Killings down. Targets already killed.

Editor,

That trade unionism is thriving in Columbia because killings of union organizers there are less numerous than before is as unpersuasive as that democracy is thriving in Iraq because sectarian killings there are down. When few targets are still alive, the frequency and number of their killings decline; besides, corporate America's contempt for labor world-wide has hardly diminished with the number of these killings.

The desperation with which American corporations and their apologists are clinging to the Columbian "free" trade deal correlates about equally with the depth of revulsion with which all but the criminal rich in Latin America have come to view the predatory style of capitalism practiced by the American ruling class.