Sept. 30 (EIRNS)—Despite the green psychosis that has overtaken South Africa, more than 400 South Africans participated in the annual “Stand Up for Nuclear” events on Sept. 18 in Pretoria and Cape Town, and at the proposed nuclear site, Thyspunt.
Despite demands from the international bankers that coal be abandoned—even while South Africa is overwhelmingly dependent on coal for generating electricity—South African public opinion about nuclear energy is still ambivalent, at best. “Stand Up for Nuclear South Africa” and related efforts intend to change that.
Participants in the Sept. 18 events included nuclear industry professionals, politicians, educators, and students.
The main event was a three-mile walk across the township of Atteridgeville in Pretoria to the Phatudi Comprehensive School, where Zizamele Mbambo, Deputy Director General of Nuclear in the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy, gave the keynote address.
On the streets, the activists—equipped with loudspeakers, banners and posters—demanded that government include nuclear in the green finance taxonomy. They engaged the surrounding communities on the merits of nuclear energy, including its huge potential to end load-shedding (power shut-offs, now 25% of the time) and reduce the cost of electricity.
The coordinator for Stand Up for Nuclear South Africa, Princess Mthombeni, told Executive Intelligence Review that “we are planning other initiatives such as the upcoming energy debate, as well as outreach programs that aim to engage communities and other stakeholders such as trade unions.”
Stand Up For Nuclear SA is a program of trade union NEHAWU’s Professionals Technical Committee, in collaboration with other organizations including South African Young Nuclear Professionals Society and Women in Nuclear South Africa. NEHAWU is the National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union.
Stand Up for Nuclear is also held annually in more than 80 cities around the world, including New York, Seattle, Paris, and London; the number is growing. The South African organizers say that it has been led since 2016 by Environmental Progress, an American environmental movement led by Michael Schellenberger, to inform societies about the harmful effects of the indiscriminate expansion of renewable energy and the necessity of nuclear power.
Argentina To Produce the Sputnik V Vaccine, the First Ibero-American Nation To Do So
April 21 (EIRNS)—In an April 20 press release, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, announced that its partner, Argentina’s Laboratorios Richmond, had produced a test batch of 21,000 doses of the Sputnik V vaccine, the first Ibero-American nation to do so. Samples will be sent to Russia’s Gamaleya National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology, which first developed Sputnik V, where they will undergo quality control tests, and once those are completed, Richmond will plan to gear up for mass production by June if all goes well. Quoted in the press release, RDIF CEO Kirill Dmitriev said that Argentina was the first Ibero-American nation to approve emergency use authorization of Sputnik V, and now, thanks to technology transfer to Richmond labs from RDIF and its partners, production has begun. “The vaccine produced in Argentina can then be exported to other nations of Central and South America,” he said.
In remarks to Telam news agency, government sources cautioned that the next steps in the production process will be “complex and challenging,” explaining that “as this is a biological process, there could be some delays and difficulties until we reach optimal levels…. We’re betting on [producing] the best vaccine in the world, but in the short term, let’s be cautious.” A medium-term perspective would be “for year’s end to produce 100% of the vaccine,” the officials said.
Marcelo Figueiras, CEO of Laboratorios Richmond, stressed he is proud to have the support of the RDIF “that trusted in our scientific and technical platform to produce the Sputnik V vaccine in Argentina. We celebrate this recognition that we will reward with work, commitment and professionalism, to facilitate availability of the vaccine in the shortest possible time for Argentina and the entire Latin American region,” the daily Página 12 reported him as saying in its April 20 edition. President Alberto Fernández expressed his great pride in this achievement, expressing that “Argentina has become the first country of the region to launch the production of Sputnik V thanks to the partnership between RDIF and Laboratorios Richmond. Sputnik V is approved in more than 10 countries of Latin and Central America and production in Argentina will help facilitate deliveries to other partners in the region. It will be a great opportunity to advance in the fight against the pandemic,” not only for Argentina but for the entire region.
Chas Freeman Issues Strong Warning on Deteriorating U.S.-China Relations
April 21 (EIRNS)—Chas Freeman, a former Defense official and diplomat with extensive knowledge of China-U.S. relations, issued a strong warning to the U.S. on the deterioration of relations between the two superpowers in an April 15 speech to the University of Idaho. He noted: “China is now in some ways more connected internationally than the United States. It is the largest foreign trade partner of most of the world’s economies, including the world’s largest—the European Union (EU). Its preeminence in global trade and investment flows is growing. The 700,000 Chinese students now enrolled in degree programs abroad dwarf the less than 60,000 students from the United States doing the same. American universities still attract over one million foreign students annually but nearly half a million international students now opt to study in China. China’s role in global science and technological innovation is growing, while America’s is slipping.
On militarily matters, he says the U.S. “containment” of China in the past, especially regarding Taiwan, was based on an overwhelming advantage on the U.S. side. This containment prevented China from “effectively asserting ancient claims to islands in its near seas, while opening the way for other claimants to occupy them.” Now, however, “the Chinese military can now defend their country against any conceivable foreign attack. They also appear to be capable of taking Taiwan over American opposition—even if only at tremendous cost to themselves, Taiwan, and the United States.” The U.S. military presence in the region today, Freeman said, “has the effect of backing and bolstering Taiwan’s refusal to talk about—still less negotiate—a relationship with the rest of China that might meet the minimal requirements of Chinese nationalism and thereby perpetuate peace.”
As to the U.S. rallying its “friends and allies” to join in opposing China, “it will discover that few of them share the all-out animus against China to which so many Americans have become committed….
On the BRI, Freeman makes the interesting point: “The Greeks invented the concept of a ‘Europe’ distinct from what they called ‘Asia.’ Chinese connectivity programs (the ‘Belt and Road’) are recreating a single ‘Eurasia.’ Many countries in that vast expanse see an increasingly wealthy and powerful China as an ineluctable part of their own future and prosperity. Some seem more worried about collateral damage from aggressive actions by the United States than about great Han chauvinism. Few find the injustices of contemporary Chinese authoritarianism attractive, but fewer still are inclined to bandwagon with the United States against China….”
He notes China’s major advances in science and education, compared to the U.S., which is in “chronic fiscal deficit, immobilized by political gridlock, and mired in never-ending wars that divert funds needed for domestic rejuvenation to preeminence in global science, technology, and education.” The foolish U.S. move of “excluding Beijing from international cooperation in space (has) led to an increasingly robust set of indigenous Chinese space-based capabilities, many of which are of military relevance.
On U.S. sanctions, he adds: “It is generating an active threat to the U.S. dollar’s seven-decade-long command of international trade settlement. Increased use of other currencies menaces both the efficacy of U.S. sanctions and the continued exemption of the American economy from balance of trade and payments constraints that affect other countries…. The domestic and foreign purchasers of U.S. government debt could conclude that it is backed by little more than ‘modern monetary theory’ and cease to buy it. This alone would end the ‘exorbitant privilege’ of the United States, deprive Washington of the ability to enforce unilateral sanctions, and make the American dominance of the Indo-Pacific economically unsustainable.”
There is much more; a full transcript of Freeman’s speech is here.
Sept. 30, 2021—Today, EIR News Service posted, “The Schiller Institute Plan to Develop Haiti,” a 16-page report, which presents a comprehensive program addressing “eight fundamental areas of infrastructure, industry, and agriculture, which are at the core of the Haitian economy … present[ing] what capabilities and what problems exist, along with recommended development plan solutions.” Those areas are 1. Power and Electricity, 2. A Universal Health Care System, 3. Hunger and Agriculture, 4. Railroads and Roads, 5. Airports and Seaports, 6. Sanitation and Water Purification, 7. Industry and Labor Force, and 8. Education. The full report is available here.
The Schiller Institute Plan is clear in the mandate, and the urgent necessity of acting now, saying:
“The task of rebuilding Haiti is a daunting one because of the level of destruction deliberately imposed on it by two centuries of Malthusian policies. Every sector of its physical economy must be rebuilt from the bottom up, to uplift its impoverished population. But it’s not an impossible task if China and the U.S. collaborate along with other nations of the Caribbean Basin and Central America, as part of an expanded Belt and Road Initiative and Maritime Silk Road throughout the region.
“Haiti will have to establish diplomatic relations with China: it is still one of the few countries in the world that maintains diplomatic relations instead with Taiwan. China rightly insists that it will only work with nations that recognize the principle of One China, and Haiti would be wise to follow the path taken by its neighbor, the Dominican Republic—which recently broke with Taiwan and established ties with China—if it is to have any hope of attaining Chinese participation in its reconstruction.
“Haiti has been repeatedly subjected to an intentional depopulation policy every time a ‘natural disaster’ strikes the country. For 125 years, the looting of Haiti by the City of London, Wall Street, and other Trans-Atlantic banks (France is key among them), joined in the 20th Century by the International Monetary Fund and other multilateral lending agencies, has denied it the right to develop into a modern nation, leaving it defenseless in the face of repeated disasters, the August 14, 2021, earthquake being only the most recent one.
“The Schiller Institute program for the rebuilding and reconstruction of Haiti, the initial outlines of which are presented below, includes a unified infrastructure plan, financed by a Hamiltonian system of ample directed credit, created as a central feature of a bankruptcy reorganization of the disintegrating international financial system. The Schiller Institute has estimated preliminarily that a viable Haiti reconstruction program will cost between $175 and $200 billion, or $17.5 to $20 billion per year over ten years.”
The report also reviews the scuttled 2017 Haitian-Chinese $4.7 billion project to rebuild Haiti’s capital, in which “two Chinese companies—the Southwest Municipal Engineering and Design Research Institute of China (SMEDRIC), and the Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC)—outlined a series of detailed projects valued at $4.7 billion to carry out the rebuilding of the capital and its environs. SMEDRIC indicated that the projects for Haiti’s capital were part of a broader, $30 billion proposal for the whole country, discussed at the May 14-15, 2017, Belt and Road Initiative summit in Beijing. A short time after that, a Chinese delegation carried out an 8-day investigative visit to Haiti and met with local officials.”
Video Preview—‘Need Creative Genius of the World To Bear on Haiti and Afghanistan’
The report was previewed on Sept. 25, on an international webinar by the Schiller Institute, with the intent of bringing together the forces to make it happen. The 2.5-hour event was titled, “Reconstructing Haiti—America’s Way Out of the ‘Global Britain’ Trap,” featuring the Schiller Institute Plan and the immediate emergency action required. The plan was summarized, and discussed by experts with ties to Haiti, in engineering, medicine, and development policy. This deliberation stands in stark contrast to the events of the past weeks, which included the U.S. forced deportation of thousands of displaced Haitians from the Texas-Mexico border, back to Haiti, to disaster conditions from the August earthquake and before. The full video of the webinar is available here.
The six panelists were Richard Freeman, co-author of “The Schiller Institute Plan To Develop Haiti”; Eric Walcott, Director of Strategic Partnerships, Institute of Caribbean Studies; Firmin Backer, head of the Haiti Renewal Alliance; Joel DeJean, engineer and Texas based LaRouche political organizer; and Walter Faggett, MD, based in Washington, D.C., where he is former Chief Medical Officer of the District of Columbia, and is currently Co-Chairman of the Health Council of D.C.’s Ward 8, and an international leader with the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites; and moderator, Dennis Speed.
Firmin Backer pointed out that the USAID has spent $5.1 billion in Haiti over the 11 years since the 2010 earthquake, but asked, what is there to show for it? Now, with the latest earthquake on Aug. 14, we can’t even get aid into the stricken zones, because there is no airport nor port in southern Haiti to serve the stricken people. We should reassess how wrongly the U.S. funding was spent. Firmin reported how Haiti was given some debt cancellation by the IMF years back, but then disallowed from seeking foreign credit!
Eric Walcott was adamant. “We need the creative genius of the world to bear on Haiti and Afghanistan.” He said, “leverage the diaspora” to develop Haiti. There are more Haitian medics in New York and Miami than all of Haiti. He stressed that Haiti is not poor; the conditions are what is poor. But the population has pride, talent, and resourcefulness. Walcott made a special point about elections in Haiti. He said, “Elections are a process,” not an event. He has experience. From 1998 to 2000, Walcott served as the lead observer for the OAS, for elections in Haiti.
Joel DeJean, an American of Haitian lineage, was forceful about the need to aim for the highest level in that nation, for example, to leapfrog from charcoal to nuclear power. He advised, “give China the opportunity” to deploy the very latest nuclear technology in Haiti—the pebble-bed gas-cooled modular reactor. We “don’t need more nuclear submarines, we need nuclear technology!” He called for the establishment of a development bank in Haiti, and other specifics.
Dr. Faggett summed up at many points, with the widest viewpoint and encouragement of action. He served in the U.S. military’s “Caribbean Peace-Keeping Force,” and was emphatic about taking action not only in Haiti, but worldwide. He referenced President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, saying that “you can tell a lot about people, by how they take care of the health of their people.” He reported that, at present, aid workers in Haiti are having to shelter in place, because of the terrible conditions.
But, he said, we should mobilize. Have “vaccine diplomacy,” and work to build a health platform in Haiti, and a health care delivery system the world over. He is “excited about realizing Helga’s mission,” referring to Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Chairwoman of the Schiller Institute, who issued a call in June 2020, for a world health security platform. At that time, she, and Dr. Joycelyn Elders, former U.S. Surgeon General, formed the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites.
For more information contact the Schiller Institute at contact@schillerinstitute.org
Chinese COVID-19 Vaccine Producers Plan Technology Transfers to Developing Countries
April 21 (EIRNS)— Zheng Zhongwei, director of the Development Center for Medical Science and Technology of China’s National Health Commission, raised the problem yesterday that some 5 billion people in the world outside China threatened by the COVID-19 pandemic have no access to vaccines, “while another 1.2 billion people in places where the epidemic is serious—including the U.S., U.K. and Europe—do have vaccines.” Zheng was addressing the session on COVID-19 at this year’s Boao Forum for Asia.
The two top executives of China’s Sinovac and CanSinoBIO vaccine producers told the session that to address that disparity, they are “mulling” how to transfer at least some part of the technology needed for vaccine production to developing countries, Global Times reports.
CanSinoBIO CEO Yu Xuefeng said the company is considering technology transfer to some qualified countries like Mexico and Pakistan, so that countries in South America and Central Asia can get vaccines more conveniently. The company already exports semi-finished vaccine products to Brazil and Mexico, where they are packaged locally. (“Packaging” a vaccine is not like packaging tablets or capsules, but requires special technology and trained personnel.)
Sinovac Biotech CEO Yin Weidong was more decisive, announcing that his company plans “to select 10 countries for technology transfer as soon as possible” to break the bottleneck, Reuters reports. Sinovac Biotech has already supplied over 60% of the 260 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine which it has produced to countries outside China, he reported, and is producing more than 6 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine per day. According to Zheng, China plans now to produce over 3 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines this year, but hopes to build up its capacity so as to produce some 5 billion doses. China is in the midst of its own vaccination program, and there have been places in the country where a vaccine shortage has meant that some people could not get their second shots in time. Zheng told Global Times yesterday that current production increases should ease the scarcity by June, so that China can provide doses to more people internationally through multilateral and bilateral measures.
India Helps Crush the Great Reset and `Green New Deal’
April 6 (EIRNS) – In a second “No”, India’s Energy Minister Raj Kumar Singh said at an IEA meeting on climate change that “net zero” carbon is “pie in the sky” no matter when you pledge it for. At a meeting supposed to be preparatory to the COP26 in Scotland in November, Singh said, “I would call it, and I’m sorry to say this, but it is just pie in the sky. What we hear is that … 2060 is far away and if the people emit at the rate they are emitting the world won’t survive, so what are you going to do in the next five years…. You have 800 million people who don’t have access to electricity. You can’t say that they have to go to net zero. They have the right to develop, they want to build skyscrapers and have a higher standard of living; you can’t stop it.”
China’s minister Zhang Jianhua also spoke at that IEA meeting, but when invited to a formal pre-meeting for COP26 – by the UK, remember, which is its host – China declined the invitation.
John Kerry, in Delhi for the same meeting, “happened to meet” Sergei Lavrov, who was in India on the world’s real business (see separate report). Kerry was perhaps trying to gauge whether Russia would attend Joe Biden’s April 22 “Earth” (or “dearth”) summit. But at the IEA meeting Kerry appeared to be criticizing long-term pledges to net zero carbon, like China’s 2060 pledge. “Avoid the happy talk and recognize that this challenge is global”, Kerry chided.
The real challenge is the power to develop, as Minister Singh made clear. The only power that can meet {that} global challenge is nuclear fission and, as soon as possible, fusion. (See BBC News article here.)
These are blows against the royal family’s “Green Deal” which can be amplified in the United States. Americans do have ‘plentiful” electricity but a steadily increasing share of it doesn’t work. In 2020 the percentage of companies which reported suffering blackout problems {every month} leaped from 20% in 2019 – already very high – to 44% in 2020. The FERC attributed this to the increasing share of “renewable” (interruptible) power sources.
This destroys an economy’s productivity, exactly as described in EIR Special Report and The LaRouche Organization’s mass pamphlet, Great Leap Backward: LaRouche Crushes “Green New Deal” Fraud.
In a sign of political pressure for nuclear rising, President Biden’s “climate advisor” Gina McCarthy told press on April 2 that nuclear energy will be included in the Administration’s so-called Clean Energy Standard, which is intended to be a requirement for electric power utilities and generators.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche delivered a thoroughly composed analysis of how the world has changed since August 15, 2021, when the Taliban marched into Kabul, and the U.S. and NATO left. “A whole system is coming to an end. The policy has failed.” All the lives lost, the chaos in the country, and the money spent—and stolen—served the interests of a greedy elite, but benefited no one else.
She reported on the prescience demonstrated by participants at the Schiller Institute conference on July 31, and then the solutions presented in the follow-up conference on August 21. The solution begins with a rejection of neoliberalism and imperial geopolitics. Biden’s rejection of the demand by Boris Johnson and the Europeans that the U.S. remain in Afghanistan longer has provoked hysteria among the war hawks responsible for the catastrophe, typified by Tony Blair.
It is now up to the Americans and the Europeans to join with Afghanistan’s neighbors to forge a durable peace, based on economic development. This means the West must junk the delusion that the “Rules-Based Order” must be accepted by all nations.
One in Three ‘Food Insecure’ In Afghanistan–
Aug. 21 (EIRNS)–One in three people in Afghanistan is “food insecure,” that is either with insufficient, or unreliable daily food, or both, according to the World Food Program Representative in Kabul this week, Mary-Ellen McGroarty. She spoke with AFP, and attributed the situation to strife, displacement of people from their homes, and bad weather, which she called “climate change.” There are 39 million people in the country, with masses more displacement currently taking place.
The Afghan wheat crop was down 40% this last crop year, under very dry conditions. The price of wheat in the country today is up 24% over the price averaged over the prior five years. Livestock have also been badly affected.
The WFP curtailed its operations since the Kabul changing situation since Aug. 14, but intends to ramp up again. The WFP is putting out the word that resources are needed. The WFP gave out food and aid in Afghanistan in the past week to 400,000 people overall, it was reported Aug. 20 by WFP official Frances Kennedy, to TASS. But there is a need for full-scale operations. She said, of the Afghanistan situation, “In the first six months of this year, WFP delivered food and nutrition assistance to 5.5 million people. WFP needs US$200 million urgently to continue its operations until the end of the year.”
China has pledged to send food, reported the Afghani Ambassador Javid Ahmad Qaem, on Aug. 18, in a CGTN interview. He said that he is working on finding transportation for it to reach his country. Given the air carrier problems in Kabul, he is seeking train transport via Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, which for food, in any case, is far less costly than air cargo.
Also, Amb. Qaem said that the WHO has promised to get a million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to Afghanistan.
Apr. 2 (EIRNS)–On April 1, the third of four high level US-China Agriculture Dialogues took place, lasting almost 3 hours, titled, “Agriculture Education Dialogue: Together, how can the U.S and China transform agriculture?” The dialogue brought together the Deans and Presidents of Peking Univ., Nanjing Agricultural Univ., China Agricultural Univ., Zhejiang Univ., with UC Davis, Ohio State, the Tuskegee Institute, Oklahoma State and Iowa State Univ. The overall sponsor was the Missouri-based US Heartland China Association (USHCA). The topic was the state and future of agricultural education — extension services for the farmers themselves in China and the US, and educating students for careers in agriculture.
Among the standout presentations, Prof. Sun Qixin of China Agricultural Univ., discussed the recent 40 year history of Chinese and American colleges exchanging students and training students together — he called this of “strategic importance.” Quoting President Xi, he explained the identity of food security and poverty alleviation for both China and for the whole world. He said that China’s development policy was to make sure that “we have a good environment for the Chinese people — China will never be a threat to other countries.” Quoting Mencius, he said, “It is better to be happy together with others, rather than trying to be happy alone.” He said that Yuan Longping is a friend of his, and that he had met with Dr. Borlaug in 1992 and in 2002.
Prof. Huang Jikun of Peking Univ. stressed the many hundreds of ag science scholarly papers written jointly by Chinese and American researchers — written in both English and in Chinese — the authors pursuing food science with a single universal purpose.
Prof. Kevin Chen, of the China Academy of Rural Development at Zhejiang Univ. described how the Chinese government has 1 million farm extension workers, serving 200 million farm families with small farms, many with aging farmers. He reported that only 40% of the farms have access to the internet — a problem to be solved. They have formed NAECP — the “National Cloud Platform for Grassroots Ag Tech Extension in China.”
Among the Americans, Dr. Walter A. Hill, the Dean of the College of Ag, Environment, and Nutrition Sciences of Tuskegee University, made the greatest contribution. He framed his talk on the notion from WEB DuBois of “double consciousness” — seeing oneself and the world from “two sets of eyes,” one’s own and those of the oppressor. He said, “We need the brilliant young minds discussing China trade.” He reported that 90% of American farms are small farms, and most are losing money…” Speaking of the high quality of American Land Grant colleges (compared to the Ivy League), he said, “Big is not better. It’s the smaller that can produce the geniuses.” He called on Chinese universities to collaborate with Black colleges: “Let’s get Chinese to come here (to Tuskegee), and to work with us in a new way — I challenge you!”
Stressing the rich common history of US-China collaboration in education, Prof. Zhu Jing, Dean at the Nanjing Agricultural University (NAU), reminded the audience that NAU was founded in 1921 by American ag economist and agricultural missionary for the American Presbyterian Mission, John Lossing Buck.
The American speakers uniformly stressed sustainable agriculture and CO2 emission reduction (“climate-smart agriculture’). The world food crisis in the former colonial sector and the famine was not discussed, and only Prof. Sun discussed the China miracle of eliminating all extreme poverty in China. What was documented was a very deep 100 year history — continuing into the present — of the China-US joint passion for and science of food production improvement and expansion. The Dialogue was introduced by Chris Chinn, the Missouri Director of Agriculture, and by Tom Peterson, the Commissioner of the Minnesota Dept. of Agriculture.
April 2 (EIRNS)–Argentine ambassador to China, Sabino Vaca Narvaja, has met with high level Chinese government officials in Beijing “to ask for that country’s support in the national government’s negotiations with the IMF, seeking an extension of payment terms and reduction in interest rates,” the daily Dangdai reported April 1, citing embassy sources. Dangdai generally reports on Sino-Argentine relations, and touches on China’s relations with other Ibero-American countries to a lesser degree.
The Telam news agency reported that Vaca Narvaja met with the Foreign Ministry’s director of the Latin American and Caribbean Department, Cai Wei, with whom he discussed President Alberto Fernandez’s desire to refinance the $45 billion standby loan contracted by former President Mauricio Macri in 2018. Further citing embassy sources, Dangdai reported that Vaca Narvaja’s meeting included a discussion of the invitation to President Fernandez to make a state visit to China, now scheduled for early May, during which he is expected to sign a Memorandum of Understanding to join the Belt and Road Initiative. A review of the two nations’ bilateral agenda, Dangdai noted, focused on a series of infrastructure investment projects which both governments prioritize and which would be integrated into a joint Five Year Plan. Especially interesting was the discussion on the use of national currencies for trade and investment, including “an evaluation of productive and industrial projects that could be financed in renminbi, a currency which could be used subsequently to meet foreign payments to China.”
It should be noted that the IMF’s 2018 standby loan, which was originally for $57 billion, but whose last tranche Fernandez refused to accept after he became President, was granted by then IMF Managing Director Christine “Lady Gaga” Lagarde largely for political reasons to prop up the sagging Macri government and the brutal austerity program he was implementing in hopes he might be able to be reelected. Argentine authorities are in fact conducting a criminal investigation into the fraudulent way the loan was contracted and used–most of it ending up as capital flight and vastly expanding the amount of debt Argentina cannot pay. The loan violated Argentina’s constitutional norms as well as the IMF’s own internal regulations. Macri himself, his two former Central Bank presidents and two former finance ministers, are all under investigation.
