NAFTA

In preparation for our leaders' meeting in New Orleans on April 21-22, we, the ministers responsible for the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) met in Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, to review progress on the five priorities identified by leaders in Montebello and to discuss cooperative approaches to common challenges and opportunities.

Under George W. Bush, the United States has not lived up to its historic role as a leader in the Western Hemisphere. As president, I will restore that leadership by working to advance the common prosperity and security of all of the people of the Americas. That work must begin with a renewed strategic partnership with Mexico.

Water shortages are no longer the exclusive concern of poor desert countries, and unless we change course dramatically, the entire world could go to war over water. This was the message of Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians, in Montreal Monday night as part of a national tour for her new book, Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water.

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox confirmed the existence of a plan conceived with President Bush to create a new regional currency in the Americas, in an interview last night on CNN's "Larry King Live."

Environmentalism has become one of the fastest growing religions in the world over the past two decades.

In this, the fourteenth year of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), it is of the utmost importance--in terms of its continued application in the future--to look back and examine the economic impact of free trade on the U.S. and Mexico over the last decade and a half.

Besides the U.S. George W. Bush administration's imperial aims and permanent war on the world, add the one at home below the radar. Its weapons include the WTO, NAFTA, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), FBI, CIA, NSA, NORTHCOM, militarized state and local police, National Guard forces, paramilitary mercenaries like Blackwater USA, and all other repressive instruments of state power and control. They target the people of three nations slowly becoming one headquartered in Washington. That's the apparent aim of those in power here wanting one continent, "indivisible" minus old-fashioned ideas like "liberty and justice for all" we used to believe in when, as kids, we recited our "Pledge of Allegiance." They now have a whole new meaning. They're just words drummed into young minds hoping they'll still believe them when they're old enough to know better.

Mexico City – Which country could give the son of a poor immigrant from an impoverished faraway land so many opportunities as to make him the world’s richest man? Mexico. It is NAFTA’s most ironic of unintended consequences that Carlos Slim, the Mexican son of Arab immigrants, surpassed this month Bill Gates to become the world’s richest man.

It's been called "NAFTA on crack," and the participants have been derided as "the Three Amigos," but you'd better start taking the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) seriously. Aimed at keeping "our borders closed to terrorism yet open to trade," according to their website, the SPP is poised to change the face of North America.

Besides the Bush administration's imperial aims and permanent war on the world, add the one at home below the radar. Its weapons include the WTO, NAFTA, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), FBI, CIA, NSA, NORTHCOM, militarized state and local police, National Guard forces, paramilitary mercenaries like Blackwater USA, and all other repressive instruments of state power and control.