May 22, 2010
Happy 200th Argentina
This week is Bicentenary week in Buenos Aires. As I sit here sucking my Guarani tea (mate) from a straw/bombilla, I reflect on the bombastic inventiveness of history. I now have the good fortune to be present at my second such party.
Back in the eighties I spent my first Bicentenary in Sydney, Australia. Contrary to many myths, neither America nor Australia were “empty” before their “discovery” by “us.” In Australia the Indians / Autochthonous / Native Peoples / Aboriginals or simply the non-white folk that the white folk had to remove, were impolitely but descriptively referred to as the “Black Fella’s”. Here the tribes are collectively referred to as “originals”, "indigenous" but it is more common to hear the non indigenous refer to these americans as “Negros” in Buenos Aires “Porteno” slang.
I ask myself: “Who am I to decide their name”. ”We” brought our languages and our religions from Europe, re-labeling and revaluing all things! Here river water had more value than a Gold mine, it still has. Spanish and Portuguese replaced the language of the Incans and the Aztecs and the labels and the religions changed to support the export trade.
Buenos Aires, Sydney and Dublin all had the dubious pleasure of being the seat of empire for an occupying imperial force. For a couple of hundreds of years their function was to impose control over the land, the resources and the workforce to extract, extract, extract sending the “valuable” stuff to London and Madrid. Not much has changed. A trip to the European clubs in Buenos Aires might leave one with the question as to why exactly they bothered having a revolution at all?
In Sydney the exports were gold, wool and coal. Dublin too exported sheep but possibly more important was a steady supply of poor Irish men, adventurers and thugs to feed the armies, navies and later the air-forces of the British Empire. We like the Scots and the Gurkas fed the regiments to fight the wars with the other empirical powers and to subjugate the rebellious indigenous who didn't want to be British slaves. I lost some of my family, loyal soldiers of Empire, in World War I, not to mention an uncle in the British air force in the 1950’s.
Buenos Aires, the “Porteno” capital: a port facing north and east to Europe accomplishing its role, sending a steady stream of exports in exchange for debt forgiveness. The Spanish conned the immigrants like the Danes with the "Green"land. They called the river twelve blocks from my house “Plate or Plata" implying that it lead to some wondrous mountains of silver which it did not. In fact there was little silver to sent “home” but the Pampa was, and still is, a grand resource, on of the world's largest fertile plains which was exploited for meat! Before coal-fired ships, the meat was dried and sent North to feed the Portuguese African Brazilian slaves. Their work too was in export but they specialized in the smaller more portable stuff like the gold from the mines of Minas Gerais or sugar and coffee. Beef was later sent to Europe, refrigerated or canned to feed (and win) European wars. "Bully" was the name given to the canned stuff fed to army troops. It came from Fray Bentos, a small Uruguayan town just across the river plate not far from here which is still famous for its slaughterhouses.
So the calendar declares that is time to celebrate the separation of Argentina from Spain. Well sort of! Back on the 25th of May (1810) some declarations were made in the Buenos Aires Plaza de Mayo which proclaimed allegiance to a new King: Ferdinand II, of Spain. Napoleon had taken out the Bourbon kings and sent the Portuguese crown (accompanied by a British naval escort) across the Atlantic to Rio de Janeiro. The Spanish-speaking parts of Mexico, Central and South America are now celebrating a plethora of Bicentenaries. Napoleon’s invasion gave the managers of empire a free hand to expel the Inquisition and reduce taxes while the land of their mother tongue was at war. Later the same families invented nations to consolidate or legitimate their power and built their own armies to exterminate and consolidate the all-important ownership of land.
We Irish had similar tactics. We too took advantage of an even more disastrous Imperial war in 1916. It stuck in the throats of our founding fathers to pledge allegiance to the British King. So even after partial victory (and even more defeats) our patriots were shot to a man --all but one, that is, the one with the US passport. The invention of the Irish nation like that of Hungary is also somewhat false an incomplete. In Argentina in 1810 the patriots/”proceres” --a kind of founding father Latin style-- signed allegiance to a Spanish King. Not much of a revolution, 1810 was, at best, a partial declaration of post-colonialism; an attempt to stabilize what was at best an incomplete national idea, the profitable business of maintaining control of the vast pampa lands by the Rio Plata in the hands of a few “old” families. Goodly King Ferdinand was a self-proclaimed liberal so the Argentine-Spanish families championed him, he had declared himself a non-absolutist and a liberal which made him more palatable. Ferdinand later changed his mind reestablishing absolute control which prompted the real wars of “independence” in South America and the eventual defeat of the Spanish in Ayacucho (now Peruvian territory) a town named after an Incan rebel to the Spanish crown. We can celebrate that one in a few years time. The Spanish armies were finally defeated by the Masonic warlords: San Martin and Bolivar, the latter with the help of an Irishman to lead his forces.
Latin America is free "and she shall be British" as one wag British ambassador was to put it. In the case of Argentina he was "not half wrong". So let’s leave the last words to the original people whose bad luck it was to be wiped out by the muskets and the plagues brought by the smelly invaders from Europe: a motley crew of professional killers, diplomats, priests and vagabonds.
In Sydney, back in the 80's, the Aboriginals reminded the English that they had been in the same territory for two hundred bicentenaries --2002 or 40,000 years of continuous culture. The aboriginal tribes of South America haven't been quite so long on this continent but it is fair to say that they have been here much longer than the Iberians, the British and much much longer than this Irishman who sits here sipping his mate. And here they shall remain when we are all gone.
As the Indian and mestizo movements march on Buenos Aires from la Quiaca in the North close to Bolivia I bid my Argentine Spanish "Feliz cumpleanos, America" or should I say? Happy Birthday "Abya Yala."
Posted by Tony Phillips at 06:31 PM | Comments (0)
April 30, 2010
From the Good Guys for the Bad Guys
An unprecedented theft from the Irish people by a small elite of less than 100 patriots with their global network of property and other speculative investments culminated in the 2009 legalization, absolution or amnesty by a complicit Fianna Fáil government. This masked illegal financial speculation behind four little capital letters: N.A.M.A. Unfortunately the "euro-crisis" means the ugly face behind this little mask is morphing; it is taking on other monstrous guises.
Using the imminent collapse of the banking sector as an excuse, NAMA was an enormous rescue, a transfer of private debt rich-to-poor equivalent, in worst case scenarios, to maybe ten years of Irish government tax revenues —not current revenues but the revenues of the surplus tears of 2007. Now it seems the banks will collapse anyway and the rescue will now most likely bankrupt the current as well as future generations. The generosity is mind-boggling.
NAMA was a clumsy reaction; an ultra-orthodox rescue attempt trying to reverse a decade of speculative excess —too much, too late. NAMA is a debt gamble gone sour. It is also an extremely regressive tax transferring an exaggerated quantity of Irish money (that never really existed) from the future tax-payer to an already rich elite with a fondness for stashing funds in offshore accounts. This state welfare has saved the same souls who have run the chilly banana republic since they muddled their treacherous way through the civil war less than a century ago. Now the thugs wear suits and discuss their property deals in the Shelbourne bar with a nod and a wink. No more for them the virgins on the crossroads dancing to diddly-idle music. Gobbling back a few twenty euro cocktails in a business chat with your friend in the Dáil works wonders. Then pour oneself into the beamer to sleep soundly in the sound knowledge that your personal financial nightmares will be sorted out by those same councillors (now member of the Dáil) who you paid off in brown paper bags for Malahide land concession back in the good ole' days of Haughey.
The unwinding of Ireland's debt gamble has just begun. NAMA shifted the bankrupt private financial suicide of property investments to the public coffers. The problem is that these coffers that are not only empty, they are in the red and now interest rates will rise, the lenders taking advantage of borrower risk. Now the citizenry of a small Euro-nation that for just over a decade thought that they could do no wrong need to "tighten their belts." The unwinding of this generous giveaway to a scurrilous Irish private sector will mean more than tightening belts, it might merit an Athens style revolution.
The global speculative attack on Euro government debt has already made this situation exponentially worse and might well have brought forward the date of a possible Irish default. Not to worry though, you won't see any rise in corporate taxation levels. The government will save at any and all costs those precious jobs in the "manufacturing/assembly/value-added tax dodge" sector (or what is left of it). Taxes on the rich and the transnational corporate sector will be protected even if my mother's pension needs to be shaved to do so.
Ireland; You are very welcome to the beyond PIGS club! Please stand in line. To your right you will find Argentina and Turkey, on your left Greece, Iceland, Spain and Portugal. Smile for the cameras everybody!
The NAMA plan may have made the Irish government one of the largest owner of golf courses on the planet but at the cost of taking on a public debt that is becoming more unsustainable ever day. While the rich take budget flights to relax in their hidden apartments on the Riviera. Not to worry lads the government didn't take everything I still have the properties I hid behind the trust investments with my offshore partners.Thank God I still have enough cash on hand to pay the crew of my yacht.
The discourse in International media continues to be whether the euro will stand but this is a non-discussion; the Euro is here to stay. The Germans need it to devalue to regain first place in the export league above China. Does one really wish to return to the 'punt' or maybe it might be more fun to go back to the pound sterling collapsing nicely alongside? Euro-dangers is a discourse is used to hide the rude facts that Ireland is one of the leading nations on the planet in the index of thievery from its own people.
Oh wait they haven't invented that index yet!
Take a look at some of the numbers and decide for yourself. The poor UK is close to financial collapse but at least one other country can feel the pain worse than Britain. Yes you guessed it good ole' Ireland is playing the role as incompetent west brit!
Notes on the worst case scenario:
1. Check this out, Ouch! FT Britain second only to Ireland in size of cuts required (11.2% of GDP)
2. 
Posted by Tony Phillips at 01:29 AM | Comments (0)
April 02, 2010
When value does not equal price
Posted by Tony Phillips at 03:53 PM | Comments (0)
April 01, 2010
Direct action against Climate Change before it is too late
Continue reading "Direct action against Climate Change before it is too late "
Posted by Tony Phillips at 04:25 PM | Comments (0)
March 02, 2010
Central Bank Independence ... Independent from Whom?
Americas Program: Central Bank Independence ... Independent from Whom?, translated by Tony Phillips from the original "Banco Central Independiente… ¿De quien?", written by UBA professor, Andrés Musacchio
Returning for a moment to Economics and Finance from my activities in Ecology. In the end it is all the same thing really. I translated the following piece by a professor of mine on the takeover of the Argentine Central Bank by the Elected president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. Funny in Argentina that seems to a bigger problem than a takeover by the IMF or the Club de Paris (go figure)
Posted by Tony Phillips at 09:26 PM | Comments (0)
January 27, 2010
Planning a New World Climate Order: ‘Seal the Deal’ or ‘Seattle the Deal’?
This article was sent to me by the author Patrick Bond from South Africa. Patrick presents it today at the World Social forum tenth anniversary in Porto Alegre (Brazil). It is an Africa- and US-centric viewpoint of the collapse of talks in Copenhagen. Ironically, as Patrick tells us Obama's significant hatchet job to collapse the agreement will most likely cause significant harm to his own rural Kenyan people (on his father's side).
'Climate damage to Africa will include much more rapid desertification, more floods and droughts, worse water shortages, increased starvation, floods of climate refugees jamming shanty-packed megalopolises, and the spread of malarial and other diseases. Ironically, Obama’s and Zuma’s own Luo and Zulu relatives in rural Kenya and KwaZulu-Natal will be amongst the first victims of the Accord.
Continue reading "Planning a New World Climate Order: ‘Seal the Deal’ or ‘Seattle the Deal’?"
Posted by Tony Phillips at 12:29 PM | Comments (1)
January 18, 2010
Copenhagen to Cochabamba
O.K. Copenhagen is over and it showed that the UNFCCC COP process is not yet capable of the incredibly urgent task that it has been tasked to do. So what? Wait for another calamity in COP-16 Mexico City December 2010? No thanks! I shall go to see what South American nations get to put on the table in Bolivia. Let's hope it isn't another waste of time ... Click on the image above to see some closing statements from Denmark and below to see what is in store in Bolivia.
Posted by Tony Phillips at 06:54 PM | Comments (0)
January 13, 2010
Copenhagen: "About the What Kind of People We Want to Be"
Five days ago I returned to South America to gather my thoughts. Back from Denmark, people ask what I had seen in Copenhagen. Most of those asking were short on hope and long on fear, there were still a few idiots that think equate global warming with Santa Claus, but there was a third group who were quite happy. Climate change to this third group was an obvious irritation.
I still feel hope that a radical solution to our energy problems is possible, so can typically cheer up the first group, I'm not religious so I ignore denialists, but I found the third group most perplexing. After four days reading 444 mails awaiting me in Buenos Aires, I discovered this small jewel of an article from George Monbiot. His analysis uses the psychology of the "Universal Ape". Here is what he had to say about mankind, especially we men!
Continue reading "Copenhagen: "About the What Kind of People We Want to Be""
Posted by Tony Phillips at 01:17 PM | Comments (0)
December 16, 2009
When all is said and done in Carbon-hagen
Wednesday December 16th, “Reclaim Power” day in Copenhagen, inside the Africans are shouting at the Ethiopians and outside the Climate Justice advocates are shouting at the COP who they accuse of being co-opted by corporate lobbyists. To a lobbyist climate change is an oportunity. Should the worst come to the worst they can take the last high speed yacht out of Houston to their favorite Caribbean Island and batten down the hatches in hurricane season.
Continue reading "When all is said and done in Carbon-hagen"
Posted by Tony Phillips at 07:56 PM | Comments (1)
Reclaim Power Video
Posted by Tony Phillips at 01:05 PM | Comments (1)
December 13, 2009
It happened before in Denmark, a Viking story
Saturday I visited The National Museum (NATIONALMUSEET) in Copenhagen. I was walking back from the 100,000 person march against climate change billed as “Planet first. People first”. It was a few degrees below zero and I had been out for two hours. Inside I began to thaw. I decided to ask about the Vikings. Rather than sound too touristy, I inquired about the 900’s to the 1100’s and was directed to the Vikings section by a very pleasant blonde attendant.
The Vikings founded my city, Dublin. They constructed a quay from a field very close to the Coombe hospital where I was born. The Coombe and the Liberties are new names for the first settlement of Dublin. The Vikings, like the hospital, have “ceased to be”, their remains flattened below the offices that manage the new City of Dublin. Modernism is not the friend of history.
Continue reading "It happened before in Denmark, a Viking story"
Posted by Tony Phillips at 07:44 AM | Comments (1)
December 11, 2009
Age of stupid Show
Posted by Tony Phillips at 04:43 PM | Comments (1)
December 08, 2009
Naomi Klein opens Kilmaforum09 in Copenhagen, the People’s Climate summit
Tambien disponible en espanol en CriticalDigital.com de la Argentina.
Naomi Klein was in fine form as she opened the Klimaforum09 counter-conference in Copenhagen Monday night 7/12. She gave a keynote opening speech to open the summit of ecological NGO’s that bills itself as The People’s Climate Summit. The Canadian author is perhaps best known for her books No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, the latter book based in no small part on her experiences living in Argentina during the crisis of 2001-2002. She shared the stage with Nnimmo Bassey from Nigeria, Chair of Friends Of the Earth International, and Henry Saragih from Indonesia general coordinator for La Via Campesina. Ms. Klein told us that she is “not an expert on climate change” however she added with gross understatement that she “knows a little bit about global corporations”.
Referring to the climate, Ms. Klein explained that everyone at Kilmaforum09 was there “fighting to protect something that is too important to be left to the market”. By the market Ms. Klein was referring to plans to expand the global market in carbon credits to enable those countries who can afford to do so to continue to pollute in greenhouse gasses.
Referring to US plans to extend the global trade in carbon credits Ms. Klein rejected the idea of exporting restrictions from the developed world to the developing world by buying up carbon credits. This puts Ms. Klein firmly in the camp of the eminent NASA climate scientist James Hansen, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the first scientist to warn the US Congress about global warming. Hansen has been quoted recently saying that no deal in Copenhagen is better than a bad deal that will not work.
But Ms. Klein was not saying that there would be no deal in Copenhagen, quite the contrary. “[US President] Obama would not be coming if he did not think that there was going to be a deal” she told the audience. “These meetings have their own momentum”, Ms. Klein added, as she believes that negotiators from the developed world would strong-arm even the African block into agreement. The Africans walked out of the last meeting on Climate Change in Barcelona because they thought that developed countries were not putting a reasonable offer on the table. The African continent is experiencing serious problems due to Climate change including expansion of deserts like the Sahara. Ms. Klein felt that even Africa would be coerced into signing on to a bad deal by tough negotiating tactics.
Ms. Klein closed her speech referring to the tactics of social groups outside of the official United Nations (UNFCCC) government negotiations in the Bella Center. Referring to tactics that were used ten years ago in Seattle at the WTO conference in 1999, Ms. Klein said “Rage has a place here and we shouldn’t forget it!”
Social movements, she said, “had a coming out in Seattle” and they would have “A Coming of Age in Copenhagen.” Referring to the tradition in social movements of disobedience she referred to the alternative saying "Life may be terminated because of too many acts of obedience."
Posted by Tony Phillips at 03:31 PM | Comments (1)
Callout from Copenhagen
Hello from Denmark,
Decided to come freeze my little tush off in Copenhagen for eleven days for global warming (COP-15, look it up). Sounds like fun? Well, sort of!
Anyway I'm writing articles for a few people here and I thought that you might like to see what I'm writing. If not just delete the next few emails from tones and it will go quiet in a few days again when I go home to visit family in Ireland.
The first piece is one on the opening speech I attended last night by Naomi Klein, that one is worth reading anyway ...
Here's hoping I don't get arrested!
TONES
Posted by Tony Phillips at 01:47 PM | Comments (1)
September 07, 2009
A Change of Tune in September 2009?
Version in English
Versión en español
Posted by Tony Phillips at 07:02 PM | Comments (0)
July 04, 2009
The penny drops, the real reason for the "crisis"
Saturday morning, Buenos Aires: while the city sleeps off a hangover dreaming of a delicious breakfast or nightmare public hospitals full of A H1N1 patients, I read the Financial Times.
I do it so you don't have to!
So I come across this short, and, dare I say it, boring piece by Ms. Henny Sender. Henny is a dead-pan, middle aged, US east-coast financial commentator who spends a lot of time with Private Capital. She says it like it is.
So what is Private Capital? Remember "Mergers and Acquisitions" in the 1980's? Same thing! They got a bad name for unemployment in the UK so they changed their name. Private Capital buy and sell companies. Henny's article is about them buying and selling banks. Sounds boring? Stick with me! I promise to get right to the point.
Continue reading "The penny drops, the real reason for the "crisis""
Posted by Tony Phillips at 03:44 PM | Comments (0)
June 02, 2009
The Southern Bank / Banco del Sur (One more step)
Americas Program Report: A New Financial Architecture for Latin America, Part 1, by Tony Phillips
Part one of a two part series Im writing about financial architectures for Latin America and the Caribbean. I intend to make this the basis for my thesis in the UBA in Regionalism/MERCOSUR. Part one is the simple piece part two is more for people who like economics. I hope you like it.
Posted by Tony Phillips at 12:17 AM | Comments (0)
May 30, 2009
Small World
Copenhagen is the new Kyoto. Later this year in Copenhagen the political and economic agents of the planet will decide for you and your progeny what shall be done to prevent a violent change in the planet's weather systems from spiralling out of control. Yes the same people who brought you various world wars, nuclear weapons and genetically engineered food are now to be placidly trusted to save the planet. I think not! This one is too critical to just leave to the policymakers, this is literally the air that we breathe. Time to get personal, what do you think? Check out this excellent guide and pass it on ...
Posted by Tony Phillips at 03:45 PM | Comments (0)
April 26, 2009
G-20 Reloaded & moving to the gold camp
G-20 Reloaded, by Tony Phillips
This crisis is big, very big. Previous efforts have failed. Trillions of good dollars have been thrown after bad. The G-20 leaders announced in their communiqué that the "crisis […] has deepened since we last met." The communiqué describes their plans as "the largest fiscal and monetary stimulus and the most comprehensive support program for the financial sector in modern times." They "pledged to do whatever is necessary." They were "undertaking an unprecedented and concerted fiscal expansion […] that will, by the end of next year, amount to $5 trillion, raise output by 4%, and accelerate the transition to a green economy."
Lofty expectations indeed!
Posted by Tony Phillips at 03:10 PM | Comments (0)
April 21, 2009
What the bees are telling us
The goodly folk at the New Economics Foundation at 3 Jonathan Street, London, have come out with a short book (20 pages or so) about supermarkets, food, oil, agriculture and especially apiculture (Beekeeping). It is a light read which encompasses much about why we need to change our consumption habits and is available for four pounds sterling or you can download it for free if you are poor like me. It is much recommended especially for those of you who live near the UK.
Posted by Tony Phillips at 04:12 PM
April 14, 2009
Climate Camping
A handful of people who are involved in the Camp for Climate Action process in the UK have made a short newspaper which summarises discourse leading up to the UN Climate Talks in Copenhagen at the end of the year.
Continue reading "Climate Camping"
Posted by Tony Phillips at 03:11 PM
April 10, 2009
Letter to the Irish Times
Click on the Irish times logo below to see the original
(or buy the newspaper).
Continue reading "Letter to the Irish Times"
Posted by Tony Phillips at 08:59 PM | Comments (3)
January 29, 2009
Back into Paraguay
Just a short note to tell you all that I shall be heading to Paraguay (the belly-button of the World). This time rather than going to Asunción (solely) for beer, politics and morochas; this time I shall be making a film on the Irish whore-queen of Paraguay Ms. Eliza Lynch. Ms. Lynch lived the first 10 years of her life in Ireland and many more in the dark kingdom of Paraguay surviving a war there that killed every male in Paraguay over the age of 13. If you have any contacts in Paraguay (especially historians) I would love to talk with them.
Wish me luck!
Tony
Posted by Tony Phillips at 09:48 PM
January 24, 2009
Shoot the Irish Bankers
A story The case for and against nationalising the banks from the Irish Times on January 24th, notes that it may be inevitable that the Irish government will nationalize the islands largest banks (Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Bank). For those of you interested in share prices they make the US S&P 500 Volatility Index (the VIX Index) seem stable, for example, the AIB share price went up 35% on Friday 23rd. January. Imagine your house did that. How stable would that make the housing market?
The same article also briefly notes that both the Irish and British states may be rated for their national debt in similar risk categories as those of the certain third world countries (and Im writing this from Argentina), noting (as an aside) that Great Britain may itself default, something that hasnt happened since the Middle Ages.
You think this credit derivatives problem is over? Read the fine print. I shall be coming out with a sequel called Plan "B"!.
Sorry folks but this has just begun (baton down the hatches because the stakes are getting higher and the ideas more interesting than will ever be printed in the Irish Times).
For those of you who like their news in video form; this interview with Nobel Prize winning economist Joey Stiglitz 
is most revealing.
If you like your video news whacky and maybe slighly less conventional then maybe take a look at TheModernMystic, a english chap living in Spain who could be as right as most economists. Here is his take on The Irish Problem 
.
Continue reading " Shoot the Irish Bankers "
Posted by Tony Phillips at 02:00 PM | Comments (1)
