As long as those who negotiate the treaties come from the ranks of the corporations and do not include labor, then agreements like NAFTA will continue to be produced.

To my knowledge, Kucinich is the only candidate that advocates the pull out of the U.S. from all "free" trade agreements, the WTO, IMF, and World Bank. I trust his judgement on these things.

Does anyone know where John Edwards stands on these issues?

I wouldn't need to eat quite as much Maalox if they would quit including the word "Free" in the titles of these "agreements".

In the meantime look for more Peruvian immigrants painting houses and manning leaf blowers in your neighborhood.

When the Senate voted Tuesday of the Peru Trade Agreement, a critical test of U.S. economic policy that raised fundamental questions with regard to how this country will frame its economic ties to hemispheric neighbors, the five senators who would be president were the only members of the chamber who missed the vote.

If we are to trust their statements with regard to the issue: Biden and Dodd would have voted against the Peru deal, while Obama and Clinton would have supported it.

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=256831

Now Common Dreamers let's look on the positive side of this. The more the US and Peruvian elites screw the ordinary folk, the sooner those elites and the US will be ejected from any influence. If I were a Peruvian elite I would be looking over my shoulder and around my neighborhood.

Correa in Equador, Morales in Bolivia, Chavez in Venezuela, and how deep in defecation that little pip-squeek, Uribe, in Columbia is standing.

One way or another the same change that is happening all around them will come to the people of Peru. The elites can be part of the solution or part of the problem. So far they have chosen the latter. Whatever they and their US handlers continue to choose, there will be consequences.

Banco Del Sur (The Bank of the South--an alternative to the IMF)and ALBA (the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas an alternative to NAFTA) are a reality and they are not going away. Neither is the discontent of the masses of ordinary people being "structurally readjusted" into more and more desperate straits by their elite masters and the US handlers to whom they bow in tribute.

I agree with Poet ... in their excess of greed, the multinational corporations and neoliberal policymakers are their own worst enemies.

One seldom-mentioned, deliberate consequence of these trade deals arises from the destruction of local agricultural economies in Latin America, after they are subjected to competition from subsidized American agribusiness. The farmers driven off the land join the ranks of wage laborers (some 30 million of them in Mexico alone), putting enormous downward pressure on wages in their own countries and in the United States.

These deals have been sold to the American public on the grounds that they will generate growth in Latin American economies that will come back to the US in the form of demand for American goods. In fact, they are structured so as to perpetuate the infamous "race to the bottom," punishing wage earners the world over while guaranteeing continued growth in corporate profits. It is this demand for growth that is destroying the both the planet and the human communites that inhabit it.

Unlimited Growth vs. Sustainability? Let the people decide with the referendum.

Ezeflyer: We don't need a referendum! We need to go clean out ALL the rot. Until the people fully understand that the planet and its resouces are finite, there is no hope. Until we change the paradigm of consumption, there is no way your referendum would get off the ground.

International corporations have to go!!! People and the planet first!!!! There is nothing "FREE" about Free Trade. The people and the planet are paying through the nose for these bastards profits.

Poet, if Morales in Bolivia was so popular, please explain why the Departamento of Santa Cruz is about to declare autonomy?

"More interestingly, Paul Samuelson is just one of the intellectual fathers of free trade to concede that the gains in reduced consumer prices from free trade may not offset the losses of good jobs."

I wonder how much money this alleged "intellectual" father of free trade made from this elitist predatory scam before he conceded it may not have been such great idea?

If the economic trade gurus think that the subprime scam is hurting the banks, wait until a major portion of U.S. citizens are unable to pay off their credit card debt.

The grand scheme of the Central Bankers to keep people in eternal fiscal debt is only in its infancy stage of backfiring. The more lost jobs and reduced wages - the fewer debt payments will be made to banks. Aside from increasing the wealth of the major players in this "free" market scam, the only other thing it will create is a another depression in this country and around the world.

The following link is one wich everybody needs to become familiar: http://www.leap2020.eu/GEAB-N-20-is-available!-LEAP-E2020-Alert-Breaking-phase-ahead-for-the-global-financial-system-in-2008_a1140.html

Sonof powerslave wonders:

Poet, if Morales in Bolivia was so popular, please explain why the Departamento of Santa Cruz is about to declare autonomy?

*****************

Sonofpowerslave release the shackles on your mindset. It's not "who" it is "what" is going on. Morales, Chavez, Correa, even Kirchener,Ortega and Fidel are not the point--what is the point is the process they represent (admitedly some better than others).

That process is a change in the mindset of the people towards their government. There is a great line in the Michael Moore movie "Sicko" where Michael is tlaking to a French citizen who was familiar with America from actually having lived there. Michael asks: "What is the biggest difference between France and America in your opinion?" To which the reply is: "In America the people are afraid of the government, in France the government is afraid of the people".

In that simnple statement lies the essence of freedom. Only a free people would be emboldened enough to dare to challenge those of the State when they believe it is not representing their interests.

That there is a potential of a breakaway province in Bolivia (even if it's agenda is being driven by the elites) shows that even those in the minority can protest, reject, and even threaten to seceed from the government. It's the same for the defeat of Chavez' referendum to change the term limits in the Venezuelan constitution.

Stop and ask yourself: "What would the consequences for such actions have been under the likes of Fjimori, or Galtieri, or Somoza, or Norriega, or any of the other toady elites who previously ruled in these countries?" For an idea look at how Calderon is dealing with the Zapatistas in Mexico.

The new crop of leaders is far from perfect, but this much they have going for them--the people feel they have the power to express themselves politically and publicaly and often over government policy. All power to the people!

Let us look at how Calderon is dealing with the EZLN. He is ignoring them, and behaving far more kindly to what ammounts to an armed rebellion than Chavez or Fidel would.

Now, the very existance of the EZLN says something very negative about the state of Mexico today, and the way Chiapas has been excluded from what little wealth Mexico generates. Just as the existance of a breakaway movement in Bolivia (and it is NOT just one departamento, Beni, Pando and others are also involved) says quite a bit about Morales.

Rebel Farmer: John Edwards is against the Peru Free Trade deal. He favors "fair trade."

Btw, Obama fans: Barack Obama favors "free" trade---actually misnamed since its really corporate managed trade. And you thought he was the candidate of change...

p.s. Obama supports nuke power, too. Again, so much for change.

Say what?

"""""NAFTA is not the sole cause of working-class woes in the past two decades. It has not sucked away millions of jobs, as its most demagogic opponents claimed, but the unequal terms of trade it guarantees combined with a fierce domestic attack on unions, the minimum wage and occupational regulation have placed intense pressure on the working class.""""""

Dial the labor clock back to pre Reagan with tarriffs etc., and see the difference in Labors muscle. Corporatists can and still do wield the fear mongering of 'if you can't compete with $50 a week wages, we will move..........

andersld,
Poor Peruvians immigrate undocumented mostly to Europe (Italy, Spain). For them it is almost the same distance to go there than to the US. They pick Europe because there they don't need to learn English.

Actually, they pick Europe because it is a LOT easier to get a Spanish visa.

SonOfPowerslave: "If Morales in Bolivia was so popular, please explain why the Departamento of Santa Cruz is about to declare autonomy?"

The popularity of Morales is between 60 to 80 per cent and it keeps growing as destabilization attempts to his government grows. Representatives of ten international organizations in support of the bolivian process meeting in Santiago (Chile) make note of a flare-up of the disinformation campaign and destabilization attempts of the process of change lived in Bolivia. They cited dubious polls of a opposition newspaper of the separatist region of Santa Cruz collected by the Spanish News Agency EFE in the sense of a baseless 'loss of support of the president' in data adquired the last weekend. These 'black propaganda' tactics very likely "confirm to our eyes that they are being designed by some rogue parties from USA and Spain" told to Bolpress Laura Feldger, representative of the Chilean Cultures Center. Morales for his part denounced the existence of the conspiracy in past days.

The rogue attempts of separatism of the Santa Cruz region is being fuelled mainly by foreign, racist and unpopular pro 'free-trade' moneyed interests of the region corrupted and manipulated by many commercial and industrial operatives.Main Ethnic Groups induced in conflict: 'Collas' mainly from La Paz Region against 'Cambas' from the Santa Cruz Region. Two very well known individuals forged (one in flesh and other by ancestry) in divisionary tactics in tne Balkans(Ex Yugoslavia), Philip Goldberg and Branco Marinkovic, are heavy influence in this ethnic cauldron in the heart of Latinoamerica.

Goldberg holds the representation of the american embassy in La Paz and worked in Bosnia during the civil war there and later in Kosovo.

Marinkovic a powerful bolivian landowner of yugoslavian ancestry is president of the Pro Santa Cruz Committee and open promoter of exacerbate regionalism. Known for his calls to 'civil resistance' and 'civil strikes' for autonomy of the separatist region in conflict.

SonOfPowerslave, I do not know if your question has been answered.

Actually, it has not been. 60 to 80 % support of Evo? What polling are you pulling this from? He probably has that level of support in El Alto, but no where else.

As to what the people of Santa Cruz want, I guess we will have to wait until the revocatory referendum and see what happens. I doubt it will be what Evo and his venezuelan puppet masters want.

By the way, WHAT exactly is wrong with "exacerbate regionalism"? That would seem to be what the EZLN wants in Chiapas, are you saying they are racist puppets of foreigners too?

January 8, 2008

Lessons for the Rest of the World
Why Bolivia Matters
By LAURA CARLSEN

COUNTERPUNCH MAGAZINE

Bolivia's National Palace is a classic colonial building that sits on the pigeon-filled Plaza Murillo in downtown La Paz. It's more often called the "Palacio Quemado" or "Burned Palace" because it's been set on fire repeatedly by dissidents of one stripe or another over the centuries since Bolivia gained its fragile independence. Today, painted a cheery yellow, it stands as a reminder of a conflictive past and a fresh future.

During the colonial period the Spanish exploited the country's mineral wealth without mercy, leading to the death of hundreds of thousands of indigenous mineworkers and uprisings that punctuated the nation's history with blood and legends. Between forced labor, the war of independence, and European diseases, the new nation began its life as a republic rich in natural resources but with a decimated populace. In the words of an historian in 1831, Bolivia was like "a beggar seated on a throne of gold."

In many ways, the nation's predicament changed little over the two centuries of republican life. The indigenous population, if no longer enslaved, confronted permanent inequality in political institutions and economic opportunities. The constant flow of resource wealth to a criollo elite-allied with foreign interests-cut deep channels into Bolivian society. Those flows changed form but scarcely diminished with the advent of globalization.

The government of President Evo Morales came to power in January 2006 with bold plans to change all this. Its main promise to its indigenous and impoverished base of support was to reform the constitution to assure the indigenous majority the full exercise of its citizenship, and to redistribute national wealth in favor of the poor.

Despite winning an absolute majority in the 2005 presidential elections, the Morales administration has had considerable difficulty leveraging its political capital into an efficient reform process.

Constitutional Revision

For the fledgling government of President Evo Morales, a new constitution is the cornerstone of lasting change. The goal is to create a new legal structure for Bolivian society that for the first time in the nation's history respects and legally recognizes diversity in a "plurinational" country.

The Constituent Assembly arose as a demand by social movements in the 1990s and more specifically in the Water War of Cochabamba in 2000-2001. In recent years neoliberal governments made legal and constitutional changes to grant private investors near carte-blanche access to natural resources and basic services, exposing the poor nation to one of the most unequal and exploitive forms of globalization found in the hemisphere. These legal changes became the hallmark of their governments and the source of their downfall.

For instance, in 2003 President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada fled to the United States after his government fired into a crowd of protestors, killing dozens. He and former defense minister Sanchez Berzain currently face extradition demands and a lawsuit from the Center for Constitutional Rights for damages related to the murder of 67 women, men, and children in the September and October protests, nearly all from indigenous Aymara communities.

After taking office the Morales government moved rapidly to institute the Constituent Assembly. The unprecedented process required establishing new institutions and rules that have generated ambiguity at times and conflict throughout. Acrimonious negotiations, dualing mobilizations in the streets, and overheated media warnings of ungovernability held the nation in near permanent chaos from July of 2006 to the mandated deadline of Dec. 14, 2007. Much of that time the assembly was suspended.

The government has been criticized frequently by both the left and the right for errors of judgment and procedure, but it has attempted to keep dialogue open. The conservative opposition has taken a confrontational stance toward the Constituent Assembly-presided over by Quechua and women's rights leader Silvia Lazarte -from the outset. The loosely coordinated opposition has zig-zagged between calls for greater adherence to the law and illegal acts of sabotage, including violence from civic committees and local neo-fascist groups. Finally, some but not all of the rightwing conservative parties launched a boycott of the institutional process.

The Assembly faced one obstacle after another. Debates over representation, regional autonomy, landholdings, and an old issue of where the nation's capital should be physically located (Sucre or La Paz) tested the limits of a country facing entrenched interests and the uncertainties of moving from a historically unjust system to a new system yet to be defined.

Toward Referendum

Finally on December 9 the assembly approved the constitutional text with the required two-thirds vote, but with a boycott of the major political conservative party PODEMOS. The text now goes to a national referendum, but only after a separate referendum on the crucial issue of land reform.

In a recent interview with the CIP Americas Policy Program, Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera stated that the conflicts have their roots in Bolivia's history and reflect a fundamentally healthy, if difficult, stage of democratic redefinition.

Following the boycotted assembly, four of the nine departmental governments declared autonomy, with some leaders going so far as to threaten secession. They have begun gathering signatures to call a referendum on a far more radical form of autonomy that would grant local governments broad control over resources found in their territories and erode central government authority and national cohesion. Since these departments concentrate much of the nation's oil and gas and agricultural production, the move is a serious challenge to the Morales government, which has responded by declaring it divisive and illegal.

The text of the proposed constitution begins by declaring that Bolivia is "a unitary, plurinational, communitarian, free, independent, sovereign, democratic, social decentralized state, with territorial autonomies" that is founded on "plurality and political, economic, judicial, cultural, and linguistic pluralism."

The sheer quantity of adjectives reveals the complexity of the political project underfoot. The declaration of principles reflects the recent history of Bolivia's grassroots struggles for political representation for the indigenous majority and similar efforts in other Latin American nations with sizable indigenous populations.

It also addresses the age-old issue of the balance of power between federal, state, and local government by recognizing four types of autonomy: departmental, regional, municipal, and indigenous. The practical overlap here will be a challenge.

A detailed analysis of the 411 proposed articles now becomes the task at hand of Bolivian society as the constitution goes up for a popular referendum. But the other key element worth mentioning is the constitution's overall concept of building a state that controls and regulates natural-resource use for the public good. This is a political sea change from the era when it was assumed that what was best for the private sector was best for the nation.

Why Bolivia Matters

To outsiders, Bolivia's upheaval may seem like merely the latest in a seemingly endless series of conflicts in a tiny nation known for political instability.

The corporate-controlled media in the United States have carefully crafted an image of a relatively ignorant and violent populace running rampant over hopelessly weak institutions. These distorted images persist even though the deep changes proposed by the government have been conducted largely through legal channels and it has been the conservative opposition that has sought to undermine those processes.

The indigenous character of Evo Morales's leadership and popular support plays like a subtle but palpably racist sub-theme in the international press, with the Wall Street Journal taking the lead in Evo-bashing. An Indian president, Morales is persistently portrayed as a pawn of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and his deep ties to traditional coca growers are recast as nefarious drug lord activities. Numerous press reports portray indigenous organizations as mindless mobs intent on dismantling the remains of Bolivia's dubious democratic institutions.

The viciousness of these attacks on the Morales government best reveal the potential global impact of what it's trying to do. Bolivia matters, to everyone seeking more just and stable societies, for two reasons that Vice President Garcia Linera describes as the "two conquests of equality"-political justice and economic justice.

The government's attempt to establish conditions for the full exercise of citizenship for indigenous peoples goes beyond equal access to limited forms of representative democracy. Recognizing the rights for the 36 peoples mentioned in the new constitution implies devising concrete mechanisms to harmonize communitarian and liberal forms of justice and government that have very different logics. Every nation in the Western Hemisphere where indigenous peoples have survived the genocidal campaigns of the past five centuries faces this challenge.

The second challenge, the effort to harness the sustainable use of natural resources for the public good, tests the limits to change imposed by the global neoliberal system. Can a country climb from poverty to equitable development through constitutional reform?

The answer will depend in large part on the dynamics of Bolivian politics and the ability of the political leadership. But it will also depend on the extent of external limitations. In assessing those limitations, Mexican political analyst Adolfo Gilly points out "the inelastic limits that those who govern run into, whether it be the ferocious resistance of the classes that have been displaced from power, and their political and economic representatives, foreign as well as domestic; or the steel cage in which the new global neoliberal order encloses possibilities of action, along with the imminent presence of its powerful material base-the Pentagon, the military force of the United States; or the material limits of scarcity, national isolation, and poverty."

The Morales administration has so far sought to break the ties that bind in various ways. It announced withdrawal from the U.S.-run School of the Americas-now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) but still often referred to by the less cumbersome name it carried prior to a 2001 revamping. SOA/WHINSEC is a military training facility in Georgia that has produced a long line of dictators and torturers throughout the hemisphere.

With respect to the global economy, the Bolivian government decided to withdraw from the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes of the World Bank, a trade arbitration system characterized by its supranational powers, lack of transparency, and bias toward investors.

Bolivia has sought renegotiation of its Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Mexico as well as opposing an FTA with the United States, while signing a People's Trade Agreement with Venezuela and Cuba. In March of 2006 the government stated it would not seek to renew its standby agreement with the IMF, which was responsible for imposing neoliberal policies that hurt the national economy and its most vulnerable sectors.

International Response

The response of the Bush administration to the Morales government has been hostile but guarded. U.S. Agency for International Development has moved to directly fund projects in opposition regions to strengthen resistance to the policies of Morales' party, the Movement for Socialism (MAS), as part of its "democracy-building" program.

The U.S. ambassador in Bolivia, Phillip Goldberg has had frequent run-ins with the Bolivian government over accusations of politically targeted aid. The ambassador recently stated that the relationship between the two countries was "complicated" and emphasized that cooperation would be focused on reducing coca cultivation. This formulation is ominous given the wide differences between the Morales government's policy of promoting traditional coca growing while cracking down on cocaine production, and the U.S. drug war model centered on militarization and fumigation programs.

On the other hand, several Latin American nations have stepped up to support Bolivia following the termination of the Constituent Assembly. Brazil's President Lula made a state visit and announced a $1 billion investment by the country's state-owned petroleum company in oil and gas. The announcement was particularly significant since Brazil's semi-public gas giant Petrobras initially protested the Morales government's nationalization of control of its operations in the country and suspended further investment. Chilean president Michelle Bachelet also gave explicit support to the beleaguered government by promising to finish the Inter-Oceanic highway system.

Perhaps the most important determining factor in the success of the Morales program will be its relationship with progressive social movements of indigenous peoples, workers, miners, women, and others that created the revolutionary conditions that brought the MAS to power. Not only is this the government's base of support, but it is the true source of national sovereignty and impetus for democratic change. Although the Evo Morales administration defines itself as "a government of social movements," historians Forrest Hylton and Sinclair Thompson rightly point out that the relationship is far from simple and that it will be crucial that the independence and political space of those movements not be subsumed in the logic of the state.

Bolivia today is an open laboratory. It might seem an unlikely stage for such an ambitious experiment: a landlocked nation of scarcely nine million with strong vestiges of colonial rule and the continent's highest poverty rate. Yet the effort to use the state to retake and redistribute resources ceded to private economic interests under globalization, to enfranchise indigenous populations, to narrow the appalling gap between the haves and have-nots of our era deserves a chance and will no doubt provide lessons for the rest of the world.

Laura Carlsen is director of the Americas Policy Program at the Center for International Policy in Mexico City, where she has been a writer and political analyst for two decades.

http://www.trafford.com/07-2440

Dear Sirs and Mesdames,
This subject, in my mind, is the most immediate most urgent and serious matter confronting the Human Race. Despite the fact that many great minds, philosophers, politicians, academics and economists, have all created eminent careers based on their knowledge and understanding of how free enterprise, national economies and the human race interact, they have all failed to admit the obvious. It is glaringly obvious that we have large swathes of the human race that do not have access to money; it is that simple.
Therefore we need a system of economy that literally accommodates the needs and aspirations of every human being. A system that will not rely on taxing others' in order to provide all the multifarious forms of infrastructures, as well as our human and social obligations. A system of taxation in which the haves are continually being pressured to claw back those taxes from the have-nots. We must face the fact, once and for all; this system can never provide all human needs and infrastructures.
We have allowed right-wing ideology to dictate the terms and even if or when large swathes of populations may be fed and housed or have health needs addressed. We tolerate the fact that we have millions of working poor who will never earn enough to meet all of life's basic costs. Many of these are struggling to raise families the bedrock of our future. Those who work lead the most precarious of lives.
Precarious, because their work and income has become the plaything of corporate power, which moves production to lower waged economies. This makes the executives and the shareholders richer but at the cost of the misery they leave behind. Wages go down, but not prices, or costs of living, and the formerly free "social wage entitlements" are removed.
This is the "rationalized" world directed by Corporate Power and implemented by our Governments, the world of "user pays".
Take it or suffer the consequences. The Government calls this "work choices". Hear the Corporate applause? The consequences are total destitution for some; they could buy none of life's essential services.
Complete and total destitution for many unless they work, no shelter, no food, no health care, and no education, none of life's necessities.
So we need a system, which provides equal opportunity and care for all, overlaid with free enterprise. At the same time we can put in place a fair and equitable industrial relations system that eliminates employer employee antagonisms.
Our democracy is in serious trouble. Rich people and corporations channel funds into political parties in order to achieve their own commercial or ideological ends cleverly bypassing democratic inputs. It is happening in all democracies but that does not make it "worlds best practice" or "right". We can correct that quite easily. We make so-called free trade agreements under which corporations are exempted from government regulation that control workers rights, pay and working conditions. Is this democracy, is this really necessary, should corporations have such unbridled power, where will it end?
Introduction of The Universal Economy will immediately and substantially impact and improve such questions as Poverty, provision of universal education, health care, pensions, unemployment, housing and all public infrastructure (roads bridges schools hospitals etc). None of this will require the imposition of taxation.
The concept of The Universal Economy will be easy to introduce, because it benefits everyone, everyone will want it to work. It will be hardest to implement in third world nations, not impossible, just slower to implement. It will kick start economies wherever it is introduced.
This is a concept for the twenty-first century. Put to one side traditional thought processes and embedded conventions see only the greater-good and benefit of mankind then you will support this enterprise with the open heart and mind it deserves. Adopt this concept for the good of humanity.
Give your support, not money.

Yours Faithfully, THOMAS W ADAMS.