How "North American Integration" Can Lead To a North American Union, Friday, March 9, 2007, By Cliff Kincaid

Robert Pastor, a top Democratic Party foreign policy specialist associated with the Panama Canal giveaway, denies that he is at the center of a "vast conspiracy" to subvert American

Sovereignty under the cover of establishing a "North American Union." Pastor says that he favors a "North American Community," not a formal union. But his Center for North American Studies (CNAS) sponsored an all-day February 16, 2007, conference devoted to the development of a North American legal system. The holding of the conference was itself evidence that a comprehensive process is underway to merge the economies, and perhaps the social and political systems, of the three countries.

Wearing a lapel pin featuring the flags of the U.S., Canada and Mexico, Pastor said that he favors a $200 billion North American Investment Fund to pull Mexico out of poverty. Rather than a border fence, he favors a national biometric identity card for the purpose of controlling the movement of people in and out of the U.S.

Academic literature distributed in advance to conference participants about a common legal framework for the U.S., Canada and Mexico included proposals for a North American Court of Justice (with the authority to overrule a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court), a North American Trade Tribunal, and a Charter of Fundamental Human Rights for North America, also dubbed the North American Social Charter.

Pastor is associated by conservatives with President Jimmy Carter’s treaty, opposed by then-presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, which transferred control of the Panama Canal away from the U.S. to the Panamanian government. Pastor was National Security Advisor for Latin America under Carter. His nomination as U.S. Ambassador to Panama was withdrawn in 1995 after conservative Senator Jesse Helms, then-chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, threatened to block a vote on his nomination. Helms accused Pastor of aiding radical forces and undermining U.S. interests in the region.

Pastor’s current project, a $200 billion North American Investment Fund, is for the purpose of narrowing the income disparity between Mexico, on the one hand, and the U.S. and Canada, on the other. "You need a lot of money to do it and do it effectively," Pastor says. He said Mexico would be required to put up half of the money, with the U.S. contributing 40 percent and Canada 10 percent. It would be done over 10 years.

The fund, he said, would focus on economic development in the southern and middle parts of Mexico, which haven’t been touched to any significant degree by

NAFTA , the North American Free Trade Agreement. This, he indicated, would go a long way toward stemming illegal immigration to the U.S.

Pastor said Senator John Cornyn, a conservative Republican, had introduced his North American Investment Fund as a bill in Congress but had backed away from it under conservative fire. The bill would "authorize the President to negotiate the creation of a North American Investment Fund to promote economic and infrastructure integration among Canada, Mexico, and the United States, and for other purposes."

There can be no doubt that a process of building a North American Union or a North American Community, whatever it’s called, is underway. There can also be little doubt that the process of bringing this into being is extremely secretive. The public interest group Judicial Watch obtained notes from a "North American Forum" conference, attended by U.S. government and corporate officials, which referred to getting people to accept the notion of a North American entity through "evolution by stealth." ^[1] To indicate how secretive this process has been, these notes had to be obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. ^[2]

As noted by Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, the notes for the presentations document the need to overcome popular opposition to North American integration. They say:

Judicial Watch also had to go through the Freedom of Information Act to obtain documents naming the members of some of the mysterious "working groups" which carry out the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) involving the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The group also disclosed

SPP organization charts.

The SPP is officially described as "a trilateral effort to increase security and enhance prosperity among the United States, Canada and Mexico through greater cooperation and information sharing" but its "working groups" have been operating in secret and many of the members and consultants are still not known. The official SPP web site ^[3] refers to "working groups" in the following areas:

However, no names of any of the members of the working groups are officially provided by the

SPP. If a member of the public wants to contact any of the working groups, he or she must use an email "comment form" that goes somewhere into the bureaucracy.

The

SPP was announced by President Bush, then-Mexican President Vicente Fox and then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, on March 23, 2005. The SPP says, "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." (emphasis added).

But then-Prime Minister Martin had declared that "President Bush, President Fox and I signed the Security and Prosperity Partnership…" A transcript of a "press availability" from June 27, 2005, shows Carlos Abascal, the Mexican Secretary of the Interior, saying that, "Our three leaders, President Fox, President Bush and prime Minister Paul Martin have signed the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America." based on a memorandum signed by President Bush and the leaders of Canada and Mexico in March 2005.

The text is available on the website of U.S. presidential documents but it does not indicate a signature had been attached to it. It is not listed under the category of executive orders.

A Canadian report describes the SPP as "an international framework for trilateral and bilateral cooperation in North America" that is "not a formal international treaty" or "an overarching binding legal agreement."

But what is an "international framework" that commits U.S. officials from various federal agencies to working with officials of two other countries? Why is such a process not subjected to congressional scrutiny and approval?

On the basis of this allegedly unsigned SPP document, federal officials have entered into other agreements with the governments of Mexico and Canada which have been signed. The SPP refers, for example, to a "signed" agreement with Mexico on consumer goods and a "signed" agreement with Canada on pipeline regulations. They are described by the SPP as "accomplishments." Who signed these documents? It doesn't say. Why should they be signed when the original agreement creating the SPP is not? It doesn't explain.

Officially, on the U.S. side, the SPP is coordinated by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, and Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez. The most recent SPP meeting was in Canada on February 23. ^[4] The next meeting is in Canada in August.

Some aspects of this proposed trilateral relationship make sense. The idea of further development of the energy resources of Canada and Mexico> would benefit North America as a whole. Getting Canadian and Mexican assistance in national security matters also makes sense.

But there are just too many indications that the process goes far beyond collaboration on development issues and national security matters to the elimination of national boundaries.

Pastor’s work is one example. Another is a Trilateral Commission paper, The Future of North American Integration,^[5] proposing "deeper economic integration" for the three countries, such as making NAFTA into a customs union or a "common market" for North America The

Trilateral Commission is a powerful private organization, composed of citizens from Japan, Europe, and North America, which is committed to fostering closer cooperation "among these core democratic industrialized areas of the world with shared leadership responsibilities in the wider international system." ^[6]

By withholding information about the process, the governments of all three countries risk a significant public backlash.

In fact, some Canadians, mostly on the left,^[7] see the process as designed to permit "Big Business" to exploit Canada’s natural resources. They have launched the "Integrate This" campaign challenging the SPP. They also believe that integration will result in the weakening of Canadian environmental and public health standards. They contend that "corporate Canada [is] intent on trading Canadian sovereignty for greater access to American markets…" Author Mel Hurtig, a "Canadian nationalist," says Canada will become Puerto Rico with snow. Like the left in Canada, some Mexicans^[8] see the process as being under the control of big corporations and designed to exploit Mexico’s natural resources and workers.

Here, American conservatives see the process, which would make it easier to move goods and people across borders, as undermining the ability of the U.S. to protect and defend its long-neglected borders and, therefore, subverting American sovereignty. They see the integration of the U.S. with Mexico, which is characterized by systemic corruption, as completely nonsensical, even dangerous, and view integration with Canada, which has very liberal social policies, as undermining the need to preserve traditional American values.

So far, the Bush Administration has dismissed the concerns of conservatives. White House spokesman Tony Snow appeared on the Lars Larson radio show in January and said the charge that the U.S. is being submerged in a North American Union and developing a common currency with Canada and Mexico is an "urban legend." It may be the case that he does not understand Robert Pastor’s real agenda.

On the other hand, the Bush Administration’s commitment to the SPP may help explain why, in the opinion of many observers, it does not want to enforce border security, despite the president having signed a bill to create a border fence, and instead favors "legalization" of illegal aliens and a "guest-worker program." The Washington Times reports that Senator Ted Kennedy is putting the final touches on a comprehensive immigration-reform bill, which will be backed by the White House, "that includes an easier citizenship path for illegal aliens and weaker enforcement provisions than were in the highly criticized legislation that the Senate approved last year."

In a related matter, the Department of Transportation (DOT) announced on February 23, the same day as a

Security and Prosperity Partnership meeting in Canada, that Mexican trucks would be allowed to travel anywhere in the U.S. officials claimed that Mexico was promised such access under

NAFTA. The plan is seen as worrisome in terms of a proposed "NAFTA Superhighway" from Mexico through the U.S. into Canada.[9]

This led to a March 8 hearing on the matter called by Sen. Patty Murray, chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on transportation, housing and urban development. Charlie Parfrey, president of Parfrey Trucking Brokerage in Spokane, Washington, who testified on behalf of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, said that the DOT effort "has been almost entirely secret and beyond public view or scrutiny."

On March 7, in advance of President Bush’s trip to Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico, Jorge G. Castaneda, Mexico’s foreign minister from 2000-2003, wrote an article in the Washington Post saying that Bush should take to Mexico "a firm commitment to comprehensive immigration reform, and the bipartisan backing of House and Senate leaders to approve it promptly…" ^[10] Castaneda suggested this might be the only way to prevent the new Mexican President, Felipe Calderon, from deciding to join the anti-American bloc of nations led by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. ^[11]

Such a position by Bush would be viewed by most conservatives as caving in to the open borders lobby and a form of amnesty for illegal aliens.

This quotation from Castaneda was reported favorably by a news service known as "Los Voz De Aztlan" or "The Voice of Aztlan." Aztlan is an Aztec word that is used by Mexican irredentists in the U.S. to describe the Western states that they hope to take over and restore to Mexico. One of the articles featured on the site was:

Fidel Castro Ruz Says US Should Return Aztlan Back to Mexico

MEXICO CITY -- Cuban President Fidel Castro said that the United States should return to Mexico huge chunks of that country's territories it acquired more than a century ago.

In a fiery 90-minute speech, the Cuban leader claimed that the United States wrongly appropriated more than half of Mexico's territory, mostly through successive invasions. These include Texas, California, Arizona, and New Mexico.

"Now, they are terrorized because Mexicans cross'' into what is properly their territory, Castro said. He said that in effect, Mexicans are reconquering their own land. Castro's comments were contained in a speech he gave at the close of an international congress of educators in Havana, the Cuban capital, including several hundred teachers from Mexico. Excerpts were contained in a dispatches from Havana by the Mexican government news agency Notimex and other news sources, in Mexico City.

Source: http://www.aztlan.net/castroaztlan.htm

Like Robert Pastor, with whom he wrote a book, ^[13] Castaneda supports the idea of a "development fund" to benefit Mexico ^[14] He also favors building new institutions to create a "North American Economic Community." [15]

The United Nations is now funding Pastor’s Center for North American Studies (CNAS) through the U.N.’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). ^[16] Pastor was a consultant to ECLAC from 1991-1993. ^[17] The U.N. funding is to address "regulatory convergence" issues.

At the same time, Mexico frequently threatens to go to the U.N. to stop any U.S. move to crack down on illegal immigration.

Under the Vicente Fox government, Mexico was reported to be drafting a resolution for the United Nations Human Rights Council criticizing the U.S. plan to build a border fence. Before that, Mexico took the United States to the U.N.'s International Court of Justice, complaining about the treatment of Mexican criminals, including convicted killers, by U.S. authorities. The U.N. court ruled against America. Just recently, Mexico's Congress condemned the United States because workers building a section of fence between the two countries went 10 yards into Mexico.

The U.N., however, has not turned a completely blind eye to what is happening in Mexico. Alberto Szekely, a career ambassador with the Mexican Foreign Service, told the North American law conference sponsored by Pastor that Mexico was "a country where the contravention of the law is the daily rule rather than the exception." He said he could confirm, as rapporteurs of various international human rights bodies from the U.N. and the O.A.S. had discovered, that the Mexican legal system is characterized by official corruption, including widespread influence peddling, graft, racketeering, bribery, payoffs and kickbacks. He said Mexico is also characterized by systematic police brutality, extrajudicial executions, deplorable incarceration conditions, widespread torture and violation of fundamental human rights. He said reforms under the presidency of Vicente Fox went nowhere and that Mexico is one of the most corrupt countries in the world today.^[18]

However, he said the government of Mexico diverts public attention away from this record by signing various U.N. human rights treaties.

Rather than take a strong stand against illegal immigration, the Global Commission on International Migration, launched by then-U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and a number of governments in 2003, proposed a "Global Migration Facility" to manage the "flow" of people.

The "flow" includes money. Indeed, one reason Mexico opposes a border fence is that illegal aliens in the U.S. send money back to Mexico.

The commission pointed out that Mexico receives $16 billion a year from "international migrants," most of them in the U.S. But the commission did not discourage this practice. Rather, it proposed that national governments and financial institutions "should make it easier and cheaper to transfer remittances and thus encourage migrants to remit through formal transfer systems."^[19]

In this context, Judicial Watch obtained and disclosed Federal Reserve marketing materials created for "Directo a México" [Direct to Mexico], which it described as a new government program designed to facilitate the transfer of funds from immigrant workers in the U.S. – regardless of their legal status – to people in Mexico. Judicial Watch notes that similar financial transactions, conducted through Western Union, have allegedly been linked to a sophisticated drug smuggling and human trafficking racket.^[20].

Similarly, Bank of America Corp. has begun offering credit cards to customers without Social Security numbers, who tend to be illegal immigrants, to facilitate money transfers. This is just the latest from Bank of America. Carl F. Horowitz of the National Legal and Policy Center notes that Bank of America’s 2005 annual report actually boasts of a Bank of America program called SafeSend that allows "any Bank of America customer with a checking account to send cash to anyone in Mexico— immediately and free of charge." The report says that, "The SafeSend service provides cash in Mexican pesos, at competitive exchange rates, to recipients in Mexico through more than 3,600 locations…No fees, cards or unfamiliar procedures are required, only proper identification. A patent is pending on this new remittance process." ^[21]

Another scheme to benefit illegal aliens can be found in the form of the so-called Social Security "totalization agreement."

In testimony provided to the Global Commission on International Migration, the liberal U.S.-based Migration Policy Institute ^[22] praised President Bush for making this agreement to "help workers get credit towards qualification in each country’s public pension systems for years worked in the other country." However, the testimony noted that the agreement "may face resistance in the US Congress due do the political sensitivity of any measure that touches on the issue of unauthorized immigration from Mexico."

This is an understatement. The agreement was withheld from public scrutiny for years. Finally, the TREA Senior Citizens League, a senior citizens advocacy group, released a copy of the agreement with Mexico after finally getting it through the Freedom of Information Act. It said the document, which "could allow millions of illegal Mexican workers to draw billions of dollars from the U.S. Social Security Trust Fund," was approved in June 2004 but is awaiting President Bush's signature. It says that once President Bush approves the agreement, which would be done without Congressional vote, either House of Congress would have 60 days to disapprove the agreement by voting to reject it. ^[23]

Beyond this agreement, however, lies Pastor’s vision of a North American Community.

Marlon Brown, the first American University undergraduate to earn a minor in North American Studies, notes that Pastor has a "Vision of a North American Parliament" and a step-by-step process to create it. In a research paper submitted to Pastor, Brown notes that Pastor has proposed "the creation of a trilateral legislative workgroup that may resemble the early stages of a future North American Parliament."

Talk about a North American Parliament raises the specter of a North American Union similar to the currently functioning European Union, a political and economic entity of 27 European states that includes a European Parliament and a European Court of Justice. The EU has been charged with usurping the sovereignty of member states and moving European nations in a left-wing direction on matters such as acceptance of abortion and gay rights and abolition of the death penalty.

Brown contends that a "North American Parliamentary Group" is already in existence and could evolve into a "supranational legislature."

It is already in existence because, as Pastor notes in his book, Toward a North American Community, there are already two existing parliamentary groups, the U.S.-Mexico Inter-Parliamentary Conference, ^[24] and the U.S.-Canada Inter-Parliamentary Group. Pastor proposes merging the two bodies.

Brown himself participated in the "Triumvirate," a simulated North American Parliament organized by the Montreal-based North American Forum on Integration. The "Model North American Parliament" is said to be comparable to the Model U.N. programs which teach students that the U.N. is a valuable institution.

Brown’s paper, which is available on the Internet, ^[25] makes "The Case for a Trilateral Legislature," which is the subtitle of the document. The paper was prepared in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Undergraduate Minor in North American Studies and as part of the requirements for the North American Politics class being taught by Dr. Christopher Sands,^[26] a senior fellow in the Center for North American Studies at American University, where he also serves as an adjunct professor in Government at the School of Public Affairs. ^[27]

Other key players in the movement for integration of the U.S., Canada and Mexico include:

The North American Law Conference, conducted in cooperation with the American Society of International Law, an organization affiliated with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, was held at the American University Washington College of Law. A large number of speakers came from American University.

Pastor himself talked about new institutions, such as a "permanent tribunal" on trade issues, but emphasized that such ideas "take time" and have to "take root." He advised conference participants to "think about the horizon," in terms of what is possible, over the course of 5, 10 or even 20 years from now. Indeed, the academic literature distributed to conference participants alluded to how the three countries of North America are "polarized" on "sensitive" cultural issues such as the death penalty, abortion and gay marriage and that it might take a long time to "harmonize" their legal systems on such matters. ^[31]

While Pastor, a foreign policy advisor to each of the Democratic Presidential Candidates since 1976, tried to dismiss talk of a North American Union, he did emphasize in his remarks to the conference that North America is "more than a geographical entity" and is in fact a "community." His 2001 book, Toward a North American Community, begins by emphasizing his status as a resident of North America, rather than just a U.S. citizen, and outlines a vision of the three countries taking their relationship "to a new level."

Rather than use the phrase "union," he described the creation of an "emerging entity called North America," growing out of the fact that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), passed in 1993, had brought about a "remarkable degree of economic integration" between the three countries. One panel was devoted to analyzing how NAFTA could be expanded into the areas of intellectual property and taxation and regulations.

In a Newsweek cover story, in which Pastor claimed to have solved the illegal immigration problem, he admitted that:

But no speaker at the conference proposed border control as a solution to the illegal immigration problem. The answer, instead, is more "North American integration" and foreign aid to Mexico.

Pastor said that the solution is not a fence, except in some isolated high-crime areas along the border, and it’s not to punish companies for hiring illegal aliens, since identity documents can be too easily forged. He said the solution is a national biometric and fraud-proof identification card that identifies national origin and legal status and regulates migration into and out of the U.S.

One speaker, Stephen Zamora of the University of Houston Law School, denounced the idea of a wall separating Mexico and the U.S., in order to control illegal immigration, asking, "What does citizenship mean anymore?" He expressed pleasant surprise when a Mexican in the audience said she had dual citizenship in Mexico and the U.S. Later, he said he was just as concerned about people living in Mexico as people living in the U.S.

Another speaker, Tom Farer, Dean of the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver, made a point of saying that his representative in Congress, Tom Tancredo (R-Col.), a staunch advocate of U.S. border security, was a backward thinker. Tancredo could be seen "dragging his knuckles along the ground," Farer said, trying to crack a joke.

An important moment in the conference occurred when Alan Tarr, director of the Center for State Constitutional Studies at Rutgers University, was challenged about glossing over President Clinton’s submission of NAFTA as an agreement, requiring only a majority of votes in both Houses of Congress for passage, and not a treaty, requiring a two-thirds vote in favor in the Senate. NAFTA passed by votes of 234-200 in the House and 61-38 in the Senate. Tarr said he had not intended to be uncritical of what Clinton did. Pastor quickly interjected that there was nothing improper in submitting NAFTA as an agreement rather than a treaty.

But Clinton’s move was seen at the time as an effort to bypass constitutional processes and the United Steelworkers challenged NAFTA’s constitutionality in court. The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 2001, after lower courts had thrown the case out, saying it was a political matter between the president and Congress. The Bush Administration sided with Clinton and the Supreme Court declined to get involved.

The history of NAFTA is one reason why so many conservatives are concerned that a North American Community could be transformed into a North American Union that runs roughshod over U.S. constitutional processes and guarantees.

One of the main concerns of conservatives, who have formed a "Coalition to Block the North American Union," has been the lack of congressional interest and oversight. They are backing a bill introduced by Rep. Virgil Goode (R-Va.) to put the Congress on record against a North American Union.

Pastor’s luncheon speaker, Eric Farnsworth, the Vice-President of the Council of the Americas, provided some valuable insight into this process. Saying NAFTA is "no longer enough," he described the SPP as designed to help North America meet the economic challenges posed by such countries as China and India. Farnsworth said that the Council of the Americas advises the SPP.

The Council is closely tied to the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC), which was "established" by the three governments "to collect guidance from the private sector" and prepare "extensive recommendations on such issues as border crossing facilitation, standards and regulatory cooperation, and energy integration." ^[33]

On February 23, 2007, on the occasion of a Security and Prosperity Partnership meeting in Canada, the NACC provided a 63-page report to officials of the three countries calling for new policies "to streamline border crossings, harmonize regulatory standards and improve supply and distribution of energy." These new policies are to be introduced over three years.^[34]

It is not clear whether the U.S. Government will implement these initiatives on its own, through the administrative or regulatory process, or whether they will be submitted to Congress for approval.

The Council’s honorary chairman is David Rockefeller and its board members come from such major corporations as Merck, PepsiCo, McDonald’s, Ford, Citibank, IBM, Wal-Mart, Exxon Mobil, GE (which owns NBC News and MSNBC) and Time Warner (which owns CNN and Time Inc.).

One of the key board members is Thomas F. McClarty III, President of Kissinger McLarty Associates, who served as Clinton’s White House counselor and chief of staff during the time that NAFTA was signed and passed by Congress. McLarty, who also functioned as Special Envoy to the Americas under Clinton, is an adviser to the Carlyle Group, focusing on "buyout investment opportunities in Mexico."

Nelson W. Cunningham, the managing partner of Kissinger McLarty Associates, was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations trinational, Independent Task Force on the Future of North America. ^[35] The group, including Robert Pastor as a vice-chairman, proposed a "new community" of North American countries by 2010 and offered specific recommendations on how to achieve it. ^[36] According to his bio, ^[37] Cunningham advised John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign on international economic and foreign policy issues, and previously served in the Clinton White House as Special Adviser to the President for Western Hemisphere Affairs. He earlier served as a lawyer at the White House and as Senate Judiciary Committee General Counsel under then-chairman Joseph Biden.

For his part, Farnsworth told the luncheon crowd that the creation of a "super-national Supreme Court" governing business and trade issues in North America was possible. But he was ambiguous about whether it would ever come to pass.

A self-described Democrat who served as policy director in the Clinton White House Office of the Special Envoy for the Americas from 1995-98, he also said that he was optimistic that Bush would strike a deal with the new Democratic-controlled on immigration. He said Bush was "at odds with his own party" on immigration and that legislation to create a so-called "guest worker" program could pass now that Republicans have lost control of Congress.

[1] American participants were identified as Ms. Deborah Bolton Political Advisor to Commander, US Northcom; Mr. Ron T. Covais, President, The Americas, Lockheed Martin Corporation; Sec. Kenneth W. Dam Max Pam Professor Emeritus of American & Foreign Law and Senior Lecturer, University of Chicago Law School; Mr. Dan Fisk Senior Director, Western Hemisphere, National Security Council; Sec. Ryan Henry Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; Ms. Carla A. Hills Chairman & CEO, Hills & Co.; Ms. Caryn Hollis DASD (Acting) Western Hemisphere Affairs; Mr. Bill Irwin Manager - International Government Affairs; Policy, Government and Public Affairs, Chevron Corporation; Mr. Robert G. James President, Enterprise Asset Management Inc.
Admiral Tim Keating Commander, US Northern Command; Mr. Floyd Kvamme Chair, President’s Council of Advisors on Science & Technology; Director, Centre for Global Security Res.; Dr. Ronald F. Lehman II Director, Center for Global Security Research, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Mr. William W. McIlhenny Policy Planning Council for Western Hemisphere Affairs;
Dr. Peter McPherson President, National Association of State Universities & Land-Grant Colleges; Ms. Doris Meissner Senior Fellow, Migration Policy Institute; Dr. George Miller Director, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Mr. George Nethercutt Chairman, US Section of the Permanent Joint Board on Defense, US – Canada (Security); Mary Anastasia O’Grady Journalist for Wall Street Journal (Area Specialist); Dr. Robert A. Pastor Director, Center for North American Studies, American University, Washington, DC; Dr. William Perry Co-Director, Preventive Defense Project; Lt. Gen. Gene Renuart USAF Senior Military Assist. to Sec. Rumsfeld; Mr. Eric Ruff Department of Defense Press Secretary; Sec. Donald R. Rumsfeld Secretary of Defense, US Department of Defense; Dr. James Schlesinger Former Sec. Of Energy & Defense; Mr. William Schneider President, International Planning Services; Sec. Clay Sell Deputy Secretary of Energy, US Dept. of Energy; Dr. Thomas A. Shannon Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs; Dr. David G. Victor Director, Program on Energy & Sustainable Development, Center for Environmental Science & Policy; Maj. Gen. Mark A Volcheff Director, Plans, Policy & Strategy, NORAD-NORTHCOM; Ms. Jane Wales President & CEO, World Affairs Council of Northern California; Mr. R. James Woolsey Vice President, Booz Allen Hamilton

[2] The documents concern the participation of NORTHCOM Commander, Admiral Timothy Keating, NORTHCOM Political Advisor Deborah Bolton, and Plans, Policy & Strategy Director Major General Mark Volcheff in a meeting of the "North American Forum" at the Banff Springs Hotel in Banff, Canada on September 12-14, 2006.

See: http://www.judicialwatch.org/6123.shtml

[3] http://www.spp.gov/prosperity_working/index.asp?dName=prosperity_working

[4] http://www.commerce.gov/opa/press/Secretary_Gutierrez/2007_ Releases/February/23_Gutierrez_SPP_Ottawa_stmnt.htm

[5] http://www.trilateral.org/nagp/regmtgs/pdf_folder/dobson02.pdf

[6] Its North American chairmen are Thomas Foley, former U.S. Speaker of the House; Allan Gotlieb, former Canadian Ambassador to the U.S., and Lorenzo Zambrano, chairman of CEMEX of Mexico. Michael J. O’Neil, former general counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency, serves as the North American Director of the Trilateral Commission.

[7] These include the Council of Canadians, the Canadian Labor Congress, and the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives. See www.canadians.org A Canadian conference, March 30-

April 1, is designed "to bring together activists, artists and academics to challenge deep integration and to rethink Canada's increasingly close relationship with the United States."

[8] These include RMALC, the Mexican Action Network Against Free Trade, a coalition of more than 100 Mexican organizations which opposed NAFTA. It is participating in the Canadian conference opposing the SPP. RMALC official Bertha Lujan favors the re-negotiation of the Labor Chapter of NAFTA, in order to promote "codes of conduct" for transnational corporations and rights for "migrant workers."

[9] For over ten years, a group called North America’s SuperCorridor Coalition (NASCO) has been working to develop "a strong coalition of cities, counties, states, Canadian provinces, and private sector companies to lobby for federal funding" for a "SuperCorridor" to "address the transportation, trade and security needs of the three NAFTA nations." It has formed a NASCO "SuperCorridor Caucus" on Capitol Hill "to promote corridor development and to help secure NASCO legislative initiatives in both the authorization and appropriation processes." It says, "We continue to be recognized as the strongest International Trade Corridor Coalition on Capitol Hill, and we are the only Corridor Coalition with true international representation from the three NAFTA nations." It already claims to have secured hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds. However, the group denies any of this constitutes a "NAFTA Superhighway."

[10] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/06/AR2007030601595.html

[11] Two Calderon officials were identified as participants in the North American forum conference. They were Arturo Sarukhan Coordinator of Int’l Affairs, Campaign of Felipe Calderon, and
Juan Camilo Mouriño General Coordinator of the President Elect’s transition team.

[12] http://www.aztlan.net/jorge.htm

[13] Limits to Friendship: The United States and Mexico, Robert A. Pastor and Jorge G. Castaneda. 415 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

[14] http://www.myschool-monecole.gc.ca/Research/publications/html/manion2004/2_e.html

[15] Ibid.

[16] http://www.american.edu/ia/newsletter/v3_n1/1.html

[17] http://www.american.edu/ia/pdfs/pastorcv.pdf

[18] Conference "Briefing book."

[19] http://www.gcim.org/en/finalreport.html page 26.

[20] http://www.judicialwatch.org/6058.shtml

[21] http://www.nlpc.org/view.asp?action=viewArticle&aid=1904

[22] The Migration Policy Institute is supported by the George Soros Open Society Institute, and the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, among others. See: http://www.migrationpolicy.org/about/funders.php

[23] http://www.tscl.org/NewContent/102800.asp

[24] The office of Senator John Cornyn says that the U.S.-Mexico Interparliamentary Group Conferences have been held on a regular basis since 1961 for the purpose of providing a forum for the progression of understanding between the representatives of Mexico and the United States."

[25] http://www.ipa.udel.edu/students/brown/SRPforCNAS.pdf

[26] Sands, a senior associate with the Canada Project for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), also serves as the director of strategic planning and evaluation at the International Republican Institute (IRI) of the National Endowment for Democracy.

[27] AU now has an undergraduate minor and graduate certificate in North American Studies.

[28] http://www.irpp.org/books/archive/AOTS2/folio_1.pdf

[29] http://www.irpp.org/books/archive/schwanen_roadmap.pdf

[30] http://oldfraser.lexi.net/publications/critical_issues/1999/amero/section_02.html

[31] Laura Spitz of the University of Colorado Law School argues that North Americans might be able to enjoy "new rights" essential to "human flourishing" such as gay marriage. She argues in one paper that U.S. economic integration with Canada will make it nearly impossible for the United States not to recognize same-sex marriage so long as it is lawful in Canada.

[32] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11904430/site/newsweek/

[33] http://www.americas-society.org/coa/NACC/indexNACC.html

[34] http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/23/america/NA-GEN-Canada-US-Mexico-Competitiveness.php

[35] http://www.cfr.org/publication/8102/#author

[36] The Brookings Institution held a December 2001 conference on "The Future of North American Integration" that produced a book by the same name, edited by Peter Hakim (President of the Inter-American Dialogue) and Robert E. Litan. Robert Pastor’s contribution was a chapter titled, "NAFTA is Not Enough: Steps Toward a North American Community."

[37] http://www.cfr.org/publication/8102/#author

NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For further information please refer to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

Back to Cliff Kincaid Articles