Argentina versus the USA

[malaise]

Police attacked protesting teachers last week and hit a Chemistry teacher in the head. He died later. Across Argentina, hundreds of thousands of people are on the streets demonstrating. Unions shut down the country.
Meanwhile Bushco is killing thousands with impunity.


<snip>
Argentina was brought to a near standstill on Monday amid protests over the killing of a teacher in the south-west of the country last week.

Tens of thousands took to the streets of Buenos Aires and other cities.

Schools closed, public transport was halted and banks and many offices shut for a couple of hours.

Carlos Fuentealba, a chemistry teacher, was killed during a protest over pay after being hit by a tear gas canister fired by police.

Public transport stopped for a couple hours on Monday and banks and some offices shut their doors in a protest called by the country's main trade union movement.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6539617.stm

[Selatius]

1. I doubt that sense of community/solidarity exists here in the US.

If anything, the people the world over could learn something about democracy by watching the people of Argentina protest. One question though: What was the role of the US government in precipitating this killing?

[malaise]

2. That's more World Bank/IMF

OK call it the Washington consensus, although Argentina has been doing her thing since their economy collapsed as a result of those policies. Still, many governments in developing countries continue to self impose restrictions on social spending including teachers' salaries.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Note the timing, too. Just months before a general election.

If all hell breaks loose, and the right-wing can agitate to get some harsher law and order going, they might be able to knock leftist President Kirchner off the perch, which would be pure bliss for _Bush.

You may remember he sent a nasty little State Undersecretary down there to bitch about the fact they allowed Hugo Chavez the use of one of their large soccer stadiums for a rally at the same time _Bush was just across the river, in Uruguay, on his abjectly failed Latin American tour.

On edit, here's his photo. Nicholas Burns, Under Secretary of State:

Posted on Sat, Mar. 24, 2007
STATE DEPARTMENT
U.S. blasts Argentina for Chávez rally
At a trade meeting, a top State Department official scolded Argentina for hosting the Venezuelan president's anti-Bush rally.
BY PABLO BACHELET
[e-mail]

WASHINGTON -- In a rare public rebuke, a top U.S. official has complained about Buenos Aires' decision to let Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez use a stadium to attack President Bush as the U.S. president visited nearby Uruguay.

While Bush pointedly ignored the leftist Chávez on his weeklong tour of Latin America, Nicholas Burns, the State Department's undersecretary of political affairs, unleashed some candid criticism of ArgentinaThursday.

The subject: Chávez's use of a football stadium in Buenos Aires to attack Bush as a ''political corpse'' on March 9.

Speaking at the Council of the Americas, a group that promotes more trade and contacts with Latin America, Burns scolded Buenos Aires in his opening remarks while looking at Argentine Ambassador José Octavio Bordón, who was seated on the front row.

''I'm sorry that that rally was held there on the same day that our president was in Montevideo,'' Burns said, according to a recording of the speech posted on the council's website. ``I didn't think that was the right thing to do. And I'm sorry to say that, Mr. Ambassador, but that's the feeling that everyone in our government has about that.''
(snip/...)

http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:L5yGZqHwYfEJ:www.miamiherald.com/579/story/51505.html+Nicholas+Burns+Argentina+Bush+stadium&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us



Waaaaaaa.

[malaise]

4. Won't happen

That photo has me in stitches. :rofl: :rofl: