Argentina announces that it has rogue murder-assassination squads.

To put this in perspective: imagine if we had had an apparent ‘suicide’ of a prominent administration critic just before he was about to testify against the Obama administration, and the administration came out and blamed the whole thing on rogue elements within the NSA that wanted to attack President Obama. That’s pretty much the Argentinian government’s position on the assassination of state prosecutor Alberto Nisman, and it’s a heck of a thing when that’s considered to be still a better story than the actual truth. Which is: Mr. Nisman was investigating the Iranian bombing of an Argentinian synagogue; he got hindered in his investigation by would-be dictator Cristina Fernandez, who is in cahoots with the Iranians to cover up the Iranian regime’s involvement in said bombing; Nisman was about to talk about all of that to a court; and so the Fernandez regime proceeded to put a bullet in his head*. Continue reading Argentina announces that it has rogue murder-assassination squads.

Pope insists on Argentine passport, ID.

I gotta agree with @vermontaigne, here: the Independent sounds downright grumpy about Pope Francis I’s continuing refusal of the temporal luxuries that come with his new status.

In his continuing quest to show what an all-round great guy he is, Pope Francis has had a new passport and I.D card produced so that he can travel the world without ‘enjoying any priveleges’ [sic – ML] others might not get.

The head of the Catholic Church has asked his birth country of Argentina to renew his travel documents so he can travel as a regular Argentine rather than as a privileged citizen of the Vatican City, the country’s interior and transportation ministry said on Monday.

I’d wonder what Pope Francis I could do that would please the Independent, only I expect that it would involve the words ‘grease fire.’

Moe Lane

Obama takes Argentina’s side in Falklands dispute.

Ahem. “It’s all because of the oil.”

Ed Morrissey and Fausta are both not getting why the President is taking the side of Argentina (thus sharing a podium with that noted beacon of freedom, tolerance, and capitalism known as Venezuela) in its perennial attempts to get the United Kingdom to give up the Falkland Islands. It’s not just that we’re signed on to the OAS declaration demanding that the British negotiate on the question of giving up territory that doesn’t want to be given up; we’re even endorsing Argentina’s blustering insistence on calling the islands by the prior name.  All in all, this is a fairly significant change: the question is, why?

The answer is in two parts, both of them easy to grasp: first, President Obama doesn’t particularly like the British.  It’s largely a racial thing, alas: the President’s grandfather had personal issues with the British colonial government, and the President has never really forgiven them for it*.  Second, and probably more importantly (for Obama, at least**): Argentina will probably offer the President a better deal for the Falklands’ resources.  And before you say “What, sheep?” …nope.  Oil.  It’s confirmed now that there’s oil there.

See?  Easy to understand: President Obama hates one side, and the other side will be happy to kiss up to to the President in exchange for the opportunity to get a hold of several billion dollars’ worth of oil revenue.  If you have the kind of mind that the President does, it’s practically a no-brainer… which I suppose could also describe my reaction to this, if not in the way that the term is usually used… Continue reading Obama takes Argentina’s side in Falklands dispute.

Argentine anti-plagiarism bill rips off Wikipedia.

I don’t care who you are, this is funny:

Techdirt reported recently that a politician in Argentina who introduced an anti-plagiarism bill has come under fire for apparently copying some of the language he used without crediting the source, a practice some have called “plagiarism.”

What makes it funnier is that the parts that got ripped off were from the entry on plagiarism itself.  I believe that the technical term for this is “You’re doing it wrong…”

This Guardian article on the Falklands situation is not exactly illogical. #rsrh

It’s merely not based on Aristotelian logic.  I mean, when something starts like this:

If some supreme being could give British leftists of my generation the power to go back and stop one historical event, I have no doubt that we would rewind the tape and wipe out the Falklands war. Before General Galtieri’s fascistic junta invaded the islands Margaret Thatcher had no “-ism” after her name. She seemed a doomed prime minister surrounded by enemies, whose party was third in the polls behind the SDP, a political force I suspect many young readers have never heard of. After Britain’s victory, nothing could stop her and by the time she had finished, British socialism was dead, and the prospects for British social democracy did not seem much healthier.

…you would assume that we’re about to hear some solemn pontificating on how the UK needs to mediate its dispute with Argentina. Not so much: the title is “Obama should back our claim to the Falklands,” and the author is calling the President a neoconservative for not siding with the Brits.

No, really. Continue reading This Guardian article on the Falklands situation is not exactly illogical. #rsrh