In 2001 Howard Zinn wrote "How can a war be truly just when it involves the daily killing of civilians, when it causes hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children to leave their homes to escape the bombs, when it may not find those who planned the September 11 attacks, and when it will multiply the ranks of people who are angry enough at this country to become terrorists themselves?

This war amounts to a gross violation of human rights, and it will produce the exact opposite of what is wanted: It will not end terrorism; it will proliferate terrorism."

Unfortunately he was right. And the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are still raging as the recent bombings in Baghdad illustrate, and show no signs of abating. The chaos of the American military intervention has reduced the quality of life drastically all over Iraq and the war is STILL CONTINUING.

The walkout on April 18th is vitally important...we need to keep fighting to stop this.

From NAFTA to KORUSFTA

Excerpts:

"Trade representatives from the United States and South Korea are racing against the clock to sign the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement under the "fast track" deadline.

Given the effects of NAFTA on America's manufacturing workers and Mexico's farmers, free traders can no longer simply tout the miracles of neoliberal economics. According to the Economic Policy Institute, since NAFTA took effect, over 1 million workers in the U.S. lost their high-paying manufacturing jobs, and were forced to take lower-paying service jobs where they now earn 23 percent less. U.S. workers without a college education - 73 percent of the population - saw their wages drop by 13 percent since NAFTA took effect.

But NAFTA's impact is even more apparent in Mexico where real wages dropped by 80 percent and unemployment rose from nine to 15 percent. Approximately 1.5 million Mexican farmers were forced to give up farming because they were unable to meet the price of corn produced by massively-subsidized U.S. agribusinesses."

And get this:

"From 1995 to 2005, the U.S. rice industry received over $10.5 billion dollars in government subsidies, and the lion's share - 25 percent - went to the top one percent of rice growers. In the U.S., the average rice farm is 397 acres, compared with South Korea's average rice farm of 3.5 acres. Approximately 8,000 of America's two million farms grow rice, compared with South Korea, where over 787,000 farms - or 57 percent - cultivate rice."

Globalization and free trade make for beautiful economic theory and end up tearing apart the lives of the victims of government policy makers.

Original: http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/020807LA.shtml