Perhaps the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA will have the greatest detrimental impact on Mexico.
Operating under the rubric of global concerns, global terror, global warming and global action we are supposed to swallow the notion that 3 nations are better than one. In order to Secure our Prosperity through Partnership, SPP could have little to do with partnership, less to do with security and everything to do with prosperity. The prosperity of the military-industrial-congressional complex may actually be what is afoot.
Canadian and U.S. citizens are finally awakening to see NAFTA and the SPP as stripping our liberty, sovernty and economic stability from us. At some point the citizens of Mexico may wake up to a harsher reality.
Mexico may look like a delicious lobster to be lured, gently, into what they perceive as a warm pot of prosperity. Once lured into the pot it will be too late to escape. Escape what?
The population of Mexico alone was a whopping 103 million plus in the year 2005. By some estimates there could be as many as another 12 million illegal Mexicans in the U.S.. 50% of Mexicans are under the age of 25.
Consider the U.S. military first started missing its recruitment goals since the early fall of 2003. Now, in 2007 millions of Mexicans, the ripe age of cannon fodder, may find themselves served up intentionally, or inadvertently onto the plate of the military-industrial-congressional complex, who is very hungry.
Signing bonuses of $10,000 dollars up and college scholarships raised to $70,000 dollars failed to entice young Americans, but may look far more appealing to the Mexican youth. Once the blanket of NAFTA falls over our 3 nations, these young people may even find military service a ‘condition’.
It’s easy for us in the North to overlook the fact that the richest man in the world, is a Mexican, Carlos Slim Helu. We are constantly reminded of Mexico’s poverty, the plight of the poor Mexicans risking death to make it to America for all those low paying jobs. In fact, according to CNNMoney.com Carlos Slim-controlled companies make up a full 1/3 of the $422 billion (dollar) stock exchange. There is a vast chasm between the wealthy and the poorest population in Mexico. It would be naive of us to think the only major players behind the closed doors of NAFTA are wealthy Americans and Canadians.
The Iron Triangle of government, industry and the military may indeed be the true Axis of Evil.
In 1961 President and former Army General Dwight D. Eisenhower said of the Military-Industrial-(congressional*) complex,
“…The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” “We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
Waging a permanent war, thereby creating a permanent war economy, is certainly not good for the environment. War not only devastates life, but the implements of war devastate the environment. NAFTA and the SPP may have little to do with tooth paste, wheat, or cheap t-shirts and everything to do with the prosperity of war.
Our neighbors South of the Rio Grande are certainly no strangers to rebellion and revolt. It would also be naive to believe the citizens of Mexico won’t soon be waking up SPP and NAFTA.
It may be time to withdraw the fork from the red herring, and cleanse our palate with a spoonful of cold, bitter sorbet.
*”congressional” It is widely held when Congressional leaders saw this word, they requested that it be removed. Eisenhower did so.
Photo Thanks:Project Gutenberg ‘the young mountaineers’ ebook Charles Egbert Craddock
No we aren’t talking about agent ‘007′ types with an attitude, we’re talking about agents such as phosgene. If you are a member of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission you toss your phosgene in a baggie and toss it in the corner where it stays for the next 11 years.
Frightening enough possibilities leap to mind when considering where other ‘agents may be stored and how’.
Apparently the offices of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, Unmovic are being emptied. I’m not certain if they were being emptied so that the decorator could come in and redesign, or maybe the carpets were just going to get a good steam but, this stuff was found left over from 1996 in the UN building.
The good news is the items found, which were thankfully listed in an inventory sheet were screened and found to have no toxic vapours. But, what else is lurking in other ‘official’ type building across the planet? Are the people that deal with even more deadly hazards any more organized that these Unmovic people?
The vials found at the UN were found by inspectors as they were clearing these offices out. So, the inspectors need inspectors. Who, then, will inspect the inspectors, that inspect the inspectors who just plain inspect?
Day after day we are finding that all the organizations that have been assembled to protect us are actually the most unorganized balls of confusion on earth.
Our plea goes out today to the ‘experts’ in all the fields that holds society together. Lock the door behind you when you leave the lab that contains the deadly virus you have been ‘inspecting’. Call out the repair crews when you find the bridge you have inspected is falling apart. Lock up the people you have found dumping poisons into our oceans. Stop letting companies that are poisoning our children, tainting our food and selling us tires without rubber steal from us our lives, our loved ones and our health. See that not one more nuclear plant is built upon a major fault line. Those are the kinds of things we need the experts to do.
Well take care of the everyday minutia of life like bank robbers, rapists and drunken drivers. You experts need to take of the big stuff, and for heaven’s sake please dispose of the phosgene you have inspected 11 years ago safely, turn out the lights, and lock the door behind you when you leave the building!
The news would have us thinking there are ways the NAFTA COULD go. The problem is, the plan is already in motion for the way NAFTA WILL go.
Here is a little background video. Lou Dobbs asks if the American people have the stomach to stop the SPP.
We will be posting on NAFTA and the SPP all this week.
Efforts by the public of both Canadian, and American citizens to slow down or call off this Orwellian agreement have fallen on deaf ears so far. Too few of the public are even aware of what the SPP has in store.
If there is any progress being made we will be looking for it this week and posting where and which efforts are having success….if any.
The danger of pesticides is a three-way merge onto a dangerous roundabout.
While Canadians are worried about the dangers coming their way from the US, Americans are worried about the dangerous pesticides being imported from Canada. Meanwhile the US exports banned or unregistered pesticides to Mexico.
25 % of all fresh and frozen produce in the US is imported, 50% of which is imported from Mexico. Canada is the second largest market for US agricultural exports and US exporters are the dominant suppliers of produce exporters to Canada.
In March of this year The US EPA and the Canadian Pest Management Regulatory Agency gave the first joint approval of a NAFTA ‘harmonized label for pesticide.
The first product called Avadex in Canada, and Far-Go in the US is an herbicide that “Warning labels state that it should not be applied directly to water, to areas where surface water is present, or to intertidal areas below the mean high water mark.” “The use of this chemical in areas where soils are permeable, particularly where the water table is shallow, may result in ground water contamination.” “Have a high potential for runoff into surface water where there are poorly draining or wet soils with slopes toward adjacent surface waters, frequently flooded areas, areas over-laying extremely shallow ground water, areas with in-field canals or ditches that drain to surface water, areas not separated from adjacent surface waters with vegetated filter strips, and areas over-laying tile drainage systems that drain surface water.”
Is there any type of land being farmed that doesn’t fall under the above classification?
It defies logic that the US and Canada, known for ‘feeding the world’, now depends on importing food from the world to be feed?
Importing and exporting, and shipping and receiving. Fast tracking, highway building, and labeling. NAFTA, SPP, NAF, NASCO, CTCS and the rest of the alphabet look strangely like a perpetual motion profit machine. A machine engineered by a basket full of corporations that walk hand-in-hand into the sunset with our good will, our health and our money in their pockets.
If you feel like you’re at a square dance that’s being called in a foreign language, it’s because you are. Welcome to the NAFTA Dance. Where the power elite is the belle of the ball, and the public, that’s you, is the whore in the hall.
Mexico, Canada and the US have joined hands and are now forming a circle that is becoming impossible to penetrate. Impossible to penetrate because as more of the public is becoming aware of exactly what affect NAFTA is going to have on our futures the heavier the veil surrounding NAFTA becomes.
Among a litany of fast-track recommendations the Council of the Americas recommends being implemented by the end of this year are:
1. Establish a set of rules that provide legal protection for companies that conduct risk assessments and share information on vulnerabilities with the appropriate government entities. (Protection from litigation resulting in bad risk assessments resulting in harm to the public?)
2. Implementing preclearance pilot projects. (Well underway, this moves customs processes further inland from actual border crossings. This move constitutes moving potentially catastrophic events into the hearts of Canada and the US rather than keeping these events in the nation in which they originate.)
3. Improve the benefits of voluntary business participation in security programs. (Little needs to be said regarding business doing anything voluntary as it applies to anything much beyond the profit margin.)
4. Further simplify the NAFTA rules-of-origin requirements. (US$30billion in trilateral trade has already been simplified to the point our health protection is becoming virtually non-existent.)
5. Simplify NAFTA certification process and requirements. “The long-term goal should be to eliminate the NAFTA certificate on shipments.” (Eliminating the administrative burden on producers of finished goods)
6. Withdraw or suspend the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. (US and Canada should lower their standards by mitigating legitimate risks while minimizing disruption to legitimate trade.)
Potential meaning: Lower your health and safety standards as it pertains to imports.
Raise the potential for dangerous cargo getting past the borders and moving inland.
Leave border crossings free from congestion so that goods can still move freely across the border should there be a catastrophic event inland.
Spend all resources necessary for the promotion of trade rather than finding innovative, safe and secure ways of protecting and feeding our own citizens.
Those yellow bricks paving the NAFTA superhighway appear to be made of gold. Who is financing the fancy footwork of the NAFTA dance?
The same way water seeks its own level; NAFTA seeks to level the field between Canada, the USA and Mexico.
Under the guise of creating a seamless commercial endeavor between the three countries, it appears NAFTA will in fact create a North American Union similar to the way the European Union was created. Smaller less economically developed nations could share in prosperity and economic growth by becoming members of the larger ‘Nation of Commerce’. NAFTA will certainly lead to the same situation on the North American Continent. This scheme, for better or for worse, is rolling full steam ahead.
I can think of no other country that may guard its sovereignty more tenaciously than Great Britain, who did not sign on to the EU.
So why are people in Canada and the US only now starting to take a look at what may become of their sovereignty? The answer is simple answer is much of the nuts-and-bolts of this agreement have been parsed out to the people one tiny bite at a time, with many of the facts being concocted in high-level secret meetings where the public has not been made privy to these facts.
NAFTA has been served to the people in small bites that are easily swallowed, digested and passed. The pile of facts surrounding these digested pieces is now beginning to smell.
Proponents of the NAFTA, nearly without exception, are large corporations who stand to rake in even more profits and smaller business that hope to become larger by this agreement.
The battle cry for the seamless integration of these three nations is Security and Prosperity as the name (SPP) Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America would indicate. But, it isn’t clear what part of our security will be enhanced by this plan. What is clear is that the Security OF Prosperity will be enhanced.
Does the seamless transportation of goods from Mexico to Canada through the USA make us more secure?
Is prosperity the definnition of security? According to the CEO’s of industry and the Politicians the answer is yes.
