Oh ye of little faith, John.
Sure, the NACC and various bizness leaders bitched and moaned at the slow pace of implementing their anti-democratic corporate agenda, going so far as to threaten to call Montebello off if they didn't get their way. Sure half of them declined to attend.
But you have to look at the big picture, John.
The SPP is only the latest incarnation in a long line of attempts to open up Mexican labour and Canadian resources to US corporations while gathering all of North America under its nuclear empire umbrella.
Here...take some heart from this newly released White Paper from the Hudson Institute : Negotiating North America : The Security and Prosperity Partnership :
"The SPP process is the vehicle for the discussion of future arrangements for economic integration to create a single market for goods and services in North America."And just in case you didn't get that the first time, they repeat it :
"The most important feature of the SPP design is that it is neither intended to produce a treaty nor an executive agreement like the NAFTA that would require congressional ratification or the passage of implementing legislation in the United States. The SPP was designed to function within existing administrative authority of the executive branch."
"The SPP's design places negotiation fully within the authority of the executive branch in the United States."Now to be fair, the report sees the possible demise of the SPP in this lack of transparency and congressional oversight and suggests this be corrected in future. But, ya know, it's lonely at the top, power corrupts, and rulers make bad lovers :
"The US has tried to overcome the defensive instincts of its neighbours by structuring negotiations in such a way that the US advantages are minimized, treating negotiators for Canada and Mexico as equals and partners."Equals and partners - just like you always wanted, John.
But wait, here's the bit to gladden your heart.
After noting, like yourself, that opposition to the SPP is coming from both "excluded Congress" and "a fractious group of critics on both the left and right", plus "exploitation by groups such as al Qaeda that have been remarkably sophisticated in capitalizing on divisions among Americans", the report notes :
"There are signs that debates over future North American arrangements are overflowing the limits of the SPP"and ends by suggesting :
"It may ultimately be necessary to redesign and re-launch a new process to take up the work of the SPP under a new acronym."Gosh, I can hardly wait. A redesign and a new acronym.
5 comments:
Here's my suggestion for the acronym and redesign (although the design remains pretty much the same, I'm afraid):
S(crew)
C(anada)
U(ndercut)
M(exico)
SCUM. Seems rather appropriate, eh ? ? ? ?
SCUM sure works for me.
At precisely the time that it seems possible to challenge theories of "executive" dominance at the very heart of the empire, Canadians are leading the charge to bolster it?
I am trying so hard not to despair.
Skdadl I know you meant in the larger sense, but, well, it is the Hudson Institute after all, home of discredited spinmeisters and felons : Richard Perle, Scooter Libby, Norman Podheretz, Frank Luntz, Conrad Black, Craig Fuller who ran that Hill & Knowlton babies and incubators front group Citizens for a Free Kuwait I mentioned earlier.
The authors of this particular report are both American, although one of them teaches poli-sci at University of Calgary. Sands is actually with the NACC and the pro-integration Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Maybe I should put their bio under the post.
"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." -Twain
We killed the MAI right?
Only to have the undead walking through Montebello. There is no killing this thing because it has no fixed name. It is a shape shifting many tenticled thing. It is the roots of the capitalist weed: You can never dig it all up. You can only remember what it looks like and try to cut it back when it sprouts up again.
Or like a german verb, coming up just when you thought the sentence surely must be over.
It is a tortured metaphor, and you cant kill all the writers.
Marcus.
A new acronym? Hence a new name. And just when I was getting used to calling it the Greater North American Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Darn.
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