The SPP is dead. Let's keep in that way.

With virtually no fanfare or media analysis, one of the most transformative agreements ever signed by Canada and the US (and Mexico) is officially dead. The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), the formal expression of a corporate lobbying campaign called deep integration, is no more. Its official US government website declared last month: "The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) is no longer an active initiative. There will not be any updates to this site." (It's been edited since to be a little less brutal). 

We should celebrate. It seems the economic crisis had a silver lining.

Anticipating another federal election feels like being in the movie Groundhog Day with the same players (save one) going through the same routines, everyone stuck in the same place, doing the same thing.

The two major parties are tied (according to the most reliable polls) at levels that are a long way off from majority territory. The NDP has learned nothing from the last two elections and the Greens are stuck at levels that mean they cannot possibly elect even one MP. Quebec will show its contempt for the whole mess by electing more Bloc members.

The most mean-spirited PM in history

If progressives, whether in unions, activist groups or political parties, don’t soon begin doing politics differently -- radically differently -- they will fail to show that “a better world is possible.”

And the price of failure will be catastrophic.

We have known for years that our consumer culture is out of control and our obsession with having more and more stuff has reached the status of a virus. Our consumer-driven global economy is a lethal threat to the planet and every one of its eco-systems.