Argentina defies IMF blackmail and raises Wages and Social Protection after key BRICS membership .. Eng/Esp

/from thefreeonline on 3rd Aug 2023 by elcomunista / Bloomberg

Argentina’s Ministry of Economy announced measures to improve the salaries of public workers and divert money to retirees and the poorest families, defying the demand of its International Monetary Fund (IMF) masters for the country to spend less.

The national economy is dedicated to paying the interest on its debt, making it a mere ‘cash cow’ for the western holders of shares in the debt and always being forced to seek more.

The IMF claims to be ‘helping’ Argentina, but its financial interest is to make it poorer and more dependant on new loans.

Argentina’s admission to BRICS gives it a glimmer of hope. By trading in currencies outside the dollar and joining any new BRICS currency it could finally free itself from the debt ‘vultures’.

Sergio Massa, economy minister and presidential candidate, outlined measures including tax cuts, higher pension payments, additional money for feeding programs for families with children and low-interest lines of credit, Bloomberg reported.

The new plan, which also includes financing for export products, comes after President Alberto Fernández’s Union for the Homeland coalition, of which Massa is a candidate, was surprised by the victory of the far right libertarian capitalist Javier Milei in the primaries of this August before the October elections.

Argentina has long been reduced to penury despite natural and social riches, having been caught, like dozens of poor countries, in a classic neo Liberal debt trap by the US controlled financial system.

The fraud of IMF-World Bank “debt relief”

In the opinion of Bloomberg analyst Maya Averbuch, these measures “could put the government in conflict with the IMF”, which on August 23 approved a disbursement of 7.5 billion dollars to the South American country after extensive negotiations over its multimillion-dollar loans, after of Argentina failing to meet program targets in the midst of a drought.

In his speech, the minister cited the devaluation of the currency and the unprecedented climate crisis as reasons to offer financial support to Argentine families.

“The main objective is that all sectors of the economy have help, in some way, from the State,” Massa was quoted as saying by the US media.

One of the conditions of the IMF loan to the Fernández government was that Argentina intensify control of spending by even further limiting public salaries and pensions.

In its statement, the credit agency demanded that Buenos Aires apply a ‘temporary’ increase in taxes on certain goods and services to compensate for drought-related export losses.

Argentina is by now the largest debtor of the IMF, an entity that in 2018 delivered to the Macri Executive the largest credit granted in its history to a single country

Argentina desobedece a la presión del FMI y eleva los salarios y la protección social

Posted on agosto 28, 2023 by ELCOMUNISTA.NET in ARGENTINA, LO MÁS VALORADO // 0 Comments

Argentina en la trampa del FMI –

Sergio Massa, ministro de Economía y candidato a la presidencia, esbozó medidas que incluyen rebajas fiscales, mayores pagos de pensiones, dinero adicional para programas de alimentación para familias con niños y líneas de crédito a bajo interés, informa Bloomberg.

Freedom NOW for Jorge “Yorch” Esquivel! Eng/Esp

The case of Mexican anarchist prisoner, Jorge “Yorch” Esquivel, marking the Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners. More info on Yorch’s case here.

/from thefreeonline on 3rd Aug 2023 by Its Going Down

Jorge «Yorch» Esquivel has been a hostage of the Mexican State within the walls of the Reclusorio Oriente prison for 259 days. 259 days and nights stolen from his life

The main reason he is behind bars is the very existence of the prison industrial complex, the repressive «security» apparatus of the State, and the forms of punishment that will never reintegrate, reform or heal anyone, but quite the opposite.

The specific reason in Jorge’s case is the fabrication of crimes as part of a set-up created by the UNAM university in order to criminalize the struggle as part of their twisted obsession with evicting the Okupa Che squat, but only with the approval of the community of people whose opinion is important to them in order to maintain their esteemed reputation in Mexico and abroad.

If they wanted to, the authorities would have every «right» to evict the squat and imprison whoever is inside the space at the time of a police operative with the legal claim of dispossession of their property,

But since that would damage said reputation, it has been more convenient for them to orchestrate what started with a media campaign of contempt that reduced Okupa Che and those who participate in it, to a space of violent pseudo-student criminals dedicated to selling drugs to the innocent saints of the UNAM student community, among other criminal activities.

For that, they found the perfect person to play the role of the main protagonist of their imaginitive yet totally false narrative, and that person was and continues to be our compañero Jorge, who is a punk and an anarchist, a cook

(his mixiote tacos are highly addictive, we’ll give you that!) and an artisan, a supporter of countless causes and struggles, one of which is the fight for the right to squat starting with the first squats in Mexico City to the Okupa Che (which he has been a part for almost its entire existence of more than 20 years), a compañero who was raised and schooled by the streets of the great Tenochtitlán from a very young age.

That’s right, Jorge is of the people from below, the same people who, according to the struggles won by UNAM students and teachers over the decades, should be included as part of their community, but in this and numerous other situations, we see that the opposite is true.