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12-07-2007, 07:33 PM
Political Tectonic Shift: the NAU
by Mary-Sue Haliburton
Ottawa, Canada
In a process underway for decades in secret, and more recently coming to the brink of emergence, the three nations currently occupying the continent of North America are to be merged economically, and, to a greater extent than any of their respective populations yet realize, politically. This is known as the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). On March 23 in 2005, the SPP agreement was signed formally by the three government leaders of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. (Ref. 2)
Political Tectonic Plates Shifting
Whether it is “only” a new layer of government that will be overlaid on top of existing ones, or whether the unified administration will ultimately replace the existing three governments in Ottawa, Washington, and Mexico City, the SPP represents a violent shakeup of the ground we thought we had under our feet. A tsunami of daily-life consequences will flood over everyone as well, as all areas of financial and social law are to be “harmonized” to make it easier for business. To those setting up this continental administration, borders are simply a hindrance to commerce. Modeled on the European Economic Community (EEC), the North American Union (NAU) seeks to minimize and ultimately to eliminate such inconveniences.
Because elected officials participate along with the CEOs of oil businesses in the working groups and councils which are finalizing the details, the official stance is that the push toward this union is a “democratic” one. All that is missing from their apparent working definition of that word is a mandate from the electorates of the three countries. Many Canadians voting in the January 2006 election were led to believe, based on the campaign slogans of Steven Harper, that they were voting for a nationalist leader. He claimed he would “stand up for Canada” – all the while clearly planning to do the opposite.
Under working groups and the “North American Competitiveness Council” (NACC), a single administration for the continent is already being set up, with ministries and secretariats of its own. It is not yet publicly known exactly what form this will take, but the political and social traditions of each country are on the table -- or maybe the chopping block. The plans are to be completed by the end of 2006. Within one to four years, residents of all parts of North America will be facing a monolithic administration – most likely without any of our original constitutions, and possibly without our familiar political party setups and legal systems.
This is not a wild conspiracy theory, nor is what little has been published based on guesswork. The union of North America is the official policy of the U.S. government. (Ref. 3)
Government Secrecy: U.S. Administration’s Misinformation
The U.S. government describes this incoming merger in neutral, non-threatening terms as a co-operative partnership (ref. 4), but many observers are suspicious that it involves a tighter union than what has been described in official communiqués. The SPP actually establishes a "totally new state corporate rule over the entire North American Continent." (Ref. 5)
With great effort, some individual Americans have ferreted out the background and ramifications of the agreement, comparing public announcements with what is actually happening in Congress and in verifiable news reports. These individuals accuse the government of covering up a traitorous agenda to eliminate the constitution and the nation itself. The government's own myth-debunking website (ref. 6) alleges that no agreement was ever signed.
In refutation of that official misdirection, Tom DeWeese’s (ref. 7) article about the cover-up lists news reports of Bush, Fox and Martin in fact signing the SPP agreement in 2005 in Waco, Texas. And on March 31, 2006, a second agreement was signed in Cancun by Bush, Vicente Fox and Steven Harper, the new Prime Minister of Canada. The politicians’ photo-op and signing were a formality; the real negotiations had been ongoing among high-level government and industry representatives in the preceding years. Only a brief summary of the agreement was announced, stating six priorities to ensure that the union would be in place by the end of this year. Notably, the agreement calls for "collaboration" amongst business executives and governmental agencies for “energy security" as a continental policy exercise.
DeWeese lists more examples of how the government's official statements are contradicted by the facts. For example, to counter the claim that the SPP "won’t change our court system or legislative process and that it respects the sovereignty of each nation," DeWeese outlines the total lack of Congressional oversight as indicating that the SPP is not respecting the existing system.
If the existing system were being respected, why would the planning and implementation be so secretive, and government statements not supported by facts? And if it’s for our benefit, why aren’t politicians, who love to show how much they are achieving for their constituents, promoting it in glowing terms?
DeWeese concludes, "The United States is the most unique nation on earth. We were created out of a radical idea that free people, with their freedoms protected by the government would be happy and prosper beyond imagination. The idea worked. Now, the Bush Administration is ignoring this historic fact to “harmonize” us with Canada and especially Mexico, which is not a free country; has no [right of] property and has just proved its unworthiness of conducting free and fair elections. At risk are our culture, our wealth, and the once proud American way of life."
In short, the same lack of honesty which Al Gore ascribed to both Democrats and Republicans in not telling the public enough about energy policy (Ref. 8: speech text) has also been at work to hide the nature and effects this trilateral negotiation that is bringing the NAU into effect. The public in three countries are not being told enough about the process (in as many languages) to know whether to take action against it, and if so, of what kind.
American Media: Very Few Voices Raised
On June 21st, 2006, viewers of CNN’s Lou Dobbs’ program, would have heard this chilling announcement: "President Bush signed a formal agreement that will end the United States as we know it, and he took the step without approval from either the U.S. Congress or the people of the United States." (Ref. 9) Given that statement’s tone of doom, it’s not hard to see why the government’s website is issuing soothing denials.
This is quoted in “Creating the North American Union” by Dennis Behreandt, which appears on The New American website as well as in its current issue of the Magazine.
On the invited list of participants at a secret planning conference in Banff, Alberta, September 12-14, 2006, was one Mary Anastasia O’Grady, described as a “Journalist for Wall Street Journal (Area Specialist)”. (Ref. 10: list of attendees) Apparently the business-oriented readers of that publication may be treated to some future reports that might reflect tips obtained as inside knowledge. But this doesn’t amount to disclosure of the NAU agenda in any broad sense. We may see some Wall Street insiders being touted for their very astute market “predictions” about what is going to happen with resource stock prices, but they will not be discussing the politics of union or its social implications, other than the usual talk of how borders and “protectionist” laws get in the way of business.
No other journalists were present either inside that meeting or outside the hotel making observations at a distance, or at any other of the meetings since the SPP signing was announced at the press conference in March. The silence from the media is deafening.
Despite having an overtly and publicly pro-NAU website, the spokesman of the North American Forum which sponsored the event, John Larson, excused the secrecy on the grounds that because attendees were promised privacy, reporters could not be told about the conference. And for the same reason he refused to confirm who had attended, let alone what they discussed in secret. (Ref. 11)
The strongly right-wing John Birch Society, which continues to sound alarm bells, regards supporters of the NAU as communists and enemies of freedom. They might be surprised to find that their allies in Canada who also strongly oppose the continental union are doing so because they see it as too right-wing due to its avowed purpose of terminating Canadian social programs such as universal Medicare. It’s the far-right-wing Conservative Party of Canada (CPC), currently in power, which is promoting the NAU. Its officials who attended the conference are toeing the secrecy line; and its leader co-signed the May 2006 agreement.
This “strange-bedfellows” aspect of the issue puts the usual left vs. right dichotomy into perspective. The old concepts are nearly irrelevant when it comes to whether people support the continental amalgamation or not. It’s all about concentrating power over larger and larger areas into fewer and fewer hands, and theories from all parts of the left/right spectrum are advanced both to justify and to attack the monster country that is being created. We need new language to discuss this, and on a different level.
Government Secrecy: Canadian officials silent
Organizers of the event in Canada were the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, an elite club of Canada’s richest CEOs, and the Canada West Foundation, a very right-wing and pro-SPP think-tank based in the Alberta oil patch.
We Canadians have been encountering total stonewalling from our own government on the subject. Even recent and current Prime Ministers, who know perfectly well what is going on, have refused to discuss it. And because they have not permitted the issue to arise during any recent election, there is certainly no mandate from the Canadian public to negotiate an agreement to terminate the country.
Stockwell Day, a former leader in the Conservative (or as it was then called, Alliance) party, and now Minister of Public Safety in the Conservative federal government, was an active participant in Banff. His office is flatly refusing to answer questions from journalists.
This was disclosed by the founder of the citizen watchdog group Council of Canadians, Maude Barlow, who has pointed out that it’s the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) which lobbies the government and continually pushes the notion that because the economies of the two countries are already partly integrated, Canadian “domestic laws are essentially redundant.” (Ref. 12). Her concern is that the idea of redundancy of our laws will be extended to the government itself, and that because its government is seen as redundant, Canada itself will be made to disappear.
Not a journalist with a job to protect, Barlow is nearly the only person to crack the barrier of media silence. And because her “Op-Ed” piece was published in only two Canadian newspapers (though undoubtedly it was offered to many more), that didn’t amount to much more than a squeak. Her article is hard to find online unless you are a paid subscriber to the Calgary Herald; at the time of writing the complete text was available in full only by email and within a frame article on a Toronto-based independent blog site. (Ref. 13)
Because Barlow is determinedly “non-political” in that she has never joined or endorsed a political party, perhaps this tiny chink in the stonewall of silence was permitted in order to imply that it’s only the “fringe” that worries about national sovereignty, and thereby to suggest that it’s not something to worry about. .
Currently, the political scene in Canada is occupied with electing a new leader for the Liberal Party. Most candidates for leadership started out blissfully unaware of the impending continental union, which could render their party superfluous within four years. After many attempts to reach them through their campaign teams, and buttonholing two of them in person, I got one candidate, Bob Rae, to agree that Canadians should be able to vote on this, and to promise to look at the information about it. Another, Gerard Kennedy, has issued a campaign message on September 27th by telephone to the party members calling on them not to go down the same road as the Harper conservatives. A third candidate, former Environment Minister Stéphane Dion, gained the endorsement and campaigners of David Orchard, a former leadership candidate who perennially calls for Canadian independence. (Ref. 14)
My hope was that nationalist candidates at the convention will be willing to raise the spectre of continental merger and make it the key issue. Only if Canadians could get to choose a government running for office on the issue of whether to keep our country might it be possible to derail the NAU juggernaut, at least for a while. However, a new obstacle has arisen. As announced in the September 29th Press Release, Canadian Action Party leader Constance Fogal points out that if the Harper government succeeds in passing Bill C-16, no further election can occur until 2009, too late to stop the NAU. (Ref. 14b: Bill C-16) The only option remaining would then be to hold a national referendum as soon as possible, and to pressure the government to respect the result if the outcome is contrary to the Conservative government’s plan.
Canadian Media Complicity
The Canadian media has been completely silent on the issue, including the publicly-owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation which used to investigate stories the privately-owned media ignored.
In a revealing phone message, award-winning CBC news producer Mark Harrison told a Canadian-sovereignty activist that previous coverage of negotiations toward continental integration had triggered "national self interest" that appeared to stop it. And since the CBC didn’t think this continental agenda was going ahead, it didn’t see a reason to cover the story, he concluded. (Ref. 15) The fact that Harrison also brought up the “One World Government” indicates that he’s assuming it’s all a “conspiracy theory” (a “meme”, a tactic to prevent people from thinking about the subject, and therefore by definition we are supposed to ignore this topic).
It’s not out of line to read between lines here, and wonder whether the news directors were told to keep the SPP quiet until it’s already a "fait accompli". Then their role would be to tell us that this union is for our own good. Given that journalists are naturally curious people, one wonders how journalists in a news organization worthy of the name can ignore all these high-level meetings and the signed agreements. It’s inexplicable, unless there have been orders come down from above.
More recently – perhaps after receiving complaints like the one above -- the CBC did briefly and belatedly mention the Banff conference. Because no Canadian journalists were notified about it beforehand, there was no possibility, after it was all wrapped up, of obtaining statements from attendees, or even photos of the bigwigs arriving and departing. However, an anonymously-authored report on the CBC website quotes a taxi driver in Banff as expressing outrage that this “assault on democracy” was taking place in his own backyard. (Ref. 16)
Leaked Document: the Participants
A long-time activist in the Canadian independence movement, Mel Hurtig, publisher of The Canadian Encyclopedia, apparently used his own connections to obtain an early version of the agenda for that high-level SPP meeting that took place in the luxury Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel, September 12-14, 2006 in Banff, Alberta. The hotel is known as a spectacular (and pricey) tourist resort in the mountains near the famous jewel-like, green-tinted Lake Louise.
Vive le Canada activist Susan Thompson has circulated this document widely through email networks such as that reached by the nationalist Canadian Action Party. In the view of CAP leader Constance Fogal, a lawyer, this SPP group is already functioning as a "government de facto" (Black's Law Dictionary page 824), or
"a government of fact. A government actually exercising power and control in the state as opposed to the true and lawful government; a government not established according to the constitution of the state, or not lawfully entitled to recognition or supremacy, but which has nevertheless supplanted or displaced the government de jure. A government deemed unlawful or unjust, which nevertheless receives presently habitual obedience from the bulk of the community."
Due to the secrecy and exclusion of the public from the process, she further suggests that the participants are operating as traitors to the electorates who put them in office. Again she cites Black's Law Dictionary, which defines "Traitor" as "One who, being trusted, betrays; one guilty of treason." (Ref. 23)
The leaked document obtained by Hurtig contains along with the agenda of topics, for the first time a comprehensive list of the movers and shakers who are re-writing the political map of the continent, and who are by-passing the political systems of three nations to do it.
Officials of the Country of North America
At this secret convention, co-chaired by George Schultz, former Secretary of State (U.S.), Peter Lougheed, a former Alberta premier, and former Mexican Minister of Finance Pedro Aspe, were many leaders and CEOs from oil companies, universities, pro-business think tanks, and the military. (Ref. 24: participant list)
A few names and their associated titles indicate that a continental proto-government has already been set up. A Mexican, Gerónimo Gutiérrez, holds the title of Deputy Foreign Minister for North America. Under what authority could such a position be created, other than by the as-yet-unveiled Country of North America complete with its own head of state and cabinet?
Who's the “Foreign Minister for North America?” Which individuals have been named to other posts in the new administration of “North America” has not been disclosed, and so far, there is no corroborating evidence to support speculation. A member of the “Ghost Troop”, who may have insider information through that network, lists leading figures in the Bush Administration as holding key positions in the continental government. (Ref.)
There is also a secretariat for "Western Hemisphere Affairs", suggesting further planned econo-political consolidation, probably over the heads of, and without the consent of, the nations in South America.
Can this North American Union be Stopped?
Without an immediate and overwhelming groundswell of political will from a MAJORITY within the general populations of each of the three countries, it is difficult to see how the already-far-advanced union of North America can be disentangled. The corporate media’s silence seems calculated to make sure that no rumbles of disturbance will wake the sleeping giant of public opinion and derail the union this time. News might stir up the emotions of people who cling to old and, according to the planners, outdated loyalties.
No matter how many credible and high-level individuals oppose an official dogma (ref. 27), if the mass media does not report their testimony, the public can be kept in a state of acquiescence with the policy or situation they are trying to challenge.
And the mental laziness of many who believe only what’s been on the nightly TV news, and reject every other idea remains the majority opinion, the massive popular political awakening required to stop the NAU may not occur in sufficient numbers, if at all.
Too many people still associate their love of country with support for Big Oil. Due to Canadian soldiers dying in Afghanistan, the Harper government is using the slogan “support our troops” (against alleged foreign terrorists) in the same manner as the Bush Administration. The Canadian Action Party is countering by adding “bring them home” to the slogan. (Ref.)
Knee-jerk responses buttressed by anomalous emotional intensity are routine against any hint that the elected government might not be acting for the best interests of the nation. To a suggestion that long-term manipulation of the system for their own benefit by certain wealthy families and individuals (ref. 28) has been able to override the famous checks and balances on which the American constitution has always depended, complacent “media consumers” react indignantly, denying that this could possibly happen.
If people are simply unable to believe – state merely because their faith in the system is unassailable – that criminal acts or conspiracies could or would undermine the Constitution and the State itself, this complacency may lull them into not exercising the needed vigilance to ensure that the system does not become perverted.
No matter how well designed, any system is only as good as the most corrupt person operating within it. Those checks and balances, like the constitution, are only paper protections. These pieces of paper in turn represent the magnificent principles of human rights and democracy of the country’s founders. In every generation, good people must keep watch for wrong-doing, and defend these inscribed principles whenever evidence emerges that power-hungry and unscrupulous interests are becoming a threat. If vigilance falters or sleeps, the legal and constitutional protections will fail along with it.
Media giants have, of course, spent big bucks hiring very convincing and handsome news anchors, and heavily promote the notion of placing trust in these individuals. A servile philosophy has grown around the idea of the news anchor as the source of all truth, even if it’s based on sloppy reasoning. (Ref. 29) Intellectual sleaze is a foundational principle of the billion-dollar business of selling news, or “infotainment”. As long as the news sells, it doesn’t even matter whether it’s true.
The ideal of journalism as serving the public and their right to know is often held up as the highest expression of the human right of “free speech”. However, corporate ownership of the media is now so concentrated that “free speech” has become “expensive speech”. Some analysts have shamelessly argued that it’s only the owner of the means of disseminating the news who has the right to decide what is published therein. The “human right” of freedom of speech is derided as a “communistic” belief, and free speech is described as a “property right”, thus removing this right from those with less wealth.
In his comprehensive article “Personalizing the Impersonal: Corporations and the Bill of Rights” Carl J. Meyer analyses how the notion of corporate personhood has insinuated itself into the law, and how rights once regarded as “inalienable” for human beings have been pried away from people and given to corporations. (Ref. 29b.) It is within this distorted, but officially-sanctioned legal context, that the “Competitiveness Council” and other private working groups and think tanks are developing the plans for a corporatized North America – without that pesky Constitution and Bill of Rights.
If only a minority protests against a powerful police state, the dissenters could find themselves classified as terrorists, and treated accordingly. (Ref. 29c.)
The Eleventh Hour
In general it seems that it’s still only a few individuals who are willing to face potential jail terms, loss of employment, lawsuits (ref. 39) and other penalties not yet specified for opposing the continental unification agenda. This does not bode well for the future of energy technologies that arise from outside of, and could potentially reduce the profits of, the powerful oil interests which have involved themselves at the steering level of creating the North American Union.
Will we see “more of the same” from this new Bush-Administration-on-Steroids that the NAU is likely to be? Or will there be an intensified crackdown against alternative technologies as an alleged threat to national security (i.e. a threat to the political and economic ascendancy of oil companies)? This might make past suppression of new energy inventions and inventors (ref. 40) look like a polite tea-party.
Little time remains in which implementation of the SPP continental administration could even be challenged legally or politically. By next year, even the court systems and laws may have changed. Will the people we have known as Canadians, Mexicans, and – yes – Americans exit the world stage, “not with a bang but a whimper”? (Ref. 41: Poem by T.S. Eliot.) Those who don’t want that fragment of lament to be their epitaph will have to shift gears now, and hit the ground running.
It would make the ultimate political face-off if a serious attempt were to be mounted to defeat the NAU. On one side are middle-of-the road greenies like Al Gore who accepts the idea of sequestering CO2 while advocating a total freeze on carbon emissions. Aligned with him on this issue would be the fringed edge of research: tinkerers who make Joe Cells, fiddle with magnetic motors, and theorize about zero-point alternatives. These people usually do not have the resources to build prototypes let alone to to hire engineers for design optimization and for securing independent certification of performance.
Arrayed against them are the media-and-oil conglomerates who have politicians in their deep pockets, along with the resources to fund whatever they want.
In contrast, the independent researchers with shallow pockets will find themselves on a collision course with the new and even more powerful continental administration. It is capable of putting a damper on alternative clean-energy technologies which might be able to avert the onrushing climate disaster and eliminate any need to toy with the idea of setting off super-volcanoes.
The trend toward seeking and embracing clean energy certainly is gaining momentum. Is this North American Union an act of desperation by an industry that’s been feeling threatened? A sort of final hurrah of big oil and corporate government? It’s a “final hurrah” that could last a very long time, if way is not found to bring power back to the people, the citizens and voters.
The Basis of Hope
What the inventors and clean-energy researchers also have in their shallower pockets, however, is eternally-springing hope. And passion. This passion for freedom and for the health of the planet’s biosphere may yet rise up in a tidal wave to carry them forward.
It won’t happen without everyone’s making a personal decision to get involved in the issue. It will take setting aside personal rivalries and funneling personal energies and resources into a channel that appears to have some logical chance of success as understood by all who want to see a cleaner environment achieved through human creativity and new science.
There may be a personal price to pay for taking a stand, but even people who don’t feel courageous can draw strength joining with others of like mind. Let’s seek an outcome that is for the highest good of all Earth’s inhabitants, and act politically and peacefully to make it happen.
http://pesn.com/2006/09/29/9500242_NorthAmericanUnion_and_energy/
by Mary-Sue Haliburton
Ottawa, Canada
In a process underway for decades in secret, and more recently coming to the brink of emergence, the three nations currently occupying the continent of North America are to be merged economically, and, to a greater extent than any of their respective populations yet realize, politically. This is known as the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). On March 23 in 2005, the SPP agreement was signed formally by the three government leaders of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. (Ref. 2)
Political Tectonic Plates Shifting
Whether it is “only” a new layer of government that will be overlaid on top of existing ones, or whether the unified administration will ultimately replace the existing three governments in Ottawa, Washington, and Mexico City, the SPP represents a violent shakeup of the ground we thought we had under our feet. A tsunami of daily-life consequences will flood over everyone as well, as all areas of financial and social law are to be “harmonized” to make it easier for business. To those setting up this continental administration, borders are simply a hindrance to commerce. Modeled on the European Economic Community (EEC), the North American Union (NAU) seeks to minimize and ultimately to eliminate such inconveniences.
Because elected officials participate along with the CEOs of oil businesses in the working groups and councils which are finalizing the details, the official stance is that the push toward this union is a “democratic” one. All that is missing from their apparent working definition of that word is a mandate from the electorates of the three countries. Many Canadians voting in the January 2006 election were led to believe, based on the campaign slogans of Steven Harper, that they were voting for a nationalist leader. He claimed he would “stand up for Canada” – all the while clearly planning to do the opposite.
Under working groups and the “North American Competitiveness Council” (NACC), a single administration for the continent is already being set up, with ministries and secretariats of its own. It is not yet publicly known exactly what form this will take, but the political and social traditions of each country are on the table -- or maybe the chopping block. The plans are to be completed by the end of 2006. Within one to four years, residents of all parts of North America will be facing a monolithic administration – most likely without any of our original constitutions, and possibly without our familiar political party setups and legal systems.
This is not a wild conspiracy theory, nor is what little has been published based on guesswork. The union of North America is the official policy of the U.S. government. (Ref. 3)
Government Secrecy: U.S. Administration’s Misinformation
The U.S. government describes this incoming merger in neutral, non-threatening terms as a co-operative partnership (ref. 4), but many observers are suspicious that it involves a tighter union than what has been described in official communiqués. The SPP actually establishes a "totally new state corporate rule over the entire North American Continent." (Ref. 5)
With great effort, some individual Americans have ferreted out the background and ramifications of the agreement, comparing public announcements with what is actually happening in Congress and in verifiable news reports. These individuals accuse the government of covering up a traitorous agenda to eliminate the constitution and the nation itself. The government's own myth-debunking website (ref. 6) alleges that no agreement was ever signed.
In refutation of that official misdirection, Tom DeWeese’s (ref. 7) article about the cover-up lists news reports of Bush, Fox and Martin in fact signing the SPP agreement in 2005 in Waco, Texas. And on March 31, 2006, a second agreement was signed in Cancun by Bush, Vicente Fox and Steven Harper, the new Prime Minister of Canada. The politicians’ photo-op and signing were a formality; the real negotiations had been ongoing among high-level government and industry representatives in the preceding years. Only a brief summary of the agreement was announced, stating six priorities to ensure that the union would be in place by the end of this year. Notably, the agreement calls for "collaboration" amongst business executives and governmental agencies for “energy security" as a continental policy exercise.
DeWeese lists more examples of how the government's official statements are contradicted by the facts. For example, to counter the claim that the SPP "won’t change our court system or legislative process and that it respects the sovereignty of each nation," DeWeese outlines the total lack of Congressional oversight as indicating that the SPP is not respecting the existing system.
If the existing system were being respected, why would the planning and implementation be so secretive, and government statements not supported by facts? And if it’s for our benefit, why aren’t politicians, who love to show how much they are achieving for their constituents, promoting it in glowing terms?
DeWeese concludes, "The United States is the most unique nation on earth. We were created out of a radical idea that free people, with their freedoms protected by the government would be happy and prosper beyond imagination. The idea worked. Now, the Bush Administration is ignoring this historic fact to “harmonize” us with Canada and especially Mexico, which is not a free country; has no [right of] property and has just proved its unworthiness of conducting free and fair elections. At risk are our culture, our wealth, and the once proud American way of life."
In short, the same lack of honesty which Al Gore ascribed to both Democrats and Republicans in not telling the public enough about energy policy (Ref. 8: speech text) has also been at work to hide the nature and effects this trilateral negotiation that is bringing the NAU into effect. The public in three countries are not being told enough about the process (in as many languages) to know whether to take action against it, and if so, of what kind.
American Media: Very Few Voices Raised
On June 21st, 2006, viewers of CNN’s Lou Dobbs’ program, would have heard this chilling announcement: "President Bush signed a formal agreement that will end the United States as we know it, and he took the step without approval from either the U.S. Congress or the people of the United States." (Ref. 9) Given that statement’s tone of doom, it’s not hard to see why the government’s website is issuing soothing denials.
This is quoted in “Creating the North American Union” by Dennis Behreandt, which appears on The New American website as well as in its current issue of the Magazine.
On the invited list of participants at a secret planning conference in Banff, Alberta, September 12-14, 2006, was one Mary Anastasia O’Grady, described as a “Journalist for Wall Street Journal (Area Specialist)”. (Ref. 10: list of attendees) Apparently the business-oriented readers of that publication may be treated to some future reports that might reflect tips obtained as inside knowledge. But this doesn’t amount to disclosure of the NAU agenda in any broad sense. We may see some Wall Street insiders being touted for their very astute market “predictions” about what is going to happen with resource stock prices, but they will not be discussing the politics of union or its social implications, other than the usual talk of how borders and “protectionist” laws get in the way of business.
No other journalists were present either inside that meeting or outside the hotel making observations at a distance, or at any other of the meetings since the SPP signing was announced at the press conference in March. The silence from the media is deafening.
Despite having an overtly and publicly pro-NAU website, the spokesman of the North American Forum which sponsored the event, John Larson, excused the secrecy on the grounds that because attendees were promised privacy, reporters could not be told about the conference. And for the same reason he refused to confirm who had attended, let alone what they discussed in secret. (Ref. 11)
The strongly right-wing John Birch Society, which continues to sound alarm bells, regards supporters of the NAU as communists and enemies of freedom. They might be surprised to find that their allies in Canada who also strongly oppose the continental union are doing so because they see it as too right-wing due to its avowed purpose of terminating Canadian social programs such as universal Medicare. It’s the far-right-wing Conservative Party of Canada (CPC), currently in power, which is promoting the NAU. Its officials who attended the conference are toeing the secrecy line; and its leader co-signed the May 2006 agreement.
This “strange-bedfellows” aspect of the issue puts the usual left vs. right dichotomy into perspective. The old concepts are nearly irrelevant when it comes to whether people support the continental amalgamation or not. It’s all about concentrating power over larger and larger areas into fewer and fewer hands, and theories from all parts of the left/right spectrum are advanced both to justify and to attack the monster country that is being created. We need new language to discuss this, and on a different level.
Government Secrecy: Canadian officials silent
Organizers of the event in Canada were the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, an elite club of Canada’s richest CEOs, and the Canada West Foundation, a very right-wing and pro-SPP think-tank based in the Alberta oil patch.
We Canadians have been encountering total stonewalling from our own government on the subject. Even recent and current Prime Ministers, who know perfectly well what is going on, have refused to discuss it. And because they have not permitted the issue to arise during any recent election, there is certainly no mandate from the Canadian public to negotiate an agreement to terminate the country.
Stockwell Day, a former leader in the Conservative (or as it was then called, Alliance) party, and now Minister of Public Safety in the Conservative federal government, was an active participant in Banff. His office is flatly refusing to answer questions from journalists.
This was disclosed by the founder of the citizen watchdog group Council of Canadians, Maude Barlow, who has pointed out that it’s the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) which lobbies the government and continually pushes the notion that because the economies of the two countries are already partly integrated, Canadian “domestic laws are essentially redundant.” (Ref. 12). Her concern is that the idea of redundancy of our laws will be extended to the government itself, and that because its government is seen as redundant, Canada itself will be made to disappear.
Not a journalist with a job to protect, Barlow is nearly the only person to crack the barrier of media silence. And because her “Op-Ed” piece was published in only two Canadian newspapers (though undoubtedly it was offered to many more), that didn’t amount to much more than a squeak. Her article is hard to find online unless you are a paid subscriber to the Calgary Herald; at the time of writing the complete text was available in full only by email and within a frame article on a Toronto-based independent blog site. (Ref. 13)
Because Barlow is determinedly “non-political” in that she has never joined or endorsed a political party, perhaps this tiny chink in the stonewall of silence was permitted in order to imply that it’s only the “fringe” that worries about national sovereignty, and thereby to suggest that it’s not something to worry about. .
Currently, the political scene in Canada is occupied with electing a new leader for the Liberal Party. Most candidates for leadership started out blissfully unaware of the impending continental union, which could render their party superfluous within four years. After many attempts to reach them through their campaign teams, and buttonholing two of them in person, I got one candidate, Bob Rae, to agree that Canadians should be able to vote on this, and to promise to look at the information about it. Another, Gerard Kennedy, has issued a campaign message on September 27th by telephone to the party members calling on them not to go down the same road as the Harper conservatives. A third candidate, former Environment Minister Stéphane Dion, gained the endorsement and campaigners of David Orchard, a former leadership candidate who perennially calls for Canadian independence. (Ref. 14)
My hope was that nationalist candidates at the convention will be willing to raise the spectre of continental merger and make it the key issue. Only if Canadians could get to choose a government running for office on the issue of whether to keep our country might it be possible to derail the NAU juggernaut, at least for a while. However, a new obstacle has arisen. As announced in the September 29th Press Release, Canadian Action Party leader Constance Fogal points out that if the Harper government succeeds in passing Bill C-16, no further election can occur until 2009, too late to stop the NAU. (Ref. 14b: Bill C-16) The only option remaining would then be to hold a national referendum as soon as possible, and to pressure the government to respect the result if the outcome is contrary to the Conservative government’s plan.
Canadian Media Complicity
The Canadian media has been completely silent on the issue, including the publicly-owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation which used to investigate stories the privately-owned media ignored.
In a revealing phone message, award-winning CBC news producer Mark Harrison told a Canadian-sovereignty activist that previous coverage of negotiations toward continental integration had triggered "national self interest" that appeared to stop it. And since the CBC didn’t think this continental agenda was going ahead, it didn’t see a reason to cover the story, he concluded. (Ref. 15) The fact that Harrison also brought up the “One World Government” indicates that he’s assuming it’s all a “conspiracy theory” (a “meme”, a tactic to prevent people from thinking about the subject, and therefore by definition we are supposed to ignore this topic).
It’s not out of line to read between lines here, and wonder whether the news directors were told to keep the SPP quiet until it’s already a "fait accompli". Then their role would be to tell us that this union is for our own good. Given that journalists are naturally curious people, one wonders how journalists in a news organization worthy of the name can ignore all these high-level meetings and the signed agreements. It’s inexplicable, unless there have been orders come down from above.
More recently – perhaps after receiving complaints like the one above -- the CBC did briefly and belatedly mention the Banff conference. Because no Canadian journalists were notified about it beforehand, there was no possibility, after it was all wrapped up, of obtaining statements from attendees, or even photos of the bigwigs arriving and departing. However, an anonymously-authored report on the CBC website quotes a taxi driver in Banff as expressing outrage that this “assault on democracy” was taking place in his own backyard. (Ref. 16)
Leaked Document: the Participants
A long-time activist in the Canadian independence movement, Mel Hurtig, publisher of The Canadian Encyclopedia, apparently used his own connections to obtain an early version of the agenda for that high-level SPP meeting that took place in the luxury Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel, September 12-14, 2006 in Banff, Alberta. The hotel is known as a spectacular (and pricey) tourist resort in the mountains near the famous jewel-like, green-tinted Lake Louise.
Vive le Canada activist Susan Thompson has circulated this document widely through email networks such as that reached by the nationalist Canadian Action Party. In the view of CAP leader Constance Fogal, a lawyer, this SPP group is already functioning as a "government de facto" (Black's Law Dictionary page 824), or
"a government of fact. A government actually exercising power and control in the state as opposed to the true and lawful government; a government not established according to the constitution of the state, or not lawfully entitled to recognition or supremacy, but which has nevertheless supplanted or displaced the government de jure. A government deemed unlawful or unjust, which nevertheless receives presently habitual obedience from the bulk of the community."
Due to the secrecy and exclusion of the public from the process, she further suggests that the participants are operating as traitors to the electorates who put them in office. Again she cites Black's Law Dictionary, which defines "Traitor" as "One who, being trusted, betrays; one guilty of treason." (Ref. 23)
The leaked document obtained by Hurtig contains along with the agenda of topics, for the first time a comprehensive list of the movers and shakers who are re-writing the political map of the continent, and who are by-passing the political systems of three nations to do it.
Officials of the Country of North America
At this secret convention, co-chaired by George Schultz, former Secretary of State (U.S.), Peter Lougheed, a former Alberta premier, and former Mexican Minister of Finance Pedro Aspe, were many leaders and CEOs from oil companies, universities, pro-business think tanks, and the military. (Ref. 24: participant list)
A few names and their associated titles indicate that a continental proto-government has already been set up. A Mexican, Gerónimo Gutiérrez, holds the title of Deputy Foreign Minister for North America. Under what authority could such a position be created, other than by the as-yet-unveiled Country of North America complete with its own head of state and cabinet?
Who's the “Foreign Minister for North America?” Which individuals have been named to other posts in the new administration of “North America” has not been disclosed, and so far, there is no corroborating evidence to support speculation. A member of the “Ghost Troop”, who may have insider information through that network, lists leading figures in the Bush Administration as holding key positions in the continental government. (Ref.)
There is also a secretariat for "Western Hemisphere Affairs", suggesting further planned econo-political consolidation, probably over the heads of, and without the consent of, the nations in South America.
Can this North American Union be Stopped?
Without an immediate and overwhelming groundswell of political will from a MAJORITY within the general populations of each of the three countries, it is difficult to see how the already-far-advanced union of North America can be disentangled. The corporate media’s silence seems calculated to make sure that no rumbles of disturbance will wake the sleeping giant of public opinion and derail the union this time. News might stir up the emotions of people who cling to old and, according to the planners, outdated loyalties.
No matter how many credible and high-level individuals oppose an official dogma (ref. 27), if the mass media does not report their testimony, the public can be kept in a state of acquiescence with the policy or situation they are trying to challenge.
And the mental laziness of many who believe only what’s been on the nightly TV news, and reject every other idea remains the majority opinion, the massive popular political awakening required to stop the NAU may not occur in sufficient numbers, if at all.
Too many people still associate their love of country with support for Big Oil. Due to Canadian soldiers dying in Afghanistan, the Harper government is using the slogan “support our troops” (against alleged foreign terrorists) in the same manner as the Bush Administration. The Canadian Action Party is countering by adding “bring them home” to the slogan. (Ref.)
Knee-jerk responses buttressed by anomalous emotional intensity are routine against any hint that the elected government might not be acting for the best interests of the nation. To a suggestion that long-term manipulation of the system for their own benefit by certain wealthy families and individuals (ref. 28) has been able to override the famous checks and balances on which the American constitution has always depended, complacent “media consumers” react indignantly, denying that this could possibly happen.
If people are simply unable to believe – state merely because their faith in the system is unassailable – that criminal acts or conspiracies could or would undermine the Constitution and the State itself, this complacency may lull them into not exercising the needed vigilance to ensure that the system does not become perverted.
No matter how well designed, any system is only as good as the most corrupt person operating within it. Those checks and balances, like the constitution, are only paper protections. These pieces of paper in turn represent the magnificent principles of human rights and democracy of the country’s founders. In every generation, good people must keep watch for wrong-doing, and defend these inscribed principles whenever evidence emerges that power-hungry and unscrupulous interests are becoming a threat. If vigilance falters or sleeps, the legal and constitutional protections will fail along with it.
Media giants have, of course, spent big bucks hiring very convincing and handsome news anchors, and heavily promote the notion of placing trust in these individuals. A servile philosophy has grown around the idea of the news anchor as the source of all truth, even if it’s based on sloppy reasoning. (Ref. 29) Intellectual sleaze is a foundational principle of the billion-dollar business of selling news, or “infotainment”. As long as the news sells, it doesn’t even matter whether it’s true.
The ideal of journalism as serving the public and their right to know is often held up as the highest expression of the human right of “free speech”. However, corporate ownership of the media is now so concentrated that “free speech” has become “expensive speech”. Some analysts have shamelessly argued that it’s only the owner of the means of disseminating the news who has the right to decide what is published therein. The “human right” of freedom of speech is derided as a “communistic” belief, and free speech is described as a “property right”, thus removing this right from those with less wealth.
In his comprehensive article “Personalizing the Impersonal: Corporations and the Bill of Rights” Carl J. Meyer analyses how the notion of corporate personhood has insinuated itself into the law, and how rights once regarded as “inalienable” for human beings have been pried away from people and given to corporations. (Ref. 29b.) It is within this distorted, but officially-sanctioned legal context, that the “Competitiveness Council” and other private working groups and think tanks are developing the plans for a corporatized North America – without that pesky Constitution and Bill of Rights.
If only a minority protests against a powerful police state, the dissenters could find themselves classified as terrorists, and treated accordingly. (Ref. 29c.)
The Eleventh Hour
In general it seems that it’s still only a few individuals who are willing to face potential jail terms, loss of employment, lawsuits (ref. 39) and other penalties not yet specified for opposing the continental unification agenda. This does not bode well for the future of energy technologies that arise from outside of, and could potentially reduce the profits of, the powerful oil interests which have involved themselves at the steering level of creating the North American Union.
Will we see “more of the same” from this new Bush-Administration-on-Steroids that the NAU is likely to be? Or will there be an intensified crackdown against alternative technologies as an alleged threat to national security (i.e. a threat to the political and economic ascendancy of oil companies)? This might make past suppression of new energy inventions and inventors (ref. 40) look like a polite tea-party.
Little time remains in which implementation of the SPP continental administration could even be challenged legally or politically. By next year, even the court systems and laws may have changed. Will the people we have known as Canadians, Mexicans, and – yes – Americans exit the world stage, “not with a bang but a whimper”? (Ref. 41: Poem by T.S. Eliot.) Those who don’t want that fragment of lament to be their epitaph will have to shift gears now, and hit the ground running.
It would make the ultimate political face-off if a serious attempt were to be mounted to defeat the NAU. On one side are middle-of-the road greenies like Al Gore who accepts the idea of sequestering CO2 while advocating a total freeze on carbon emissions. Aligned with him on this issue would be the fringed edge of research: tinkerers who make Joe Cells, fiddle with magnetic motors, and theorize about zero-point alternatives. These people usually do not have the resources to build prototypes let alone to to hire engineers for design optimization and for securing independent certification of performance.
Arrayed against them are the media-and-oil conglomerates who have politicians in their deep pockets, along with the resources to fund whatever they want.
In contrast, the independent researchers with shallow pockets will find themselves on a collision course with the new and even more powerful continental administration. It is capable of putting a damper on alternative clean-energy technologies which might be able to avert the onrushing climate disaster and eliminate any need to toy with the idea of setting off super-volcanoes.
The trend toward seeking and embracing clean energy certainly is gaining momentum. Is this North American Union an act of desperation by an industry that’s been feeling threatened? A sort of final hurrah of big oil and corporate government? It’s a “final hurrah” that could last a very long time, if way is not found to bring power back to the people, the citizens and voters.
The Basis of Hope
What the inventors and clean-energy researchers also have in their shallower pockets, however, is eternally-springing hope. And passion. This passion for freedom and for the health of the planet’s biosphere may yet rise up in a tidal wave to carry them forward.
It won’t happen without everyone’s making a personal decision to get involved in the issue. It will take setting aside personal rivalries and funneling personal energies and resources into a channel that appears to have some logical chance of success as understood by all who want to see a cleaner environment achieved through human creativity and new science.
There may be a personal price to pay for taking a stand, but even people who don’t feel courageous can draw strength joining with others of like mind. Let’s seek an outcome that is for the highest good of all Earth’s inhabitants, and act politically and peacefully to make it happen.
http://pesn.com/2006/09/29/9500242_NorthAmericanUnion_and_energy/