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What is NAFTA and
the FTAA?
The North American Free Trade Agreement covers Canada, the
USA, and Mexico. The Free Trade Agreement of the Americans covers the
entire American continent. Both NAFTA and the FTAA contain chapter 11,
but the FTAA does not have the token labor and enviromental agreements
of NAFTA.
What is Chapter 11?
Chapter 11 bans democratically-elected
governments from actions that hurt the profits of investors.
Corporations sue governments (and in the end, taxpayers)
The claims are arbitrated
corporate-style, before secretive World Bank or United Nations
tribunals.
Examples:
The first NAFTA Chapter 11 case saw the
U.S.-based Ethyl Corporation sue Canada over a ban on Ethyl's product,
a gasoline additive known as MMT. Canada surrendered in 1998, agreeing
to remove the law and pay $13 million taxpayers dollars to Ethyl.
The very next day, another NAFTA Chapter
11 case was filed by another U.S. company--the hazardous-waste-disposal
corporation S.D. Myers--against a different Canadian environmental law.
In 1999, after a study by the university
of California at Davis warned that the chemical MTBE may cause cancer
in humans, the democratically elected government of California decided
to phase out MTBE.
The Canadian corporation Methanex, which
produces the MBTE ingredient methanol, is using chapter 11 of NAFTA to
sue the taxpayers of the United States for $970 million.
"We find it disconcerting that our
democratic decision-making ... is being second-guessed in a distant
forum by unelected officials" wrote California legislators.
Chapter 11 negotiator Daniel Price sings
the praises of "strong, stable legal regimes to protect property
rights." and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Council for
International Business support chapter 11 in the name of "stable
business environments". By "stability", they mean no progress, no
response to the will of the people, by "strong" they mean dictatorial.
States fight back
Oregon's legislature passed a joint
measure calling on the U.S. Congress to monitor proposed trade
agreements for conflicts with state sovereignty; Washington State has
shown similar interest. Interestingly, both are very liberal areas. To
conservative politicians, "states rights" is just rhetoric.
"States rights" had been a massive issue
during the debate over the 14th Amendment, (ensure equality for all
citizens regardless of race).
Meanwhile during the 1993 NAFTA
congressional debate Chapter 11 was not even mentioned. When
conservatives talk about "states rights", they mean a right to racism,
not democracy.
NAFTA's implementation act calls upon the
United States, Canada, and Mexico--all nations with federal forms of
government --"to overrule inconsistent state law through legislation or
civil suit." Naturally, neos intend to make standards consistent - at
their lowest level.
What are some results of NAFTA?
Example: Farms
Neos promised that NAFTA would give
farmers new markets to export to, increasing income for farmers while
lowering prices for consumers. The opposite happened.
U.S. Consumer Price Index shows that U.S.
consumer food prices increased by almost 20%, even as the price paid to
Mexican corn farmers dropped 48%! All of the missing money has gone to
the agribusiness corporations that bribed politicians during the
writing and passing of NAFTA.
Dispite promises of new markets to US
farmers, the volume of US cotton exports fell by 28% and prices plunged
38%.
In the US, 33,000 farms with under
$100,000 annual income have disappeared during the seven years of
NAFTA. This is a rate 600% steeper than the pre-NAFTA period.
While Canada's NAFTA agricultural exports
grew by C$6 billion between 1993 and 1999, net farm income declined by
C$600 million over the same period instead of rising by $1.4 billion as
Agri-Food Canada had predicted. Since NAFTA, the rate of Canadian farm
bankruptcies and delinquent loans is five times that before NAFTA, even
as Canadian agricultural exports doubled.
What is intellectual property? What are
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and Trade-Related
Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs)
The World Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO) has governed "intellectual property" issues since
its founding in 1970 (though it oversees treaties and conventions
dating from as early as 1883).
In the old days, "intellectual property"
only covered property rights over inventions, industrial designs,
trademarks, and artistic and literary works. Now it covers computer
programs, electronic images and recordings, and even biological
processes and genetic codes, most of which are owned by rich
multinational corporations. These patents etc. stop small business in
the third world from competeing with them. In short, neos support
monopoly.
A 1996 WIPO treaty, if ratified, would
prevent "reengineering" - using someone elses old design as the base of
your own, better design.
Reengineering has been a large part of
development. In the US, Lowell, Massachusetts textile manaufacturers
built their looms based on English designs. Taiwan is another example
of development through reengineering. They built a better moustrap, but
the WTO does not want them to build moustraps at all.
Because WIPO is not able to crush
opposition, The WTO with its "Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual
Property Rights" (TRIPS) intends to take over.
TRIPs would put the muscle of trade
sanctions behind intellectual property rights. It would also stake out
new intellectual property rights over plant, animal, and even human
genetic codes.
The governments of some poor countries are
against this, because rich corporations in rich countries will declare
ownership over the genetic codes of plants long used for healing or
crops within their countries, meaning the poor would suddenly have to
start paying the rich. For example, the natural pesticide from the Neem
tree, which has been used for hundreds of years by farmers but has now
been patented by a US corporation.
When poor nations have tried to produce
cheap drugs to fight AIDS and other diseases, they have been stopped
because the rich drug companies (one of the most profitable businesses
in the world) want to use their copywrite-granted monopoly (even though
much of their research and development was paid for by taxpayers).
PAUL DAVIS, of http://www.healthgap.org :
"At a recent WTO meeting, almost all rich nations joined with the
countries of the South in asking the WTO to reform its drug monopoly
rules...to address the devastation caused by the AIDS epidemic...Only
the U.S. opposed this."
A one way street
When American fast food chains serve Tacos
or white bands play reggae, none of the money goes to Mexico or
Jamaica. Yet if those same Jamaicans tried to save lives with cheap
AIDS drugs, they would be punished.
Conclusion
Intellectual property is a form of
trickle-down economics that says that when the poor give to the rich,
it is better for them. In other words, if Mother Teresa really cared
about the poor she would have robbed them. The neo view is that if the
owners of drug patents end up with one less mansion than usual, they
will give up on making pills and start begging on the streets. This has
not happened: the economy of China has quadrupaled despite copywrite
violations on a massive scale.
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