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Intercepted conversations between representatives of the Iranian and Argentine governments point to a long pattern of secret negotiations to reach a deal in which Argentina would receive oil in exchange for shielding Iranian officials from charges that they orchestrated the bombing of a Jewish community center in 1994. The transcripts were made public by an Argentine judge on Tuesday night, as part of a 289-page criminal complaint written by Alberto Nisman, the special prosecutor investigating the attack. Mr. Nisman was found dead in his luxury apartment on Sunday, the night before he was to present his findings to Congress. In...

Death of a ProsecutorPosted By Kenneth R. Timmerman On January 21, 2015 @ 12:35 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 2 Comments Alberto Nisman, the Argentinean prosecutor who indicted top Iranian regime officials for the July 1994 AMIA Jewish Center bombing in Buenos Aires, was found dead by gunshot in his apartment on Sunday night, in what initially was called a suicide.Nisman was scheduled to address members of parliament the next day to reveal new information about alleged efforts by Argentinean President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and her foreign minister, Hector Timerman, to cover up the responsibility of the Iranian regime...

Our President may be a well-educated and a very smart guy, but he seems to have skipped out on his world history classes. He certainly would have learned the absolutely true saying that “history repeats itself.” He would also know that any dithering with ISIS will only cause us more pain and lost lives in the future. History does repeat itself, and regularly. A perfect example has been on display with the debt crisis in Argentina. The country has defaulted on its debt. Its President, Cristina Kirchner, did not accept blame for the default. She pointed the finger at two...

In 2005, then Pope Benedict quoted from an obscure medieval text which declared that the Prophet Mohammed, founder of the Islamic faith, was "evil and inhuman", enraging the Muslim population and causing attacks on churches throughout the world before an apology was issued. Reacting within days to the statements, speaking through a spokesman to Newsweek Argentina, then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio declared his "unhappiness" with the statements, made at the University of Regensburg in Germany, and encouraged many of his subordinates with the Church to do the same. "Pope Benedict's statement don't reflect my own opinions", the then Archbishop of Buenos...

Many millions of Catholics around the world were joyous with the naming of a new pope -- a holy man from the Third World no less. Even in choosing his name, Pope Francis is emphasizing a devotion to the poor, and humility in his clothing and manners. The liberal media should be lapping this up. There was an accurate recounting of the global rejoicing, especially in Argentina. There were hopeful words about his pastoral modesty. But as the day came for the pope to be installed, the natural secular liberal nastiness toward the oldest Christian faith bubbled up in demands...

President Hugo Chavez delivered a bizarre attack on the Queen when the firebrand Venezuelan leader demanded Britain return the Falkland Islands to Argentina.The outspoken Mr Chavez used his weekly television and radio show Alo Presidente to rally Latin America behind the cause of his Argentine counterpart Cristina Kirchner by making a direct appeal to Buckingham Palace. "Look, England, how long are you going to be in Las Malvinas? Queen of England, I'm talking to you," said Mr Chavez. "The time for empires are over, haven't you noticed? Return the Malvinas to the Argentine people." Still addressing the Queen, he went...

21st Century SocialismThe attempt to destroy democracy in Latin America.  The Obama administration started out on the wrong foot in world affairs. It used techniques better suited for domestic political campaigns — popularity contests — in its foreign policy. In our own hemisphere, the result was confusion for our allies and our enemies alike. The overriding objective of U.S. policy — in Latin America and elsewhere — should be to advance U.S. national interests, not to curry favor with foreign leaders. If we can be liked while advancing our interests, so much the better. But when we try to befriend...

Argentina on Thursday blasted the head of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency for saying the country, along with Ecuador and Venezuela, could be pushed into instability by the global economic crisis. Lumping Argentina together with Ecuador and Venezuela, both led by leftist anti-Washington firebrands, raises concern in this country, where center-left President Cristina Kirchner is trying to keep the economy from stagnating.

BUENOS AIRES–Argentina's senate passed a controversial bill Thursday that gives the government control over newsprint, boosting the power of President Cristina Kirchner's administration in its battle against the opposition media. The legislation gives the state control over Papel Prensa SA, the country's leading producer of paper used to produce newspapers.

Bond payoffs are supposed to be boring, but Argentina's president is celebrating Friday's final $2.3bn payment on a bond given to people whose savings were confiscated a decade ago, calling it a lesson for European countries now mired in foreign debt. The nation's economic disaster left thousands with a grim choice after the government seized their dollar-denominated deposits to stop bank runs in 2002. They could switch to devalued pesos and regain access to what was left of their savings, or accept a piece of paper promising to repay the money in dollars over the next 10 years. Few had...

It is Margaret Thatcher Day in the Falkands, a perfect moment to celebrate the great leadership of the Iron Lady, and to recall her stirring words at Port Stanley on January 10, 1983 upon visiting the Islands for the first time after their liberation: Today again the Union Jack flies over Port Stanley, and may it ever fly there. So we in the Falkland Islands and in Great Britain re-dedicate our lives to the cause of freedom and justice of people here and everywhere. We have given an example to the world, and hope to many of those who do...

Leaders from Latin America and the Caribbean began arriving in Cuba on Sunday for a summit of a fledgling regional bloc that was conceived as a force for integration and a counterbalance to their most powerful neighbor, the United States. The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, or CELAC for its initials in Spanish, was formed in 2011 and comprises every nation in the Western Hemisphere except the U.S. and Canada. By Sunday, Presidents Cristina Fernandez of Argentina, Evo Morales of Bolivia and Dilma Rousseff of Brazil and several foreign ministers were already in Havana for the meeting. […]...

Doctors ordered a month’s rest for Argentina’s president on Saturday after they found blood on her brain due to a head injury. President Cristina Fernandez’s spokesman issued a statement Saturday night saying she had suffered a previously undisclosed blow to the head on August 12. … The statement said problems surfaced Saturday after Fernandez, 60, went to a hospital for checks on an irregular heartbeat. Because she was suffering headaches, they looked at her skull again, too, and found a subdural hematoma. …

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez never had cancer despite being diagnosed with the disease last month and having her thyroid gland removed on January 4, her spokesman said on Saturday. The government announced just after Christmas that the recently re-elected leader had thyroid cancer. The operation to remove the gland went well, but when it was later analyzed it turned out to have never contained cancerous cells, said spokesman Alfredo Scoccimaro. "The original diagnosis has been modified," he told a news conference. "The presence of cancer cells was discarded." Fernandez was originally diagnosed with papillary carcinoma. …