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#30

From: Tom Condit <tomcondit@...>
Date: Thu Jan 4, 2001 12:53 am
Subject: Free Trade Agreement of the Americas

tomcondit@...

forwarded message. note that there will be demos in Quebec City April 20-22
and a labor anti-FTAA conference in Mexico City. plenty to coordiante
with.  -- Tom Condit <tomcondit@...>

"getmelissa@..." <getmelissa@...>
wrote:  http://www.tradewatch.org/FTAA/factsheet.htm

UNVEILING “NAFTA FOR THE AMERICAS”

NAFTA + WTO = FTAA

What is “FTAA”?

The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is the formal name given to an
expansion of NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) that would
include nearly all of the countries in the western hemisphere. This massive
NAFTA expansion is currently being negotiated in secret by trade ministers
from a total of 34 nations in North, Central and South America and the
Caribbean. The goal of the FTAA is to impose the failed NAFTA model of
increased privatization and deregulation hemisphere-wide. Imposition of
these rules would empower corporations to constrain governments from
setting standards for public health and safety, to safeguard their workers,
and to ensure corporations do not pollute the communities in which they
operate. Effectively, these rules would handcuff governments’ public
interest policymaking and enhance corporate control at the expense of
citizens throughout the Americas. FTAA would deepen the negative effects of
NAFTA we’ve seen in Canada, Mexico and the U.S. over the past seven years
and expand NAFTA’s damage to the other 31 countries involved. The FTAA
would intensify NAFTA’s “race to the bottom”: under FTAA, exploited workers
in Mexico could be leveraged against even more desperate workers in Haiti,
Guatemala or Brazil by companies seeking tariff-free access back into U.S.
markets.

A quick look at NAFTA’s legacy reveals disastrous consequences:

An estimated 395,000 U.S. jobs have been lost since NAFTA as companies
relocated to Mexico to take advantage of the weaker labor standards. These
workers usually find jobs with less security and wages that are about 77%
of what they originally had.

The U.S. trade surplus with Mexico has become a deficit for the first time.
Despite promises of increased economic development throughout Mexico, only
the border region has seen intensified industrial activity. Yet even this
small “gain” has not brought prosperity. Over one million more Mexicans
work for less than the minimum wage of $3.40 per day today than before
NAFTA, and during the NAFTA period, eight million Mexicans have fallen from
the middle class into poverty.

In addition, the increase of border industry has created worsening
environmental and public health threats in the area. Every day, 44 tons of
hazardous waste are disposed of improperly. In this time, birth defects
have increased dramatically. In the first year of NAFTA in one Texas border
county, 15 babies were born without brains—an unprecedented 36% increase
from the year before! Along the border, the occurrence of some diseases,
including hepatitis, is two or three times the national average, due to
lack of sewage treatment and safe drinking water.

Although it’s hard to imagine that anyone would push for more of a failed
model like this, what little we do know about FTAA is that is likely to
look quite a bit like NAFTA. In fact, some FTAA texts are reported to be
literally based on NAFTA, with additional countries added in. We know what
results to expect!

Who is involved in the FTAA negotiations, and how did it get started?

High on their NAFTA victory, U.S. officials organized a Summit of the
Americas in Miami in December 1994. Trade ministers from every country in
the western hemisphere (except for Cuba) agreed to launch negotiations to
establish a hemispheric free trade deal. After the “Miami Summit,” however,
little more was done on FTAA until the “Santiago Summit” in Chile in April
1998. However, at this second summit the 34 nations set up a Trade
Negotiations Committee (TNC), consisting of vice ministers of trade from
every country and headed by Dr. Adalberto Rodriguez Giavarini of Argentina.
Negotiators also agreed on a structure of nine working groups to deal with
the major areas they agreed to cover under FTAA: agriculture, services,
investment, dispute settlement, intellectual property rights, subsidies and
anti-dumping, competition policy, government procurement and market access.
You would never know it from news reports, but since late 1999, the working
groups have been meeting every few months to lay out their countries’
positions on these issues and try to develop treaty language.

As with the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), many Members of
Congress have no idea this is even going on. Congress has set no goals for
the U.S.’s participation in these talks and has not delegated to the
Executive branch its Constitutional role of setting the terms of
international commerce. However, a variety of corporate committees do
advise the U.S. negotiators; under the trade advisory committee system,
over 500 corporate representatives have security clearance and access to
FTAA NAFTA expansion documents. Organizations such as the Organization of
American States (OAS), Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and the UN
Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC),
collectively known as the “Tripartite Committee,” also provide direction.
Early on, non-governmental civil society organizations (NGOs) demanded
working groups on democratic governance, labor and human rights, consumer
safety and the environment. These were rejected, and instead a Committee of
Government Representatives on Civil Society was established to represent
the views of civil society to the TNC. Yet this committee is little more
than a mail in-box. It has no mechanism to incorporate civil society
concerns and suggestions into the actual negotiations, so these are mainly
ignored.

The U.S. is represented by the U.S. Trade Representative’s office (USTR),
headed by Charlene Barshefsky as of November 2000. The lead USTR negotiator
on FTAA is Peter Allgeier.

What will FTAA’s practical effects be?

Because negotiations are occurring in secret and no texts have been made
publicly available, we cannot know the details of the draft text. However,
our conversations with the USTR have given us some clues about what to
expect once a final agreement is unveiled—in other words, once it’s too
late to change it!

Essential Social Services Endangered:

The FTAA will contain a series of commitments to “liberalize” services,
which is much like the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) within
the WTO. “Services” is a broad category that includes education, health
care, environmental services (which can include access to water!), energy,
postal services and anything else we pay for that isn’t a physical object.
Possible effects of the FTAA services agreement include:

Removal of national licensing standards for medical, legal and other key
professionals, allowing doctors licensed in one country to practice in any
country, even if their level of training or technological sophistication is
different; privatization of public schools and prisons in the U.S., opening
the door to greater corporate control, corruption and the temptation to cut
critical corners (such as medical care for inmates or upkeep of safe school
facilities) in the interests of improving profit margins; and privatization
of postal services transferring U.S. Postal Service functions to a few
delivery companies like FedEx, which could then send postal rates through
the roof.

Investment and a Backdoor MAI:

FTAA NAFTA expansion provides a potential “back door” for the Multilateral
Agreement on Investment (MAI), through negotiations focused on investments
and in the financial services sector.  We didn’t call the MAI “NAFTA on
steroids” for nothing! MAIN is based on NAFTA and direct NAFTA expansion is
just another way to impose these rules.  Like in NAFTA’s Chapter 11, the
USTR says that FTAA will include “investor-to-state” suits. These allow
corporations to sue governments directly for the removal of standards or
laws designed to protect public health and safety, which may cost the
corporations a little more in operating costs. In other words, the FTAA
would provide a hemispheric “regulatory takings” clause that explicitly
values corporate profits over human costs. NAFTA cases that set a likely
precedent for FTAA actions under this provision include:

The Canadian funeral home chain Loewen Group used NAFTA investor
protections to sue the U.S. government for $750 million in cash damages
after a Mississippi court found Loewen guilty of malicious and fraudulent
practices that unfairly targeted a local small business. (NAFTA permits
companies to sue governments over rulings or regulations that may
potentially limit their profits.) Loewen argues that the very existence of
the state court system violates its NAFTA rights.

The U.S.-based Ethyl Corporation forced Canada to pay $13 million in
damages and drop its ban on the dangerous gasoline additive MMT, a known
toxin that attacks the human nervous system. Other regulations protecting
public health and the environment remain open for attack under NAFTA and FTAA.

In a similar case, U.S.-based Metalclad Corp. sued a Mexican state to allow
a toxic waste disposal site, claiming that the environmental zoning law
forbidding the dump constituted an effective seizure of the company’s
property  a seizure that, under the property rights extended by NAFTA (and
to be perpetuated in FTAA), requires that the offending government
compensate the company.

Food, Agriculture & GMOs:

The U.S. is trying to force all countries to accept biotechnology and
genetically modified (GM) foods in which unregulated U.S.-based
corporations have taken a lead. Yet food security organizations all over
the world agree that these technologies will increase hunger in poor
nations. Being forced to buy expensive patented seeds every season, rather
than saving and planting their own, will force traditional subsistence
farmers in the developing world into dependency on transnational
corporations and closer to the brink of starvation. If the U.S. position
wins out, FTAA will promote the interests of biotech and agribusiness
giants like Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Cargill and Monsanto over the
interests of hungry people in developing nations.

Intellectual Property Rights (IPR):

The U.S. is trying to expand NAFTA’s corporate protectionism rules on
patents to the whole hemisphere. These rules give a company with a patent
in one country the monopoly marketing rights to the item throughout the
region. These rules are enforced with cash fines and criminal penalties,
making these rules even harsher than the WTO IPR rules. These rules have
been used as justification for pharmaceutical companies to quash compulsory
licensing mechanisms to allow competitor companies to manufacture a drug in
exchange for a fee for “renting” the patent. This monopoly control allows
pharmaceutical corporations to keep drug prices high and block production
of generic versions of life-saving drugs, which spells disaster for the ill
and impoverished, especially in developing nations.

These rules also allow companies to “bioprospect” and lock down patents for
traditional medicines that are considered “traditional knowledge,”
effectively robbing indigenous people of their cultural heritage to fatten
corporate wallets.

What is the current status of the FTAA negotiations?

All the negotiating groups have held meetings at two to three month
intervals throughout 2000. Negotiators have laid out the positions of their
governments on the nine core issues. As of fall 2000, they are in the
process of consolidating proposed text to find points of agreement among
the governments. A complete “bracketed” (draft) text will be ready in
December 2000. Vice ministerial level meetings on FTAA NAFTA expansion will
begin in early 2001.

The next ministerial-level Summit of the Americas is planned for Quebec
City, Canada on April 18-22, 2001, at which negotiators will start building
a whole text.

The agreement is to be complete and implemented in 2005.

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#29

From: SIUHIN@...
Date: Wed Jan 3, 2001 2:25 pm
Subject: TJ-SD April 21 Action Suggestion: BUILD BRIDGES NOT FENCES

SIUHIN@...

Send Email

BUILD BRIDGES NOT FENCES
festivals/fiestas/giant potlucks

Sent by: Paul Rogers, Grupo Primavera and San Diego Globalphobic Committee
<paul168@...>

I would like to propose that we look into having two festivals/fiestas/giant
potlucks - one in the SD area, and one in TJ - perhaps on both sides of the
fence in border field park (where the Posada was held) on the 21st of April.

These fiestas would include lots of food, music, entertainment and short
talks on the issues of globalization, perhaps some videos etc.

At the fiestas we would collect food and clothing donated from all
participants (maybe it would be the entry "fee") and, at a certain time, we
on the San Diego side would bring it to the other side in a caravan as a
symbol of solidarity of the struggles going on in TJ, SQ, and elsewhere.

In the meantime, feliz año nuevo to everyone,

Paul Rogers (Pablo)

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#28

From: SIUHIN@...
Date: Wed Jan 3, 2001 2:24 pm
Subject: Tijuana-San Diego: Globophoic-January 13 meeting

SIUHIN@...

Send Email

January 13 meeting
Date: 12/31/00 12:08:02 AM Pacific Standard Time
From: Endavalos
COULD WE MOVE THE JANUARY 13TH DATE?

Sent by: Magali, Globalphobic San Diego Committee
<Magali@...>

Hello,

I wanted to see if we could move the January 13th date for the San Diego
meeting to another day. That Saturday is the big Martin Luther King Jr.
parade in downtown. I know the Green Party is planning to be there and get
as many people there as possible. I think it would be hard to get
progressive groups to attend that (especially if they plan on getting a
booth in the afternoon) and send someone to our meeting. So, can we move the
meeting date to the following Wednesday evening if possible?

Also, let's start discussing the agenda for that meeting so we are prepared
for our guests. I think we should use this list to exchange all sorts of
information in the preparation for that meeting like who has been contacted,
who's coming, what things we would like to see take place, and so on. I
guess one key part of the conversation is how the link to the Mexican groups
will be. I think it would be good to make sure newcomers understand we want
to be inclusive. Specifics are always good if we can get them. But about the
agenda, it would be nice to have copies of it to handout and a separate
handout with information on the Stop the FTAA campaign. What do you think?

Happy New Year!

Magali
858-578-4505

-------------------------------------------------------

Hi Magali,

I think it is complicated to try to decide another day for our Jan 13
meeting. Wednesday evening, for example, I could not attend a meeting because
I have to work. However, you are right--MLK parade is Jan. 13, beginning at
10 am. Perhaps we could move our meeting from 2 pm to 3 pm, if most people
agree. What do you think?

Saludos,

Enrique

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#27

From: SIUHIN@...
Date: Wed Jan 3, 2001 2:04 pm
Subject: Fwd: Washington Post-Immigrants Left Out In Cold

SIUHIN@...

Send Email

Immigrants Left Out In the Cold
Budget Deal Hurts Central Americans

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 2, 2001; Page A01

Just two months ago, Salvadorans, Guatemalans and other refugees from
Central America were ecstatic: President Clinton had threatened to veto a
final budget deal unless more than a million immigrants -- including them
-- were allowed a chance at becoming legal residents.

But in the wake of elections that favored Republicans, and facing fierce
GOP opposition to broader proposals, Clinton dropped his threat and agreed
to an immigration package last month that helps just over half as many
people. Most come from Mexico, India and other populous countries with long
lines of immigrants waiting for green cards.

Those from Central America, however, are largely out of luck, victims of an
ideological struggle dating to the Cold War and played out in a political
showdown over the federal budget.

In the end, about 400,000 immigrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and
Honduras, plus 50,000 or so from Haiti and Liberia, find themselves with
little reasonable chance at becoming legal U.S. residents, let alone
citizens. And many, including tens of thousands in the Washington area, are
likely to face new threats of deportation after more than a decade of
living here.

The outcome has enraged immigrant advocates, who were as disappointed by
the White House's retreat as they were by opposition from Republicans. Some
members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus accused Clinton of using them
to curry Democratic favor among Latino voters, only to abandon them after
Election Day.

"Most of these people came here at a time of extraordinary strife in
Central America that we had a big hand in," said Angela Kelley, deputy
director of the National Immigration Forum, a pro-immigration group. "The
Central Americans have the strongest case for relief, and yet they got
absolutely nothing. The politics in this just stink."

Those who favor more stringent immigration rules, however, praised the
final package, arguing that the measures are properly tailored to help only
those who truly need it.

"It always becomes, 'Let's just make a special rule for this small group,'
and then it gets larger and larger until you include everyone," said David
Ray, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform. "When
you start granting pocket amnesties, giving amnesty to one group or
another, then everyone else starts crying foul. The other 6 million people
who are in this country illegally say, 'What about me?' "

The dispute over Central American refugees has its roots in the 1980s, when
several waves of immigrants came to the United States fleeing the region's
civil wars and political strife. Most, but not all, have been trapped in
political and legal limbo over their immigrant status ever since.

The exceptions are those arriving from Nicaragua before 1995, who along
with Cuban refugees were given special amnesty under a 1997 law. Some had
fought for guerrillas supported by the Reagan administration.

But the same has never been granted to other Central American illegals,
most of whom fled right-wing military regimes backed by Washington in wars
with Marxist rebels. The 1997 law allowed some Salvadorans and Guatemalans
to fight deportation under more lenient rules than before but stopped well
short of the amnesty afforded Nicaraguans.

Hondurans were left out of that package altogether; many are still in the
United States only because of temporary protection given to them after
Hurricane Mitch devastated their homeland.

This year, after Clinton proposed a bill easing the way to legal residency
for more than a million immigrants, GOP congressional leaders stood firm
against bringing Central Americans, Haitians and Liberians into parity with
Nicaraguans and Cubans. Those involved in the negotiations said that
dropping the issue emerged as a key to breaking the budget deadlock, which
threatened to shut down the federal government.

"The Republicans were dead set against anything for Central Americans, it's
that simple," said Maria Echaveste, White House deputy chief of staff.

The final package largely mirrors a proposal by Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.)
called the Legal Immigration Family Equity Act, focusing primarily on
relatives of legal U.S. residents trapped in the immigration process. Gramm
spokesman Larry Neal said the senator opposed Clinton's bill because it
effectively acted as a "broad amnesty" for too many people.

"This legislation was written expressly for the purpose of giving people an
opportunity to unite their families," Gramm said in a statement about his
original bill.

The measures signed by Clinton on Dec. 21 help three main classes of
immigrants.

The largest group includes more than 300,000 spouses and minor children of
legal residents who have been waiting more than three years for visas. A
new category of visa will allow these applicants to bypass backlogs of up
to seven years in Mexico and other populous countries, where the demand for
visas far outweighs the number available under annual quotas.

Another provision will allow as many as 200,000 illegal immigrants to pay a
$1,000 fine in order to adjust their immigration status if they apply by
April. Without this provision -- which was tried successfully once before
-- these immigrants legally would have to return home for as many as 10
years before reapplying for a green card; in practice, most would just
remain here illegally.

Finally, an estimated 150,000 immigrants who missed out on a broad amnesty
in 1986 will be allowed to apply for citizenship. This group was involved
in a series of class-action lawsuits against the Immigration and
Naturalization Service, which initially ruled against them because of brief
trips they took out of the country.

By and large, these provisions will help those from countries with the
heaviest rates of immigration into the United States, including Mexico,
India, China and the Philippines.

"The bill would allow nearly 700,000 immigrants who have worked, lived and
paid taxes in the United States for years to stay here legally without fear
of being separated from their families," Clinton said before signing the
legislation.

But relatively few Central Americans are likely to be helped, experts said,
in part because many of their relatives also are here illegally and can't
serve as U.S. sponsors.

The final bill outraged members of the 17-member, all-Democrat
Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.) fired off a
blistering letter accusing Clinton of a "lack of fortitude" and of breaking
his word to Hispanics.

The caucus also feels betrayed after agreeing to support an earlier GOP
priority: an increase in visas for high-tech workers, mostly from India and
China, needed by Internet and technology firms.

"Let's not kid ourselves: They played Cold War politics, and they were
cold-hearted about it," said Gutierrez, whose district includes a large
number of Mexican immigrants, but who has been a champion of parity for
Central Americans. "They play politically with the immigration issue, and
they don't play fairly with it. . . . I'm not happy with how either side
handled this."

But Echaveste, the White House deputy, said Gutierrez is unfair in his
criticism of Clinton, arguing that there may have been no immigration
reforms at all this year if the president had not issued his veto threat.

Aides to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), Sen. Orrin G. Hatch
(R-Utah) and other GOP lawmakers told the administration that the 1997
amnesty, although pushed by Republicans at the time, was a mistake that
should not be repeated for other Central Americans, according to Echaveste.

Skeptical Democrats ascribe a more political motive to the GOP, which has
strong support among conservative Cuban and Nicaraguan immigrants.
Hispanics overall voted against President-elect Bush in November by nearly
2 to 1.

"They were willing to provide citizenship for people who they think might
become Republican, but not to do the same for people that they think might
support Democrats," Echaveste said. "That's the only distinction anyone can
think of for treating the two groups differently."

Conservatives argue the opposite: that Democrats want to legalize as many
potential supporters as possible and that Clinton was pandering to Hispanic
voters with an empty veto threat. "The vast majority of those who would
have been amnestied, and eventually become citizens, would be Democratic
voters," Ray said.

Jose Pertierra, a Washington immigration lawyer, says few of his Central
American clients pay attention to such political arguments. All they know
is that many of them have been cut out of the deal, he said.

Pertierra recalls one single mother from El Salvador, age 25, who rushed
into his office shortly after the compromise legislation was announced. She
heard the immigration deal had been passed and wanted to file paperwork to
avert being deported along with her 6-year-old child, a U.S. citizen by birth.

When he explained that the package didn't include her, Pertierra said, she
broke down in sobs.

"There's nothing I can do for her unless she's prepared to go back to El
Salvador," Pertierra said. "She either lays low or goes back home for 10
years. . . . After all the high hopes people had, Central Americans are the
big losers in this."

© 2001 The Washington Post Company

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#26

From: SIUHIN@...
Date: Wed Jan 3, 2001 1:59 pm
Subject: Tijuana-San Diego: Globalphobics Next Meeting (Spanish+English)

SIUHIN@...

Send Email

Globalphobics Next Meeting (English)
Date: 1/3/01 1:17:14 AM Pacific Standard Time
From: Endavalos@...

***Report in Spanish Edition First, then English Edition*****

Hola companer@s:

Los estamos invitando (y recordando) de las siguientes reuniones de la Red de
Globalifobic@s. Tambien incluimos aqui informacion de las ultimas reuniones
de la red.

Saludos,

Enrique Davalos

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I. ENERO 12, 5 pm. COMITE BAJA CALIFORNIA DE LA RED

Lugar: Factor X. Junipero Serra # 14364-1

Para llegar: Tomar Blv. Agua Caliente hasta llegar a la 5 y 10. Alli doblar a
la derecha y a cinco cuadras se encuentra Junipero Sierra. (Hay una tienda
Oxxo en la esquina). Atras de Oxxo esta la oficina de Factor X. Informes:
Reyna Montera, coordinadora factor X, tel: 622-4217

Propuesta de orden del dia:

1. Solidaridad con jornaleros de San Quintin
2. Delegacion del EZLN a la Cd. De Mexico
3. Solidaridad con trabajadores de Leymex
4. Contratacion de un facilitador (o coordinador) para la Red
5. Acciones por el Tratado de Libre Comercio de las Americas, FTAA, Abril 2001
6. Informaciones y generales

II. ENERO 13, 3 pm. REUNION AMPLIA CONVOCADA POR EL COMITE SAN DIEGO DE LA RED

Lugar: San Diego City College (A confirmar)

Propuesta de orden del dia

1. Acciones y organizacion por el Tratado de Libre Comercio de las Americas,
FTAA, Abril 20
2. Informaciones y generales
3. (Despues de la reunion amplia): Contratacion de un facilitador de la Red
de Globalifobic@s

III. ENERO 26, 5pm. REUNION AMPLIA CONVOCADA POR EL COMITE BAJA CALIFORNIA DE
LA RED

Lugar: Por decidirse

Propuesta de orden del dia

1. Acciones por el Tratado de Libre Comercio de las Americas, FTAA, Abril 20
2. Informaciones y generales

IV. ENERO 27, 10 am. (Fecha propuesta) TALLER DE SABERES LOCALES SOBRE SAN
QUINTIN

Reunion conjunta de los comites Baja California y San Diego de la Red

Lugar: A decidirse (Tijuana)

Propuesta de orden del dia

1. Taller de Saberes Locales sobre San Quintin
2. Informaciones y generales

+ + + + + + + + + + + + +

INFORME DE REUNIONES ANTERIORES DE LA RED DE GLOBALIFOBIC@S

A] Comite Baja California: Tijuana, 15 de diciembre, Oficina de Factor X
B] Comite San Diego: San Diego, 16 de diciembre en San Diego City College

Puntos de discusion:

1. Reporte de la delegacion de San Quintin y tareas
2. Campan~a ante el FTAA, Free Trade of the Americas Agreement (Acuerdo de
Libre Comercio de las Americas), Quebec, Abril 21 y 22, 2001
3. Leymex
4. Organizacion de la Red

1. REPORTE DE LA DELEGACION DE SAN QUINTIN Y TAREAS

La reunion de Tijuana no tuvo tiempo de discutir este punto. Se tratara en la
proxima reunion: enero 12, 5 pm., Factor X.

La reunion de San Diego si discutio el punto. Varios de los asistentes a la
delegacion platicaron su experiencia y opiniones. Hubo muchas preguntas,
muchas de ellas dificiles de contestar. Hay varios problemas importantes a
resolver, entre ellos:

(A) Hicimos contactos con ciertas organizaciones de jornaleros indigenas de
San Quintin, sin embargo la Red busca mantener relacion y solidaridad con
TODAS las organizaciones progresistas de SQ. Hasta este momento sabemos que
existen mas de 15 organizaciones.

(B) La solidaridad con San Quintin no puede limitarse a una campanha que
culmine en abril, como se resolvio en el festival de los globalifobicos. Si
iniciamos contactos y solidaridad con San Quintin, es claro que sera un
trabajo demandante y con un compromiso que requerira quizas an~os.

(C) Decidimos en el Festival de octubre hacer una accion en San Quintin pero
es claro que necesitamos mucha mas informacion y conocimiento sobre las
condiciones de SQ, si no queremos hacer acciones inutiles o incluso
contraproducentes para la organizacion local de SQ.

(D) La comunicacion es un asunto crucial a resolver, por ejemplo, a traves de
una linea telefonica con SQ, fax, correo electronico, y quizas otras formas
de comunicacion como correo a traves de contactos o radio trasmision.

(E) Un problema abierto es como vincular la campan~a de SQ con la lucha vs.
la globalizacion. En particular necesitamos decidir como vincular la campan~a
SQ con las acciones para abril 2001 vs. FTAA.

La reunion resolvio:

1. Crear un subcomite que va a recopilar informacion acerca de San Quintin y
preparar un Taller de Saberes Locales sobre SQ.

2. Invitar al Comite de Baja California a crear un subcomite SQ. Es claro que
el Taller de Saberes Locales no podra organizarse sin la contribucion del
comite de Baja California.

3. Algunos puntos sugeridos para el Taller: Radiografia de las 10
agroindustrias mas importantes de SQ y Maniadero y de su red de produccion y
distribucion, desde SQ hasta los mercados en EUA; Como demandar a las
companhias por el uso inconstitucional del llamado "salario integrado";
Formas de trabajo, organizacion y resistencia de los jornaleros. Se propone
invitar a algunos compas de SQ y Maniadero a dirigir el taller.

4. Propuesta de fecha para el taller SQ: Sabado 27 de enero, 10:00 am, en
Tijuana.

5. Se propone que un grupo pequenho de personas vaya a SQ para invitar a los
compas y para explorar las mejores vias de instalar comunicacion con SQ.

6. Se va a necesitar una campanha de solidaridad en cobijas, despensas, y
dinero para SQ. Se esta formando un subcomite de solidaridad para SQ y Leymex.

2. ACCIONES vs. FTAA, QUEBEC 2001

El punto fue discutido por las dos reuniones, Baja California y San Diego.

Se informo de algunas propuestas que se estan discutiendo, sobre todo en los
Estados Unidos:

(A) Campan~a de repudio al FTAA que tenga como eje la frontera San
Ysidro/Tijuana que incluya talleres de estudio y una movilizacion en la
frontera.

(B) Consulta internacional que tenga como punto central la opinion ciudadana
acerca de la globalizacion. Esta consulta se realizaria siguiendo la
experiencia de consulta zapatista de marzo de 1998.

(C) Campan~a de movilizaciones en los distintos puntos fronterizos de Estados
Unidos con Mexico (Tijuana/SD, Cd. Juarez/El paso, Nuevo Laredo/Laredo, etc.)

La reunion de Tijuana considero que la Red necesita tener mas informacion
para que los Globalifobic@s tomen una posicion. La reunion decidio invitar a
grupos de Mexicali, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Tucson, etc, ademas de grupos
en Tijuana, Ensenada, Tecate y San Diego para discutir el que hacer el 21 y
22 de abril. Se propone que la reunion sea el 26 de enero, 5 pm, en Tijuana.

La reunion de San Diego tomo una resolucion similar: considera que los
miembros de San Diego de la Red podrian llamar a una reunion para explorar la
formacion de una coalicion regional binacional ante las acciones por FTAA,
Abril 2001. El Comite San Diego invita al Comite de Baja California a asistir
a esta reunion. Se propone como fecha el sabado 13 de enero, 3 pm, en San
Diego. Si el Comite de Baja California acepta esta propuesta, la reunion del
13 podria reemplazar a la propuesta de la reunion de Tijuana del 26 de enero,
o podria servir para que la coalicion se formara el dia 26.

3. LEYMEX

El movimiento de los obreros de Leymex sigue adelante. La situacion es
dificil porque los compas en lucha que demandan a la compan~ia no pueden
encontrar trabajo en otras empresas: los patrones de Leymex han boletinado
sus nombres a todos los empresarios de Tijuana.

A la solidaridad entre patrones debemos oponer la solidaridad entre
trabajadores. El viernes 15 se realizo la posada por Leymex. Fue bastante
divertida. En mes y medio de campan~a, los comites globalifobicos de Tijuana
y San Diego han recopilado mas de 2,000 dolares en ayuda monetaria y material
a los compas.

Los compan~eros de Leymex tendran una audiencia trabajadores/empresa en la
Junta de Conciliacion y Arbitraje el 11 de enero. Debemos estar pendientes
para apoyar a los trabajadores en este momento de su combate.

4. ORGANIZACION DE LA RED

Este punto no fue discutido por el Comite San Diego (por falta de tiempo) y
fue discutido brevemente por el Comite Baja California.

En la reunion de Tijuana se informo que la Red cuenta con algunos fondos para
apoyar a un compan~ero/a que sea facilitador/a de la Red. Los fondos
disponibles alcanzan para contratar a un facilitador por dos meses. Se
propuso que se contrate a un facilitador y se propone que el facilitador
tenga su oficina en Baja California.

[Reporte elaborado por el Comite por Solidaridad en las Americas]

****(English)*****

Hi companeras y companeros:

We are inviting you to the next meetings of the Globalphobics Network. Also
we are sending you information about our last meetings.

Saludos,

Enrique Davalos

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Meetings gs of the Globalphobics Network.

I. JANUARY 12, 5 pm. BAJA CALIFORNIA COMMITTEE

Where: Factor X office. 14364-1 Junipero Serra st.

Directions: In Tijuana, take Blv. Agua Caliente to the corner known as "5 y
10." Turn right and go five block to Junipero Serra. (There is an Oxxo store
on the corner.) Factor X office is right behind Oxxo. Information, Reyna
Montera, phone number 011-52(66) 22-4217, e-mail: factorx@....

Agenda (proposal)

1. Solidarity with San Quintin Indigenas farmworkers
2. Delegacion del EZLN a la Cd. De Mexico
3. Solidarity with Leymex workers
4. Hiring a Network's logistic coordinator
5. FTAA--April 2001
6. General issues and information

II. JANUARY 13, 2 pm. FTAA CAMPAIGN MEETING CALLED BY Globalphobics' San
Diego Commitee

Where: San Diego City College (To be confirmed.)

Agenda (proposal)

1. FTAA--April 2001
2. General issues and information
3. (After the open meeting) Hiring a Networks' logistic coordinator

III. JANUARY 26, 5pm. MEETING CALLED BY GLOBALPHOBICS' BAJA CALIFORNIA
COMMITTEE

Where: To be decided (Tijuana)

Agenda (proposal)

1. FTAA--April 2001
2. General issues and information

IV. JANUARY 27, 10 am. (Date proposal) TEACH-ING ABOUT SAN QUINTIN
Jointed meeting of both San Diego and Baja California committees

Where: To be decided (Tijuana)

Agenda (proposal)

1. Teach-in about San Quintin
2. General issues and information

+ + + + + + + + + + +

REPORT OF LAST MEETINGS OF
THE GLOBALPHOBICS NETWORK

Meetings:

A] Baja California, Tijuana, Dec. 15, Factor X office
B] San Diego, Dec. 16, San Diego City College

Agenda:

1. Report of the delegation to San Quintin (SQ)
2. FTAA campaign, April 21/22, 2001
3. Leymex workers
4. Network Organization

1. REPORT OF THE DELEGATION TO SAN QUINTIN

The Baja California Committee could not discuss this issue, but it will be
the first point in the next meeting on Jan. 12, 5 pm, at Factor X office.

The San Diego Committee did discuss the issue. People from the delegation
explained their experience and opinions about the delegation to SQ. There
were a lot of questions and many questions difficult to answer. There are
serious issues to be considered, including the following ones:

(A) The delegation made some contacts with SQ groups of indigenous
farmworkers. This is very positive; however, the Globalphobic Network should
make contact with more of the progressive organizations in SQ. At this point,
we know that there are at least 15 groups in SQ.

(B) The solidarity with SQ could not be limited to a campaign that would end
in April, even though this was the commitment of the Festival. If we begin to
organize solidarity actions, we have to be aware that we are taking on a
commitment that will require work and effort for a long time, perhaps years.

(C) The Festival decided to organize a campaign supporting SQ struggles;
however, it is clear that we need more information and knowledge about SQ in
order to have a successful campaign.

(D) Communication is a key problem to be solved. We need a phone line,
e-mail access, fax, and/or other ways of efficient communication with groups
in SQ.

(E) We need to decide how to weave in a wise way the campaign for San
Quintin with the struggle against FTAA.

The meeting accorded the following points:

1. The creation of a sub-committee to get information and prepare a teach-in
about SQ.

2. To invite the Baja California Committee to create a similar subcommittee
that could focus on SQ. It is clear that a teach-in won't be possible without
the push of the Baja California Committee.

3. There are some suggestions for the teach-in: To explore the ten biggest
agribusiness in SQ. and Maniadero, including their network from production to
distribution, from SQ. to the US supermarkets; to explore how to prepare a
legal demand against the unconstitutional "salario integrado" that SQ.
businesses pay to farmworkers; to explore experiences of SQ. Indigenous
organization and mobilization. Organizers from SQ. should be invited to lead
the teach-in.

4. Proposal for the teach-in: Jan. 27, Saturday, 10:00, at Tijuana

5. A small delegation should go to SQ. to invite people for the teach-in and
explore ways of communication with SQ. groups.

6. We need a campaign of solidarity to get food, blankets, and money to SQ.
San Diego Committee is creating a subcommittee in solidarity with Leymex and
SQ.

2. FTAA, QUEBEC 2001

This issue was discussed in both meetings in Tijuana and San Diego.

In both meetings, information was given about several proposals that are
currently being discussed, especially in the US, regarding April FTAA meeting:

(A) A campaign against the FTAA focussing on the San Ysidro/Tijuana border
gate, including actions of education (as workshops and teach-ins) and
mobilizations on the border line.

(B) An international consultation asking people about their feelings on the
current process of globalization and the FTAA. This consultation would follow
the Zapatista experience of national consultation that was organized on March
1998.

(C) Campaign of several mobilizations on the US/Mexico border line including
border crossing points at Tijuana/SD, Cd. Juarez/El Paso, Nuevo
Laredo/Laredo, etc.

The meeting in Tijuana considered that we need more information before the
Globalphobics decide on a plan for April 2001. It was decided to organize a
future meeting, in which people and groups from several cities, including
Mexicali, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Tucson, will be invited. The meeting
was proposed for Jan. 26, Friday, 5 pm, in Tijuana.

The meeting in San Diego made a similar resolution. They considered that the
San Diego members of the Globalphobic Network could call a meeting to
investigate forming a regional and binational coalition for April 2001 FTAA
actions. The San Diego committee invites the Tijuana Committee to attend this
meeting as well. The date proposed was: Jan. 13, Saturday, 3 pm., in San
Diego. If the Tijuana committee agrees, t

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#25

From: SIUHIN@...
Date: Wed Jan 3, 2001 1:52 pm
Subject: FNS: Electricity Theft in Cd. Juarez

SIUHIN@...

Send Email

FNS: Electricity Theft in Cd. Juarez

January 3, 2001
19,000 Juárez Homes Steal Electricity from Utility Approximately 19,000
Ciudad Juárez families illegally obtain electricity by running wires called
"diablitos" from their homes to the cables of the Comisión Federal de
Electricidad (CFE). While the practice is highly dangerous those that steal
power from the utility say that they can not afford to pay for electricity or
that power lines do not yet reach their communities. The number of homes
illegally obtaining power from the CFE has doubled since 1996 according to
the utility. Between January and August, 2000 833 house fires were attributed
to the dangerous hook ups when illegal wires heated up or short circuited and
came into contact with combustible material. These figures would suggest that
about one of every twenty illegally-wired homes catches fire per year.
On December 31, 2000 much of the Anapra neighborhood celebrated the New Year
in darkness when electricity thieves overloaded the system, according to Juan
Duarte, a CFE service executive. Power was not restored until 11:47 on
January 1, 2001. Regarding the inability of many to afford electricity, a
widow living in the Rancho Anapra neighborhood stated, "They charge us a lot
for light, the last time I was billed 1,000 pesos (US$100). How am I going to
pay this if we can barely feed ourselves? I prefer that they cut our service
and that we hang off of the lines in front like everyone else on our block."
The Alderete Gutiérrez family has had electricity for the past 14 years--all
of them thanks to a "diablito" connection. However, in contrast to people
that do not want to pay for electricity or cannot afford to, the Aldretes
live in the Lomas de Poleo neighborhood where there is no power
infrastructure. Source: El Diario, January 3, 2001. Article by Edith
Caballero. --
Frontera NorteSur
On-line news coverage of the US-Mexico border
To see our site or subscribe for free to our daily news service go to:
http://www.nmsu.edu/~frontera/ FNS is an outreach program of the Center for
Latin American Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico
Email address: frontera@...
(505) 646-6817

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#24

From: SIUHIN@...
Date: Sat Dec 30, 2000 3:47 pm
Subject: Report for Dec 29 Border Party at Luna Sol Cafe, LA, CA

SIUHIN@...

Send Email

**Report for Dec 29 Border Party at Luna Sol Cafe, LA, CA

Hi everybody:

Last night's fundsing/culture event at Los Angeles Luna Sol Cafe (Luna Sol is
a most famous independent, progress coop-own coffee house in LA) was a great
success, nearly 40 people show up.

Two great music bands La Paz and Sahua, several speakers include: LA Food Not
Bombs, Cal Poly MEChA, East LA Micro Radio Collective, Mexican Journalist
Reymundo Reynosa and LA Catholic worker Hose. The event was live on radio via
John Martinez's micro-radio at 104.7 FM.

We raised $230.00 and some amount of food. $30.00 donated to Luna Sol Cafe.
$50.00 and food donated from LA Food Not Bombs, will donated to Tijuana-San
Diego Globoalphoics Network for the San Qunitin, Baja California, Mexico farm
workers. The remaining $150.00 will be for the future mailing costs for the
border planning.

Thank you for everybody's support and Happy New Year!

Lee Siu Hin
2001 Border Actions Committee
---------------------------------------------------------
Mexico-US Border Mass Mobilization
LIBERATE THE BORDER,
NO MORE BLOCKADES!
April 20-22 2001
Tijuana - San Diego, and beyond...
---------------------------------------------------------
Tel: (626)403-2530
e-mail: BorderActions@...
http://www.actionla.org/border.htm

Please Subscribe the Border01 List Group!
Send e-mail to:
Border01-subscribe@egroups.com

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#23

From: SIUHIN@...
Date: Sat Dec 30, 2000 3:20 pm
Subject: Report for Dec 29 Border Party at Luna Sol Cafe, LA, CA

SIUHIN@...

Send Email

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#22

From: "isbilln" <isbilln@...>
Date: Sat Dec 30, 2000 1:53 am
Subject: Fw: Inauguration Protest - Next Planning Meeting

isbilln@...

Send Email

EVERYONE:

The December 27th Inauguration Day Protest (I20) planning meeting was
incredible. Now THAT was democracy. Everyone walked out of it committed,
angry but not grim, inspired but ready to get down to business. Here is the
call for the next meeting. Please, I urge you or your organization to get
involved. Whether you are appalled at the violations of civil rights and the
disenfranchisement of many voters, or if you feel the system has never been
democratic and its unfairness was finally exposed, GET INVOLVED. President
Bush must be sent the message, from day one of his administration, that we
will not take four years of attacks, we will not go back to the Reagan
years, and that his Presidency is illegitimate from the beginning. WE WON'T
GO BACK.

Bill Neal

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian P Jones" <brianpjones@...>
To: <i20la@...>
Sent: Friday, December 29, 2000 4:10 PM
Subject: Inauguration Protest - Next Planning Meeting


> <<meeting announcement - please post and distribute
> widely>>
>
> PROTEST THE BUSH INAUGURATION!
> January 20, 2001
> Gather @ Pershing Square
> (5th & Hill, LA)
> 11am
> March to the Federal Bldg
>
> Next Planning Meeting:
> Tuesday, Jan 2, 2001
> 7pm
> The Quaker House
> 4167 South Normandie Ave.
> (near Martin Luther King Jr Blvd)
> LA
>
> endorsed by:
> Americans for Democratic Action (So. Cal)
> Billionaires for Bush
> Campaign to End the Death Penalty
> Center for the Advancement of Non-Violence
> CounterCoup / TrustThePeople
> Direct Action Network
> International Socialist Organization
> KPFK Listener Lab Alliance
> Rainbow/PUSH
>
> contact:
>
> i20LA@...
> 323.993.6180
> http://www.geocities.com/countercoup/
>
>
>
> =====
> Brian P. Jones
> brianpjones@...
> 213.948.4888 c
> 310.838.3609 h
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Photos - Share your holiday photos online!
> http://photos.yahoo.com/
>

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#21

From: SIUHIN@...
Date: Fri Dec 29, 2000 7:07 am
Subject: Fwd: LA TIMES--INS SECRET EVIDENCE AGAINST IMMGRANTS

SIUHIN@...

Send Email

**LA TIMES ARTICLE ON SECRET EVIDENCE AGAINST IMMGRANANS

US Racist immigration policy not only against people from south of the
border, but also against people of different faith of being possible
"terrorists."

Lee Siu Hin
Los Angeles

December 21, 2000
Los Angeles Times
INS Must Stop Using Secret Evidence
By NIELS W. FRENZEN

     Over the past five years, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno has allowed the
Immigration and Naturalization Service the unfettered discretion to use
secret evidence in immigration courts to seek to deport noncitizens. The
targets of secret evidence almost always are Arabs and Muslims.

     When secret evidence is used, the INS has an almost perfect track
record in convincing the judges who hear immigration cases that the
targeted individual is a terrorist or poses some other risk to the
national security. Yet all of the secret evidence cases tracked by
advocacy groups in the past several years have unraveled the moment the
targeted individual either gets a glimpse of the government's evidence
or is granted a retrial in which the government cannot rely on secret
witnesses or documents.

     Mazen Al-Najjar, a Palestinian and a former adjunct professor at
the University of South Florida in Tampa, is the latest victim to be set
free. Al-Najjar spent more than three years in INS custody before his
release Dec. 15. The INS has not revealed any of the evidence in his
case but has insinuated that Al-Najjar belonged to political groups the
INS claimed are fronts for terrorist groups. Publicly, the INS said only
that Al-Najjar's brother-in-law, also of Florida, had yelled "death to
Israel" at a political meeting and that Al-Najjar refused to denounce
him. The attempt to establish guilt by association is a common INS
tactic in secret evidence cases.

     Were it not for the tragedy of unjustly accused and jailed
individuals, one could scoff at the INS' dismal track record of
prosecuting secret evidence cases. Yet these cases involve real people
who face unjust prosecution. Here are some of them:

     * Mehdia Al-Zubaidy: The INS detained Al-Zubaidy in Los Angeles in
1997 and sought to deport her to Iraq. When Al-Zubaidy finally figured
out that the case against her was based on her former husband's alleged
intelligence activities in Syria, she pointed out that her husband was
present in the U.S. with the consent of the U.S. State Department and
with the knowledge of INS officials. How could she be held based on his
alleged activities while the State Department allowed him to come to the
United States? The case against her was dismissed.

     * Hashim Hawlery: An Iraqi Kurd, Hawlery, who was held in a Los
Angeles detention facility for 10 months, was released in 1998 when it
was revealed that the secret and suspect organization to which the FBI
and INS claimed he belonged did not in fact exist. It turned out that an
interpreter used by the FBI during an interrogation of Hawlery had
created an acronym as a short-hand way of referring to the several Iraqi
Kurdish opposition groups with which Hawlery had been affiliated over
the years. The false acronym was cross-referenced by the FBI with CIA
records. When the CIA had no record of the group, the FBI suggested that
Hawlery posed a high level of dangerousness because of his membership in
this "secret" (i.e., unknown) organization.

     When this stupid error became evident, the INS' case against
Hawlery was quickly dropped. While laughable, the misunderstanding cost
Hawlery nearly a year of imprisonment, separated from his wife and
children.

     * Nasser Ahmed: Ahmed, an Egyptian citizen living in New York, was
released last year after more than three years in detention, much of it
in solitary confinement, when a judge characterized the government's
secret evidence as double and triple hearsay. Much of the evidence came
from the Egyptian government, which viewed Ahmed as a political
opponent. Most disturbing was the testimony of an unidentified FBI agent
who, speaking in opposition to releasing Ahmed, said Ahmed's release
would make him a martyr. "He would be more well-known, lending to his
credibility in the community, both inside . . . and outside the United
States," the agent testified.

     * Hany Kiareldeen: A Palestinian resident of New Jersey, Kiareldeen
was jailed for 19 months after being accused by the FBI and INS of
hosting a meeting in his apartment with one of the World Trade Center
bombers shortly before the center was bombed. When Kiareldeen was
finally allowed to see the government's key allegations, he easily
established that he had not lived in the apartment building in question
at the time of the alleged meeting. The source of the allegations
against Kiareldeen is classified, but it is widely believed to be his
former wife, with whom he was engaged in a child custody dispute.

     The use of secret evidence violates one of the most fundamental
tenets of the U.S. legal system: the right to confront one's accuser.
There are times when the accused may get lucky and guess what the
allegations are. But someone like Kiareldeen would never have guessed
that he needed to present evidence about meetings that never occurred in
a place in which he did not reside; Hawlery would never have known to
present evidence about a group that he had never heard of and that,
indeed, didn't exist.

     In 1953, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote, in a
dissenting opinion criticizing the use of secret evidence, that "due
process of law is not for the sole benefit of an accused. It is the best
insurance for the government itself against those blunders which leave
lasting stains on a system of justice."

     The INS track record over the past five years is filled with such
blunders. But it is worth noting that a still-pending secret evidence
case was commenced during the Reagan administration in 1987 and has
continued to wind its way through the courts under the Bush and Clinton
administrations.

     It remains to be seen what the new Bush administration will do.
During the campaign, President-elect Bush questioned the use of secret
evidence in immigration proceedings. A survey conducted by the Council
on American-Islamic Relations found strong support for Bush on behalf of
American Muslim voters and attributed this support in part to Bush's
views on such evidence.

     The incoming Bush administration's decision whether to continue
with the Reagan-era case against two Los Angeles-area residents,
Palestinians Khader Hamide and Michel Shehadeh, will be an early sign
whether the new administration is willing to halt the use of secret evidence.

Reply | Forward | Messages in this Topic (1)

#20

From: "Justin Akers" <isosd@...>
Date: Thu Dec 28, 2000 12:21 am
Subject: union/NGO endorsements

isosd@...

Send Email

Hello-


This is Justin from San Diego-
Does anyone have a complete list of groups endorsing the
ANTI-FTAA campaign/protest?

Im looking particularly for unions but would like to have a complete
list as well.

solidarity,
-Justin.

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#19

From: SIUHIN@...
Date: Wed Dec 27, 2000 5:41 am
Subject: Fwd: Bush Team Mulls Colombia Policy

SIUHIN@...

Send Email

**Fwd: Bush Team Mulls Colombia Policy

With new Bush presidency, it'll be a clear indication of escalating US
military invitation to Columbia, corporate media like New York Times, had
already filling anti-FARC propaganda daily and openly support US 'anti-drug'
role in the country without critical arguments.

Lee Siu Hin
Direct Action Network
Los Angeles

Bush Team Mulls Colombia Policy

By GEORGE GEDDA
.c The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - A hallmark of the Clinton administration's military
commitment to Colombia has been to help Colombian officials curb
narcotraffickers while staying out of the country's long-running civil war.

President-elect George Bush may not be as fussy about drawing such
distinctions. He could face a collision with Democrats over Colombia policy.

Under President Clinton's rules of engagement, leftist guerrillas are fair
game if they are part of the drug trafficking infrastructure, but U.S.
helicopters and other assistance should not otherwise be used against the
rebels.

As Clinton sees it, drug trafficking poses a threat to the United States but
Colombia's 35-year civil war doesn't.

The Bush team seems to think the current policy is too confining, a point
made by Robert Zoellick, a top foreign policy adviser to Bush, in a
no-press-allowed speech in late October.

``We cannot continue to make a false distinction between counterinsurgency
and counternarcotics efforts,'' said Zoellick, a State Department aide in the
first Bush administration a decade ago.

``The narcotraffickers and guerrillas compose one dangerous network,'' he
said.

A copy of Zoellick's prepared remarks was made available by his office. His
speech was delivered to a gathering of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Colombian rebels are believed to earn hundreds of millions of dollars through
their links to drug traffickers. The State Department recently cited evidence
that Colombia's leading rebel group supplied cocaine to a major Mexican
cartel in exchange for cash and possibly weapons.

Zoellick suggested that future U.S. support for Colombia would depend on
Colombian willingness to confront enemies of all stripes.

``If the legitimately elected leaders of Colombia demonstrate the political
will to take their country back from killers and drug lords, and if the
Colombian people are willing to fight for their own country, then the U.S.
should offer serious, sustained and timely financial, material and
intelligence support,'' Zoellick said.

But if the incoming Bush administration tries to alter the ground rules along
the lines suggested by Zoellick, it would almost certainly produce Democratic
opposition, particularly from Sens. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., and Patrick
Leahy, D-Vt.

Many Democrats believe the Clinton administration already is too deeply
involved in Colombia, citing shortcomings in the human rights record of the
Colombian military and its continuing links with rightist paramilitary groups
that also have a reputation for brutality.

Zoellick sees the problem differently.

He said in October that the ``forces of democracy'' must join hands to combat
``new threats to security,'' such as that which exists in Colombia. His
comments made no reference to human rights problems that Democrats find
troubling.

The tougher line on Colombia was foreshadowed in an Aug. 25 speech by
then-candidate Bush himself who said U.S. assistance ``will help the
Colombian government protect its people, fight the drug trade, halt the
momentum of the guerrillas and bring about a sensible and peaceful resolution
to this conflict.''

In those comments, Bush gave equal billing to the need to curb
narcotraffickers and guerrillas. The Clinton approach has been to give
prominence to the counterdrug aspect of the problem.

Clinton angered many Democrats in August by waiving a legislative provision
which requires that Colombia meet certain human rights criteria before
further U.S. assistance can be dispensed. A $1.3 billion U.S. anti-drug
package was approved for Colombia last summer.

Wellstone, in an opinion piece in Tuesday's New York Times, delivered an
appeal for no more human rights waivers.

``Next month,'' he wrote, ``the U.S. government must once again certify that
Colombia's military satisfies the conditions so that delivery of anti-drug
aid can continue in 2001.

``This time, the Bush administration's State Department must take a tough
stance: no waiver and no aid until all human rights conditions are met,''
Wellstone said. ``Americans should not be supporting a partnership with a
military that does not meet these very basic standards.''

EDITOR'S NOTE - George Gedda has covered foreign affairs for The Associated
Press since 1968.

On the Net:

State Department on Colombia aid:
http://www.state.gov/www/regions/wha/colombia/index.html

AP-NY-12-27-00 0207EST

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#18

From: "isbilln" <isbilln@...>
Date: Tue Dec 26, 2000 10:06 pm
Subject: Fw: INAUGURATION PROTEST - organizing meeting

isbilln@...

Send Email

Subject: INAUGURATION PROTEST - organizing meeting
From: "I.Twenty.LA" <i20la@...>


<<meeting announcement- please post and distribute widely>>

The next planning meeting for the January 20
Inauguration protest in LA will be held:

WEDNESDAY, DEC 27
7PM
The Community Room
Lafayette Community Center
625 South Lafayette Park Place
(between Wilshire & Hoover)
LA

This meeting is open to all interested organizations
and individuals... SPREAD THE WORD!

-Brian Jones
Campaign to End the Death Penalty
323.993.6180

=====
"Families is where our nation takes hope, where wings take dream."
-George W. Bush, Jr

Reply | Forward | Messages in this Topic (1)

#17

From: SIUHIN@...
Date: Tue Dec 26, 2000 2:34 pm
Subject: Alert! Updates on Nicaragua Chentex Maquila

SIUHIN@...

Send Email

****NICARAGUA: CHENTEX MAQUILA THREATENS TO CLOSE

Talks over a labor dispute at the Chentex maquiladora (tax-exempt
assembly plant producing for export) in Nicaragua's Las Mercedes
free trade zone broke down again on Dec. 21. Lucas Wei Huang,
general manager in Nicaragua for the Taiwan-based Nien Hsing
Textile Company, which owns the plant, failed to bring a promised
written proposal and refused to discuss rehiring 11 fired union
leaders, a key union demand [see Update #568]. Huang also
threatened to shut down two production lines and lay off 100
workers. Talks are scheduled to resume on Dec. 26. [National
Labor Committee Chentex/Nicaragua Update 12/21/00]

On Dec. 22, plant administrator Carlos Yin announced that the
plant may be closed because the principal client, US chain store
Wal-Mart, had decided to cancel its contract as a result of an
international pressure campaign around the firings. "We will have
to look for another purchaser who will buy the same quantity as
Wal-Mart did or more," he said. Chentex legal representative
Doris Escalona indicated that layoffs were likely; they will be
done in stages to soften the blow, she said, with 200 people
being dismissed at each stage. Dr. Vilma Nunez de Escorcia, head
of the Nicaraguan Human Rights Center (CENIDH) suggested that
management might be following a strategy of saying: "what I want
gets done or we go." "[I]t could be that they are blackmailing
the government and the workers," she said. [El Nuevo Diario
(Managua) 12/23/00]

[According to the New York-based National Labor Committee for
Human Rights, the principal buyer at Chentex is the Kohl's chain,
which has been the target of an international pressure campaign
(but not a boycott). Wal-Mart, which has not been targeted,
accounts for less than 28% of Chentex's business; see Update
#561.]

Ironically, the new tensions followed a Dec. 19 meeting between
US labor activists and the Taiwanese representative to the US,
Chien-Jen Chen, in his Washington, DC office. Chen showed the
activists an official statement that the "government of the
Republic of China [Taiwan] is deeply concerned about the labor
dispute that occurred between labor and management at the Chentex
factory in Nicaragua... In order to encourage both labor and
management of the Chentex facility to rebuild a positive
relationship, the government has recommended that Chentex rehire
the 12 workers [the 11 union leaders] whose contracts were
terminated in May and June 2000." [Campaign for Labor Rights
(CLR)/Labor Alerts 12/20/00]

The Taiwanese statement coincided with an effort, announced on
Dec. 20 by Taiwan's prime minister, Chang Chun-hsiung, to
strengthen Taiwan's diplomatic and commercial ties with Latin
America. Taiwan has diplomatic relations with 29 countries; 14
are in Latin America. [Agencia Informativa Pulsar 12/20/00]

VOLUNTEERS ARE NEEDED to help research and write the Weekly News
Update on the Americas via email (from anywhere). We need people
who are regular Update readers to send us news sources and to
write articles for the Update. If you're interested, send your
inquiry to <wnu@...> and we'll send you the details.

CHECK US OUT on the Resource Center of the Americas website at
http://www.americas.org

ALSO SEE OUR OWN WEBSITES:
http://home.earthlink.net/~dbwilson/wnuhome.html
http://home.earthlink.net/~dbwilson/nsnhome.html

For New York area events, check out the CREED NYC calendar at
http://home.earthlink.net/~dbwilson/creed.html (if you don't have
web access, write <nicadlw@...> for info).

Weekly News Update on the Americas * Nicaragua Solidarity Network of NY
339 Lafayette St, New York, NY 10012 * 212-674-9499 fax: 212-674-9139
http://home.earthlink.net/~dbwilson/wnuhome.html * wnu@...

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#16

From: SIUHIN@...
Date: Mon Dec 25, 2000 7:12 pm
Subject: Two Interesting events in LA

SIUHIN@...

Send Email

Hi:

Just in case if you are in Los Angeles, coming this weekend there're two
interesting culture events I suggest you to go, they both related to border
issues, Mexico, human rights and grass-root activism.

Lee Siu Hin
Los Angeles

**Rage Against Border
**A New Year Celebration Party at Luna Sol Café, Los Angeles, CA
**When: December 29, 6 PM
**Where: 2501 W. Sixth St., Los Angeles, CA

Live music by:
La Paz
Sahua
plus speakers, presentations.

Suggest donations:
$5.00, or bring nonperishable food, tents or blankets to support Big Mountain
Campaign and farm workers at San Quintin, Baja California, Mexico!

For more info, call: (626)403-2530
2001 Border Actions Committee

**Activists Party and Workshop
**Host by: Alternative Gathering Collective
**When: Sat, Dec 30, 4:30 pm - 10:00 pm
**Where: Lafayette Community Center - 625 Lafayette Park Pl., Los Angeles
(Between Wilshire and 6th St.)

Alternative Gathering Collective Presents for an awareness and listening.
There will be films shown at the event. Info booth will be set up with animal
rights, anarchist, feminist books, literature, DIY distro and veggie foods.

Donation: $5.00

Potery by Christine Addams
Workshop: The Haymarket Anarchist of Chicago/Intra-personal relationship by
Camille
Speaker: Garry Rumour on Magonista (Mexican Anarchist Movement)

Music:
Contravene
Sin Orden
Subsistencia

**The End**

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#15

From: SIUHIN@...
Date: Mon Dec 25, 2000 7:00 pm
Subject: Reuters: Mexico Fox to recruit police for drug fight

SIUHIN@...

Send Email

Mexico Fox to recruit police for drug fight-paper

MEXICO CITY, Dec 22 (Reuters) - Mexican President Vicente Fox said he hopes
to recruit up to 15,000 extra police agents over the next six months as part
of a promised crackdown against drug traffickers, the newspaper Reforma said
on Friday.

Fox, visiting cities on Mexico's northern frontier with the United States
since Thursday, said he planned to station between 1,000 and 2,000 more
agents in Tijuana, home to the brutal Arellano Felix cartel.

"We want to be in Tijuana precisely because that's the patch of the Arellanos
(brothers) and we want to work to eradicate them from the city," Fox was
quoted as saying.

Benjamin and Ramon Arellano Felix are on the U.S. list of most wanted drug
traffickers.

Fox said the federal preventive police force, which has 1,500 agents at
present, would be expanded to at least 10,000 men in the next six months.

Moves to recruit some 4,000 agents by year's end into the federal judicial
police, which only has 1,200 agents currently and plays a more investigative
than preventive role, were already underway, Fox said.

According to Reforma, Fox said the agents would be educated and well paid.
Mexico has faced a huge uphill battle to try and keep its poorly paid police
officers clean in the face of rich rewards offered by powerful drug barons.

12:36 12-22-00

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#14

From: SIUHIN@...
Date: Mon Dec 25, 2000 5:22 am
Subject: Reuters: Mexico Fox to recruit police for drug fight

SIUHIN@...

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#13

From: SIUHIN@...
Date: Sun Dec 24, 2000 7:52 am
Subject: Mexico maquiladora production rose 14.2 in October

SIUHIN@...

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Mexico maquiladora production rose 14.2 in October

MEXICO CITY, Dec 22 (Reuters) - Production in Mexico's maquiladora export
sector rose 14.2 percent in October compared with the same month a year ago,
while employment in the sector rose 12.0 percent in the month, the
government's statistics agency Inegi said on Friday.

The total number of people employed in the maquiladora industry reached
1,338,970 nationwide at the end of the month, Inegi said, while the number of
hours worked rose 13.4 percent year-on-year.

Inegi said real, or inflation adjusted, average wages increased 7.5 percent
in annualized terms in September.

Mexico's maquiladora plants, mostly located near the U.S.-Mexican border,
import raw materials or components duty free and subsequently export abroad.
They produce clothing, electronics and other items.

18:00 12-22-00

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#12

From: SIUHIN@...
Date: Sun Dec 24, 2000 6:48 am
Subject: Party! Rage Against Border at Luna Sol Cafe-7 PM Dec 29

SIUHIN@...

Send Email

**Rage Against Border
**A New Year Celebration Party at Luna Sol Café, Los Angeles, CA
**When: December 29, 7 PM
**Where: 2501 W. Sixth St., Los Angeles, CA

Join us in our New Year Festival of Liberation and in a celebration of the
human potential, as we prepare to protest the Mexico-US border, at coming
April 20-22, 2001. A symbol of all corporate borders that are used to
segregate, blockade, and exploit people around the world, we demands:
LIBERATE THE BORDER, NO MORE BLOCKADES!

Live music by:
La Paz
Sawa Sahua
plus speakers, presentations.

Suggest donations:
$5.00, or bring nonperishable food, tents or blankets to support Big Mountain
Campaign!

For more info, call: (626)403-2530
2001 Border Actions Committee

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#11

From: SIUHIN@...
Date: Sun Dec 24, 2000 3:43 am
Subject: Fwd: Meeting notes from Tijuana--San Diego Globoalphobics Network

SIUHIN@...

Send Email

**Meeting notes from Tijuana--San Diego Globoalphobics Collective

Dear all border activists:

This is the note from last week Tijuana-San Diego Globoalphoics working
meeting.

In solidarity!

Lee SIu Hin
from Los Angeles

REPORT OF LAST MEETINGS OF THE GLOBALPHOBICS NETWORK
Diciembre 2000

Hi / Hola compan~eras y compan~eros,

The Committee for Solidarity in the Americas prepared this report of the last
meetings of the Globalphobics. Send your comments and amendments, please.

REPORT OF LAST MEETINGS OF THE GLOBALPHOBICS NETWORK

(Internal document for San Diego/Baja California Committees of the Network)

Meetings:

Baja California, Tijuana, Dec. 15, Factor X office
San Diego, Dec. 16, San Diego City College

Agenda:

1. Report of the delegation to San Quintin (SQ)
2. FTAA campaign, April 21/22, 2001
3. Leymex workers
4. Network Organization

1. REPORT OF THE DELEGATION TO SAN QUINTIN

The Baja California Committee could not discuss this issue, but it will bethe
first point in the next meeting on Jan. 12, 5 pm, at Factor X office.

The San Diego Committee did discuss the issue. People from the delegation
explained their experience and opinions about the delegation to SQ. There
were a lot of questions and many questions difficult to answer. There are
serious issues to be considered, including the following ones:

(A) The delegation made some contacts with SQ groups of indigenous
farmworkers. This is very positive; however, the Globalphobic Network should
make contact with more of the progressive organizations in SQ. At this point,
we know that there are at least 15 groups in SQ.

(B) The solidarity with SQ could not be limited to a campaign that would end
in April, even though this was the commitment of the Festival. If we begin to
organize solidarity actions, we have to be aware that we are taking on a
commitment that will require work and effort for a long time, perhaps years.

(C) The Festival decided to organize a campaign supporting SQ struggles;
however, it is clear that we need more information and knowledge about SQ in
order to have a successful campaign.

(D) Communication is a key problem to be solved. We need a phone line, e-mail
access, fax, and/or other ways of efficient communication with groups in SQ.

(E) We need to decide how to weave in a wise way the campaign for San Quintin
with the struggle against FTAA.

The meeting accorded the following points:

1. The creation of a sub-committee to get information and prepare a teach-in
about SQ.

2. To invite the Baja California Committee to create a similar subcommittee
that could focus on SQ. It is clear that a teach-in won't be possible without
the push of the Baja California Committee.

3. There are some suggestions for the teach-in: To explore the ten biggest
agribusiness in SQ. and Maniadero, including their network from production to
distribution, from SQ. to the US supermarkets; to explore how to prepare a
legal demand against the unconstitutional "salario integrado" that SQ.
businesses pay to farmworkers; to explore experiences of SQ. Indigenous
organization and mobilization. Organizers from SQ. should be invited to lead
the teach-in.

4. Proposal for the teach-in: Jan. 27, Saturday, 10:00, at Tijuana

5. A small delegation should go to SQ. to invite people for the teach-in and
explore ways of communication with SQ. groups.

6. We need a campaign of solidarity to get food, blankets, and money to SQ.
San Diego Committee is creating a subcommittee in solidarity with Leymex and
SQ.

2. FTAA, QUEBEC 2001

This issue was discussed in both meetings in Tijuana and San Diego.

In both meetings, information was given about several proposals that are
currently being discussed, especially in the US, regarding April FTAA meeting:

(A) A campaign against the FTAA focussing on the San Ysidro/Tijuana border
gate, including actions of education (as workshops and teach-ins) and
mobilizations on the border line.

(B) An international consultation asking people about their feelings on the
current process of globalization and the FTAA. This consultation would follow
the Zapatista experience of national consultation that was organized on March
1998.

(C) Campaign of several mobilizations on the US/Mexico border line including
border crossing points at Tijuana/SD, Cd. Juarez/El Paso, Nuevo
Laredo/Laredo, etc.

The meeting in Tijuana considered that we need more information before the
Globalphobics decide on a plan for April 2001. It was decided to organize a
future meeting, in which people and groups from several cities, including
Mexicali, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Tucson, will be invited. The meeting
was proposed for Jan. 26, Friday, 5 pm, in Tijuana.

The meeting in San Diego made a similar resolution. They considered that the
San Diego members of the Globalphobic Network could call a meeting to
investigate forming a regional and binational coalition for April 2001 FTAA
actions. The San Diego committee invites the Tijuana Committee to attend this
meeting as well. The date proposed was: Jan. 13, Saturday, 3 pm., in San
Diego. If the Tijuana committee agrees, this meeting could take the place of
the Jan. 26 meeting that they proposed, or, alternatively, could be used to
further prepare for the formation of the coaltion on Jan 26.

3. LEYMEX

Leymex workers' struggle is going on well; however the situation is difficult
because the workers could not get a new job in another maquiladora: Leymex's
boss sent information to Tijuana maquiladoras' administrators with the names
of Leymex workers.

To face bosses' solidarity we should create workers' solidarity. The posada
on Dec. 15 was successful. At this moment, the San Diego/Tijuana
Globalphobics committees have obtained more than $2,000 dollars (cash and
goods) in solidarity to Leymex's workers.

Leymex workers have a meeting with the corporation and the Mexican Labor
Department on Jan. 11. We should be alert to support the workers on that day.

SUMMARY: NEXT MEETINGS

1. Baja California Committee: Jan. 12, Friday, 5 pm, at Factor X, Tijuana

Directions: In Tijuana, take Blv. Agua Caliente to the corner known as "5 y
10." Turn right and go five block to Junipero Serra. (There is an Oxxo store
on the corner.) Factor X office is right behind Oxxo. Information, Reyna
Montera, phone number 011-52(66) 22-4217, e-mail: factorx@....

2. Calling to creating a regional binational coalition to fight the FTAA
April meeting: Jan. 13, Saturday, 2 pm., San Diego

3. Meeting of both California and Baja California to discuss FTAA: Jan. 26,
Friday, 5 pm, at Tijuana

4. Teach-in on San Quintin: Jan. 27, Saturday, 10 am, Tijuana.

Report prepared by: Committee for Solidarity in the Americas

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#10

From: SIUHIN@...
Date: Sun Dec 24, 2000 3:29 am
Subject: Recent LA and San Francisco Border Planning Meeting Notes

SIUHIN@...

Send Email

**Recent LA and San Francisco Border Planning Meeting Notes

Hi fellow border activists:

I enclosed you the recent border planning meeting notes I attended at Los
Angeles and San Francisco. I hope it can give you some fruit of thought on
how we should built our movement at the coming new year.

In solidarity!

Lee Siu Hin
from Los Angeles

Please Subscribe the Border01 List Group!
Send e-mail to:
Border01-subscribe@egroups.com

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------

Dec 16th 1:00 PM, Los Angeles, LA Border Actions Planning meeting.

Facilitators: Don White

Introductions:
Don White (LA CISPES)
Carl Renyolds (LA DAN)
Michael Myers (ISO)
Bill Neal (ISO)
John Martinez (radio reporter)
Jose Avila & son
Lee Siu Hin (LA DAN)

Agenda:
I-Report back from Tucson conference, Tijuana meeting, and San Quintin trip.
II-Issue of Mexico-US join border cooperations
III-Outreach committee report

I-Report back from Tucson/Tijuana/San Quintin
Siu Hin: The meeting at the Tucson (Dec 8 -10) was a great success, over 600
people attend and they were very excited about the border mobilization.
During the meeting, several local AZ DAN, border right activists and
anti-globolizations folks established a work group to prepare for the border
actions next year. They propose a cross border activities from California to
Texas, they are plan to organize local actions along Arizona-Sonora border,
at cities such as Nogales-Nogales, Naco-Bisbee and Agua-Douglas.
The visits to San Quintin (Dec 10), organized by Globoalphoics migrant farm
community was also very important, he found the living conditions of the farm
workers are very bad, many farm union organizers were treated by mobs and
police, they don't have enough to eat and their food products are 100% ship
to US.
The meeting on Tijuana last Friday (12-15) was very difficult, during the
meeting, several San Diego (SD) and Tijuana (TJ) activists were very critical
about the culture of organizing from the activists of north, they complain
that LA organizers did not inform them what they are doing, and they thinks
LA folks are doing their own border actions planning without consult with the
activists from TJ-SD.
Propose next meeting with TJ activists: Friday Jan 26th, 3 PM at TJ
Don: We need more dialogue with TJ folks, we need to build a "point of
unity". He will try his best to go to TJ meeting next time.
Bill: Friday Jan 26th is not a good time, since all of us need to go to work
and school, he suggest Saturday, Jan 27th, so more people can go to the TJ
meeting.
Everybody: agrees.

II-Issue of Mexico-US join border cooperation
Siu Hin: he believes since D2K protest last August, the Seattle-style
anti-globalization movement is "dead", there's many reasons behind this
failure--distrust amount different activists, power struggle, pride, protest
didn't achieve its demand/results, heavy police crackdown, debate between
civil disobedience Vs peaceful march, internal political/personal struggles,
and so on. He believes the border actions is a new hope for the
anti-globolaization movenent, a successful join Mexico-US border cooperation
can unite people of north America to fight NAFTA, WTO, World Bank, sweatshops.
Don: he believe that most of the distrusts amount activists are root of
miscommunications, it happened many times during D2K mobilizing.
John: We should individually talk to the TJ activists for the feedback, he
personally had talk to the media collectives in TJ, and send an personal
e-mail to Enrique.
Jose: he believes we need more Spanish speaking people from the community to
join the mobilization, such as MEChA and Justice for Janitors.
Siu Hin: he believes communications is important, we need to be more humble
and respect the idea and decisions from south of the border.
Don: Let's not point fingering each other, unless TJ activists agrees, we
should not decide any actions at Tijuana-San Diego without them.
Decision:
A draft letter to TJ activists--points of unity, include:
-Importance of equal, democratic partnerships between Mexico-US activists
-listen to what TJ activists wants
-Solidarity with San Quintin
-NO to FTAA, NAFTA
-Support EZLN
-Human and civil rights at border
-Yes to immigrant amnesty
-No to ecological devastation of border

III-Outreach committee report
Formally establish outreach work group
Bill: he can talk to Cal State LA anti-globolization and anti-sweatshop folks
for the support.
Siu Hin: he talked to Cal Poly Pomona's MEChA and United Students against
Sweatshop, and they would like to join the mobilization after the new year.
Don: we should also approach to some LA immigrant-based labor organizations,
such as Jerry Acosta from AFL/CIO-Justice for Janitor, United Farm Workers
Union and Juan from One Stop Immigrant. It'll be very logical to ask UFW to
solidarity with San Quintin workers.
John: he'll talk to some media activists in TJ, and he believe we should also
approach to the activists outside Tijuana for support, he suggests we should
contact the student activists from Mexico city campuses, such as Prof. Juan
Manuel Sandoval.
Siu Hin: He suggest LA activists to meet with several TJ activists at the
beginning of January for a Friendship meeting.

Next meeting time: January 6th, 1AM at Peace Center

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------

Dec 29th 6:30 PM, San Francisco, SF FTAA-planning meeting.

*Here's the border actions part of the meeting notes.

Facilitators: Antonia (IFG) & Tony
Notetaker: Elizabeth

I. INTRODUCTIONS
Mike, Public Citizen (Mike D.)
Juliette, Global Exchange
Ben, Turtle Island Telephone
Judith
Elizabeth, Sacramento Activists for Democratic Trade
Mark, Political Ecology Group
Donovan, Peninsula Peace and Justice Center
Sal
Earl, Misc. affiliations
Kalija, U.C. Berkeley
Mike, ISO
Rafael, ISO
Kevin, ISO
Michael
Brooke, Misc. affiliations
Dan, Midnight Special Law Collective
Aaron, MAC, FNB, SEIU
Pascha, CHRIA
Siu Hin, LA-DAN
Jeff, CHRIA
Juan, USA/CUBA INFOMED
Rai, Reclaim the Streets
Marcus, Reclaim the Streets
Tristan, Reclaim the Streets
Herman, Reclaim the Streets
Roman, PGA
Tom Price, ILWU
Robert, ILWU
Scott
Barbara, SOA Watch
Greg, Misc. affiliations
Elaine, Just Act
Starhawk, Misc. affiliations
Suzanne, IFG
Shannon, IFG
Antonia, IFG
Tony

AGENDA:
I-Introductions (25 minutes)
II-Consensus overview (7 minutes)
III-Committee report backs (caravan, outreach, education, action/scenario)(20
minutes)
IV-Discussion of organizing (committees, future meetings)(30 minutes)
V-Break out into committees (30 minutes)
VI-Up Dates on Border Actions
VII-Announcements

III-Committee report backs:
(4) Action/Scenario
Mike D.: We discussed three things. First, we discussed issues re: sending a
Bay Area contingent to Quebec City including logistics, cost, and
transportation. Second, we discussed how to support the border action. Third,
we discussed the action(s) in the Bay Area. In particular, we discussed the
importance of ensuring that the action is Bay Area wide, e.g., including the
Peninsula, the East Bay, etc., as opposed to only an event in downtown S.F.
with puppets. In addition, we also want to make sure the event(s) target
acupressure points- that is, the congressional delegation who will eventually
decide yes or no on the FTAA and fast track, the condition precedent to the
FTAA.

VI-Up Dates on Border Actions:
Siu Hin: He has been making trips to the border region and attended several
border meetings, include Tijuana Globoalphoics and Tucson border summit.
Believes that the good news is that there is support for border action groups
to do actions along the border. The details need to be defined. Believes that
there are also substantial challenges including low levels of trust and
differences in approach to activism amount Mexican and US activists. The
Northern activists have received feedback that their approaches can be
domineering. There is a need to do a great deal of talking in order to build
relationships and discuss how to do joint Mexico-Us border activities.
Meeting is proposed coming up on January 27th in Tijuana

Rafael: This is one of the major things this group should be focusing on b/c
the border is a lot closer than Quebec and b/c of the issues raised.

Juliette: Also attended the Global Phobics conference. There were a lot of
concerns.

--The End--

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From: SIUHIN@...
Date: Sat Dec 23, 2000 2:28 am
Subject: Fwd: Mexico News Summary Dec 15-21, 2000

SIUHIN@...

Send Email

Mexico News Summary Dec 15-21, 2000
Date: 12/22/00 3:38:06 PM Pacific Standard Time
From:Â Â msn@... (Mexico Solidarity Network)

MEXICO SOLIDARITY NETWORK
WEEKLY NEWS SUMMARY
DECEMBER 15-21, 2000

Contents:

1. PopocatÃ©petl volcano erupts outside Mexico City; 30,000
evacuated
2. EZLN autonomous municipalities in Chiapas could become
official: ZebadÃºa
3. Accused EPR prisoners in Oaxaca accept amnesty; six freed
4. Briefs

1. POPOCAPETL ERUPTS; THOUSANDS EVACUATED

Almost exactly six years after it entered into an active phase,
the PopocatÃ©petl stratovolcano, located just sixty kilometers
southeast of Mexico City, erupted on December 18 and 19,
launching a mixture of ash and steam more than four kilometers
into the atmosphere above the 16,000-ft. crater, while glowing
rock was blasted to a radius of 3 kilometers from the volcano.

The National Center for Disaster Prevention (CENAPRED), whose
team of vulcanologists have been monitoring the mountain since
1993, had predicted the possibility of such an eruption and
placed the volcano on an "alert" status several days earlier.
The move prompted authorities to proceed with precautionary
evacuations of 28 communities located on the flanks of the
volcano in the states of Morelos, Mexico, Tlaxcala, and Puebla.

Many inhabitants were reluctant to leave their homes and
animals, partly because similar evacuations in 1994 were chaotic
and resulted in houses of evacuated families being looted.Â Some
residents of San Pedro Nexapa, located within the ten-kilometer
danger zone in the State of Mexico, insisted that the
evacuations were being conducted by PRI governor Arturo Montiel
so that "he and the Japanese can loot the gold and uranium
mines" they insist exist within the volcano.Â Another man in the
town told reporters that while he feared PopocatÃ©petl, he
"feared the government more."

Nevertheless, most reluctant residents changed their minds
during PopocatÃ©petlâ€™s fiery display on the night of December 18.
By the following morning, as the volcano roared with an ash and
rock eruption which lasted more than fourteen hours, more than
30,000 residents had been evacuated by the army, and another ten
thousand were being slowly convinced to leave, although coercive
measure were not used to force the evacuation of those who
wished to remain.

In general, the authorities proved relatively prepared to handle
the situation, and the evacuations were conducted in an orderly
fashion.Â Hundreds of shelters were quickly established which,
apart from a lack of bedframes, managed to accommodate most of
those fleeing the volcano.Â Looting in evacuated communities has
so far been extremely isolated, and in many communities a
handful of elderly residents stayed behind in order to "guard
our property and feed the animals."

What geologists and the CENAPRED officials are most concerned
about is not a lava eruption, but rather the possibility that
the 1000-degree Celsius rocks being tossed out of the crater
could begin to melt PopocatÃ©petlâ€™s glacier overhanging
communities in Morelos and the State of Mexico.Â Such an event
could trigger a potentially devastating avalanche of mud, water,
and ash.

Although the volcano quieted down considerably on December 20,
the CENAPRED and the Interior Ministry insist they are still on
"high alert," and that there is still too much danger for the
residents living around the volcano to return to their homes.

2. EZLN AUTONOMOUS MUNICIPALITIES COULD BECOME OFFICIAL: ZEBADUA

Chiapas state interior minister Emilio ZebadÃºa declared this
week that the autonomous municipalities in Chiapas created by
the rebel Zapatista Army (EZLN) "represent the legitimate
aspirations of peoples and communities who formerly were not
represented," and that therefore "we should try to formalize and
regularize them through constitutional means, with the
participation of the state congress and the existing [official]
local governments, so that they may have the legal validity
which politically they already enjoy in terms of their
representative abilities."

Several days later, on December 19, ZebadÃºa officially abrogated
the creation of seven new municipalities whose existence was
decreed during the past interim government of Roberto Albores.
ZebadÃºa said that apart from being illegal, the new "official"
municipalities were damaging to the peace process, as they had
been created as part of the state counterinsurgency effort to
counter the Zapatista autonomous municipalities.

Also in Chiapas, state government officials said this week that
the first group of Zapatista political prisoners could be freed
before the end of the year with suspended sentences.Â Although
there are more than one hundred Zapatista prisoners in Chiapas
(and two others in Tabasco and QuerÃ©taro), the government has
refused to say how many might be released in the imminent
future.

Meanwhile, with respect to another of the key demands of the
EZLN for the resumption of negotiations with the federal
government â€“ the full military and police withdrawal from seven
specific locations in the conflict zone â€“ Chiapas governor Pablo
Salazar said that his administration "does not intend to be a
step behind the Federation in making decisions," and therefore
would immediately withdraw all state police and security forces
from the seven areas.

Simultaneously, however, Salazar placed all state security
forces on alert due to the approaching anniversaries of the
massacre of Acteal (December 22, 1997) and the Zapatista
uprising (January 1, 1994).

Civilian Zapatista authorities, for their part, denounced this
week that military patrols and harassment of Zapatista
communities have resumed in the canyons of Ocosingo (autonomous
municipality of Francisco GÃ³mez).Â The discourse of President
Vicente Fox is "very pretty," they said, "but the reality is
that the military has not withdrawn from the indigenous
communities in Chiapas as the federal government has said.Â They
only removed the checkpoints for searching inhabitants of the
communities."

3. ACCUSED EPR PRISONERS ACCEPT AMNESTY IN OAXACA

Seventy-five indigenous Zapotecos imprisoned in Oaxaca under
accusations of belonging to the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR)
decided this week to accept an offer of amnesty issued on
December 8 by the state government, although they clarified that
their decision does not mean that they are in fact militants of
the guerrilla group.

"At no time do we accept that we are guilty of the various
crimes of which we are accused, related to the EPR," they said
in a statement, adding that they accepted the terms of the
amnesty only "because the most important thing is human
freedom."

"We are innocent, we do not belong to any armed group," they
said, "and we ask national and international human rights and
civil groups to be alert to make sure this law [of amnesty] is
honored."

Four days later, the first six prisoners were freed under the
amnesty law.Â Again, they insisted that "the amnesty law which
has been applied to us does not prove that we are guilty of the
charges against us, nor does it force us to accept that we
belong to the EPR."Â An additional eleven prisoners were later
granted amnesty on December 21, and it is expected that the rest
will soon follow.

In related news, members of the Revolutionary Democratic
Tendency (EPR-TDR) appeared in the state of Oaxaca this week and
distributed a communiquÃ© demanding the arrest and trial of
former governor DiÃ³doro Carrasco Altamirano (who was also
ex-president Zedilloâ€™s last Interior Minister) for "the
detention, torture, murder, and disappearance of revolutionary
militants and civilian activists."Â The group also demanded the
immediate release of all the prisoners in the state accused of
belonging to the EPR, including those from the Loxicha region
who accepted the offer of amnesty extended by the state
government.

The appearance of the EPR-TDR in Oaxaca comes just one week
after the group held a secret press conference in Guerrero to
formally announce its separation from its parent organization,
the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR).

4. BRIEFS

- The Mexican Chamber of Deputies voted unanimously on December
21 to approve a law criminalizing the practice of "forced
disappearances."Â The law, promoted by human rights activists
such as Rosario Ibarra de Piedra, classifies disappearances
carried out with support of the State and its security forces
(either through commission or omission) as crimes punishable by
up to forty years in prison, although if the victim is released
from clandestine detention alive and within three days, the
punishment is reduced to between eight months and four years in
prison.

- The government of Vicente Fox Quesada decided this week to
lift the expulsion order against US citizen Peter Brown,
expelled from Mexico during the Zedillo administration for his
work with the Schools for Chiapas project.Â In a letter to the
LA JORNADA newspaper published on December 21, Foreign Ministry
spokesperson Juan Ignacio Zavala wrote: "With respect to the
letter published yesterday in the 'letters to the editor'
section, referring to the U.S. teacher Peter Brown, I am happy
to communicate to your readers and to the persons and
institutions who signed that letter that today (December 20) the
Ministry of Foreign Relations, in agreement with the Interior
Ministry, has instructed the consulate in San Diego, California,
to inform Professor Brown as soon as possible that he has
authorization to enter national territory."

- Over the last ten years, the interest payments alone made by
Mexico on its foreign debt amounted to a total of $63.93 billion
dollars, according to reports of the Bank of Mexico and the
Treasury Secretary.Â The quantity is equivalent to 80 percent of
Mexicoâ€™s current total foreign debt of $79.58 billion.Â For the
year 2001, the Fox administration plans to make additional
interest payments of nearly $17 billion, more than three times
the amount spent on debt interest in the year 2000.

- President Vicente Fox confirmed this week that he has ordered
Defense Minister Ricardo Vega GarcÃa to review the cases of
twenty military officers who, led by Lieutenant Colonel
Hildegardo Bacilio, participated in an unauthorized
demonstration, in uniform, in Mexico City two years ago to
demand improvements in the conditions of life for soldiers and
that the army respect human rights.Â All were subsequently
detained and imprisoned in military jails for insubordination,
sedition, conspiracy, and defamation against the army, among
other charges.

______________________________________________________________

SOURCES: Milenio Semanal, La Jornada, Milenio, El Universal, El
Financiero.

This report is a product of the Mexico Solidarity Network.
Redistribution is authorized and encouraged provided that the
source is cited.

Comments: msn@...

This and previous news updates are archived at:
http://www.mexicosolidarity.org

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From: "isbilln" <isbilln@...>
Date: Mon Dec 18, 2000 8:35 pm
Subject: The Rise of Corporate Global Power

isbilln@...

Send Email

This is an incredible report about globalization. Everyone should read this. --Bill Neal

The Rise of Corporate Global Power

Top 200: The Rise of Corporate Global Power
by Sarah Anderson and John Cavanagh of the Institute for Policy Studies

(The complete report with charts is at
http://www.ips-dc.org/top200.htm)
Thanks to Sid Shniad <shniad@...>

The profits of the Top 200 firms grew 362.4 percent, while the number of people they employ grew by only 14.4 percent between 1983 and 1999.

Top 200: The Rise of Corporate Global Power

CONTENTS

KEY FINDINGS
I. INTRODUCTION
II. OVERVIEW OF THE TOP 200
III. POWER OF THE TOP 200
A. ECONOMIC CLOUT
B. POLITICAL CLOUT
IV. CONTRIBUTIONS OF TOP 200
A. JOBS
B. TAXES
V. CONCLUSION

NOTES

Table 1. Changing Profile of the Top 200 (1983-1999)
Table 2. Top 100 Economies (1999)
Table 3. Top 200 (1999)

About the authors

Sarah Anderson is the Director of the Global Economy Project of the Institute for Policy Studies and the co-author (with John Cavanagh and Thea Lee) of Field Guide to the Global Economy (New Press, 2000)

John Cavanagh is the Director of IPS and a former international economist at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

KEY FINDINGS

1. Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations; only 49 are countries (based on a comparison of corporate sales and country GDPs).

2. The Top 200 corporations' sales are growing at a faster rate than overall global economic activity. Between 1983 and 1999, their combined sales grew from the equivalent of 25.0 percent to 27.5 percent of World GDP.

3. The Top 200 corporations' combined sales are bigger than the combined economies of all countries minus the biggest 10.

4. The Top 200s' combined sales are 18 times the size of the combined annual income of the 1.2 billion people (24 percent of the total world population) living in "severe" poverty.

5. While the sales of the Top 200 are the equivalent of 27.5 percent of world economic activity, they employ only 0.78 percent of the world's workforce.

6. Between 1983 and 1999, the profits of the Top 200 firms grew 362.4 percent, while the number of people they employ grew by only 14.4 percent.

7. A full 5 percent of the Top 200s' combined workforce is employed by Wal-Mart, a company notorious for union-busting and widespread use of part-time workers to avoid paying benefits. The discount retail giant is the top private employer in the world, with 1,140,000 workers, more than twice as many as No. 2, DaimlerChrysler, which employs 466,938.

8. U.S. corporations dominate the Top 200, with 82 slots (41 percent of the total). Japanese firms are second, with only 41 slots.

9. Of the U.S. corporations on the list, 44 did not pay the full standard 35 percent federal corpo-rate tax rate during the period 1996-1998. Seven of the firms actually paid less than zero in federal income taxes in 1998 (because of rebates). These include: Texaco, Chevron, PepsiCo, Enron, Worldcom, McKesson and the world's biggest corporation-General Motors.

10. Between 1983 and 1999, the share of total sales of the Top 200 made up by service sector corporations increased from 33.8 percent to 46.7 percent. Gains were particularly evident in financial services and telecommunications sectors, in which most countries have pursued deregulation.

I. INTRODUCTION

In 1952, General Motors CEO Charles Wilson made the famous statement that "What is good for General Motors is good for the country."1 During the past decade and a half, General Motors and other global corporations have obtained much of what they claimed was good for them. They have succeeded in obtaining trade and investment liberalization policies that provide global firms considerable new freedoms to pursue profits internationally. They have also persuaded governments to take a generally hands-off approach to corporate monopolies, claiming that mega-mergers are needed for firms to compete in global markets.

This study examines the economic and political power of the world's top 200 corporations.2 Led by General Motors, these are the firms that are driving the process of corporate globalization and arguably benefiting the most from it. The report then examines the extent to which these firms are fulfilling the second half of Charles Wilson's promise by providing "what's good for the country" and global society in general. The conclusion of our analysis is that widespread trade and investment liberalization have contributed to a climate in which dominant corporations are enjoying increasing levels of economic and political clout that are out of balance with the tangible benefits they provide to society.

The study reinforces a strong public distrust of the economic and political power of corporations. In September 2000, Business Week magazine released a Business Week/Harris Poll which showed that between 72 and 82 percent of Americans agree that "Business has gained too much power over too many aspects of American life."3 In the same poll, 74 percent of Americans agreed with Vice President Al Gore's criticism of "a wide range of large corporations, including 'big tobacco, big oil, the big polluters, the pharmaceutical companies, the HMOs.'" And, 74-82 percent agreed that big companies have too much influence over "government policy, politicians, and policy-makers in Washington."

II. OVERVIEW OF THE TOP 200

U.S. firms lead the pack

Top U.S. firms faced stiff competition from Japanese corporations throughout much of the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1995, Japanese and U.S. firms were nearly tied in the number of corporations on the Top 200 list, with 58 and 59, respectively. Because the Japanese economy has been in stagnation for nearly a decade, U.S. corporations are once again dominant, comprising 41 percent of the Top 200 in 1999. The countries with the most corporations on the Top 200 list are the United States (82), Japan (41), Germany (20), and France (17) (see Table 1).

Fewer firms outside the industrial giants

In 1999, South Korea was the only country with a corporation on the Top 200 list outside North America, Japan, and Europe. In 1983, Brazil, Israel, South Africa, and India also had firms on the list. The merger boom of the past two decades, particularly among U.S. firms but also in Europe, has further concentrated economic power in companies based in the leading industrial economies. For example, two of the top five firms in 1999 were the products of megamergers: Exxon Mobil (No. 2) and DaimlerChrysler (No. 5).

Services on the rise

The types of firms in the Top 200 also reflect trends in the global economy. During the past decade and a half, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have promoted reforms to lift controls on investment in banking, telecommunications, and other services, opening new markets for the global giants in these sectors. Hence, the former dominance of manufacturing and natural resource-based corporations among the Top 200 has eroded. Between 1983 and 1999, the share of total sales of the Top 200 made up by service corporations increased from 33.8 percent to 46.7 percent. One major firm, General Electric, helped bolster the service sector component
of the list. While GE is best known for appliances, its financial services division has grown so large (at least half of sales) that the company has shifted from the manufacturing to the services category.

Concentration

In 1999, more than half the sales of the Top 200 were in just 4 economic sectors: financial services (14.5 percent), motor vehicles and parts (12.7 percent), insurance (12.4 percent), and retailing/ wholesaling (11.3 percent). 2

Stability at the top

Despite some noteworthy shifts, more than half of the firms that were on the Top 200 list in 1983 made the cut again in 1999. Returnees totaled 103, although in 25 cases they were listed under a different name, due to mergers, spin-offs, and name changes. The most stunning ascendance among the Top 200 firms is that of Wal-Mart. In 1983, the retail giant's sales were $4.7 billion –far below the Top 200 threshold. By 1999, they had climbed to $166.8 billion, making Wal-Mart the second largest firm in the world.

III. POWER OF THE TOP 200

A.ECONOMIC CLOUT

Top 200 vs. Countries

Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations; only 49 are countries (based on a comparison of corporate sales and country GDPs) (See Table 2). To put this in perspective, General Motors is now bigger than Denmark; DaimlerChrysler is bigger than Poland; Royal Dutch/Shell is bigger than Venezuela; IBM is bigger than Singapore; and Sony is bigger than Pakistan.

The 1999 sales of each of the top five corporations (General Motors, Wal-Mart, Exxon Mobil, Ford Motor, and DaimlerChrysler) are bigger than the GDP's of 182 countries.

The Top 200 corporations' combined sales are bigger than the combined economies of all countries minus the biggest 10. 4

Top 200 growing faster than rest of the world

The Top 200 corporations' sales are growing at a faster rate than overall global economic activity. Between 1983 and 1999, their combined sales grew from the equivalent of 25.0% to 27.5% of World GDP.

Top 200 vs. The World's Poorest

The economic clout of the Top 200 is particularly staggering compared to that of the poorest segment of the world's humanity. The Top 200s' combined sales are 18 times the size of the combined annual income of the 1.2 billion people (24 percent of the total world population) living in "severe" poverty (defined by the World Bank as those surviving on less than $1 per day).

B POLITICAL CLOUT

Campaign contributions

The 82 U.S. companies on the Top 200 list made contributions to 2000 election campaigns through political action committees (not including soft money donations) that totaled $33,045,832. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, corporations in general outspent labor unions by a ratio of about 15-to-1. The group also found that candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives who outspent their opponents were victorious in 94 percent of their races. Unfortunately, campaign contribution data for non-U.S. firms is not available.

Lobbying

Of course global corporations also spend massive amounts each year influencing the political system through lobbying. The exact amount spent on these activities is not known, but of the Top 200 firms, 94 maintain "government relations" offices located on or within a few blocks of the lobbying capital of the world -Washington, DC's K Street Corridor.

USTR Inc.

Campaign contributions and lobbying are only the most visible example of corporate political clout. For example, officials with the U.S. Trade Representative's (USTR) Office, who are responsible for negotiating international trade and investment agreements, routinely state that their primary responsibility is to represent the interests of U.S. industry, rather than all Americans affected by trade deals. This in spite of the fact that the USTR, upon its creation in 1960, was deliberately placed in the White House, rather than the Commerce Department, in order to prevent it from being overly influenced by business interests. In addition, trade negotiators are required to meet with nongovernmental advisory committees, but these are overwhelmingly dominated by representatives of large corporations. Recently, the U.S. government went a step further and allowed representatives from corporations such as AT&T and IBM to join the official delegation in hemispheric talks on electronic commerce in the Free Trade Area of the Americas, which is due to be finalized by 2005.

Transparency

The political influence of top firms is also evident in the scarcity of publicly available information on their activities. Leading corporations have fiercely opposed attempts to require them to achieve a higher level of transparency. Just a few examples of information that U.S. firms are not required to reveal to the American public:

. a breakdown of their employees by country
. toxic emissions at overseas plants
. locations of overseas plants or contractors
. wage rates at overseas facilities
. layoffs and the reasons for layoffs

In most cases, collecting company-specific data in countries outside the United States is even more difficult.

IV. CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE TOP 200

This section looks at the contributions the Top 200 corporations make to society in terms of jobs and taxes. This is not to deny that these firms may influence our lives in many other ways. Particularly in the United States and other rich nations, it is difficult to go through a day without direct contact with many of these companies, whether you are watching a movie, shopping in a super-market, driving a car, or depositing a check.

Nevertheless, given their extreme levels of economic and political power, it is important to take a hard look at whether these corporate giants are indeed upholding their end of the social compact. The corporations themselves, when lobbying for policies to lift barriers to trade and investment, have promised that they will lead not only to improved consumer goods and services but also to significant job creation and an overall improvement in social welfare. It seems only fair that the public should be able to expect-at a minimum-that these colossal firms be major providers of employment opportunities and that they bear their share of the tax burden.

A. JOBS

Sales vs. Workers

While the sales of the Top 200 are the equivalent of 27.5% of world economic activity, these firms employ only a tiny fraction of the world's workers. In 1999, they employed a combined total of 22,682,166 workers, which is 0.78% of the world's workforce.

Profit vs. Employment Growth

Between 1983 and 1999, the number of people employed by Top 200 firms grew 14.4%, an increase that is dwarfed by the firms' 362.4% profit growth over this period.

Corporate analysts may see the dramatic increase in the ratio between profits and employees as a positive sign of increased efficiency. The growing gap between profits and payrolls is at least partly the result of technological changes that has allowed firms to produce more with less people. Automation is not always a negative development, especially in the case of jobs that are dangerous or otherwise undesirable. However, another factor is the trend towards outsourcing, particularly among large industrial firms. By shifting more and more of their production to contractors, companies can distance themselves from potential charges of labor rights abuses and other illegal behavior and keep labor costs low by forcing contractors to compete for business with an ever smaller number of giant purchasers. The giant firms also have more freedom to hire and fire contractors to meet shifting demand. U.S. corporations have been at the forefront of this trend.

Chrysler (known as DaimlerChrsyler since the merger with Daimler Benz), for example, purchases almost all of its parts, from brakes to seats, from suppliers. Hewlett-Packard relies on 10 different contractors and IBM relies on 8 to make their products. In recent years, Japanese electronics firms, including Mitsubishi, NEC, Fujitsu, and Sony, have also begun to outsource.

Still, Americans may be less concerned about the growing gap between profits and employees because of the country's record low unemployment rate. What is often ignored in the mainstream media is the fact that unemployment problems remain prevalent elsewhere in the world, including in many countries where the Top 200 firms are enjoying strong profits. (U.S. firms overall earned 19 percent of their profits overseas in 1995).5 In the European Union, the 1999 unemployment rate was 10 percent, compared to 4.2 percent in the United States.6 The International Labor Organization estimates that one billion people worldwide are unemployed or underemployed.7 Joblessness around the world hurts the United States because it reduces the capacity of consumers in other countries to purchase U.S. products and can lead to social instability that has international ramifications.

Wal-Mart Workers

A full 5 percent of the Top 200s' combined workforce is comprised of Wal-Mart employees. The discount retail giant's workforce has skyrocketed from 62,000 in 1983 to 1,140,000 in 1999, making it the largest private employer in the world. The next largest, DaimlerChrysler, has a workforce of 466,938-less than half the size of Wal-Mart's. Although Wal-Mart is indeed providing many new jobs, the company is notorious for its strategy of employing armies of workers on a part-time basis to avoid paying benefits. The firm is also adamantly anti-union. In March, Wal-Mart announced it was closing the meat department in 180 stores two weeks after the meat cutters at one Texas store voted to form a union - the first successful organizing drive at an American Wal-Mart.

B TAXES

Not too big to hide from tax collectors

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) recently released a study of federal tax rates paid by several hundred major, profitable U.S. corporations. Forty-four of the U.S. corporations on the Top 200 list were included in the study, which revealed that not a single one of them had paid the full standard 35 percent corporate tax rate during the period 1996-1998. Seven of the firms had actually paid less than zero in federal income taxes in 1998, because they received rebates that exceeded the amount of taxes they paid. These include: Texaco, Chevron, PepsiCo, Enron, Worldcom, McKesson and the world's biggest corporation-General Motors.8 According to ITEP, companies use a variety of means to lower their federal income taxes, including tax credits for activities like research and oil drilling and accelerated depreciation write-offs.

Tax Avoidance Internationally

While company-specific data on tax avoidance outside the United States does not exist, the trend towards lower corporate tax burdens is also evident internationally. According to the OECD, over the past two decades the share of total taxes made up by corporate income tax in the industrialized OECD countries has remained about 8 percent, despite strong increases in corporate profits. The organization attributes this decline in tax rates to the use of "tax havens" and intense competition among industrialized countries as they attempt to lure investment by offering lower taxes.9

V. CONCLUSION

As citizen movements the world over launch activities to counter aspects of economic globalization, the growing power of private corporations is becoming a central issue. The main beneficiaries of the market-opening policies of the major multilateral institutions over the past decade and a half are these large corporations, especially the top 200.

This growing private power has enormous economic consequences, spelled out in this report. However, the greatest impact may be political, as corporations transform economic clout into political power. As a result, democracy is undermined. This threat deserves to be one of the major issues on the political agenda in the United States and overseas. 7

NOTES

1. Testimony before Senate Armed Forces Committee, 1952.
2. Corporations are ranked by sales, based on data from Fortune, July 31, 2000.
3. Aaron Bernstein, "Too Much Corporate Power?" Business Week, September 11, 2000. Note: In June 2000, 82 percent of those polled strongly or somewhat agreed to this statement; in September 2000, the figure was 72 percent.
4. Note: Calculated using GDP data from the World Bank, World Development Report 2000, Table 12, p. 296-297. This table includes 131 countries and excludes 74 additional economies that have sparse data or populations of less than 1.5 million.
5. Business Roundtable web site, citing figures from the U.S. Department of Commerce and Price Waterhouse.
6. OECD, Standardized Unemployment Rates (www.oecd.org).
7. ILO, World Labour Report 2000 (Geneva: International Labor Organization, June 2000). 8 Based on a study of 250 large U.S. corporations conducted by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Washington, DC, October 19, 2000. 9 OECD, "A World of Taxes," July 7, 2000, on the OECD web site:
http://www.oecd.org.

Institute for Policy Studies
733 15th St. NW, #1020
Washington, DC 20005
tel: 202/234-9382, fax: 202/387-7915
http://www.ips-dc.org
saraha@...

(Six pages of charts not included in this message.
The complete report, with charts, is at
http://www.ips-dc.org/top200.htm)

..........................................…………………………
Liberate democracy from corporate control
Bob Olsen, Toronto bobolsen@...

---------------------------- ftaa-l -----------------------------
resisting the FTAA and capitalist globalization
mobilizing for Quebec City, April 2001
creating alternatives

Reply | Forward | Messages in this Topic (1)

From: SIUHIN@...
Date: Sun Dec 17, 2000 5:17 am
Subject: Fwd: ActivistSanDiego Newsletter 12/14-12/20

SIUHIN@...

Send Email

Dear all border activists:

Here's the latest newsletter from ActivistSanDiego, a San Diego based
activist organization. I forward this and hope the upcoming Border
mobilization can be a communication/solidarity point for border activists
from California-Baja California to Texas-Tamamulipas.

In solidarity!

Lee Siu Hin

ASD Newsletter 12/14-12/20 ActivistSanDiego
Date: 12/16/00 9:57:00 PM Pacific Standard Time
From: ActivistSD-owner@... (Activist San Diego)

Activist San Diego - http://www.activistsandiego.org

[] <>>><><><><><><><><*><><><><><><><><><<<> []

ACTIVIST SAN DIEGO NEWSLETTER
Building a Network for Social Justice
December 14-20, 2000

[] <>>><><><><><><><><*><><><><><><><><><<<> []

ASD contacts: Steph 619-237-5496, Tanja 858-459-4650

CONTENTS:
* Activist San Diego News
* Featured Activist Events of the Week
* Featured WEB sites of the week on twisted ELECTIONS

<><<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
ACTIVIST SAN DIEGO NEWS

MARTIN EDER IN COLOMBIA - ASD director Martin Eder is currently visiting
Colombia, where he grew up. He will be investigating the war there and
the impact of U.S. aid and "Plan Colombia." He will report back to the
community upon his return to San Diego early next year. The Committee for
Solidarity in the Americas will sponsor his report-back, tentatively
scheduled for Friday, January 12, at Casa del Libro bookstore in
Hillcrest. For more information, call Enrique Davalos at (619) 216-0095
or by email at endavalos@...

A BIG WELCOME TO OUR NEW BOARD MEMBERS - Sherry Wright, Humberto Tessada,
Jeanne Ertle, and Stephanie Jennings were recently elected to join the
Board of Activist San Diego. Each one of them brings special talents and
experience to the ASD Board and we already feel more solid for their
presence. We thank them for taking on this commitment and we look forward
to the significant contributions they will be (and already are) making.

MAKE A CHRISTAS GIFT TO YOUR COMMUNITY - Make a year-end tax-deductible
donation to Activist San Diego: You and 1000 people receive this
newsletter every week, yet only 100 have sent in a donation to support
this social justice networking cause. Now is the time. Help insure a
prosperous and progressive New Year.
Send your tax-deductible contribution to Activist San Diego, PO BOX 33555
San Diego, CA 92163-3555 or contact Tanja at tanja@... or
(858)459-4650.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE - The Energy Rally which took place in San Diego in
late November will be seen on ABC's Nightline Tuesday Night, December 19.
What will Ted Koppel say about our puppets?

LA RAZA LEADER TO RUN FOR CITY COUNCIL - Calaca Press poet to run for City
Council San Diego, CalifasCalaca Press poet Christian Ramirez has decided
to run for City Council in next year's special election. Christian's
poetry appeared on volume 1 of the Raza Spoken Here CD series that was
produced by Calaca in 1999.
For a sample of his poetry visit the Calaca Press website:
http://www.calacapress.com (Click on Calaqueros and then click on
Christian Ramirez.)
Below is a brief article from the San Diego Union-Tribune.
http://www.uniontrib.com/news/metro/20001209-9999_7m9briefs.html

600 ACTIVISTS ATTEND BORDER SUMMIT - Immigrant rights groups in Tucson,
Arizona hosted a large gathering of human rights activist from around the
United States and Mexico to address the issues of immigrant rights, the
militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border and globalization. Unanimous
consent was given to a proposal for one day of coordinated actions at all
ports of entry on the U.S.-Mexico border with the idea of shutting down
the border and calling for an end to the militarization of the border.
Roberto Martinez of the American Friends Service Committee and Claudia
Smith of California Rural Legal Assistance were among the conference
speakers. ASD Board member Gerry Condon represented the Committee for
Solidarity in the Americas at the conference. He is quoted in the Arizona
Star's report on the Border Summit.
http://www.azstarnet.com/star/mon/001211border.html

======================================
GET READY FOR THE PEOPLE'S INAGURUGAL BALL, SATURDAY, JANUARY 20
Why be miserable because you were not invited to the $5000 per person (per
corporate person)inaugural ball in Wash. DC, when you can party with
progressives? Join Activist San Diego at a gala event with music by the
Revelations and others. Come enjoy the culture, live dance music, food
and more. HELP US ORGANIZE THE FESTIVITIES: Contact Tanja Winter at
tanja@... or(858) 459-4650 or Stephanie Jennings sjagitator@...
or (619)237-8870.
http://www.ActivistSanDiego.org/what/ball.html

GOT TECHNICAL WEB SKILLS? Why not join the ACTIVIST WEB - TECH TEAM.
Learn while you give a hand. ASD's local web administrator Bodhi Nadler
could use some help. bodhitech@...

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

HELP now! ASD needs DONATIONS AND SUPPORT to enrich an activist presence
in San Diego... Join, become a member. Give a sustaining contribution and
help our cause grow. If you would like to help support ASD projects please
send contributions (payable to Activist San Diego) to: PO BOX 33555 San
Diego, CA 92163-3555 or tanja@... Tanja @(858)459-4650

<><<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
FEATURED ACTIVIST EVENTS OF THE WEEK:
<><<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

We regret that the Activist San Diego newsletter is actually being
published this week after the following events have occurred. We
encourage interested persons to contact the organizations below to
participate in ongoing organizing for justice for all peoples on both side
of our militarized border.

1) Saturday December 16, 2000 @ 3:00- 6:00 PM, A Beautiful annual event!
La Posada without borders / sin fronteras. Friends from Tijuana and San
Diego will come together on either side of the border fence to celebrate
Christmas with friendship, candles and song. In San Diego: Border Field
State Park, San Ysidro. In Tijuana: Playas de Tijuana. Bring candles.
Dress warmly. (619) 233-4114 afscilemp@... WEBSITE
www.afsc.org/posada.htm

2) Will homophobic Boy Scouts get another 50-year lease in Balboa Park?
City Council took public testimony on whether. Please help us make our
voices heard! You can view the docket online on city's website
www.sannet.gov. Email a comment to your council member. The Boys Scouts
exclude and discriminate against gays scouts and scout masters. Contact
ASAP: bankhead@...

3) Posada in solidarity with the struggle of Leymex workers. (See
information about this struggle below.) You are invited to eat tamales,
drink atole and break a pin~ata. Please bring a present for solidarity
with the workers of Leymex.(Provisions--beans, rice, caned food, or money)

Where: Dec. 15, Friday, 5 pm
Where: Factor X: Junipero Sierra 14364-1, Tijuana

Directions: In Tijuana, take Blv. Agua Caliente to the corner known as "5
y 10." Turn right and go five block to Junipero Serra. (There is a Oxxo
store on the corner). Factor X office is right behind Oxxo. Phone number
011-52(66) 22-4217

4) Meeting of the Committees of the Network of the Globalphobics
Proposal of agenda: Report of the Delegation to San Quintin, Information
about Leymex, Information about April 2001 actions against the injustices
of globalization, organizing against the Free Trade Agreement of the
Americas (FTAA), the expansion of NAFTA, and organization of the
cross-border network.

MEETING IN TIJUANA: Dec. 15, Friday, 3 pm, Factor X: Junipero Sierra
14364-1, Tijuana. Directions: See point 3.

5) Globalphobics: MEETING IN SAN DIEGO: December 16, Saturday, 10 am, San
Diego City College, Room A-214, San Diego downtown. For more information
on this vital organizing, contact Enrique Davalos at (619) 216-0095 or by
email at endavalos@....

<><<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
YOU CAN ADD YOUR OWN ACTION ALERTS AND "WHAT'S HAPPENING" by clicking at
the BOTTOM of those pages. It is automated and easy, even for computer
novices. contact Steph @ 619-237-5496 if you need help doing it the first
time.
<><<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

ACTIVIST CALENDAR: http://www.calendars.net:8212/asd
Many, important events are being listed on the calendar. See the postings
on ASD's Calendar. You and your non-profit organization can post onto the
main calendar. Look for "Add Events" at the bottom of each calendar page.
There are now new student calendars to add to the mix. Especially check
our SDSU's.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

~ FEATURED WEBSITES OF THE WEEK ~

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

ALTERNATIVE VIEWS ON THE ELECTIONS!

THINK SOMEONE STOLE THE ELECTION? - You'll find plenty of ammunition at
Salon.com, with a bunch of very interesting articles about the fraud in
Florida.
http://www.salon.com/directory/topics/florida/index.html

DEMOCRACY NOW! is on ASD's home page. - Listen
http://www.webactive.com/pacifica/demnow.html

FBI DEMONSTRATES AGAINST CLEMENCY FOR LEONARD PELTIER! Read about that,
and other travesties, at the multimedia Independent Media Center.
http://www.indymedia.org/

THE INDEPENDENT PRESS LIVES! - For proof, and a listing of many
progressive publications, check out http://www.indypress.org/

For December the ZNet (http://www.zmag.org) Daily Commentaries, ordinarily
available only to ZNet Sustainers, are also being sent to all 44,000 ZNet
Free Update recipients.

CHOOSE TOYS THAT TEACH PEACE! TRUCE posts the annual Toy Action Guide on
their website and encourages anyone who is interested to download it,
copy it, and circulate it as broadly as possible.
http://www.wheelock.edu/truce/

CRAIGS LIST- San Diego: A San Francisco non-corporate solution to us
buying and selling to each other. http://www.craigslist.org/sdo/
where you can submit your need or item for FREE!

WORKING ASSETS BROADCASTING Progressive news, intelligent talk, and
alternative viewpoints 24 hours a day in RealAudio.
http://www.webactive.com/wab/

CHECK IT OUT! WorldBeat Center's 24-hour Internet TV Station. Watch the
best in World Music Videos http://www.Oneworldradiotv.com

See Activists from Greenpeace, wearing chicken, cow and sheep masks,
gathered outside the meeting around a feeding trough full of corn and
displayed a banner reading, "EPA: Don't Test Gene-Altered Corn on Us."
http://www.truefoodnow.org/inside_scoop/index.html

HAVE AN ITEM YOU'D LIKE TO SEE IN THE NEXT NEWSLETTER?
Send it to us at info@...

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
Think Globally, Act Locally AND Globally

Adios until next time. Live well and do something extraordinary.

Reply | Forward | Messages in this Topic (1)

From: SIUHIN@...
Date: Fri Dec 15, 2000 6:43 am
Subject: LA Area planning meeting-Sat Dec 16th 1 PM @ Peace Center

SIUHIN@...

Send Email

*2001 Border Actions Committee
*Mexico-US Border Mass Mobilization
--LA Area Planning Meeting, and Report Back from Tucson--

Date: Saturday 1 PM December 16th
Where: LA Peace Center, 8124 W. Third St., LA
For more information, contact:
Lee Siu Hin, tel: (626)403-2530
e-mail: borderactions@...

Dear all border activists:

Last week we had a successful meeting at Border Summit in Tucson, AZ, many of
the 600 participants are interest to call for mass border mobolization next
spring (see the enclosed news article).

Time is coming, let's get together for the border mobilization planning
coming Saturday at LA Peace Center!

Agenda:
1. Report back from Tucson Border Summit, and San Quintin farmer meeting
2. Border mobilization planning, and
3. If we have enough people, beginning to form work group

In solidarity!

Lee Siu Hin
2001 Border Actions Committee
---------------------------------------------------------
Mexico-US Border Mass Mobilization
LIBERATE THE BORDER,
NO MORE BLOCKADES!
Spring - Summer 2001
Tijuana - San Diego, and beyond...
---------------------------------------------------------
Tel: (626)403-2530
e-mail: BorderActions@...
http://www.actionla.org/border.htm

Please Subscribe the Border01 List Group!
Send e-mail to:
Border01-subscribe@egroups.com

Activists urge border solutions
Tucson, Arizona  Monday, 11 December 2000
By Tim Steller and Ignacio Ibarra
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

More than 600 activists from around the United States and Mexico found broad
agreement during a weekend conference in Tucson that the border region must
be de-militarized, immigration laws reformed and economic globalization
humanized.
The upshot, organizers said, is that broad sentiment for these reforms has
coalesced.

"It looks like a whole movement coming up," said Gerry Condon of San Diego's
Committee for Solidarity in the Americas.

Among the ideas emerging from the two-day conference at the Inn Suites
Hotels, 475 N. Granada Ave., is that the movement consummate in a "binational
day of action."

"We're talking about closing down the border for one day," said Isabel Garcia
of Tucson's Coalición de Derechos Humanos, or Arizona Border Rights Project,
the primary conference sponsor.

While the attendance surpassed expectations, two of those who missed the
conference were the scheduled keynote speakers. Labor organizer Dolores
Huerta was ill and unable to attend, while U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill.,
bowed out due to commitments in Washington, D.C., Garcia said.

Those attending focused on three interrelated issues that have be-come
evident in Arizona as Mexican migration reached record levels over the last
two years: militarization, immigration laws and economic globalization.

Globalization of the world economy has uprooted people worldwide to seek work
in other countries, and the Mexican-U.S. experience is just one example of
that phenomenon, said Sasha Khokha of the National Network for Immigrant and
Refugee Rights in Oakland, Calif. In the United States, the response has been
to militarize the border by adding Border Patrol agents and to pass stricter
immigration laws.
"Any solution to the immigration problem must take globalization into
account," Khokha said.

Mexico, too, is militarizing its border region, said Victor Clark Alfaro of
the Binational Human Rights Center in Tijuana. While Americans have
celebrated President Vicente Fox's assumption of power, he has shown signs of
continuing the militarization, Clark said.

Among his recent Cabinet appointments was Army Gen. Rafael Macedo as the top
civilian law-enforcement official, the attorney general.

"The enthusiasm for Fox surprises me," Clark said.

The presence of Mexican soldiers and Border Patrol agents has been especially
hard on the Tohono O'odham people, said Henry Ramon, the nation's vice
chairman. They have seen their own people become officially "undocumented" on
their own ancestral lands.

"My dream for the border is to end the military occupation of our land, both
in the United States and Mexico," he said.

* Contact Tim Steller at 573-4086 or at steller@.... Contact
Ignacio Ibarra at (520) 432-2766 or at nacho@....

Reply | Forward | Messages in this Topic (1)

From: "Juan Reardon" <jreardon@...>
Date: Thu Dec 14, 2000 8:25 pm
Subject: NY Times 12/14/00 : Fox & the Border

jreardon@...

Send Email

Fellow Border Activists:

An article in today's NY Times
by Tim Weiner, states:

"Mexico Chief Pushes New Border Policy: Free and Easy Does it".
The author makes reference to a "larger vision" of the border
by Vicente Fox's. This would be one in which "the border will not
longer be a barrier, fortified by armed guards, but a mere line on a
map dividing two partners in a common market..."

If the author is interpreting correctly Fox's vision , there
might be in the newly introduced Mexican administration some
political space to acommodate (or at least not to interfere with)
sectors of its own citizenry mobilizing at the border against the
deaths, abuses, and violations of human rights that are currently
taking place. This would be advantageous for a binational
send-a-message effort with strong popular participation on both
sides of the border.

Hopefully compan~eros from Mexico can explore further this aspect.

In solidarity,

Juan Reardon

Reply | Forward | Messages in this Topic (1)

From: SIUHIN@...
Date: Thu Dec 14, 2000 4:46 am
Subject: FNS Border News: The Story that Wasn't? Ciudad Juárez's Narcograves

SIUHIN@...

Send Email

Mexico-US Border Mass Mobilization
LIBERATE THE BORDER,
NO MORE BLOCKADES!
Spring - summer 2001
Tijuana - San Diego, and beyond...

*FNS is an outreach program of the Center for Latin American Studies at New
Mexico State University at Las Cruces, New Mexico. They have a great source
of information about current border events and I will periodically post their
news, if you want to subscribe to their free news service, please visit:
http://www.nmsu.edu/~frontera/

Lee Siu Hin
---------------------------------------------------------
Tel: (626)403-2530
e-mail: BorderActions@...
http://www.actionla.org/border.htm

Please Subscribe the Border01 List Group!
Send e-mail to:
Border01-subscribe@egroups.com

FNS: The Story that Wasn't? Ciudad Juárez's Narcograves
Date: 12/11/00 8:59:56 AM Pacific Standard Time
From: frontera@... (Frontera)

December 11, 2000
The Story that Wasn't? Ciudad Juárez's Narcograves As if Ciudad Juárez's
border-town reputation was not bad enough because of media attention to the
disappearance of hundreds of young women over the past five years, the
breaking of the narcograves story on November 29, 1999 brought reporters from
around the world streaming into the city. The same day that the media seized
on the news, Alvaro Cruz, FBI spokesperson, announced that his organization
was part of a joint operation with the Mexican Army and the Mexican Attorney
General's Office (Procuraduría General de la República, PGR) to investigate
several sites around Cd. Juárez where human remains had been found. Alvaro
Cruz would not dismiss the possibility that perhaps hundreds of bodies would
be found, allegedly victims of the Juárez-Carrillo Fuente drug cartel. Other
significant details of the story were that investigating officials believed
that both US and Mexican victims would turn up in the graves. The FBI was
needed on humanitarian grounds, according to Alvaro Cruz, because its experts
had the resources to identify the bodies. Jorge Madrazo Cuéllar, Attorney
General of México, said that some of his own men from the PGR, that served on
the border between 1994 and 1996, may have been responsible for some of the
disappearances. The press, and the public, seemed all too ready to believe
that Cd. Juárez would be just the place for such horrors to take place. In
the end nine bodies were found on three of the narcoranches, six of the
bodies have been identified. In the second week of May, 2000, José Trinidad
Larrieta Carrasco of the Organized Crime Unit (Unidad Especializada en
Delincuencia Organizada, UEDO), said that six of the nine bodies found on the
ranches had been clearly identified. At a press conference before Mexican and
international media Trinidad identified the known victims: Raúl Alarcón
Sánchez, Mexican, a Cd. Juárez resident who disappeared May 3, 1995. He died
from knife wounds to the abdomen and neck. Ignacio del Real Fierro, Mexican,
an El Paso resident, identified by family members and three pieces of
identification found in his clothes. He was a friend of Raúl Alarcón, above,
but died from a gunshot wound to the head. Marcelo Javier Aguilar Molina, US
citizen, disappeared in April, 1995. Died from knife wounds to neck and
abdomen. Guillermo Jesús Rojo, US citizen. Died from knife wounds. Jesús
Alonso Provencio, US citizen, identified by his mother, last seen by her
April 17, 1995. Died from knife wounds. In the Santa Rosalía ranch two bodies
were found and one was identified as the lawyer Antonio Tarazón Navarro,
Mexican. Authorities are still investigating if perhaps Tarazón had
represented one or two of the other victims. He disappeared in February,
1995, according to his wife and his sister. He was identified via DNA
testing. He died of gunshot wounds to the neck and face. At the third site,
in the Granjas Santa Elena neighborhood, at an address without a street
number at the corner of Abeto and Olivo streets, a ninth and still
unidentified body was found. In July, 2000, the second victim from the Santa
Rosalía ranch was identified as Castor Alberto Ochoa Soto, Colombian. Tarazón
was his lawyer and they had been buried together. Ochoa and Tarazón were
disappeared together after crossing the Paso del Norte-Santa Fe bridge into
Cd. Juárez. They were kidnapped at the base of the bridge, in the light of
day, by Federal Judicial Police (PJF) in blue Suburbans at approximately
11:00 a.m. on February 15, 1995. Four days earlier Ochoa had been freed by an
El Paso judge after Ochoa had been accused of importing six tons of cocaine
into the US. Ochoa was the nephew of the recently arrested head of the
Medellín drug cartel, Fabián Ochoa. Ochoa's body is still unburied in Cd.
Juárez waiting to be claimed by family. Source: El Norte, November 27, 2000.
Article by Carlos Huerta. --
Frontera NorteSur
On-line news coverage of the US-Mexico border
To see our site or subscribe for free to our daily news service go to:
http://www.nmsu.edu/~frontera/

Reply | Forward | Messages in this Topic (1)

From: SIUHIN@...
Date: Wed Dec 13, 2000 1:08 pm
Subject: Fwd: FNS: US Field Burns and Pesticide Spraying Contaminate Air over Méxical...

SIUHIN@...

Send Email

December 13, 2000
US Field Burns and Pesticide Spraying Contaminate Air over Méxicali and Calexico

Fernando Medina, director of the Méxicali environmental group Comité Cívico de Divulgación Ecológica, stated that agricultural burns on the US side of the Imperial Valley affect Méxicali air quality because the prevailing winds in the region are from north to south. In recent days, he said, it has been evident that smoke from the US has crossed the border to contaminate the air over Méxicali.

Medina says that this phenomena occurs every year and will continue to do so until Mexican authorities decide to take action. Children are most affected by the increased level of air pollutants.

In addition to problems with smoke, Méxicali citizens that live along Calle Colón are oversprayed with pesticide by planes spraying Calexico fields. Medina hopes that recent, preliminary actions taken by Mexico will help to resolve some of these issues.

Source: La Crónica, December 8, 2000. Article by César Angulo.

--
Frontera NorteSur
On-line news coverage of the US-Mexico border
To see our site or subscribe for free to our daily news service go to:
http://www.nmsu.edu/~frontera/

FNS is an outreach program of the Center for Latin American Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico
Email address: frontera@...
(505) 646-6817

Reply | Forward | Messages in this Topic (1)

From: "Juan Reardon" <jreardon@...>
Date: Wed Dec 13, 2000 5:27 pm
Subject: A Statement of the U.S. Catholic Bishops from 11/15/00

jreardon@...

Send Email

Fellow border activists:

This document provides significant foundations
for a close working relation with the catholic church
in the struggle ahead. The full document can be found
at   http://www.nccbuscc.org/mrs/unity.htm
I'm including here one section called: The Call to Solidarity.

How can we go from this statement to an active massive participation
by this sector of the feith community? What reasonable proposals
can we put forward at the local/regional levels to facilitates the
fulfillment of the direction provided by their bishops?

Liberate the borders!
No more blockades!
No more death and suffering!

Abrazos
Juan
......................................................

  Issued by NCCB/USCC, November 15, 2000
  Copyright © 2000, United States Catholic Conference,
  Inc. All rights reserved.
  Order Copies of This Statement
....................................................

          Welcoming the Stranger Among Us
               Unity in Diversity

        A Statement of the U.S. Catholic Bishops

.................................................

http://www.nccbuscc.org/mrs/unity.htm
.......................................

      The Call to Solidarity

The Gospel calls us to solidarity with those who are suffering,
vulnerable, and in need. In this spirit we recall the words of
Pope John Paul II, who proclaimed, "The Church hears the suffering
cry of all who are uprooted from their own land, of families
forcefully separated, of those who, in the rapid changes of our
day, are unable to find a stable home anywhere. She senses the
anguish of those without rights,without any security, at the
mercy of every kind of exploitation, and she supports them in
their unhappiness" (Message for World Migration Day 2000, no. 6).
Among today's immigrants, those who have fled war, famine, civil
unrest, and economic desperation deserve ourspecial understanding
and support; but seafarers, those in the aviation  world, and
migrant workers, too, suffer uprootedness, discrimination, and
injustice, along with all people on the move: circus and carnival
workers, truckers, tourists, pilgrims, Gypsies, and Irish travelers.

>  In an age of economic globalization, a special concern of a
>  culture of solidarity must be the migrant worker, both
>  rural and urban. These laborers are vital to our agricultural,
>  construction, service, and tourist industries. From the
>  time they leave their homes to the time they arrive at their
>  place of work, these migrant workers—forced to search
>  for a basic livelihood for their families—face hazardous border
>  crossings. (In the past five years, more than 500
>  have died at the U.S.–Mexico border because of increased border
>  enforcement.) They are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse in
>  transit, in border regions, and in the workplace. We bishops
>  pledge ourselves, in the spirit of Ecclesia in America, to work
>  in solidarity with the bishops of the migrants' countries of
>  origin to provide for the safety, the basic needs, the human
>  rights, and the effective pastoral care of these migrant
>  workers. One of the propositions of the Synod of America
>  asserts, "The Church in America must be a vigilant advocate,
>  defending  against any unjust restriction the natural right of
>  individual persons to move freely within their own nation and
>  from one nation to another.  Attention must be called to the
>  rights of migrants and their families and to respect for their
>  human dignity, even in cases of non-legal immigration"
     (Ecclesia in America, no. 65).

Solidarity with migrants and refugees will take many forms,
from participating in efforts to ensure that the U.S.
government respect the basic human rights of all immigrants,
to providing direct assistance to immigrants through
diocesan and parish programs. Particularly vulnerable are the
immigrant elderly who often find themselves isolated
in their new country, lacking in language skills and in the
family and community support system that they enjoyed in
their country of origin.

Community organizing efforts can also be important vehicles for
addressing the needs of immigrant communities and incorporating
immigrants into civic life. Such efforts can provide the basis
for achieving improved housing conditions, a living wage, better
medical attention, and enhanced educational opportunities for all,
and for empowering local communities. The United States Catholic
Conference supports many such efforts through the Catholic
Campaign for Human Development. The local church's participation
in such efforts is important, both for the direct good that
community organizing can do for individuals and groups and as part
of a broader evangelization that proclaims God's care for all his
children and the Church's special responsibility for the poor,
the persecuted, and the stranger.

The call to solidarity is also a call to promote the effective
recognition of the rights of immigrants and to overcome
all discrimination based on race, culture, or religion. "It means
bearing witness to a fraternal life based on the
Gospel, which respects cultural differences and is open to sincere
and trustful dialogue" (Pope Paul VI, Octogesima Adveniens, no. 17).
Especially since World War II, the Church has devoted special
efforts on behalf of the human rights of migrants and refugees
throughout the world, and in the United States in particular. At
the national level the U.S. bishops' Office of Migration and
Refugee Services has addressed these issues through
participation in public policy debates, special programs for
refugees, and aid to dioceses. Diocesan officials and
parish leaders often participate as well in city- or region-
wide bodies aimed at gaining recognition for immigrants in
local affairs and combating discrimination.

We Catholic bishops commit ourselves to continue to work at the
national level to promote recognition of the
human rights of all, regardless of their immigration status, and
to advance fair and equitable legislation for refugees
and prospective immigrants. Present efforts need to be strengthened
and supported with new initiatives, both at
the local level and at the national level as U.S. immigration law
and practice change in the face of changing political
pressures and social realities. In particular, Catholic lay people,
diocesan officials, and bishops should continue to
work together with community organizations, labor unions, and
other religious bodies on behalf of the rights of
immigrants in the workplace, schools, public services, our legal
system, and all levels of government. The Catholic
Church in the United States through the National Conference of
Catholic Bishops, many of the state Catholic
conferences, individual bishops, and other Catholic
organizations have been meaningfully involved in social
advocacy in behalf of migrant workers and other immigrants.
We encourage others to place public social policies
that impact this special population a higher priority.

Reply | Forward | Messages in this Topic (1)

From: SIUHIN@...
Date: Wed Dec 13, 2000 3:51 am
Subject: Fwd: Posada and meetings of Globalphobics (Ingles)

SIUHIN@...

Send Email

NETWORK OF THE GLOBALPHOBICS OF THE CALIFORNIAS
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Hi compan~er@s,

We are inviting you to our activities this week.

1. Posada in solidarity with the struggle of Leymex workers. (See information
about this struggle below.) You are invited to eat tamales, drink atole and
break a pin~ata. Please bring a present for solidarity with the workers of
Leymex. (Provisions--beans, rice, caned food, or money)

Where: Dec. 15, Friday, 5 pm
Where: Factor X: Junipero Sierra 14364-1, Tijuana

Directions: In Tijuana, take Blv. Agua Caliente to the corner known as "5 y
10." Turn right and go five block to Junipero Serra. (There is a Oxxo store
on the corner). Factor X office is right behind Oxxo. Phone number 011-52(66)
22-4217


2. Meeting of the Committees of the Network of the Globalphobics

Proposal of agenda: Report of the Delegation to San Quintin, Information
about Leymex, Information April 2001--meeting of the FTAA, organization of
the network

MEETING IN TIJUANA: Dec. 15, Friday, 3 pm, Factor X: Junipero Sierra 14364-1,
Tijuana. Directions: See point 1.

MEETING IN SAN DIEGO: December 16, Saturday, 10 am, San Diego City College,
Room A-214, San Diego downtown.

---------------------------------------------------------------

SOLIDARITY WITH THE WORKERS OF LEYMEX,
A MAQUILADORA IN TIJUANA

We ask for your solidarity with the workers of Leymex.  This maquiladora in
Tijuana is the property of  the Korean Corporation Hundai that controls the
Han-Young factory.

A few years back the workers of Han-Young had one of the most important
struggles in Tijuana sweat shops.  The struggle culminated with the formation
of an independent union, but a year ago the factory changed name and
management to get rid of the union: it changed from Han-Young to Tra-Hoo.
The union has filed a legal suit against this tactic.

Now, in another plant of the same corporation a new movement has emerged:

Two weeks ago the company Leymex decided to change name and registration. The
two hundred workers protested: "we are not merchandise that one boss can just
sell and that another one can buy."  The workers are asking that if Leymex
disappears they should be appropriately paid, before the new boss rehires
them.  "The change in boss does not represent a single benefit for the
workers", says one laborer, "this is just another trick by the Korean owners
to increase their profits, to keep us in poverty."

The Leymex workers are welders that, due to the bad working conditions, are
continually exposed to lead contamination.  They also cut and fold steel and
aluminum sheets with machinery that used to have protective sensors.  As a
way of increasing the speed of production, the administrators inactivated the
sensors.  The result is an increase in accidents: 4 workers with no hands, 16
missing some fingers, 2 with no eyes, 80% with scars resulting from
"accidents."  According to CITAC, organizers who have done more than 10 years
of solidarity work with the laborers at the maquila, "this is one of the
maquiladoras with the worst working conditions in Tijuana."

Workers as also tired of the boss's authoritarianism.  For example, workers
receive a weekly bonus; but since "accidents" are so frequent, sometimes five
a week, the boss takes away this bonus to give the money to those hurt in
these accidents.  He uses the workers money to pay for his own
irresponsibility.  With this, he also encourages division and problems among
the workers.  In this way he tries to hide the fact that the "accidents" are
in reality the consequence of the horrible working conditions and the lack of
industry safety.

When the workers found out that the owner was changing name, they protested
and did not want to sign the contract.  The boss illegally decided to suspend
the salary of those who did not sign the contract.  Even with this pressure,
at least 13 workers would not sign and they are now in a struggle demanding
the respect of Mexican labor laws.  The company union has been threatening
the workers and CITAC members.

HELP WORKERS SUSTAIN THEIR RESISTANCE.  Don't let them fold due to hunger;
that the pain of seeing their families suffer does not force them to accept
the horrible working conditions and the violation to their rights as workers.

How to contribute?

1. Send a check. Please made it out to Enrique Davalos to the following
address:

  1535 Apache Rd. # A
Chula Vista, CA, 91910.

2. Support them with basic goods: rice, beans, oil, sugar, canned food, soap.
  Write and let us know where we can pick up your contribution.

Sincerely,

Globalphobics

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