P.S. I'm not going to respond to any posts. It's just so futile and tiring.
Posted on 07/05/2006 5:21:34 AM PDT by conservativecorner
NASCO has altered the organization’s website homepage, apparently in direct response to the North American Union series we have published here, including discussion of NASCO and NAFTA Super-Highways.
NASCO appears to be reacting from recent publicity deriving from our argument that NASCO actively supports the goals of their members, including the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and the Kansas City SmartPort. TxDOT plans to start the first segment of the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) as early as next year and the Kansas City SmartPort plans to house a Mexican customs operation within their Inland Port design. These are new infrastructure developments along the North American NAFTA Super-Corridor that NASCO as a trade organization was created to support.
A box has been inserted to the left of the NASCO map on the homepage, emphasizing the following:
This map is not a blueprint or plan of any kind. The Infrastructure depicted on this map is not drawn to scale. The highways shown EXIST today, and have been enlarged to highlight the NASCO Corridor focus area. The rail lines have been placed on the map to show NASCO’s multimodal approach.
The subtitle on the home page still reads “Secure Multi-Modal Transportation System,” evidently referring to the automobile, truck, and railroad nature of the “NASCO Super-Corridor” described in the top title on the page. By so adding to the homepage, NASCO appears engaged in a public relations marketing effort to defuse concerns that the organization supports any new NAFTA Super-Highway development that would include TTC features.
This modification to the homepage echoes an email the author received from Tiffany Melvin, NASCO’s Executive Director, on June 23, 2006, in which she wrote:
If the map were drawn to scale, it would be very difficult to see our focus area. The map is designed for marketing purposes, to highlight the highways we are focusing on. It is for our Coalition. That’s it.
An insert box has been placed on the homepage in the Atlantic Ocean area east of Massachusetts, reading “NASCO Myths Debunked.” We understand that our articles are among the “myths” intended to be “debunked.” The first line of text in the 4-page document linked to the “debunked box” reads: “There is no new, proposed ‘NAFTA Superhighway.” The next paragraph seems to say the NAFTA Super-Highway already exists -- it is evidently the current I-35:
As of late, there has been much media attention given to the “new, proposed NAFTA Superhighway.” NASCO and the cities, counties, states and provinces along our existing Interstate Highways 35/29/94 (the NASCO Corridor) have been referring to I-35 as the “NAFTA Superhighway” for many years, as I-35 already carries a substantial amount of international trade with Mexico, the United States and Canada. There are no plans to build a new NAFTA Superhighwary -- it exists today as I-35.
The “debunked text” even wants to de-emphasize the “Super” in the NASCO “Super Corridor” name. As Ms. Melvin expressed in a June 22, 2006 email to the author:
We have been using the name “SuperCorridor” since 1996. It does not mean huge, mega highway. We use “Super” in the sense of “more inclusive than a specialized category” (dictionary definition). Like Superman was not a huge, giant four football field wide man. He was MORE than a man. We are MORE than a highway coalition. We work to promote the use of multiple modes of transportation. We work on economic development along the corridor. We work on environmental issues. We work on networking inland ports. We work on developing business relationships for our members.
Perhaps NASCO would be well advised to review the Trans-Texas Corridor website of its member TxDOT agency. There the 4,000 page Environmental Impact Study (EIS) clearly describes the 1,200 foot new Super-Highway that TxDOT plans to build parallel to I-35. Page 4 of the EIS Executive Summary shows an artist’s rendition of the full build-out of the TTC-35 concept, an automobile-truck-railroad corridor with a utility space for energy pipelines and electronic circuits, along with tower electricity strung out on the perimeter. No artist’s conception of the TTC drawn by the TxDOT bears any resemblance to the current I-35 in Texas or anywhere else.
This TTC-35 description belies NASCO’s contention that the organization does not support the constructing any new Super-Highway infrastructure.
Perhaps NASCO wants to advance the argument that no state north of Texas will continue the TTC-35 project to connect through Oklahoma City with the Kansas City SmartPort, continuing north toward Duluth, or that TTC-35. As we have already shown, the investment bankers and international capitalists who are funding the development of TTC-35 can be expected to develop extend this NAFTA Super-Highway north, whether NASCO or the states north of Texas have the funds or current plans to do so.
From a public relations point of view, NASCO’s emphasis that the “NASCO Super-Corridor” only involves existing highways, truck routes, and rail lines is a strategy consistent with a desire to stay below the radar of public awareness, so as to avoid criticism that might otherwise stop or impede NASCO’s true mission -- to support the development of a NAFTA Super-Highway, either through enhancements to the existing north-south corridor along Interstate Highways 35/29/94 (the NASCO Corridor), or any Super-Highway enhancements its members initiate, including the TTC and the Mexican customs facility in the Kansas City SmartPort.
Today, there are some 5,000 miles of interstate highway in the U.S. and the TxDOT is proposing a full build-out of the TTC network that will build some 4,000 miles of TTC Super-Highways in Texas over the next 50 years. The TTC project at full development will involve the removal of as much as 584,000 acres of productive Texas farm and ranchland from the tax rolls permanently, while displacing upwards of 1 million people from their current residences. The 11 separate corridors planned will permanently cut across some 1,200 Texas roads, with cross-over unlikely for much of the nearly quarter-mile corridor planned to be built. Our research shows that dozens of small towns in Texas will be virtually obliterated in the bath of the advancing TTC behemoth. Reviewing statistics such as these, we can see why NASCO might prefer a low profile, preferring to stay below the radar of public scrutiny.
We also note that George Blackwood, NASCO President, attended the January 10-11 meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, held by the Council of the Americas and the North American Business Committee to conduct a “Public/Private Sector Dialogue” on the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America. A key finding of this meeting was that associations in the U.S. organized to promote particular corridors needed since the dawning of SPP in Waco, Texas, on March 23, 2005, to coordinate their efforts in a less provincial style, more reflective of the North American regional orientation of SPP itself:
For instance, conversation at the Louisville forum raised the potential for commonalities and/or synergies between disparate transportation efforts in the US Midwest (the “SuperCorridor” initiative), the North American West (“CANAMEX Corridor”), and in the Southeast United States and Mexico (the “Gulf of Mexico Trade Corridor” initiative). Before SPP, there was no obvious mechanism through which to promote coordination of these discrete activities.
The Louisville SPP meeting also advised “the establishment of bilateral or trilateral commissions to facilitate border and cross-border infrastructure.”
While the NASCO “debunking text” is correct in asserting that NASCO is a trade organization, not a government organization, NASCO officers appear deeply involved in working with federal and state departments of transportation, local and state governments, and regulatory agencies in promoting the goal of developing a “Super Corridor” structure for “integrating” the U.S., Canada, and Mexico into a corridor-dimensioned transportation system to promote NAFTA trade. NASCO trade organization professionals evidently are much more comfortable working in professional SPP conferences and dealing with government bureaucrats in the closed confines of their offices than answering the questions that public citizens are openly discussing on the Internet.
The NASCO “debunking text” continually asserts that a primary NASCO concern is transportation security, much as SPP itself asserts that the North American Partnership is put in place to promote security and prosperity, two goals SPP could assume no one would object to pursuing. The idea seems to be that NASCO wants to present itself as only concerned about security and efficiency as the volume of traffic on the existing “NASCO SuperCorriror” of existing interstate highways gets expanded under NAFTA.
NASCO’s “debunking text” asserts that the organization’s mission is “develop (NOT BUILD) the world’s first international, integrated and secure, multi-modal transportation system along the International Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation to improve both the trade competitiveness and quality of life in North America.”
Given this, we have a challenge. Let’s see NASCO come forward and repudiate the TTC-35 plans of their TxDOT member, because clearly the TTC-35 plan to build 4-football-field-lengths wide of NAFTA Super-Highway corridors is inconsistent with NASCO’s goal as expressed in the “debunking text” of only using existing transportation infrastructure. We also challenge NASCO to come forward and repute the Mexican customs facility plans of its Kansas City SmartPort member. Otherwise, we will assert that NASCO is continuing to say one thing for public relations effect, while doing something quite different -- quietly supporting their members as the members build the “new and improved” NAFTA Super-Highway infrastructure along the NASCO Corridor.
Head for Human Events for many links embedded in the article.
No doubt they are coming from the same sources.
Jerome, it's a freaking road.
And you are a fruitcake.
I'm telling you all these same arguments appeared on the leftwingnut/environmental whacko propaganda opposing the I-69 extension in Indiana. You people have been had.
And by your response, you show no intellect. What part of the article do you wish to refute with facts, if any? Name calling qualifies you for DU, and not Free Republic where we have discussion and dialog without the name calling.
The problem is that it's absurd to label everything either "conservative" or "liberal," "rightwing" or "leftwing."
Sometimes a bad idea is just a bad idea, not owned by an idealogy.
P.S. I'm not going to respond to any posts. It's just so futile and tiring.
We do plenty of name-calling at FR.
What part of "IT'S A FREAKING ROAD" do you not understand?
I'm with you on that. I think-if you could somehow manage to dig out the truth, you would find the issues are being manipulated-very discreetly- by a mixture of people who have millions invested in the "China Trade",the Teamsters and Longshoremens unions-looking for a way to dip their beaks, and organized crime people anxious to protect their pieces of the action.
I'm not saying, or even remotely suggesting Corsi is corrupt: the date he is relying on has been corrupted.
The original article as background to this new article:
Controversy Erupts Over NASCO and the NAFTA Super-Highway
by Jerome R. Corsi
Posted Jun 26, 2006
Last Thursday in a radio interview with the 55KRC Morning Show in Cincinnati, Tiffany Melvin, executive director of North America’s SuperCorridor Coalition, told host Jerry Thomas that my June 12 Human Events article on NASCO was “absolutely inaccurate.”
Melvin declined to be interviewed for this article, stating in an e-mail her current priority was to answer the “accusations, bad information, and false assumptions” in the June 12 article. “After I have a chance to get my life back and return to a normal schedule, I will contact you,” she wrote. “In the meantime, I will continue to respond to the inquiries your erroneous reporting has caused.”
What is NASCO? It is a non-profit 501c6 organization that functions as a trade association and sometimes lobbying group for the public and private entities that are members. NASCO is an acronym for North America’s SuperCorridor Coalition, which is the official title of the organization. According to the group’s website, NASCO is “dedicated to developing the world’s first international, integrated and secure, multi-modal transportation system along the International Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation Corridor to improve both the trade competitiveness and quality of life in North America.”
Specifically, NASCO supports the corridor that encompasses Interstate Highways 35, 29 and 94, and “the significant east/west connectors to those highways in Canada, the United States, and Mexico.” That NASCO is organized around promoting NAFTA trade is obvious. Again, as stated by the group’s website:
From the largest border crossing in North America (The Ambassador Bridge in Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Canada), to the second largest border crossing of Laredo, Texas and Neuvo Laredo, Mexico, extending to the deep water Ports of Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico and to Manitoba, Canada, the impressive, tri-national NASCO membership truly reflects the international scope of the Corridor and the regions it impacts. (Emphasis in original.)
From an industry perspective, NASCO is one of the organizations supporting various north-south corridors identified to facilitate NAFTA trade. NASCO has absorbed the former North American International Trade Corridor Partnership, a non-profit group organized in Mexico with similar goals of internationalizing U.S. highways into a NAFTA structure to facilitate trade with Mexico and Canada. The North American Inland Port Network (NAIPN) is also listed as a NASCO partner. NAIPN functions as a NASCO sub-committee to develop “inland ports” along the highway corridors “to specifically alleviate congestion at maritime ports and our nation’s borders.”
To get a feel of the NAFTA corridor movement, we also reference CANAMEX, a trade organization that promotes a Western tri-lateral route utilizing I-19, I-10, I-93 and I-15 in the states of Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Idaho and Montana to link the three countries in trade. Another non-profit group, the North American Forum on Integration (NAFI), identifies four bands of NAFTA corridors (Pacific, West, East and Atlantic), all relying primarily upon internationalizing north-south existing interstate highways into NAFTA trade corridors.
One of Melvin’s main bones of contention was that NASCO did not stand for the building the NASCO corridor into a Trans-Texas Corridor-type super-highway. “NASCO is working on existing infrastructure,” Melvin told 55KRC. Yet, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is a NASCO member and NASCO supports the Trans-Texas Corridor as part of that relationship. Melvin’s e-mail stated:
The Trans-Texas Corridor is not a NASCO initiative. We support the project in Texas, as it solves critical funding problems and congestion IN TEXAS. I know of NO plans to extend it into additional states. It is not the first section of a NAFTA Super Highway. It is not ready to begin construction next year.
According to the 4,000-page draft environmental impact statement, the plan is to build a 4,000-mile network of new super-highways that will be “up to 1,200 feet wide (at full build-out) with separate lanes for passenger vehicles (three in each direction) and trucks (two in each direction), six rail lines (separate lines in each direction for high-speed rail, commuter rail, and freight rail), and a 200-foot wide utility corridor.”
On March 11, 2005, TxDOT signed a definitive agreement with Cintra Zachry, a limited partnership formed by Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructures de Transport in Spain and the San Antonio-based Zachry Construction Co. “to develop the Oklahoma to Mexico/Gulf Coast element of the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC-35). This agreement calls for the Cintra-Zachry limited partnership to pay Texas $1.2 billion “for the long-term right to build and operate the initial segment as a toll facility.” The initial TTC-35 segment is scheduled to be built roughly parallel to I-35 between Dallas and San Antonio. The final public hearings are scheduled in Texas for July and August. While construction contracts have yet to be finalized, Cintra-Zachry presumably holds those rights as a result of the $1.2 billion payment to Texas, as described in the March 11, 2005, contract. The timeline published on the Trans-Texas Corridor website envisions final federal approval by the summer of 2007, with the construction of the first TTC-35 segment to follow immediately afterward.
In regard to whether NASCO intends to rely only on existing interstate highway infrastructure, the NASCO statement of purpose cited above calls for building “the world’s first international, integrated and secure, multi-modal transportation system.” The TTC-35 project is the first super-highway project in the U.S. proceeding to incorporate railroad as part of the design, producing a truly “integrated” and “multi-modal” highway-railroad system.
Do other states plan to build TTC like roads? Most states today are strapped for cash even to maintain existing highways. Still, the investment banking and international capital pools that put together the TTC project are certain to want to apply the model to additional states along the I-35 corridor. I would also note that Cintra-Zachry is unlikely to be building TTC-35 with the idea that the four-football-fields-wide super-highway just ends at the Oklahoma border. Once the investment bankers have the deal sealed in Texas, the TTC plan and funding are certain to be taken to many other states, including Oklahoma and Kansas.
The city of Kansas City, Mo., and the Kansas City SmartPort are both listed on the NASCO website as NASCO members. The Kansas City Area Development Council has directly confirmed that the Kansas City SmartPort intends to build a Mexican customs facility to facilitate out-going traffic headed to Mexico. A copy of the Kansas City council resolution authorizing the construction of the Mexican customs facility can be found on the Internet.
Melvin also maintained that NASCO is “not competing with West Coast ports or trying to take work from them.” This argument is made, however, in a brochure posted on the website of the Kansas City SmartPort, titled “Lazaro Cardenas—Kansas City Transportation Corridor Offers Opportunities for International Shippers.”
Yet, in March 2005, Kansas City signed a cooperative pact with representatives from the Mexican state of Michoacan and with representatives from Lazaro Cardenas, a deep-port town on the Pacific coast south of the Baha peninsula, to increase the cargo volume between Lazaro Cardenas and Kansas City. The goal is to bring super-ships carrying 4,000 containers or more from China and the Far East into Mexico so the containers can be moved into the heart of the United States, bypassing the West Coast ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Right now transportation costs about double the cost of cheap goods made in China and the Far East. The Kansas City SmartPort plan offers a methodology for cutting out U.S. workers from the International Longshoremen’s Association, the United Transportation Union and the Teamsters. As the brochure explains:
Shipments will be pre-screened in Southeast Asia and the shipper will send advance notification to Mexican and American Customs with the corresponding “pre-clearance” information on the cargo. Upon arrival in Mexico, containers will pass through multiple X-ray and gamma ray screenings, allowing any containers with anomalies to quickly be removed for further inspection.
Container shipments will be tracked using intelligent transportation systems (ITS) that could include global positioning systems (GPS) or radio frequency identification systems (RFID) and monitored by the ITS on their way to inland trade-processing centers in Kansas City and elsewhere in the United States.
The Kansas City SmartPort brochure could not be more explicit: “Kansas City offers the opportunity for sealed cargo containers to travel to Mexican port cities with virtually no border delays. It will streamline shipments from Asia and cut the time and labor costs associated with shipping through the congested ports on the West Coast.”
The plan to put the NAFTA Super-Highway is intended to be done incrementally, designed to stay below the radar of mainstream media attention. The full build-out of the Trans-Texas Corridor’s 4,000-mile planned network is projected to be completed in discrete stages, over the next 50 years. This gives plenty of time to expand the super-highway network incrementally, state-by-state up-and-down the various identified NAFTA corridors.
The plan to create a North American Union as a regional government in 2010 is directly stated only in the May 2005 task force report, “Building a North American Community.” Still, we must examine how the Security and Prosperity Partnership signed by President Bush with Mexico and Canada in Waco, Tex., on March 23, 2005, is being implemented. We find that government offices such as the Security and Prosperity Partnership working groups being organized within the U.S. Department of Commerce are signing trilateral memoranda of understanding and other agreements with Mexico and Canada consistent with the goal of fulfilling the CFR’s dream to bring about a North American Union by 2010.
We find the same here. NASCO is a trade organization that will never fund or build a single highway anywhere. Yet NASCO supports its members and NASCO members are hard at work building the NAFTA Super-Highway.
Did you that Eisenhowsers's Interstate system was a communist plot to allow the Soviets to steamroll across the country during their invasion? It's true. What possible other reason could there be for building a massive interconnect of super highways in the country with the most vehicles and commerce?
Look, tons of their garbage is still on the net. It was submitted as "evidence" to the various highway design control agencies at public hearings.
You might read it; see if you find something familiar; then give the originator a call and see where she first got it.
There's some truly amazing stuff in there, particularly the part about Indian villages still extant on top of barren limestone quarries.
Human Events probably ought to see if some of that stuff they published was plaigerized too ~ nothing like a copyright violation to put money in somebody else's pocket you know.
Actually, we seem to have more name calling and pissing matches than discussion now. Too many want to attack someones position rather than simply prove them wrong. That being said, I would like to see more information from both sides of the issue before I make any decisions. I know certain forces twist the truth and the facts to get their way. I also understand the insidious nature of government. This whole road thing stinks of either propaganda or NWO.
You might remember those ~ the white painted tanks and other track vehicles on rail sidings in Mississippi? They even had UN markings. Turned out the US is/was the primary source of heavy equipment (tanks, artillery) for UN forces worldwide, and the stuff was being shipped out, not in.
Once the truth was known, most of these guys quit posting. Now they have a highway to complain about and they're as happy as pigs in slop.
Concerning those Secret Prison Camps, that storyline recently resurfaced over in the leftwingnut camp ~ supposedly the CIA was holding terrorists in secret underground prisons somewhere. Hmmm?! ~ same story ~ different folks ~ I hope
I think if we could spend enough time checking out the posters we'd find the very same people (the anti-highway crowd) having been first off the mark in the Dubai "ports" issue.
In my experience, any time you find the mob, Longshoremen, Teamsters, New Jerseyites and New York Port Authority on the same side ....... well, you know exactly what I mean.
Roads are most definitely a commie plot. They were devised in 68 BC by the Consiglio sui Rapporti Stranieri, the predecessor to today's CFR, and the earliest known commie organization.
All Freepers should personally vow to block new road construction and rip up existing ones. It's the only way to preserve the republic.
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