[Soulflytribe]

Now it's official: the argentine officials went crazy.

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Argentina Targets Petrobras After Revoking YPF Licenses

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-04-04/argentina-targets-petrobras-after-revoking-ypf-licenses
By Matt Craze on April 04, 2012 Tweet Facebook LinkedIn Google Plus 0 Comments

Petroleo Brasileiro SA (PETR4), Brazil’s state-controlled crude producer, had an oil concession revoked by Argentina’s Neuquen province as the country broadens a dispute over investments to include foreign oil companies.

Petrobras, as the company is known, failed to invest in the Veta Escondida field, currently not in operation, the government of Neuquen said yesterday in a statement on its website. The province will continue to evaluate reclaiming fields where output has fallen through lack of investment and said it will seek investors to develop fields where licenses were revoked.

Argentine rival YPF SA (YPFD) has lost 12 licenses in five Argentine provinces since March 14 after President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s government demanded higher investment to curb declines in output and rising fuel imports. The company’s Manantiales Behr field, which produced about 10 percent of Buenos Aires-based YPF’s oil last year, is among four more licenses the Patagonian province of Chubut plans to revoke.

Petrobras fell 1 percent to 22.32 reais at 10:10 a.m. in Sao Paulo. YPF fell 16 percent in Buenos Aires trading yesterday, to 123.7 pesos, after Chubut province said that it will revoke the company’s most productive concession.

Petrobras’s Argentine assets are its biggest overseas, according to the company’s 2010 annual report. Petrobras produces most of its oil from its Puesto Hernandez in Neuquen province, the Medanito oil field in La Pampa province and El Tordillo in Chubut province.

[Social_Critic]

If all they took was Veta Escondida, it's not a big deal. The attacks against YPF are much more serious. I notice they are not moving against Pan American, the BP/Bridas combine. So it's a mixed bag. Kirchner's government is in a sense similar to Correa's, getting a short term boost by nationalizing properties and otherwise putting the squeeze on private industry, but longer term they are going to pay a very heavy price. I was consulting for one of these outfits in Argentina last year, and I noted a really serious labor and community relations crisis almost everywhere. I also saw data showing the government is faking inflation data (inflation is running a lot higher than the official reports). This tells me the government may ride for a while on top of the high prices Argentina fetches for food exports, but in the long run they are killing private industry, and making the country very unfriendly for private investors.

You know, it's really amazing to see Humala and Mujica praise Lula so much. To see Dilma turn from a communist into a neo liberal, and to see poor Argentina still lurching back and forth under the rule of miscreants like the Kirchner-Fernandez dynasty. I used to live in Argentina, and I realize its potential is there, but I don't think they'll ever amount to much.

[Varg]

Cristina lost her marbles. Argentina will become a bigger Venezuela soon.

[Social_Critic]

It would be very difficult for Argentina to be like Venezuela. What Chavez has done is very hard to replicate, he's so way out there, I don't think we'll see another one like him for a long time, an idiot who enjoyed 10 years of very high prices to fuel one of the most destructive and corrupt regimes on earth.

[Soulflytribe]

And Brazil started to harass Argentina in the last days...

Exclusive: Brazil targets Argentina with new import license
http://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-brazil-targets-argentina-import-license-230606382--finance.html


BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil plans to end automatic import licensing for about 10 perishable products including apples, raisins, wheat flour, potatoes and some cheeses and wines in retaliation against rising trade barriers in Argentina, a senior Brazilian government official told Reuters on Monday.
While the licensing change applies to all countries, neighboring Argentina is a major source of the targeted imports, the official said. The move could delay approval for imports by up to 60 days.
Average Brazilian daily exports to Argentina, Brazil's main partner in the Mercosur trade block, fell 27 percent in April compared with a year earlier.


Also:


Brazil suspends Argentine grape imports
http://www.freshfruitportal.com/2012/05/04/brazil-suspends-argentine-grape-imports/

"The decision will be maintained until Brazil creates a lot of requirements that must be made ​​by Argentina for sending loads of new grapes to Brazil. There is the possibility of Brazil send a technical mission to Argentina to see the controls that the country is currently in relation to Brevipalpus chilensis."

[Varg]

Brazil should invade and annex Argentina. It's depressing to see the present Argentina. A beautiful and European country has been destroyed by left-wing morons.

Now we have a decadent place, with a woman commanding indians.

[Rei Murasame]

I'm not sure what the problem is here. Kirchner is part of the FpV faction. Isn't she doing what she was put in power to do?

[Social_Critic]

I don't think she won the election saying she was about to break agreements with oil companies. But the people in general are kinda stupid and will probably back her, the same way they have backed so many other disasters perpetrated on the country by all sorts of governments. I used to live in Argentina, and it always amazed me to see how people who in general are well educated and smart can be so darned stupid to keep on electing governments which lead them to ruin. Argentina is a good example of a country which should be submitted to Klingon rule, I suppose.

The current moves to nationalize oil companies and suspend license rights will of course make Argentina a much poorer nation. They are already running a very high energy deficit, about $10 billion predicted for 2012. And it's going to get a lot worse.

[Rei Murasame]

Are you sure they didn't back it? Given the history and the class-composition of the Justicialist Party, and the fact that FpV was created as a counter-weight to the neoliberal policies of the previous decade, and the sort of narratives that involved, they can't be surprised that this has turned into a nationalist regime with left-ish orientation (in the context of the Peronist movement).

They can't possibly have supported her and been surprised at what has happened. It'd be like voting for Alessandra Mussolini in the EU and then being 'surprised' at what policies she comes up with after that.

[Soulflytribe]

I used to live in Argentina, and it always amazed me to see how people who in general are well educated and smart can be so darned stupid to keep on electing governments which lead them to ruin.

This is somehow a latin american trait, and I believe it happens to a certain degree in all third world countries.

Around here, it doesn't matter if a person is well-educated and a distinguished professional in his field, when he or she starts talking about politics your first reaction will be:
"Christ, are you serious that you believe the yankees will take the Amazon forest in the near future?";
"God, are you sure that there is a mundial conspiracy against our country in order to steal the potable water?";
"Oh no, do you really believe that the CIA has spread cancer to the south american leftist leaders?"
And they will ingenuously nod affirmatively. I have heard the most absurd things from people with fantastic curriculums.

This is clear as water for me: people in Latin America are extremely naïve concerning politics, and this is what allows people like Cristina or Hugo to be so powerful, the general assumption among people is something like:

"Socialists have a good heart, they think about the poor." (Hugo Chávez and the Castro brothers would represent some kind of good-hearted Robin Hoods.)
"Businessmen are evil! They steal from the poor! The less private companies and businessmen a country has, the more developed this country will be." (Sure, just like Lesotho is.)

And people are like that mainly because they were collectively brainwashed at schools and Universities.
I remember having to vote "against ALCA" at school when I was a small kid. The socialist teachers were so crazy that they put ballots in all classrooms and said that we should vote "NO" for Alca, then they made all of us write "NO" on a paper and put it inside the ballots.
I had to answer exam's questions like: "Why is free trade bad for your country?".

There is only one way to revert this trend: internet use. And this hegemonic socialist dominance is already being reverted and fought back like never before.
If the socialists want to keep spreading their lies and to stay in power forever they will need to create something like the Great Firewall of China as fast as possible, because they are clearly losing the battle. People are starting to break free from the chains.

Take a country like mine as an example:
Second in the world in twitter use.
Second in the world in facebook use.

How can an oppressive regime fight something like this? There is no way!

[Rei Murasame]

It may not be that they are naive, but rather that they are worried and slightly paranoid. Not that they can be blamed for that, given how little respect the USA has shown them - and by 'them' I mean the average LATAM person - in the last 150 years.

[Social_Critic]

Lack of respect by the USA is meaningless. That's an excuse used by Castro and all sorts of Latin american leftists since they emerged from the caves a while back. I get a funny feeling in my left elbow whenever I read the crap about the US doing this or doing that. Cristina Kirchner's actions are not attributable to the USA, the latest actions have respected US corporate interests and have focused on screwing Repsol in particular. Since I lived there many years and I have continued to observe and work as a consultant in the country, I can observe that indeed Kirchner has support, and the crowds who clap and dance as she burns down the nation's economy are indeed a happy tribe, just like they were a happy tribe and celebrated so much when the three stooges invaded the Malvinas. Argentinians, as a nation, are just plain stupid when it comes to these issues, and their stupidity can not be blamed on the USA. Those who choose to blame the USA for everything are just infantile generation X types who can't face the realities of life. And because Latin America is full of these generation X sheeple, they will continue to be an economic backwater forever - only Africans can misbehave and act even stupider than Latin Americans.

[Baff]

Countries need external threats to unify their people.

[Social_Critic]

Baff, not all countries need jingoism to unify their people. Jingosim is practiced by governments when they are weak and unpopular. In Cristina's case, the government is approaching an economic cliff caused by their own incompetence, so she's copying the booklet written by the military troika in 1981-1982 when they did the Falklands war fiasco.

Why is Cristina's government ruining the economy? They are using typical populist semi-communist (aka semi-fascist) practices such as nationalizing industry, imposing currency and price controls, and so on. I drone on and on about this topic, these guys are all the same, and there's very little difference between a "leftist" like Cristina Fernandez and a right wing fascist like say Viola or Videla. The only difference is that Cristina isn't throwing people off planes (yet).

[houndred]

The people who live there say 'Falklands'.My all means when speaking Spanish say Malvinas but in the English langauge the name is Falklands.

[Social_Critic]

Well, the people who live in the Malvinas are a bunch of welsh sheepherders imported by the Falklands Company, which is the one which really makes money when the United Kingdom of Alphabet Soup spends a wad of money setting up and defending a worthless piece of crap set of islands. Only Thatcher would have had the numb nuts to go get a bunch of people killed for something nobody in their right mind would want anyway.