RIP Facundo Cabral

[from Wikipedia]

Facundo Cabral

Cabral was shot and killed during a tour in Guatemala City while en route to La Aurora International Airport on July 9, 2011.

Guatemala's President Alvaro Colom decreed three days of national mourning. Hundreds of Guatemalans sang songs written by the artist in the capital's Plaza de la Constitución. Some of the signs carried by Guatemalans grieving the death of the beloved singer said ""We ask forgiveness of the world for the assassination of Facundo", "We are here not only for the death of Maestro Cabral, but also for every boy, girl, old man and woman, who becomes, day after day, victim of violence. Not only for Facundo Cabral, but also for the future of our children."

Argentina's foreign minister, Héctor Timerman, tweeted "Adios amigo!"

Guatemala's 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Rigoberta Menchú, went to the scene of the killing and wept. "For me, Facundo Cabral is a master," she said. "He loved Guatemala greatly."

The President of Venezuela expressed his dismay with a short message via the Twitter social network. "Oh what a pain! Killed the great troubadour of Las Pampas Long live Facundo Cabral weep with Argentina and with all our great homeland," wrote Chavez in his Twitter profile.

"Every morning is good news, every child that is born is good news, every just man is good news, every singer is good news, because every singer is one less soldier."

"I like the sun, Alice, and doves, a good cigar, a spanish guitar, jumping walls, and opening windows, and when a woman cries. I like wine as much as flowers, and rabbits, but not tractors, homemade bread and Dolores' voice, and the sea wetting my feet. I like to always be lying on the sand, or chasing Manuela on a bicycle, or all the time to see the stars with Maria in the hayfield. I'm not from here, I'm not from there, I have no age, nor future, and being happy is my color of identity."

"I'm amazed to form part of this amazing universe and I'm proud of the hunger that keeps me awake. Because when man is full he falls asleep."

"May God want for man to be able to be a child again to understand that he is mistaken if he thinks he can find happiness with a checkbook."

"I don't waste time taking care of myself. Life is beautiful danger. From the danger of love, my mother had seven kids. If she had guarded herself against my father and his fervor, a singer would be missing from tonight's meeting."

"My poor boss thinks that I'm the poor one."

"This is a new day to begin again, to look for the angel that appears in our dreams, to sing, to laugh, to be happy again. In this new day I will leave the mirror, and try to finally be a good man. I will walk with my face to the sun, and I will fly with the moon."

"Forgive me Lord but sometimes I get tired of being a citizen. The city tires me, the offices, my family and the economy. Forgive me Lord, I am tired of this hell, this mediocre market where everyone has a price. Forgive me Lord but I will go with you through your mountains, your seas, and your rivers. Forgive me Lord but sometimes I think you have something better than this for me. Forgive me Lord, I don't want to be a citizen, I want to be a man, Lord, like you created me."

"I am my own inventor because that is the task with which God has trusted me. God, or the Devil because they are the same thing. The Devil is a pseudonym that God uses when he has to create something of morally doubtful character, in order to not tarnish his good name, he uses the pseudonym."

"The poor man that walks through this borrowed life without a song, in addition to being poor is a ghost, and in addition to being a ghost, is nothing."

"We are crossing through life on the train of death seeing how progress is putting an end to people."

"And God created woman and she said 'My Lord, if Mary conceived without sin, couldn't I sin without conceiving?'"

"I stop in San Francisco where there's always something to hear, at least when Krishna Murti is nearby, he who knows that the fundamental revolution is to revolutionize one's self. I stop in Crete where there is always something to love,

I raise my voice in Italy and I am silent in India, because I am and I live in the present, because I am made of dreams, of emptiness, of wine, and of wheat, they call me MAN. It's true that I am dust, but sacred dust I am, even though you know that when I say I am, I am saying you are, invincible, unnameable. Highest Lord, don't worry about our daily bread because that is up to us, that's why we are men, but don't leave us without our nightly dream because without it we are nothing, we who are perhaps only a dream that you dream."

"If I am a thief, it's because of private property."

Facundo Cabral

70's geishas

[from Suzanne Jill Levine's Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman: His Life and Fictions, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2000]

. . . the nightmare atmosphere of the mid-seventies, when military officials exploited their power as rapists and torturers of their victims but also used female captives, usually "Montoneras" (left-wing Peronist guerrillas), as cultivated geishas. Instead of dining at home with their wives, who were the uneducated daughters of other officers, the officers would take these highly literate ex-citizens out to dinner, to "discuss books, movies, politics."

John Hasnas on why anarchy is better than government

Charles sent me this essay a few months ago. I love it.

The Obviousness of Anarchy

by John Hasnas

“You see, but you do not observe.”
      Sherlock Holmes to Dr. John Watson in A Scandal in Bohemia

Introduction

In this chapter, I have been asked to present an argument for anarchy. This is an absurdly easy thing to do. In fact, it is a task that can be discharged in two words – look around. However, because most of us, like Dr. Watson, see without observing the significance of what we see, some commentary is required.

Anarchy refers to a society without a central political authority. But it is also used to refer to disorder or chaos. This constitutes a textbook example of Orwellian newspeak in which assigning the same name to two different concepts effectively narrows the range of thought. For if lack of government is identified with the lack of order, no one will ask whether lack of government actually results in a lack of order. And this uninquisitive mental attitude is absolutely essential to the case for the state. For if people were ever to seriously question whether government is really productive of order, popular support for government would almost instantly collapse.

The identification of anarchy with disorder is not a trivial matter. The power of our conceptions to blind us to the facts of the world around us cannot be gainsaid. I myself have had the experience of eating lunch just outside Temple University’s law school in North Philadelphia with a brilliant law professor who was declaiming upon the absolute necessity of the state provision of police services. He did this just as one of Temple’s uniformed private armed guards passed by escorting a female student to the Metro stop in this crime-ridden neighborhood that is vastly underserved by the Philadelphia police force.

A wise man once told me that the best way to prove that something is possible is to show that it exists. This is the strategy I shall adopt in this chapter. I intend to show that a stable, successful society without government can exist by showing that it has, and to a large extent, still does.

To continue reading, download the PDF by clicking here.

who's guilty: Schocklender or the Mothers?

[from Almudena Calatrava @ Associated Press, 9 June 2011]

Corruption scandal hits Argentina's Mothers group

Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — The influential rights group Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo is struggling with a corruption scandal that forced it to fire a top executive accused of misusing taxpayer funds meant to build housing for the poor.

The group is a close ally of Argentina's presidency and the scandal could have political consequences with only months to go before the Oct. 23 election. President Cristina Fernandez enjoys a wide lead in the polls and is favored to win re-election should she announce her candidacy this month.

The judicial investigation has already been broadened to include any politicians and government appointees found to be involved in the scandal.

"If there wasn't complicity, there was negligence in terms of government controls. This case is yet more proof that the controls aren't working in Argentina," Ricardo Alfonsin, the president's leading challenger, said in an interview he promoted on Twitter.

On Wednesday, opposition members of Congress called for more transparency and controls in government spending, and governing party deputies defended the Mothers group as key to the president's populist programs.

The human rights group began during the 1976-83 dictatorship when its founders demanded information about their children who had disappeared in the military junta's campaign to eliminate political dissenters. In recent years, the group has evolved into a political movement that backs specific candidates and unions, is a fixture at governing party rallies, and runs a wide range of social programs as well as radio and television stations.

Since 2008, the government has given the Mothers group about $187 million for more than 2,000 housing and related construction sites, Deputy Public Works secretary Abel Fatala told a congressional committee Wednesday. But he insisted that local officials, not the federal government, were responsible for making sure the money was properly spent.

Opposition leaders said the Mothers and federal officials showed a shocking failure of responsibility.

Fernanda Reyes, a deputy with the opposition Civic Coalition, said that since 2004, only 35 percent of housing that should have been built with taxpayer money was actually finished. A Peronist party deputy, Gustavo Ferrari, countered that the Mothers group is now Argentina's second-biggest housing builder in terms of the number of people it employs.

Sergio Schoklender

Sergio Schoklender, the right hand of the Mothers' president, Hebe de Bonafini, is accused along with his brother Pablo and more than a dozen others of fraud, money laundering and illegal enrichment. Sergio Schoklender served as the rights group's legal representative, which gave him key financial and administrative responsibilities.

Hebe Pastor de Bonafini

Prosecutor Jorge Di Lello's complaint alleges Schoklender made a series of suspicious operations that shifted taxpayer funds into businesses he owns.

While earning about $16,000 a year to help Argentina's poor, Schoklender amassed a 19-room mansion, Ferrari and Porsche sports cars and a yacht, according to the opposition Clarin newspaper. Schocklender also frequently flew around the country in private jets, the paper said.

Judge Norberto Oyarbide has barred the Schoklender brothers from leaving Argentina and ordered a series of raids to recover documents. At one point, Sergio Schoklender showed up unexpectedly at court to give the judge evidence such as receipts, bank statements and other financial documents that he said would prove he committed no crimes, according to his lawyer, Adrian Tenca.

The government, meanwhile, has moved forcefully to support Bonafini and fix any blame on those who worked for her.

Bonafini, who visited the presidential palace Wednesday, is seeking to distance herself from the Schoklenders, whom she had treated like sons. She founded the group after her own two sons disappeared during the military dictatorship and long defended the Schoklenders, who were released early from life terms in prison after killing their parents in a 1981 crime that shocked Argentina.

"I'm neither the first nor the last mother whose son gets into big trouble," Bonafini told the pro-government Tiempo Argentino on Sunday in an interview that set the tone for this week's wagon-circling. "The accusations are against the legal representative, who was Sergio, and against his brother, and if they committed crimes they will have to pay."

The formal complaint doesn't directly target the Mothers group but raises questions about its activities and the conduct of government officials who directed millions of dollars to its public works projects, apparently without enough controls.

The case has drawn criticism from some of the group's traditional allies, such as Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who was imprisoned by the dictatorship for his human rights work and won the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize for drawing attention to the junta's abuses and condemning political violence.

"I believe there's a great responsibility on the part of the government to determine the controls, audits, submission of receipts, because this doesn't involve pocket change — it's millions and millions of pesos," Perez Esquivel said.

He also questioned the Mothers group for going beyond its traditional mandate to get involved in pro-government political causes. Another group, the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, also is a close supporter of Fernandez, but remains more focused on its core mission of seeking justice for the dictatorship's human rights victims.

Fernandez's Cabinet chief, Anibal Fernandez, argued in his weekly opinion column that opponents will try to use the scandal to justify a frontal attack on human rights gains in Argentina.

"What's done is done and you have to investigate it," he wrote. "But they're trying to blame the heart of the human rights groups."

snakes, tortoises, lizards & an armadillo

[from AFP, 9 April 2011]

Snakes on a bus: Argentina nabs wildlife trafficker

BUENOS AIRES — Passengers on a bus in Argentina got an unwelcome surprise when police found more than 600 snakes and other reptiles packed in the luggage compartment, a ranger said Saturday.

Acting on a tip-off, police intercepted the bus in a northern province bound for Buenos Aires, asked to see passengers' documents, then began poking into their bags.

"A passenger came onboard with 40 snakes, plus what he had in the boxes" in the bus luggage hold, said ranger Daniel Chersich, warden of Santa Fe province.

Police "were terrified of opening the bags," Chersich, who was investigating a wildlife trafficking network and joined in the operation, told the daily Clarin.

With good reason.

The trafficker had loaded them with 444 boas, vipers and other snakes; 186 endangered tortoises; 40 lizards, and an armadillo.

The smuggler, who was arrested, boarded the bus in Santiago del Estero, where he had spent three months trapping various species in the bush with the intent of selling them, Chersich said.

Al Queda @ the Triple Frontier

[from MercoPress, 4 April 2011]

Islamic extremists operating illegally in Triple Frontier area, says Brazilian magazine

Islamic extremist groups such as Al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas are illegally operating in the Triple Frontier area shared by Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil, where they allegedly gather large amounts of money, recruit new militants and plan additional attacks, Brazilian magazine Veja denounced.

The weekly publication stated that several reports by the Brazilian Federal Police and the US government warn that at least twenty high-ranking members from the three organizations are currently operating in the so-called “Triple Frontier” area, shared by Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil.

The Brazilian government has always denied the existence of any activities linked to these Islamic groups, but has admitted that a large portion of the Lebanese community living in the country legally sends large sums of money to the Middle East.

Also under investigation, according to the article published on Sunday, is Mohsen Rabbani, a former cultural attaché to the Iranian embassy in Buenos Aires, who is suspected of being involved in the 1992 and 1994 terrorist attacks against the Jewish community in Argentina.

Apparently Rabbani “frequently flies to Brazil under a fake identity in order to visit a brother living in Curitiba.”

According to Interpol authorities and intelligence agents in Brazil, his last visit to Brazil was in last September.

Veja reports that the ABIN (Brazil’s intelligence agency) found out that Rabbani took over 20 young men from the Greater Sao Paulo area, Pernambuco and Parana to a meeting in Tehran in which they would be instructed on religious formation.

The article also assures that 41-year old Lebanese Khaled Hussein Ali, currently living in Sao Paulo since 1998 when he obtained legal residence after fathering a Brazilian girl, has coordinated Al Qaeda operations in over 17 countries from Brazil.

In 2009, Ali was detained and secluded for 21 days in a Brazilian jail after authorities raided his home and found several videos and emails that instigated hate against the Jews and black people.

Police authorities believed that Ali was one of Al Qaeda’s top propaganda men, but the Brazilian Public Ministry decided not to bring him to justice over a lack of evidence.

The magazine also states that the Shiite Lebanese group Hezbollah and the Palestine group Hamas also have a logistics operations centre in the Triple Frontier region.

Argentine corruption

[from MercoPress, 28 March 2011]

Wikileaks: Corruption rampant in Argentina says US, German, Spanish diplomats

Diplomats from United States, Germany, Spain and Finland repeatedly expressed their concerns about the level of corruption in Argentina in recent years according to the contents of several Wikileaks cables published in the Buenos Aires media.

In September 2007 US ambassador Earl Anthony Wayne says that with an almost perverse meaning “when Argentine officials argue ‘there’s money to be done in Argentina’, maybe the true message is that yes, there’s money to be done as long as you know how and with whom you can really make business deals”.

He also describes as “inefficient the legal system which makes it virtually impossible the investigation into sensitive and politically complex corruption cases”.

Summarizing a 26 June 26 2007 meeting of US Ambassador Wayne with Dr. Abel Fleitas Ortiz Rozas, head of Argentina’s Office of Anticorruption (OA), the report says that Fleitas opened by describing some of the challenges Argentina faces in its fight against corruption: a general public tolerance of corruption, the lack of a culture of transparency, and a slow and cumbersome legal system that hinders his office's ability to successfully prosecute cases. He mentioned that, “while his office has brought many cases to trial, there are far fewer convictions”.

Another (2006) cable points out that coming to power (May 2003) after one of the worst economic, political and social crises in Argentina's history, President Nestor Kirchner has had a successful first three years in office. He is seen as a strong and decisive leader and is credited with restoring governability to the executive branch and promoting Argentina's impressive economic recovery.

But “although Kirchner started his presidency by strengthening the independence of the Supreme Court, Kirchner has since then failed to strengthen Argentina's institutional democracy, and in many cases has weakened it. Kirchner's reliance on presidential decrees, manipulation of the electoral system, tightened control over the Judiciary, and pursuit of permanent “”super“” budgetary powers have enhanced presidential power at the expense of Argentina's already weak institutional framework”.

“Kirchner campaigned in 2003 on a strong anti-corruption message and his first Justice Minister, Gustavo Beliz, championed the cause of rooting out official corruption, but the government has placed less emphasis on fighting corruption since Beliz was fired in 2004”.

Another cable mentions the NGO Centre for the Study and Prevention of Economic Crimes, which recorded that corruption cases in Argentina took 14 years, on average, to be resolved and only 15 out of 750 cases tried, resulted in convictions.

Finally a May 2009 indicates that Manuel Garrido, Argentina's top District Attorney in the National Prosecutor's Office for Administrative Investigations kept a frantic level of activity in launching over 100 investigations, “but he did not obtain a single conviction in over five years”.

In Mid March he resigned from the FIA after five years as its head. He was replaced by a close Kirchner family friend Julio Vitobello known for organizing soccer matches at the presidential residency over weekends.

In a May 2009 cable the US embassy points out that Garrido had distinguished himself as the prosecutor who filed or advanced the most high-level corruption cases implicating administration officials.

Garrido had an important role in the following cases: the alleged manipulation of the National Statistical Agency (INDEC) by Secretary of Internal Commerce Guillermo Moreno; the Skanska corruption allegations; the bag of money found in the office of then-Economy Minister Felisa Micelli; the alleged illicit enrichment of Nestor Kirchner and, separately, of the former debt negotiator Daniel Marx; the overpricing of public works contracts; the installation of electricity cables in southern Argentina by Electroingenieria, a company with close ties to the Kirchners which employs the son of Planning Minister De Vido; the management of official government advertising by Press Secretary Enrique Albistur; train repairs by Transport Secretary Ricardo Jaime; and the decision process for granting highway concessions.

Garrido also filed several more criminal complaints: Claudio Uberti, the former toll road regulator who was fired in the “Valijagate” scandal (money from Venezuela’s Chavez for Cristina Kirchner’s campaign), and Jorge Simeonoff in the Planning Ministry of administrative irregularities and presumed collusion with the highway construction firm Coviares in contract negotiations.

The other two cases accuse the Executive Branch of irregularities in the management of campaign financing -- specifically regarding the broadcasting of political events on a private cable network using public funds -- and presumed irregularities and in another highway concession with the firm Caminos del Valle SA.

One of the cables makes a special consideration of mentioning the Kirchners' home province of Santa Cruz and an investigation of a case against members of the administration and their allies in the business sector, which remains stalled.

“The case focuses on the preferential sale of large properties in Santa Cruz to approximately 50 top administration officials, including the Kirchners, and pro-administration businesspeople during the final years of the tenure of Nestor Mendez, the mayor of El Calafate from 1995 to 2007. The investigation is in the hands of prosecutor Natalia Mercado, who is the daughter of Minister of Social Development Alicia Kirchner and niece of former president Nestor Kirchner.

The case focuses on the purchase of municipal land by the Kirchners and close associates, including Rudy Ulloa, Lazaro Baez, Carlos Sancho, Fulvio Madaro, Natalia Mercado herself, Romina Mercado, Julio Ciurca and Ricardo Etchegaray. Nestor Kirchner reportedly re-sold two hectares (20,000 square meters) to a Chilean investment group for US$2 million -- forty times what he paid after less than two years.

In May 2008 the Secretary General of the Spanish cabinet, Bernardino León is quoted in a cable saying that “Spanish companies in Argentina were highly concerned with the populist emphasis of the Argentine government, political polarization and the extended level of corruption” among the Kirchner network.

In February 2008 German ambassador Wolf Rolf Schumacher also expressed concern with the attitude of close members of the Cristina Kirchner administration towards cases or acts of corruption.

“The CEO of a German corporation went to see the Federal Planning Minister, Julio De Vido to complain because one of his trusted advisors had gone to see him asking for a kickback to which the CEO had refused. De Vido showed no interest in finding out the name of the officer involved and instead recommended the CEO that next time something like that happens to have the incident filmed and taped”, the German diplomat revealed to US officials in Buenos Aires.

Argentine drug trade & use

[from La Nación, 1 March 2011]

An article in La Nación today about drug use, drug manufacturing, & drug trafficking in Argentina. It's in Spanish, but you can ask Google translator to translate it.

The message is that drug trafficking is an increasing problem in Argentina, that the problem could grow to the scale of drug trafficking in Colombia or Mexico, but that the government & police mostly ignore it.

Poor Argentines use paco, aka cocaine paste.

Excerpts:

"According to the latest UN annual report on world drug consumption, Argentina is the largest consumer of cocaine in Latin America & the second in America, second only to the US. 2.6% of the population takes drugs, while in the US, it's 3%. The price of cocaine for personal use in Argentina, according to official sources, is very low: it costs only 10-20% of what the same drug costs in Europe or in the US. . . .

"Formosa, Misiones, Corrientes y Chaco form a very vulnerable region, because of their porous frontiers with Brazil & Paraguay, two countries with intense drug traffic. In northern Argentina, Salta & Jujuy border Bolivia & receive the raw material, coca leaf, or already manufactured cocaine from their neighbor. . . .

It's been known for years that there are hundreds of secret landing strips in north Argentina, but no serious attempt to identify & register them."

Argentina seizes illegal goods on US Air Force plane

[from Merco Press, 15 February 2011]

US Air Force plane cargo triggers serious Argentina/US diplomatic incident

Argentina presented a formal protest to the United States embassy in Buenos Aires over the incident of a US Air Force plan that landed in the country last Thursday with alleged undeclared military equipment.

In the protest note Argentine Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman urged the US government to assist local authorities in the investigation, called for an official apology and warned that the seized material would not be handed back.

“For the sake of Argentine security, they owe us a response” he stated and indicated that “this was not the first incident of such nature.”

“The last time this happened it didn’t grow to become a major incident due to the intervention of US ambassador to Argentina Vilma Martínez,” he explained.

However Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Arturo Valenzuela described the situation as “puzzling and disturbing” and said that the incident has been “blown out of proportion, when it should have been solved in a much more respectful way”.

Mr. Timerman clarified that he is not accusing the US government, but “he is asking them to help Argentina maintain security in the country.“

”If they helped, the investigation would go much smoother.”

The Foreign Minister also stated that Argentina “was never disrespectful to the US,” and urged authorities to “acknowledge their mistake.”

“They were trying to bring warfare material into the country without letting us know”. He added “all they have to say is ‘We’re sorry’”.

Mr. Timerman continued to say that the US should not try to bring unauthorized material into the country without letting authorities know, and said that he had delivered an official letter of complaint to the US embassy in Buenos Aires.

Among the unauthorized items Mr. Timerman described “a briefcase containing morphine and psychotropic medication, highly-sensitive communication devices and a letter that read, in Spanish, ‘I am an American soldier, let my country know I’ve been arrested’.”

He also added that the plane was carrying a “chest full of expired medication,” and wondered: “what were they trying to do with that? Why was that on the plane?”

He clarified that the seized items “will not be returned, as any other country wouldn’t”.

The material seized from the plane’s cargo included “software, security information, weapons and narcotics,” all elements that according to the Argentine government, had not been authorized or listed by the US government.

The cargo, mostly weaponry and ammunition, was meant to be used in training for officers from Argentina’s Federal Police GEOF special operations group.

Valenzuela said that the way local authorities treated US personnel was “improper” adding he was surprised the matter hadn’t been discussed in a more respectful way”.

He also said the US government would “ask for the seized material to be returned.”

Regarding the material seized by local customs authorities, the secretary said that “what the planes usually carry are a large amount of equipment that has been previously discussed with Argentine officials,” and added that, after discovering certain discrepancies, the matter should have been discussed and resolved without these excessive accusations.

At the same time, Mr. Valenzuela said that “the US never intended to break any Argentine laws.”

“All we wanted was to perform some constructive, respectful joint work in an important area such as hostage-taking,” he said, adding that he was “saddened to see how the situation had escalated into excessive accusations.”

Earlier, a spokesperson for the US State Department had said that ”the training had been previously arranged between US military experts and the Argentine Federal police and was approved by the government of Argentina’s Ministry of Security and the Foreign Affairs Ministry,” a spokesperson for the US State Department said.

Regarding the local government’s seizing of sensitive material, the State Department assured that they were taken after an “unusual and unannounced search of the aircraft’s cargo.”

“The actions taken by Argentine officials involved in this incident are puzzling and disturbing,” the State Department’s spokesperson said, adding that the material was inappropriately seized for which they are seeking explanations from the local government.

French artwork recovered in Argentina

[from AFP, 11 February 2011, thank you Steve Abramowicz]

Argentine police recover stolen French artwork

Police said they recovered four paintings by 19th-century born French artists that had been stolen from an Argentine collector in 1999.

The paintings are "La maison de Yerres" by Claude Monet (1840-1926), "Nu dans un atelier d'ami" by Albert Marquet (1875-1947), "Gelee blanche en Ile de France" by Jean-Baptiste Guillaumin (1841-1927), and "Antibes les fortifications," by Eugene Boudin (1824-1898).

The artwork was recovered from a building in Avellaneda, on the southern outskirts of Buenos Aires, the Interpol department of the Argentine Federal Police said in a statement.

The paintings were in the Interpol data bank of stolen art, making it difficult to sell in the open market, the statement said.

The artwork has a market values of "several million," an Interpol source told AFP, refusing to give more details on the value or the rescue operation.

currency exchange

[from Drew Benson at Bloomberg.com, 13 January, 2011]

Argentine Thieves Rob $91,000 In President's Cash Before Trip, Clarin Says

Argentine thieves riding motorcycles stole $91,000 in dollars and euros that President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner planned to take with her on a trip to the Middle East today, Clarin newspaper reported, without saying how it obtained the information.

The thieves grabbed the cash from a government worker who was carrying the bills in a backpack and fled on their motorcycles, the Buenos Aires newspaper reported. The money was to be used for presidential plane expenses during Fernandez’s trip to Kuwait, Qatar and Turkey, Clarin said.

Officials at the press office in Argentina’s presidential palace said they couldn’t confirm the report when contacted by Bloomberg.

unsafe deposit boxes

[from nzherald.co.nz, Jan. 4, 2011]

Argentine thieves tunnel into bank over New Year

Thieves dug a 30-metre-long ventilated and lit tunnel from a neighbouring building into an Argentine bank and emptied the contents of up to 140 safety deposit boxes, officials said Monday.

Authorities said three thieves entered a Banco Provincia branch in the Buenos Aires district of Belgrano on New Year's Eve when it was closed and spent the weekend opening and emptying between 130 and 140 of the branch's 1,408 boxes. The robbery wasn't discovered until the bank opened Monday.

Bank executives didn't say how much the thieves got away with because clients are not obliged to tell authorities what was in their safety deposit boxes.

The thieves rented a building next to the bank in June and spent months digging the tunnel, which emerged in an area where safety deposit boxes are located, prosecutor Martin Niklison said.

The tunnel had lights, ventilation and reinforcement.

"It was a really impressive job," Niklison said, adding that officials had not ruled out that the thieves had an accomplice on the bank's staff.

Anti-seismic alarms sounded various times but police couldn't get into the bank to check out their cause, the prosecutor said.

Hundreds of bank clients gathered in front of the state bank Monday to demand their savings and blocked a nearby street to protest the slow pace at which authorities were confirming whose boxes had been robbed.

"The message we want to give (clients) is that we are going to protect their interests after this incident," Banco Provincia Vice President Gustavo Marangoni told channel C5N.

Many Argentines began putting their savings in bank safety deposit boxes instead of bank accounts following the country's 2001 financial crisis, when many depositors lost savings.

WikiLeaks re Argentina

[from tmcnet.com, December 5, 2010]

Leaked Embassy cable: Argentina awash in drug $

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — A secret U.S. Embassy cable sent from Buenos Aires a year ago bluntly describes Argentina as becoming awash in drug money due to lax prosecution of organized crime. The dispatch said the problem started with the president herself, who "stands to lose" by going after money launderers.

The unvarnished language in the Dec. 1, 2009 cable — one of hundreds of documents exposed by the WikiLeaks website this week — made for banner headlines in Argentina's opposition newspapers Thursday.

Other leaked U.S. diplomatic cables also have shown Argentina's leaders in an unflattering light, including one dated Dec. 31, 2009, in which the Embassy was asked to find out if President Cristina Fernandez was taking medicine to control her mental health. Another, from Sept. 10, 2009, shared unsubstantiated allegations that her Cabinet chief had ties to drug traffickers.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally called Fernandez to apologize on Thursday from Central Asia, where she spent much of her time reassuring various leaders that America has good intentions despite the blunt language of leaked diplomatic cables that were supposed to remain classified for decades.

Fernandez responded by describing the importance of the friendship Argentina has with the United States, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said.

Argentine officials did not comment directly on the money laundering cable, but Justice Minister Julio Alak told a conference of provincial security ministers Thursday that the government "has launched, with all of its weapons and along with the other countries in the region, a battle without quarter against traffickers of drugs, weapons and people."

Many of the cables dealing with Argentina summarize opinions and gossip about the political challenges of Fernandez and her rivals.

But the Dec. 1, 2009 cable is something else: a lengthy summary of the country's efforts to combat money laundering. Its conclusion: "The near complete absence of enforcement coupled with a culture of impunity and corruption make Argentina ripe for exploitation by narcotraffickers and terrorist cells."

Citing current and former Argentine government officials with close knowledge of the country's law–enforcement situation, the cable describes a series of challenges, from a lack of funding for investigators, to uninformed judges, to a general absence of political willpower to make any changes in a country where much of the economy operates off the books in order to evade taxes.

The Embassy's guidance to Washington: Don't expect the Argentine government to do anything about it — least of all Fernandez and her husband, former President Nestor Kirchner, whose personal wealth soared during their years in office. Kirchner died in October. The couple had said that they made their money in real estate, and judges have declined to file charges after repeated investigations stalled in the courts.

The cable said Argentina's anti–money–laundering office had refused to respond to requests from Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg for investigative reports on allegedly suspicious transactions by the Kirchners themselves.

"Some Embassy contacts argue that the current GoA leadership, including the President, stands to lose from honest and vigorous pursuit of money laundering," said the cable, later adding, "It is probably unrealistic to expect that the GoA (government of Argentina) will funnel resources to prosecutors or make a concerted effort to pursue money launderers. The Kirchners and their circle simply have too much to gain themselves from continued lax enforcement."

The cable said that "although tax cheats and compromised politicians may still be the chief source of dirty money, continued GoA indifference to AML/CFT (anti–money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism) could offer an attractive local staging ground to narcotraffickers and international terrorists. If the GoA does not move to close loopholes and enhance enforcement, it may soon find its financial system contaminated by drug money and terror funds."

Another leaked cable cited "unsubstantiated press and intelligence reports" suggesting that Fernandez's Cabinet chief, Anibel Fernandez, "may be financially profiting from narcotrafficking," and that he personally called off a drug investigation near the Bolivian border. The cable added that Embassy officials had "no information to corroborate these allegations, and we are unaware of any formal legal complaint against him on narcotrafficking charges."

"Given AF's importance, accessibility, and the absence of hard evidence to substantiate the allegations described above, we continue to meet and work with him. At the same time, there are enough rumors about Fernandez — even in this rumor–plagued, conspiratorial society — to approach interactions with him with some caution," the cable advised.

Anibel Fernandez responded in a television interview late Wednesday night that "I'm not prepared to give credit to this stupidity."

"Our administration is the only one in the entire world that has detained bands of narcos like nobody else," the Cabinet chief declared. "That's the only explanation I'm going to give."

Embassy spokeswoman Shannon Farrell condemned the unauthorized disclosures, and stressed that the diplomatic cables are by definition preliminary and incomplete, and thus don't represent U.S. policy. She said the information "may be merely the opinion of the reporting officer or a compendium of the opinion from a variety of local sources designed to convey the variety of interpretation, speculation and debate."

"The United States is committed to freedom of expression, and to fostering a broad diversity of opinion in our communications — including our internal communications and deliberations," Farrell added. "To protect the candor and integrity of that communication process, our internal reporting is often classified."

Nestor's death

[from Jeff Clark at The Growth Stock Wire, 11/16/10]

Bribes, Litter, and Dog Poop… The Future of America?

Argentina's stock market jumped 8% the day I arrived in Buenos Aires.

The gains had nothing to do with improved corporate earnings or better economic conditions. Argentina's central bank didn't promise to inject billions of dollars of stimulus into the market. Something else caused the buying panic.

President Nestor Kirchner died of a heart attack.

Kirchner was elected President of Argentina in 2003, following the currency crisis. He served until 2007, when his wife took over the post. He was campaigning to run for President again next year, and was widely expected to win.

It is quite a statement when the market rallies 8% after a candidate's death. Talk about being worth more dead than alive.

"Kirchner was a crook," said a group of businessmen I had lunch with a few days following his death. Indeed, in a country known for electing people of dubious character to higher office, Kirchner raised the standard of thievery.

His administration was rife with scandal. It was common to hear stories involving bags of cash stashed in various government offices, and suitcases full of money transported through the airport. Kirchner's net worth ballooned from less than $1 million when he was elected in 2003 to an estimated $70 million when he died two weeks ago. Much of the increase is rumored to have come from various sweetheart real estate deals and corporate kickbacks on government contracts.

"But he was popular," I argued. The funeral procession marched down the avenue in front of my apartment. Several thousand people turned out for it.

"It's easy to be popular when you buy votes," the businessmen replied. Many of Kirchner's policies were designed to redistribute wealth – higher taxes and fees for those who achieved, and more "free" handouts for the rest.

"Popularity doesn't mean the policies are in the nation's best interest," one businessman said. "I'll bet most of the crowd was bused and bribed to be at the funeral."

I found out later, the housekeeper who cleaned my apartment marched in the funeral procession. She received a sandwich and 100 pesos (about $25) for her participation.

"So who's next?" I asked the businessmen. "Who will you vote for?"

"It doesn't matter," they agreed. "Everyone's corrupt. We'll just be trading one thief for another. It's not even worth the bother to vote."

And there we have what seems to be the national slogan of Argentina post-currency crisis… Why bother?

Food wrappers and other trash litter the streets, even though there are trash cans on every corner and it takes little effort to properly dispose of the garbage. But why bother?

Dog walkers leave their clients' poop in the middle of the sidewalk despite the stench and mess it makes. Why bother?

Gentlemen don't dress for dinner anymore… Many don't even shave… Why bother?

It's as if the entire culture has thrown up its hands and decided it's not worth the effort. There's no point working hard if what you earn can be taken away from you by government decree, or if what you need is provided for "free." Why bother honoring your contracts if the government doesn't honor its own contracts? Why bother playing the game by the rules if those rules change every time you get ahead?

As a visitor, it's hard to digest this thinking. After all, Argentina appears to have a thriving economy. The government reports strong economic numbers. The stock market is up 40% in the past year. There's constant traffic in the streets of Buenos Aires. And people are bustling along the sidewalks.

"But we're peaking," one businessman said. "And we're peaking at a much lower level than before." The rest of the men nodded in agreement. "If only the rest of the government would suffer a heart attack."

There is a deep distrust and resentment of the government here – which isn't a surprise since it was government actions that created the currency crisis years ago, destroying much of the country's wealth.

But that wasn't always the case. Prior to the currency crisis, the government was largely seen as a regulator and a protector of last resort.

And that is how the U.S. government is seen right now. While it's not a perception I agree with, it's apparently the view of the majority of U.S. voters.

Following a currency crisis, however – if Argentina is any example – the government becomes a competitor. It fights with its citizens for each piece of the pie. And its appetite is insatiable.

How do you battle against a larger and more powerful entity? I don't know. Most of the people I've met here in Argentina do so by hiding their wealth. They send it overseas, or bury it in their mattresses. They don't keep it in the banks for fear of confiscation. So the money never makes its way into the economy and growth is always less than what it could be.

If only the rest of the government would suffer a heart attack… The businessmen's words replay over again in my head.

If only…

Terrorism in South America

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia | The capture of a key member of the Islamic militant group Hezbollah in Paraguay last month and intensified leftist activity in the Triborder zone of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina highlight renewed threats in a region long considered a hub for terrorists. (Article from the Washington Times)

annual homicides

[from Wikipedia, intentional homicide rates, 2004, darker colors represent more homicides]

[from the Latin American Herald Tribune, 06/24/10]

MEXICO CITY – Nearly 19,000 homicides of all types occurred in Mexico in 2009, making the country No. 6 in the world in terms of homicides, consulting firm Grupo Multisistemas de Seguridad Industrial said in a new study.

South Africa has the highest homicide rate in the world, with 126 per 100,000 people, followed by Colombia, with 114.5, Guatemala, with 44, Thailand, with 41.5, Paraguay, with 19.4, and Mexico, with 12 per 100,000 people, the study said.

crime

In case you missed this from Simon Black:

Buenos Aires is an excellent example. It's a beautiful city, sort of, but the crime situation has really deteriorated to the point that you can easily be robbed and/or assaulted in broad daylight on the most popular tourist streets in town.