I’ll Think About Ethics After I’m Full September 27, 2008
Posted by Webmaster in Foreign Trade.comments closed
At Wash U., scholars debate the ethics of eating
St. Louis — With skyrocketing grocery prices and a recent wave of food safety scares, Americans have started paying more attention to what they eat — and how it got to their dinner tables.
Add to the mix questions over biotechnology, globalization or the environmental consequences of industrial farming, and the simple act of eating has become riddled with worry and confusion.
“With every bite you take and every sip you take, you are making a political, ethical, economic, ecological, social decision,” said Washington University anthropology professor Glenn Stone, speaking Friday at a forum called “The Ethics of Diet.”
(snip)
“I want to say it’s unethical to not know where your food comes from,” author Joan Dye Gussow told the group. Our ignorance of the source of our food has led to a complete alienation with nature and to environmental problems, including, among other things, a widespread disappearance of bees that pollinate plants, Gussow went on to say.
I agree. But the reason why we’re not allowed to know fully where our food comes from is because of racial pandering. I think “our better minds” assume that if food were properly labeled, “bigoted” whites wouldn’t buy produce from most countries south of the U.S.-Mexico border, or processed food products from China.
Even if we had genuine origin labeling, it might not do any good — remember, a lot of the “USA” produce might as well come from Mexico.
The Protectionist Indians Coming Over The Wall July 13, 2008
Posted by Webmaster in Business & Corporate, Economics and Finance, Foreign Trade, St. Louis Local.comments closed
I was watching the “Jaco Report” on Channel 2 this morning, and Charles Jaco headed a panel of important local business leaders and Mayor Slay, to talk about the economic downturn in the metro area, symbolized by what will probably be a successful takeover of A-B by InBev.
First off, Jaco himself said that one of the big problems in the region is the “black hole of the public education system” in certain parts of the metro area. I suppose Jaco hasn’t yet read this story, but he will soon be getting a visit from the civil rights alphabet gang nonetheless, especially since he used “black hole” in an implied racial sense.
One of the panelists admitted that most people laid off from well-paid “working class” employment almost never find other work in the spirit of “re-training.” He also admitted that employers are loath to hire such people, because they’re afraid that they’re going from a $50G job to a $20G job, and the severe reduction in pay will make them constantly frustrated and unable to do their new job. Even if they are hired, the panel admitted, the pay isn’t as much, plus those that look for new work but give up after awhile drop out of the official unemployment stats. Therefore, these kinds of mass layoffs at Chrysler or A-B don’t affect the unemployment stats very much, which conceals the extent of the near-depression that we’re in.
However, these panelists have not yet “gotten it.” Jaco asked a question — To paraphrase, that Lou Dobbs and all his protectionist Indians are just over the fort wall, ready to storm into the protected palace of free trade and the global economy; What do we do to con the masses into thinking free trade is good? One of the panelists said that free trade means that they don’t have any restrictions in buying our goods.
What goods? The only stuff they’re buying from us is raw materials to build up their manufacturing base, and food. As such, the United States of America is becoming nothing more than a colony that one imperialist or another gets basic materials from. The last time we were in this fix, Thomas Jefferson was working on his ninth draft of something that started with, “When in the course of human events…”
And to the notion that free trade is wonderful? Mayor Slay agreed. What a clueless schmuck.
Original Sin March 30, 2008
Posted by Webmaster in Africa, Foreign Trade.comments closed
Spot the contradiction.
Rice hits U.S. ‘birth defect’
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that the United States still has trouble dealing with race because of a national “birth defect” that denied black Americans the opportunities given to whites at the country’s very founding.
“Black Americans were a founding population,” she said. “Africans and Europeans came here and founded this country together — Europeans by choice and Africans in chains. That’s not a very pretty reality of our founding.”
As a result, Miss Rice told editors and reporters at The Washington Times, “descendants of slaves did not get much of a head start, and I think you continue to see some of the effects of that.”
“That particular birth defect makes it hard for us to confront it, hard for us to talk about it, and hard for us to realize that it has continuing relevance for who we are today,” she said.
And then Fox News:
Rice Says Zimbabwe President Mugabe Is `Disgrace’ to His People and to Africa
JERUSALEM — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Sunday branded Zimbabwe’s president a “disgrace” to his people and to Africa, and expressed concerns about verifying whether the country held free and fair elections.
Rice, in the Mideast for peace talks, made the harsh comments after voting Saturday in Zimbabwe that presented Robert Mugabe with the toughest challenge to his 28-year rule. The main opposition party on Sunday claimed an early lead; preliminary results were expected by Monday.
“We’ve made very clear our concerns about how this election might be conducted, given the very bad record of Mugabe concerning his people, the opposition and the region,” Rice told reporters after meeting with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
“We’ve tried to make a case … that there needed to be free and fair elections in Zimbabwe as much as it was possible. It’s difficult since really no international observation was allowed,” the top U.S. diplomat said.
“But really, the Mugabe regime is a disgrace to the people of Zimbabwe and a disgrace to southern Africa and to the continent of Africa as whole,” she said.
It seems like all Robert Mugabe did was atone for Rhodesia’s “birth defect.”
Isolationists and Protectionists and Nativists, Oh My! March 25, 2008
Posted by Webmaster in Foreign Trade, Globalism and UN, Immigration, Interventionism, Nationalism and Devolution.comments closed
PJB:
On reading George Bush’s discourse to the New York Economic Club last week, Cicero’s insight came to mind: “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.”
With Iraq entering its sixth year, the dollar sinking to peso levels, the economy careening into recession, and 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens roosting here, Bush alerted us to what really worries him:
“I’m troubled by isolationism and protectionism … (and) another ‘ism,’ and that’s nativism. And that’s what happened throughout our history. And probably the most grim reminder of what can happen to America during periods of isolationism and protectionism is what happened in the late — in the ’30s, when we had this America First policy and Smoot-Hawley. And look where it got us.”
(snip)
In smearing as nativists, protectionists and isolationists those who wish to stop the invasion, halt the export of factories and jobs to Asia, and stop the unnecessary wars, Bush is attacking the last true conservatives in his party.
Which is understandable. For after the judges and tax cuts, what is there about Bush that is conservative? His foreign policy is Wilsonian. His trade policy is pure FDR. His spending is LBJ all the way. His amnesty for illegals is Teddy Kennedy’s policy.
Two-thirds of the nation says we are on the wrong course. Two-thirds rejects NAFTA and amnesty. Two-thirds wants out of Iraq. Two-thirds rejects Bush. Bush says that people are being misled by those wicked old isolationists, protectionists and nativists. At least he and Poppy will have something to agree on in retirement.
I would like to know which “isolationists, protectionists and nativists” President Bush is worried about. Does he mean the three remaining major Presidential candidates to replace him, the ones that are for free trade, open borders, and foreign military interventionism, in spite of the pretenses on the part of two of them? Does he mean the current Democrat-run House and Senate, the one that has jacked tariff rates way up, funded the border fence, and defunded the American military empire? (Tongue-in-cheek.)
He probably means the Council of Conservative Citizens, whose isolationism, protectionism and nativism is genuine, because he knows that our trek to total national domination is proceeding as planned.
Captain Oblivious March 24, 2008
Posted by Webmaster in China, City Hall, Foreign Trade, St. Louis Local.comments closed
I plan to spend most of today (and some of tomorrow) on an airplane [but not a slow boat -- ed.]. Along with a delegation of regional and state officials, I am traveling to China to suggest that the central geography, moderate climate, established transportation infrastructure, and lower costs of St. Louis make us the perfect choice of that country’s Ministry of Commerce for a new air freight hub.
(snip)
It is a simple economic reality that more and more US goods will be going to China over the next several decades. An airfreight hub in St. Louis makes perfect sense.
You actually think that the Chinese government wants an airline hub in the middle of America because they want to make it easier to sell American manufactured goods in China? Actually, it’s more like the other way around.
To assume that is to assume (just as obliviously) that America still manufactures anything. If there are going to be any goods transported from America to China via this airline hub, it will be raw materials to help China grow and sustain its own manufacturing base. The items manufactured in China will then go in the opposite direction, to razzle and dazzle the patrons at Big Box Mart.
CWA’s Empty Rhetoric March 17, 2008
Posted by Webmaster in Business & Corporate, Campaign 2008, Foreign Trade, Organized Labor, Outsourcing, St. Louis Local.comments closed
Communications Workers of America presser from last Friday, dateline St. Louis:
The Communications Workers of America is condemning Western Union Financial Services Inc., for its plans to close three union-represented facilities in Missouri and Texas and shift that work to non-union and overseas operations.
Some 640 workers in Dallas, Texas, and Bridgeton and St. Charles, Missouri, were told they will lose their jobs over the next five months.
Its apparent to me that Western Union has determined that it would prefer to operate as a union-free enterprise, said Andy Milburn, CWA Vice President for District 6, which covers Missouri, Texas, Arkansas, Kansas and Oklahoma.
CWA will do everything legally possible to stop these centers from closing and stop Western Union from moving our work to non-union operations, both in the United States and overseas, said CWA Staff Representative Mike Neumann, who heads the Western Union bargaining team.
Western Union said it will transfer the work of employees in the three customer service centers and financial operations to locations including Denver, Costa Rica, Manila, Mexico City and Mexicali, Mexico.
Last month, CWA Local 6377 filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board against Western Union, charging that company managers have tried to coerce union members and subvert the bargaining process. The local also charged that earlier layoffs announced by Western Union - of 150 workers in Bridgeton and Dallas — were an act of retaliation against the workers and the union.
Western Union is an American icon. Today, it has turned its back on the very employees who built the company into a multinational enterprise, said Earline Jones, president of CWA Local 6377.
Olivia Espinosa, president of CWA Local 6178 in Dallas, said Western Union is a greedy, profitable company that doesnt seem to care about the excellent customer service our CWA members now provide. And thats bad news for customers.
Yet, the CWA will endorse a free-trade globalist for President. Make no mistake about it — Both Hillary and Obama are, the only difference between them is that the former was married to a free-trade globalist, and wants us to think that she was opposed to his leanings while she was First Lady, and the other pretends to be an economic nationalist while crossing his fingers behind his back with his back turned toward foreign capitals.
As Only Buchanan Can March 4, 2008
Posted by Webmaster in Campaign 2008, Foreign Trade.comments closed
First, from PJB’s latest, on NAFTA:
America rose to power behind a Republican tariff wall. What has free trade wrought? Lost sovereignty. A sinking dollar. A hollowing out of U.S. manufacturing. Stagnant wages. Wives forced into the labor market to maintain the family income. Mass indebtedness to foreign nations, and a deepening dependency on foreign goods and borrowings to pay for them. We have sacrificed our country on the altar of this Moloch, the mythical Global Economy.
It took Rip Van Republican 20 years to wake up to the disaster of open borders and five years to realize the folly of igniting wars in which no vital interest was at risk. How long before the GOP wakes up to the reality that globalism is not conservatism, never was, but is a pillar of Wilsonian liberalism, in whose vineyards our faux conservatives now daily labor.
Second, the magazine he founded exposes Barack Hussein Obama as a phony when it comes to his supposed opposition to the war in Iraq:
Obama’s campaign frequently invokes his 2002 “speech against the war,” but very rarely quotes directly from it. Why? Because this mysterious speech—which has become the stuff of legend in Obamaphilic circles, talked about but rarely read—is a pro-war tirade. Yes, Obama described the planned invasion of Iraq as “dumb” and “rash,” but his overriding concern—expressed repetitively throughout the speech—was that the Bush administration was damaging the legitimate case for American-made wars of intervention and potentially making it harder for future administrations (Democratic, for example) to send soldiers around the world to depose unfriendly regimes.
We knew that Obama’s anti-NAFTA rhetoric in Ohio was just a sideshow. Now we’re finding out that he’s even more of an arrogant universal egalitarian imperialist than BushClinton.
Arch-Left Winger Admits: USA Becoming Third World March 3, 2008
Posted by Webmaster in Foreign Trade, Immigration.comments closed
The Emerging Third World US
by Francis Ferguson
I have an expression I present to my economics classes. It has a certain impact: the US is a a third world nation, we just haven’t realized it yet. Our emerging status isn’t obvious. Products remain relatively cheap (energy excluded) despite the falling value of the dollar against most foreign currencies. But there are real signs.
As Dr. Ferguson is a left-winger, he will not cite mass immigration and open borders as another fundamental reason. But it is the fundamental reason by the USA is becoming Third World, because you can’t have a First World country with Third World people. The deindustrialization of America is merely one consequence of the globalist zeitgeist — the others being open borders and international military empire.
And I Don’t Really Think Obama Will End the War in Iraq, Either. February 29, 2008
Posted by Webmaster in Campaign 2008, Foreign Relations, Foreign Trade.comments closed
Obama’s NAFTA opposition? Because he was way too cozy with too many CFR-types, I had a hunch it was all for show. Alas, from his campaigning in Ohio, he has just turned his head northward toward Ottawa and winked.
Just so you forgot, many of the neo-con types who were part of the Bush administration and brought about the invasion of Iraq are now with Obama.
Why Not? January 14, 2008
Posted by Webmaster in Campaign 2008, Foreign Trade, Globalism and UN, Immigration.comments closed
Michigan Crowd Boos McCain on Illegal Immigration
Sen. John McCain of Arizona, winner of last Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, drew cheers and jeers from an audience of over 500 conservative activists in Michigan over the weekend
(snip)
Globalism, he told the audience, is not going away. “Some jobs that have left Michigan aren’t coming back, and the answer is not to create false hopes that we can bring back lost jobs — but to create new ones,” McCain said, to a stony silence.
McCain, who engaged the audience in a lengthy Q&A period, drew howls of protest and boos when he expressed support for allowing most illegal aliens to stay in the United States and when he opposed against any form of protectionism.
In that, his open-borders stance is totally consistent with his notion that “globalism isn’t going away” (i.e. he really wants it to stay) and thus “protectionism” should be opposed. The globalist that doesn’t want any restrictions on the free flow of goods between the fictions formerly known as national borders would no more want restrictions on the free flow of people between the fictions formerly known as national borders.
A Political Treatise for the ADD Generation October 21, 2007
Posted by Webmaster in Business & Corporate, Foreign Trade, Outsourcing.comments closed
Two minutes are better than 200 pages.
Kit Bond: Damn the National Security Concerns — Full Sinification Ahead October 16, 2007
Posted by Webmaster in China, Computers & Technology, Foreign Trade, Missouri.comments closed
House Republicans have introduced legislation calling for the Bush administration to block the merger of a U.S. computer-security equipment company and a Chinese firm with close ties to Beijing’s military and a history of illicit exports and industrial espionage.
Sen. Christopher S. Bond, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, meanwhile, said yesterday he favors the Treasury Department review of the merger, but does not want Congress to pre-empt the administration’s national-security investigation of the deal.
The senator’s remarks and the legislation came in response to the announcement last month of the planned $2.2 billion purchase of 3Com, which sells hacker-prevention hardware to the Pentagon, by the investment company Bain Capital Partners and China’s Huawei Technology.
Mr. Bond, Missouri Republican, said he does not want congressional and public pressure to derail the proposed deal like the failed effort by the United Arab Emirates’ firm Dubai Ports World last year to buy operational control of six U.S. ports for $8 billion. That deal was approved by the Treasury Department but later canceled over concerns that terrorists might infiltrate U.S. ports posing as Dubai company employees.
I do. After all, regulating foreign trade and commerce is one of those Constitutionally-mandated Congressional duties. They should focus on these kind of issues before they obsess about nooses hanging on trees and providing 24-year old men and women with childrens’ health insurance.
And, by the way, Mr. Bond, do you have a political death wish? I mean, this state could produce another Claire McCaskill quite easily.
Most Vulnerable to Offshoring October 13, 2007
Posted by Webmaster in Foreign Trade.comments closed
Submitted by a regular reader.
***
Table: “Most Vulnerable: Selected Occupations Ranked By Princeton Economist Alan Blinder As ‘Highly Offshorable’: Number of US Workers in Such Professions”, in Wall Street Journal, March 28, 2007. p. A1.
Computer programmers: 389,000.
Data entry keyers: 296,700.
Actuaries: 15,770.
Film and video editors: 15,200.
Mathematicians: 2,930.
Medical transcriptionists: 90,380.
Interpreters and translatiors: 21,930.
Economists: 12,470.
Graphic designers: 178,530.
Bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks: 1,815,000.
Microbiologists: 15,250.
Financial analysts: 180,910.
***
Table: Selected occupations that should be the most vulnerable to offshoring, and number of US workers in such professions. St. Louis CofCC Blog, October 13, 2007.
U.S. President: 1.
U.S. Senate: 100.
U.S. House of Representatives: 435.
U.S. Supreme Court: 9.
U.S. State Governors: 50.
***
McCain Glosses Over the Symptoms, While Hunter Proposes a Cure for the Disease October 9, 2007
Posted by Webmaster in Campaign 2008, Foreign Trade.comments closed
The Republicans are debating tonight in Detroit, and the candidates themselves have been pounding the pavement there looking for support.
1. John McCain wants to make bureaucratic changes to Federal unemployment and job retraining programs. From the AP:
John McCain on Tuesday proposed updating the unemployment system and retooling training programs to help people who have lost their jobs — particularly older workers — adapt to a changing economy.
“Change is hard, and while most of us gain, some industries, companies and workers are forced to struggle with very difficult choices,” the Republican presidential candidate said as he espoused free-market principles in a state that leads the nation in unemployment.
It’s not a “changing economy,” it’s an economy that is being forcefully demoted from a first-world manufacturing economy to a third world service economy by means of globalist, open borders, and free trade treachery brought about by the likes of John McCain. What, pray tell, are people supposed to be “re-trained” to do when almost everything can be outsourced by outsourcing, outsourced by insourcing, or affirmative actioned? In other words, McCain is merely pretending to want to put a band-aid on the hemorrhage caused by the trifecta of free trade, open borders and domestic egalitarianism.
2. Duncan Hunter, the closest thing in the Republican field to a Perot/Buchanan economic (and otherwise comprehensive) nationalist, has an op-ed in the Detroit News explicitly blaming free trade and the global economy for the dissolution of the working middle class.
The Political Spectrum Turned Upside Down October 7, 2007
Posted by Webmaster in Foreign Trade, Mexico & Latin America, Nationalism and Devolution.comments closed
The Christian Science Monitor profiles growing Costa Rican nationalism, and opposition to the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), and to the formal continental unification that CAFTA and its partner in crime, NAFTA, foreshadows. There is a public vote this weekend, asking the country’s citizens whether the country should adopt CAFTA; pre-election opinion polls show a slight lead for the anti-CAFTA and nationalist forces.
The irony of Latin American nationalisms are that those movements are associated with the political left, and as one can read in this article, Costa Rica’s intelligentsia, represented by the prevailing opinion of its professors of higher education, are on board. In the white world, the political left and the professorial class are usually anything but nationalist.
Costa Rica has been, for the last few decades, a retirement haven for American pensioners. The danger in buying real estate in Latin America has always been the risk of a nationalist-leftist regime coming to power, and expropriating “gringo’s” property. An anti-CAFTA victory this weekend could be the first step along the way.
It’s Just as Well — Our Christmas is Made in China These Days October 5, 2007
Posted by Webmaster in Foreign Trade.comments closed
Boy Scouts recall lead-tainted Chinese badges
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Boy Scouts of America said on Friday it is recalling more than a million badges worn by young Cub Scouts because of a lead paint danger.
The made-in-China plastic “totem” badges are painted blue and yellow with the words “Progress Toward Ranks.” Cub Scouts aged 7 and 8 normally wear them on their shirt pockets.
“During a routine test of products, the Boy Scouts’ supply group discovered lead paint” on the badges, said Gregg Shields, national spokesman for the Boy Scouts of America.
(snip)
Shields said, “We test all products we receive directly from China and we’ve been testing other products from suppliers that bring them in from China… This is the first of 94 items we’ve tested so far to come back with excessive lead.”
And I thought the Democrats and their pro-homosexual agenda were the greatest threat to American Scouting. If we ever have a trade embargo with China, the only kind of equipment and uniforms that the Boy Scouts will have are those which they were born with.
“Earrings on a Pig” October 1, 2007
Posted by Webmaster in Foreign Trade.comments closed
Federal officials, bowing to safety concerns over Mexican trucks on U.S. highways, announced last week trucks participating in the ongoing cross-border demonstration project will be required to submit to monitoring by a satellite-based vehicle tracking system – a move one critic dismissed as an “ornament” that “fails to address the real issues of driver safety.”
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration issued a statement Thursday saying the tracking plan jointly developed by FMCSA and Mexico’s Secretaria de Communicaciones y Transportes applies to both U.S. and Mexican trucks in the program.
“This will give us the ability to monitor every vehicle from Mexico and ensure all companies are following our strict safety requirements, including those governing hours of service and sabotage,” said John Hill, FMCSA administrator.
Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner Operator Independent Drivers Association, isn’t buying FMCSA’s claims of enhanced safety.
“This really accomplishes nothing. It’s like putting earrings on a pig,” he told WND.
“The FMCSA just proceeds with the program, placing more and more ornaments on it, but fails to address the real issues of driver safety.”
The reason I think Mr. Spencer is correct is the weasely language that Mr. Hill used, saying that the vehicle tracking system will ensure “our strict safety requirements, including those governing hours of service and sabotage.” The reason why the phrase “our strict safety requirements” is suspect is that, because of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the very reason why Mexican trucks can roam free in the USA and Canada to begin with, “our” safety rules don’t apply to transnational commerce among and between NAFTA signatory countries — Mexican trucks, even ones in the USA and Canada, need only meet Mexico’s “standards.” Therefore, “our” safety rules, in the context of the trucks that will be so “tracked” and “monitored” (if they really will be), are Mexico’s safety rules.
Cherish This One Step Forward While You Can — The Two Backwards Steps Are Starting September 13, 2007
Posted by Webmaster in Foreign Trade.comments closed
Cocaine flow to 26 cities curbed
Tough action by Mexico is driving down the cocaine supply in 26 U.S. cities, a recently declassified Drug Enforcement Administration analysis shows, an encouraging drop in narcotics crossing the border that law enforcement officials hope will continue.
As evidence of the short supply, prices have spiked sharply and purity has decreased since September 2006, says the analysis, which previously had not been made public. A gram of pure cocaine sold for about $118.70 in the spring, a 29% increase from last fall. Purity decreases when dealers add other ingredients, such as baby formula and sugar, to stretch the supply.
Cocaine prices are at their highest since the DEA began calculating the price and purity data in April 2005, when a pure gram of cocaine sold for $93.63.
“The law enforcement community and intelligence community is asking, ‘How did this work?’ and ‘How do we keep it going?’ ” says John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. “Less cocaine, less crack means fewer victims of drugs.”
(snip)
DEA intelligence agents credit a crackdown in Mexico by President Felipe Calderón, who sent 3,000 troops to corral two drug cartels engaged in a violent turf war.
“This new Calderón government is really taking a tough stance, and it’s really taking its toll on the trafficking organizations,” says Tony Placido, the DEA’s intelligence chief. About 90% of cocaine reaching the USA comes via Mexico.
“We had clear information from informants and from telecommunications intercepts that Mexico was the problem” for drug traffickers, Placido says.
This will all be undone soon. Two words: Mexican trucks.
Mexico Wants to Annex USA, Canada August 8, 2007
Posted by Webmaster in Foreign Trade, Globalism and UN, Immigration, Mexico & Latin America.comments closed
Now that the game plan is laid out, we can connect the dots: NAFTA, the admission of Mexican trucks onto our highways, the contract to build the TransTexas Corridor and the plans to extend it into a NAFTA Super Highway, making Kansas City an international “port,” the “totalization” of illegal aliens into our Social Security system, and the recently defeated Senate amnesty bill. That bill would have integrated 20 million illegal aliens into our labor force, locked us (by Section 413) into the SPP, and spent massive foreign aid to “improve the standard of living in Mexico.”
If neither the USA nor Canada can deport illegal aliens, nor are any Mexicans in the USA or Canada are supposed to be considered “illegal aliens,” if the purpose of the American and Canadian government is to “improve the standard of living in Mexico,” and if Mexican commerce is to have free reign in the USA and Canada, the NAFTA/NAU/SPP can best be described with the title of this post.
Ton of Marijuana Stashed in Texas Border County Warehouse Burns in Fire June 22, 2007
Posted by Webmaster in Foreign Trade, Immigration.comments closed
AP:
EDINBURG, Texas - Firefighters who spent half an hour fighting a blaze in which 2,000 pounds of marijuana went up in smoke breathed so much of it that they would have failed a drug test, a fire chief said.
It took more than 35 firefighters, 1,000 gallons of water and five gallons of chemical suppressant to extinguish the warehouse blaze on Wednesday, Fire Chief Shawn Snider said.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were investigating the origin of the drugs. The Hidalgo County fire marshal was investigating whether arson was the cause.
Snider said Thursday the firefighters were exposed to so much marijuana smoke that they would not be able to pass a drug test, despite wearing air packs to prevent them from inhaling toxic or hazardous fumes.
This is a testament to the failure of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and also a clue that the North American Union (NAU), the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), and President Bush’s Comprehensive Immigration Reform (Soft Amnesty) will similarly fail, in the area of squelching cross-border drug trafficking.
Contradictorily, the White House has released a study stating that marijuana use has strong links to teen crime and violence.
