trade

"Original in Lithuanian: "Šiandien daugelis vakariečių nežino nieko apie Lietuvą. Neturime tokio stipraus identiteto kaip estai ar šveicarai. Tikime, kad turėdami inžinerinių kompetencijų ir pozicionuodami save kaip inžinerinę šalį tapsime lengvai atpažįstamais ir išskirtiniais""

"Translation in English: "Today, many in the West know nothing about Lithuania. We don't have as strong an identity as the Estonians or the Swiss. We believe that having engineering competences and positioning ourselves as an engineering country will make us distinctive and recognisable.""

"At this time (c. 2150-2000 BC) ivory from Meluḥḥa is mentioned only in connection with ivory bird figurines. Otherwise, in the body of texts from Ur dating to about 2000 BC ivory is attributed to Dilmun (Bahrain), where it had presumably been shipped up the Gulf from the Indus, where ivory was plentiful on the sites of the Harappan period, both as tusks and as objects."

"By the late Early Dynastic era, as references to ivory figurines in the pre-Sargonic texts from Lagash attest, ivory objects had begun to reach southern Mesopotamia. While these, in theory, could have come from either Africa or the Indus region, it is generally believed that the ivory was of Indian origin for the earliest representation of an elephant in Mesopotamia, ... is definitely of the Indian as opposed to the African country. Third millennium representations of elephants in Mesopotamia are, however, extremely rare and aside from the Tell Asmar seal just mentioned none of the other elephants can be taken as confirmed [… but ...] ivory was certainly reaching the area."

"An elephant tusk from level IIA at Mehrgarh in Pakistan, c.5500 BC, grooved by artisans, is the earliest evidence for the working of an Asian elephant's tusks."

"Ivory objects from the Iberian peninsula dated from the Chalcolithic at about 3000 BC [....] brought in by sea" [excavated from the metropolis of Los Millares in the south-east of Spain on the Mediterranean Sea] "revealed a majority of Asian ivory (Elephas maximus)", [but African ivory is not found here] "before the Early Bronze Age (end of the third and first half of the second millennium BC)" ... Whereas in Portugal are found a majority of African savannah elephant in the early chalcolithic, in south-eastern Spain on the contrary we cannot identify this type of ivory before the Early Bronze Age (end of the third and first half of the second millennium BC). So the analysis of ivory from various tombs from the metropolis of Los Millares revealed a majority of Asian ivory (Elephas maximus). The situation in south-western Atlantic Spain, on the other hand, coincides with the one in Portugal, where African savannah elephant ivory can be found in the Early Chalcolithic. This speaks for the existence of an Atlantic route of contact and exchange for the western part of the Iberian Peninsula already in the first half of the third millennium BC."

"It is probable that at the time when south Mesopotamia was in contact with the Indus by sea, directly or indirectly, from the middle of the third millennium BC to about 1700 BC, ivory was regularly traded."

"A seal and a gaming piece of elephant ivory from Mundigak (III) in Afghanistan, c.3000 BC, are the earliest ivory artefacts so far discovered outside India."

"A text from the time of Gudea and Ur-Baba, which is a list of items dedicated to a temple preserves the earliest attestation of ivory (zu-am-si) arriving in Mesopotamia in raw form, listing two pieces of ivory by length and thickness. The evidence of ivory import continues to grow during the succeeding Ur III period. Most of our information comes from Ur, at this time the main gateway for goods entering the region from the south and east [….] in contrast to the pre-Sargonic texts mentioning the import of finished goods in ivory, the craftsmen of Ur were in receipt of sizable quantities of raw ivory, which they then fashioned themselves into objects."

"Only the community can stop drug trafficking, and it is our responsibility however you look at it. After all, those junkies are our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, neighbors and friends; they are no strangers. We must organize to save their lives and the life of our community."

"What about the other parts of the world? The criminologist Gary LaFree and the sociologist Orlando Patterson have shown that the relationship between crime and democratization is an inverted U. Established democracies are relatively safe places, as are established autocracies, but emerging democracies and semi-democracies (also called anocracies) are often plagued by violent crime and vulnerable to civil war, which sometimes shade into each other. The most crime-prone regions in the world today are Russia, sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of Latin America. Many of them have corrupt police forces and judicial systems which extort bribes out of criminals and victims alike and dole out protection to the highest bidder. Some, like Jamaica (33.7), Mexico (11.1), and Colombia (52.7), are racked by drug-funded militias that operate beyond the reach of the law. Over the past four decades, as drug trafficking has increased, their rates of homicide have soared. Others, like Russia (29.7) and South Africa (69), may have undergone decivilizing processes in the wake of the collapse of their former governments. The decivilizing process has also racked many of the countries that switched from tribal ways to colonial rule and then suddenly to independence, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa and Papua New Guinea (15.2)."

"Crack and other drugs are a huge source of profits for the government, and it keeps the Black community passive and politically indifferent. That is the main reason why we cannot depend upon the police force and or the government to stop the drug traffic or help the victims hooked on drugs. They are pushing the drugs to beat us down, on the one hand, but the State is also made more powerful because of the phony “” which allows police state measures in Black and oppressed communities, and because of millions of dollars in government monetary appropriations made of “law enforcement” agencies, who supposedly are putting down the traffic in drugs. But they never go after the bankers or the big business pharmaceutical companies who fund the drug trade, just the street level dealers, who are usually poor Blacks."

"The spread of crack is just a follow-up to massive government drug peddling that began at the end of the decade of the 1960s. The white House is the “rock house,” meaning the U.S. political administration is behind the whole drug trade. The U.S. government has actually been smuggling drugs into this country for many years aboard CIA and military planes to use as a chemical warfare weapon against Black America. These drugs were mostly heroin imported from the so-called “Golden Triangle” of Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. But with the introduction of , there was no need to import drugs into the country at the same extent as before, because it could be chemically prepared in a mainland lab, and then distributed immediately. Crack created a whole new generation of drug clients and customers for the drug dealers; it was cheap and highly addictive."

"Unemployment is another reason that drug trafficking is so prevalent in our communities. Poor people will desperately look for anything to make money with, even the very drugs that are destroying out communities. But if people have no jobs or income, drugs look very lucrative and the best way out of the situation. In fact, the drug economy has become the only income in many poor Black communities, and the only thing that some people perceive will lift them out of lives of desperate poverty. Clearly, decent jobs at a union wage are part of the answer to ending drug trafficking in our community, rather than a dependence on police, courts and the State. The cops are not our friends or ally, and must be exposed for their part in protecting the trade, rather than suppressing it."

"Nearly all the evidence of Harappan relations with the West has been brought to light in foreign territories (the Persian Gulf, Mesopotamia, Iran) and not in the Indus territories."

"It is clear however that the products of India which entered long-distance trade were of a great, seemingly infinite, variety and that they were quite commonly expensive or precious."

"O Soma, from every side pour forth four seas filled with a thousand-fold riches."

"The program of the world's peace, therefore, is our program; and that program, the only possible program, all we see it, is this: [...] 3. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance."

"I believe strongly in free trade but it also has to be fair trade. The first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, warned that the "abandonment of the protective policy by the American Government [will] produce want and ruin among our people." Lincoln was right -- and it is time we heeded his words. I am not going to let America and its great companies and workers, be taken advantage of anymore."

"But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade."

"Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular."

""Free trade" is a slogan used to attack practices designed by competitor economies to protect their own interests."

"If got a big head start on the 707 from multibillion-dollar military contracts to develop an air force transport, is that a sin against free trade?"

"Free trade consists simply in letting people buy and sell as they want to buy and sell. It is protection that requires force, for it consists in preventing people from doing what they want to do. Protective tariffs are as much applications of force as are blockading squadrons, and their object is the same—to prevent trade. The difference between the two is that blockading squadrons are a means whereby nations seek to prevent their enemies from trading; protective tariffs are a means whereby nations attempt to prevent their own people from trading. What protection teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war."

"Technological advance often thrives in sheltered and subsidized markets, which defy free trade."

""Free trade" is a policy imposed on the weakest and evaded by the most powerful."

"People commonly think of neoliberalism as an ideology that promotes totally free markets, where the state retreats from the scene and abandons all interventionist policies. But if we step back a bit, it becomes clear that the extention of neoliberalism has entailed powerful new forms of state intervention. The creation of a global 'free market' required not only violent coups and dictatorships backed by Western governments, but also the invention of a totalizing global bureaucracy – the World Bank, the IMF, the and bilateral s – with reams of new laws, backed up by the of the United States. In other words, an unprecedented expansion of state power was necessary to force countries around the world to liberalize their markets against their will. As the has known ever since the in , when British gunboats invaded China in order to knock down China's , free trade has never actually been about freedom. On the contrary, as we have seen, free trade has a tendency to gradually undermine and ."

"Free Trade is a great pacificator. We have had many quarrels, many causes of quarrels, during the last fifty years, but we have not had a single war with any first-class Power. Free Trade is slowly but surely cleaving a path through the dense and dark thicket of armaments to the sunny land of brotherhood amongst nations."

"If I were five-and-twenty or thirty, instead of, unhappily, twice that number of years, I would take Adam Smith in hand—I would not go beyond him, I would have no politics in it—I would take Adam Smith in hand, and I would have a League for free trade in Land just as we had a League for free trade in Corn. You will find just the same authority in Adam Smith for the one as for the other; and if it were only taken up as it must be taken up to succeed, not as a political, revolutionary, Radical, Chartist notion, but taken up on politico-economic grounds, the agitation would be certain to succeed; and if you apply free trade in land and to labour too—that is, by getting rid of those abominable restrictions in your parish settlements, and the like—then, I say, the men who do that will have done for England probably more than we have been able to do by making free trade in corn."

"Behind their fluffy rhetoric about free trade and free markets lurks a hostility toward freedom for ordinary people — and a love affair with police and prisons."

"Free Trade! What is it? Why, breaking down the barriers that separate nations; those barriers, behind which nestle the feelings of pride, revenge, hatred, and jealousy, which every now and then burst their bounds, and deluge whole countries with blood; those feelings which nourish the poison of war and conquest, which assert that without conquest we can have no trade, which foster that lust for conquest and dominion which sends forth your warrior chiefs to scatter devastation through other lands, and then calls them back that they may be enthroned securely in your passions, but only to harass and oppress you at home."

"The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors,” and has left no other bond between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment.” It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade."

"Never was the military spirit half so rampant in this country since 1815 as at the present time. Look at the news from Rangoon...This makes 5400 persons killed by our ships in the East during the last five years, without our having lost one man by the butcheries. Now give me Free Trade as the recognized policy of all parties in this country, and I will find the best possible argument against these marauding atrocities."

"Free trade is profoundly based on the assumption of equilibrium conditions and in particular that wages always fall to their strict economic level. If they do not, and if for several reasons we do not desire them to, then it is only by means of a tariff that the ideal distribution of resources between different uses, which free trade aims at, can be achieved; and there is an unanswerable theoretical case for a countervailing import duty (and also for an export bounty) equivalent to the difference between the actual wage and the economic wage. ... I am no longer a free trader – and I believe that practically no-one else is – in the old sense of the term to the extent of believing in a very high degree of national specialisation and in abandoning any industry which is unable for the time being to hold its own. Where wages are immobile, this would be an extraordinarily dangerous doctrine to follow."

"When you make foreign wine more expensive, domestic manufacturers can sell their wine at a higher price. The same with washing machines and solar panels and chairs. Anything that is in competition with an import will also get more expensive."

"If soldiers are not to cross international boundaries, goods must do so. Unless shackles can be dropped from trade, bombs will be dropped from the sky."

"We are already well down the road toward a managed-trade regime. It would be far better to acknowledge that reality, and seek a set of reasonable rules, than to pretend that Ricardian trade is the norm and allow mercantilist states to overwhelm U.S. industry and ratchet down wages, in the name of free trade."

"So, recently, though it wasn’t reported here, there were negotiations with Australia to establish what’s called a free trade agreement. ... The negotiations were held up for some time because the United States was objecting to Australia’s highly efficient health care system. ... Why was the U.S. objecting to the Australian system? Well, because the Australian system is evidence-based... They have to provide evidence that the drug actually does something, that it is better than some cheaper thing that’s already on the market. That evidence-based approach, the U.S. negotiators argued, is interference with free markets, because corporations must have the right to deceive. ... The claim itself is kind of amusing, I mean, even if you believe the free market rhetoric for a moment. The main purpose of advertising is to undermine markets. If you go to graduate school and you take a course in economics, you learn that markets are systems in which informed consumers make rational choices. That’s what’s so wonderful about it. But that’s the last thing that the state corporate system wants. It is spending huge sums to prevent that."

"The importance of international trade for economic development cannot be overemphasized. But free trade is not the best path to economic development. Trade helps economic development only when the country employs a mixture of protection and open trade, constantly adjusting it according to its changing needs and capabilities. Trade is simply too important for economic development to be left to free trade economists."

"As the most powerful state, the U.S. makes its own laws, using force and conducting economic warfare at will. It also threatens sanctions against countries that do not abide by its conveniently flexible notions of "free trade." In one important case, Washington has employed such threats with great effectiveness (and GATT approval) to force open Asian markets for U.S. tobacco exports and advertising, aimed primarily at the growing markets of women and children. The U.S. Agriculture Department has provided grants to tobacco firms to promote smoking overseas. Asian countries have attempted to conduct educational anti-smoking campaigns, but they are overwhelmed by the miracles of the market, reinforced by U.S. state power through the sanctions threat. Philip Morris, with an advertising and promotion budget of close to $9 billion in 1992, became China's largest advertiser. The effect of Reaganite sanction threats was to increase advertising and promotion of cigarette smoking (particularly U.S. brands) quite sharply in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, along with the use of these lethal substances. In South Korea, for example, the rate of growth in smoking more than tripled when markets for U.S. lethal drugs were opened in 1988. The Bush Administration extended the threats to Thailand, at exactly the same time that the "war on drugs" was declared; the media were kind enough to overlook the coincidence, even suppressing the outraged denunciations by the very conservative Surgeon-General. Oxford University epidemiologist Richard Peto estimates that among Chinese children under 20 today, 50 million will die of cigarette-related diseases, an achievement that ranks high even by 20th century standards."

"Rich countries have 'kicked away the ladder' by forcing free-market, free-trade policies on poor countries. Already established countries do not want more competitors emerging through the nationalistic policies they themselves successfully used in the past."

"Britain and the US are not the homes of free trade; in fact, for a long time they were the most protectionist countries in the world. Not all countries have succeeded through protection and subsidies, but few have done so without them. For developing countries, free trade has a rarely been a matter of choice; it was often an imposition from outside, sometimes even through military power. Most of them did very poorly under free trade; they did much better when they used protection and subsidies. The best-performing economies have been those that opened up their economies selectively and gradually. Neo-liberal free-trade free-market policy claims to sacrifice equity for growth, but in fact it achieves neither; growth has slowed down in the past two and a half decades when markets were freed and borders opened."

"As South Korea shows, active participation in international trade does not require free trade. Indeed, had South Korea pursued free trade and not promoted infant industries, it would not have become a major trading nation. It would still be exporting raw materials (e.g., tungsten ore, fish, seaweed) or low-technology, low-price products (e.g., textiles, garments, wigs made with human hair) that used to be its main export items in the 1960s."

"Economists have, in fact, devoted a lot of effort to documenting how international differences in economic conditions change as national governments lower the barriers that limit trade across countries. Much of international trade theory attempts to imagine what happens when countries allow unrestricted flows of goods and capital across national boundaries. One common theme in these models, which has greatly influenced economic policy, is that the removal of restrictions on such flows increases global income and tends to equalize prices and wages across countries. Decades of experience with various trade liberalization policies, however, do not seem to have had as much of an impact on global income or on international wage inequality as the proponents of free trade would have expected."

"Why are we free-traders? ... We are satisfied that it is right because it gives the freest play to individual energy and initiative and character and the largest liberty both to producer and consumer. We say that trade is injured when it is not allowed to follow its natural course, and when it is either hampered or diverted by artificial obstacles. ... We believe in free trade because we believe in the capacity of our countrymen. That at least is why I oppose protection root and branch, veiled and unveiled, one-sided or reciprocal. I oppose it in any form. Besides we have experience of fifty years, during which our prosperity has become the envy of the world."

"Almost all of today's rich countries used tariff protection and subsidies to develop their industries. Interestingly, Britain and the USA, the two countries that are supposed to have reached the summit of the world economy through their free-market, free-trade policy, are actually the ones that had most aggressively used protection and subsidies."

"The aim of protection, in short, is to prevent the bringing into a country of things in themselves useful and valuable, in order to compel the making of such things. But what all mankind in the individual affairs of every-day life, regard as to be desired is not the making of things, but the possession of things."

"The US is sort of the flag-bearer for capitalism and free markets, the US continues to be a very important part of a global industry that is interconnected, that is dealing with a fungible commodity which is crude oil. So having equalisation through free trade is very healthy for oil."

"The history of capitalism has been so totally re-written that many people in the rich world do not perceive the historical double standards involved in recommending free trade and free market to developing countries."

"Challenging the assumption of free choice in neo-classical economics, Fairtrade redefines not only how value should be calculated, but also what it is it that should be valued and who values. This makes visible the political confrontation at the point of price determination, notably by providing a social arena ... where conflicts of interest between opposing parties are played out. Once the producer enters price formation processes as a person and not only as the alienable owner of a commodity, the social, political and ecological and relations of production come to the fore that are otherwise concealed through the spontaneous market mechanism."