Posted on 09/11/2007 5:33:05 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
It's now leaking out that there was more going on than met the eye at the Security and Prosperity Partnership Summit in Montebello, Canada, in August. The three amigos - President George W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon - finalized and released the "North American Plan for Avian & Pandemic Influenza."
The "Plan" - that's what they call it, with a capital P - is to use the excuse of a major flu epidemic to shift powers from U.S. legislatures to unelected, unaccountable "North American" bureaucrats.
This idea was launched on Sept. 14, 2005, when Bush announced the "International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza." He was then speaking to the United Nations General Assembly.
We might have thought that idea had some merit because the influenza partnership called for "transparency in reporting of influenza cases in humans and in animals" and the "sharing of epidemiological data and samples." That's very different from the Security and Prosperity Summit, where transparency has always been conspicuously avoided like the plague.
This year's Security and Prosperity Summit in Canada morphed the Influenza Partnership into the North American Plan. Now we discover that the Plan is not only about combating a flu epidemic but is far-reaching in seeking control over U.S. citizens and public policy during an epidemic.
The Plan repeatedly features the favorite Bush word "comprehensive" - it calls for a "comprehensive, coordinated North American approach." The Plan would give authority to international bureaucrats "beyond the health sector to include a coordinated approach to critical infrastructure protection," including "border and transportation issues."
The Plan is a wordy 44-page document, much of which sounds innocuous. It is helpful to exchange information about disease and take precautions against letting foreign diseases enter the United States.
However, self-government and sovereignty are at risk when control over these matters is turned over to a newly created North American body headed by the representative of another country. It's an additional problem when the entire Plan is a spin-off of the Security and Prosperity Partnership, an arrangement created in secret solely by White House press releases, without Congressional approval or even oversight.
The 2007 Plan acknowledges that it is based not only on the Influenza Partnership, but also on the guidelines, standards and rules of the World Health Organization, the World Organization for Animal Health, the World Trade Organization, and the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The Plan sets up a "senior level coordinating body to facilitate the effective planning and preparedness within North America for a possible outbreak of avian and/or human pandemic influenza under the Security and Prosperity Partnership." The Plan identifies this Security and Prosperity Partnership coordinating body as "decision-makers."
The Plan then (ungrammatically) states: "The chair of the Security and Prosperity Partnership coordinating body will rotate between each national authority on a yearly basis." Thus, a foreigner will be the "decision maker" for Americans in two out of every three years.
What powers will this foreign-headed coordinating body exercise? The Plan suggests that these include "the use of antivirals and vaccines; ... social distancing measures, including school closures and the prohibition of community gatherings; ... isolation and quarantine."
Will this foreign-headed coordinating body respect the First Amendment "right of the people peaceably to assemble"? Or will the rules of the Plan, Security and Prosperity Partnership, World Health Organization, World Organization for Animal Health, World Trade Organization and NAFTA take precedence?
In evaluating the Plan, it is instructive to recall the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, an anti-epidemic plan launched by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Oct. 23, 2001. Designed to be passed by all state legislatures, the model bill was primarily written by Lawrence O. Gostin, a former member of U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's discredited Task Force on Health Care Reform, and was promoted by the Bush administration during its first year.
The proposed Emergency Health Powers Act would have given each governor sole discretion to declare a public health emergency and grant himself extraordinary powers. He would have been able to restrict or prohibit firearms, seize private property and destroy it in many circumstances, and impose price controls and rationing.
Governors would have been given the power to order people out of their homes and into dangerous quarantines. Children could have been taken from their parents and put into public quarantines.
Governors could even have demanded that physicians administer certain drugs despite individuals' religious or other objections. The Emergency Health Powers Act was based on the concept that decision-making by authoritarian bosses and unelected bureaucrats is the way to go in a time of crisis.
The proposed Emergency Health Powers Act roused a nationwide storm of protest because it was an unprecedented assault on the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens, as well as on the principle of limited government, and so it never passed anywhere in its original text. Will similar totalitarian notions now bypass legislatures and be forced upon us by Security and Prosperity Partnership press releases?
Phyllis Schlafly is a national leader of the pro-family movement, a nationally syndicated columnist and author of Feminist Fantasies.
PING!
Those of us who don’t listen to talk radio (the tinfoil hats interfere with the signal) have known about this since HillaryCare days. While the mechanics of her “task force” were rejected by congress (mostly because she was spending money without them), the actual protocols were accepted by several Federal Departments, and are mostly being slipped into the law even now. The SPP is only the public face of an incremental adoption of HillaryCare.
Gawd amighty! This reads like a sequel to Clancy’s “Rainbow Six!”
Hyperbole in the extreme. Garbage.
Schlafly has been right on some issues (e.g., ERA, family-related issues, abortion) in the past, but I've also noticed that she specializes in taking relatively benign things outside her area of knowledge and making absurd "end of the world" claims.
The plan is simply to have cooperative committees to handle a crisis that might strike and to try to coordinate a response. For example, if a plague broke out in Europe, the officials of the three countries could coordinate a technique to minimize the risk of the plague getting to North America.
None of the countries gives up their independence.
For Schlafly to say that "a foreigner will be the decision maker for Americans in two out of every three years" is absurd. Schlafly apparently does not understand the difference between the chair and the full committee.
The chair doesn't set policy. The chair of the Committee would not be the decision-maker. The chair simply calls the meeting ("meet in my country tomorrow at 1 pm") and does similar things.
If the full committee could override Congress (and they can't), even that would be a lot different than "a foreigner will be THE decision maker for Americans" [emphasis added] as Schlafly wrongly claims. The committee, i.e., the decision-makers of the countries, meet and try to adopt a crisis response such that one country's response doesn't increase problems for other countries.
Few people realize that in just about any country, the health department can overnight become the most authoritarian government agency there is. Essentially doctors directing men with guns, all the way up to the use of nuclear weapons to stop a major biological disaster.
The health department can disallow all constitutional rights, and there is no civil appeal. And this is not a new regime, but has existed for 100+ years. Before World War II and the invention of antibiotics, or even the widespread use of sulfa drugs, invented in 1932, quarantines were common and everyone learned to respect posted quarantine signs.
And yet, at the same time, politicians who would seek to increase their power during a medical crisis are in for a rude awakening. They are no longer in charge of things, nor are bureaucrats. It is a dictatorship of doctors.
And I think I can pretty well say that if medical doctors are in charge, it will be pretty hard to tell if they are American, Canadian or Mexican, because their concerns will be almost identical, and the execution will almost certainly be similar, and brutally objective.
Ironically, being under a technocratic regime of medical doctors is probably not too bad, specifically because they don’t *want* to be in charge, they *have* to be. And they want to return power to the civil authorities as soon as possible. This is not a bad quality to have in leaders.
And while initially, a large percentage of the population will stupidly and stubbornly resist their direction, they either become more cooperative, or they have a much better chance of becoming casualties.
But most epidemics like avian flu are like wildfires. Which means that they will pass through an area quickly. Strangely, though, in two waves. And between waves, and once it has done its worst, locally at least, things will quickly return to some degree of normalcy. The biggest after effect being that people remain standoffish and concerned with hygiene for some time. But otherwise, life will return to a great extent, to normal.
That depends whether the real objective of the leadership is to mitigate a plague, or to enhance their own power.
ping...
Well, why don’t we just build a wall and keep those sick birds out? How dare they think they can mess with the U.S. of A.? /s/
As far as I’m concerned, my fellow citizens’ constitutional right to move freely about the country ends when they’re carrying some bug that can kill my family.
We’re talking about contingency plans for a pandemic here, folks, and I, for one, am pleased to know that someone is thinking ahead. If perilous times require drastic measures to ensure public safety, I’m all for it.
Read the preamble if you don’t think that’s a legitimate government function.
Go to the library and read microfilm of newspapers in 1918 and think what life would be like if it happens again in this day of mass transit and multiplied population.
NAU PING
The Plan sets up a "senior level coordinating body to facilitate the effective planning and preparedness within North America for a possible outbreak of avian and/or human pandemic influenza under the Security and Prosperity Partnership." The Plan identifies this Security and Prosperity Partnership coordinating body as "decision-makers."ty for the ping, hedgie; I'll read this more thoroughly tomorrow, but, I don't like what I've skimmed here, at all. BumPing!!The Plan then (ungrammatically) states: "The chair of the Security and Prosperity Partnership coordinating body will rotate between each national authority on a yearly basis." Thus, a foreigner will be the "decision maker" for Americans in two out of every three years.
BTTT
Any opinions from a REAL conservative like Phyllis Schlafly are definitely worth reading.
Agreed!
I have wondered about this.
Ping for later.
Wanna make a bet? As Calderon said in his speech to Mexico, "where there is a Mexican there is Mexico."
For example, if a plague broke out in Europe, the officials of the three countries could coordinate a technique to minimize the risk of the plague getting to North America.
Now should this plague break out in Mexico, do you honestly think these officials would close the borders? The SPP agreement is to keep the borders open during a pandemic as money is more important to them than life. Free trade must go on come hell or high water. So therefore, we will have a world wide pandemic due to free trade.
And a free traitor globalist will do the 3rd year.
You raise a good issue, but it’s a different matter, one that’s separate from Schlafly’s misstatements.
Under current political reality, you are probably right that the border would unfortunately not be closed. However, it would be because U.S. officials (under the type of political pressure that produced the amnesty bill) were wrongly choosing to subordinate U.S. interests to Mexico’s. It would NOT be a result of the chairman of a coordinating committee being in the hands of Mexico, contrary to Schlafly’s contention.
When I said that the countries don’t give up their independence, I meant under the SPP. That was the context and what I was talking about, but it’s good to clarify that.
Bump. Correct.
It truly shows how little that "Security" has to do with the Security Prosperity Partnership.
As for BillF's argument that there is no abdication of sovereignty in the SPP, that would seem to be contradicted by the very secrecy surrounding these negotiations that never seem to have any tangible Congressional authority or work-product for the Senate to review and confirm in treaty-form.
Our nation's sovereignty flows from the PEOPLE. And since the People, inclusive of their representatives, are being kept in the dark, ignorant of the issues of the foreign discussions and policies... then it follows that they have already had their sovereignty violated.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.