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the NYT reporting it with a straight face?
"President Bush arrives here on Thursday with an energy partnership plan to create jobs and decrease poverty and inequality..."
If the NYT was into honest reporting any more, they would say Bush's "ALLEGED plan to create jobs and decrease poverty and inequality." Where else on earth has the Bush Junta done anything to "create jobs" or to "decrease poverty and inequality"? There is no evidence at all that that is what they intend ANYWHERE. So it deserves to be treated with skepticism, on its face. The way to handle this--if you want to be polite about it--is to use quotations. "A plan to create jobs and decrease poverty," according State Dept. spokeswoman _____. But the NYT doesn't even make a pretense at objectivity here. They accept the Bush Junta's WORD, as FACT, that their "plan" for Latin America is to "decrease poverty."
What a load of crap!
What Bush is really doing is taking a $4 BILLION check--written against future U.S. revenues, and adding to our $10 TRILLION deficit--to the worst of the worst fascist thugs and murderers in Colombia. But, guess what? Even the filth that Bush hangs out with are getting arrested and indicted in Colombia, in huge scandals right now about rightwing paramilitary drug trafficking and murder, including a plot to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. (That recently came out.) Bush's favorite fascist regime--that of Pres. Uribe of Colombia--is being rocked by these scandals, even as we speak. (To Uribe's credit, he apparently refused to participate in Bushite plots against Chavez, but he is nevertheless head of an extremely corrupt regime, which has bled more money from U.S. taxpayers into rightwing paramilitary thuggery, murder and drug running than anyone except maybe Osama bin Laden.)
Bush is NOT going to Latin America to "decrease poverty and inequality"! If he were, he would be visiting Venezuela, and congratulating the people there for their success at restoring their democracy and their Constitution after the US-backed rightwing military coup attempt in 2002, and he would be apologizing for supporting the coup; and he would be visiting Bolivia, and congratulating the people there for electing the first indigenous president of Bolivia, socialist Evo Morales, and he would be apologizing for Bechtel Corp.'s behavior (privatizing the water in Cochabamba, and then jacking up the prices to the poorest of the poor, even charging poor peasants for collecting rainwater*); and he would be visiting Ecuador, and congratulating the people there for the success of their democracy, in giving a 60% electoral victory to US-educated leftist economist Rafael Correa, and he would be offering to remove the US air base that Correa and most Ecuadorans want removed from their territory; and he would be visiting Argentina and congratulating them for getting out from under World Bank debt, and would be apologizing for the part the US played in destroying Argentina's economy; and he would be visiting Chile, and congratulating the people there for electing socialist Michele Batchelet, who was tortured by US-backed dictator Pinochet, and he would be apologizing for US support of Pinochet, and would be promising to dismantle Guantanamo Bay and to disavow torture and to re-commit the US to human rights and to international law.
In Latin America, it has been the poor who have most suffered from torture and 'disappearances.' It is leftists and union leaders who get murdered. And it is they--the tortured, the murdered, the 'disappeared'--who have fought for a "decrease" of "poverty and inequality." Not the Bush Cartel. A disavowal of torture would be the most meaningful and helpful thing that a US president could do, to promote a "decrease" of "poverty and inequality." Just stop killing the poor. Just stop supporting rightwing thugs and dictators who brutally suppress the poor in their aspirations to democracy and a decent life.
But that isn't Bush's purpose--decreasing poverty and inequality. And we know it. And the NYT knows it--the bastards.
Bush's purpose is to conspire with fascist elements in Guatemala, Colombia and Mexico toward further repression of the poor, and to try to drive a wedge between Brazil and Uruguay (his other two stops), to slow the momentum toward a South American "Common Market" and common currency. That may be the price that Bush's Corporate puppetmasters are extracting from Bush for their continued propping up of the Bush/Cheney junta (including keeping its two main criminals out of prison). And this is a pretty picture, indeed: While maimed US soldiers suffer in their own urine in military hospitals, amidst rats and cockroaches, and more of them are blown up every day in Bush's "surge" in Iraq, and the US government goes into meltdown and bankruptcy, our shitty little dictator is off to South America to do the dirty work for the Corporate Rulers, to try to topple democratic governments, and prevent cooperation among them, for the betterment of their people.
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*(The people of Bolivia rose up and threw Bechtel out of their country, and elected Evo Morales--a leader of the movement--as President. THAT is how to "decrease poverty and inequality" in Latin America!)
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