Comments on: Argentine dictator goes on trial

By: Jack Mitchell

Jack Mitchell — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:30:52 +0000

From what I could gather, the Kirchnerist party, such as it is, represents a kind of desperate alternative to the neoliberals on the one hand (who completely screwed up the country in the late 2000's by pegging the Argentine peso to the US dollar) and the hard-core socialists on the other, but the Kirchners don't have an organised party structure backing them. I get the feeling they're kind of hoping they can figure everything out with the IMF and ride out this recession, then start selling beef to the Chinese middle class. Attitudes are still pretty entrenched.

By: craigola

craigola — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:18:40 +0000

Bankrupt? The moment they can afford it? Wasn't the government that was put in place there done so in order to establish some kind of free-market paradise? Why aren't they rolling in dough?

By: Jack Mitchell

Jack Mitchell — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:02:13 +0000

High time, and I hope he hangs. (Actually I think Argentina doesn't have the death penalty.) But even though they're at last, 25 years later, getting around to retrying Bignone, it's a sign of controversial, incredibly enough, the dictatorship remains in Argentina that the government has still not established how many people were disappeared (= kidnapped, tortured, and murdered) only 35 years ago. That is well within living memory. I don't care how bankrupt your State is, the moment you can afford it you exhaustively research how many of your own citizens were murdered by your own government and you account for the 17 000-person discrepancy between the official figure and the higher estimate.