Grass-roots Action Needed on SPP NOW!
By Erik Rush (10/31/07)
On October 12 and 13, activist groups The Council of Canadians and the Canadian Action Party, respectively, called for a popular referendum on Canada's involvement in the controversial Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) that has been covered in the U.S. primarily by alternative media sources over the past few months.
“Closed to the press, the first SPP North American Forum meeting was held in Alberta, Canada, from September 12-14, 2006. The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America is ostensibly ‘a trilateral effort to increase security and enhance prosperity among the United States, Canada and Mexico through greater cooperation and information sharing.’”
- From Target: SPP, Erik Rush, The New Media Journal, Aug. 21, 2007
The first question that comes to the mind of one not completely sedated by supermarket tabloids and the traditional media is why this outfit perceives the need to operate in clandestine fashion. The second is why (given the information that’s been trickling out of Canada since 2006, the efforts of people in the alternative media and bipartisan factions in Congress that are either opposed to America’s involvement or at least believe that oversight is in order) the issue has been ignored by the mainstream press.
The answer is money. I’m sure you’re surprised.
According to the Council of Canadians, an organization called The North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) is the “beard” for certain multinational corporations responsible for bringing leaders of Canada, Mexico and the United States to the table. The NACC is comprised of 30 North American multinational corporations. Its U.S. members include (according to an October 12 press release by The Council of Canadians and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce website) the Campbell Soup Company, Chevron Corporation, Ford Motor Corporation, FedEx Corporation, General Electric Company, General Motors Corporation, Kansas City Southern, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Merck & Co., Inc., Mittal Steel USA, New York Life Insurance Company, Procter & Gamble, UPS, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., and Whirlpool Corporation.
So, as far as media coverage goes, ask yourself: How many commercial news enterprises might be in a position to be hurt by one or more of those corporations as regards cessation of advertising revenue? Well, NBC, formerly one of the “Big Three” is owned by General Electric (see above), so that news agency could simply have been ordered off of the story. While neither the Council of Canadians and the Canadian Action Party have indicted Disney (which owns ABC) or Sony (which owns CBS but is not a North American corporation), it’s not a huge intellectual jump to surmise that any one or more of the companies they hold might have a CEO or two in the SPP sessions.
"So far, only 30 CEOs from North America's richest corporations, including Lockheed Martin, Bank of Nova Scotia, Chevron, Power Corporation and Merck, have had any meaningful input… Only they have been invited to annual closed-door meetings of SPP leaders and ministers, such as the one that took place in Montebello, Quebec, in August."
- Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians, October 12, 2007
For the last few weeks, former Mexican president Vicente Fox has been strutting about the television talk show circuit promoting his new book (Revolution of Hope: The Life, Faith, and Dreams of a Mexican President) and essentially admitting to being the chief architect of the design for a North American Union. This of course contradicts our president’s assertions that no such animal exists and that anyone who believes so is off the beam.
It makes sense that the idea might come out of Mexico, although we may never know if it actually did. There is a growing socialist contingent in Mexico, and it is generally known that they are supported by Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, who would like to see a socialist Mexico as openly hostile to America as he is. Mexico has more to gain as a nation than The U.S. or Canada; this is assuming there is anything to be gained by U.S. and Canada at all, save financial gains for their resident corporate interests. Mexico’s appeals for a North American Union are sort of analogous to bank robbers lobbying for a law requiring banks to leave their vaults open overnight.
In my book Annexing Mexico: Solving the Border Problem Through Annexation and Assimilation, I offer a far saner and equally lucrative win-win solution to our southern border crisis. In qualifying Mexico’s political culture, I also rather inadvertently illustrate why a North American Union would be disastrous for the American people and (to a lesser extent) our Canadian neighbors. The unilateral gambits played to date by the Bush administration (i.e., Mexican trucking company access and additional financial aid to Mexico), I believe, speak for themselves in this regard.
The Canadian people don’t want the SPP. The American people (who are aware of it) don’t want it. Even substantially influential bipartisan contingents in Congress doesn’t want it. So why are Bush, Calderon and Harper giving all the middle finger?
Plutocracy (noun): 1. government by the wealthy; 2. a controlling class of the wealthy.
Oligarchy (noun): 1. government by the few; 2. a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes; also: a group exercising such control.
- From Merriam Webster’s Dictionary
Despite the fact that we still hold elections (for the time being, at least), America has apparently transmogrified from a constitutional republic into a plutocratic oligarchy, or an oligarchic plutocracy; take your pick. The reasons for the modus operandi of the SPP, the NACC and other such interests are many, but three of the most significant are:
1. Greed,
2. elitist arrogance, and
3. a naïve and dangerous premise, that being: Back in the ‘Seventies, a handful of highly influential politicians and wealthy business interests reasoned that if the economies of nations around the globe were sufficiently interdependent, then the likelihood of anyone desiring to blow anyone else into subatomic particles would be dramatically reduced.
Sounds reasonable, right?
About as reasonable as loosening commercial freight restrictions for a border nation that’s legendary for its level of corruption, at whose border firefights involving drug dealers (aided by Mexican police) and our Border Patrol are a regular occurrence and where terrorist affiliates have been apprehended. Apparently, those Americans and others who will suffer due to drug trafficking, human trafficking, the actions of criminal aliens and possibly even terrorists don’t stack up against the bottom line of multinational corporations.
Then there’s the “interdependency equals security” fallacy. The economies of Saudi Arabia and the U.S. have been intimately intertwined for decades; that hasn’t stopped the Saudis from actively supporting Wahabbists who desire to blow us into subatomic particles from without and from within. There are many other examples of “economic partner nations” and allies who have gone on to stab America in the back. Globalist rationalization is apparently somewhat akin to the addict’s: “This time it’ll be different…”
So, throwing American sovereignty under the bus notwithstanding, the underlying question is: Will the member nations of these globalist “unions” be able to trust one another? If the United Nations is any indicator, the answer is a resounding, 9.5 on the Richter Scale “NO!” The idea that such an association could be sustained at this juncture in our social evolution is born of conceit on the part of politicians and would-be statesman and blind greed on the part of big business.
The problem with Mexico is that she’s needy, or 10 percent of them wouldn’t already be in the United States. With her resources, Mexico shouldn’t be needy, but that’s due to the greed, corruption and racism of her ruling class. Vicente Fox knows that his country will eventually succumb to socialism or slide down the swirly without some form of radical change – as long as that change doesn’t threaten the one-tenth of one percent of the population that runs the place.
Whether annexed or incorporated into a North American Union, Mexico will have to lay aside some measure of national pride; that one-tenth of one percent don’t particularly want their throats slashed and their haciendas burned when a Mexican avatar of Hugo Chavez comes to power.
If American political interests are operating under the presumption that economic interdependence will produce a united front where our enemies are concerned, I’d suggest they revisit our relationships with Saudi Arabia, France (under Chirac) and Germany, as well as other so-called allies of ours.
As the Canadian people propose, grass-roots action is the only course. We must demand that our congressmen and senators (who work for us, by the way) pass legislation that will effectively hamstring anyone in the executive branch of our government with respect to unilateral trade arrangements that have the potential to affect our sovereignty, domestic conditions, national security, and American workers at large. If Americans become sufficiently motivated in this area (as they did in the case of the Senate Immigration Bill) and begin to show consistent vigilance, then we can trust that congressional oversight will at least give us a fighting chance against shadow governments.
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