"Rainforest resources conflict in northern Peru turns bloody," Environmental News Service, June 6, 2009.

BAGUA, Peru, June 6, 2009 (ENS) - Peruvian Special Forces staged a violent raid early Friday on a group of indigenous people who were sleeping at a road blockade outside of Bagua in the remote northern Peruvian Amazon. At least 25 civilians are confirmed dead and over 100 were wounded and nine police officers are confirmed dead in the raid. For the past two months, indigenous people have blocked waterways and roads across the Amazon, demanding the repeal of legislative decrees issued last year to bring Peru into compliance with the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement that protesters claim will allow deforestation and privatization of their traditional lands.

For the past two months, indigenous people have blocked waterways and roads across the Amazon, demanding the repeal of legislative decrees issued last year to bring Peru into compliance with the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement, which took effect early this year. The protesters claim the decrees will allow deforestation and privatization of their traditional lands and natural resources.

The indigenous people do not claim the ultimate ownership of the Amazon forest, but ask for a voice in the decision making process in the development of the region.

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Laura Carlsen, "Time to rethink free trade agreements with the United States," CIP Americas Program, January 19, 2009.

An economic crisis is no time to tie the hands of government in the economy. It is time to rethink the free trade model.

Changes include mandating long-term exclusive intellectual property protection

The path to "free trade"—as defined by George Bush and his predecessors—is currently at a crossroads. The Obama presidency, the growing number of developing countries that oppose NAFTA-like trade agreements, and the global economic crisis are interrelated factors that provide an opportunity to rethink this model and demand conditions favoring equitable development.

Through its ideology and practices, the Bush administration depicted free trade as the sine qua non of all modern progress, including economic growth, security, and even personal freedom. When representatives of the U.S. government faced opposition in the WTO and other multilateral institutions, they focused on bilateral free trade agreements and agreements with small groups of countries with less negotiating power. The North American Free Trade Agreement was the model and Latin America the region where they channeled their efforts. Bush has signed agreements with 10 countries in the region and has recently pushed hard for Colombia and Panama to be added to the list.

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Laura Carlsen, "Make good on Obama's promise to renegotiate NAFTA," CIP Americas Program, January 12, 2009.

Will he or won't he? In the shadow of the economic crisis, a war of words rages over whether President Obama will hold to his campaign promise of opening up the North American Free Trade Agreement for renegotiation.

Besides the jobs issue, U.S. opposition splits between fair-trade groups that focus on jobs and the environment and a nationalist rightwing that believes NAFTA and its offspring, the Security and Prosperity Partnership, threaten U.S. sovereignty.

The debate is not likely to stay in the shadows for long. Campaign attacks on NAFTA and candidate promises to renegotiate proved that demands for revision of the free trade model have reached critical mass in U.S. politics. A post-election report from Public Citizen heralded a net gain of 28 fair-trade members in the House and seven senators. Most of these politicians, it notes, did not just happen to be critical of the free trade model. They actively ran on a fair-trade platform and won based at least in part on that stance.

The economic crisis only strengthens those demands. If international trade and investment policy is the pillar of the current economic model, its revision must be a foundation of global restructuring plans.


Why Renegotiate NAFTA?

The mainstream press is wrong when it says that the United States cannot "unilaterally" call for renegotiation. Not only is renegotiation permitted legally—in fact, any country can unilaterally withdraw with six months notice—but there have been many calls for renegotiation in Canada and Mexico.

Canadians have built a strong grassroots movement to protect natural resources from predatory NAFTA clauses. Broad-based citizen groups like the Council of Canadians oppose NAFTA because of the energy proportionality clause that requires Canada to export oil to the United States even in times of scarcity, the investor-state clauses that give investors the right to sue governments contained in Chapter 11, and the clause that permits bulk-water exports. Polls in the general population show that 61% favor renegotiation.

In Mexico, 100,000 people marched in the streets on two separate occasions under the banner of renegotiation to revise the agricultural chapter. They demanded protection of basic food production by removing corn and beans from the agreement. In 2003, former President Vicente Fox requested opening up the agreement, only to be rebuffed by the U.S. government.

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Cyril Mychalejko, "Canadian Company Threatens El Salvador with Free Trade Lawsuit Over Mining Project," Upside Down World, December 19, 2008.

[The very expensive culture of unrestricted corporate entitlement keeps spreading. This story belongs on the table with the $10 billion suit by Platinex against the KI Algonquin in Ontario and the uranium suit against the province of BC by Boss Power Inc. Contempt of court charges and lengthy jail sentences link them to the Ardoch Algonquin uranium opposition, also in Ontario. File under "Why 'free trade' is not free." (In the good ol' days, I paid $7.15 for my "free" Netscape T-shirt from California, but the price is going up, as they say, exponentially. There's that hockey-stick graph again.) Hard to tell whether we're busier doin' it or havin' it done to us. -jlt]

A Canadian mining company intends to sue El Salvador's government for several hundred million dollars if it is not granted permission to open a widely unpopular gold and silver mine that scientists warn would have devastating effects on local water supplies.

Pacific Rim Mining Corp., using its Nevada-based subsidiary Pac Rim Cayman LLC, filed a Notice of Intent on Dec. 9 through provisions in the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) that allow transnational corporations to sue governments over laws and decisions that often put public interests ahead of corporate profits.

"The El Dorado EIA, unfortunately, presents baseline data that are incomplete and which do not allow a reader to adequately evaluate the pre-mining water quantity conditions. To a lesser extent the baseline water quality data are also inadequate, especially with respect to ground water quality." Robert Moran Hydrogeologist, 2005

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Canadians Feel U.S. Has Benefited the Most from the NAFTA; Two-in-five Would Renegotiate, Angus Reid Forum, March 27, 2008.

The majority of respondents want to stay in the trade agreement, whether under current terms or after a renegotiation

Fourteen years after Canada, the United States and Mexico formed the world's largest free trade area, the majority of Canadians think their country has not greatly benefited from the pact. In an Angus Reid Strategies online survey of a national representative sample, 51 per cent of respondents think the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has mostly benefited the United States, while 22 per cent think the accord has been better for Mexico. Only eight per cent of respondents think Canada has secured the most positive results out of the three countries from being a NAFTA partner.

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