Check out this article and feel your blood boil.....

Free trade, we’re told, is the secret to global prosperity. But what trade pacts are really all about is redesigning the international economy in a way that transfers significant new powers to corporations.

It has traditionally been recognized that there should be limits on corporate power, and that in a democracy, power should ultimately rest with the people. But that democratic notion has been discarded by those designing the new trade deals.

Consider the case of Methanex. It’s a Canadian company that produces a gasoline additive considered a health hazard in California. Santa Monica had to shut down most of its wells after some of the Methanex additive leeched into the local water supply. After that, California imposed a ban on the additive. One would think that Methanex would at least apologize for the incident, and in the old days that’s probably what would have happened. But under NAFTA, Methanex has a whole new set of legal rights that puts it in the drivers seat. So, Methanex has launched a massive lawsuit, suing the U.S. for almost a billion dollars for financial losses resulting from California’s ban.

Such a lawsuit would be considered a joke in Canadian court, but that’s where the magic of NAFTA comes in. The corporation gets to take its case to a private tribunal, operating in secret under the auspices of NAFTA. This private tribunal has the power to make binding decisions. What NAFTA does is single out corporate profit-making AS A RIGHT that has its own international legal protections, and a private tribunal system to enforce them. No other set of rights- environmental, social, labor, even human rights-has been accorded the same protection in international law. When a corporation thinks its rights have been violated, no matter how ridiculous the claim, it is permitted to sue under NAFTA, and the tribunal can force the government to pay the corporation huge sums of money.

Pundits suggest that governments are becoming powerless due to mysterious forces operating out there in the global economy, well beyond our control. Here’s another possibility: governments and citizens are losing power these days simply because we keep signing trade deals that render us powerless. If we stopped signing these trade deals, governments might retain enough power to do things like defend the public interest.

-excerpted from "Trade Bait"
by Linda McQuaig

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
Pundits suggest that governments are becoming powerless due to mysterious forces operating out there in the global economy, well beyond our control. Here’s another possibility: governments and citizens are losing power these days simply because we keep signing trade deals that render us powerless.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

<FONT size="4">We</FONT s> don't sign these deals. Our politicians do. We, in fact, are out in the street protesting, when the cops let us.

Neo-Liberalism aka the Washington Consensus aka Thatcherism is the failure of imagination. It's saying, "OK, we tried socialism, we tried communism, we tried welfare, now let's just give up and be post modern and let the corporations run the world and tell us how to live because it's all hopeless anyway."

Chomsky's lecture on Free Market Fantasies is still pretty much the canonic document here. He makes the point that free trade is not trade at all. Most of what WTO calls trade is internal shifting of corporate inventory in various stages of completion. They're just moving the stuff across borders to beat unions, human rights treaties, and environmental laws.

NAFTA was a scam all the way. It gave corporations the right to sue governments getting in the way of this process. FTAA is just as bad. Mostly it's to get Canada into the game.

The "mysterious forces," also known as "the wisdom of the free market," are further corporate disinformation. They want us to believe that the mathematical laws of chaos (a good thing in this case) guarantee a fair price for everything if we just let everyone do their thing. Of course it doesn't work because corporations become free to cheat, and they cook the market. You've been had again, folks.

This is the struggle of our generation. It's pure class warfare - absolutely pure. Labor and capital haven't been this far apart since the conditions that inspired Karl Marx 130 years ago. It's feudalism vs democracy. It's way bigger than Viet Nam. It affects the kind of planet this will be for the next 200 years.

-Z
who fights, but remains happy

it's not good! read the other day that in a few years half of the world's existing languages will be extinct.

lcj, zowie, yipman, and myself..we're all just cannon fodder to them...

i'm good with that...what they gonna do??
shoot me twice?!

"I'm on a low social cholesterol diet..
NO MORE FATHEADS!!" (utah phillips)

Hey, I'm all for fighting this, as long as you don't put the fox in the chicken coop because the alternatives aren't good enough. Now matters as well as what's going to happen in a generation or so. The future is vital, but people live or die on the smaller issues that are decided right here and now, too.

I think that business has gotten so powerful that they're starting to believe their own hype and are starting to make stupid mistakes. That's always a good sign.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by pat:

I think that business has gotten so powerful that they're starting to believe their own hype and are starting to make stupid mistakes. That's always a good sign.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

LOL!!! you can bet your sweet ass that's a good sign! fun too!!!!

you just made my day, blundermom!

satan... the first absolute artist -- the first true nigger... one
graced in high beauty w/ a fine position in the celestial order but he
saw another... he was the first to have a vision of existence beyond
what was imposed on him. he fell to disgrace not for being evil but for
exhibiting the anxious passionate recklessness of the artist... (Patti Smith)

i thank the god of my understanding for the option!

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by todd:

i'm good with that...what they gonna do??
shoot me twice?!<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

See, that's why I'm staying out of the line of fire as much as possible, and wasting time with things like radio transmitters. (Though radio waves run a lot faster than cops.) I see myself as evolving into another mean ol' cuss who winds up like Mother Jones, and at the age of 83 stands up in front of the whole state militia and yells, "Go ahead, SHOOT an old fart!!!" It is time to start separating the next generation of Old Left Wingers from the wannabes.

-Z
Who remains happy

i understand your sentiment. zowie, but just look.....10 months ago, pat & lcj & maybe even Todd wouldnt've agreed about the falacy of "free-trade" The corporate socialists, or, "free traders" count on the left wingers fragmenting into philosphical factions, arguing about the morality and means of dissent, instead of uniting against the dis-information campagin fostered in mass media, and subsequent usurping of power from nations & especially, individuals..
mother joneses or wannabees...it doesnt matter now, keep yelling, dont stop, dont ever stop......

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 1 times, lastly by Bumper on Jun 20, 2001 ---</FONT></center>

good stuff,,,i like it!

how do you tell the vietcong from the vietnamese???

the vietcong run faster!!


Let Freedom Ring!!!!!

get some!!!
get some!!
get some!

and that pat, is striving at the most local level!

I didn't say I was shirking the struggle. I think I meant that my contributions lie elsewhere than putting on those black parkas and throwing teddy bears at the cops and going to jail. There are plenty of other ways to get out in the street, or on the air, and make yourself seen or heard.

I too am sick of all this bickering over tactics. Let the anarchist kids blow off their hormones and play Black Bloc, because it's provocative and gets in the news, and let people who want to march, march, and let the Socialists do their thing and the unions theirs. The protest scene is so big right now that you can't really talk about everything converging for an N30 or an A20 anymore. It's grown way past that, and just in the last month or so.

We are winning, and ZoWie is not hiding any more, and ZoWie remains happy.

-Z

to me, it seems you people get bugged by weird scenes inside the gold mine....

it ain't too weird for me yet!!!

other than flapping your pie holes,,,seems you got no steam in your ass(es)!!

you cannot find truth with logic, unless you
first possess the truth.

are you that bold to claim it?

There are so many struggles out there that it is very easy to spread oneself too thin. Too many flags to carry, and how to figure out which is most important. Drives me crazy sometimes, but its fun fighting the dark side.

Todd, I'll never claim to have absolute spiritual truth, no man on earth does (even though many people think they do).
Political truth can be gained through logic, and we're all over that one.

Onward beaten, bruised, and pissed off!

Bumper, I never had much use for free trade. I was, and am, apoplectic about the left helping to put Bush in office because trade, globalization and even the environment are not the only issues. And there were other reasons...what I see as a death wish on the left, seemed to be happening all over again. And it surely still could. Just want to set that record straight.

Protest is growing, it seems. That's a good thing. I'm all for that. And while it's not a happy thing for all too many people when the economy slows, it seems like more younger people are disenchanted with the corporate world. That wasn't the case 18 months ago when they all thought they were about to be rich. Now even the thirty something children of the 80's are feeling it. Overworked, but no longer overpayed, lied to, laid off, they're getting less satisfied with the status quo, too. At least some of them are. We'll see what happens. Looks like the beginning of interesting times.

oh shit,,,it seems we might be getting along...at least here.

i suggest we play it in a G chord..you know,
the peoples' chord!!

it's good to be!

Somehow....un-free trade seems a lot worse.