Cristina Kirchner and the crowning of clumsiness
The Argentine-Iranian agreement, a perfect closure to Argentina’s sinister circle of foreign affairs.
Amado Boudou. Reminiscences of Oliver North
The Vice-President, in a stark but messy crusade against others ... and his allies.
The 9/11 Commission Recommendations
Last week, the Bipartisan Policy Center’s National Security Preparedness Group (NSPG)—a follow on to the original 9/11 Commission—reported that, 10 years after 9/11, nine of the 41 recommendations made by the commission remain unfulfilled. With scores like that, this report card certainly isn’t going to make it on anyone’s fridge.
De facto 'corralito'
Financial constraints –in the best style of 2001– have already landed, albeit surreptitiously. While banknotes are scarce, the National Government insists on defending itself by foisting the responsibility off on Brazilians for failing to deliver the requested paper banknotes. However, decrepit and rusty Hercules C-130 from Argentine Air Force had been made available to the Dakar Rally. Simultaneously, public, provincial, and private banks have interposed restrictions on ATM withdrawals: being now impossible to withdraw more than five hundred pesos. There’s chaos and urban anger in La Plata city and holiday resorts. Retirees, police agents and social programmes beneficiaries are unable to take out their monthly wages. Dark alternatives are taking shape behind Amado Boudou and Mercedes Marco del Pont’s official ineptitude. Truck driver Hugo Moyano’s political game. The bank run is among us.
Prisoner
Lacking answers, Cristina Fernandez has ended up falling victim to a hazardous cocktail set by her own inexperience and ineptitude, the agenda of dark representatives from the hard-line wing of kirchnerism, and the social and security crisis that her late husband greatly contributed to fuel, for the sake of his political goals. The irony within the chaos: only the so called 'dissident' Peronism and the opposition can stop her fall.