GREEN PAPER 3: Freedoms
That Are Abolished
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Envision the Free Trade Area of the Americas: one huge and "integrated" open market, engulfing the entire Western Hemisphere, in which corporate and investor "rights" are more important than millions of people having any real democratic participation in their economic, political and cultural lives; more important than animals and the environment; and more important than workers' safety and decent wages. Does this sound like an environment in which a democratic society can thrive?
The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is the next step on the corporate agenda to ensure that multinational corporations' profits continue to increase at the expense of the environment, lives, jobs and human rights. After 500 years of exploitation in the Americas, the privileged wealthy are still trying to get richer. In a day and age where 475 individuals hoard the same amount of wealth as the poorest 50% of the world's population1s, it is obvious that the promised trickle-down of prosperity is clogged with the blood and sweat of a poor majority working for the benefit of a rich minority.
The FTAA is the expansion of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to the entire Western Hemisphere with the exception of Cuba. Given the effects of NAFTA on North America‹the job losses and decreased wages in Canada, Mexico, and the United States; the acceleration of pollution especially in the free trade zone on the Mexican-U.S. border; and the loss of indigenous communal land holdings in Mexico; it is astonishing (but not surprising) that anyone claiming to be a representative of the people would even consider expanding NAFTA.
The FTAA will expand NAFTA, not only geographically, but is also likely to include new rules and policies designed to give investors (corporations) rights and freedoms that are more extensive than the ones they enjoy under NAFTA. If the FTAA is passed, thirty-four countries of the Americas and the Caribbean, where over 755 million people reside, will be subject to a new international law that will undermine national environmental, labor, human rights, and food safety laws. A New World Order is literally under way that is granting corporations power that even governments do not possess.
Free trade agreements, like the proposed FTAA, are just one of the cogs that enable the globalization of capitalism. Every cog that we can successfully dismantle will slow down the process of job displacement, ecocide and indigenous genocide. People from throughout the hemisphere are uniting to resist and eliminate the possibility of the FTAA. We refuse to allow corporations, free trade agreements, and governments to dictate how we live our lives. Join us and say Ya Basta! (Enough already!)
FTAA = MAI + NAFTA = DEATH
DEATH to democracy, indigenous rights, environment, human rights, labor unions,women's rights sovereignty, healthcare, education, food safety, culture, LIFE