Welcome!

To the new Argentine Post, that is. Take your shoes off, take a seat, kick back and relax.

This is now our new home for online news and views on all things Argentine. The new Argentine Post is now located at www.argentinepost.com, so please take note. If you have linked to The Argentine Post on your own site, please update the link to reflect this new address. Meanwhile, please let me know if I need to update my link to your site. I will be adding links and updating others in the days ahead. I’ll also be adding in more interactive features and making other improvements.

Among other things, this new site includes a better search engine for finding older stories, as well as a new hover-over, pop-up menu that shows you the most recent entries in each category (politics, culture, sports, etc.). The Best of The Rest feature, located in the right-hand sidebar, is like a mini Drudge Report of sorts. I will update it often to include the most recent and interesting stories about Argentina from across the web. If you know of a good article or post that should be included, just send me the link and, if it would be interesting to most readers, I’ll add it.

This new site is a beta version and your feedback is important. So take look around, explore, and make yourself at home. Please let me know what you like and what you don’t. If something doesn’t work, let me know and I’ll try to fix it. If you’d like to see a story about something, let me know and, if the idea is good enough, I’ll investigate it.

Also, all of the Scooping Argentina videos are now located on the Video page of this site, so check those out too. New videos will be added soon.

Again, your feedback is important, so please share any thoughts you have, good or bad, that will help make the project better. Thank you for taking a look.

Taos

The Buenos Aires Province Health Ministry this week banned discos from offering free breast augmentation operations to patrons. Local discos had been raffling the operations as a way to get more girls into the clubs.

Last weekend Sunset, a popular club in the northern suburb Olivos, attracted more than 600 girls to such a raffle, according to this article posted on the Ministry’s site.

“Everything that is not prohibited by law is permitted,” Sunset spokesman Fernando Maldonado was quoted as saying here by the daily Crítica. “If this is law, of course we will obey it, and we will have a raffle that gives cash to the winner so that she can decide herself to have an operation if she wants.”

Dance clubs in the provinces of Cordoba, La Rioja and San Juan have also been raffling free boob jobs, says Crítica. The raffles, which had been marketed under the slogan, “I want my boobs,” are increasingly popular. Rodrigo Herrera, a PR agent for such raffles in La Rioja, was quoted this way: “People are tried of car and motorcycle raffles, and they’re looking for something new.”

UPDATE: This post has been updated to reflect new policy details available here.

As reported by your faithful scoopster at The Argentine Post Tuesday, the government will start charging tourists a reciprocal visa fee to visit the country. Beginning January 1, tourists will have to pay a visa fee upon arrival if they come from countries that charge Argentines a similar fee. In the case of the U.S., which charges Argentines US $134 to get a visa, Americans visiting Argentina will have to pay a similar amount upon arriving at Ezeiza, Interior Minister Florencio Randazzo announced Wednesday.

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The Argentine government plans to require Americans and citizens of 115 other nations to pay for a visa to visit the country, the local daily Ambito Financiero reported Monday. “President Cristina Fernandez plans to sign a decree in the coming days (to impose the new requirement),” Ambito said. “The policy will be applied to 116 countries that charge Argentines such a visa fee.”

The Argentine Post tried to confirm the new policy with a Tourism Secretariat spokesperson Tuesday and got the following reply. “There is something to this,” the spokesperson said, but declined to provide definitive confirmation.

Stay tuned for updated information on this.

This Tuesday at The Saramento, El Salvador 5729, 8pm

If you’re looking for a place to watch the second U.S. presidential debate between Senators Barrack Obama and John McCain, look no further. Click on the photo for more details.

Wanna watch the historic Biden-Palin debate Thursday in a public space full of interesting people? If so, then head over to The Sacramento at El Salvador 5729 in Palermo. Admission is free, and political partisans of all types and styles are welcome. Yankqui Mike has even offered to buy guests a drink, at least as long as he can afford it. May the best candidate win.

The average annual inflation rate in Argentina between 1965 and 1989 was 284%, according to a 1992 research paper archived by the National Bureau of Economic Research. According to this paper by Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker, inflation surpassed 1,000% in both 1989 and 1990. And here is a Reuters story from 1984: “Inflation in Argentina, already the highest in the world, reached a record of 433.7 percent in 1983, the National Statistics Institute said today. The previous record was 347 percent in 1976.”

Now, who thinks setting records is always a good thing?

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez often boasts that poverty has declined impressively in recent years, thanks largely to government economic policies. And nobody doubts that for many years poverty was declining.

But not everyone thinks Fernandez is being fully forthcoming about the matter these days. Most economists think poverty is actually rising as inflation pinches purchasing power at a faster rate than wage hikes lift it. Inflation, economists say, is akin to a tax that flattens peoples’ wallets. Most of the debate over poverty centers on the impact of inflation. Is it the culprit? According to Fernandez, inflation is not a problem, and those who question this assertion are “irresponsible” partisans looking to penalize the government for its success.

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His end was quick, I hope, though I’ll never know for sure. I can only pray that he felt no pain, that the blow was so fast, so furious, so severe that he died on impact or lost consciousness before knowing his fate.

What I know for sure is that his fate was sealed. His time had come. It was a horrific sight. I saw no blood, but that’s because his body lay directly atop the rail, one side exposed to full view, the other hidden, mercifully, from sight.

I looked in the papers but found nothing about the accident. I’ll never know his name, or if he had a family, or children, or if he was married.

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Twenty-five years ago today a brutal, intentional foul nearly changed the course of soccer history. The foul, which occurred in a game between the European clubs Barcelona and Athletico de Bilbao, and is shown in the above video, left Diego Maradona with a fractured left ankle. But it could have been worse. Maradona was operated on the same day, according to a Mundo Deportivo story commemorating the event. The operation was a success. Three years later Maradona – and the “Hand of God” – led Argentina to win the 1986 World Cup.

Link: BBC Timeline of Maradona’s Life

 The Democrats Abroad in Argentina are gathering this Friday to watch the first debate between Senators John McCain and Barrack Obama (assuming there is a debate). The gathering, which also is a fundraiser for the group, will take place at 8pm at the Sacramento Resto Bar, El Salvador 5729. More details can be found here, and here. Event sponsors think as many as 300 people will show up. You can see a press release for the event here.

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez’s approval rating slid one point to 28% in August, according to a survey published Wednesday by the consulting firm Poliarquia Consultores. This a still up from the president’s 20% low in June, but way down from her 54% high in December. Some 34% of the population views the president negatively, down from 36% a month ago.

Fernandez is most popular among people aged 30-49 and least popular with younger and older Argentines. She is most popular in northwestern Argentina and least popular in the country’s farming heartland, or the Pampas region. Fernandez is most popular among people who have gone to elementary school and least popular among those who have done college-level coursework.