CAFTA, WALMART

A few excerpts from the September 9, 2005 edition of Jim Jontz's Trade Bits:

GIVING THANKS: The so-called "CAFTA 15," House Democrats whose votes, combined with those of most of the Republican majority, narrowly passed the CAFTA, "will reap rewards from business interests tonight at a fundraiser that is stoking the ire of some labor lobbyists," The Hill reports (9/7). Co-sponsored by National Association of Manufacturers President John Engler, the Electronic Industries Alliance, and the Business Roundtable, the fundraiser is being billed as a "thank you" to the 15 Democrats for their "politically difficult CAFTA support in the face of pressure from their leadership and outside forces," the article says. "This is just one of many events we will have in an ongoing battle to really raise consciousness and breadth of support for trade liberalization on Capitol Hill," an executive involved in the fundraiser said. "It’s pretty telling, I think, that the business community would be so interested in congratulating these Democrats because CAFTA is definitely a trade deal that’s in the interest of corporations and not in the interests of workers,” responded Karen Ackerman of the AFL-CIO. Unions wrote to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) before the CAFTA vote, warning of labor’s united opposition to the deal and urging swift retaliation against any Democrat who supported the trade agreement, "a crucial legislative priority for House GOP leadership."
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LOBSTER TRAP: Obscure provisions in CAFTA have been used by the U.S. Trade Representative to ignore the wish of New Hampshire to be released from the deal's procurement rules, writes Arnie Alpert of the American Friends Service Committee in the Concord Monitor (9/5). Alpert says that the USTR took no action when New Hampshire's Governor wrote last May "instructing him to take New Hampshire out of CAFTA," claiming the U.S. would have to renegotiate the whole agreement. "In other words, CAFTA's provisions are like a lobster trap; once you get inside, it is impossible to get out again," Alpert writes. He says that if New Hampshire elected officials were to pass a law limiting the foreign outsourcing of public sector jobs, or prohibiting the purchase of uniforms made in sweatshops, those laws could be challenged under CAFTA. "The point is whether it is our elected officials or the members of international trade tribunals who should be able to decide" what procurement rules it should use," Alpert says. "It is ironic that one of the contentions made by the Bush administration to win CAFTA's passage was that the agreement would promote democracy. If future agreements are going to impose binding rules on state and local government, our own democratically elected leaders will have to raise their voices higher."
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LOWER PRICES?: Wal-Mart is facing a "pitched battle" from opponents to its plans for new stores in "two heavily indigenous areas" in Mexico, Reuters reports (9/1). "This time we will definitely keep Wal-Mart from continuing its attack on Mexico's culture and its people," said Lorenzo Trujillo, head of the Civic Front for the Defense of Teotihuacan Valley. "We will occupy public offices and will do everything necessary to impede Wal-Mart's cultural plunder." Trujillo is facing legal action for the protests his organization held against the construction of a Wal-Mart store less than two kilometers from the Teotihuacan pyramids, Reuters says. The two proposed stores drawing protests would be located in the "picturesque colonial town" of Pátzcuaro, and in Juchitán in the state of Oaxaca. "We are not going to let Wal-Mart barge in with its neoliberal trade practices to sites of historical and cultural importance in Mexico," said Trujillo. "Someday in the not-too-distant future" the Wal-Mart supermarket near the Teotihuacan pyramids will be shut down and demolished, Trujillo also told Reuters. "Time will prove us right," he says.

It should however be noted that, if memory serves, a majority of the community in the Teotihuacan Valley support the opening of the Wal-Mart (as of about a year ago, anyway) because of the anticipated low prices. Very possibly this reflects an expensive PR campaign on the part of Wal-Mart.

Zapatista boot-making collective

Someone named Chris Arsenault has published an article [The First of January Boot Co-op] on a co-op in chiapas that produces boots for the local communities and internationally. The article also mentions the memo written by a Chase Manattan Bank analyst in his capacity with the Bank, which stated in part:

While Chiapas, in our opinion, does not pose a fundamental threat to Mexican political stability, it is perceived to be so by many in the investment community. The government will need to eliminate the Zapatistas to demonstrate their effective control of the national territory and of security policy.

The memo is available in full online. The original expose by CounterPunch can be found here.

The website for the Black Star Boot Collective mentioned in the piece can be found here.

Details on the U.S. interference in Venezuela

Philip Agee has come out with a series of articles analyzing how the U.S. is interfering in Venezuela. Reading them I am reminded of just how little all of us - even very informed leftists - are aware of the extent of the evil perpetrated by our government. I've excerpeted a few paragraphs from each of his first two articles.

How United States Intervention Against Venezuela Works Part 1 of 3

During the administration of Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) general agreement developed in the foreign policy establishment that the repressive dictatorships supported by the United States around the world (Philippines, Iran, the Southern Cone of South America, Central America, etc.) were not the best solutions to maintaining the long-term interests of the country. These interests fundamentally were free access to primary resources, labor, and worldwide markets especially those of the so-called Third World. This new concept favoring democracy over authoritarian regimes came to be known as the Democracy Project. In 1979 the American Political Foundation (APF) was established with both government and private financing, and with the participation of both political parties as well as business and union sectors. Its purpose was to determine how the United States could better protect its foreign interests through freely elected civilian governments based on the U.S. federal system or the European parliamentary model.

The APF began studies and investigations under the direction of a high-ranking CIA official assigned to the National Security Council. Its conclusions after two years’ work were to adopt something similar to the practice of the Federal Republic of Germany in which the Liberal, Social Democratic and Christian Democratic parties each had private foundations that were financed by the federal government. These foundations supported political parties and other organizations abroad that shared their political persuasions. The APF recommendations were broadly accepted, and in November 1983 Congress approved a law that established the National Endowment for Democracy awarding it $14 million for fiscal year 1984.
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The NED and its associated foundations were conceived as a mechanism to channel funds toward political parties and other foreign civil society institutions that favored U.S. interests, above all the neo-liberal agenda of privatization, deregulation, control of unions, reduction of social services, elimination of tariffs, and free access to markets. The entire mechanism was, and is, nothing more than an instrument of U.S. government foreign policy. Nevertheless the NED and its associated foundations have always tried to maintain the false impression that their operations are private, and in fact NED has the legal status of an NGO.


Use of a Private U.S. Corporate Structure to Disguise a Government Program, US in Venezuela Part 2

However, after the coup, there was an obvious decision taken in Washington to multiply its efforts in Venezuela with much more money, but now through OTI/AID and a contracted consulting firm, Development Alternatives Inc. This firm would act as a branch of OTI/AID under the guise of a private company.
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The contract makes it clear that OTI is the equivalent of an international political fire brigade that is used by the government to bring under control social and political upheavals that threaten U.S. interests – something similar to the military’s Special Forces.
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To sum up this contract, after the failed coup of April 2002, the government of the United States widened its program of intervention in the Venezuelan political process through the Agency for International Development (AID) with budgets much greater than those of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its four associated foundations whose programs with the opposition nevertheless continued. In August 2002 AID/OTI contracted the consulting firm Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI) to develop various programs to support the political opposition with annual budgets of around $5 million. DAI then established an office in Caracas, very possibly as a front for and with personnel from the CIA, while passing as an ordinary subsidiary of a U.S. transnational corporation. In reality, it is a key office of the U.S. embassy disguised as a private company.
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At least 67 projects up to end of 2004 have been financed by the DAI program called Venezuela: Initiative to Build Confidence. The first projects started in the fall of 2002 were designed to support the lockout and sabotage of the oil industry from December 2002 to February 2003. This support included financing the TV ad campaign in favor of the strike. When the strike failed, DAI focused its projects on the referendum of August 2004, and among its main beneficiaries was Súmate, the main NGO that promoted the referendum against Chávez. Parallel to these activities DAI has financed the development of the opposition’s political program against the Bolivarian Revolution known as Plan Consensus. Some of the beneficiaries of this project were Queremos Elegir (We want to Choose) and Liderazgo y Vision (Leadership and Vision). Now, since the victories of President Chávez in the referendum and in the local and state elections of October 2004, DAI is focusing on the national elections of 2005 and 2006.