Posted on 02/24/2007 1:22:02 PM PST by NapkinUser
OTTAWA - Are North American governments secretly conspiring to build a "NAFTA superhighway," four football fields wide, from Mexico to Canada, to bypass regulatory controls and whisk goods swiftly to market?
If you believe some right-wing websites in the United States, it's all but a fait accompli. They insist a gargantuan project is in the works that will carve a 365-metre-wide swath through the continent's heart, with 10 traffic lanes, rail lines for freight and passenger trains, fibre-optic cable lines and pipelines carrying oil, gas and water.
Conservative commentators Pat Buchanan and Phyllis Schlafly, and websites such as WorldNetDaily, link the supposed superhighway to the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), a series of agreements being negotiated among the United States, Canada and Mexico. They fear the SPP will lead to a North American union similar to the European Union, with a resulting loss of American sovereignty.
If you've never heard of the NAFTA superhighway, it may be because no such plan actually exists. The whole idea, one American official recently told a congressional committee, is an "urban myth."
But some remain unconvinced, in part because the largely secretive SPP process has created an information void that provides oxygen for conspiracy theorists.
Most SPP work is being done by 19 working groups that meet behind closed doors. The project only surfaces publicly when politicians from the three countries gather for periodic updates, like Friday's SPP ministerial meetings in Ottawa.
So far, anxiety about the purported NAFTA superhighway has been confined to the United States. Activists in Canada, by and large, don't quite know what to make of it, though the Sierra Club has expressed concern that NAFTA super-corridors could be used to pipe Canadian water to American markets.
Even the Council of Canadians, never shy about expressing alarm about anything that furthers "deep integration" with the U.S., declined comment. "We're trying to figure out what's going on, like everyone else," says spokesman Stewart Trew.
In the U.S, though, the furor over the NAFTA superhighway is so intense that the American government's Security and Prosperity Partnership website has posted a denial under the heading, "SPP Myths vs. Facts."
Those who swear that a NAFTA superhighway is in the works cite two main pieces of evidence.
One is the Trans-Texas Corridor, a proposed statewide network of transportation routes, each of which could include six automobile lanes, four truck lanes, freight and commuter rail lines, and infrastructure for utilities. It would take up to 50 years to fully build.
The other is the existence of North America's SuperCorridor Coalition (NASCO), a non-profit organization whose mission is to develop "the world's first international, integrated and secure multi-modal transportation system."
NASCO, whose members include companies and governments in the United States, Mexico and Canada - including the city of Winnipeg and the province of Manitoba - promotes and lobbies for what's known as the "international mid-continent trade and transportation corridor." It says the corridor connects 71 million people and supports $1 trillion US in total commerce between the three nations.
The 4,000-kilometre corridor runs from the Pacific port cities of Lazaro Cardenas and Manzanillo in Mexico to Manitoba, with a major offshoot to the Ambassador Bridge border crossing between Detroit and Windsor.
In the U.S., the corridor tracks interstate highways 35, 29 and 94.
As it happens, the first leg of the proposed Trans-Texas Corridor would run parallel to Interstate 35, leading critics to allege that the massive Texas project is a prototype for the coming NAFTA superhighway.
Allegations like that exasperate Tiffany Melvin, NASCO's executive director. The Texas plan, which NASCO supports, is a response to growing highway congestion in that state, she says. "There's no plan - I cannot emphasize this enough - to extend this to other states," Melvin insists.
She blames any misperception on fear-mongering by people who have strung together local highway projects to "make it appear to be some evil plot that has been kept secret from the public."
If there's any such secret plan, it's news to Andy Horosko, Manitoba's deputy minister of transportation and a member of NASCO's board.
"When we talk about the super-corridor, we're basically talking about how do we make best efforts in terms of the existing infrastructure," he says. "We're not part of any super-plan that's going to have this four-football-field-wide corridor with no regulatory controls on it."
Nor is NASCO linked to the Security and Prosperity Partnership, says Horosko, though one of the SPP's key transportation milestones is to establish "an intermodal corridor work plan" and test it in a pilot project.
"We certainly are aware of what they're doing," says Horosko. "Any time we see something that we think lines up well with SPP, we certainly try to make sure that the federal government is aware of what we're doing and can bring it to the SPP table."
But even assuming there's no secret plan to pave over a chunk of mid-America, recognition of the importance of trade and transportation corridors in expediting the movement of foreign and domestic goods is growing.
Stephen Blank, a business professor at Pace University in New York, says the mid-continent corridor is well positioned to become North America's main trade conduit, in part because its roads and rail lines already exist.
That doesn't mean upgrades aren't required, adds Blank. "Everywhere along our North American infrastructure system there's tremendous need now for maintenance, which has fallen way behind, and also for thinking about what we're going to build next. And none of that is realistically being done."
The mid-continent corridor is more of an entrepreneurial concept than a physical plan, Blank says. He credits NASCO for "driving the concept of north-south trade. For the first time, I think entrepreneurs have begun to realize there's business to be done up and down the corridor."
Yet the mid-continent corridor faces competition from other regions that are promoting their own trade and transportation corridors.
One is the Canamex Corridor Coalition, a joint project of Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Utah and Montana, which is pushing a trade and transportation corridor from Mexico to Calgary. Little of the needed infrastructure now exists, though.
As well, the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies is championing a corridor called Atlantica, spanning the Maritime provinces, Newfoundland, southern Quebec and several New England states.
Supporters envisage the port of Halifax as Atlantica's gateway. From there, super-sized "train trucks" would haul Asian goods to the U.S. midwest. A parallel energy corridor would ship offshore oil and gas to American markets.
But none of these competitors are as far advanced as the mid-continent corridor, which NASCO has been promoting since its formation in 1994.
"This is really a success story," asserts Blank, who says the mid-continent corridor offers "one of the first examples of a sense of collaboration north-south among urban centres."
Manitoba has been using NASCO to forge closer links along the corridor, all in the name of opening doors for business, says Horosko.
"We've benefited a whole lot just from putting Manitoba on the map," he says. "We are certainly known along the corridor. We've got contacts in Mexico as a result of this participation."
So now one of my heroines, Phyllis Schlafly, is being attacked as liar. I don’t think so, Don Butler. It is you that has a credibility problem. You will never ever be on the same intellectual level as Ms. Schlafly.
I used to think Phyllis hung the moon. Now I think she's just luney.
What's so wrong with by-passing the commie ridden Panama Canal, and the commie/socialist/mafia ridden east and west coast union leaderships (that donate ga-zillions to defeat republicans and conservatives every election cycle), get a lot of the heavy truck traffic off our existing highways, create millions of jobs, streamline the distribution of goods, have a better look at what is traveling on our highways, make it easier to inspect and interdict?
It will directly benefit red states, and, also, directly hamper the socialist blue states on the east and west coasts...........
Brilliant!
We are not going to switch to the Peso or Canadian dollar, we are not going to bow down to the Canadians or Mexicans, but we can hit the American socialist left right between the eyes with this one......
"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." – Jerome Corsi on May 19, 2006
"If President Bush had run openly in 2004 on the proposition that a prime objective of his second term was to form the North American Union and to supplant the dollar with the “Amero,” we doubt very much that President Bush would have carried Ohio, let alone half of the Red State majority he needed to win re-election." – Jerome Corsi on May 22, 2006
"What will happen to the sovereignty of the United States? The model is the European Community. While the United States would supposedly remain as a country, many of our nation-state prerogatives would ultimately be superseded by the authority of a North American court and parliamentary body, just as the U.S. dollar would have to be surrendered for the “Amero,” the envisioned surviving currency of the North American Union.
…What we have underway here with the SPP could arguably be termed a bureaucratic coup d’etat. If that is not the intent, then President Bush should rein in the bureaucracy until the American people have been fully informed of the true nature of our government’s desire to create a North American Union. Otherwise, the North American Union will become a reality in 2010 as planned." – Jerome Corsi on May 30, 2006
Yesterday, Jerome Corsi was prattling on about the North American Union again after Michael Medved deservedly spanked him for spreading conspiracy theories. While I don't think Corsi is any more worthy of being taken seriously than those who think Jews rule the world or the "Truthers" who think President Bush is responsible for 9/11, I thought I would respond to him one last time. (I think that's about the fourth time I've said that.)
Now, why respond again? What's the point? Well unfortunately, a lot of conservatives consider this conspiracy theory to be so preposterous that they believe it's beneath them to even bother discussing it, and that leaves Corsi and his ilk to dominate the debate. And since there are a lot of conservatives being taken in by this North American Union nonsense, somebody has got to step up to the plate.
Of course, once you decide to respond to a conspiracy theory, you have a very basic problem: the people who believe in this theory didn't reason their way into it, so it's extremely difficult to use reason to convince them that there's nothing to it. In this case, from what I've seen, most people who buy into the NAU conspiracy theory have done so because they're understandably upset about Bush's outrageous position on illegal immigration or because they've heard a few big conservative names like Corsi, Phyllis Schlafly, Michael Savage, Lou Dobbs or Joseph Farah talk about it as if it were reality. Then, they see that we're cooperating with our neighbors on certain issues (which is something that we're always doing) and they leap to the conclusion that we're in the middle of some far ranging plot when nothing could be further from the truth.
However, not one of the advocates of this conspiracy theory mentioned above has ever produced one single solitary piece of evidence that shows anyone in the Bush Administration is working on an “Amero” or actually merging the U.S. into Canada or Mexico, because there is no such evidence. In fact, that's one of the most striking things about this conspiracy: it's supposedly a grandiose plot that the Bush Administration is engaged in, yet no one from the Bush Administration is ever tied to any of the "evidence," such as it is, that's offered. For example:
-snip-
(John Hawkins in Human Events, January 10, 2007)
To Read This Article Click Here
Truckers gain freeway access in Mexico, U.S.
Yearlong program could begin in April
By Diane Lindquist
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
February 24, 2007
After more than a decade of fierce opposition, U.S. and Mexican officials came to the Otay Mesa border crossing yesterday to announce a pilot program that will open highways on both sides of the border to truckers from either country.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters said the yearlong pilot program, which could start as early as April, will initially enroll 100 Mexican and 100 U.S. long-haul freight companies. She gave further details of plans first disclosed Thursday.
“The time has come to move forward on a longstanding promise with Mexico,” Peters said.
Under the North American Free Trade Agreement, U.S., Canadian and Mexican truckers were supposed to gain unfettered access to highways across the continent.
But in 1995, days before the date the NAFTA trucking provision was to kick in, President Clinton – under pressure from the Teamsters union – prevented implementation. He cited concerns that Mexican trucks and drivers might endanger the safety of U.S. citizens.
Congress subsequently appropriated funds to establish safety inspection facilities along the border and to quadruple the number of U.S. inspectors and auditors to ensure that Mexican trucks and drivers met U.S. safety standards.
Safety and environmental challenges continued, however, until the Supreme Court ruled in 2004 that the Bush administration could go ahead and open the U.S. border to trucking.
Currently, Mexican truckers can operate only within a limited zone at the border. In San Diego County, many drivers transfer their loads to U.S. operators for delivery to the U.S. interior. Some Mexican fleet owners have operations in both countries.
At yesterday's news conference at the California Highway Patrol inspection station, Peters said measures are being taken to ensure Mexican trucks will meet U.S. safety and environmental standards, including requirements that truckers have driver's licenses, be medically fit, comply with U.S. requirements that drivers work limited hours, can respond to questions in English, have U.S. insurance policies, and comply with U.S. truck safety standards.
Opening the border will benefit business on both sides, she said.
“Here at the border trade is an essential part of economic life,” Peters said. “Now U.S. truckers will be able to compete in the Mexican marketplace for the first time ever.”
Mexican Communications and Transportation Secretary Luis Tellez said the decision to start the pilot program is historic. “We are neighbors and trade partners, and we have to work together,” he said.
U.S. opponents of the plan have not given up. The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association announced that it plans to take its concerns about numerous safety issues to the U.S. Congress.
“While some of the safety shortcomings of trucks from Mexico have seen improvement . . . many others have not,” Todd Spencer, the group's executive vice president, said in a statement. “We feel (the Department of Transportation) is overstepping its bounds with the pilot program, and they may very well be overstepping congressional mandates.”
Under the program, U.S. inspectors from the Department of Transportation will visit trucking operations in Mexico to examine their trucks, books and safety records.
While Mexican truckers from across the U.S.-Mexico border region will be enrolled in the pilot program, 500 of the 800 Mexican companies that previously applied for access are from Baja California.
Alfonso Isaias Esquer Millán, a Baja California-based fleet operator who made one of his trucks available for a safety demonstration, said he hopes to get into the pilot program.
“We have to update our files,” he said, “but our trucks are as compliant with U.S. safety regulations as those in the United States.”
Mexico has not yet finalized the application process for U.S. truckers to gain access to roads south of the border. It might take as long as six months to get the system up and running.
“There's not been an overwhelming interest in American companies to go south,” said John H. Hill, administrator of the Transportation Department's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
I wonder where the Eco-WackOs are, The trucks from Mexico blow a lot of crap.
Dream on.
Easing trade is generally a good thing, but we have 0 trust in this US government as to anything that may affect our soverign country...that is a big issue...NO Trust on any border issues left.
Maybe so but the Mexican fence is being exposed as a mere gambit/game/diversion to pacify the base.. by the White RINO House.. What evil lurks behind the White RINO House doors?.. (creeeeaking sound)..
Preparation for Hitlerys Presidency and her appointing Bill Clinton to fulfill the rest of her Senate term are being made NOW, I think.. Evil lurks in the nightime and daylight too in ol' Foggy Bottom..
This guy knows NOTHING! He's making an absolute fool out of himself, and he's going to hear about it when he finds out we were all right. What kind of proof does he need? I would be willing to bet he never did anything to verify the FACTS before he started shooting off his big mouth!
Even the newspaper employee quotes proponents of that corridor. "When we talk about the super-corridor, we're basically talking about how do we make best efforts in terms of the existing infrastructure," he says. "We're not part of any super-plan that's going to have this four-football-field-wide corridor with no regulatory controls on it."
Yet the proponents sidle up to SPP.
But above all the problem for me is the super-sized "train trucks" hauling Asian goods from Mexican ports to U.S. markets. When will our "free traders" be satisfied that the Chi-Com war machine is big enough for them?
In his new book Peter Navarro (The Coming China Wars) catalogues Red China's myriad monster problems -- any one of which IMO could spark a revolution.
I sincerely hope to live long enough to see everything that the "free traders" have invested in Mexico's ports and trucks, and Red China disappear as a new Mao "rescues" Red China from the new Guomindang and worse.
And don't expect the taxpayers to tolerate OPIC, Ex-Im Bank and other taxpayer-backed entities replacing the "free traders" losses.
This nitwittery is straight from the wingnut fever swamps which discredit us on the right.
Who or what will be setting the rules for using the NAFTA superhighway?
Who or what will police use of the highway?
Who or what will settle disputes over its use?
The Illuminati.
No, I thought it was green men from Mars.
My questions are legitimate. You obviously don't know.
Go play in the street.
Try this then. Let's take Texas, for example. Laws will be enforced by the Texas Highway Patrol, and those or any other issues adjudicated by Texas courts, unless there is Federal jurisdiction in some matter to be determined.
The US is no different.
The US needs new roads not only to transport international goods. Population growth is about 1% per year plus there has been and will be a significant population shift meaning more roads plus more roads in places they weren't needed before.
The Corsi Kooks love to talk about the Texas roads. Today, 17% of the truck traffic in Texas is NAFTA related. Undoubtedly there will be more in the future. Most likely there will be asian goods entering the US thru Texas. For sure, the increased international freight will put demands on Texas roads. However, these freight demands are not anywhere near the demands that will result due to a doubling of the Texas population in the coming decades.
Anyone that tries to ignore the significance of population growth on the Texas' needs for roads looks like a fool.
Thank you.
I'm guessing there will be jurisdictional questions all along the highway. I'd like to read an analysis concerning who can do what where. In other words, who or what is writing the rules.
Do counties, states or the federal government have a say?
Is there an NGO involved?
Who claims ownership of the highway and its easements? This has a bearing on what businesses may locate along the highway and possibly profit from it.
So if you have links that might answer these questions, I'm interested.
NWO...!
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