Posted on 05/19/2006 6:56:03 AM PDT by Dark Skies
President Bush is pursuing a globalist agenda to create a North American Union, effectively erasing our borders with both Mexico and Canada. This was the hidden agenda behind the Bush administration's true open borders policy.
Secretly, the Bush administration is pursuing a policy to expand NAFTA to include Canada, setting the stage for North American Union designed to encompass the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. What the Bush administration truly wants is the free, unimpeded movement of people across open borders with Mexico and Canada.
President Bush intends to abrogate U.S. sovereignty to the North American Union, a new economic and political entity which the President is quietly forming, much as the European Union has formed.
The blueprint President Bush is following was laid out in a 2005 report entitled "Building a North American Community" published by the left-of-center Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The CFR report connects the dots between the Bush administration's actual policy on illegal immigration and the drive to create the North American Union:
At their meeting in Waco, Texas, at the end of March 2005, U.S. President George W. Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox, and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin committed their governments to a path of cooperation and joint action. We welcome this important development and offer this report to add urgency and specific recommendations to strengthen their efforts.
What is the plan? Simple, erase the borders. The plan is contained in a "Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America" little noticed when President Bush and President Fox created it in March 2005:
In March 2005, the leaders of Canada, Mexico, and the United States adopted a Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), establishing ministerial-level working groups to address key security and economic issues facing North America and setting a short deadline for reporting progress back to their governments. President Bush described the significance of the SPP as putting forward a common commitment "to markets and democracy, freedom and trade, and mutual prosperity and security." The policy framework articulated by the three leaders is a significant commitment that will benefit from broad discussion and advice. The Task Force is pleased to provide specific advice on how the partnership can be pursued and realized.
To that end, the Task Force proposes the creation by 2010 of a North American community to enhance security, prosperity, and opportunity. We propose a community based on the principle affirmed in the March 2005 Joint Statement of the three leaders that "our security and prosperity are mutually dependent and complementary." Its boundaries will be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter within which the movement of people, products, and capital will be legal, orderly and safe. Its goal will be to guarantee a free, secure, just, and prosperous North America.
The perspective of the CFR report allows us to see President Bush's speech to the nation as nothing more than public relations posturing and window dressing. No wonder President Vincente Fox called President Bush in a panic after the speech. How could the President go back on his word to Mexico by actually securing our border? Not to worry, President Bush reassured President Fox. The National Guard on the border were only temporary, meant to last only as long until the public forgets about the issue, as has always been the case in the past.
The North American Union plan, which Vincente Fox has every reason to presume President Bush is still following, calls for the only border to be around the North American Union -- not between any of these countries. Or, as the CFR report stated:
The three governments should commit themselves to the long-term goal of dramatically diminishing the need for the current intensity of the governments’ physical control of cross-border traffic, travel, and trade within North America. A long-term goal for a North American border action plan should be joint screening of travelers from third countries at their first point of entry into North America and the elimination of most controls over the temporary movement of these travelers within North America.
Discovering connections like this between the CFR recommendations and Bush administration policy gives credence to the argument that President Bush favors amnesty and open borders, as he originally said. Moreover, President Bush most likely continues to consider groups such as the Minuteman Project to be "vigilantes," as he has also said in response to a reporter's question during the March 2005 meeting with President Fox.
Why doesn’t President Bush just tell the truth? His secret agenda is to dissolve the United States of America into the North American Union. The administration has no intent to secure the border, or to enforce rigorously existing immigration laws. Securing our border with Mexico is evidently one of the jobs President Bush just won't do. If a fence is going to be built on our border with Mexico, evidently the Minuteman Project is going to have to build the fence themselves. Will President Bush protect America's sovereignty, or is this too a job the Minuteman Project will have to do for him?
Oops! Dutiable imports in Hong Kong!
HKSAR is a free port. There is no tariff on general imports. However, there is duty on liquors, tobacco, hydrocarbon oil and methyl alcohol. This is prepaid by the seller and included in the price, so it often goes unnoticed. Duties on these goods raise revenue for the general administration and for development projects, while at the same time help to keep general tax levels low.
The Customs and Excise Department is responsible for enforcing the law for collection of duties and protection of revenue.
For tobacco, hydrocarbon oil and methyl alcohol, duties are charged at specific rates per unit quantity. For liquors, duty is assessed at different percentages of their values on the basis of three different categories defined broadly according to alcoholic strength. The duty rates prescribed in the Schedule to the Dutiable Commodities Ordinance (Cap. 109) are extracted as below :
texastoo: Daon is not an American company. So we will be putting American ID's in a foreign company. Anyway, Tom Ridge, is on the board of this company so it must be hunky-dory. Sarc.
From the article mentioned in #488:
"This is going to allow a foreign firm to collect and maintain the personal records of 750,000 American workers," he said. "That does not seem right."
Because the organization doesn't. You've accepted a lie. And based on the rest of your post, you've apparently accepted many lies. Support them with facts if you can.
I have accepted no lies. I have gone to their website and spent about 2 days reading the information posted there.
I came away with the distinct impression that what they stand for is exactly what I stated before.
Go read the info for wourself, or better yet provide me with the information that disputes what I claimed.
Because anti-free traders such as the Canadian socialists Nicmarlo mentioned are able put immense pressure on these trade agreements. Trade is just like the tax system in that, when they're done right, simplicity and transparency go hand in hand in both... Free trade depends on competition, not harmonization, and its only the harmonization aspects of NAFTA that one should worry about from the standpoint of sovereignty. Look at the history of anti-trade movements. Guys like Nader, the Know-Nothings, Hugo Chavez and the rest are able to arouse enormous resentment and passion.
The reason trade agreements are so tough to put through in a form that isn't overly complex is that every special interest wants some exemption that that favors themselves: car makers want tariffs on cars but not on steel. Combined with the lack of support for free trade from anti free market "right" wing types, governments sometimes try to appeal to the Left--- "hey, look, we're really just trying to keep those nasty corporations from benefitting from slave wages in Mexico" by introducing harmonization elements in trade agreements.
The tax cuts President Bush pushed through aren't perfect, either. But the perfect can't be the enemy of the good. The answer to a complicated tax cut bill is not to say screw it and then raise taxes. The answer to overly complex free tarde agreements is not to raise tariffs and duties or to otherwise restrict the freedom to buy and sell, but to support its simplification.
Pastor’s 2001 book “Toward a North American Community” called for the creation of a North American Union that would perfect the defects Pastor believes limit the progress of the European Union. Much of Pastor’s thinking appears aimed at limiting the power and sovereignty of the United States as we enter this new super-regional entity. Pastor has also called for the creation of a new currency which he has coined the “Amero,” a currency that is proposed to replace the U.S. dollar, the Canadian dollar, and the Mexican peso.
Granted, but that doesn't really affect my point since it doesn't contradict it (you're not going to try to claim that a duty on liquors sustains their economy, are you?). I said Hong Kong doesn't have "higher tariffs and duties" and they don't:
Hong Kong is basically duty-free. The World Trade Organization reports that Hong Kong's weighted average tariff rate in 2003 (the most recent year for which WTO data are available) was 0 percent. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, "Non-tariff barriers such as labeling requirements, standards, etc. are minimal." Based on the revised trade factor methodology, Hong Kong's trade policy score is unchanged.
http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/country.cfm?id=HongKong
Now the fact that Hong Kong isn't a country, is one reason they can reduce tariffs. Generally speaking cities or regions don't collect tariffs, they do not have the governmental structures and authorities to do so, nations do. Hong Kong is a special administrative region for China and China does collect tariffs. China as a nation would never give up tariffs, but they may modify their rules, as they have done for special administrative regions. A nation, like the United States, cannot give up tariffs without extreme harm to the domestic economy.
Why would a nation want to apply tariffs? Have you considered the reasons?
“Some even believe we are a part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty and I am proud of it.”
--David Rockefeller,the principle founder of the Council on Foreign Relations, in Memoirs.
Seems like big government colluding with transnational corprations is all the integrationists care about. "In this new world, our North America partnership is critical."
Canada, Mexico, U.S. release blueprint for tight economic and security ties
Anne McLellan delivers a statement on security and prosperity partnership of North America, in Ottawa, Monday. (CP/Fred Chartrand)
BRUCE CHEADLE
OTTAWA (CP) - Canada, the United States and Mexico are committing to much broader and deeper economic and security integration to eliminate what Industry Minister David Emerson calls the "tyranny of small differences."
The sheer scope of the plan, released Monday by senior ministers from the three trading partners, defies easy description.
The proposals range from the mundane to the highly controversial: finding common specifications for dangerous goods containers, for example; and developing common biometric travel documents and visa requirements.
There's a commitment to pursuing a North American steel industry strategy, continental compatibility in automobile standards and removing requirements for "rules of origin" on $30 billion of trade goods.
Standardized food-safety regulations, pesticide-residue rules and veterinary drugs are in the mix, as is a flu pandemic plan.
There's to be more sharing of information among law enforcement agencies, and a joint emergency response exercise "to be conducted in advance of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver/Whistler," says the 90-page document.
"With today's announcement, we are setting out over 300 specific, concrete milestones in our work plans," Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan said at a news conference packed with business leaders and officials.
The package was later attacked by critics who called it undemocratic, skewed toward big business and a threat to Canada's sovereignty.
"Allowing corporate North America to define our interests as a nation implies, in the end, complete regulatory harmonization with the U.S. and the subordination of our economic, social, cultural and environmental policies to U.S. policies," said NDP MP Peter Julian.
McLellan reacted with disdain.
"I don't buy into ill-informed, alarmist rhetoric," she said later. "What we're talking about is a partnership."
The report marks the three-month followup on a meeting between Prime Minister Paul Martin, President George W. Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox in Waco, Texas in March. The summit produced what the leaders called the Security and Prosperity Partnership.
"There's been a lot of work done and we are just getting started," Carlos Gutierrez, the U.S. secretary of commerce, said Monday.
"No market economy can thrive without safety and security for its people. The threats we face require seamless co-operation that extends beyond borders."
Emerson said global supply chains are being reconfigured by the emergence of China and India as economic giants.
"In this new world, our North America partnership is critical."
The goal, said Emerson, is to "eliminate duplicative testing and the tyranny of small differences. But we remain unalterably committed to high standards of health and safety for our citizens."
Business leaders who attended the event enthusiastically endorsed the initiative, with the only quibble being that governments may be moving too slowly.
"It's still at the 20,000-foot level and we're going to want to see details on it," Perrin Beatty, president of the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, said of the policy blueprint.
North America has to compete for investment and jobs with the world's emerging economies, said Tom d'Aquino, president of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, but can't do it by lowering wages here.
"There's only one way to close that gap and that is through greater efficiencies," said d'Aquino.
The fact that the foreign affairs, security and commerce sectors of government are "all now talking the same language . . . is sweet music to our ears."
But others found the blueprint alarming.
Economist Andrew Jackson of the Canadian Labour Congress said he's been following the partnership initiative for months and has seen "no opportunity where public-interest groups can engage with it at all."
Most of the proposed changes are regulatory, not legislative, meaning Parliament won't necessarily get a chance to debate them.
"If we're talking about harmonized product-safety standards, for instance, is this just going to be industry plus officials?" said Jackson.
"Does anybody representing the public interest get anywhere near the process?"
http://www.recorder.ca/cp/National/050627/n0627121A.html
bump!
I don't think I'll trust anything that would be "sweet music" to any globalists' ears.
One way to get additional oil reserves. /sarc
Not suprisingly, there are no words from the citizens in this new 'language'. They might add some sour notes, so they are best left out, I guess.
serfs don't count what they think or want. Just the elistist globalists.
LOL Tin foil hat alert.
Afraid not...unisex bathrooms can be found all over socialist New England; Dartmouth College in NH and Fletcher Allen in VT as just two of many examples. When you have GOT to go, and that's all that is available...that's pretty 'forced' to me. :-)
I'm not a bit surprised of the words trilateral and trilaterally being repeatably used in his speech. If one didn't know any better, we'd be led to believe the Mexican ambassador to Canada was speaking about three nation discussions. When in reality, the content of his speech meant the NWO, or the softened renamed term..."globalization." Is there a North American Union plan to Replace the USA? Absolutely, only a mushroomed fool could think otherwise.
Why would a nation want to apply tariffs? Have you considered the reasons?
The main reason is that, while free trade is accepted by virtually every economist respected within the profession since in every country it always is and must be the interest of the great body of the people to buy whatever they want of those who sell it cheapest, free trade remains a political loser because of confusions, such as the confusion of goods with persons, a belief in the free lunch and a refusal to heed the lesson of the broken window:
An American manufacturer of woolen sweaters goes to Congress or to the State Department and tells the committee or officials concerned that it would be a national disaster for them to remove or reduce the tariff on British sweaters. He now sells his sweaters for $30 each, but English manufacturers could sell their sweaters of the same quality for $25. A duty of $5, therefore, is needed to keep him in business. He is not thinking of himself, of course, but of the thousand men and women he employs, and of the people to whom their spending in turn gives employment. Throw them out of work, and you create unemployment and a fall in purchasing power, which would spread in ever-widening circles. And if he can prove that he really would be forced out of business if the tariff were removed or reduced, his argument against that action is regarded by Congress as conclusive.
But the fallacy comes from looking merely at this manufacturer and his employees, or merely at the American sweater industry. It comes from noticing only the results that are immediately seen, and neglecting the results that are not seen because they are prevented from coming into existence.
The lobbyists for tariff protection are continually putting forward arguments that are not factually correct. But let us assume that the facts in this case are precisely as the sweater manufacturer has stated them. Let us assume that a tariff of $5 a sweater is necessary for him to stay in business and provide employment at sweater-making for his workers.
We have deliberately chosen the most unfavorable example of any for the removal of a tariff. We have not taken an argument for the imposition of a new tariff in order to bring a new industry into existence, but an argument for the retention of a tariff that has already brought an industry into existence, and cannot be repealed without hurting somebody.
The tariff is repealed; the manufacturer goes out of business; a thousand workers are laid off; the particular tradesmen whom they patronized are hurt. This is the immediate result that is seen. But there are also results which, while much more difficult to trace, are no less immediate and no less real. For now sweaters that formerly cost retail $30 apiece can be bought for $25. Consumers can now buy the same quality of sweater for less money, or a much better one for the same money. If they buy the same quality of sweater, they not only get the sweater, but they have $5 left over, which they would not have had under the previous conditions, to buy something else. With the $25 that they pay for the imported sweater they help employment—as the American manufacturer no doubt predicted — in the sweater industry in England. With the $5 left over they help employment in any number of other industries in the United States.
But the results do not end there. By buying English sweaters they furnish the English with dollars to buy American goods here. This, in fact (if I may here disregard such complications as fluctuating exchange rates, loans, credits, etc.) is the only way in which the British can eventually make use of these dollars. Because we have permitted the British to sell more to us, they are now able to buy more from tis. They are, in fact, eventually forced to buy more from us if their dollar balances are not to remain perpetually unused. So as a result of letting in more British goods, we must export more American goods. And though fewer people are now employed in the American sweater industry, more people are employed—and much more efficiently employed—in, say, the American washing-machine or aircraft-building business. American employment on net balance has not gone down, but American and British production on net balance has gone up. Labor in each country is more fully employed in doing just those things that it does best, instead of being forced to do things that it does inefficiently or badly. Consumers in both countries are better off. They are able to buy what they want where they can get it cheapest. American consumers are better provided with sweaters, and British consumers are better provided with washing machines and aircraft.
Hong Kong existed as an independent national economy for decades before it was "returned" to China. WHY was it prosperous?
North America is different from other regions of the world and must find its own cooperative route forward. A new NorthAmerican community should rely more on the market and less on bureaucracy, more on pragmatic solutions to shared problems than on grand schemes of confederation or union, such as those in Europe. We must maintain respect for each other’s national sovereignty.Although they "claim" they "must maintain respect for each other's national sovereignty," it appears that's not really what they MEAN. For example, that statement contradicts Mexico's actions in this excerpt:
Document translated from Mexican Government website, using Babelfish:Press release Not. 071Mexico, ACLU Preparing Lawsuit Against US Over Guard DeploymentMexico, D.F., April 29, 2005
THE GOVERNMENT OF MEXICO REJECTS THE STATEMENTS OF THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA, AROUND THE MINUTEMAN PROJECT
The Government of Mexico rejects the statements of the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, around the activities that groups of civilians carry out to stop undocumented people [illegal aliens] on the border between United States and Mexico. It is not through this type of unfortunate pronouncements that a better understanding between our country and the state of California will be achieved.
* * * Though it is sovereign right of any country to take the necessary measures to assure the protection of their borders, Mexico has maintained in repeated occasions that these activities correspond uniquely and exclusively to the competent authorities of the countries. The actions by means of which groups of individuals carry out detentions of Mexican migrants are unacceptable.
It's fitting to emphasize that this year, by initiative of Mexico, the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations Organization approved by consensus a resolution on the rights of migrants [illegal aliens], in which, among others things, presses to the [United] States to adopt effective measures to punish any form of deprivation of the liberty of the migrants [illegal aliens] on the part of individuals [such as the Minutemen] and to prosecute and to punish violations of the law that result from these conducts,.
* * * As has been expressed in previous occasions, Mexico reiterates its commitment to continue working with the authorities of different levels within the U.S. in search of mechanisms that assure that the migration of Mexicans toward United States is legal, sure, ordinate and respectful of their rights.
Mexico Threatens Suits Over Guard Patrols
Mexico Condemns U.S Border Fence Plan ~ Central Americn countries join complaints...
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