Dead Constitution
See other Dead Constitution ArticlesTitle: José Can You See? Bush's Trojan Taco
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Published: Apr 24, 2008
Author: Greg Palast
Post Date: 2008-04-24 12:03:53 by Jethro Tull
Keywords: None
Views: 112
Comments: 7
José Can You See? Bush's Trojan Taco
By Greg Palast
Monday April 21, 2008
(for
<http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/jos- can-you-see-bush-s-trojan-
taco>
TomPaine.com)
Psst! George Bush has a secret.
While you Democrats are pounding each other to a pulp in
Pennsylvania, the
President has snuck back down to New Orleans for a meeting of the
NAFTA
Three: the Prime Minister of Canada and the President of Mexico.
You're not supposed to know that – for two reasons:
First, the summit planned for the N.O. two years back was meant to
showcase
the rebuilt Big Easy, a monument to can-do Bush-o-nomics. Well, it
is a
monument to Bush's leadership: The city still looks like Dresden
1946, with
over half the original residents living in toxic trailers or
wandering lost
and broke in America.
The second reason Bush has kept this major summit a virtual secret is
its
real agenda. More important, the agenda-makers, the guys who called
the
meeting, must remain as far out of camera range as possible: The
North
American Competitiveness Council.
Never heard of The Council? Well, maybe you've heard of the
counselors:
the chief executives of Wal-Mart, Chevron Oil, Lockheed-Martin and 27
other
multinational masters of the corporate universe.
And why did the landlords of our continent order our presidents to a
three- nation pajama party? Their term is "harmonization."
Harmonization has nothing to do with singing in fifths like Simon and
Garfunkel. Harmonization means making rules and regulations the same
in all
three countries. Or, more specifically, watering down rules – on
health,
safety, labor rights, oil drilling, polluting and so on - in other
words,
any regulations that get between The Council members and their
profits.
Take for example, pesticides. Wal-Mart and agri-business don't want
to
reduce the legal amount of poison allowed in what you eat. Solution:
"harmonize" US and Canadian pesticide standards to Mexico's.
Can they do that? Can Bush just say, "Eat your peas – even if they're
radioactive?" Under NAFTA, at least the way George Bush reads it (or
has it
read to him), he can. At any rate, he does.
The three chiefs of state will meet privately with the thirty
corporate
chiefs where they are also expected to legally erase more of our
borders, to
expand the "NAFTA highway." Technically, the NAFTA highway is a set
of
legal rules governing transcontinental shipment. Some fear NAFTA
highway
expansion will allow a new flood of cheap Mexican products into the
US and
Canada. Not so. Their hunger to expand the NAFTA highway is to
bring in
even cheaper Chinese goods.
Say what?
As trade expert Maud Barlow explained to me, the new "NAFTA highway"
will
allow Chinese stuff dumped into Mexico to be hauled northward as duty-
free
"Mexican" products. That's one of the quiet agendas of this "Summit
for
Security and Prosperity," the official Orwellian name for this meet.
Think
of the SSP "harmonization" as the Trojan Taco of trade.
Barlow is Chairwoman of the Council of Canadians. She is known as the
"Ralph Nader of Canada" (not Nader version 2.0, The Spoiler
Candidate, but
Nader version 1.0, the consumer advocate). Because Americans are too
distracted by the Punch-and-Judy primaries to complain about this
lobby-fest
on the bayou, Canadian Barlow is leading street protests against this
greed-grab.
I caught up with this courageous Canadian (I've seen her face down
corporate
bullying we can't imagine in the US) on her way down to New Orleans.
Barlow's particular concerns are first, the NSS agreement promotes a
five-fold increase in the mining of Canadian tar sands for import, as
liquid
crude oil, into the USA, an idea filthier than a re-make of Debbie
Does
Dallas. "This is an insane model of development," she says,
especially
given Bush's recent claim that he wants to slow global warming.
Bush himself is pushing his Canadian and Mexican counterparts to adopt
US-style "Homeland Security" measures so that, says Barlow, "we'll
all be
zip-locked together in one security bag."
There will be other anti-SSP protesters in New Orleans as well, from
America's populist Right. They are concerned that the Security and
Prosperity Summit is worse than the "NAFTA on steroids" that Barlow
fears.
The populists see in the SPP a nascent "North American Union," and the
elimination of the good old US of A.
They're wrong, of course. The U.S. of A. has been long eliminated,
at least
economically. The Competitiveness Council is a multinational crew,
with one
shared set of country clubs, beach homes, art collections, union
busters and
lobbyists knowing no borders.
The populist radio hosts railing against the coming North American
Union
don't realize that these CEOs won't take away their flags or Fourth
of July
or Star-Spangled Banner. The rags and flags will always be kept
around to
con the schmucks along the Yahoo Belt into donating their children to
the
Iraq Occupation or other misadventures. A billionaire like Carlos
Slim, the
richest man on the planet (sorry, Mr. Gates), didn't buy the Mexican
government to "protect" his nation from Gringos but to protect his
media
monopoly.
So there is no United States of America nor Canada nor Mexico - at
least as
we like to imagine ourselves in our national fairy tales: self-
governing
democracies run by we the people or nosotros el pueblo. There's just
the
diktats of the North American Prosperity Council. Get used to it.
Barlow said that the US Ambassador to Canada told her the legal
changes
wrought in New Orleans will not be put before the three national
Congresses
for a vote. "We don't want to open up another NAFTA." So, they'll
skip the
voting stuff. Democracy is so, like, 20th Century.
Is Bush just a reluctant participant in this "harmonizing" of our
economic
fate? The meetings are secret, so I can't say for sure. But I note
that,
at the opening ceremony, if you read his lips, you can see our
president
singing the national anthem as, "José, can you see? "
***********
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, The Best
Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse:
<http://www.GregPalast.com/order-the-book> Sordid Secrets and
Strange
Tales of a White House Gone Wild. Sign up for Palast's investigative
reports for BBC on RSS feed at
<http://feeds.feedburner.com/gregpalast- articles>
http://feeds.feedburner.com/gregpalast- articles
Note: On May 1, in New York, Palast will speak at the international
conference of the victims of Barrick Gold mining operations, the
Canadian-American company whose board members included the former
Prime
Minister of Canada Brian Mulroney and the former President of the
United
States, George Bush Sr. Information soon at
<http://www.GregPalast.com>
www.GregPalast.com
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