NAFTA? CAFTA? SHAFTA!!!

In this "election season" a neglected issue is what will the next president do to rescue our neighbors to the south from the bloody greedy hegemony of American and "transnational" (read American) corporations? Who will stand up to these bullies and tell them they may not despoil the entire planet to fill their own pocketbooks; that they have gotten away with it for long enough? America's relationship to the world is a vital issue and touches on virtually every other issue we face. You want to discuss an "immigration problem"? Stop making other peoples homes unlivable and they will live in them; stop destroying the economies and governements of the Americas and beyond, and they will build democracies that the people want to inhabit (but, of course those people won't be available to exploite here and abroad). What we are calling an immigration problem others call human trafficing and slavery. You are concerend by war and hostility that other people have toward us? Alllow them to govern themselves; stop putting puppet governerments in power that steal from the poor to give to the rich.

Make no mistake, this is a moral, a "religious" issue. An administration that claims to be "Christian" and trades in slavery and oppression has a lot of explaining to do. Much of Jesus preaching was council on how to resist the "free trade" advocates of His time, the Roman empire; lend without expectation of repayment, share you excess, love your neighbor There is of course more to this than a political strategy, but the people of His time were being driven into poverty by the policies of the empire, and their response to the communities that His followers created mirror our response to South American countries that demand freedom. Then as now, free trade meant that the empire was free to become more powerful and the local people were free to starve.

We know these neo-liberal economic policies don't work. We know they only wreak destruction; we have seen it in nation after nation, not the least of these Iraq (and of course the U.S.A). We have seen economies destroyed and freedoms lost. In Iraq we did everything that has already failed and then we were shocked it erupted in violence. And further, we know what does work. After world war two we instituted the Marshall plan; rebuilding economies, putting the wealth and potential back into the hands of the people in the lands of our ex-enemies. At home, we funded the arts, put people back to work for a livable wage, provided the GI bill to help returning soldiers get good jobs and own houses. All of thes policies have fallen by the wayside; they are not friendly to a feudal society, they create and egalatarian society, not one where the majority of people are just tools to be used by the priviledged few and then discarded.

So, which of these candidates will become a President that will give our nation its soul back? Restore or dreams and our morality? Does anybody have the courage? And rest assured, it will take courage. If the people of the U.S. caught wind that democracy and populist capitalism works, and that the corporatism that runs this country is neither democratic or capitalist, we might want a piece of that.