Patch

Good article from NY times on retirement.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/business/government/index.html

How did Social Security and Company pension plans become my fault for failing?

World Trade Organization (WTO)
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
And now, Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA)
Are these agreements helping or hurting working people?
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the only global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations. At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the bulk of the world’s trading nations and ratified in their parliaments. The goal is to help producers of goods and services, exporters, and importers conduct their business.
January 1, 2004 marked the tenth anniversary of the North American Free Trade Agreement’s implementation. NAFTA promoters - including many of the world’s largest corporations - promised it would create hundreds of thousands of new high-wage U.S. jobs, raise living standards in the U.S., Mexico and Canada, improve environmental conditions and transform Mexico from a poor developing country into a booming new market for U.S. exports. NAFTA opponents - including labor, environmental, consumer and religious groups - argued that NAFTA would launch a race-to-the-bottom in wages, destroy hundreds of thousands of good U.S. jobs, undermine democratic control of domestic policy-making and threaten health, environmental and food safety standards.
Read more.
http://www.citizen.org/documents/NAFTA_10_jobs.pdf
Thea M. Lee, chief international economist for the AFL-CIO. "All the teary-eyed arguments about how this is good for democracy and prosperity -- none of that will happen if all the agreement does is enrich multinational corporations, cost good jobs here in the United States and create sweatshop jobs in Central America."
President Bush shifted from an economic argument to a political one, making a case that more robust commerce with the United States would strengthen the fragile democracies in a region only now emerging from decades of dictatorship and violence

Critics worry Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will use a new 24-hour TV news network to drown out free press ( http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0513/p01s03-woam.html )
We know how this works. Just watch Fox news.

Afghanistan riddled with drug ties
Afghanistan riddled with drug with drug ties (http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0513/p01s04-wosc.html )
The involvement of local as well as high-level government officials in the opium trade is frustrating efforts to eradicate poppy fields.
Afghanistan isn’t near as riddled as the United States.

State of the media (http://www.stateofthemedia.com/2005/index.asp )

Patch