NORTH AMERICAN UNION

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Opposing THE NORTH AMERICAN UNION .
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"Evolution by Stealth"
UPDATED:
How "North American Integration"
Can Lead To a North American Union
http://www.usasurvival.org/ck3.09.07.shtml

Robert Pastor, a top Democratic Party foreign policy specialist
associated with the Panama Canal giveaway, denies that he is
at the center of a "vast conspiracy" to subvert American sovereignty
under the cover of establishing a "North American Union."
Pastor says that he favors a "North American Community,"
not a formal union.

But his Center for North American Studies (CNAS)
sponsored an all-day February 16, 2007, conference
devoted to the development of a North American legal system.
The holding of the conference was itself evidence
that a comprehensive process is underway
to merge the economies,
and perhaps the social and political systems, of the three countries.
Wearing a lapel pin featuring the flags of the U.S., Canada and Mexico,
Pastor said that he favors
a $200 billion North American Investment Fund
to pull Mexico out of poverty.
Rather than a border fence, he favors a national biometric identity card
for the purpose of controlling the movement of people
in and out of the U.S.

Academic literature distributed in advance to conference participants
about a common legal framework for the U.S., Canada and Mexico
included proposals for a North American Court of Justice
(with the authority to overrule a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court),
a North American Trade Tribunal,
and a Charter of Fundamental Human Rights
for North America, also dubbed the North American Social Charter.

Pastor is associated by conservatives
with President Jimmy Carter's treaty,
opposed by then-presidential candidate Ronald Reagan,
which transferred control of the Panama Canal
away from the U.S. to the Panamanian government.
Pastor was National Security Advisor for Latin America
under Carter.
His nomination as U.S. Ambassador to Panama was withdrawn
in 1995 after conservative Senator Jesse Helms,
then-chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
threatened to block a vote on his nomination.

Helms accused Pastor of aiding radical forces
and undermining U.S. interests in the region.
Pastor's current project,
a $200 billion North American Investment Fund,
is for the purpose of narrowing
the income disparity between Mexico, on the one hand,
and the U.S. and Canada, on the other.
"You need a lot of money to do it and do it effectively," Pastor says.
He said Mexico would be required to put up half of the money,
with the U.S. contributing 40 percent and Canada 10 percent.
It would be done over 10 years.
The fund, he said, would focus on economic development
in the southern and middle parts of Mexico,
which haven't been touched to any significant degree by NAFTA,
the North American Free Trade Agreement.

This, he indicated,
would go a long way toward stemming illegal immigration to the U.S.
Pastor said Senator John Cornyn, a conservative Republican,
had introduced his North American Investment Fund
as a bill in Congress
but had backed away from it under conservative fire.
The bill would "authorize the President
to negotiate the creation of a North American Investment Fund
to promote economic and infrastructure integration
among Canada, Mexico, and the United States, and for other purposes."
There can be no doubt
that a process of building a North American Union
or a North American Community, whatever it's called, is underway.
There can also be little doubt that the process
of bringing this into being is extremely secretive.

The public interest group Judicial Watch obtained notes
from a "North American Forum" conference,
attended by U.S. government and corporate officials,
which referred to getting people to accept the notion
of a North American entity through "evolution by stealth." [1]
To indicate how secretive this process has been,
these notes had to be obtained
under the Freedom of Information Act. [2]
As noted by Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton,
the notes for the presentations document the need
to overcome popular opposition to North American integration.
They say:

"To what degree does a concept of North America help/hinder
solving problems between the three countries?
…While a vision is appealing
working on the infrastructure might yield more benefit
and bring more people on board ('evolution by stealth')."

Judicial Watch also had to go through
the Freedom of Information Act to obtain documents
naming the members of some of the mysterious "working groups"
which carry out the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP)
involving the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
The group also disclosed SPP organization charts.
The SPP is officially described as "a trilateral effort
to increase security and enhance prosperity among the United States,
Canada and Mexico through greater cooperation
and information sharing" but its "working groups" have been operating
in secret and many of the members and consultants are still not known.
The official SPP web site [3] refers to "working groups"
in the following areas:

Manufactured Goods & Sectoral and Regional Competitiveness
Movement of Goods
Energy
Environment
E-Commerce & Information Communications Technologies
Financial Services
Business Facilitation
Food and Agriculture
Transportation
Health

However, no names of any of the members of the working groups
are officially provided by the SPP.
If a member of the public wants to contact any of the working groups,
he or she must use an email "comment form"
that goes somewhere into the bureaucracy.

What Legal Basis?
The SPP was announced by President Bush,
then-Mexican President Vicente Fox
and then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, on March 23, 2005.
The SPP says, "The SPP is a dialogue to increase security
and enhance prosperity among the three countries.
The SPP is not an agreement nor is it a treaty.
In fact, no agreement was ever signed." (emphasis added).

But then-Prime Minister Martin had declared that "President Bush,
President Fox and I signed the Security and Prosperity Partnership…
" A transcript of a "press availability" from June 27, 2005,
shows Carlos Abascal, the Mexican Secretary of the Interior,
saying that, "Our three leaders, President Fox, President Bush
and prime Minister Paul Martin have signed
the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America."
based on a memorandum signed by President Bush
and the leaders of Canada and Mexico in March 2005.

The text is available on the website of U.S. presidential documents
but it does not indicate a signature had been attached to it.
It is not listed under the category of executive orders.
A Canadian report describes the SPP as
"an international framework for trilateral
and bilateral cooperation in North America"
that is "not a formal international treaty"
or "an overarching binding legal agreement."

But what is an "international framework" that commits U.S. officials
from various federal agencies to working with officials
of two other countries?
Why is such a process not subjected to congressional scrutiny
and approval?
On the basis of this allegedly unsigned SPP document,
federal officials have entered into other agreements
with the governments of Mexico and Canada which have been signed.
The SPP refers, for example, to a "signed" agreement
with Mexico on consumer goods and a "signed" agreement
with Canada on pipeline regulations.
They are described by the SPP as "accomplishments."
Who signed these documents? It doesn't say.
Why should they be signed
when the original agreement creating the SPP is not? It doesn't explain.

Officially, on the U.S. side,
the SPP is coordinated by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,
Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff,
and Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez.
The most recent SPP meeting was in Canada on February 23. [4]
The next meeting is in Canada in August.

There are just too many indications that the process
goes far beyond collaboration on development issues
and national security matters
to the elimination of national boundaries.

Pastor's work is one example.
Another is a Trilateral Commission paper,
The Future of North American Integration,[5]
proposing "deeper economic integration" for the three countries,
such as making NAFTA into a customs union or a "common market"
for North America .
The Trilateral Commission is a powerful private organization,
composed of citizens from Japan, Europe, and North America,
which is committed to fostering closer cooperation
"among these core democratic industrialized areas of the world
with shared leadership responsibilities
in the wider international system." [6]

By withholding information about the process,
the governments of all three countries risk a significant public backlash.
In fact, some Canadians, mostly on the left,[7]
see the process as designed to permit
"Big Business" to exploit Canada's natural resources.
They have launched the "Integrate This" campaign challenging the SPP.
They also believe that integration
will result in the weakening of Canadian environmental
and public health standards.
They contend that "corporate Canada [is] intent
on trading Canadian sovereignty
for greater access to American markets…"
Author Mel Hurtig, a "Canadian nationalist,"
says Canada will become Puerto Rico with snow.
Like the left in Canada, some Mexicans[8] see the process
as being under the control of big corporations
and designed to exploit Mexico's natural resources and workers.

Here, American conservatives see the process,
which would make it easier to move goods and people
across borders, as undermining the ability of the U.S.
to protect and defend its long-neglected borders
and, therefore, subverting American sovereignty.
They see the integration of the U.S. with Mexico,
which is characterized by systemic corruption,
as completely nonsensical, even dangerous,
and view integration with Canada,
which has very liberal social policies,
as undermining the need to preserve traditional American values.

So far, the Bush Administration
has dismissed the concerns of conservatives.
White House spokesman Tony Snow
appeared on the Lars Larson radio show in January
and said the charge that the U.S. is being submerged
in a North American Union
and developing a common currency with Canada and Mexico
is an "urban legend."
It may be the case
that he does not understand Robert Pastor's real agenda.

On the other hand, the Bush Administration's commitment
to the SPP may help explain why, in the opinion of many observers,
it does not want to enforce border security,
despite the president having signed a bill to create a border fence,
and instead favors "legalization" of illegal aliens
and a "guest-worker program."
The Washington Times reports
that Senator Ted Kennedy is putting the final touches
on a comprehensive immigration-reform bill,
which will be backed by the White House,
"that includes an easier citizenship path for illegal aliens
and weaker enforcement provisions
than were in the highly criticized legislation that the Senate approved last
year."

In a related matter, the Department of Transportation (DOT)
announced on February 23,
the same day as a Security and Prosperity Partnership meeting
in Canada, that Mexican trucks would be allowed to travel
anywhere in the U.S. and officials claimed
that Mexico was promised such access under NAFTA.
The plan is seen as worrisome
in terms of a proposed "NAFTA Superhighway"
from Mexico through the U.S. into Canada.[9]

This led to a March 8 hearing on the matter
called by Sen. Patty Murray,
chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee
on transportation, housing and urban development.
Charlie Parfrey,
president of Parfrey Trucking Brokerage in Spokane, Washington,
who testified
on behalf of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association,
said that the DOT effort
"has been almost entirely secret and beyond public view or scrutiny."

Bush in Mexico :
On March 7, in advance of President Bush's trip to Brazil,
Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico,
Jorge G. Castaneda, Mexico's foreign minister from 2000-2003,
wrote an article in the Washington Post
saying that Bush should take to Mexico
"a firm commitment to comprehensive immigration reform,
and the bipartisan backing of House and Senate leaders
to approve it promptly…" [10]

Castaneda suggested
this might be the only way to prevent the new Mexican President,
Felipe Calderon, from deciding
to join the anti-American bloc of nations
led by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. [11]

Such a position by Bush
would be viewed by most conservatives
as caving in to the open borders lobby
and a form of amnesty for illegal aliens.
Castaneda, however, warned that:

Some Americans -- undoubtedly more than before -- dislike immigration,
but there is very little they can do about it,
and the consequences of trying to stop immigration
would also certainly be more pernicious than any conceivable advantage.
The United States should count its blessings: it has dodged instability
on its borders since the Mexican Revolution,
now nearly a century ago." [12] (emphasis added).

This quotation from Castaneda was reported favorably
by a news service known as "Los Voz De Aztlan"
or "The Voice of Aztlan."
Aztlan is an Aztec word that is used by Mexican irredentists
in the U.S. to describe the Western states
that they hope to take over and restore to Mexico.
One of the articles featured on the site was:

Fidel Castro Ruz Says US Should Return Aztlan Back to Mexico
MEXICO CITY -- Cuban President Fidel Castro said
that the United States should return to Mexico
huge chunks of that country's territories
that it acquired more than a century ago.
In a fiery 90-minute speech, the Cuban leader claimed
that the United States wrongly appropriated
more than half of Mexico's territory,
mostly through successive invasions.
These include Texas, California, Arizona, and New Mexico.
"Now, they are terrorized because Mexicans cross''
into what is properly their territory, Castro said.
He said that in effect, Mexicans are reconquering their own land.
Castro's comments were contained in a speech he gave
at the close of an international congress of educators in Havana,
the Cuban capital, including several hundred teachers from Mexico.

Excerpts were contained in dispatches from Havana
by the Mexican government news agency Notimex
and other news sources, in Mexico City.
Source: http://www.aztlan.net/castroaztlan.htm

Like Robert Pastor, with whom he wrote a book, [13]
Castaneda supports the idea of a "development fund" to benefit Mexico
[14] He also favors building new institutions
to create a "North American Economic Community." [15]

The Role of the United Nations :
The United Nations
is now funding Pastor's Center for North American Studies (CNAS)
through the U.N.'s Economic Commission for Latin America
and the Caribbean (ECLAC). [16]
Pastor was a consultant to ECLAC from 1991-1993. [17]
The U.N. funding is to address "regulatory convergence" issues.
At the same time, Mexico frequently threatens to go to the U.N.
to stop any U.S. move to crack down on illegal immigration.

Under the Vicente Fox government,
Mexico was reported to be drafting a resolution
for the United Nations Human Rights Council
criticizing the U.S. plan to build a border fence.
Before that, Mexico took the United States
to the U.N.'s International Court of Justice,
complaining about the treatment of Mexican criminals,
including convicted killers, by U.S. authorities.
The U.N. court ruled against America.
Just recently, Mexico's Congress condemned the United States
because workers building a section of fence
between the two countries went 10 yards into Mexico.
The U.N., however, has not turned a completely blind eye
to what is happening in Mexico.

Alberto Szekely, a career ambassador with the Mexican Foreign Service,
told the North American law conference
sponsored by Pastor
that Mexico was "a country where the contravention of the law
is the daily rule rather than the exception."
He said he could confirm,
as rapporteurs of various international human rights bodies
from the U.N. and the O.A.S. had discovered,
that the Mexican legal system is characterized by official corruption,
including widespread influence peddling, graft, racketeering, bribery,
payoffs and kickbacks.
He said Mexico is also characterized by systematic police brutality,
extrajudicial executions, deplorable incarceration conditions,
widespread torture and violation of fundamental human rights.
He said reforms under the presidency of Vicente Fox went nowhere
and that Mexico is one of the most corrupt countries in the world today.[18]
However, he said the government of Mexico diverts public attention
away from this record by signing various U.N. human rights treaties.

Rather than take a strong stand against illegal immigration,
the Global Commission on International Migration,
launched by then-U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan
and a number of governments in 2003,
proposed a "Global Migration Facility" to manage the "flow" of people.
The "flow" includes money.
Indeed, one reason Mexico opposes a border fence
is that illegal aliens in the U.S. send money back to Mexico.
The commission pointed out that Mexico receives $16 billion a year
from "international migrants," most of them in the U.S.
But the commission did not discourage this practice.
Rather, it proposed that national governments and financial institutions
"should make it easier and cheaper to transfer remittances
and thus encourage migrants to remit through formal transfer systems."[19]

Needless to say, such schemes encourage illegal immigration.
In this context, Judicial Watch obtained
and disclosed Federal Reserve marketing materials
created for "Directo a México" [Direct to Mexico],
which it described as a new government program designed to facilitate
the transfer of funds from immigrant workers in the U.S.
– regardless of their legal status – to people in Mexico.
Judicial Watch notes that similar financial transactions,
conducted through Western Union, have allegedly been linked
to a sophisticated drug smuggling and human trafficking racket.[20].

Similarly, Bank of America Corp. has begun offering credit cards
to customers without Social Security numbers,
who tend to be illegal immigrants, to facilitate money transfers.
This is just the latest from Bank of America.
Carl F. Horowitz of the National Legal and Policy Center
notes that Bank of America's 2005 annual report actually boasts
of a Bank of America program called SafeSend
that allows "any Bank of America customer
with a checking account to send cash to anyone in Mexico
— immediately and free of charge."
The report says that, "The SafeSend service
provides cash in Mexican pesos, at competitive exchange rates,
to recipients in Mexico through more than 3,600 locations
…No fees, cards or unfamiliar procedures are required,
only proper identification.
A patent is pending on this new remittance process." [21]

Another scheme to benefit illegal aliens
can be found in the form of the so-called Social Security
"totalization agreement."
In testimony provided
to the Global Commission on International Migration,
the liberal U.S.-based Migration Policy Institute [22]
praised President Bush for making this agreement
to "help workers get credit
towards qualification in each country's public pension systems
for years worked in the other country."
However, the testimony noted
that the agreement "may face resistance in the US Congress
due do the political sensitivity of any measure
that touches on the issue of unauthorized immigration from Mexico."

This is an understatement.
The agreement was withheld from public scrutiny for years.
Finally, the TREA Senior Citizens League,
a senior citizens advocacy group, released a copy of the agreement
with Mexico after finally getting it
through the Freedom of Information Act.
It said the document, which "could allow
millions of illegal Mexican workers to draw billions of dollars
from the U.S. Social Security Trust Fund,"
was approved in June 2004 but is awaiting President Bush's signature.
It says that once President Bush approves the agreement,
which would be done without Congressional vote,
either House of Congress would have 60 days
to disapprove the agreement by voting to reject it. [23]

Beyond this agreement, however,
lies Pastor's vision of a North American Community.
Marlon Brown, the first American University undergraduate
to earn a minor in North American Studies,
notes that Pastor has a "Vision of a North American Parliament"
and a step-by-step process to create it.
In a research paper submitted to Pastor,
Brown notes that Pastor has proposed
"the creation of a trilateral legislative workgroup
that may resemble the early stages
of a future North American Parliament."

Talk about a North American Parliament raises the specter
of a North American Union
similar to the currently functioning European Union,
a political and economic entity of 27 European states
that includes a European Parliament and a European Court of Justice.
The EU has been charged with usurping the sovereignty
of member states and moving European nations
in a left-wing direction on matters such as acceptance of abortion
and gay rights and abolition of the death penalty.
Brown contends that a "North American Parliamentary Group"
is already in existence and could evolve into a "supranational legislature."
It is already in existence because,
as Pastor notes in his book, Toward a North American Community,
there are already two existing parliamentary groups,
the U.S.-Mexico Inter-Parliamentary Conference, [24]
and the U.S.-Canada Inter-Parliamentary Group.
Pastor proposes merging the two bodies.

Brown himself participated in the "Triumvirate,"
a simulated North American Parliament
organized by the Montreal-based North American Forum on Integration.
The "Model North American Parliament"
is said to be comparable to the Model U.N. programs
which teach students that the U.N. is a valuable institution.

Brown's paper, which is available on the Internet, [25]
makes "The Case for a Trilateral Legislature,"
which is the subtitle of the document.
The paper was prepared in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the Undergraduate Minor in North American Studies
and as part of the requirements for the North American Politics class
being taught by Dr. Christopher Sands,[26]
a senior fellow in the Center for North American Studies
at American University, where he also serves as an adjunct professor
in Government at the School of Public Affairs. [27]

Other key players in the movement for integration
of the U.S., Canada and Mexico include:

Debra Steger, Professor of Law at the University of Ottawa,
is considered one of Canada's leading authorities
on international trade policy and law.
She was General Counsel to the Canadian International Trade Tribunal
during the implementation of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement,
the North American Free Trade Agreement
and the Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization.
She is on record in favor
of "new governance structures for the North American Economy"
and the development of "common North American institutions." [28]

Daniel Schwanen, who holds degrees in economics
from the University of Montreal and Queen's University,
is a staunch advocate of North American regional integration [29]
and even a "Treaty for North America."
The treaty would create a "community of North Americans"
and would include an "official trilateral body."

Herbert Grubel of Simon Fraser University
proposes creation of a North American currency called the "Amero" [30]
as part of a "North American Monetary Union."
He also proposes a North American Central Bank.

The North American Law Conference,
conducted in cooperation with the American Society of International Law,
an organization affiliated with the Economic and Social Council
of the United Nations, was held
at the American University Washington College of Law.
A large number of speakers came from American University.

Pastor himself talked about new institutions, such as a "permanent tribunal"
on trade issues, but emphasized that such ideas "take time"
and have to "take root."
He advised conference participants to "think about the horizon,"
in terms of what is possible, over the course
of 5, 10 or even 20 years from now.
Indeed, the academic literature distributed to conference participants
alluded to how the three countries of North America are "polarized"
on "sensitive" cultural issues such as the death penalty,
abortion and gay marriage and that it might take a long time to "harmonize"
their legal systems on such matters. [31]
While Pastor, a foreign policy advisor
to each of the Democratic Presidential Candidates since 1976,
tried to dismiss talk of a North American Union,
he did emphasize in his remarks to the conference
that North America is "more than a geographical entity"
and is in fact a "community."

His 2001 book, Toward a North American Community,
begins by emphasizing his status as a resident of North America,
rather than just a U.S. citizen, and outlines a vision of the three
countries
taking their relationship "to a new level."
Rather than use the phrase "union,"
he described the creation of an "emerging entity called North America,"
growing out of the fact
that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), passed in 1993,
had brought about a "remarkable degree of economic integration"
between the three countries.
One panel was devoted to analyzing how NAFTA could be expanded
into the areas of intellectual property and taxation and regulations.

In a Newsweek cover story, in which Pastor claimed
to have solved the illegal immigration problem, he admitted that:
Illegal immigration has increased and if anything,
NAFTA has inadvertently fueled immigration
by encouraging foreign investment near the U.S.-Mexican border,
which in turn serves as a magnet for workers in central and southern Mexico.
As a result, the number of undocumented Mexican workers
who live in the United States has skyrocketed in the NAFTA era…[32]

But no speaker at the conference proposed border control
as a solution to the illegal immigration problem.
The answer, instead, is more "North American integration"
and foreign aid to Mexico.
Pastor said that the solution is not a fence,
except in some isolated high-crime areas along the border,
and it's not to punish companies for hiring illegal aliens,
since identity documents can be too easily forged.
He said the solution is
a national biometric and fraud-proof identification card
that identifies national origin and legal status
and regulates migration into and out of the U.S.

One speaker, Stephen Zamora of the University of Houston Law School,
denounced the idea
of a wall separating Mexico and the U.S., in order to control illegal
immigration,
asking, "What does citizenship mean anymore?"
He expressed pleasant surprise when a Mexican in the audience
said she had dual citizenship in Mexico and the U.S.
Later, he said he was just as concerned about people living in Mexico
as people living in the U.S.

Another speaker, Tom Farer,
Dean of the Graduate School of International Studies
at the University of Denver, made a point
of saying that his representative in Congress, Tom Tancredo (R-Col.),
a staunch advocate of U.S. border security, was a backward thinker.
Tancredo could be seen "dragging his knuckles along the ground,"
Farer said, trying to crack a joke.

Subverting the Constitution :
An important moment in the conference occurred when Alan Tarr,
director of the Center for State Constitutional Studies
at Rutgers University, was challenged
about glossing over President Clinton's submission of NAFTA
as an agreement, requiring only a majority of votes
in both Houses of Congress for passage, and not a treaty,
requiring a two-thirds vote in favor in the Senate.
NAFTA passed by votes of 234-200 in the House
and 61-38 in the Senate.
Tarr said he had not intended to be uncritical of what Clinton did.
Pastor quickly interjected that there was nothing improper
in submitting NAFTA as an agreement rather than a treaty.

But Clinton's move was seen at the time as an effort
to bypass constitutional processes
and the United Steelworkers challenged
NAFTA's constitutionality in court.
The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 2001,
after lower courts had thrown the case out,
saying it was a political matter between the president and Congress.
The Bush Administration sided with Clinton
and the Supreme Court declined to get involved.

The history of NAFTA is one reason why so many conservatives
are concerned that a North American Community
could be transformed into a North American Union
that runs roughshod over U.S. constitutional processes and guarantees.
One of the main concerns of conservatives,
who have formed a "Coalition to Block the North American Union,"
has been the lack of congressional interest and oversight.
They are backing a bill introduced by Rep. Virgil Goode (R-Va.)
to put the Congress on record against a North American Union.

Pastor's luncheon speaker, Eric Farnsworth,
the Vice-President of the Council of the Americas,
provided some valuable insight into this process.
Saying NAFTA is "no longer enough,"
he described the SPP as designed to help North America
meet the economic challenges
posed by such countries as China and India.

Farnsworth said that the Council of the Americas advises the SPP.
The Council is closely tied
to the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC),
which was "established" by the three governments
"to collect guidance from the private sector"
and prepare "extensive recommendations
on such issues as border crossing facilitation,
standards and regulatory cooperation, and energy integration." [33]

On February 23, 2007,
on the occasion of a Security and Prosperity Partnership meeting
in Canada, the NACC provided a 63-page report to officials
of the three countries calling for new policies
"to streamline border crossings, harmonize regulatory standards
and improve supply and distribution of energy."
These new policies are to be introduced over three years.[34]

It is not clear whether the U.S. Government will
implement these initiatives on its own,
through the administrative or regulatory process,
or whether they will be submitted to Congress for approval.

The Council's honorary chairman is David Rockefeller
and its board members come from such major corporations
as Merck, PepsiCo, McDonald's, Ford, Citibank, IBM, Wal-Mart,
Exxon Mobil, GE (which owns NBC News and MSNBC)
and Time Warner (which owns CNN and Time Inc.).

One of the key board members is Thomas F. McClarty III,
President of Kissinger McLarty Associates,
who served as Clinton's White House counselor
and chief of staff during the time that NAFTA was signed
and passed by Congress.
McLarty, who also functioned as Special Envoy to the Americas
under Clinton, is an adviser to the Carlyle Group,
focusing on "buyout investment opportunities in Mexico."

Nelson W. Cunningham, the managing partner
of Kissinger McLarty Associates,
was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations trinational,
Independent Task Force on the Future of North America. [35]
The group, including Robert Pastor as a vice-chairman,
proposed a "new community" of North American countries by 2010
and offered specific recommendations on how to achieve it. [36]

According to his bio, [37] Cunningham advised
John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign on international economic
and foreign policy issues, and previously served
in the Clinton White House as Special Adviser
to the President for Western Hemisphere Affairs.
He earlier served as a lawyer at the White House
and as Senate Judiciary Committee General Counsel
under then-chairman Joseph Biden.

For his part, Farnsworth told the luncheon crowd
that the creation of a "super-national Supreme Court"
governing business and trade issues in North America was possible.
But he was ambiguous about whether it would ever come to pass.
A self-described Democrat who served as policy director
in the Clinton White House Office of the Special Envoy
for the Americas from 1995-98, he also said that he was optimistic
that Bush would strike a deal
with the new Democratic-controlled Congress on immigration.
He said Bush was "at odds with his own party" on immigration
and that legislation to create a so-called "guest worker" program
could pass now that Republicans have lost control of Congress.
Such a measure will undoubtedly be sold as bipartisanship.