Home
Larry Keiler's Library tagged → View Popular
CIP Americas Program | NAFTA'S Serfs: From Wage Slavery to Debt Slavery
-
Essentially governed by the rules laid down by NAFTA and other trade agreements, the lives of the U.S. and Mexican working and middle classes were shaped by the same corporate investors, lenders, profiteers, hucksters, and political players on both sides of the border.
CIP Americas Program | Massacre in the Amazon: The U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement Sparks a Battle Over Land and Resources
-
The FTA with the United States was negotiated beginning in May of 2004 under the government of Alejandro Toledo (2000-2005). The treaty was slated to replace the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act signed in 2002 and in effect until December of 2006. The FTA eliminated obstacles to trade and facilitated access to goods and services and investment flows. Modeled on the North American free Trade Agreement, it also includes a broad range of issues linked to intellectual property, public contracting and services, and dispute resolution.5
CIP Americas Program | Obama Reaffirms Promise to Renegotiate NAFTA
-
Broad-based citizen groups like the Council of Canadians oppose NAFTA because of the energy proportionality clause that requires Canada to export oil to the United States even in times of scarcity, the investor-state clauses that give investors the right to sue governments contained in Chapter 11, and the clause that permits bulk-water exports. Polls in the general population show that 61% favor renegotiation.
-
In 2003, former President Vicente Fox requested opening up the agreement only to be rebuffed by the U.S. government.
- 5 more annotations...
CIP Americas Policy Program | Time to Renegotiate NAFTA, Not Expand It
-
The SPP affects over 300 areas of government responsibility, from energy production and environmental protection to national security and public health.
-
we reject the idea that acceptable hemispheric policy on such important matters can emerge from cloistered summit meetings that exclude the public, civil society, trade unions, the media, and—in violation of the constitutional traditions of all three of our countries—transparent legislative oversight.
- 2 more annotations...
CIP Americas Policy Program | Armoring NAFTA: The Battleground for Mexico's Future
-
this was the first time that a U.S. official had stated outright that regional security was no longer focused on keeping the citizens of the United States, Canada, and Mexico safe from harm, but was now about protecting a regional economic model.
-
the counter-terrorism/drug-war model elaborated in the SPP and embodied later in Plan Mexico (known officially as the Merida Initiative) encourages a crackdown on grassroots dissent to assure that no force, domestic or foreign, effectively questions the future of the system.
- 6 more annotations...
IRC Americas Program | A Primer on Plan Mexico
-
The Bush administration's concept of a joint security strategy for North America goes back at least as far as the creation of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) as an extension of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).3 When the three North American leaders met in Waco, Texas in March of 2005, they put into motion a secretive process of negotiations between members of the executive branches and representatives of large corporations to facilitate cross-border business and create a shared security perimeter. Subsequent meetings, including the April 2008 trilateral summit in New Orleans, extended these goals amid mounting criticism.4
-
Through the SPP, the Bush administration has sought to push its North American trade partners into a common front that would assume shared responsibility for protecting the United States from terrorist threats, promoting and protecting the free-trade economic model, and bolstering U.S. global control, especially in Latin America where the State Department sees a growing threat due to the election of center-left governments.
- 1 more annotations...
IRC Americas Program | The North American Union Farce
-
A poli-sci undergrad can tell you who will prevail if Canadian, U.S., and Mexican negotiators get together to set out a common agenda. (Hint: it's not Mexico or Canada.)
Officially described as "... a White House-led initiative among the United States and the two nations it borders—Canada and Mexico—to increase security and to enhance prosperity among the three countries through greater cooperation," the SPP poses a much more palpable sovereignty threat to NAFTA's junior partners. Canadians have been the most active in opposing the SPP, not out of fear of a mythical NAU but because of real threats to their ability to protect consumer health, natural resources, and the environment. SPP rules would force open oil production in environmentally sensitive areas and channel water supplies to U.S. needs. Likewise, Mexican civic organizations have protested against SPP pressures to privatize Mexican oil and allow greater U.S. intervention in the Mexican national security system.
-
As for moving toward a borderless North America, the years since the SPP began have witnessed a hardening of the U.S.-Mexico border never seen before in modern history. Fifteen thousand Border Patrol agents, 6,000 members of the National Guard, and a border fence powerfully belie any suggestion that the U.S. government aims to eliminate borders as it moves toward a secret North American Union.
- 1 more annotations...
http://www.alternet.org - AlterNet: Why Can't the U.S. Have the Debate about Naomi Klein's Book That Europe Has?
-
The timing of The Shock Doctrine's release in Canada is very relevant here because it just hosted a summit with George Bush and Mexican President Calderon to meet with Prime Minister Steven Harper to talk about the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) which is basically like NAFTA-plus -- NAFTA plus security issues. The SPP is an example of the shock doctrine I outline in the sense that this was an agenda that would have been unspeakable in terms of integration with the United States before 9/11, and in the panic after -- in that shock -- the SPP agenda moved forward in technocratic circles, and it was presented as a done deal.
Once Canadians began learning about the SPP, they started rejecting it, and then they had this summit, where it was announced that, "Don't worry, nothing's going to happen here." But they said in the final press conference at the summit in Montebello, Quebec, at the end of August that the one exception that they would push for the SPP to be pushed through is if there's a disaster -- if there's an avian flu outbreak or a terrorist attack or a natural disaster -- then they would implement tightened integration between security forces in all these countries.
In Canada this was front-page news -- in the U.S., it wasn't reported on. When my book came out a week later people saw the connections immediately. They realized that what the Canadian government was saying was, the next time there's a disaster, we will use it as a moment of opportunity to push through these policies that you're rejecting where there isn't a disaster going on. It's incredibly naked.
Selected Tags
Related Tags
Sponsored Links
Top Contributors
Diigo is about better ways to research, share and collaborate on information. Learn more »
Join Diigo