Re: The nation that proves oil wealth can be used to help the poor
Have any nice photos of U.S. marines invading Nicaragua and staying there from 1910-1930 to prop up the dictatorship controlled by U.S. owned fruit companies? The origin of the term Banana Republic is not flattering to U.S. foreign policy.
How about something sentimental of president McKinley giving his "Benevolent Assimilation" proclaimation to Congress to justify our putting down of the rebellion of the Phillipinos and Moros when we took over the Phillipines in 1898 after they rose up and helped us in the Spanish American War; and then we returned the favor by refusing to let them govern themselves?
Maybe a photo of a CIA agent giving financial and military advice to the forces of Pinochet in the overthrow of the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende? The CIA even helped set up the DINA, Pinochet's secret police which was responsible for many murders and disappearances over the years, with many of its officers trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas.
Hey! How about a photo of the School of the Americas itself! That would be propagand-tastic, wouldn't it?
Edit: I don't mean the above to sound quite so sarcastic as it does on a second reading. Blame the blinding headache I've acquired while trying to track down an elusive bug in a stupid unit_prod.txt file which is also making me tear my hair out in clumps. So attach many grinning blue ~D to the above.
Re: The nation that proves oil wealth can be used to help the poor
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Black Ship
OK Soulforged, now I have to ask, why isn't Peron villified for his contribution to the Argentine economic contraction? Did Peronism work? Does working for the poor grant you total immunity?
BTW, are all individuals on the top tier of the economic scale "fat asses"? Did any of them earn their wealth legitimately through hard work?
I notice noone took me up on my query regarding Chavez running for another term... guess everyone thinks it's a foregone conclusion?
Well the question about the capitalists in general and to the high middle class has been responded many times (by me in another post) and here with great autority by Aenlic.
About Perón: Well some criticized Peron exactly for that (mostly, and ironically, the follower Menem), but you've to understand that if you let open your economy to free competition when it's still weak then your own companies will fall eventaully. On the other hand, not open it will be the other extreme and in some time will make your economy less competitive for the same reason. The best way to combat this by making unilateral agreements of importation, so you import new technology but your products are not overwhelmed by foreing superior products at less prices (or tax the importation products making them more expensive), this was the implemented, though never acomplished much in the long term, and making unilateral agreements will not result many times.
Perón didn't have total immunity, that's why he fell eventually overthrown by his own ex-partners, the military. There were basically two groups against Perón: the agriculturalists (that even had some status of landowner, wich Perón tried to reduce in various ways) and one of the factions between the military, that to the end of his second mandate turned into all. The first were against Perón because he was the first to not give them all the rights on this land (they were always the most powerful people here, some still are), Perón created an assotiation of industrial workers and subsidied the creation of heavy industries (wich of course was not convinient to the undiscussed hegemony of the agricultural sector). The military at the first gained the favor of Perón and he granted many positions to them, but eventually he stoped that practice (here called clientelismo), and also the agricultural sector made an "alliance" with this proposing many favors to the sector and also power if they helped them to overthrown Perón. They did it.
So the answer was not, mostly here where the real power in society didn't lied on the worker or middle class, nor in the industry, but in the camp. But Perón implemented most of the social laws and created most of the social institutions that we have now (though many of those laws were changed in the progress of time). Hope i've answered your question.
