ClinPsych takes on Newsweek coverage of the Bipolar Child

Newsweek Takes On The Bipolar Child

The new issue of Newsweek has a cover story on a child who allegedly has bipolar disorder and, while it is an article filled with lots of detail and heart, it is also one of the worst pieces of journalism on the alleged disorder that I have ever seen. I'll return to the media criticism in a second.

The article concerns a boy named Max, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and hyperactivity when he was two. He's been on 38 different meds, including Zyprexa at two years old. He's been hospitalized. He's been in therapy (still is). He's made suicide attempts. His parents, seemingly educated and fairly normal, have tried everything. He even had an off-meds trial that lasted for one month (probably not long enough to assess things, but then I wasn't there). Their son is 10 years old now. He's not doing particularly well. There's an accompanying video which I cannot make myself watch.

It's a very sad and rough story to read. It takes place in the Boston area (why are so many of the stories about out of control kids centered in the Boston area?). And, yes, the kid's doctors come the realm of the Harvard bipolar child army. While I am critical of the bipolar child paradigm, it's very clear that there is something the matter with kids like Max. We're a generation now into diagnosing young children with serious mental illnesses and I don't think we have many answers for what's up. That's discouraging.

We'd all like answers, but my global hunch is that child bipolar disorder is not anything other than an intermediate explanation of what's going on. Maybe I'll be proven wrong someday.

Even more discouraging is the magazine's handling of the most controversial diagnosis in all of psychiatry and psychology. The author, Mary Carmichael, admits a few times in the piece that the diagnosis of bipolar disorder in kids is controversial and that some doctors feel it's overdiagnosed (since it doesn't even exist in the DSM, it's overdiagnosed by definition). However, Carmichael doesn't include a single quote from a single critic of the child bipolar disorder paradigm. These critics exist, have medical degrees, teach at major medical schools and are easy to find through the miracle of search engines. Why Carmichael didn't include any dissenting views is hard to understand. Why her editors at the mag didn't insist upon the same is beyond comprehension for a news magazine that is supposed to adhere, at least somewhat, to the basic journalistic principles of fairness. Unless the editors and Carmichael have swallowed the Kool-Aid of the child bipolar paradigm and are now becoming its primary advocates in the press. If so, they should run an editorial announcing and defending the magazine's stance on the issue. Otherwise, they are misinforming and duping their readership and violating their trust. They are also being lazy.

Even more staggering are Carmichael's descriptions of the disorder. Here are a few:

"Yet untreated bipolar disorder can be disastrous; 10 percent of sufferers commit suicide."

That's nonsense, as I've written about previously and it's time for the American media to stop using inflated suicide statistics to scare people.

"Max's life, of course, is rarely easy. During a recent appointment at Frazier's office, he went into full-fledged mania. Laughing wildly, he rolled on the floor, then crawled over to his parents and grabbed an empty medication bottle, yelling, 'Drugs! I've got drugs! It's child safety!'"

If that's what counts as full-fledged mania these days, God help us all.

"Max will never truly be OK."

How does the reporter even know this? Sigh.

The web page of resources for families that the magazine provides is pretty much just a series of links to various proponents of the bp kids business although, interestingly, it includes a link to Robert Whitaker's website for Mad In America, a very critical look at how America has treated mental illnesses in the past (the book's narrative stops many years ago). As I recall, the book doesn't even take up the bipolar child controversy, so its inclusion, while nice to see, is sort of confusing. But whatever.

The mag's website also has a page tackling "the biology of bipolar disorder." Whitaker is quoted there and criticizes the use of psychotropic drugs in children, particularly in how they might affect brain development. Other than that, it's just the usual talking heads of the bipolar child paradigm.

There's an already lengthy comment thread on the magazine's website.

Anyway, I pass all of this along for whatever it's worth to anyone. Happy reading.

Posted by Philip Dawdy

NPR: National Pentagon Radio? plus BOOKS OF NOTE item

NPR: National Pentagon Radio?

I would think his book would be really good. Lots of books are a waste of time these days - but those attacking media bias are very important reads right now.

So as human rights ACTIVISTS we know how to NOT do things when we finally get our chance ..

By Norman Solomon, AlterNet.

Posted March 27, 2008.

When even public radio parrots the military's official line on the war in Iraq, what hope is there for unbiased, quality reporting?

While the Iraqi government continued its large-scale military assault in Basra, the NPR reporter's voice from Iraq was unequivocal on the morning of March 27: "There is no doubt that this operation needed to happen."

Such flat-out statements, uttered with journalistic tones and without attribution, are routine for the U.S. media establishment. In the War Made Easy documentary film, I put it this way: "If you're pro-war, you're objective. But if you're anti-war, you're biased. And often, a news anchor will get no flak at all for making statements that are supportive of a war and wouldn't dream of making a statement that's against a war."

So it goes at NPR News, where -- on Morning Edition as well as the evening program All Things Considered -- the sense and sensibilities tend to be neatly aligned with the outlooks of official Washington. The critical aspects of reporting largely amount to complaints about policy shortcomings that are tactical; the underlying and shared assumptions are imperial. Washington's prerogatives are evident when the media window on the world is tinted red-white-and-blue.

Earlier in the week -- a few days into the sixth year of the Iraq war -- All Things Considered aired a discussion with a familiar guest.

"To talk about the state of the war and how the U.S. military changes tactics to deal with it," said longtime anchor Robert Siegel, "we turn now to retired Gen. Robert Scales, who's talked with us many times over the course of the conflict."

This is the sort of introduction that elevates a guest to truly expert status -- conveying to the listeners that expertise and wisdom, not just opinions, are being sought.

Siegel asked about the progression of assaults on U.S. troops over the years: "How have the attacks and the countermeasures to them evolved?"

Naturally, Gen. Scales responded with the language of a military man. "The enemy has built ever-larger explosives," he said. "They've found clever ways to hide their IEDs, their roadside bombs, and even more diabolical means for detonating these devices."

We'd expect a retired American general to speak in such categorical terms -- referring to "the enemy" and declaring in a matter-of-fact tone that attacks on U.S. troops became even more "diabolical." But what about an American journalist?

Well, if the American journalist is careful to function with independence instead of deference to the Pentagon, then the journalist's assumptions will sound different than the outlooks of a high-ranking U.S. military officer.

In this case, an independent reporter might even be willing to ask a pointed question along these lines: You just used the word "diabolical" to describe attacks on the U.S. military by Iraqis, but would that ever be an appropriate adjective to use to describe attacks on Iraqis by the U.S. military?

In sharp contrast, what happened during the All Things Considered discussion on March 24 was a conversation of shared sensibilities. The retired U.S. Army general discussed the war effort in terms notably similar to those of the ostensibly independent journalist -- who, along the way, made the phrase "the enemy" his own in a followup question.

It wouldn't be fair to judge an entire news program on the basis of a couple of segments. But I'm a frequent listener of All Things Considered and Morning Edition. Such cozy proximity of world views, blanketing the war maker and the war reporter, is symptomatic of what ails NPR's war coverage -- especially from Washington.

Of course there are exceptions. Occasional news reports stray from the narrow baseline. But the essence of the propaganda function is repetition, and the exceptional does not undermine that function.

To add insult to injury, NPR calls itself public radio. It's supposed to be willing to go where commercial networks fear to tread. But overall, when it comes to politics and war, the range of perspectives on National Public Radio isn't any wider than what we encounter on the avowedly commercial networks.

See more stories tagged with: public radio, npr, iraq war, media bias

Norman Solomon's latest book Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State (PoliPointPress) is available now. For more information go to www.madelovegotwar.com.

New Documents Reveal North American Union PR Campaign

New Documents Reveal NAU PR Campaign

Category: NAU/NAFTA/EU

Journalist acquires memos detailing secretive group's efforts to counter critics

Steve Watson
Infowars.net

New documents have been uncovered that reveal how heads of state of the U.S., Mexico and Canada are beseeching business leaders they privately meet with to launch public relations campaigns in order to counter critics of the secretive Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP).

The documents detail how corporate representatives have been urged to "humanize" North American integration, promote NAFTA success stories to employees and unions and evolve the harmonization agenda "without fueling protectionism".

The documentation consists of internal memos from Canada's Foreign Affairs and Internal Trade ministry, which were obtained by the World Net Daily reporter Jerome Corsi under an Access to Information Act request.

"The text of the undated memo is an internal government summary of the third SPP summit meeting held Aug. 20-21, 2007, in Montebello Quebec," writes Corsi.

The memo details the SPP's behind closed doors inaugural meeting with the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC), an advisory Council Comprised of 30 senior private sector representatives of North American corporations that were selected by the American, Canadian and Mexican governments at the June 2006 trilateral meeting in Cancun, Mexico.

The "PR offensive", as Corsi puts it, is detailed in the several paragraphs of the memo, the author of which and the persons referred to within are unknown.

Excerpts of the memo read:

"Leaders had a successful meeting with the members of the NACC, which had been launched at the leader's meeting in Cancun in March 2006, to counsel governments on how they might enhance North American competitiveness,"

"He also urged NACC members to assist in confronting and refuting critics of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP)."

"In closing, all leaders expressed a desire for the NACC to play a role in articulating publicly the benefits of greater collaboration in North America."

"Leaders discussed some of the difficulties of the SPP, including the lack of popular support and the failure of the public to understand the competitive challenges confronting North America."

"Governments are faced with addressing the rapidly evolving competitive environment without fueling protectionism, when industry sectors face radical transformation."

"In terms of building public support, President Bush suggested engaging the support of those who had benefited from NAFTA and from North American integration (including small business owners) to tell their stories and humanize the impressive results."

"NACC members should have a role in communicating the merits of North American collaboration, including by engaging their employees and unions."

The NACC is expected to meet annually with SPP ministers and will engage with senior government officials on an ongoing basis.

The media and the public are not invited to participate in or observe the meetings and the minutes of the meetings are to be kept secret.

The memo highlights how those advancing the North American integration agenda are concerned about the exposure and subsequent public backlash they have encountered recently.

The initial Security and Prosperity Partnership agreement was signed by President Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox and then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Texas, March 23, 2005. It established working groups, under the North American Free Trade Agreement office.

Jerome Corsi brought attention to the SPP two years ago when he obtained SPP documents, under the freedom of information act, showing that a wide range of US administrative law is being re-written in stealth under a program to "integrate" and "harmonize" with administrative law in Mexico and Canada, just as has become commonplace within the EU.

The documents contained references to upwards of 13 working groups within an entire organized infrastructure that has drawn from officials within most areas of administrative government including U.S. departments of State, Homeland Security, Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, Transportation, Energy, Health and Human Services, and the office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

More recently representatives within Congress have petitioned the government on the secretiveness of the SPP and multiple states have introduced resolutions calling on their federal representatives to halt work on the so called "North American Union".

Related: Dear Deluded Mass Media, North American Union Agenda Exists

Books of note: Flat Earth News by Nick Davis

How the Spooks Took over the News

By Nick Davies, The Independent UK
Posted on February 19, 2008, Printed on February 19, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/77281/

Editor's note: This is an edited excerpt from Nick Davies' book, Flat Earth News: An Award-Winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media (Chatto & Windus). Davies' book has created enormous controversy in the UK, where many of the newsmakers Davies discusses in the book have fired back with op-eds accusing Davies of relying on the same anonymous sourcing that he condemns the commercial press for using in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq.

It’s not surprising that the book strikes a tender spot among many a news-maker. It is the deepest examination of the links between the "public diplomacy" -- sometimes known as propaganda -- pushed by the Bush administration and its allies, and the media’s uncritical repetition of the claims made to justify the invasion.

It's easy to forget just how easy it was to sell an unprovoked attack on a sovereign state. It was the media, after all, that promulgated the novel idea that if Saddam Hussein possessed "weapons of mass destruction," that was in and of itself a justification to go to war. How did the issue of "WMD" become a proxy for the more important question of whether Iraq was a credible threat to the United States and its allies. At the time of the invasion, there were close to 40 countries suspected of having an illicit weapons program. Twelve of them were considered "hostile" to the United States and its allies. Yet, the administration claimed that possession of old chemical or biological munitions was a de facto justification for attacking the only country among the twelve that was well-contained; a country whose air-space and imports and exports were under international control. The media embraced the idea uncritically, never mind that Saddam Hussein had not been rattling his saber or threatening any offensive action against another state.

Hussein was in a great position for a tin-pot dictator -- he and his cronies had extracted over $10 billion in corporate kick-backs and bribes which the Right spun as a UN scandal rather that what it was: the largest corporate bribery scandal in history -- and he was able to blame all of his country’s domestic woes on the U.S./British sanctions program that strangled the country.

It’s always been a curiosity that public opinion could be manipulated so comprehensively, and Davies provides one more piece of the puzzle explaining where our media culture is today.

***

How the Spooks Took Over the News

by Nick Davies

On the morning of 9 February 2004, The New York Times carried an exclusive and alarming story. The paper's Baghdad correspondent, Dexter Filkins, reported that US officials had obtained a 17-page letter, believed to have been written by the notorious terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi to the "inner circle" of al-Qa'ida's leadership, urging them to accept that the best way to beat US forces in Iraq was effectively to start a civil war.

The letter argued that al-Qa'ida, which is a Sunni network, should attack the Shia population of Iraq: "It is the only way to prolong the duration of the fight between the infidels and us. If we succeed in dragging them into a sectarian war, this will awaken the sleepy Sunnis."

Later that day, at a regular US press briefing in Baghdad, US General Mark Kimmitt dealt with a string of questions about the New York Times report: "We believe the report and the document is credible, and we take the report seriously… It is clearly a plan on the part of outsiders to come in to this country and spark civil war, create sectarian violence, try to expose fissures in this society." The story went on to news agency wires and, within 24 hours, it was running around the world.

There is very good reason to believe that that letter was a fake -- and a significant one because there is equally good reason to believe that it was one product among many from a new machinery of propaganda which has been created by the United States and its allies since the terrorist attacks of September 2001.

For the first time in human history, there is a concerted strategy to manipulate global perception. And the mass media are operating as its compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to expose it.

The sheer ease with which this machinery has been able to do its work reflects a creeping structural weakness which now afflicts the production of our news. I've spent the last two years researching a book about falsehood, distortion and propaganda in the global media.

The "Zarqawi letter" which made it on to the front page of the New York Times in February 2004 was one of a sequence of highly suspect documents which were said to have been written either by or to Zarqawi and which were fed into news media.

This material is being generated, in part, by intelligence agencies who continue to work without effective oversight; and also by a new and essentially benign structure of "strategic communications" which was originally designed by doves in the Pentagon and Nato who wanted to use subtle and non-violent tactics to deal with Islamist terrorism but whose efforts are poorly regulated and badly supervised with the result that some of its practitioners are breaking loose and engaging in the black arts of propaganda.

Like the new propaganda machine as a whole, the Zarqawi story was born in the high tension after the attacks of September 2001. At that time, he was a painful thorn in the side of the Jordanian authorities, an Islamist radical who was determined to overthrow the royal family. But he was nothing to do with al-Q'aida. Indeed, he had specifically rejected attempts by Bin Laden to recruit him, because he was not interested in targeting the West.

Nevertheless, when US intelligence battered on the doors of allied governments in search of information about al-Q'aida, the Jordanian authorities -- anxious to please the Americans and perhaps keen to make life more difficult for their native enemy -- threw up his name along with other suspects. Soon he started to show up as a minor figure in US news stories -- stories which were factually weak, often contradictory and already using the Jordanians as a tool of political convenience.

Then, on October 7, 2002, for the first time, somebody referred to him on the record. In a nationally televised speech in Cincinnati, President George Bush spoke of "high-level contacts" between al-Q'aida and Iraq and said: "Some al-Q'aida leaders who fled Afghanistan, went to Iraq. These include one very senior al-Q'aida leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks."

This coincided with a crucial vote in Congress in which the president was seeking authority to use military force against Iraq. Bush never named the man he was referring to but, as the Los Angeles Times among many others soon reported: "In a speech [on] Monday, Bush referred to a senior member of al-Q'aida who received medical treatment in Iraq. US officials said yesterday that was Abu al Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian, who lost a leg during the US war in Afghanistan."

Even now, Zarqawi was a footnote, not a headline, but the flow of stories about him finally broke through and flooded the global media on 5 February 2003, when the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, addressed the UN Security Council, arguing that Iraq must be invaded: first, to stop its development of weapons of mass destruction; and second, to break its ties with al-Q'aida.

Powell claimed that "Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al Zarqawi"; that Zarqawi's base in Iraq was a camp for "poison and explosive training"; that he was "an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al-Q'aida lieutenants"; that he "fought in the Afghan war more than a decade ago"; that "Zarqawi and his network have plotted terrorist actions against countries, including France, Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany and Russia."

Courtesy of post-war Senate intelligence inquiries; evidence disclosed in several European trials; and the courageous work of a handful of journalists who broke away from the pack, we now know that every single one of those statements was entirely false. But that didn't matter: it was a big story. News organizations sucked it in and regurgitated it for their trusting consumers.

So, who exactly is producing fiction for the media? Who wrote the Zarqawi letters? Who created the fantasy story about Osama bin Laden using a network of subterranean bases in Afghanistan, complete with offices, dormitories, arms depots, electricity and ventilation systems? Who fed the media with tales of the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, suffering brain seizures and sitting in stationery cars turning the wheel and making a noise like an engine? Who came up with the idea that Iranian ayatollahs have been encouraging sex with animals and girls of only nine?

Some of this comes from freelance political agitators. It was an Iranian opposition group, for example, which was behind the story that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was jailing people for texting each other jokes about him. And notoriously it was Iraqi exiles who supplied the global media with a dirty stream of disinformation about Saddam Hussein.

But clearly a great deal of this carries the fingerprints of officialdom. The Pentagon has now designated "information operations" as its fifth "core competency" alongside land, sea, air and special forces. Since October 2006, every brigade, division and corps in the US military has had its own "psyop" element producing output for local media. This military activity is linked to the State Department's campaign of "public diplomacy" which includes funding radio stations and news websites. In Britain, the Directorate of Targeting and Information Operations in the Ministry of Defense works with specialists from 15 UK psyops, based at the defense Intelligence and Security School at Chicksands in Bedfordshire.

In the case of British intelligence, you can see this combination of reckless propaganda and failure of oversight at work in the case of Operation Mass Appeal. This was exposed by the former UN arms inspector Scott Ritter, who describes in his book, Iraq Confidential, how, in London in June 1998, he was introduced to two "black propaganda specialists" from MI6 who wanted him to give them material which they could spread through "editors and writers who work with us from time to time."

In interviews for Flat Earth News, Ritter described how, between December 1997 and June 1998, he had three meetings with MI6 officers who wanted him to give them raw intelligence reports on Iraqi arms procurement. The significance of these reports was that they were all unconfirmed and so none was being used in assessing Iraqi activity. Yet MI6 was happy to use them to plant stories in the media. Beyond that, there is worrying evidence that, when Lord Butler asked MI6 about this during his inquiry into intelligence around the invasion of Iraq, MI6 lied to him.

Ultimately, the US has run into trouble with its propaganda in Iraq, particularly with its use of the Zarqawi story. In May 2006, when yet another of his alleged letters was handed out to reporters in the Combined Press Information Center in Baghdad, finally it was widely regarded as suspect and ignored by just about every single media outlet.

Arguably, even worse than this loss of credibility, according to British defense sources, the US campaign on Zarqawi eventually succeeded in creating its own reality. By elevating him from his position as one fighter among a mass of conflicting groups, the US campaign to "villainise Zarqawi" glamorised him with its enemy audience, making it easier for him to raise funds, to attract "unsponsored" foreign fighters, to make alliances with Sunni Iraqis and to score huge impact with his own media maneuvers. Finally, in December 2004, Osama bin Laden gave in to this constructed reality, buried his differences with the Jordanian and declared him the leader of al-Q'aida's resistance to the American occupation.

Nick Davies is a veteran journalist and author of Flat Earth News: An Award-Winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media (Chatto & Windus).

© 2008 The Independent UK All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/77281/

the SPP finally hits some mainstream media

VIDEO: SPP a threat to Canadian sovereignty?

Ross McDermott, LondonTopic.ca	Send to a Friend
02/11/2008

Hassan Yousseff (left), Secretary-Treasurer of the Canadian Labour Congress, and NDP Trade Critic Peter Julian address the crowd at the London forum. Photo by Ross McDermott, LondonTopic.ca

The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) was a hot topic at London's Wolf Performance Hall, Friday (Feb. 8), where NDP Trade Critic Peter Julian told those in attendance that the controversial agenda is about much more then just "jelly beans," as stated by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and if continued, could become a threat to Canadian sovereignty.

About 90 people turned up at the London forum to hear the reasons the federal NDP are vehemently opposed to the SPP, which was thrown into the spotlight last summer when violence broke out as police clashed with protesters during the annual trilateral meeting of the leaders of Canada, Mexico and the U.S., at the Montebello Summit in Quebec.

In one instance, Quebec police officers disguised themselves as protesters and, according to the Council of Canadians, attempted to incite a riot during what was a peaceful demonstration (see video below).

Julian was hosted by London-Fanshawe MP Irene Mathyssen, and was joined by Eduardo Sousa from the Council of Canadians and Hassan Yousseff, Secretary-Treasurer of the Canadian Labour Congress. The two-hour forum provided information that could be viewed by some as a threat to Canadian sovereignty.

The SPP began in Canada as a Prime Minister Paul Martin, Liberal government initiative in March, 2005, to boost co-operation on security, trade and public-health issues between Canada, the United States and Mexico. However, staunch criticism of what some see as a closed-door agenda has raised concerns among people on all sides of the Mexico, U.S. and Canada borders.

"We are essentially giving up our ability to function independently as a nation, and essentially that is what is at stake with the SPP," said Julian.

For the most part, guidance in relation to decisions being made within the SPP is provided by a group called the North American Competitive Council (NACC). Officially launched in June of 2006, the NACC was comprised of the 30 senior, private-sector representatives, 10 from each of the three countries, with Canada's 10 including Dominic D'Alessandro (Manulife Financial); Paul Desmarais, Jr. (Power Corporation of Canada); David Ganong (Ganong Bros. Limited); Richard George (Suncor Energy Inc.); Hunter Harrison (CN); Linda Hasenfratz (Linamar Corporation); Michael Sabia (Bell Canada Enterprises); Jim Shepherd (Canfor Corporation); Annette Verschuren (The Home Depot); and Rick Waugh (Scotiabank).

Julian told those in attendance that the NDP have compiled 10-top reasons why they are opposed to the SPP.

"It's anti-democratic by design," he said, adding the SPP discussions are being held behind closed doors.

There are 19 working groups involved with the SPP, all operating behind closed doors, and over a two-year period the NDP, through access to information requests, managed to procure documents in relation to these closed-door, working group sessions. "We finally managed to get the documents…hundreds and hundreds of pages…" Julian said, holding up pages marred heavily in thick, black lines – most, if not all of the information vetted out. "Courtesy of the Government of Canada," he said.

This veil of "profound secrecy" began with Martin and the Liberals, and in a "seamless transition," is being carried on today by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government.

However, Julian continued, within those documents the party was able to determine that there were more than 300 areas of safety and protection, "important to Canadians," he said, adding the SPP contains a "deep and wide agenda." He said the SPP has been called the next logical step to follow NAFTA. But noted Canadians rejected NAFTA in two national elections, and though the majority of individuals in this country suffer economically under that agreement, with the SPP things will only get worse.

Julian talked about hazardous wastes and said during the Montebello Summit, the way Canada handles its hazardous wastes was handed over to the U.S. "While Canada's system was not perfect, in the United States there is no tracking of hazardous chemicals," Julian said.

Last spring Harper announced the harmonization of allowable pesticide residue on food to match American levels – levels much higher than those previously upheld in Canada. This is detrimental to the health of Canadians and unfair to Canadian producers, Julian said.

A major threat related to the SPP concerns natural resources such as water, oil, and natural gas, he said.

"Water stewardship is fundamental in Canada. We know that despite the fact that we have 20 per cent of the world's fresh water supply, only six per cent of the world's renewable water is found in Canada," Julian said.

The export of bulk water is not permitted under NAFTA, unless one province or jurisdiction approves such activity. At that point any company can apply for bulk water exports and if Canada does not comply, those companies can sue for compensation under the controversial Chapter 11.

"Water diversion is on the agenda of the SPP," Julian said. "Though we haven't seen any concrete plans yet there is no doubt that there is a huge appetite in the United States to simply divert Canadian water."

In relation to oil and natural gas, Canada has already given up more sovereignty in the area of energy than any other country in the world. Under NAFTA Canada is obliged to share 60 per cent of its oil and 60 per cent of its natural gas with the United States, even in the event of a major supply shortage.

"Mexico said 'No' to the same arrangement – it's crazy," Julian said, adding "Under the SPP the negotiations are going even further. Essentially our energy resources will be considered part of the strategic energy resources of the United States."

The issues surrounding softwood lumber, he continued, is just the beginning. Though Canada has seen more than 10,000 job losses in the lumber industry, and Washington having a veto over any changes to Canada's forestry policy, thanks, once again to NAFTA, "Under the SPP that veto will extend across the economic spectrum and other industries will be treated the same way."

Julian touched upon what he called "the slippery slope of civil rights," noting that already Canada has mirrored its southern neighbour – implementing a no fly list. In the area of military he said Canada's capacity is now based on "working with the U.S. military," and the tradition of Canada being thought of as a peace-keeping country, "a Canadian invention," he said, is swiftly becoming a thing of the past.

In addition, he noted, the latest foreign policy report from 2007, "specifically referred to Canada relating its foreign policy to American priorities."

Julian urged the public to speak out against the SPP, in order to stop the "deep, wide-ranging agenda."

Hassan Yousseff, Secretary-Treasurer of the Canadian Labour Congress, said engaging the public will be a challenge.

"It's hard to get the public to engage in regulatory issues in their own country, never mind what's happening at three national levels… and that is the tremendous challenge which we face."

Yousseff said one of the biggest conspiracies related to the SPP is the lack of coverage coming from the national media. Pointing to the Montebello Summit, he noted that the trilateral meeting received very little press.

"It was only when police were exposed disguising themselves as protesters – and that was the story. The bigger story of what the three leaders were doing in Montebello, of course, never got the debate that was required – never got reported," he said.

He too echoed the need for Canadians not only to speak out against the SPP, but to demand information regarding the three-country discussions that take place every year.

"I wish it were about jelly beans, then I would stop worrying," Yousseff said. "It's critical we understand the debate because if we don't understand the debate we might put the same bastards back in power."

Eduardo Sousa with the Council of Canadians said 9-11 provided a vehicle for the powers that be to propagate the SPP under the guise of security. He urged the public to visit the Council of Canadians website to view a chronological timeline (see link) outlining the events that have happened since 9-11, all directly related to Canadian sovereignty and the SPP.

"We're giving away sovereignty over our energy – sovereignty over our water – our ability to determine what is safe and what is good in more than 300 regulatory areas – to determine what is good and safe for our environment – our collective ability to decide, as Canadians, what kind of society we want to create," Julian said, adding, "What is left?"

BEYOND THE ONIONS: Time for Canadians to stand up and stop the SPP
WEB: Council of Canadians -- SPP Timeline
WEB: Government of Canada -- Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America

Comments:

Thank you for this article!! Canadians need to know and our media is not giving this enough coverage!

By: Misty on 02/11/2008

And from what I said before, the SPP scares the hell out of me. I'm motivated. Secret meetings!!? COWARDS. Give me a break. This bureaucratic crap has to end. So, SICK of it.

By: pessy on 02/11/2008

Daniel Casey on the media coverage

of the

Montebello summit and demonstrations!!!

PUBLIC TRUST ABHORS A VACUUM
by Daniel Casey
August 20, 2007

The media’s coverage of the secretive Montebello summit calls to mind an Irish cop in an old movie: After having insisted that there’s nothing to see here, they now start telling us to move along. CTV News, the Globe, the Star, the Post, La Presse and the Citizen all go inside with their patient explanations of why a framework for tighter continental integration is good for us even if we don’t know what’s in it. Only La Presse and the Citizen put even the briefest of mentions of the summit or the protests on their front pages, a tiny box with a generic photo of demonstrators in each. Demonstrators on Parliament Hill—one to two thousand of them, according to the Post, a flat two thousand in the Star, and a mere “several hundred” in the Globe’s estimate—gathered to oppose the talks, which were never formally approved by any of the three national legislatures, and to oppose the exclusion of any outside representatives other than a hand-picked committee of chief executives.

The Citizen pulls off a trifecta of dismissal: a story about how boring the talks are, how so little of any consequence will be discussed there, accompanied by an interview with Canadian Chamber of Commerce head Perrin Beatty smugly opining that “protesters believe in a zero-sum game” in defiance of the iron-clad law of comparative advantage, and followed by a dry account of the protest itself. To cap it all off, there’s a piece from US ambassador David Wilkins on the editorial page, advising us to leave our leaders to their folksy tête-á-têtes, because “that’s what diplomacy is all about.” A conservative estimate would put the ratio of opinion to news content addressing the summit in today’s Citizen at five to one, which oversells the point to the extent that the paper loses credibility. When put together, Harper’s penchant for secrecy, the security bubble around a widely unpopular US president, and the divided Mexican electorate that voted in Felipe Calderon in a questionable poll last year, are all combining with the visible unpopularity of the continental-integration agenda to create a vacuum of information about the “Security and Prosperity Partnership.” When Harper came into power and changed press briefing rules, the media were up in arms for weeks. Now they see a vacuum about a much more consequential policy issue and fill it with reassurance; were it that the media was as concerned with our collective access to information as they are with their own.

Comment: These liar$ (overt and covert) in the press are going to be right sorry about their actions surrounding this in days to come.

This is going to prove to be the most riveting chapter in the fight for Canadian democracy yet!! You can mark my wordz on this.

There has been a very tenuous thread holding the social contract together in Kanada for a very long time. NO ONE I know trusts any politician.

No one I know here LIKES increasingly globalization; no one I know very well would ever shop at Walmart!! even if it's become the (high priced and nutritionally valueless) grocery store in their neighborhood. Staying away from transantional entities are a regular POLITICAL pasttime here - even if going to vote is not. So far that is.

And few I know want Canada increasingly militarized for any reason at all. Thus far the Canadian media is only REALLY talking about this "antiwar, anti-Afghanistan" sentiment in relation to the SPP protests; there is FAR more going forward than THAT.

My prediction is that with the NDP and the Greens (the latter being the only political entity saw getting TV coverage over the weekend) on side, we are going to come to a national referendum on the SPP/ North American 'issue" befor this is all over and people are going to V O T E against it in the biggest numbers ever shown at the polls.

People like me are going to bang away and bang away at what is at stake here; the press be DAMNED. I think we may see, finally, the start of some viable alternative media; I could not get press credentials for the event . this says something as hundreds of people read me on this topic.

For every reactionary (and it is) step taken by the media the reaction to social control will rachet up ever further.

We are going from deafening silence to Alfred E. Newman "what me, worry?" on the part of the mainstream media, that is ALL. They had better start paying attention themselves before total censorship sets in as it did every time a war or "national emergency" sets in, as people are going to only read a handful of journalists at that junction.

Over the weekend, I was shocked to find that I could only use the Globe&Mail of ALL Canadian information sources for reference to the financial meltdown situation. Not relevant to make that comment? you think. No, that IS the point - only there can one from information on finance and business in Canada TODAY to figure out what is going on. This is a travesty .. and the information THEY gave out on the SPP so bad, I wrote them a letter which of course never got published.

The item in The Star appeared on Page 19, no commentary whatsoever in the editorial pages. CTV made sure any protester quoted (with the exception of the head of the Greens) mad no sense to the viewer - the signs and banners selected for viewers CAREFULLY censored to mislead and misrepresent. (unfortunately there were any number of them to choose from) The Globe and Mail and the Sun have been taunting dissents for nearly two weeks now. Writing editors and TV stations can be a full time job.

I took a gander over to Garth Turner's site hoping to find some commentary. While the posters THERE are very knowledgable in the main and there is some very good discussion, the SPP is being IGNORED. His site is, afterall, the site for those concerned with middle income Canadians flocks; one would expect more. The North American Union (camoflagued for the time being as the SPP) is of strategic interest to them as they plan for their futures ...

As a general observation, I think the MSM (mainstream media) is going to make the battle over the NAU, and the SPP, more difficult, but their very silence and contortions are only going to make people more radicalized rather than less in the days ahead.

And the politicians who cover up are in more trouble than ever, too.

Time for a clean sweep!! of the lot of corporate apologizers.

On Citizen Journalism ..

From I Have Heard the Mermaids Singing Blog

Open media?
We all bitch, left and right, about the increasingly obviously failure of the media and traditional "journalism" in these contentious, complicated times. This analysis of the issue is as good as any I've seen:

Google's new program is a very rough approximation of what truly open media provides, something the newspapers themselves should be doing.

It seems journalism is the new Catholic Church. Without the savior. smile

IMHO, the pros are right to be worried. It's the last quarter of a game they're losing, and the opposing team is deep in their territory. They need to get the ball back and then connect on a few Hail Marys to even be in the game. Yet all they do is weakly protest that "this isn't journalism." We need information. To say it's not journalism now is like a priest saying it's not Catholic to a bunch of agnostics. You're answering a question no one is asking.

A news story should summarize points of view that are available in full on the newspaper website. The newspapers should try to host the blogs of the people they quote. Instead they cling to the fiction that they have the exclusive wisdom to decide which soundbites and points of view are relevant, and the reader needs nothing more than what they provide. This is wrong, the world is too complicated, and the resources of news organizations are shrinking and our appetite for information is exploding (and the tools for creating and using news are getting better all the time).

If a reader wants to find out what's really going on they have to search thoroughly for many views of the same event and try to piece it together. The first news organization that embraces that view wins. Google is taking first steps to be that news organization.

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I think OpEd News does a great job and will eclipse the others, frankly. Why? It isn't corporately OWNED. Google has its own fish to fry. I've seen more centrist oped sites, such as Political Cortex and realized that thyey will never work as Good Work can go "missing" so easily and the technology tools needed to become a good information gatherer are missing. OpEd has made tremendous strides in helping out those who want to know and those who care to comment, providing acessibility to everyone concerned at whatever "level". Rob Kall's amazing "platform" COULD have been developed by anyone but it wasn't. No one else cared or took steps to do that.

To expect the corporate media to be anything but corporate is a nonstarter in my book. CorporatISM is a religion which is something I work to expose in anything I write,not an easy task. I don't expect ot see a single word I write (and I write plenty) appear in any corporate media in my lifetime. Even google refuses to troll this blog; rather most of my google "hits" are no items I post on other people's blogs on in reponse to corporate media lists! This system of looking for sprols and leaving the bloggers out of the google listings has not gone unnoticed by people other than me either! It's a "topic of conversation".

So as much as media moves forwards; the more overt forms of control become even hard to pinpoint or get exposed.

I really like that synopsis a whole bunch, but just totally disagree with the last sentence. Google did, in fairness, get a better thang in place when it started sending out alerts of blog posts. I watch the CONtrol at the NYT with increasing horror. Even the WaPo does a better job of allowing comment and then commenting on that.

I posted long and hard about the Gates/Buffet charitable giveaway and made particular references to what was wrong with Circuit's editor's analysis with totally changed the outlook on the thread after 96 posts. The next week, a followup was done, as AFTER my remark generated another 200 comments. No where in that followup was a mention of me OR my blog. Their form of orthodoxy still has many hoodwinked. The NYT policy of having people PAY to get information really sucks; how can a "citizen" get the real information they need? And the increasingly reliance they have on using video encyclicals when having people such as the Science Editor (a truly morally reprehensible man, imho) announcing that the melting of the Arctic is a good thing really got me going.

It worries me too as the NAU comes in how a person without "media credentials" issued by corporate news is EVER going to be able to cover events. We've seen the start of the clamp down on "certification" in the upcoming Montebello summit organizing events, where the RCMP checks all the credentials. So The Pope, the corporate media, increasingly has all the right Swiss Guards, paid for by the taxpayer. How neat!!

Virginia