Real Place of the Day...Central America?

Here we go CAFTA (Central America Free Trade Agreement). The House voted 217-215 in favor and Bush is ducking and penning his signature on that thing pretty damn soon.

Mexican workers, tapped after Clinton’s NAFTA, are way, way, way too expensive. The capitalist machine is skillfully targeting even poorer workers to fill sweat shops, glue together sneakers and package toys they won’t ever be able to afford to wrap in colorful paper for their own pequenos on Christmas.

Next is SAFTA, then ChiFTA, and maybe IndiFTA or hopefully AusFTA. But less and less likelihood of a JaFTA because Japan just put a 15% levy on importing U.S. Steel products.

In 1992, USA Today ran a headline saying ‘Japan and U.S.A- Enemies Again.’ I read the paper on a bus in Salzburg sitting next to my 18-year-old Japanese roommate. I was just doing one of those study-abroad programs at the time and was loving the world but not felling particularly patriotic toward the States. The late 80s and early 90s were the “Buy American” era, you remember it. My roomie and I laughed it off and she made vegetable tempura that night which was delicious. Let the big corporations wage their wars and sling their mud, wasn’t gonna’ faze us. I did suffer through quite a shit storm of diarrhea that night, but I’m sure it had nothing to do with the tempura.

Thank Buddha we don’t have to worry about Japan anymore because everything’s made in China now.