Global Farmers Fight Back

My comrades who are Free Market Libertarians and mutualists who oppose capitalism in favour of a cooperative marketplace, will find much to praise in this new farmers movement. It poses a real alternative to capitalist globalization and corporatist free trade. None other than creation of a new movement for a cooperative commonwealth.

The latest attempt to destroy the Wheat Board in Canada is an example of the attack by the State on small farmers in favour of the Agribusiness cartels in the developed world. The Green Revolution, the push for GMO crops and patents on crops as well as using arable land for production for export; palm oil, are examples of non sustainable agribusiness versus the sustainable production of local farmers.

The recent Fraser Institute report by Preston Manning and Mike Harris calling for the end of supply management, the Wheat Board , and subsidies in the market place for farmers, does nothing but open up the farm marketplace to the agribusiness oligopolies. Ironic since Manning's daddy ran a party; Social Credit, made up of farmers that saw these same oligopolies as enemies of a producer run economy.


The fact is that the majority of farmers in the world are family farmers, not far removed from their peasant roots. It is the peasantry that provides the basis for the survival of the food economy. But with the advent of capitalist globalization the peasantry has become a new force in the world economy as Warren Bellow points out.

It is agricultural reform, the privatization of the inherent collectivism of peasant farming, the enclosure of common lands that led to the creation of capitalism in Britain. Forced off the land the peasants move to the cities to look for work becoming the proletariat.

But not all have done so, since it is the farmers who support the cities with their food production. And forced by globalization to collectivize farmers are reforming cooperatives to deal with the new demands of the marketplace.

Thai pig farmers protest at CPF headquarters

S. Korea may allow farmers to export locally grown rice: gov't source

Farmers Cooperative Extends Rollout Of SOA Tool

Connecting Coffee Growers and Drinkers

Cameroon: Coffee - Reasons Behind Poor Performance

Phoenixville Farmer's Market returns to town for sixth season

Innovations in rural financial system inPunjab

What began in England over 400 hundred years ago is now writ wide across the globe. It is not Free Trade nor Free Markets but the concentration of capital and its power to monopolize the market. It is the transformation of agriculture from sustainable economics to the economics of unrestrained growth. Thus the land, people and environment suffer as we see in Indonesia as the islands there burn for the sake of the agribusiness palm oil industry.

Whereas export crops like organic and fair trade coffee have become a basis for sustainable export farming, which can support sustainable agriculture as well as meet the farmers need to be part of a global market place.


Free Trade vs. Small Farmers

Walden Bello is Executive Director of Focus on the Global South, a Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute, and a Professor of Sociology at the University of the Philippines at Diliman.

The main battle cry of Via Campesina, whose coordinating center is located in Indonesia, is “WTO Out of Agriculture” and its alternative program is food sovereignty. Food sovereignty means first and foremost the immediate adoption of policies that favor small producers. This would include, according to Indonesian farmer Henry Saragih, Via's coordinator, and Ahmad Ya'kub, Deputy for Policy Studies of the Indonesian Peasant Union Federation (FSPI), “the protection of the domestic market from low-priced imports, remunerative prices for all farmers and fishers, abolition of all direct and indirect export subsidies, and the phasing out of domestic subsidies that promote unsustainable agriculture.”

Via's program, however, goes beyond the adoption of pro-smallholder trade policies. It also calls for an end to the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights regime, which allows corporations to patent plant seeds, thus appropriating for private profit what has evolved through the creative interaction of the natural world with human communities over eons. Seeds and all other plant genetic resources should be considered part of the common heritage of humanity, the group believes, and not be subject to privatization.

Agrarian reform, long avoided by landed elites in countries like the Philippines, is a central element in Via's platform, as is sustainable, ecologically sensitive organic or biodynamic farming by small peasant producers. The organization has set itself apart from both the First Green Revolution based on chemical-intensive agriculture and the Second Green Revolution driven by genetic engineering (GE). The disastrous environmental side effects of the first are well known, says Via, which means all the more that the precautionary principle must be rigorously applied to the second, to avoid negative health and environmental outcomes.

The opposition to GE-based agriculture has created a powerful link between farmers and consumers who are angry at corporations for marketing genetically modified commodities without proper labeling, thus denying consumers a choice. In the European Union, a solid alliance of farmers, consumers, and environmentalists prevented the import of GE-modified products from the United States for several years. Although the EU has cautiously allowed in a few GE imports since 2004, 54% of European consumers continue to think GE food is ”dangerous.” Opposition to other harmful processes such as food irradiation has also contributed to the tightening of ties between farmers and consumers, large numbers of whom now think that public health and environmental impact should be more important determinants of consumer behavior than price.

More and more people are beginning to realize that local production and culinary traditions are intimately related, and that this relationship is threatened by corporate control of food production, processing, marketing, and consumption. This is why Jose Bove's justification for dismantling a MacDonald's resonated widely in Asia: “When we said we would protest by dismantling the half-built McDonald's in our town, everybody understood why -- the symbolism was so strong. It was for proper food against malbouffe [awful standardized food], agricultural workers against multinationals. The extreme right and other nationalists tried to make out it was anti-Americanism, but the vast majority knew it was no such thing. It was a protest against a form of production that wants to dominate the world.”

Many economists, technocrats, policymakers, and urban intellectuals have long viewed small farmers as a doomed class. Once regarded as passive objects to be manipulated by elites, they are now resisting the capitalist, socialist, and developmentalist paradigms that would consign them to ruin. They have become what Karl Marx described as a politically conscious “class-for-itself.” And even as peasants refuse to “go gently into that good night,” to borrow a line from Dylan Thomas, developments in the 21st century are revealing traditional pro-development visions to be deeply flawed. The escalating protests of peasant groups such as Via Campesina, are not a return to the past. As environmental crises multiply and the social dysfunctions of urban-industrial life pile up, the farmers' movement has relevance not only to peasants but to everyone who is threatened by the catastrophic consequences of obsolete modernist paradigms for organizing production, community, and life.

Farmers hungry for change

At this week's intergovernmental meeting in Rome to assess progress towards the pledge to halve hunger by 2015, the mood was sombre. Figures from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) show not a reduction but an increase of more than 25 million chronically undernourished people since 1996. The figure, now at more than 850 million, is testament to how current global policies are consigning the hungry to stay hungry.

So what is going wrong? In 2002, when the UN World Food Summit pledge was last reviewed, the parallel Forum for Food Sovereignty, organised by non-governmental groups representing small farmers and those who feel the sharp end of hunger directly, concluded that the problem was not a lack of political will, as the FAO asserted, but the opposite. Trade liberalisation, industrial agriculture, genetic engineering and military dominance, it said, were now the main causes of hunger.

The farmers, from 30 countries, who participated in the conference were eloquent about how farming for small producers is more than just a food production system. Edgar Gonzales Castro, from Peru, said his vision of the future was "traditional" agriculture aimed at satisfying the needs of farmers, rather than generating profit. "What matters is that, on the family plot of land, farmers and their families have a range of crops to fill the cooking pot," he said.

"When governments decide to hold public consultations to help guide their decisions, policy experts as well as representatives of large farmers and agrifood corporations are usually centre stage, not small-scale producers, consumers and their organisations," says Pimbert.

The message of the report is that small-scale farmers - the majority of growers in the world - want radically different policies from those being promoted by their governments. The call is for policies to start from the perspectives of food producers and consumers rather than the demand for profit.

If "one-planet farming" means that western governments will only support farming practices that provide healthy, local food, maintain livelihoods for local producers and conserve resilient landscapes, then there is common ground with small-scale farmers. But if it means a uniform system for all, this will accelerate the hunt to source food globally and as cheaply as possible.

This will result in a continuing decline in food quality, with ever higher social and environmental costs, and be lorded over by fewer and fewer transnational agribusinesses. It would lead both to greater obesity and greater starvation, and see the eradication of more farmers and further loss of farmland.

Farmers' Views on the Future of Food and Small Scale Producers is at http://www.iied.org/pubs/pdf/full/14503IIED.pdf

Friends of African Farmers & Fishermen

Friends of African Farmers & Fishermen is a Non Profit local community organisation formed by local women and men who are farmers and fishermen. Due to increasing poverty in the area, the local people formed this organisation of Volunteers to help themselves. Due to lack of money and machinery for farming and fishing, wish to appeal for donations of Farm Machinery ie, tractors, irrigation equipment etc. Donations for our Agricultural and development projects in Volta Region of Ghana. To help women and children to have food to eat.Train the young women and youth to acquire the needed skills. To also help farmers with farming machinery and fishing equipment. This would generate income for the local people.Non Profit Organisation.

SEE:

Free Trade Not Aid

Free Trade and Africa

The War For Chocolate

IWD Economic Freedom for Women

Water War

Development Versus Population Growth

WTO: Privatization of Water

Is There a Silver Lining to the WTO Talks? No




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Nationalism Will Not Stop North American Union

The drive to further Fortress North America is gaining ground with through the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) Also known as the North American Union. It is the natural follow up to NAFTA, driven by the events of 9/11.

Unfortunately the response so far has been that of narrow nationalism and the wailing over the death of sovereignty.

In the U.S. it has been led by nativist populist Lou Dobbs, and in Canada by left nationalist Maude Barlow, making strange bedfellows indeed.

DOBBS: There are rising concerns in Canada about the SPP, the so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership which some think is directly the foundation for something called the North American Union. The Bush administration is pretty excited about that, saying the initiative is meant to increase security and prosperity for all of North America. Opponents, however, say the initiative is nothing less than a plan to create a North American Union that would eliminate sovereignty for all three nations.

As Christine Romans now reports, grassroots opposition is rising in Canada.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): In Ottawa, author and activist Maude Barlow has unrestrained contempt for the Security and Prosperity Partnership. She's concerned about a grab for Canada's natural resources and a watering down of its regulations and benefits by the biggest corporations doing business in North America. And that's just for starters.

MAUDE BARLOW, THE COUNCIL OF CANADIANS: If Canadians and Americans and Mexicans, ordinary people, saw what these guys are talking about, including one trade bloc, one security perimeter, one -- you know, everybody agreeing with George Bush's foreign policy, and don't ask any questions -- you know, lowest common denominator environmental standards, I don't think they would go for it.

ROMANS: Her group, the Council of Canadians, has published a citizens guide called "Integrate This," denouncing the deep integration agenda between the United States, Mexico and Canada. The stated goal established by presidents Bush, Fox and Prime Minister Paul Martin is integration by 2010. Harmonizing regulations for a safer, more prosperous North America.

But Barlow recently testified before a parliamentary trade committee that the SPP "... is quite literally about eliminating Canada's ability to determine independent regulatory standards, environmental protections, energy security, foreign, military, immigration and other policies."

Among the Canadians left, a growing fear that big business is drafting government policy behind closed doors.

BRUCE CAMPBELL, CANADIAN CENTER FOR POLICY ALTERNATIVES: This is a vast initiative. It's an umbrella for a whole bunch of initiatives. There's 20 working groups and initiatives totaling about 300. And very little is known really about the nitty-gritty of these. We have a superficial knowledge, but I think we need -- we need to know more.

ROMANS: He's hoping all three legislative bodies will insist on oversight.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROMANS: It's just emerging as an issue now before Canada's lawmakers, driven by progressives and Canadian nationalists. In the U.S., the (INAUDIBLE) opposition is dominated by border control advocates. Strange bedfellows, they both agree, but both are wondering why more people aren't raising questions. Canadian immigration opponents promise plenty of noise as the next trilateral meeting of leaders approaches in Canada this time -- Lou.

DOBBS: The new -- the new world order that this president's father talked about with such great enthusiasm seems to be high on the agenda in this administration. It's remarkable to me, the arrogance, the idea of just simply throwing away the nation's sovereignty. But they're trying to do so in many ways.

But like opposition to NAFTA this narrow nationalism fails to address the real nature of this agreement and thus is unable to effectively offer any alternative.

For narrow nationalism has already been defeated by the continental reality of the trading blocs created as a result of the evolution of the WTO. It was begun in the 1970's with the creation of the Trilateral Commission and has evolved since then into a new global order of capital integration and a new era of inter-capital imperialism.

The New World Order was declared by George Bush I and the result has been almost two decades of transformation of the nation state into the corporatist state. That is where the State is a partner with the private sector, the ultimate P3 is globalization.

The agenda of the corporatist state is to access large amounts of public funds accessible for private investment, such as public pension funds/Social Security.

It is replacing the Fordist Welfare State in the U.S. and the social security state in social democratic countries like Canada and Mexico. It is creating blended economies of trading blocs in Latin America, Europe, Asia, and ultimately at its source; North America. Left out is Africa which remains the cheap goods, labour and raw resource colony of the New World Order, and the place they can invest.

Immigration Bill Advances North American Union
By Cliff Kincaid
Apr 29, 2007

Rep. Edward Royce, a high-ranking conservative California Republican, said over the weekend that a White House-backed amnesty plan for illegal aliens has provisions which undermine the national sovereignty of the U.S. and help facilitate development of a North American Union, much like the European Union that supersedes the sovereignty of 27 European countries.

He vowed to defy the White House and mobilize House Republicans against the bill, backed by what he called the "open borders lobby."

This is a new development in the decadence of the period of State Captialism. Ultimately as corporations replaced governments in providing services, they developed the need for trade agreements that allowed for their access to these services intra and internationally.

The dialectic was that globalization required nation states to promote it, but through a new form of governance, one modeled on corporate agreements rather than on binding national and international models of governance. APEC, the WTO, the GATTS, etc. are all corporate treaties signed by two parties, the State and its corporate allies. They are not international trade agreements solely between governments, and their dispute resolution boards are made up of corporate as well as judicial lawyers.

A group supporting North American integration is preparing to hold its annual "North American Model Parliament" for students from the United States, Canada and Mexico.

The North American Forum on Integration, or NAFI, is scheduled to hold "Triumvirate," in Washington, D.C., May 20–25.

NAFI, according to the group's website, is as a non-profit organization based in Montreal, dedicated to "address the issues raised by North American integration as well as identify new ideas and strategies to reinforce the North American region."

The group's support of North American integration is documented by an objective listed to "identify the elements of the North American agenda which would allow the consolidation and reinforcement of the North American region."

A variety of issues pertinent to the formation and operation of a North American Community are debated by the mock parliament, including expanding immigration, stimulating investment in Mexico and revising NAFTA to move in the direction of becoming a regional government.

This year's Triumvirate themes are listed as the creations of a customs union, water management, human trafficking and telecommunications in North America.

Last year's Triumvirate 2006 was held in the Mexican Senate.

Triumvirate 2005, the first NAFI mock North American Parliament, was held in Ottawa, Canada.

As WND reported, Raymond Chretien, the president of the Triumvirate and the former Canadian ambassador to both Mexico and the U.S., was quoted as claiming the exercise was intended to be more than academic.

"The creation of a North American parliament, such as the one being simulated by these young people, should be considered," he told WND.

The recent development of TILMA, a labour, capital, agreement between Alberta and B.C. which allows for NAFTA regulations to be applied in the two provinces as a way of breaking traditional inter provincial barriers is another example of the NAU being put into practice.

The North American Union is the child of the privateers and neo-cons despite the opposition of the traditional right in the U.S. In Canada the right has always admired the U.S. and been contientalist, it is the left who has been nationalistic.

Preserving America’s Freedom

Wood’s actions in Idaho were the first successful and visible manifestations of a groundswell of opposition to the NAU that has materialized in recent months. Led by members of the John Birch Society (of which this magazine is an affiliate), concerned grass-roots activists have succeeded in raising awareness at the local and state level of the dangers presented by the SPP and the move toward further North American integration. As a result of these efforts, resolutions opposing a North American Union have been introduced in 18 states as we go to press. So far, resolutions opposing the SPP and NAU efforts of the federal government have been passed by state legislatures in Idaho and Montana. But it is in Idaho that opposition to the SPP had its first great success.

North American Union

One example is the reaction to evidence that U.S. officials are laying the groundwork for a North American entity, sometimes called a "North American Community" or "North American Union" of the U.S., Canada and Mexico in economic and other spheres. I attended a Washington conference devoted to developing a North American legal system that included literature outlining the creation of a North American Supreme Court. Lou Dobbs of CNN had me on his show recently to talk about it. "It's clear that you're as astounded as I am and as my colleagues are that more people in the media are not focusing on this issue," he said. Indeed, it is a story with dramatic implications for the survival of our nation as a sovereign entity. Yet, Dobbs is the only major media figure to consider the issue newsworthy. Conservative radio host Michael Medved openly ridiculed those who are covering the issue, and Fox News won't touch it.

In the latest developments, Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm, has uncovered federal documents indicating that secretive "working groups" in the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), a Bush Administration initiative, are working on a "One Card" concept to facilitate cross-border movement between the three countries. The SPP is being sold to the public as an attempt to help business, but the documents indicate a far-reaching effort to erase national borders and even national identity. Previous documents released by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act reveal a strategy called "evolution by stealth" to undermine the sovereignty of the three countries. That suggests a determined effort to keep this from the American people.

It may be difficult for the rest of the media to continue ignoring the controversy because opposition to the SPP is growing not only in the U.S. but Canada and Mexico. In fact, activists, academics, union officials, politicians and journalists from Canada, Mexico and the United States were in Ottawa from March 31-April 1 to organize opposition to the initiative. Judi McLeod of the Canada Free Press reports sources close to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper as saying that he is firmly against Canada being part of any North American Union and that Canadian sovereignty is "everything" to him.

Actually what right winger Judi McLeod said in her article was far less flattering of Harper, and more to my point;

"This newspaper had been told by trusted sources that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is against the NAU. But not only is Harper's silence on the NAU deafening, his top ministers attend NAU meetings."

Mar. 31, 2006: At the Summit
of the Americas in Cancun,
Canada (under new Prime
Minister Stephen Harper) along with the
U.S. and Mexico release the Leaders' Joint
Statement. The statement presents six action
points to move toward a North American
Union, aka a North American Community.
These action points include:
1) Establishment of a Trilateral Regulatory
Cooperative Framework,
2) Establishment of the North American
Competitiveness Council (NACC),
3) Provision for North American Emergency
Management,
4) Provision for Avian and Human
Pandemic Influenza Management,
5) Development of North American Energy
Security,
6) Assure Smart, Secure North American
Borders.

The release of the new Fraser Institute study by Preston Manning and Mike Harris shows that the conservative corporatist lobby embraces the North American Union, unlike their social conservative counterparts.

Canada must reduce trade and ownership barriers, integrate economy with U.S., say Manning and Harris

Canada needs to fully open its economy and drop restrictions on foreign ownership in all business sectors including banking, financial services and telecommunications, Preston Manning and Mike Harris say in a new policy paper released today by independent research organizations The Fraser Institute and the Montreal Economic Institute.

The two also call for eliminating Canada’s supply boards and agricultural subsidies, establishing a customs union and common external tariff with the United States, and reforming Canada’s approach to foreign aid.

International Trade Liberalization

Freer international trade offers the most effective means of increasing Canadian prosperity and sustaining essential social services. Manning and Harris propose eliminating protectionist measures from supply management to business subsidies, systematic privatization of government export promotion and development programs, elimination of ideologically driven efforts to diversity trade patterns and partners, and fully opening up the domestic market to international competition.

Maximizing the Benefits of Strong Canada-US Relations

Whether Canadians like it or not, Canada's influence in the world depends to a large extent on its ability to gain and exert influence in Washington. Harris and Manning propose a Canada-US Customs Union involving a common external tariff, a joint approach to the treatment of third-country goods, a fully integrated energy market, a common approach to trade remedies and border security, and an integrated government procurement regime.

The solution lies not in narrow nationalism but in the labour movement creating a continental opposition to the NAU by focusing on the environment. It is not the Kyoto protocol perse that is the weak link in the Harper Bush push for a North American Union, it is government regulation they oppose. The push is for deregulation, to have national standards meet the lowest common denominator.

Regulations pertaining to food and pesticides, environmental issues by any other name, being subjected to not only NAFTA but the SPP protocols as well.

Better break out the veggie-scrubbers: Canada is set to raise its limits on pesticide residues on fruit and vegetables for hundreds of products.

The move is part of an effort to harmonize Canadian pesticide rules with those of the United States, which allows higher residue levels for 40 per cent of the pesticides it regulates.

Differences in residue limits, which apply both to domestic and imported food, pose a potential "trade irritant," said Richard Aucoin, chief registrar of the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, which sets Canada's pesticide rules.

Canadian regulators and their U.S. counterparts have been working to harmonize pesticide regulations since 1996, as part of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Now the effort is being fast-tracked as an initiative under the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), a wide-ranging plan to streamline regulatory and security protocols across North America.

The SPP's 2006 report identified stricter residue limits as "barriers to trade."

When it comes to the environment, environmental health, green house gas reductions, the three Amigos oppose tougher regulations. It is this that is the weakness in ruling class plans for a Continental union. And the source of real opposition to the SPP. It is not a narrow nationalist response but a global solidarity alternative to corporate globalization.

Asserting that “global warming has transformed the issue of pollution into the ultimate health and safety issue,”

United Steelworkers (USW) president Leo W. Gerard on May 7 told the North American Labor Conference on Climate Crisis that regulating both carbon emissions and trade more stringently are essential for addressing the global climate crisis.

“Labor, environmental and human rights standards are at the core of our vision for making the global economy work for workers,” Gerard told more than 300 delegates. “They should become the new gold standard for how nations trade with each other.”

Gerard characterized the Labor Movement’s vision of addressing global warming as fundamentally at odds with the approach of giving away the right to emit carbon pollution to the world’s giant corporations and letting them make immense profits by trading and acquiring those rights without ever addressing the basic inequalities in our global economy.

“We need to use regulation of global warming and trade to lift two billion people out of poverty around the world,” he said. “To do that, we’ll need to regulate a lot of economic activity — from power plants to fuel efficiency to energy efficiency — and we’ll need to use this regulation as a powerful tool to improve workers’ lives, both here in North America and across the globe. The struggle for sustainability is not just about cleaning up the planet. It’s about engaging in raising standards of living over the long term – creating a world that has the capacity to solve the divisions of wealth and poverty that are the drivers of international conflict.”

To create a real opposition to capitalist contientalism and globalization a new movement of the Cooperative Commonwealth must be built.

An alternative form of stateless socialism based on community self management is the only solution to the crisis of capitalism with its attempts to privatize and commodify the world while avoiding the social and environmental costs of its actions.

Technocracy offered a possible alternative industrial model of contientalism under self management, the IWW and the Socialist Industrial Unionism of DeLeon offered models of self management of Fordist production. Combined they offer a real alternative to the current models of capitalism. See my paper: The Administration of Things: 20th Century North American Economic Models for A Post Capitalist Society, Socialist Industrialization, Syndicalism and Technocracy

While the cooperative commonwealth offers a political economic model of a market without the state.

See:

Deep Integration

Origins of the Captialist State In Canada

Time For A Canadian Steel Workers Union

Will Canadian Labour Accept Free Trade?

Cold Gold

Mittal Plays Monopoly

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Another Canadian Victim of Cancun Drug Wars

Perhaps this will cause Foreign Affairs to finally declare a warning on Mexico for Canadian tourists but don't count on it.

Since we are one of the three amigos of NAFTA, and the secret continental Security Prosperity Partnership of North America, Mexico gets kid glove treatment from the Canadian government. Despite the murders and attacks on Canadian tourists.

Alta. man fights for life after attack in Cancun

The family of an Alberta man severely injured in Mexico suspect he was beaten, while local authorities say the man was involved in an accident.

Jeff Toews, 34, of Grande Prairie, Alta. is now on life-support, according to his brother Murray. He was found early Monday at the Moon Palace Golf and Spa Resort in Cancun.

"He received serious head injuries, four blows to the head and he's been beaten very bad on his back," Murray Toews said by phone.

Once again the corrupt Mexican provincial regime in Cancun covers up the results of the drug war to keep the tourista bucks flowing. And like other recent Canadian deaths in Cancun the Attorney General claims the deaths as accidents.

"They're playing typical tourism crap. Like it happened to other Canadians, it's just always an 'accident.' Nobody's seen nothing and no witnesses, of course."

However, Bello Melchor Rodriguez y Carrillo, attorney-general for the state of Quintana Roo, dismissed the claim.

"He wasn't beaten. He fell from a second storey of the hotel where he was staying," he told the Canadian Press. "That's the report that we have from the security guard from the hotel, and the report we're getting from the hospital too."

Carrillo has also overseen the controversial Ianiero case, the Canadian couple murdered at another Mexican resort. He has blamed two women from Thunder Bay, Ont. for the killings, despite heavy criticism.

Cancun is more dangerous to Canadians than Israeli or Lebanese beach resorts. But we have a warning for the latter. Cancun and Acapulco are the centers of the drug cartel wars, which have taken more Canadian lives than the Israeli/Lebanon war.

Toews is the latest case of a number of Canadians injured or killed while vacationing in Mexico:

• Domenic and Nancy Ianiero, of Woodbridge, Ont., were staying at the luxury Barcelo Maya beach resort near Cancun when they were found with their throats slashed on Feb. 20, 2006. The murder remains unsolved.
• Another Woodbridge resident, 19-year-old Adam DePrisco, was killed outside an Acapulco nightclub last January. Local authorities said he was the victim of a hit-and-run, but relatives say the teenager was beaten to death.
• In February, Rita Callara, 55, and a Canadian man, both from the Niagara Falls region, were each shot in the leg after a gunman fired a semi-automatic weapon at the Casa Inn hotel in Acapulco.

The same weekend the Canadian tourist was attacked this happened; Gunmen attack police chief in Cancun beach resort Coincidence? I think not.

While not apparently connected to the death of the Canadian tourist, it reflects the dangers of the drug wars occurring under the surface in the land of umbrella drinks, sun and surf.

Zeta Mercenaries Attack Troops In Mexico
In the real city of Cancun -- rather than the "Hotel Zone" -- the chief of police was ambushed with his entourage. His bodyguard was killed and others wounded. He survived.

Some sources estimate 900 people have been murdered since the beginning of the year in Mexico in drug-war violence but that is not confirmed. The AP reported that figure from the Mexico City magazine, Milenio. The government does not confirm any figure.

Mexico: The Price of Peace in the Cartel Wars

This current cartel war is being waged not only for control of the smuggling plazas into the United States, such as Nuevo Laredo, Mexicali and Tijuana, but also for the locations used for Mexico's incoming drug shipments, in places such as Acapulco, Cancun and Michoacan, and for control of critical points on transshipment routes through the center of the country, such as Hermosillo.

While there has always been some level of violence between the Mexican cartels, the current war has resulted in a notable escalation in the level of brutality. One significant cause of this uptick is the change in the composition of the cartels' enforcement arms. Historically, cartel leaders performed much of their own dirty work, and figures such as Cardenas and Ramon Arellano Felix were recognized for the number of rivals they killed on their rise to the top of their respective organizations. In the recent past, however, the cartels have begun to contract out the enforcement functions to highly trained outsiders. For example, when cartels such as the Tijuana organization began to use active or retired police officers against their enemies, their rivals were forced to find enforcers capable of countering this strength. As a result, the Gulf cartel hired Los Zetas, a group of elite anti-drug paratroopers and intelligence operatives who deserted their federal Special Air Mobile Force Group in 1991. The Sinaloa cartel, meanwhile, formed a similar armed force called Los Pelones, literally meaning "the bald ones" but typically understood to mean "new soldiers" for the shaved heads normally sported by military recruits. Although the cartels had long outgunned Mexican police, these highly trained and aggressive enforcers upped the ante even further, introducing military-style tactics and even more advanced weapons.

The life of a Mexican drug cartel enforcer can be exciting, brutal -- and short. Los Zetas and Los Pelones are constantly attacking one another and some members of the groups even have posted videos on the Internet of them torturing and executing their rivals. Beheading rival enforcers also has become common. The current cartel war has proven to be a long and arduous struggle, and there has been heavy attrition among both organizations. Because of this attrition, the cartels have recently begun to bring fresh muscle to the fight. Los Zetas have formed relationships with former members of the Guatemalan special forces known as Kaibiles, and with members of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) street gang.

It is this environment of extreme and often gratuitous violence -- killings, beheadings and rocket-propelled grenade attacks -- that has sparked Calderon's actions against the Gulf cartel. Why he is focusing specifically on the Gulf cartel is unclear, though it is possible the government has better intelligence on it than on the others. Or perhaps it is because the Gulf cartel has a more centralized command structure than does Sinaloa, which is a federation of several smaller cartels. Of course, the Gulf cartel itself has argued that the Calderon administration is on the Sinaloa payroll and is being used by Sinaloa to destroy its rival. Another possible reason is that taking out Los Zetas -- who have become emblematic of extreme cartel violence -- would be a major accomplishment for the new president.

See:

Mexican Murder Cover Up?

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Foreign Take Overs

Lots of buzz about the American hostile take over of Alcan but little buzz about the Americans taking over van Houtte Coffee.

Perhaps because in the case of van Houtte the Quebec labour movement has invested in the take over.

While workers at Alcan in Quebec have faced layoffs. And could face more after Alcoa takes over its old branch plant again.


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Flaherty Flip Flops

Okay so when will the Conservatives back track on their failed Child Care program and reinstate funding for actual child care spaces. Oops that of course affects only Martha, Henry and the kids, not corporations and CEO's.

Flaherty backtracks on tax measure

In a reversal, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says a new controversial tax measure will be rewritten to ensure that legitimate Canadian corporations can continue to invest abroad and deduct the interest charge from their taxes.

Under pressure to back down from a "sleeper" measure in the March 19 budget that Canadian businesses said would cost them more than $1 billion and make them less competitive, Flaherty confirmed yesterday that draft legislation being prepared by the finance department would ensure that the provision only went after tax havens and so-called double dipping.

Flaherty blitzed on Alcan bid

Nevertheless, news yesterday of Alcoa Inc.' s US$33-billion takeover bid for Alcan turned up the heat once again on Mr. Flaherty and his proposed move to limit companies' ability to deduct interest on foreign financings.

Tax specialists, business groups, blue-chip chief execdutives and think-tanks have weighed in in opposition to the move. The government has said the proposal would end the practice by some Canadian-based firms of obtaining two or more deductions for interest expenses incurred to finance offshore operations.

Last month, Richard Evans, Alcan CEO, said in a published interview that the tax change could make the aluminum maker susceptible to a foreign bid because it would hinder Alcan's ability to grow through foreign acquisitions.

SEE:

Gildan Sweat Wear

Tax Fairness For The Rich

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President Of The Free World

This is why the Republicans will not win the Presidential election in 2008.

They are all white guys in suits.


Representative Duncan Hunter of California, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, Representative Ron Paul of Texas, Representative Thomas Tancredo of Colorado, former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson, former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and Senator John McCain of Arizona

While the Democrats represent the diversity of America and the rest of the world.

J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/The Associated Press Presidential hopefuls shake hands Thursday following the first Democratic presidential primary debate of the 2008 election hosted by the South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, S.C. From left are New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio.


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Shangri-La

Well this certainly befits the Shangri-La myth.....

Paintings of Buddha dating back to the 12th century have been found in a secret cave system in a remote area of Nepal, according to a team of international researchers.

This photograph shows one of 55 panels depicting the story of Buddha's life found in a remote cave in Nepal.
(Sky Door Productions/Luigi Fieni/Associated Press)

The team of Nepalese, American and Italian archeologists, art experts and climbers said they found a mural with 55 panels portraying Buddha's life in March in Nepal's Mustang area, about 250 kilometres northwest of Kathmandu.

One of the largest panels is 7.6 metres wide while others measure 35 by 43 centimetres.

A nearby cave contained manuscripts written in Tibetan along with pre-Christian era pottery shards.

The panels and manuscripts were in a system of caves with multiple floors connected by vertical passages with rough hand and footholds, the team members said.

They had to use ice axes to break through the snow to reach the caves after being tipped off by a sheep herder.

Though others believe that Shangri-La is elsewhere in Tibet; This Way to Shangri-La

Luckily this find is not in Afghanistan.


See:

Atlantis


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Worst Canadian(s)

The Beaver magazine is looking for Canadians whose legacy is infamy. The Canadian history magazine has begun an online promotion inviting Canadians to name the "worst Canadian" in the country's past.

It's a tie of course between Wolfe and Montcalm whose joint failure to win a decisive victory on the Plains of Abraham led to the creation of Canadian 'Con' federation.

And Canadians have suffered from a political complex of compromise ever since.

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American Faux Pas

Americans can never get it right despite all their fawning over royalty.

It's the Queen who leads not some colonial upstart

who wishes he was King.














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Lou Dobbs New Enemy: The Church

Lou Dobbs has discovered political secularism. In his continuing nativist war on 'illegal aliens' and illegal immigrants, Lou has recently discovered that Christians in America are a political lobby.

During a gushing interview with Chris Hitchens over his new book on Atheism, God Is Not Great, Hitchens sucked up to nativist Dobbs and asked him to pin the American flag pin to his sport coat collar, since he had just become an official American, the love affair between these two nationalist populist pedagogues was thus sealed.

Lou Dobbs loved him. Lou Dobbs made an appeal to his listeners for the book God is Not Great, "I read it, and I strongly recommend you do too. Terrific book....".

Hitchens does come over as a bit toad-like, possibly smelling of martinis and cigarettes, but he will move some books with this lengthy and sympathetic interview.

Hitchens is likewise a sort of conservative, supporting the Iraq War, for example. He mentioned that he had just become an American citizen, which will have a nice appeal for the flag-waving old school conservatives that watch Lou Dobbs on CNN. (A bit of a joke I suppose for Dobbs' usual anti-illegal immigrant audience that instead of illegal immigration of hispanics they get a legally immigrated atheist).

And following his 'conversion' to radical secularism, not quite atheism just good old American deism, Lou has expanded his populist nativist war on 'aliens' to include institutional Christianity, the very base of the Republican right. But of course for Lou the bad Churches are the liberal ones that support amnesty.

DOBBS: Coming up here next, another religious group all but declares that God wants amnesty for as many as 20 million illegal aliens. Holy mackerel. Is the separation of church and state dead in this country?

We'll have that special report.

And outrage after a pro-amnesty group gives illegal aliens instructions on how to circumvent our immigration laws.

DOBBS: The nation's religious leaders tonight bypassing the notion of separation of church and state. In fact they're lobbying Washington and lobbying hard for amnesty for illegal aliens, both on the pulpit and by direct mail.

Lisa Sylvester reports now on the campaign by the Catholic Church and other Christian churches to influence if not direct the Senate debate on amnesty legislation. Casey Wian reports on a renewed call for amnesty from Cardinal Roger Mahony and the mayor of Los Angeles.
SYLVESTER (on camera): Church leaders may be pushing for amnesty but a Zogby poll from last year asks the members of the Christian faith if they supported a get tough approach to illegal immigration. That is, securing the border and doing employment checks. Seventy- five percent of Protestants responded that was a good or very good idea. Seventy-seven percent of born-again Christians also agreed and 66 percent of Catholics also backed tougher enforcement measures.

So Lou, it appears that there's a bit of a disconnect between church leaders and church goers on this issue. Lou?

DOBBS: And there's just as large, if not a larger disconnect between our political elites and American citizens on the same issue. Did you, by any chance ask why in the world this reverend would suggest that this is a choice between Jesus Christ and Lou Dobbs?

SYLVESTER: I think he was trying make the point that it's one or the other. But clearly he was being a little facetious.

DOBBS: I hope so. Because -- When these folks start talking -- suggesting that God tells them not to worry about border security and not to worry about illegal immigration, and -- you know, I start worrying a little bit about the secular interests of this country. Any discussion about separation of church and state for crying out loud?

SYLVESTER: That line does seem to be very blurred on this issue. Now the church feels like it's essentially their mandate to protect the poor but it is clearly written in scripture that it is also the mandate of Christians to respect the rule of law. Romans 13.

DOBBS: Well, I am impressed with the citation, I couldn't have done as well but I appreciate you doing so.

Lisa Sylvester, thank you very much.

In Los Angeles, renewed calls tonight for amnesty for illegal aliens. Cardinal Roger Mahony and the mayor of Los Angeles making the push at a special mass held yesterday.

DOBBS: Well, I think that the good cardinal should check out Lisa Sylvester's citation of Romans. There's something to me -- I'll put it this way -- inappropriate about con founding, confusing and conflating religion and secular issues such as politics and the law of the land.

This is, to me, inexplicable and very troubling. I suspect a lot of other folks, as matter of fact, given those surveys about the disconnect between the membership of the Protestant churches and the membership of the Catholic churches both, I think a lot of people have to be deeply troubled.

So if Lou is upset as he was yesterday about Christians pushing their agenda for amnesty for migrant workers in the U.S. what does he have to say about Roe Vs. Wade?

Giuliani had difficulty answering questions about abortion, especially when moderator Chris Matthews asked the candidates whether Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, should be repealed. Though everyone before him answered yes unequivocally, Giuliani said tepidly: "It would be OK."

"OK to repeal?" Matthews asked.

"It would be OK to repeal," Giuliani said. "It would be OK also if a strict constructionist judge viewed it as precedent, and I think a judge has to make that decision."

Actually, Giuliani did give a real answer later, when he said he does not like abortion, but "since it is an issue of conscience, I would respect a woman's right to make a different choice." Too bad it took so long.

Or the fact that three Republican Candidates for President said they did not believe in Science!

It ought to count as a national embarrassment not just that the 10 Republican presidential aspirants were asked in their first debate whether they believe in evolution but, worse, that the question was called for. And worst of all, that three testified to their disbelief.

Upon being asked if anyone on the stage “does not believe in evolution,” Senator Sam Brownback, Former Governor Mike Huckabee, and Representative Tom Tancredo raised their hands. That alone should spell an immediate end to their respective candidacies. It indicates that their minds have been so thoroughly poisoned by religious literalism - truly fundamentalism of the most dangerous kind - that they have lost touch with reality.

Inquiring minds want to know.

Lou has made the step towards democratic secularism, now he has to understand that it is not just a matter of separating Church and State, but of recognizing the American libertarian ideal; No God, No Master, and now add to that; No One Is Illegal. Dobbs needs to abandon his nativism since America was founded on the migrant labour of indentured servitude and slavery.

No doubt you've seen car stickers of the American flag along with the irritating words, "God Bless America." Well, I propose a better phrase that actually represents the original United States government.

The words, "No Gods, No Masters," originates from Margaret Sanger from the title of an article about birth control. It fits because nowhere in the Constitution does it mention deities, or masters. Our government derives from We the People not by gods, kings, or masters but by the very mortal citizens of the United States.

SEE:

American Polytheism

Creationism=Paganism

Secular Democracy

Migration

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