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go hand in hand. Cheney kills a hundred thousand people without a thought, meanwhile padding the pockets of his own company with billions of taxpayer dollars--the future solvency of the pension system for our elders, the money for universal health care, and good schools. He steals big, and all the Repuli-cons imitate him, from Wolfowitz to Cunningham to Abramoff to Ney and Delay, the entire party gone egregiously corrupt, padding personal accounts, and throwing fat, do-nothing, government contracts to their cronies. It was the same in South America. The corrupt rich incurred the World Bank loans, ripped off the money, and left the poor to pay the debt, in the reduction or elimination of even the most fundamental life services, like water, and certainly in the ability of the country to improve its economy and social conditions. Enter the global corporate predators--to enslave the work force in sweatshops, and rip off the country's natural resources.
This is why South American countries are rebelling against the World Bank, and have formed their own bank, the Bank of the South, to help each other get out from under onerous World Bank/IMF debt. It started with Venezuela using some of its oil profits to bail out Argentina (which was a basketcase, due to World Bank/IMF policy) on easy terms that promoted social justice. Argentina is now well on the way to recovery. Venezuela thus created a healthy trading partner for itself, Brazil and other countries. Bolivia and Ecuador will be next. And Paraguay just joined. The World Bank is how global corporate predators shoved "free trade" deals on these countries (get the country into deep debt, then rape the work force, rip off the natural resources, and dump first world products on their markets, to kill local enterprise). The answer of South America's new leftist (majorityist) governments: Mercosur, the South American trade group, and probable precursor to a South American "Common Market" and common currency (to get off the US dollar).
The World Bank is finished in South America. So is "free trade." Country after country are rejecting them. The latest "free trade" deal is by far the most corrupt--with Colombia, where a huge rightwing paramilitary scandal has erupted, with the top echelon of the Uribe government involved in drug trafficking, mass murder of union organizers, leftists and peasants, and plots against the Andean democracies (Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador), larded with $4 billion in military aid from the Bush Junta. But Colombia is a dinosaur. It is very isolated. And that became very obvious when Bush visited Latin America recently, and got publicly lectured by Latin American leaders, from Brazil to Mexico, on the SOVEREIGNTY of Latin American countries. (The corporatist president of Mexico even mentioned Venezuela as an example. I was amazed. I think they all know that the main plotting in Colombia was against Chavez and Venezuela.)
You wonder why our war profiteering corporate news monopolies demonize Hugo Chavez as a "dictator" (a laughable charge--no more valid than calling FDR a "dictator," as the Reichwing did then)? Because notions of Latin American self-determination and regional cooperation are coming out of Venezuela, one of the healthiest democracies in South America, where THE PEOPLE defeated a fascist military coup in 2002, and demanded the return of Constitutional government and their elected leaders--the President and the National Assembly. So Hugo Chavez owes his life--and his power as president--TO THE PEOPLE, who elected him and then defended him. It is THESE PEOPLE--not Chavez alone--and like-minded people in other South American countries--who are effecting a sea change in Latin American politics and economics. The Bush State Department, and its echo chamber, the corporate press, try to personalize this vast and revolutionary political movement, by calling up old stereotypes--cigar-chomping, gun-toting communist insurgents; South American "strong men," etc. But this is a DEMOCRATIC revolution, and profoundly visionary--often led by the indigenous (as with Evo Morales in Bolivia*). It is the biggest threat to the global corporate predators that has ever come along. And they focus on Chavez so that WE won't see what's really going on, and get any ideas from it.
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*(In Bolivia, Bechtel Corp. came in (invited by corrupt fascists) and privatized the water in Cochabamba, then jacked up the prices to the poorest of the poor--even charging poor peasants for collecting rainwater! The Bolivians rose up--the uprising that led to Evo Morales' election as president--and threw Bechtel out of their country. Very scary stuff to global corporate predators. The latest from Bolivia is that the big landowners and fascists in the oil/gas rich provinces--in cahoots with the oil companies, of course, and probably with the rightwing paramilitaries of Colombia (and the Bush Junta)--are plotting to split their provinces off from the federal government, headed by Morales, so that the poor gain no benefit from Bolivia's rich resources. They are threatening insurrection. Morales has his hands full. But I think that the OAS, which now has many new leftist (majorityist) governments as members, and the consensus of leaders surrounding Bolivia (Brazil, Argentina, Chile) may work to keep Bolivia whole. Venezuela and Ecuador will also be influential in what happens in Bolivia. Peru has a very corrupt "free trade" leftist in charge--but there is a big (real) leftist movement pressuring that government, as there is in Paraguay (where the Bush Cartel is rumored to have purchased a large landholding, possibly as a launching pad for paramilitary wars against the democracies, to get control of their oil, gas and other resources)).
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