hydrarchist writes: "Here's part 2 which includes the footnotes."

The programme’s implementation, however, provoked fierce controversy. The complaints began when Menem used the emergency law to institute privatization by decree, and then exploited his powers of appointment to the Supreme Court to impede investigations of malfeasance. Government administrators of the sell-offs were accused of squandering national assets, and of ignoring criteria of efficiency or service. Public Works Minister Roberto Dromi made no effort to create regulatory bodies for the newly formed private monopolies. María Julia Alsogaray, the daughter of one of Argentina’s leading liberal politicians

Political transformations

As he reformed the economy, Menem redrew the political map of Argentina. The most striking changes of the 1990s lay in the eclipse of the military—a dominant force in the country since the nineteenth century—and the steep decline of the once powerful trade unions. The army’s standing had suffered an irreparable blow during the ‘Dirty War’ of the 1970s, compounded by humiliating defeat in the Malvinas; they had been ejected from government in disgrace in 1983. Throughout the Alfonsín years, hard-line military factions had fought against cuts in the defence budget and the trials of former junta leaders. Menem adopted a subtler policy. On the one hand, he proclaimed an era of ‘national reconciliation’—200 officers, sentenced for murder or torture on the basis of irrefutable evidence, walked free in his amnesty of October 1989. On the other, he cracked down on the resistance of the extreme-right carapintados, or ‘painted faces’. The last barracks rebellion occurred in December 1990, following Menem’s restoration of relations with Britain. The army command was ordered to crush it, and complied. The ringleader Colonel Mohamed Seineldín, another turco, was sentenced to life imprisonment.

hydrarchist writes:

"The European Social Forum: Sovereign and Multitude"

J.J. King [jamie@jamie.com]

'There are [...] two primary positions in the response to today's dominant
forces of globalization: either one can work to reinforce the sovereignty of
nation-states as a defensive barrier against the control of foreign and
global capital, or one can strive towards a non-national alternative to the
present form of globalization that is equally global.' [1] (Michael Hardt.)

'Rarely has the corruption of political and administrative life been so
deeply corrosive; rarely has there been such a crisis of representation;
rarely has disillusionment with democracy been so radical. When people talk
about a "crisis of politics", they are effectively saying that the
democratic State no longer functions — and that in fact it has become
irreversibly corrupt in all its principles and organs; the division of
powers; the principles of guarantee; the single individual powers; the rules
of representation; the unitarian dynamic of powers; and the functions of
legality, efficiency and administrative legitimacy. There has been talk of
an "end of history," and if such a thing exists we might certainy identify
it in the end of the constitutional dialectic tto which liberalism and the
mature capitalist State have tied us.' [2] (Antonio Negri.)

WASHINGTON -- (AP, Reuters Digest) Police arrested 649 people, including anti-capitalist
protesters and bystanders, in a show of force as the annual meeting of
the World Bank and the IMF opened here.

Radical demonstrators had threatened to bring the US capital to a
standstill by blocking traffic, but police moved swiftly on pockets of
protesters in central Washington streets, arresting hundreds and
swinging clubs to clear crowds.