Piglet and Pooh and a walk in the snow

Pillaged from Bond Papers
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Confirmed Canadian H1N1 influenza A cases now stand at 34.
Swine flu deaths worldwide - 13.
Deaths from other flu variants worldwide - 250,000 to 500,000 per year.
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Update : WHO doesn't want us calling it swine flu anymore.
Rick Arnold of Common Frontiers suggests NAFTA flu would be more accurate.
Laura Carlsen at the America Program, Center for International Policy, provides the reasons :

• a rapid transition from small livestock production to industrial meat farms after NAFTA established incentives for foreign investment,
• the failed decentralization of Mexico's health system along lines established by multilateral lending banks,
• lax and non-enforced environmental and health regulations as the Mexican government was forced to downsize,
• the increased flow of goods and persons across borders, and
• restricted access to life-saving medicines due to NAFTA intellectual property monopolies for pharmaceutical companies.

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The SPP is dead - Long live the SPP

Robert Pastor, chair of the 2005 Council on Foreign Relations task force "Building a North American Community" (now available in book form and co-authored by John Manley) and author of the book "Toward a North American Community" says the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America is dead.

It was killed, he tells us, by the timid incremental approach of its policy makers who tried to fly the SPP below the radar of public opinion, thereby arousing their deepest suspicions.
Right wing fears of Mexican immigrants and a North American Union combined with left wing fears of unfair labour practices to create 'a perfect storm' of public alarm that scuttled its chances of success.

So that's it then - it's been nailed to its perch pining for the fjords since last April. It's kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile.
THIS IS AN EX-SPP!!

Well ok then.

In other totally unrelated news just this week :

1) the U.S. is leaning on Mexico to privatize its state-owned oil consortium PEMEX

2) Saskatchewan has followed BC in introducing the Enhanced Driver's Licences demanded by Homeland Security for admission to the U.S.

3) U.S. Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs Daniel Sullivan is calling for greater energy integration and enhanced energy supply routes between the U.S. and Canada, praising the benefits of "benefits of market-based free trade agreements" to "enhance energy security throughout North America".

4)Avi Lewis and Linda Carlsen on Democracy Now discuss "re-armouring NAFTA" : Plan Mexico, the $400 million regional cooperation security initiative that introduces a greater US military presence into Mexico under the guise of lending aid for the war on drugs.

5) The U.S. Navy has reactivated gunboat patrols off the coasts of Latin America to "send a strong signal to all Navies operating in the region".

You see we don't care what you call it : SPP, deep integration, the Monroe Doctrine, Manifest Destiny. We don't care. Really. Call it whatever you like.