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Originally posted by titmowse
here's another great read:
Brewing Poverty And Violence In El Salvador
Mark Engler, a writer based in Brooklyn, has previously worked with the Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress in San José, Costa Rica, as well as the Public Intellectuals Program at Florida Atlantic University.
In advance of his visits to several Latin American countries, President Bush has focused public attention on U.S. aid to developing countries. As a result, the real purpose of his tour has gone unnoticed. Bush is using his time in Mexico, Peru, and El Salvador to promote neoliberal economic policies that actually serve to exacerbate inequality and undermine democratic institutions in countries throughout the region.
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Amazing that someone can say something and then its believed by others without researching the *facts*
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Originally posted by titmowse
El Salvador, in particular, provides a case study in how Bush's version of economic "modernization" has failed the poor.
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Bush's version? Really? when did he become the president of El Salvador?
titmowes, you shouldn't buy into this "my country is ruined because of the billions of dollars the US gives us" clap trap.
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Originally posted by titmowse
Geography has never been George W.'s strong suit,
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really? care to prove this myth?
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Originally posted by titmowse
but one might expect him to try being sensitive to El Salvador's human rights concerns, given that a U.N. Truth Commission blamed the right-wing governments supported by his father for 90 percent of the approximately 80,000 murders committed through the country's civil war.
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Is this the same UN who said Saddam is disarming?
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Originally posted by titmowse
Instead, President Bush's visit falls on the day normally reserved for commemoration of Archbishop Oscar Romero's assassination. The army's death squads gunned down Romero, a stalwart defender of the country's poorest citizens, during a mass on March 24, 1980.
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what's your point? you know how many foriegn white guys come to America on Martin Luther King's birthday?
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Originally posted by titmowse
Ten years after the signing of the Chapultepec Peace Accords ended more than a decade of bloody conflict,
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You mean when the left and right of el salvador agreed to stop fighting each other?
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Originally posted by titmowse
U.S.-supported policies continue to impede progress toward human rights. Rather than atoning for its sponsorship of Cold War crimes, the United States has overseen a type of economic transformation that punishes the same communities most victimized during El Salvador's time of violence.
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Wrong. Liberals are so good at making claims. They should attempt to tell the truth instead.
The US sponsored no war crimes. And the punishing "economic transformation" was better than the old communist system they had.
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Originally posted by titmowse
Under the supervision of the IMF and World Bank in Washington, DC, the conservative Salvadoran governments of the 1990s hacked social services and sold off state enterprises in telecommunications and utilities to private interests.
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hahaha, yeah, that evil IMF and world bank! lets all run out in the steets and protest!!! How dare the IMF and world bank demand el salvador to clean up its communist act before giving it billions of dollars. oh, and Bush wasn't our president in the '90s (just so you know)
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Originally posted by titmowse
Businesses dramatically raised costs to consumers.
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someone should tell this assclown that if if you raise the price too high, you'll go out of business. If people keep paying, then its still at a level considered fair.
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Originally posted by titmowse
At the same time, the government led drives to bust the unions that fight to keep wages in the "modernizing" economy from falling to sweatshop levels.
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this is a lie. the communist unions want to break the business there.
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Originally posted by titmowse
Over the past months it announced the firing of 10,000 workers in the public sector -- a dramatic loss of jobs in El Salvador's small labor economy.
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did it also announce the hiring of 10,000 new workers? because if not, the article is slanted or the workers were not needed in the first place.
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Originally posted by titmowse
Contrary to the objectives of the U.N.'s International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico, the forum which prompted Bush to increase foreign aid, these economic policies worsen living conditions for the majority of Salvadorans. The United Nations Development Program reports that El Salvador's increasing levels of income inequality rank among the highest in the world. Even the official government measures show that half of the country lives in poverty. Many Salvadorans can provide for their basic needs only because of money sent back from relatives who have emigrated to the United States. Indeed, with a regressive tax structure and a lack of public assets creating huge debts for the government, the economy as a whole depends on the $1.9 billion a year in remittances for its survival.
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the UN keeps being mentioned here as something credible. odd.
some countries are poor, some are rich. get over it. At least the rich are giving them billions in aid. (oh, wait. is that evil? its so hard to tell with the liberal crowd)
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Originally posted by titmowse
Democracy is also a casualty in the neoliberal regime. Members of the Bush administration have embraced the conservative ARENA party as their ideological brethren. Bush himself praises his Salvadoran counterpart, Francisco "Paco" Flores, as a "brilliant young leader" and a "breath of fresh air." But ARENA frequently shows contempt for free speech and the rights of opposition parties. When the rival FMLN gained a plurality in the Legislative Assembly in 2000, ARENA led right-wing parties in refusing to let them assume the presidency of that body. More recently, after a prominent health-care union led several days of street marches protesting the January cutbacks, they found their offices occupied by police. These are exactly the type of abuses that Bush would need to remedy if he were serious about his proclaimed desire to "strengthen democratic institutions" in El Salvador.
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so then we should be embracing the communists? because things were so good under their rule? I suggest you read a little history.
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Originally posted by titmowse
In the context of economic turmoil and political abuses, human rights have again become endangered. Due to an epidemic of street crime, which has given the country one of the highest per capita murder rates in the hemisphere, life for most citizens is as dangerous now as during the war.
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Well then perhaps the people of el salvador should stop killing each other. are you really blaming this on Bush?
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Originally posted by titmowse
ARENA persistently attempts to undermine the Human Rights Ombudsman, an office created by the Peace Accords as a major institutional safeguard against future abuses. And the process of reckoning with past trauma has been difficult. Against the advice of organizations such as Amnesty International, the right rushed an amnesty law through the Assembly in the wake of the U.N. Truth Commission report detailing many of the war's horrors. With few exceptions, those responsible for atrocities never faced justice.
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those responsible on both sides never faced justice. Both sides's leaders were guilty and agreed they didn't want to go to prison. I'm sure you think president bush had a vote in that assembly too.