Free Republic

Incoming Global Warming Czar Carol Browner was — until last week — listed as one of 14 leaders of a socialist group that advocates what's called "global governance" and says rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change. The Washington Times reports Browner's name and biography were listed on the Web page for Socialist International . Mr. Obama's transition team says Browner's membership in the organization is not a problem and that it brings experience in policymaking to her new role. But House Minority Leader John Boehner’s spokeswoman Antonia Ferrier asks, “Does she agree with the group's positions...

In the down-is-up world of American biofuels, success carries enormous costs. The latest evidence of these costs is an amendment tucked into the House version of the 2007 Farm Bill: As Mexican granular sugar flows into the U.S. in 2008, the U.S. Department of Agriculture will oversee a supply-balancing program where the extra sugar can be purchased, at government-subsidized prices, by American ethanol makers. Sweet, eh? Moreover, if you think American corn growers are angered by seeing part of their fast-growing ethanol market legislatively handed to imported sugar, think again. Ethanol, after all, is the rabbit hole that swallowed logic...

China appears to be using its economic might as a means to strip Taiwan of its Latin American allies. China’s economic engagement with Latin America responds to the requirements of a booming Chinese economy that has been growing at nearly 10 percent per year for the past quarter century. The economic figures are impressive: in the past six years, Chinese imports from Latin America have grown more than six-fold, at a pace of some 60 percent a year, to an estimated $60 billion in 2006. China has become a major consumer of food, mineral, and other primary products from Latin...

Thousands of protesters greeted Mr Bush's arrival US President George Bush has met his Uruguayan counterpart, Tabare Vazquez, as part of his five-nation Latin American tour to promote trade.Mr Bush arrived in Montevideo from Brazil - where he signed a deal to develop alternative fuel sources. Uruguay is keen to sign free trade deals with the US, even if it means leaving the Mercosur trade bloc. The tour attracted protests in Brazil and about 5,000 protesters gathered in Uruguay for Mr Bush's visit. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is conducting his own tour of the region and addressed 40,000 anti-Bush...

Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center Washington, D.C. Thank you all. (Applause.) Please be seated -- si ntese. Buenas tardes. Gracias por la bienevenida. For those of you not from Texas, that means, good afternoon. (Laughter.) And thank you for the welcome. I'm honored to be back again with the men and women of the Hispanic Chamber. I appreciate your hospitality. I'm pleased to report the economy of the United States is strong, and one of the reasons why is because the entrepreneurial spirit of America is strong. And the entrepreneurial spirit of America is represented in this room....

Latin America is back on the North American radar. In 2006, most references to the region were circumscribed to the electoral processes that took place in many of its countries, with very little in the way of active policy-making. With the renovated political realities sinking in, and hemispheric trends becoming more apparent, it's time for revamping diplomacy and co-ordinating actions on critical issues of the Americas. One increasing trend since the 2005 Summit of the Americas was a deepening North-South hemispheric divide. The collapse of the Free Trade Area of the Americas negotiations seemed to leave the United States–and Canada–without...

The Honourable Peter MacKay, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, the Honourable Stockwell Day, Minister of Public Safety, and the Honourable Maxime Bernier, Minister of Industry, together with their counterparts from the United States and Mexico, today released the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) Report to the three North American leaders. The report outlines progress of collaborative initiatives between Canada, the United States and Mexico in such vital areas as security, the economy, transportation, the environment, and public health. "This report to Prime Minister Harper, President Bush, and President Fox marks the significant progress...

Canadian, U.S., and Mexican elites, including CEOS and politicians, have a plan to create common North American policies and further integrate our economies. This plan goes by various names and euphemisms, such as "deep integration", "NAFTA-plus", "harmonization", the "Big Idea", the "Grand Bargain", and the "North American Security and Prosperity Initiative". Regardless of which name your prefer, the end goal of all of these plans is to create a new political and economic entity named the North American Union (NAU) that would supercede the existing countries. Theoretically, it would be similar to and competetive with the European Union (EU). The...

Key word being international, this is a master plan with a blank form for a homeowners association, city, county, township, state or any governing body really. This thing almost makes emminent domain look good. With emminent domain, you get the price of your home, or at least they say you do. With this thing you get nothing. I just started to look through this thing so I don't know all what it's about yet, but so far, wow! Read section 106.3. It says that if you fail to comply with a notice of violation or order served in accordance with...

A $491 million public-financing deal promoted by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush as a boon to commuters actually paves the way for shipping more cheap goods from China to the North American marketplace, charges a whistleblower. Ex-CSX Transportation employee Dave Nelson told WND the deal in Florida amounts to providing CSXT with a public subsidy. Money from the public purse will position the railroad company as a major freight carrier throughout Florida, transporting cargo containers filled with cheap goods coming into the NAFTA marketplace from China. CSXT is positioned to receive millions in the deal. Under the terms of the agreement,...

The World Trade Organisation's Appellate Body, reversing an earlier panel report, on Tuesday ruled that the U.S. method for calculating anti-dumping duties on softwood lumber imports violated global free trade rules. A WTO dispute panel on April 3 rejected a challenge brought by Canada against a U.S. method known as "zeroing" for calculating anti-dumping duties on billions of dollars worth of softwood lumber imports. But in a 60-page ruling issued on Tuesday, the three judges on the WTO's Appellate Body -- its highest arbitration court -- found that the use of zeroing was inconsistent with the WTO's Anti-Dumping Agreement. "The...

The Bush Administration is pushing to create a North American Union out of the work on-going in the Department of Commerce under the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America in the NAFTA office headed by Geri Word. A key part of the plan is to expand the NAFTA tribunals into a North American Union court system that would have supremacy over all U.S. law, even over the U.S. Supreme Court, in any matter related to the trilateral political and economic integration of the United States, Canada and Mexico. Right now, Chapter 11 of the NAFTA agreement allows a private...

Quietly but systematically, the Bush Administration is advancing the plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn. Once complete, the new road will allow containers from the Far East to enter the United States through the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas, bypassing the Longshoreman’s Union in the process. The Mexican trucks, without the involvement of the Teamsters Union, will drive on what will be the nation’s most modern highway straight into the heart of...

Presidents George W. Bush and Michelle Bachelet underscored the increasingly strong and close ties that Chile and the United States enjoy, based on common values and objectives, including the promotion of democracy, development, economic growth, hemispheric integration, trade liberalization, international security, and combating terrorism. They recognized the link among development, peace, security, human rights, and social justice. They reaffirmed their commitment to further strengthen the bilateral relationship based on these principles and to deepen the two nations' ongoing strategic dialogue on democracy and regional development, and other key shared priorities. They agreed that Chile and the United States, like all...

WASHINGTON—A few months ago, Brazil was happy to let Hugo Chavez wreck the Free Trade Area of the Americas pact (FTAA) promoted by the United States and some Latin American countries. Chavez is now wrecking Brazil’s own plan for South American integration (ultimately compatible with the FTAA) and replacing it with Bolivarian megalomania. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s reaction has been to display a mind-boggling lack of leadership.In 1999, Brazilian statesman Roberto de Oliveira Campos said that Russia and Brazil were similar in that Russia was a superpower that discovered it was a Third World nation while Brazil...

For years, economists and politicians have said the solution to surging emigration is prosperity at home. If Mexico and other Latin American nations that send millions of migrants to the U.S. could grow fast enough, the theory goes, their residents wouldn't head north for work. Last month, Mexican President Vicente Fox, looking to influence the U.S. Congress's latest efforts at an immigration overhaul, pledged his country would do its part, creating good manufacturing jobs for Mexican workers on their home soil. He pointed to more than 100,000 job openings in assembly plants established within a few miles of the U.S....

Immigration issues are always ripe for demagoguery, particularly in an election year. But the solution to the very real problems along the U.S.-Mexican border can be found, ironically, in that other part of the world that American demagogues love to ridicule: old Europe. Two years ago, the European Union admitted 10 new nations into their backyard. Like Mexico, all of these nations were poor, some of them fairly backward, corrupt and recently ravaged by war and communist dictatorship. But the leaders of the European Union wisely created policies for fostering regional economic and political integration that make efforts like the...

Surprise! Last week's completion of U.S. free trade talks with Colombia - and the likely signing of similar deals with Ecuador and Panama in coming weeks - may mean that U.S. plans to create a hemisphere-wide free-trade area may not be dead after all.     Four months after the disastrous 34-country Summit of the Americas last November in Mar del Plata, Argentina, in which Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made big headlines by proclaiming that the U.S.-backed free-trade plan would be "buried for good" at the meeting, U.S. officials are boasting that the free-trade agenda is enjoying new momentum.     In...

Webb County Commissioner Jerry Garza has been chosen to represent the United States as vice president of North America's SuperCorridor Coalition. "I am very excited to have been selected by the county as a representative, and then by my new peers at NASCO for the vice presidency," Garza said. "I think it's good for Webb County because we've always said how important transportation and trade efficiency are for the county. Webb County will also benefit from lobbying on the tri-national level." Garza is one of three vice presidents chosen to represent Canada, the United States and Mexico in the nonprofit...

NATIONAL HEALTH FEDERATION A NOT-FOR-PROFIT HEALTH ORGANIZATION                                                            PRESS RELEASE   ALERT America As You Know It May Soon Be Over   OPPOSE The North American Cooperative Security Act (NACSA) (S.853 & H.R.2672) by Cheri Tips January 19, 2006   This urgent alert is being sent to all Congress Members.     Even I, as a hardened health-freedom fighter, became physically ill putting this information together to alert you, the reader, to one of the most damning acts against America and its citizens. If you are a true American, the information that I will convey, should make your blood...