The Dominion - Security and Prosperity Partnership

Bush is Comin' to Town- New Orleans Pt. 1

Lia Tarachansky — Wed, 07 May 2008 23:41:31 +0000

Free Trading USA

Lia Tarachansky — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 05:05:22 +0000

Intermingled amongst brand new hotels and entertainment swag are the ghosts of New Orleans. Abandoned buildings with boarded up windows are on every side street off Canal. Hidden only by the busy flickering of neon lights and bars begging for your undeserved business. One needs only to turn to any of the buildings behind the flashy palm trees to see Katrina leftovers.

Hidden also, though beating through the heart of this city is its intense poverty and racism. It is swept under the bridges and sheltered in back alleys. It is beaten away from the sight of tourists and entertainers by batons and vacational apathy.

While thousands await the return to their native city, hundreds lining its streets in shelters and tents, the busy Bourbon street continue to party. Quite a bit of thought and design went into the sweeping away of the life and reality of this city. Benches in the entertainment district- the French Quarter- are curved downward to make them impossible to sleep on. Similarly benches at major tourist squares are dividied by bars to prevent lying down. Lights are granted only there where the tourist industry wants foreign attention. The resistance to the gentrification, systemic discrimination, and outright ethnic cleansing is conveniently relocated.

Subsidized and affordable housing has been sustaining an intense attack by the city, the state, the government, and private enterprise. Demolitions have forced hundreds onto the streets and eviction notices are handed out like pamphlets. Once enough people are evicted, the housing is torn down to build hotels, condominium apartments, and bars.

Securely Prosperous

Lia Tarachansky — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 04:53:56 +0000

New Orleans.jpg

Opening up before us is New Orleans as we finish our last leg of the trip in Louisiana. Stories of ghosts fill our entry as they fill our first day in this town. Coming here for the People's Summit, opposing this year's Security and Prosperity Partnership, we're beginning to learn the true tales of surviving Katrina from the lives of those America has forgotten.

We've spent 41 hours on the road from Ottawa, but after playing through the Greyhound shuffle, switching routes four times, and spending two nights on varying buses, the hardest part of the trip was entering New Orleans from Mobile, Louisiana. The energy in the Ottawa contingent was rising, even with the absolute loss of the sense of time after so much travel. We've come here for the People's Summit, opposing the Security and Prosperity Partnership meeting of Canada, the U.S., and Mexico's heads of state with over 30 CEOs of the continents most powerful corporations. Our energy quickly died down once John, one of the passengers returning to his native New Orleans shared stories of what opened up before us.

Entering through the East Quarter, the poorest and most impacted part of the city, we see empty mega buildings of former Wal-Marts and strip malls. Today what was once the projects of the city is quickly becoming suburban townhomes as the city attempts to gentrify its population.

"All this was trailers," John tells us. "Now they've moved all these people away. They sent them up around the world."

We drive through collapsed roofs, and abandoned neighborhoods.

Talking about reconstruction, he tells us "they give us $25,000 to rebuild our homes, but it cost you $60,000 to do it."

"The projects' all boarded up, ain't no one coming home. They took it from you... it makes you wanna cry."

At the Gates of Fortress North America

dru — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 23:46:32 +0000

Opposing the Security and Prosperity Partnership: Demonstrations in Montebello

Military helicopters hovered as protesters converged in Montebello, Quebec, a relatively remote Canadian town in which the political leaders of North America gathered for a two-day summit on August 20. The Fairmont Château Montebello, the location for the critical trilateral meetings, became a Canadian fortress surrounded by a high metal fence and thousands of police from throughout the country.

Throughout the summit, over 1,000 protesters converged to oppose the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), a North American governmental and corporate initiative aimed at developing greater integration of trade and security policies from Mexico to Canada. Critics view the SPP as a post-9/11 development of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a trade treaty widely unpopular among labour unions, indigenous communities and social justice activists across the continent.

Corporate influence is central to the entire SPP process, within which, according to official documents, "high-level business input will assist governments in enhancing North America's competitive position." Entirely absent from the process are environmental groups, labour unions and representatives from indigenous communities.

Major corporations represented by institutions like the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the North American Competitiveness Council have strongly advocated for the institutionalization of the SPP. Both organizations were also strong backers of NAFTA. According to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), NAFTA negatively impacted the majority of Canadians: "Income inequality expanded in Canada during the 1990s," after the implementation of NAFTA "as the top 20 per cent of families saw their incomes increase, while the bottom 20 per cent saw their share drop."

Critics of the SPP argue that the initiative will be a blow to working people in North America. "The founding premise of the SPP is that an agenda of economic free trade and national security will result in human prosperity," writes No One is Illegal -- a grassroots anti-colonial immigrant and refugee rights collective in Vancouver -- "yet we know that the so-called 'prosperity' of previous free trade agreements such as NAFTA have only brought corporate prosperity, with increasing rates of poverty and displacement for the majority of people."

The Montebello summit included multiple sessions between the North American leaders on "integrating" more than 300 areas of policy -- including health, safety and environmental standards -- between Canada, the US and Mexico, according to official documents. Although details of the meeting have not been revealed, government officials had stated that areas of discussion at the closed-door meetings included water exports, environmental policy, immigration controls and military power in North America.

A stated aim of the Security and Prosperity Partnership is to "increase border security" in North America, according to internal documents outlining the trilateral initiative. One area of focus is the creation of a co-ordinated no-fly list between the US and Canada. Canada recently announced the creation of its own no-fly list, while the US list now includes half a million names.

Migrant rights organizations such as No One is Illegal, operating in multiple Canadian cities, were centrally involved in organizing the demonstrations against the SPP. The initiative has been slammed as an attempt to model North American security regulations after extremely stringent European laws, widely referred to as "Fortress Europe." In 1999, the BBC reported on "Fortress Europe," writing that harmonized immigration legislation in Europe would "lower the drawbridge for the few but keep it firmly up for the many."

In light of the SPP standards, migrant rights organizations in North America expressed concerns of attempts to create "Fortress North America," a match to the exclusionary European model.

“Debate surrounding the SPP has grown because the initiative encapsulates so many important issues in post 9/11 North America concerning domestic repression justified through language of ‘national security’, said Harsha Walia of No One is Illegal in Vancouver. “The SPP also promotes an economic system which displaces people throughout the global south, specifically in Latin America, while implementing security policies in Canada and the US which attempts to halt peoples ability to flee the economic destitution created by the economic polices promoted through the SPP.”

Secret discussions at Montebello also revolved around the "War on Terror," linking North American foreign policy in both Latin America and the Middle East, while demonstrators in Canada called for a withdrawal of Canadian forces from Afghanistan. Block the Empire, a Montreal collective active in opposing the Canadian military participation in the NATO mission in the Kandahar province of southern Afghanistan, was strongly represented at the demonstrations in Montebello.

Also present at the demonstrations in Montebello were members of the Centre for Philippine Concerns from Montreal, who decried the Canadian and US support for the current government of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in Manila, Philippines. Human rights groups such as Amnesty International accuse the Arroyo government, a key Western ally in Asia, of carrying out hundreds of assassinations of leftists as part of the "War on Terror" in the Asia-Pacific region.

Demonstrators faced police violence in Montebello. Federal and provincial police forces used chemical gas --"tear gas" -- rubber bullets and clubs to push demonstrators away from the location of the trilateral summit. Following the demonstrations in Montebello, the Quebec Provincial Police were forced to admit to the use of under-cover police provocateurs within the demonstration, after a widely-circulated online video picked up by news media clearly depicted undercover agents carrying rocks during the demonstration.

SPP: Riot Police

Tear Gas

Helicopter

SPP: Riot Police

SPP: Demonstrators

SPP: Flags

SPP: Tess Tesalona

SPP: No One is Illegal

SPP: Tear Gas

SPP: Graveyard

Radio Tadamon! Protests: Israeli Apartheid / Security Prosperity Partnership

Stefan Christoff — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 22:12:57 +0000

tadradioimage1.jpg

Listen / Download HERE.

This edition of Radio Tadamon! brings you to the streets, from the ongoing demonstrations throughout Canada calling for a boycott of Indigo/Chapters bookstores due to their support for Israel, to the major demonstrations in Montabello, Quebec surrounding the North American trilateral summit in August 2007.