North American Union to Replace USA?

by Jerome R. Corsi
Posted May 19, 2006

President Bush is pursuing a globalist agenda to create a North American Union, effectively erasing our borders with both Mexico and Canada. This was the hidden agenda behind the Bush administration's true open borders policy.

Secretly, the Bush administration is pursuing a policy to expand NAFTA politically, setting the stage for a North American Union designed to encompass the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. What the Bush administration truly wants is the free, unimpeded movement of people across open borders with Mexico and Canada.

President Bush intends to abrogate U.S. sovereignty to the North American Union, a new economic and political entity which the President is quietly forming, much as the European Union has formed.

The blueprint President Bush is following was laid out in a 2005 report entitled "Building a North American Community" published by the left-of-center Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The CFR report connects the dots between the Bush administration's actual policy on illegal immigration and the drive to create the North American Union:

At their meeting in Waco, Texas, at the end of March 2005, U.S. President George W. Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox, and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin committed their governments to a path of cooperation and joint action. We welcome this important development and offer this report to add urgency and specific recommendations to strengthen their efforts.

What is the plan? Simple, erase the borders. The plan is contained in a "Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America" little noticed when President Bush and President Fox created it in March 2005:

In March 2005, the leaders of Canada, Mexico, and the United States adopted a Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), establishing ministerial-level working groups to address key security and economic issues facing North America and setting a short deadline for reporting progress back to their governments. President Bush described the significance of the SPP as putting forward a common commitment "to markets and democracy, freedom and trade, and mutual prosperity and security." The policy framework articulated by the three leaders is a significant commitment that will benefit from broad discussion and advice. The Task Force is pleased to provide specific advice on how the partnership can be pursued and realized.

To that end, the Task Force proposes the creation by 2010 of a North American community to enhance security, prosperity, and opportunity. We propose a community based on the principle affirmed in the March 2005 Joint Statement of the three leaders that "our security and prosperity are mutually dependent and complementary." Its boundaries will be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter within which the movement of people, products, and capital will be legal, orderly and safe. Its goal will be to guarantee a free, secure, just, and prosperous North America.

The perspective of the CFR report allows us to see President Bush's speech to the nation as nothing more than public relations posturing and window dressing. No wonder President Vincente Fox called President Bush in a panic after the speech. How could the President go back on his word to Mexico by actually securing our border? Not to worry, President Bush reassured President Fox. The National Guard on the border were only temporary, meant to last only as long until the public forgets about the issue, as has always been the case in the past.

The North American Union plan, which Vincente Fox has every reason to presume President Bush is still following, calls for the only border to be around the North American Union -- not between any of these countries. Or, as the CFR report stated:

The three governments should commit themselves to the long-term goal of dramatically diminishing the need for the current intensity of the governments’ physical control of cross-border traffic, travel, and trade within North America. A long-term goal for a North American border action plan should be joint screening of travelers from third countries at their first point of entry into North America and the elimination of most controls over the temporary movement of these travelers within North America.

Discovering connections like this between the CFR recommendations and Bush administration policy gives credence to the argument that President Bush favors amnesty and open borders, as he originally said. Moreover, President Bush most likely continues to consider groups such as the Minuteman Project to be "vigilantes," as he has also said in response to a reporter's question during the March 2005 meeting with President Fox.

Why doesn’t President Bush just tell the truth? His secret agenda is to dissolve the United States of America into the North American Union. The administration has no intent to secure the border, or to enforce rigorously existing immigration laws. Securing our border with Mexico is evidently one of the jobs President Bush just won't do. If a fence is going to be built on our border with Mexico, evidently the Minuteman Project is going to have to build the fence themselves. Will President Bush protect America's sovereignty, or is this too a job the Minuteman Project will have to do for him?

Copyright © 2006 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.

Bush Administration Quietly Plans NAFTA Super Highway

by Jerome R. Corsi
Posted Jun 12, 2006

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.

Once complete, the new road will allow containers from the Far East to enter the United States through the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas, bypassing the Longshoreman’s Union in the process. The Mexican trucks, without the involvement of the Teamsters Union, will drive on what will be the nation’s most modern highway straight into the heart of America. The Mexican trucks will cross border in FAST lanes, checked only electronically by the new “SENTRI” system. The first customs stop will be a Mexican customs office in Kansas City, their new Smart Port complex, a facility being built for Mexico at a cost of $3 million to the U.S. taxpayers in Kansas City.

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.

Just examine the following websites to get a feel for the magnitude of NAFTA Super Highway planning that has been going on without any new congressional legislation directly authorizing the construction of the planned international corridor through the center of the country.

• 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.

Copyright © 2006 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.

Controversy Erupts Over NASCO and the NAFTA Super-Highway

by Jerome R. Corsi
Posted Jun 26, 2006

Last Thursday in a radio interview with the 55KRC Morning Show in Cincinnati, Tiffany Melvin, executive director of North America’s SuperCorridor Coalition, told host Jerry Thomas that my June 12 Human Events article on NASCO was “absolutely inaccurate.”



Melvin declined to be interviewed for this article, stating in an e-mail her current priority was to answer the “accusations, bad information, and false assumptions” in the June 12 article. “After I have a chance to get my life back and return to a normal schedule, I will contact you,” she wrote. “In the meantime, I will continue to respond to the inquiries your erroneous reporting has caused.”

What is NASCO? It is a non-profit 501c6 organization that functions as a trade association and sometimes lobbying group for the public and private entities that are members. NASCO is an acronym for North America’s SuperCorridor Coalition, which is the official title of the organization. According to the group’s website, NASCO is “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.”

Specifically, NASCO supports the corridor that encompasses Interstate Highways 35, 29 and 94, and “the significant east/west connectors to those highways in Canada, the United States, and Mexico.” That NASCO is organized around promoting NAFTA trade is obvious. Again, as stated by the group’s website:

From the largest border crossing in North America (The Ambassador Bridge in Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Canada), to the second largest border crossing of Laredo, Texas and Neuvo Laredo, Mexico, extending to the deep water Ports of Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico and to Manitoba, Canada, the impressive, tri-national NASCO membership truly reflects the international scope of the Corridor and the regions it impacts. (Emphasis in original.)

From an industry perspective, NASCO is one of the organizations supporting various north-south corridors identified to facilitate NAFTA trade. NASCO has absorbed the former North American International Trade Corridor Partnership, a non-profit group organized in Mexico with similar goals of internationalizing U.S. highways into a NAFTA structure to facilitate trade with Mexico and Canada. The North American Inland Port Network (NAIPN) is also listed as a NASCO partner. NAIPN functions as a NASCO sub-committee to develop “inland ports” along the highway corridors “to specifically alleviate congestion at maritime ports and our nation’s borders.”

To get a feel of the NAFTA corridor movement, we also reference CANAMEX, a trade organization that promotes a Western tri-lateral route utilizing I-19, I-10, I-93 and I-15 in the states of Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Idaho and Montana to link the three countries in trade. Another non-profit group, the North American Forum on Integration (NAFI), identifies four bands of NAFTA corridors (Pacific, West, East and Atlantic), all relying primarily upon internationalizing north-south existing interstate highways into NAFTA trade corridors.

One of Melvin’s main bones of contention was that NASCO did not stand for the building the NASCO corridor into a Trans-Texas Corridor-type super-highway. “NASCO is working on existing infrastructure,” Melvin told 55KRC. Yet, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is a NASCO member and NASCO supports the Trans-Texas Corridor as part of that relationship. Melvin’s e-mail stated:

The Trans-Texas Corridor is not a NASCO initiative. We support the project in Texas, as it solves critical funding problems and congestion IN TEXAS. I know of NO plans to extend it into additional states. It is not the first section of a NAFTA Super Highway. It is not ready to begin construction next year.

According to the 4,000-page draft environmental impact statement, the plan is to build a 4,000-mile network of new super-highways that will be “up to 1,200 feet wide (at full build-out) with separate lanes for passenger vehicles (three in each direction) and trucks (two in each direction), six rail lines (separate lines in each direction for high-speed rail, commuter rail, and freight rail), and a 200-foot wide utility corridor.”

On March 11, 2005, TxDOT signed a definitive agreement with Cintra Zachry, a limited partnership formed by Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructures de Transport in Spain and the San Antonio-based Zachry Construction Co. “to develop the Oklahoma to Mexico/Gulf Coast element of the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC-35). This agreement calls for the Cintra-Zachry limited partnership to pay Texas $1.2 billion “for the long-term right to build and operate the initial segment as a toll facility.” The initial TTC-35 segment is scheduled to be built roughly parallel to I-35 between Dallas and San Antonio. The final public hearings are scheduled in Texas for July and August. While construction contracts have yet to be finalized, Cintra-Zachry presumably holds those rights as a result of the $1.2 billion payment to Texas, as described in the March 11, 2005, contract. The timeline published on the Trans-Texas Corridor website envisions final federal approval by the summer of 2007, with the construction of the first TTC-35 segment to follow immediately afterward.

In regard to whether NASCO intends to rely only on existing interstate highway infrastructure, the NASCO statement of purpose cited above calls for building “the world’s first international, integrated and secure, multi-modal transportation system.” The TTC-35 project is the first super-highway project in the U.S. proceeding to incorporate railroad as part of the design, producing a truly “integrated” and “multi-modal” highway-railroad system.

Do other states plan to build TTC like roads? Most states today are strapped for cash even to maintain existing highways. Still, the investment banking and international capital pools that put together the TTC project are certain to want to apply the model to additional states along the I-35 corridor. I would also note that Cintra-Zachry is unlikely to be building TTC-35 with the idea that the four-football-fields-wide super-highway just ends at the Oklahoma border. Once the investment bankers have the deal sealed in Texas, the TTC plan and funding are certain to be taken to many other states, including Oklahoma and Kansas.

The city of Kansas City, Mo., and the Kansas City SmartPort are both listed on the NASCO website as NASCO members. The Kansas City Area Development Council has directly confirmed that the Kansas City SmartPort intends to build a Mexican customs facility to facilitate out-going traffic headed to Mexico. A copy of the Kansas City council resolution authorizing the construction of the Mexican customs facility can be found on the Internet.

Melvin also maintained that NASCO is “not competing with West Coast ports or trying to take work from them.” This argument is made, however, in a brochure posted on the website of the Kansas City SmartPort, titled “Lazaro Cardenas—Kansas City Transportation Corridor Offers Opportunities for International Shippers.”

Yet, in March 2005, Kansas City signed a cooperative pact with representatives from the Mexican state of Michoacan and with representatives from Lazaro Cardenas, a deep-port town on the Pacific coast south of the Baha peninsula, to increase the cargo volume between Lazaro Cardenas and Kansas City. The goal is to bring super-ships carrying 4,000 containers or more from China and the Far East into Mexico so the containers can be moved into the heart of the United States, bypassing the West Coast ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Right now transportation costs about double the cost of cheap goods made in China and the Far East. The Kansas City SmartPort plan offers a methodology for cutting out U.S. workers from the International Longshoremen’s Association, the United Transportation Union and the Teamsters. As the brochure explains:

Shipments will be pre-screened in Southeast Asia and the shipper will send advance notification to Mexican and American Customs with the corresponding “pre-clearance” information on the cargo. Upon arrival in Mexico, containers will pass through multiple X-ray and gamma ray screenings, allowing any containers with anomalies to quickly be removed for further inspection.

Container shipments will be tracked using intelligent transportation systems (ITS) that could include global positioning systems (GPS) or radio frequency identification systems (RFID) and monitored by the ITS on their way to inland trade-processing centers in Kansas City and elsewhere in the United States.

The Kansas City SmartPort brochure could not be more explicit: “Kansas City offers the opportunity for sealed cargo containers to travel to Mexican port cities with virtually no border delays. It will streamline shipments from Asia and cut the time and labor costs associated with shipping through the congested ports on the West Coast.”

The plan to put the NAFTA Super-Highway is intended to be done incrementally, designed to stay below the radar of mainstream media attention. The full build-out of the Trans-Texas Corridor’s 4,000-mile planned network is projected to be completed in discrete stages, over the next 50 years. This gives plenty of time to expand the super-highway network incrementally, state-by-state up-and-down the various identified NAFTA corridors.

The plan to create a North American Union as a regional government in 2010 is directly stated only in the May 2005 task force report, “Building a North American Community.” Still, we must examine how the Security and Prosperity Partnership signed by President Bush with Mexico and Canada in Waco, Tex., on March 23, 2005, is being implemented. We find that government offices such as the Security and Prosperity Partnership working groups being organized within the U.S. Department of Commerce are signing trilateral memoranda of understanding and other agreements with Mexico and Canada consistent with the goal of fulfilling the CFR’s dream to bring about a North American Union by 2010.

We find the same here. NASCO is a trade organization that will never fund or build a single highway anywhere. Yet NASCO supports its members and NASCO members are hard at work building the NAFTA Super-Highway.

Copyright © 2006 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.

North American Union Already Starting to Replace USA

by Jerome R. Corsi
Posted May 30, 2006

In March 2005 at their summit meeting in Waco, Tex., President 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.

Reporting in June 2005 to the heads of state of the three countries, the trilateral SPP emphasized the extensive working group structure that had been established to pursue an ambitious agenda:

In carrying out your instructions, we established working groups under both agendas of the Partnership – Security and Prosperity.  We held roundtables with stakeholders, meetings with business groups and briefing sessions with Legislatures, as well as with other relevant political jurisdictions.  The result is a detailed series of actions and recommendations designed to increase the competitiveness of North America and the security of our people.

This is not a theoretical exercise being prepared so it can be submitted for review.  Instead, SPP is producing an action agreement to be implemented directly by regulations, without any envisioned direct Congressional oversight.

Upon your review and approval, we will once again meet with stakeholders and work with them to implement the workplans that we have developed.

And again, the June 2005 SPP report stresses:

The success of our efforts will be defined less by the contents of the work plans than by the actual implementation of initiatives and strategies that will make North America more prosperous and more secure.

Reviewing the specific working agenda initiatives, the goal to implement directly is apparent.  Nearly every work plan is characterized by action steps described variously as “our three countries signed a Framework of Common Principles …” or “we have signed a Memorandum of Understanding …,” or “we have signed a declaration of intent …” etc.  Once again, none of the 30 or so working agendas makes any mention of submitting decisions to the U.S. Congress for review and approval.  No new U.S. laws are contemplated for the Bush administration to submit to Congress.  Instead, the plan is obviously to knit together the North American Union completely under the radar, through a process of regulations and directives issued by various U.S. government agencies. 

What we have here is an executive branch plan being implemented by the Bush administration to construct a new super-regional structure completely by fiat.  Yet, we can find no single speech in which President Bush has ever openly expressed to the American people his intention to create a North American Union by evolving NAFTA into this NAFTA-Plus as a first, implementing step.

Anyone who has wondered why President Bush has not bothered to secure our borders is advised to spend some time examining the SPP working groups’ agenda.  In every area of activity, the SPP agenda stresses free and open movement of people, trade, and capital within the North American Union.  Once the SPP agenda is implemented with appropriate departmental regulations, there will be no area of immigration policy, trade rules, environmental regulations, capital flows, public health, plus dozens of other key policy areas countries that the U.S. government will be able to decide alone, or without first consulting with some appropriate North American Union regulatory body.  At best, our border with Mexico will become a speed bump, largely erased, with little remaining to restrict the essentially free movement of people, trade, and capital.

Canada has established an SPP working group within their Foreign Affairs department. Mexico has placed the SPP within the office of the Secretaria de Economia and created and extensive website for the Alianza Para La Securidad y La Prosperidad de Améica del Norte (ASPAN).  On this Mexican website, ASPAN is described as “a permanent, tri-lateral process to create a major integration of North America .”

The extensive working group activity being implemented right now by the government of Mexico , Canada , and the United States is consistent with the blueprint laid out in the May 2005 report of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), titled “Building a North American Community.”

The Task Force’s central recommendation is the establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community, the boundaries of which would be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter. (page xvii)

The only borders or tariffs which would remain would be those around the continent, not those between the countries within:

Its (the North American Community’s) boundaries will be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter within which the movement of people, products, and capital will be legal, orderly, and safe.  Its goal will be to guarantee a free, secure, just, and prosperous North America . (page 3)

What will happen to the sovereignty of the United States ?  The model is the European Community.  While the United States would supposedly remain as a country, many of our nation-state prerogatives would ultimately be superseded by the authority of a North American court and parliamentary body, just as the U.S. dollar would have to be surrendered for the “Amero,” the envisioned surviving currency of the North American Union.  The CFR report left no doubt that the North American Union was intended to evolve through a series of regulatory decisions:

While each country must retain its right to impose and maintain unique regulations consonant with its national priorities and income level, the three countries should make a concerted effort to encourage regulatory convergence.

The three leaders highlighted the importance of addressing this issue at their March 2005 summit in Texas .  The Security and Prosperity Partnership for North America they signed recognizes the need for a stronger focus on building the economic strength of the continent in addition to ensuring its security.  To this end, it emphasizes regulatory issues.  Officials in all three countries have formed a series of working groups under designated lead cabinet ministers.  These working groups have been ordered to produce an action plan for approval by the leaders within ninety days, by late June 2005, and to report regularly thereafter. (pages 23-24)

Again, the CFR report says nothing about reporting to Congress or to the American people.  What we have underway here with the SPP could arguably be termed a bureaucratic coup d’etat.  If that is not the intent, then President Bush should rein in the bureaucracy until the American people have been fully informed of the true nature of our government’s desire to create a North American Union.  Otherwise, the North American Union will become a reality in 2010 as planned.  Right now, the only check or balance being exercised is arguably Congressional oversight of the executive bureaucracy, even though Congress itself might not fully appreciate what is happening.

Copyright © 2006 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.

North American Union Would Trump U.S. Supreme Court

by Jerome R. Corsi
Posted Jun 19, 2006

The Bush Administration is pushing to create a North American Union out of the work on-going in the Department of Commerce under the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America in the NAFTA office headed by Geri Word. A key part of the plan is to expand the NAFTA tribunals into a North American Union court system that would have supremacy over all U.S. law, even over the U.S. Supreme Court, in any matter related to the trilateral political and economic integration of the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Right now, Chapter 11 of the NAFTA agreement allows a private NAFTA foreign investor to sue the U.S. government if the investor believes a state or federal law damages the investor’s NAFTA business.

Under Chapter 11, NAFTA establishes a tribunal that conducts a behind closed-doors “trial” to decide the case according to the legal principals established by either the World Bank’s International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes or the UN’s Commission for International Trade Law. If the decision is adverse to the U.S., the NAFTA tribunal can impose its decision as final, trumping U.S. law, even as decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. U.S. laws can be effectively overturned and the NAFTA Chapter 11 tribunal can impose millions or billions of dollars in fines on the U.S. government, to be paid ultimately by the U.S. taxpayer.

On Aug. 9, 2005, a three-member NAFTA tribunal dismissed a $970 million claim filed by Methanex Corp., a Canadian methanol producer challenging California laws that regulate against the gasoline additive MTBE. The additive MTBE was introduced into gasoline to reduce air pollution from motor vehicle emissions. California regulations restricted the use of MTBE after the additive was found to contaminate drinking water and produce a health hazard. Had the case been decided differently, California’s MTBE regulations would have been overturned and U.S. taxpayers forced to pay Methanex millions in damages.

While this case was decided favorably to U.S. laws, we can rest assured that sooner or later a U.S. law will be overruled by the NAFTA Chapter 11 adjudicative procedure, as long as the determinant law adjudicated by the NAFTA Chapter 11 tribunals continues to derive from World Court or UN law. Once a North American Union court structure is in place can almost certainly predict that a 2nd Amendment challenge to the right to bear arms is as inevitable under a North American Union court structure as is a challenge to our 1st Amendment free speech laws. Citizens of both Canada and Mexico cannot freely own firearms. Nor can Canadians or Mexicans speak out freely without worrying about “hate crimes” legislation or other political restrictions on what they may choose to say.

Like it or not, NAFTA Chapter 11 tribunals already empower foreign NAFTA investors and corporations to challenge the sovereignty of U.S. law in the United States. Sen. John Kerry (D.-Mass.) has been quoted as saying, “When we debated NAFTA, not a single word was uttered in discussing Chapter 11. Why? Because we didn’t know how this provision would play out. No one really knew just how high the stakes would get.” Again, we have abundant proof that Congress is unbelievably lax when it comes to something as fundamental as reading or understanding the complex laws our elected legislators typically pass.

Under the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) plan expressed in May 2005 for building NAFTA into a North American Union, the stakes are about to get even higher. A task force report titled “Building a North American Community” was written to provide a blueprint for the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America agreement signed by President Bush in his meeting with President Fox and Canada’s then-Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Tex., on March 23, 2005.

The CFR plan clearly calls for the establishment of a “permanent tribunal for North American dispute resolution” as part of the new regional North American Union (NAU) governmental structure that is proposed to go into place in 2010. As the CFR report details on page 22:

The current NAFTA dispute-resolution process is founded on ad hoc panels that are not capable of building institutional memory or establishing precedent, may be subject to conflicts of interest, and are appointed by authorities who may have an incentive to delay a given proceeding. As demonstrated by the efficiency of the World Trade Organization (WTO) appeal process, a permanent tribunal would likely encourage faster, more consistent and more predictable resolution of disputes. In addition, there is a need to review the workings of NAFTA’s dispute-settlement mechanism to make it more efficient, transparent, and effective.

Robert Pastor of American University, the vice chairman of the CFR task force report, provided much of the intellectual justification for the formation of the North American Union. He has repeatedly argued for the creation of a North American Union “Permanent Tribunal on Trade and Investment.” Pastor understands that a “permanent court would permit the accumulation of precedent and lay the groundwork for North American business law.” Notice, Pastor says nothing about U.S. business law or the U.S. Supreme Court. In the view of the globalists pushing toward the formation of the North American Union, the U.S. is a partisan nation-state whose limitations of economic protectionism and provincial self-interest are outdated and as such must be transcended, even if the price involves sacrificing U.S. national sovereignty.

When it comes to the question of illegal immigrants, Pastor’s solution is to erase our borders with Mexico and Canada so we can issue North American Union passports to all citizens. In his testimony to the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee on June 9, 2005, Pastor made this exact argument: “Instead of stopping North Americans on the borders, we ought to provide them with a secure, biometric Border Pass that would ease transit across the border like an E-Z pass permits our cars to speed though toll booths.”

Even Pastor worries about the potential for North American Unions to overturn U.S. laws that he likes. Regarding environmental laws, Pastor’s testimony to the Trilateral Commission in November 2002 was clear on this point: “Some narrowing or clarification of the scope of Chapter 11 panels on foreign investment is also needed to permit the erosion of environmental rules.” Evidently it did not occur to Pastor that the way to achieve the protection he sought was to leave the sovereignty of U.S. and the supremacy of the U.S. Supreme Court intact.

The executive branch under the Bush Administration is quietly putting in place a behind-the-scenes trilateral regulatory scheme, evidently without any direct congressional input, that should provide the rules by which any NAFTA or NAU court would examine when adjudicating NAU trade disputes. The June 2005 report by the SPP working groups organized in the U.S. Department of Commerce, clearly states the goal:

We will develop a trilateral Regulatory Cooperative Framework by 2007 to support and enhance existing, as well as encourage new cooperation among regulators, including at the outset of the regulatory process.

We wonder if the Bush Administration intends to present the Trilateral Regulatory Cooperative Framework now being constructed by SPP.gov to Congress for review in 2007, or will the administration simply continue along the path of knitting together the new NAU regional governmental structure behind closed doors by executive fiat? Ms. Word affirms that the membership of the various SPP working group committees has not been published. Nor have the many memorandums of understanding and other trilateral agreements created by these SPP working groups been published, not even on the Internet.

Copyright © 2006 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.

The Plan to Replace the Dollar With the 'Amero'

by Jerome R. Corsi
Posted May 22, 2006

The idea to form the North American Union as a super-NAFTA knitting together Canada, the United States and Mexico into a super-regional political and economic entity was a key agreement resulting from the March 2005 meeting held at Baylor University in Waco, Tex., between President Bush, President Fox and Prime Minister Martin.

A joint statement published by the three presidents following their Baylor University summit announced the formation of an initial entity called, “The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America” (SPP). The joint statement termed the SPP a “trilateral partnership” that was aimed at producing a North American security plan as well as providing free market movement of people, capital, and trade across the borders between the three NAFTA partners:

We will establish a common approach to security to protect North America from external threats, prevent and respond to threats within North America, and further streamline the secure and efficient movement of legitimate, low-risk traffic across our borders.

A working agenda was established:

We will establish working parties led by our ministers and secretaries that will consult with stakeholders in our respective countries. These working parties will respond to the priorities of our people and our businesses, and will set specific, measurable, and achievable goals.

The U.S. Department of Commerce has produced a SPP website, which documents how the U.S. has implemented the SPP directive into an extensive working agenda.

Following the March 2005 meeting in Waco, Tex., the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) published in May 2005 a task force report titled “Building a North American Community.” We have already documented that this CFR task force report calls for a plan to create by 2010 a redefinition of boundaries such that the primary immigration control will be around the three countries of the North American Union, not between the three countries. We have argued that a likely reason President Bush has not secured our border with Mexico is that the administration is pushing for the establishment of the North American Union.

The North American Union is envisioned to create a super-regional political authority that could override the sovereignty of the United States on immigration policy and trade issues. In his June 2005 testimony to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Robert Pastor, the Director of the Center for North American Studies at American University, stated clearly the view that the North American Union would need a super-regional governance board to make sure the United States does not dominate the proposed North American Union once it is formed:

NAFTA has failed to create a partnership because North American governments have not changed the way they deal with one another. Dual bilateralism, driven by U.S. power, continue to govern and irritate. Adding a third party to bilateral disputes vastly increases the chance that rules, not power, will resolve problems.

This trilateral approach should be institutionalized in a new North American Advisory Council. Unlike the sprawling and intrusive European Commission, the Commission or Council should be lean, independent, and advisory, composed of 15 distinguished individuals, 5 from each nation. Its principal purpose should be to prepare a North American agenda for leaders to consider at biannual summits and to monitor the implementation of the resulting agreements.

Pastor was a vice chairman of the CFR task force that produced the report “Building a North American Union.”

Pastor also proposed the creation of a Permanent Tribunal on Trade and Investment with the view that “a permanent court would permit the accumulation of precedent and lay the groundwork for North American business law.” The intent is for this North American Union Tribunal would have supremacy over the U.S. Supreme Court on issues affecting the North American Union, to prevent U.S. power from “irritating” and retarding the progress of uniting Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. into a new 21st century super-regional governing body.

Robert Pastor also advises the creation of a North American Parliamentary Group to make sure the U.S. Congress does not impede progress in the envisioned North American Union. He has also called for the creation of a North American Customs and Immigration Service which would have authority over U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) within the Department of Homeland Security.

Pastor’s 2001 book “Toward a North American Community” called for the creation of a North American Union that would perfect the defects Pastor believes limit the progress of the European Union. Much of Pastor’s thinking appears aimed at limiting the power and sovereignty of the United States as we enter this new super-regional entity. Pastor has also called for the creation of a new currency which he has coined the “Amero,” a currency that is proposed to replace the U.S. dollar, the Canadian dollar, and the Mexican peso.

If President Bush had run openly in 2004 on the proposition that a prime objective of his second term was to form the North American Union and to supplant the dollar with the “Amero,” we doubt very much that President Bush would have carried Ohio, let alone half of the Red State majority he needed to win re-election. Pursuing any plan that would legalize the conservatively estimated 12 million illegal aliens now in the United States could well spell election disaster for the Republican Party in 2006, especially for the House of Representative where every seat is up for grabs.

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