McCOOK, Neb. (AP) - U.S. Highway 83 could one day stretch all the way to Asia.
At least, that's what one group recently told Gov. Mike Johanns' transportation task force at a meeting in McCook.
The Central North American Trade Corridor Association is pushing the idea of building a transportation system from northern Mexico through Canada, into Alaska and across the Bering Straight to the Asian continent.
The corridor for the intercontinental system would span Alaska, Canada, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.
The ultimate goal of the organization - which has its roots and most of its members in North Dakota - is to encourage economic development along U.S. Highway 83.
Ted Teitjen of Grant, Neb., told task force members the trade route would not only relieve traffic around major population centers but also could play an important role in homeland security and save transport carriers 300 miles between the Canadian and Mexican borders.
Teitjen's business, Big Byron Agri Services of Grant, is one of three Nebraska members of the trade corridor association. The other two are a woman from Valentine and a Stapleton book and afghan store, according to the association's Web site.
McCook Mayor Jerda Garey wants the state to consider expanding U.S. Highway 83 from a two-lane to four-lane highway between McCook and North Platte, in hopes that the route eventually could develop into an expressway from Interstate 70 in Kansas to Interstate 80.
"This is the retail hub of southwest Nebraska," she told the governor's group. "Think futuristic, think big and help us revitalize southwest Nebraska."
The Central North American Trade Corridor Association promotes what it calls "the five Ts": trade, tourism, transportation, training and technology.
Besides the three Nebraska members of the association, the group's Web site lists two sponsors from Nebraska: the town of Curtis and the Highway 83 Trade and Tourism Association based in Stapleton.
This sounds LaRouche-ite.
I remember he wanted to build a railroad around the world.
Anyone know more about this genius plan?
there are plans to bridge the Strait.
Series plans, for a HUGH bridge.
See also plans to build a rail bridge/tunnel between Alaska and Russia. This could also include pipelines and possibly electrical grid.
Just wait a few thousand years and the next Ice Age will provide a convenient route for those asian hoards to invade the Western Hemisphere again. :)
And don't forget to make the Highway heated, so it don't freeze, and make it underground not to disrupt coyotes, and mice, and make sure the travellers have enough $$$ to bribe Russian customs. Seriesly hugh! He He
Kind of parallels Buckminister Fullers' interconnected electrical grid for the planet. Load balanced - nite and day - and who would fire the first shot knowing it would bring the grid down?
The Global Dimensions of the Eurasian Land-Bridge
the economic engine for world-peace and world development
editorial
http://peace.rolf-witzsche.com/landbridge/global-eurasian.html The Eurasian Land-Bridge was originally perceived in the mid 1800s as a rail link that would connect western Europe and China across the vast expanses of the Eurasian continent. The project was prevented, for which World War I was evidently arranged since a development on such a vast, continental scale threatened to upset the 'balance of power' of the dominant empire of the time. Today, it is becoming a reality as a planned network of three continental links: A northern route, a central route, and a southern route across India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, with major links reaching deep into Africa.
However, the Eurasian Land-Bridge is not perceived as merely a transportation link across a vast continent, or continents if Africa is included. These transportation links are envisioned as a lifeline for a whole network of economic development centres, connecting outward into the interior regions.
Obviously, a development project on this scale needs to be globally interconnected, for the whole of humanity to be able to benefit from the unfolding economic potential. Fortunately, such a global interconnection is not difficult to achieve, via the Bering Straight.
The Bering Strait between the Eurasian and American continents is a mere 53 miles wide. The deepest water is about 180 feet deep. There are two islands, Big Diomede and Little Diomede, out in the channel, which make a tunnel connection easier to build. The longest underwater crossing is 22 miles. Actually, the Bering Strait has better soil conditions than the English Channel, where a long distance under sea rail tunnel has already been built. The huge scale of of this global development promises to open up markets, resources, and opportunities for cooperation that presently lie but in the land of dreams.
A part of this project involves connecting the islands of Japan and the Sakhalin Island to each other, and to the mainland through Korea. The economic development potential for this project, all by itself, is hard to imagine. Click on the map for a more detailed version of it.
Already, the Tumen development region between Vladivostok and Chongjin is being build up as a vast industrial center to supply the interrior infrastructure development. Centers like these would develop in many places at strategic location on the land bridge network.
One would also see projects being carried out, such as the planned bridge-tunnel project accross the Bohai Straight near Bejing which will shorten the land distance between the cities of Dalian and Yantal by 2000 km. (See Map.) Click here for a complete map of the entire region.
In addition to the economic development potential, the Eurasion Land-Bridge development has enormous political potential for the world, as it establishes a rich economic foundation for the world's most volatile region that presently has to potential to blow up the whole of human civilization as an escalator to World War III. With the land-bridge these regions become connected to the world and its development potential. Many of the hotspots of the world that have become household names in these troubled times, are situated in the primary development region of the land-bridge network. (See Map)
The financial imperative for a full committemet to the Land-Bridge Project now.
In today's world, the Land-Bridge Project, as proposed by Lyndon LaRouche, presents an even greater potential in the financial arena which is so hopelessly bankrupt that nothing at all can be build anymore. The Land-Bridge Project, if it were to be pursued by the West, would require that the western monetary and economic system be scrapped, as it presently exists, and be replaced with one that functions properly, before the old one disintegrates fully on its own in an environment of anarchy and violence that has already begun to unfold.
In fundamental terms, an economy exists to supply society's physical needs and the resources for its cultural development. This is no longer happening to a large extend. Theoretically, money exists to facilitate the production and distribution of physical goods, and the creation and operations of infrastructures, and institutions for the welfare of society. Whatever wealth is created for society, is created within the sphere of these tangible processes. Unfortunately, this sphere is being rapidly collapsed by a vast re-allocation of financial resources into financial speculation that has itself a destructive effect on the nations' economies.
This began in the mid 1960s when a new element was introduced which exists exclusively for leveraging financial aggregates for purely financial profiteering. Since the financial aggregates system does not produce anything of tangible value, the profits that are claimed with the operation of this system are essentially stolen. Typically they are stolen from the physical economy by a "voluntary" relocation of recourses from the productive sector to the speculative sector. As the result of the ever growing re-allocation, the physical economy began to collapse from the mid 1960s on (see Figure 1). The collapse has wiped out well over half of society's standard of living. Virtually everyone has been effected by this collapse, since is now takes the earnings of two or even three members of a family to provide the basket of goods that a single income in 1965 was able to provide for a family.
It is self evident that a collapsing physical economy leads to a corresponding price inflation, since now the available money is chasing fewer and few goods (see Figure 2). In the graph, the money supply is assumed to remain constant. In the real world, this did not happen. The money supply has been constantly expanding since 1965 to fuel the financial aggregates system which doesn't produce anything but provides rich profits for a few. It has been the lure of rich profiteering that has accelerated the dislocation of recourses from the physical economy into the speculative aggregates system. In the course of this process entire nations have been looted to the point of near physical collapse, such as Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Turky, and many Asian and African nations. In order to fuel the process even further, the nations' currencies have been turned into gambling chips in 1971, when the principle of the Bretton Woods financial system was abandoned, which had provided for relatively fixed exchange rates between the nations to facilitate long term economic development. Naturally, with all these huge inflationary pressures added, the speculative system grew immensely, literally in leaps and bounds, with the proportionate increase in the collapse of the physical economy (see Figure 3).
The end result is, that we now have a huge gap between the financial aggregate values that have been leveraged into the stratosphere, and whatever tangible wealth is still being produced in the collapsing physical economy (see Figure 4). This gap represents a rapidly growing financial inflation that has made the entire financial value system meaningless.
This is what has been happening when seen in a very broad perspective. The reality, unfortunately is worse and is getting more so. In order to understand the worsening trend one also needs to look at what is happening to the increase of the money supply in the system that tends to fuel to bubble of financial aggregates. To show this interrelationship, the American economist and statesman, Lyndon LaRouche, created some years ago the now famous triple curve which illustrates the collapse function interrelationships (see Figure 9). The curve shown in figure 9 represents the world-financial situation as it existed until app. 1997. At this time frame it became increasingly apparent that the financial aggregates bubble could no longer be maintained by the normal means, which where centred on driving all existing liquidity into the bubble. Evidently, it was realized at this time, that in order to keep the bubble growing, as a means for saving it, more and more financial liquidity had to be made available. Since the required liquidity didn't exist, it was artificially created by dramatically expanding the money supply. This new and more dangerous trend, is illustrated by LaRouche's updated triple curve (see Figure 10).
Presently, the monetary hyperinflation remains hidden from people's daily living, since most of it is channelled directly into the financial bubble, which thereby becomes evermore unstable, while the physical economy continues to collapse at an ever increasing rate. The collapse of the physical economy comes now through a backdoor effect, as a kind of fallout from the insanities in the financial aggregates arena. This back door effect on the physical economy can be judged to some degree by the rapid increase in the volume of financial gambling in terms of currency trading and derivatives speculation, which now exceed 4 trillion dollars worth in turnover volume every single day. This enormous gambling mania has a correspondingly destructive effect on the value of the nations' currencies and the operation and indebtedness of countless businesses. In the wake of this unfolding crisis, even huge businesses, which once stood like the Rock of Gibraltar, simply disappear, with entire nations being presently poised to follow this path. Nor are these small banana republics that are so affected. This disintegrating sector includes quite a few large and once highly advanced nations like Brazil, Argentina, Turkey, and Mexico.
Presently, the average value of financial aggregates that are wagered on the financial gambling tables, are estimated to be greater at face value than ten years worth of the entire world's gross domestic product, and greater by an infinite amount of world-economy's actual profit which is virtually none-existing. Most of the economies around the world have become totally bankrupted by economic collapse and the ever growing debt burden.
The debt bubble, itself, has become an unstoppable death spiral, driven by a system that has been totally designed for looting rather than for economic development. Under this system, which is the present world-financial system, the nations' effective debts that are mostly U.S. dollar denominated, are being escalated by a build in penalizing system. The moment that a nation has trouble making its interest payments, its official bond rating status becomes reduced, which leads to a devaluation of its currency by the currency traders. This, in turn results in higher interest for the necessary borrowing to meet the interest payments, or debt rescheduling. By this strange kind of 'bankers arithmetic' the effective debt that the nations are forced to carry, becomes constantly increased. One nation, for instance, saw a nine billion dollar increase in its debt, in a single month, as the result of this escalator mechanism, without it ever having borrowed a single extra penny that month.
The overall effective savagery of this system is literally raping the economies of many nations to the point that evermore people are starved to death, while the debt itself has long ago become unpayable. It should be self-evident that such a system of savagery on one hand, combined with the overgrowing illusions of wealth on the other (as the debt is still counted as equity), cannot be maintained indefinitely. Nevertheless the game continues to be played, because the existence of huge empires depends on the looting operations carried out by this game.
The real financial inflation that has been leveraged up in this game of looting over the last few decades, is so huge that a natural equalization cannot be achieved by any means within the parameters of this system (go back to Figure 4). Note: The shaded area represents the ever growing financial inflation which presently is greater than ten years worth of the Gross Domestic Product of the entire world.
With this in mind, it is easy to understand why Lyndon LaRouche, who has been warning the world for decades about this trend, keeps telling the world "the present system is bankrupt, it is gone, it cannot be rescued by any means available within this system."
LaRouche points out that such a huge gap of financial inflation cannot be reduced to zero by any means except a global bankruptcy reorganization of the entire system. This is what he is proposing, and has been proposing for quite a few years already, while the urgency for taking this step becomes evermore acute. He is warning, about the insanity to allow the world's financial system, that we all depend on, to disintegrate on its own. He is insisting that people's lives, their industries, their economies, their jobs, their pensions, their civilization, must be protected from the effects of the onrushing systemic disintegration of the present financial system that has lost its foundation for existence.
Lyndon LaRouche is also saying that the national currencies must be taken out of the gambling arena, by creating a new Bretton Woods type agreement between the nations that establishes relatively fixed currency exchange rates. Another requirement that LaRouche points out must be met, is the re-institution of national banks for the creating of credits for infrastructure and industrial development. This step is required throughout the entire world for a world wide economic recovery to be possible. Virtually every country in the world is economically at its knees. May are facing already an unprecedented crisis.
The proposed re-organization, therefore, is essential. Without it, a redevelopment cannot occur according to the fundamental principle of economics. In order to re-vitalise the physical economy on which all our lives and our welfare depends, monetary credits must be extended for the development of the physical economy by which the economy and the resulting welfare of society begins to grow (see Figure 5). Since it is the physical economy alone that generates tangible wealth for society, the resulting development in the physical economy necessarily results in a richer standard of living for society as a whole (see Figure 6). The shaded area, in this case, indicates the resulting rapid increase in prosperity.
The above illustrations may appear simplistic. Obviously, the real world is far more complex. Nevertheless, the real world unfolds according to some invariable fundamental principles, which have been outlined above. These are principles that we cannot mock with arrogant demands. We prosper or we decay, according to these underlying principles. We can go into a state of denial and wish that they didn't exist, and we may even dream that we are successful in contravening these principles, but in the end, we cannot avoid the consequences of insane actions or demands.
An example of insane tendencies can be found in the stock market. People believe that the market is rich and can make them rich, also. They even deny what they know, that the market doesn't produce anything. In real terms, the market is but an empty box. People put into the market what others are willing to take out. What is rolled into the market, rolls out the same way. It becomes no bigger, no smaller. No magic takes place. (see Figure 7 and Figure 8) The profits that are realized are stolen from others who are enticed by the system to respond to their greed. Obviously, no society is able to develop itself by means of stealing from one another by clever means. Nevertheless much of humanity has become entangled in this type of orgy of stealing from one another.
Unfortunately, the system that enables the stealing from one another is supporting huge and powerful financial empires who are the masters of the process. Nor can these empires exist without this globally looting system. Today's problem is, that this system can no longer be maintained. It is reasonable to assume, therefore, that the powers that need this system, will do whatever is necessary to create the conditions that are required to prevent the system from disintegrating like a soap bubble disintegrates into a spray of fine mist. They appear to be prepared to go to war and destroy much of the world instead of giving up their dying system.
With this in mind one can see the rationality behind Lyndon LaRouche's proposal to the whole of humanity to commit itself to the fullest possible implementation of the Eurasion Land-Bridge project as a locomotive for rebuilding the physical economies around the world that are neccessary for productive employment and a rich physical, social, and cultural life,
Naturally, an infrastructure development project on this scale has the potential to develop and transform the entire Eurasian continent with the corresponding potential for creating an end to poverty, and furnishing a lasting peace. Because of this enormous civilization building potential of the project, LaRouche's proposal has become accepted in principle in many parts of the world and finds its reflection today in a growing commitment by a number of the world's leading nations to build several interlinked efficient rail links across Asia. China is adopting LaRouche's Land Bridge proposal as a basis for its own interior development. In this context Chinal has become a driving force for securing cooperation among the nations that share the Eurasian continent. The creation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is a part of this ever widening commitment to the associated nation's self-development outside of the framework of the rapidly collapsing western feudal monetary and economic system.
Naturally, the kind of large infrastructure development as it is now being envisioned, cannot be achieved on a financial platform that is designed for looting, rather than building. Therefore, the very idea of building these vast infrastructure corridors poses a threat to the presently established world-financial system. It is against this background that many of the destabilizing agitations must be seen, most of which are carried out by richly financed terrorist and ideological forces, who are deployed in the infamous "arc of crisis" stretching from the Agean Sea to Tibet, as developed during the Cold War by the West.
In historic terms, as already noted earlier, LaRouche's Eurasian Land Bridge development proposal is nothing new. A similar project had already been agreed to by the relevant nations in the 1800s. This earlier proposed project, too, had threatened the status of the largest empire in the world, that of the British Empire, which consequently moved swiftly behind the scenes to set the stage for World War I.
Today, we stand once more at the crossroads. On one hand we have tremendous movements unfolding to create a richer existence for all people across the world, while at the same time we see equally tremendous movements unfolding to protect a dying, essentially feudal, financial system that is incompatible with the economic development needs of the world.
The terrorist outbreaks that we see here and there, with provocation being projected against even the greatest powers of our world, cannot be seen as isolated incidents, but must be seen as parts of an interlinked movement for creating the already much talked about "clash of civilizations" that will once again prevent the prosperity that humanity is able to create for itself; that it has tried to create several times before. With rapid strides being presently made towards engineering the "clash of civilizations" that would destroy this hope, our chances for a brighter world are rapidly fading. Nevertheless, there is still hope. All is not lost yet. There are great efforts being made to assure that this hope will be realized. Foremost among these efforts are Lyndon LaRouche's proposals for solving the onrushing crisis of the world-financial disintegration, to which the present cycle of wars are a secondary phenomena. Let us work to assure that these efforts are not in vain; or better still, let us support those efforts for sanity and peace to the fullest extend possible.
Sounds good to me.
Only, NO EXITS between Mexico and Canada.
too late:
(what's up w/ORTIZ & CHINA SHIPPING??)
Texas port seeks new trade route
By Lynn Brezosky
The Associated Press
STAR-TELEGRAM
TRADE MAP PLANNED
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/6443236.htm BROWNSVILLE - Port of Brownsville officials say an agreement signed with Mexico's Port of Manzanillo-Glipsa on Friday will christen a trade route that could bypass the Panama Canal and give Texas a chunk of the $300 billion-a-year West Coast port industry.
"I'm very optimistic at this event," said Fausto Suarez, an official at the Glipsa port, which is a few miles inland from the fast-growing Port of Manzanillo on Mexico's Pacific coast. "Together we have everything we need to compete internationally."
The inland port specializes in containers -- 40-foot-long boxes used to move cargo ranging from food to cars and electronics. Suarez said the port can move anything that comes into the larger port, which is handling 12 times more goods than it handled in 1990.
Mexico has cross-country railways that can accommodate double-stacked containers for the entire route.
From Manzanillo, the trains can go to Laredo or Browns-ville and link with the North American Free Trade Agreement superhighways. Or they can be unloaded at the Brownsville port and their cargo shipped out via the Gulf of Mexico and then the Atlantic Ocean.
"We can ship to Central America, South America and Europe WITHOUT HAVING TO GO THROUGH THE PANAMA CANAL," Port of Brownsville Director Raul Besteiro said. "We're just trying to cut the time."
Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, for example, already is pushing its Mexi-Modal freight shipping services that focus on connecting markets throughout the United States with Mexico.
Brownsville officials say their 47,000-acre port is poised for growth, with two union shops and one nonunion shop of stevedores ready to take on the work.
A $2.5 million crane that the port bought two years ago would enable it to handle containers right away, but port officials acknowledge they need new docks and infrastructure to handle the level of traffic they want.
Hence, there are hundreds of millions of dollars worth of dreams on the drawing board, such as dredging 8 miles of the Brownsville Ship Channel to allow bigger ships.
After 20 years of talk, officials say an international port-to-rail bridge could get under way at any time -- providing there's the long-sought agreement with Mexico.
Today(8/2/03), U.S. Rep. Solomon ORTIZ, D-Corpus Christi, is to travel with the Mexican port officials to Hong Kong and mainland China in hopes of luring CHINA SHIPPING HOLDING CO., one of the largest shipping agencies in China.
"This is a very important company that's willing to give this a try," Ortiz said. "If we can open this door from Manzanillo to Brownsville, this is a new beginning of a lot of freight coming in through Brownsville."
I like it, Ever see that T-shirt that says "pave the world" "one people, one planet, one big slab of asphalt" it has a picture of the globe with a black strip across it.
There was a nice 5 earthquake right on the proposed route in the west of Alaska about a month ago. Usually it is very quiet over there.