Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (57604)	9/29/2004 2:42:38 PM
From: Skywatcher	Respond to of 89467

Nice to see that BUSH is SCARING THE HELL OUT OF ALL SOUTH AMERICA!....what a SURPRISE! You Scare Us * Bush is giving Latin America the willies By Carlos Fuentes, Carlos Fuentes is the author, most recently, of "Contra Bush," which will be translated into seven languages. LONDON — The United States is strong. Latin America is weak. This is the basic truth that shapes their relationship. There is no irrational animosity toward the U.S. in Latin America. There is a measure of suspicion balanced by enormous admiration for the culture of Herman Melville to Walt Whitman to William Faulkner, of Hollywood and jazz, of Eugene O'Neill to Arthur Miller. Nor is there envy of the United States. Latin America is deeply aware of its cultural values. Our personality is not assailed by gringo fashions. We absorb and adapt to the cultures of the world, including that of the U.S. The problem lies in foreign policy. Too often, the United States is seen as a benevolent Dr. Jekyll at home and a malevolent Mr. Hyde abroad. The wars against Mexico (1846-1848) and Spain (1898), Teddy Roosevelt's "big stick," Woodrow Wilson's well-intentioned but counterproductive intervention in Mexico during its revolution, incessant and arrogant meddling in Central America. Not an easy menu to swallow. One moment shines through, however: Franklin Roosevelt's "good neighbor" policy, his decision to win Latin American support during World War II through negotiation rather than confrontation. And after that war, a limpid admiration for the Roosevelt and Truman policies of international cooperation through organizations based on the rule of law. "We all have to recognize," Harry Truman said in 1945, "[that] no matter how great our strength … we must deny ourselves the license to do always as we please." The United Nations was a creation of U.S. diplomacy. Its principles were clearly stated and universally accepted. Even when the U.S. violated them in practice during the Cold War, the principles were never renounced. This brings us to what Latin Americans find so shocking about the Bush administration. Instead of multilateralism, unilateralism. Instead of diplomacy and negotiation and a search for consensus and the use of force only as a last resort, the barbaric principle of preventive war. U.S. support for brutal dictatorships in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay in the name of anti-communism caused great suffering. The overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala and Salvador Allende in Chile. The Central American wars in the 1980s and their high body counts. These Latin American grievances were balanced by a perception that the U.S. never formally renounced the principles of international law and the hope that it would reaffirm them again. What is alarming about the Bush administration is its formal denunciation of the basic rules of international intercourse. With us or against us, President Bush declares starkly and simplistically. The U.S. acts according to its own interests, "not those of an illusory international community," asserts national security advisor Condoleezza Rice. Is it strange that many Latin Americans should see in these statements an aggressive denial of the only leverage we have in dealing with Washington: the rule of law, the balance obtained through diplomatic negotiation? Not only out of self-interest, but also as participants in the global society, many Latin Americans worry that U.S. unilateralism is incompatible with the multilateralist nature of globalization. This was the warning issued by former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo at last year's Harvard commencement. Add Chilean President Ricardo Lagos' perception that the world community is postponing the urgent global agenda of creating an adequate social-program fund, strengthening human rights and overcoming the chasms between haves and have-nots. And top it with former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's plea to the French National Assembly: Fight vigorously against terror but also against the underlying causes of terror: hunger, ignorance, inequality and distorted perceptions of other cultures. Fortunately, these composite voices of Latin American statesmen found a powerful echo in North America, when former President Clinton warned that you do not defeat terror if you do not figure out how to work with an interdependent world. These voices, these warnings, these hopes have been disowned by the Bush administration. "With us or against us," Bush has said. It hardly matters. Offensive as these words are to the international community, I believe that Latin America, in particular, will not forget the outright deceptions of the Bush era: the shifting rationales for an unnecessary war and a disastrous postwar occupation; the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; the targeting of one tyrant (Saddam Hussein) among many (Kim Jong II, Robert Mugabe, Moammar Kadafi); the utter lack of foresight that an occupied Iraq would rise against the foreign occupiers and try to fashion its own political future out of its complex religious, tribal and cultural realities, all of them ignored by the neoconservatives in Washington. But while not forgetting these mistakes and deceptions, we would put the accent on the restoration of the rule of law, the thrust of cooperation and the attention due to 3 billion human beings living in poverty, ignorance and illness. When Bush and his bellicose minions are gone, these problems will still be around. We in Latin America should try to bring them forward as the real agenda for this troubling century.

To: stockman_scott who wrote (57604)	9/29/2004 3:19:00 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 89467

Secret Service ousts seven anti-Bush hecklers By Dana Milbank The Washington Post COLMAR, Pa. — Secret Service agents are famous for their willingness to take a bullet for the president. Less famous is their willingness to take out a heckler for the president. Officially, the Secret Service does not concern itself with unarmed, peaceful demonstrators who pose no danger to the commander in chief. But that policy was inoperative Thursday when seven AIDS activists who heckled President Bush were shoved and pulled from the room — some by their hair, one by her bra straps — and then arrested for disorderly conduct and detained for an hour. After Bush campaign bouncers handled the evictions, Secret Service agents, accompanied by Bush's personal aide, supervised the arrests and detention of the activists, and blocked the media from access to the hecklers. The Bush campaign has made unprecedented efforts to control access to its events. People sometimes are required to sign oaths of support before attending events with Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney. At times, buses of demonstrators are diverted by police to idle in parking lots while supporters are waved in. And the Secret Service has played an unusual role; one agent cooperated with a plan by the Bush campaign last month to prevent former Sen. Max Cleland, D-Ga., from handing a letter to the agent outside Bush's Texas ranch. The seven activists, with the AIDS group Act Up Philadelphia, signed up as volunteers for the event at a warehouse in suburban Philadelphia. They were admitted Thursday to the Bush speech, which they quickly disrupted with chants of "Bush lies, people die," and signs saying, "Bush: Global AIDS Liar." Bush forced a smile as the seven interrupted his speech in waves. As the crowd drowned them out with chants of "Four More Years," the demonstrators were led roughly from the room by event ushers as a few attendees shouted "traitors." Outside, plainclothes Secret Service agents, joined by Blake Gottesman, Bush's personal aide, circled the demonstrators. One uniformed Secret Service agent complained to a colleague that "the press is having a field day" with the disruption — and the agents clamped down quickly. Journalists were told that if they sought to approach the demonstrators, they would not be allowed to return to the event site. One agent said that there was a "different set of rules" for reporters who did not seek out the activists. In the confusion, even Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., had to cool his heels for 10 minutes before the Secret Service would let him leave the building. The seven hecklers were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, then kept out of sight until Bush departed. One of them, Jen Cohn, said Secret Service agents interrogated the demonstrators and stood by as a police officer handled the arrests. Tom Mazur, a spokesman for the Secret Service in Washington, said dealing with hecklers is the job of "the host committee and local enforcement" officers. "The Secret Service normally doesn't get involved." Mazur referred questions about the event to the Philadelphia field office, where the agent in charge was unavailable for comment. seattletimes.nwsource.com