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GUEST: Manuel Pérez Rocha is an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he leads an initiative on the Security and Prosperity Partnership

This week political and business leaders from the three North American countries have gathered in New Orleans for a meeting called the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) to discuss ways in which to expand NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. The meeting, shrouded in secrecy, has sparked a wave of conspiracy theories about the formation of a so-called North American Union, whose currency would be the “Amero” like the EU’s Euro. CNN’s notoriously anti-immigrant anchor, Lou Dobbs has predicted that the SPP will “end the United States as we know it.” But many other activists gathered outside the meeting are protesting a conspiracy with more basis in reality: the bulldozing of civil rights and workers rights in the interests of big business.

Read Rocha’s articles about the SPP here:
http://www.ips-dc.org/articles/324
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/81361/