JCT: I keep pointing out articles about how the LETS timecurrency Creditos system is helping Argentinians cope with their recession. Here's an article about how Argentinians who don't belong to a timecurrency system cope:

Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2002 08:44:39 -0700
From: mgivel@earthlink.net (Michael Givel)
Subject: [toeslist] Soup kitchens and Dumpster-diving; hunger spreads in recession-wracked Argentina
To: toeslist@yahoogroups.com

Soup Kitchens and Dumpster-Diving; Hunger Spreads in Recession-Wracked Argentina
=========================================================
Wednesday, Jun 12, 2002
By BILL CORMIER,
Associated Press Writer

Note: Bill Cormier’s writing is prefaced with BC and John C. ‘The Enginer’ Turmel’s comments are prefaced with JCT. This will clarify whose writing and comments you are reading below.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina:

BC: Jose Perez and his wife Maria have 11 hungry mouths to feed. So they travel each week to Argentina's biggest vegetable market to raid the Dumpsters.

JCT: They could be travelling to a social creditos trading their work for their food instead of scrounging.

BC: Rotten tomatoes, blackened potatoes, rubbery bell peppers -- the throwaways from the central market are all the Perez family will eat today. Oblivious to trucks rumbling into the market with loads of fresh oranges, melons and other produce, they fend off the flies and claw through the mushy debris for anything edible.

A four-year-old economic downturn has become the worst recession in Argentine history. The jobless rate has soared to 20 percent, the peso has devalued more than 70 percent against the dollar, and more than one-third of the 36 million people now live in poverty. "My husband hasn't been able to work a decent job in years, and we still have to eat," said Maria, hefting a paring knife in calloused hands as she hacked out black spots in rotting potatoes.

JCT: Isn't amazing how fast people can put down their tools and become unemployed and wait for starvation?

BC: Jose, a laid-off electrician, carried a plastic bucket of water to wash the vegetables that often give his family stomach aches. Nearby, a grizzled man in an old army jacket already had a meagre pot of potatoes and cabbage bubbling over a smoky fire. "Tell Mr. Bush we still want to pay back the debt, but give us more time," he said with a laugh. He
meant the dlrs 141 billion Argentina owes after January's default, when the crisis exploded.

JCT: As if an electrician doesn't have useful services to trade. He just doesn't know yet, that's all. 

BC: Hunger is becoming evident in Argentina--from the overrun soup kitchens to the streets of the capital where armies of people sift the trash each night for anything to recycle, sell or eat.

On March 23 a truck carrying 22 cattle overturned near Rosario, 180 miles (290 kilometers) to the north. As hungry shantytown dwellers gathered around the injured animals, men appeared with butcher's knives and carted away dripping sides of beef.

Sociologist Artemio Lopez, at the Equis consulting group, said the price for the government's "basic food basket" of essential goods like bread, rice and eggs soared 47.4 percent in the first five months of the year. "With each passing day there is more hunger in Argentina," said Lopez, who estimates the proportion of the population that cannot afford the basics has nearly doubled to 21 percent in a year.

JCT: I guess a price rise of 50% for food could wreck most family budgets. It's so easy to torment the slaves when you control their money system. And they just sit there and take it.

BC: To properly feed a family of four cost 215 pesos in March and 252 pesos in April, government figures show. That's an increase from dlrs 61 to dlrs 72, and salaries haven't risen at all.

The cash-strapped government has social programs for the poor, but critics say these can't keep pace with the spreading crisis. On May 17 the government started dispensing 150 pesos (dlrs 42) a month to 1 million unemployed heads of households. The critics say it should be double that amount. Community and religious groups struggle to fill the gap.

JCT: Their anti-poverty critics sound like our anti-poverty critics. Great rhetoric condemning the lack but no concrete alternatives to offer.

BC: Genia Skegin is supervising donations of foodstuffs like pasta and flour at a synagogue in northern Buenos Aires. "Every month there are more and more families coming here," she said. "People are losing jobs, it's just terrible."

Across town, at a warehouse piled high with bags of pasta and rice, hundreds of women with plastic buckets wait outside a soup kitchen where 300 pounds (135 kilograms) of macaroni are boiling in a steel vat. At a guard's signal, they rush forward, frantically holding out plastic tubs. "Keep inline, one at a time!" the guard shouts.

"This is my only meal of the day," said Catalina Pineyro, a 71-year-old grandmother, as she gulped her plate down. The soup kitchen is called Cara Sucias, Spanish for "Dirty Faces," as the homeless are known. The founder, Monica Carranza, said she gets 800 visitors on a big day, more than double that of a year ago.

"It's always been hard," she said, "but nothing so bad as now." She said the soup kitchen has registered 95 especially malnourished families, up from 25 a year ago, who get extra food, iron pills for anemia and antibiotics for bronchitis.

Those worst off see the soup kitchen's specialist, Dr. Javier Sary. Wearing a white smock, he listened with a stethoscope to the hacking cough of Daniel, not yet 2, his eyes slightly sunken.

"Here is a case of malnutrition," the doctor said as Daniel's worried mother looked on. "He lacks the basics and is at risk of bronchitis or pneumonia if he isn't treated." He gave the mother antibiotics and shook his head as she left.

"This is certainly not the hunger you see in Africa... but this is an Argentina that didn't exist before: people going hungry, people malnourished ... If it weren't for the help these people receive, I'm afraid they'd simply die in the streets."

JCT: Keep in mind that international bankers, Rothschilds, Rockefellers, etc, would take the medicine money from a dying baby. That's one of the major complaints of poor nations, paying usury rather than health care. But these heartless monsters have been tormenting mankind's debt slaves for the past dozen millennia since the dawn of money and the development of the usury trap. Doubtful they're going to stop now.

And yet, the usury-free UNILETS UNC6 Millennium Declaration resolution might never have been there had it not been for the support of a couple of Rockefellers!

So I'm ready to have a general amnesty, general anonymity once money is fixed and all have access to life support, live and help live, forgive and forget, and leave the judgments to the next world. And by the way, everyone gets a free credit line also with the introduction of a new ‘usuryfree’ time currency system which will serve us optimally, locally, nationally and internationally.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John C. "The Banking Systems Engineer" Turmel, Author of the UNILETS usury-free time-based currency United Nations C6 recommendation to Governments in the http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration.htm & http://www.cyberclass.net/turmel & http://www.medpot.net Tel: 1.613.632.2334