THE NORTH AMERICAN UNION

For The Tribune Papers

By Mike Scruggs

Buried deep in the 300-plus pages of the latest Senate Amnesty-Guestworker bill, S.1639, was a proposal to expedite the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP). The SPP is the forerunner of a North American Economic Community with no internal borders dividing the United States, Mexico, and Canada. It in turn foreshadows a North American Union (NAU) which would have many sovereign administrative and judicial powers over its three major administrative regions.

The SPP is already being implemented in small incremental steps outside of public view and Congressional oversight. Fortunately, the SPP’s activities and goals are now receiving some public and Congressional notice. Its birth, growth, and methods of implementation are remarkably similar to those of the European Union (EU).

As of 2007, there are 27 European nations in the European Union. Its first predecessor was the European Steel and Coal Community established in 1951 by France, West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Italy. It later became the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957 and initially sought only to enhance common economic prosperity by establishing common trade, customs, and monetary policies. In 1992, the European Union replaced the EEC and at the same time expanded its objectives from trade and commerce to more overtly political, social, cultural, and foreign policy functions. In the future, the EU hopes to implement common police and security functions within its membership nations. This expansion of functions and objectives is especially worrisome in light of the governmental structure of the EU.

The executive arm and real power of the EU is the European Commission, whose members are appointed by their national governments and are not directly subject to the consent of European voters. Furthermore, EU administrative policies tend to emerge from “dialog groups” with little public visibility or accountability. The EU and its governmental bodies are largely dominated by France, Belgium, and Germany.

Many regard Jean Monnet (French bureaucrat and visionary, 1888-1979) as the “Father of the European Union.” He envisioned a European superstate (dominated by the French, of course) with a free flow of labor, capital, and goods within a continent with essentially no internal borders. He further envisioned a European identity replacing the old national and ethnic identities. He knew, however, that most Europeans would not accept the loss of their national identities and cultures. Monnet’s plan was to reach the goal of a European superstate by small incremental steps implemented by dialog groups and Eurocrats well beneath public visibility. This plan was working very well until increased public awareness and resistance caused the Dutch and French to reject the European Union Constitution in 2006. But EU superstate ambitions still live in the plans of many European political and bureaucratic leaders.

Like Monnet, the SPP has its own visionary leader in the person of American University professor, Robert Pastor. Pastor is a gifted left-wing thinker and organizer who first gained political notice during the Carter Administration. He has the usual leftist distaste for American nationalism and was Carter’s point man for the 1978 treaty, narrowly approved by the U.S. Senate, which gave away the Panama Canal in 1999. Pastor’s vision is for a North American Union similar to the European Union. His methods shadow the thinking of EU’s Jean Monnet. Plans for a North American Union should be accomplished in small administrative steps as far out of public sight and Congressional scrutiny as possible.

The SPP is evolving into an internally borderless North American Community reflecting the globalist dreams of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a cadre of revolutionary academics, and an assortment of the largest international corporations expected to benefit from its implementation. Next would come a North American Union and the effective loss of U.S. sovereignty. The two most prominent political leaders associated with advancing globalist economics and the plans for a North America without internal borders are George W. Bush and former Mexican President, Vincente Fox.

The transportation plans for the North American Economic Community are impressive, but their principal function will be to transport cheap-labor foreign goods into the world’s greatest consumer markets, the U.S.A. With most of the labor coming from outside the U.S., however, one might sensibly ask how long the late U.S. middle class will have enough spendable income to afford the cheaper merchandise, especially since their jobs are being shipped overseas or displaced by less expensive guest-workers.

These huge transportation projects will be financed by Public-Private Partnerships (PPP’s). Foreign investment in the private segment is being enthusiastically embraced.

Hence you may soon be paying tolls to a French, Mexican, or Saudi Arabian company to use the new colossal transportation system.

The People’s Republic of China, with its 25 cents an hour wage rates, will probably be the main national beneficiary of this transportation system. The Trans-Texas corridor will be the first completed. Huge ships with 20-foot-long containers will move goods from China to Mexican ports. The containers will then be shipped by rail or truck to the U.S. heartland. But don’t worry about security. These containers will be checked by sophisticated new electronic gear developed and owned by largely foreign enterprises including several dominated by the Chinese government. I sure hope the Chinese never get cross with us. I have a feeling we won’t be able to help Taiwan and other Asian allies much with Chinese technocrats supervising our internal transportation security. If you were also worrying about the proverbial corruption of Mexican businesses and government officials, you probably don’t understand that globalism and cheap labor trump national security.

All this resembles President Bush’s recent attempt to turn our largest ports over to a Dubai state ports company. Never mind that Dubai is predominantly Muslim and vulnerable to one of those Islamic awakenings. Just remember that George Bush told you that Islam is “a religion of peace and tolerance.” Just look at Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, and the Sudan and take comfort. Or if you are into Jihad, maybe you could read the Koran and the teachings of Muhammad for comfort.

Basically, The North American Union is a project of the same economic thinking that brought us NAFTA and CAFTA. According to Jerome Corsi, author of the newly published book, The Late Great U.S.A: The Coming Merger with Mexico and Canada, the U.S. is in quite an economic jam because of trade agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA. Almost every country in the world is taking advantage of the U.S. by subsidizing their own exports and imposing Value Added Taxes (VAT) on American goods. We are doing free trade, and they are doing export subsidies and VAT tariff barriers. All this is causing trade deficits to balloon. One result is that China owns more than a Trillion dollars in U.S. Treasury securities.

As for the plans of the SPP and emerging NAU, get ready to exchange your dollars for “Ameros” as early as 2010. Also get ready to discard your American identity. It won’t be politically correct anymore. Start thinking of your North American identity.

And don’t worry about getting the government of the North American Union organized in such a short time. Committees, “dialog groups” (shades of the EU), and study groups are already laying out the plans for you. According to information on SPP meetings retrieved through the Freedom of Information Act, the top SPP lieutenants in the U.S.,

reporting to the “leaders,” will be Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, and Secretary of State Condi Rice. Gutierrez and Chertoff have already been instrumental in promoting Bush’s open borders immigration policies and the infamous Senate bill, S.1639.

Corsi believes the misguided trade, cheap labor, and cheap money policies of the last three presidents, but particularly George W. Bush, are bringing the nation to the brink of a monetary crisis which risks the collapse of the dollar. Meanwhile the political and commercial architects of our misguided big business-big government globalist policies are getting rich, while the living standards and future opportunities of most Americans are slowly declining. Greed is always blinded by short-term profits, and more often than not, suddenly overcome by the disaster of short-term thinking.

Fortunately, some people are waking up. Former globalist-free trade enthusiast, Princeton economist Alan Binder has reversed his position. In a March 2007 Wall Street Journal article, Binder warned that the outsourcing practices he once advocated could place as many as 40 million U.S. jobs at risk of being shipped out of the country in the next two decades. Thanks to globalist economics, there are now only 20 million manufacturing jobs left in the U.S. Many high-tech service jobs will also be leaving unless the trend is reversed very soon.

In January of this year, Congressman Virgil Goode (R-VA) introduced House Concurrent Resolution 40 (HCR 40) to express the sense of Congress that the U.S. should not construct a super corridor system or enter into a North American Union with Mexico and Canada. Two Republican House members from North Carolina are co-sponsors of HCR 40: Virginia Foxx and Walter B. Jones.

Goode also introduced HCR 18 expressing disapproval of the proposed “totalization” agreement between the U.S. and Mexico, which would provide social security retirement benefits to currently illegal immigrant workers from Mexico. Also with North Carolina Representative Walter B. Jones, he has introduced HCR 22, calling on the President to withdraw from NAFTA.

“There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations”—James Madison

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