An honest person cannot have read, and outright dismissed any of the following information, and continue to state that there is no plan for an NAU or that the Council on Foreign Relations is not deeply involved with its inception and promotion. For one to do so, they must REJECT ALL of the following:
The March 2005 Joint Statement of Presidents Bush, Fox and Prime Minister Martin, the March 2005 Waco meeting, the signing of the "Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America" (SPP), and the goals stated in the "Building a North American Community" (written by Dr. Robert A. Pastor, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS member) (pdf) file.
In the Joint Statement, it states, for instance:
our security and prosperity are mutually dependent and complementary. Its boundaries will be defined by a common external tariff [i.e., the perimeter of the entity now known as the "North American Community"] and an outer security perimeter [id.] within which [id.] the movement of people, products, and capital will be legal, orderly and safe.
This paragraph cannot be taken as an isolated statement of intent as there are many other similar statements and suggestions of same in numerous other documents and which expand upon that idea. It is yet another suggestion that there will be a NEW BORDER made, and militarily protected, around the entity now known as the "North American Community." By moving the militarily protected "borders" to the perimeter of THREE NATIONS, it is the clear intent that the three countries will have an almost indistinguishable INNER border between the three countries.
The suggestion is legitimate in that the beginning sentence states the entity's "security and prosperity are mutually dependent and complementary," as if it were one land, as if it has been melded into one country. Thus, the sovereignty of each country, Canada, the United States of America, and Mexico, has been removed.
I suggest reading, also, the following documents:
1) Found at the COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS website:
http://www.cfr.org/project/311/study_group_on_globalization_and_the_future_of_border_control.html
2) Written by D. Spingola: Building a North American Community, the Selling of America
by Deanna Spingola | 14 July 2005
3) Congressional testimony by Council on Foreign Relations member, Robert Pastor:
A North American Community Approach to Security
COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS | June 9, 2005 | Dr. Robert A. Pastor
In February 2001, Fox and Bush jointly endorsed the Guanajuato Proposal, which read, "After consultation with our Canadian partners, we will strive to consolidate a North American economic community whose benefits reach the lesser-developed areas of the region and extend to the most vulnerable social groups in our countries." Unfortunately, they never translated that sentiment into policy (with the exception of the symbolic but substantively trivial $40 million Partnership for Prosperity).
4) Excerpt, from "Building a North American Community":
Develop a North American Border Pass. The three countries should develop a secure North American Border Passwith biometric identifiers. This document would allow its bearers expedited passage through customs, immigration, and airport security throughout the region. The program would be modeled on the U.S.-Canadian ‘‘NEXUS’’ and the U.S.-Mexican ‘‘SENTRI’’ programs, which provide ‘‘smart cards’’ to allow swifter passage to those who pose no risk. Only those who voluntarily seek, receive, and pay the costs for a security clearance would obtain a Border Pass. The pass would be accepted at all border points within North America as a complement to, but not a replacement for, national identity documents or passports.This has already implemented.
For information on "biometrics" used at the border, and what's been currently in place, see Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, April 5, 2005
5) Read, also, all of the following:
Trinational Call for a North American Economic and Security Community by 2010
March 14, 2005 (obtained at the COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATION'S website) - Three former high-ranking government officials from Canada, Mexico, and the United States are calling for a North American economic and security community by 2010 to address shared security threats, challenges to competitiveness, and interest in broad-based development across the three countries.
Former Canadian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance John P. Manley, former Finance Minister of Mexico Pedro Aspe, and former Governor of Massachusetts and Assistant U.S. Attorney General William F. Weld (MEMBER OF THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS) make policy recommendations to articulate a long-term vision for North America in a Chairmen's Statement (English) (PDF) of the Independent Task Force on the Future of North America sponsored by the COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS in association with the Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales and the Canadian Council of Chief Executives. [One task force member is Dr. Robert A. Pastor]
"The COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, which has no affiliation with the US government and no institutional position on merging the US with Canada and Mexico, certainly managed get its agenda enacted. How did that happen?"
United States of North America
by Steven Yates | May 1, 2006
"The new architecture would include a free trade zone protected by a common security perimeter, within which goods, people, and capital would move freely across what had once been firmly established international borders."
The Plan to Replace the Dollar With the 'Amero' | May 22, 2006
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. Commission for Labor Cooperation
The Council of Ministers of the Commission is supported by a Secretariat, whose staff is drawn equally from the three NAALC countries. It includes labor economists, labor lawyers and other professionals with wide experience in labor affairs in the region. They work in the three official languages of the NAALC English, French and Spanish in a unique multinational institution devoted to advancing labor rights and labor standards as an integral part of expanding trade relations.
Located in Washington, D.C., the Secretariat also undertakes labor-related research and public information, and assists the member countries with their cooperative activities.
The official web site of the North American Commission on Environmental Cooperation.
Intermodal Association of North America
Information on the North American Trade Corridors
Conclusions of the U.S.-Mexico Migration Panel
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace/Global Policy
February 15, 2001
On February 15, 2001, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace International Migration Policy Program hosted a breakfast briefing featuring three members of the U.S.-Mexico Migration Panel, which released a report on February 14 to U.S. President George W. Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox including proposals to change and improve the relationship of the U.S. and Mexico regarding migration.
- | - The panel's report calls on the U.S. and Mexico to craft a "grand bargain" that would be mutually beneficial, make migration safe, legal, orderly, and predictable, and decrease migratory pressures over time. The report calls for a reconceptualization of the border as a "line of convergence rather than a line of defense."
A North American Community A Modest Proposal To the Trilateral Commission [pdf]
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
November 1-2, 2002 | Dr. Robert A. Pastor
MEMBER OF THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
Foreign companies would prefer to invest in the interior (where the workforce would be more stable), but the roads and infrastructure are inadequate. The World Bank estimates Mexico needs $20 billion a year for ten years, just for infrastructure. The three leaders should establish a North American Development Fund, whose priority would be to connect the U.S.-Mexican border region to central and southern Mexico. If roads were built, investors would come, immigration would decline, and income disparities would narrow. If Mexico’s growth rate leaped to twice that of its neighbors, the psychology of the relationship would be transformed.
The North American Development Fund is a done deal. It's called the North American Development Bank.
The NADB was created by the United States and Mexico, under NAFTA, in a joint effort to preserve and promote the health and welfare of border residents and their environment.
ORGANIZATION
Under the Charter, the BECC and NADB have a shared Board of Directors, while each institution has its own officers and staff.
Board of Directors The BECC-NADB Board of Directors consists of ten members: five from the United States and five from Mexico. The chairmanship of the board alternates between U.S. and Mexican representatives every year. (MANY BOARD MEMBERS ARE MEMBERS ON THE COUNCIL OF FOREIGN RELATIONS)
United States MexicoSecretary of the Treasury * Secretary of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP) Secretary of State Secretary of Foreign Affairs (SRE) Administrator of the Secretary of the Environment and Natural Environmental Protection Agency Resources (SEMARNAT) Rep. of U.S. border states Rep. of Mexican border states Member of U.S. public who Member of Mexican public who resides in the border region resides in the border region * Current Chair
At the North American Studies, you can peruse through a list of dozens of publications which provides relevant background information for
* Prepared Statements and Testimony
* Articles and Papers
* Books
One of which is entitled, "The Future of North American Integration: Beyond NAFTA"
By: Peter Hakim (Editor) (MEMBER OF THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS), Robert E. Litan (Editor)
The governments of Canada, Mexico, and the United States now must confront the question of whether NAFTA is enough. Do they want to keep their trilateral relationship focused on economic matters or are they interested in integrating more deeply-perhaps initiating a process to build a North American Community similar to the European Union?
The North America's Superhighway Coalition (NASCO) (the corridor), connecting Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, as well as the planned Punta Colonet Project, which will likely shut down American ports in Long Beach/Los Angeles area, and possibly the Washington port:
Formed in 1997 [when Bush was Gov. of Texas], NASCO is a partnership of businesses and state and provincial governments in the U.S., Canada and Mexico focused on developing the international trade corridor based on I-35 from Laredo, Texas to Kansas City, Missouri and I-35, I-29 and I-80/I-94 north of Kansas City to the Canadian border.
North American Inland Port Network (NAIPN) [founded in 2003 by NASCO members in Canada, US and Mexico] is a sub-committee of the North America's SuperCorridor Coalition (NASCO). NAIPN advocates the interests of Inland Ports along the International Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation Corridor (IMCTTC) and supports NASCO's mission to strengthen the Secure, Multi-Modal Trade and Transportation System.
2006 Texas Republican Party Platform
On Saturday, June 3, 2006, the Republican Party of Texas adopted their 2006 State Republican Party Platform. Under the first section of their platform, titled Preserving American Freedom, is a plank specific to the Trans-Texas Corridor. It reads:
"Trans-Texas Corridor — Because there are issues of confiscation of private land, State and National sovereignty and other similar concerns, we urge the repeal of the Trans-Texas Corridor legislation." [page P-4]The NAFTA Corridors: Offshoring U.S. Transportation Jobs to Mexico
U.S. workers, who have seen so many lucrative manufacturing jobs moved overseas, assumed that import transportation and distribution jobs could not be offshored and were, therefore, relatively secure.Current transportation trends are proving labor’s assumption to be dead wrong. Sparked by organized resistance and wildcat actions by workers against falling wages and deteriorating working conditions at America’s ports and on the nation’s highways, the flow of container traffic is being shifted to a south-north orientation. By leveraging both the U.S. and Mexican governments and taking advantage of the terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), big capital is developing container terminals in Mexico and using that country as a land bridge and labor pool to deliver shipping containers to destinations in the United States at discount prices.
* * *
Chart 1 signals the beginning of the assault on labor in the north, which could eventually result in the offshoring of hundreds of thousands of transportation jobs to the south and undermine the working class on both sides of the border significantly. The success of this offshoring scheme rests on the development of vast transportation corridors in the United States and Mexico and the extensive exploitation of Mexican labor to both construct and operate the system. The recently established NAFTA Railway (Transportación Ferroviaria Mexicana, Texas Mexican Railway, and Kansas City Southern Railway, merged under control of the latter), which began operations in the Lazaro Cardenas–Kansas City Transportation Corridor in 2003, offers a preview of capital’s offshoring plan in action.
Mexico plans an alternative to the jammed docks in L.A., Long Beach
By Diane Lindquist
Union-Tribune Staff Writer | August 14, 2005
As cargo clogs West Coast ports again this summer, Mexican officials and global shipping executives are getting ready to transform a remote bay 150 miles south of the border into a megaport to help relieve the Asian import glut.
The sleepy, sweeping inlet of Punta Colonet in Baja California will be transformed into a multibillion-dollar container port, one of the biggest maritime transportation centers on the West Coast of North America, under a plan by Mexico's government.
Mexico plans a multibillion-dollar project to remake Punta Colonet, a desolate, sparsely inhabited inlet two hours beyond Ensenada, into a major container port on the scale of those at Los Angeles and Long Beach.
The new port in Mexico will require major road construction for connections to the Superhighway corridor. I can only presume where funding for that will come from (and it won't be from Mexicans or Mexico).
What do you think will happen to all the American jobs at the San Diego/Los Angeles ports when the Mexican port opens, the size of which will equal the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports? Imagine what will happen to the communities and surrounding areas which currently depend upon the income generated by those ports and the union workers (illegals cannot be part of American unions) of those ports. Where will all the young entry level workers go to find work when so many jobs will likely be "outsourced"? How many non-union businesses will be forced to close their doors because there's no longer a workforce (or families) to support their business (I'm thinking even of such businesses as restaurants, grocery stores, hardware stores, and clothing stores)? Will we continue to hear the same mantra that those were just "jobs Americans wouldn't do" so they're being shipped out to Mexico?
Then there's yet another upgrade to another port, closer to Mexico City, as stated in the following article (which is also referred to in the NASCO/NAIFN website: Strategic Agreements with Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas, Ports on the West Coast of Mexico):
Hutchison Ports Holdings to construct terminal at Mexican port
5/24/2006 | Intermodal
Hutchison Ports Holdings Group plans to spend $200 million to build a container terminal at the Port of Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico — a project that could mean more intermodal traffic for Kansas City Southern de México S.A. de C.V. and its parent, Kansas City Southern. [KCS' North American rail holdings and strategic alliances are primary components of a NAFTA Railway system, linking the commercial and industrial centers of the U.S., Canada and Mexico.]The terminal is designed to handle 2 million containers annually. Hutchinson Ports expects the facility to handle 450,000 containers annually after the company completes the project’s first phase next year. The terminal’s second and third phases will increase annual capacity to 850,000 containers and 1.7 million containers, respectively.
When you've finished reading the above, you're still not done reading. Most of the above information is no longer the most current, thanks to FOIA, which has forced the U.S. GOVERNMENT to release information and documents it was previously not disclosing. A sane person cannot deny the implications of the aforementioned documents, cannot deny the mounting evidence which serves only to condemn the COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS and those who are its members or affiliated with it. It is indeed, the driving force behind these plans which include the creation of the "North American Union," and the erosion of U.S. sovereignty, incrementally and carefully planned, so that people like you could disparage those who criticize the CFR, its plans, and those who are affiliated with it.