President Bush, in world opinion the most unpopular American president in history, traveled to Latin America last week to sell the idea of “free trade.” But the people of Latin America know what the corporate globalists' idea of “free trade” really means, and they are no longer buying what the United States is selling. They are smarter than we are.

According to Mr. Perkins, if the EHM's cannot enlist the cooperation of foreign leaders, “jackals” working for the CIA come in to finish the job. He asserts that “jackals” assassinated recalcitrant presidents Jaime Roldos of Ecuador and Omar Torrijos of Panama, both by means of fiery plane crashes, because they “opposed that fraternity of corporate, government and banking heads whose goal is global empire.” If the jackals cannot assassinate their target, as in Iraq, the military is brought in, he says, and we go to war.

Perkins writes that part of his job as an EHM was to create exaggerated economic models of how the GNP of a country would benefit from dams or oil exploration or ??? Leaders would borrow money from the IMF or the World Bank to finance the cost of such development, but it was required that American corporations such as Bechtel and Halliburton be hired to do the work. Consequently, most of the borrowed money never really left American pockets. It went almost directly from the IMF or the World Bank into the coffers of Halliburton, Bechtel, or other huge international corporations, although it can be assumed cooperative leaders derived personal as well as political benefits from their willingness to sell out the best interests of their countries for the enrichment of American corporations.

Third World countries paying First World contractors' rates almost guarantees the loans cannot be repaid by the debtor nations, so America takes her pound of flesh in the form of favorable U.N. votes, or we confiscate resources. An added benefit to our corporations operating in poor countries is that they can exploit and pollute with much more impunity in developing nations than they can in the United States. Although, sadly, Bush is working mightily to close the pollution gap as well.

The American people are kept in ignorance of our “of/by/for corporations” governments true agenda, and even if the American media chose to expose it, many Americans would refuse to believe it. But the people of Central and Latin America have seen American interventionism in their countries, military and otherwise. They have seen that a rise in the country's GNP does not necessarily translate into better lives for that country's people. They have good reason to believe the allegations made by Perkins and others are true. They have seen that when American companies come in to their countries, a few among them get richer, but many among them see very little if any improvement in their lives. Indigenous people are often virtually wiped out. Many become landless, and consequently have less control over their lives. Some of those who survive become even more impoverished than they were before “progress” financed through the IMF or the World Bank came to their country.

Money that their governments could have used to provide services for their own people must, instead, be used to pay off their indebtedness to the World Bank or the IMF even though most of the borrowed money ended up in the coffers of American companies.

Bush lectured the people of Latin America on the glories of Democracy. But they have seen America intervene to help remove the democratically elected leaders of many Latin American countries, most recently Haiti, and back a coup which temporarily removed Hugo Chavez, the democratically elected leader of Venezuela.

In Argentina Bush talked about leaders who do not provide for their people. But the people he lectured recently witnessed on television how the richest nation in the world could not or did not rescue thousands of poor people stranded in New Orleans. In New Orleans, also, the usually hidden face of Americas own poor was exposed to the shock of self-satisfied Americans and foreigners alike. Chavez, while autocratic, is improving life for the poor of his country, while Bush is clearly intent on helping only the rich in America. The poverty rate in the United States has increased every year he has been in office, as has the number of people without health insurance.

In Panama, Bush insisted America does not torture. But the entire world saw the images from Abu Ghraib, and they know about Guantanamo. A documentary on torture and murder in Afghanistan was screened around the world as well, although it was not shown in the United States.

Bush assured the people of Latin America we have their best interests at heart. But they know from experience that that is not always the case. If they have something America's government wants, they know we are likely to come in and try to take it.

If they ever doubted this, our invasion of Iraq has erased that doubt. They know we went into Iraq because Iraq had oil, and they know we have Venezuela in our sights. Indeed, Venezuela, along with Syria, is listed as a “rogue nation” in the Pentagons war planning schedule. They are in the second tier of “enemy.” The first tier consists of Iran and North Korea.

As Molly Ivins said, The hypocrisy of this administration is going to “kill irony.” Willfully delusional Americans may still “believe,” but the people of Latin America see their former “good neighbor to the North” for what it is becoming. Under the Bush administration America, widely perceived as the “savior of the world” during my childhood, is fast becoming the aggressor nation, the secretive nation, the repressive nation, the exploitive nation, the thug nation we once accused the U.S.S.R. of being. A nation that kills to advance corporate interests.

This administration has achieved extraordinary power. Even Colin Powel's former Chief of Staff says the Bush administration was hijacked by madmen with their own secret agenda.

"A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

The media has not done its job (although it has recently gotten a little better) so it is up to us. I, my friends and my “information truck” are demonstrating in my conservative town almost every weekend.

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