The terminology keeps changing. Deep integration is now ‘plug and play interoperability’. But changing the words will not change the odious Security and Prosperity Partnership.
Alison over at Creekside has an excellent post about this:
A year ago the U.S. Department of Homeland Security gave Arizona State University $15 million to establish a Center of Excellence for Border Security and Immigration. The border security research centre is led by Rick Van Schoik, director of ASU’s North American Center for Transborder Studies.
Arizona State U presser, Feb. 2008 :
“The establishment of the center by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security follows more than two years of work assembling a team of U.S. universities, Mexican and Canadian institutions, government agencies, technology companies and national laboratories.[…]
Read rest of Alison’s post here.
Also linked: CathiefromCanada: “Plug and play interoperability”
For SPP watch articles, visit the Council of Canadians Integrate This! website:
September 26, 2008
Posted by Andrea HardenPresident Bush met with leaders and officials from 11 countries in the Western Hemisphere on Wednesday, September 24th in New York to launch the ‘Pathways to Prosperity in the Americas’ initiative. Canada is joined by the U.S., Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama and Peru in this initiative. All have free trade agreements with the U.S., or one pending before Congress. In a Washington Post article, Bush hails the initiative as, “a forum where leaders can work to ensure that the benefits of trade are broadly shared.” (more…)
CIP Americas Program: Armoring NAFTA: The Battleground for Mexico’s Future
Excerpt:
In April 2007, on the eve of the North American Trilateral Summit, Thomas Shannon, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, described the SPP’s purpose with remarkable candor: The SPP, he declared, “understands North America as a shared economic space,” one that “we need to protect,” not only on the border but “more broadly throughout North America” through improved “security cooperation.” He added: “To a certain extent, we’re armoring NAFTA.”2
Mexicans and other Latin Americans have learned that adopting the U.S.-promoted neoliberal economic model—with its economic displacement and social cutbacks—comes with a necessary degree of force, but this was the first time that a U.S. official had stated outright that regional security was no longer focused on keeping the citizens of the United States, Canada, and Mexico safe from harm, but was now about protecting a regional economic model. Of course, Shannon didn’t list political opposition as one of the threats to be countered; he simply argued that the new “economic space” needed to be protected against “the threat of terrorism and against a threat of natural disasters and environmental and ecological disasters.” But the counter-terrorism/drug-war model elaborated in the SPP and embodied later in Plan Mexico (known officially as the Merida Initiative) encourages a crackdown on grassroots dissent to assure that no force, domestic or foreign, effectively questions the future of the system.
[… Read more]
Posted by verbena19 
Canada is now considered an unimportant good neighbor by the superpower to its south. A recent effort to create a “North American Union” (NAU) with Canada, the USA, and Mexico is a semi-secret effort by industrialists in these three nations. The goal is similar to the “European Union” in that it would allow low-cost Mexican labor and abundant Canadian energy reserves to fuel the huge industrial machine of the USA and create the world’s greatest economic power. The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is the cornerstone of this union.
However, the free movement of cheap labor from Mexico resulted in angry opposition from American workers. Legal obstacles have been evaded by encouraging illegal immigration. Current immigration laws are rarely enforced and the number of illegal immigrants is now so great that they openly hold political rallies and make demands. As a result, NAU leaders are attempting to squeeze a second amnesty law through the U.S. Congress to provide legal status to this cheap labor. This will ensure that millions more Mexicans flood across the lightly patrolled border and depress wages further, thus boosting profits with what NAU leaders call the “free movement of labor.”
Moreover, melting ice will allow practical access to arctic energy reserves that Canada claims. Huge energy reserves are suspected in this region, yet there is no road or rail access. As ice melts and the sea emerges, long dormant territorial disputes have arisen. Two years ago, Denmark, which rules Greenland, was angered by a visit of Canada’s defense minister, Bill Graham, on disputed Hans Island. He stayed for a short while, examining a new Maple Leaf flag planted by Canadian servicemen there, and an old flag left by a Danish naval party three years earlier. Denmark dispatched the naval cutter Tulugaq and threatened to land more men. However, as tensions rose, the rival claimants agreed to discuss the dispute at the United Nations.
Meanwhile, U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins criticized Harper, claiming the Northwest Passage as “neutral waters.” The U.S. Navy has sent ships and submarines through the passage in recent years without Canadian permission. It seems inconceivable that the USA would use this as an excuse to invade Canada, but if energy prices double yet again “something” may happen as the CIA shifts its misinformation and political manipulation machine to secretly destabilize the Canadian government. They could argue the area is not inhabited by real Canadians, just the indigenous Inuit. Perhaps a “Free Inuit” movement will appear, secretly backed by the USA. The few thousand Inuit could become wealthy and may eagerly sign whatever oil contracts they are presented. The long-standing “Stephen Harper” movement could be used to divide Canada and blame trouble on the French-speaking Canadians that dominate the province of Quebec. Should Quebec become independent, this would split Canada.
![Daily Mail [UK]](http://web.archive.org./web/20170910004536im_/http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t193/Annamarie_033/mHead2.gif "British daily newspaper")
