Archive for the '"Free" Trade' Category

Oct 03 2007

Loaded Language and Loaded Guns: The Meaning of Opposites

Published by cyrano2 under Libertarian Lies, Reactionaries, Right Wing Degenerates, Capitalism, Corporate Media Lies, Propaganda, Neoliberalism, "Free" Trade, Corporatism, False Consciousness, Savage Capitalism, American Empire, Reaganites, "Free" Markets

Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

foto_pinochet10g

“Decades ago, in order to field test the economic theories that were formulated by the right wing think tanks at The Chicago School, Friedman and his disciples descended like locusts upon Latin America. The results were devastating: Democratically elected governments were systematically overthrown and brutal dictators friendly to US business interests were installed in their place—all of which were subsidized by US tax dollars with the complicity of the CIA.”

By Charles Sullivan

10/03/07

One can no longer understand US governmental policy on the basis of conventional language or traditional wisdom. Language itself and its long-established meanings were long ago twisted and distorted in order to deceive the people. Now war is peace and terror and occupation is liberation. In order to make sense of what is happening, it is important to understand everything within the context of a specific economic philosophy, and the distorted capitalist system that spawned it.

That ideology was crafted by a diminutive economist named Milton Friedman, at the University of Chicago some five decades ago. The holy trinity of Friedman’s version of capitalism—privatization of the public domain, corporate deregulation, and deep cuts in social spending—has resulted in enormous societal inequity and socio-economic classes. It has given us the haves and the have-nots, the haves and the have-mores.

Friedman and his disciples, collectively known as ‘The Chicago School’ do not believe in a minimum wage—much less a living wage, unions, worker rights, environmental protections, worker safety, or any other kind of restraint imposed upon corporations. In Friedman’s view, the market should rule and profitability should be the guiding principle, the end results always justifying the means.

Continue Reading »

14 responses so far

Sep 20 2007

“Free market” triumphalism is everywhere

Published by cyrano2 under Libertarian Lies, Depraved Aristocracy, Right Wing Degenerates, Torture, Capitalism, Neoliberalism, Neocolonialism, "Free" Trade, Exploitation, Corporatism, Savage Capitalism, Reaganites, Bourgeoisie, Empathy Deficient

Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

reagan-thatcher

[Reaganomics adherents are today’s neoconservatives with the “full force of the US military machine (serving their unfettered) corporate agenda” of greed writ large. Its holy policy trinity is: “elimination of the public sphere, total liberation for corporations and skeletal social spending (if any at all).” But instead of lifting all boats as promised, it’s the mirror opposite. It creates a powerful ruling corporatist class partnered with corrupted political elites - “with hazy and ever-shifting lines between the two groups.”]

Review of Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine”

by Stephen Lendman

9/20/07

Naomi Klein is an award-winning Canadian journalist, author, documentary filmmaker and activist. She writes a regular column for The Nation magazine and London Guardian that’s syndicated internationally by the New York Times Syndicate that gives people worldwide access to her work but not its own readers at home.

In 2004, she and her husband and co-producer Avi Lewis released their first feature documentary - “The Take.” It covered the explosion of activism in the wake of Argentina’s 2001 economic crisis. People responded with neighborhood assemblies, barter clubs, mass movements of the unemployed and workers taking over bankrupt companies and reopening them under their own management.

Klein is also the author of three books. Her first was “No Logo - Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies” (2000) that analyzes the destructive forces of globalization. Next came “Fences and Windows - Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate” (2002) covering the global revolt against corporate power.

Her newest book just out is “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” that explodes the myth of “free market” democracy. It shows how neoliberal Washington Consensus fundamentalism dominates the world with America its lead exponent exploiting security threats, terror attacks, economic meltdowns, competing ideologies, tectonic political or economic shifts, and natural disasters to impose its will everywhere. Wars are waged, social services cut, and freedom sacrificed when people are too distracted, cowed or bludgeoned to object. Klein describes a worldwide process of social and economic engineering she calls “disaster capitalism” with torture along for the ride to reinforce the message - no “New World Order” alternatives are tolerated.

“Free market” triumphalism is everywhere - from Canada to Brazil, China to Bulgaria, Russia to South Africa, Vietnam to Iraq. In all cases, the results are the same. People are sacrificed for profits and Margaret Thatcher’s dictum applies - “there is no alternative.”

Continue Reading »

No responses yet

Aug 25 2007

Stiglitz – a book with major flaws that reveal much truth.

Published by cyrano2 under Oppression, Neoliberalism, Neocolonialism, "Free" Trade, World Bank, IMF, WTO

Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

wto28

By Jim Miles

8/25/07

Fair Trade For All – How Trade Can Promote Development. Joseph Stiglitz and Andre Charlton. Oxford University Press, Oxford, U.K., 2005.

In 2003 Joseph Stiglitz published his much acclaimed and critically popular book Globalization and it Discontents. Its overall thesis, arguable particularly to those hidebound within the ‘Washington Consensus’, simply stated that following International Monetary Fund (IMF) rules and regulations – the combination of trade rules, loans, and ‘structural adjustments’ required to receive financial assistance – “the result for many people has been poverty and for many countries social and political chaos. The IMF has made mistakes in all the areas it has been involved in.”

These allegations have become more apparent as truths as time has passed since the publication of Stiglitz’ first book. It is a book that is readily accessible to the public. Stiglitz’ writing is clear and well argued. He does not slip into a frenzy of economic jargon and presents concise historical examples of the different situations that unfolded globally due in part to IMF ministrations (along with other non-governmental organizations and other governmental interference, especially with the EU and the US.). At the end of his arguments he presents what he sees as reasonable ways and means to help correct the faults of the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Continue Reading »

No responses yet

Aug 21 2007

The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America

Published by cyrano2 under Capitalism, "Free" Trade, Exploitation, Corporatism, China

Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

harper

Stephen Harper, the George Bush of the “Great White North”, fervently supports the SPP and its ostensible beneficence to “the people.”

By Si Contino

8/20/07

Free Trade was an idea that was born at the close of the Second World War. It continued to gain momentum within elite circles during the 1960’s; and by 1986 was codified into global law when the World Trade Organization was founded.

With the birth of the North American Free Trade Agreement under the Clinton Administration, global regulations began being deeply integrated, furtively, into every aspect of law within the United States, Canada and Mexico. This process was accelerated in 2005 under the auspices of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America; a plan to facilitate the free movement of goods, services and people throughout our continent.

Continue Reading »

One response so far

Jun 21 2007

U.S. Agricultural Policy Linked to the Surge in Illegals.

Published by cyrano2 under American Nightmare, Capitalism, Poverty, Latin America, Oppression, Neocolonialism, "Free" Trade

By Ivor Hughes

6/21/07

“The flow of immigrants north from Mexico since NAFTA is inextricably linked to the flow of American corn in the opposite direction, a flood of subsidized grain that the Mexican government estimates has thrown two million Mexican farmers and other agricultural workers off the land since the mid-90s. (More recently, the ethanol boom has led to a spike in corn prices that has left that country reeling from soaring tortilla prices; linking its corn economy to ours has been an unalloyed disaster for Mexico’s eaters as well as its farmers.) You can’t fully comprehend the pressures driving immigration without comprehending what U.S. agricultural policy is doing to rural agriculture in Mexico. ”

The Way We Live Now … You Are What You Grow
By MICHAEL POLLAN
The New York Times, April 22 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/magazine/22wwlnlede.t.html

Protectionist food politics and starvation are the seeds of war. In 1984 and under American pressure… New Zealand adopted the American free market model … almost overnight we introduced a system that produced an underclass with all of its destructive on flow into a rise of criminality of every kind… crimes of violence… theft of property .. police brutality… food banks for the new underclass… A sharp rise in nutrition based disease… children going to school on a packet of instant noodles with its little flavor sachet of Neuro Toxins.

This user pays mentality was extraordinarily destructive to the social fabric… the suicides and the ever increasing family violence mirrors exactly what is on plain view in the USA and the UK.

A land where Corporations direct the people elected legislature is seldom productive of any kind of good for the new serfdom. New Zealand is a young vibrant and resilient nation… we survived the Corporation led economic holocaust… but the damage has been done.

I shudder to think what kind of effect these policy’s have in 3rd world nations… their social structures are ill equipped to deal with the economic equivalent of Atilla the Hun which is unleashed upon the hapless peoples… any time .. any where… it is no longer necessary to be an Arab in an oil rich land to invite destruction.

The Corporations are trying to wrest control of the food supply into their own mortician hands. They use their paid lackeys in the Media to spread a myth of food scarcity and how Genetically Modified crops and animals are going to save the world…

Nothing could be further from the truth… there is no shortage of food … but there is a shortage of money to buy it with and an obscenely unjust system of distribution.

2 responses so far

Jun 16 2007

In Pursuit of Immigrants. Whose security? Whose Interest?

Published by cyrano2 under Souless Capitalists, Neoliberalism, Neocolonialism, "Free" Trade, Immigration, Human Rights, Exploitation

“NAFTA alone is estimated to have displaced 40% of the small farmers in Mexico. “Displaced” to where, and to what? For many, it is to abject poverty and they head to where jobs are - regardless of how exploitative - the United States.”

By Rowan Wolf

6/15/07

They stand in icy water; in crowded conditions; wet to the skin for 18 hour shifts. They work for one of the largest food processors in the world. They are paid below legal wage, and not paid overtime. Now, 167 of them sit in ICE custody after a raid on the North Portland (Oregon) plant at which they were employed. Some had ICE agents show up at their homes and take them into custody.

The workers (including legal immigrants) were employed at $7.00 an hour (below Oregon’s minimum wage of $7.80). They worked up to 18 hour shifts with no overtime in appalling conditions. Why did the workers stay?

Rodriguez, the former worker, said most employees did not report poor conditions and long shifts to authorities for fear of losing their jobs.

“Most of them didn’t have papers to work, so they had no choice; this is where they could find work,” Rodriguez said. “It made me sad, because these people came here to work. The women had little kids at home to feed.” [Work complaints hang over plant]

Now those children, like the children of the workers arrested at Michael Bianco, Inc - a military contractor being paid with our tax dollars - sit waiting for parents who will never come home.

Continue Reading »

4 responses so far