I could be wrong…but I don’t think they dig us down in South America. Perhaps they should get Scott McClellan down there to explain to Argentina how they ‘think’ they dislike America, but are really just experiencing a form of dimentia brought on by an overload of ‘liberal media’.
MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina – More than 1,000 demonstrators angry about President Bush’s policies clashed with police, shattered storefronts and torched businesses Friday, marring the inauguration of the Summit of the Americas as leaders began debating creation of one of the world’s largest free trade zones.
The violence reflected the often violent, worldwide debate on free trade as the United States and Mexico pushed to relaunch talks on creating a free trade area stretching from Canada to Chile. Past summits on free trade — including last year’s summit of Asian-Pacific leaders in Chile — have drawn bitter opposition and similar angry protests.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez emerged as the most strident opponent of the plan, addressing more than 10,000 protesters hours before the summit convened in this normally tranquil seaside resort.
Chavez vowed to defeat the Free Trade Area of the Americas, or FTAA, once and for all. Speaking before a six-story banner of revolutionary Che Guevara, Chavez urged the throng — including soccer great Diego Maradona and Bolivian presidential hopeful Evo Morales — to help him fight free trade.
“Only united can we defeat imperialism and bring our people a better life,” he said, adding: “Here, in Mar del Plata, FTAA will be buried!”
Before Chavez’s speech, demonstrators flooded the streets, shouting “Get out Bush!” and “Fascist Bush! You are the terrorist!”
Mexican President Vicente Fox said the FTAA proposal would move forward anyway because 29 of the 34 nations taking part in the summit were considering cobbling together their own FTAA — without opponents Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.
As leaders inaugurated the two-day summit to work out their differences on free trade, a smaller group of protesters threatened a barricade of riot police, prompting authorities to fire tear gas into the crowd.
The protesters, armed with large wooden clubs, began smashing storefront windows and setting at least one bank on fire just outside the gated summit security zone. One restaurant with anti-Bush posters plastered across its windows was untouched.
Car sirens wailed and residents — including elderly people and children — fled as protesters launched rocks with slingshots and threw sharpened sticks at police. They also set fire to U.S. flags, using them as fuel for bonfires.
More than 50 people were detained, police said. It was unclear if there were injuries.
Ramon Madrid, a hotel manager, hurriedly closed up.
“I don’t like Bush, but this is too much. There is no need for violence,” Madrid said.
Top-level negotiators at the summit have so far failed to agree on key language aimed at relaunching talks as soon as April for the proposed FTAA — an ambitious proposal originally raised in 1994 at the first Americas summit in Miami.
The trade zone would rival the European Union as the world’s largest, but its creation has been stalled for years amid bickering over U.S. farm subsidies and other obstacles.
Chavez and protesters argue that free trade is being forced on Latin American countries. He has instead pushed for an anti-FTAA deal based on socialist ideals. He has used Venezuela’s oil wealth to push for regional solidarity, offering fuel with preferential financing to various Caribbean and Latin American countries.
Venezuela is a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and is the world’s fifth largest oil exporter as well as a major supplier to the U.S. market.
Chavez also regularly claims the United States is trying to overthrow his government, something the U.S. denies.
Joking about his rivalry with Bush, the Venezuelan president has said he might try to sneak up and scare the U.S. president during the summit.
When asked how he would react to a close encounter with Chavez, Bush said he would be polite.
“That’s what the American people expect their president to do, is to be a polite person,” he said. “And if I run across him, I will do just that.”
After meeting with Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, Bush made no mention of free trade but said the two had a frank talk about Argentina’s struggle to extricate itself from its financial meltdown.
Kirchner led a difficult renegotiation of more than $100 billion in public debt that was the largest sovereign default in history.
“The president was quite frank,” Bush said.
Some 40 percent of Argentina’s 36 million people remain in poverty, and many blame trade liberalization for destroying local industries and causing a flood of cheap imports.
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Associated Press Writers Alan Clendenning, Dan Molinski, Nestor Ikeda and Vivian Sequera contributed to this report from Mar del Plata.
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http://www.summit-americas.org
They like Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez – and they deserve them Chris !!
I don’t think it’s all of them. Folks elsewhere in the world are fond of their America hatin’.
I wish we were allowed to visit Cuba, I would like to see for myself what the country is like.
Karl,
Isn’t there isn’t a penitentiary/prison near you? There is another way to “feel” what Cuba is like without leaving the safety of the U.S. You need to find an abandoned crack house and a dominatrix and spend the weekend there. That is a good start.
It’s a beautiful island – lots of Cubans, old cars, poor folk. Trade sanctions are all that’s keeping it from being a player…and that boils down to ‘Castro dead yet?’
China is communist and we trade with them…of course that whole ‘communism will eat your children and turn up your thermostat when you’re not looking’ song and dance got old once tens of thousands Americans fought and died in that bullshit war in Vietnam.
China is on the other side of the world. Cuba is right next door. Hence, China-good, Cuba-bad. That’s how simple it all is.
What might happen in the next ten years (I really think you’ll see this), is the Democrats and Republicans splitting up the ‘Commie-hatin’ and Dems trash China exclusively, leaving Cuba for the GOP to continue blathering on about.
I say Castro dies when he’s 136 years old, and around that time you’ll call the 800-number on the back of a phone bill and someone in China will take the call. The call center is situated in a former factory that produced telephones that sold for $6.43 at a Greensboro WallMart in 2003. 87,056 people in the USA got rid of the phone after accidentally hanging up on the person they were talking to with their cheeks. In 2005 the factory closed down and moved to Cambodia as workers became too expensive. The price of a phone in 2015 is $4.89 at the Greensboro WalMart, and 293,098 people in the USA got rid of the one they had purchased because it would hang up on them mid-conversation.
In Cuba, Fidel Castro is very old and hungry for chocolate and ice cream. His diabetes does not allow for much of that, but that gap is filled by his hareem of women he calls ‘well wishers’. Some homegrown, others imported from Asia and Aruba, none are allowed to leave. On a hot Friday afternoon he’s carried up a flight of stairs to the stage.
These times confuse el presidente, causing him to resist and flail his arms and legs. One whip of his head backwards catches one of his handlers in the eye, green hat falls off of Fidel’s head, 30 feet down between the stairs. When they get to the top he calms down and another green hat is put on his head.
They seat him on the stage in a chair with a seatbelt, green, to keep him from falling out of it. The back of his uniform, below each shoulder, is a hook that hitches to the chair as well. A crowd has been gathered for an hour already before the curtain is drawn.
RT?
Crack house and Domantrix? Where do I sign up?
RT:
You say Cuba is like a prison, wont the US be similar if certain people get their wish to build a fence around the United states. You know keep all those women who want abortions in the US. Just a thought fences keep things in as well as they keep things out.
Chris:
It seems silly at this point not to trade with Cuba, seems like the only thing standing in the way are the Cuban expats who want Fidel overthrown.
Crack house and Domantrix? Where do I sign up?
Easy, take a boat to Cuba and tell them you won’t be missed here in the U.S. and that you are a stong worker.
You say Cuba is like a prison, wont the US be similar if certain people get their wish to build a fence around the United states.
The prison reference is a nod to removal of persoanl freedom and the freedom of self determination. The fence is about national and local security, and bureaucracy (we chould know who is living in the U.S. so they can pay taxes).
You know keep all those women who want abortions in the US.
That guy jumped the boarder with a motorcycle, if these chicks want a abortion bad enough they can clear the fence on a honda.
It seems silly at this point not to trade with Cuba
Trade what? Casto has all the wealth. How many cigars do we need, really?
seems like the only thing standing in the way are the Cuban expats who want Fidel overthrown.
Yeah, all those pesky (real)torture victims trying to seek justice and free their people from enslavement. Why do they have to be so noisy?
Elian gonzalas’s cousins did not look like torture victims. As far as trading with Cuba why not let people go there if they want?
I will have to mull the rest of your responses. Talk to you later.
Elian gonzalas’s cousins did not look like torture victims.
How do you know those were really his relatives?
As far as trading with Cuba why not let people go there if they want?
Because they probably will never been seen or heard from again.
Like I said, China is communist and they control the people in ways that wouldn’t fly here either. My website probably wouldn’t be acceptable if I were Chinese.
We provide the lifeblood for each others’ countries through the jobs created by our high amount of annual trade.
If sugarcane can be grown in Cuba, the people would bennefit greatly. Produce, coffee beans, cotton…they’re all natural and legal means to an end for a great many Cubans.
Keep an eye on sugar futures over the next three years. Brazil is keeping more and more of theirs to fuel their automobiles. Their cars run on half gas and half sugar ethanol. Cuba becomes a player in the sugar market, a need is filled and the people bennefit.
Ronald Reagan said the best social program is a job. All this talk about what Castro does to his people isn’t what it’s about. It’s about the size and production capacity of the country, and being miniscule compared to China or any number of other countries deficient in some humanitarian way…it’s not worth it to go through the trouble of making that happen.
Also, Castro is quite predictable at this point, and while Iraq is across the ocean, Cuba is right there. And if Castro’s gone, these people can’t be all that happy about the USA, say they get their hands on some copies of the Koran.
The devil you know…something like that.