
Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez's tweets translation from last night - sanbor
https://gist.github.com/anonymous/5917093
======
mr_luc
I've said it since early in Correa's campaign, and I'll say it again: that guy
is a really special politician. He's his country's Bismark, but he's done it
all democratically. I've been living down here 9 months per year for the last
7 years and it's been an interesting time.

Check out his Enlace Ciudadanos on their youtube channel.
[http://www.youtube.com/user/PresidenciaEc](http://www.youtube.com/user/PresidenciaEc)
and you'll see how he goes way beyond the stump speech. He's spending 2 or 3
hours every week personally articulating the government's policy at the town-
hall level.

Yeah, like every politician everywhere who wants to consolidate support, he
uses the US as a punching bag. And the one genuinely messed-up thing he's done
are his media laws, which make it hard for any large independent media
companies to flourish. But he's no Hugo Chavez. He's too smart, and too good
of a politician, to need to be.

~~~
muyuu
Yep, I used to think he was just another regional populist, but he really is
not. He's something else entirely.

~~~
GFischer
Goes to show... I had branded him as another populist too, but I haven't
researched much.

I'll have to look things up :)

------
krelian
>This is a reference to the President's years-long struggle against
preventative injunctions put in place by Argentine courts against her efforts
to break up the big Argentine media trusts that are her strongest local
political enemies.

The preventative injunction are in place to put the measures on hold while the
court decides if the made-to-order laws she comes up with twice a week are
constitutional or not.

For those unfamiliar with Argentinian politics: don't be too impressed with
Mrs Kirchner. This Us vs Them is her bread and butter and a perfect
opportunity for her to leverage for some cheap points. She's not really that
communicative in real life. To put it in perspective, if Mrs. Kirchner was in
Obama's spot right now facing spying accusation her response to the reports
would be to totally ignore them and instruct her subordinates to mention that
Snowden is a liar, all the documents are forged and everything is a plot by
the enemies of the American people.

~~~
kragen
...as you can see, Argentine politics are somewhat polarized.

~~~
estebank
As a political satirist has said about argentinian politics:

"You can neither explain it or understand it, you just endure it." — Enrique
Pinti, Pingo Argentino

------
wslh
For people who don't know about Argentinian politics it's important to
emphasize that Cristina Fernandez has her own NSA project:
[http://www.argentinaindependent.com/currentaffairs/newsfroma...](http://www.argentinaindependent.com/currentaffairs/newsfromargentina/security-
minister-elaborates-on-project-x/)

Not only that, Cristina's Government anticipates Obama using the local IRS
against the opposition and individuals speaking against the government in the
press.

Finally... a few days ago Assange said: "Argentina has most aggressive
surveillance ‎system in Latin America"
[http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/06/29/311375/assange-
argen...](http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/06/29/311375/assange-argentina-
has-most-aggressive-surveillance-system-in-latin-america/)

~~~
Fargren
Well, that assertion by Assange is somewhat out of context. What he said is
that of the medium sized Latin American countries, Argentina's surveillance
was the most aggressive. He also said it was nothing compared with what's
being done in the USA, the UK or China. So calling it "her own NSA" seems a
bit disingenuous, at least from this perspective.

Link to the interview:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If7MbOvuEbg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If7MbOvuEbg)

~~~
wslh
You can't compare the NSA with the Argentinian intelligence agencies because
the countries are in a very different scale.

~~~
JVIDEL
Indeed, Argentina lacks the ability or manpower to launch a worldwide program
like PRISM but it has more than enough to do similar things to its <40MM
population.

That and a set of laws that allow the government to make life a living hell to
any dissidents: had Snowden been Argentine getting his passport cancelled
would be the least of his problems.

------
SomeRandomUser
Regarding the wording used, "buddy" is an affective way of referring to one
another between left-oriented political movements here. Extremely common in
peronism but also used in several other countries from South America.

> He has the advantage of thousands of years of civilization over me. [Not
> sure I understood that sentence correctly.]

It refers to the bolivian/peruvian aboriginal culture from which Morales' is
considered a representative so the translation is correct. It's just a
political compliment, nothing more than that.

~~~
kragen
Thanks! I thought that might be what she meant, but I wasn't sure.

I'm not really sure if "buddy" is a good translation of "compañer@", but it
seemed about right. "Comrade" might be an equally good translation if you
wanted to prejudice people in the US against her.

~~~
nandemo
"Buddy" sounds really silly. "Comrade" is closer, but at least in Portuguese
that would be "camarada", which carries a rather old-style socialist nuance,
not "companheiro".

"Fellow", "brother" or even "mate" sound better in this context.

~~~
JVIDEL
Indeed the word is "companero", but its not as formal as comrade which also
exists as "camarada", in this context its actually more like _partner_ (in a
professional sense) but not as informal as brother or pal in english.

Peron put that word _en vogue_ around here.

------
gadders
Kirchner is a flake, and Argentina is in serious economic trouble, including
faking their inflation figures.

TBH I'm surprised she didn't mention the Falklands as well.

------
dep_b
This article should be flagged for containing Argentinean government
propaganda.

~~~
davidw
Welcome to the new HN.

The rate of political stories after datagate broke has skyrocketed, and I
don't think the genie will go quietly back in the bottle.

You can downvote me all you want: I have a shitload of this useless karma
stuff that I built up on the old HN.

~~~
coldtea
It's a social site. HN members find those stories relevant.

Perhaps some people (including, you, I presume) don't care about surveillance,
privacy, freedom of information and the like enough to want to highlight those
issues on HN.

They'd rather talk about Google buying some company, how someone learned
Golang and Node.js all day.

But I wouldn't call those people "hackers".

Not in the traditional cultural sense.

~~~
davidw
I don't understand the mental processes that lead you and others to think that
if I don't enjoy politics taking over this site, then I must not care about
the issues in question.

Another site I read often is www.cyclingnews.com - they have great coverage of
professional bicycle racing, which I love to read about and watch.

You know what, though? I find politics annoying there too.

You know where I like to read about politics? The Economist is pretty good.
www.corriere.it is pretty good for local stories. And there are other sources
I read from time to time.

This site is a great place to talk about startups and tech. There aren't many
of those. There are approximately 343244329165 sites where people can have
inane discussions about things like whether the US is really "exactly like
China and Russia".

~~~
coldtea
> _I don 't understand the mental processes that lead you and others to think
> that if I don't enjoy politics taking over this site, then I must not care
> about the issues in question._

It's a very simple process.

People that like sites like this "segmented" and "pure" are mostly apolitical
and don't care about the issues they want to expunge from them in the first
place. I've seen such people in lots of other places.

Hackers tend to be all over the place. They tend to appreciate tech, science,
politics, philosophy, Star Wars, startups, what have you, and to want to
discuss it at the same time.

Kind of like PG discusses tons of things in his essays, not just tech or
startups all the time.

> _You know where I like to read about politics? The Economist is pretty
> good._

Not really the outlet for a hacker interested in politics, and especially the
stuff we're discussing here. Actually, it's as far away from the traditional
hacker culture as you can get -- and quite far from caring about privacy,
surveillance, and the whole EFF spirit too.

It's basically a status quo rag for rich folks and middle class wannabes.

~~~
davidw
So you presume to know what I think and to judge me "not really a hacker"
because of what I read? That's certainly the kind of open-minded thinking I'm
a fan of.

 _PLONK_

------
jschuur
Seems like this content would have been a great fit for
[http://storify.com](http://storify.com).

------
gailees
What happens if the plane would have continued flying through airspace
claiming its political immunity? WWIII?

------
seppo0010
I'm surprise not many people read her blog instead of her tweets stream. The
full article (in Spanish) was published there
[http://www.cfkargentina.com/evo-morales-detenido-en-
europa/](http://www.cfkargentina.com/evo-morales-detenido-en-europa/)

------
hetman
One could only hope these types of strong arm tactics against a diplomatic
mission would lead to repercussions serious enough to make future incidents
much less likely.

However, since it seems there is nothing more to be gained by continuing to
hold the plane, what will actually happen is that high ranking politicians in
the involved countries will apologise profusely, claim this was done by some
low ranking bureaucrat that will be appropriately disciplined (sounding
familiar?), and everything will go back to normal since no one wants to risk
major economic repercussions over a minor incident.

I wonder if this could have a long term impact on how the South Americans view
Europe ideologically though.

------
kragen
Did I get it right in the part where she's talking about "thousands of years
of civilization"?

~~~
pvarangot
Yes, she is definitely playing with the fact that Evo is acting very calmly
and being polite with her despite the situation, and at the same time making a
reference to his aymaran descent. Cristina is not known for being frugal in
speech nor calm when in adverse situations.

~~~
narrator
I have spent a lot of time in Argentina. Argentinian people are very into
being cute and intimate, even with people they don't know that well. There is
a refreshing lack of excessive seriousness in that culture. If you know
Spanish and have seen Kirschner speak she almost comes off as a goofball the
way she cracks jokes and makes "cute" references to things, but it's really
just a reflection of Argentine culture more than anything else.

~~~
rld
Argentine here, CFK's way of speaking is a reflection of insanity, not
Argentine culture. True, we take many things lightly but CFK goes way over the
top, especially for a President.

In any case, the deep-rooted corruption of her administration (and practically
all others decades before it) is a symbol of Argentine culture.

