National Problematique: North American Nightmare

Jerome R. Corsi / World Net Daily | September 21 2006

A closed-door meeting of high-level government and business leaders that discussed the merger of North America was designed to subvert the democratic process, charged an attendee of the confab in Banff, Canada.

Mel Hurtig, a noted Canadian author and publisher who was the elected leader of the National Party of Canada, provided WND the agenda and attendee list of the North American Forum at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel in Banff, Alberta, Sept. 12-14.

Hurtig said the "secret meeting was designed to undermine the democratic process."

"What is sinister about this meeting is that it involved high level government officials and some of the top and most powerful business leaders of the three countries and the North American Forum in organizing the meeting intentionally did not inform the press in any of the three countries," he said. "It was clear that the intention was to keep this important meeting about integrating the three countries out of the public eye."

As WND reported yesterday, the meeting was closed to the press, and the documents obtained by WND were marked "Internal Document, Not for Public Release."

The motive for U.S. participation, according to Hurtig, was "to gain access and control Canada's extensive natural resources, including oil and water."

As for Canada, he said, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives "wants to make sure that the 150 Canadian top companies who are their members who gain access to the American market and to American capital."

The office of Thomas d'Aquino, president and CEO of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, confirmed d'Aquino attend the Banff meeting.

The North American Forum consists of the three individuals who co-chaired the Banff meeting: George Schultz, former secretary of state under President Reagan; Canadian Peter Lougheed, the former Alberta premier and former leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta; and Mexico's Pedro Aspe, the former secretary of the Treasury of Mexico.

The North American Forum has no business office and no business address. Attendees at the Banff meeting contributed funds to cover the organizational expenses. Attendees, including government officials, were responsible for their own travel, lodging and per diem expenses.

A spokesman for the Canadian Council of Chief Executives said the Council of Canadians, which he characterized as a "far left group," was the first to obtain and begin circulating the meeting's agenda and attendee list.

Meera Karunananthan, spokeswoman for the Council of Canadians confirmed to WND the group was responsible for obtaining and releasing the meeting agenda and attendee list. She took exception with the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, preferring to characterize her organization as "a citizens' advocacy group."

Karunananthan said the Council of Canadians released the North American Forum information because it questions the "privacy of a meeting that involves senior ministers of our government meeting with senior government officials in the United States and Mexico."

"The Canadian public has not been adequately informed about the on-going North American integration process, and we believe it is wrong for a meeting that involves top North American business executives and government officials to be held in secret behind closed doors," she said.

Jean-Yzes LeFort, also a spokesman for the Council of Canadians, told WND the group opposes the effort to create a North American Union because "the NAU represents an elite corporate agenda and to us what is being planned would be an unacceptable loss of sovereignty."

Attending the Banff meeting was Robert Pastor, the director of the Center for North American Studies at American University. Pastor is widely known for his extensive writings arguing for the creation of a North American Union, a new super-regional North American government based on the model of the European Union, with the intent of subrogating the sovereignty of the United States [and Canada].

Pastor was co-chair of the Council of Foreign Relations task force that in May 2005 released a report entitled "Building a North American Community."

About one-third of the listed members of CFR task force attended the Banff conference. One prominent participant in both was Carla A. Hills, who served as U.S. trade representative from 1989 to 1993 and was the primary U.S. negotiator for NAFTA.

On the second day of the conference, a session entitled "A Vision for North America: Issues & Options" was moderated by Thomas A. Shannon, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs.

Perrin Beatty, president and CEO of Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters, Canada's largest trade and industry association, also confirmed to WND he attended the Banff North American Forum meeting. Beatty described the meeting as "an opportunity for a small group of people from our three North American countries to get together informally and discuss issues of common interest."

When asked why the meeting was closed to the press, Beatty responded the meeting was not a "decision forum" but a "discussion forum."

Beatty claimed Pastor's views were not universally shared by all attendees.

"My interest in attending the meeting was economic," he told WND. "How do we insure we keep pace with the explosion in competition in the North American industry? It's absolutely critical to the economic growth of our three countries that we stay competitive and successful."

Among the U.S. government participants listed was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, though WND was told he did not attend. Also listed were U.S. Department of Defense Lt. General Gene Renuart, USAF Senior Military Assistant to Secretary Rumsfeld, and Major Gen. Mark A. Volcheff, director of Plans, Policy, and Strategy for NORAD-NORTHCAM.

In what is apparently intended to be an annual event, the first North American Forum meeting was held last September in Sonoma, Calif., and a meeting for next September is to be held in Mexico.

Canada is slated to become a member of NORTHCOM at the end of the BPG's two years mandate.

No doubt, the issue will be presented in Parliament as being "in the national interest". It "will create jobs for Canadians" and "will make Canada more secure".

Meanwhile, the important debate on Canada's participation in the US Ballistic Missile Shield, when viewed out of the broader context,  may serve to divert public attention away from the more fundamental issue of North American military integration which implies Canada's acceptance not only of the Ballistic Missile Shield, but of the entire US war agenda, including significant hikes in defense spending which will be allocated to a North American defense program controlled by the Pentagon.

And ultimately what is at stake is that beneath the rhetoric, Canada will cease to function as a Nation:

• Its borders will be controlled by US officials and confidential information on Canadians will be shared with [US] Homeland Security.

• US troops and Special Forces will be able to enter Canada as a result of a binational arrangement.

• Canadian citizens can be arrested by US officials, acting on behalf of their Canadian counterparts and vice versa.

WASHINGTON – Are secret meetings being held between the corporate and political elites of the U.S., Mexico and Canada to push North America into a European Union-style merger?

Is President Bush's reluctance to control the border and enforce laws requiring deportation of foreigners who enter the country illegally part of a master plan to all but eliminate borders between the U.S., Canada and Mexico?

Does the agenda of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America include a common currency that would scrap the dollar in favor of what some are calling the "amero"?

It may be the biggest story of the 21st century, but few press outlets are telling it. In fact, until very recently, few in the U.S. were aware of the plans and even fewer denouncing what appears to be the implementation of an effort some have characterized as "NAFTA on steroids."

But opposition is mounting.

Perhaps the most blistering criticism has come from Lou Dobbs of CNN – a frequent critic of Bush's immigration policies.

"A regional prosperity and security program?" he asked rhetorically in a recent cablecast. "This is absolute ignorance. And the fact that we are -- we reported this, we should point out, when it was signed. But, as we watch this thing progress, these working groups are continuing. They're intensifying. What in the world are these people thinking about? You know, I was asked the other day about whether or not I really thought the American people had the stomach to stand up and stop this nonsense, this direction from a group of elites, an absolute contravention of our law, of our Constitution, every national value. And I hope, I pray that I'm right when I said yes. But this is -- I mean, this is beyond belief."

What has Dobbs and a few other vocal critics bugged began in earnest March 31, 2005, when the elected leaders of the U.S., Mexico and Canada agreed to advance the agenda of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America.

No one seems quite certain what that agenda is because of the vagueness of the official declarations. But among the things the leaders of the three countries agreed to work toward were borders that would allow for easier and faster moving of goods and people between the countries.

Coming as the announcement did in the midst of a raging national debate in the U.S. over borders seen as far to open already, more than a few jaws dropped.
 

Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo. and the chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus as well as author of the new book, "In Mortal Danger," may be the only elected official to challenge openly the plans for the new superstate.

Responding to a WorldNetDaily report, Tancredo is demanding the Bush administration fully disclose the activities of the government office implementing the trilateral agreement that has no authorization from Congress.

Tancredo wants to know the membership of the Security and Prosperity Partnership groups along with their various trilateral memoranda of understanding and other agreements reached with counterparts in Mexico and Canada.

Jim Gilchrist, co-founder of the Minutemen, welcomed Tancredo's efforts.

"It's time for the Bush administration to come clean," Gilchrist said. "If President Bush's agenda is to establish a new North American union government to supersede the sovereignty of the United States, then the president has an obligation to tell this to the American people directly. The American public has a right to know."

Geri Word, who heads the SPP office, told WND the work had not been disclosed because, "We did not want to get the contact people of the working groups distracted by calls from the public."

WND can find no specific congressional legislation authorizing the SPP working groups nor any congressional committees taking charge of oversight.

Many SPP working groups appear to be working toward achieving specific objectives as defined by a May 2005 Council on Foreign Relations task force report, which presented a blueprint for expanding the SPP agreement into a North American union that would merge the U.S., Canada and Mexico into a new governmental form.

Phyllis Schlafly, the woman best known for nearly single-handedly leading the opposition that killed the Equal Rights Amendment, sees a sinister and sweeping agenda behind the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America.

"Is the real push behind guest-worker proposals the Bush goal to expand NAFTA into the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, which he signed at Waco, Texas, last year and reaffirmed at Cancun, Mexico, this year?" she asks. "Bush is a globalist at heart and wants to carry out his father's oft-repeated ambition of a 'new world order.'"

She accuses the president and others behind the effort of wanting to obliterate U.S. borders in an effort to increase the Mexican population transfer and lower wages for the benefit of U.S. corporate interests.

"Bush meant what he said, at Waco, Texas, in March 2005, when he announced his plan to convert the United States into a 'Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America' by erasing our borders with Canada and Mexico," she said. "Bush's guest-worker proposal would turn the United States into a boardinghouse for the world's poor, enable employers to import an unlimited number of 'willing workers' at foreign wage levels, and wipe out what's left of the U.S. middle class. Bush lives in a house well protected by a fence and security guards and he associates with rich people who live in gated communities. Yet, for five years, he has refused to protect the property and children of ordinary Arizona citizens from trespassers and criminals."

That's unusually harsh criticism of a Republican president from one of Ronald Reagan's most loyal supporters.

At least one of the nation's daily newspapers has officially weighed in in opposition to the mysterious plans for closer cooperation in security, commerce and immigration between the three North American nations.

Recently, the Pittsburgh Tribune Review questioned the unchallenged momentum toward merger.

"Will Americans trade their dead presidents for Ameros?" the newspaper asked in an editorial last month.

The paper chided efforts at replacing the U.S. and Canadian dollars and Mexican peso with "the amero" – a knockoff of the euro – along with the building of "a looming NAFTA-like superstate." Citing the meeting between the three national leaders at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, in March 2005, the editorial warned: "Canadians, Mexicans and Americans who value the sovereignty of their respective countries should be concerned."

The Tribune Review editorial saw synergy between the plans of the national leaders and the ambitious agenda of the Council on Foreign Relations – seen by many as a kind of secretive, shadow government of the elite. The CFR issued a bold report in the spring of 2005, shortly after the joint announcements in Waco by Bush and his counterparts.

"The Council on Foreign Relations published a report in May -- "Building a North American Community" -- calling for, among other things, redefining the borders of the three nations, creating a super-regional governance board and the North American Paramilitary Group to ensure that Congress does not interfere with whatever the trilateral union feels like doing," said the paper. "Must the Bush administration happily sacrifice every shred of American sovereignty for the greater good of the New World Order?"

In fact, the CFR report is a five-year plan for the "establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community" with a common "outer security perimeter."

Some see it as the blueprint for merger of the U.S., Canada and Mexico. It calls for "a common economic space ... for all people in the region, a space in which trade, capital and people flow freely."

The CFR's strategy calls specifically for "a more open border for the movement of goods and people." It calls for laying "the groundwork for the freer flow of people within North America." It calls for efforts to "harmonize visa and asylum regulations." It calls for efforts to "harmonize entry screening."

In "Building a North American Community," the report states that Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin "committed their governments" to this goal March 23, 2005, at that meeting in Waco, Texas.

Alan Burkhart, who describes himself as a free-lance political writer, cross-country trucker "and proud citizen of one of the reddest of the Red States – Mississippi," is another critic seething over these plans that seem to have a life of their own – with little or no real public debate.

"As time passes, American corporations will find it unnecessary to move their facilities out of the country," writes Burkhart. "Our already stagnant wages will be just as low as those of Mexico. The cultures of three great nations will be diluted. Our currency will be replaced with the 'Amero.' And, we’ll be one giant step closer to the U.N.’s perverse dream of a one-world government."

The Amero is not a new concept. It was first proposed by the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think tank, in a monogram titled "The Case for the Amero" in 1999.

Last month, the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America made one of its most visible and public moves since it was first announced last year. In Washington, on June 15, U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, Mexican Economy Minister Sergio Garcia de Alba and Canadian Minister of Industry Maxime Bernier joined North American business leaders to launch the North American Competitiveness Council. It was a major development that showed the March 2005 meeting was no fluke – and that the plans announced by the three national leaders then were continuing to take shape. The NACC was first announced by Bush, Harper and Fox.

Made up of 10 high-level business leaders from each country, the NACC will meet annually with senior North American government officials "to provide recommendations and help set priorities for promoting regional competitiveness in the global economy."

Officially, the council has the mandate to advise the governments on improving trade in key sectors such as automobiles, transportation, manufacturing and services. The three countries do more than $800 billion in trilateral trade.

Gutierrez said the Bush administration is determined to develop a "border pass" on schedule despite worries about its implementation. The new land pass is to be in effect for Canadians, Americans and Mexicans by Jan. 1, 2008.

The U.S. executives involved in the NACC include: United Parcel Service Inc. Chairman Michael Eskew; Frederick Smith, chairman of FedEx Corp.; Lou Schorsh, chief executive of Mittal Steel USA; Joseph Gilmour, president of New York Life Insurance Co.; William Clay Ford, chairman of Ford Motor Co.; Rick Wagoner, chairman of General Motors Corp.; Raymond Gilmartin, CEO of Merck & Co. Inc.; David O'Reilly, chief executive of Chevron Corp.; Jeffrey Immelt, chairman of General Electric Co.; Lee Scott, president of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.; Robert Stevens, chairman of Lockheed Martin Corp.; Michael Haverty, chairman of Kansas City Southern; Douglas Conant, president of Campbell's Soup Co. and James Kilt, vice-chairman of Gillette Inc.

The concerns about the direction such powerful men could lead Americans without their knowledge is only heightened when interlocking networks are discovered. For instance, one of the components envisioned for this future "North American Union" is a superhighway running from Mexico, through the U.S. and into Canada. It is being promoted by the North American SuperCorridor Coalition, or NASCO, a non-profit group "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."

The president of NASCO is George Blackwood, who earlier launched the North American International Trade Corridor Partnership. In fact, NAITCP later morphed into NASCO. A NAIPC summit meeting in 2004, attended by senior Mexican government officials, heard from Robert Pastor, an American University professor who wrote "Toward a North American Community," a book promoting the development of a North American union as a regional government and the adoption of the amero as a common monetary currency to replace the dollar and the peso.

Pastor also was vice chairman of the May 2005 Council on Foreign Relations task force entitled "Building a North American Community" that presents itself as a blueprint for using bureaucratic action within the executive branches of Mexico, the U.S. and Canada to transform the current trilateral Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America into a North American union regional government.

CNN's Dobbs Sees Big Ratings Gains

_________

____________

New World Order Chieftans Openly Discuss Dismantling US Border and Bringing Us into the Pan-American Union

RELATED LINKS:

• Mexican Migration Project Director Calls for a North American Union

• Toll Road Conglomerate Silences Nagging Texas Newspapers by Purchasing Newspaper Group.

• Internationalizing US Roads

• Mexico and U.S. put “Security Perimeter” on fast-track

• North American IPv6 Task Force

• Council on Foreign Relations Joins Leading Canadians and Mexicans to Launch Independent Task Force on the Future of North America

• Experts call for common North America border

• Panel calls for secured border perimeter with U.S., Canada, Mexico

• Task force urges creation of 'Fortress America'

• New PNAC/neocon front group pushing tri-national ID on 9/11 corpse

• The NAFTA Superhighway - by Dr. Ron Paul, Republican member of Congress from Texas.

The full extent of Tony Blair's ambitious pay-as-you-drive road tolls plan has

been revealed - with a string of hidden elements unearthed.

Under the scheme, motorists will pay by the mile for use of the roads.

______________

Discussions on Tolls for BC residence starts.

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones/Prison Planet.com | June 21 2006

The open plan to merge the US with Mexico and Canada and create a Pan American Union networked by a NAFTA Super Highway has long been a Globalist brainchild but its very real and prescient implementation on behalf of the Council on Foreign Relations has finally been reported on by the Associated Press.

After nearly ten years of reporting by Alex Jones and the rest of the Patriot Movement, the Associated Press finally detailed a serious report on the plan for a Pan-American Union, which was based on recent articles by Human Events columnist Jerome Corsi.

The AP reports,

"The White House has established working groups, under the North American Free Trade Agreement office in the Department of Commerce, to implement the Security and Prosperity Partnership, or SPP, signed by President Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox and then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Texas, March 23, 2005."

The article even carries the admission that the Council on Foreign Relations, often the bane of sophomoric stereotypical caricatures of paranoid conspiracy theorists, played a fundamental role in crafting the policy for the homogenization of the US, Canada and Mexico.

"Many SPP working groups appear to be working toward achieving specific objectives as defined by a May 2005 Council on Foreign Relations task force report, which presented a blueprint for expanding the SPP agreement into a North American union that would merge the U.S., Canada and Mexico into a new governmental form."

This admission is as historical as it is concerning - the CFR moulds the foundational policy for the elimination of American sovereignty and it is passed as executive law within weeks. It is once again evident that the true vestiges of power lie within the ranks of the CFR and the Trilateral Commission who act on policy decided upon by the big brother of multinational semi-secret steering societies, the Bilderberg Group.

Up until five or six years ago the CFR largely operated in the shadows, only publishing its mouthpiece Foreign Affairs, and any inference that the group held sway in US politics or even existed was met by heckles of incredulity from the establishment media. Now the Associated Press openly reports their guiding hand in the drives towards global government.

Jerome Corsi has now filed a FOIA request asking for full disclosure of the SPP office in its activities towards creating a Pan American Union.

 The framework on which the American Union is being pegged is the NAFTA Super Highway (pictured) , a four football-fields-wide leviathan that stretches from southern Mexico through the US up to Montreal Canada.

Corsi's article cites government websites which carry full planning details of the Super Highway and its construction has already begun in Texas with no congressional oversight whatsoever. The Trans-Texas Corridor is being overseen by The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and the contract is owned by the Cintra corporation which in turn is owned by the King of Spain Juan Carlos. The project is being financed by the implementation of a toll that will be collected by means of GPS tracking devices installed in all vehicles and also envelops many connecting roads to the highway.

The NAFTA Super Highway will allow vehicles, people and goods to travel from Mexico, into the heart of America and up to Canada with little impediment, effectively erasing America's borders wholesale.

Coupled with Bush's blanket amnesty program, the Pan American Union is the final jigsaw piece for the total dismantling of America as we know it.

Related: Pan American Union Archive

Related: The American Union by 2005 – 2006 by Robert Gaylon Ross

____________

So by now you must be thinking " why hasn't the media been raising more of a ruckus about such clear threats to our sovereignty?" Well according to the head media guru of the CBC, this "North American Union" deal died years ago because of our determination as Canadians to axe the deal. Has Mark Harrison (senior Producer for the CBC) been living in a cave for the last several years? Only last week (July 03/2006) it was revealed (see above link) that the target date for insuring the deal was moved forward from 2010 to 2007.

Here is Mark Harrison's exact comments on the subject of the North American Union, NAFTA Super Highway and the Pact (which the CBC reported) to create a US controlled military command zone which includes Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean.

 Feds finally release info on 'superstate'

Some officials will tell you they have seen no "earmarks" for such a plan and question whether it even exists.

But the plan does exist and the NAFTA superhighway is being built – under the radar screen.

One need look no further than the $286 billion highway bill signed into law earlier this month by President Bush for some of the "earmarks."

The measure gave the state of Tennessee more than $111 million to help plan and build Interstate 69, called "one of the most significant transportation projects in the region's history" by the Commercial Appeal.

No one in Tennessee has any doubts about plans for the NAFTA superhighway. It is being built now with federal taxpayer dollars. And the plan calls for I-69 to extend from Michigan to Texas, linking the Canadian and Mexican borders.

Those supporting the plan, like Transportation Secretary Mario Cino, say it will bring an unprecedented windfall not only to the regions it traverses but for all Americans, Mexicans and Canadians.

Tennessee Department of Transportation Commissioner Gerald Nicely said I-69 "could help position the western part of the state as one of the world's new economic centers of power in the global marketplace."

The entire I-69 project is expected to cost $8.8 billion in current dollars, with states picking up 10 percent of the tab. So where is the money hidden? It's not really. But nowhere in any highway bill is the project referred to as the "NAFTA superhighway." Since the money is doled out to states to spend on their portion of the project, the allocations look like any other highway spending.

Ultimately, the Tennessee portion of the I-69 project is expected to cost $1 billion. It will shadow the present route of U.S. 51, connecting towns like Union City, Troy, Dyersburg, Ripley, Covington and Millington before following what is now I-40/240 through Midtown, according to the Commercial Appeal. The new highway bill focuses on the portion of I-69 through Northwest Tennessee about 80-110 miles north of Memphis. A 20-mile section of that segment – a four-lane stretch of U.S. 51 between Dyersburg and Troy – already is completed. Signs label it as part of the "Future I-69 Corridor." That leaves a 19-mile section to be built from Troy to the Kentucky line before one-third of the I-69 route through Tennessee is completed.

"The route's already been laid out, with survey markers planted in fields and cryptic benchmarks painted on the pavement of country roads," reports the Commercial Appeal.

Detailed drawings are expected to be finished next February. Right-of-way acquisition could begin early next year. Crews could start moving earth as early as 2008.

So why are some officials still questioning whether the project is real?

Last week, in Kansas, Sen. Pat Roberts, a Republican who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, seemed like he was short on domestic, backyard intelligence when he was asked in Saline about the NAFTA superhighway project – again, prompted by reports in WND.

"There's nothing I'm aware of in any authorization bill," Roberts said with derision. "I don't know where these things get started. This is one of those blogosphere things that makes you wonder what's going on."

When the Duluth News Tribune followed up WND reports about the project by turning to a local congressman for help, Mary Kerr, an aide to Rep.Jim Oberstar, said: "There are no earmarks for a superhighway like that."

But you can't hide for long a superhighway, in some places, according to plans, four football fields wide.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51730