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SPP
Pandemic measures envisioned by SPP threaten civil liberties
There is no mention of ensuring the threat of pandemic is real, nor of penalties for officials who implement measures under false pretences
By Kevin Potvin
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One half of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) summit between leaders of Mexico, the US and Canada that occurred at Montebello, Quebec last week concerned coordinating government measures to meet the potential threat of avian and influenza pandemics.
That sounds like a good thing for our leaders to be doing. But like every new government initiative, there arises potentials for abuse of powers. The threat of terrorism, for example, produced measures in Canada and the US that have lead to abuse of government powers that have severely constrained civil liberties. Similarly, there are proposed measures in SPP documents that seem ripe for abuse leading to very severe restraints on civil liberties.
The main SPP document points to a November 2005 White House-released document that establishes US emergency plans in the event of a pandemic. That document is called The National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza and it forms the model for the proposed coordinated strategy between Mexico, the US and Canada envisioned by the SPP.
In the section of that document entitled Pillar Three: Response and Containment, it says departments of the US government, including the Department of Defense “and other military organizations,” will “offer and coordinate assistance from the United States to other members of the International Partnership.” And two sentences later, it says it will “use governmental authorities to limit non-essential movement of people, goods and services into and out of areas where an outbreak occurs . . . including those circumstances where social distancing measures, limitations on gatherings, or quarantine authority may be an appropriate public health intervention.” In language that eerily echoes justifications for US-initiated wars in Afghanistan and Iraq said to combat terrorism before it reaches the US, the document talks of international deployments of US military personnel to combat the threats of pandemics as they develop overseas and before they reach US borders.
While the governments of Mexico, the US and Canada may share the public’s concern for the human and commercial costs of a potential pandemic, the public alone has an added concern for the potential for government abuse of power. But while all the SPP documents related to the threat of pandemic are long on information gathering and sharing among authorities, there is scant provision for information sharing with the public.
First and foremost of the information the public would require if measures are implemented for cross-border maneuvers by the US military to limit movement of people and their gatherings, or similar maneuvers by the Canadian military and police in Canada, is proof there is a pandemic. Once such an announcement is made, there will certainly be no time or space to raise that question. There is, for example, little evidence today that SARS posed any more serious a threat to the public than any other usual flu, yet authorities hysterically raised the spectre of a major public threat when SARS appeared on the scene. Nearly everyone believed it, except for nurses dealing with the problem at hospitals who noticed early on SARS was in fact a particularly mild flu bug compared to most they see in typical flu seasons. If proposed SPP measures were then in place, the severe restrictions to civil liberties they contain may well have been unleashed.
The proposed measures in the SPP offer these governments the most draconian restrictions on civil liberties ever contemplated, if for whatever reason those governments might wish to implement them, without any thought given to testable public assurances that they are justified. The civil liberties already encroached upon by the threat of terrorism predicated on the false reading of events of September 11, 2001 give a taste of what these governments are capable of when the interests of their corporate sponsors are at stake.
The Republic is not in the business of raising paranoia. But not all cases of paranoia are unfounded. Recent history’s most famous paranoiac, Richard Nixon, turned out to be right when he famously said “they’re out to get me,” to much hilarity in the public and press at the time. But they were out to get him: Bob Woodward’s Watergate source, Deepthroat, turned out to be the FBI’s number two man, Mark Felt, and Woodward himself turned out to be a Navy Intelligence-trained FBI stooge inserted by Felt into the Washington Post newsroom.
In considering measures necessary to meet the potential threat of a pandemic, it would be helpful to the public interest if our leaders also concerned themselves with measures to confirm to the public a pandemic is occurring, to cross out any provisions for cross-border military maneuvers, to impose strict time limits on whatever measures are taken pending full disclosure and debate in the people’s parliaments, and to write in the agreement severe, non-discretionary and unpardonable penalties for any public officials up to and including national leaders who implement SPP measures under false pretences. If no officials plan to abuse the provisions proposed in the SPP, then agreeing to severe penalties for doing so should pose no problem for them.
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