While I was writing the series 10 Steps Towards Closing a Society, President Bush gave his annual State of the Union Address. In the days following the speech, the general consensus was that the speech was nothing more than "Bush's Greatest Hits". I didn't find this to be true mainly because of one important "applause line":
This statement was ignored by, well, just about everybody outside of Canada. However, the North American Summit that will take place in our broken New Orleans on April 21-22, 2008 should not be ignored. Here's why.
Although President Bush speaks about this summit as if it is a routine meeting that occurs every year, this couldn't be further from the truth. The first such meeting between the leaders of the United States, Canada, and Mexico took place less than three years ago in March 2005 in Waco, Texas. At the end of the meeting, during a press conference, President Bush, then Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, and then Mexican President Vicente Fox announced the "Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America", otherwise known as SPP. This boring name is actually hiding something quite sinister: the end of American sovereignty and the beginning of a North American Union, complete with erased borders and a new currency, apparently to be called the Amero (which could help explain why the Bush administration doesn't appear concerned that the dollar is crashing). For more, here's Lou Dobbs (one of the few television "journalists" to even touch the subject):
To prove that this isn't just some paranoid conspiracy theory, watch the video below from a show called Conservative Roundtable. It's a bit long at 27 minutes, but it's a fascinating clip for a few reasons.
- First, it's interesting to see the obvious rift in the Republican party between the people that identify themselves as "conservative" and the people currently running our government that they refer to as "pure capitalists" whose focus is only on concentrating wealth (people I would call members of The Club). This seems to prove my theory that the Republican Party (and the Democratic Party for that matter) are largely myths. Instead, there are people who are members of The Club and people that are not. It is going to be crucial in the next months and years to decipher who makes up each side. It gives me hope that at some point, the people of this country who are not members of The Club can come to some kind of common ground and unite against this group of elites that are re-shaping our country for the benefit of only themselves.
- Second, the interviewer, Howard Phillips, identifies the plan to evolve NAFTA into a North American Union as "bi-partisan treason", citing the first President Bush, President Clinton, and our current President Bush all as part of the plan to create a "New World Order" and fundamentally change our society without consultation with Congress or American citizens. I feel the need to highlight this for any of my readers that still think a President Hillary Clinton would be a good idea.
- Third, the interview clearly illustrates that the plan for a North American Union is designed to benefit large multi-national corporations and the people that make money via those large corporations. This makes the decision to hold the 4th annual North American Summit in New Orleans a telling one. Since Hurricane Katrina wiped out the lower class neighborhoods, thereby creating a "clean slate" in terms of disaster capitalism, New Orleans has been transformed into a privatized paradise for The Club and their private contractor partners and a land of despair for the lower and middle class citizens. As described by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine
, here are the results in New Orleans that the Bush administration wants to showcase:
"After the flood, an already divided city turned into a battleground between gated green zones and raging red zones- the result not of water damage but of the "free-market solutions" embraced by the president. The Bush administration refused to allow emergency funds to pay public sector salaries, and the City of New Orleans, which lost its tax base, had to fire three thousand workers in the months after Katrina. Among them were sixteen of the city's planning staff- with shades of "de-Baathification", laid off at the precise moment when New Orleans was in desperate need of planners. Instead, millions of public dollars went to outside consultants, many of whom were powerful real estate developers. And of course thousands of teachers were also fired, paving the way for the conversion of dozens of public schools into charter schools, just as (Milton) Friedman had called for.Here's the clip from Conservative Roundtable:
Almost two years after the storm, Charity Hospital was still closed. The court system was barely functioning, and the privatized electricity company, Entergy, had failed to get the whole city back online. After threatening to raise rates dramatically, the company managed to extract a controversial $200 million bailout from the federal government. The public transit system was gutted and lost almost half its workers. The vast majority of publicly owned housing projects stood boarded up and empty, with five thousand units slotted for demolition by the federal housing authority... New Orleans tourism lobby had been eyeing the housing projects, several of them on prime land close to the French Quarter, the city's tourism magnet...
Amid the schools, the homes, the hospitals, the transit system and the lack of clean water in many parts of town, New Orleans' public sphere was not being rebuilt, it was being erased, with the storm used as the excuse."
Up until now, I have been reluctant to post anything about the North American Union because it just sounded too... ridiculous. That is until I heard the President of the United States refer to it during the State of the Union Address. The plans apparently call for the integration of our country with Canada and Mexico to be complete by 2010. I'm still not sure how strongly I believe this, but come April 21-22, I hope we will all be paying close attention. If this is true, the word "treason" would be putting it mildly.
Better safe than sorry, mis amigos.
5 comments:
Great read as always, however, I would like to respectfully disagree with your wording of "the end of American sovereignty", the ones who really have to worry the most about a potential American Union are those of us who live on either side of the American border.
While we have our share of problems, we have been able to avoid some of the biggest problems in America (i.e. our obesity rate is lower, our violent crime rate is significantly lower, and both economies seem less likely to be heading for a recession). Sure a Union would be a partnership, but with the vastly larger American population, military structure, and larger international clout, it is obvious who would be running the show. I for one like my Public Health Care, Gun Laws, wacky government system, and what little cultural differences we have in Canada from those of you down South. The thought of those sneaking away if we start to elect a North American Parliament, like they do in Europe, is of great concern to me.
So instead of ending American Sovereignty, I think that a North American Union would go much farther towards expanding American Imperialism, and further compromising the sovereignty of the other nations of the world...really more of the same that has been happening for the past half-century...
G- you're right. I would have the same exact fears if I were from Canada and I should have worded that as "the end of the sovereignty of America, Canada, and Mexico" as all three countries have a lot to lose. My posts tend to be Amero-centric sometimes because I just assume that most of my readers are from the states. It's something I'll have to work on.
Good point. Well said.
Jen, per usual, excellent work.
JWN at Jonestown has been talking about this for several years.
It's a shame like minded people from the Left, and the Right can't come together on these kind of issues.
Honestly, in many ways, I'm a "Conservative," at least in the Classical sense, but I find that when the Orthodoxy is stripped away, most people agree that what's going on is complete bullshit.
"Pure capitalists" is a great way to describe these lunatics.
And you are dead on when you say the Two Parties are an illusion.
Don't let the Orthodox get hold of you.
And keep up the excellent writing.
Fairlane - thank you. It means a lot to me to have a writer from a fantastic blog like Jonestown say such kind words about my writing.
As for people from the left and right coming together, I think it's already starting to happen. Take Bruce Fein for instance. He was a part of the Reagan administration and is as conservative as you get and he has been siding with people like Air America's Randi Rhodes and The Nation's Jason Nichols on impeachment. People are slowly starting to realize that the teams are different than what they once believed. Like everything else, the awakening is much slower than I would like, but it is perceivable and it is important.
Like you, I would also say that I'm a "conservative" in many ways, but in the true sense of the word - not the Bill Kristol sense of the word. But I'm also a traditional liberal in many ways too. Like just about everyone I've ever met, I don't fit neatly into any one category. Trying to label people, in my mind, is a big waste of time.
And good on JWN from Jonestown for paying attention to this. I'll keep an eye out for his/her posts on the subject.
Scheise, these bastards just don't know when to quit, do they.
I think "g" is right, this looks like a way to make Canadian and Mexican citizens subject to the wishes of the handful of people running things in Washington, D.C. I think Canada is much more progressive than the United States, and I would think this must absolutely drive Bush/Cheney crazy, that is, to have progressive neighbors.
This is the kind of issue which should freak out millions of right-wingers who foam at the mouth about how it will be the left, not the right, which will ultimately be the ruin of our country. The real problem. or road to ruin, may lie right there in their own party, which they won't attempt to police because they have been distracted by talkers who tell them how awful the "liberals" are. Everything the Republicans do is correct, everything the Dems do is incorrect, for us or against us, black and white, blah blah blah.
Thanks for the good work. I need to visit your site far more often!
Post a Comment