<nettime> Re: Debt non payment (proposals section)

[Julian Burgos <JulianBurgos@compuserve.com>]

THE HUMANIST PARTY OF ARGENTINA LAUNCHES ALL OUT CAMPAIGN 
AGAINST THE ADVANCE OF GLOBALIZATION
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
20th National Congress of the Humanist Party of Argentina

May 2nd, 1998 - Ferro Stadium, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 16:00 hours.  

For education, health and employment, and against international banks and
the perpetuation of false options 

After many years of  "conversion" and "growth" in the country, it is time
to ask oneself:  "am I better off or worse off than before?". With that
question answered, there are no doubts.  If they assure me that all is
going well and will continue to be better, I already know what kind of
future awaits me from the present government or the opposition.  Everything
has worsened and will go on worsening with the passage of time.   The
government and the opposition will continue to promote the "conversion",
the breakup of the country, the decay of education and health, the sale of
the country, the progressive indebtedness to international banking, the
closing of sources of employment, the decline in productivity, the increase
in violence and the growing corruption.  What new plans does the government
have? What new plans does the opposition have?  They are in the same
game...  they are differentiated only by their crude cravings.  Some
trample it all, while others go at it with "finesse".  That is not the
point.  Let them, if they dare, set conditions to the IMF and to the
usurious international banking industry;  if they dare, to forbid
privatization of public health and education;  if they dare, to reactivate
the productive machinery;  if they dare, to expel speculative capital;  if
they dare, to favor small or medium-size enterprises...   No, they will not
do anything of the sort because they are "globalized" and in the process of
"globalization" nothing can be done without the consent of the government
of the United States.

To make matters worse, a global crisis of Capitalism has appeared in the
stock exchanges and in the world banking institutions; a worldwide
recession has combined with growing unemployment. And because this collapse
is global, one must tune to it!

Education:

Our teachers are torn between trying to provide education and training to
the youth and attending to their own lack of resources. They live in a
state laid upon them by minuscule remunerations and the demoralizing
conditions in which they have to carry out their efforts.

In alleyways without exit, where each one of these human beings, these
teachers, are threatened and punished with unjust wage cutbacks, with less
and less adequate material conditions, within a general climate of
discouragement and degradation of education, they help form the women and
men of the future of Argentina.

While this occurs, all kinds of predators prowl the best research
institutes, seeking to draw a slice for their miserly businesses.

All that has been built throughout our history to give us free and
compulsory public education is today being dismantled and sold to the
highest bidder.

Health:

Beyond the cutting of ribbons at inaugurations of hospital facilities
during electoral times, and beyond the businesses of purchasing "high-tech"
equipment, useful for television appearances, the work conditions of the
physicians does not fulfill the minimal requirements of dignity to devote
themselves to what is high-priority:  the practice of healing.

In different parts of our country there is a resurgence of diseases that
were considered contained by the development of medical science and health
care, while birth mortality and infant mortality increases.

Sick people, needy of the most painstaking cares, are received in
institutions where there are no bandages, no syringes, no remedies and
where those that should attend to them make their best effort to reassure
and comfort them.

Public works, built with the efforts of generations of workers, are
condemned to the scrap yard and subjected to crimes of privatization;
illegally, millions of persons are shed of rights gained over decades.

In this situation, there are millions of Argentines living in fear of
remaining unprotected and facing the possibility that an epidemic could
destroy their families.

Work:

While politicians and public officials saturate the media with lies saying
that Argentina is undergoing a real revolution, millions of youths do not
find encouragement to seek their first job, millions are let in the
streets, millions consume their lives in exhausting occupations for
miserable remunerations.

Hundred of thousands of families can barely sleep at night concerned with
the threat of losing their jobs; jobs held by force while accepting wage
reductions, increases in work hours and under the table payments. All of
this while having to hear the most outrageous stories from the worst liars
and apologists.

Today, the worst unemployment figures since the crisis of the 30's have
resulted in record numbers of underemployed people. People are subject to
totally inhuman working conditions, occupational insecurity in all its
nuances, combined with the additional seasoning of a greater than ever
arrogance from the rich and powerful.

The International Banking:

The gigantic external debt, surpassing 100 billion dollars, threatens to
devour everything.  Meanwhile the IMF continues dictating, insolently, the
adjustments and measures that have to be implemented...

On the other hand, speculative capital comes and goes without control,
extracting rapid and easy profits while boot-licking locals explain to us
what a privilege it is to be attracting their interest and voracious
appetite.

Credit institutions, founded to fulfill indispensable social ends, are now
pushed to privatization, widening the generalized plunder.

The banking concentration is under way.  Thus, strong local banks will
begin to fall dragging along thousands of small saving account holders
that, within a greater, scandalous lack of equity, do not count on any
support or guarantee for their savings.

Thus our people are impoverished, while simultaneously generating huge
resources that are used only to pay an external debt.  External debt that,
contradicting all logic and all common sense, continuously grows.

False Options:

What do they say to all of this, the pathetic characters of the accepted
and acceptable opposition?  When asked about these fundamental topics, all
they do is stutter vague answers about the need for commitment.  They
peregrinate, shamelessly, seeking the approval of Clinton and Camdessus. 
Masters of deceit, concealment and carelessness, they fill their mouths
with whatever secondary issues that are put before them.

Why do they do this?  Because they are small politicians and because they
are small people.  There is no greatness, sensibility, neither talent and,
not even, a pinch of grace in them; they have only their ridiculous
disputes for positions and candidacies.

Meanwhile the people prepare their spirits to choose a new deceit, a new
orchestrated fraud.  

The Real Option

Some of the immediate proposals of the Humanist Party are:

- Public and free management of health and education.

- A law that favors ownership and shared management of good-producing
companies by workers.

- Refusal of payment of the principal of the external debt until it is
clearly known how it was contracted.  Refusal of payments of interests,
that in practice have already been collected with the so called special
rates (risk-country rating) applied.  Non-recognition of all debt
contracted during the military dictatorship.

- Expulsion of speculative, global capital.

- Elimination of all interest collection in banking and credit
transactions.

- Optional vote, so that is clear that a very important sector of the
population rejects all the "offers" presented to them.

- Direct election of judges, beginning at the Supreme Court.  

- Direct election of police chiefs.

- Restructuring of the police budget so that 80% of the funds do not go, as
now do, to increase the arsenal intended for social repression. But instead
to the technological improvement and training of a reduced, more effective
police force, focused exclusively on the protection of the citizens.

- Penalizing ecological offenses.

- Direct Democracy, based on plebiscites and direct consultation of the
population.  

-  Law of political responsibility.

The Humanist Party has its own project and does not participate in
alliances and fronts with anybody.  The Humanist Party wants to share this
project with the people.  And no matter how utopian it may seem, these
proposals must be implemented if we want to lift our country out of this
crisis.  The only misguided utopia in all of this is the false hope that we
can live in peace if things continue in the current direction.

For more information:
http://www.in-contact.com/pharg/
http://www.humanist.org/hp/
---
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