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11/05/2005:

"Thousands Protest Bush in Argentina, People's Summit Counters Free Trade Talks"

...JAMES PETRAS: Well, you have many years, not only under President Bush, but many years of pursuing this neo-liberal agenda of privatization of public enterprises, structural adjustment policies which reduce salaries and generate unemployment and cuts -- vast cuts in social spending. There's a whole series of issues: Promotion of agribusiness instead of small farmers; you have massive unemployment as a result of debt payments and the lack of public investment. There's a whole gamut of problems, which have emerged from the Washington Consensus of applying this neo-liberal policies which have had the effect of polarizing society between 1% of billionaires and 50%, 60%, 70% of people who've been impoverished.

So the demonstrations here are a response to the causes of poverty and unemployment. The official conference is calling for tackling the problems of unemployment and poverty, and this, of course, is the problem that they have created. That is, the governments and particularly the United States. I should mention here very clearly that, contrary to the Financial Times and other media, this is not an anti-American movement. The -- first of all, the Latin Americans are Americans in the broadest sense and, secondly, they are attacking a government, a policy, and an economic system. They are not attacking some abstraction called America. They're really attacking U.S. imperialism, and not the U.S. People.
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