Bush Vs. Chavez in Argentina

[2-0-Sixx]

Protesters mass to confront Bush

Thousands of protesters chanting "Get out Bush" have thronged the streets of Mar del Plata, an Argentine beach town hosting the Summit of the Americas.

The US president and 33 other regional leaders are in town to discuss free trade and poverty, amid tight security.

George W Bush is expected to face vocal opposition over plans to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

Venezuela's leader Hugo Chavez, a key opponent, told protesters: "Here, in Mar del Plata, FTAA will be buried!"
Addressing the rally in a football stadium, Mr Chavez called for help to beat the US-backed free trade proposal.

"Only united can we defeat imperialism and bring our people a better life," he said.

'Throw out Bush'

Alongside him stood Argentine former football legend Diego Maradona, wearing a T-shirt accusing Mr Bush of war crimes. "Argentina is dignified. Let's throw out Bush!" he cried.

Earlier protesters had surrounded a train that brought their comrades from Buenos Aires, among them Bolivian left-wing presidential candidate Evo Morales.
Mr Bush held a meeting on Friday morning with leaders from the Central American Free Trade Area.

He also appeared at a news conference alongside his host, Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, at which the two acknowledged their policy differences.
The US president wants free trade relations to be instituted across the two continents.

Mexican President Vicente Fox has said 29 of the 34 summit nations are willing to move forward with free trade negotiations without dissenting countries.
Apart from Venezuela, those nations opposed to the creation of a huge free trade zone include Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay.

Bush 'polite'

Emotions are high among those who say US-backed free-market policies have pushed millions into poverty.
Some 96 million people in the region are surviving on less than $1 per day, according to the United Nations.
In his keynote speech, Mr Bush will argue that the way to guarantee prosperity is by encouraging free trade and a flourishing private sector and by deepening democracy, the BBC's Jamie Coomarasamy in Mar del Plata reports.

The rivalry between Mr Bush and Mr Chavez is expected to dominate the meeting.

Asked at a news conference how he would approach Mr Chavez, Mr Bush replied that he would be "polite".
The Venezuelan government has said that it will reject any summit declaration which contains references to free trade in the Americas.

The BBC's South America correspondent says Washington still has many strong allies among Latin American countries, who are well aware that the US remains their dominant trade partner.
More than 8,000 police officers are guarding the venue of the summit.

"We hope protests are carried out in a peaceful way, but if they are not, we are prepared to give wrongdoers a forceful response," said federal police commissioner Daniel Rodriguez.

 

[JoMoDo]

My cousin is down there now, he submitted some writing samples, and the Times or P.I. is sponsoring his trip to cover some of the events....

 

[nefar559]

...

 

[ColdBlooded]

lawn fairies aren't supposed to use their hands

 

[L Mac-a-docious]

Just peeped CNN...they're serving molotov cocktails now.

 

[skipper]

Hey Nefar i like your pic ha ha the infamous GOD'S HAND GOAL!!!

 

[2-0-Sixx]

Good read for those interested...

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Americas summit ends in debacle for Bush
By Bill Van Auken
7 November 2005

President Bush left Argentina Saturday after failing to achieve an agreement on reopening talks on forming a hemisphere-wide Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The Fourth Summit of the Americas turned into a debacle for the US administration, with rioting in the streets of Mar del Plata, mass repudiation of Bush by the Argentine people and open defiance of US policies on the part of South America’s principal economic powers.

“I am a bit surprised,” Bush told Argentine President Néstor Kirchner as he departed the country, the Argentine daily Pagina 12 reported. “Something happened here that I hadn’t foreseen.”

Perhaps the US president was not adequately briefed by his handlers or the White House as a whole had deluded itself into thinking that a bit of arm-twisting and diplomatic pressure could overcome the profound tensions that have built up over the past five years between Washington and Latin America.

Bilateral meetings, sessions with Central American heads of state who have signed a free-trade pact with Washington and interventions on Washington’s behalf by Mexico’s President Vicente Fox, all proved to be of no avail.

US officials indicated that they were taken aback by Kirchner’s speech, which denounced the role of the International Monetary Fund and US-backed policies in provoking the catastrophic economic collapse of December 2001 from which millions of Argentines have yet to recover.

“Kirchner’s speech was very disappointing,” a US diplomat told the Argentine daily Clarín. “He kept talking to his people. The truth is his harshness surprised me.”

The “harshness” of the Argentine president, however, was a pale reflection of the mass hatred exhibited by the Argentine people towards Bush, whose presence in the country provoked not only the demonstrations and rioting in Mar del Plata, but strikes by teachers and public employees throughout the country.

Bush stayed several hours longer than planned Saturday in a vain attempt to broker a consensus on the trade pact that has represented the principal US goal in the region for the past decade. In the end, however, the summit came to a near breakdown over differences on trade. Faced with the threat that the meeting would be unable to issue any joint statement, diplomats ended up crafting a document that put forward two mutually opposed positions.

The first part consisted of four paragraphs introduced by the government of Panama, acting as a spokesman for Washington’s aims, calling for the resumption of free trade talks. This, however, is followed by a second section inserted at the demand of the four full members of Mercosur—Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay—and Venezuela, that declares, “The conditions do not exist to attain a hemispheric free trade accord that is balanced and fair with access to markets that is free of subsidies and distorting practices.”

The rest of the statement consisted of empty promises on the summit’s theme of “creating work to confront poverty and strengthen democratic governability.”

The self-contradictory document was issued after most of the region’s 34 heads of state had left Mar del Plata, precluding the reading of a joint declaration that is the standard protocol at such gatherings.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who voiced the most intransigent opposition to the trade pact and participated in a mass anti-Bush rally held during the summit, gloated over the US administration’s defeat. “The great loser today was George W. Bush,” Chavez told the press after Bush’s departure. “The man went away wounded. You could see defeat on his face.”

A measure of this defeat was the attempt by top US aides to put a good face on the debacle in Argentina. Among them was Bush’s National Security Advisor Steven Hadley who said there had been “real progress.” He added, “We went from a summit which was supposed to bury FTAA to a summit in which all 34 countries actually talk in terms of enhanced trade...recognizing there are challenges.”

The phrase about burying FTAA was introduced by Chavez, who told supporters that he had brought a shovel. For the top US security official to present the Venezuelan populist president as the one setting the agenda for the Americas summit is an indication of the isolation that Washington felt at the gathering.

Bush hit by protests in Brazil too

From Mar del Plata, Bush flew to Brazil, where the presence of the US president provoked protests throughout that country as well. Thousands marched down Avenida Paulista in the commercial capital of Sao Paulo Saturday, confronting military police who unleashed barrages of tear gas and rubber bullets after protesters pelted the Bank of Boston building with rocks and eggs.

Protest also erupted outside the US Embassy in Brasilia—which warned US citizens in the country to avoid coming to because of hostile demonstrations—and in Rio de Janeiro. In the northern city of Recife protesters covered the side of the US Consulate in red paint.

When Bush’s convoy reached the home of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva outside Brasilia Saturday, the line of armored-plated limousines was forced to speed past the front entrance, where hundreds of demonstrators had gathered, and go through a side gate. The protest was then broken up by military police.

As in Mar del Plata, security for the US president was intense, provoking further animosity from the Brazilian people. In addition to the small army of secret service and FBI agents as well as US military personnel accompanying Bush, the Brazilian government deployed 1,800 troops and police to protect him. Cellular telephone communications were jammed in a three-mile radius surrounding the US president, and surrounding Brazilian airspace was closed.

In deference to Bush’s deepening political crisis, the Brazilian president organized a press conference in which the two heads of state delivered statements, but accepted no questions from reporters. In Argentina, Bush was confronted by a White House press corps pressing him about his collapse in the opinion polls and on whether his chief aide Karl Rove would be forced to resign over his role in the CIA leak case.

Standing beside the Brazilian president, Bush made it clear that his 24-hour visit had done nothing to shift the Brazilian government’s position on the US trade agenda in Latin America. “He has got to be convinced, just like the people of America must be convinced, that a trade arrangement in our hemisphere is good for jobs, it’s good for the quality of life,” he said of “Lula.”

Da Silva is facing an intense political crisis over a roiling corruption scandal that is inseparably linked to his Workers Party government’s pro-capitalist policies. He denied that there had been any “deterioration of relations between Brazil and the US...On the contrary, our relations today are going through one of their best moments ever.”

In Brasilia, Bush delivered a right-wing speech to a select group of business executives, politicians and “youth leaders” in which he again promoted the idea of free market capitalism based upon “faith in the transformative power of freedom in individual lives.”

In an obvious attack on the rising opposition to US imperialism in the region, Bush derided what he termed an opposing “vision” 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 failure to provide for their people.”

The so-called “democratic progress of the past two decades” came in the wake of a decade of brutal military dictatorships brought to power with the direct aid of the CIA, one of whose directors during that period was the president’s father, George H.W. Bush.

The fall of these dictatorships was followed by the Latin American debt crisis and a period of US-backed free market reforms known as the “Washington Consensus.” This program involved wholesale privatizations, sharp cuts in social programs and sweeping deregulation of financial markets.

These policies, dictated to indebted governments by the International Monetary Fund and the major international banks, yielded massive profits for foreign investors, while resulting in a sharp growth in poverty and unemployment, stagnating production and an unprecedented increase in social polarization for Latin America. Today, the richest one-tenth of the continent’s population earns 48 percent of total income, while the poorest tenth earns only 1.6 percent.

For Bush to accuse Latin Americans of “blaming others for their own failure” in the context of this history—and the century of US imperialist exploitation of the continent that preceded it—is a measure of the arrogance that continues to dominate Washington’s relations with the lands south of the US border.

But the charge of “playing to fear,” coming from a US president who has for the past four years sought to terrorize the people of the United States and the world into accepting his policies by invoking the specter of terrorism, plumbs the depths of hypocrisy.

 

[I. Cold]

I wonder what it feels like to be hated by 2/3 of the world

 

[2-0-Sixx]

Bush is a very popular president; he is loved all across the globe! After leaving a chaotic Argentina with thousands of protesters rioting, Bush traveled to Brazil where he was met with love and affection!

I think it’s safe to say that Bush’s Latin America tour was a great success!

 

[2-0-Sixx]

 

[LadyTragik]

That was a good read....

“The man went away wounded. You could see defeat on his face.”

This is just the beginning...

For Bush to accuse Latin Americans of “blaming others for their own failure” in the context of this history—and the century of US imperialist exploitation of the continent that preceded it—is a measure of the arrogance that continues to dominate Washington’s relations with the lands south of the US border.

But the charge of “playing to fear,” coming from a US president who has for the past four years sought to terrorize the people of the United States and the world into accepting his policies by invoking the specter of terrorism, plumbs the depths of hypocrisy.

 

[EDJ]

^PEEPED YOUR MUSIC. DIggIN' YOUR FLOW.

 

[COPIUM]

goodread

 

[2-0-Sixx]

Great news for low-income families of Massachusetts:


A subsidiary of the Venezuelan national oil company will ship 12 million gallons of discounted home-heating oil to local charities and 45,000 low-income families in Massachusetts next month under a deal arranged by US Representative William D. Delahunt, a local nonprofit energy corporation, and Venezuela's president, White House critic Hugo Chávez.

The approximately $9 million deal will bring nine million gallons of oil to families and three million gallons to institutions that serve the poor, such as homeless shelters, said officials from Citizens Energy Corp., which is signing the contract. Families would pay about $276 for a 200-gallon shipment, a savings of about $184 and enough to last about three weeks.

The contract is to be signed Tuesday by officials from Citizens Energy, based in Boston, and CITGO, a Houston-based subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela SA. The contract was arranged after months of talks between Delahunt, a Quincy Democrat active in Latin American affairs, and Chávez, a leftist former paratrooper and fierce critic of the Bush administration.

''We recognized that we had an opportunity," Delahunt's spokesman, Steve Schwadron, said yesterday.

Chávez showed ''an inclination to do a humanitarian distribution" of oil, and poor families in Massachusetts had a ''desperate need" for relief from high home-heating prices, Schwadron said. He characterized the deal as one between ''a US company and two nonprofits to help them do more of what they already do, with terms that mean the price is good."

Delahunt was not available for comment yesterday.

Schwadron said the congressman did not get involved in the details of the contract, but had raised the issue with Chávez and helped connect the nonprofits with CITGO, which is owned by PDV America Inc., an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela SA, the national oil company of Venezuela.

When the discounted oil arrives early next month, Citizens Energy -- whose chairman and president, former US representative Joseph P. Kennedy II, also helped arrange the contract -- will screen recipients with the help of local organizations that serve the poor. Some 350 local dealers will then distribute three-fourths of the oil to local families.

MassEnergyConsumer Alliance, a nonprofit group that also offers discounted oil, will distribute or sell the remaining quarter to homeless shelters, food banks, and low-income housing groups, said Larry Chretien, the group's executive director. Recipients must apply for the help, he said.

Home heating oil prices are expected to increase by 30 percent to 50 percent this winter because of rising oil prices, Chretien said. Because funding for the federal Low Income Heating Assistance Program is expected to pay for only one delivery of heating oil to eligible households, the CITGO agreement could help ease the crunch on some families, he said.

''Fuel assistance is woefully underfunded, so this is a major shot in the arm for people who otherwise wouldn't get through the winter," Chretien said. He said he hoped the deal would present ''a friendly challenge" to US oil companies -- which recently reported record quarterly profits -- to use their windfall to help poor families survive the winter.

Some foreign-policy analysts said Chávez helped broker the deal in part as a jab at President Bush. Chávez has frequently belittled the White House, saying it is not doing enough to help the poor, and he has called Bush an ''assassin" and a ''crazy man." Now, he has helped arranged for 285,000 barrels of oil to arrive in Massachusetts at a 40 percent discount over the next four months. Each barrel contains 42 gallons.

''It is a slap in the face" to the Bush administration, said Larry Birns, executive director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a group that tracks Latin American politics and government. ''Chávez is involved in petro-diplomacy."

Chávez has drawn criticism from human rights groups for his treatment of political foes and curbs on media freedoms. But he has also become a hero to some on the left who say he has helped improve conditions for the poor in his country and drawn attention to US foreign policy in Iraq and Latin America.

On Friday, a US State Department spokesman declined to comment on the oil deal with Chávez.

Schwadron said Delahunt's involvement had nothing to do with Venezuela's strained relationship with the Bush administration and was meant as a specific effort to ease high heating costs for Bay State residents.

Massachusetts already gets a great deal of oil from Venezuela, Chretien said, and the deal with CITGO means only that the oil will be less expensive. He added that he has never been approached with such an offer from a US oil company.

''We did not negotiate foreign policy here," Schwadron said. ''We steered clear of that."

Kennedy said he was not concerned about Chávez's politics.

''You start parsing which countries' politics we're going to feel comfortable with, and only buying oil from them, then there are going to be a lot of people not driving their cars and not staying warm this winter," Kennedy said. ''There are a lot of countries that have much worse records than Venezuela. At the end of the day it's not our business to go choosing other peoples' leaders, particularly when they are duly-elected democratic leaders."

Kennedy said Delahunt has been working with Chávez ''for years now and has gone down there many times and developed a personal relationship with him."

Chávez has used his influence in the global market before.

In August, he offered discounted home-heating oil to poor communities in the United States after meeting in Caracas with the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

Taken from: The Boston Globe

 

[Dirty Shoez]

Just read that earlier today. More power to him. It would be wrong to legally force oil company execs to roll back their profits, but if foreign countries/companies want to do it on their own, that is a great thing.

 

[Raiders760]

Great sig 2-0-Sixx.

I dont understand why these people dont try to fix their own country? Do something instead of bitching about another countries president. Oh well this will never happen, i guess its just wishfull thinking. Try to go into a country and the people say its wrong, do nothing and its wrong too. Either way your're screwed.

 

[The Duke of Earl]

i think hugo chavez is fixin' his country , you know what other countries policies do effect the whole world .

 

[ColdBlooded]

 

[Dirty Shoez]

13 months too late.

 

[YoungVicious]

Chavez has done more to help the people of his country than Bush has done to help Americans.

But Bush calls him a dictator? Shit, at least Chavez won the popular vote in his country.