First, MORE quotes from the o.p.'s link:
*******QUOTE*******
.... Grassroots movement exposes elite conspiracy and forces politicians to respond: It would be a heartening story but for one small detail.
There's no such thing as a proposed NAFTA Superhighway. ....
In his essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," Richard Hofstadter famously sketched the contours of the American tradition of folk conspiracy--a tradition that has, at different times, seen its enemy in Masons, Jesuits, immigrants, Jews and Eastern bankers. There's certainly a strong continuity between that tradition and the populist/nationalist ire that drives the NAFTA highway myth. Hofstadter's original essay was motivated in part by the activities of the John Birch Society, which today is one of the leading purveyors of the highway myth.
But there's something more. The myth of the NAFTA Superhighway persists and grows because it taps into deeply felt anxieties about the dizzying dislocations of twenty-first-century global capitalism: a nativist suspicion of Mexico's designs on US sovereignty, a longing for national identity, the fear of terrorism and porous borders, a growing distrust of the privatizing agenda of a government happy to sell off the people's assets to the highest bidder and a contempt for the postnational agenda of Davos-style neoliberalism. Indeed, the image of the highway, with its Chinese goods whizzing across the border borne by Mexican truckers on a privatized, foreign-operated road, is almost mundane in its plausibility. If there was a NAFTA highway, you could bet that Tom Friedman would be for it--what could be more flattening than miles of concrete paved across the continent?--and Lou Dobbs would be zealously opposed. In fact, Dobbs has devoted a segment of his show to the highway, its nonexistence notwithstanding. "These three countries moving ahead their governments without authorization from the American people, without Congressional approval," he said. "This is as straightforward an attack on national sovereignty as there could be outside of war."
Though the story of the highway has been seeded and watered in the fertile soil of the nationalist right wing--promoted by Birchers and Corsi, co-author of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's book about John Kerry--it also stretches across ideological and partisan lines. Like immigration and the Dubai ports deal, it divides the Republican coalition against itself, pitting the capitalists against the nationalists. And more than a few on the center-left have voiced criticisms as well: Teamsters president James Hoffa wrote in a column last year that "Bush is quietly moving forward with plans...for what's known as a NAFTA superhighway--a combination of existing and new roads that would create a north-south corridor from Mexico to Canada.... It would allow global conglomerates to capitalize by exploiting cheap labor and nonexistent work rules and avoiding potential security enhancements at U.S. ports." Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Boyda, from eastern Kansas, invoked its specter early and often in her improbably successful 2006 campaign against Republican incumbent Jim Ryun. A campaign circular inserted in local newspapers warned that "if built, this 'Super Corridor' would be a quarter-mile wide and longer than the Great Wall of China." Boyda told me that her attacks on the highway "hit a real nerve because enough people had the same concerns." ....
Texas Transportation commissioner Ric Williamson is one of those Texas personalities who seem almost self-consciously to will themselves toward caricature. One Democratic staffer in the Capitol casually referred to him as Darth Vader; Texas Monthly recently called him "the most hated person in Texas." Owner of a natural gas production company before becoming a state legislator in 1985, he has lately been reincarnated as a transit policy wonk, a role he plays as a cross between mid-twentieth-century road builder Robert Moses and J.R. Ewing from Dallas: the planner as good old boy. He does not suffer from a lack of confidence. "We're the greatest state agency you'll ever interview," he told me at one point. With his good friend Governor Perry hemorrhaging political capital, it's fallen to Williamson to advocate for the corridor and draw fire from its opponents. ....
But what people like Williamson don't seem to understand is how disempowered people feel in the face of a neoliberal order whose direction they cannot influence. For corporatists within both parties (Williamson, it should be noted, was a Democrat while in the Statehouse), selling port security or road concessions to a multinational is inevitable, logical, obvious. To thousands of average citizens in Texas and elsewhere, it's madness or, worse, treason. Both the actual TTC and the mythical NAFTA Superhighway represent a certain kind of future for America, one in which the crony capitalism of oil-rich Texas expands to fill every last crevice of the public sector's role, eclipsing the relevance of the national government as both the provider of public goods and the unified embodiment of a sovereign people.
********UNQUOTE*******
AND THEN, Corsi's Swiftbotting, Minuteman a-hole background, as featured frequently on George "I wannabe Art BELL" NOORY's Coast to Coast:
************QUOTE*************
http://www.spp.gov/Security and Prosperity Partnership Of North America
http://www.spp.gov/myths_vs_facts.asp Text Myth vs. Fact
Myth: The SPP was an agreement signed by Presidents Bush and his Mexican and Canadian counterparts in Waco, TX, on March 23, 2005.
Fact: The SPP is a dialogue to increase security and enhance prosperity among the three countries. The SPP is not an agreement nor is it a treaty. In fact, no agreement was ever signed.
Myth: The SPP is a movement to merge the United States, Mexico, and Canada into a North American Union and establish a common currency.
Fact: The cooperative efforts under the SPP, which can be found in detail at www.spp.gov, seek to make the United States, Canada and Mexico open to legitimate trade and closed to terrorism and crime. It does not change our courts or legislative processes and respects the sovereignty of the United States, Mexico, and Canada. The SPP in no way, shape or form considers the creation of a European Union-like structure or a common currency. The SPP does not attempt to modify our sovereignty or currency or change the American system of government designed by our Founding Fathers. ....more
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_and_Prosperity_Partnership_of_North_AmericaSecurity and Prosperity Partnership of North America
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
.... Canadian criticism has also been directed at the North
American Competitiveness Council (NACC), a committee made up of
10 CEOs each from Mexico, the United States and Canada, which has been asked to reduce the over 300 recommendations in the SPP down to about 30 achievable goals. NACC members include CEOs from
Wal-Mart, Chevron, Lockheed Martin, FedEx, General Electric and Ford, among others. Of the ten Canadian CEOs on the NACC, nine are members of the
Canadian Council of Chief Executives, the driving force behind the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the Canadian representative on the trinational
Task Force on the Future of North America, whose recommendations led to the creation of the SPP.
The NACC will meet with government reps from all three countries to discuss their proposals in September 2006.
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=14965North American Union to Replace USA?
by Jerome R. Corsi
Posted May 19, 2006
.... President Bush intends to abrogate U.S. sovereignty to the North American Union, a new economic and political entity which the President is quietly forming, much as the European Union has formed.
The blueprint President Bush is following was laid out in a 2005 report entitled "Building a North American Community" published by the left-of-center Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The CFR report connects the dots between the Bush administration's actual policy on illegal immigration and the drive to create the North American Union: ....
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=15497Bush Administration Quietly Plans NAFTA Super Highway
by Jerome R. Corsi
Posted Jun 12, 2006
.... A good reason Bush does not want to secure the border with Mexico may be that the administration is trying to create express lanes for Mexican trucks to bring containers with cheap Far East goods into the heart of the U.S., all without the involvement of any U.S. union workers on the docks or in the trucks.
Mr. Corsi is the author of several books, including "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry" (along with John O'Neill), "Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil" (along with Craig R. Smith), and "Atomic Iran: How the Terrorist Regime Bought the Bomb and American Politicians." He is a frequent guest on the G. Gordon Liddy radio show. He will soon co-author a new book with Jim Gilchrist on the Minuteman Project.
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=15623North American Union Would Trump U.S. Supreme Court
by Jerome R. Corsi
Posted Jun 19, 2006
The Bush Administration is pushing to create a North American Union out of the work on-going in the Department of Commerce under the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America in the NAFTA office headed by Geri Word. A key part of the plan is to expand the NAFTA tribunals into a North American Union court system that would have supremacy over all U.S. law, even over the U.S. Supreme Court, in any matter related to the trilateral political and economic integration of the United States, Canada and Mexico. ....
http://www.wnd.com/news/archives.asp?AUTHOR_ID=246 Coming soon to U.S.: Mexican customs office
Monday, June 05, 2006 by Jerome R. Corsi -- Kansas City is planning to allow the Mexican government to open a Mexican customs office in conjunction with the Kansas City SmartPort. This will be the first foreign customs facility allowed to operate on U.S. soil.
Southern border blurs for global trade
Thursday, June 01, 2006 by Jerome R. Corsi -- The Texas segment of the NAFTA Super Corridor is moving rapidly toward approval. When built, the Trans-Texas Corridor, or TTC, will be a major super-highway with six lanes mo ...
Bush border policy linked to Carlyle deal?
Tuesday, May 23, 2006 by Jerome R. Corsi -- In January 2004, the Carlyle Group put together a new team to begin investing in Mexico. The team consisted of Luis T鬬ez, who was then an executive vice president of Desc, one of Mexico's larges ...
Immigration reform spells death for GOP
Friday, May 19, 2006 by Jerome R. Corsi -- To measure what exactly the Senate is doing in putting together a "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" bill, we have to ask what is going to change after the bill is passed: No illegal immigrant currently in the United Stat ...
Border fence will never be built
Thursday, May 18, 2006 by Jerome R. Corsi -- The Senate voted to approve the amendment submitted by Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., to build a 370-mile section of triple-layered fence along the Mexican border. Now the Bush administration is trying to push this as a victory for conservative ...
http://mediamatters.org/items/200408060010MMFA investigates: Who is Jerome Corsi, co-author of Swift Boat Vets attack book?
....
• Corsi on Islam: "a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion"
• Corsi on Catholicism: "Boy buggering in both Islam and Catholicism is okay with the Pope as long as it isn't reported by the liberal press"
• Corsi on Muslims: "RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters -- it all goes together"
• Corsi on "John F*ing Commie Kerry": "After he married TerRAHsa, didn't John Kerry begin practicing Judiasm? He also has paternal grandparents that were Jewish. What religion is John Kerry?"
• Corsi on Senator "FAT HOG" Clinton: "Anybody ask why HELLary couldn't keep BJ Bill satisfied? Not lesbo or anything, is she?" ....
********UNQUOTE*******
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
