Three Amigos Summit : Protecting corporations from the people

In his Counterpunch article Three Amigos Summit : Sleepwalking Through the Minefield, author John Ross relates a story not covered up here : Mexican government use of ex-RCMP to pin the murder of a US journalist by Mexican authorities on a Oaxaca social activist.

After American journalist Brad Will was gunned down while filming a violent clash between government and anti-government forces in 2006 in Oaxaca, the US Congress stipulated that 15% of $1.4-billion Plan Mexico Merida Initiative war on drugs money flowing from the US to Mexico would be subject to Mexico stemming human rights abuses that have left thousands dead. Only 15%.
This is the presumed reason why, despite front-page photographs of five plainly identified Oaxaca politicians and police officers firing on Will and the protesters, federal prosecutors have instead framed one of the protesters, Juan Manuel Martinez, who has since been languishing in jail awaiting trial.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Mexico's National Human Rights Commission, Physicians for Human Rights, Committee to Protect Journalists, and the family of Brad Will have all called for his release and the arrest of the government gunmen.

CPJ :

"On July 26, the following headline appeared in Mexico's daily Milenio newspaper:
"Canada: Will assassinated at point-blank range."
Soon, similar headlines followed. The stories focused on a recent report by three Canadian investigators that sustains conclusions made by the Mexican authorities in the case of Bradley Roland Will. The government-commissioned report has sparked controversy for echoing the findings of Mexican authorities, whose investigation has been heavily questioned by local and international human rights groups and the Will family for being politicized and riddled with irregularities."

In fact it was not an independent investigation from "Canada" at all, but rather three ex-RCMP hired by the Mexican government, apparently to bolster its claim to that endangered 15% in aid prior to the Leaders Summit. A thorough debunking of the so-called RCMP report which praised the Mexican state's version of events while slagging the slain Brad Will, and the report itself, here and here.

Ironically, ten days later at the Leaders Summit in Mexico, as noted by John Ross :

"in the spirit of the Security & Prosperity Partnership, Stephen Harper offered a $15 million Royal Canadian Mounted Police program to train Mexican police chiefs."

The people of Oaxaca are protesting the exploitation and environmental destruction of the over 80 mining concessions granted to transnational companies, most of them Canadian. :

"Mexican Secretary of the Economy figures reveal that more than 70% of all mining exploration, development and production projects in Mexico are owned by Canadian corporations. Canadian mining companies have benefited from legal reforms that the Mexican government adopted in order to accommodate NAFTA and draw foreign investment."

Good to know the SPP is still protecting its corporate citizens from the people.
.

North American Leaders Summit 2009

The leaders of Canada, Mexico, and the US, annoyingly known as 'the three amigos', kicked off their annual two day bunfest in Mexico today. Anyone thinking of actually throwing any buns should be advised that protesters from the last summit there five years ago are still in prison without trial.

The summit is promising to be less chummy all round this time.
Canada has angered Mexico by abruptly slapping Canadian visa requirements on Mexican visitors in order to stem the growing tide of Mexicans claiming refugee status in Canada. As of today Harper has stated he is not open to revoking it.
Harper in turn is pissed at Obama's protectionist 'Buy American' measures which funnel US stimulus money to US companies and away from Canadian ones. He and Stockwell Day have been pressing premiers and municipal leaders to open up their government procurement markets to US companies in hopes this gesture would win Canada an exemption from the Buy US measures although there is no guarantee the US will reciprocate.
Meanwhile Congress is threatening to cut off further Merida Initiative anti-drug trafficking money to Mexico until President Calderon rescinds the legal impunity he has so far granted to the Mexican police and military to rape, rob, and murder in the course of their war on drugs. Since he took office in 2006, 10,000 have died in drug wars. Two days ago Obama said he would not consider reopening NAFTA till conditions in Mexico were more stable.

The Security and Prosperity Partnership, once called NAFTA on steroids, is now looking more like NAFTA on continual life support, and all the above issues are parts of that sickness. When NAFTA allowed cheap corn to flood Mexican markets, farmers lost their land and whole families moved to the labour camps set up along the US border to provide cheap manufacturing labour to US corporations. Drug lords delivered services to the people not provided by the government but as the newly militarized war on drugs became a war on civilians, conditions in the labour camps increased the influx of illegal aliens to the US. Presumably Harper's new visa requirements for Mexicans entering Canada will also result in increased illegal immigration with its resulting exploited labour pool.

Meanwhile US companies like Smithfield Farms relocated their hog and chicken factory farming operations into Mexico where environmental and safety regulations were less stringent, resulting in the deplorable livestock conditions and subsequent contamination of groundwater that is a possible cause of the swine flu pandemic, more appropriately called the NAFTA flu.


In Canada, the secretive undemocratic corporate-led leaders’ SPP meetings have resulted in a cross-border harmonization of regulations that have weakened civil liberties and labour and environmental safeguards in exchange for ... increasingly militarized border regions.

Something to remember when the smiling glad-handing photo ops in front of flags appear in the media over the next couple of days. The SPP may currently be on life support but we'll still recognize that sucker when the bandages come off.
.
The trilateral Task Force on Renegotiating NAFTA has a better idea.
.

The Three Amigos shovel some PR for Uribe

in advance of news of his cousin's arrest.
Seems my question on Tuesday night about why each of the three amigos mounted such a stirring and seemingly completely off-topic defence of Colombia's President Uribe in their joint press conference was answered in the following day's news :

WaPo : Cousin of Colombian President Arrested in Death Squad Probe

"Authorities on Tuesday arrested former senator Mario Uribe, a cousin and close ally of President Alvaro Uribe, for alleged ties to death squads in a widening inquiry that has implicated nearly a quarter of Colombia's Congress.
The arrest of the former senator, who built a formidable political movement that helped his cousin win the presidency in 2002, comes during an institutional crisis that has tarnished a country closely allied with the United States."

AFP : Colombia's Uribe under probe over 1997 massacre

"Colombian President Alvaro Uribe denied Wednesday charges he helped plan a 1997 massacre by right-wing paramilitaries, while confirming that his role was being examined in an official investigation."

At their Summit presser, Bush, echoed by Harper, proclaimed : "we got no better friend in South America than President Uribe."

So The Three Amigos presumably already knew about the arrest and thought they'd shovel a little PR manure for the Uribe government before the rest of us heard about it.

Linda Carlsen of the Americas Program, Center for International Policy, also writing before news of the Uribe arrests broke, dissects "the prominence of this issue in the official statements" here:

"Again the summit is being used to advance the failing Bush administration domestic agenda.
Considering again that the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement is not an issue in Mexico, the geopolitical strategy of building alliances among rightwing governments in the hemisphere to confront the growing number of leftwing governments becomes clear. This ideological taking sides has no place in a trilateral summit dedicated to North American integration issues and panders to the Bush agenda."

The whole article is an excellent read :
Dissecting the North American Summit Joint Statement: Bush's Last Stand

So the Three Amigos Summit was really about...Colombia?

While Canadian media mostly concentrated today on Harper and Bush's comments on NAFTA - NAFTA good! - I was rather surprised by how strongly the proposed US and Canadian free trade deals with Colombia figured in the transcript of their "Joint Press Availability" statement.

Calderon brings it up in his opening statement.
The first question from a reporter is about the Dem candidates' remarks on reopening NAFTA, a question you will note does not refer in any way to Colombia, and Bush responds :

"Actually, my biggest concern on trade right now is with Colombia", and
"my biggest concern is to turn our back on our friends in Colombia".

He goes on to bitch some about his failure to get his FTA with Colombia past Pelosi, and concludes with :

"when America turns its back on a strong leader like President Uribe and a friend for democracy like President Uribe."

With friends for democracy like that...

Finally the three amigos get a question that actually is about Colombia and they really light up.
Bush :

"in terms of President Uribe, we got no better friend in South America than President Uribe. He believes strongly in rule of law. He's a reformer, and he's working hard to protect his country from a bunch of narco traffickers who murder innocent people to achieve their objectives."

and quite a bit more in the same vein, then :

"if we don't agree to a free trade agreement that we honest -- negotiated in good faith with them, it will undermine his efforts, and will destabilize parts of the world. And it would be a big mistake for the Congress to turn its back on Colombia."

And Harper! Harper uses up three of the transcript's paragraphs on it -

"We want to be in the game. We don't want to be out of it."

- and finally echos Bush with :

"if the United States and our allies turn their back on an important ally in this region, that that will have long-term security consequences for all of our countries in North America."

Good lord, its the FTAA all over again.
The Free Trade Area of the Americas was intended to expand NAFTA to include Central and South America plus the Carribean - all but Cuba.
Seven years ago on April 20, 2001, the tear gas was so strong at the anti-FTAA protests at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City that the FTAA delegates inside the conference could smell it.

The "FTAA Declaration of Quebec City" : "We, the democratically elected Heads of State and Government of the Americas, have met in Quebec City at our Third Summit, to renew our commitment to hemispheric integration" went down in flames only to rise again before limping to its grave.

But here it is - back from the dead and walking around : an SPP expanded to include Colombia, presumably as an inroad into the dangerously non-NeoCon south with its new lefty governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, and now Paraguay.

The issues are the same. Even the protagonists are the same : Maud Barlow vs Tom d'Aquino and Derek Burney, who has just been fingered to lead a new Canadian SPP panel comprised of business, government agencies, and some of those deep integration fans residing at Carleton U.

Someone remember to bring the silver stake this time.

A Colombian MP explains why a free trade agreement would be "very negative for Canada and Colombia".

CTV : "Harper praised outing Bush"

LuLu at Canadian Cynic posted this photo from the Three Amigos Summit and commented:

"It looks like Big Daddy just doesn't know how to quit Dubya.Eewwwwwwwww"

Bad LuLu.
That comment is exactly the kind of gratuitous scurrilous hyperbole the main scream media is always slagging the blogosphere for. Furthermore....

Hang about. What's this from CTV?

Latest : Three amigos summit :
CTV News: Robert Fife with more from the summit
" Prime Minister Stephen Harper praised outing US President George Bush Monday to start the "Three Amigos Summit"

Harper praised outing Bush?

Sorry, LuLu, I didn't realize you already had Harper's endorsement on that "outing" thing. Please carry on.

(And everyone else go look quick before they fix it)

Cross-posted to The Galloping Beaver