Pursuing the ‘North American’ Agenda — September 2006

On March 23, 2005, President Bush met at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, with Vicente Fox of Mexico and Paul Martin of Canada in what they called a Summit. The three heads of state then drove to Baylor University in Waco, where they issued a press release announcing an agreement to form the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP).

On May 17, 2005, the Council on Foreign Relations issued a 59-page document outlining a five-year plan for the “establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community” with a common “outer security perimeter” to achieve “the freer flow of people within North America.” This document is full of language spelling out an “integrated” strategy to achieve an “open border for the movement of goods and people” within which “trade, capital, and people flow freely.” The document calls for “a seamless North American market,” allowing Mexican trucks “unlimited access,” “totalization” (the code word for putting illegal aliens into the U.S. Social Security system), massive U.S. foreign aid, and even “a permanent tribunal for North American dispute resolution.”

Tying this document into the Bush-Fox-Martin March 23 Summit, the CFR stated that the three men on that day “committed their governments” to the North American Community goal, and assigned “working groups” to fill in the details.

On June 9, 2005, Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Richard Lugar held a friendly committee hearing that featured Task Force member Robert Pastor, a professor at American University and author of the 2001 book Toward a North American Community. He revealed further details of the plan for a “continental perimeter,” including “an integrated continental plan for transportation and infrastructure that includes new North American highways and high-speed rail corridors.”

Pastor asserted that President Bush endorsed North American integration in the Guanajuato Proposal of February 16, 2001, in which Bush and Vicente Fox promised that “we will strive to consolidate a North American economic community.” Bush followed up on April 22, 2001 by signing the Declaration of Quebec City in which he made a “commitment to hemispheric integration.”

On June 27, 2005, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff attended an SPP meeting in Ottawa, Canada, at which he said “we want to facilitate the flow of traffic across our borders.” The White House issued a press release endorsing the Ottawa report and calling the meeting “an important first step in achieving the goals of the Security and Prosperity Partnership.”

In July 2005, the White House let it be known that it is backing a coalition called Americans for Border and Economic Security organized by former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie. Its purpose is to conduct a political-style campaign to sell the American people on a guest-worker program wrapped in a few border-security promises and financed by coalition members who each put up $50,000 to $250,000.

On March 31, 2006, President Bush met at Cancun, Mexico for a spring frolic with Vicente Fox and the new Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Their press release celebrated what they called the first anniversary of the Security and Prosperity Partnership, and Bush demanded that Congress pass an immigration bill with a worker permit program.

On May 15, 2006, Bush made a nationally televised speech in which he enunciated the amazing non sequitur that we can’t have border security unless we also have a “comprehensive” bill including legalization of illegals now in the United States and the admission of new so-called guest workers.

Thanks to the investigative work of Dr. Jerry Corsi, we have learned that SPP’s more than 20 working groups are already quietly operating in the NAFTA office in the U.S. Department of Commerce, which refuses to reveal the groups’ members because, in the words of SPP spokesperson Geri Word, the Bush Administration does not want them “distracted by calls from the public.” Corsi discovered in June 2006 that SPP issued a “Report to Leaders” on June 27, 2005 that shows SPP’s extensive interaction with government and business groups in the three countries.

On June 15, 2006, SPP’s North American Competitiveness Council (NACC), consisting of government officials and corporate CEOs from the three countries, met to “institutionalize the North American Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) and the NACC, so that the work will continue through changes in administrations.”

What’s Up to Date in Kansas City? 
Grassroots Americans of all parties and economic classes rose up out of their political apathy a few months ago and forced President Bush to reverse his administration’s decision to allow a Middle East government to own America’s major ports. But the push for foreign ownership continues: the next port scheduled to be taken over is Kansas City, Missouri.

Even though public schools stopped teaching geography a couple of decades ago, most Americans (especially residents of the Show Me state) are surprised to learn that Kansas City (where the only waves are “amber waves of grain”) is a port. We are also surprised, and shocked, to discover that Mexico will be running its own facility.

The plan has been in the works for at least three years, but it is now coming to light because of the diligent use of Missouri’s Sunshine law by concerned citizens. Joyce Mucci and Francis Semler forced the release of the emails from Kansas City to Mexico, including one admitting that “The space [in Kansas City] would need to be designated as Mexican sovereign territory.” SmartPort spokesmen are now running away from this written admission, blaming “the problems and pressure the media attention has created.” However, the stubborn sovereignty issue won’t go away; the plan does involve setting up Mexican customs officials in Kansas City.

The mechanism for this deal is a “nonprofit” business economic development corporation called Kansas City SmartPort Inc., whose president is Chris J.F. Gutierrez. The deal calls for Kansas City to lease the valuable property at 1447 Liberty Street.

As laid out on SmartPort’s website, the plan is to enable cheap-labor products made in Communist China to travel in sealed “containers nonstop from the Far East by way of Mexico,” through “a ships-to-rail terminal at the port of Lazaro Cardenas in Mexico,” then up “the evolving trade corridor” to Kansas City, Missouri, where they would have their first inspection. A Kansas City SmartPort brochure explains further: “Kansas City offers the opportunity for sealed cargo containers to travel to Mexican port cities with virtually no border delays.”

A key purpose of the project is to take jobs away from U.S. longshoremen in Los Angeles and Long Beach who earn $140,000 a year and replace them with Mexican laborers at $10,000 a year. U.S. truck drivers and railroad workers will likewise be replaced by Mexicans.

The port of Lazaro Cardenas on the west coast of southern Mexico is controlled by Hutchison Whampoa, the same giant Hong Kong shipping firm that owns the ports at both ends of the Panama Canal. The Chinese-made goods will be carried by Kansas City Southern Railway de Mexico directly to Kansas City, where freight will be distributed east and west and on to Canada.

Kansas City Southern was originally just a belt rail around Kansas City but, after buying various Mexican rail companies and tracks, KCS now controls a 2,600-mile artery from Lazaro Cardenas to Kansas City. KCS’s president, Michael Haverty, was one of only five U.S. businessmen who met with Presidents Bush and Vicente Fox, along with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, at their Cancun Summit in March.

Mexico was at first expected to pay for the big, expensive machines to conduct high-tech gamma-ray screening for drive-through inspections of containers, but Mexico declined the honor. SmartPort has applied for a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration (i.e., to get the U.S. taxpayers to pay for the machines).

The Kansas City city council has already earmarked $2.5 million in loans and $600,000 in direct aid (of taxpayers’ money) to SmartPort, which would build and own the facility and then sublet it to the Mexican government. The cost could go as high as $6 million because Kansas City has an existing lease that runs through 2045 on the same property with the 107-year-old American Royal, which uses that land for its annual livestock/rodeo/barbecue event.

The last piece in finalizing this project is getting the U.S. State Department to approve the Mexican operation on U.S. soil by signing off on what is called the C-175 document. It has already been approved by U.S. Customs.

Meanwhile, NASCO (North America’s SuperCorridor Coalition), another non-profit business organization, has taken on the mission of building an “international, integrated and secure, multi-modal transportation system” from Lazaro Cardenas through Kansas City and up to Winnipeg, Canada. This will allow Mexican trucks to haul goods along a 12-lane superhighway through the heartland of the United States.

The NAFTA Super Highway 
It’s not just American ports that are fast slipping into foreign ownership; it’s highways, too. A Spanish company, Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A., has bought the right to operate a tollroad through Texas and collect tolls for the next 50 years.

Called the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC), on which construction is planned to begin next year, this highway would bisect Texas from its border with Mexico to Oklahoma. Hearings held by the Texas Department of Transportation this summer attracted hundreds of angry Texans.

Plans call for a ten-lane limited-access highway to parallel I-35. It would have three lanes each way for passenger cars, two express lanes each way for trucks, rail lines both ways for people and freight, plus a utility corridor for oil and natural gas pipelines, electric towers, cables for communication, and telephone lines.

Central to this plan is a massive taking of 584,000 acres of farm and ranch land at an estimated cost of $11 to $30 billion, property then lost from the tax rolls of counties and school districts. After the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London, no one need worry about the power of eminent domain to take private property.

The Trans-Texas Corridor will be the first leg of what has been dubbed the NAFTA Super Highway to go through heartland America all the way to Canada. This would be a major lifeline of the plan to merge the United States into a North American Community. Mexican trucks will be able to drive sealed containers up the fast lanes of the NAFTA Super Highway, inspected only electronically if at all, and making their first customs stop in Kansas City.

In response to recent articles in conservative publications about the sovereignty, freedom and economic dangers that will result from President Bush creating the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) in Waco in March 2005, the SPP has issued an unconvincing rebuttal. This SPP document starts by declaring that “our three great nations share a belief in freedom, economic opportunity, and strong democratic institutions.” That’s false; Mexico is a corrupt country where a few families control all the wealth while the rest of the people are kept in abject poverty with no hope of economic opportunity.

The document states that SPP’s mission is to make “our businesses more competitive in the global marketplace.” That globalist doubletalk means producing U.S. goods with cheap foreign labor, thereby destroying the U.S. middle class.

The document states that SPP wasn’t “signed” by Bush at Waco. But when Bush went to Cancun in March 2006, he proclaimed the first anniversary of whatever he had agreed to in Waco in 2005, and he sent Michael Chertoff to Ottawa to take “an important first step” toward whatever Bush did or didn’t sign in Waco. The document denies that SPP’s working groups are secret, but SPP won’t release the names of who is serving on them. The document denies that SPP will “cost U.S. taxpayer money” because SPP is using “existing budget resources” (from the fairy godmother?).

Thanks to the internet, we can often find out more about the doings of the Bush Administration from the foreign press than from the U.S. media. An article written in Spanish from a Mexican perspective one year ago fully described the plan for the “deep integration” of the three North American countries. Economist and researcher Miguel Pickard explained that although the plan is sometimes called NAFTA Plus, there will be no single treaty text and nothing will be submitted to the legislatures of the three countries. The elites plan to implement their shared vision of “a merged future” through “the signing of ‘regulations’ not subject to citizens’ review.”

Pickard revealed a series of three meetings of a new entity called the Independent Task Force on the Future of North America (ITF). After secretly conniving in Toronto, New York and Monterrey, the ITF called for a unified North American Border Action Plan (i.e. open borders among the three countries), and the three countries then signed “close to 300 regulations.” The United States was represented at the ITF by Robert Pastor, who has been working for years to promote North American integration. Pickard revealed that Pastor is in “constant dialogue” with Jorge G. Castaneda, Vicente Fox’s foreign relations adviser.

Pickard is convinced that George W. Bush is “vigorously pushing” the idea of a “North American Community.” Pickard concluded that the schedule calls for beginning with a customs , then a common market, then a monetary and economic union, and finally the adoption of a single currency (already baptized as the “amero” by Robert Pastor).

Is America for Sale? 
Conservatives believe that private industry does a better job than government; right? Conservatives are for divesting some government functions so private industry can run them more efficiently; right? Many state and local governments take this idea seriously and, unnoticed by the American public, have been selling off some of our infrastructure to foreigners.

Then suddenly the news hit the fan about the proposed sale of 22 East and Gulf Coast port operations to Dubai Ports World, a maritime company controlled by a Middle East government. When devotion to private enterprise ran up against American sovereignty and national defense, not only conservatives but the American people opted for the latter. The anti-Dubai uproar swept across all party and economic lines because there is a limit to whom we want to sell our essential transportation systems.

A federal agency known as CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States) is supposed to be guarding our national interests when foreigners seek to buy U.S. properties. CFIUS operates in secret, so the public is in the dark about its procedures. CFIUS is apparently also in the dark about what the American public thinks and didn’t foresee that the Dubai Ports deal would be controversial. The foreign purchase of U.S. infrastructure has been proceeding at a rapid pace, both before and after the Dubai Ports flap.

The scholar Frank Gaffney discovered that “out of more than 1,500 cases of foreign acquisitions reviewed since 1988, CFIUS has only formally rejected one.” Homeland Security admits that 80% of our 3,200 terminals nationwide are operated by foreign companies and countries.

In June, a Spanish firm paid $1.3 billion for a 50-year lease to operate a 10-lane toll road through the heart of Texas. The same month, an Australian company bought a 99-year lease on Virginia’s Pocahontas Parkway. Also in June, an Australian-Spanish partnership paid $3.8 billion to lease the Indiana tollroad for 75 years. Last year, Chicago sold a 99-year lease on the eight-mile Chicago Skyway to the same buyer for $1.8 billion, and the tolls are expected to double. Almost weekly, we learn about other American properties that have been sold or leased-long-term to foreign companies. The tolls from the U.S. side of the tunnel between Detroit and Windsor, Canada, belong to an Australian company.

Why the rush to sell our transportation systems to foreigners? Like most actions that are hard to understand, “follow the money” explains all. State and local governments pocket the money up front and get to spend it here and now, so politicians can cover their runaway budget deficits and enjoy the political rewards of spending for new facilities. They ignore the fact that U.S. citizens must pay tolls to foreign landlords for the next two or three or even four generations.

The foreigners like the deals because they know that, unlike the rest of the world, American law enforces contracts and the U.S. government doesn’t nationalize industries. The foreign companies can raise the tolls without having to cope with objections from local customers.

These deals leave a lot of unanswered questions. Texas ranchers are concerned about the use of eminent domain to cut a wide swath through their properties in order to build a very-limited-access corridor on which foreign trucks and trains will transport Chinese goods in sealed containers, uninspected until they reach Kansas City. The Texas governor is already talking about more toll roads through Texas.

Indiana legislators are concerned that the Spanish firm could rake in $133 billion over the 75-year life of the Indiana toll road lease for which Indiana received only $3.8 billion. The Indiana Governor is now seeking an I-69 toll road from Evansville to Indianapolis which critics claim will destroy vast Hoosier properties: 5,100 acres of farmland, 1,600 acres of forest, 140 acres of wetlands, 400 homes, 76 businesses, and 135 existing roads. A foreign company could collect tolls for decades into the future.

Orange County, California, was burned by its contract with a French company that bought part of state Route 91 for $130 million. When Orange County found that the fine print in the contract prohibited it from building more roads, it had to buy back the lease for $207.5 million.

The U.S. government blessed this rush to sell off American infrastructure on April 30, 1992, when the first President Bush signed Executive Order 12803 called “Infrastructure Privatization.” It directed federal departments and agencies to encourage state and local governments to “privatize infrastructure assets.” Infrastructure assets were defined to include “roads, tunnels, bridges, electricity supply facilities, mass transit, rail transportation, airports, ports, waterways, water supply facilities, recycling and wastewater treatment facilities, solid waste disposal facilities, housing, schools, prisons, and hospitals.”

Bush’s order didn’t put any restrictions on who the purchasers could or should be, American or not, or friend or foe. The second President Bush is now acquiescing in European demands to open up U.S. airlines to foreign ownership.

Is America for sale?

Buchanan’s Challenge to Americans 
What is the United States of America? Is it merely an accident of geography, or a job market for the world, or a multiethnic, multilingual lot of people who agreed to live under a Constitution? Patrick Buchanan believes that America is fundamentally a nation “held together by bonds of history and memory, tradition and custom, language and literature, birth and faith.” Those bonds of brotherhood and ancestry existed before our Constitution was written, and sustained us through wars and economic depressions.

In his newest book, Buchanan challenges us to ponder our national identity, which already existed in the hearts of Americans when the Founding Fathers proclaimed the sovereignty of “we the people.” Because we are now in critical danger of losing our identity, the apt title of his book is State of Emergency.

Buchanan agrees with Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington that the “central issue of our time” is the migration into America of millions of people who come from very different cultures and refuse to adapt to ours. Buchanan calls the unprecedented entry of legal and illegal foreign born during the last ten years a tsunami, unlike any wave ever seen in the history of the world. The melting pot metaphor is a thing of the past. Today we are admitting people who don’t want to be part of the nation called the United States; they want a land that looks like the UN General Assembly. Buchanan’s book will convince you that we are, indeed, in a State of Emergency.