Sunday 19 July 2015

Conservative wins mayoral election in Argentina's capital

 

 

 
 

FILE - In this July 5, 2015 file photo, Buenos Aires Mayor Chief of Staff who is running for mayor, Horacio Rodriguez Larreta, right, stands before supporters with Buenos Aires Mayor and presidential candidate Mauricio Macri as they celebrate the results of mayoral elections in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Although Larreta won the mayoral election, Buenos Aires is holding a July 19 runoff between Larreta and his rival Martin Lousteau from the ECO 

coalition. (AP Photo/Daniel Jayo, File)







BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Conservative Horacio Rodriguez Larreta won Sunday's mayoral run-off election in Buenos Aires, in a closer race than his opposition party had hoped for in the capital ahead of presidential voting later this year.
With 99.9 percent of ballots counted, the candidate of the business-friendly PRO Party had 51.6 percent of the votes. His rival, ECO Party candidate and former economy minister Martin Lousteau, got 48.4 percent.
Rodriguez Larreta is an economist and was chief of staff for outgoing mayor and likely presidential candidate Mauricio Macri. Rodriguez Larreta won the most votes in the opening round of balloting July 5, but did not garner enough votes to avoid a run-off with Lousteau.
In his victory speech, Rodriguez Larreta thanked Macri for his work as mayor and vowed to continue improving public education, health and security for Argentina's capital city.
"I'm optimistic about the future because with Mauricio (Macri) as president, Argentina will recover its path of growth and well-being for all. And that will benefit all of the citizens of Buenos Aires as well," he said.
With Buenos Aires' 2.5 million voters accounting for nearly 8 percent of Argentina's voting population, the capital city's election was being closely watched for tendencies for the Aug. 9 presidential primaries and the Oct. 25 national election.
Both Rodriguez Larreta and Lousteau are critical of President Cristina Fernandez's leftist government. The candidate representing Fernandez's Victory Front coalition, Mariano Recalde, was knocked out of the race after finishing third in the first round July 5.
Rodriguez Larreta has said he hopes to help achieve change for all of Argentina after the 12-year rule of Fernandez and her late husband and predecessor as president, Nestor Kirchner.
The PRO had been hoping for a stronger margin in the mayor's contest to give a boost for Macri's chances in the presidential race. His main rival is Buenos Aires Gov. Daniel Scioli, who has been picked by Fernandez to continue the populist policies that began with her husband's presidency. Fernandez is barred from seeking a third consecutive term.
Restoring Argentina's sense of pride and sovereignty after the country's worst economic crisis in 2001 has been the central goal of Fernandez and Kirchner. The presidential couple negotiated or paid off most of Argentina's defaulted debt, nationalized the pension system, kept energy cheap through subsidies and dug deep into the treasury to redirect revenue to the poor through handouts.
But many Argentines are calling for change amid frustration with one of the world's highest inflation rates, government currency and trade controls and corruption accusations that have penetrated deep into Fernandez's inner circle



Read more about this here.

Tuesday 14 July 2015

Introduction of ´´Peor es nada´´ and course of english for emigrating men: ``Juan Perez is a chicken thief ´´


The best critical and smart humor of the nineties .
 
No subtitles, I'm very sorry.

Argentinean police contaminated evidence at dead prosecutor’s home

Video shows authorities wiping clean the gun Alberto Nisman reportedly used to kill himself.

Caso Nisman
An image from the police video recorded at Nisman's home. / El trecetv

A police video released to the public on Sunday night shows how investigators may have tampered with evidence at the scene of Argentinean federal prosecutor Alberto Nisman’s death, the details of which continue to remain an enigma for many nearly five months later.
TV journalist Jorge Lanata broadcast the unedited police video taken at the crime scene on his popular news program Periodismo para todos (Journalism for everyone). The recording demonstrates how a series of investigative errors were committed by authorities when they arrived at the prosecutor’s apartment on January 18.
The video shows a series of errors committed by officials when they arrived at the prosecutor’s home
The broadcast has only fueled more speculation over the mysterious death of 51-year-old Nisman, who was found with a gunshot wound to his head on his bathroom floor the day before he was scheduled to testify before Congress over cover-up charges he had recently filed against President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
After a string of appeals, the Federal Criminal Cassation Court last month decided to dismiss Nisman’s original complaint against the president and other government officials whom he accused of covering up an attack on the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994, which left 85 people dead.
Lanata said he had the entire four-hour video in his possession but only showed parts of the recording that police took at Nisman’s Le Parc Tower apartment in Buenos Aires’ Puerto Madero neighborhood.
According to Lanata, authorities on the scene apparently ruined a good part of the investigation in they way they handled the evidence, including searching for DNA samples. For example, one extract shows the cartridge clip of the gun to be completely clean, but the firearm itself stained with blood.
One part shows the gun’s cartridge clip to be completely clean, but the firearm itself stained with blood
This reportedly prevented forensic experts from lifting fingerprints from the gun, which may have belonged to people other than Nisman, experts on the show said. Forensic investigators did not even find DNA evidence linking the firearm to Diego Lagomarsino, a computer expert and friend of Nisman, who has admitted giving him the gun for his own protection the day before the prosecutor’s body was found.
And while the clip was clean when authorities arrived, one investigator is seen handling and staining it with blood from his rubber gloves. He is also shown picking up bullet shells and putting them in the bidet, further altering the original crime scene.
Nisman’s former wife, Sandra Arroyo, who is a judge, has maintained that her ex-husband did not commit suicide but was murdered in his own apartment.
No official ruling has been made in Nisman’s death but an investigating prosecutor, Viviana Fein, has said that so far all the evidence points to suicide.
But many, like Arroyo, remain unconvinced.
Nisman cut short his vacation in Spain in mid-January to file cover-up charges against Fernández de Kirchner, Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman, and other officials for allegedly trying to derail his investigation into the 1994 terrorist bombing.
He had claimed that the president was trying to seek a grain-for-oil deal with Iran and in exchange she had agreed to drop charges against high-level Iranian officials charged with complicity in the attack.
The government has repeatedly denied this allegation, and Nisman’s reputation has come under question from many sectors.
Prosecutor Fein can be seen leading the investigation throughout the video, and the voice of Sergio Berni, the president’s chief of state security – whose arrival at the scene before the forensic team has also evoked a whirlwind of speculation – can also occasionally be heard in the background. At one point, he tells Fein to go to the bathroom because Nisman may be suffering when in fact the prosecutor had been dead for at least 12 hours.
Authorities are also seen wiping the bloody firearm with toilet paper. This is followed by a sudden cutoff in the recording – which should not have occurred – when images may have shown exactly how investigators cleaned the weapon.
The bathroom is shown to be full of investigators stepping on blood, including Fein, who may have added her own prints at the scene.
One official can be heard telling her: “Watch out where you are stepping.”
“I have never had any doubt that Nisman was murdered,” said Lanata on his show. “But we may perhaps never know this because the crime scene was tampered with.”
 
 
 
 
 

For more information you can click here.

Thursday 2 July 2015

The forgotten Holocaust: The Armenian massacre that inspired Hitler

 

 

When the Turkish gendarmes came for Mugrditch Nazarian, they did not give him time to dress, but took him from his home in the dead of night in his pyjamas.
The year was 1915, and his wife, Varter, knew that she was unlikely to see her husband alive again. Armenian men like him were being rounded up and taken away. In the words of their persecutors, they were being "deported" - but not to an earthly place.

Varter never found out what fate her husband suffered. Some said he was shot, others that he was among the men held in jail, who suffered torture so unbearable that they poured the kerosene from prison lamps over their heads and turned themselves into human pyres as a release from the agony.

Heavily pregnant, Varter was ordered to join a death convoy marching women and children to desert concentration camps.
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armenian massacre


She survived the journey alone - her six children died along the way. The two youngest were thrown to their deaths down a mountainside by Turkish guards; the other four starved to death at the bottom of a well where they had hidden to escape.

Varter herself was abducted by a man who promised to save her - but raped her instead. Eventually, she was released to mourn her lost family, the victims of Europe's forgotten holocaust.

The killing of 1.5m Armenians by the Ottoman Turks during World War I remains one of the bloodiest and most contentious events of the 20th century, and has been called the first modern genocide.

In all, 25 concentration camps were set up in a systematic slaughter aimed at eradicating the Armenian people - classed as "vermin" by the Turks.

Winston Churchill described the massacres as an "administrative holocaust" and noted: "This crime was planned and executed for political reasons. The opportunity presented itself for clearing Turkish soil of a Christian race."

Chillingly, Adolf Hitler used the episode to justify the Nazi murder of six million Jews, saying in 1939: "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"


Yet, carried out under the cover of war, the Armenian genocide remains shrouded in mystery - not least because modern-day Turkey refuses to acknowledge the existence of its killing fields.

Now, new photographs of the horror have come to light. They come from the archives of the German Deutsche Bank, which was working in the region financing a railway network when the killing began.

Unearthed by award-winning war correspondent Robert Fisk, they were taken by employees of the bank to document the terror unfolding before them.

They show young men, crammed into cattle trucks, waiting to travel to their deaths. The Turks crowded 90 starving and terrified Armenians into each wagon, the same number the Nazis averaged in their transports to the death camps of Eastern Europe during the Jewish Holocaust.

Behind each grainy image lies a human tragedy. Destitute women and children stare past the camera, witness to untold savagery.

Almost all young women were raped according to Fisk, while older women were beaten to death - they did not merit the expense of a bullet. Babies were left by the side of the road to die.

Often, attractive young Armenian girls were sent to Turkish harems, where some lived in enforced prostitution until the mid-1920s.

Many other archive photographs testify to the sheer brutality suffered by the Armenians: children whose knee tendons were severed, a young woman who starved to death beside her two small children, and a Turkish official taunting starving Armenian children with a loaf of bread.

Eyewitness accounts are even more graphic. Foreign diplomats posted in the Ottoman Empire at the time told of the atrocities, but were powerless to act.

One described the concentration camps, saying: "As on the gates of Dante's Hell, the following should be written at the entrance of these accursed encampments: 'You who enter, leave all hopes.'"


So how exactly did the events of 1915-17 unfold? Just as Hitler wanted a Nazi-dominated world that would be Judenrein - cleansed of its Jews - so in 1914 the Ottoman Empire wanted to construct a Muslim empire that would stretch from Istanbul to Manchuria.
Armenia, an ancient Christian civilisation spreading out from the eastern end of the Black Sea, stood in its way.


At the turn of the 20th century, there were two million Christian Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire. Already, 200,000 had been killed in a series of pogroms - most of them brutally between 1894 and 1896.


In November 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered World War I against the Allies and launched a disastrous military campaign against Russian forces in the Caucasus. It blamed defeat on the Armenians, claiming they had colluded with the Russians.

A prominent Turkish writer at the time described the war as "the awaited day" when the Turks would exact "revenge, the horrors of which have not yet been recorded in history".

Through the final months of 1914, the Ottoman government put together a number of "Special Organisation" units, armed gangs consisting of thousands of convicts specifically released from prison for the purpose.

These killing squads of murderers and thieves were to perpetrate the greatest crimes in the genocide. They were the first state bureaucracy to implement mass killings for the purpose of race extermination. One army commander described them at the time as the "butchers of the human species".

On the night of April 24, 1915 - the anniversary of which is marked by Armenians around the world - the Ottoman government moved decisively, arresting 250 Armenian intellectuals. This was followed by the arrest of a further 2,000.
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armenian massacre


Some died from torture in custody, while many were executed in public places. The resistance poet, Daniel Varoujan, was found disembowelled, with his eyes gouged out.

One university professor was made to watch his colleagues have their fingernails and toenails pulled
out, before being blinded. He eventually lost his mind, and was let loose naked into the streets.

There were reports of crucifixions, at which the Turks would torment their victims: "Now let your Christ come and help you!"

Johannes Lepsius, a German pastor who tried to protect the Armenians, said: "The armed gangs saw their main task as raiding and looting Armenian villages. If the men escaped their grasp, they would rape the women."

So began a carefully orchestrated campaign to eradicate the Armenians. Throughout this period, Ottoman leaders deceived the world, orchestrating the slaughter using code words in official telegrams.

At later war crimes trials, several military officers testified that the word "deportation" was used to mean "massacre" or "annihilation".

Between May and August 1915, the Armenian population of the eastern provinces was deported and murdered en masse.

The American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, said: "Squads of 50 or 100 men would be taken, bound together in groups of four, and marched to a secluded spot.

"Suddenly the sound of rifle shots would fill the air. Those sent to bury the bodies would find them almost invariably stark naked, for, as usual, the Turks had stolen all their clothes."

In urban areas, a town crier was used to deliver the deportation order, and the entire male population would be taken outside the city limits and killed - "slaughtered like sheep".

Women and children would then be executed, deported to concentration camps or simply turned out into the deserts and left to starve to death.

An American diplomat described the deportations or death marches: "A massacre, however horrible the word may sound, would be humane in comparison with it."

An eyewitness who came upon a convoy of deportees reported that the women implored him: "Save us! We will become Muslims! We will become Germans! We will become anything you want, just save us! They are going to cut our throats!"

Walking skeletons begged for food, and women threw their babies into lakes rather than hand them over to the Turks.

There was mass looting and pillaging of Armenian goods. It is reported that civilians burned bodies to find the gold coins the Armenians swallowed for safekeeping.

Conditions in the concentration camps were appalling. The majority were located near the modern Iraqi and Syrian frontiers, in the desert between Jerablus and Deir ez-Zor - described as "the epicentre of death". Up to 70,000 Armenians were herded into each camp, where dysentery and typhus were rife.

There, they were left to starve or die of thirst in the burning sun, with no shelter. In some cases, the living were forced to eat the dead. Few survived.

In four days alone, from 10-14 June 1915, the gangs 'eliminated' some 25,000 people in the Kemah Erzincan area alone.

In September 1915, the American consul in Kharput, Leslie A. Davis, reported discovering the bodies of nearly 10,000 Armenians dumped into several ravines near beautiful Lake Goeljuk, calling it the "slaughterhouse province".


Tales of atrocity abound. Historians report that the killing squads dashed infants on rocks in front of their mothers.

One young boy remembered his grandfather, the village priest, kneeling down to pray for mercy before the Turks. Soldiers beheaded him, and played football with the old man's decapitated head before his devastated family.

At the horrific Ras-ul-Ain camp near Urfa, two German railway engineers reported seeing three to four hundred women arrive in one day, completely naked. One witness told how Sergeant Nuri, the overseer of the camp, bragged about raping children.

An American, Mrs Anna Harlowe Birge, who was travelling from Smyrna to Constantinople, wrote in November 1915: "At every station where we stopped, we came side by side with one of these trains. It was made up of cattle trucks, and the faces of little children were looking out from behind the tiny barred windows of each truck."

In her memoir, Ravished Armenia, Aurora Mardiganian described being raped and thrown into a harem. From a wealthy banking family, she was just one of thousands of Armenian girls to suffer a similar fate. Many were eventually killed and discarded.

In the city of Malatia, she saw 16 girls crucified, vultures eating their corpses. "Each girl had been nailed alive upon her cross, spikes through her feet and hands," Mardiganian wrote. "Only their hair blown by the wind covered their bodies."

In another town, she reports that the killing squads played "the game of swords" with young Armenian girls, planting their weapons in the ground and throwing their victims onto the protruding blade in sport.

Elsewhere, bodies tied to each other drifted down the Euphrates. And in the Black Sea region, the Armenians were herded onto boats and then thrown overboard.

In the desert regions, the Turks set up primitive gas chambers, stuffing Armenians into caves and asphyxiating them with brush fires.

Everywhere, there were Armenian corpses: in lakes and rivers, in empty desert cisterns and village wells. Travellers reported that the stench of death pervaded the landscape.

One Turkish gendarme told a Norwegian nurse serving in Erzincan that he had accompanied a convoy of 3,000 people. Some were summarily executed in groups along the way; those too sick or exhausted to march were killed where they fell. He concluded: "They're all gone, finished."

By 1917, the Armenian 'problem', as it was described by Ottoman leaders, had been thoroughly "resolved". Muslim families were brought in to occupy empty villages.

Even after the war, the Ottoman ministers were not repentant. In 1920, they praised those responsible for the genocide, saying: "These things were done to secure the future of our homeland, which we know is greater and holier than even our own lives."

The British government pushed for those responsible for the killing to be punished, and in 1919 a war crimes tribunal was set up.

The use of the word "genocide" in describing the massacre of Armenians has been hotly contested by Turkey. Ahead of the nation's accession to the EU, it is even more politically inflammatory.

The official Turkish position remains that 600,000 or so Armenians died as a result of war. They deny any state intention to wipe out Armenians and the killings remain taboo in the country, where it is illegal to use the term genocide to describe the events of those bloody years.

Internationally, 21 countries have recognised the killings as genocide under the UN 1948 definition. Armenian campaigners believe Turkey should be denied EU membership until it admits responsibility for the massacres.

Just as in the Nazi Holocaust, there were many tales of individual acts of great courage by Armenians and Turks alike.

Haji Halil, a Muslim Turk, kept eight members of his mother's Armenian family safely hidden in his home, risking death.

In some areas, groups of Kurds followed the deportation convoys and saved as many people as they could. Many mothers gave their children to Turkish and Kurdish families to save them from death.

The Governor-General of Aleppo stood up to Ottoman officials and tried to prevent deportations from his region, but failed.

He later recalled: "I was like a man standing by a river without any means of rescue. But instead of water, the river flowed with blood and thousands of innocent children, blameless old men, helpless women and strong young people all on their way to destruction.

"Those I could seize with my hands I saved. The others, I assume, floated downstream, never to return."


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-479143/The-forgotten-Holocaust-The-Armenian-massacre-inspired-Hitler.html#ixzz3en8FtQSv

Saturday 27 June 2015

Argentina Armenians Keep Culture Alive

Latin America's largest Armenian population hold fast to their cultural identity 100 years after their ancestors fled a massacre in the Ottoman Empire.
 
 

Armenians in Argentina commemorate genocide

Armenians march to the residence of the Turkish ambassador to demand justice 100 years after what has come to be known as the Armenian genocide.
 
 

Raúl Alfonsín teaches about social justice and peace while the conservative republican Ronald Reagan stands with a blank expression


Thursday 18 June 2015

BBC Documentary Our World 2015 Who Killed Alberto Nisman


Alberto Nisman, Argentina's special prosecutor, had just accused the government of covering-up the country's deadliest terrorist attack. But he never got to testify before Congress. He was found dead in his flat. Was it suicide or murder? In an exclusive interview the BBC's Wyre Davies speaks to Alberto Nisman's former wife. She says he was murdered and the official investigation into his death flawed. Davies also meets the last person known to have seen Nisman alive. In a tale of corruption and international espionage Our World asks - who killed Alberto Nisman?
 
 
 

Wednesday 3 June 2015

Dagmar Hagelin: a Swedish Teenage Girl



Dagmar Hagelin, age 17, a swedish girl, living in Buenos Aires, was shot and kidnapped on January 27th, 1977 by Alfredo Astiz, a member of task force 332 (GT332), based in the Navy Mechanics School (Spanish initials: ESMA: Escuela Mecanica de La Armada, a secret detention center, and extermination camp in the capital, Buenos Aires). She was carried to the ESMA, wounded but alive. At least three survivors of the ESMA saw Dagmar and talked to her in captivity. She was mentally sound and her physical condition was improving when she was finally killed by her captors.
Dagmar Hagelin was kidnapped by mistake, and her disapperance became an international problem to the Argentine dictatorship. To prevent leaks about the atrocities in the ESMA, Dagmar's captors decided to kill her in cold blood.
She never came back.
 
 
 
THIS IS A STORY BASED ON THE DISAPPEARANCE OF DAGMAR. LANGUAGES OF THE MOVIE:  ENGLISH, SPANISH AND SWEDISH.


Congress packed for anti-gender violence march

The plazas and streets around Congress were filled with tens of thousands of campaigners protesting against gender violence, as the #NiUnaMenos march brought out massive crowds in solidarity with victims of mistreatment.

Family members of women who had been killed at the hands of partners or ex-partners were the first to gather near the iconic City landmark today, alongside survivors left paralysed or blinded by abusive relationships. As the afternoon went on the area was taken over by sympathisers of the campaign, organised primarily through social media and with some famous faces lending support.

"No more femicide. From Barcelona we join today every Argentine to shout loudly #NiUnaMenos", Barcelona football star Lionel Messi wrote on his Facebook page. President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner also criticised what she considered "a culture of devastation against feminism."

As well as the capital, over 80 cities across Argentina organised events for the campaign. The City march, which has gained massive publicity and support from social media, political, artistic and cultural figures, began from Congress.

The hashtag #NiUnaMenos translates to not a women less in English, and refers to violent attacks and murders targeting females in the country. According to the latest available statistics, 1808 women were killed in the last seven years - an average of one every 31 hours.

The organisers of the march showed in front of Congress a manifesto demanding:

- The implementation of the National Action Plan for the Prevention, Assistance and Erradication of Violence against Women, with is included in law 26.485. That it is wholly observed, with monitoring and budget.

- That victims' access to the courts is guaranteed; that there is judicial support; that they do not become victims again; that the cases heard in civil and penal courts are joined together for a more agile system.

- Within the state there must be a single official register of victims, so that public policies are designed from that perspective.

- A guarantee of integral sexual education at all education levels.

- The victims must be protected because it is extremely difficult for a woman to make an accusation living in a situation of domestic violence. When it happens, the courts have to ensure the measures ordered are carried out against the violent party. 


 Read more about this here.



Saturday 23 May 2015

Remembering Orlando and Ronni

Saul Landau and Sarah Anderson, two IPS fellows, remember the lives of colleagues Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt. On September 21, 1976, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's secret police agents detonated a car bomb on Sheridan Circle, Washington DC, killing Orlando and Ronni on the way to work. IPS pays tribute to their memory by continuing to work for peace, justice and dignity in the U.S. and around the world. 





Thursday 23 April 2015

Symphony Concert was held in Buenos Aires for the Armenian Genocide Centennial


 

A symphony concert organized by the interinstitutional commission for the Armenian Genocide Centennial was held in Buenos Aires today.

The show combined traditional Armenian music of ​Aram ​Khachaturian, Alan Hovhaness and Arno Babajanian with songs of Luis Alberto Spinetta and Astor Piazzolla's compositions. The event was attended by several city officials along with the Ambassador of Armenia in Argentina Alexan Harutiunian and the Embassy Counselor Esther Mkrtumyan.

The concert is one of the activities organized by the Armenian community of Argentina. On April 25 there will be a ceremony at the Book Fair of Buenos Aires, and on April 29 there will be a ceremony at the Luna Park stadium. The traditional rally that draws thousands of people in the country will take place on April 28, as the City of Buenos Aires does not allow political acts on April 24, two days before the primary election.
Click here for more information.







Sunday 12 April 2015

No conclusions yet in Argentine prosecutor case

Two months after the body of Argentine investigator Alberto Nisman was found in his apartment, the country is still waiting for answers. 


THE BLOG HAS OVER 10.000 HITS.


Saturday 7 March 2015

Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman's ex-wife has claimed that independent forensic tests show he was murdered.

The investigator had accused the president of plotting to cover up Iran's alleged role in a 1994 bombing.

Nisman was found dead, a bullet in his head and pistol by his side, at home in Buenos Aires in January.


Sunday 22 February 2015

The Captivating, Legendary and Problematic Route 40


National Route 40 crosses the country longitudinally, connecting small villages and big cities from Cabo Vírgenes (Santa Cruz ) to La Quiaca (Jujuy). This route has become an attraction for tourists and the spoils of war for politicians on duty. In this article we tell you how it is being transformed. We invite you to go through it!

National Route 40 can practically be considered Argentina’s backbone, running along 5,000 kilometers (3,100 mi), crossing 18 important rivers, 20 National Parks and NatRoute 40ural Reserves and connecting 11 provinces: Santa Cruz, Chubut, Río Negro, Neuquén, Mendoza, San Juan, La Rioja, Catamarca, Tucumán, Salta and Jujuy,.
Similar to Route 60 in the United States, but many kilometers longer and reaching higher altitudes (almost 5,000 meters -16,400 ft- above sea level in Abra del Acay, Salta), Route 40 has become the new star of tourist products offered in the country, which is why it is planned to be completely paved by 2010.

Not all that glitters is new pavement…

Even though the government has, in theory, a clear intention to pave this very important route, in practice, there are some bureaucratic difficulties and conflicts of interest against which inhabitants –at least from the south- are ready to raise their dissident voices.
Modifyed Route 40The Secretary of Tourism provides funds to the provinces for maintenance and additional infrastructure works, and the provinces of Neuquén and Mendoza have done so. However, further south, in Río Negro, the situation is different. Apparently, the money destined to pave Route 40 has been secretly diverted, however, the maps started showing route 40 as paved. What was the trick? Daniel Barrios, a neighbor from Bariloche, explains it clearly in his Web page: “Instead of actually paving Route 40, which runs far from the mountain range, two other paved routes were renamed after it: Route 237 going from Senillosa to Bahía López, and Route 258 going from Bariloche to Epuyen”. This way, Route 40 now goes across Bariloche and El Bolsón, the stars of the north Patagonian lake region.
But, has Route 40 really been paved?

What about dear old Route 40?

Old Route 40Former Route 40 has passed to the hands of provincial governments and is now called the “old route 40”. The decision to pave the route to El Bolsón and Bariloche and to leave out a vast region from Alicura dam in Río Negro to El Maitén in Chubut -going across Cerro Alto, Pilcaniyeu, Las Bayas and Ñorquinco- is a political decision aiming to drive tourists to a region promoted well enough.
Something similar happens to the route that borders Lake Cardiel in Santa Cruz, where the new route has been outlined further to the East, near Gobernador Gregores.

Everyday Problems

For practical purposes, the alteration of the outline and the name of Route 40 will cause some problems until the modifications are officially Route´s signpostset and the local people get familiar with them.
Visitors will have to update their maps and brochures and will probably need directions from the local people when traveling the road on their own.
Inhabitants will have to restate their mailing addresses and update the kilometer where they actually live since these changes will force them to act as if they had moved.
Likewise, when car accidents take place in this region and have to be officially reported, there will be confusing legal aspects and bureaucratic issues. Not to mention that many officers will make mistakes when they record the information, since many of them work using their memory and knowledge of the area.
But it is no news that the decisions taken by a few for their own benefit (or to take federal funds) affect the lives of many others.

From South to North

Despite these ups and downs, Route 40 is still an astonishing road, a rolling myth, the place of places that represents a milestone. For those who dare take it, there will always be a “before and after” the trip on Route 40. Below you will find a brief summary of  the route, as well as some interesting facts from its history.
Since its creation in 1935 and while kilometer 0 (zero) was located in Mendoza city, on the intersection of San MZigzag roadartín Avenue and Garibaldi Street, the route was divided into North and South. But as from 2004, the Highway Department (Dirección Nacional de Vialidad) moved this point to Cabo Vírgenes.
From the current kilometer 0, located 124 km (77 mi) from Río Gallegos -the most southern point of the continent- up to Puna in Jujuy, the route is approximately 5,200 km (3,200 mi) long and goes across a variety of climates, geographies and cultures.
It borders the Andes range for the most part, from latitude 52º to parallel 22º 45’, and goes through three different regions: Patagonia, Cuyo and Northwest.
The area of the Patagonian region that Route 40 crosses (Santa GuanacosCruz, Chubut, Río Negro and Neuquén) shows a geography of plateaus and mountains and arid cold climate. This area is characterized mainly by a landscape full of lakes, mountains and forests. Some outstanding points are: Cabo Vírgenes, Río Turbio coal bed and Perito Moreno Glacier in Los Glaciares National Park, Cueva de las Manos in Perito Moreno National Park and Los Alerces National Park, El Bolsón, San Carlos de Bariloche and San Martín de los Andes.
In Cuyo region (Mendoza, San Juan and La Rioja), the geography varies Camino Valle de Uco in Mendozabetween plains and mountains and the climate is mainly arid. Here, the rivers come down the mountains to provide water for the vineyards, whose products are  internationally well-known . The most outstanding points touched by Route 40 along this area are: Caverna Las Brujas, Las Leñas, Agua del Toro dam, Laguna Diamante, the famous Penitentes, San Rafael, the imposing Aconcagua, Talampaya National Park, Valle de la Luna and Chilecito.
On the other hand, in the Northwest (Catamarca, Tucumán, Salta and Jujuy), the geography presents plateaus and mountains; the climate varies between high altitude arid climate and subtropical. Landscapes Cerro de los siete colores in Purmamarcaare breathtaking, showing mountains in thousands of colors and green valleys, full of vineyards. But in the northwest the beauty of nature equals the cultural richness, since Inca and Kolla traditions are kept intact, alive and everlasting in each town and every inhabitant of these high lands. Some of the interesting points the route joins are: Santa María, the Quilmes Ruins, Cafayate, Angastaco, Molinos, Los Cardones National Park, Nevado de Cachi, Abra El Acay and San Antonio de los Cobres.
Roadside YPF
Route 40 and its surroundings bear an endless number of attractive places. Some are displayed as treasures in a showroom. Others are kept a secret. You only need time to discover them. Go ahead and dive in the “Route 40 experience”!

Some tips

For those who want to join in a trip along this mythical route, here are some tips:
  • It is convenient to travel around Cuyo and the Northwest in the winter season since summer rains tend to flood and badly damage the route. In Patagonia, instead, the best time is from October to April, since winter snow and ice make the trip harder.
  • In terms of clothing, for dry mountain winds or snow storms it is advisable to have a spare change of light clothes and warm clothes as well as sunscreen lotion and related accessories (sun glasses, lip balm, gloves).
  • Although the trip can be made by car, it is convenient to increase the standard tire air pressure (28 pounds) to 32 pounds.
  • Water is vital in this kind of trips. A drum to quench your thirst, to use in an emergency or for the engine is always useful.




    Article taken from here.

Tuesday 17 February 2015

Investigator: Prosecutor found dead had drafted arrest warrant for Argentina’s president

Officials investigating the death of Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman confirm that he had drafted an arrest warrant for Argentina’s president Cristina Fernandez. The warrant, found in Nisman’s home, was drafted in connection to the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires.


Prosecutor's death angers Argentina


Argentine prosecutor Albert Nisman had been building a case on who was behind a 1994 Buenos Aires bombing, and whether there had been a government cover-up, when he was found dead. Jeffrey Brown asks Simon Romero of The New York Times about what evidence Nisman had and how Argentina’s government is reacting


Tuesday 27 January 2015

Cristina and the ayatollahs

President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner alongside Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman.


Argentina’s foreign policy leaves a lot to be desired Over the years, Cristina has been the target of a considerable amount of flak, much of it justified, but not even the allegation that she and her late husband contrived to get their hands on a few billion stray dollars or euros has been as damaging as the charge recently hurled at her by Special Prosecutor Alberto Nisman. According to the man who has been doing his utmost to track down the individuals who planned the attack on a Jewish community centre in which 85 Argentines died and over 300 others were wounded. Cristina, with the eager assistance of such unlikely characters as the notorious rabble-rouser Luis D’Elía and Fernando Esteche, the leader of an extreme right-wing, or, in keeping with current fashions, left-wing gang called Quebracho, wanted the bloodthirsty Iranian theocrats to give her some cheap oil in exchange for her willingness to stop demanding that they hand over the thugs accused of masterminding the 1994 terrorist atrocity. Though Argentina’s Congress rubberstamped Cristina’s generous offer, the Iranians lost interest when it became clear to them that Interpol was not about to remove the accused, among them the defence minister and a former president, from its wanted list.
To counter Nisman, loyal Kirchnerites have been doing their best to portray him as a dodgy individual with close ties to the US embassy and some local spies with plenty of grudges, who got what information he might have by illegal means, but, unfortunately for them, for Cristina and for Héctor Timerman, the prosecutor’s version rings true. Even the government did not pretend that its surprising decision to let the ayatollahs off the hook was made on the basis of new evidence that proved Iran had nothing whatever to do with the AMIA bomb attack. Instead, it tried to persuade people that the Iranians were as interested as anyone else in finding out exactly what had happened and would therefore collaborate fully with the Argentine judiciary. It was a bit like proposing that a joint Nazi-Allied “truth commission” be set up to investigate the Holocaust.
For a cold practitioner of Realpolitik, what some are calling a “blood for oil” deal may have made sense a couple of years ago when the price of the black stuff the country desperately needed was going through the roof, but for obvious reasons selling it to the Argentine and international public would have been rather difficult. So too, as it turned out, was making reasonably well-informed people think that the Iranian theocrats would take seriously anything an Argentine jurist might say. As far as the ayatollahs who run Iran are concerned, their own Islamic rules trump all others and, in any case, murdering Jews, even if it does entail some collateral damage, cannot be considered a crime.
Nisman’s unexpected onslaught could hardly have come at a worse time for Cristina. After years of pretending there was nothing to worry about, Europeans are finally waking up to the dangers posed by Islamic militancy and are bracing themselves to confront it, so they will not make life easy for foreign leaders accused of being in cahoots with holy warriors of any kind. Shiite Iran may be at war with Sunnite terrorists like the ones who gunned down the French journalists of Charlie Hebdo and their comrade who killed four Jewish shoppers in a kosher delicatessen, or those who took on the police in Belgium, but nonetheless it is generally assumed that the terrorists who look to Tehran for money, moral support or useful contacts are every bit as bad as those who are fighting for the Islamic Caliphate. In Europe and elsewhere, the climate is changing fast, so Cristina did herself no favours when she allowed herself to be suspected of allying herself with religious fanatics.
Unlike her deceased friend Hugo Chávez, who openly sided with the ayatollahs because they too wanted to bring down the evil Yankee empire, before letting Timerman sign that memorandum with his Iranian counterpart in Addis Ababa Cristina did not seem particularly inclined to cozy up to the archenemies of Israel and the capitalist West, but lately she has become less cautious. In last year’s rambling speech to the UN General Assembly, by casting doubt on the veracity of videos of jihadist beheadings she adopted attitudes that would be more appropriate for a conspiracy theorist lurking in cyberspace than a respectable head of state.
Foreign policy
Cristina found herself in serious difficulties soon after getting re-elected in October 2011. So much money had been squandered in the previous months that she had little choice but to stem the outflow. As support for her ebbed away, she found herself increasingly dependent on a handful of family members and acritical loyalists with what may be described as heterodox opinions about economics, international affairs and much else, people such as D’Elía, a man who boasts of his links with the Iranian regime, and Hebe de Bonafini, a lady who danced with glee when the Twin Towers were destroyed and who, to the French ambassador’s distaste, apparently thinks the Charlie Hebdo caricaturists deserved to die because not that long ago France had done nasty things in Algeria.
Could it be that Argentina’s foreign policy has been outsourced to D’Elía, Bonafini, Esteche and zealots from La Cámpora? If it has been, the next eleven months will be even more interesting than Cristina’s most virulent critics had already expected before Nisman made his move.


Article taken frome here.