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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (517210)	10/27/2012 1:38:30 PM
From: Geoff Altman	4 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 794032

RE: I think all of us here believe that Obama stood there in the ready room at the WH, watched it go down, and personally gave the orders not to interfere because he did not want an American force in there. Just the thought of this happening is so repulsive,,,, but with the information we have I can't come up with an alternative.... I'll gladly post a bit of my impressions of Argentina and hopefully a few pictures to boot when I return from the hospital........

To: LindyBill who wrote (517210)	10/28/2012 1:22:58 PM
From: Geoff Altman	6 Recommendations Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 794032

RE: When you have the time, fill us in with your impressions of Argentina. I suppose before I start to lay a bit of my back ground and the frame of mind I had on this trip so you'll know of my bias's right off hand.... I was a Navy brat and moved every three years of my life more or less which probably contributed a lot towards me being a rather gregarious type. After I left home I continued to travel throughout the US eventually doing an extended stint in Japan where I met my wife. Moving and travelling are just part of military life but after a lifetime of that and especially since 911, I've developed a certain loathing for travel but especially, air travel. The bottom line is, it's not the being there that I mind so much as the getting there.....<g> Several years ago my wife decided to purchase a condominium in Buenos Aires, just inside a nice section of the city called Recoleta. To say the least I had trepidations about the idea but I've always found my wife to have good instincts about these things. She had visited previously before the apartment was completed having gone to ink the transaction through a friend of a friend of Michi's mother..... A wonderful man who I'd stumbled through a brief conversation on the phone a few times. Surprisingly, there's a strong Okinawan community in BA. All their real estate transactions are in American dollars....(hint). From right to left, Masa, his wife Olga, me and 2 of Masa's friends, all wonderful people. We didn't meet them until the last day we were there. They'd just returned from a long vacation drive through Patagonia.... We were an eclectic group, I speak no Spanish and little Japanese but I'm rusty. My wife speaks Japanese of course but no Spanish. Masa's friends and wife Olga only speak Spanish and Masa speaks both Japanese and Spanish but no English....... Somehow or another we all communicated without much trouble....<g> Anyway, I digress... My wife an I never really had a honey moon so, while I had my preconceptions of Argentina, I didn't go there to dig up Juan Peron.....<g> We were able to use the consierge service Michi's apartment manager provides so we were met at the air port by a nice young man who spoke English well. As we were driving to the management company to pick up our keys the first thing that impressed me was the graffiti.... Virtually everything at ground level seemed to have been tagged. I had a fleeting thought that perhaps the youth were trying desperately to blot something out. I got a kick out of the way they drive there, I was reminded of this line when applied to road rules, the cars clear each other by millimeters: What didn't have graffiti had some sort of poster, most of them political. I asked the driver about one such poster. He told me it was a protest against a dissident leader who'd been assassinated, (he used that word), by police during a protest. He talked quite openly of the fascist state and had a dislike for Kershner..... Another aspect that Michi had warned me about was the smell. I was thankful that we planned this trip while the weather was fairly cool during the summer the place would be rather stifling with all the bus fumes. Usually this is the type of atmosphere that triggers nasty headaches with me but fortunately I dodged that bullet while I was there. I won't fill you in with all the details of us settling in but driving through the city you can't help but be impressed with the sheer rococo quality to the whole place, but in a way more influenced by Europe than by Spain. One thing that we ventured on our first day was to go to a market to get a few things. Over all we were successful at retrieving what we wanted. This store was rather large but the produce section wasn't all that appealing to me, most of it looking rather old. I was also struck by the limited selection of most items, I supposed that could be contributed by space restrictions... After recovering he first day we turned into your typical tourists beginning to visit interesting sites Michi picked out of the guide book. Our first stop was the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes... I don't know much about art but even I could appreciate the collection, many of them early works. I was wishing that I had Nadine with me, along with her encyclopedic knowledge of some of this stuff, (she would have gone nuts at the flea markets). The museum itself didn't seem to be air conditioned which I thought strange... Of course, no cameras. Museo_Nacional_de_Bellas_Artes After we left the museum we walked around the plaza, that's when I started to notice the police presence. Virtually every populated block occupied by some feet on the ground. Pistols only no automatic weapons than I noted. At this point, while I'm not going to mention every place we went, I have to say something of our visit to the Teatro Colon. They had an english tour we waited for and it was very interesting..... It's one of the largest and arguibly the grandest opera house in the world, took 18 years to build and was shipped over piece by piece from Europe..... Unfortunately, few of my pictures from there came out but the detailed work is utterly fantastic, beautiful stained glass ceilings that are as vibrant as when they were made.....unbelievable. Well worth the price of the tour... The salon was really amazing, here's the ceiling: I should say something of the people that I've seen and met. I'd have to say that the most common trait is the fixation on beauty.... Seems to be a tradition carried by every pseudo dictator they've ever had here. But the idea that Argentina must have the 'most' beautiful this and that is carried to an extreme IMO. In the city you don't see alot of fat people. We asked a taxi driver if there were many fat people here... He said there's plenty out in the country....<g> Coffee is more or less the national drink and from the menus I've seen and the food I've eaten they tend to eat a lot of pastas and meat not that many veggies. Spinach in lots of dishes. In summation, what struck me most about Buenos Aires Argentina was the fact that 2 groups of people emanating from essentially the same place could form, through more or less the same democratic processes, styles of government so diametrically opposed..... One being a matternalistic quasi fascist state and the other the freest place on the planet.