Keynote
Littered with broken promises, the trail of free trade is leading the world to a dead end. Wayne Ellwood makes the case for change.

Free Trade – THE FACTS

Hanging in the balance
New trade treaties increase corporate control over patents. AIDS patients in Peru will pay the price, argues Stephanie Boyd.

Affordable drugs? Forget it!
Patricia Ranald monitors Australia’s fight to hang on to its low-priced drugs scheme in the face of mounting US pressure.

Race to the bottom
Illustrated by Polyp.

Ring of fire
Indigenous people across the Andes are fed up with free trade. Co-authors Kathryn Ledebur and Sandra Edwards report from Ecuador and Bolivia.

Can’t pay, won’t pay!
Roger Burbach claims foreign investors have pushed Argentina to the wall. And now the country is pushing back.

Action
The fair trade alternative.

FROM THIS MONTH'S EDITOR

What do you think of when you hear the word ‘trade’? I’ll tell you my first thoughts: giant transnational corporations, Wall Street bond dealers, international money markets, the machinations of the World Trade Organization, etc, etc.

Mmm... yes, thought so. Trade is one of those topics whose mere mention makes the eyes glaze over.

That’s unfortunate – because for millions around the world, it’s anything but an abstract notion.

The terms on which you engage in the global market determine if you have food on the table, whether you have decent employment, if you can afford to educate your kids or whether you can provide healthcare for your family.

Free trade stacks the deck in favour of the powerful. The winners are those who produce the most for the least, no matter what the social or environmental costs.

That’s why trade matters – and why the campaign to stop free trade matters even more.

This year was the 10th anniversary of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a deal which has more than lived up to the fears of its critics. Now the Free Trade Area of the Americas is attempting to extend NAFTA from the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego.

Across Latin America those who will be marginalized by this process are standing up to say, ‘No!’

This issue of NI tracks that opposition and explores the pressing need for alternatives. Because, behind the bland language, trade is really about who we are as people – and the kind of societies we want to build.

Wayne Ellwood
for the New Internationalist
Co-operative
waynee@newint.org

Letters
Reasoning with Judeophobes; were Chaucer and Shakespeare antisemitic?; encouraging selflessness; in defence of humanism.
PLUS: Letter from Lebanon

Southern Exposure
Radical photomontage from Iranian woman Shadi Ghadirian.

View from the South
Afonso Dhlakama of Renamo may once have been sponsored by apartheid South Africa but he deserves more influence in the democratic Mozambique of today, argues Ike Oguine.

Currents
The Pan-African Parliament opens in Johannesburg; disaster relief as a transnational marketing opportunity in Haiti; resistance to US military bases; Death Row blues in Jamaica.
PLUS: WordPower – the language of corporations.
PLUS: Speechmarks and Seriously

Worldbeaters
Calling me a CIA stooge is misleading, says Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi - I spied for 15 different spy agencies.

Big Bad World
Homophobes of the World Unite! by Polyp.
PLUS: NI Prize Crossword

Front cover and magazine designed by Andrew Kokotka.
All monetary values are expressed in US dollars unless otherwise noted.
On-line mag maintained by: Simon Loffler

© Copyright 2004 New Internationalist Publications Ltd. All rights reserved.