Besides the Bush administration’s imperial aims and permanent war on the world, add the one at home below the radar.  Its weapons include the WTO, NAFTA, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), FBI, CIA, NSA, NORTHCOM, militarized state and local police, National Guard forces, paramilitary mercenaries like Blackwater USA, and all other repressive instruments of state power and control.  They target the people of three nations slowly becoming one headquartered in Washington.  That’s the apparent aim of those in power here wanting one continent, “indivisible” minus old-fashioned ideas like “liberty and justice for all” we used to believe in when, as kids, we recited our “Pledge of Allegiance.” They now have a whole new meaning.  They’re just words drummed into young minds hoping they’ll still believe them when they’re old enough to know better.

 

There may be a greater scheme for the planet ahead, but this article only focuses on what we know about and how it’s unfolding so far.  It has a name, in fact, several, but they all aim for the same thing – one nation, indivisible, where three sovereign ones once stood, headquartered in Washington.

 

The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) or “Deep Integration” North American Union

 

SPP was formerly launched at a March 23, 2005 meeting in Waco, Texas attended by George Bush, Mexico‘s President Vincente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin.  It’s a tri-national agreement hatched below the radar in Washington containing the recommendations of the Independent Task Force of North America.  That’s a group organized by the powerful US Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), and Mexican Council on Foreign Relations.  It advocates greater US, Canadian and Mexican economic, political, social, and security integration with secretive working groups formed to devise non-debatable agreements that, when completed, will be binding beyond the power of legislatures to change.  It’s also taking shape without public knowledge or consideration.

 

From what’s already known, SPP unmasked isn’t pretty.  It’s a corporate-led coup d’etat against the sovereignty of three nations enforced by a common hard line security strategy already in play separately in each country.  It’s a scheme to create a borderless North American Union under US control without barriers to trade and capital flows for corporate giants, mainly US ones. It’s also to insure America gets free and unlimited access to Canadian and Mexican resources, mainly oil, and in the case of Canada water as well.  It’s to assure US energy security as a top priority while denying Canada and Mexico preferential access to their own resources henceforth earmarked for US markets. 

 

It’s also to create a fortress-North American security zone encompassing the whole continent under US control in the name of “national (and continental) security” with US borders effectively extended to the far reaches of the continent.  The scheme, in short, is NAFTA on steroids combined with Pox Americana homeland security enforcement.  It’s the worst of all possible worlds headed for an unmasked police state, and it’s the Bush administration’s notion of “deep integration” or the “Big Idea” meaning we’re boss, what we say goes, no outliers will be tolerated, public interest is off the table, and the people of three nations be damned.

 

It’s also the next step in what GHW Bush had in mind when he delivered his “Toward a New World Order” speech to a joint session of Congress on another September 11 in 1990.  At the onset of the “crisis in the Persian Gulf,” he said “We stand today at a unique and extraordinary moment (offering) a rare opportunity to move toward….a new world order” free from “the threat of terror….and more secure….”  He spoke of a “new world….struggling to be born….quite different from the one we’ve known.”  He masked his intentions in language of peace and the pursuit of justice while  preparing for war on Iraq and the region that’s gone on for over 16 years with no end in sight.  A new Bush administration is bringing that “New World Order” to the North American continent.  Unless it can be stopped, the streets of Boston, Baltimore and Buffalo may one day look like occupied Baghdad or Bogota when drug barons clash and Colombia‘s US-financed military and paramilitaries step in.

 

SPP Unmasked

 

Establishing hard line security initiatives is key to making SPP’s “deep integration” trade agenda work.  It’s being planned at a time of Washington‘s cooked up “war on terrorism” scheme unleashing imperial dreams not possible without the public traumatized enough to go along. Intended is a ramped up militarized police state of enhanced border and homeland security.  It’s based on the phony notion that doing business and protecting the national interest and public welfare require tough measures in place to secure them at a time of threatening global terrorism.

 

As outlandish as it sounds, the scheme is moving ahead toward implementation.  It threatens Canadian, Mexican and US national sovereignty and priorities, and their people and ours are none the wiser about it.  NAFTA is a glimpse of what’s ahead.  It’s record in 12.5 years has been disastrous with huge numbers of job losses and growing insecurity in three countries.  SPP guarantees more of the same on steroids with small businesses hurt as well. They continue being trampled by corporate giants they’re no match for.  Many go under or are bought out if they survive.  They and working people aren’t part of the SPP process, and their concerns aren’t being addressed and are guaranteed to worsen as this initiative advances.

 

Its doing it at secret meetings like the one from September 12 – 14, 2006 in Banff, Alberta, Canada. It was co-chaired by three former high officials of the participating nations including a leading US cold warrior as Reagan Secretary of State, George Shultz.  He has all the credentials SPP needs as a former Bechtel president and current board member also holding memberships at the hard right Hoover Institution and American Enterprise Institute, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, and the Committee on the Present Danger military lobbying group.

 

They were part of a high-powered group of present and former government officials; top military-industrial complex representatives, Big Oil and other corporate executives; leading policy analysts; high-ranking military brass; and a single Wall Street Journal self-styled Latin American expert editorialist known never to let facts conflict with the state and corporate interests she represents. She’s a frequent target of this writer, and by now likely knows it – Mary Anastasia O’Grady. 

 

Except for O’Grady, no journalists attended, and no press releases followed the meeting with its carefully scripted agenda and controlled media blackout.  Yet veteran Canadian publisher, author, activist and former political candidate Mel Hurtig managed to get hold of the attendee list and published it online.  He also posted topics discussed including: “A Vision for North America” (but not a people-friendly one), “A North American Energy Strategy” (for US energy security at the expense of Canada and Mexico), “Demographic and Social Dimensions of North American Integration,” and “Opportunities for Security Cooperation” (aka Pox Americana).

 

Washington dominates the planning at all meetings with its interests getting primary attention.  Along with what’s mentioned above, efforts are to create uniform business practices and standards, ease the flow of US products into Canada and Mexico, remove labor constraints, and eliminate unwelcome environmental standards or restrictions interfering with the primary consideration of profits.

 

Also on the agenda is getting Canada and Mexico to allow more privatization of state-run enterprises like Mexico‘s nationalized oil company, PEMEX, and eventually open up Canada‘s medicare health care system to private investment. The US can’t negotiate this way with its western European, Chinese or Japanese trading partners but can easily pressure most developing nations to go along with policies harming their own people, and neighboring accommodating ones like Canada, so long as their elite leading players share the benefits.

 

In February, 2007, a set of SPP private sector priorities were laid out by the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) that serves as an official tri-national SPP working group.  It was created at the March, 2006 second annual SPP summit in Cancun, Mexico.  The group is composed of representatives of 30 giant North American companies, with powerful US ones like GE, Ford, GM, Wal-Mart, Lockheed Martin, Merck and Chevron running things the way Orwell described in “Animal Farm” where “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

 

NACC’s recommendations centered on “private sector involvement” being “a key step to enhancing North America’s competitive position in global markets and is the driving force behind innovation and growth.”  It mentioned “border-crossing facilitation, standards and regulatory cooperation, and energy integration (with a top priority of) improving the secure flow of goods and people within North America.”  These issues and others were discussed above explaining what they’re really all about, not the usual code language hiding their real purpose.

 

Without using the word, NACC stressed the importance establishing policies for maximum profits.  Its report said “Every measure that adds to the cost or time to cross borders within North America is in effect a tax on enterprise, a tax on investment (fair taxes in both cases), or a tax on jobs (a slap at high wages) across the region, which ultimately results in incremental costs for the consumers in all three countries (untrue as cost savings accrue to bottom lines, not consumer pockets).”  Also mentioned was the need to make the North American economy “work better (and strengthen) the security and well-being of citizens” without mentioning the “citizens” NACC has in mind are dominant corporate ones and the privileged only and doing it means hard line restraint on the public.

 

SPP wants “to cut red tape and give consumers better access to safe, less expensive, and innovative products” that only “red tape” can help assure.

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