How Bush, the Military and Corporate America Plan to Tighten Their Control Over Our lives

by Nancy Price (Click here to read/print this article.)


President George W Bush seated next to Robert 1. Stevens, president and CEO of Lockheed Martin, during a meeting with new Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexico's President Vicente Fox, in an SPP discussion with US, Mexican and Canadian business leaders in Cancun, Mexico, March, 2006. photo:Eric Draper, White House

With little fanfare, the Security and Prosperity W Partnership (SPP) was signed by the three leaders of North America-Bush, Mexico's President Fox and Canada's Prime Minister Martin-on March 23, 2005 in Waco, Texas. Recognizing that the new world order of prosperity for the privileged few and growing inequality for the rest is dependent on mili¬tary strength, the plan of these leaders is to fully inte¬grate the three countries for a comprehensive and mutual strategy to secure North America from exter¬nal threats and prevent and respond to threats from within North America.

The growing independence and unpredictability of Venezuela, a major exporter of oil to the US, cou¬pled with turmoil in the Middle East and Central Asia, and the growing political and economic power of China and India, make creation of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America all the more imperative to sustaining America's empire.

Equally important, this partnership is part of the super-NAFTA plan to promote North American ben¬efits from corporate globalization by construction of super-corridors and super-ports. At a secret September meeting at Banff Springs Hotel in Canada, a group of high-ranking past and present government officials from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico met with representatives of corporate business and industry, the military, academic and financial institutions and "think tank" allies to strategize on this "North American Union."

Integrated border regions are being proposed with benign sounding names like Atlantica for northeastern Canada and New England/northern New York, and Cascadia for western Canada and northwest U.S.

Plans call for the heartland of all three countries to be bisected by a vast multi-lane highway system connecting southern Mexico to northern Canada. The half-mile wide super-corridor would have 6 lanes for cars, 4 lanes for trucks, and parallel railroad lines and utility corridors to carry oil, electricity and even water. The Trans Texas Corridor is furthest along in planning. The toll road would be built and owned by a Spanish corporation with generous public subsidies.

This corridor may well be extended south through Central America as part of Plan Puebla Panama to the proposed new canal in Nicaragua. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made it a point to be present in Nicaragua when the canal was proposed in early October.

Another super-corridor tied to Atlantica would run from a super-port in Nova Scotia down through Maine and across New Hampshire and upstate New York, with something similar planned for Cascadia on the West coast.

The movement of goods from China and the movement of ships and troops are equally facilitated by these plans. The corridors would cut transportation costs for goods from China to the US, especially if plans to hire cheap Mexican truck drivers come to fruition. "We will have super cargo tankers and thou¬sands upon thousands of trucks, bringing soon-to-be¬disposed of goods to U.S. consumers," notes the Alliance's Ruth Caplan. "Remember when George Bush Senior said at the Earth Summit in Rio (1992) that we in the U.S. have a right to our life style?"

These corridors would also greatly expedite the movement of oil and gas from Canada to the US,
already mandated by trade agreements, as well as oil from Mexico to the US Water could easily be piped from Canada to the U., stoking a fear long held by Canadian environmentalists.

Now, the Zapatista's struggle to protect their Lacandon Jungle resources in southern Mexico from corporate profiteering and destruction makes sense and the recent protests in Mexico City over the results of the Presidential election take on new meaning.
Nancy Price is Co-chair of the AfD National Council and the western Coordinator of the Defending Water for Life Campaign.

Stop the SPPI
What will it take for people in the US and Canada to mobilize to stop the military-industrial-corporate complex that threatens to rob us of our last vestiges of a democracy, plunder our natural resources and hasten the devastation of global warming?

• First, we must educate ourselves about this cor¬porate/military agenda for consolidating power under the guise of creating prosperity.
• Second, we must mobilize our friends, and organ¬izations we work with to begin a broad-based movement to stop the SPP in its tracks. Already there is a movement in Eastern Canada "Atlantica No Way" and in Texas, "Corridor Watch" against the Trans Texas Corridor.
• Third, we must recognize that we will not be free if these plans go forward. We must build a peo¬ple's movement that unites all of us fighting for freedom in the US, Canada and Mexico.

As we learn more about the Security and Prosperity Partnership we will post information and materials for education and action.on the AfD website,