- Besides the Bush administration's imperial aims and permanent
war on the world, add the one at home below the radar. Its weapons include
the WTO, NAFTA, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), FBI, CIA, NSA, NORTHCOM,
militarized state and local police, National Guard forces, paramilitary
mercenaries like Blackwater USA, and all other repressive instruments of
state power and control. They target the people of three nations slowly
becoming one headquartered in Washington. That's the apparent aim of those
in power here wanting one continent, "indivisible" minus old-fashioned
ideas like "liberty and justice for all" we used to believe in
when, as kids, we recited our "Pledge of Allegiance." They now
have a whole new meaning. They're just words drummed into young minds
hoping they'll still believe them when they're old enough to know better.
-
- There may be a greater scheme for the planet ahead, but
this article only focuses on what we know about and how it's unfolding
so far. It has a name, in fact, several, but they all aim for the same
thing - one nation, indivisible, where three sovereign ones once stood,
headquartered in Washington.
-
- The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America
(SPP) or "Deep Integration" North American Union
-
- SPP was formerly launched at a March 23, 2005 meeting
in Waco, Texas attended by George Bush, Mexico's President Vincente Fox
and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin. It's a tri-national agreement
hatched below the radar in Washington containing the recommendations of
the Independent Task Force of North America. That's a group organized
by the powerful US Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Canadian Council
of Chief Executives (CCCE), and Mexican Council on Foreign Relations.
It advocates greater US, Canadian and Mexican economic, political, social,
and security integration with secretive working groups formed to devise
non-debatable agreements that, when completed, will be binding beyond the
power of legislatures to change. It's also taking shape without public
knowledge or consideration.
-
- From what's already known, SPP unmasked isn't pretty.
It's a corporate-led coup d'etat against the sovereignty of three nations
enforced by a common hard line security strategy already in play separately
in each country. It's a scheme to create a borderless North American Union
under US control without barriers to trade and capital flows for corporate
giants, mainly US ones. It's also to insure America gets free and unlimited
access to Canadian and Mexican resources, mainly oil, and in the case of
Canada water as well. It's to assure US energy security as a top priority
while denying Canada and Mexico preferential access to their own resources
henceforth earmarked for US markets.
-
- It's also to create a fortress-North American security
zone encompassing the whole continent under US control in the name of "national
(and continental) security" with US borders effectively extended to
the far reaches of the continent. The scheme, in short, is NAFTA on steroids
combined with Pox Americana homeland security enforcement. It's the worst
of all possible worlds headed for an unmasked police state, and it's the
Bush administration's notion of "deep integration" or the "Big
Idea" meaning we're boss, what we say goes, no outliers will be tolerated,
public interest is off the table, and the people of three nations be damned.
-
- It's also the next step in what GHW Bush had in mind
when he delivered his "Toward a New World Order" speech to a
joint session of Congress on another September 11 in 1990. At the onset
of the "crisis in the Persian Gulf," he said "We stand today
at a unique and extraordinary moment (offering) a rare opportunity to move
toward....a new world order" free from "the threat of terror....and
more secure...." He spoke of a "new world....struggling to be
born....quite different from the one we've known." He masked his
intentions in language of peace and the pursuit of justice while preparing
for war on Iraq and the region that's gone on for over 16 years with no
end in sight. A new Bush administration is bringing that "New World
Order" to the North American continent. Unless it can be stopped,
the streets of Boston, Baltimore and Buffalo may one day look like occupied
Baghdad or Bogota when drug barons clash and Colombia's US-financed military
and paramilitaries step in.
-
- SPP Unmasked
-
- Establishing hard line security initiatives is key to
making SPP's "deep integration" trade agenda work. It's being
planned at a time of Washington's cooked up "war on terrorism"
scheme unleashing imperial dreams not possible without the public traumatized
enough to go along. Intended is a ramped up militarized police state of
enhanced border and homeland security. It's based on the phony notion
that doing business and protecting the national interest and public welfare
require tough measures in place to secure them at a time of threatening
global terrorism.
-
- As outlandish as it sounds, the scheme is moving ahead
toward implementation. It threatens Canadian, Mexican and US national
sovereignty and priorities, and their people and ours are none the wiser
about it. NAFTA is a glimpse of what's ahead. It's record in 12.5 years
has been disastrous with huge numbers of job losses and growing insecurity
in three countries. SPP guarantees more of the same on steroids with small
businesses hurt as well. They continue being trampled by corporate giants
they're no match for. Many go under or are bought out if they survive.
They and working people aren't part of the SPP process, and their concerns
aren't being addressed and are guaranteed to worsen as this initiative
advances.
-
- Its doing it at secret meetings like the one from September
12 - 14, 2006 in Banff, Alberta, Canada. It was co-chaired by three former
high officials of the participating nations including a leading US cold
warrior as Reagan Secretary of State, George Shultz. He has all the credentials
SPP needs as a former Bechtel president and current board member also holding
memberships at the hard right Hoover Institution and American Enterprise
Institute, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, and the Committee
on the Present Danger military lobbying group.
-
- They were part of a high-powered group of present and
former government officials; top military-industrial complex representatives,
Big Oil and other corporate executives; leading policy analysts; high-ranking
military brass; and a single Wall Street Journal self-styled Latin American
expert editorialist known never to let facts conflict with the state and
corporate interests she represents. She's a frequent target of this writer,
and by now likely knows it - Mary Anastasia O'Grady.
-
- Except for O'Grady, no journalists attended, and no press
releases followed the meeting with its carefully scripted agenda and controlled
media blackout. Yet veteran Canadian publisher, author, activist and former
political candidate Mel Hurtig managed to get hold of the attendee list
and published it online. He also posted topics discussed including: "A
Vision for North America" (but not a people-friendly one), "A
North American Energy Strategy" (for US energy security at the expense
of Canada and Mexico), "Demographic and Social Dimensions of North
American Integration," and "Opportunities for Security Cooperation"
(aka Pox Americana).
-
- Washington dominates the planning at all meetings with
its interests getting primary attention. Along with what's mentioned above,
efforts are to create uniform business practices and standards, ease the
flow of US products into Canada and Mexico, remove labor constraints, and
eliminate unwelcome environmental standards or restrictions interfering
with the primary consideration of profits.
-
- Also on the agenda is getting Canada and Mexico to allow
more privatization of state-run enterprises like Mexico's nationalized
oil company, PEMEX, and eventually open up Canada's medicare health care
system to private investment. The US can't negotiate this way with its
western European, Chinese or Japanese trading partners but can easily pressure
most developing nations to go along with policies harming their own people,
and neighboring accommodating ones like Canada, so long as their elite
leading players share the benefits.
-
- In February, 2007, a set of SPP private sector priorities
were laid out by the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) that
serves as an official tri-national SPP working group. It was created at
the March, 2006 second annual SPP summit in Cancun, Mexico. The group
is composed of representatives of 30 giant North American companies, with
powerful US ones like GE, Ford, GM, Wal-Mart, Lockheed Martin, Merck and
Chevron running things the way Orwell described in "Animal Farm"
where "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than
others."
-
- NACC's recommendations centered on "private sector
involvement" being "a key step to enhancing North America's competitive
position in global markets and is the driving force behind innovation and
growth." It mentioned "border-crossing facilitation, standards
and regulatory cooperation, and energy integration (with a top priority
of) improving the secure flow of goods and people within North America."
These issues and others were discussed above explaining what they're really
all about, not the usual code language hiding their real purpose.
-
- Without using the word, NACC stressed the importance
establishing policies for maximum profits. Its report said "Every
measure that adds to the cost or time to cross borders within North America
is in effect a tax on enterprise, a tax on investment (fair taxes in both
cases), or a tax on jobs (a slap at high wages) across the region, which
ultimately results in incremental costs for the consumers in all three
countries (untrue as cost savings accrue to bottom lines, not consumer
pockets)." Also mentioned was the need to make the North American
economy "work better (and strengthen) the security and well-being
of citizens" without mentioning the "citizens" NACC has
in mind are dominant corporate ones and the privileged only and doing it
means hard line restraint on the public.
-
- SPP wants "to cut red tape and give consumers better
access to safe, less expensive, and innovative products" that only
"red tape" can help assure. Regulations, it says "impede
the efficiency and competitiveness of businesses in all three countries"
except ones giving them a competitive advantage and even though regulations,
in fact, serve (or should serve) to protect consumers, not harm them.
-
- Recommendations in the report call for specific action
in these sectors in the order the report listed them. It placed last the
one of greatest importance, energy, but here's the order priority given:
food and agriculture, financial services, transportation, protection of
intellectual property rights and lastly energy integration specifically
emphasizing Canada's vast oil sands that make its overall reserves second
only to Saudi Arabia.
-
- Canada aims to triple its oil sands production by 2015
to three million barrels daily to feed America's insatiable energy appetite
these resources are earmarked for. Mexico's oil is also targeted, but
the report hides NACC's aim for state oil company PEMEX to be opened to
private investment saying only while the country is "blessed with
abundant reserves, (it) faces major challenges in attracting capital"
needed to realize their potential. NACC wants Mexico to "increase
the competitiveness in (its) energy sector" without saying it wants
it privatized so foreign investors can plunder them for profit.
-
- It also wants governments and the private sector to "work
together effectively in strengthening the competitive position of enterprises"
in all three countries saying, in effect, end all restrictions on how we
do business even if it harms your nations, people and environment. It
made 50 total recommendations it wants mostly accomplished before the end
of 2008 with some longer range ones targeting 2010. They cover the range
of issues discussed above and specific ones listed below:
-
- -- developing "national critical infrastructure
protection strategies" with rules providing for legal protection;
-
- -- enhancing emergency management and disaster planning;
-
- -- implementing planned land clearance projects, meaning
less for the people and more for corporate predators;
-
- -- putting in place more business-friendly border security
practices, meaning militarizing the border;
-
- -- further simplifying NAFTA rules-of-origin requirements,
meaning no restrictions on regional trade even for unsafe products;
-
- -- simplifying the NAFTA certification process and requirements
aiming at their total elimination;
-
- -- ending the consumer-protective US Animal and Plant
Health Inspection Service (APHIS);
-
- -- removing regulatory standards and practices that impede
trade even if doing it harms consumers;
-
- -- working toward a goal of uniform global regulatory
standards and practices regardless of the consequences or concern about
national sovereignty;
-
- -- easing cross-border tax burdens forcing consumers
to pick up the difference;
-
- -- cooperating in identifying common financial regulatory
concerns, then work to eliminate them;
-
- -- agreeing to unrestricted air cargo transport services
between the US and Mexico;
-
- -- completing a coordinated Intellectual Property Rights
(IPR) Strategy aimed at protecting them and keeping their prices high;
-
- -- developing an initiative against counterfeiting and
piracy; and
-
- -- collaborating on expanding the supply of highly skilled
people in the energy sector throughout North America and building a model
to be applied to other knowledge-intensive sectors such as financial services.
-
- NACC denies what's pretty clear about about its aims.
Saying its recommendations aren't meant to "threaten the sovereign
power of any of the three countries," there's no doubt that's the
central objective. It wants a North American Union headquartered in Washington
with policies in place benefitting corporate giants at the expense of working
people. They'll be hammered by greater job losses, fewer social services,
and a loss of personal security under militarized police state conditions
in the name of "national (continental) security" in the age of
concocted global terror threats.
-
- North American Future 2025 Project
-
- This is another secretive effort with the same objective
run by the US-based conservative Center for Strategic and International
Studies (CSIS). It held closed-door meeting roundtables of Canadian business
leaders in Calgary as part of a project by this name. CSIS former American
political heavyweights are involved including Sam Nunn, Zbigniew Brzezinski,
Harold Brown, William Cohen, Henry Kissinger and others. The agenda involves
preparing a final report to the US, Canadian and Mexican governments by
September 30 expected to recommend the benefits of integrating the three
nations into a single political, economic and security bloc.
-
- What's known has activist groups upset including the
Council of Canadians and Coalition for Water Aid. They're protesting what
they say amounts to a sub rosa effort for corporate interests to control
Canada's huge fresh water supply, estimated at one-fifth of the world's
total. They want Canadian energy and other resources, too.
-
- LIke NACC, CSIS carefully states its aims in what it's
made public so far, showing the goals of both efforts are the same. CSIS's
North America Future 2025 Project is its research effort to help policymakers
"make sound, strategic, long-range policy decisions about North America,
with emphasis on regional integration." It cites "six areas of
critical importance to the trilateral relationship: labor mobility, energy,
the environment, security, competitiveness and border infrastructure and
logistics." This is all familiar terminology to be discussed in "seven
closed-door roundtable sessions (with) 21 (to) 45 individuals - with an
equal number from each nation."
-
- They kicked off in Roundtable I discussing "Methodology
of Global and North American Projections" followed by each of the
above listed six "critical" areas. Protesters are planning to
be at the third trilateral SPP summit Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper
will host August 20 and 21 in Montebello, Quebec. They'll target SPP overall
as well as the Harper government's efforts to advance the corporate-friendly
"Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement" (TILMA) as
one more nail in the coffin of Canadian national sovereignty.
-
- The agreement between Alberta and British Columbia took
effect April 1, 2007 and mandates harmonizing regulations and standards
between the two provinces, removing barriers to economic development. Saskatchewan
is now being targeted to sign on as efforts advance overall for a borderless
North America with schemes like TILMA being used as stepping stones along
the way to achieve it. TILMA for all Canada will allow Canadian companies
the right to challenge any provincial laws conflicting the NAFTA provisions.
-
- SPP North American integration will go much further,
of course, and Joseph Watson reported "Globalists to Formally Propose
Merger of US, Canada (and) Mexico" in his July 5 Prison Planet web
site article. In it, he says CSIS "political heavyweights" will
formally propose a North American union to Congress at summer's end after
the conclusion of their seven secret roundtable meetings to devise it.
It will contain provisions explained above that spell doom for the sovereignty
of the three participating nations. Their leaders want them to become
one in service to corporate giants' strategy for greater profits at the
public's expense. A further aim is to harmonize regulatory standards with
the European Union (EU) in a new transatlantic economic partnership that
moves things closer to corporate America's dream of a militarized borderless
world run by them.
-
- The North American SuperCorridor Coalition (NASCO)
-
- This is another organization set up to facilitate the
designs of NACC and the North American Future 2025 Project for continental
integration. It's a trilateral provincial, state and local government
coalition aligned with the goals of corporate giants in three countries.
As its name suggests, it aims to develop an international, integrated,
secure superhighway running the length of the continent. If built, it
would extend from Winnipeg, Manitoba; Edmonton, Alberta; and Windsor, Ontario,
Canada through Kansas City, San Antonio and Laredo, Texas into Neuvo Laredo,
Guadalajara, and the ports of Manzanillo, Colima and Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico.
-
- It's planned to be a comprehensive energy and commerce-related
jugular vein-sized artery for transportation, trade and strategic resources
like energy. According to NASCO documents, DHS will be in charge of monitoring
the entire system through high-tech sensors and trackers as a further step
to securing the continent for business at taxpayers expense. This is part
of the massive infrastructure planned for North American integration.
If completed, it'll be a boon to business at the expense of the environment
and working people throughout the continent, always the ones to lose from
grandiose schemes like this one.
-
- Plan Puebla-Panama (PPP)
-
- Mexican President Felipe Calderon wishes to revive former
President Vincente Fox's PPP that flopped but didn't die. It's a multi-billion
dollar development scheme to turn Southern Mexico and Central America,
all the way to Panama, into a colossal free trade paradise displacing indigenous
people, destroying their culture and sacred corn, and harming the environment
for profit. Fox earlier and Calderon now want to induce private investment
by shamelessly handing over to them the region's natural resources, including
its oil, water, minerals, timber and ecological biodiversity.
-
- The idea is to rip into the area with new ports, airports,
bullet trains, bridges, superhighways, 25 hydroelectric dams, new telecommunication
facilities, electrical grids, and a new Panama Canal - for starters, with
more development to follow. Also envisioned is opening the country's wildlife
reserves for bioprospecting with a huge giveaway to giant seed, chemical
and drug companies and connect everything with new highways linking Mexico
to Central America and no doubt would connect to the proposed NASCO superhighway.
The idea is to develop and facilitate business throughout the region -
meaning indigenous people have to leave to make way for it, like it or
not, which they don't and will fight it.
-
- The area planned for development is enormous and so far
stalled. It covers 102 million hectares with 64 million inhabitants in
eight countries, few of whom will benefit from a naked scheme to exploit.
It masquerades as infrastructure, private development and more without
consent of the people the way it's always done. It's the reason the plan
went nowhere so far. It's irrelevant to the poor, rural South who'll lose
everything so corporate predators can take their land and livelihoods for
private gain. They then want to sell back to the people what's already
theirs like Chiapas' fresh water. It's 40% of Mexico's total and the reason
Coca-Cola is dying to get hold of it. It would also destroy the last significant
tropical rain forest in Chiapas' Montes Azules Integral Biosphere in the
Lacandon jungle where the government wants to remove native Mayans from
lands belonging to them.
-
- Enter Felipe Calderon. On April 9, he held a one-day
conference in Campeche, Mexico attended by the presidents of all Central
American countries except Belize and Nicaragua, who sent their prime minister
and vice-president respectively. Washington no doubt is pushing this scheme
as it would be a development bonanza for US corporations if implemented
and a huge opportunity for many others if ever completed.
-
- Militarizing A Continent As A First Step
-
- No nation is more militarized today than America. It
spends more on national defense and homeland security than all other nations
combined. Add to those budgets all others related to defense, still others
for intelligence and covert actions, plus the net interest cost attributable
to past debt-financed defense outlays and it totals over $1 trillion for
FY 2007 according to one analyst's estimate and heading way above that
in FY 2008 if current budget proposals pass and become law which is almost
certain.
-
- Canada and Mexico are expected to share the load as part
of Washington's "war on terrorism" and are doing it. Supporting
Washington is central for Canada's Stephen Harper conservative administration.
It includes adhering to the 2002 Binational Planning Agreement allowing
US military forces to enter Canada on its own discretion, set up shop,
and exercise authority over Canadians in their own country. Harper's more
hard line than his predecessors. He believes Canadian political and business
interests depend on it, and he's committed to serving them no matter how
ordinary Canadians feel about it. He's submissive to Washington and has
been massively ramping up military spending with plans to increase it over
50% above 2005 levels to $21.5 billion annually by 2010.
-
- That's chump change by US standards but a major commitment
for a nation traditionally spending at far lower levels. Canada faces
no outside threat so spending hugely on its military, unlike in the past,
defies tradition and public consensus favoring social spending that's being
cut to pay for it. It's also contrary to Canada's traditionally eschewing
militarism and foreign wars unlike its southern neighbor's thriving on
them since the nation's founding.
-
- Business interests, not national security or the public
welfare, drive Harper's agenda. America accounts for 87% of Canada's exports,
and Canadian businesses are closely allied with US ones. In many instances,
it's as subsidiaries with US corporations owning 20% of Canada's non-financial
sector, 33% of its oil and gas industry, and many Canadian defense companies
linked to US ones as subsidiaries or in a sub-contracting capacity. Canada's
influential Department of National Defense (DND), its new Chief of Defence
Staff, General Rick Hillier and defence minister Gordon O'Connor are on
board with Harper as well. They're committed to ramping up the nation's
military spending and linking with America's "war on terrorism."
It gives them more power to lock in even more as SPP advances and outlines
a plan for it across the continent.
-
- Mexico has its part to play as well. With threats and
fear-mongering, it's using drug-related violence as a pretext for cracking
down on simmering unrest wherever it surfaces with plenty of US military
aid to do it. The scheme is to quiet and cow millions in the country opposing
democracy, Mexican-style. It made National Action Party (PAN) Felipe Calderon
president in a process decided before people ever voted last July 2 the
way it's always worked in Mexican politics. It's got parts of the country,
like Oaxaca, in open rebellion against its state governor, Ulises Ruiz
Ortiz (known as URO).
-
- It also made the country a tinderbox of discontent with
growing numbers in it fed up with sham elections, decades of repression,
deepening poverty and an entrenched system of privilege for the rich and
powerful. Mega-billionaire Carlos Slim just passed Bill Gates by $8.6
billion to become the world's richest man in a country with the second
largest number of billionaires in Latin America after Brazil and among
the top ten in the world with the greatest number of them. The US tops
all nations by a wide margin with far more in New York and Los Angeles
alone than anywhere else.
-
- Calderon to their rescue to make his own richer. He's
got 30,000 troops stomping on the people and fighting Washington's wars
on Mexico's streets and along its near-2000 mile northern border. He also
has to protect state oil company Pemex after a series of July explosions
attacked the company's gas pipelines in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato.
It affected 800 companies incurring losses of $5 - 10 million a day and
caused 5000 people to be evacuated from 20 surrounding communities.
-
- A group called the Popular or People's Revolutionary
Army (EPR) claimed responsibility saying it demands release of two men
detained unjustly in Oaxaca in May and held as political prisoners. The
group's communique also said the attacks were part of a "national
campaign against the interests of the oligarchy and of this illegitimate
government (in power from the stolen 2006 election) that has been put in
motion." It's another sign how polarized Mexican society is with
those losing out in it striking back.
-
- In the US, poverty is growing and the wealth disparity
is unprecedented. However, things are much worse in Mexico. It has the
world's fourth largest number of millionaires, but poverty's been rising
since the 1970s, and since the mid-1980s the nation's poor have been reeling
under the affects of IMF-imposed structural adjustment policies mandating
large-scale privatizations and wage restraints. Then came NAFTA in 1994.
It devastated millions of Mexicans, forced many north to survive, and
may by one estimate eventually displace 10 million small farmers from their
land (plus their families) into poverty assuring they'll head north in
desperation.
-
- Today nearly one-third of Mexicans live on $2 or less
a day, and millions can't afford basic needs like enough food, decent shelter
and medical care when sick. It didn't help that Felipe Calderon allowed
staple corn prices to skyrocket causing tortilla prices to spike by 50%
in most regions devastating impoverished consumers. They can't afford
the staple they rely on, and small Mexican corn producers are even less
able to compete with subsidized imports that wasn't possible post-NAFTA.
-
- These are the issues generating mass civil unrest and
disobedience that simmer beneath the surface when they're not visible on
the streets like in Oaxaca since last May, 2006. It's gone on in spite
of harsh efforts to crush it violently with Federal Preventative Police
(PFP) and military forces launched against it on the pretext of fighting
drugs traffickers and terrorism.
-
- Calderon's 30,000 Mexican troops are also in a third
or more of the nation's states, civil rights are suspended and widespread
abuses are reported because the military got a mandate to "use all
necessary force to resolve disturbances and return peace to society."
That's just a hint of what's coming across Mexico and the continent under
full implementation of SPP that won't tolerate opposition and will crack
down hard against it. Mexican law now allows it after passage of the draconian
"International Terrorism Law" criminalizing dissent, calling
it terrorism, and imposing harsh sentences for using "violence against
persons, things, or public services that spread (enough) alarm or fear
in the population....to threaten national security or pressure authorities
to take certain determinations."
-
- The press is also targeted with prohibitions against
"publish(ing) or distribut(ing)....photos or images without the express
consent of those featured," a condition impossible to meet. Social
protests may be criminalized as well with resistance movements like the
Zapatistas and Oaxacan Popular Peoples' Assembly (APPO) labeled terrorist
organizations and their leaders subject to 40 year mandated prison terms
if charged and convicted. And President Calderon wants Mexico's Congress
to pass an amendment giving him constitutional powers to tap phones and
search private residences without first obtaining court-ordered approval
under any conditions he claims is "urgent."
-
- Mexico's hard right Supreme Court of Nacional Justice
(SCJN) is supportive. Last year it declared Mexico's military can aid
police in cases of public security that can be anything the state says
it is. The Court also ruled law enforcement officials need no court-ordered
warrants to search and seize in "flagrant situations" that can
also mean anything and that violates the American Convention of Human Rights
adopted as Mexican law.
-
- Then there's Calderon's war on drugs and the cartels
that's, in fact, a war no different than Colombia's war on dissident resistance
groups like the FARC and ELN. Like Plan Colombia, Washington has a similar
one for Mexico, so call it what it is - Plan Mexico with tens of millions
in funding, equipment and technology to back it up. Also call it US-supported
and funded state terrorism in a grand scheme to militarize the country
and crack down on dissent and resistance to authoritarian rule at the federal,
state and local levels. It's partnered with Washington in its phony "war
on terrorism" to maintain order, crush opposition and incarcerate
anyone interfering or in the way.
-
- US military elements already operate inside Mexico freely
and covertly, and a 1994 Pentagon briefing paper, declassified under FOIA,
hinted at a US invasion if the country became destabilized or the government
faced the threat of being overthrown because of "widespread economic
and social chaos" that would jeopardize US investments, access to
oil, overall trade, and would create great numbers of immigrants heading
north.
-
- Plans are in place and are playing out to snuff out trouble
before it spirals out of control, and the proposed US immigration bill
was to provide funding for it through stepped up militarization. But even
with the bill defeated, the money's coming and US forces will follow if
needed. Congressional budgeting calls for millions in Mexican military
aid and massive new border detention centers for up to 30,000 detainees
for starters with two notorious ones discussed below already operating.
What's planned on the border will also likely show up anywhere in all
three SPP countries to defuse social discontent by disappearing a large
new political prisoner population into black holes of repressive incarceration.
That's SPP's promise and scheme to create police state North America making
the continent safe for corporate interests by revoking ours.
-
- Raymondville and Hutto Texas Immigrant Prison Detention
Centers
-
- The Willacy immigrant detention center at Raymondville,
Texas, is oppressive enough to be called "Ritmo." It's run by
the private for-profit MTC Corporation and is currently the largest immigrant
prison in the country in the remote southern tip of the state. It cost
$65 million to build, is a "tent city," and is ringed by barbed
wire and 14-foot high chain-link fences. It currently holds over 2000
immigrant detainees under repressive conditions including 23 hour a day
lockdowns in 10 windowless hothouses. Entire families are incarcerated
there, fed poor or insufficient food, given inadequate and delayed medical
care, and treated inhumanely in unsafe conditions for extended periods
lasting months.
-
- Conditions overall are abusive, disciplinary punishment
harsh, with detainees having to put up with no partitions or doors separating
five toilets, five sinks, five shower heads and eating areas where some
days detainees lack utensils and eat with their hands. Lights are kept
on round the clock, clothing is inadequate, and on cold days detainees
are kept outside for an allowed daily hour in short-sleeved uniforms with
no warm protective clothing like blankets, sweat shirts or jackets.
-
- The Hutto Residential Center is another immigrant detention
center in Taylor, Texas currently holding around 400 prisoners including
200 children and infants. Few detainees here or at other immigrant prisons
committed crimes or were charged with any, yet they're treated like criminals
because they were forced here to survive NAFTA and DR-CAFTA inflicted job
losses. They're victims of US repressive trade policies but are treated
like criminals made to suffer retribution for exploitative state practices
committed against them.
-
- Post 9/11, the Homeland Security Act of 2002 was passed
establishing the repressive Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and in
March, 2003 its largest investigative and enforcement arm - the US Immigration
and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). It's charged with protecting public
safety by identifying and targeting "criminal" and "terrorist"
threats to the country that include Latino and other desperate for work
undocumented immigrants forced to come here to survive.
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- ICE was established to apprehend them at the border or
hunt them down relentlessly once here. It has four integrated divisions,
one of which is policing our southern border and conducting terror-raid
undocumented immigrant worker roundups with those apprehended headed for
abusive detention at facilities like Raymondville and Hutto. There and
at other facilities like them, ICE-detained immigrants number around 28,000
on an average day with totals heading for 30,000 or more by year end.
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- Hutto is run by Corrections Corporation of American,
the largest for-profit private prison operator in the country. It has
64 facilities in 19 states and the District of Columbia with a capacity
for incarcerating over 69,000 inmates. It's reputation is unsavory based
on former prisoner accounts of severe abuse, inadequate medical and educational
services, poor or noxious food and overall inhumane conditions including
rat and roach-infested cramped centers, inadequate basic hygiene, rapes,
beatings and deaths at their facilities.
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- The Hutto facility in Taylor, Texas houses immigrant
detainees. It's particularly notorious for treating young children no
differently than adults, including some too young to know where they are
or why and older ones with no idea why they're detained at all. Conditions
are made worse by abusive guards and uncaring officials.
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- The daily routine is stultifying and cruel. Families
are awakened at 5:30AM and allowed 30 minutes to bathe and dress. They
then get 20 minutes to eat food that's often poor quality, inedible, and/or
inadequate. If children haven't finished in time, their food is thrown
out and they're left to go hungry.
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- Following meals, prisoners are returned to their cells,
aren't allowed out, denied sleep during the day, and forced to sit and
endure boredom to pass the time. No books are allowed, and frequent head
counts are taken throughout the day to assure no one escaped. Educational
facilities for children are pathetically inadequate at one hour a day in
which practically nothing is taught, and conditions and treatment overall
are so bad the ACLU sued DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff on March 6 on behalf
of 10 abused children at Hutto. The US District Court judge hearing the
case, Sam Sparks, set an expedited trial date for August, agreeing with
the plaintiff that detainee treatment at Hutto fails to meet federal standards.
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- Homeland Security Police State Justice for Everyone
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- Post-9/11, Muslims and Latino immigrants have been targeted
by the Bush administration, falsely charged with terrorism and other crimes,
and subjected to abusive harassment and persecution. They've been victimized
by mass roundups, detentions, prosecutions and deportations the result
of baseless claims they threaten national security. If full-blown SPP
security measures are implemented, anyone challenging, or seen threatening,
state authority may henceforth be subjected to similar harsh treatment.
It's practically that way now, but expect lots worse ahead. The rule of
law will be weakened or ignored, civil liberties and essential human needs
further eroded, and state and corporate power tightened enough to be in
full control.
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- Dissent no longer will be tolerated, and anyone seen
as a threat in an age of a "war on terrorism" will be targeted,
just as Muslims and immigrants are today. Preparations are in progress
for mass detentions with Halliburton the beneficiary of a DHS contingency
contract worth up to $385 million to build US-based detention centers.
Their stated purpose is for "detention and processing" in case
of an "emergency influx of immigrants....or to support the rapid development
of new programs (for planned) expansion facilities (able to hold 5000 or
more persons)."
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- This language provides cover for planned concentration
camps targeting anyone for indefinite detention as a perceived enemy of
the state or threat to national security any time henceforth. The idea
is to have facilities ready in case martial law is declared for any reason.
It might include the kind of major "terrorist" attack DHS Secretary
Michael Chertoff practically signaled is coming later this summer to a
Chicago Tribune editorial board July 10. ABC News also hyped the story
citing a new FBI analysis of Al-Queda messages warning of "continued
messages that convey their strategic intent to strike the US homeland and
US interests worldwide (that) should not be discounted as merely deceptive
noise." The rest of the corporate media jumped on the story as well
to prepare the public for full militarization of the country if what Chertoff
and a number of intelligence analysts believe is virtually certain ahead.
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- The Pentagon is ready if it comes with an action plan
prepared in a DOD document called "Strategy for Homeland Defense and
Civil Support." It envisions an "active, layered defense"
both within and outside the US pledging to "transform US military
forces to execute homeland defense missions in the....US homeland."
It lays out a strategy for increased reconnaissance and surveillance to
"defeat potential challengers before they threaten the United States."
It also "maximizes threat awareness and seizes the initiative from
those who would harm us."
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- These are ominous developments signaled with very dangerous
language. It suggests the likelihood of an impending terror attack severe
enough to warrant suspension of the Constitution followed by martial law.
It means anyone may be considered a threat to national security and detained
indefinitely with or without evidence to prove it. It further empowers
the state, through the military, to act preventively through mass roundups
and detentions. No one will be safe or spared if targeted and will be
subject to police state justice granting them none.
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- A full-scale militarization of the country can be implemented
any time on what a 1988 Reagan era Executive Order 12656 called any "national
security emergency" defined as "Any occurrence, including natural
disaster, military attack, technological or other emergency, that seriously
degrades or seriously threatens the national security of the United States."
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- Other repressive legislation's already in place as well.
Under Patriot and Military Commission Acts justice, constitutional rights
are severely weakened, and we're all "enemy combatants" stripped
of our habeas and due process rights, subject to indefinite detentions,
denied our right to counsel and at the mercy of military tribunal justice
with no right of appeal.
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- Welcome to North America's Security and Prosperity Partnership
guaranteeing it to elitist interests by denying it to the people of three
nations. They're to be parts of the new "united continent of America,"
or North American Union, run by dark forces in Washington that won't move
out when a new president moves in January 20, 2009.
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- Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
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- Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and
listen to The Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on The MicroEffect.com
Saturdays at noon US central time.
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