:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 11.05.2005 ::
:: "No trade deal for Bush" ::
MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO -- Hopes of uniting the hemisphere from Canada to Chile within a common free trade zone were stalled until further notice as the Americas Summit wrapped up Saturday without even a blueprint for advancing the proposal.
President George Bush attended the two-day summit in Mar Del Plata, Argentina hoping to burnish relations between the United States and the region, as well as inject new vigor into the decade-old proposal to create the Free Trade Area of the Americas.
But the resort area just south of Buenos Aires quickly became a magnet for anti-U.S. demonstrators led by Venezuela's populist leader Hugo Chavez and became the scene of fiery violence as some protestors torched stores and battled with riot police.
Chavez, who has repeatedly accused Bush of wanting to invade his oil-rich nation, triumphantly gathered with local icons, such as famed soccer player Diego Maradona, and declared the deal dead at a peacefully stadium rally that attracted more than 20,000 protestors.
"Every one of us has brought a shovel, because Mar del Plata is going to be the tomb of F.T.A.A.," Mr. Chavez told a crowd carrying banners calling Bush a "fascist," "child-killer" and "genocidal-beast," the New York Times reported.
"F.T.A.A. is dead, and we, the people of the Americans, are the ones who buried it."
Chavez believes Latin American and Caribbean nations should band together and reject U.S. style capitalism, instead adopting more socialist inspired ideals.
Several hundred rioters ransacked at least 30 businesses and confronted riot police with rocks, slingshots and sharpened sticks. Some threw gasoline bombs into a bank, causing a fire that destroyed the ground floor, while others set alight a pile of looted furniture in the middle of the street.
Amid the smoky backdrop, regional leaders were unable to forge a compromise between those who supported the removal of regional trade barriers and others who believe such a union would unfairly benefit the U.S.
Read more here.
posted by me
:: 3:23:00 PM [+] ::
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