Last week, I did some reporting from a conference called Argentina Shale Oil and Tight Gas. No, they didn’t officially let me in (American Business Conferences apparently has good taste) but I managed to listen in on a few sessions and corner several oil executives too polite to tell me to go away. I’ll have a lot more details coming out in an article or two in the next month (elsewhere — guy’s gotta eat), but for now, let me tell you the basic conclusion for South America: few people here know what’s about to hit them.
Guest post: Popular!
Otto writes: Every few months, reliable Mexican polling company Mitofsky puts together its Poll of Polls on the popularity of Heads of State in The Americas, then publishes its findings. That’s what they did scant hours ago and here’s how things look for the continental bigwigs at the moment, colour-coded chart and all. We even do a table if that big graphic is too messy and big for you.
Argentines & Chileans agree: Let’s hate the Jews

Israel-sponsored fire truck in Santiago, Chile. Jews are blamed for arson, by Chileans who won't even pay for their own firefighters. Image taken without permission, click to go to original story.
Chile Hoy, a rather bland news aggregator of good news about, yes, Chile, had a headline that I figured would be some environmental story. “La Patagonia argentina y chilena en peligro,” or to put it another way, “Argentina’s and Chile’s Patagonia in danger.” Coal? Fires? Industrial fisheries?
Nope: it’s the Jews. So, you thought that the New Years forest fire in Torres del Paine National Park was an accident, caused (perhaps) by a hapless Israeli tourist who improperly burned his toilet paper? No no no: it was just another volley in an ongoing race war, run by my own Hebrew tribesmen. Who knew? I had a bar mitzvah, but somehow I never get invited to these things. The first paragraph gives a taste:
While we watch the disaster that’s been made of our world, that “future” it could be that such a “future” is right around the corner. Led by the International Zionist Movement, this silent takeover of Patagonia has progressed dramatically in recent years; not through war and invasion, but through territorial acquisitions, economic infiltration, Israeli fifth columns, global media support and geopolitical positioning.
The author, notable non-Mapuche Adrian Salbuchi, doesn’t seem to get the humor in a white Argentine warning Chileans about the “takeover” of land that was for centuries claimed by Argentina, continuously occupied by independent indigenous groups, and at one point even under the supposed dominion of a Frenchman.
Hilarious Argentine controversy is hilarious
It is difficult to compete with Argentina in the department of breathless political drama. The latest involves Federal Judge Norberto Oyarbide, who reportedly holds court in a luxury spa and wears absurdly expensive jewelry while hearing some of the country’s highest-profile corruption cases.

