Editorials

Nova Scotia activists are expressing surprise that former US president Bill Clinton has apologized for flooding Haiti with cheap American rice beginning in the mid 1990s. During testimony before a US Senate committee three weeks ago, Clinton admitted that requiring Haiti to lower its tariffs on rice imports made it impossible for Haitian farmers to compete. The trade policy forced farmers off the land and undercut Haiti's ability to feed itself.

Janet Eaton, trade and environment campaigner for Sierra Club Canada, says members of the global democracy movement have long known about the failures of the globalized food system and Clinton’s apology to Haitians only reinforces what many activists have talked and written about for years..

“When high-profile leaders admit that economic globalization isn’t working, then it’s time for governments to get on board and look at alternatives.” Eaton adds. “It is time to admit that these failures exist and put an end to the aggressive free trade frenzy that is now occurring in Canada, the US and Europe as they vie for foreign markets, raw materials and unfettered free trade.”

By Dana Gabriel

Although there is a need for Canada to expand its trade horizons, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) currently being negotiated with the European Union (EU) appears to be based on the flawed NAFTA model. Many view it as an opportunity to decrease its trade reliance on the U.S., but it could serve to accelerate the corporate takeover of the country. The deal would exceed NAFTA in its scope and with the third round of negotiations scheduled for April 19-23 in Ottawa, there are lingering concerns regarding its lack of transparency. A Canada-EU CETA could be used to expand NAFTA, strengthen U.S.-EU economic relations and further advance the transatlantic agenda.

This is Part Two of a four part series.  The three letters are to "officials" I believe are derelict in their responsibility to law and the administration of justice in the BC Rail Scandal criminal court case.  This letter is to the Attorney General of British Columbia, the Honourable Michael de Jong.

AMI – Monetary Reform and Liberation
G-20 - Debt Slavery

In Pittsburgh the G-20 agreed to disagree, thus maintaining the illusion that they have secured the unraveling financial system by instituting the mildest of reforms even while allowing the bankers most responsible for the economic disaster to keep their ill-gotten gains. Simultaneously, in Chicago a less heralded group gathered at the American Monetary Institute (AMI) 5th Annual Monetary Reform Conference to deepen their understanding of the flaws in the dominant debt-based system and the possibilities for transformation. At the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh, protected by brutal military and police forces, world leaders were met by thousands of protesters deploring their policies. At the AMI meeting at Roosevelt University in Chicago, monetary researchers, authors, and activists from Russia, New Zealand, Europe, Africa, Canada, Britain, and across the US were ignored by the press as they shared their insights and experiences and discussed the Monetary Reform and Financial Security bill, to be introduced into Congress by Dennis Kucinich as a first step to ease the debt slavery burdening humanity.

The AMI was founded by Stephen Zarlenga (& Dr. Lucienne DeWulf). Zarlenga, author of The Lost Science of Money: The Mythology of Money, the Story of Power, contends that

“By mis-defining the nature of money, special interests have often been able to control a society’s monetary system, and in turn, the society itself.”

by Laura Carlsen

On January 31, an armed commando unit pulled up to a house in a working-class neighborhood in Ciudad Juarez on the Mexican side of the border with the United States. Inside the house, 60 teenagers were celebrating a friend's birthday. Wielding high-caliber weapons, the commandos opened fire on the kids, robbed the house, then drove away from the scene — amid human cries, the scent of gunpowder, and the total absence of law enforcement officials.

To date, 16 people are dead as more lie wounded in the local hospital. Photographs capture the concrete floors stained with blood, the bereaved families, the frightened neighbors. Local residents interviewed in the aftermath of the tragedy called the security forces "useless." Fearing to give their names, they noted that the gunmen entered the neighborhood, hunted down the victims, and passed right by a group of soldiers in the vicinity.

What's this?  A falling out on the right?  Perhaps to compensate for the discord among the federal Liberals....?

From Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico — in the name of reducing travel time, transport and trade processing costs.

The Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation Corridor consists of a series of interconnected transportation systems, including: rail, road, air and marine shipping, that run through the centre of North America from the Arctic Port of Churchill in Manitoba, though the American Heartland to Mexico.

Last April, the US Trade Representative explained to us that the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement had to stay secret in order to provide room for negotiating. In fact, ACTA was so inchoate that "a comprehensive set of proposals for the text of the agreement does not yet exist." In other words: there's nothing to release.

That was true in early 2009, but by 2010, there was such a comprehensive set of proposals—and still we got nothing from the ACTA negotiating nations, except a long series of piecemeal leaks that appear to have emanated from Europe. This week, those leaks became a flood as French digital rights group La Quadrature du Netreleased a complete copy of ACTA's consolidated text, filled with various textual proposals from the different negotiating countries.

What appeared to be a postponed deal resurfaced on the agenda of the
Canadian government last week when Trade Minister Peter Van Loan re-
introduced the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement into Parliament.

Mr. Van Loan stressed the "opportunity for [Canada] to open markets
to the high quality products produced by Canadian workers and
businesses" and called for opposition support for what is now known
as Bill C-2...

By Terri Hall
March 22, 2010

[Editor's note: The Free Trade corridor network that tie Mexico, Canada and the U.S. together are a critical component of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that was negotiated by George W. Bush and signed into law by Bill Clinton. Both Bush and Clinton were members of the Trilateral Commission. Furthermore, NAFTA's chief architect was U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills, also a Trilateral. The Trans Texas Corridor is the first major link of this super-corridor system; if successfully completed (e.g., if Texans lose the fight to stop it again), America will be opened up like a can of sardines. Please see additional links below for other August Review articles on this topic.]

Three times this week Stephen Harper folded, once on loathsome junk mail flyers, a second time on foreign aid funding for contraception and a third on public library Internet access.

Now the Prime Minister faces a tougher decision: to hold his Afghan torture cards, or walk away from a charged test of wills with Parliament.

Buoyed by those small victories over Conservatives, usually timid opposition MPs are taking their chances on a daring bluff. They are asking Peter Milliken, the Commons Speaker, to rule that fundamental democratic rights are being trampled by Harper's refusal to release documents believed to hold the secrets of who knew what about Afghan prisoner abuse.
 

This is the first part of a four part series.  Three letters will be sent to "officials" I believe are in dereliction of their responsibility to law and the administration of justice.  The fourth part is an overview, placing the BC Rail Scandal and the Gordon Campbell government in relation to the present, persistent attack on democratic accountability across the Western World.

Opposition members of Parliament joined together Wednesday to pass a motion that would prevent the prime minister from proroguing Parliament for longer than seven days unless supported by the House.

ACTION ALERT: Liberals must stop fast-track of Canada-Colombia free trade agreement (Bill C-2)
March 11, 2010

The Harper government has reintroduced implementation legislation for the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement in Bill C-2. As the number suggests, it is the second bill the government will handle after the budget, with second reading debate on the free trade agreement starting as early as this Friday. There is every reason to believe Harper will try to fast-track it through the House of Commons.

The Liberal Party was prepared to help last term's implementation legislation (Bill C-23) pass second reading and head to committee despite a June 2008 all-party recommendation of the Standing Committee on International Trade that an "impartial human rights impact assessment be carried out by a competent body, which is subject to independent levels of scrutiny and validation... before Canada considers ratifying and implementing an agreement with Colombia."

With the new bill (C-2) taking Parliament back to square one, there is no longer any justification for the Liberals to ignore the need for a human rights assessment before passing the free trade
agreement. We need to make sure they make that choice.

http://www.canadians.org/action/2010/CCFTA-0203.html
SEND A LETTER NOW: