http://briarpatchmagazine.com Fiercely independent (and often irreverent) news & views. Tue, 30 Sep 2008 06:05:26 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 en http://briarpatchmagazine.com/2008/09/12/rich-countries-once-used-gunboats-to-seize-food-now-they-use-trade-deals/ http://briarpatchmagazine.com/2008/09/12/rich-countries-once-used-gunboats-to-seize-food-now-they-use-trade-deals/#comments Fri, 12 Sep 2008 15:12:43 +0000 dave http://briarpatchmagazine.com/?p=702 By George Monbiot The Guardian August 26, 2008 The world's hungriest are the losers as an old colonialism returns to govern relations between wealthy and poor nations In his book Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis tells the story of the famines that sucked the guts out of India in the 1870s. The hunger began when a drought, caused by El Niño, killed the crops on the Deccan plateau. As starvation bit, the viceroy, Lord Lytton, oversaw the export to England of a record 6.4m hundredweight of wheat. While Lytton lived in imperial splendour and commissioned, among other extravagances, "the most colossal and expensive meal in world history", between 12 million and 29 million people died. Only Stalin manufactured a comparable hunger. Now a new Lord Lytton is seeking to engineer another brutal food grab. As Tony Blair's favoured courtier, Peter Mandelson often created the impression that he would do anything to please his master. Today he is the European trade commissioner. From his sumptuous offices in Brussels and Strasbourg, he hopes to impose a treaty that will permit Europe to snatch food from the mouths of some of the world's poorest people.]]> http://briarpatchmagazine.com/2008/09/12/rich-countries-once-used-gunboats-to-seize-food-now-they-use-trade-deals/feed/ http://briarpatchmagazine.com/2008/06/12/disaster-in-the-making/ http://briarpatchmagazine.com/2008/06/12/disaster-in-the-making/#comments Thu, 12 Jun 2008 21:14:26 +0000 dave http://briarpatchmagazine.com/?p=667 By Todd Gordon The Bullet #112 SocialistProject.ca What's the monetary value of a Colombian trade unionist's life? As it turns out, it depends on how many are killed in a given year since the potential fines the Colombian government will have to pay as penalty under its free trade agreement (FTA) with Canada whenever a union activist is killed is capped at $15 million. If this sounds like a sick joke I apologize, but this is in effect what the Canadian government actually negotiated. On June 7th, Canada proudly proclaimed that it had successfully concluded its trade deal with the human rights-troubled Andean country. Negotiated with an efficiency that must make the Bush administration - whose own trade agreement with Colombia has stalled because of Congressional opposition - jealous, the deal was concluded less than a year after negotiations began. With four Canadian cabinet ministers visiting Colombian president Alvaro Uribe and other members of his cabinet between July 2007 and February 2008, it's clear the Harper Tories had made the trade deal a major priority despite Colombia's appalling human rights record (see, for example, my article on Canada and Colombia). As new Foreign Affairs minister (and ex-Liberal), David Emerson, declared, "The Government of Canada is delivering on its commitment to open up opportunities for Canadian business in the Americas and around the world." The agreement, which still hasn't been made public, will now undergo a legal review by Canadian and Colombian lawyers. After the review is completed, it'll be brought to the House of Commons for ratification, which should not be a problem for the Tories despite their minority government since the Liberals have said they'll support it if it contains language on human rights. It does - but I'll come back to that in a moment.]]> http://briarpatchmagazine.com/2008/06/12/disaster-in-the-making/feed/ http://briarpatchmagazine.com/2008/01/21/zero-hour/ http://briarpatchmagazine.com/2008/01/21/zero-hour/#comments Mon, 21 Jan 2008 14:47:55 +0000 admin http://briarpatchmagazine.com/2008/01/21/zero-hour/ http://briarpatchmagazine.com/2008/01/21/zero-hour/feed/