Argentina ticked off with U.S. over criticism on Cuban ties

Looks like the Bushistas managed to piss off most of Latin America with their gunslinging remarks yesterday. LOL what a bunch of f*ck'n MORONS lead by an imbecile.

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Buenos Aires, Jan 7 (EFE).- Argentina's center-left government expressed indignation Wednesday over criticism from the Bush administration of its warming ties with Cuba, characterizing as "impertinent" the comments by a high-ranking U.S. official.
President Nestor Kirchner told Washington to stop treating his country "like a doormat." "We are an independent country with dignity," he said, noting that the U.S. comments came just a week before a meeting he has scheduled with U.S. counterpart George W. Bush during the Summit of the Americas in Monterrey, Mexico.

Though no one was predicting fisticuffs, the Argentine leader, a strapping former governor of the rough-and-tumble Patagonian province of Santa Cruz, said his nation will win the upcoming encounter "by a knockout." Other senior officials here spoke out against comments made Tuesday in New York by Roger Noriega, Washington's top official for Latin America.

Noriega, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, described Kirchner's policy toward Cuba as "a matter of concern and disappointment" for the United States.

"We are perturbed, and a lot," Argentine Cabinet chief Alberto Fernandez said Wednesday. He told Radio Mitre that Noriega's comments "sound frankly impertinent when referring to someone of the stature of the Argentine president." "It would seem he has not understood that the relationship we're trying to have with the United States is one which is mature and serious," he said, adding that Buenos Aires is no longer following a policy of "automatic alignments" with Washington.

http://www.efenews.com/includesasp/noticias.asp?opcion=0&id=5859434

President Nestor Kirchner told Washington to stop treating his country "like a doormat." "We are an independent country with dignity,"
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Bitch slapped by a Third World country! :) I really like Kirchner's bluntness. He's shown quite often that he isn't going to take this shit from Bush (or the IMF). I love it!

Vamos Argentina!

This great editorial ran in last months NACLA:

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We sure did, Mr. President. How could we have “misunderestimated” your regime’s ability to drive your country two Worlds back to the Third—not just a Third World country, but a full blown Banana Empire. As U.S. imperial reach is extended, the country is ruled by corporations through an unelected executive who continues to gut civil liberties in the name of national security with the complicity of a servile media and a one-party system disguised as two—not to mention economic and environmental degradation. Welcome to Third World politics kiddies!

Let’s begin with the rigged election of 2000. The son of a former President, “Bush the Lesser” (thank you, Arundhati Roy), had his brother Jeb swinging votes in Florida. The blatant politicking and nepotism of that sham was an electoral fiasco that probably even made Mexico’s PRI blush. When the Cuban government offers to send election monitors to Florida, something momentous has occurred.

With the worst still to come, Bush the Lesser assumed power and appointed a recycled cabinet that, for the purposes of this mental exercise, we’ll call a junta. I’ve always been amazed at the way some Latin American dictators—Bolivia’s Hugo Banzer Suárez or Guatemala’s Efraín Ríos Montt, among others—maintained political legitimacy after a well-documented reign of terror. Bush’s neocon cabal, including such Iran-Contra scandal veterans as John Negroponte and Elliott Abrams, seems to have done the same. Abrams helped support some of the most repressive regimes in Latin America and helped conceal their abuses, mostly in countries dominated by the U.S. fruit industry—the so-called Banana Republics. The irony of Abrams’ appointment and title was probably lost on Bush when the one-time Contra supporter was given the post of Senior Director for Democracy, Human Rights and International Operations in 2001.

Then came September 11, sadly an event that is now used to justify the Wars du Jour. As in the Latin American dirty wars of recent decades, national security is now used to rally the population behind illegal and inhumane detentions of citizens and non-citizens alike. As far as we know, today’s “detainees” could be suffering the same torture endured by the desaparecidos of the South.

http://www.nacla.org/art_display.php?art=2288

another country that hates us :sigh:

Supporting the generals all those years.

"We" (not me, but our government) supported them as they tried to rid Argentina of the dangerous leftists. How many thousands were "disappeared"?

Argentine President Nestor Kirchner was among those who were tortured.

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Project Disappeared is a joint project of several human rights organizations and activists with the purpose of recovering and maintaining memory, understanding what happened in Argentina during the "dirty war" and fighting against impunity. We invite you to visit it, to contribute, to join our efforts - and above all, to remember.

http://www.desaparecidos.org/arg/eng.html

It's sickening, these friends to Nazis and fascist scum like Augusto Pinochet, to hear them dare to condemn anything.

Hats off to Argentina!!

"stature" of bush, the only thing that is holding him up is the office of the presidency. he has none of the "stature" of most of the leaders in the world. the presidency was handed to him and the governorship was handed to him...he certainly hasn`t had to fight for anything in his life. no one is buying him anymore and our country is reaping the whirlwind because of it.

after the previous President Menem, a friend of George H. W. Bush got through with it:

In Argentina today:

1 out of every 4 people is unemployed.
50% of the population is living below the official poverty line " Child malnutrition, in a country rich in natural resources, is making the headlines
70 % of retirees are living on poverty pensions, under $100 a month.
People have been sucked dry of their life savings, trapped in frozen bank accounts

All this, thanks to Menem's corruption in the privatization process, and in "opening up the economy" with no restrictions, supposedly to pay back the foreign debt and "modernize".

The vocal criticism has not come without repercussions stateside. At least one major charity event slated to benefit MSF has switched its beneficiary, hoping to avoid controversy.

More than 150,000 people lost their jobs as a direct result of the privatizations
Import tariffs were lowered, severely weakening Argentina's own industry
Most national resources (including oil) were sold off, leaving Argentina with barely any industry to speak of.
In the meantime, Menem and his cronies made huge fortunes through the privatizations and by cutting deals with the likes of George Bush and Enron
Wealth became much more concentrated in a handful of economic groups, widening the gap between rich and poor.
Argentines must now pay for the water that comes out of their taps, pay export prices for their own oil, and pay the highest telephone rates in the world.
Even so, the debt (mostly under Menem) ballooned from 70 billion in 1993 to 140 billion in 2001.
To cover his and his cronies' corruption, he added 4 pro-Menem judges to the Supreme Court to guarantee immunity against his crimes.
Among many charges, Menem was under house arrest for illegal arms trading with Croatia and Ecuador
Menem pardoned the former members of the military junta, who were serving life sentences for crimes against humanity.
Dispatch

http://www.lalutta.org/dispatch/protesta1.htm
What a total @$$####.

Good luck and best wishes to Kirchner. Thanks for the Desparecidos site to examine. We sure have been kept in the dark about our rightl-wing activities in Latin America. We all need to catch up on our reading!

Argentina and US row over Cuba

Reuters in Buenos Aires
Thursday January 8, 2004
The Guardian

Diplomatic relations between Argentina and the US deteriorated into mudslinging yesterday after Washington said the country's left-leaning government was too soft on communist-run Cuba.

Roger Noriega, US assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, told reporters on Tuesday he was "disappointed" that officials visiting Cuba had failed to meet dissidents, a reference to foreign minister Rafael Bielsa's recent trip.

Last year Argentina restored full diplomatic ties with Cuba under its new president, Nestor Kirchner.

"We consider the declarations aggressive... and inopportune," the vice-foreign minister, Jorge Taiana, told local radio.
(snip/...)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/argentina/story/0,11439,1118072,00.html

Kirchner has taken a page from Hugo and is telling
Noriega to fuck off. The mice are not afraid of the
cat any longer.

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...After Castro"s visit to Buenos Aires in May, to attend to Kirchner"s inauguration, Argentina restored full diplomatic ties with Cuba. Then Foreign Minister, Rafael Bielsa, met Castro in Havanna and, according to official information, refused to meet internal dissidents. Next June, the United Nations Human Rights Committee is expected to vote on Cuba, and Washington desperately looks for support to a condemn resolution to the Island. Last year, Argentina moved from supporting US proposal to abstain.

On the other side, US support to Argentina during the negotiations with the IMF to restructure its defaulted debt, allowed the South Americans to reach a positive deal. However, private debt holders say the agreement discriminates them, as while Argentina will pay its debt with IMF in full, offers them a 75% cut.

Since then, Kirchner won few friends in Washington with his criticisms of the International Monetary Fund, blaming it for Argentina's collapse in 2002, and his tough stance on creditors holding $88 billion in Argentina's defaulted debt. Kirchner criticism came after the IMF begun to look for changes to the agreement signed in September, ceding to private holders demands. Argentina replied it would not pay any extra-dollar to the agreed.

This week's clash ratcheted up tension between the United States and Argentina, which under Kirchner has established closer ties with Washington's main political enemies in Latin America, from Cuban President Fidel Castro to Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez. Sources in Washington said some U.S. officials have said there is a growing alliance emerging in Latin America between Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina, countries that have swung to the left in recent years amid a backlash against free-market policies fueled by Washington.
Kirchner also "irritated" US Hawks after meeting Bolivian leftist leader, Evo Morales, accused by Washington of plotting the popular rebellion that ousted President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada last year. Observers believe recent US anti-Castro offensive is related to next presidential race. Bush runs for reelection as badly needs the votes of the Cuban community living in the State of Florida, source of his controversial victory in 2000.

http://english.pravda.ru/world/20/91/368/11726_latinos.html

Roger Noriega, to start gibbering at Venezuela, Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, and accusing them all of being part of some new leftist syndicate. This TRULY SUCKS.

We've NEVER had an administration this shabby, this childish, and this stupid. What a shame.

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Posted: Thursday, January 08, 2004
By: David Coleman


Argentina latest in Beltway bullies' attempts to smokescreen Washington failures

VHeadline.com reporter David Coleman writes: It's not just the Venezuelan government that's getting miffed by the recent groundswell of USA McCarthyism ... the Argentinean government has its hackles up over the Beltway bullies' attempts to smokescreen Washington D.C.'s failures, most notably in Iraq.

Diplomatic relations between Argentina and the USA has significantly deteriorated, after chronically red-necked US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Noriega let fly with yet another thoughtless observation that Washington is "concerned" by Buenos Aires diplomatic relations with Cuba.

Caracas and Buenos Aires could, of course, express equal concern over the Bush 2 administrations ties with the dictator of Pakistan, Burma or a string of other not-so-democratic countries around the world. Venezuela could even express disgust over Nike's exploitation of sweatshop labor in a Third World perspective, but no.

Argentine President Nestor Kirchner says he'll take on the cowboy at the White House and defeat him by "a knock out!"
(snip/...)

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=14420
(Free registration required)

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=14395

Prepare to invade.

What do you mean we don't have any more
soldiers?

I envy you Norteamericanos, for you live w/in the belly of the beast.
Che Guevara

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Thanx to all here. We're winning.

You won't see articles like THIS every day, by golly.

(snip) Questions are also being raised as to the complicity or otherwise of US officials and there appears to be a wall of silence from usually verbose press spokespersons at the US bunker on Colinas de Valle Arriba where the New Year 2004 has been ushered in with the news of US Ambassador Charles S. Shapiro's imminent removal from Caracas. (snip)

Now it's possible to think Shapiro's sudden departure's got to be connected to this. God knows he's embarrassed normal Americans a thousand times over after we learned he was involved in the coup with the really sleazy pro-Bush Venezuelans.

(snip) In a story that is not being given any significant coverage by international wire services and/or Venezuela's opposition-controlled print and broadcast media, it is reported that Customs & Excise officers at the Caracas (Simon Bolivar) international airport in Maiquetia have seized a 25-kilo (55 lbs.) sack said to hold an illegal shipment of United States banknotes to the tune of US$2,500,000.

The airport raid has been kept under wraps since December 30 when the cache was discovered off an American Airlines flight 935 that had arrived from Miami a day earlier. (snip)

This has definitely been underreported, as this story points out. Thank god for the internet.