Click here to access audio interview from KPFA radio in Berkeley, California. (Note: there is one five minute interruption at 32:00m to report on a U. of California student protest march to Bank of America.)
Using the World Trade Organization (WTO) as a vehicle, global capitalist elites began a campaign several decades ago to establish multinational "free trade" agreements. To counter this, the Anti-globalization Movement engaged in many protests at WTO meetings across the world, one of the most notable was here in nearby Seattle in 1999. As a consequence of so much global opposition, capitalist elites began to use another strategy-- bi-lateral "free trade" agreements. As Professor Martin Hart-Landsberg explains in this interview, these agreements are accomplishing the same purposes--undermining the ability of governments to impose any control over capitalist practices and weakening workers rights.
Using the recent bi-lateral agreement with South Korea approved by Congress as an example, Hart-Landsberg provides a very clear understanding of what such agreements actually contain. He explains how economists try to rationalize these agreements under the theory of Comparative Advantage to hide the reality of a stealth attack on workers and their governments to control out-of-control global capitalist elites.
