Posted on 10/25/2005 2:06:02 PM PDT by Kitten Festival
Latin America: A weekend march by 5,000 Bolivians in favor of a free trade pact with the U.S. got little attention. But it was a clear signal to step up commerce in a troubled region we often don't know what to do about.
Bolivia is the poorest country in South America. The prospect of a growing free-trade movement, coming from humble factory workers, is startling. It surprised even other Bolivians who often hear anti-free trade rhetoric.
After all, just about the only thing we ever hear about Bolivia is that a far-leftist, Evo Morales, leads in the presidential polls for elections in December. His 28% support is atrociously low, but in a crowded field of candidates, it's enough to win.
Morales is the indigenous leader of Bolivia's coca farmers who hates free trade, plays divisive ethnic politics, campaigns to nationalize energy and has no intention of cooperating in the war on drugs. He's also dangerously close to Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, two anti-U.S. troublemakers with designs on the region.
That's why factory workers literally banging on the U.S. embassy gate for free trade had such resonance. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
--tnat's the picture I'd wear on a t-shirt--
I just LOVE Che Guevara tee-shirts.
They are a trick.
Those tee-shirts are how we trick clueless diptard idiots into voluntarily identifying themselves as imbeciles, thereby saving the rest of you the 30 seconds or so of vapid conversation it would otherwise take to independently make the appropriate assessment.
So, the next time you see a Che shirt, thank us FReepers for keeping this brilliant trick going. Oh, and do not try to engage the wearer of the stupid Che shirt into any sort of conversation. You will only come away from it irritated.
Viva Che!
That's pretty much what I was going to say, Bon. If it happened in Washington and it was anti-American it would be billed as a million man march.
The only thing Evo has to offer is coca. He tells his people that producing oil and gas is slavery, and that coca is authentic to Bolivian culture. He tells his people that laws against drug use and energy investments are both efforts to enslave them.
And so his mobs have driven the police out of the hills, and have shut down construction of a pipeline to the sea.
Chile had offered them pipeline right-of-way to the Pacific, and Evo has demanded that Bolivia go to war against Chile to seize the area by force.
His mobs had the capital surrounded and cut off from the outside world recently. He's insane, he's violent, he's backed by Chavez, and he is within arm's reach of seizing the Bolivian presidency. This December he will be president.
LOL! You're a genius!
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