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7-04-06
comrade
Little George Wants comrade Calderon to win Mexico's Presidential
Election
Little
George Bush is a fourth generation communi$t. His grandfather
helped finance Hitler and his fourth generation grandfather
helped finance Lenin. The Bush family has made money out of
war, killing kids, for four generations. September 11 and
the Iraq war is about a lot of bad things but the spread of
communi$m is in the middle of the entire mess going on in
the world right now. communi$m is about this and that but
mostly communi$m is about economics. Basically zioni$t communi$t$
do not allow you and me to be in business for ourselves. communi$t
do not allow people to earn money for themselves because communi$t
set up an economic system which give a few zioni$t$ all the
money and helps the bad guys treat you and me like Menachem
Begin believes non zioni$t$ should be treated.
 Menachem
Begin (Israeli Prime Minister, 1977-1983) who stated boldly,
"Our race (speaking of a sect of Jews) is the Master
Race. We are divine gods on this planet. We are as different
from the inferior races as they are from insects. In fact,
compared to our race, other races are beasts and animals,
cattle at best. Other races are considered as human excrement.
Our destiny is to rule over the inferior races. Our earthly
kingdom will be ruled by our leader with a rod of iron. The
masses will lick our feet and serve us as our slaves."
- Menachem Begin."
THE PROTOCOLS OF THE LEARNED ELDERS OF ZION
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/przion1.htm
A Fourth of July
truly America thought
RAY SUAREZ: But
which people? Lopez Obrador's potent slogan is "For the
good of all, but first for the poor." And while all the
candidates have some crossover appeal, Lopez Obrador supporters
cheer when their man describes his plans to collect unpaid
taxes from the wealthy and renegotiate the part of NAFTA that
exposed farmers of beans and corn to American competition.
López Obrador
has declared that he does not accept the preliminary results,
and has challenged the data from the PREP, claiming that millions
of votes are missing.
Little George and
the zioni$t communi$t$ want Felipe Caleron to win the Mexican
election because Calderon will keep running small Mexican
farmers out of business and promote a zioni$t communi$t economy
in Mexico.  comrade
Karl Rove must be advising Felipe Calderon's PAN Party on
how to steal elections because PAN's chairman, César
Nava Vásquez, has requested IFE to declare a winner
by tonight (July 3, 2006).
The Programa de
Resultados Electorales Preliminares (Preliminary Electoral
Results Program, gave Felipe Calderón a lead of less
than 403,000 votes.
Isn't it
pathetic what NAFTA's zioni$m and communi$m has done to Mexico's
farmers
posted 30-10-2005
print
http://www.bilaterals.org/article.php3?id_article=3009
Low prices force Mexicans from fields
But in just over a decade, an estimated 1 million farmers
in rural Mexico have lost their livelihoods.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Low prices force Mexicans from fields
By Bill Lambrecht
POST-DISPATCH WASHINGTON BUREAU
Sunday, Oct. 30 2005
NOCHIXTLAN, MEXICO
Over thousands of years since Jesus Leon’s ancestors
developed corn from a wispy grass, Mexican farmers have had
an abiding relationship with the crop they call maize.
Near Leon’s hometown in southern Mexico, a museum features
ancient murals depicting humans being born of corn stalks.
Patches of white, blue and red corn dot the mountainsides
of the region.
But in just over a decade, the bond between many Mexican
farmers and their favorite plant has been broken. An estimated
1 million farmers in rural Mexico have lost their livelihoods.
"We never imagined what would happen to us in ten years’
time," said Leon.
Passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993
and the Mexican government’s sharp reduction of protective
tariffs triggered a flood of U.S. corn pouring south into
the Mexican heartland. That corn - grown more cheaply in the
United States with the benefit of taxpayer subsidies - sent
prices in Mexico into a tailspin from which they have never
recovered.
Corn farmers in Illinois, Missouri and the rest of the Midwest
were big winners under NAFTA, which opened a dependable new
market in Mexico that has grown to nearly 6 million tons and
could double within a decade, according to the U.S. Agriculture
Department.
The plight of Mexican corn farmers could come back to bite
the Midwest, in more ways than one. Many ex-farmers and their
families have emigrated to Missouri and other rural areas
that are hard-pressed to handle them. And the story of Mexican
corn has provided a cautionary tale to other poor nations
pressuring the United States to reduce its subsidies to farmers,
something the administration of President George W. Bush has
already proposed.
So Midwestern corn growers, already struggling with low prices
for their crops and record diesel fuel costs, aren’t
shedding too many tears for their Mexican counterparts.
Greg Guenther, who farms 730 acres near Belleville, observed
that U.S. farmers face constant barriers in trying to sell
around the world. At the moment, the United States is fighting
with Mexico to avoid a 20 percent tax on corn syrup, which
the World Trade Organization has ruled illegal.
"I don’t want to sound cold-blooded about this,
but what are the chances of those Mexican farmers ever getting
beyond barely making a living? Maybe this is a good thing
for them and will help the Mexican government focus on how
they can have a better life," he said.
Some segments of Mexican agriculture have prospered post-NAFTA:
high-tech corn farmers, who have increased Mexico’s
overall corn output; poultry and hog operations that prosper
from cheap feed corn; and fruit and vegetable growers who
now ship their produce to the United States.
There are uncalculated costs to free trade, on both sides
of the border. With little or nothing to earn from selling
their corn, many Mexican farmers began heading to the United
States.
Other farmers found a dependable cash crop to replace corn:
marijuana. According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection
Office, the amount of marijuana seized annually along the
Mexican border has doubled to 1.1 million pounds since 1994,
the year NAFTA took effect.
Jesus Leon, who heads a small farmer’s alliance in
the Sierra Madres in the state of Oaxaca, says a quarter or
more of young males who tended the soil in his part of Mexico
are gone, leaving behind fractured families and unplanted
fields.
"It makes people very angry when they think about what
has happened to our corn and all that it has meant for us.
But it’s invisible to the world. It’s as though
we don’t exist," said Leon, 40.
Perils of trade
When NAFTA was negotiated in the early 1990s, neither the
administration of President Bill Clinton nor the Mexican government
suggested that some Mexican farmers would suffer as a result.
Yet, since the agreement went into effect, 900,000 farmers
and other agriculture workers have lost their jobs, according
to the Mexican government. Private research organizations
have placed the number as high as 1.3 million. Many have left
the country.
Deborah Meyers, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute,
a think tank in Washington, recalled negotiators’ making
the opposite case when NAFTA was debated in the U.S. Congress
in the early 1990s.
"The idea was that bringing greater growth to Mexico,
fewer Mexicans would need to leave. Mexico said, ’We
want to export our tomatoes, not our people.’ But, in
fact, it led to greater migration," she said.
The Mexican farmers who have left the land are victims not
just of competition but of their own country’s policies.
The problem for small farmers became apparent early when
the Mexican government scrapped plans for a 15-year transition
period for reducing tariffs on U.S. corn, instead removing
most of the tariffs by 1996. As a result, U.S. corn exports
to Mexico spiked.
"It was a little gift to their friends, the guys who
were doing the importing," Alejandro Nadal, an economics
professor at the College of Mexico in Mexico City, said in
an interview in his office.
The result, according to Nadal, was a 48 percent drop in
Mexican corn prices, which triggered the upheaval in Mexico’s
farm sector that continues to this day.
Meanwhile, Mexico dismantled its price regulation agency,
which was to have been phased out gradually, while reducing
state support for agriculture.
In the United States, corn subsidies averaging $4.2 billion
in recent years give farmers a leg up on the competition.
Mexico gives smaller subsidies to its corn farmers - but farmers
in half of its 32 states get no corn subsidies.
No wonder many farmers see a brighter future north of the
border. And Mexico has little reason to complain about emigration:
The $16 billion sent home from the United States last year
from ex-farmers and others to their families has grown nearly
three-fold since the mid-1990s and ranks second only to oil
revenue in foreign currency Mexico takes in.
Luis de la Calle is a former Mexican government official
who was instrumental in drafting NAFTA and who still defends
the agreement as a great benefit to his country.
He said freer trade was needed, in part to reduce the number
of small farmers eking out a living in the countryside. "You
cannot have 25 percent of the population trying to live off
5 percent of the gross national product," he said in
Mexico City.
But instead of using subsidies to help the small farmers
who could no longer make a living from the land, the Mexican
government has given subsidies to well-off farmers, he said.
"You have a lot of people trapped in a system of low
income and no way out unless they migrate. And that’s
what’s happening," he said.
Jon Doggett, the St. Louis-based National Corn Growers’
vice president of public policy in Washington, said critics
of trade polices ought to compare the Mexican subsistence
farmers’ quality of life with the richer existence they
can find in the United States.
He added, "Is that the best way to feed the world, by
continuing to encourage subsistence-style agriculture? While
one of our farmers can feed hundreds of people, theirs can
feed a family and maybe a few more people. And basically,
our job is to feed people."
Those left behind
In Mexico, many in rural areas are concerned mainly about
feeding themselves, a task that often becomes a challenge
when the males in the family leave the farm.
At a recent church-sponsored gathering in Mexico City to
talk over the corn crisis, Gaudencia Munoz, 52, said that
her son had left the family farm for the United States because
"there was no other way for him to live."
Elizabeth Paez Gonzalez, 40, told of women suffering from
depression and anxiety whom she counsels in rural areas of
Veracruz.
"They’re left alone," she said. "They
see their husbands leave, and they don’t know if they’ll
ever come back."
Manuela Pereda, 51, echoed other participants in saying that
many in her community of Tuxtepec simply quit growing corn
because prices are so low. With men gone, fields that get
planted are tended by women and children, she said.
"It has destroyed families," she said. "When
men leave, they take up with other women, and women start
relationships with other men."
Yet 200 miles east in other fields of Oaxaca, several farmers
said they planned to continue growing corn for their families
despite the inability to sell any for profit.
"This is how we live," said Elvira Garzon Miguel,
73. "We feed ourselves and all of Mexico."
From Mexico to Missouri
Farmer Jesus Leon continues to plant his corn. But he also
traveled last month to the United States, hoping to tell his
story and influence future trade policy in ways that benefit
small farmers.
Traveling in Missouri with financial support from Maryknoll,
a Catholic mission movement, and Catholic Relief Charities,
Leon even visited the boyhood home of Mark Twain in Hannibal.
In nearby Palmyra, Mo., he found kindred spirits at the farm
of Lowell and Marcia Schachtsiek at a gathering arranged on
his behalf by the Missouri Farmers Union, an advocacy group
for family farmers.
Lowell Schachtsiek said later that many U.S. farmers, too,
had been driven off the land by plummeting corn prices that
recently reached a modern low of $1.50 a bushel.
"People are paying more for a bottle of water than a
bushel of corn," said Schachtsiek, 63.
As a result of the meetings in Missouri and elsewhere, U.S.
farmers agreed to take part in a gathering with their Mexican
counterparts with hopes of changing policies in both countries.
No date has been set.
Eventually, Leon journeyed to Washington, where he met with
staff representing 15 members of Congress. They perked up
when Leon got to the part about how problems in Mexico affect
congressional districts in the United States.
"There has been an abandonment of the countryside and
a new migration of people, some to our cities. But many are
coming here to the United States," he said.
ccccccccccc
http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v18n2/danaher_on_the_run.html
The Public Eye - Summer 2004 - Vol. 18, No. 2
"Free Traders" On the Run
By Kevin Danaher and Jason Mark
After years of
growing citizen opposition to corporate globalization, the
free traders are on the run.
In September of
2003, a World Trade Organization (WTO) summit in Cancún,
Mexico came to a screeching halt after the world's poor countries
defied the industrial powers and said they would not agree
to new concessions unless the wealthy nations committed to
opening their own markets. Two months later, government ministers
meeting in Miami to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas
(FTAA) barely reached consensus for moving ahead with talks.
The current plan for the FTAA is so far removed from what
the corporations backing the deal originally wanted that the
result marks a clear victory for fair trade forces.
With the WTO in
disarray and the FTAA on the defensive, fair trade groups
are poised to deal a lethal blow to the "free trade"
agenda.
The WTO deadlock
in Cancún was the second of the institution's five
meetings to end in failure. "The fiasco in Cancún,"
government negotiators called it. For the world's majority,
"fantastic" would be more like it.
New bonds of unity
among WTO critics and between civil society groups and poor
nations led to the collapse. Nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs) and demonstrators established an impressive degree
of cooperation as past divisions between protesters and policy
wonks melted away: Constant communication between the marchers
in the streets and the agitators in the negotiating suites
gave WTO opponents a strength greater than the sum of their
parts.
At the same time,
the NGOs and the negotiators from developing nations also
reached a new level of collaboration. Vastly outnumbered by
officials from wealthy countries (the United States had some
300 staff members in Cancún, while countries like El
Salvador had less than a dozen) the poorer nations were greatly
assisted by NGOs monitoring the talks. The sharing of information
between NGOs and negotiators from countries in Latin America,
Asia, Africa and the Caribbean helped right the imbalance
of power between poor nations and rich ones.
But most important
to the WTO meltdown was the new unity among developing countries.
Going into the talks, a collection of southern countries—the
so-called "Group of 21," which included Brazil,
China, India, Argentina, Indonesia and Mexico—said they
would not agree to a further expansion of investors' powers
unless they were given new access to the North's agricultural
markets. In a customary display of arrogance, the industrial
powers ignored the South's demands. The poorer countries refused
to back down and resisted attempts at divide-and-conquer.
With the Group of 21—representing some 63 percent of
the world's farmers and 51 percent of the earth's population—holding
strong, the meetings ended.
This muscular resistance
is largely due to the failures of the "free trade"
model. Most countries' economies and human development indicators
have gone backward since the WTO took effect in 1995. This
dismal record has led, in turn, to increased resistance to
corporate globalization from grassroots movements. Poor countries
could have acceded to the wealthy nations' demands, but only
at the risk of inflaming their own citizens.
The rebellions
against privatization, neoliberalism and corporate power are
perhaps strongest in Latin America. Argentine President Nestor
Kirchner rode into office on a wave of anti-IMF sentiment.
Similar feelings are roiling Brazil, where Ignácio
(Lula) da Silva heads the first Workers Party government in
the country's history. In Venezuela, Hugo Chávez has
become a hero among the country's poor majority as he resists
transnational corporations. And in Bolivia, a recent peasant
revolt grounded in opposition to neoliberal policies recently
unseated the probusiness president. Thirteen members of the
Group of 21 that brought down the WTO talks are Latin American
nations.
The plight of Mexico's
maquiladora industry and its poor farmers shows why opposition
to the "free trade" agenda is on the rise.
Mexico was once
a "free trade" poster child, its lines of maquilas
"proof" that low wages and loose regulations could
attract investment. But cheap as Mexico's labor is, it is
not as cheap as that in Asia or Eastern Europe. In the last
two years, Mexico's maquiladora sector has lost at least 280,000
jobs with the closing of 400 plants. Many of the jobs have
been transferred to China.
The ultimate affront:
Statuettes of the beloved Mexican icon, the Virgin of Guadálupe,
now carry the "Made in China" label.
Labor rights and
development organizations have long criticized the assembly
plants along the United States-Mexico border as a dead-end
model of development. The foreign-owned maquilas rarely transfer
technology to Mexican industry, instead relying on workers
to assemble already-manufactured parts. Wages hardly ever
rise above subsistence levels, while union organizing drives
are invariably crushed. For Mexico's maquila workers, the
departure of the assembly plants adds injury to years of insult.
A typical Mexican
worker in an assembly plant makes a fraction of the average
U.S. wage—between $2 and $2.50 an hour. A similar worker
in China earns no more than 80 cents per hour. For a multinational
corporation with no allegiance to any community, the comparison
is no contest: lower wages usually win out. No wonder that
Philips Electronics, Microsoft, and Canon have moved factories
from Mexico to East Asia.
The flood of jobs
from Mexico shows that the sweatshop model of development
is not only inequitable, but also unsustainable. If a better
deal comes along, corporations will jump for it, leaving workers
in the lurch. In a global economy driven by the whims of investors
on Wall Street, short-term profits are always going to trump
the long-term investment that leads to genuine prosperity.
Under the "free trade" system, communities shouldn't
expect to be regarded as anything more than disposable resources.
The race-to-the bottom is real.
At the same time,
Mexican farmers are in dire straits, due in large part to
NAFTA. Since 1994, U.S. corn exports to Mexico have increased
eighteen-fold as U.S. producers dump massive quantities of
cheap corn on the market. The drop in corn prices caused by
this dumping has crippled the 15 million Mexicans who rely
on corn farming. Another 10 million farmers have been similarly
devastated by the collapse in prices for coffee and sugar.
U.S. taxpayers
are directly funding the crisis in the Mexican countryside.
U.S. agribusiness giants like Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill
are able to dump corn on the Mexican market because of the
massive subsidies they receive from the U.S. government. Such
subsidies enable U.S. farmers to produce corn and wheat well
below production costs—an advantage not enjoyed by Mexican
farmers. While Mexico gives about $720 per year to each farmer,
the United States spends $20,800 per farmer. Last year the
U.S. Congress approved a $70 billion increase in farm subsidies
over the next 10 years.
So U.S. farmers
are doing well, right? If only. The new farm supports will
go overwhelmingly to the largest, corporate-owned operations.
By encouraging over-production, the subsidies end up dropping
farm prices on both sides of the border, to the dismay of
family farmers everywhere. While agribusiness giants Conagra
and ADM have seen profit increases of 200 and 300 percent,
respectively, since NAFTA went into effect, small farmers
in the United States have been pushed into bankruptcy. Thirty-three
thousand U.S. farmers went out of business since NAFTA—three
times the pre-NAFTA rate.
To add insult to
injury, ordinary consumers have not received any savings from
the decrease in wholesale prices. Between 1993 and 2000, prices
for food eaten at home in the United States increased 20 percent.
Tortilla prices in Mexico City have also risen.
Now the situation
threatens to become worse. On January 1, 2003, NAFTA's latest
stage eliminated Mexican tariffs on wheat, rice, potatoes,
pork, apples and barley. Pitting hi-tech U.S. agribusiness
corporations against small-scale Mexican farmers is no contest.
Thanks to NAFTA, Mexico will soon be converted from a self-sufficient
country to a country that cannot feed itself.
"Free trade"
opposition is also on the rise in the world's wealthiest nation.
Grassroots resistance in the United States, combined with
the rebelliousness throughout the rest of the hemisphere,
is largely responsible for crippling the FTAA talks. With
Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela opposing any FTAA that would
give investors new powers, expand intellectual property rights
rules, or reduce government powers over public purchasing,
the negotiators in Miami were only able to agree to a "FTAA-Lite."
Government officials said it was a kind of "buffet-style"
agreement that allows countries to pick and choose what policies
they will adopt. If so, it's buffet without any real meat:
The corporate lobbyists left Miami hungry.
The question facing
fair trade forces is whether the failure in Cancún
and the deadlock in Miami are due to poor strategic judgment
or smart political calculus. That is, did the rich nations
merely underestimate the courage of poor countries? Or did
they deliberately push too hard, knowing that a collapse in
negotiations would free them from having to make concessions
that would anger their own farmers and workers?
If it's the first,
then the "free trade" agenda will have a second
life: Negotiators won't make the same mistake twice. But if
it's the second, then the "free trade" plan is very
likely stalled for good. As long as citizens' movements can
keep the pressure on their governments and demand that the
public interest not be sacrificed for corporate interests,
the free traders won't have the political strength to achieve
their dangerous goals.
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