Seoul Riot Police Break Up U.S. Free Trade Protest

Seoul Riot Police Break Up U.S. Free Trade Protest
http://kdka.com/business/finance_story_069144005.html

(AP) SEOUL, South Korea Riot police used a water cannon Saturday to break up a noisy but peaceful street protest in downtown Seoul against a proposed free trade agreement between South Korea and the United States.

Police armed with shields and truncheons fired several bursts from a water cannon into the crowd of about 2,000 protesters, mostly farmers, workers and students, after they ignored a warning to disperse as temperatures dropped to freezing in early evening.

Some scuffles broke out as police pushed the demonstrators back, but there appeared to be no major injuries on either side. Some in the crowd began to disperse, while others eventually marched away.

A National Police Agency official, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, said 10 people were detained.

South Korea and the U.S. say an agreement would boost economic growth and trade, but opponents say it would harm the livelihoods of farmers and workers.

"We will keep protesting because we are right," veteran activist Oh Jong-ryul told the crowd before riot police moved in.
http://kdka.com/business/finance_story_069144005.html

to folks like these, willing to face water cannons and police truncheons, to educate the public, and to pressure political representatives toward FAIR trade, social justice and world peace. Thousands of farmers in places like South Korea and India have committed suicide because their lives have been ruined, and their farms, families, agricultural knowledge base and businesses are being destroyed by foreign agricultural dumps on their local markets--so-called "free trade"--often with US Ag as the main culprit I saw a documentary about Jamaica, which chronicled the utter destruction of Jamaica's fresh dairy product farms--all local, family run, based on hundreds of years of expertise--by the importation and underpricing of dried milk from US corporate farms. The interviews of the farmers were some of the saddest moments in film I have ever experienced. They just to do what they do--feed their families and feed others, provide wholesome products, continue the tradition and help their community and their country. All gone. Overall, Jamaica's ability to feed itself was destroyed. Then the Corporatists built a "free trade zone" at a port--a sweatshop labor zone, where local laws did not apply--for cheap, unprotected labor to manufacture products that were placed directly on tankers, the whole operation entirely outside of Jamaica's legal system and economy, except for the robot labor that was easy to obtain from Jamaica's decimated population. (Along in there somewhere, also, World Bank/IMF loans--the rich incur them, rip off the money and the poor are left to pay the debt.)

This is what "anti-globalists" are demonstrating against--in Seattle back in '99, in Miami, in Davros, in Calgary (Canada), in Cancun, and other places--and in South Korea. The global corporate predators get together and design these dreadful fates for countries that are already struggling with the legacy of hundreds of years of colonial rule, and now with weak or corrupt rightwing governments. And they are coming to get you and me, Mr. and Mrs. and Ms. Middle Class America. Somewhat different methods, same story. They intend to destroy Social Security (they are already borrowing against it) and all social programs; they have already crippled the US federal government with the Bush wrecking crew and a $10 trillion deficit. Add horrid war profiteering to our woes, by corporations that have no allegiance to the US--global corporate predator war profiteers. Ironic that their lapdogs in Congress wanted to ban flag-burning--as if the US flag means anything to global corporations. Check out the massive usury of credit card companies. Check out the cost of medical care, and gasoline. Check out the Bankruptcy Bill. Check out the tyrannical presidential powers of indefinite detention without trial, torture, and massive domestic spying. Check out the outsourcing of thousands of jobs every week to cheap labor markets abroad. Check out the decimation of our manufacturing capability. Check out our inability to do anything about these outrageous fascist policies, because our votes are now "counted" on electronic voting machines, run on 'trade secret,' proprietary programming, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations--a gift from the biggest crooks in the Anthrax Congress, Tom Delay and Bob Ney, abetted by Corporate 'Democrats' like Christopher Dodd.

We are now their "Banana Republic." So if you think this is a distant struggle--way off in Seoul, South Korea--you are very wrong. It's right here. We have the potential power to stop it--to reign in these US-based predators. That is why they took away our right to vote. Restoring transparent vote counting--vote counting that everyone can see and understand--needs to be Priority No. 1, in the U.S. For our own sake, and for the sake of others in the world.

I am happy to see the same happening in South Korea.

and yet again the corporate media is silent in this betrayal

exports. They export a tremendous amount to us.

I guess it is natural that many there don't want the same treatment for our exports to them. One way "free trade" is always better than the two way version, as long as you are on the right end.

Is that freetrade? I guess Korean agriculture should be turned into apartment buildings and parking lots to satisfy American corporate greed.

be reduced or eliminated, because they have a devastating effect on agriculture in the Third World (not sure that South Korea fits that description anymore.)

Perhaps you know more than I do about any subsidies that South Korean farmers benefit from. My real point was that in any international trade, "free trade" should not just be with just for the exports of one country or the other. If SK's industrial and consumer exports were subsidized, perhaps they are not, or US agricultural exports are subsidized, neither would be fair.

When one country has a large trade surplus with another and then resists opening its markets to some types of goods or services, there is some burden on them to justify why the trade between the two countries is largely a one-way street.