Photo:~Hypatia~, Creative Commons, Flickr
Last Tuesday, for the umpteenth time – though this time publicly – the leaders of Canada, Mexico and the U.S. met to try to prevail over more sensible heads (including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi) who want to amend, and possibly abrogate, NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Often referred to as "the three amigos" (a reference to the 1986 comedy), U.S. President George Bush, Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon and Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper presented a united front to Congress in an attempt to push extending a free trade agreement to Columbia – one of Bush’s biggest allies – and forestalled attempts by both Clinton and Obama, the two Democratic presidential candidates, to renegotiate the existing NAFTA agreement.

Bush, who sees NAFTA as one of his administration’s greatest legacies, decries what he often refers to as the “political maneuvering for president” that surrounds NAFTA, and has been known to criticize both Democratic political candidates harshly for continuing to oppose him. Calderon, clearly in the same camp, said that now was the time to strengthen NAFTA, not amend or cancel it.

Neither Bush nor Harper is very popular in their respective countries. Bush’s approval rating recently dropped to an all-time low of 31 percent. Harper, a Conservative, was elected in 2006 with a 55 percent majority, but currently has less than a 34 percent approval rating. Calderon, elected in 2006, dropped to 57 percent after gas taxes went up in 2007 but now has a 65-percent approval rating, mostly based on his willingness to open oil reserves to foreign investors.

Of course, Mexico has the most to gain from a trilateral trade agreement, which will depress U.S. and Canadian wages while upping Mexico’s economy. Harper favors NAFTA because he believes it will help the Canadian economy, since Canada is America’s biggest supplier of oil and gas. Harper’s alliance with the Canadian oil and gas industry is legendary, and the primary reason he has backed off climate-change agreements. He knows the Athabascan tar sands are an environmental nightmare in the making, albeit a perfect storm of profit for the energy industry.

Clinton and Obama both oppose NAFTA as it stands, citing that the agreement increases economic disparity in the U.S. by outsourcing production; Mexico can do it cheaper, if not always better. The one thing most people don’t realize is that NAFTA, under Bush, will open the floodgates for really cheap Chinese merchandise to pour into Mexico and make its way north, branded as Mexican merchandise, further depressing an already shaky economy.

McCain, the sole Republican candidate for the presidency, supports Bush and insists that free trade can solve the current problems. It’s not free trade, McCain argues, but the fact that U.S. citizens can’t, or won’t, adapt to a new world economy that keeps us stuck in park.

Personally, the words “new world economy” strike fear in my heart. They sound uncomfortable similar to “new world order.” I, like many, interpret McCain’s remarks to mean that the little people must adapt to increasing poverty and the loss of well-paying jobs as the price of survival in a world marketplace, while multinational corporations further pollute our environment, bankers steal our money in engineered economic meltdowns, and hedge fund managers reap the profits on artificially inflated crop futures, leaving us little or nothing to eat. All we need to complement our increasing status as serfs of a feudal monarchy is a monarch, a position which Bush seems ready and eager to fill – if not in person, at least by proxy.

The next stop on McCain’s speaking tour to promote the new poverty will be Inez, Ky. Its single claim to fame is that it is the place where former president Lyndon Johnson delivered his 1964 speech declaring a national war on poverty. Irony surrounds me.

When the three amigos secretly met in August of 2007 at a hotel in Quebec (a meeting with no media access and even less transparency), they discussed what is now being called the “Security and Prosperity Partnership” (SPP), another name for the North American Union, first put forward in 2005 and attended, at various times and locations, by such kingmakers as big business (in the form of the NACC), corporate lobbyists and political insiders.

SPP, which exists only in the minds of these kingmakers and their puppets (Bush, Harper and Calderon), is nowhere presented in the form of a document or treaty, and aims to restructure Canadian, Mexican and American businesses, military, and social reform programs into single entities without having to go the troublesome route of democratic process. In other words we, the serf, will not be asked to vote or provide input while these three henchmen of a shadow government composed of the wealthy and powerful reduce us to a form of slavery not seen since the early years of this nation.

Some have said the proposal won’t work. Canadians don’t want to become an American colony or have their dollar devalued by America’s tanking economy. Others are alarmed by the fact that Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff recently traveled to Mexico in preparation for the fourth SPP annual summit in New Orleans on April 21-22.

One of the oddest things about this summit, other than Chertoff’s presence, is the fact that the media were separated into groups according to their representative countries and told which events to attend, suggesting a hidden agenda on the parts of one or more countries. Another odd fact is that none of the principal representatives used the term "Security and Prosperity Partnership" in any press release or public comment, and instead referred to the meeting as the “North American Leaders Summit,” which should have been disconcerting to the Mexican contingent.

The choice of city (where over half the original residents are living in toxic trailers), and Chertoff’s presence, suggests much more than a mutual realignment of national policies, military functions and business practices. Could it be that our three countries are on the verge of a silent, potentially bloody and divisive coup to institute a single government, which Canadian trade expert/activist Maude Barlow describes as being, “zip-locked together in one security bag”, with the most active and verbal protesters transferred to regional rendition camps (supposedly maintained for terrorists).

If so, how long will it be before our most effective defense – our Second Amendment right to bear arms – is removed by a Supreme Court predominately bought and paid for under the Reagan and Bush administrations? Or will the Court simply abstain and allow regional jurisdictions to act in their behalf to disarm the angry masses, leaving only Montana – whose constitution supports this right – to defend a defunct democracy?

With Karl Rove now working at Newsweek and Bill Kristol at the New York Times reflecting mainstream media’s embrace of neo-con politics, while Rupert Murdoch proposes buying yet another media outlet to add to his collection of non-news sources, we aren’t likely to hear about it until it happens, and by then it will be too late.

Disclosure: I don’t own stock in any corporation represented by the NACC.

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