27 December 2010

Greed With No Bounds: How Argentina's Mafiocracy Sold Out Their Nation To Foreign Kleptocrats, Plutocrats And Oligarchs

Americans would do well to study how the lower and deconstructed middle class of Argentinian people took to the streets after decades of privatization and giveaways to a global corporatocracy. This once public or common wealth of Argentina, when privatized, was usually sold at low slanted bids to criminal insiders at Too Big To Fail Banks, Big Multi-Naitonal Oil Companies, and the like, while Argentinian "insiders" were paid off. These insiders, called Argentinian Mafiocracy in the film, bankrupted their country and destroyed the pensions and healthcare of their people who were the worker bees responsible for building up the wealth over the years.

In this film, you will learn how the richest 10% of Argentina quickly took control of 60% of that nation's wealth through the corrupt machinations of politicians from all parties, and by using corrupt union leaders, lobbyists, bankers, businessmen, the IMF, the World Bank, and other wealthy and soon to be wealthy criminals to do their bidding.

This 10/60 wealth disparity figure galvanized the students, workers and pensioners of Argentina into a Solidarity which took to the streets for years to protest against their corrupt government and Central Bank. Amazingly, here we are in America, at the cusp of 2011 A.D., with 10% of Americans owning 71% of our wealth . . . which is a bigger disparity than that which made Argentinians angry enough to take to the streets!

Instead of a movement of all American workers, retirees, the under-employed/unemployed and the 99ers we have Senators and Congress People trying to block medical care to 9/11 first responders or trying to cut off much needed aid to people who've been unemployed for longer than 99 weeks, while corporate lobbyists for Big Banks, Big Oil, Big Pharma and more are writing bills which Congress rubber stamps, and Wall Street banksters are raking in hundreds of billions of dollars in bonuses and bitching about it in the nation's media.

As you watch this enlightening film about Argentina, keep in mind the allegories your critical mind will find and overlay with what has been going down in America since the "Reagan Revolution".

In many ways, this film is disheartening as it shows un-regulated greed abetted by a compliant government will soon enough bring a country to its knees. But in another context, this film is uplifting because it shows what a angry majority of lower class and middle class people are capable of when they unite:

p.s. I had no sooner put this post up on my blog when I clicked on James Kunstler's latest from his "Clusterfuck Nation Blog" titled The Moment of Convulsion. Here are the first three (continued below Part 1 of the 12 Part Film)

Part 1



paragraphs from it which tie in nicely with the film you are about to watch:
A little ways off the curb on the Boulevard Henry IV here in Paris, you can see the memory of the Bastille outlined by a course of masonry in the pavement, in particular one of the bulbous towers of the old fortress-prison. It marks one of those threshold moments in history when things got out-of-hand - in the late afternoon of July 14, 1789 - and by the time a mob had detached the head of Warden Bernard-René de Launey from his shoulders and paraded it around on a pike, everyone in the city knew that they had crossed into the politically unknown frontier of Revolution.

Seeing this residue of history put me in mind of a riddle that one of my college professors presented to us one day years ago: why did Achilles drag Hector around the city of Troy three times? We came up with dozens of reasons ranging from conjectures out of the text of The Iliad to lame bits of Hippie numerology, but nobody could furnish the answer that the prof was looking for, which was eventually revealed: Because he [Achilles] was just that pissed off.

This was the idea that dogged me in the winter twilight of Paris late on Christmas Day as I pondered the fate of my own country back across the cold cold sea. A lot of Americans are beaten down and discouraged these days. They've lost not only jobs, incomes, and houses, but also a sense of purpose, and perhaps faith in the essential fairness of the American venture - as the propane runs out, and families try to subsist on Froot Loops, and the re-po squad turns up to haul away the Ford F-150 Raptor. Meanwhile, in their last remaining refuge from harsh reality, TV, they glimpse the likes of Jamie Dimon, Chloe Kardashian, and Jay-Z emerging from limousines looking hopelessly bored with wealth beyond imagination. When will the folks out theremove from shame and despondency to being really pissed off about the disposition of things?

Isn't that a question, though?

Part 2




Part 3




Part 4




Part 5




Part 6




Part 7




Part 8




Part 9





Part 10




Part 11




Part 12

4 comments:

LA Ronnie said...

Hot damn, Rock! This is the best thing you've put up since "The Money Masters". Keep 'em coming!

Anonymous said...

This is a must see by all Americans who think "It cannot happen here..."

Anonymous said...

"In a head-on clash between violence and power, the outcome is hardly in doubt... Nowhere is the self-defeating factor in the victory of violence over power more evident than in the use of terror to maintain domination, about whose weird successes and eventual failures we know perhaps more than any generation before us." -Hannah Arendt

NJ Cassie said...

Loved that Hannah Arendt quote. Is that from a book or film?

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