The FTAA's agenda for intellectual property rights, i.e. patents, is to expand the WTO's TRIPs agreement into the entire Western Hemisphere. TRIPs allows patents in one country to apply in another. Absurdly enough, these patents can now cover even plants and animals.

Patenting laws are used by huge pharmaceutical companies to monopolize treatments and medicines needed by many to survive. These corporations almost always hike prices to unseemly levels, making it impossible for the world's poor to get the care they need.

Prior to the WTO's stranglehold of every market on the globe, many countries would disallow patents on certain vital medicines, in order to prevent epidemics and massive death tolls. However, now that megacorporations have final say over such matters, laws intended to maintain public health are outweighed by WTO-empowered corporate needs for more money than is possible to count in six lifetimes. Corporations make it impossible for the poor to get the treatment they need, and because of patenting rights it's illegal to manufacture cheap generic drugs.

We've already seen the devastation AIDS has wrought in Third World countries that cannot afford expensive patented medicines. In Africa, 45 million people have AIDS, but only 10,000 (.04%) are receiving treatment. Recently the WTO showed some compassion and will allow AIDS drugs to be distributed freely.

Of course, AIDS treatments are very cheap to produce, in reality. Most nations, even in the third world, can afford to produce these drugs and preserve the lives of millions. But the WTO officials, never ones to concern themselves with trivial matters like human life, refuse to let up on their policies. Millions are dying, unnecessarily, and no one's doing anything about it.

In Brazil, the government has turned its back on TRIPs to create a free AIDS treatment program, which has been an enormous success. However, if the FTAA is implemented, Brazil will have to abandon its life-saving program, which has cut AIDS related death tolls in half. Thirty million people have AIDS in the global south- the FTAA would mean death and suffering for millions of patients and their families.

Patenting laws also let foreign corporations invade a native culture, "bioprospect" for traditional medicines, and then patent those medicines, making it illegal for native peoples to preserve the traditions of their ancestors while megacorporations reap the benefits. This was a major impetus behind the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas, Mexico: a precursor to the worldwide anti-globalization movement. Marcos and company declared Chiapas a "bio-piracy free zone," refusing to allow the corporate empire to rob them of their ancient traditions and culture.

Subsidies and Competition Policy

The FTAA will regulate what governments can and cannot provide funds for. This applies to all governmental activities except, not surprisingly, military spending. In fact, by limiting a government's capacity to provide funding for social programs, the FTAA will in effect force governments to pour more money into their defense budgets, diverting money away from constructive programs and into weapons manufacturing. This will conveniently provide a defense system for the hemispheric market, which I'll go into later.

(It should be noted that this increase in military spending will be most significant in wealthy nations, which will only perpetuate the dominance of those countries in the decades to come.)

Continuing with this theme of holding down the little people, the FTAA's competition policy will force governments to eliminate any policy or regulation that might favor local producers. Although advertised as a measure that promotes fair competition, what it really does is provide an unfair advantage for wealthy corporations, who will always dominate in an open market system. You'll notice this is the third such mandate designed to overwhelm independent, local producers (government procurement and agriculture being the other two). What are these corporate powerhouses so afraid of?

Dispute Settlement

The dispute settlement procedures relate to the afore-mentioned "investor-to-state" suits that are decided in secret courts. If a government is taken to court, and its regulation is judged to be a "barrier to trade," then that regulation will be overturned. The losing country must repeal the law, or else pay cash compensation for lost profit or face devastating trade sanctions. Dozens of health, food safety, and environmental laws have already been removed under NAFTA's Chapter 11, a few of which were illustrated in the "Investment" section.

So that covers the nine mandates of the FTAA negotiators. Before I go further into the FTAA, I want to throw out some facts about NAFTA that the free trade proponents might not want to know. The FTAA will be in large part an expansion of NAFTA, which, as you will see, is a proven failure.

The NAFTA Disaster

Mexico:

· When NAFTA was first implemented, investors (stock market investors) rushed into the Mexican market and traded heavily. But, in a matter of months, they got nervous and pulled out billions of dollars, thus devaluing the peso and causing the Mexican economy to crash.

· Eight million families have fallen from the middle class into poverty, since NAFTA.

· Four million more Mexicans live in "severe" poverty in Mexico than did before NAFTA.

· One million more work for less than minimum wage.

· 28,000 small businesses, unable to compete with huge corporations, were forced to shut down.

· 38,000 small corn farmers had to pack their bags after NAFTA opened the gates to American producers. NAFTA also obliterated all government programs that would favor small farmers, so most were forced to sell their land.

· Wages in the manufacturing sector have dropped 9.5%.

· Mexico's debt burden was ratcheted $20 billion and now the Mexican government must attract foreign corporations using any means necessary, and that includes eliminating "trade barriers" like social programs and environmental laws.

· Mexico lacks or fails to enforce environmental laws.

· Along the notorious "border region" of Mexico, manufacturing has increased, to the detriment of public health and the environment in that area. The lack of sewage treatment and safe drinking water has caused a threefold increase in the frequency of diseases like hepatitis. Every day 44 tons of hazardous waste are improperly discarded here, and the rate of birth defects has risen dramatically as a result.

· In southern Mexico, 15 wood product companies set up operations and logging increased substantially, leading to soil erosion and habitat destruction.

United States:

· Over a million U.S. jobs have been lost since NAFTA, as corporations relocated to Mexico to exploit cheaper wages and weaker labor standards.

· Despite record-high corporate profits, real wages have increased only slightly. This is because corporations often threaten to relocate to Mexico if labor unions fight for higher wages.

Canada:

· Competitive pressures under NAFTA forced the Canadian government to reduce social programs.