North America Doesn't Exist

About every six months or so, the media provide a fleeting show of North American unity. Whether on the shores of the Mexican Caribbean, the forests of Quebec, or the hurricane-torn streets of New Orleans, the script is pretty much the same. It includes a lot of back-slapping and almost no public information.

These encounters—the trilateral summits—would be imminently forgettable if not for what happens behind the photo ops....

Business leaders and government officials from the United States, Canada, and Mexico have been meeting to expand on the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement since the trinational summit in Waco, Texas in March of 2005. Ostensibly, the premise is that this great continent of three nations must bond to create a safe, free, and prosperous haven in a threatening world.

The only problem is, North America—at least as portrayed in the summits—doesn't exist.

Flunking Geography

There is a North American land mass—a fact confirmed by any one of the 515 million people who at this moment are compelled by gravity to stand, sit or lie upon it. But nobody can even agree on its borders.

To the North, the mass breaks up into a vast expanse of ice, impossible to draw on a map as its boundaries recede due to global warming. This is creating consternation and confusion—and not just among polar bears. For the first time since modern science began recording, the fabled Northwest Passage that connects Asia and Europe via North America is free of ice, causing an international dispute over who controls it.

The confusion is even worse regarding the southern edge of our shared continent.

Children in the United States are taught that the North American continent begins in the North—which is always the "top," passes through a gray area called "Canada," to reach a vibrant, multi-colored zone divided into 50 states that most good students can name. It then begins its decline, gradually petering out below the Rio Grande. If the kids were to ask their parents where the southern limit is, they too would probably just shrug.

Mexican school children, however, will answer immediately that there really is no North America. They are taught that North and South America are a single continent—"America," without the "s." That's why if you say you're "American," they will reply, "But what country are you from?"

Turning to the experts, most geographers have decided that North America extends down through Panama. (To make matters worse, Panama used to be part of South America when it belonged to Colombia, but that's another story). That means that North America encompasses 23 sovereign nations and 16 colonies, or "dependencies" as they are referred to in this not-so-post-colonial era.

So why this brief geography lesson? Because the ongoing geographical debate offers important insights into what's wrong with the North American Free Trade Agreement and the son-of-NAFTA—the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP).

The problems of defining the region begin with geography, but they get way worse when politics, economics, and culture are thrown in.

Commercial Bloc-heads

The "North American Free Trade Agreement" is actually a compound misnomer. The "North America" in NAFTA is an invention of a particular point in history and a particular set of economic and geopolitical motivations.

"Trade" under the agreement has been liberalized but is far from "free." Politically powerful sectors in the United States maintain protections, whether openly in the form of tariffs or covertly as phytosanitary barriers or subsidies. All countries maintain some barriers for strategic sectors and products—often a reasonable practice, especially in the case of developing countries like Mexico.

Finally, the "agreement" did involve the Congress and civil society organizations at the moment of approval in the United States, but in the negotiating stages and certainly in Mexico, civil society was shut out of the process. NAFTA's extension into the SPP was even more non-consensual since it did not involve congressional approval or signed agreements. In Mexico, NAFTA isn't legally an agreement but rather a treaty, giving it a higher juridical stature than in the United States.

But the biggest problem here is the assumed commonality of interests. The most touted rationale for NAFTA is that the United States, Canada, and Mexico must join to form a trade bloc to compete in the global market with other trade blocs. This assumes that the three nations are on the same team. The Security and Prosperity Agreement even formed a "North American Competitiveness Council" made up of Walmart, Chevron, Ford, Suncor, Scotiabank, Mexicana, and other major corporations to represent the team interests.

But when we look at the play on the field, there is very little teamwork involved. In multilateral forums each country plays by its own game plan. In the World Trade Organization, Mexico forms part of the Group of 20 to protest U.S. and Canadian agricultural subsidies. Canada and the United States have faced off on numerous trade conflicts among themselves, many of them—like the softwood lumber case—the subject of drawn-out and bitter negotiations. Mexico has also had disputes with its supposed team mates, including the tuna-dolphin dispute, the entry of Mexican trucks into the United States under the agreed-to terms of NAFTA, and the tomato wars between northern Mexico and Florida.

If the bloc fails to act as a bloc of nations on the international level, its lack of cohesiveness is even more obvious from the point of view of its major corporations. Globalization opens up a world where everyone is out for themselves in search of cost-cutting production, cheaper resources, and closer markets. Corporations based in the United States, Canada, or Mexico have no loyalty whatsoever to building North America as a competitive bloc. An executive of a Hewlett-Packard subsidiary described how the company decided to move operations from the Mexican border to Indonesia. It was a no-brainer, he said, the labor was cheaper and it was closer to the expanding Chinese market. Like a game of Chinese checkers, the company now seeks to leap production from Indonesia directly into China as its next strategic move. NAFTA partner Mexico is left with nothing but unemployment.

Even the most regionally integrated industries, like the auto industries, measure their success not in terms of integration but by how successfully they can break down the production process into ever-cheaper components. This allows them to offshore labor intensive phases to Mexico where labor is cheap, while maintaining sales and research, management, and research and development in the United States. If anything changes in that formula, the whole concept of regional integration would be thrown out the window in search of a different global strategy. Recent negotiations to reduce wages in Mexican auto plants of Ford and General Motors based on the threat to move production to China are good examples of the logic.

Although corporate strategies are global not regional, corporations do have a reason to push the NAFTA-SPP agenda. Corporations that have operations in the three nations have an interest in developing mechanisms to lower all costs and barriers. In this sense they seek to create not a trade bloc to compete against their operations in other countries, but a pilot project for territorial reorganization along the lines of a corporate wish list. In this conception, "North America" is not a block of countries defined by a common geography and purpose, so much as a territory delineated for the optimal use of capital.

This realization explodes the first myth of "regional integration" under NAFTA. Far from a homogeneous process of integration, it promotes a curious blend of integration and fragmentation of territory. Mexico, for example, has been split in two. The North, where irrigation, climate, and topography provide advantages in agriculture and industrialization is more advanced, is tightly integrated into the U.S. economy. U.S. companies selling in U.S. markets now control much of production and Mexican export companies are concentrated in this region.

Southern Mexico remains outside this scheme and always will. Even the World Bank has recognized this in a study called "Why NAFTA did not reach the South." The response is the Plan Puebla-Panama, with a focus on public-sector loans for major infrastructure development, resource extraction, and energy grids. Since the region is too indigenous, too remote, and too rebellious for productive investment, the southern states of Mexico have been shunted off to join Central America as a facilitator region to provide natural resources and serve as a conduit for the North-South movement of goods. The local populations are considered largely extraneous.

Security for Who?

The issue of security is where the myth of a unified North America is most starkly revealed. Security didn't figure into the original NAFTA agenda, although it was implied that greater economic integration would result in harmonization of foreign policy agendas. Sept. 11 and the Bush National Security Doctrine created a strong U.S. security agenda while at the same time creating tensions with the NAFTA partners.

Canadian business sought to avoid another border closure like the one following the World Trade Center attacks and was willing to concede on other issues to assure uninterrupted trade. The government was forced to accept U.S. Homeland Security measures such as a "no-fly" list that bars "suspect individuals," including dissidents, from air travel between the two nations.

The Mexican people, as in all of Latin America, reacted to U.S. unilateralism and the invasion of Iraq with a rise in anti-American sentiment and suspicion. But both National Action Party (PAN) presidents Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon shared much of the Bush agenda and have entered into commitments under the SPP on security issues.

The security plan put forth in the SPP is an extension of the agenda of a nation that is the world's pre-eminent military power, a major target for international terrorist attacks, a proponent of unilateral action and pre-emptive strikes, and an advocate of military over diplomatic responses and U.S. hegemony the guarantee of global governance.

Mexico is a nation that is not a target of international terrorism, has had a foreign policy of neutrality, and whose primary security threat has historically been—the United States. Nonetheless, Mexico has had to accept the failure of the binational immigration reform agenda and cooperate in aspects of the U.S. Homeland Security agenda and other counter-terrorism programs. The latest and most radical project to come out of the SPP security agenda is Plan Mexico, or the Merida Initiative—a regional security plan developed in the context of the SPP that bundles counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism, and border security measures into a new national security program for Mexico led by Washington.

The concept that Canada, the United States, and Mexico should forge a single security agenda as a non-existent continent is absurd and dangerous. Yet this is exactly what the SPP does. It is an agreement built on a convenient myth, a partnership that really consists of two countries subordinated to a superpower that agree to this subordination due to economic dependencies and the interests of corporations that cross borders seeking to maximize profits.

The New Geography

When the North American Free Trade Agreement was conceived, it was not a trinational—much less continental—affair. The negotiations focused on pasting together three separate agreements: the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement—already in effect since 1989, a new U.S.-Mexico agreement and, to a lesser degree, a series of Canada-Mexico rules.

Few people realize that the resulting NAFTA reflects these differences. Critical goods for the United States, such as oil and corn, are traded under completely separate rules with Canada and with Mexico in the context of NAFTA depending on the relative bargaining power.

What has happened in the 14 years since NAFTA has fractured the continent even more. Led by the transnational corporations for whom it was designed, in practical terms NAFTA today covers an expanse of territory that runs roughly from Mexico City in the south, to mid-Canada. Through a growing network of consolidated production chains, trade links, and infrastructure development, this region—with the exception of poverty zones of little interest for capital expansion—has undergone rapid processes of concentration and integration.

Under the "vision" of North America forged under NAFTA and its follow-up, the Security and Prosperity Partnership, the three governments have attempted to convince their people that their fate lies along a common path—a path defined by geography, cemented by shared values, and marked by the assumption that just one road leads to the fulfillment of everyone's goals. But it has become increasingly clear that instead of being a pact between three nations, NAFTA constitutes a roadmap for U.S. regional hegemony.

Not So Fast ...

Right wing organizations like the John Birch Society that have been up in arms over the supposed creation of a North American Union and the construction of NAFTA superhighways, may find comfort in the thesis that North America doesn't—and shouldn't—exist. But just because I argue that each nation must define and defend its public good, doesn't mean I agree that there is a neo-Aztec conspiracy to take over the United States. The greatest threat to every country in the region is the attempt of the Bush administration to impose its failed trade and security agenda at home and abroad, and the supranational powers of transnational corporations.

Should We All Go Home Now?

The question remaining is: if North America doesn't exist, why should Canadians, U.S. citizens, and Mexicans work together to shape the NAFTA and SPP processes?

The trinational networks that have formed to monitor and question both NAFTA and the SPP play a critical role. Although each nation has its own priorities and demands, the networks serve to share information and compare notes on how regional integration affects citizens' interests.

Grassroots organizations from the three countries face common challenges and common threats. The indisputably high levels of trade, investment, immigration, and cultural exchange that exist between our countries mean that we live daily lives that overlap across borders. Maybe it isn't a region or a trading bloc in the terms conceived of under the SPP and the differences between us are many and a source of strength. But we are neighbors—as nations, as communities, and as families.

These organizations, meeting in binational or trinational conferences and to protest at official summits, explode the myth of regional homogeneity while at the same time making common cause. They expose the lie that there is only one path forward by developing alternatives in policy and practice. Precisely on the basis of their different political contexts and geographical, ethnic, and economic diversity, they have the potential to build a crossborder movement for social justice to counteract plans for regional integration designed and implemented exclusively in the upper echelons of business and government.

Fourteen years after implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, a majority of the population in all three countries believes the agreement has had a net negative effect on their nation and it turns out that the North American Free Trade Agreement is a misnomer in every one of its terms—it wasn't an agreement, it isn't free trade, and North America doesn't exist. So now what?

First, stop extending it. The SPP must be thoroughly reviewed and revamped. Most likely this review will lead to construction of different forums for trinational coordination that separate the trade/investment and security areas, balance out the preponderant influence of the United States government, and open up proceedings and representation to the public.

Second, stop copying it. Although NAFTA is the only trade agreement to extend into an SPP, the Free Trade Agreement model enshrined there has become a template for other agreements and, in the case of the United States, pressures to impose security plans tend to follow close behind. The Merida Initiative contains resources for Central American countries to integrate the CAFTA region into the regional security plan.

Finally, analyze and evaluate the SPP—the forces behind it, the decisions it makes that affect us, and the directions it plans for the future. Citizens have the right and the obligation to know about and participate in mapping the future, and when they do it's likely to look far different from the future mapped for us by corporate and government leaders behind the closed doors of the Security and Prosperity Partnership.

Laura Carlsen (lcarlsen(a)ciponline.org) is director of the Americas Policy Program (www.americaspolicy.org) in Mexico City. This piece was part of a talk at the Lessons from NAFTA Conference. Check out the Americas Mexico blog at www.americasmexico.blogspot.com.

SuperCorridor Defeat? Don't Bet On It

The title refers to the I-69/Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) portion of the North American SuperCorridor Coalition (NASCO) project. The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) announced that, for now at least, it nixed this part of the $184 billion scheme calling for:

-- a 4000 mile toll road network of transportation corridors;

-- 10 lanes or 1200 feet wide;

-- two or more trans-Texas corridors being considered; one paralleling I-35 from Laredo through San Antonio, Austin, Dallas/Fort Worth to Gainesville; the other an extension following US 59 from Texarkana through Houston to Laredo or the Rio Grande Valley;

-- others would parallel I-45 from Dallas/FortWorth to Houston and I-10 from El Paso to Orange;

-- they'll accommodate car and truck traffic;

-- rail lines;

-- pipelines and utilities; and

-- communication systems.

It's planned across Texas from Mexico to Oklahoma, would have annexed huge private land tracts, and may later on take much of it anyway. Enough to threaten organizations like the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association (TSCRA), Texas Farm Bureau and other rural interests. Their member property rights are at stake, so they fought it, and for now, prevailed - at least partly, but the matter is far from settled.

On June 10, Executive Director Amadeo Saenz announced that TxDOT "narrowed the (TTC I-69) study area (to) existing highway (routes) whenever possible," and "any area (outside) an existing (one) will not be considered" except for necessary portions. NASCO's Texas highway remains viable. It's just a little less "Super" and for now will use mostly existing state highways and connect them to northern links.

The larger project is far more ambitious. It's to develop an international, integrated, secure superhighway running the length and breath of the continent for profit. It's to militarize and annex it as part of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) scheme - aka "Deep Integration" North American Union. If completed, it will extend nearly everywhere - North, South, East and West along four main cross-border regions:

-- an Atlantic Corridor, including: the Canada-US East Coast; the Champlain-Hudson Corridor; the Appalachian region; and the Gulf of Mexico;

-- a Central Eastern Corridor; an urban one through large cities and industrial areas; another through the Great Plains to the Canadian Prairies;

-- a Central Western Corridor, including the largest Mexican maquiladora concentration; and

-- a Pacific Corridor linking Fairbanks, Alaska to San Diego into Tijuana, Ciudad Obrego and Mazatlan, Mexico.

From north to south, it will extend from Fairbanks to Winnipeg, Manitoba; Edmonton, Alberta; and Windsor, Ontario, Canada through Kansas City, San Antonio and Laredo, Texas into Neuvo Laredo, Monterrey, Guadalajara, and the ports of Manzanillo, Colima and Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico. Other links will connect Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto, Canada to New York, Chicago, Indianapolis, Denver, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Memphis, Dallas, Houston with still more routes to follow - East to West, North to South across Canada, the US and Mexico.

Canada's plan is called CISCOR - the Canadian Intelligent SuperCorridor running west from Vancouver and Prince Rupert to Montreal and Halifax. Its web site explains it as follows: "The Saskatchen-based CISCOR Smart Inland Port Network will serve as the central logistics and coordination hub, creating a Canadian east-west land bridge (connecting) three major North American north-south corridors; North Americas SuperCorridor (NASCO), Canada America Mexico Corridor (CANAMEX) and River of Trade Corridor Coalition (ROTCC).

ROTCC was created in 2004 to facilitate trade across 3300 miles from Laredo, Texas to Detroit and into Canada. Another route along I-45 extends from Houston and the I-10 corridor and rail route from Los Angeles and Long Beach to Dallas/Fort Worth.

Overall, it will be a comprehensive energy and commerce-related transportation artery for trade and strategic resources with DHS and NORTHCOM in charge. They'll monitor and militarize it through a network of high-tech sensors and trackers to secure the continent for profit at the expense of the greater public good the way these schemes always work.

Part of the plan involves a proposed arrangement between NASCO and a company called Savi Networks - a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Hutchison Ports Holdings, a Chinese ports management firm. If instituted, it will generate huge revenues by paying NASCO 25 cents for each of the millions of "revenue-generating intermodal ocean cargo container(s)" using the supercorridor as well as along other north-south routes being planned. The idea is to install an RFID chip network and put them in containers as well for tracking. They'll monitor them from port of entry to final destination and make shippers pay tolls in addition to transportation costs. They'll, in turn, pass on costs to buyers.

Lockheed Martin runs a Global Transport Network (GTN) Command and Control Center for the military that provides electronic tracking. On its web site, Savi Networks says it "was formed to improve the efficiency and security of global trade (through its) SaviTrack system." It "utilizes a reliable network of wireless Automated Identification and Data Collection (AIDC) equipment and (Enterprise Resource Planning - ERP) software to provide shippers, logistics service providers, and terminal operators with precise and actionable information."

For now, the Texas artery will be less ambitious but still part of the grander scheme. For its part, I-69/TTC remains a government-private partnership whereby new roads will charge tolls for maximum revenue generation and make the public to pay the tab for their use.

Besides the scaled back I-69/TTC, another planned project is just as worrisome. It's called the TTC-35 600 mile corridor extension along I-35 from Oklahoma through Dallas/Forth Worth to Laredo to Mexico and possibly the Gulf Coast. A two-tiered environmental study for it began in spring 2004 and remains ongoing.

Tier One engendered sweeping opposition but not enough to stop it. Public hearings were held for input on potential corridor locations and promoted what's called the Preferred Corridor Alternative. Federal Highway Administration approval comes next, after which a Tier Two phase would identify proposed highway alignments and other modes and potential access points. Hearings would follow for further public input and be as likely to generate hostility as did the I-69/TTC project. It slowed SuperCorridor momentum, but in Texas and across the country it's very much alive and ongoing.

Powerful forces back it in spite of considerable opposition in states across the country. In support are organizations like:

-- the Council on Foreign Relation and its influential members; it backed business having "unlimited (cross-border) access in its 2005 report titled "Building a North American Community; its Task Force "applauds the announced 'Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP)' of North America" - aka North American Union and its SuperCorridor project; it also sees a step beyond with "a more ambitious vision of a new community by 2010 (giving) specific recommendations on how to achieve it."

-- the International Mobility & Trade Corridor Project (IMTC); it bills itself as a US - Canadian government and business coalition "promot(ing) improvements to mobility and security for the four border crossings between Whatcom County, Washington and the Lower Mainland of British Columbia" - combined called the Cascade Gateway;

-- the CANAMEX Corridor Coalition for a superhighway linking Mexico City to Edmonton, Alberta; it supports the "seamless and efficient transportation of goods, services, people and information between Canada, Mexico and the US;"

-- the Central North American Trade Corridor Association (CHATCA); it's for a Central North American Trade Corridor fully integrated in the global economy and refers to "5 T's" as "essential:" tourism, technology, trade, transportation and training;

-- the Ports to Plains Trade (PTP) Corridor; it supports a multimodal one from Mexico through the four PTP states of Texas, New Mexico, Colorado and Oklahoma up to Canada and the Pacific Northwest;

-- the Champlain-Hudson Trade Corridor and Gateway Coalition representing trade from Quebec City and Montreal to New York; and

-- the I-95 Corridor Coalition alliance of transportation agencies, toll authorities, and related organizations (including law enforcement) from Canada to Florida in support of transportation managements and operational common interest issues favoring business.

Nothing so far is finalized, but SuperCorrider momentum remains viable. It's slowed in Texas, but very much alive and viable.

In contrast, opposition groups are numerous, vocal, but yet to achieve enough critical mass to matter. They include groups like the "People's Summit" that protested in New Orleans last April against the recent three-presidential secret summit to plot strategy. Also, the conservative Coalition to Block the North American Union condemns a "stealth plan" to erase national borders, merge three nations into one, end the sovereignty of each, build a SuperCorridor, put Washington and the military in charge, allow unlimited immigration, and replace the dollar with the "amero."

Still another is a group of citizen-activist Oklahomans and the organization they formed: Oklahomans for Sovereignty and Free Enterprise. Like similar Texas and other state groups, it's against the SuperCorridor and its proposed I-35 route through their state. It's a conservative group believing that "a capitalist economy can regulate itself in a freely competitive market...with a minimum of governmental intervention and regulation." It opposes government using the law to facilitate a "corporate takeover" of society and fund it with public tax dollars. On board as well is an Oklahoma state senator who says "the NAFTA Superhighway stops here."

He'll need other lawmakers with him and on April 29 failed. Despite vocal opposition, the Oklahoma state legislature authorized the creation of "Smart (inland) Ports" and SuperCorridor system despite earlier having passed a resolution urging Congress "to withdraw from the (SPP - North American Union)" and all activities related to it. Besides Oklahoma, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) lists 21 other states that have passed public-private partnership enabling legislation considered essential for private investment to go forward.

At the federal level, there's also congressional opposition (but not enough to matter) in spite of Rep. Virgil Goode and six co-sponsors introducing House Concurrent Resolution 40 in January 2007. It expressed "the sense of (some but not enough in) Congress that the United States should not engage in (building a NAFTA) Superhighway System or enter into a North American Union with Mexico and Canada."

State legislatures as well are against it (in contrast to others in support) - thus far a dozen or more passing resolutions in 2008 and another 20 in 2007. Well and good but remember Adlai Stevenson's response to an enthusiastic supporter during his first presidential campaign. He thanked the woman and replied: "That's not enough madam. I need a majority."

It's no different for the SuperCorridor and North American Union. They're progressing secretly in spite of activist opposition and a largely unaware public. A recent poll sheds light. It was conducted by the American Policy Center that calls itself "a privately funded, nonprofit, 501 c (4), tax-exempt grassroots action and education foundation dedicated to the promotion of free enterprise and limited government...."

It revealed no widespread public SPP opposition because most people (58% living along the proposed Texas to Minnesota route) don't know about it or enough to matter. However, 95% of respondents with awareness opposed it but unfortunately in answer to biased questions. Their wording apparently conveyed the idea of "private corporations (having) power to enforce trade policy that may adversely affect our national sovereignty and independence."

Market researchers know that questions must be neutral and unbiased to produce reliable results. For example, respondents should have been asked: From what you know about SPP, do you favor or oppose it? A follow-up should then ask "why" to get unguided replies. Other biased questions were also asked and elicited strong opposition to an "amero," NAFTA courts superseding state and federal ones, the Bush administration being allowed to proceed without congressional approval, the US being "harmonized" or merged with Mexico and Canada, and more.

Most important is that public knowledge is sparse. What is known is incomplete, at times inaccurate, and either way plans (so far) are proceeding with or without congressional or public approval.

It means a corporate coup d'etat is advancing, aided and abetted by three governments. They plan to unite and become one, militarize the continent for enforcement, lay ribbons of concrete and rail lines across it, and hand it over to business for profit. That's where things now stand. Imagine where they'll end if a way isn't found to stop them.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen [at] sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to the Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM - 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9383

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com

Seriously, what the hell is wrong with Canada?

Does the public become incensed about the destruction of Canadian sovereignty advocated in the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) that would create a North American Union of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico (the NAU), and the use of a common currency named the Amero? Signed by then Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Texas in March of 2005, followed by further semi-secret meetings in Banff, Alta, in 2006, in Montebello, Quebec in Aug of 2007, and New Orleans in April of 2008. This group discuss and decide policy on water rights in Canada, counter-drug dealings in Mexico, transportation, migration, environment, health, to name only a few subject matters. All this with nil congressional or parliamentary oversight, authorization or discussion in any of the three countries involved.
Hockey Night in Canada

Does this anti-democratic effort to amalgamate Canada, the U.S. and Mexico get much attention from the Canadian electorate? Not at all, most will tell you they never even heard of it. No debate in Parliament, you say? Where do you come up with bullshine like that? Never heard of such cowabunga; you have to be puttin’ me on sir; and why should I give a continental damn in any case. There’s nothing I can do about it.

Do the majority of Canadians care that we form part of an immoral and illegal attack force in Afghanistan and the Middle East, where our erstwhile peacekeepers are fighting to force an energy corridor through that country for the benefit of ‘big oil’. The answer seems to be that the Canadian majority could care less.. Anyway, we have to support our troops, right or wrong, don’t we, and build up an army to help prevent Iran from having the same nuclear power enjoyed by Canada, Israel and the United States. Maybe we should join the U.S. and Israel, who already have the bomb, and consider helping them invade Iran, starting with the delivery of a little pre-emptive nuclear message first, just in case they have the temerity to refuse to sell us their oil in petrodollars or nationalize the industry

Do the majority of the Canadian public give a rat’s ass that the ‘War on Drugs’ and the ‘War on the Noun of Terror’ are both farcical corrupt scams? That 9/11, 2001, was a covert false flag operation conducted by rogue elements of the CIA and the US government, in which the World Trade Center twin towers and Building 7 were demolished by controlled demolition?

The National threat from within

National threat comes from within

President Lincoln, in the early years of his administration, gave this speech which was prompted by a burning in St. Louis by a mob a few weeks before. It shows his concern about a conspiracy that could destroy our nation from within. His speech included the following paragraph.

'At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reaches us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.'

Mitt Romney, in his closing speech, said that our nation is under a threat and that threat is from within. He was probably referring to the plan to form The North American Union by the Bush Administration.

Ron Paul, during one of the early presidential debates said, in response to a query by a caller, that the Council on Foreign Relations is planning a merger of the U.S. with Mexico and Canada.

The above comment confirms that there is a plan being developed for this merger, and members of the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) consisting of government officials and corporate CEO’s from the three countries are currently writing the details to institutionalize the Security and Prosperity Partnership, a document previously signed by leaders of the three nations on March 23, 2005. All of this without oversight by the congress.

This needs to be opposed. For more information on this, use the Internet by searching and downloading: Council on Foreign Relations, Security and Prosperity Partnership, North American Community, North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and NACC.

What is being written by the NACC is not known but some details have been reported:

The borders between the US, Mexico and Canada will be open with no inspections by 2010. The court system will have no appeal. Decisions of the jury and/or judges will be final. Innocent until proven guilty will be scrapped.

The dollar will be replaced by the 'amero' following the example in Europe when their money was replaced by the euro. What assurance do you have when your exchange is made at the bank that you will have the same purchasing power? The Germans received one euro for every 1.96 marks, having the effect of drastically increased prices.

If you want to be a part of the solution, there are several things you can do. (1) Ask your congressman to support H. Con. Res. 22 to block the NAU by repealing NAFTA, (2) support H. Con. Res. 40 to stop The North American Union, (3) order materials about the betrayal of the NAU and then tell others. I am convinced this can be defeated by an overwhelming opposition. We owe it to ourselves and our Founding Fathers to save our Nation.

Earl W. Hurty

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NAU-NAFTA Superhighway agenda: Manitoba Premier Gary Doer exposes NDP leader Jack Layton's campaign of mass-deception

by Bill Lavigne

	NDP Premier Gary Doer [Left] and NDP leader Jack Layton [Right] are demonstrating themselves to be politically invasive “fifth column” collaborators of a U.S. military expansionist agenda into Canada.

The federal NDP advertises on its website that it is against the Security and Prosperity Partnership North American Union (SPP-NAU) agenda. However, it appears that the NDP merely advertises such opposition to placate and deceive its activist supporters, while Mr. Layton and his political party elite colleagues substantively capitulate.

Indeed, in spite of the alleged opposition of the NDP to the SPP-NAU agenda, Manitoba's NDP Premier Gary Doer, in his government's Throne Speech 20 November 2007, endorsed the so-called "Mid Continental Corridor" North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Superhighway.

While Mr. Harper professes to stand for "integrity in government", the Stephen Harper government has officially denied the existence of any such "NAFTA Superhighway" project, in the face of ample proof that it does exist.

Rest assured, Mr. Doer as an NDP Premier, within the constitutional modus operandi of the NDP, would not have provided that SPP-related endorsement, without having consultation and agreement with Jack Layton, his federal party leader. That type of high level "executive-political" non-consultation is not how the NDP works.

Victor Fletcher, the editor of Toronto Street News, regales us with a story about NDP leader Jack Layton: "I met Jack Layton two Saturdays ago and asked him why the NDP was supporting the NAFTA highway in the NDP Manitoba Throne Speech. He said "Manitoba needs the Churchill jobs." I agreed but further asked: "Why then, do they have to issue Mexican drivers licenses for fall of 2008?" He then RAN AWAY!"

"He took off with his aide and never answered after taking a copy of Toronto Street News which a headline I pointed to saying: “Harper's Police State Union With Bush Moving Fast! Manitoba Throne Speech Announces U.S. Union!"

This is not the action of someone who is substantively against the SPP-NAU agenda. Mr. Layton as a "Quisling"-like collaborator, along with Mr. Dion and the Bloc Quebecois leader have indeed turned Opposition Party politics in Canada into facile political theatre aimed at deceiving Canadians.

The Norwegian Prime Minister Vidkun Quisling co-operated with Adolf Hitler to deliver that country to the Nazis; and these Canadians are similarly cooperating to deliver Canada to Neo-Nazi military expansionist interests. Indeed, both former German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler, and the U.S. Bush administration embrace disturbingly similar pre-emptive military strike foreign policy and national security legitimated doctrines.

The NDP grassroots in particular, are being lulled into a stupor that 'Jack' is out fighting against the SPP, while his operatives like Gary Doer betray the apparent true allegiances of NDP political party elites.

Victor Fletcher also states: "Jack Layton is an old customer of mine from the late 1970's when he ran for municipal politics and I ran a union typesetting company designing election literature and arranging union printing for customers." Therefore, Mr. Fletcher provides his comments as someone who has been very supportive of Mr. Layton and the NDP.

Mr. Fletcher as elaborates that: "I was a supporter of his [Mr. Layton] over the years and he did help us with the Toronto Street News sold by the homeless. So I have known Jack for many years and he was the only politician who ever wrote a book about the homeless situation."

"I was deeply saddened when he confirmed the NDP government of Doer and their Throne Speech also confirmed the NAFTA highway was coming from Mexico to deliver exploited Mexican labour to Canada as well as Chinese goods."

The NAU-NAFTA Superhighway is an apparent scheme designed to faciliate the bringing into Manitoba (and other parts of Canada) exploited Mexican slave labour; and bringing out of Canadian resources. Map reference: LINK

Indeed, the so-called NAFTA Superhighway, is an agenda of Big Business interests, that have sought to use the secretive arrangement of the SPP-NAU created by elites, to import slave labour from Mexico and goods created from the slave labour of Communist China.

In the view of Big Business NAFTA Superhighway backers, why should corporations move to Mexico and build new factories to employ cheap Mexican labour, when you can bring cheap Mexican labour into the U.S. and Canada through a NAFTA Superhighway corridor? Imagine cheap Mexican and other exploited labour being brought to work in existing manufacturing plants into Canadian cities like Winnipeg, Vancouver, Hamilton, and Toronto, where these Mexicans (and other exploited labour) would be paid the same wage as if they were still in Mexico, Communist China, India or a "Third World" country.

An integral part of the NAU agenda is to replace existing Canadian and U.S. immigration law, with edicts that have been secretly created by Big Business interests, and that can move cheap labour, like livestock, around North America, along a elite constructed Continental Highway and Inland Port System.

Drivers Licenses in the context of the NAFTA Superhighway Agenda

	NAFTA map corridor.

The Security and Prosperity Partnership hologram logo in the shape of the North American Continent has began to appear on new driver's licenses being issued in the State of North Carolina.

The issuing of such licenses in North America is apparently being executed under the terms of the Driver's License Agreement (DLA), launched under the auspices American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA).

The National Conferences of State Legislatures in the United States documents in a report issued in March 2005 that "the new DLA was developed largely without input from state elected officials." LINK. The DLA is the institutional creature of an anti-democratic and exploitative agenda.

The DLA indeed envisions the creation of one common license across North America inclusive of Mexico, in relation to the broad SPP-NAU agenda.

Indeed, the apparent NAU agenda of the DLA defines "jurisdiction" to, “allow participation by a territory or province of Canada and by any state of the Republic of Mexico or the Federal District of Mexico.” LINK.

Under the pretext of new national security features, in defence against the "terrorists", the DLA operatives of the SPP are seeking to convince Canadians and Americans of the need to accept new licenses. However, that is an apparent mass-deception. The new licenses appear to be actually about furthering a calculated malevolent continental corporate agenda.

William Gheen, who heads the Raleigh, N.C.-based Americans for Legal Immigration political action committee, says the new license is “‘North American Union' ready.”

The online publication New Max reported on 6 September 2007 that, "The hologram is a foil-based security patch that carries design features both visible and invisible to the human eye, including a variety of codes, numbers, and 3-D and fluorescent images."

The apparent agenda of these licenses is to enable exploited Mexican labour who are issued North American licenses, to be able to freely drive into U.S. and Canadian industrial centres, as a parallel pool of cheap labour, that can be paid by employers as if they were still in Mexico. Mexicans would be presumably housed in prison like labour camps, as an industrial reserve army for the rich corporate elites that seek to replace democracy in Canada and the United States with their own "NAU continental authority".

The Industrial interests that back that NAFTA Superhighway are anti-union, and seek the NAFTA Superhighway as a means to take labour rights back to an elite idealized time during the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, when workers lived in abject poverty, at the sufferance of their employers.

Indeed, the whole apparent goal of the U.S. Bush administration's interest in amnesty for illegal Mexican immigrants in the United States was not out of compassion or a conviction for human rights. Rather, the U.S. Bush administration appears to have simply sought to enable corporations to be able to more openly hire exploited Mexican workers, without union support, on wages that are below the poverty line.

NAFTA Superhighway promises masses job losses for Canadians and Americans, alongside growing urban poverty

The NAFTA Superhighway promises to create massive new layoffs of higher paid Canadian workers in Canada, and American workers in the U.S., and the overall spread of worsening urban poverty and crime, as a result of these massive lay-offs, and the influx of exploited migrant labour.

The NAFTA Superhighway agenda is being hidden away from Canadians, (as well as Americans) because less than 1% of Canadians and Americans (i.e. elite corporate shareholders and owners of capital) is expected to commercially benefit from it.

It is apparent that the NAFTA Superhighway that in turn is linked to the DLA architects "one license under one continent" mantra , that in turn is linked to the overall SPP-NAU agenda, is part of the New World Order (NWO) agenda, that seeks to "unify" the world under a neo-fascist elite. Through new licenses and other such sophisticated biometric and other such "security measures", in the name of "fighting terrorism", elites seek to rule our planet Earth via totalitarian control.

The NWO envisions a planet Earth, where people cannot rely on local democratic control to defend their human rights.

The NAFTA Superhighway or Mid-Continental Corridor in reference to Mr. Layton's comments, is not designed to provide good paying jobs to the people of Churchill, or other parts of Canada. Rather, the NAFTA Superhighway is intended to simplify continental land routes, and accordingly, ease the ability of Mexicans, and other exploited labour to be transported into Churchill, and other parts of Canada, at the will of elites, within a neo-fascistic NAU.

As Mr. Fletcher expresses: "I hadn't expected the NDP of all parties to be the ones to let the cat out of the bag for all Canadians to see, after he had previously indicated the NDP would fight the union of Canada, U.S. and Mexico."

"We all know that the CPR bought a railway south of the Great Lakes which has a spur line down to Kansas City where the NAFTA Superhighway will allow Mexican truck drivers to reach quickly," adds Mr. Fletcher

"The CNR is doing similar work on Canada's west coast reaching south into Washington State."

"Yes, I button-holed him at the Bali demonstration at Yonge and Dundas. His aide took the current issue of the paper calling Harper a traitor for lying about the NAFTA highway and NAU. But they left me standing there when I asked the question," further says Mr. Fletcher.

The NAFTA Superhighway is being built around a broader scheme to transfer Canada's control of its own resources, to U.S. and Canadian-based Big Business interests, in the context of the neo-fascistic NAU agenda.

The U.S. political-military-industrial complex having depleted America's resources through greed-driven exploitation, seeks to create a NAFTA Superhighway specifically, and the NAU. in general, in order to facilitate the siphoning and depletion of our resources, here in Canada.

Canadians must either rally to cancel NAFTA that spawned the SPP-NAU agenda, or face a future in which they will have little more rights that sheep in a farm, with a quality-of-life that may not be that much better.

THE NORTH AMERICAN UNION AND THE LARGER PLAN

By Dennis L. Cuddy, Ph.D.
November 17, 2007
NewsWithViews.com

In order to bring about a North American Union (NAU), the public first has to be conditioned to think of themselves as North Americans. In that regard, Thomas Donohue (president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) on June 16, 2006 remarked that "for CEOs, North America is already a single market, and business decisions are no longer made with a Mexico strategy---or a Canada strategy---but, rather, with a North American strategy....I think it's pretty clear now that it no longer makes sense to talk about U.S. competitiveness and Mexican competitiveness---or, for that matter, about the competitiveness of Canada. We are all in this together---we, as North Americans."

Also relevant to this process is the publication of NORTH AMERICAN INTEGRATION MONITOR since 2002 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Very soon, CSIS also will publish (and has agreed to send me) their final document on their "North American Future 2025 Project." The Project has "an emphasis on regional integration," and the year 2025 A.D. was selected "on the basis of the data presently available on overall global projections." Seven closed-door roundtable sessions have been looking at the methodology of global and North American projections, as well as labor mobility, energy, the environment, security, competitiveness, and border infrastructure and logistics.

Zbigniew Brzezinski has been a CSIS counselor, and at Mikhail Gorbachev's first State of the World Forum in 1995, Brzezinski revealed: "We cannot leap into world government through one quick step....The precondition for eventual and genuine globalization is progressive regionalization because by that we move toward larger, more stable, more cooperative units." This is why the CSIS Project has "an emphasis on regional integration." (Brzezinski also described the regions that would be formed, that Israel and the Palestinians would be part of a Middle Eastern region, how Communist China would be brought into an Asian region, and that Iran would be part of a Central Asian region which would have important oil and gas pipelines constructed.)

At this point, it is worth remembering that in Stalin's January 1913 address in Vienna, he advocated national loyalties becoming subservient to regions. And 3 years later, Lenin in 1916 proclaimed: "The aim of socialism is not only to abolish the present division of mankind into smaller states and all-national isolation, not only to bring the nations closer to each other, but also to merge them."

You may recall that in Brzezinski's BETWEEN TWO AGES (1970), he praised Marxism, and he claimed that "the nation-state is gradually yielding its sovereignty." One aspect of American sovereignty that is being yielded is ownership of American companies by Americans. In the first 9 months of 2007, 69 companies in New England alone have been sold to foreign buyers. Nationally, the French company Alcatel bought Lucent Technologies in the U.S. last year, and in September 2007 announced it will be cutting thousands of jobs.

Relevant to this, Alan Tonelson (research fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council) said foreign companies are "acquiring control over the most dynamic pieces of the American economy, and they're acquiring control over America's future." Also relevant to this was the assessment by Donald Klepper-Smith (chief economist at DataCore Partners) regarding decisions made overseas and how they would effect American workers. He opined: "It raises some red flags and some real questions about our independence."

Part of the conditioning process to cause Americans to accept a NAU is the role of past and present government officials explaining the alleged economic benefits of such a union. For example, Harry Roegner in a letter titled "An economic union would be beneficial" in THE GREENVILLE (South Carolina) SUN (October 15, 2007) pointed out the large oil reserves of both Canada and Mexico that would be useful to the U.S., as well as Mexico's excess manpower who, as immigrants, would help support U.S. and Canadian economic growth. Roegner was an adviser on foreign trade issues to the U.S. Department of Commerce from 1984 to 1994, and in his letter said: "A North American economic union would provide the free flow of capital and labor across national borders needed to address many of the (aforementioned) imbalances."

Often regional economic integration into some type of union is argued on the basis of free trade. However, John Fonte (who had an office next to mine at the U.S. Department of Education) of the Hudson Institute has explained that the concept of regional economic arrangements or trading blocs actually is contrary to free trade to an extent. For example, in a NAU, there would be trading arrangements among the 3 nations which would limit the ability of the U.S. to trade freely with nations outside the NAU trading bloc.

But hasn't President Bush recently said all this talk about a NAU is nonsense? On August 21, 2007 at the concluding press conference for the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) in Montebello, Quebec, Fox News reporter Bret Baier asked if the SPP is a prelude to a NAU similar to the European Union (EU), and if there are plans to build some kind of superhighway connecting all 3 countries. President Bush replied: "If you've been in politics as long as I have, you get used to that kind of technique where you lay out a conspiracy and then force people to try to prove it doesn't exist."

The truth, of course, is that the U.S., Canada and Mexico are being connected by 4 Trade Corridors. On November 20, 2007, Lt. Governor John Harvard of Manitoba delivered a "Speech From The Throne," in which he revealed: "Manitoba has been working with the Canadian government and state governments in the U.S. to protect and enhance our access to key trade markets. In response to U.S. border and security measures, Manitoba will begin offering an enhanced driver's license as an affordable and secure form of identification for travelers. The new license will be available in the Fall of 2008. Manitoba is also taking a major role in the development of a Mid-Continent Trade Corridor, connecting our northern Port of Churchill with trade markets throughout the central United States and Mexico. To advance the concept, an alliance has been built with business leaders and state and city governments spanning the entire length of the Corridor. When fully developed, the trade route will incorporate an 'in-land port' in Winnipeg with pre-clearance for international shipping."

The SPP is also an important part of the power elite's plan for a techno-feudal fascist world government because it is a "partnership." For years, the American people and their leaders have been conditioned to accept educational and other partnerships as solutions to their problems. For example, city governments strapped for funds are approached by corporations or their related private foundations with plans and funds to improve education, which the city leaders are only too glad to accept. This conditions the people eventually to accept government/corporate rule. This is a form of Socialism known as fascism, and it will be the type of world government the power elite plans ultimately to bring about and control. In this government, the power elite will control politicians who will become government leaders who will promulgate laws, rules and regulations favorable to certain transnational corporations (controlled by the power elite) and unfavorable to any possible competition to those select corporations.

So why did President Bush ridicule Bret Baier's question, especially since there are already 47 Mexican Consulates across the U.S.? Lou Dobbs in his CNN commentary "Beware the Lame Duck" (October 17, 2007) wrote: "Although many conservatives refuse to accept the reality, George W. Bush is a one-world neo-liberal who drove budget and trade deficits to record heights....President Bush has pressed hard for the Security and Prosperity Partnership, the first step toward a North American Union that will threaten our sovereignty. The administration has permitted American businesses to hire illegal aliens, encouraged the invasion of 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens and has given Mexico and corporate America dominion over our borders and our immigration policy....The assault on our national sovereignty continues....The president is urging the Senate to act favorably on our accession to the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea....The treaty will submit the United States to international tribunals largely adverse to our interests, and dispute resolution mechanisms are stacked against the United States....The treaty would undermine our national sovereignty and act as a back door for global environmental activists to direct U.S. policy." Fortunately, in Congress, House Concurrent Resolution 40 states: "Expressing the sense of Congress that the United States should not engage in the construction of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Superhighway System or enter into a North American Union with Mexico and Canada."

If I could have followed up Bret Baier's question with one of my own, here's what I would have asked: "So, President Bush, will the massive 10-lane toll road TransTexas Corridor funded by Cintra of Spain and to be built by Zachry Construction of Texas come to a screeching halt at Oklahoma's border?" What are all the vehicles supposed to do---merge all of a sudden into a small road? I don't think so ! And by the way, Cintra is legally represented in Texas by leading Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani's law firm Bracewell & Giuliani, which also just happens to have an office in Dubai (remember Dubai Ports was about to take over operation of a number of America's largest ports) ! Perhaps before President Bush was too critical of people warning about a NAU, he should have read what Mexico's President Vicente Fox said May 16, 2002 at Club 21 in Madrid: "Eventually, our long-range objective is to establish with the United States, but also with Canada, our other regional partner, an ensemble of connections and institutions similar to those created by the European Union" (or as Gorbachev refers to the EU, the "European Soviet").

I would also have asked President Bush at the press conference why on September 6, 2007 at 9pm did he open all U.S. highways to Mexican trucks? Earlier in the day, U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio said President Bush was "_ _ _ _ bent" on getting Mexican trucks in the U.S. by stealth. Currently, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration website lists 10 Mexican carriers that are approved to transport goods throughout the U.S., and nearly 40 more Mexican carriers will soon join them on the list.

Will all Mexican truck drivers be stopped at the border to see if they can read road signs in English, if they have criminal backgrounds, and how long they already have been driving that day (U.S. law prohibits more than 10 consecutive hours)? I doubt it, since no more than 2% of Mexican trucks entering the U.S. today are inspected ! Many of these trucks will be a danger to Americans' safety, and could be used for smuggling drugs, illegal aliens, and terrorists into the U.S.

Many countries deliberately release their criminal elements into the U.S., often coming across the Mexican border. And if the criminals are caught, our federal government releases them into American society if their own countries refuse to take them back. Our government knows how to solve this problem (e.g., stop issuing visas to people from those countries), but has refused to take such action most of the time. Ask yourself why our government would release murderers, rapists, arsonists, and other criminals into our society to commit violent crimes against us. Think about it !

Returning to Bret Baier's question to President Bush about the SPP being a prelude to a NAU similar to the EU, what would we get if we became like the EU, which has certain characteristics of fascism? Mrs. Kitty Werthmann (a survivor of Hitler's reign and Soviet rule afterward) recently returned to Europe and interviewed many senior citizens. They informed her they were told conversion to the Euro would bring prosperity via free trade, lower prices for goods, etc. In reality, though, their money was devalued greatly, and they're now living on welfare and food stamps. Unemployment in Europe is high while guest workers are brought in, and the people are angry.

In terms of what is planned for Americans relevant to the EU and the Euro, Vicente Fox on CNN's "Larry King Live" show October 8, 2007 explained that what he and President Bush agreed to "is a trade union for all the Americas," and he suggested that eventually there would be a regional currency. He made similar comments on the "Daily Show" the same day. Earlier in 2007, Bolivian President Evo Morales proposed a single currency for all South American nations.

Concerning North American nations, in June 1991, Dallas Federal Reserve publication no. 9115, "Free Trade and the Peso" by Darryl McLeod and John Welch, analyzed the potential for a single North American currency. In 1999, former Canadian parliament member Herbert Grubel published "The Case for the Amero: The Economics and Politics of a North American Union," giving 2010 as the possible date for introducing the "amero" as the new North American currency. And in the Atlanta Federal Reserve's ECONOMIC REVIEW (4th quarter, 2000), Michael Chriszt (director of the Reserve's Latin America Research Group) wrote "Perspectives on a Potential North American Monetary Union" in which one reads that "the idea of a single currency for NAFTA is on the table." In July 2000, Vicente Fox had already proposed a North American common market with a continental monetary policy.

More recently, David Dodge, Governor of the Bank of Canada, in May 2007 said that a common currency with the U.S. is definitely possible. What will happen is the power elite will cause the dollar to be devalued to the point where Americans reluctantly will accept the amero. As Bob Chapman in his December 2006 newsletter, INTERNATIONAL FORECASTER, said: "(The amero) will be presented to the American public as the administration's solution for dollar recovery."

On June 14, 2007 BankIntroductions.com told their clients that in the next 10-20 years, as the global economy moves toward regional trading blocs, the amero or "North American Monetary Unit" (NAMU) will be introduced. The power elite's plan is to form regional unions with their own currencies and then link them into a world government with one global currency. Relevant to this, Reuters reporter Emmanuel Jarry on October 23, 2007 wrote "Sarkozy (French President) Calls for Mediterranean Union Launch in 2008." And the African Union's African Central Bank plans to mint the "Gold Mandela" as a single African currency by 2010 (the date the NAU is supposed to form).

If you look at the top of the website for the Single Global Currency Association (SGCA), there is a quote by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, saying: "A global economy requires a global currency." The SGCA "is dedicated to the goal of implementing a single global currency by 2025...managed by a single international central bank." I have already indicated that on the cover of THE ECONOMIST (June 9, 1988) is a picture of "The Phoenix," a global currency suggested for implementation in 2018.

Whatever the date of the global currency's introduction, it will be advertised as facilitating world trade, which the power elite will control. This will be like in the days of Solomon when he fortified Gezer, Hazor and Megiddo (the Har, or Mount, of Megiddo would be called Armageddon). Through this fortification, he controlled the Via Maris and world trade, thereby controlling the world of his day. The power elite today plans to do likewise, but in a Biblical sense their plan will lead to the Battle of Armageddon.

© 2007 Dennis Cuddy - All Rights Reserved

Dept of Justice Against Net Neutrality

Within the last few days, he Department of Justice has recommended that the FCC come out against Net Neutrality, in favor of allowing the owners of infrastructure to charge people who write online to allow content to pass to readers and viewers.

The move could potentially give a handful of companies more control over Net-based information than they currently have over radio and television programming.

DOJ Slams Net Neutrality (Article in PC Mag Online).

5 Day Martial Law Exercise

ntel Strike | September 7, 2007
Lee Rogers

The United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) has just announced plans for an anti-terrorism exercise called Vigilant Shield 08 . The exercise which is slated to run from October 15th to October 20th is described as a way to prepare, prevent and respond to any number of national crises. The exercise is simply a test case scenario for the implementation of martial law. Although the description of the exercise is disturbing, USNORTHCOM also announced that they are more prepared for a natural disaster and a terrorist attack after they used their response to Hurricane Katrina as a test laboratory. During Hurricane Katrina, authorities violated the constitutional rights of citizens by stealing people?s firearms and even relocating people against their will. These announcements are incredibly disturbing on a number of levels as the nature of Vigilant Shield 08 and the admission that Hurricane Katrina was used as a test laboratory shows that the government is actively preparing the military and government institutions for martial law.

Below is the full press release from USNORTHCOM describing Vigilant Shield 08. Also check out the Vigilant Shield 08 fact sheet by clicking here .

North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command along with U.S. Pacific Command, the Department of Homeland Security as well as local, state and other federal responders will exercise their response abilities against a variety of potential threats during Exercise Vigilant Shield ?08, a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff-designated, North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM)-sponsored, and U.S. Joint Forces Command-supported Department of Defense exercise for homeland defense and defense support of civil authorities missions.

VS-08 will be conducted concurrent with Top Officials 4 (TOPOFF 4), the nation?s premier exercise of terrorism preparedness sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security, and several other linked exercises as part of the National Level Exercise 1-08. These linked exercises will take place Ocober 15-20 and are being conducted throughout the United States and in conjunction with several partner nations including Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, as well as the Territory of Guam.

VS-08 and National Level Exercise 1-08 will provide local, state, tribal, interagency, Department of Defense, and non-governmental organizations and agencies involved in homeland security and homeland defense the opportunity to participate in a full range of exercise scenarios that will better prepare participants to prevent and respond to national crises. The participating organizations will conduct a multi-layered, civilian-led response to a national crisis.

USNORTHCOM?s primary exercise venues for VS-08 include locations in Oregon, Arizona and a cooperative venue with USPACOM in the Territory of Guam. NORAD?s aerospace detection and defense events will take place across all the exercise venues, to exercise the ability to mobilize resources for aerospace defense, aerospace control, maritime warning, and coordination of air operations in a disaster area.

This exercise is clearly a way to prepare government to respond to a national crisis with martial law. This announcement also follows a number of other news stories that indicate the government is becoming more actively prepared for the implementation of martial law.

These stories include the following:

George W. Bush issuing a presidential directive declaring that he is a dictator during the case of a national emergency be it a natural disaster, a terror attack or any number of crises.

KSLA reporting that members of clergy will be used to convince people to submit to government in the case of declare martial law.

The U.S. Department of Treasury conducting a disaster drill to prepare for a potential economic crisis.

In addition to the announcement of Vigilant Shield 08, USNORTHCOM also announced that they have been using the lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina to better respond to crises. The response to Hurricane Katrina was essentially used as a test laboratory to implement martial law in a city. People were forced to relocate against their will and authorities stole people?s firearms in the name of safety despite these actions being entirely unconstitutional.

From USNORTHCOM :

?Hurricane Katrina?s impact on this country was unprecedented. There are still many of our fellow Americans whose lives still haven?t returned to normal,? said Gen. Gene Renuart, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and USNORTHCOM. ?It will take many years for the Gulf Coast to fully recover.

?The United States military was deeply involved in the response to the hurricane and subsequent flooding,? Renuart said. ?While our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines helped thousands of people, we also learned many lessons.?

According to Renuart, USNORTHCOM has been using the lessons learned from Katrina to modify plans to respond to both natural disasters and potential terrorist actions.

Northern Command also admits in the same article that they have pre-scripted mission assignments coordinated with FEMA to implement martial law under the pretext of disaster response.

From USNORTHCOM :

USNORTHCOM is ready to help federal, state and local officials to be prepared for a major hurricane and to be successful at conducting response operations, if necessary and requested by the primary responding agency. Some of the ways these objectives are being achieved are:

Through State Engagement programs, USNORTHCOM provides planning support to help states prepare for emergencies.

USNORTHCOM and its subordinates, as well as local, state and federal partners conduct major disaster exercises to refine processes and apply lessons learned.

Working with FEMA, USNORTHCOM has prepared pre-scripted mission assignments to accelerate the disaster response process.

USNORTHCOM conducted a major exercise with the National Guard in May to refine the interface between the National Guard and DoD.

There is no question that Vigilant Shield 08 is either government preparation for the implementation of martial law or a way for criminal elements within the government to distract emergency responders in order to conduct a false flag terror attack as a pretext to actually implement martial law and engage in foreign war. On September 11th, 2001 there were drills run by NORAD including Vigilant Guardian which served as a way to ensure that there was no adequate military response to the hi-jacked planes. A similar scenario unfolding with Vigilant Shield is not out of the question.

Sicko

Once again, Michael Moore takes on big game. Sicko, his latest, has humor and poignancy as well as relevancy and Message.

Here in Orange County, California, several large theater chains refused to air Moore's previous works Bowling for Columbine and Farenheit 911, but Edwards has now picked it up.

Meanwhile, Moore's site Sickotix, at http://www.sickotix.com/ has a theater locator and options to buy.