Nation Report # 3

ArgentinaContemporary

By Bryan Cooper

Economic / PoliticalPresident Cristina Fernandez administration is

spend happy much like the United States. Fernandez is now attempting to use the reserves of foreign currency in their Central Bank. She has also ramped up taxes on the farmers & last year nationalised private pension funds.

Last month Fernandez issued a decree transferring 6.6 Billion of the reserves to a fund to service the public debt. Problem is the gov. can't borrow freely in foreign capital markets because investors mistrust its policies.

Argentinas' Central Bank used to be private, now there is a fued between Fernandez and the governor of the bank Martin Redrado. Only the congress can decide on moving the funds, and Redrado will not allow it. The President might get what she wants because most politicians do not want tax cuts or spending cuts, we will see!

PoliticalApril 20, 2010, a sentence was given for 25 years in

prison to General Reynaldo Bignone by a special tribunal and also sentenced six other key officers also for their parts in crimes dealing with operating concentration camps under Bignone's dictatorship.

Former dictator Bignone, 82 yrs. old received the longest sentence of the Dirty War era. President Fernandez & her courts have been pushing for harsh sentencing. They were charged with illegal raids, kidnapping, torture, and murder of 56 people – that they know of.

Between 1976 & 1983 around 340 camps held an estimated 13,000 to 30,000 people for which the majority are either missing or murdered and buried. General Bignone took over as president from 1982 until Dec. of 1983 when the British took their control away during the Falkland Island war.

Argentina & Iran relationsIn 1994 a Jewish cultural center in

Buenos Aires was bombed, 85 people died and hundreds were wounded. Iran's defense minister Ahmad Vahidi is wanted by Interpol. This is another black eye on Iran seen by another country.

Mr. Vahidi was the head of the secret Quds Force that carries out operations overseas like our CIA does. He was one of five Iranian officials sought by Interpol on Argentina charges of “conceiving, planning, financing, & executing” the attack. An Iranian proxy group may have done the dirty work but Iran is still the main suspect.

Iranian relationsArgentina and really most of the world

has a lack of respect for the past elections in Iran which were stollen by fraud. A western diplomat who worked in Iran for years said that the internal divisions are unprecedented.

Argentina is sensitive to any political dictatorships and Iran basically is one due to the voter fraud. The Ayatollah Jannati in Iran has announced that they should be arresting the instigaters of the political protests and riots and those two people would be the two other presedential candidates, Mir Hussani & Mehdi Karroubi.

Sources

1. Wikipedia

2. Google Images

3. The Economist

4. NY times