Harper's Free Trade Mantra: Hush, Rush, and Sign
Written by Dawn Paley
Tuesday, 01 July 2008
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1356/1/
This January, after little more than 6 months of negotiations, the
Canadian Government announced the completion of negotiations of the
Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement at the World Economic Forum in Davos,
Switzerland.

Six months later, on June 7, 2008, Canada announced that negotiations
for a controversial Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Colombia were
finalized.

The negotiations with Colombia were controversial from the get go: the
country has the worst human rights record in the hemisphere, and the
government of Alvaro Uribe is riddled by ongoing scandals that have
revealed proven links between Uribe's allies in Congress and
paramilitary death squads.

In a corruption scandal that would most certainly bring down a
Canadian Prime Minister, Uribe himself is the subject of a recent
Sentence by the Colombian Supreme Court. The justices condemned him
for buying the key vote of Congresswoman Yidis Medina in exchange for
political favours, a crime necessary for the constitutional changes
that opened the door to Uribe's re-election in 2006.

On June 26th, Medina was sentenced to 3 ½ years of house arrest for
accepting bribes from the president. The president promptly responded

Building its Ties to Colombia: Canada’s Imperial Adventure in the Andes

May 25, 2008 By Todd Gordon
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/17729

On May 5th, 2008 Canada's Trade Minister, David Emerson, proudly declared that Canada is "very close" to concluding free trade negotiations with Colombia. According to Foreign Affairs officials, a deal could be reached in a few short months, meaning that Canada would complete its free trade agreement with Colombia before the United States completes its own deal with the Andean country. In the U.S., Bush faces strong Congressional opposition to such a partnership.

Canada's push into Colombia is part of its broader interest and growing economic influence in Latin America going back to the 1990s. Canadian political and business leaders have been clear that economic expansion into Latin America (and the Caribbean) is a central priority of Canadian foreign policy. This agenda has been stepped up under the Stephen Harper Tory government, with cabinet ministers scurrying across the region building up Canada's political and economic ties. By 2006, Canada was the third largest foreign investor in Latin America and the Caribbean. It's the biggest investor in mining and has a strong presence in financial services, telecommunications and oil and gas among other industries.

ZNet Commentary
Colombia Assassinates Raul Reyes of FARC March 02, 2008
By Justin Podur
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2008-03/02podur.cfm

By Chris Arsenault, courtesy of Upside Down World

These are prosperous times for Canadian mining and oil companies extracting resources from Colombia.

"We have at least four exploration wells to be drilled throughout Colombia with large value additions for our company," said Scott Price, a spokesperson for Solana resources, an oil and gas company headquartered in Calgary, Alberta.

Ottawa Citizen
May 18, 2007 Friday
NEWS; Dan Gardner; Pg. A15
The Colombia experiment; If the Americans are teaching Afghans the tricks of the trade based on what has 'worked' in South American drug wars, look out
Dan Gardner

On Wednesday, a feature story in the New York Times began with an unusual scene. In a compound outside Kabul, a group of raw Afghan recruits was being instructed in the basics of enforcing drug laws. "It's Narcotics 101," one of the instructors, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent, told the reporter. "We are at a stage now of telling these recruits, 'this is a handgun, this is a bullet.' "

An Interview with William Robinson

William I. Robinson is a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he teaches and writes on global capitalism, Latin America, social change, and democracy. His recent publications include Promoting Polyarchy (1996), Transnational Conflicts: Central America, Globalization and Social Change (2003), and A Theory of Global Capitalism: Production, State and Class in a Transnational World (2004). Robinson is currently finishing a new book on globalization and Latin American which will be released in the coming year. In September of 2006 Honor Brabazon and Peter Brogan interviewed Robinson for Upping the Anti. In this interview Robinson traverses a wide terrain, from an in-depth historical summation of the sweeping structural changes that have occurred in Latin America over the past few decades to a critical assessment of movements in Bolivia and Mexico. Additionally, attention is paid to the lessons movements in North America can draw from these vibrant and inspirational struggles.

ZNet | Latin America

by MST Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement -- MST; MST Brazil; March 16, 2007

We, representatives of organizations and social movements of Brasil, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Colombia, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic, gathered at a forum on the expansion of the sugarcane industry in Latin America, declare that:

The current model of production of bioenergy is sustained by the same elements that have always caused the oppression of our peoples: appropriation of territory, of natural resources, and the labor force.

Latin America is preparing to settle accounts with its white settler elite
The political movements and protests sweeping the continent - from Bolivia to Venezuela - are as much about race as class
by Richard Gott
November 19, 2006
The Guardian
The recent explosion of indigenous protest in Latin America, culminating in the election this year of Evo Morales, an Aymara indian, as president of Bolivia, has highlighted the precarious position of the white-settler elite that has dominated the continent for so many centuries. Although the term "white settler" is familiar in the history of most European colonies, and comes with a pejorative ring, the whites in Latin America (as in the US) are not usually described in this way, and never use the expression themselves. No Spanish or Portuguese word exists that can adequately translate the English term.

Written by Rune Geertsen, Upside Down World

Wednesday, 20 September 2006
The powerful Ecuadorian indigenous movement faces one of its biggest challenges yet in the October 15th presidential elections – for the first time they are presenting their own candidate. For them it is not about winning, it is about continuing the indigenous struggle after a great crisis. When the Ecuadorian indigenous movement backed a candidate in the last presidential elections, it was a huge victory that quickly turned into a disaster.

Written by Raúl Zibechi
Tuesday, 16 May 2006, Upside Down World.

After scoring resounding victories, the indigenous movements of South America are encountering new challenges, both on an institutional and state level, that they have not been able to answer. Expanding on the wide range of experiences and deepening the exchange between organizations appear to be some of the possible routes that lie ahead.