2024-03-03 00:08:10
“The new president of Argentina loves his cloned dogs. To the people, less.” The brutal phrase was the cover title, this Tuesday, of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), one of the most influential newspapers among investors around the world. The long text seems to warn investors of Javier Milei’s imbalances and mentions, for example, that the president claims that he met Conan’s dog, now dead, 2,000 years ago in the Colosseum when Conan was a lion and Milei a gladiator. At that moment – says Milei – they agreed not to fight, but to unite to govern Argentina. Curiously, the WSJ asked the president for a current photo with his dogs, but the president replied “I have photos, but I don’t show them.” According to the financial newspaper, Milei became noticeably irritated. The WSJ leaves doubts floating about where the English mastiffs are and if they are alive. This doubt has already been raised by several media outlets in Argentina. The WSJ also tells part of the story of how cloning was done in the United States at a cost of $51,200, a figure that does not seem to fit with the declaration of assets that Milei presented to the Anti-Corruption Office: his assets are more like a department. boy, two cars, three accounts in pesos and about 32,000 dollars. The PRO deputy, Nicolás Massot, strongly questioned that statement: “wasn’t he charging $20,000 for each conference? Wasn’t he publishing books and selling thousands and thousands of copies? “What did he pay for so many months in a hotel?” And, of course, how the $51,000 for cloning was paid.
An amazing note
The extensive WSJ chronicle occupies ample space on the cover and continues on page A8. Delicately, the newspaper mentions that since 2018 no one has seen Murray, Milton, Robert, Lucas and Conan II again, so it asked Milei for a photo. The newspaper illustrated the note with a shot of Milei sitting in an armchair with four mastiffs, all puppies. “I have photos, but I don’t show them,” the president replied to the WSJ. And, according to the note, Milei became irritated when they asked her about the dogs.
Doubts about mastiffs have already been raised by various media. The most striking fact is that, according to various sources, Olivos’ kennels were dismantled, after the photos that were known of an area with cages and air conditioning circulated. It means that, for now, the dogs are not there. And, furthermore, understanding that Milei lived for several months in a hotel and now in Olivos, at no time was it mentioned that she visited her “four-legged children,” as she calls them.
Regarding the dismantling of the kennels, the argument was that the structure could not support so much weight – each dog weighs more than 100 kilos – and that These are specimens that cannot coexist with each other.. As explained by the well-known veterinarian Juan Enrique Romero “They are all males that compete for the affection of their owner, food, resting place, water, toy”. He remembers the injuries Milei himself suffered when he tried to intercede.
Last Sunday, the newspaper Profile, with the signature of Milei’s biographer, Juan Luis González, also questioned whether the dogs are alive given that cloned specimens have a limited lifespan. In the program Argenzuelaof C5N, they have been asking for “proof of life for the dogs” for weeks. When a government source was consulted, he acknowledged that the kennels were dismantled, but that they will be replaced, reinforced, in mid-March.
The history of cloning
Another American newspaper, The New York Times, on its cover dated October 19, 2023, also put the emphasis on Milei and the dogs. In a long chronicle he detailed the way in which cloning was done in the United States, mentioning the figure of $51,200 paid by the president.
This is the sequence, according to the NYT:
*In 2014, Conan was still alive, whose name comes from that movie Conan, The Barbarian.
*Milei spent $1,200 in the process of extracting tissues from the mastiff. That would be the basis for cloning.
*The fabric was sent to a company, Perpetuate, owned by Ron Gillespie, based in Hawaii.
*This laboratory is associated with Worcester Polytechnic Institute, in Worcester Massachusetts, which carried out the freezing of the embryos.
*After Conan’s death, the surrogate process was launched in 2018. It was done by Via Gents Pets, in Austin Texas.
*Milei paid $50,000, in addition to the $1,200 for tissue removal.
The NYT article is critical from an ethical point of view because it questions whether dogs with such values are cloned when there are so many to adopt.
Juan Luis González, the author of CrazyMilei’s unauthorized biography, maintains that initially there were six dogs, one died within a year and there would be five left, Conan II, Murray, Milton, Robert, Lucas, the latter four in honor of liberal economists.
Accounts do not close
In the context of a controversy with the president, the PRO deputy, Nicolás Massot, put the magnifying glass on Javier Milei’s sworn statement before the Anti-Corruption Office. That same statement, presented by some Peronist official, would have unleashed a rain of covers from newspapers aligned with Together for Change.
Milei says tener:
*An apartment in Almagro.
*Two cars.
*Three bank accounts in pesos, for 11,500,000 pesos.
*As is obvious, before the OA you must submit the declaration in pesos, therefore Milei indicated how many dollars he has and then made the calculation in pesos. An account in dollars for 23,800,000 pesos and, in cash, 3,500,000 pesos, in dollar bills. It is 27,300,000 pesos, in green currency. If you take into account that an official dollar was 850 pesos, his total assets in the North American currency are 32,000 dollars.
Massot, on the X network, asked: “what happened to your numerous conferences for which you charged between 10 and 20 thousand dollars each?” You wrote interesting things”, “I want to believe that the rumors that a motorcycle was looking for the envelopes with dollars after the talks are false and that everything must be properly invoiced, the taxes paid and that your accountant failed to reflect such a successful career in your statement” .
There are also those who wonder how he met the expenses of the five-star hotel where he stayed for several months – it is assumed that he paid the bill with his credit card – and where he occupied more than one room. Finally, looking at the president’s assets, it seems that the fact that in 2018 he allocated $51,800 to the multiple cloning of Conan does not fit. Massot evaluates all the data and points to the president’s black economy.
Questions without answer
The WSJ in the United States and several Argentine media wonder what happens to Conan II, Murray, Milton, Robert and Lucas? Are the kennels truly installed and will they be occupied by “the four-legged children” of the president? There is no answer for now, but it will be seen if this month what a government source indicated is confirmed, that the mastiffs will finally arrive in Olivos. It should be taken into account that the specialists also raised their doubts about the kennels in those photos: the mastiffs would be separated only by bars, they would see each other and the atmosphere of fierce competition would persist, something that would occur just by looking at each other and notice each other’s presence.
Finally, there are the most important questions from an ethical, political, and judicial point of view: how is it possible for the Anti-Corruption Office to accept, without objection, such a declaration of assets that clashes with everything the candidate has said in recent years? ?