Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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The radical tourists Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean

Nick Cohen takes to task “lefty westerners who trawl the world for revolutions to praise:” Radical tourists have been deluded pimps for Venezuela, in The Guardian, no less.

ARGENTINA
Viviana Fein still trying to justify herself: Alberto Nisman may have been forced to kill himself, says Argentine prosecutor. Shot in the back of the head, no less.

BOLIVIA
Bolivia police, workers clash at protest over plant shutdown

Dynamite Used at Bolivian Protest, 3 Injured, 76 Arrested

BRAZIL

Brazil’s Revised 2016 Budget Projects Worse-Than-Expected Fiscal Picture. Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles says forecasts are ‘transparent and realistic’

Brazil Partners with WHO to Track Tobacco, Alcohol Industries. Country Also Plans to Monitor Use of Alcohol and Sugar Intake. I don’t drink or smoke, but this gives me a craving for a Derby and caprinhas.

CHILE
Violent protests erupt during Chile president’s speech

Chileans are angry because of an economic downturn and a corruption scandal involving Ms Bachelet’s family.

COLOMBIA
Colombia and FARC Rebels Reach a Deal to Free Child Soldiers

FARC has said in the past that it no longer recruits child soldiers. But during a visit this year by a New York Times reporter to a rebel camp,minors said guerrilla fighters had taken them into custody in recent months.

COSTA RICA
At Drudge:  Hell opens? Costa Rica volcano erupts…

Hundreds hospitalized…

CUBA
Cuban and North Korean Special Forces in Venezuela

Furthermore, how this arrangement stems from a confidential military cooperation and intelligence-sharing agreement that North Korea’s Kim Jong-un with Cuba’s Castro regime in March.

ECUADOR
Ecuador Bank Hacked — $12 Million Stolen in 3rd Attack on SWIFT System

Ecuador deporta a cinco de los cubanos detenidos en el Hotel Carrión

JAMAICA
Venezuela’s Maduro stopped by: Venezuelan president in Jamaica for working visit

MEXICO
Mexican Marines Denounce Superiors’ Unwillingness to Fight Cartels

‘El Chapo’ Extradition to the U.S. Approved. The Mexican Foreign Ministry said Friday that the government has authorized the extradition of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán to the U.S. where he faces drug trafficking and other charges.

Mysterious Roar And Light In The Sky Wake Mexican City

Police, soldiers swarm Acapulco, killings continue…

Lord Rolls Royce (en español),

PANAMA
Panama ends sale of Mexico air tickets to stranded Cuban migrants

PARAGUAY
Paraguay battles over land rights in the courts and across the airwavesAs soya companies appropriate land in Paraguay, many small-scale campesino farmers are forced out to cities. For those who stay to fight for their land, the conflict can turn bloody

PERU
Peru’s Fujimori faces money laundering investigation ahead of election. Prosecutors have opened an investigation against Peruvian presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori and her husband. The probe comes shortly before nationwide polls and will look into suspicious campaign contributions.

PUERTO RICO
Creditors of Puerto Rico Government Bank Revive Lawsuit Over Debt Moratorium

URUGUAY
Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro is ‘Crazy as a Goat’, says former Uruguayan president. The colloquial equivalent in American English is “batshit crazy.”

VENEZUELA
Good luck with that, Oil-for-Drugs Swap: India’s Answer to Venezuela’s Unpaid Bills

Chains of the Foolish

Sugar shortage forces Coca-Cola to stop production in Venezuela

Venezuela, where hamburger is officially $170…

Socialist paradise turned living hell…

‘We are like a bomb’…

Fidel Castro, Evo Morales discuss ‘imperialist efforts’ in Latin America…



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Argentina: New prosecutor in Nisman investigation

Argentine prosecutor asks to reopen Nisman case. New government voids deal with Iran on investigating AMIA bombing, reviving suspicions of Kirchner cover-up

A federal prosecutor has asked an Argentine court to reopen the complaint filed by the late special prosecutor Alberto Nisman charging that former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner covered up Iran’s role in the 1994 AMIA Jewish center bombing.

The prosecutor, Raul Plee, filed a request Monday to reopen the case with the Federal Criminal Cassation Court.

On Monday, just after the new government voided the Argentine pact with Iran to jointly investigate the AMIA attack, Plee asked the justices to analyze new information collected during the case about the unconstitutionality of the Iran memorandum with an eye toward reviving Nisman’s theory that the pact was a bid to cover up Iran’s role in the bombing.

According to the state-run news agency Telam, Plee wrote in his request that during hearings about the unconstitutionality of the pact, the Foreign Ministry presented “secret and confidential” documents that could be considered useful to reactivate Nisman’s accusation against Kirchner, her Jewish former foreign minister Hector Timerman, and others.

The prosecutor asked that the secret and confidential files be sent to prosecutor Gerardo Pollicita and to the judge, Daniel Rafecas. Pollicita was the prosecutor who took over Nisman’s accusation after his death and presented it to the court in February. Rafecas dismissed the accusation, saying it could not be sustained by the evidence.

More in Spanish, here.

The prior prosecutor, Viviana Fein, has treated the case as a possible suicide, not a possible murder.



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Argentina: #Nisman could not have shot himself

Alberto Nisman could not have killed himself, ballistics tests show. The prosecutor investigating Argentina’s worst-ever terrorist attack was shot dead by someone else

In the latest twist to the case, a series of tests carried out in a laboratory in the northern Argentine city of Salta have shown that the gun that killed Nisman would have left traces of gunpowder on the hand that pulled the trigger. Tests done on Nisman’s hands in the days following his death found no such residue.

However,

Viviana Fein, who is leading the investigation into Nisman’s death, said the latest tests cannot be fully accurate because they cannot recreate the crime scene. “We can’t take one piece of proof in an isolated way,” she said.

Knowing on which side her bread is buttered (emphasis added),

The prosecutor said her findings will not be published until after the October general elections, when Mrs Kirchner will have to step down after serving two terms.

Meanwhile, the Money laundering investigation is moving forward at a faster clip.

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Argentina: Crime scene video from #Nisman apartment

Argentinian journalist Jorge Lanata played in his TV show the following video:

In it, State Security chief Sergio Berni, while at the apartment of the presumably very dead Alberto Nisman, went to prosecutor Viviana Fein who was recording the findings at the scene, and asked her whether they should first verify the state of the person in the bathroom, “in case he was in agony.”

Nisman’s own mother had already been at the scene, and he was clearly dead.

The investigation had been botched up from the start. Lanata has more video (which apparently had been edited by the authorities) showing how evidence was handled by numerous people who were not wearing rubber gloves, the murder weapon was wiped to show its registration number, Fein stepped in the blood on the bathroom floor, and on and on.

One would compare them to the Keystone Kops, but there’s no need to insult the Kops.

Departing question:
Incompetence, yes; willful or not?

Related: “Silence is health”

UPDATE:
Linked to by Power Line Picks. Thank you!

Linked to by Grouchomarxistas. Thank you!

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Argentina: And now the spy is missing

Having announced her upcoming vacation, the Investigator Probing Mysterious Death of Prosecutor Will Question Argentina’s Former Top Spy . . . if they can find him, that is:
Argentine Ex-Spy Chief at Center of Prosecutor’s Murder Mystery Is Missing

Prosecutors accompanied by intelligence agents weren’t able to find Antonio Stiuso at three addresses registered to his name, Intelligence Secretary Oscar Parrilli said. Stiuso, who worked his way up through the intelligence agency over four decades before his departure last month, was summoned to testify on Thursday by the prosecutor investigating the death of Alberto Nisman from a shot to the head Jan. 18.
Even Stiuso’s lawyer says he doesn’t know where his client is.

Stratfor analyzes how Argentina’s President Fends Off Challenges from the Intelligence Service

Fernandez’s motivations for reforming the SI are not completely clear, but concerns that criminal charges could be brought against her and other members of the government once they leave office might have been a factor. Moreover, though the reform appears to be immediately motivated by concerns over the SI’s loyalty to Fernandez, it may significantly affect how the Argentine security apparatus functions long after her term in office ends.

(The Startfor report refers to Stiusso as Jaime).

Last December’s reshuffle of the SI removed Stiusso as Director of Operations, and the president’s chief of staff is asserting, “I have no doubts that Stiusso is behind” Alberto Nisman’s death.

Now Stiusso vanished.

The prosecutors’ union has a silent march scheduled for February 18th: “Nisman’s death was the first, buy may not be the last.” (link in Spanish)

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Argentina: Who killed #Nisman?

  • No traces of gunpowder on his hands
  • Gun was not his
  • Apparently none of the ten security officers assigned to protect Nisman was stationed on the thirteenth floor of the apartment building on which he lived
  • Theory of “induced suicide”
  • Minister for State Security on the scene before police investigating authorities
  • Ariel Lijo, the Argentinian judge who received Nisman’s 300 page complaint alleging the involvement of President Cristina ​Fernández de Kirchner and others in covering up Iran’s culpability for the 1994 bombing of the AMIA, ordered the seizure of all documentation and other evidence referred to in the complaint
  • Left shopping list for his housekeeper

Following the outpour of outraged citizens in Buenos Aires and the country, the government has issued more information:

Spain’s El País reports (link in Spanish) that forensic tests showed no traces of gunpowder on Alberto Nisman’s hands.

The prosecutor in charge of the case, Viviana Fein, explains it as, “Coming from a small caliber weapon, 22 caliber, usually that causes that electronic sweeps show no results.” The weapon had no silencer.

Fein had previously revealed that the gun that shot the bullet in Nisman’s brain was not his, although he owned and had permits for two firearms; additionally,

Fein said she would not rule out the possibility that Nisman was “induced” to suicide.

Which, of course, opens innumerable spin opportunities for the government propaganda machine.

The AP suggests that none of the ten security officers assigned to protect Nisman was stationed on the thirteenth floor of the apartment building on which he lived.

The time of death appears to have been in the mid-afternoon, while none of his bodyguards were present.

Fein also had Nisman’s office raided today.

Timeline: The Events Leading to Alberto Nisman’s Death

Now Nisman is dead meaning that Kirchner and Iran can rest a lot easier. Are we to believe that his death is really a suicide, as the Argentinian government claimed today?

Related:
Argentine prosecutor’s death: The latest act in the Iran-Israel saga
Alberto Nisman was the Argentine prosecutor investigating Iran’s hand in the 1992 and 1994 bombings of Jewish targets; Imad Mughneiyeh, father of the Hezbollah commander killed in Syria on Sunday, was suspected of organizing the Argentina attack.

UPDATE:
Floor plan,

Nisman lived in Apartment 4 (shaded in green, bottom left).

The plot thickens: The government Secretary for Security was on the scene before the investigating authorities (including Fein and the coroner’s office).

Alberto Nisman Death: Judge Seizes Evidence, Initial Autopsy Findings Released (h/t David Gertsman).

“A suspicious death:” John Batchelor talked about Nisman in last night’s show.

UPDATE 2,
Nisman left a shopping list for his housekeeper.

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