ABSTRACT
One measure of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's credentials as an American was reflected in his devotion to the idea of 'the common people' and his parallel dislike of royalty or anything that smacked of privilege by wealth or social class. The ruling, in effect, gives Chiquita – the large South American banana-producing multi-national (largely owned by US stockholders) – all the rights to free trade in bananas with EU states. A growing number of local governments, trade unions, non-governmental organisations, governments of small countries and so forth are criticising these talks and calling for them to end. The people just the level of desperate poverty, but still grindingly poor, observe that they had better hold on just a bit longer to see if they can avert disaster. In one third-world country after another this author has seen this sort of scenario unfold, and what it does to community empowerment and individual self-esteem hardly bears discussion.
