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WELCOME TO THE CAFTA OPPOSITION PAGES 

Anti-Cafta / WTO Articles Can be found below

Why CAFTA is Bad for you

The Three Senators most responsible for passage of CAFTA:

SENATE Sponsors of CAFTA: 

1 . Sen Grassley, Chuck [IA]  

2. Sen Frist, William H. [TN] - 6/23/2005 

3. Sen Reid, Harry [NV] - 6/23/2005 

CAFTA is now Law

NOW THAT CAFTA HAS PASSED -  

HOW TO RESIST IMPLEMENTATION 

Why CAFTA is Bad for you

The Dangers of the Central American Free Trade Agreement

  AMERICAN BORDERS  TO BE DISMANTLED 

*******************************************************************

CAFTA NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT ? Watch the Free Streaming Video (Windows Media Player) and find out

We Become Silent
The CODEX-CAFTA Documentary 

(Click on link to go to webpage)

ALL U.S. Laws and Statutes to be "harmonized" [controlled by]

E.U.   "Standards"

Your U.S. Constitution is in Their way !!

NBC: Nuclear, Biotechnology and the "CODEX"

Bush Administration Happy with Passage of CAFTA

Statement of USTR (U.S. Trade Representative) Rob Portman Regarding Today's Extension of Trade Promotion Authority and the U.S. Trade Agenda 
07/01/2005 

"This has been a terrific month for the U.S. trade agenda. Today, the extension of Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) became final, showing Congressional support for U.S. economic leadership and participation in the global trading system. 

"Yesterday, the Senate approved CAFTA-DR in bipartisan fashion, and the House Ways and Means Committee also approved legislation for consideration by the House of Representatives later in July. On June 9, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to support U.S. participation in the World Trade Organization (WTO). The United States has also had a number of very good victories in the WTO, ensuring fair trade for American apple producers and semiconductor manufacturers. 


"All of this provides us with growing, positive momentum as the U.S. continues to provide global economic leadership. President Bush will attend next week's G-8 Summit, and our work to advance the ongoing Doha negotiations is entering an important phase. 

"The Administration will continue to work to level the playing field, expand export opportunities and promote economic prosperity at home and around the world."

htp://www.ustr.gov/Document_Library/Press_Releases/2005/July/Statement_of_USTR_Rob_Portman_Regarding_Today's_Extension_of_Trade_Promotion_Authority_the_U.S._Trade_Agenda.html

Left, right: Iran and Venezuela in lockstep 
By M K Bhadrakumar 

July 8/05 - Among the world leaders felicitating Iran's president-elect, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, one head of state conspicuously set aside protocol norms - President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Though Ahmadinejad will only be formally sworn in on August 4 - and a congratulatory message through diplomatic channels at this stage was all that was required - Chavez telephoned Ahmadinejad. 

Chavez was being deliberate in making an extraordinary gesture of warmth and camaraderie. He wished to personally convey to Ahmadinejad that the latter's election had enhanced the "legitimacy" of Iran internationally, a country that Venezuela would regard as a "friend and brotherly nation" on the world stage. He said he would depute a high-level delegation from Caracas to visit Tehran specially to be present at Ahmadinejad's swearing-in ceremony, and that he would visit Tehran in the near future, aiming at a "comprehensive expansion" of cooperation between the two countries. 

Full Story Here

Totalitarian Medical Health Control Plan - Sooner than you Think

http://www.progressiveconvergence.com/index.htm 

Why CAFTA is Still Bad for you

The Dangers of the Central American Free Trade Agreement

Statement of Lori Wallach, Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch

On behalf of Public Citizen’s 200,000 members, I thank the Committee for the opportunity to share my organization’s views on the proposed Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) NAFTA expansion. Public Citizen is a nonprofit citizen research, lobbying and litigation group based in Washington, D.C. with offices Austin, TX and Oakland, CA. Public Citizen, founded in 1971, accepts no government nor corporate funds. Global Trade Watch is the division of Public Citizen founded in 1995 that focuses on government and corporate accountability in the globalization and trade arena. 

CAFTA, signed in May 2004, would expand the economic model established in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to five Central American countries and the Dominican Republic. 

If approved, CAFTA, like NAFTA, would require its signatory countries to conform their domestic policies and practices to a broad array of non-trade dictates, for example regarding the regulation of service sector companies and foreign investors’ operations in other economic sectors operating within a signatory nation’s territory. It would require signatories to provide certain patent medicine and seed protections that have been criticized by health and consumer groups worldwide as undermining consumers’ access to these essential ‘goods.’ It even sets constraints on how countries and other political entities may spend their own tax revenues. In addition, CAFTA contains the same model of interconnected trade rules and foreign investor protections that together create incentives that motivate business operations seek out the most profitable sites and processes for production, even if these are often contrary to the public interest.

An analysis of CAFTA’s provisions reveals that it replicated NAFTA’s provisions to a high degree – often with identical language. Thus, there is much that we can learn from the 11-year record of NAFTA, which CAFTA would expand to additional nations. 

1. CAFTA NAFTA Expansion is an Outsourcing Agreement: Eleven-Year Record Demonstrates that the NAFTA Model Lowered Living Standards on Both Sides of the Border

Since 1994, the United States has lost nearly 1 million jobs on net due to NAFTA trade,[1] with one in six U.S. manufacturing jobs being eliminated during the NAFTA decade.[2] U.S. income and wage inequality have gone up markedly, with the ratio of both income and wages of the top five percent of the income and wage distribution growing nearly 10 percent since NAFTA alone as compared with the bottom 20 percent.[3] The U.S. real median wage has scarcely risen above its 1970 level, resulting in declining or stagnant standards of living for the nearly 70 percent of the U.S. population that does not have a college degree.[4] During the NAFTA era, the U.S. trade deficit has risen to historic levels, and approaches six percent of national income – a figure widely agreed to be unsustainable, putting the U.S. economy at risk of lowered income growth.[5] The U.S. trade balance with NAFTA countries alone went from a mild surplus with Mexico and mild deficit with Canada to a ballooning deficit with the two countries exceeding $110 billion in 2004.[6] 

For our neighbors in Mexico, the economic outcomes of eleven years of NAFTA are not brighter. Over 1.5 million Mexican campesino farmers lost their livelihoods to the dumping of commodities such as corn as a result of NAFTA’s agricultural rules,[7] while the Mexican minimum wage has lost 20 percent of its value in real terms, and the median industrial wage 10 percent of its value[8]. The jobs that were temporarily created in the country’s maquiladora sector in NAFTA’s initial years, as plants relocated from the United States, are increasingly relocating and losing market share to lower wage countries such as China.[9]

In both countries, the increased ability of companies to nearly effortlessly relocate production to lower wage countries -- (as NAFTA’s investor protections forbid the policies a country like Mexico might otherwise use to root foreign direct investment for development) -- has tilted the playing field against the majority of the working population who are finding it ever more difficult to obtain and maintain quality employment. Meanwhile, studies commissioned by the U.S. government show that as many as 62 percent of U.S. union drives face employer threats to relocate, with over 10 percent of such threats specifically referring to a relocation to Mexico. The actual factory shut-down rate following successful union certifications tripled in the years after NAFTA relative to the years before.[10] 

2. Contradicting Congress’ Demand that Trade Pacts Give Foreign Investors “No Greater Rights” within the U.S. than Available to U.S. Citizens, CAFTA Extends NAFTA’s Special Protections for Foreign Investors that Expose U.S. Taxpayer Funds to Claims in Closed Trade Tribunals

The changes described above in the NAFTA country labor markets are supported by the granting in NAFTA and CAFTA of special rights and privileges to foreign investors from one signatory country operating in another. In NAFTA, these rights are contained in Chapter 11, which also provides for foreign investors’ private enforcement of these new privileges through so-called investor-state dispute resolution, a controversial mechanism also included in CAFTA. The investor-state system allows corporations to sue governments for cash compensation before closed trade tribunals for claims based on signatory countries’ policies that may or may not have a demonstrable economic impact on their expected future earnings. The provisions afford foreign investors operating in the United States greater rights than those available to U.S. citizens and businesses under the U.S. Constitution as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court. Thus far, 42 cases have been brought before the NAFTA investor-state tribunals, 11 have been finalized, and some $35 million in taxpayer funds have been granted to five corporations that have succeeded with their claims. An additional $28 billion has been claimed from investors in all three NAFTA nations in cases attacking the most basic functions of government. The U.S. government’s legal costs for the defense of just such recent case topped $3 million, and seven cases against the United States are currently in active arbitration.

While ostensibly, NAFTA’s investor protections were designed to ensure compensation if property is nationalized by a NAFTA government, only one of the 42 known NAFTA “Chapter 11” cases filed to date involve expropriation. Instead, investors have challenged domestic court rulings, water rights, local and state environmental policies, municipal contracts, tax policy, controlled substances rules, anti-gambling policies, emergency efforts to halt the spread of mad cow disease, and even provision of public postal services. 

Given that these extraordinary investor rights and their private enforcement had not been part of any previous U.S. trade agreement, and that many Members of Congress did not understand these implications at the time when NAFTA was enacted in 1993, the record of NAFTA’s Chapter 11 has generated enormous controversy. Thus in order to obtain a congressional delegation of Fast Track Trade Authority in 2002, the administration offered to address Congress’ concerns. Fast Track thus specified that in future U.S. trade agreements, foreign investors should not have “greater substantive rights with respect to investment protections than United States investors in the United States.”[11] 

Unfortunately, the Executive Branch negotiators failed to meet Congress’ requirements. In CAFTA’s Chapter 10 foreign investor protections and investor-state mechanism actually amplify many of the problems Congress identified with NAFTA. 

CAFTA Would Allow Compensation to Foreign Investors in “Regulatory Takings” and “Minimum Standard of Treatment” Cases not Permitted by U.S. Law: CAFTA includes the NAFTA language that requires foreign investors be compensated for “indirect expropriation.” This provision has been the basis for an array of cases that would not be permitted under U.S. law, including regulatory takings cases. In one such case, Metalclad Corporation obtained $16 million from the Mexican Treasury after being denied a permit to expand a toxic waste facility until it cleaned up existing contamination.[12] Several additional CAFTA provisions promote regulatory takings cases not allowed under U.S. law. For instance, the Supreme Court has ruled that “mere diminution in the value of property, however serious, is insufficient to demonstrate a taking”[13]and that the entire property must be affected permanently. 

In contrast, NAFTA Chapter 11 tribunals have found that a government action need only cause “significant” or “substantial” impairment of an investment’s value to qualify as a taking.[14] 

For instance, the Metalclad tribunal held that “expropriation under NAFTA includes not only open, deliberate and acknowledged takings of property… but also covert or incidental interference with the use of property which has the effect of depriving the owners in whole or significantpart, of the use or reasonably-to-be-expected economic benefit of property.”

[15] USTR failed to remedy this problem in CAFTA. 
To make matters worse, CAFTA allows such claims regarding types of property not subject to takings action under U.S. law. U.S. law deems public interest policies governing personal property (property other than land) to be legitimate exercises of police powers and exempt from takings claims. In contrast, CAFTA’s broad definition of what categories of property are subject to compensation claims includes an array of non-real estate property such as assumption of risk and also bonds, loans, stocks, and intellectual property rights. 

In response to criticism that investment rules in CAFTA allow for broad regulatory takings claims, the USTR will likely point to CAFTA, Annex 10-C, which reads: “Except in rare circumstances, nondiscriminatory regulatory actions by a Party that are designed and applied to protect legitimate public welfare objectives, such as public health, safety, and the environment, do not constitute indirect expropriations.”[16] Unfortunately, this language has precisely the opposite effect claimed. This language enshrines the right of foreign investors to challenge a wide array of public health and safety regulations not be subject to U.S. taking claims. U.S. law safeguards all public interest regulations governing personal property, yet this language reiterates that such policies are subject to CAFTA challenge. Moreover, the U.S. government would have no capacity to affect whether such cases are brought only in “rare” circumstances. Foreign investors decide whether to file these cases. (And, the U.S. legal defense cost for just one such case, Methenex’s attack on California’s ban on the gasoline additive MTBE, has already cost $3 million in U.S. taxpayer funds.) Further, the ultimate decision whether or not to grant compensation in such challenges remains with investor-state tribunals on a case-by-case basis. Moreover, when deciding such cases, tribunals will reference other specific provisions of CAFTA that directly conflicts with the Annex’s general language. There have been numerous NAFTA cases involving toxic substances, including Phillip Morris’ threat against a proposed Canadian tobacco control law, and Canadian cattlemen’s NAFTA challenge of U.S. actions to prevent entry into the U.S. of mad cow disease. To avoid future such cases and to bring CAFTA into conformity with U.S. takings law, the scope of property subject to such claims in CAFTA needed to have been limited to real estate and the “indirect expropriation” language needed to have been eliminated, or at least defined in the context of U.S. takings standards that require that virtually all of a property’s value must be taken permanently to obtain compensation.

CAFTA Would Allow Compensation to Foreign Investors in Cases in which U.S. Law Only Permits Injunctive Relief: Under U.S. law, both foreign and domestic firms can sue under the Due Process or Equal Protection Clauses of the Constitution for injunctive relief, but they are not allowed to sue for monetary relief. 

Under NAFTA’s investment rules – and under CAFTA were it to be approved – foreign investors are empowered to sue for monetary relief on similar grounds. CAFTA extends this NAFTA problem by allowing foreign investors to obtain taxpayer compensation not only for claims of expropriation, but also based on national treatment (non-discrimination) and “fair and equitable treatment” claims – which are the trade agreement equivalent to Due Process or Equal Protection Clauses claims in U.S. law. 

CAFTA Would Eviscerate the Long-established Principle that Governments Can Remedy a “Nuisance” without Compensating Polluters: The expansive definition in CAFTA of what sorts of foreign investments are subject to compensation covers government actions to prevent a public nuisance. Given the record of the related NAFTA provisions, this element of CAFTA is likely to generate further claims by chemical companies attempting to combat environmental regulation. Under NAFTA, foreign investors are demanding compensation for California’s ban of the gasoline additive MTBE which has been found to be polluting scarce water resources in the state and for California’s open pit mining reclamation law. Yet, under the U.S. Supreme Court holding in Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, pollution that harms public or other properties is a nuisance that can be regulated by states without compensation.[17] USTR failed to remedy this problem in CAFTA. 

CAFTA Would Empower Foreign Investors to Overcome the Long-established Sovereign Immunity Shield to Pursue U.S. Taxpayer Compensation In Property Claims from which U.S. Residents and Companies Are Barred: NAFTA panels have explicitly refused to dismiss investor challenges when governments have raised sovereign immunity as a defense in investor-state challenges – apparently allowing firms to sue governments at any level regarding any issue for any amount of money. Indeed, in these cases, investor-state tribunals have accepted the argument raised by some foreign investors that Congress waived federal sovereign immunity when it passed NAFTA. USTR failed to remedy this problem in CAFTA with explicit language clarifying that sovereign immunity was not waived, thus providing an open door for future such challenges. 

3. CAFTA Would Forbid Congressional, States’ Anti-Offshoring Policies that Require Government Contract Work be Done by U.S. Workers; Forbids Environmental, Other Procurement Rules

CAFTA’s rules on government procurement apply to an array of federal government agencies as well as the states that are listed as “covered entities” in Chapter 9, Annex 9.12 (b) (i). In September 2003, the United States Trade Representative sent a letter to all 50 governors, requesting that they commit their states to be bound by the procurement provisions in all bilateral and regional trade pacts under negotiation, including CAFTA. The letter touted the potential for U.S. suppliers to bid on foreign government contracts, but failed to mention the requirements the procurement chapters CAFTA and other agreements imposed on states. Initially, twenty eight states were listed as bound in the CAFTA text. However, since then, state officials have become much more aware of the implications that binding state procurement policy to CAFTA’s rules would have on their ability to determine what procurement policies are in the best interests of the state, including policies that use state purchasing power to further social, environmental, and economic development goals. 

As a result, a majority of U.S. states (30) have rejected CAFTA’s government procurement rules and decided it is not in their best interest to be bound. In 2004, seven governors (from Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Oregon, and Pennsylvania) rescinded their previous commitments on behalf of their states to be bound to CAFTA’s procurement rules. Other states (Montana, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Virginia) declined the USTR’s request outright. Governors of states that remain bound by CAFTA, including Texas and Washington, have requested that additional reservations be taken. (Only some of those requests have been incorporated into the CAFTA text. Washington’s request was rejected in an August 13, 2004 letter from Ambassador Zoellick to Washington Governor Gary Locke.) In early 2005, the National Conference of State Legislatures wrote to the USTR, requesting that the USTR respond to the myriad concerns of state legislators. The Intergovernmental Policy Advisory Committee (IGPAC) issued recommendations in August 2004 that state legislative leaders be carbon copied on all requests sent to governors, as state legislators to date have been cut out of the consultation process, despite the fact that in most states, the Legislative Branch has the authority to set state procurement policy. The USTR explicitly denied that request, and sent another letter to governors requesting that they sign on to the procurement provisions of free trade agreements with Panama and Andean countries. Most recently, in April 2005, the Maryland General Assembly passed legislation over Governor Ehrlich’s veto which stipulated that it was the authority of the legislature, not the Governor, to sign on to the government procurement rules in trade pacts. The bill also declared invalid previous expressions of consent made by governors, including Governor Ehrlich’s letter offering to bind Maryland to CAFTA’s procurement provisions.

State officials’ concerns stem from the restrictions that CAFTA’s rules impose on their ability to maintain existing and adopt new procurement policies in the public interest. CAFTA’s procurement chapter prohibits many common purchasing policies, seriously weakening governments’ flexibility to use procurement as policy tool to promote economic development, environmental sustainability, and human rights. These rules also apply to federal government procurement policies:

Requirements that Government Work Be Performed in the United States by U.S. Workers Are Prohibited: If CAFTA were approved, federal and state governments would be required to treat companies located in the six CAFTA countries identically to U.S. domestic companies when governments seek to procure goods and services. This means neither Congress nor state governments could give preference to domestic or local firms or require that to obtain government contracts, firms must employ U.S. workers (CAFTA Article 9.2). 
Sweat-Free, Recycled Content, Renewable Source and Other Labor and Environmental Criteria Banned: CAFTA requires that “a procuring entity shall not prepare, adopt or apply any technical specification describing a good or service with the purpose or the effect of creating unnecessary obstacles to trade” and that technical specifications are limited to “performance requirements rather than design or descriptive characteristics.” These constraints mean that procurement policies that set criteria for how a good is made or how a service is provided are prohibited – putting preferences for recycled content or renewable energy, “green” building requirements, and bans on goods made with the worst forms of child or slave labor at risk as “barriers to trade” (CAFTA Article 9.7). 
Consideration of Bidding Firms’ Labor, Tax, Environmental, Human Rights Records Forbidden: CAFTA limits what sorts of qualifications may be required of companies seeking to supply a good or service to a government. Conditions for participation in bidding are limited to “those that are essential to ensure that the supplier has the legal, technical and financial abilities to fulfill the requirements and technical specifications of the procurement.” CAFTA’s limits on the requirements that can be imposed on contractors prohibit conditions such as prevailing wage and living wage requirements, as well as consideration of suppliers’ environmental or labor track records (CAFTA Article 9.8). 

4. Opposition to CAFTA NAFTA Expansion Wide and Varied, Having Grown Since NAFTA

As successive administrations have failed to reverse the damage and demonstrated, significant problems of NAFTA’s foreign investor protection model, opposition has grown in all quarters. The Association of State Supreme Court Justices, U.S. League of Cities, National Conference of State Legislatures, National Association of Counties, and National Association of Towns and Townships all have expressed concerns about the investment provisions of CAFTA.

Concerns about CAFTA’s foreign investor protection by these typically pro ‘free trade’ associations of state and local officials, groups that are concerned about our nation’s system of federalism and the integrity of our domestic courts, has been joined by outright opposition to CAFTA from other unexpected quarters, suggesting the degree to which this agreement signed a year ago is seen not to serve the U.S. national interest. The National Association of State Departments of Agriculture, for one, concerned about CAFTA’s agricultural provisions called on Congress to oppose CAFTA.[18] These and other agricultural groups are concerned about declining farm revenue even as volumes of food trade increased under NAFTA, and that the United States is about to become a net food importer. Furthermore, these groups take to heart the claims of pro-CAFTA forces, who continually repeat that CAFTA is a stepping stone to a proposed broader Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).[19] Many U.S. economic sectors views of CAFTA are tied to their analysis of how competition with Brazil in a NAFTA expansion from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego would affect their export capacity in beef, soy, citrus, sugar and ethanol.

Many other groups have also expressed opposition to CAFTA NAFTA expansion. Human Rights Watch has produced analyses of the failure of Central American labor law and enforcement practices to meet the minimal International Labor Organization core labor standards,[20] an analysis that has been confirmed by the U.S. Department of State’s annual human rights reports.[21] 

And U.S. Latino organizations who supported NAFTA, from the nation’s largest and oldest Hispanic civil rights organization the League of United Latin American Citizens to an array of immigrant rights groups representing Central Americans in the United States, have also indicated their opposition the current terms of the agreement, concerned that trade-related job loss disproportionately affects U.S. Latinos and that CAFTA’s negative repercussions for Central America are foretold by NAFTA’s negative results in Mexico.[22] 

5. Central American Public Opposition to CAFTA NAFTA Expansion Is Based on NAFTA’s Record of Destroying the livelihoods of 1.5 Million Mexican Small Farmers and U.S. Heavy-Handed Tactics Forcing Price-Raising Medicine Policies, Essential Service Privatizations 

Lawmakers concerned about the implications of the so-called “Arab Street” in the Middle East should also pay attention to the passionate CAFTA opposition on the “Latin Street” of Central America. Nearly one out of every 25 El Salvadorans have publicly rallied against CAFTA in the past several years, and polls indicate that a majority of citizens in Guatemala and elsewhere oppose the terms of CAFTA.[23] In Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua, massive protests have also occurred against CAFTA, while it is unclear if Costa Rica’s congress will approve the deal.[24] 

Officials from the U.S. Trade Representative’s office have taken to threatening Costa Rica that if the democratically-elected Congress there determines the pact is not in their nation’s interest and rejects it, the United States will remove that nation’s existing terms of access to the U.S. market provided under the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI). These threats continue today despite the March 2005 letter by Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Charles Rangel (D-NY) calling upon the administration to desist these misleading pronouncements. As Rep. Rangel’s letter pointed out, CBI is a “congressionally mandated program [whose] benefits are guaranteed on a permanent basis, unless the Congress amends current U.S. law.” The representative said he would oppose such an amendement of U.S. law, characterizing the administration’s remarks as “thinly veiled blackmail.”[25]

Regardless of the Administration’s bullying and disrespectful treatment of some CAFTA countries, certainly Congress would be concerned with the underlying cause of such passionate opposition to CAFTA in Central America -- opposition whose protests have been met with increasing violence by governments. This includes the murder by military troops in Guatemala of two Mayan protestors -- an act of military violence by the army explicitly forbidden in the 1996 peace accords.[26]

The causes of opposition include CAFTA’s service sector rules, which would require these nations to privatize and deregulate numerous essential services such as energy and other utilities, health care and more, as well as foreign investor protections, which would create a new set of rights for foreign investors to acquire ownership over natural resources and land and pharmaceutical patent requirements, including extended data exclusion terms, which would hurt poor people’s access to medicines and take Central American governments’ abilities to respond to public health crises such as HIV-AIDS. Fury about these severe threats has been exacerbated by the administration’s heavy handed tactics, for instance in pressuring Guatemala to rescind a law that would have improved access to generic, life-saving medicines or in threatening Costa Rica with removal of CBI benefits.[27] 

Now major Central American political parties, Catholic bishops, the Central American Council of Churches and other mainstream, important Central American interests have come out against CAFTA as a threat to the region. In addition, eighteen of the most democratic, independent and representative union federations throughout Central America representing workers in the private and public sector, including in export-oriented manufacturing and agriculture, have demanded stronger workers rights than those provided under CAFTA.[28] They have noted that the existing CBI arrangement affords concerned citizens with the International Labor Organization core rights and with the greater ability to improve Central American labor law than the proposed CAFTA’s roll-back CBI labor provisions.

6. Given the NAFTA Record and Growing Central American Public Opposition, CAFTA Supporters Resort to Increasingly Dubious Arguments… 

Given this broadscale U.S. and Central American opposition to a NAFTA expansion, pro-CAFTA forces have increasingly resorted to disconnected arguments and exaggerated and misrepresentative claims about the agreement. For instance, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has produced a flawed study projecting U.S. economic gains from a Central America agreement. But to obtain that conclusion, the Chamber had to assume that – contrary to the history of every trade agreement the United States has signed – the United States would receive no new imports from the CAFTA countries if the pact went into effect.[29] The study’s methodology additionally implies that over 80 percent of the Honduran economy would have to absorbed by U.S. exports by 2013, a potentially socially and economically destabilizing outcome if true.[30]

Despite this projection that Central American countries would not gain from a CAFTA, pro-CAFTA forces have simultaneously asserted that CAFTA would save the U.S. and Central American textile industries from the end of the global textile and apparel quota system.[31] Here too, their claims are wildly misleading, since experts from the U.S. International Trade Commission to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have demonstrated that China enjoys a significant technological, wage and input cost advantage over the Central American countries. This means that, with or without a CAFTA, the expiration of the Multi Fiber Arrangement quota system will result in Central America losing a great deal of its current production and employment in the textile and apparel industry. 

The notion that CAFTA would affect this situation is beyond bizarre. Already under CBI, CAFTA countries’ textile and apparel exports enter the United States duty free. CAFTA provides no additional benefit for entry. Indeed, CAFTA loosens the CBI rules of origin, meaning more Chinese goods could enter through CAFTA countries if CAFTA were implemented than are now permitted.

Already, apparel imports from China jumped amount in the first quarter, and by as much as 1,521 percent in some customs categories.[32] While Congress may seek to address this flood of cheap Chinese imports, this is a separate problem than CAFTA and would require a separate solution. The debate around CAFTA is not a question of “whether U.S. workers would rather lose their jobs to China or to Central America,” as Carlos Sequeira, Nicaragua's chief CAFTA negotiator put it.[33] Congress should instead focus on the flaws of CAFTA, which would loosen CBI’s requirement that U.S. inputs be used to enjoy duty-free access to the U.S. market and undermine CBI’s labor rights protections, while still not proffering to the dying Central American industry any access benefits that they do not already enjoy through CBI. 

Conclusion

The bottomline in Congress’ consideration of CAFTA should be whether extending the NAFTA model will help us create a brighter future for our children and grandchildren. Even considering only the well-documented NAFTA record of undermining the livelihoods of 1.5 million Mexican farmers, suppressing real median wages in the United States and Mexico, gutting the U.S. manufacturing base, coinciding with record-low prices paid farmers for the food they produce in all three countries even while consumer prices increased, and exposing some 42 domestic environmental, health, zoning and laws and regulations to attack in closed investor-state tribunals and the payment of some $35 million in taxpayer funds to foreign investors for the lost NAFTA-guaranteed profits they lost, it seems quite clear the answer is no. If one adds to the NAFTA evidence the problems caused by the CAFTA provisions that go beyond even what NAFTA requires – for instance in the foreign investor protections chapter or regarding drug patents – the answer becomes only clearer. 

As a group that works with consumer organizations around the world, we would urge Congress to oppose this agreement simply on the basis of its intellectual property rules which are certain to undermine affordable access to essential medicines for poor consumers in the Central America. Many other organizations are submitted testimony about these scandalous provisions of CAFTA NAFTA expansion. At issue are life or death matters: generic versions of the cocktail of anti-retroviral drugs essential to extending the lives of those infected with HIV cost several hundred dollars for a yearlong course while the brand name patented version of the same drugs cost $5,000 per year. If the CAFTA drug patent rules would go into effect in the Central American countries and the Dominican Republic, many people now able to have access to these life saving HIV-AIDS medicines and also drugs vital to fighting tuberculosis and other deseases will not have access to these medicines – either because they cannot afford to purchase them or because their government health agencies cannot afford them to provide to their public.

Thus given CAFTA NAFTA expansion’s potential extension of the failures of NAFTA to people in six additional nations and the damage to U.S. residents that further extension of this model would pose, we urge Congress to oppose NAFTA’s expansion to Central America and beyond.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] Robert E. Scott, “The High Price of ‘Free’ Trade: NAFTA’s Failure has cost the United States jobs across the nation,” Economic Policy Institute Briefing Paper, Nov. 2003.

[2] This number refers to manufacturing job loss since the most recent manufacturing employment peak in 1998 of 17.6 million, relative to the 2003 number of 14.6 million. See Josh Bivens, Robert Scott, and Christian Weller, “Mending manufacturing:Reversing poor policy decisions is the only way to end current crisis,” Economic Policy Institute Briefing Paper #144, Sept. 2003.

[3] Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and Sylvia Allegretto, The State of Working America 2004/05, (Washington, DC: Cornell University Press, 2004), at 69 and 145.

[4] Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and Sylvia Allegretto, The State of Working America 2004/05, (Washington, DC: Cornell University Press, 2004), at 154.

[5] Nouriel Roubini and Brad Setser, “The US as a Net Debtor: The Sustainability of US External Imbalances,” New York University Briefing Paper, Nov. 2004.

[6] U.S. Census Numbers.

[7] John Audley, Sandra Polaski, Demetrios G. Papademetriou, and Scott Vaughan, “NAFTA’s Promise and Reality: Lessons from Mexico for the Hemisphere,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Report, Nov. 19, 2003.

[8] Carlos Salas, “Highlights of Current Labor Market Conditions in Mexico,” Global Policy Network Country Brief, April 2003.

[9] Sanjaya Lall, Manuel Albaladejo, Mauricio Mesquita Moreira, “Latin American Industrial Competetitveness and the Challenge of Globalization,” Inter-American Development Bank OCassional Paper SITI 05, June 2004.

[10] Kate Bronfenbrenner, “The Effects of Plant Closing or Threat of Plant Closing on the Right of Workers to Organize,” North American Commission for Labor Cooperation Report, 1997.

[11] 19 U.S.C. § 3802(3), Chapter 24, “Bipartisan Trade Promotion Authority: Trade Negotiating Objectives.”

[12] Award, Before the Arbitral Tribunal constituted Under Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Metalclad Corporation v. the United Mexican States, International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (Additional Facility), Aug. 25, 2000.

[13]Concrete Pipe and Products v. Construction Laborers Pension Trust, 508 U.S. 602, Jun. 14, 1993, at 615.

[14] Interim Award by Arbitral Tribunal, In the Matter of an Arbitration Under Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement between Pope & Talbot Inc. and the Government of Canada, United Nations Commission on International Trade Law, Jun. 26, 2000, at 37; Award, Before the Arbitral Tribunal constituted Under Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Metalclad Corporation v. the United Mexican States, International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (Additional Facility), Aug. 25, 2000, at 28. The Metalclad panel stated that expropriation under NAFTA “includes not only open, deliberate and acknowledged takings of property such as outright seizure or formal or obligatory transfer of title in favor of the host state, but also covert or incidental interference with the use of property which has the effect of depriving the owner in whole or in significant part of the reasonably-to-be-expected economic benefit of the property.” 

[15] Award, Before the Arbitral Tribunal constituted Under Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Metalclad Corporation v. the United Mexican States, International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (Additional Facility), Aug. 25, 2000, at 33.

[16] Central America Free Trade Agreement, Final Version, Aug. 5, 2004, Annex 10-C, at 4(b).

[17] Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003, at 1015-19 (1992).

[18] Alan Guebert, “State Ag Directors Whack CAFTA, White House,” Aberdeen News, March 11, 2005.

[19] Jorge Arrizurieta, “A needed precursor to FTAA,” Florida Sun Sentinel, March 11, 2005

[20] Michael Bochenek, “Turning A Blind Eye: Hazardous Child Labor in El Salvador’s Sugarcane Cultivation,” Human Rights Watch Report, June 2004; “Pregnancy-Based Sex Discrimination in the Dominican Republic’s Free Trade Zones: Implications for the U.S.-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA),” Human Rights Watch Briefing Paper, April 2004; Carol Pier, “Deliberate Indifference: El Salvador’s Failure to Protect Workers’ Rights -- implications for CAFTA,” Human Rights Watch Report, Dec. 2003; Judith Sunderland, “From The Household To The Factory: Sex Discrimination in the Guatemalan Labor Force,” Human Rights Watch Report, Jan. 2002.

[21]U.S. Department of State, “Report on El Salvador,” 2001 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.

[22] “Another America is Possible: The Impact of NAFTA on the U.S. Latino Community and Lessons for Future Trade Agreements,” LCLAA and Public Citizen, Aug. 2004

[23] Angus Reid Global Scan, “Guatemalans Decry CAFTA Deal With U.S.,” April 2005

[24]Karen Hansen-Kuhn, “Central Americans Speak Out Against DR-CAFTA: Major Issues and Mobilizations,” Alliance for Responsible Trade, Mar. 2005, at 10.

[25] Rep. Charles B. Rangel, “Rep. Rangel Reacts to Reported ‘Threat’ from Administration Official to CAFTA Countries,” Press Statement, March 22, 2005.

[26] Sergio de Leon, “Police, protestors clash ahead of Guatemala-U.S. free trade vote,” Associated Press, Mar. 9, 2005. 

[27] Catherine Elton, “Activists Fear Free Trade Act Will Restrict Access to AIDS Drugs in Central America,” Voice of America, April 2005.

[28] “The Real Record on Workers’ Rights in Central America,” AFL-CIO, Apr. 2005.

[29] U.S. Chamber of Commerce, “Chamber Hails Economic, Job Benefits of DR-CAFTA,” Issue Briefing, Feb. 2005.

[30] Todd Tucker, “Fool Me Twice? Chamber of Commerce Distorts NAFTA Record, Hides CAFTA Costs,” Public Citizen, Mar. 2005.

[31] Rossella Brevetti, “Ambassadors from Central America, Dominican Republic Urge Action on FTA,” BNA No. 27, Feb. 10, 2004. See also, Martin Vaughan, “Pro-CAFTA Business Alliance Lobbying House Members,” Congress Daily PM, Jan. 25, 2005.

[32] Kristi Ellis, “China’s First Qtr Surge,” Women’s Wear Daily, April 4, 2005.

[33] Paul Magnusson, “This Trade Pact Won't Sail Through,” Business Week, March 28, 2005.

AMERICAN JOBS FLEEING AT RECORD PACE

CEOs' China syndrome - jobs

NYDN - Washington is beginning to make the connection between a record trade deficit and the loss of millions of American manufacturing jobs. Since July 2000, 2.7 million manufacturing jobs have been lost due to layoffs and outsourced work to cheap foreign labor markets.

And despite strong 3.1% second quarter gross domestic product growth, a pickup in manufacturing and strong corporate earnings, many companies are continuing to take a wait-and-see attitude toward hiring domestically.

When it does come time to add workers, companies are too often opting to outsource manufacturing and service jobs to less costly foreign labor markets. A February survey of 145 U.S. companies conducted by Forrester Research found that 88% of the companies that look overseas for services claimed to get more value for their money abroad. 

China, for instance, a country that enjoys an $11 billion monthly trade imbalance with the United States, is now taking an active role in recruiting American jobs away from U.S. workers.

Full story Here

WASHINGTON - Ap 3/05 - Shirts, pants, underwear and a lot of other clothes made abroad have arrived in the United States by the bulging boatload since Jan. 1, when more than three decades of quotas ended. 

Consumers are rejoicing over the lower prices. But the domestic textile and apparel industry is complaining about the loss of thousands of jobs from what it contends is unfair competition. It wants the Bush administration to move quickly to limit the soaring number of shipments from China. 

"Time is so critical. The amount of goods that China is flooding into this market is so large that only the government can move quickly enough to prevent a lot of textile jobs from being lost," said Cass Johnson, president of the National Council of Textile Organizations. 

According to data released Friday by the Commerce Department, China shipped 78.3 million cotton knit shirts to the United States in the first three months of this year, an increase of 1,258 percent from the same period a year ago. Shipments of 74.1 million cotton trousers represented an increase of 1,521 percent 

Just three months after the quotas expired, U.S. manufacturers say the fallout has been swift and severe. Another government report Friday showed the loss of 7,600 textile and apparel jobs, bringing job losses for the industry to 17,200 this year. 

In the past three months, 14 textile plants in five states — North and South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Virginia — have shut down. More could come, industry officials say, without federal action. 

"The textile and apparel industry will experience severe job losses in 2005 unless the U.S. government decisively confronts China's predatory trade practices," said Auggie Tantillo, executive director of the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition, an industry group. 

For more than three decades, quotas restricted imports of clothes, yarns, cloth and other textiles to the United States and other wealthy nations. Those barriers disappeared as part of an agreement in the last round of global trade talks. 

The quotas have been phased out over 10 years. But the United States and other nations kept controls on the biggest categories of clothing as long as was permitted, sheltering their domestic industries. 

As expected, China has been the biggest beneficiary of the total elimination of quotas, reflecting the country's highly efficient manufacturing plants. 

Under the terms for China's admission to the World Trade Organization, the United States and other countries have the power to restore the quotas 

Full Story Here

Bush promotes Border Disintegration under the guise of "Greater Security"

Official: Mexico, U.S. and Canada to announce alliance to protect trade, ensure border security

MEXICO CITY (AP) - Mar 21/05 - Mexico, the United States and Canada will announce a special alliance to improve security while protecting the flow of trade across their borders, a Mexican official said Monday.

The alliance represents "a big step" toward promoting economic development in the three countries, which belong to the North American Free Trade Agreement, and making their markets more competitive with Europe and Asia, Geronimo Gutierrez, Mexico's deputy secretary for North America, told reporters.

President Vicente Fox also hopes to broach immigration reform during Wednesday's meeting in Waco, Texas, although he has said previously that chances of its passage in the United States are slim.

Bush, Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin were expected to sign an accord Wednesday committing the three countries to work together on establishing specific actions aimed at achieving the alliance's goals, Gutierrez said.

The new northern alliance will promote prosperity, security and quality of life, Gutierrez said.

Full Story Here

Please Note: When an official refers to a Promotion of "Quality of Life" in a Nafta/Cafta context, usually this means Federal Aid delivered to other Countries compliment of U.S. Taxpayers

Iowa congressman speaks the Truth about Bush Border-Collapse Effort

Agapepress - Mar 22/05 - An Iowa congressman is skeptical that anything positive will come out of Wednesday's meeting between President Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox. The meeting in Texas will also include Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin. The White House says the three leaders will discuss ways to strengthen North America's common security and enhance peoples' common prosperity. 

But Iowa Congressman Steve King says in the past that means benefits for Mexico -- and nothing for the U.S. "It does seem that every time the president sits down with Vicente Fox, we begin conducting the policy of Mexico with regard to immigration and trade with Mexico in the border disputes that we have." And King says he expects Bush will discuss a totalization agreement with the Mexican president. "Every indication from the administration has been towards allowing earned income for illegals. If they were in the United States illegally, earning money illegally, sending that to a false Social Security number, most any kind of record will do if you work here, we can't track your individual contributions, but we'll just give you your retirement benefits and send the check to Mexico City." King says a totalization program could send billions of dollars there if Congress is not able to put a stop to the program.

FOUNDATIONS AND THE RADICAL HISPANIC LOBBY - 

A MUST-READ PDF FILE

 http://www.thesocialcontract.com/pdf/eleven-one/xi-1-56.pdf 

Stiff Right Jab: Who Is the Real Fox?

NAFTA ... FTAA ... joint border development planning commissions ... new rules with new institutions ... no single government can handle it alone ... a borderless society ... a border government ... taking compassionate conservatism to the next level ... trust ... trust ... trust. (1)

These are the words, the Third Way/new world order rhetoric, if you will, of U.S. President George W. Bush and Mexican President Vincente Fox – two men equally committed, it would seem, to redefining the laws, the Constitution, the way of life of the United States of America according to the collectivist design ...even as they promise prosperity economics, democracy, democracy ... and more democracy.

Patrick Henry, at St. John's Church on March 23, 1775, said: 

For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and provide for it. (2)

The truth, as Henry saw it, was that the chains were clanging. Their clanging was ominous. The janglers were the British, whose stated design was to bind their enemies in all things. The soon-to-be-enslaved were our forefathers. Henry's biggest concern? With the facts staring patriots square in their faces, far too many of them felt secure, complacent, trusting. It was unfathomable that the heads of their own government would conspire against their rights. Wasn't the king their father? Wasn't England their mother? Surely, Father and Mother would not make war on their children!

The truth was, however, and the evidence supported it, Father and Mother were conspiring, were making war, and were fixed on enslaving and exploiting their wayward, troublesome, bastard child.

The lesson learned? When it comes to political power, never trust – be ever vigilant.

Mr. Bush and the Republican Party encourage conservatives, regarding their "free" trade negotiations, regarding the dismantling of our immigration laws, that we should "trust" them – that our sovereignty, our political institutions, and our way of life are secure in their hands. That their only design is to help the American economy and to export democracy. In essence, they will honor their oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." But such promises are hollow in light of the facts and common sense.

Let's take a step back. The date is April 22, 2001. The location, Quebec. The players involved, the heads of state of the Western Hemisphere, including President Fox and President Bush. The occasion, the Summit of the Americas. The purpose, to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas.

Ask yourself to what document George W. Bush made a loyalty oath when he and his fellow Western Hemisphere buddies put their hands, their voices and their hearts to the following joint declaration:


We, the democratically elected Heads of State and Government of the Americas, have met in Quebec City at our Third Summit, to renew our commitment to hemispheric integration. ... We reiterate our firm commitment and adherence to the principles and purposes of the United Nations and of the Organization of American States. ... We welcome the significant progress achieved to date toward the establishment of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). ... The Agreement should be balanced, comprehensive and consistent with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and disciplines. ... (3) 

This is not an oath to sustain the U.S. Constitution. This is not an oath to protect U.S. sovereignty. This is not an oath to defend the laws and borders of this country – but to take them down, to merge the United States with a bunch of corrupt, leftist banana republics under the laws and premises of the pro-Communist, anti-morality, anti-American United Nations.

Is this the true goal of free trade and regional arrangements under the U.N. Charter? Consider what pro-NAFTA, pro-WTO Newt Gingrich said

Full Story Here

March 20/05 - Mexican President Vicente Fox believes concerned Americans joining civilian border groups to help guard against massive illegal immigration from his country are little more than extremists trying to take the law into their own hands.

Specifically, Fox is criticizing a group calling itself the Minuteman Project, which plans to patrol the border for 30 days beginning April 1 with some 950 volunteers. Fox and other Mexican officials say such groups are creating an anti-immigrant sentiment that is spreading across the U.S., says a report in the Arizona Republic.

The paper said Mexico's National Human Rights Commission believes a number of such grass-roots organizations are being formed, especially in the wake of the passage of Proposition 200 in Arizona – a voter-approved measure requiring proof of citizenship to vote and receive some public benefits.

"We totally reject the idea of these migrant-hunting groups," Fox said. "We will use the law, international law and even U.S. law to make sure that these types of groups, which are a minority ... will not have any opportunity to progress."

Backers of such groups say what they are doing is well within U.S. law. And group organizers say they aren't looking to intercept illegals themselves, but instead will notify Border Patrol agents when illegal migrants are spotted so Border Patrol agents can make the arrests.

"Vicente Fox can rant and rave all he wants, but he obviously doesn't understand what a democracy means," Chris Simcox, a co-organizer of the Minuteman Project, told the Republic. "We have been working within the law."

Fox, who will be in Texas next week to meet with President Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, also criticized recent U.S. legislative efforts to fund construction of border fences.

Full Story Here

Vicente Fox: 'We're Going for More' Than Bush Plan

Jan 8/03 - NSMX - Mexican President Vicente Fox said Thursday that while President Bush's plan to liberalize U.S. immigration law was a good start, he intends to press for further reforms that would loosen restrictions on Mexican immigration to the U.S.

"We're going for more. We're going for more," Fox told reporters while visiting a Mexican shelter for street children.

While announcing his intention to press Bush to go even further, Fox praised the president for taking "a great step forward," adding that he deserved partial credit for the breakthrough.

"It is an achievement of the measures we have been taking during these [last] three years," he told the Associated Press.

In a 2000 interview, Fox outlined his goal for fully open borders between the U.S. and Mexico within 10 years.

"I'm talking about a community of North America, an integrated agreement of Canada, the United States and Mexico in the long term, 20, 30, 40 years from now," he told PBS's Jim Lehrer "That may mean in 10 years we can open up that border when we have reduced the gap in salaries and income."

In a 2002 interview, Fox rejected the term "illegal alien."

Full Story Here

On December 17 officials from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua finished negotiations with the United States on the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). CAFTA is a bad deal, one that promises to extend the harmful impacts of NAFTA to Mexico's weaker southern neighbors.

At the same time, boosters like US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick are premature in declaring victory for their hemispheric "free trade" agenda. A week of intense negotiations in Washington demonstrated that developing countries are not as easily browbeaten as in the past. And the coming fight to stop ratification of the agreement will likely show opponents of corporate globalization to be in a stronger position than ever.

Thea Lee, assistant director of the public policy department at the AFL-CIO, notes that CAFTA will diminish pro-worker safeguards present in the Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act. "Zoellick says that this agreement includes unprecedented protections for labor. That's a flat-out lie," she argues. While the previous initiative mandated that participating countries uphold internationally recognized labor norms, the new agreement only requires that governments enforce their own laws, which are often far weaker.

Full Story Here

Second thoughts on CAFTA

   Washington Post - Letters to the Editor -  I read with great interest Bernardo Callejas' support of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in your Dec. 21 edition ("CAFTA and the economic guard," Commentary). It's no surprise that the senior investment adviser to Nicaraguan President Enrique Bolanos' ProNicaragua Investment Promotion Agency would take such a stance. After all, according to its own Web site, ProNicaragua is a newly created agency "dedicated to support foreign investors seeking offshore opportunities in Nicaragua."

    Those familiar with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) all know what the term "offshore opportunities" means: sending more American jobs elsewhere where cheaper labor can be found and exploited at the expense of hardworking Americans.
    I particularly enjoyed Mr. Callejas' reference to " 'economic-freedom' fighters" whose hopes lie in U.S. adoption of CAFTA. I'm guessing these "freedom-fighters" aren't your average everyday Nicaraguan farm and manufacturing laborers, but rather the wealthy elites who are the only ones who stand to gain from CAFTA in the Central American region should it become law.

Full Text Here (Scroll down to second half of page)

Merging the USA with Mexico - The Dissapearance of the Southern Border

Bush to meet with Mexico's Fox, Canada's Martin this month (March) in Texas

Bush will hold working sessions with Fox and Martin at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and host a lunch for them at his ranch in nearby Crawford, where he will be taking an Easter break.

"The three leaders will discuss ways to strengthen our continent's common security and enhance our people's common prosperity," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.

Relations between the United States and its neighbors have been lukewarm.

When he took office, Martin promised to improve U.S.-Canada relations, which had fallen to a new low when former Prime Minister Jean Chretien declined to take part in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Bush made a recent goodwill visit to Ottawa. But last month, Canada announced its decision to opt out of a U.S.-led anti-ballistic missile shield program – a likely subject during the meeting later this month.

The president's relations with Mexico also have been chilly because of differences over Bush's policy in Iraq and border issues.

Full Story Here

Mexican Troops Fire on U.S. Border Watchers

Jack Foote, national spokesman for property protection group Ranch Rescue, told NewsMax a reconnaissance squad of his volunteers spotted two armed Mexican soldiers wearing green combat fatigues and Kevlar helmets on U.S. soil adjacent to property the group was asked to protect.

Foote said his volunteers, part of a mission Ranch Rescue dubbed "Operation Thunderbird," deployed at the landowner's request to interdict smuggling of illegal aliens and drugs on the property, reported the shootings about 5:22 p.m. Saturday. There were no injuries, and Ranch Rescue members, who are patrolling the property armed, did not return fire.

The group spokesman said the leader of the reconnaissance unit reported movement about 200 meters north of the landowner's southern boundary, a location near the U.S.-Mexico border.

Full Story Here

One Reporter's Opinion: Tit for Tat – Mexican Oil Is a Fair Exchange

Louis Giovannini of Los Angeles, one of our regular listeners, writes in discussing at great length America's crude oil situation, noting that Saudi Arabia is one of our longstanding allies (America's biggest foreign supplier of oil, next to Canada) – and that it's about time we seek another source and stop buttering up the Saudis.

Louis suggests that we look to our neighbor to the south. The United States needs oil and Mexico is an oil-rich country. Why not tap into that source in exchange for all of the goodies Mexico takes from us. Is it necessary to recount the inequities we suffer at the hands of hoards of illegal aliens pouring across our southern border? The impact on our culture and economy threatens our continued existence.

It is estimated that Mexico's second-largest source of income is the $10 billion sent back to Mexico each year by Mexicans working in the U.S. Mexico's largest source of income comes from oil that ends up in Japan and elsewhere. Why not make an exchange – Mexican oil for all of the millions of dollars Mexico is costing us in uncounted services.

A possible way of equalizing the situation would be to exchange Pemex Oil for all of our services, such as health care and public schools, as a starting point.

The profit from the sale of Mexican oil could be deposited with the U.S. Federal Reserve in New York. A predetermined amount charged for social services could be deducted from each sale to the U.S. and deposited with our California treasury.

This could begin to pay for all of the social services used by Mexicans in the U.S. The remaining balance in this arrangement could be deposited with the Mexican treasury.

Full Story Here

The Civil War Inside Mexico’s Soul 

Marina taught him that the Aztecs ruled a colonial empire of conquered kingdoms and tribes. The monstrous evil of Aztec rule was epitomized by the continual sacrifice of human beings – up to sixteen per day – their backs broken on the altar and their hearts cut out of their chests while they were still alive, in the temple of Huichilpotztli (the Aztec sun god) in Tenochtitlan (the Aztec capital, now Mexico City). Without the sacrificial hearts, the Aztecs believed, the sun would not rise.

Marina saw Cortez as a liberator who could free subjugated people from Aztec tyranny, and together they came up with the brilliant strategy of organizing a tax revolt. “Join and fight with me,” Cortez told the colonized tribes, “and you won’t have to pay any more taxes to your Aztec rulers, nor send any more of your sons to be sacrificed to the Aztec gods.”

They did, and that is how Cortez and his tiny band of 400 Spaniards defeated an empire ruling millions of subjects. It is one of the great epics of history, and it was made possible by a woman whom the Indians of Mexico came to revere and worship as their savior, whom they called La Malinche. The title meant Malinali was “Master of Herself,” for the Indians’ (including the Aztecs) name for Cortez was Malinche, meaning “Master of Malinali.”

Yet among Mexicans today, particularly the intelligentsia, the memory of La Malinche is despised – in fact, a common term for “traitor” in Mexico is malinchista. This means there is a civil war being fought within the modern Mexican soul.

The vast majority of Mexico’s 90 million people are of mixed (in varying degrees) Indian/Spanish ancestry. The Indian part of that soul has sided with his ancestors’ oppressors (the Aztecs were an elite minority; most Indians in Cortez’s time were non-Aztec) and hates the Spanish part, an ineradicable part of his fundamental self-identity. For “malinchista” to mean “traitor” means Mexicans are traitors to themselves. This is a national psyche in deep turmoil.

The problem is that a growing number of Mexicans are deciding to take it out on America.

Full Story Here

Mexico and the Routine Violation of Human Rights

FORMER U.S. TRADE REPRESENTATIVE DISMISSES CAFTA LABOR CLAUSE
AS "A MAJOR STEP BACKWARD."

Former U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor (1993-1996) predicted the defeat of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) for lack of an adequate, enforceable labor clause while at a conference on trade policy attended by five former trade representatives at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on February 9, 2005.  “I think it should go back to negotiating table,” said Kantor, who found several shortcomings with the labor clauses negotiated by the current U.S.  Trade Representative Robert Zoellick. Kantor explained, “[T]he reason CAFTA is in trouble is because of the agreements on labor which don't have sanctions attached, aren't part of the dispute settlement mechanism in CAFTA and don't enforce core labor standards in the agreement. It is a major step backwards on this issue.”

 Rejecting current labor language, which requires enforcement of current, domestic labor laws, Mr. Kantor made a strong economic case for the inclusion of labor clauses that give full effect to core labor standards, with adequate enforcement mechanisms. Mr. Kantor argued, “The fact is that we know that if you enforce these labor rights that are part of trade agreements and you have sanctions applied to them, you would raise standards of labor, you would raise standards of living, wages would go up…’we’d stabilize economies, we’d stabilize governments and … create even new markets and bigger markets for our own products.”

Story Here

The Role of CAFTA in establishing Control over International Medicine

There are roughly 44 million people in the Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Costa Rica, plus the Dominican Republic. Their per capita income ranges from $370 a year in Nicaragua to $1,750 in Guatemala to more than $4,000 in Costa Rica.

The corporate members of the U.S. Pharmaceuticals Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) look at Central America and see a market to conquer.

U.S. drug companies presently export about $50 million worth of drugs a year to the Central America and the Dominican Republic.

With adoption of the U.S.-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which includes the five Central American countries, plus a U.S.-Dominican Republic deal that is being "docked" on to CAFTA, the drug companies think they can make more.

According to Renard Aron, assistant vice president for Latin America and Canada at PhRMA, that's due in part to the tariff provisions of the agreement, which would bring down tariffs on imported pharmaceuticals -- and enable the brand-name drug companies to raise their prices commensurately.

But most important to PhRMA is the intellectual property provisions of CAFTA.

Full Story Here

A Decade and More Later - The Harmful impact of Nafta on the American Middle Class

U.S. Ends Cooperation in Mexican Investigations

Idaho County Bills Mexico $2 Million for Illegal Aliens

Secured Borders U.S.A. Nears 500,000 Petitions

NSMX- April 5/04 - Popular radio host Mark Edwards of KDWN in Las Vegas tells NewsMax that the grassroots organization Secured Borders U.S.A. has gathered nearly 500,000 notarized signatures on its petition urging the government to enforce immigration law and stop the invasion of illegal aliens, and the group is looking for more Americans to sign up.

Story Here

Six Guards Killed at Mexico Prison on U.S. Border

MATAMOROS, Mexico (Reuters) - Jan 20/05 - Six guards were found murdered outside a high-security prison on Mexico's border with Texas on Thursday, in the latest bloody episode in weeks of prison violence being blamed on powerful drug gangs.

Troops sealed off the Matamoros penitentiary and federal agents removed the bodies, some of them blindfolded, from a four-wheel-drive Ford riddled with bullets about half a mile from the prison watchtower.

The Ford was sprayed with blood and its rear windshield was smashed. Helicopters circled overhead and scores of troops stood guard.

Interior Minister Santiago Creel said the murders were in retaliation against a government crackdown on prisons, where powerful drug barons often have continued to do business.

"Precisely because we are cleaning the prisons, because we are reviewing law enforcement, because we are advancing against organized crime like no other administration previously, that is why these things are happening," Creel told a news conference.

In recent weeks, Mexican prisons have seen a series of killings and escapes, prompting tighter security, administrative resignations and federal investigations into prison authorities.

Story Here

Your Job: Waves of Illegals May receive Amnesty - 

Rove & McCain already hard at work

Nov 10/04

President Bush yesterday moved aggressively to resurrect his plan to relax rules against illegal immigration, a move bound to anger conservatives just days after they helped re-elect him.
    The president met privately in the Oval Office with Sen. John McCain to discuss jump-starting a stalled White House initiative that would grant legal status to millions of immigrants who broke the law to enter the United States.
    The Arizona Republican is one of the Senate's most outspoken supporters of expanding guest-worker programs and has introduced his own bill to offer a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

  "We are formulating plans for the legislative agenda for next year," said White House political strategist Karl Rove. "And immigration will be on that agenda."
    He added: "The president had a meeting this morning to discuss with a significant member of the Senate the prospect of immigration reform. And he's going to make it an important item."

Full Story Here

Arizona anti-immigration initiative inspires others

Nov 10/04

The passage of an Arizona immigration initiative requiring verifiable identification to vote or receive public benefits has spurred similar efforts in other states and created panic among some Hispanics, who are questioning whether it is safe to go to work, shop or send their children to school.

Full Story Here

Blog - Mexico Strengthens Ties with Arab World