FINALISSIMA
Since this weekly was last published, Argentina has cleared both the World Cup quarter-finals and semi-finals to reach tomorrow’s final against Spain. Last Saturday Lionel Scaloni’s team made heavy weather of eliminating Switzerland, despite an early advantage from an Alexis Mac Allister header and a man advantage for most of the second half, being unable to prevent either a Swiss equaliser or extra time until late goals after almost two hours of play from Julián Alvarez and Lautaro Martínez made for a final score of 3-1. The country erupted into jubilation with 14 arrested around the Obelisk and six in Córdoba Province for celebrating too exuberantly along with incidents elsewhere while seven people ended up in hospital. One widely commented aftermath of the Swiss match was a video of former Buenos Aires Province Cabinet Chief Martín Insaurralde celebrating the win by smoking a cigar alongside the brother of the judge trying him on mega-corruption charges, seen by many as flaunting impunity. After Spain had handed France a supreme Bastille Day frustration on Tuesday by ending their confident World Cup hopes with a 2-0 win, it was Argentina’s turn the next day to clinch an epic 2-1 semi-final win over arch-rivals England – trailing 1-0 with five minutes to go, they turned the tables in seven explosive minutes with goals by Enzo Fernández and Lautaro Martínez. The first semi-final was preceded by the French Embassy repudiating the comments of Mendoza Lieutenant-Governor Hebe Casado dismissing the side starring Kylian Mbappé as “a bad-mannered African team.” The triumph over England was preceded by Vice-President Victoria Villarruel describing the adversaries as “pirate usurpers” in an emotional message and followed by the players in Atlanta unfurling a “Las Malvinas Son Argentinas” banner (which could land them in trouble with a FIFA strictly banning any political expressions) while the celebrations around the Obelisk were even more intense than on Saturday. Finally, the presence of the British warship HMS Medway in Argentine waters led to questions in Congress but no comment from the Foreign Ministry before press time.
INFLATION DOWN TO ONE-PLUS
For the first time in 10 months inflation was posted below the two-percent barrier when the INDEC national statistics bureau reported June inflation as 1.9 percent last Tuesday with an annual rate of 33.5 percent while prices rose 33.5 percent in the first half of the year. Core inflation (excluding regulated and seasonal prices) was even lower at 1.6 percent and the key item of food and beverages lower still at 1.3 percent. The main culprits were recreation and culture at 4.2 percent with winter holidays approaching and public services at 3.3 percent.
MILEI LONDON-BOUND?
Wednesday’s World Cup clash against England did not prevent President Javier Milei from placing a visit to Britain before the year is out at the top of his foreign travel wish list. The idea is to tag on an “Argentina Week” road show in London to the one already scheduled for Paris at the end of September. Last month the government formalised its request to join the CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership), of which Britain is its most recent member, and is also seeking membership of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), implying further linkage with the United Kingdom. However, those plans may now be on hold given the imminent change of prime minister in London. Apart from the inaugurations of the new presidents of Peru and Colombia in the next three weeks, Milei will also be attending the annual General Assembly of the United Nations in New York in late September and the G20 summit in Mar-a-Lago, Florida at the end of the year. After hearing out an Independence Day Te Deum sermon in the City Cathedral by Buenos Aires Archbishop Jorge Ignacio García Cuerva urging greater sensitivity towards the suffering and especially the handicapped, Milei accompanied Saturday’s World Cup quarter-final against Switzerland with the curious opinion that “if we did not import, we’d all be eating dulce de leche,” based on his Davos World Economic Forum experience of Swiss supermarkets importing everything amid national prosperity, even if the recent wave of imports is causing acute distress to local retailers and manufacturers.
SKANSKA VERDICT AT LONG LAST
TOF (Tribunal Oral Federal) 4 court last Monday sentenced former Federal Planning Minister Julio De Vido and his Public Works secretary José López to five years in prison for fraudulent administration and the collection of bribes from the Swedish construction company Skanska, as well as banning them from public office for life. Of the 30 defendants in a trial lasting two years, a total of 13 received prison sentences of between three and four years, including local executives of the Swedish firm and middlemen, while 17 were acquitted. Skanska’s contract to expand two gas pipelines was the first case of Kirchnerite corruption coming to light, dating back to 2004. The fundamental evidence for the bribery came from the company itself.
IS MILEI A PLAGIARIST?
This month President Javier Milei and Demian Reidel published a working paper ‘Minimum Viable Scale: Extinction and Escape under Increasing Returns,’ based on Milei’s 2024 book Capitalismo, Socialismo y la Trampa Neoclásica. The paper describes the law of diminishing returns as driving economies down to a scale too small for survival, which both the “cultural battle” and deregulation are considered to be crucial to avoid. But early this week Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, an economics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, sat down to read the paper given its proximity to his area of interest and quickly started suspecting it of being the work of Artificial Intelligence. Taking the abstract and four paragraphs at random, he ran them through a tool and in all five cases a 100-percent probability of AI generation emerged. Reidel admitted online that AI had been used in the writing of the paper, though suggested it was more for smoothing out text than pilfering.
ADMAN DIES
Ramiro Agulla, 62, an emblematic figure of the advertising world since the return of democracy, died on Independence Day in hospital after never really recovering from a complex heart operation earlier this year. He was the son of Horacio Agulla, editor of the magazine Confirmado who sought to trace the missing during the last military dictatorship until slain by five bullets in 1978. Although the episode was never clarified, Ramiro never had the slightest doubt about blaming the junta and when democratic elections returned in 1983, he threw his support behind the presidential candidate most committed to human rights, the Radical Raúl Alfonsín. But what made him most famous was the “Dicen que soy aburrido” (“They say I’m boring”) catchphrase which propelled another Radical, Fernando de la Rúa, to the Presidency in 1999, following a decade of Carlos Menem (whom Agulla also advised). Apart from working for the dissident Peronist campaigns of Sergio Massa and Francisco de Narváez, he was also contracted abroad, generally right of centre – Sebastián Piñera in Chile and Vicente Fox in Mexico (both elected) and the 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain in the United States, among others. But his work was not limited to politics as the creator of numerous catchy commercials.
TURKISH COUP ANNIVERSARY
Last Wednesday the Turkish Embassy celebrated the 10th anniversary of the defeat of a military coup causing 21 hours of terror as from the night of July 15, 2016 and over 250 deaths before the people massively took to the streets to defend democracy and the elected President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (still in office today). Behind the military front line lurked the sinister FETO (Fetullahist Terrorist Organisation), explained Turkish Ambassador Ömür Budak and an accompanying video. MS
MURDER IN FUERTE APACHE
The incinerated body of a man with a bullet through his head was found last Monday afternoon in the Fuerte Apache neighbourhood of Ciudadela in the Greater Buenos Aires district of Tres de Febrero in what the courts assume to be a narco vendetta. Firemen arrived at the scene of the crime ahead of the police when neighbours alerted them to flames. In the small hours of that day neighbours also reported an intense crossfire between narco gangs.
CHAU ARMANI
River Plate football club last Monday confirmed that the long and successful career of goalkeeper and club idol Franco Armani (39) at Núñez is over. Via a communiqué, the club announced that his contract had been rescinded by mutual consent, enabling him to return to Colombia’s Atlético Nacional in order to end his illustrious career where it began. For over eight years Armani guarded the net in 366 matches, keeping the ball out almost half the time (158 games) and helping his team to win 10 titles.
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