WTF is it NAU?

The Royal Bank has been refusing to open American dollar accounts for Canadian citizens with dual citizenship in Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Sudan, North Korea or Myanmar since April 2006.
The Royal Bank has confirmed it is conforming with U.S. Treasury Department laws.

According to CBC :
"A spokesperson for the federal Finance Department said it was unaware of the practice, and that the bank could be liable for heavy fines."

Now, as it happens, the Royal Bank has a blog [Ed. note - and rivetting stuff it is too] and on this blog they are running a contest : The Next Great Innovator Challenge.
Drop by and let them know that your idea of a great innovation is abiding by Canadian law.

Bonus Reading : The Case For the Amero - The Economics and Politics of a North American Monetary Union, a Fraser Institute report by Conservative/Reform Party member Herb Grubel.
I especially liked this line with its quotation marks :
"#39 Resistance to the amero will be lessened by continuing to call it officially a "dollar".

SPP : Stupid Papineauville Policy

Does the Municipality of Papineauville, Quebec have any idea of the irony of pronouncing the authority of the US Army to deny the Council of Canadians the right to protest deep integration with the US on Canadian soil?

From the Council of Canadians :
"The Municipality of Papineauville, which is about six kilometres from Montebello, has informed the Council of Canadians that the RCMP, the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) and the U.S. Army will not allow the municipality to rent the Centre Communautaire de Papineauville for a public forum on Sunday August 19, on the eve of the so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership Leaders Summit.

The Council of Canadians has been told that the RCMP and the SQ will be enforcing a 25-kilometre security perimeter around the Chateau Montebello, where Stephen Harper will meet with George W. Bush and Felipe Calderón on August 20 and 21."

The US Army will not allow the municipality...?
A 25K security perimeter? WTF?

From the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms :
2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

• a) freedom of conscience and religion;
• b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
• c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
• d) freedom of association.

No mention in there anywhere of these rights being subject to the whims of the US Army.
Note that Papineauville evidently didn't feel the authority of the RCMP was sufficient unto itself here.
Or have we officially given up bothering to distinguish between the policies of the RCMP and those of the US Army?

UPDATE : From Thursday's Ottawa Citizen :
"Mr. Patterson [of Council of Canada] said Frederic Castonguay, the town's general manager, reported that Guy Cote, of the Quebec police force in Montreal, had told him the council "is an activist organization opposed to the summit and that it would not be wise to have us set up in the community centre."

Mr. Castonguay yesterday confirmed he had been called by Mr. Cote, who told him that the police and U.S. army need the community centre as a base of operations for summit security."

Canada says torture flights "lawful"

From Macleans :
"Extraordinary rendition, the U.S. practice of shipping terrorism suspects to foreign prisons, may be legal in some cases, says the Foreign Affairs spokesman Rodney Moore :
"Whether any particular rendition is lawful would depend on the facts of each individual case."

But hey, not to worry because :
"The government said earlier this year a review of dozens of alleged CIA aircraft landing at Canadian airports uncovered no evidence of illegal activity."

Even though :
"Alex Neve of Amnesty International Canada accused Ottawa on Monday of failing to "launch a thorough and comprehensive probe" of the possible use of Canadian airstrips by planes involved in extraordinary rendition."
Some of those same planes implicated in the European cases are known to have made use of Canadian airspace and airstrips," he said."

Alleged CIA torture flights in 2005 : UK-210, Gemany-437, Canada, um, 0

At the same time this secret Foreign Affairs/Justice Dept report was being prepared last November, Condi Rice was jetting around Europe telling everyone to just shut up shut up shut up about torture flights.

Times-Online Dec 6, 2005
"Rice challenged European leaders to back controversial American anti-terrorism tactics yesterday as she robustly defended the CIA’s extrajudicial seizure, transportation and interrogation of thousands of suspects.
Dr Rice said that she expected American allies to co-operate and keep quiet about sensitive anti-terrorism operations....she pointedly reminded European governments that they had helped the US for years in a “lawful” policy of rendition — the removal of suspects to third countries for interrogation."

Ah, there we go - "lawful".

Canada, a nation within the United States

From the Glib&Mall :
"The Conservative government is floating plans to block takeovers and investment from foreign state-owned firms should it detect a threat to Canada in the transaction, a move triggered by China's global prowl for acquisitions."

Well, I've certainly argued for this, although I wouldn't have singled out China or bothered with delicate distinctions between foreign state-owned firms and firm-owned states. (Firms? Who says firms any more?)
But look at the assumptions in this next bit :

"Greater Chinese inroads into the oil sands would certainly unnerve American policy makers, who always include Canada's tar-rich deposits in the equation when they discuss how the United States could achieve energy independence."

So Canada is now voluntarily initiating policy to facilitate a smoother US takeover of our resources?
When did the US cease to be a foreign power?
Yeah, I know, but it bugs me the G&M just takes it for granted.
The list of 'unfriendlies' is interesting : Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran or Venezuela. What - no North Korea?

The Cons - vigilantly protecting the national interests of the US.

The man that time forgot

Atlantica, Cascadia, and presumably also Pointsinbetweenica* will soon be getting a boost as a replacement for Canada, thanks to the appointment of right wing free marketeer Brian Lee Crowley to a position as senior policy adviser to the federal Finance Department.

Crowley is the founding president of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, created to promote Atlantica as the economic union of the Atlantic provinces with the New England states. He's also a big fan of NASCO, the ten lane corridor almost a quarter of a mile wide with gas, oil, electricity, and water pipelines running up either side, which is being proposed to link Mexico, with her non-union truck drivers, directly to Winnipeg.

The Canada/US border, according to Crowley, is merely an impediment to "continental integration" :
"The east-west axis for development of North America is being supplemented by a drive to stitch back together the old north-south trade routes that had flourished across the continent before 1867."

Ah yes, the goode olde dayes.
Other concepts from before 1867 that win Crowley's approval are lack of pay equity for women, lack of regional development funding, lack of EI and welfare, and lack of government interference in the glorious free market.

The Federal Bureau of Integration

FBI agents are carrying out investigations in Canada without the approval of the Canadian government. Yeah, I know - quel surprise.

But there's an interesting bit of vid up on CBC about it here : Video - Evan Dyer.
I know you hate the clicky/linky thing so here's the gist of it.
RCMP Commissioner Zaccardelli assured Canadians that no effort would be spared to avoid a repetition of the Arar debacle, and he has since put in place procedures that centralize and properly vet "paper documentation" going to U.S. authorities.

However Evan Dyer reports that this means doodly because members of the FBI are in fact physically present at those very meetings. The Canadian Integrated National Security & Enforcement Teams are there when ongoing investigations are discussed. Ongoing, as in unproven.
INSET handled the intel on Arar and the Toronto 17.

Dyer further points out that this is particularly troubling given the recent passage of the U.S. Military Commissions Bill, which allows the U.S. to prosecute foreigners, including Canadians, on hearsay evidence.

I'm guessing despite Zac's concern about vetting "paper documentation", the FBI will probably manage to take its own notes at those meetings.

"When asked about the report during question period, Day said Canadian security forces work with Canada's allies, including the U.S, and have agreements in terms of information sharing."
Shorter Day : It's ok if the FBI doesn't ask our permission first before initiating their own investigation because we already said they don't have to.

Shorter me : Isn't this where we came in? Stockwell Day has Stockholm Syndrome.

Senate endorses leaky umbrella

A senate defence committee report released Thursday says Canada should sign on to the U.S. ballistic missile defence program.

Because signing on to a program that can't even pass its own tests on a good day under ideal conditions in that sink hole of escalating pre-emptive militarization and weaponization of space that is the flagship of U.S. diplomacy just seems like the right thing to do.

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Here's a better test of Canadian security for you - How many Canadian students travelling abroad sport a US flag on their backpacks?

To be fair, the Senate Defence Committee also advises doubling the amount of money we assign to foreign aid :

"The likelihood of reducing world turmoil through military responses is a mug's game. Force won't work on its own."

Yeah, well, they got the first sentence right.

Link. Much better coverage of this at No BMD, eh?

The Anschluss watchdogs

Remember the super-secret deep integration conference at the Banff Springs Hotel last week?And the quite spectacular non-coverage it received from CBC and the print media?

Well today it just became a whole lot more visible thanks to ...

Aaron Paton at the Banff Crag and Canyon who scooped the mainstream media.
Susan Thompson at Vive le Canada who followed up on publishing Mel Hurtig's email last week with a list of the conference's participants and agenda, and
Maude Barlow of Council of Canadians who provides a concise overview in today's Toronto Star, the first big paper to make any mention of it.

On the blogs, skdadl at Pogge summarizes the progress so far, while Ross at The Gazetteer has been pushing on this all week in five separate posts.

Take a bow, Anschluss watchdogs, for paying attention to the little men behind the curtain.

Update : Gosh, and thanks just ever so, CBC, for this truly stellar piece of investigative journalism.
And to think they were working without a media press kit from Stockboy!
They did at least quote Banff taxi driver Chris Foote, who as Herbinator mentioned below, should have been prominantly included in my list above for his part in getting the word out.

Stop the clock

Yesterday I was furious that there was no mention on CBC or in any newspaper of the Canada/US "deep integration" conference wrapping up today in Banff. One would have thought that the possibility of Donald Rumsfeld's visit to Canada would have rated at least a one-liner somewhere.

Nada. Ditto today.

Silly me. I should have been looking among the Anschluss fans :
"This is how the future of North America now promises to be written: not in a sweeping trade agreement on which elections will turn, but by the accretion of hundreds of incremental changes implemented by executive agencies, bureaucracies and regulators. "We've decided not to recommend any things that would require legislative changes," says Covais. "Because we won't get anywhere." "

"The guidance from the ministers was, 'tell us what we need to do and we'll make it happen,' " recalls Covais, who chairs the U.S. section of the council, which includes 10 CEOs of big companies like Wal-Mart, General Motors and Merck."

"Covais figures they've got less than two years of political will to make it happen. That's when the Bush administration exits, and "The clock will stop if the Harper minority government falls or a new government is elected."

That's Ron Covais - President of the Americas for Lockheed Martin, a former Pentagon adviser to Dick Cheney and Chair of the US section of the North American Competitiveness Council created during the Harper/Bush Cancun meet in March.
He made these remarks following the last deep integration conference in Washington in June.
The objective of the current Banff conference is to draw up a list of recommendations for ministers of "Canada's New Government" for the reopening of parliament in October.

Stop the clock. Stop it any way you can.

Write to the CBC, national newspapers, your MLA.
It may be inevitable/necessary/natural that one day we will see a North America union with one coin, one flag, one defense perimeter, one education system, one health care system, one energy resource pool, etc.
Opposition to this idea in Canada is often spun as anti-Americanism by its corporate sponsors and their government flacks.
It isn't. It's anti-corporatism. And most Americans agree with us.

Stop the clock.


Update : Sept 20/06
Ok, this story has now finally made it into the mainstream press.
Here's Maude Barlow of Council of Canadians in today's Toronto Star.
Note how many of the details are still very much under wraps.

Emerson : NAFTA is crap

No, he didn't actually use the word "crap".
He did one better : he explained why it *is* crap for Canada.

"I want people to remember that NAFTA is built on domestic laws," Emerson said. "You can win a legal victory today, and think you have established a legal precedent, only to have Congress change the laws affecting the industry and the way disputes are litigated in the future."

In other words - if no US law is broken, the US wins the dispute.
If a US law is broken causing the US to lose the dispute, Congress simply changes that law and mounts an appeal.

We would like to thank David Emerson for being the first member of Harper's cabinet to publicly admit that NAFTA is a crappy deal for Canada.

Of course, Emerson is only knocking NAFTA to sell his and Steve's 'Firesale! softwood diplomacy' as a better alternative. And we already know that Steve intends to blackmail the opposition into accepting it rather than risk having the government go down in a non-confidence vote this fall.
As Toronto Star's David Crane puts it :
"Because U.S. courts were finding for Canada, the Bush administration wanted an immediate settlement.The Harper government caved. Now we will have to see whether the opposition parties will do the same."

Bonus : Dave's Snarky (Northern) Canadian Blog explains Emerson's affinity for Firesale! diplomacy.

Tread water and carry a big stick

Shorter David Emerson : If the lumber companies don't voluntarily sign off on giving $1 billion in illegal softwood bribe money to the US in order to keep the Cons in power here, then, as the government of Canada, we will let the US keep the whole damn $5 billion.

Emerson states that negotiations have ended and the White House has no more appetite left for further negotiations.

Hah! By "negotiations" he is presumably referring to the unamended version of the deal which Canadian lumber companies received only days before he signed off on it.
CathiefromCanada was right on the money when she pointed out that an agreement requires, you know, agreement.

He also has the unmitigated gall to slag the previous liberal government's strategy of winning all softwood disputes in both international and US courts - at a "cost of millions". Which last time I looked was still less than "billions".

Hey, asshole, weren't you a big part of that strategy when you were with the Libs? I mean, wasn't the big rationale for you defecting to the Cons that it would enable you to continue your valuable work despite a change in government? So who exactly is it you are actually working for again?

Gosh is it G8 time again already?
Yes it is, and Harper will be leaving for St Petersburg this week.
You remember last year's G8 summit in Gleneagles, right?
The televised Live 8 concert and the billions of dollars in aid promised by the world's richest nations to the world's poor.

On the way over, Harper will first make a stop in England, who failed to meet the Live 8 Aid to Africa target they set for themselves last year, and afterwards he'll spend a day in France, the only country who did.
The focus of this year's G8 is "energy security".
Well, that's handy - Harper should be really well boned up on this one.
As it happens, "energy security" was also a focus of the "Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America" pact which Harper endorsed in his meeting with Bush just this last March. In fact the phrases "North American energy security" and "North American energy markets" appear repeatedly in this document, along with the stated goal of "Increasing private sector engagement in the SPP by adding high-level business input".

Plus of course Bush and Harper announced the implementation of the North American Big Box Competitiveness Council.
Death to regulation of industry by government, but pleased as punch to have industry regulating government.
I wonder what grand promises will be made in the interests of the public good this time round.
And whether Harper will be "standing up for Canada" or North America.

The far side of crazy

From the transcript of the Bush/Harper press conference yesterday, here is Bush answering a question about the threat posed by North Korea :

Are you ready, Ginger?

.

"blah, blah, blah, blah, we're trying to make sure, by the way, that the missile that he fired wasn't headed for Canada. We don't know, for a fact, where it was headed. But, for example, one thing that Stephen and I talked about is he could be seemingly firing a missile at the United States, say, at -- I don't know, this is all speculation -- but could be headed toward the Northwest of our country, and it wouldn't take much for it to get off course, and end somewhere where he may not have intended blah, blah, blah, blah."

.

Did you get all that, Ginger?

What's that? You only heard "missile headed for Canada"?

Good boy, Ginger, good boy!

.

At this point Harper is balancing sucking up to Bush with not freaking Canada out about it.

Harper has hitched his wagon to Bush's falling star and up till now Canadians have shown little inclination to follow. We are especially leary of hitching Canada's wagon to Bush's Star Wars shenanigans.

Harper's best hope here is to convince Canadians that it is already too late to base our security on our ability to keep our distance from the egregious imperialist misadventures of our neighbours to the south.

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So the question for Canadians is : Are we any smarter than Ginger?

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Bonus snark : Bush calls Harper "Steve"; Harper calls Bush "Mr. President". Try to imagine Harper calling Bush "George".

Gravy train spotting

Some people hate the Americans.
I don't.
Americans are just wankers.
We, on the other hand, are colonized by wankers.*

Eleanor Grant has a great piece up, tracing the history and players of "deep integration", or, as the Canadian Council of Chief Executives winningly puts it : "creating a single economic space".

The only thing I would add to her excellent summary is that it's always worth dropping by the CCCE website from time to time to listen to them take credit for it.

*with apologies to Irvine Welsh

Extra soft and super absorbent

David Emerson hailed the new improved softwood lumber agreement as "a nation-to-nation agreement, it's a treaty."

Ha! Why, sure, if by "treaty" you mean another 2-ply extra-soft super-absorbent guarantee that the US will treat like so much used toilet paper whenever it suits them.

And what do we get out of it? In return for $1 billion, the US promises not to bother losing any more NAFTA court battles to us for the next two years.

Harper released a statement hailing the agreement as "a great day for Canada" and CTV further reports:

"the Tory hope is that, with softwood out of the way, Harper and Bush can concentrate on issues like global security, water exports..."

And photo ops. Lots and lots of photo ops.

You're not fooling anyone, you know.

.

Update : Ross at The Gazetteer is all over this.

And Canadian Cynic weighs in on water exports.

Hey Alberta, who's your daddy?

This year's Smithsonian Folklife Festival is going to feature the "culture of Alberta".
"Festival director Diana Parker said the Smithsonian worked with Albertan scholars, government officials and ordinary citizens to come up with ....."

Go on, take a guess. What's it going to be?
The Calgary Stampede? The Oilers? Wheat-henge?
Nope. The "culture of Alberta" is a monster truck and the tar sands.

From Canadian Press :"One in three Alberta jobs depends on exports to the United States and 85 per cent of those exports are petroleum and natural gas."

Sinking Atlantica

The “Reaching Atlantica: Business Without Borders” conference just wrapped up last weekend. It's an Atlantic Provinces Chamber of Commerce proposal to expand economic and political links between the Maritimes and the Northeastern US, and it kind of makes sense when you look at the map, doesn't it? Atlantic Canada plus Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York state and part of northern Massachusetts.

In fact the front page of the Atlantica website states :

"After the Americans rejected Reciprocity and Confederation was born, the continent was divided into two national projects...in 1867."

If this sounds like an unusual reading of history to Canadian ears, it may be because the VP soon-to-be-President of the Atlantic Provinces Chamber of Commerce is an American and the CEO of Eastern Maine Development Corp.

And while there are many alarming references to minimum wage legislation, size of public employee workforce and “union density” as barriers to “Labour Market Flexibility” and “Public Sector Efficiency”, it is in the Atlantica Media pages that they really get down to it :

"If the vision of Atlantica could be realized, it would be a wonderful facilitator toward restoring Atlantic Canada's heritage as a thriving centre of international trade, but even better would be to integrate all of Canada and the U.S. inside one big continental economic and security zone, which would also eliminate the looming problem of American passport controls at the border which former Ambassador to the U.S. Frank McKenna estimated as potentially causing a reduction of up to 7.7 million visitors to Canada, and losses of nearly $2 billion annually - mainly from the tourism industry.

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The ideal solution would be a European Union-style "perimeter" that would allow Canada and the U.S. to jointly manage common external border entry points while largely dismantling internal border restrictions. Last year, an independent task force sponsored by the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, of which former Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister John Manley is a co-chair, recommended that Canada, the United States and Mexico become a single trading zone. This is so logical that it should be a no-brainer, but resistance from the above-mentioned "usual suspects" is of course a given."

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I'm sorry, who were those usual suspects you mentioned again?

Ah yes, here it is :"the usual suspects - unions, rabid ultranationalists like the Council of Canadians, radical feminists, and other fellow-traveling leftist flat-earthers"

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Dear Atlantica : While your proposal is generally well researched and adequately reasoned, in your list of usual suspects you refer to "fellow-travelling leftist flat-earthers" when the more usual designation of "godless tree-hugging Commie fags" would be more consistent with the rest of your material.

NASCO - Paving the way for stuff

According to their website, NASCO is "a non-profit organization dedicated to developing the world’s first international, integrated and secure, multi-modal transportation system along the International Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation Corridor to improve both the trade competitiveness and quality of life in North America."

For "quality of life" here, read "stuff".

Expanding the wealth and power of corporations at the expense of people and the environment.
A ten lane corridor almost a quarter of a mile wide with gas, oil, electricity, and water pipelines running up either side, extending all the way from Mexico to Winnipeg.

Containers from the far East to be offloaded at Mexican deep-sea ports and transported by truck to the new $3 mil Mexican Customs Office - in Kansas City!

Texas has already been given both federal funding and the go-ahead to begin their section of this toll-road, and the second "Hemispheria" summit to discuss this project was due to happen in Winnipeg earlier this month.

What could possibly go wrong?

Oh yeah... Terror, Terror, Terror! Big fences! Passports and tighter border security! Bad Canada harbours terrorists! Canadians are naive! says Harper. Beef up Canada's spy network! Get under the Ballistic Missile Defense Umbrella! says the Canadian Council of Chief Executives."

Hemispheria" was cancelled due to security concerns, over the objections of the mayor of Winnipeg and the (so far laughably small) Winnipeg arm of NASCO, after the Manitoba government evidently deemed the $8 mil cost of providing security for the expected 600 CEOs and US governors to be prohibitively expensive.

So the real issue is profit vs security then?

No. The real issue is profit and their security, how to free up the movement of capital while simultaneously controlling the movement of people.

Terror! Terror! Terror! is merely one way of getting us to agree to it.

We haven't yet, but they'll be back.

Senate endorses leaky umbrella

A senate defence committee report released Thursday says Canada should sign on to the U.S. ballistic missile defence program.

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Because signing on to a program that can't even pass its own tests on a good day under ideal conditions in that sink hole of escalating pre-emptive militarization and weaponization of space that is the flagship of U.S. diplomacy just seems like the right thing to do.

.

Here's a better test of Canadian security for you - How many Canadian students travelling abroad sport a US flag on their backpacks?

.To be fair, the Senate Defence Committee also advises doubling the amount of money we assign to foreign aid :

"The likelihood of reducing world turmoil through military responses is a mug's game. Force won't work on its own."

.

Yeah, well, they got the first sentence right.

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Link. Much better coverage of this at No BMD, eh?

The Media is the Massage

Flag by Scout over at Harper Valley

Great, isn't it?

Would be a good backdrop for the magic act appearing in the (I kid you not!) 'Grand Scheme Ballroom' tomorrow.

American NeoCon funnyman Frank Luntz will be up in Canada teaching a select group of Canadian Con polis and Con media how to perform his Newspeak dog and phony show, aptly titled "Massaging the Conservative Message For Voters".

Some highlights from his previous shows down south : "September 11 changed everything.

So start with 9/11….Without the context of 9/11, you will be blamed for the deficit….The trick is then to contextualize the deficit inside of 9/11."

"No speech about homeland security or Iraq should begin without a reference to 9/11"and who could forget : "Never say 'drilling for oil', say 'exploring for energy'."

"Hotter Than Hell" quasher Rona Ambrose is already retelling her own version of this one :"Instead of using the term "global warming," substitute "climate change" because while global warming has catastrophic communications attached to it, climate change sounds a more controllable and less emotional challenge."

Some of his older stuff, like "Contract With America" which he co-authored with Newt Gingrich, has gotten more than a little stale, but tomorrow the Cons will be learning how to retell those old jokes in their own inimitable comic style.

I can hardly wait. I'm sure I won't have to.

More reviews at Public Eye Online, The Galloping Beaver, and The Gazetteer