Trade

King George III Won: Happy Fourth of July!
By David Swanson
http://warisacrime.org/node/58333

The Declaration of Independence is best remembered as a declaration of war, a war declared on the grounds that we wanted our own flag. The sheer stupidity and anachronism of the idea serves to discourage any thoughts about why Canada didn't need a bloody war, whether the U.S. war benefitted people outside the new aristocracy to whom power was transferred, what bothered Frederick Douglas so much about a day celebrating "independence," or what the Declaration of Independence actually said.

When you read the Declaration of Independence, it turns out to be an indictment of King George III for various abuses of power. And those abuses of power look fairly similar to abuses of power we happily permit U.S. presidents to engage in today, either as regards the people of this nation or the people of territories and nations that our military occupies today in a manner uncomfortably resembling Britain's rule over the 13 colonies.

Or perhaps I should say, a large portion of us take turns being happy or outraged depending on the political party with which the current president is identified.

Click the picture to see how they did it 55 years ago

Honduras: Military Coup Engineered By Two US Companies?

By John Perkins

August 07, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- I recently visited Central America. Everyone I talked with there was convinced that the military coup that had overthrown the democratically-elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, had been engineered by two US companies, with CIA support. And that the US and its new president were not standing up for democracy.

Earlier in the year Chiquita Brands International Inc. (formerly United Fruit) and Dole Food Co had severely criticized Zelaya for advocating an increase of 60% in Honduras’s minimum wage, claiming that the policy would cut into corporate profits. They were joined by a coalition of textile manufacturers and exporters, companies that rely on cheap labor to work in their sweatshops.

Memories are short in the US, but not in Central America. I kept hearing people who claimed that it was a matter of record that Chiquita (United Fruit) and the CIA had toppled Guatemala’s democratically-elected president Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 and that International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT), Henry Kissinger, and the CIA had brought down Chile’s Salvador Allende in 1973. These people were certain that Haiti’s president Jean-Bertrand Aristide had been ousted by the CIA in 2004 because he proposed a minimum wage increase, like Zelaya’s.

I was told by a Panamanian bank vice president, “Every multinational knows that if Honduras raises its hourly rate, the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean will have to follow. Haiti and Honduras have always set the bottom line for minimum wages. The big companies are determined to stop what they call a ‘leftist revolt’ in this hemisphere. In throwing out Zelaya they are sending frightening messages to all the other presidents who are trying to raise the living standards of their people.”

Obama Drinks Friedman's Kool-Aid
by Thom Hartmann

Our economy has gone into the toilet over the past 30 years, and President Obama and his advisors think "free trade" is the solution. Like Bill Clinton and both George Bush's, he's so enamored of it he's even recommending it to poor African nations.

Yet "free trade" is a guaranteed ticket to the poorhouse for any nation, and the evidence is overwhelming. The concept was introduced, in fact, by Henry VII, as something that England should encourage other countries to do while it maintained protectionism; a process known as the 1485 Tudor Plan that led to the rapid industrialization of England and the deeper impoverishment of its trading "partners."

Farheed Zakaria & Post-America-Centric World



From May 27, 2008 in San Francisco, CA, hear the editor of Newsweek International, ABC News analyst, and New York Times bestselling author, Farheed Zakaria discusses a future where the U.S. no longer dominates the global economy, geopolitics, and culture. Duration 1 hr. 7 min.



From July 28, 2008, Glenn Greenwald Interviews David Sirota. Sirota's book explores how the pervasive and intense dissatisfaction among the citizenry with our political class can be channeled into genuine political change. Duration 36 min.



Click here to download or listen to mp3 Total Duration 1:46:39




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In 1999, Farheed Zakaria was named "one of the 21 most important people of the 21st Century" by Esquire Magazine.

New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen Endorses Free Trade with Colombia Joining Other Free Traders to Eviscerate the Middle Class
Andrew H. Dral

Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen, a member of New Jersey’s (NJ) 11th Congressional District, recently visited Colombia. He thought a trade deal with the United States (U.S.) would benefit both countries. He was quoted as saying, “This is a nation that has recovered enormously from the scourge of violence and drug wars.“ Yet human rights groups and labor leaders believe Colombia is actually moving backwards, not forwards in regards to workers‘ freedom of association and collective bargaining. Since the 1980s 2,500 workers have been murdered by pro-corporate reactionary Colombian death squads. Under President Alvaro Uribe’s watch death squads murdered 400 union members. Last year, 39 union members were killed, and so far the tally this year is 25 murdered. Lacking the ability to unionize exacerbates wage disparities, the lack of benefits, and poor working conditions. NJ’s 11th district deserves a representative to stand up for the rights and dignity of workers, better wages and working conditions, that representative is progressive Democratic candidate Tom Wyka.

Back in the U.S., over the past twelve months ending in March 2008 overall workers‘ wages rose 3.1%, while inflation rose 4%. Paychecks continue to lose ground to inflation. Since the late 1990s, incomes of the bottom fifth of families have declined by 2.5%, while those in the middle fifth improved by 1.3%, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute. The top-fifth of Americans saw their incomes rise by 9% over the same period. Lower and middle class families did not share in the 2001 recovery.

Click for videos
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Ooops, somebody better tell the province of Alberta to remove this from their website -

NAFTA Superhighway

What's the big deal about this?

Click the picture above for an enlargement. Notice anything? ...... Like the fact that it bypasses the Port of Long Beach. The Port of Los Angeles (San Pedro). The Port of Oakland. The Port of Sacramento.

Why would that be?

Freight has to be offloaded by union workers at those sights.

Something tells me that somebody did the math and figured out that if you pay substandard wages in Mexico and ship the goods over land as opposed to union wages in the U.S. at the ports that you can ruin the unions, and BONUS: Get away with treating Mexicans like trash in the name of giving them jobs similar to the maquilas; i.e they'll work them something like 12 hours a day 7 days a week for a fraction of what they would have to pay the union workers in the U.S.

California’s 5th & New Jersey’s 8th Congressional District Back-benchers Doris Matsui & William Pascrell Vote for HR3688 Free Trade with Peru Joining 176 Republicans to Eviscerate the Middle Class by Andrew H. Dral
Version Published, November 18, 2007, Herald News Forum Letters to the Editor: "On Pascrell and free trade"

The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) Democrats never learn. Free trade policies exacerbate the great wage and income disparities in the US. NAFTA, CAFTA, and other free trade deals, most notably with China, promoted by the DLCers have contributed to cutting the legs off of working people, directly attacking the economic well-being of working families. The destruction of the middle class continues with HR3688 free trade with Peru. Wages for working people have gone no where since the 1990s, rising only 32%, barely keeping pace with inflation, while chief executive officer (CEO) pay rose 535% over the same period. In 2006 CEO pay averaged 364 times the average workers‘ pay, down from 525 times in 2000, a record year, compared to 42 times in 1980 and 25 times in 1960.

Free trade policies have shifted the wealth of this country to percentages not seen since the Gilded Age around the turn of the century and the period before the Great Depression. The wealthiest 1% of Americans earned 21.2% of all income in 2005, up from 19% in 2004. The top 10 percent of earners comprise roughly 75% of the wealth in this country. The bottom 50% of wage earners accounted for only 12.8% of 2005’s income, a drop from 2004’s 13.4%. Illegal immigration continues to grow as free trade destroys the livelihoods of workers across the globe.

Stop the NAFTA Expansion!!

Short-Sighted Trade Deal Heads U.S. Over the Edge
Democrats pave path for Bush to pass more NAFTA expansions, fast track authority?!

This is your once-in-a-decade, unique opportunity to help change the rules of the global economy and stop the race-to-the-bottom.
TAKE ACTION NOW!

Like most Americans, you probably don’t trust this Administration to have more authority over anything! Well, here’s some good news: President Bush’s grant of Fast Track authority – the un-democratic Nixon-era law that transfers Congress' constitutionally-mandated control over U.S. trade agreements to the White House – expires June 30, 2007.

And then there is the shockingly bad news – Democratic leaders recently struck a "deal" with President Bush that could pave his was to new “Fast Track” authority – and more of his devastating trade policy.

Fast Track is how we got into devastating pacts like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). If this new "deal" takes hold, then Fast Track will be used to further NAFTA expansion to more countries instead of the needed replacement of NAFTA itself.

Watch this brand new video to learn more!
"Fast Track to Nowhere" by the IAMAW