Marjorie>

El Barzon came about in early 1995 when due to the "Error of December" the interest rates on homes went from about 18% to 150% overnight. I attended some of the organizational meetings with friends of mine who were having to walk away from their houses.

Like everything else in Mexico, the power structure chose to blow off El Barzon and just wage a war of inattentive attrition. It worked. El Barzon never did.

The campesinos have tried many of the same strategies over the past few years in the runup to the final nail in the Free Trade coffin. A big problem, unfortunately, is that the CNC was an organization created to receive handouts from the PRI party during its years of hegemony--and was-and still is-- the rural equivalent of the charro unionism of the CTC and the teachers' union.

El campo no aguanta mas 3 or 4 years ago mounted some protests in demand of the renogiation of the Free Trade agreement that captured media attention--especially when they rode horses into the legislature--but that all came to nothing with the insistence on the part of the government that no provision for renegotiation existed nor was it possible to create one. A blatant lie, as there is no legal basis whatsoever for that statement--and which the legislature actually pointed out a few days ago.

I am not optimistic about anything being done to stop this attack on the economy and culture of Mexico, as the government of Felipe Calderon is a complete sell out to the gringos. In fact, it may even be their plan to wear down the people with this corn and beans issue so that they are less willing to put up a fight against the Proposed Plan Mexico, designed to turn Mexico into another gringo military beachhead like Colombia.

MaxheMust: Good that you referenced Chavez' oath. Too bad that the other parties to the oath--notably Raul Baduel--didn't take it as seriously as he did.

Bill BRG( the first commenter) mentions Al Gore. Interesting as Al Gore was a key PR person is puting NAFTA across. He was the Clinton administration's very effective mouthpiece during the NAFTA debates with Ross Perot on Larry King's show.

Read "The Selling of NAFTA" and learn how Bill used his political capital to get NAFTA passed rather than using it for Hilary's health care program.

Has anyone asked Al Gore what he now thinks of NAFTA and his role in geting it passed?

Has any one asked Hilary how she feels about where Bill chose to use his political clout in the first year of his administration?

NAFTA has shut down thousands of small farmers in Mexico while increasing the holdings of a few insanely greedy bastards.

=======================================================

"I swear by the God of my parents, I swear by my nation,
I swear by my honor that I will not allow my soul to rest, nor my arm to relax until I have broken the chains that oppress my people through the will of the powerful.
Free elections, free land and free men, horror to the oligarchy."

Oath used by Hugo Chavez (when he was 28) and some of his revolutionary friends.
(Page 80, !HUGO! by Bart Jones)...

Check out videos like "the Futuer of Food", "Fed Up", "The 4th World War" and "Kilometer Zero". Previews available here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2293923683440246993

The corn subsidies in the United States are really subsidizing the synthetic fertilizer, pesticide, fossil fuel, and heavy machinery industries. There is also a seed business and shipping to move the corn from the United States down to Mexico where it will displace Mexican production.

US farmers make their living doing other things like banking, dealing in heavy machinery and petro-chemical inputs to the industrial agriculture, and selling off chunks of farmland to developers. The actual farming operations lose money, and serve as tax writeoffs. Americans move from meaningful, sustainable farming to unmeaningful, unsustainable jobs. Industrial grain's environmental destruction includes river and delta dead zones, soil depletion, aquifer depletion, greenhouse gases.

The Mexican varieties of corn carry two to four times the metabolic efficiency, nutrition, and pest resistance of US varieties. Mexican varieties require two to four times less material, land and energy, inputs for the same nutritional output. Mexican production methods provide less yield/acre, but keep large numbers of people employed in dignified, independent and sustainable occupations. Crop diversity is increased, and environmental health is sustained.

There is an illusion that the Mexican farmers, who are very poor, will benefit from being pushed off their farms and forced to work factory jobs. The benefit is that they may afford to buy the junk they make in the factories. But to most people, the illusion of luxury and convenience that the junk provides isn't worth the loss of self-determination, damage to health and environment.

The better trade policy will "do no harm" and allow Mexican farmers to keep their independent, sustainable occupations. This requires purging the capitalists from Washington.

Well,

There goes the quality of food in another nation! Now they get to choke down genetically spiced Frankencorn with leaching pesticides in their guts long after the harvest is over.

MMM, MMM Monsanto Good,

MMMMMMMMMM (barf, shake, convulse, slowly die of cancer)

God what a nightmare these Globalization Nazis are! No one is safe from their chromosome damaging poison.

(except me. The remote pacific islands provide all my needs. I eat only my own home-grown strange tropical fruits and vegetables, five servings a day. Some are mild narcotics like Kava. Only peasants eat these odd seed-plenty tree born and volcanic ground nurtured roots I subsist on. No commie frankenfood ag/seed CEO could find a market here for their schidt. I suck down lots of anti-oxidant green seaweed tea too. And the food is dirt cheap (compared to the US police states.)

I have never felt better in my life.

When it gets too bad (like Berlin 1938,) let me know. You all are invited to my little Volcania.

pac "nautilus" plyer

Related, en masse, the following important review of an evidently very important (and very alarming) book provides a strong example of a huge problem with FTAs.

""Seeds of Destruction, The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation"
Review of F. William Engdahl's Book

by Stephen Lendman

Global Research, January 2, 2008"

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7716

That's Part I and Lendman will be providing two more parts.

Excerpt, including bio. on Engdahl, a writer and analyst I've found to be one to not miss:

"Bill Engdahl is a leading researcher, economist and analyst of the New World Order who's written on issues of energy, politics and economics for over 30 years. He contributes regularly to publications like Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Foresight magazine, Grant's Investor.com, European Banker and Business Banker International. He's also a frequent speaker at geopolitical, economic and energy related international conferences and is a distinguished Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization where he's a regular contributor.

Engdahl also wrote two important books - "A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order" in 2004. It's an essential history of geopolitics and the importance of oil. Engdahl explains that America's post-WW II dominance rests on two pillars and one commodity - unchallengeable military power and the dollar as the world's reserve currency combined with the quest to control global oil and other energy resources.

Engdahl's newest book is just out from Global Research: "Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation" and subject of this review. It's the diabolical story of how Washington and four Anglo-American agribusiness giants plan world domination by patenting life forms to gain worldwide control of our food supply and why that prospect is chilling. The book's compelling contents are reviewed below in-depth so readers will know the type future Henry Kissinger had in mind in 1970 when he said: "Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people."

Remember also, this cabal is one of many interconnected ones with fearsome power and ruthless intent to use it - Big Banks controlling the Federal Reserve and our money, Big Oil our world energy resources, Big Media our information, Big Pharma our health, Big Technology our state-of-the-art everything and watching us, Big Defense our wars, Big Pentagon waging them, and other corporate predators exploiting our lives for profit. Engdahl's book focuses brilliantly on one of them. To fully cover its vital contents, this review will be in three parts for more detail and to make it easily digestible.

...

This review covers the book in-depth because of its importance. It's an extraordinary work that "reveals a diabolical World of profit-driven political intrigue (and) government corruption and coercion" that's part of a decades-long global scheme for total world dominance. The book deserves vast exposure and must be read in full for the whole disturbing story. It's hoped the material below will encourage readers to do it in their own self-interest and to marshal mass consumer actions to place food safety above corporate profits.

Engdahl's book supplies the ammunition to do it and is also a sequel to his earlier one on war, oil politics and The New World Order and follows naturally from it. It covers the roots of the strategy to control "global food security" that goes back to the 1930s and the plans of a handful of American families to preserve their wealth and power. But it centers on one in particular that above the others "came to symbolize the hubris and arrogance of the emerging American century" that blossomed post-WW II. Its patriarch began in oil and then dominated it in his powerful Oil Trust. It was only the beginning as the family expanded into "education of youth, medicine and psychology," US foreign policy, and "the very science of life itself, biology, and its applications" in plants and agriculture.

The family's name is Rockefeller. The patriarch was John D., and four powerful later-generation brothers followed him - David, Nelson, Laurance, and John D. III. ... Today, three brothers are gone, David alone remains, .... He's active in family enterprises, however, including the Rockefeller Foundation to be discussed in Part II of this review."

PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT THESE review articles are saying; and therefore the book, while these reviews are still important, very. (The book surely is a 'must have' one for people who can afford books, and who care about what's going on and to learn ... much about it all).

There's much treasurable education in this kind of material.

In case my recommendation is not treated seriously, given some people here don't like my posts due to being prosaic, or writing enough to cause some CD'ers to slander me with references like I'm some crystal meth addict; well, maybe reviews of the book, which Lendman included following the article, will help to persuade people more than my words can.

"Reviews of Engdahl's Seeds of Destruction

What is so frightening about Engdahl's vision of the world is that it is so real. Although our civilization has been built on humanistic ideals, in this new age of "free markets", everything -- science, commerce, agriculture and even seeds -- have become weapons in the hands of a few global corporation barons and their political fellow travelers. To achieve world domination, they no longer rely on bayonet-wielding soldiers. All they need is to control food production.

(Dr. Arpad Pusztai, biochemist, formerly of the Rowett Research Institute Institute, Scotland)

If you want to learn about the socio-political agenda --why biotech corporations insist on spreading GMO seeds around the World-- you should read this carefully researched book. You will learn how these corporations want to achieve control over all mankind, and why we must resist... (Marijan Jost, Professor of Genetics, Krizevci, Croatia)

The book reads like a murder mystery of an incredible dimension, in which four giant Anglo-American agribusiness conglomerates have no hesitation to use GMO to gain control over our very means of subsistence...

(Anton Moser, Professor of Biotechnology, Graz, Austria)."

1993

Bill Blaikie says: (snipped) How does the Prime Minister answer that question? What does he intend to do about it? When will he reverse this facile notion that somehow free trade with Mexico will be of benefit to the working people of Mexico? It is not going to be of benefit to them or to the working people of America or Canada.

http://www.billblaikie.ca/node/832

1994

Bill Blaikie says: (snipped) Following up on the question raised earlier with respect to events in Mexico, an interesting exchange in which those who were against NAFTA defended it and those who were for it criticized it, what does the government intend to do about the situation in Mexico? What is the government prepared to do if the human rights situation does not improve in Mexico?

Are we going to continue in this agreement regardless of what the Mexican army and government do to people who feel these agreements are destroying their lives?

http://www.billblaikie.ca/node/831

1991

Bill Blaikie says: (snipped) The free trade agreement with Mexico is about to be fast-tracked through negotiations and the government is not going to listen. It was not willing to listen before and now some of the horrible predictions-

I think that the Mexican farmers are not just protesting NAFTA but its potential add ons. Remember this:

Cancun Address to IPN
Remarks by Bill Blaikie to the Inaugural Ceremony of the World Parliamentary Forum of the International Parliamentary Network

Cancun, Mexico, September 9, 2003

I am very pleased to be able to participate in this world parliamentary forum and extend my thanks to our Mexican hosts and Senator Leticia Borgesia in particular for organizing this event. As the Parliamentary Leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada, I am proud of the political fact that our party has always believed and advocated the idea that, as it says in the declaration of the International Parliamentary Network on the Fifth Ministerial Conference of the WTO, "another economic and trade paradigm is possible, which benefits the majorities of the populations all over the world." I have been an MP for almost 25 years and unfortunately I have spent almost my whole political life contending against the neo-liberal paradigm.

Indeed, especially since the introduction of the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement in 1988 and subsequently the NAFTA, Canada has been the object of an experiment in imposing the ideology of the global corporations and their view of the role of government, i.e. a very limited one, on a Canada with a previously strong public sector and mixed economy. The experiment is not over. Much has been done but much remains to be destroyed and handed over to the private sector, and so much depends on what happens at the WTO. This is why, as a Canadian, I stand before you with a warning in one hand, and an offer of solidarity in the other. We offer you solidarity in building up a new vision of a global economy in which democracy is not threatened, public services are valued and strengthened, access to lifesaving medicines comes before profit, life itself does not become a patented commodity, the environment is protected by Multi-lateral Environment Agreements to which trade is subordinated, and workers rights are treated with the same seriousness as investor rights.

We also offer a warning, born of our own experience, about the paradigm that is being pursued at the WTO, for we have first hand experience of some aspects of this through the NAFTA. Other countries have their own experience of this ideology, encountering various other forms of enforced structural adjustment.

I want to speak most particularly in this context of Chapter Eleven of the NAFTA, in which is found the investor-state dispute settlement provisions that permit corporations, independent of their government's permission or participation, to sue foreign government for actions that impede their profits.

As the WTO debates whether to proceed with negotiations on the four Singapore issues, the most significant of which is investment, it is critical that all be aware of the dangers of such a provision, for such a provision was intended for the MAI in 1998, and it is on the agenda again. The MAI may be dead, but it threatens to rise again through the WTO.

It would be preferable, of course, that there be no beginning of negotiations on investment, and the developing countries are right to insist that other issues be dealt with before any such negotiations are contemplated. But should there ever be such negotiations it is critical for the North American experience to be taken into account, both Canadian and otherwise as I know that Mexico has also had experience with this investor-state provision.

An investor-state provision is the perfect example of how such agreements threaten democracy and sovereignty. A democratically elected government makes a policy decision in the interests of the local environment, in the interest of preserving a particular resource, or in the interests of protecting or creating a public service, and it has to worry about being sued for whatever loss of profit is alleged to have been created as a result of such measures. This creates a "chill effect" which is much larger than the effect of particular suits. We have seen this in action in Canada, and we appear to be stuck with it in the NAFTA, but this is no reason why it should be spread any further.

I will conclude by saying that I am very concerned about the negotiations going on in the context of the GATS. Here, the object and priorities are clear. The agenda is driven by domestic businesses who want market access to service provision in other countries. In the Canadian context, put bluntly, Canadian businesses want to be able to make more money abroad, and if that means access for others in terms of providing services that are now provided in Canada by the public sector, than that may well be the cost. This is not yet the case, and the Canadian government would have believe that it will never be. But it is clear that private interests would love to have a much larger share of the pie when it comes to health, education, and water, and the GATS is a possible vehicle for such an expansion, all in the name of creating opportunities for Canadians in other countries.

A final note on agriculture. There is a need to find the right balance between getting rid of export subsidies and upholding "multi-functionality." We in Canada are the victims of export subsidies, but we also want to preserve our right to do things differently. The Canadian Wheat Board and orderly marketing should not be construed as subsidies, as they sometimes are by the US, at the same time as they are heavily subsidizing their own producers in ways that are clearly intended to be, and are, real subsidies.

Thank you Mr. Chairman, for the invitation to speak here today. We Parliamentarians have a tremendous challenge in bringing to the trade table all those more important perspectives which so often get lost in a discussion captive to a certain economic language and limited by the current free market fundamentalism that one hopes is soon to wane. There is more than one kind of fundamentalism to be wary of in the world today. The WTO should be a politically ecumenical cathedral in which political diversity, democratically chosen, is respected instead of slated for elimination by negotiation.

http://www.billblaikie.ca/node/391

During the first year of his presidency (1993), Bill Clinton vigorously supported NAFTA without even pretending to be concerned about including environmental or worker health/safety rules. This resulted in massive defections of the Democratic Party base and enabled the Republicans to take control of Congress in 1994. The rest is history that only a neocon could love.

Many of the immigrants you see in US cities hanging drywall, manning leaf blowers, and soliciting for work in front of Home Depot are displaced Mexican farmers. With the recently enacted trade agreement with Peru, Americans will see more displaced farmers seeking work in the US.

Thanks to NAFTA the Mexican people have become economic refugees, so once they cross the border into the USA undocumented we get cheap labor. Win-win situation for the wealthy.

Al Gore said in his Nobel speech that we've declared war on the earth. NAFTA is a war against the Mexican people. And the American people too.

Any country signing a FREE TRADE agreement with any country who heavily subsidises their own products for export are just asking to be butt intercoursed so carry your own KY as theirs has sand in it

Anyone out there smell another El Barzon in the making? I do.

http://marjorieanndrake.blogspot.com/

"But the government of President Felipe Calderon celebrated the end of the trade barriers,..."

I $u$pect that'$ not all they're celebrating!

NAFTA critics say Mexican farmers cannot compete with their American counterparts because the government subsidies they receive are paltry compared with those given to U.S. farmers.

And there at the bottom of the article is the BOTTOM LINE!

I tried to explain to my almost 80-year-old mother how the farm subsidies that are creating multi-million dollar midwest farmers (of those few remaining who didn't have to sell out to Big Ag) are also the cornerstone of why illegal immigrants are 'stealing our jobs.' She could not comprehend how huge the subsidies are that make imported corn (including transportation costs) cheaper to buy in developing countries than locally grown corn. To then connect this to why mexican / peruvian farmers have to leave the land and come to this country OR just wait in their own countries until the corporations ship off jobs that those farmers will then take to earn only pennies per hour.

Part of the unwillingness to believe is due to age (I think much of Bush's support still comes from the elderly who like to think the best of his 'just plain folks' image). Part of it is the indoctrination that corporations are loyal to their employees (thus making the corporate off-shoring of jobs the fault of immigrants, not the fault of corporations).

A large part of it is education - particularly the kind of education that she and I and her grandchildren received. Authoritarian, compartmentalized, focused on right / wrong answers vs. how did you come up with that? Until the world's education system is revamped to teach critical thinking, in-depth analysis, finding relationships and patterns between seemingly unrelated events/subjects then every human being in the world will be easily manipulated by the uber-wealthy who control the corporate media/publishing industry and the increasingly-corporate education system.

NMBill, Canadian farmers don't get any where near the subsidies American farmers get either. Not that they don't want them.

And American farmers are not as subsidized as many in Europe.

RE: - I tried to explain to my almost 80-year-old mother how the farm subsidies that are creating multi-million dollar midwest farmers (of those few remaining who didn't have to sell out to Big Ag) are also the cornerstone of why illegal immigrants are 'stealing our jobs.'

Why did those farmers, in your words, "have to sell out"? Seems as if the subsidies are not enough to make a go of it on the smaller scale which is the family farm. It is a bit like blaming higher wages for Mexicans coming to the US when it would have been easy enough to make wage and work standards part of any trade agreement (ie if you don't pay your workers a living wage, we will put tarriffs on your products to make up for the difference).

There is another related issue with American aid to starving countries - is that they usually give the aid with strings attached. Instead of buying food grown as close by as possible to feed the starving, it has to be shipped from the US.

I have nothing against the US buying up surplus wheat from its farmers and giving it to those in need. However, when you give money, you should not have strings like having to spend it on American food or cosy high paying jobs for Americans to do what the locals can do.

Thanks for covering this Common Dreams, the MSM coverage has been sketchy.

nspire - the pesticide standards for food are lower in Mexico than they are in the US than they are in Canada. One thing that The Three Amigos and 30 CEOS were discussing during that SPP meeting in Montebello was harmonizing those pesticide standards for food. Whose standards do you think those 30 CEOs would be more interested in?

Happy eating.

RE: Only Kucinich is forthright enough to say he will end our participation in NAFTA and the WTO.

There is a financial penalty for getting out of NAFTA - which complicates the issue somewhat. If one is able to water it down, one doesn't pay that financial penalty. However, there may come a point where paying the financial penalty would be more preferable to the costs of continuing with the agreement - and some say we have reached that point already.

There is a rule in NAFTA that Canada cannot increase domestic consumption of its own oil without increasing the export of the same oil to the US by the same proportion. Thus, there is that incentive for the US to want to stay in it.

Just saying that watering down NAFTA to get all the disagreeable stuff out of it (or to add a few good stuff to it) is plan "A" and getting out altogether is plan "B."

Part of plan "A" is to threaten plan "B" if the other side refused to agree to the changes.

You know that Canada could have gotten out of NAFTA with no financial penalty because of Softwood Lumber - America's actions on that regard violated NAFTA - but Harper ordered Emerson to cave in and the US got to screw Canada on Softwood Lumber and NAFTA was saved. It was a win-win for Bush.

Only Kucinich is forthright enough to say he will end our participation in NAFTA and the WTO. It is just one of the reasons he has been airbrushed out of the picture on behalf of the corporations for the past year.

I was so counting on Mexican food during the Greater Depression, only here to read that the gentle Sam hand is ripping the guts out of local farmers, and that possibility too.