"As Washington’s most loyal lackeys tentatively stand up to it one by one, we cannot help but notice that we are not just needy but needed. Canada and Mexico may seem expendable on their own, but combined? That’s a different story. Together, they represent 36 per cent of America’s export market. We supply the U.S. with thirty-six per cent of its net energy imports and twenty-six per cent of its net oil imports. And as much as its leaders like to imagine otherwise, the U.S. is actually not an island. It shares 12,000 kilometres of borderland with Canada and Mexico that it cannot protect without us.
Maybe these numbers were never supposed to be added up. NAFTA was never really a three-way partnership: It was more like two bilateral trade deals that were slapped together — one between the U.S. and Canada, the other between the U.S. and Mexico. That is beginning to change, as reality dawns. While the U.S. may act like an island, dependent on no one, it lives in a neighbourhood. Abroad, the U.S. may well be able to sail to military victory, but, at home, it suddenly finds itself surrounded." --excerpt from Naomi Klein, Standing Up To Uncle Sam", March 2003 at rabble.ca
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Maybe these numbers were never supposed to be added up. NAFTA was never really a three-way partnership: It was more like two bilateral trade deals that were slapped together — one between the U.S. and Canada, the other between the U.S. and Mexico. That is beginning to change, as reality dawns. While the U.S. may act like an island, dependent on no one, it lives in a neighbourhood. Abroad, the U.S. may well be able to sail to military victory, but, at home, it suddenly finds itself surrounded." --excerpt from Naomi Klein, Standing Up To Uncle Sam", March 2003 at rabble.ca
- sally mckay 5-21-2004 1:26 am