Iran's President-Elect Tied To 1994 Argentinian Jewish Center Bombing?

While some consider Iran's President-elect Hassan Rohani a moderate, others don't.  He certainly wasn't some 20 years ago when his son committed suicide over his dad's extremism. And now there are allegations that he probably knew about and was part of the planning of the bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1994.

Iranian President-elect Hassan Rowhani was on the special Iranian government committee that plotted the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, according to an indictment by the Argentine government prosecutor investigating the case.

The AMIA bombing is considered the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentina’s history, killing 85 and wounding hundreds more. The Argentine government had accused the Iranian government of planning the attack and Iran’s terrorist proxy Hezbollah of carrying it out. Numerous former and current Iranian officials are wanted by Interpol in connection with the bombing.

Former Iranian intelligence official Abolghasem Mesbahi, who defected from Iran in the late 1990s, testified that the decision to launch the attack was made within a special operations committee connected to the powerful Supreme National Security Council in August 1993.

According to the 2006 indictment, Mesbahi testified that Rowhani, who was then serving as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, was also a member of the special committee when it approved the AMIA bombing.

The rest here.

Anti-Government Protests in Leftist Argentina

The love affair with the Latin leftist/socialist populist movement is starting to crumble, at least in Argentina. Thousands of people took to the streets of Buenos Aires pissed off at everything from crime, corruption, high inflation, and the possibility that President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner will dump the constitutional term limits to keep herself in power. After all, Hugo Chavez managed to do that, why couldn't she?

Though the actual number of anti-government protesters in Buenos Aires (which included children and seniors) varied greatly depending on who you were talking to, there were at least 30,000 people and there could have been as many as hundreds of thousands.

Organized via social media, the throngs banged pots (typical of the Latin culture) and chanted "We're not afraid," probably a throwback to the days when political opponents simply 'disappeared.' They also carried banners with "Stop the wave of Argentinians killed by crime, enough with corruption and say no to constitutional reform."

One of the major problems facing Argentinians is a huge increase in violent crime that the government seems  powerless to contain.

Newspapers and television programmes provide a daily diet of stories about increasingly bold home robberies, in which armed bands tie up families until victims hand over the cash that many Argentinians have kept at home since the government froze savings accounts and devalued the currency in 2002. The vast majority of the crimes are never solved, while the death toll is rising.

As for inflation:

Inflation also upsets many. The government's much-criticised index puts annual inflation at about 10%, but private economists say prices are rising about three times faster than that. Real estate transactions have slowed to a standstill because of the difficulty in estimating future values, and unions that won 25% pay rises only a few months ago are threatening to strike again unless the government comes up with more.

Kirchner won re-election by 54%, but her disapproval rating dipped to 31% in a poll taken this past September. So it's interesting to note that although Argentinians voted to give her another term, they have suddenly become disenchanted. One 74, year-old Marta Morosini said,

"I came to protest everything that I don't like about this government and I don't like a single thing starting with [the president's] arrogance. They're killing policemen like dogs, and the president doesn't even open her mouth. This government is just a bunch of hooligans and corrupters."

Besides the capital, there were protests across the country as well as overseas. In Madrid, Spain, one 40-year-old Argentinian expat, Marcelo Gimenez,  said:

"In Argentina, there's no separation of power and it cannot be considered a democracy. Cristina is not respecting the constitution. The presidency is not a blank cheque and she must govern for those who are for her and against her."

Apparently there were several smaller protests this year that were easy to dismiss, but not this time. In defense of Fernández Kirchner, supporters blamed it on the rich, though she herself did not comment on the demonstrations. However, she did defend her policies, claiming:

... they helped rescue Argentina from its worst economic crisis a decade ago and kept it afloat during the 2009 world financial downturn.

"During boom times it's easy to run a country but try running when it's crumbling down," Fernández said, while urging Argentinians to support her and pledging never to give up as her late husband had taught her.

"Never let go, not even in the worst moments," she said. "Because it's in the worst moments when the true colours of a leader of a country comes out."

Granted, they were in pretty bad shape, always have been, but whatever she was doing is obviously not working anymore, if it ever worked to begin with.  But someone voted for her, just like they did here.  It's not a far stretch to imagine what's going to happen when all the "gimmes" in this country suddenly no longer have all the freebies they are accustomed to because our government ran out of money.  We could have very scary times ahead for us.

Hey Chavez, Argentina's President Never Had Cancer!

The good news for Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is the surgery to remove her cancerous thyroid gland went swimmingly on January 4.  The bad news- it wasn't cancerous after all.

According to Eduardo Faure (thyroid cancer specialist, but not Kirchner's doctor) the papillary carcinoma diagnosis was a 'false positive', which can happen occasionally:

"The cells may originally appear to be cancer but in 2 percent of cases, after the operation, when a more thorough examination can be performed, it turns out they are not," the doctor said in an interview.

I'm glad it turned out that Fernandez de Kirchner never had cancer, and I'm sure so is she, but I'd be pretty pissed off if some misinformed doctors had removed my thyroid for no compelling reason, especially in light of the fact that the effects of being thyroid-less are not much fun. As expected the Argentine people are also pretty darn ecstatic that the popular lefty leader never had cancer. News of her upgraded  'cancer-free' diagnosis, by spokesman Alfredo Scoccimaro, was greeted with great jubilation by some fans who had kept vigil by the hospital throughout her ordeal.

But I have to wonder how idiot-boy Hugo Chavez feels about this new 'no cancer for Kirchner' status update. I wonder if he's bummed out. After all, Chavez was convinced that the U.S. was probably behind the rash of cancerous diseases besetting so many Latin leftist leaders, including his own and Kirchner's. Now he has to scratch one off his list.  I'd like to think he was alone in his lunatic thinking, but there are many equally delusional folk (see comments) who also entertained the notion that the U.S. has nothing better to do than give people cancer.  If that's the case, Ahmadinejad and others would be long gone.