Showing posts with label #IULondon12. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #IULondon12. Show all posts

Monday, August 6, 2012

So very underwhelming! South America's cocky ABC countries flounder in London: After first 8 days, Argentina & Chile had combined for ZERO medals at 2012 London Olympics; ABC is roughly 250 Million people -result is one Gold Medal after first 7 days; #London2012, #IULondon12


TelegraphTV video: Argentine President Cristina Fernandez Kerchner: I thought Falklands adverts were great. June 27, 2012. http://youtu.be/Jg4nkllrNu4

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez Kerchner is like a very cocky and annoying cartoon character. Is she really that egotistical and self-serving, or... 
Yes, all the evidence to date appears to support such a hypothesis, witness this last week:

The Telegraph
British ships banned from docking in Buenos Aires
Ships flying the British ensign have been banned from docking in Argentina's largest province under a new law passed yesterday
By Jonathan Gilbert in Buenos Aires

6:20AM BST 03 Aug 2012

'To compete on English soil, we train on Argentinian soil': TV ad highlighting claim over Falklands filmed in Port Stanley 
May 3, 2012
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2138926/Falkland-Islands-London-2012-Olympics-ad-shows-athlete-training-Argentine-soil-Port-Stanley.html

The original video in question...
Homenaje a los caídos y ex combatientes de Malvinas
Yes, the video is STILL on the Argentine govt. website

I'd originally planned on posting something about the larger issue of South America's largest countries history of under-performing at the Summer Olympics in mid-June, even prior to Argentine President Cristina Fernandez Kerchner proving once again her inability to keep her more base instincts to herself.
Result, foot in mouth -again!

Hmm-m... what other female elected officials can I think of that have that same problem?

I had planned on wishing her Olympic team full of obscure handball players and synchronized swimmers good luck as the ABC countries of South America -Argentina, Brazil and Chile- once again proved that despite having lots of people and resources, they could NOT transform those advantages into anything more than under-achievement, while much smaller countries punked them in the medal count.


2011 Population estimates:
Argentina, <42 million="million" span="span">
Brazil, world's 5th-largest country, 195 Million 
Chile <17 font="font" million="million">

Total, roughly 250 Million people
Result: Number of Gold Medals after one week: one.

In fact, Chile and Argentina had not only actually earned less Gold Medals than IU students and alums in London the first week, they had earned less medals than IU student and French swimmer Margaux Farrell. http://www.iuhoosiers.com/sports/w-swim/recaps/080112aaa.html



Oh, dear!
It looks like once again, Argentina is better at agit prop than actual performance.
Now we know why their athletes are shown having so much fun at the Opening Ceremonies
-unlike the athletes of many nations, they don't have the pressure of actually doing something worthwhile, they're just there for the fun!

Outside of soccer, nobody in the rest of the world, well, outside of South America, even thinks
about Argentina, and why would they?
And seriously, how has such a large country produced so very little of interest or value to the
rest of the world for so very long?

And from a larger perspective, while there are a handful of internationally-respected music and film stars from these three countries, why so few out of 250 million people?

Chile is over three times larger in population than Finland, yet Finnish consumer products and knack for marketing -Nokia and Angry Birds- have more tangible impact on U.S. consumers and business culture than anything Argentina or Chile does; I do like Chliean wine. 

In the 1980's, when I lived in Chicago and the most well-known Argentine most people could name was tennis player Gabby Sabatini, a banker friend who traveled a lot for business, esp. to international conferences, put it very nicely, in a way that reminded me of the national archetypes mentioned in Luigi Barzini Jr.'s various works.
http://ac-support.europe.umuc.edu/~jmatthew/naples/barzini.html
"Argentines think they're good-looking Italian bankers who must wear English bespoke and see French psychologists because of their own deep sense of national inadequacy."
Exactly

Even now, they're a country that's still has plenty of people who think their govt. did nothing wrong when it grabbed political opponents and threw them off airplanes over the ocean.
Maybe things will change there once all the people who could countenance that are dead.