Immigration, Big Tobacco and the Corporate Takeover of ... Everything

By Todd Tucker, Eyes on Trade. Posted May 15, 2008.

And the food crisis roils on, thanks to NAFTA and WTO's neoliberalization of the food supply. Mexican farmers continue to be displaced in the wake of NAFTA:

"We migrate because we don't think there are options," Mr. León said. "The important thing is to give options for a better life."

Viewed against the backdrop of rising food prices in a global marketplace, Mr. León's fight to keep farmers from abandoning their land is much more than a refusal to give up a millennial way of life.

As Mexico imports more corn from the United States, the country's reliance on outside supplies is drawing protests among nationalists, farmers' groups and leftist critics of Mexico's free trade economy. Earlier this year, as the last tariffs to corn imports were lifted under the North American Free Trade Agreement, farmers' groups marched against the accord in Mexico, asking for more aid.

And the few that made it across the border are now getting slammed by ICE stings. And has anybody noticed that the destruction of Mexico's traditional economy and import substitution schemes have not led the way to more efficiency, but greater instances of narcotrafficking and narcoterrorism? I mean, seriously, we seem close to having a failed state on our borders.



In other news, apparently the Supreme Court is so taken over with corporate concerns that they can't even hear international human rights cases any more, most recently in the case of apartheid in South Africa. And though it's not directly trade related, I thought this piece on the Senate compromising on banning menthol cigarettes showed an outrageous form of health and environmental racism:

Menthol is particularly controversial because public health authorities have worried about its health effects on African-Americans. Nearly 75 percent of black smokers use menthol brands, compared with only about one in four white smokers.

That is why one former public health official says the legislation's menthol exemption is a "cave-in to the industry," an opinion shared by some other public health advocates.

"I think we can say definitively that menthol induces smoking in the African-American community and subsequently serves as a direct link to African-American death and disease," said the former official, Robert G. Robinson, who retired two years ago as an associate director in the office of smoking and health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

              

See more stories tagged with: immigration, trade, big tobacco, nafta

Todd Tucker is research director with Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch.

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