Colombian President Alvaro Uribe was in D.C. today, lobbying Congress and the media in support of the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Uribe’s pitch included a speech at the National Press Club where protestors and human rights activists, including members of Public Citizen, the Association of Internally Displaced Afro-Colombians and International Brotherhood of Teamsters gathered outside to protest the trade deal.
Public Citizen field organizer James Ploeser (pictured above with the megaphone) blogs about the protest over at Eyes on Trade.
We made it clear: the only ones to benefit from the US-Colombia FTA will be the the corporate elite and their paramilitary proxies who terrorize already impoverished people for their own profit.
More than 450 unionists have been killed by right-wing paramilitaries – and in some cases by the Colombian army – during President Uribe’s reign. You can learn more about the Colombia FTA and why it would be a disaster on several human and environmental fronts on the Global Trade Watch section of our Web site.
We have had enough of these free trade agreements that don’t benefit anyone except the corporations and governments involved. They do not enrich the people of the countries involved. They make them poor and unemployed.
NO FREE TRADE AGREEMENT WITH COLUMBIA. MY WORD. IT’S NOT EVEN SAFE TO GO THERE! NO MORE FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS EVER.
I HEAR IT TAKES A SIX MONTH NOTICE TO GET OUT OF ONE. LETS GIVE OUR NOTICE NOW AND GET OUT OF NAFTA & CAFTA AND ALL THE OTHERS AND GET OUT OF THE WTO AND THE U.N. NOW.
I for one have never cared for free trades agreemeents with latin American Nations or any other nations who don’t care about their working class and the very poor.
Just look at the mess we are in right now.
1. contaminated products wreaking havoc on our citizens.
2. unsafe products.
3. substandard inspections, if any, on products coming in to our country from countries who care to enrich their elite henchmen and corrupt government officials (government officials) on both side of the borders.
I have noticed with real concern; how our country is manipulated by these countries as they plan to push for trade agreements and the like.
We no longer control our government, other countries do that for us. Mexico for one, dictates our elected officials on what to do and should be done in order to satisfy their own government.
Why do we allow any country for that matter, to dictate what, where and when and how things should be run in our own country?
Mexico cannot cope with its own problems and should not be allowed to meddle into our internal affairs.
Just take a look as how they have become very much involved in our icountrys internal affairs:
They use Televisa, Telemundo, Univision and other high profile mexican companies to “push” for what they want.
Remember the “mexican march” held in Los Angeles this year; wanting to become legalize even thou they are “illegal immigrants”?
One of Mexico’s high profile actress, Ms Gloria Trevi” was there involved with this movement.
This Gloria Trevi was accused by mexican media and citizens that she was involved in providing her “live in boyfriend or husband” with teenage girls for his sexual pleasure. When mexican authorities began to look for her, she vanished. One young girl came on one of Mexico’s television stations and verified the accusations leveled at Ms Gloria Trevi.
She was finally apprehended in Brazil and incarcerated after having been found guilty by Brazilian authorities. She was finally released and deported to Mexico. She was tried in Mexico on the same charges and found no guilty.
In Mexico, if you got the “MULA”, you are free to go.
Our country, these United States of America, should not allow this woman to thread american soil. She should be declared, Persona Non Grata.
Sex offenders in our country are jailed or sent to prison; and their “mug shot” are free access to the public. Ms Gloria Trevi comes into our country for entertainment purposes keep up with her U.S. property in this country of ours. Ms Gloria Trevi should suffer the same consequences U.S. sex violators suffer.
These people come into our country, violate our standing laws and laugh about it.
FOR HOW LONG ARE WE; AS AMERICAN CITIZENS, OR GOING TO STAND IDLE AND DO NOTHING ABOUT IT?
You are idiots. Under President Uribe, paramilitary and terrorist organizations have been pushed out of the country & drug production and trafficking are down. Their main export to the US is petroleum products which are not an inspection or safety risk. They are a democratic toehold in a hemisphere full of countries that continue to fall to unstable Marxist regimes.
Btw…their GDP is less than $200 billion…nothing compared to the stinkin’ $700 billion gov’t bailout. If I were either of you, I’d redirect my energy to making sure that Obama doesn’t ask financially-strapped American taxpayers with devalued 401ks to give their tiny piece of the shrinking pie to an industry of overpaid autoworkers with fat pensions protected by unions.