Monday, October 15, 2007

North American Union here yet ?

North American Union here yet ?

George Bush
continues to ridicule questions about a possible North American Union as a "conspiracy theories" while continuing to press an active integration with Mexico and Canada in the remaining months of his second term.

The Bush administration is not listening to the American people, "not even when the House and the Senate vote overwhelmingly in bi-partisan majorities to take the funds for the Mexican trucking demonstration project as a last ditch effort to stop the Department of Transportation from letting unsafe Mexican trucks from rolling across the borders."


Bush, President Fox and Prime Minister Martin issued a joint statement announced the creation of the “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America” (SPP). The creation of this new agreement was never submitted to Congress for debate and decision. Instead, the U.S. Department of Commerce merely created a new division under the same title to implement working groups to advance a North American Union working agenda in a wide range of areas, including: manufactured goods, movement of goods, energy, environment, e-commerce, financial services, business facilitation, food and agriculture, transportation, and health.

SPP is headed by three top cabinet level officers of each country. Representing the United States are Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Representing Mexico are Secretario de Economía Fernando Canales, Secretario de Gobernación Carlos Abascal, and Secretario de Relaciones Exteriores, Luis Ernesto Derbéz. Representing Canada are Minister of Industry David L. Emerson, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Safety, Anne McLellan, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Pierre Stewart Pettigrew.

Its not funny in a ha ha way , however if this all is a large conspiracy theories as Bush said then why is the SPP on the White House web page ?

Quietly but systematically, the Bush Administration is advancing the plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn

What real gets me is how the states say they are not going to do it, how ever most States have or are buying land to make the highways .

As incredible as this plan may seem to some readers, the first Trans-Texas Corridor segment of the NAFTA Super Highway is ready to begin construction next year. Various U.S. government agencies, dozens of state agencies, and scores of private NGOs (non-governmental organizations) have been working behind the scenes to create the NAFTA Super Highway, despite the lack of comment on the plan by President Bush. The American public is largely asleep to this key piece of the coming “North American Union” that government planners in the new trilateral region of United States, Canada and Mexico are about to drive into reality.
NASCO, the North America SuperCorridor Coalition Inc., is a “non-profit organization dedicated to developing the world’s first international, integrated and secure, multi-modal transportation system along the International Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation Corridor to improve both the trade competitiveness and quality of life in North America.” Where does that sentence say anything about the USA? Still, NASCO has received $2.5 million in earmarks from the U.S. Department of Transportation to plan the NAFTA Super Highway as a 10-lane limited-access road (five lanes in each direction) plus passenger and freight rail lines running alongside pipelines laid for oil and natural gas. One glance at the map of the NAFTA Super Highway on the front page of the NASCO website will make clear that the design is to connect Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. into one transportation system.

* Kansas City SmartPort Inc. is an “investor based organization supported by the public and private sector” to create the key hub on the NAFTA Super Highway. At the Kansas City SmartPort, the containers from the Far East can be transferred to trucks going east and west, dramatically reducing the ground transportation time dropping the containers off in Los Angeles or Long Beach involves for most of the country. A brochure on the SmartPort website describes the plan in glowing terms: “For those who live in Kansas City, the idea of receiving containers nonstop from the Far East by way of Mexico may sound unlikely, but later this month that seemingly far-fetched notion will become a reality.”

* The U.S. government has housed within the Department of Commerce (DOC) an “SPP office” that is dedicated to organizing the many working groups laboring within the executive branches of the U.S., Mexico and Canada to create the regulatory reality for the Security and Prosperity Partnership. The SPP agreement was signed by Bush, President Vicente Fox, and then-Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Tex., on March 23, 2005. According to the DOC website, a U.S.-Mexico Joint Working Committee on Transportation Planning has finalized a plan such that “(m)ethods for detecting bottlenecks on the U.S.-Mexico border will be developed and low cost/high impact projects identified in bottleneck studies will be constructed or implemented.” The report notes that new SENTRI travel lanes on the Mexican border will be constructed this year. The border at Laredo should be reduced to an electronic speed bump for the Mexican trucks containing goods from the Far East to enter the U.S. on their way to the Kansas City SmartPort.

* The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is overseeing the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) as the first leg of the NAFTA Super Highway. A 4,000-page environmental impact statement has already been completed and public hearings are scheduled for five weeks, beginning next month, in July 2006. The billions involved will be provided by a foreign company, Cintra Concessions de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A. of Spain. As a consequence, the TTC will be privately operated, leased to the Cintra consortium to be operated as a toll-road.

The details of the NAFTA Super Highway are hidden in plan view. Still, Bush has not given speeches to bring the NAFTA Super Highway plans to the full attention of the American public. Missing in the move toward creating a North American Union is the robust public debate that preceded the decision to form the European Union. All this may be for calculated political reasons on the part of the Bush Administration.

A good reason Bush does not want to secure the border with Mexico may be that the administration is trying to create express lanes for Mexican trucks to bring containers with cheap Far East goods into the heart of the U.S., all without the involvement of any U.S. union workers on the docks or in the trucks.

The SPP - Real ID - Home land security are all below-the-radar-strategy's

I would love to say
Look for a very strong backlash coming from the Canadian people, but also from the American and Mexican peoples, once they clearly understand what the Bush-Calderon-Harper trio has been concocting in near complete secrecy and with nearly no public debate whatsoever, over the last few years.

However I have to think that only a few will if ever stand up and say any thing , well lets say that in anther way , I dont think any large group will take action to stop what is coming.
At the same time you have to think what is the poit of the Real ID as it is being sold to the American people when all of this hits the fan.

Now
In fact, it could mean a more ambitious project that could go even further than the EU toward economic and political integration in North America. In Europe, the more than two dozen participating countries have retained control over their armed forces and over their foreign policies and, what is very important, no single country exercises a hegemonic control over the entire alliance. That would not be the case in North America, however, because of the overwhelming importance of the United States vis-a-vis the other two countries.

I can see why the
Mexican people would like this but the Canadian people will never accept it I would think, the current minority government could pay dearly politically if it continues pushing in that direction.

Many Canadians justly fear that the kind of "Deep Integration" that is being planned and promoted in relative secrecy could lead to the abandonment of an independent
Canadian foreign policy, the loss of independence of the Canadian Armed forces, and the loss of national control over Canada's national resources, forcing Canada to abandon the economic rents over its oil and gas reserves, but also over its water and its hydroelectric power.

Some even fear that the next big step would be the abandonment of the Canadian dollar, in favor of the U.S. dollar, and the loss of independent monetary and fiscal policies.

If this is not the case, where are the safeguards for Canada's sovereignty and independence? where are the safeguards for American sovereignty and independence?

What are the democratic foundations of such an enlarged political union?

What are the political and economic costs relative to the expected economic gains?

There exists no study to my knowledge that evaluates these overall questions in order to form the basis for an enlightened public debate.

I am sure there is its just not for us to see.

Therefore, we have to conclude that the plan for a very "Deep Integration" of Canada within North America is basically flawed, if not fundamentally democratically subversive.

There has been no thorough public debate on the issue for the American people.

There has been no thorough public debate on the issue, even though the minority government would certainly have to consult and persuade Canadians before tabling any special legislation that would need to be enacted before the project could be implemented.

Such a public debate has not taken place yet.

On the contrary, everything seems to have been planned to keep it away from the public eye with all discussions being held behind closed doors.

This should be enough to raise suspicions, you would think

even though the ongoing discussions are not yet legally binding that we know of so far.

In a more or less near future, however, the ad hoc arrangements so discussed are likely to lead to a new formal agreement or even a new treaty between the three countries. This is presently denied, but the logic of the operation militates in favor of the last option.

I personally think the issue is of such paramount importance that sooner or later we need a countrywide referendum on the entire "Deep Integration" project. A general election is not sufficient to settle such a complicated issue, because a single political party can gather a minority of votes and squeeze into power between numerous opposition parties. No fundamental democratic legitimacy for such an important political project can be obtained through a general election. For that, a special national referendum would be required so that the sovereign people can decide.

Indeed, the real overall goal of the "Deep Integration" project goes much further and would ultimately lead to the creation of a North American Union of a political and not only an economic nature, within which the three countries, but especially a smaller country such as Canada, could lose much of their national sovereignty. It would be an economic and political arrangement resembling the European Union, which encompasses more than two dozen countries, but in North America it is to be feared that such a union would have an imperial twist. It would transform NAFTA into a common market and would force the two smaller partners to change all their relevant laws and regulations to conform to American laws and regulations, including toeing the American line on defense and foreign policies.

As can be seen, we are quite far from the idea of simply having facilitated border controls for products and people. What these secret meetings are envisaging is more like a new political and comprehensive alliance between the United States, Canada and Mexico. But because of the force of gravity, this also means, in practice, that the United States will turn Canada, and to a certain extent Mexico, into quasi colonies of the U.S. Indeed, the United States is a political elephant that does pretty much what it wants, especially under the Bush-Cheney administration, while Canada and Mexico are, at best, a small beaver in one case, and a small fox in the other. This could have the consequence of considerably reducing the quality of democratic life in Canada.

And that's where the rubber hits the road. Once a medium size country accepts a de facto merger of its defence policy with the policy of a much larger one, and all the more so with the United States , it becomes very difficult for the former to maintain an independent foreign policy. Other than the the idea that United States would want to be a empire.

Its national sovereignty risks being forever diminished and compromised.


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