ARGENTINE EX-PRESIDENT NESTOR KIRSHNER DIES

POWERFUL ARGENTINE POLITICIAN & EX- PRESIDENT
NESTOR KIRCHNER DIED OF A HEART ATTACK, WAS 60

www.washingtonpost.com - Argentine former President, UNASUR general secretary and the husband of the current president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Nestor Kirchner, died yesterday morning at 9:50am Argentina time in the city of Calafate due to a heart attack. President Cristina Kirshner and her husband, traveled earlier this week to their summer home in Calafate, to take a break after Mrs. Kirshner complained of chest pains. Mr. Kirshner, had been pestered by ill health and had undergone two major operations in 2010 alone. This February the 60 year old ex-president had surgery to remove a blockage in his carotid artery, which carries blood from the heart to the brain. September saw him come back to the surgical table, when routine tests revealed a blocked coronary artery and he was given an emergency angioplasty after complaining of numbness in his legs.

Kirchner who was considered President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s closest adviser and a major power broker in her government, had been expected to run again for president in next year’s election switching office with his wife.

Born in Rio Gallegos, Kirchner started his political career by becoming the mayor of Rio Gallegos in 1987 to 1991. In 1991 he became the Governor of Santa Cruz for the next 12 years. He then ran for President. Kirchner will be remembered as a great leader, who took the reigns of an economically battered country, and sorted things out significantly. Mr. Kirchner served as president from 2003 to 2007, when his wife became the country's second female president (after Isabel Martínez de Perón, who served during the mid-1970s). The couple was regarded by many as the Bill and Hillary Clinton of Latin America. As Argentina's most powerful couple, the Kirchners held a place in the national imagination that recalled the near-mythical Peróns. From yesterday morning, thousands of people fill the historic Plaza de Mayo in front of the Casa Rosada presidential palace in Buenos Aires, to mourn the death of their former president Nestor Kirchner and support his wife, president Cristina Fernandez.


This Peronist leader's death leaves a major gap in the political arena of Argentina, and several successions: the leadership of the Peronist Party and the national deputy banking, among others charges. All citizens are very shocked and surprised by this sudden death, but we must remember that at the time of death, every living entity is so helpless that, although unwilling, we are forced to give up this body and enter another. And because our life is too short, we must make great efforts to make sure to occupy our mind with topics related to Lord Krishna and issues about our future spiritual life, because at any time we are going to be forced to leave here.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

Our duration of life is not very long, and there is no certainty of when we shall be ordered to leave everything for the next stage. ... A living being is eternal by constitution. He is, so to speak, in the whirlpool of birth and death due to his contact with material energy. Freed from such material energy, a living entity is liberated and is eligible to return home, back to Godhead. Those who want to live forever without changing their material bodies should not waste valuable time with topics other than those relating to Lord Krishna and His devotees. ... Every human being dislikes meeting death, but he does not know how to get rid of death. The surest remedy for avoiding death is to accustom oneself to hearing the nectarean pastimes of the Lord as they are systematically narrated in the text of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. It is advised herein, therefore, that any human being who desires freedom from death should take to this course of life as recommended by the rishis headed by Śaunaka.

Śrīla A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda :
“The Śrīmad Bhāgavatam”
Purport in Canto 1, Chapter 16:
“How Parīkshit Received the Age of Kali” - Texts 6 - 8.