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Kurt Hackbarth 🌹 Profile picture
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30 Apr, 6 tweets, 4 min read
1. At the beginning of 2021, #AMLO signed an executive order to ban GM corn and the toxic chemical #glyphosate over three years.

Now, a judge has provided #Bayer with a stay against the order.

The Mexican judiciary's war against AMLO's agenda continues.

reuters.com/business/energ…
2. The ban came as a surprise to the #US and #BigAg, which thought their lobbying efforts had been sufficient to quash any such measure. In fact...

iatp.org/blog/202102/me…
3. US agencies & #Monsanto did a full-court press to stop Mexico from taking action. Leaked #USTR emails complain of “vocal anti-biotechnology activists” in the administration, and that Mexico’s health agency (Cofepris) is “becoming a big-time problem”.

theguardian.com/business/2021/…
4. The #WHO has classified glyphosate -the active ingredient in Monsanto's herbicide #Roundup- as a probable human carcinogen since 2015.

Bayer (which owns Monsanto) has already had to pay out over $10 billion to settle cancer-related lawsuits.

reuters.com/article/us-bay…
5. AMLO's order is far from perfect and, as the following analysis makes clear, leaves a frustrating amount of wriggle room. Even so, powerful international interests went to the mat to stop it.

redendefensadelmaiz.net/2021/02/diez-p…
6. And thanks to a judge, they have gotten -for now- what they want.

To find out more about the Mexican judiciary's war on AMLO's agenda, read my latest in Jacobin. /END

jacobinmag.com/2021/04/mexica…

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More from @KurtHackbarth

Kurt Hackbarth 🌹 Profile picture
23 Apr
1.) Yesterday, former Mexican president @FelipeCalderon came out complaining that he's being "persecuted."

Today it became clear why: Calderón has been implicated in the massive diversion of public funds to develop Mexico's prison-industrial complex.
2.) Through his then-Security Secretary Genaro García Luna -currently on trial in the US for drug trafficking-, the Calderón administration allegedly diverted some $300 billion pesos ($15 billion US today) into no-bid crony contracts for private prisons.

jornada.com.mx/notas/2021/04/…
3.) As I explained here, these long-term, sweetheart contracts (some possessed today by Black Rock) required the government to pay the companies as if they were at full capacity, regardless of whether a single person was in them.

Read 8 tweets
Kurt Hackbarth 🌹 Profile picture
22 Apr
1. The Mexican Congress has overwhelmingly approved #AMLO's Anti-#Outsourcing law, which bans the practice for permanent or essential functions of a business or organization.

The law largely rolls back a 2012 labor 'reform' which opened the door to it.
jornada.com.mx/notas/2021/04/…
2. In addition to fueling a crisis of precarious work in an economy already massively dependent on "informal," no-benefits employment, the outsourcing boom of the last decade has cost the Mexican treasury an estimated $500 billion ($25 billion US) a year.

infobae.com/america/mexico…
3. Beyond the labor abuses, it also became an open door to crime. The so-called "King of Outsourcing," Raúl Beyruti, allegedly set up a network of 92 outsourcing shell companies to defraud the government.

In February, a warrant was issued for his arrest.

proceso.com.mx/nacional/justi…
Read 5 tweets
Kurt Hackbarth 🌹 Profile picture
10 Apr
In recent articles (e.g. jacobinmag.com/2020/08/pena-n…), I have reported on how the energy privatization reforms of Enrique Peña Nieto were passed by bribing members of Congress.

Now, in a major development, 3 ex-senators from the conservative PAN party have been directly implicated.
They are Jorge Luis Lavalle, Roberto Gil Zuarth and Francisco Javier García Cabeza de Vaca. Lavalle was arrested on Friday; as a sitting governor, Cabeza de Vaca has immunity from prosecuction, which they were already seeking to strip for other crimes.
jornada.com.mx/notas/2021/04/…
Also under the gun - and reportedly on deck for charges - are 3 other ex-legislators: Salvador Vega Casillas, Ernesto Cordero and the PAN's 2018 presidential candidate, Ricardo Anaya, then Speaker of the House.

jornada.com.mx/2021/04/10/pol…
Read 6 tweets
Kurt Hackbarth 🌹 Profile picture
28 Jan
In October, I wrote in @jacobinmag about the parasitical nature of private banking in #Mexico (article here: jacobinmag.com/2020/10/privat…).

Now, a group of foreign banks has just been found guilty of price fixing.

aristeguinoticias.com/2501/dinero-y-…
According to an investigation by the Federal Economic Competition Commission (COFECE), the banks colluded to fix the prices of governmental bond emissions, using chat rooms to decide amongst themselves whether or not to buy or sell.

lexlatin.com/noticias/cofec…
Thus, the boys helped themselves while screwing over those buying the bonds in the secondary market.

Unfortunately, the COFECE decided to give them nothing more than a slap-on-the-wrist $1.5 million fine, only 4% of what they could have been charged.

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Read 5 tweets
Kurt Hackbarth 🌹 Profile picture
12 Dec 19
Feeling so bad for Jeremy Corbyn right now. An honest, decent man, lifelong anti-racist campaigner and fighter for justice around the world, denigrated, demeaned and slandered to the point of being reduced to practically a subhuman caricature. This is on you, media.
This is someone who fought apartheid when Thatcher was calling the ANC terrorists, who opposed Latin American dictatorships when Maggie was playing footsie with Pinochet, defended the rights of Palestinians, called out Saudia Arabia for Yemen, called a coup a coup in Bolivia.
This man, this lifelong campaigner for justice, could not just be opposed. He had to be, from the moment he raised his head as leader of the Labour Party, destroyed, debased, dehumanized. We talk in the abstract of a class system - this is how it perpetuates itself in practice.
Read 5 tweets
Kurt Hackbarth 🌹 Profile picture
27 Oct 19
THREAD: What the #US media won't tell you about the popular rebellion in #Chile.

In 1973, #Nixon/#Kissinger provoked a coup to overthrow the democratically elected #socialist government of Salvador #Allende, leading to the 17-year nightmare of the #Pinochet dictatorship.
In addition to torturing, disappearing, and murdering thousands of dissidents, Pinochet turned #Chile into a laboratory experiment for #neoliberalism. With the help of Milton #Friedman and the "Chicago Boys," they set to work privatizing everything they could get their hands on.
Health, education, pensions, roads, even WATER-everything was sold off to #Pinochet's cronies. #Chile became the shining, model state for our new, post-Keynesian world. That this only could've happened by installing a #fascist dictatorship was omitted.
theguardian.com/sustainable-bu…
Read 14 tweets

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