It’s nothing personal

There is a planned summit meeting this weekend among the NAFTA leadership — or specifically, among the Security and Prosperity Partnership leadership (same thing) — in Guadalajara.

The rather poorly thought out “Security and Prosperity Partnership”, announced back in May 2005 during some similar do in Waco, Texas.  It never was a “partnership” as such, being primarily designed to “Coordinate our security efforts to better protect U.S. citizens from terrorist threats and transnational crime and promote the safe and efficient movement of legitimate people and goods.” In other words, to make Canada and Mexico buy into the Bush administration’s paranoia.

However,  Canada and Mexico never quite bought into Bushismo (aka  “Bu-shit”) and Felipe Calderon, Barack Obama and Stephen Harper, together with their country’s foreign ministers (Patricia Espinoza, Hillary Clinton and Lawrence Cannon) — will be in the Jaliscience city Sunday and Monday to discuss common concerns and actions regarding the economy, energy and climate change.

There wasn’t much media attention given this event.  Outside of my reference in the first paragraph (from Angus Reid Strategies, a Canadian news service) there was nothing “controversial” or even particularly interesting to make the summit newsworthy.  The right wing loono-sphere  sees NAFTA and the Security and Prosperity Partnership as some sort of secret plan by the illumanti to turn over the United States government to shadowy rulers in Ottawa (or maybe Mexico City)… as opposed to the situation now, where the Mexicans and Canadians think their political strings are pulled by overlords in Washington.  They’ll be holding their own loony-do in Guadalajara too. Well known U.S. crackpots Ron Paul and Howard Phillips may provide some comic relief to what otherwise looks to be a typical “Do as we in Washington say, not as we do” gab-fest.

Certainly, “Security” is on the agenda, but in all three North American countries, the alarmist rhetoric of the Bush era was supposedly behind us.  Reuters must not have gotten the memo, writing not about common strategies for dealing with common regional issues, but focusing on the “drug war” that saturates U.S. media coverage of Mexico:

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) – Mexican drug gangs are killing rivals in record numbers in a major setback for the government, which will seek more support from U.S. President Barack Obama when he visits the country this weekend.

Severed heads, burned bodies, daylight shootouts and dead children are daily fare from Mexico’s Caribbean to its desert border with the United States, even as army generals pour soldiers and elite police onto city streets.

The Mexican voters decided last month that the Calderon Administration is giving too much attention to cutting off narcotics exports to the United States and not enough to domestic issues, and even Calderon doesn’t think that one export is the sum total of transportation and export/import issues to be considered.  And Reuters seems to have overlooked the Canadians entirely (though I think they’re used to it by now). I imagine the U.S. coverage will be focused on drugs, drugs and more drugs — and the unrealistic expectations that Mexico both implement more draconian measures to stop their citizens from involvement in an industry that is funded by the United States, while simultaneously NOT using draconian measures against its citizens that offend the sensibilities of the United States by using those measures against its citizens AND continue to provide jobs and markets for the people and businesses in the United States who create the weapons and tools used by both the exporters and the abusers.