Another Great Read!

In the second part of a continuing (yay!) series of great articles on politcal rhetoric, Connections hits another one out of the ballpark. You won't want to miss it. Here's a teaser:

Fair trade restores personal dignity and builds hope by honoring craftsmanship, emphasizing quality and creativity, and valuing the uniqueness of material, tradition, and technique. False "free trade agreements" crush all of these. In my local Haitian marketplace, one merchant put it this way: he and his fellow merchants were pawns. The purpose of their struggle-filled and abnormally short lives (the average life expectancy of a Haitian male is 45 years) was to serve the interests of rich people who lived elsewhere in the world. He said this not with melodrama but as an objective statement of fact. His understanding of international trade policy and its effects was simply better informed than mine.

This merchant remembered a time when there was more dignity in poverty than today, when one could work hard and receive a fair return for their produce in the local market. Drought and erosion contribute to today