Argentina's Fernandez Criticizes Striking Farmers

[AlphaCentauri]

March 25 (Bloomberg) -- Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner dismissed demands by farmers that she roll back higher export taxes amid a strike that threatens to be the biggest domestic challenge to her three-month-old government.

``I won't allow myself to be extorted,'' Fernandez said at the presidential palace in Buenos Aires. ``Do we want a country that is only for a select few or a country that is more just, with greater equality?''

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aiwUOLTay9Lk&refer=latin_america

More in spanish:

Rechaza Cristina Fernández "extorsión" de paro agrícola en Argentina

Al referirse a la primera gran crisis que enfrenta durante su gestión, Fernández de Kirchner optó por la confrontación y advirtió que son protestas "de la abundancia", porque en otras épocas estos "piquetes" (bloqueos) los hacían los sectores más pobres.

Explicó que a fines del siglo pasado, los miles de trabajadores que se quedaron sin empleo protagonizaron "los piquetes de la miseria" que representaban la gran tragedia vivida por los argentinos por las políticas económicas aplicadas en los años 90.

En cambio, ahora "nos tocó ver la contracara, lo que yo llamo los piquetes de la abundancia, los piquetes de la Argentina de mayor rentabilidad, de la tragedia se pasó a casi un paso de comedia", subrayó.

Escuchada entre abucheos en los bloqueos, la presidenta argentina denunció que "hay una rara conducta de algunos sectores porque cuando hay pérdidas, la sociedad debe absorberlas, y cuando las vacas están gordas, son para ellos".

La mandataria convocó a debatir el tema más allá de las cargas ideológicas, al precisar que el campo argentino logró altos niveles de competitividad y rentabilidad desde la llegada del ex presidente Néstor Kirchner al poder, en 2003.

Sostuvo, además, que los productores realizan una huelga "en contra de los argentinos" al negarse a distribuir comercialmente los productos agropecuarios y sus derivados en el mercado nacional "porque las exportaciones siguen viento en popa".
http://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/ElFinanciero/Portal/cfpages/contentmgr.cfm?docId=111712&docTipo=1&orderby=docid&sortby=ASC

*`**`*`**`**`*`*`*`*`*`**`*`**`*`*`*
love when Cristina speaks

[Runcible Spoon]

1. The Fernandez gov't is WRONG on this

45% export tax is ridiculous even by strong central govt socialist standards. I'm in BA now, there's no meat and by tomorrow probably no milk. The gov't taxes the fuck out of everything imported and exported, which was necessary during the rebuilding period, but it's not like US agribusiness. A lot of these farmers and ranchers are small independent operations. The people here are largely behind the farmers, FWIW. A lot of aging Argentines can't afford the astronomical rise in food prices and this govt has done little to address that. Just bc Christina is a popular, romantic leader doesn't mean the people will put up with this. Unlike our country, ppl speak, strike, and are heard, even if they voted for her to begin with.

[AlphaCentauri]

2. The export tax does not increase the local market prices

Actually it prevent food shortage when the hype to export all production becomes a trend. Why those producers want to export instead of sell to the local market if they could affect the entire populations? Well they may not care about their own country economy.

[Runcible Spoon]

3. it's not that simple.

I never said the tax increased local prices for food directly but there's certainly no incentive to keep domestic prices low if the money is still in exports. The fact that chicken prices went up 20% and everything else from dairy to fruits and vegetables increased is just an indicator that the Kirschner gov't is not particularly good at striking any balance with growers here.

There's protectionist policies then there is discouraging any sort of export economy AT ALL. Strikes and food shortages, real or actual, are what brought down the De La Rua gov't. I understand the desire to keep production and distribution localized to Argentina and I'm not a fan of countries selling off their resources to China, but these groups have a limit to how they will put up with.

Your opinion is straight from Kirschner's mouth. She could have easily sat down ane negotiated policy with the industry leaders as opposed to taking this hardline bullshit.

I suggest you actually look at how people are affected HERE. What do you want the agriculture industries to do here? Grow and sell solely for domestic consumption? Let the Kirchner govt tell it how much it can grow and how much it can be sold for? Sounds a little Stalinist to me.

By the way, they're rationing milk today, 3 liters each. Sigh.

[AlphaCentauri]

4. The government of Argentina has said they are open to proposals

In the case of De La Rua, like Cristina said it was the middle class and the poor who did protest in this case the unemployment statistics show positive signs, so most likely the milk rationing is because the producers are not providing the milk, that is they have the milk for exportation but not for local consumption, amazing!!!. What is behind all that export hype if they can't provide enough for the local market???????????

[Runcible Spoon]

5. just keep up your blind support for the Fernandez gov't

even if they are working against the best interests of the farmers AND the communities suffering. Christina is set to give an address tonight at 6; let's see if she decides to back down or if things are going to get ugly.

Where did you get your information about "the government is willing to negotiate"? As of YESTERDAY she said point blank she will not back down from the retentions (taxes). Now it looks like she's shot herself in the foot and we shall see tonight if she will atone for that. As for me, I'm going to go get ready to join the protests downtown.

It's easy for you to be so flippant about all of this when you're sitting thousands of miles away behind a keyboard.

I'm done with this thread.

[AlphaCentauri]

8. hard to answer that question? : that export hype if they can't provide enough for the local market??

What is behind all that export hype if they can't provide enough for the local market?

I see, the best way to answer that question is to evade it. Cristina and other government officials had said stop the huelga and lets negotiate, the producers don't want to negotiate they feel like their are back it by the RW who wants to gain political capital out of this.

My sources: El ministro de Economía, Martín Lousteau, impulsor formal de la medida que ha levantado al campo en contra de Fernández, apeló esta noche a la 'racionalidad y el diálogo', pero 'cuando termine el paro de los productores', matizó.
http://actualidad.terra.es/nacional/articulo/cristina_fernandez_campo_desafia_apoyo_2347610.htm

Las retenciones son el único instrumento que cuenta el Estado para hacer frente a las consecuencias no deseables de un aumento de precios internacionales de productos agroalimentarios, con el actual marco regulatorio e institucional del país. Además, concilian un dólar alto que beneficia a la industria y genera empleo con precios de los alimentos acordes a los salarios argentinos. El conjunto de instrumentos alternativos – entre otros, las juntas nacionales de granos y carnes - fue desmantelado durante los años ’90, dejando los mercados domésticos de alimentos a merced de la evolución de los precios internacionales.
http://www.camponova.com/nota.asp?n=2008_3_27&id=24060

[Judi Lynn]

7. It will be interesting to learn the origin of the planners of this strike. Don't forget the massive

transportation strike Nixon had arranged in Chile during the Presidency of leftist President Salvador Allende, during the time Nixon told his CIA guy, who wrote it down in his records that he wanted to "make the economy scream."

They were able to pull that off capably, setting up Allende to lose a ton of support with his citizens, when trucks were not delivering food around the country, and boats were waiting, lined up off the coast to deliver their cargo Santiago, and there were food riots from desperate people.

It's an old game for the right-wing sector of this government: they've done it time after time after time.

We weren't born yesterday, were we?

[AlphaCentauri]

9. Don't forget who is observing those movements in argentina AZNAR, FOX , ROGER NORIEGA

Looks like for those RW experts their objective is Argentina, La crisis of el corralito is over thanks to the leftist government and now they want to harvest the fruits or want to spoil the process.

Also all those food shortages in Venezuela very suspicious, there is some interest in buying those product to keep them out of their local markets, mexico and Brazil have seen those tactics in the pass.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Speaking of Argentina:Nazi Echo: Argentina, Death Camps & the Contras

Nazi Echo: Argentina, Death Camps & the Contras

By Marta Gurvich & Robert Parry

The tracks of secret financing for the Nicaraguan contra war may cross a troubling money-raising tactic passed on from Adolf Hitler's Nazis to their ideological heirs in Argentina: the liquidation of property from victims killed in death camps.

An investigation in Spain is examining evidence that an intelligence officer in Argentina's Dirty War was responsible for selling the property of Argentines after they were "disappeared" -- that is, taken to secret concentration camps and murdered. Money from the victims' property may have ended up in Swiss bank accounts maintained by Argentine military officers.

The Argentine intelligence officer accused of overseeing the property liquidations is Raul Guglielminetti. In closed-door U.S. Senate testimony in 1987, one of his accomplices also fingered Guglielminetti as the manager of a Miami-based money-laundering operation that funnelled tens of millions of dollars in Bolivian drug money to the Nicaraguan contras and to other right-wing paramilitary operations in Latin America.

The extent of the contra connection to various Bolivian drug smuggling operations reportedly is one of the surprises contained in the still-secret volume two of an internal CIA investigation into contra-cocaine trafficking. But the CIA so far has refused to release the 600-page volume two. CIA spokesmen say the agency eventually may release an unclassified summary, but will likely keep much of volume two secret.

In Spain, meanwhile, the property-liquidation case is one part of a larger examination of Argentina's Dirty War by Judge Baltasar Garzon. The judge has been investigating the fate of Spanish citizens who "disappeared" in Argentina during the late 1970s and early 1980s when the military slaughtered some 10,000 to 30,000 people who were considered politically suspect.

Garzon's investigation is looking at evidence that Guglielminetti oversaw the selling of property stolen from the victims, with the proceeds allegedly deposited in nearly 100 Swiss bank accounts belonging to Argentine officers.
Earlier this year, the inquiry led to confirmation that at least six Argentine military officers maintained secret bank accounts in Switzerland. But it was not clear whether those accounts contained proceeds looted from Dirty War victims or money from other sources.

Still, the historical echo of Hitler's financial strategies is striking. During Hitler's World War II extermination campaign against European Jews, the Nazis raised capital by selling the possessions of death-camp victims, including gold melted down from wedding bands and extracted from teeth fillings.

Hitler's government transferred large amounts of this wealth through Swiss banks and used the money to buy vital goods from neutral countries, including Argentina.

Argentina then was dominated by the quasi-fascist movement of Gen. Juan Peron. The country harbored strong sympathies for the Axis powers, especially Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini. After World War II, many Nazis escaped along "rat lines" to Argentina and other South American countries which protected war criminals, including Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele and Klaus Barbie.

International Jewish groups long have suspected that Argentina played a role, too, in laundering the Nazis' legendary ODESSA funds to fascist survivors of the Third Reich. In the decades that followed, some fascist and neo-fascist operatives branched out, linking up to organized crime and earning money as narcotics traffickers.

Others found jobs assisting Latin American intelligence services suppressing leftist insurgencies. The ex-Nazis shared their skills in torture and other intelligence techniques.

More:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/1990s/consor24.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Americans are, in some cases, just starting to wake up and discover this fascist connection which has always been there, and throughout Latin America.

Thanks for your comments, Alpha Centauri.