The North American Union Plan is Real

Note by Me: I don't agree with the JBS on all issues, but they are right on this issue.

By Timothy

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From http://jbs.org/node/7736

http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=61232

North American Union "Paranoid Fantasies"

By Christopher S. Bentley
Published: 2008-04-10 20:46

ARTICLE SYNOPSIS:

“It's time to call BS on the idea of a mythical North American Union,” stated the progressives at Alternet.

Follow this link to the original source: "Busting Paranoid Right-Wing Fantasies of Dissolving Mexico-U.S.-Canada Borders"

COMMENTARY:

Authors Rocha and Anderson, from the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), must have worn their thesaurus out in writing this latest hit piece.

Not only do they call “BS” “the idea of a mythical North American,” but they also employ such terms as “ranting and raving,” “xenophobes,” “paranoid fantasies,” “screeds,” “xenophobes” (that’s their fave), “anti-SPP xenophobes” (ooh, there it is again), “hysteria,” and “racist movement,” resorting to ridicule and name-calling, rather than a reasoned discussion based on principles.

We do agree with the authors that some (if not much) of what circulates on the Internet regarding the subject dabbles too much in speculation and hyperbole, while other information is outright inaccurate.

But other than decrying private corporations partnering with government for their own interests — which, by the way, is technically called fascism — the rest of their editorial is an anemic attempt to explain away the NAU as a myth, with absolutely no examination of the evidence, or any factual refutation of it.

Rather than engage in name-calling, why not have a rational dialogue on the subject?

The John Birch Society is opposed to NAFTA because a similar process was started 50 years ago in Europe and has turned into now what is the European Union.

That process is called “regional integration.” It’s a basic concept taught in undergraduate courses in international business these days.

Regional integration exists on five levels:

1) free trade agreement
2) customs union
3) common market
4) economic union
5) political union

A free trade agreement, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s website Export.gov, is to

help level the international playing field and encourage foreign governments to adopt open and transparent rulemaking procedures, as well as non-discriminatory laws and regulations… [and to] strengthen business climates by eliminating or reducing tariff rates, [etc., etc., ].

After Bill Clinton signed NAFTA into law in 1993, the U.S. formally entered into level one. That’s what Americans who favored it thought they were getting with NAFTA.

Many Americans thought it sounded good, but few were told about the rest.

Regarding level two, we need look no further than to the European Union for an authoritative statement. According to their website,

The customs union is a single trading area where all goods circulate freely, whether made within the EU or imported from outside….

The customs union … abolished customs duties at internal borders and put in place a uniform system for taxing imports. Internal border controls subsequently disappeared. Customs officers are now found only at the EU’s external borders.

Regarding a common market, the EU’s website states,

Within the European single market, people, goods, services and money move around as freely as within one country. We travel at will across the EU’s internal frontiers for business and pleasure….

When Robert Pastor testified before Congress in 2004, and presented the recommendations of a Council on Foreign Relations CFR) task force report, entitled Building a North American Community, he called for “establish[ing] a common security perimeter by 2010,” and “adopt[ing] a common external tariff.”

He also called for, in the wording of the report, “full labor mobility between Canada and the United States,” and eventually extending that to Mexico. Additionally, he called for an exchange of Mexican and Canadian personnel into our own Department of Homeland Security.

In essence, Pastor was calling on Congress to implement levels two and three of regional integration: a customs union and common market.

Incidentally, the Bush administration’s Security and Prosperity Partnership (www.spp.gov) is nothing more than the framework for carrying out the proposals set forth in that CFR task force report — all their denials to the contrary notwithstanding. We must look at what they are doing, not what they are saying.

The fourth level, an economic union, according to the economics division of the Canadian government,

frequently includes the use of a common currency and a unified monetary policy….

Supranational institutions would be required to regulate commerce within the union to ensure uniform application of the rules…. [C]ountries would abdicate individual control in this area.

Chapter 11 NAFTA Tribunals are already functioning as “supranational institutions,” overturning U.S. court decisions. To some degree, our nation has already entered into level four.

Regarding the “amero,” we didn’t imagine that, either. The ubiquitous Robert Pastor, in a summer 2007 interview in Intelligence Report, claimed that he “borrowed that idea from a Canadian economist called H. G. Grubel. But I just put his idea on the table for discussion, along with other options. The problem is that the right-wing attacks have made people so fearful they don’t even want to open a discussion” (Emphasis added).

So, now we’re to blame (thank you, we'll take it) for ruining any discussion of the idea of surrendering our currency to the control of a North American Central Bank, which by the way is a key component of level four, an economic union.

The Building a North American Community report also lays the foundation for political union, calling for 1) a North American Advisory Council, in which a “body of advisers … composed of eminent persons from outside government” would be “appointed to staggered multiyear terms to ensure their independence,” and 2) the establishment of a North American Inter-Parliamentary Group.

As for the “imaginative John Birch Society” and our future North American Union flag, the “paranoid” idea was provided by none other than the NAFTA Secretariat.

The podium is now open for rebuttal.