The Premier referred the Troop Exchange Agreement to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs (Minister Bill Boyd) for response.
“Paddy” in the Minister’s office was agreeable to forwarding the information below to “the Ministry” to assist in the formulation of their reply to my email about the Troop Exchange Agreement.
I advised that I will forward this same information to others in Government as well, in the interest of public debate.
You are receiving it, just so you know what I sent to the Government. Most of the information is contained in emails sent to you earlier.
I have just responded to a request for the information we’ve circulated so far. “I had no idea that this went down.” – most people do not know about the Agreement.
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SENT TO INTERGOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, MONDAY, MARCH 17
TROOP EXCHANGE AGREEMENT
(official title: “the Civil Assistance Plan“).
The Troop Exchange Agreement is understood, not in isolation, but in the context of:
– the historical record of the American military
– current developments in the U.S.
CONTENTS
(1) ACCESS TO INFORMATION ABOUT THE ACTUAL TERMS OF THE AGREEMENT
(2) THE AMERICAN MILITARY FUNCTION IS MORE-AND-MORE “OUT-SOURCED” TO CORPORATIONS LIKE HALLIBURTON. THERE IS LESS AND LESS ABILITY TO HOLD IT ACCOUNTABLE. IT BYPASSES DEMOCRATIC PROCESS. REFERENCE GUANTANAMO BAY, ABU GHRAIB AND DIAMONDBACK.
(3) THE AMERICAN MILITARY AND CORPORATE INTERESTS ARE EXTREMELY RUTHLESS AND MANIPULATIVE
(4) THE MAKINGS FOR “CIVIL EMERGENCY“. THE AMERICANS WANT CANADIAN WATER AND ENERGY SOURCES. THERE ARE INTERESTS IN CANADA WHO WANT TO ENRICH THEMSELVES AND THEIR FRIENDS BY SELLING THE WATER. THERE ARE OTHERS WHO SAY THAT WATER IS A SACRED TRUST.
(5) APPROPRIATE, INTELLIGENT RESPONSE TO WATER SHORTAGES. MILITARY RESPONSE IS UNINTELLIGENT.
(6) “THEY ARE OUR FRIENDS. IT WON’T HAPPEN HERE”.
(7) THE MILITARIZATION PROCESS
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(1) ACCESS TO INFORMATION ABOUT THE ACTUAL TERMS OF THE AGREEMENT
Reasoned comment on the Civil Assistance Plan requires information on the actual terms of the Agreement.
Canada is supposed to be an open society. But the Terms of the Agreement are not available. I have circulated an email which explains the reasons for this. Please ask if you would like a copy.
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(2) THE AMERICAN MILITARY FUNCTION IS MORE-AND-MORE “OUT-SOURCED” TO CORPORATIONS LIKE HALLIBURTON. THERE IS LESS AND LESS ABILITY TO HOLD IT ACCOUNTABLE. IT BYPASSES DEMOCRATIC PROCESS. REFERENCE GUANTANAMO BAY, ABU GHRAIB AND DIAMONDBACK.
You will know about the contracting-out of military functions through the information coming out of Iraq. That means the soldiers are not necessarily Americans. American tax-payors are paying for a growing army of mercenaries that come from poor countries. Information about the operation of “the troops” and accountability are lost when the security function is no longer carried out by the Government.
Similar “partnerships” are occurring in the American prison system. I’ve circulated an email regarding access to information. It contains the example of the prison in Oaklahoma: Diamondback Correctional Facility in Watonga, OK, a CCA prison that in 2004 held over 1,000 prisoners under a contract with the Arizona Department of Corrections, and another 800 prisoners under a contract with the Hawaii Department of Public Safety, but had no contract with the State of Oklahoma itself. How can family from Hawaii visit prisoners, or even know how the prisoners are being treated?
The Canadian Bar Association has written to the Bush Administration, requesting that Guantanamo Bay (American Military Prison in Cuba) be shut down because of its complete disregard for international agreements on the treatment of prisoners. I am happy to provide the newspaper report of the recent intervention by the CBA.
Abu Ghraib is another example of American Military behavior.
From the San Francisco Chronicle:
At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater. After a powerful tsunami devastates the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts. New Orleans’s residents, still scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened.”
… These are “the troops” we will invite into Canada in the event of “civil emergency”?
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(3) THE AMERICAN MILITARY AND CORPORATE INTERESTS ARE EXTREMELY RUTHLESS AND MANIPULATIVE
You will be aware of the countries around the World where the American military & security forces (CIA) have helped to depose leaders whose legitimacy was rooted in “the people”. Typically these people create a threat to American corporate interest in the resources of the country. The Americans provide money and arms to puppet regimes to help overthrow (and sometimes kill) the popular and elected leadership in the country. You will know the long list of places where this manipulation has happened and continues to happen, better than me.
But the case of Patrice Lumumba in The Congo is one illustrative example. It happened some time ago but is one of the cases with ample substantiated and documented information to indict the Americans on how far they will go to appropriate and enrich themselves from resources that belong to other people.
There is absolute disregard for the destruction of the environment in which local people will have to live after the resource has been completely extracted. Water supplies are poisoned, if not completely depleted. Local people are impoverished while the “shareholders” and management of the corporation wallow in wealth. People in Government (for example, in the Bush Administration) often do very well, too.
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(4) THE MAKINGS FOR “CIVIL EMERGENCY”. THE AMERICANS WANT CANADIAN WATER AND ENERGY SOURCES. LAKE MEAD AND LAKE POWELL RAPIDLY DRYING UP. THERE ARE INTERESTS IN CANADA WHO WANT TO ENRICH THEMSELVES AND THEIR FRIENDS BY SELLING THE WATER. THERE ARE OTHERS WHO SAY THAT WATER IS A SACRED TRUST.
The makings for “civil emergency”, the condition under which the American military will be invited into Canada, are in place.
Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the two largest reservoirs in the United States have a 50/50 chance of being dry by 2021 (within 13 years). They are the water supply for Las Vegas, for Los Angeles – they feed water to people and industrial users in Nevada, Arizona and California.
The situation with water in the U.S. is a disaster that has been in the making for decades. Known – and yet NO action taken to avert the disaster.
Spend your money dropping bombs on Iraq instead, where there were no weapons of mass destruction. These are outright liars, who as I say, appropriate the resources of other people. They simultaneously fail to take responsibility for their own situation and people.
I will be happy to supply a paste-together on NAWAPA, the North American Water And Power Alliance, the plans that have been on the drawing boards for decades to meet the current crisis in the U.S., the plans to divert water from Canada to the U.S.
The Government of Canada, in secret, with no discussion or consultation, signed a Civil Assistance Plan with the U.S. to cover “civil emergencies”.
The Government of Canada will invite the American troops to come and help out. The Troop Exchange Agreement, signed on Feb 14, 2008 was discovered only because it was reported in an American newspaper. There was no announcement by the Government of Canada.
People in B.C. have discovered that the rights to some of their rivers have already been handed off to companies like Ledcor and Alcan for private power production. It has come as a shock. They are mobilizing to stop the process. Excerpt from March 12th, 2008 B.C. newspaper, “The Province”: “Protesters pan private power. OK, but only if done by government, they say” “All across B.C. the government has opened the floodgates for the development of privately owned dams without adequate environmental oversight, public accountability or even demonstration of need.”
People are getting angry. The makings for civil emergency are in place.
And as seen at Montebello last fall, the manipulators place agitators among the protesters to stir things up. Hooded, hired agitators with rocks in their hands. The real protestors are informed. Their protest is legitimate and not violent. As more and more people realize the situation vis-à-vis water and other resources, the number of angry people swells.
It will be justified to bring in the American troops to quell these unruly people ?? It will seem so, if the media cooperate with the manipulators.
And of course, it’s all legal because of the Troop Exchange Agreement.
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(5) APPROPRIATE, INTELLIGENT RESPONSE TO WATER SHORTAGES. MILITARY RESPONSE IS UNINTELLIGENT.
Man-made, human-created “emergencies”. Only one response: the military option.
Lake Mead (behind the Hoover Dam) and Lake Powell (behind the Glen Canyon Dam) tell the story of what happens when you think you can “expand the water supply”. You actually only “trap” the water supply. It seems to work for a while. It takes a few decades for literally millions of people and industries to move to the area. The “water expansion” is the enabler. A HUGE dependency on that single river, in this case the Colorado River, is created.
The delta of the Colorado River is pretty well dry, a once vibrant and productive area that has supported human population for centuries gone. The people forced to leave and migrate to poverty in cities. Now Lake Mead and Lake Powell on the Colorado River. In the end it all collapses. … A 50/50 chance that within 13 years the water reservoirs will be bone dry.
Indeed, how COULD it have lasted? Was the drying up of the delta not sufficient warning?
What will be the sequence of events, if the U.S. can’t get its act together in time to avert the drying up of Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the two largest water reservoirs in the U.S., whose water millions of people are dependent upon?
An ENLIGHTENED RESPONSE to the water shortages would be:
– PLAN and DIALOGUE. Put the situation on the table and deal with it.
DISPLAYS OF INTELLIGENCE:
– The City of Battleford, SK implements a programme to put low-water-use toilets in homes.
– Idaho paid its irrigators, $73 million in one summer alone to turn off their irrigation pumps
– Nebraska has allocated well over $100 million to help take farm land OUT of irrigation
– What’s the problem with Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and other places in the U.S. that know the situation with water? Well – many of them are actively seeking ways to address the water problem. Turn off the water fountains in the desert.
– The Rosenberg Report on Water in Canada (forwarded to you some time ago) recommends (for example) that population growth in the arid regions of the South Saskatchewan River should be discouraged. With the meltdown of the glaciers we are losing the summertime water feed in the upper reaches of the River. Evaporation and transevaporation rates contribute to water shortages. It is hoped that WE in Saskatchewan will make an intelligent response to the water situation.
Leadership, such as exhibited in Battleford is required.
UNINTELLIGENT:
– It is an EXTREME lack of foresight to promote the development of ANY industries that are large users of water in arid regions. It is unthinking to CONTINUE the status quo that will lead to the complete depletion of the water resource in Nevada-Arizona-California, – It is the corporate interest in sending money to shareholders that sees the diversion of water from Canada to the U.S. as the remedy to the situation in the U.S..
PRECARIOUS:
Water was supposed to have been specifically exempted from the Free Trade Agreement, negotiated while Brian Mulroney was Prime minister. The exemption was removed before the final text was signed.
I will be happy to provide to you excerpts from Simon Reisman’s address to business interests in Central Canada during the time of the negotiation of the Free Trade Agreement with the USA. Reisman told his listeners how the balance-of-power on the North American continent would be changed because Canada has the water that the U.S. needs. They will be willing to pay to create the infrastructure (i.e. “shareholders” subsidized by the public purse will “invest”). Canada (i.e. Canadian “investors”) will simply collect the dividends and royalties as the water flows south.
The water has to come from somewhere.
If conservation doesn’t happen, if – there isn’t drastic curtailment of water use immediately in the arid western states, and – a stop to migration into the area then the water will come from Canada.
Therein lie the roots of “civil emergency” – the created and perceived need to “call in the American troops”. Legally, because the Agreement has been signed.
There is a large effort underway to:
– get the Troop Exchange Agreement rescinded. Military action is not an acceptable way to address problems.
It is unfortunately unlikely that the Governments in Canada will regulate to stop the importation of fruits and vegetables from the lands irrigated by water from the Colorado River. Canadians contribute to the falling water levels in Lake Mead and in Lake Powell by consuming the products of the irrigation.
We should be setting an example. If the irrigation doesn’t stop, there will be a 100% chance that these large reservoirs, Lake Mead (the Hoover Dam) and Lake Powell (the Glen Canyon Dam), will be dry within 13 years. Their ability to generate hydro-electric power will be gone before that (projected to happen in under 10 years).
We do NOT need a Troop Exchange Agreement. We need intelligent planning that serves the public need for security.
Troops do NOT provide security. A source of water provides security.
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(6) “THEY ARE OUR FRIENDS. IT WON’T HAPPEN HERE”.
It’s not smart to be naïve.
The Holocaust & World War 2 happened because people didn’t speak up and stop what was happening early in the militarization process. If you let it go, it becomes too late. Jewish people will be more tuned to the danger of the Troop Exchange Agreement than most people.
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(7) THE MILITARIZATION PROCESS
Naomi Wolf is an academic. Her research makes the case. As do many other writers, some of them Canadian.
Watch the video of a presentation by Wolf at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjALf12PAWc
Or read about her work. The article below appeared in the Guardian newspaper (from the United Kingdom) on Tuesday April 24 2007 on p4 of the Comment & features section.
Wolf describes the militarization of the U.S. and the inherent dangers. The Troop Exchange Agreement takes Canadians down a similar path. The text of the Guardian article (appended) is useful in understanding the situation.
The Agreement, the “Civil Assistance Plan” needs to be rescinded. I ask the Government of Saskatchewan, the Department of Intergovernmental Affairs, to address this issue knowledgeably and emphatically with the Government of Canada.
Best wishes and thank-you,
Sandra Finley
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/24/usa.comment Or, click on (text)