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BouBou a écrit:Ca m'etonrairas pas pas au ruthm qu'on va... Avec harper comme petit chiens de poches a bush, si les etats nous pointes les armes demain matin en disant: vous etre maintenant un nouvelle etats des etats-unis, ques'quon pourra y faire vraiment?

Panurge a écrit:

BouBou a écrit:Ca m'etonrairas pas pas au ruthm qu'on va... Avec harper comme petit chiens de poches a bush, si les etats nous pointes les armes demain matin en disant: vous etre maintenant un nouvelle etats des etats-unis, ques'quon pourra y faire vraiment?

Tres amusant. C'est ce qu'on vous apprend en Sc. Humaine?

Panurge a écrit:

BouBou a écrit:Ca m'etonrairas pas pas au ruthm qu'on va... Avec harper comme petit chiens de poches a bush, si les etats nous pointes les armes demain matin en disant: vous etre maintenant un nouvelle etats des etats-unis, ques'quon pourra y faire vraiment?

Tres amusant. C'est ce qu'on vous apprend en Sc. Humaine?

exactement comme disait le capitaine: avant de nous envahir par la force, les states vont nous acheter.

Sean Condon a écrit:North American Super State

By Sean Condon
AdBusters #71, Mai-Juin 2007

Last September, as the North American media fawned over a flirtatious encounter between Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Mackay and the United States Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice during a 9/11 commeemoration in Nova Soctia, some of North America's most powerful political, business and military leaders quiettly gathered at the Banff Springs Hotel in Alberta for three days to hammer out the details on how to create a North American super state.

The only member of the media invited to attend this North American Forum was a reporter from the Wall Street Journal. No other media were told the meeting was taking place.

Strange, considering the guest list included then-US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Canadian Chief of Defense Staff Gen.Rick Hillier, United States Northen Command(North-Com) Commander Tim Keating, Canada's Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, and Lockheed Martin executive Ron Cavais. Hosted by the Canadian Council of Chief Executive( a group of Canada's richest 150 CEO's), the North American Forum involved some of the most prominent figures in Canada, the US and Mexico.

But in addition to not letting anyone know about the gathering, once it was discovered, those involved have refused to reveal what was even discussed.

However, thanks to the freedom-of-information requests obtained by Judicial Watch, a Washington based legal watchdog, the forum's agenda shows the group was looking at how they could merge the three countries into a North American Union: a monolithic super-state that would look similar to the European Union but without the referendums, elections, or balance of power. Topics on the forum's program included: "A Vision for North America," "North American Energy Strategy," "Demographic and Social Dimensions of North American Integration," "Border Infrastructure" and "Opportunities for Security Co-operation." Instead of just batting eyelashes at each other like Mackay and Rice, this group was exchanging wedding vows.

Recognizing the obvious controversy that comes with secretly circumventing a country's sovereignty, the members of the North American Forum want to keep North American integration deep in the back rooms of bureaucracy and far away from the public spotlight. The meeting's official agenda notes that integration should be done as clandestinely as possible.
"While a vision is appealing, working on the infrastructure might yield more benefit and bring more people on board('evolution by stealth')," say the agenda notes.

The group's admission to "stealth" maneuvering confirmed the worst fears of political activists from all sides of the boarder. They note that over the past five years, North America has quietly taken dramatic steps to becoming a full-fledged super-state. Following a blueprint laid out by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives(CCCE), the integration of food and drug standards, foreign policy, energy resources and military capabilities are erasing the boarders between the US, Canada and Mexico- all without any public debate. But as the three countries merge, Canadian activists are particularly worried that the US will easily dominate this union and that the American elephant will finally roll over and crush the Canadian mouse.

"The Banff meeting was an extraordinarily important meeting and was all about the integration of Canada with the United States: politically, economically, socially, [with the] harmonization of standards and values," says Mel Hurting, a prominent Canadian activist and author of The Vanishing Nation. "This is very much and organized plot by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives to make Canada into a client state of the US".


A Devil's Deal.

There's and old joke that says Canada enjoyed its only five minutes of independence at the end of the Second World War, as the country quickly shifted alliances from the weakened British Empire to the emerging American one. It's not the funniest punch line, but it illustrates the fact that Canada has always lived in the shadow of a global superpower, even since settlers stoles the land from the aboriginal people. But while Canada was slowly asserting its independence under British colonial rules, it didn't take long for it to get swallowed by the American economic, political, military and cultural juggernaut.

Canadians began to find that their neighbor had become an intrusive just in the late 1960's, when the amount of foreign ownership(primarily American) of Canadian businesses reached 38 percent. At the same time, the US culture machine- music,films and media- continued to dominate in Canada, despite the creation of cultural safeguards such as the National Film Board of Canada(NFB) and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation(CBC). The trouble with Canada's coziness with the US was finally acknowledged by Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, during a 1971 speech in the Soviet Union, when he boldly stated that America had become "a danger to our national identity from a cultural, economic, and perhaps even military point of view."
With Trudeau at the helm, Canada went through a ground swelling of nationalism in the 1970's, winning accolades around the world for a foreign policy that established diplomatic ties with communist countries and inclusive domestic policies that gave more rights and freedoms to
minorities.

Responding to Canadians' concerns, Trudeau established the Foreign Investment Review Agency that helped reduce the amount of foreign ownership to 27 percent. Trudeau's nationalist policies were instantly erased in the mid-1980's, however, when Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney took power and drastically altered his countries economic and foreign policies to appease its powerful southern neighbor. Perhaps the most embarrassing moment in Canadian history occurred in 1985, when Brian Mulroney and US President Ronald Regan sang "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" at the Quebec City Shamrock Summit in 1985 in front of the nation's camera. The song and dance was a shameless attempt to forge closer ties with the US, and led to what many see as the deathblow to Canada's sovereignty: the 1989 Canada-US Free Trade Agreement(FTA).

The FTA hog tied Canada's economic prosperity to the United States and was the precursor to the North American Free Trade Agreement(NAFTA), which brought Mexico into the fold. Today, 80 percent of Canada's export s go to the US, which accounts for over 400 billion worth of trade every year.

But in order to gain access to American markets, Canada had to throw its doors wide open to American business, cede control over its energy resources and give American corporations the right to sue the Canadian government if it refused its business. The result has been the near complete Americanization of Canada.

"Anything we attempt to do to assert our sovereignty- economic, cultural or political- will be brought to a standstill by the empire to the south of us," wrote Peter C. Newman, a Canadian journalist, in a 1999 Maclean's magazine article.
In the 30 years since Trudeau wrestled with the US over Canada's sovereignty, foreign ownership of Canadian companies has shot back up to roughly 40 percent, with foreign companies controlling more then 50 percent of Canada's energy and manufacturing industries.
Foreign direct investment in Canada more than doubled from around $160 billion in 1995 to $360 billion in 2004 (nearly two-thirds of which is American). Iconic Canadian companies such as Hudson's Bay, Eaton's, Molson Breweries and Tim Horton's were all bought by or merged with American corporations, and over 90 percent of films and television shows watched in Canada come from foreign sources. Despite the unparalleled control American Corporations have over the country, Canada is looking to go even deeper down the integration rabbit-hole with a post-9/11 USA that threatens to leave Canada a country in name alone.



The Price of Prosperity

When the Canada-US border shut down on 9/11, it instantly forced Canada to reshape its relationship with a neighbor that was about to launch a destructive, expansive and vague "war on terror." With long delays at the beefed-up border costing Canadian companies millions of dollars, and politicians such as Hillary Clinton making false allegations that terrorist had penetrated the US via Canada, Canadian corporation exploited the 9/11 crisis as a way to push for deeper integration.

As frenzied Americans claimed that Canada's border was porous, the Canadian government responded with a 30-point action plan, led by Canada's then Foreign Affairs Minister John Manley, called the Canada-US Smart Border Declaration- an incredibly misleading name for a plan that has only worked to blur the border between the two countries. The agreement paved the way for Canada's own draconian anti-terror legislation (modeled after the PATRIOT ACT); the Safe Third Country Agreement (which automatically sends refugees who come through the US back); the introduction of biometric identifiers at border crossings( including retina scanners); and increased military cooperation (handing over large chunks of Canada's internal security to the US). As Canada drastically increases its military spending and fights under the US-led campaign in Afghanistan, the two countries have never been closer.

But the concessions made in the Smart Border Declaration weren't good enough for Canada's corporate gluttons, who still felt that post 9/11 border delays were hurting profits. Realizing that the only way to quell America's security concerns was to hand over Canada's decision-making to the US, the CCCE began to push the Canadian government for a North American union. In 2003 and 2004, CCCE Chief Executive Thomas d' Aquino- a fishing buddy of US President George W. Bush- penned two documents under the North American Security and Prosperity Initiative(NASPI), which declared, "Economic integration is now irreversible, but in the wake of the terrorists attacks of September 11th, 2001, it also has become clear that North American economic and physical security are indivisible". It asserted that 9/11 had locked the two countries in an arranged marriage from which neither could escape.

What should have just been a pair of innocuous discussion papers by a special interest group became the blue prints for the coming super state. The CCCE documents would be cribbed almost word-for-word by North America's three governments in March 2005 when Canada's then Prime Minister Paul Martin, Mexico's then President Vincente Fox and Bush met in Waco, Texas and announced the similarly-titled Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America(SPP)- a plan critics have called "NAFTA on steroids."
"The SPP takes in integration of North America far, far deeper than NAFTA does," says Maude Barlow, national chairperson of The Council of Canadians, the country's largest public advocacy organization. "It's particularly dangerous to have this happen during George Bush's regime, when he has completely destroyed or dismantled 400 environmental regulations, plus tons of health and safety regulations and [committed] human rights abuses in his war on terror."

Barlow calls Canada's deepening integration with the Bush administration "shocking," since its ethics and values are diametrically opposed to much of what Canada stands for. But the SPP will link US standards and regulations to Canada in virtually every sector that doesn't involve legislative changes, from trade to foreign policy and national security. While many of its proposals remain vague, some of the SPP's plans include the increase of intelligence-sharing on citizens, the creation of a North American security perimeter, and a continental resources pact (which is pushing to liberalize Mexico's energy supplies and Canada's water resources).

Almost immediately after the SPP was agreed upon, Canada launched the Smart Regulation initiative, an extensive government-wide review that harmonizes many of its regulatory rules with the US. In the two years since Smart Regulation, Canada has made several proposals that would erode many of its standards for health, drug, food, agricultural and environmental regulations in order to fall in line with generally lower standards demanded by American corporations.


Business As Usual

While North America's politicians work to erase barriers between the three countries, critics of the intense integration are especially troubled that none of the policy changes are being debated in a public forum. Despite its far-reaching implications, the SPP has not been brought before Canada's Parliament nor America's and Mexico's respective congresses.

Instead, the three governments are simply allowing the continent's biggest corporations to set the agenda. As if to emphasize this point, during the second SPP summit in March 2006 in Cancun, Mexico, the three countries announced the creation of the North American Competitiveness Council(NACC) a tri-national working group made up of 30 of the top corporation in the continent, which would have a special seat in the SPP. The NACC includes the CEOs from such multinational corporations as Lockheed Martin, General Motors, Cheveron, Wal-Mart, Bell Canada and Canfor. No labour, social or parliamentarian group from any country has ever been invited to join their discussions.

The abdication of powers to big businesses and the lack of transparency have created growing dissent in all three countries from activists who fear for the loss of sovereignty.
Curiously, while the opposition to the SPP is led by left wing groups in Canada, the primary opposition in the US is led by protectionist conservatives. Right wing pundits such as Phylllis Schlafy and CNN's Lou Dobbs have become ferocious opponents of the secretive agreement, while Republican legislators at both the national and state levels have tabled resolutions opposing the SPP.

"A merger between Canada, the US and Mexico would be a direct threat to the national independence of the US and an eventual end to the national borders," Val Stevens, a Republican Washington State senator, told the Ottawa Citizen.

Although much of the criticism from conservative groups crosses into racist rhetoric about Mexican migrants stealing American jobs, there is also worry that new North American currency- the "amero," after Europe's euro- would replace America's greenback. No North American politician has gone on record to promote the amero, but it has been endorsed by powerful right wing Canadian think-tanks like the Fraser Institute, and the C.D. Howe Institute.

While Mexican corporations have pushed just as hard as their Canadian counterpart for the SPP in hope of erasing the heavily guarded US-Mexico border, Mexican left-wing civil society networks have also begun to mobilize in opposition to the plan. Having yet to see the benefits of NAFTA, Mexican activist see the SPP as another tool to exploit cheap Mexican labour and resources. Aside from requiring Mexico to hand over it's security sovereignty, the SPP is calling for the privatization of Mexico's energy and agricultural industries. While Canada signed away a great deal of its energy rights in NAFTA, Mexico smartly held onto its oil and gas reserves. But with the US continuing to suck down oil, and the Bush administration looking for resources outside the volatile Middle East, Mexico has little hope of keeping traditional control of its prized resources.
"[The SPP] is about security and oil" says Alejandro Villamar, a member of the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade, in a phone interview from Mexico. "the United States wants [Mexico's] oil in its hands. It's important for our development, but for them it's a matter of national security."

Politicians and business leaders advocating the deal continue to insist that the SPP is a harmless harmonization of standards and regulation that are needed to in order to compete in an increasingly competitive global market. Although it's starting to bear an eerie resemblance to the three continental super states in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, SPP proponents say that North America must unify if it is to compete with powerful new rivals like the European Union, China, and India.
Ross Laver, vice president of policy and communications for the CCCE, refused to grant us an interview with d' Aquino on the grounds that Adbusters is "opposed to commerce" but offered his own views on the benefits of NAFTA to Canada, despite the growing gap between the rich and poor among Canadians since the agreement. According to a recent report by the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives, the richest ten percent of Canadian families now earn 82 times more than the poorest families in the country, while the number of homeless has doubled in some cities.

Laver purports that there has been plenty of public attention on the SPP, but even some of the strongest supporters of the North American integration have been critical of its lack of transparency. Christine Frechette, president of the North American Forum on Integration, says there needs to be more partners at the table than just big business.
"This SPP process is limited in its positive impact" she says, "because when you look at the structure of the SPP you notice that there's an advisory business council, but no other kind of civil society advisory council" says Frechette. "When you take into consideration that business interests do not fit necessarily with general public interests, something is missing."

The growing criticism against the SPP is finally beginning to force the three North American governments to account for its secret deal. The US government's SPP meeting recently added a new section called "Myths and Facts" that tries to dispute the allegations, without assuring the public about its transparency. During last February's SPP meeting in Ottawa, the mainstream media began to press ministers about the SPP's secrecy and threat to sovereignty. Mackay defended the deal's impact on Canadian sovereignty to reporters, saying "[The SPP is] ensuring that Canada's sovereignty, Canada's interests, and Canada's prosperity and security are going to be advanced through this partnership and through these very open and high-level dialogs."

Although Mackey and other political leaders are sending out reassuring statements, they still refuse to release any details about their meetings to the public. Surprisingly, the only evidence available about North America's future comes from the continent's major corporation, which are openly and aggressively pushing for a North American Union. Their documents reveal a very serious attempt to take North America down a road to unification that began decades ago. Thanks to the new world order created by 9/11 and accelerated globalization, the integration project that began with the FTA is intensifying. With borders rapidly vanishing around the world, how can less powerful countries like Canada and Mexico not be swallowed by the world's only superpower?

For now, there are still a number of barriers that will keep Canada from getting pulled in the powerful American undertow. While Canadian businesses and political leaders are pushing for bureaucratic integration, they would still have to get legislative approval to make drastic changes to their governance structures. Yet it is obvious from last September's Banff meeting that the proponents of a super-state will attempt to pursue this unification through "stealth" until they are ready to push it to the legislative level. What event will act as the catalyst for further integration remains to be seen--just as 9/11 was exploited by Canadian businesses and the American government for deeper integration, another major crisis (natural or man-made, real or perceived) could hammer the final nail in the Canadian coffin. Unless government leaders from all three countries open up the SPP discussions to the public and allow them to have a voice in how the rules, regulations and values are structured. Canadians could suddenly find themselves being governed by American corporations and their country all but disappeared.

Kapitaine_Kolon a écrit:D'ailleurs,et il faudrait que je le retrouve, j'ai lu un article récemment sur les liens entre le général Rick Hillier et l'armée US... Preuve que la colonisation touche plusieurs secteurs. En fait, Hillier serait l'un des responsables de "l'américanisation" de nos pratiques militaires au Canada, genre l'abandon du casque bleu pour les "missions de paix".

Rose a écrit:

exactement comme disait le capitaine: avant de nous envahir par la force, les states vont nous acheter.

Je crois qu'il y a deux semaines environ, je lisais dans le journal ( Je crois que c'était la presse, mais je suis pas sure ) qu'en fait, le Canada achetait présentement plus d'entreprises étrangères que le contraire.

Dommage que je retrouve pas la référence.

Rose a écrit:QUOI ??? les USA ont la capacité militaire et économique d'envahir le Canada quand ils le veulent ??? HO MON DIEU !!! C'est la nouvelle du siècle !!! Vite ! Suivont l'exemple de l'Iran et dotons nous de l'arme atomique pour pouvoir nous défendre