Issue 79: June 27, 2001

+== TIME OUT PROJECT ==+

"Each day, tens of thousands of trucks pass into the United States from Mexico — 5000 through Laredo, Texas checkpoints alone," reports the Christian Science Monitor Week ("Since NAFTA, increased drug traffic," May 10-16, 2001). And according to the Washington Times, "Only 60 inspectors monitor the 80,000 American and Mexican rigs that cross the border 4.5 million times per year." ("Highways to open to Mexican trucking," May 3, 2001)

This crush of cross-border truck traffic poses huge problems for law enforcement, which faces record levels of drugs and humans smuggled in big rigs.

But John Tanton, publisher of the quarterly journal, The Social Contract, points out another threat — often overlooked — posed by increasingly open borders: the introduction into the United States of foreign plagues such as foot-and-mouth disease (already endemic in parts of South America as far north as Colombia).

"If the foot-and-mouth virus is let loose on our susceptible animals," writes Dr. Tanton, "there will be no calling it back, especially for wild creatures. The risk is huge, and the consequences are potentially devastating, both environmentally and economically."

Yet, the last line of defense against such a disaster, the U.S.-Mexico border, is "vanishing before our eyes," according to the June 11 Time Magazine cover proclaiming AMEXICA!
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Hoof-and-Mouth Disease — A Border Control Issue
http://www.thesocialcontract.com/cgi-bin/showarticle.pl?articleID=958&terms=hoof-and-mouth

Details of foot-and-mouth disease
http://projectusa.org/Ezine/ezine_links/Ezine_memo_hoof_mouth.html

The Threat of NAFTA Trucking (great stuff here)
http://www.limitstogrowth.org/WEB-text/nafta-trucking.html

+== TAKE POSITIVE ACTION ==+

Despite the serious potential danger, the Bush Administration is irresponsibly pushing ahead with its plans to open the United States completely to Mexican trucks.

This would greatly increase the likelihood that foot-and-mouth disease will find its way into the United States. It is not hard to picture the nightmarish results if this were to happen. Millions of deer and other cloven-hoofed wildlife would suffer a painful, untreatable disease comparable to leprosy, and infected domestic animals — such as dairy cows — would be subject to wholesale slaughter.

Those organizations that care about the well-being of animals and wildlife should be front and center in opposing the reckless, profit-driven dismantling of border safeguards.

You can contact the organization below with this message: Please oppose the corporate globalists and their friends in the Bush Administration who want to open the United States to Mexican trucks. This plan increases the likelihood that diseases like foot-and-mouth will infect our domestic and wild animal populations. Please help stop this potential holocaust by taking a strong stand against NAFTA, FTAA and the other globalist corporate consumerist schemes.

+== QUOTE OF THE WEEK ==+

Speaking as a retired former Director of the U.S. Border Patrol Academy, and a former Chief Patrol Agent for the INS Border Patrol, I will state unequivocally that we can and should immediately deploy the Army and other armed forces to our southern border. Currently our border is out of control because of our government’s refusal to deal with the problem.

Bill King

+==EMAIL OF THE WEEK==+

I just found out about your organization while reading Newsmax.com, and I think the concept of advertising the immigration problem on billboards is a great idea. This open-door immigration policy is another form of insanity. Your organization exhibits a high degree of common sense so
often lacking in our out-of-control society.

Bruce
Wilkes-Barre, PA

Tags:   foot-and-mouth disease · hoof-and-mouth · Mexican trucks · NAFTANo Comments