Left I on the News

I've had one long-running series about those things which cause many times as many deaths each year in the world as terrorism, and another entitled "Capitalism Kills." In this post I add one more item to both threads courtesy of Antonia Juhasz' new book, The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time:

Over 20,000 farmers committed suicide in India in response to identical policies [the policies of the WTO which have a destructive impact on small farmers] between 1997 and 2003.

I had the pleasure of hearing Juhasz speak at a local independent bookstore last week, and, since I believe in supporting such activities (independent bookstores and progressive activist authors), I bought a copy of the book. I've only gotten though one chapter so far (from which the discussion on the WTO and the above quote comes), and it's a little dry (she's no Greg Palast, which is probably a good thing), but Juhasz is extremely knowledgeable. I have no doubt that the book, like her excellent talk, is packed with good information.

Since I can't really endorse the book yet, having only read one chapter, I'll close with an endorsement from the book frontplate from Cindy Sheehan:

"The Bush Agenda lays out the 'noble cause' for which George Bush asked [Ed. note: and continues to ask] our sons and daughters to give their lives: to open Iraq to U.S. corporate control. All potential military recruits should read this book and then decide if Halliburton and Chevron are worth fighting for."