Earlier today Bush gave one of his infamous speeches under the conditions of a lockdown at the Organization of American States conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida (those not so thrilled about the One World Global Order of multinational corporations and international bankers were confined to a “free speech” cattle pen).
“An Americas linked by trade is less likely to be divided by resentment and false ideologies,” Bush declared during his speech, making an obvious reference to Hugo Chavez, who has actually turned some of Venezuela’s oil wealth into education and health care for that country’s teeming legion of poor people. Naturally, when leaders feed and clothe people, this is considered “resentment and false ideologies” because, as everybody knows, stinking rich loan sharks and profit-crazed CEOs and stockholders are entitled to steal.
Knight Ridder felt compelled to add:
Bush said the Americas face two dueling visions, one founded on representative governments and free markets, and another that “seeks to roll back the democratic progress of the past two decades by playing to fear, pitting neighbor against neighbor and blaming others for their own failures to provide for their people.”
In Bushzarro world, “representative governments” are those—such as Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil—that effectively crush popular political movements and “democratic progress” consists of murderous exploits such as “Operation Bandeirantes,” a paramilitary search and destroy mission funded by multinational corporations—Volkswagen, GM, Chrysler, Firestone, Philips and other freedom-loving companies—that abducted and tortured suspected militants and leftists in Brazil (see Bill Van Auken’s summary of the Brazilian daily O Globo’s investigation of such loathsome practices).
It is interesting Bush would make his comments a few days after the International Meeting against Terrorism and for Truth and Justice held at the Palace of Conventions in Havana, Cuba. Guest panelists on the Cuban TV and radio program, “The Round Table,” discussed “how the US government supported Operation Condor, a conspiracy undertaken by Latin American military dictatorships to eliminate all opposition to their rule during the 1970’s and 80’s,” reported Periodico26, the newspaper of Las Tunas province. “In 1976, six Latin America dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay entered into a system for the joint monitoring and assassinating of refugees, known as Operation Condor. The bloody repression against progressive movements was organized and led by the US Central Intelligence Agency and left a trail of torture, deaths and tens of thousands of missing people.”
Predictably, the conference hosted in Cuba was not mentioned in the corporate U.S. media, even though a number of luminaries such as Hebe de Bonafini, president of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo Association, Brazilian poet Thiago de Mello and singer Beth Carvalho, film directors Jorge Sanjines (Bolivia) and Walter Salles (Brazil) were in attendance (as were Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega and Salvadoran Schafik Handal, head of Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), two personalities the far right Oort Cloud ideologues would have had a field day with).
Of course, Bush made his urgent bleatings mostly because of what is going on in Bolivia. “Bolivian President Carlos Mesa said on Monday he had submitted his resignation after weeks of crippling protests by indigenous leaders demanding that he nationalize the country’s energy resources,” reports Reuters. A massive demonstration earlier today—approximately coinciding with Bush’s “free trade” (i.e., unfettered multinational piracy) speech—overwhelmed the streets of La Paz. “The demonstration totally filled the central plazas San Francisco and the Heroes, overflowing into adjacent streets,” reports Prensa Latina. “The protest contradicted official and conservative statements on the sole involvement of radical minorities, including neighbors and unionists from El Alto Municipality, along with locals, peasants, miners, teachers, and the middle and high classes.”
Naturally, the events in Bolivia scare the heck out of Bush because they set a dangerous precedent—the vast majority of people from the most impoverished country in Latin America will soon take back their natural resources from the hated Bolivian political elite and their neoliberal co-conspirators. “From indigenous uprisings against Spanish rule, to the 1952 revolution when armed miners and factory workers marched on La Paz and defeated the Bolivian army in three days of open war, Bolivians have never given an inch to the rich white gangsters,” notes Jim Straub. So dire is the situation for the neolibs, even Pope Benedict XVI, the “Holy Father” and former Nazi youth member, called for “peace,” that is to say he would like to see an end to the “anti-government demonstrations” and avoid “social and political tensions” (besides, poverty makes for passive and obedient Catholics).
Then there is Ecuador where “mobs” (as Knight Ridder calls poor people) “forced Ecuador’s Congress to vote President Lucio Gutierrez, also a close ally of Washington, out of office.” Gutierrez was voted into office as a reformer but soon went crawling to the neolibs and the criminal loan shark operation, the IMF, and agreed to “adjustments,” i.e., a wage freeze until 2007, no right to strike in the public sector, an increase in the price of gas by 375%, privatization of electricity, oil, telecoms, water, etc.
Indeed, in Latin America (and of course Iraq) Bush has a lot to worry about. People are fed up with the neolibs and the vicious Strausscons and are increasingly resisting. Dubya the Destroyer has drawn a line in the sand with is “dueling visions” speech and now it is up to millions of people to cross the line and tell Bush and the mutlinats and carpetbaggers and the loan sharks to put their rhetoric where the sun doesn’t shine.
No comments:
Post a Comment