militarism | terrorism | security
The TPP has been mostly framed as a secret free-trade agreement but it has in large part taken the form of a policy initiative called the Pacific Pivot, a shifting of military resources into the Pacific.
EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding on Sunday warned that landmark negotiations with the United States to create a vast free trade zone could be affected if media reports that Washington had bugged EU premises proved true.
Wallach, who has been studying such agreements for twenty years with Global Trade Watch, says she has never seen the merging of a trade agreement with terror like this. Not on this scale.
US support for the peace process would imply important changes in its policy toward the militarization of Colombia, its failed war on drugs, and a revision of its Free Trade Agreements that would allow the small peasants and subsistence economy to survive.
Is it an exaggeration to speculate that drug trafficking and exploitative globalized corporate practices formalized under free-trade agreements (grounded in a race to the bottom on labor costs and environmental degradation) are two sides of the same profiteering coin?
Selling Aussie technology to the US military just got easier.
Although the resolution has compelled India to resume talks with Pakistan, it is not clear whether and how the outcome of these talks will affect the conclusion of the FTA. It is also uncertain whether or not the condition to settle the Kashmir issue with dialogue will be included in the final draft of the EU-India FTA, writes Ahmad Ali Ghouri
Representatives of the governments of Mexico and the Central American countries wrapped up a fifth round of talks on a regional free trade agreement last week. The negotiations took place in Mexico City, with the next round of talks to be held in August in El Salvador.
Governor General David Johnston said Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper would work with Washington to create a continental security perimeter around Canada and the United States "ensuring that people and goods can flow freely and safely between our two countries."
Recent documents obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University from the US Justice Department show that Chiquita Brands International, in direct contradiction of the claims of both Chiquita and the US government for many years, made illegal payments to both guerrilla groups and then AUC death squads over the course of about 14 years in return for security from these groups.
People in Chihuahua who were picked up under guidelines of the Merida Initiative on three-year-old warrants were charged not with drugs but with organizing anti-NAFTA protests!
Experts expect Obama and Harper to announce a “new” border partnership to ease the flow of goods and people across the border by harmonizing security, immigration and refugee, surveillance and possibly defense policy across the continent. There’s nothing new about this plan. It’s the regurgitation of the defunct Bush-led Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) without the Mexican “amigo.”
The SPP, along with NAFTA have already laid much of the groundwork for a North American Union.
With virtually no fanfare or media analysis, one of the most transformative agreements ever signed by Canada and the US (and Mexico) is officially dead. Its official US government website declared last month: "The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) is no longer an active initiative. There will not be any updates to this site."
A pending agreement that would give the US military broad access to several Colombian bases is rattling already shaky relations in the Andean region, where Venezuela "froze" relations with Colombia Tuesday. Uribe agreed to the deal in the hopes of finally winning approval of a free-trade agreement with the United States, according to critics.
As he blasted the "ideological" opponents of his free-trade deal with Colombia, Prime Minister Stephen Harper played down recent reports of a Colombian terrorism infiltration into Canada.
As Mexican security budgets inflate with US aid-to combat the rising power of drug trafficking and organized crime-rights groups say these funds are increasingly being used to protect the interests of multinational corporations.
The Obama administration says security should be as stringent as on the Mexican frontier. Border residents and Canadian officials disagree, saying the terrorism threat is exaggerated.
"Inside US Trade", an American magazine, last Saturday quoted sources as saying NSC officials believe that the passage of the FTA bill will cement the Korea-U.S. alliance at a time when tension is mounting on the Korean Peninsula in the wake of North Korea’s launch of a long-range rocket.
A year-end report by the Pentagon’s Joint Forces Command names two countries as likely candidates for a “rapid and sudden collapse” — Pakistan and Mexico. Arguably, NAFTA is to blame for what could be Mexico’s impending destabilization.
bilaterals.org team, Jan 2021