is filling out his status report.
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bartermania: have you ever read this?
http://senatorjessejames.com/
bartermania: ah, that seems to make a presumption that international bankers are primarily Jewish and somehow Zionists. The post WWII Japanese business and banking network was accompanied with the Rockefeller spider. The last time I looked, they are WASPs.
I made my point to keep us on focus. The Zionist conspiracy is a trap and a diversion.
bartermania and others: The Israeli nation and hence The Yehudi (Jews) are set up for a double cross and extensive betrayal. I am of the school that The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion is deliberate disinformation. The likely source is certain secret societies and the adherents of The British Round Table.
Where were the Zionists in Japan for decades? Yet, Japan is a key cog of The Trilateral Commission. History reveals that The Rothschilds sought legitimacy through marrying into European royalty. Beware of the tools of the prestidigitator.
Abolishing the USA?
by William F. Jasper
October 3, 2005 Issue
'Abolishing the USA' Reprint
The United States of America is being abolished. Piecemeal. Before our very eyes. By our own elected officials -- under the guidance and direction of unelected elites. Incredible? Certainly. But, unfortunately, true nonetheless.
For decades, federal officials have ignored the pleas of American citizens to secure our borders against an immense, ongoing migration invasion that includes not only millions of "common variety" illegal aliens, but also drug traffickers, terrorists, and other violent criminals. Now, under the pretense of providing security, the Bush administration is adopting an outrageous policy that, in effect, does away with our borders with Mexico and Canada altogether. Regular readers of THE NEW AMERICAN know that this magazine has been warning that this direct assault on our nationhood was coming, that it is part and parcel of the NAFTA-CAFTA-FTAA process.
However, almost a million Americans received their first notice of this fast-looming threat from a startling special report on CNN. On June 9, CNN anchorman Lou Dobbs began his evening broadcast with this provocative announcement: "Good evening, everybody. Tonight, an astonishing proposal to expand our borders to incorporate Mexico and Canada and simultaneously further diminish U.S. sovereignty. Have our political elites gone mad?"
Mr. Dobbs, who has been virtually the lone voice in the Establishment media cartel opposing the bipartisan immigration and trade policies that are destroying our borders and national sovereignty, then noted:
Border security is arguably the critical issue in this country's fight against radical Islamist terrorism. But our borders remain porous. So porous that three million illegal aliens entered this country last year, nearly all of them from Mexico. Now, incredibly, a panel sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations wants the United States to focus not on the defense of our own borders, but rather create what effectively would be a common border that includes Mexico and Canada.
Dobbs then switched to CNN correspondent Christine Romans in Washington, D.C., who reported: "On Capitol Hill, testimony calling for Americans to start thinking like citizens of North America and treat the U.S., Mexico and Canada like one big country." Romans then showed brief excerpts of congressional testimony by Professor Robert Pastor, one of the six co-chairmen of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Task Force on North America. "The best way to secure the United States today is not at our two borders with Mexico and Canada but at the borders of North America as a whole," Pastor told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "What we hope to accomplish by 2010," Pastor continued, "is a common external tariff which will mean that goods can move easily across the border. We want a common security perimeter around all of North America, so as to ease the travel of people within North America."
Pastor's testimony encapsulated the proposals put forward in the CFR Task Force report, entitled Building a North American Community. As CNN's Christine Romans noted, the CFR program "envisions a common border around the U.S., Mexico and Canada in just five years, a border pass for residents of the three countries, and a freer flow of goods and people." Romans went on to report: "Buried in 49 pages of recommendations from the task force, the brief mention, 'We must maintain respect for each other's sovereignty.' But security experts say folding Mexico and Canada into the U.S. is a grave breach of that sovereignty."
The CNN program further noted that the CFR Task Force also called for:
"military and law enforcement cooperation between all three countries";
"an exchange of personnel that bring Canadians and Mexicans into the Department of Homeland Security"; and
"temporary migrant worker programs expanded with full mobility of labor between the three countries in the next five years."
That portion of the CNN broadcast concluded with the following exchange between Christine Romans and Lou Dobbs.
Romans: "The idea here is to make North America more like the European Union...."
Dobbs: "Americans must think that our political and academic elites have gone utterly mad at a time when three-and-a-half years, approaching four years after September 11, we still don't have border security. And this group of elites is talking about not defending our borders, finally, but rather creating new ones. It's astonishing."
Romans: "The theory here is that we are stronger together, three countries in one, rather than alone."
Dobbs: "Well, it's a -- it's a mind-boggling concept...."
Not Just a ?Concept?
Mind-boggling, yes. Unfortunately, this "utterly mad" proposal is not merely a "concept" in the woolly minds of political and academic elites; it has already become official U.S. policy!
On March 23, 2005, President Bush convened a special summit in Waco, Texas, with Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin. The three amigos met at Baylor University to call for a "Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America" before retiring to the president's ranch in Crawford. The trio of leaders instructed their respective cabinet officials to form a dozen working groups and to report back within 90 days with concrete proposals to implement the new "partnership."
On June 27, cabinet ministers of the three countries issued their joint report, entitled Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America. Signing the report for the United States were Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff and Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez. They and their counterparts from Mexico and Canada state in their introduction to the report:
We recognize that this Partnership is designed to be a dynamic, permanent process and that the attached work plans are but a first step. We know that after today, the real work begins. We will now need to transform the ideas into reality and the initiatives into prosperity and security.
The key phrase here, "dynamic, permanent process," should set off alarm bells. Like NAFTA and CAFTA, to which it is intimately tied, this new "partnership" is intended to be an ongoing, constantly evolving process to bring about the economic, political, and social "integration" and "convergence" of the three nation states into a supranational regional system of governance that will then be merged into a larger regional system for the entire hemisphere -- which includes the proposed FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas). It is this dangerous, subversive process that should command every American's immediate serious attention.
On July 27, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger F. Noriega told a House Subcommittee concerning the new partnership: "Thus far, we have identified over 300 initiatives spread over twenty trilateral [meaning U.S., Canada, and Mexico] working groups on which the three countries will collaborate." What is being concocted in the hundreds of "initiatives" underway by these "working groups"? We don't know, and that's a major part of the problem. They have only revealed a very small part of their program thus far. The new "partnership" comes replete with pledges of "transparency." That's supposed to mean that all dealings will be above board and open and visible to the public. We hear a lot about transparency at the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, NAFTA, and other international forums. But there's an old saying that applies here: "The more he talked of honor, the faster we counted our spoons." So it is with the international elites who craft the global and regional agreements: the more they talk of transparency, the more you know they are covering up.
The so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP)* was launched by the newly elected Presidents George Bush and Vicente Fox in 2001 as the "Partnership for Prosperity." (There's no mention of Security in the original project.) President Fox was pushing for more U.S. financial aid, amnesty, and legalization for Mexicans already in the U.S. illegally, and easier access for more Mexican "guest workers" into the United States. Fox said he wanted "as many rights as possible, for as many Mexican immigrants as possible, as soon as possible." In a June 21, 2001 interview, he declared, "Those Mexicans that are working in the United States should be considered legally working in the United States." Mexico's foreign minister, Jorge Castaneda, echoing Fox's demands for legalization and more guest workers, told reporters, "It's the whole enchilada or nothing."
President Bush caused a significant national uproar (even a revolt among many of the GOP Bush faithful) by his willingness to buy almost the "whole enchilada." In comments at a White House lawn press conference on September 6, 2001, marking the end of President Fox's visit to the U.S., President Bush announced his commitment to a more expansive immigration policy that would "match a willing [U.S.] employer with a willing [Mexican] employee." Which, of course, is a prescription for virtually unlimited migration of Mexican workers into the U.S. That was just five days before the 9/11 terror attacks.
The Gulliver Strategy
For several months prior to the September 2001 Fox-Bush meeting, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Foreign Minister Castaneda had been co-chairing a binational Migration Working Group aimed at changing U.S. border policies. At a November 22, 2002 press conference in Mexico City, Secretary Powell praised Castaneda and declared: "In Mexico, the Bush administration sees much more than a neighbor. We see a partner.... Our partnership rests on common values, on trust, on honesty."
However, at the very same time that Secretary Powell was extolling the wonders of our new "partnership," Senor Castaneda was presenting a vivid contrasting image. "I like very much the metaphor of Gulliver, of ensnarling the giant," Castaneda told Mexican journalists in a November 2002 interview. "Tying it up, with nails, with thread, with 20,000 nets that bog it down: these nets being norms, principles, resolutions, agreements, and bilateral, regional and international covenants."
That sounds like a rather adversarial partnership, not one based "on common values, on trust, on honesty." Was Team Bush/Powell unaware of this less-than-neighborly attitude on the part of Team Fox/Castaneda Were they out-foxed by Fox/Castaneda? Not at all; they were participating in a giant charade with Fox/Castaneda to out-fox the American people. It was a charade completely scripted by the brain trust at Pratt House, the New York headquarters of the Council on Foreign Relations. Secretary Powell is a longtime Insider at the CFR, as are many other members of the Bush administration (including Powell's successor, Condoleezza Rice). Senor Castaneda, while not a CFR member, has been nevertheless a favorite guest at Pratt House for more than two decades. He has been the featured speaker at CFR programs, has written articles for the CFR's journal Foreign Affairs, and has received adulatory reviews for his books by CFR reviewers. And this, despite the fact that Castaneda, a longtime radical intellectual leader in Mexico's Communist Party, has participated in the annual terrorist convention known as the Sao Paulo Forum, and continues to admire Communist revolutionary Che Guevarra!
Perhaps most important, as it pertains to this joint charade, is the fact that Castaneda has been a very close partner with Robert Pastor, the main author of the CFR's blueprint for a North American Community. Pastor, a longtime Marxist associated with the radical Institute for Policy Studies (virtually a front for the Soviet KGB), even coauthored a book on U.S.-Mexico relations with Castaneda.
Castaneda, who stepped down as Fox's foreign minister and took a professorship at New York University, is now running for president in Mexico's 2006 elections. This past July 12, Castaneda appeared as an expert witness at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on border security. "No border security is possible without Mexican cooperation," declared Castaneda. "There can be no future cooperation beyond what already exists without some form of immigration package." He warned that border security is "very, very sensitive" to Mexicans. Any cooperation, he said, would have to be purchased with more U.S. liberalization of our immigration policies. To some, that sounds more like extortion than cooperation, but to the Bush administration and the bipartisan break-down-the-borders lobby in Congress, it passes for harmonious "partnering."
The senators at the hearing did not challenge Castaneda or take him to task for his belligerent stance on this important security issue. Indeed, they seem to be primarily concerned with pushing through as much of the Fox/Castaneda program as their constituents will tolerate. They are considering two major competing bills now, S. 1033 by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), and S. 1438 by Sens. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.). Both bills pretend to provide meaningful "reform" to enhance border security, but both of them are designed to propel North American "integration" forward by making our borders easier to cross, legalizing millions of illegal aliens already here, and opening the door for millions more "guest workers." At the same time, both bills would dramatically increase federal surveillance and intrusion into the lives of American citizens.
Much of this appears to be already underway without congressional approval, under the Security and Prosperity Partnership. The SPP joint statement mentioned previously, for instance, states: "We will test technology and make recommendations, over the next 12 months, to enhance the use of biometrics in screening travelers -- with a view to developing compatible biometric border and immigration systems." The statement's section on "Safer, Faster and More Efficient Border Crossings," like so much of the administration's immigration program, is clearly more focused on faster border crossings, not stronger border security.
Premeditated Merger
The administration has not come right out and endorsed the merger of U.S. and Mexican immigration, military, and law enforcement personnel, as recommended by the CFR's Task Force report, but it is headed in that direction, noting that "increased economic integration and security cooperation will further a unique and strong North American relationship." In fact, it is becoming more and more apparent that the administration's Security and Prosperity Partnership is actually an official adaptation of the CFR's Building a North American Community.
The Task Force blueprint was the culmination of several years of specific efforts to launch a concrete program aimed at the physical merger of the U.S. with other nations in the hemisphere. As we've noted, one of the principal authors of that CFR proposal is Dr. Robert Pastor. More than a year before the Waco summit, the CFR publicly floated the idea with an important article by Pastor entitled, "North America's Second Decade," in the January/February 2004 issue of its flagship journal, Foreign Affairs.
"NAFTA was merely the first draft of an economic constitution for North America," Pastor explained to the elite in-the-know readership of the journal. The CFR spinmeisters repeatedly insisted for over a decade that NAFTA was merely a "trade agreement." Now they are being a bit more candid: NAFTA was merely the first draft of an ongoing "dynamic, permanent process." The border demolition is part of the next draft, which is intended to deal with political and security issues.
"Overcoming the tension between security and trade," said Pastor, "requires a bolder approach to continental integration." So he boldly proposed, among other things, "a North American customs union with a common external tariff (CET), which would significantly reduce border inspections." (Emphasis added.) In addition, he says, the Department of Homeland Security "should expand its mission" to cover the entire continent "by incorporating Mexican and Canadian perspectives and personnel into its design and operation."
Pastor opines that, properly managed, the post-9/11 "security fears would serve as a catalyst for deeper integration." "That would require new structures," he says, "to assure mutual security." It would also require, he notes, "a redefinition of security that puts the United States, Mexico, and Canada inside a continental perimeter."
He means a very radical redefinition of security, to say the least. The claim by Pastor and the CFR claque that stretching our already dangerously porous borders to include two additional huge countries -- both of which are already fraught with their own serious security problems -- is so far beyond ludicrous that it can only be explained as openly fraudulent. That the so-called "wise men" of the CFR could actually believe their own propaganda in this case is preposterous.
After all, as CNN's Lou Dobbs reported on the same June 9 broadcast, Mexico is descending ever more rapidly into a maelstrom of chaos, corruption, and open warfare, as rival drug cartels, police, the military, and government officials (many of whom are in the pockets of the narco-terrorists) battle it out.
Mexico is notorious for official corruption -- police, military, and elected and appointed officials -- from top to bottom. In 1997, it may be recalled, Mexico's top official in its War on Drugs, Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, was arrested for working with one of the top drug cartels! However, evidence that came out during the course of his trial pointed to many other top military, police, and federal officials as accomplices as well.
More than 2,000 Mexican police officers are under investigation for drug-related corruption, and more than 700 officers have been charged with serious offenses ranging from kidnapping and murder to taking bribes from the drug cartels. Mexico, with its close diplomatic ties to Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, has also long been a friendly hangout for many revolutionary terrorist organizations.
One needn't be a Latin American expert (like Dr. Pastor) to realize the absurdity of trying to make America more secure by entrusting our homeland security in part to Mexican law enforcement, and by incorporating all of Mexico's horrendous problems inside an unconstitutional and amorphous "common perimeter."
Canada also presents us with serious security considerations. Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) director Ward Elcock has testified to Parliament that more than 50 terrorist organizations -- representing Middle East, Tamil, Sikh, Latin American, and Irish terrorists -- are active in Canada. CSIS spokesman Dan Lambert has stated that "with the exception of the United States, there are more terrorist groups active in Canada than perhaps any other country in the world."
All considered, the so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership threatens our very survival as a free nation. Congress must reject it -- totally. But that will only happen if Congress hears an undeniable roar of outrage from us, the American people.
* Details about the Security and Prosperity Partnership can be found at www.spp.gov.
NORTH AMERICA -- SIDEBAR
Council for Revolution
by William F. Jasper
The program now being implemented by the Bush administration under the false label of "Security and Prosperity Partnership" is but the most recent and transparent demonstration of the subversion of our constitutional protections by powerful elites -- internationalists, globalists, one-worlders -- who have, over the past few decades, taken control of both the Republican and Democratic Parties, and have become the real power controlling our federal government.
Like dozens of other policies, programs, treaties, and legislation that have been so detrimental to U.S. interests, this new border demolition project was conceived, hatched and nurtured by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a private "think tank," and then passed on to the Bush administration for official implementation. The CFR has been described by constitutional scholar and former top FBI official Dan Smoot as the most important public front of the "invisible government" that runs America. Liberal commentator Richard Rovere described it as "a sort of Presidium for that part of the Establishment that guides our destiny as a nation." According to former CFR member Admiral Chester Ward, the top leadership of the CFR constitute a subversive cabal seeking the "submergence of U.S. sovereignty and national independence into an all-powerful one-world government."
Explaining the tremendous influence of the CFR, Admiral Ward noted: "Once the ruling members of the CFR have decided that the U.S. government should adopt a particular policy, the very substantial research facilities of CFR are put to work to develop arguments, intellectual and emotional, to support the new policy, and to confound and discredit, intellectually and politically, any opposition."
That CFR operational scheme outlined by Ward is plainly visible in the case of the group's Security and Prosperity Program. It is no mere coincidence that the CFR's plan mentioned in the CNN piece has come out simultaneously with the official Bush plan, or that the two plans are nearly identical.
The radical background of the CFR report's primary author, Robert Pastor, is noteworthy:
As a Latin American expert on Jimmy Carter's National Security Council, Pastor was a prime instrument in toppling American ally President Anastasio Somoza and bringing the Communist Sandinistas to power in Nicaragua. President Daniel Oduber of Costa Rica recounted that Pastor had asked him, while making an official state tour with First Lady Rosalyn Carter: "When are we going to get that son of a b**** [Somoza] up to the north out of the presidency?"
At the time he was picked by Carter, Pastor was finishing up his stint as director of the Rockefeller and Ford foundation-financed CFR task force known as the Linowitz Commission, which supported revolutionary changes in Latin America, including abandonment of our strategic canal in Panama.
At the same time, Pastor also was a member of the Working Group on Latin America of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), the notorious Marxist center that has been one of the most important operational arms of the Soviet KGB and Cuban DGI in this country. He helped author The Southern Connection, a notorious IPS report calling on the United States to abandon its anti-Communist allies and to support "ideological pluralism," as represented by the Communist Sandinistas and other revolutionary terrorist groups.
The entire careers of Dr. Pastor and his CFR comrades indicate that they are consciously working (like Pastor's friend and coauthor, Jorge Castaneda) to bind and enslave the United States like a helpless Gulliver.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/artman/publish/article_2239.shtml
Iran Behind the Veil
by William F. Jasper
October 16, 2006
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is being falsely cast as conciliatory and cooperative by U.S. elites, which will likely lead to a disastrous appeasement strategy.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's controversial visit to New York City to address the United Nations on September 19 has highlighted the Tehran regime's new center-stage role in world affairs. Thousands of demonstrators gathered outside the UN headquarters to protest the volatile Ahmadinejad's previous statements calling for the State of Israel to be "wiped off the map," as well as his support for Hezbollah and other terrorist groups, and Iran's ongoing programs to develop nuclear weapons.
However, inside the UN, most of the delegates of the 191-member General Assembly warmly welcomed and applauded the Iranian firebrand. In fact, the UN confab was virtually a replay of the 118-nation Non-Aligned Movement summit in Havana, Cuba, four days before, where Ahmadinejad received hugs from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and was ecstatically cheered by the likes of Cuba's Raoul Castro (standing in for ailing brother Fidel), Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, Bolivia's Evo Morales, Sudan's Omar al-Bashir, Syria's Bashar al-Assad, and Kim Yong-nam representing North Korea's Kim Jong-il — tyrants all.
The Iranian president's UN speech was pointedly critical of President George Bush and efforts by the United States and other Western nations to halt Iran's nuclear fuel enrichment program. However, it was clearly less incendiary than usual. It was obviously crafted to present a softer, kinder image of Iran and to position Ahmadinejad before the world and the American public as the advocate of peace and reconciliation.
"In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful." So began President Ahmadinejad's global address. "Whether we like it or not," declared the Iranian leader, "justice, peace and virtue will sooner or later prevail in the world with the will of Almighty God.... I emphatically declare that today's world, more than ever before, longs for just and righteous people with love for all humanity."
A man of peace? To the casual, uninformed observer, Ahmadinejad might look and sound like a Persian version of a 1960s flower child. However, continuing the policies of his predecessors, Ahmadinejad's regime is sponsoring terrorism around the world and destabilizing the entire Middle East.
"Iran remained the most active state sponsor of terrorism," the U.S. State Department said in the 2005 edition of its annual Country Reports on Terrorism. "Its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) were directly involved in the planning and support of terrorist acts and continued to exhort a variety of groups, especially Palestinian groups with leadership cadres in Syria and Lebanese Hizballah, to use terrorism in pursuit of their goals," the report said. "In addition, the IRGC was increasingly involved in supplying lethal assistance to Iraqi militant groups, which destabilizes Iraq," it noted.
Since that State Department report was written, Iran's Hezbollah terrorist proxies have turned Lebanon into an inferno. Tehran continues to provide funding, training, logistical support, and direction not only to Hezbollah, but also to Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al-Qaeda, Al-Aqsa Martyrs, and over two dozen other terrorist organizations.
On August 1, only a few weeks before his UN appearance, Ahmadinejad, the "man of peace," delivered a scathing attack on America to a large Tehran mob that was repeatedly punctuated by the unified chant: "Death to America! Death to America!" Although he is the elected president of Iran, he serves at the pleasure of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has been the official "Supreme Leader" since 1990, when he assumed that title upon the death of Ayatollah Khomeini. Like his mentor, Ayatollah Khomeini, Ali Khamenei also is known for denouncing America as the "Great Satan." Khamenei also has hosted and presided over, in Tehran, some of the most important global terrorist summits of the past two decades.
Ahmadinejad and Khamenei have been close comrades and have been in the thick of Iranian politics ever since the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Shah of Iran. Ahmadinejad's claim that "every problem we [Iranians] have will be solved by global Islamic rule," and his militant exhortations that Muslims "must prepare ourselves to rule the world," are a reflection of the Khomeini/Khamenei influence upon him. He has also continued the Khomeini/Khamenei program of acquiring nuclear weapons technology as well as missile delivery systems.
Nevertheless, during his recent outing to the UN, President Ahmadinejad found himself the eagerly sought man of the hour. CNN, NBC, Time magazine, and other media organizations were tripping over each other in the rush for "exclusive" interviews with the new celebrity. The media-savvy Ahmadinejad undoubtedly views all of his U.S.-tour coverage as a raging success. He was allowed to present himself as a reasonable man to American audiences, and just as important, to increase his (and Iran's) world stature by presenting to a global audience the confident image of a government unafraid to challenge the American colossus.
Meeting the Establishment
Perhaps Ahmadinejad's biggest coup was his closed-door tête-à-tête on September 20 with a select group of America's private foreign-policy establishment from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Participants in the exclusive conclave included the organization's chairman emeritus David Rockefeller, current chairman Peter G. Peterson, CFR President Richard Haass, and prominent CFR members such as Newsweek editor/columnist Fareed Zakaria, former national security advisor Brent Scowcroft, New York Times reporter David Sanger, and former White House adviser Robert Blackwill.
The CFR's website described the event as a sparring match, reporting that "the Iranian leader engaged in a protracted punch and counterpunch with the [CFR] panel." The outcome of that meeting is likely to have profound implications for U.S. policy vis-à-vis Iran. Washington Post ombudsman Richard Harwood once referred to the CFR as "the American ruling class," a description that is quite apropos. Other Washington insiders have noted that it is the council that draws up most of the plans that eventually become official U.S. government policy. And it is a fact that hundreds of council members have held top positions in one White House administration after another, a feat unmatched by any other organization.
Shiite "Stability"
So, what is the council's "line" on Iran? What "advice" is it likely to push as official policy for the Bush administration? It would appear that we are going to see a great reversal. For the past year, prominent CFR members and many of the major media organs in the CFR orbit of influence have been beating the war drums, giving the appearance that war with Iran was imminent and unavoidable. But the message to come out after the Ahmadinejad meeting would seem to signal that we will be moving toward a period of "constructive engagement" with Tehran.
Richard Haass, the council's president and a former senior U.S. State Department official under Bush, told the Reuters news service, following the meeting: "My sense was that, in principle, he [Ahmadinejad] was open to a relationship [with the United States] but that he wanted the United States to take the initiative to bring it about."
While some of the CFR's leading experts continue to rattle sabers and appear to be beating war drums, the dominant strain in the council's media chorus is sounding the siren song of "new thinking" concerning our relationship with Tehran. And the Bush administration has already signaled that it is adopting this line, issuing conciliatory statements about adopting a "diplomatic" rather than military approach to a regime Bush once called part of the "axis of evil."
One of the main pieces setting this CFR theme is an article that was penned several months before the Ahmadinejad meeting, by CFR Adjunct Senior Fellow Vali Nasr. Published in the July-August 2006 issue of the council's journal, Foreign Affairs, it is entitled, "When the Shiites Rise." According to Professor Nasr, the terror regime represented by Ahmadinejad and Khamenei, and their whipping up of Shia Islam to serve their revolutionary purpose, is actually "constructive" and positive. "The emerging Shiite revival [in Iraq and throughout the Middle East] need not be a source of concern for the United States, even though it has rattled some U.S. allies in the Middle East," Nasr claimed. "In fact, it presents Washington with new opportunities to pursue its interests in the region."
How so? "Building bridges with the region's Shiites could become the one clear achievement of Washington's tortured involvement in Iraq," argues Nasr. "Succeeding at that task, however, would mean engaging Iran, the country with the world's largest Shiite population and a growing regional power, which has a vast and intricate network of influence among the Shiites across the Middle East, most notably in Iraq."
Incredibly, the CFR's Iran expert Nasr asserts that the Tehran regime actually should be considered a vital security ally who can help assure that Iraqi factions do not "spin out of control, destabilize southern Iraq, and erode government authority in Baghdad." But are we truly supposed to believe that the best course of action is to support "stability" in Iraq under Shiite fanatics backed by Iran? The same Shiite militants who are already killing U.S. troops in Iraq? Apparently so. According to Nasr, "Iranian cooperation is crucial" to achieving U.S. goals in Iraq. In fact, he fantastically asserts that "Iran's cooperation would help address Iraq's security and reconstruction needs, as well as buttress the central government in Baghdad."
As absurd as this all is, it appears to have been adopted by the Bush administration, which seems to happily accept Tehran's new Iraqi influence on the one hand, even as it rhetorically swats Iranian terrorism with the other hand. And when Iraq's Tehran-allied Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani becomes the new Ayatollah Khomeini of Baghdad, issuing "Great Satan" declamations against the United States and sending terrorist cells to attack us, what then?
Professor Nasr has been retailing this same pro-Tehran message for the CFR in other articles, speeches, and media interviews. But he is not alone. Other CFR "experts" have been delivering the same message in higher academic and political circles, and now it is making its way into the popular press. Some of these enlightened intelligentsia are now even suggesting that we may need to negotiate something similar to the arrangement that President Clinton came up with for North Korea: i.e., win the hearts of Iran's mullahs by providing them with peaceful nuclear power plants and whatever else they need to show that we mean them no harm. Of course, North Korea has rewarded our largesse by becoming even more belligerent and developing even more threatening weapons of mass destruction.
Architects of Catastrophe
On September 20, the same day that Presidents Bush and Ahmadinejad addressed the UN, the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler, in an analysis piece entitled, "U.S. Policy on Iran Evolves Toward Diplomacy," reported that behind the scenes the Bush administration was moving from a confrontational mode with Iran to a "diplomatic solution."
This is supposed to make us all so relieved that we are not going to war that we uncritically embrace the new "diplomatic option" as a godsend. But as has so often been the case in U.S. foreign policy "options" scripted by the CFR "wise men" (as they refer to themselves in their in-house literature), we are being presented with false alternatives. War and diplomacy are both legitimate functions of the State; but the history of our world has shown that both have been deceitfully abused by rulers to advance their own schemes for power.
Either option exercised by the CFR power elite who dominate the Bush administration is bound to be a prescription for disaster. If it's war, we can expect our already stretched-thin military forces to be bogged down not only in Iran, but in an ever-expanding war against inflamed world Islam. Meanwhile, our still unprotected borders will invite more terrorism at home.
On the other hand, a CFR-led diplomatic solution would no doubt follow the pattern of past initiatives that have ended up strengthening America's enemies: think North Korea, China — and Iran — to name a few.
It should not be forgotten that it was the same academic, media, and political elites — led by the Council on Foreign Relations — that set the disastrous diplomatic course that has brought us to our current dilemma. It was President Jimmy Carter and his entourage — Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, Ambassador William Sullivan, Adviser George Ball, Ambassador to the UN Andrew Young, National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, General Robert Huyser (CFR "wise men" all, to name but a few) — who combined the power of the U.S. government with that of the CFR's opinion cartel to topple America's most important ally in the region, anti-communist Shah Reza Pahlavi of Iran. The Soviets wanted him out desperately. The Carter administration's CFR brain trust could not have been more helpful to Moscow in realizing that objective.
Under pressure from Carter, the Shah released from prison hundreds of terrorists and criminals whom Carter and the media had designated "political prisoners" and "human rights activists." When these same individuals began stirring up violent demonstrations and engaging in criminal acts, the Shah, under pressure from the Carter administration, ordered his military and police to back off. As the situation predictably worsened, Carter stepped up the pressure, including threats to cut off Iran's military supplies unless the Shah left his country. Finally, the Shah did that and Ayatollah Khomeini was installed as the new grand vizier of the Persian Gulf.
All should have been wonderful; after all, didn't President Jimmy Carter refer to Khomeini as "a man of God," and didn't his UN Ambassador Andrew Young identify him as a "Twentieth-century saint"? The truth, of course, is that the overthrow of the Shah and his replacement with Khomeini set in motion a tectonic shift of incredible magnitude, and the aftershocks have been rocking the world ever since. Shah Pahlavi's dynasty may not have been perfect, but it was a positive force for modernization and moderation of Persia's Islamic society, as well as for human rights progress, and security against both Soviet domination of the area and the growing threat of Soviet-sponsored terrorism. The overthrow of the Shah's leadership, enlightened by Middle East standards, planted a virulent regime in Tehran, that, with support from Russia, Communist China, and North Korea, has been transformed into a global terror axis.
What Now?
Tehran's danger to the United States and other nations now extends beyond the threat posed by its terrorist networks. Iran now exercises tremendous economic and political influence through its oil production, its control of the Persian Gulf's strategic Straits of Hormuz, and its growing influence in OPEC, the UN, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Economic Cooperation Organization, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the World Islamic Council.
Every step of the way leading toward this dilemma, the CFR policy elites in both Democrat and Republican administrations have failed to take any beneficial actions, most notably, not only failing to make credible efforts to pressure Moscow and Beijing to stop building Iran's terror potential, but actually rewarding both Russia and China with financial and technological assistance in spite of their support for terror. Another round of that kind of diplomacy could be catastrophic for America.
So how should the United States respond to Iran — diplomacy or war? The short answer is that we do not need to do either. We certainly should not agree to make any accommodations with a terror state such as Iran. Any agreements that are made with such a regime — the transfer of technological assistance in exchange for a promise not to develop nuclear weapons, for instance — would be broken as soon as it is in the interest of that regime to do so. Nor should we go to war against Iran, unless of course we have absolutely no other choice because of Iranian aggression against us.
Instead, we should safeguard our country against treachery, including drastically increasing our own border security. We should also stop giving financial and material aid to governments such as China and Russia that support Iran. We cannot now undo the damage that was done when our policy elites supported the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in the 1970s. But we can — and must — stop helping unsavory regimes or the sponsors of those regimes.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/artman/publish/article_4240.shtml
atockkcots06: wrong again. You claimed this was going to .13 according to your charting prowess and I countered that it was going into a channel. It did and now it broke out; upward. Hardly qualifies for a dead cat bounce. BTW, since you don't know, I've provided a link for your education.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_bounce
Hmmm, the punctuation to a break out of the short-lived channel came today. Watch for a good trading week.
easymoney101: Jack Chick is a false prophet and all-around liar. If one takes the time to deeply research claims and events, then Chick Tracts are found to be wanting in the balances.
Many folks try to fit Scripture into their theories and dogmas, rather than letting The Scriptures guide one to all truth. The basics of end times is to be in a deep personal relationship with one's Creator and one's Savior. The rest will be revealed in its time.
Creating the North American Union
by Dennis Behreandt
October 2, 2006
The plans for a North American Security and Prosperity Partnership are steps on the way to a North American Union. (Tell your representative and senators "NO North American Union!")
On June 21, viewers of CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight heard the alarming introduction to a segment of the program devoted to the future of the United States of America. "The Bush administration's open-borders policy and its decision to ignore the enforcement of this country's immigration laws is part of a broader agenda," Dobbs intoned. "President Bush signed a formal agreement that will end the United States as we know it, and he took the step without approval from either the U.S. Congress or the people of the United States."
The agreement Dobbs was talking about was crafted a year earlier. On March 23, 2005, then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and Mexican President Vicente Fox met with President Bush in Waco, Texas, to discuss plans for integrating Canada, the United States, and Mexico. During that meeting, the three heads of state argued that the three nations are "mutually dependent and complementary" and need to work together more closely on a range of issues. "In a rapidly changing world, we must develop new avenues of cooperation that will make our open societies safer and more secure, our businesses more competitive, and our economies more resilient," the three leaders said in a joint statement.
The standard diplomatic language was a prelude to a radical proposal calling for the merger of the three nations in several important ways. Under a so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), the nations will no longer have separate borders, but will "implement common border-security." The three nations will no longer respond on the national level to emergencies but will have a "common approach to emergency response." And, in a move that has tremendous implications for the growing immigration crisis, the three leaders agreed that the United States' north and south borders would be eliminated. Under the SPP plan, the three nations will "implement a border-facilitation strategy to build capacity and improve the legitimate flow of people and cargo at our shared borders."
This plan is nothing short of revolutionary. As Dobbs put it on his CNN program, it is "an absolute contravention of our law, of our Constitution, every national value." Though the plan sounds like a new innovation, it is not new. It is the next step in a progression of steps that, in a manner very similar to the process used in Europe to supplant individual nations with the European Union, will ultimately lead to the formation of a new government for the United States, the North American Union. If not stopped, the plan for a North American Union will supplant the former independent states of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. And this is not conjecture. The North American Union is official U.S. policy.
The European Template
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) serves as the intellectual incubator for most of the foreign policy direction followed by the executive branch of the federal government. Before the trilateral meeting between the heads of state in Waco on March 23 of last year, the CFR had already undertaken an initiative with its counterparts in Mexico and Canada (Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales and the Canadian Council of Chief Executives) to study the possibility of integrating the three nations. Laying the foundation for the Waco meeting, the CFR produced a document entitled Creating a North American Community: Chairmen's Statement Independent Task Force on the Future of North America. The document called for "the creation by 2010 of a community to enhance security, prosperity, and opportunity for all North Americans."
The CFR is proposing nothing less than a plan to create a North American Union, similar to the European Union. The CFR protests that this is not its intention. "A new North American community will not be modeled on the European Union or the European Commission, nor will it aim at the creation of any sort of vast supranational bureaucracy," the Chairmen's Statement said.
But this is exactly the kind of statements that were made about the EU during its earlier phases of development. The EU got its start in 1950 with the plan for European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). The plan was developed by Robert Schuman, who would become a socialist prime minister in France, and French planning minister Jean Monnet in 1950. The so-called Schuman Plan was adopted via the Treaty of Paris in 1952. The ECSC merged the coal and steel industries of West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg and created a supranational governing organization. According to Georgetown University historian Carol Quigley, "This was a truly revolutionary organization since it had sovereign powers, including the authority to raise funds outside any existing state's power." As Quigley noted, "This 'supranational' body had the right to control prices, channel investment, raise funds, allocate coal and steel during shortages, and fix production in times of surplus." In short, "The ECSC was a rudimentary government," Quigley concluded.
Creating a regional, supranational government was always the aim in Europe. In 1990, the European Commission admitted as much in the publication Europe — A Fresh Start: "Monetary union and economic integration are two long-standing ambitions which the six founding States ... set themselves." The document continued, describing the intent of the EU's founders: "We see, then, that the institutions set up since 1950 on the initiative of Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet are responding well to the aim of their founders: broadening the scope of democratically and efficiently organized collective action to cover the new arenas of interdependence among Europeans." The end result of this gradual planning has been union in Europe.
That union was the goal all along was not readily apparent during the decades of its development. The long-term aim of the ECSC was hidden by its purportedly narrow scope. From its name alone, it appeared that the six-nation arrangement had only to do with coal and steel. Later EU precursors followed the same plan. The European Economic Community, at first glance, appeared to be nothing more than a free trade arrangement. It was nevertheless founded on the Monnet doctrine that economic integration must precede political integration.
Such deception, in fact, remained one of the key elements in crafting the EU, right up until recent years, a fact referenced by Villy Bergström, a recent former deputy of the Swedish central bank. "I have never before seen such manipulated, obscure and faked policies as in relation to Swedish relations to the EU," Bergström wrote a few years ago. "Information has been evasive and unclear, giving the impression that membership of the EU would mean much less radical change than what has been the case."
The strategy of building the EU through piecemeal means paid off. Following the creation of the ECSC, European internationalists supported by the U.S. government added additional elements to the emerging European superstate. Though they suffered setbacks — a nascent European Defense Community was rejected by France, and initial plans for a European Political Community were shelved shortly after the creation of the ECSC — those setbacks were temporary. The Treaty of Rome created the European Economic Community in 1957. The EEC was the immediate predecessor of today's European Union.
An EEC for North America
North American integration got its big start with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The arrangement was billed as little more than the creation of a free trade arrangement between Canada, Mexico, and the United States. But it really was the initial step toward regional integration. According to professor Guy Poitras of San Antonio's Trinity University, one of the factors motivating the creation of NAFTA was the view that it was an important early step toward further integration. In his book Inventing North America, Poitras noted that NAFTA's creation of regionalized interdependence gave "a structural foundation for the task of inventing North America."
In a pro-NAFTA article in the Washington Post in 1993, William Orme, Jr. pointed out that the then-fledgling trade pact was indeed a steppingstone to further integration. "NAFTA," Orme admitted, "lays the foundation for a continental common market, as many of its architects privately acknowledge. Part of this foundation, inevitably, is bureaucratic: The agreement creates a variety of continental institutions — ranging from trade dispute panels to labor and environmental commissions — that are, in aggregate, an embryonic NAFTA government."
That free trade agreements like NAFTA must evolve into political unions is taken for granted among academics that work closely with such issues. In 1998, Glen Atkinson, professor of economics at the University of Nevada in Reno, described this step-by-step process in an article entitled "Regional Integration in the Emerging Global Economy" in the Social Science Journal. Integration "must be an evolutionary process of continuous institutional development," Atkinson wrote. Indeed, the development of supranational governing organs is inevitable, though it will erode national sovereignty, he writes. "The need for shared institutions among the parties is critical for integration, which will lead to a weakening of national sovereignty in some areas of interest. Sovereignty, however, must reside someplace in order to enforce regional working conditions, intellectual and other property rights and other concerns." NAFTA, being a "free trade" arrangement, is only a preliminary step. According to Atkinson:
The lowest level of integration is a free trade area which involves only the removal of tariffs and quotas among the parties. If a common external tariff is added, then a customs union has been created. The next level, or a common market, requires free movement of people and capital as well as goods and services. It is this stage where institutional development becomes critical. The stage of economic union requires a high degree of coordination or even unification of policies. This sets the foundation for political union.
Now, according to those most concerned with creating a North American Union, it's time to move beyond NAFTA. Professor Robert Pastor of American University serves also as vice-chair of the CFR Task Force on North America and is one of the primary intellectual architects of North American regionalism. According to Pastor, even after NAFTA, U.S. policy has been too nationalistic. "Instead of trying to fashion a North American approach to continental problems, we continue to pursue problems on a dual-bilateral basis, taking one issue at a time," Pastor said in testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere on June 9, 2005. "But incremental steps will no longer solve the security problem, or allow us to grasp economic opportunities. What we need to do now is forge a North American Community," Pastor stated.
This, in fact, has been a major goal of the Bush administration and of the Mexican administration of Vicente Fox. In a paper entitled Closing the Development Gap: A Proposal for a North American Investment Fund, Pastor and coauthors Samuel Morley and Sherman Robinson point out that Mexican President Vicente Fox has long advocated a North American common market. "Soon after he won Mexico's presidential election on July 2, 2000, Vicente Fox proposed a Common Market to replace the free-trade area," Pastor, Morley, and Robinson wrote. "He invited President George W. Bush to his home in February 2001 and persuaded him to endorse 'The Guanajuato Proposal.'" President Bush quickly signed on to the plan. In a joint statement with Fox released by the White House on February 16, 2001, Bush described the outcome of the meeting. "After consultation with our Canadian partners, we will strive to consolidate a North American economic community whose benefits reach the lesser-developed areas of the region and extend to the most vulnerable social groups in our countries," said the Bush/Fox statement announcing a new "partnership for prosperity."
A Deepening Union
With the announcement on March 23, 2005 of the Security and Prosperity Partnership, the Bush administration, along with the governments of Mexico and Canada, has taken the next step toward a European Union-style superstate in North America. The SPP features a wide range of initiatives on matters related to security and commerce. These include:
Create a proto-parliament called the North American Competitiveness Council. According to official SPP documents, this body will "address issues of immediate importance" and provide "strategic" advice. It will also "provide input on the compatibility of our security and prosperity agendas."
Under the purported threat of an avian flu pandemic, the parties to the SPP will harmonize plans for continuity of government in the event of a crisis.
Begin harmonizing security organs by creating a "common approach to critical infrastructure protection," and "develop and implement joint plans for cooperation for incident response, as well as conduct coordinated training and exercises in emergency response."
Create a single energy policy for North America by "improving transparency and regulatory compatibility."
The SPP also has tremendous implications for immigration. As NAFTA erased most remaining barriers hampering the flow of capital between Canada, Mexico, and the United States, the SPP will look for ways to eliminate bottlenecks hampering the flow of people. According to the official SPP agenda, the new international body will work to "identify measures to facilitate further the movement of business persons."
Specific policies likely to be followed by the SPP can be found in the CFR report entitled Building a North American Community that was released just after the March 23, 2005 SPP meeting in Waco, Texas. In its recommendations, the CFR report suggests, "The three governments should commit themselves to the long-term goal of dramatically diminishing the need for the current intensity of the governments' physical control of cross-border traffic, travel, and trade within North America. A long-term goal for a North American border action plan should be joint screening of travelers from third countries at their first point of entry into North America and the elimination of most controls over the temporary movement of these travelers within North America." This goes a long way toward explaining the maddening lack of urgency that is apparent in Washington concerning the issue of illegal immigration from Mexico. If the SPP follows the CFR template — a virtual certainty — there will no longer be a border to cross illegally.
Moving Fast
Perhaps the most important difference between the formation of the European Union and the effort to build a North American Union is the speed at which the North American version is moving ahead. In Europe, union took decades, with efforts starting just after World War II and culminating in the 1990s. In North America, issues related to union first began only in 1965. According to economist Glen Atkinson, "NAFTA has evolved over several stages beginning with the Canadian-U.S. automobile pact of 1965 and the Canadian-U.S. Free Trade Agreement of 1989." Now, little more than a decade after NAFTA comes the SPP.
A measure of the rapidity with which this drive for a North American Union can affect the lives of citizens is the planned super highway linking the U.S.'s northern and southern borders. The plan for this highway is breathtaking. It includes plans to start construction in 2007 on the so-called Trans Texas Corridor, to be built in large part by a Spanish construction company.
According to the magazine International Construction Review, the project "would be part of the 'super-highway' spanning the United States from the Mexican border at Laredo, making its way through Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma and connecting with the Canadian highway system north of Duluth, Minnesota. Because it would provide a connection all the way between Canada and Mexico, the project is also described as the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) super highway."
A further measure of the speed with which a North American Union is likely to develop is found within the CFR's recommendations for the SPP. That organization, which so often drafts the foreign-policy blueprints followed by the federal government, calls for "the creation by 2010 of a North American community.... Its boundaries will be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter within which the movement of people, products, and capital will be legal, orderly, and safe. Its goal will be to guarantee a free, secure, just, and prosperous North America."
It is incredible, but just four years from now — if the CFR template is followed — the United States may cease to exist as an independent political entity. Its laws, rules, and regulations — including all freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution — will be subject to review and nullification by the North American Union's governing body. Sure, the United States will still be here in name. American soldiers will still fight, mostly, under the U.S. flag. There will be a U.S. president and both houses of Congress will continue to meet and pass legislation. Nevertheless, in very important ways, the United States will become nothing more than a province — albeit an important one — in the emergent North American superstate.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/artman/publish/article_4213.shtml
Creating the North American Union
by Dennis Behreandt
October 2, 2006
The plans for a North American Security and Prosperity Partnership are steps on the way to a North American Union. (Tell your representative and senators "NO North American Union!")
On June 21, viewers of CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight heard the alarming introduction to a segment of the program devoted to the future of the United States of America. "The Bush administration's open-borders policy and its decision to ignore the enforcement of this country's immigration laws is part of a broader agenda," Dobbs intoned. "President Bush signed a formal agreement that will end the United States as we know it, and he took the step without approval from either the U.S. Congress or the people of the United States."
The agreement Dobbs was talking about was crafted a year earlier. On March 23, 2005, then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and Mexican President Vicente Fox met with President Bush in Waco, Texas, to discuss plans for integrating Canada, the United States, and Mexico. During that meeting, the three heads of state argued that the three nations are "mutually dependent and complementary" and need to work together more closely on a range of issues. "In a rapidly changing world, we must develop new avenues of cooperation that will make our open societies safer and more secure, our businesses more competitive, and our economies more resilient," the three leaders said in a joint statement.
The standard diplomatic language was a prelude to a radical proposal calling for the merger of the three nations in several important ways. Under a so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), the nations will no longer have separate borders, but will "implement common border-security." The three nations will no longer respond on the national level to emergencies but will have a "common approach to emergency response." And, in a move that has tremendous implications for the growing immigration crisis, the three leaders agreed that the United States' north and south borders would be eliminated. Under the SPP plan, the three nations will "implement a border-facilitation strategy to build capacity and improve the legitimate flow of people and cargo at our shared borders."
This plan is nothing short of revolutionary. As Dobbs put it on his CNN program, it is "an absolute contravention of our law, of our Constitution, every national value." Though the plan sounds like a new innovation, it is not new. It is the next step in a progression of steps that, in a manner very similar to the process used in Europe to supplant individual nations with the European Union, will ultimately lead to the formation of a new government for the United States, the North American Union. If not stopped, the plan for a North American Union will supplant the former independent states of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. And this is not conjecture. The North American Union is official U.S. policy.
The European Template
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) serves as the intellectual incubator for most of the foreign policy direction followed by the executive branch of the federal government. Before the trilateral meeting between the heads of state in Waco on March 23 of last year, the CFR had already undertaken an initiative with its counterparts in Mexico and Canada (Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales and the Canadian Council of Chief Executives) to study the possibility of integrating the three nations. Laying the foundation for the Waco meeting, the CFR produced a document entitled Creating a North American Community: Chairmen's Statement Independent Task Force on the Future of North America. The document called for "the creation by 2010 of a community to enhance security, prosperity, and opportunity for all North Americans."
The CFR is proposing nothing less than a plan to create a North American Union, similar to the European Union. The CFR protests that this is not its intention. "A new North American community will not be modeled on the European Union or the European Commission, nor will it aim at the creation of any sort of vast supranational bureaucracy," the Chairmen's Statement said.
But this is exactly the kind of statements that were made about the EU during its earlier phases of development. The EU got its start in 1950 with the plan for European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). The plan was developed by Robert Schuman, who would become a socialist prime minister in France, and French planning minister Jean Monnet in 1950. The so-called Schuman Plan was adopted via the Treaty of Paris in 1952. The ECSC merged the coal and steel industries of West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg and created a supranational governing organization. According to Georgetown University historian Carol Quigley, "This was a truly revolutionary organization since it had sovereign powers, including the authority to raise funds outside any existing state's power." As Quigley noted, "This 'supranational' body had the right to control prices, channel investment, raise funds, allocate coal and steel during shortages, and fix production in times of surplus." In short, "The ECSC was a rudimentary government," Quigley concluded.
Creating a regional, supranational government was always the aim in Europe. In 1990, the European Commission admitted as much in the publication Europe — A Fresh Start: "Monetary union and economic integration are two long-standing ambitions which the six founding States ... set themselves." The document continued, describing the intent of the EU's founders: "We see, then, that the institutions set up since 1950 on the initiative of Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet are responding well to the aim of their founders: broadening the scope of democratically and efficiently organized collective action to cover the new arenas of interdependence among Europeans." The end result of this gradual planning has been union in Europe.
That union was the goal all along was not readily apparent during the decades of its development. The long-term aim of the ECSC was hidden by its purportedly narrow scope. From its name alone, it appeared that the six-nation arrangement had only to do with coal and steel. Later EU precursors followed the same plan. The European Economic Community, at first glance, appeared to be nothing more than a free trade arrangement. It was nevertheless founded on the Monnet doctrine that economic integration must precede political integration.
Such deception, in fact, remained one of the key elements in crafting the EU, right up until recent years, a fact referenced by Villy Bergström, a recent former deputy of the Swedish central bank. "I have never before seen such manipulated, obscure and faked policies as in relation to Swedish relations to the EU," Bergström wrote a few years ago. "Information has been evasive and unclear, giving the impression that membership of the EU would mean much less radical change than what has been the case."
The strategy of building the EU through piecemeal means paid off. Following the creation of the ECSC, European internationalists supported by the U.S. government added additional elements to the emerging European superstate. Though they suffered setbacks — a nascent European Defense Community was rejected by France, and initial plans for a European Political Community were shelved shortly after the creation of the ECSC — those setbacks were temporary. The Treaty of Rome created the European Economic Community in 1957. The EEC was the immediate predecessor of today's European Union.
An EEC for North America
North American integration got its big start with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The arrangement was billed as little more than the creation of a free trade arrangement between Canada, Mexico, and the United States. But it really was the initial step toward regional integration. According to professor Guy Poitras of San Antonio's Trinity University, one of the factors motivating the creation of NAFTA was the view that it was an important early step toward further integration. In his book Inventing North America, Poitras noted that NAFTA's creation of regionalized interdependence gave "a structural foundation for the task of inventing North America."
In a pro-NAFTA article in the Washington Post in 1993, William Orme, Jr. pointed out that the then-fledgling trade pact was indeed a steppingstone to further integration. "NAFTA," Orme admitted, "lays the foundation for a continental common market, as many of its architects privately acknowledge. Part of this foundation, inevitably, is bureaucratic: The agreement creates a variety of continental institutions — ranging from trade dispute panels to labor and environmental commissions — that are, in aggregate, an embryonic NAFTA government."
That free trade agreements like NAFTA must evolve into political unions is taken for granted among academics that work closely with such issues. In 1998, Glen Atkinson, professor of economics at the University of Nevada in Reno, described this step-by-step process in an article entitled "Regional Integration in the Emerging Global Economy" in the Social Science Journal. Integration "must be an evolutionary process of continuous institutional development," Atkinson wrote. Indeed, the development of supranational governing organs is inevitable, though it will erode national sovereignty, he writes. "The need for shared institutions among the parties is critical for integration, which will lead to a weakening of national sovereignty in some areas of interest. Sovereignty, however, must reside someplace in order to enforce regional working conditions, intellectual and other property rights and other concerns." NAFTA, being a "free trade" arrangement, is only a preliminary step. According to Atkinson:
The lowest level of integration is a free trade area which involves only the removal of tariffs and quotas among the parties. If a common external tariff is added, then a customs union has been created. The next level, or a common market, requires free movement of people and capital as well as goods and services. It is this stage where institutional development becomes critical. The stage of economic union requires a high degree of coordination or even unification of policies. This sets the foundation for political union.
Now, according to those most concerned with creating a North American Union, it's time to move beyond NAFTA. Professor Robert Pastor of American University serves also as vice-chair of the CFR Task Force on North America and is one of the primary intellectual architects of North American regionalism. According to Pastor, even after NAFTA, U.S. policy has been too nationalistic. "Instead of trying to fashion a North American approach to continental problems, we continue to pursue problems on a dual-bilateral basis, taking one issue at a time," Pastor said in testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere on June 9, 2005. "But incremental steps will no longer solve the security problem, or allow us to grasp economic opportunities. What we need to do now is forge a North American Community," Pastor stated.
This, in fact, has been a major goal of the Bush administration and of the Mexican administration of Vicente Fox. In a paper entitled Closing the Development Gap: A Proposal for a North American Investment Fund, Pastor and coauthors Samuel Morley and Sherman Robinson point out that Mexican President Vicente Fox has long advocated a North American common market. "Soon after he won Mexico's presidential election on July 2, 2000, Vicente Fox proposed a Common Market to replace the free-trade area," Pastor, Morley, and Robinson wrote. "He invited President George W. Bush to his home in February 2001 and persuaded him to endorse 'The Guanajuato Proposal.'" President Bush quickly signed on to the plan. In a joint statement with Fox released by the White House on February 16, 2001, Bush described the outcome of the meeting. "After consultation with our Canadian partners, we will strive to consolidate a North American economic community whose benefits reach the lesser-developed areas of the region and extend to the most vulnerable social groups in our countries," said the Bush/Fox statement announcing a new "partnership for prosperity."
A Deepening Union
With the announcement on March 23, 2005 of the Security and Prosperity Partnership, the Bush administration, along with the governments of Mexico and Canada, has taken the next step toward a European Union-style superstate in North America. The SPP features a wide range of initiatives on matters related to security and commerce. These include:
Create a proto-parliament called the North American Competitiveness Council. According to official SPP documents, this body will "address issues of immediate importance" and provide "strategic" advice. It will also "provide input on the compatibility of our security and prosperity agendas."
Under the purported threat of an avian flu pandemic, the parties to the SPP will harmonize plans for continuity of government in the event of a crisis.
Begin harmonizing security organs by creating a "common approach to critical infrastructure protection," and "develop and implement joint plans for cooperation for incident response, as well as conduct coordinated training and exercises in emergency response."
Create a single energy policy for North America by "improving transparency and regulatory compatibility."
The SPP also has tremendous implications for immigration. As NAFTA erased most remaining barriers hampering the flow of capital between Canada, Mexico, and the United States, the SPP will look for ways to eliminate bottlenecks hampering the flow of people. According to the official SPP agenda, the new international body will work to "identify measures to facilitate further the movement of business persons."
Specific policies likely to be followed by the SPP can be found in the CFR report entitled Building a North American Community that was released just after the March 23, 2005 SPP meeting in Waco, Texas. In its recommendations, the CFR report suggests, "The three governments should commit themselves to the long-term goal of dramatically diminishing the need for the current intensity of the governments' physical control of cross-border traffic, travel, and trade within North America. A long-term goal for a North American border action plan should be joint screening of travelers from third countries at their first point of entry into North America and the elimination of most controls over the temporary movement of these travelers within North America." This goes a long way toward explaining the maddening lack of urgency that is apparent in Washington concerning the issue of illegal immigration from Mexico. If the SPP follows the CFR template — a virtual certainty — there will no longer be a border to cross illegally.
Moving Fast
Perhaps the most important difference between the formation of the European Union and the effort to build a North American Union is the speed at which the North American version is moving ahead. In Europe, union took decades, with efforts starting just after World War II and culminating in the 1990s. In North America, issues related to union first began only in 1965. According to economist Glen Atkinson, "NAFTA has evolved over several stages beginning with the Canadian-U.S. automobile pact of 1965 and the Canadian-U.S. Free Trade Agreement of 1989." Now, little more than a decade after NAFTA comes the SPP.
A measure of the rapidity with which this drive for a North American Union can affect the lives of citizens is the planned super highway linking the U.S.'s northern and southern borders. The plan for this highway is breathtaking. It includes plans to start construction in 2007 on the so-called Trans Texas Corridor, to be built in large part by a Spanish construction company.
According to the magazine International Construction Review, the project "would be part of the 'super-highway' spanning the United States from the Mexican border at Laredo, making its way through Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma and connecting with the Canadian highway system north of Duluth, Minnesota. Because it would provide a connection all the way between Canada and Mexico, the project is also described as the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) super highway."
A further measure of the speed with which a North American Union is likely to develop is found within the CFR's recommendations for the SPP. That organization, which so often drafts the foreign-policy blueprints followed by the federal government, calls for "the creation by 2010 of a North American community.... Its boundaries will be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter within which the movement of people, products, and capital will be legal, orderly, and safe. Its goal will be to guarantee a free, secure, just, and prosperous North America."
It is incredible, but just four years from now — if the CFR template is followed — the United States may cease to exist as an independent political entity. Its laws, rules, and regulations — including all freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution — will be subject to review and nullification by the North American Union's governing body. Sure, the United States will still be here in name. American soldiers will still fight, mostly, under the U.S. flag. There will be a U.S. president and both houses of Congress will continue to meet and pass legislation. Nevertheless, in very important ways, the United States will become nothing more than a province — albeit an important one — in the emergent North American superstate.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/artman/publish/article_4213.shtml
atockkcots06: my, oh, my: the same truck, that you have used, in the past, to pump stocks. You should really work on originality.
atockkcots06: I'm a trader and that's my business, but we can all be certain that you are not to be trusted. Since you have to slink and deceive, your advice is a hollow gong.
atockkcots06: it has become very apparent that you do not know what you are talking about. You have failed to answer my points and you keep spouting off. You're new to IHub and you settle on this board. We can be, all certain, that you have been booted, off of IHub, one or more times.
atockkcots06: probably; however, distortion of one sort doesn't balance distortion of another. T.A. on OTCBB is different than for other exchanges. The important indicators do NOT agree with you. You may have been able to call it a falling knife a few days ago, but that is inaccurate, presently. In retrospect, one might say there was a slight dead cat bounce. Still the charts say a trench with highly increased volatility. Most playing this, right now, are traders, so your assessment is almost frivolous.
atockkcots06: it is always good to have a balanced viewpoint on any stock that one might care to trade or especially invest in. However, you made a distorted post(s) with quite a flare for being a history revisionist.
Obviously, your viewpoint is a jaundiced one. I would encourage anyone to trade this stock with caution --- yet it is STILL IN THE BLACK. And that's a fact, Jack!
MrBankRoll: good for you. My tomatoes and squash usually don't last long enough to pose for photos. I've often claimed that God invented tomatoes just for me. ~ smirk ~
Groundbreaking Lupus Diagnostic and Monitoring Technology Developed at Lahey Clinic Now Available Through Competitive Technologies
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 05, 2006 8:15 AM - BusinessWire
FAIRFIELD, Conn., Sep 05, 2006 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Competitive Technologies, Inc. (CTT) today announced that it has signed an exclusive, worldwide service and representation agreement with Dr. Vincent Agnello of Lahey Clinic to commercialize a patented laboratory test used to diagnose and monitor Systemic Lupus Erythematosus ("SLE").
SLE, commonly called "Lupus," is an autoimmune disease characterized by the appearance in serum of antibodies directed against a number of "self" antigens. Lupus currently affects approximately 1.5 million patients in the United States.
"We believe that a significant market exists for better Lupus diagnostic and monitoring tools," commented Aris Despo, Senior Vice President, Life Sciences for Competitive Technologies. "The Agnello technology is a late stage technology that is ready for commercialization and provides a cost effective, scalable testing platform for the early detection of Lupus as well as the monitoring of therapeutic efficacy and flares."
The solid-phase assay significantly improves the detection of antibodies specifically directed towards dsDNA in serum with unparalleled sensitivity and precision compared to existing diagnostic methods that detect and have difficulty separating both ssDNA and dsDNA. The assay is adaptable to operate on commercially available chemiluminescence detection platforms and has extensive clinical data with more than 10,000 assays performed at the Lahey Clinic.
"It will be extremely gratifying to see the fruits of our research efforts reach the general public," remarked Dr. Agnello. "Bringing this technology to market through CTT's licensing network will benefit patients around the world. I am delighted to play a role in advancing Lahey Clinic's unique model of medicine that constantly works at improving patient care through cutting edge research and development."
"This Lupus diagnostic technology is a strong addition to our life sciences offering," added D.J. Freed, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Competitive Technologies. "As we aggressively expand our portfolio of available technologies, we are pleased to acquire the rights to commercialize late stage technologies with proven efficacy like this Lupus test. We are excited about bringing this technology to the market on a global scale by leveraging our existing relationships with diagnostic kit manufacturers who have licensed other diagnostic assays from CTT."
About Lahey Clinic
Lahey Clinic, a physician-led, nonprofit group practice, is world-renowned for innovative technology, pioneering medical treatment, and leading-edge research. A teaching hospital affiliated with Tufts University School of Medicine, the Clinic provides quality health care in virtually every specialty and subspecialty, from primary care to cancer diagnosis and treatment to kidney and liver transplantation. For more information, please visit : www.lahey.org
About Competitive Technologies, Inc.
Competitive Technologies, established in 1968, is a full service technology transfer and licensing provider, focused on bringing the intellectual property assets of its clients to the marketplace. CTT specializes in identifying, developing and commercializing innovative technologies in a variety of areas, including life and physical sciences, electronics, and nanotechnologies. Through its global distribution platform, CTT maximizes the value of its clients' intellectual property assets. For more information, please visit: www.competitivetech.net.
Vexari: when their toys are taken away.
todd h: The Hotel California of song is the church of satan on California Street in San Francisco; formed in 1969. The Hotel Mecca would seem appropriate for the death religion adherents to the moon goddess.
bartermania: thank you, this board was created after 40-50 posts were deleted from the Q & A board. It was weird because they were happy posts of a good community. Yes, it was off the tenor of the board, but that board has gotten far worse since.
Some were my posts. I responded to a post with the quip that I was the founder of PAHA (Person Against Hurting Asparagus).
asus: they're there. Create folders and file some. You'll see previous ones appear.
Bill Clinton started jogging near his new home in Chappaqua.
But on each run, he happened to jog past a hooker standing
on the same street corner, day after day.
With some apprehension he would brace himself as he
approached her for what was most certainly to follow.
"Fifty dollars!" she would shout from the curb.
"No, Five dollars!" fired back Clinton.
This ritual between Bill and the hooker continued for days.
He'd run by and she'd yell, "Fifty dollars!"
And he'd yell back,"Five dollars!"
One day however, Hillary decided that she wanted to
accompany her husband on his jog.
As the jogging couple neared the problematic street corner,
Bill realized the "pro" would bark her $50 offer and Hillary would wonder what he'd really been doing on all his past outings.
He realized he should have a darn good explanation for the junior Senator.
As they jogged into the turn that would take them past the corner, Bill became even more apprehensive than usual.
Sure enough, there was the hooker.
Bill tried to avoid the prostitute's eyes as she watched the pair jog past.
Then, from the sidewalk, the hooker yelled,
"See what you get for five bucks?"
Vexari: Henry Kissinger had publicly alluded to such a scenario a few years back. "Alternative" worshippers have laid out common plots, which wise individuals view as a cover for demons and the like.
"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it
cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less
formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But
the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly
whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls
of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he
speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their
face and their garments, he appeals to the baseness that lies
deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he
works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars
of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer
resist. A murderer is less to fear."
--Marcus Tullius Cicero, 42 B.C.
A little old man shuffled slowly into an ice cream parlor and pulled himself slowly, painfully, up onto a stool. After catching his breath, he ordered a banana split.
The waitress asked kindly, "Crushed nuts?"
"No," he replied, "arthritis."
Whoops! Someone has.
August 28, 2006
A North American United Nations?
by Ron Paul
Globalists and one-world promoters never seem to tire of coming up with ways to undermine the sovereignty of the United States. The most recent attempt comes in the form of the misnamed "Security and Prosperity Partnership Of North America (SPP)." In reality, this new "partnership" will likely make us far less secure and certainly less prosperous.
According to the US government website dedicated to the project, the SPP is neither a treaty nor a formal agreement. Rather, it is a "dialogue" launched by the heads of state of Canada, Mexico, and the United States at a summit in Waco, Texas in March, 2005.
What is a "dialogue"? We don't know. What we do know, however, is that Congressional oversight of what might be one of the most significant developments in recent history is non-existent. Congress has had no role at all in a "dialogue" that many see as a plan for a North American union.
According to the SPP website, this "dialogue" will create new supra-national organizations to "coordinate" border security, health policy, economic and trade policy, and energy policy between the governments of Mexico, Canada, and the United States. As such, it is but an extension of NAFTA- and CAFTA-like agreements that have far less to do with the free movement of goods and services than they do with government coordination and management of international trade.
Critics of NAFTA and CAFTA warned at the time that the agreements were actually a move toward more government control over international trade and an eventual merging of North America into a border-free area. Proponents of these agreements dismissed this as preposterous and conspiratorial. Now we see that the criticisms appear to be justified.
Let's examine just a couple of the many troubling statements on the SPP's US government website:
"We affirm our commitment to strengthen regulatory cooperation...and to have our central regulatory agencies complete a trilateral regulatory cooperation framework by 2007"
Though the US administration insists that the SPP does not undermine US sovereignty, how else can one take statements like this? How can establishing a "trilateral regulatory cooperation" not undermine our national sovereignty?
The website also states SPP's goal to "mprove the health of our indigenous people through targeted bilateral and/or trilateral activities, including in health promotion, health education, disease prevention, and research." Who can read this and not see massive foreign aid transferred from the US taxpayer to foreign governments and well-connected private companies?
Also alarming are SPP pledges to "work towards the identification and adoption of best practices relating to the registration of medicinal products." That sounds like the much-criticized Codex Alimentarius, which seeks to radically limit Americans' health freedom.
Even more troubling are reports that under this new "partnership," a massive highway is being planned to stretch from Canada into Mexico, through the state of Texas. This is likely to cost the US taxpayer untold billions of dollars, will require eminent domain takings on an almost unimaginable scale, and will make the US more vulnerable to those who seek to enter our country to do us harm.
This all adds up to not only more and bigger government, but to the establishment of an unelected mega-government. As the SPP website itself admits, "The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America represents a broad and ambitious agenda." I hope my colleagues in Congress and American citizens will join me in opposing any "broad and ambitious" effort to undermine the security and sovereignty of the United States.
http://www.safehaven.com/article-5783.htm
Now who can argue with this? http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/03/20050323-1.html
The approximately 7,500 state legislators across the nation are guardians of The Constitution. Maybe, only about 10% remain from the last Con-con fight. Be ever vigilant and contact your state legislators. DO NOT GET hung up over single issues!
Con-con Movement Returns
by George Detweiler
September 4, 2006
Some proponents of a federal constitutional amendment to protect traditional marriage are considering calling for a dangerous constitutional convention to accomplish their goal.
George Detweiler is a constitutional lawyer and former assistant attorney general for the state of Idaho.
They're baaack — those pesky advocates of a constitutional convention. Following defeat of a federal constitutional amendment in the U.S. Senate to define marriage exclusively as a union of one man and one woman, talk began to circulate favoring a constitutional convention to accomplish the task. Leading the charge by convention advocates are Princeton Professor Robby George, Chuck Donovan of the Family Research Council, Frank Cannon, and Tony Perkins. Most convention proponents operate in oblivion of the dangers inherent in the convention process. Their focus is upon the remedy they seek for the perceived need, be it a marriage amendment, a balanced federal budget, a ban on flag burning, legislative reapportionment, or other items which have appeared on the shopping list of convention advocates over the decades.
Article V of the Constitution contains the procedure for amending that document: "The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a convention for proposing Amendments."
Perils of a Constitutional Convention
Amendments are proposed either by Congress or by a convention called for that purpose by the action of two-thirds (34) of the legislatures of the states. The danger of using the latter process is that there is no effective way to control the convention once it begins its work. If a convention were called for the sole and exclusive purpose of proposing a definition-of-marriage amendment, the convention would be able to propose any kind and number of amendments it might choose; it could also utterly ignore the marriage amendment issue. Any topic would be on the table. It could change the republic into a monarchy, ridiculous as that suggestion sounds. It could formally place the United States under the total power of the UN. It could abolish the states. The only limits on the convention are in the minds of the delegates — self-restraint, which is no restraint at all. The point is universally lost on single-issue convention seekers, who fail to look, and therefore cannot see, beyond their own limited agendas.
A majority of the judges and scholars who have opined on the subject have declared that restraints and limitations contained in the resolutions of state legislatures which apply to Congress to call a convention are unenforceable and of no effect whatever. A legislative application for a convention for the sole purpose of securing a marriage amendment is treated as an application without limitation, thus ignoring the marriage amendment issue. The late Chief Justice of the United States, Warren Burger, wrote in a private letter in 1988:
I have also repeatedly given my opinion that there is no effective way to limit or muzzle the actions of a Constitutional Convention. The Convention could make its own rules and set its own agenda. Congress might try to limit the Convention to one amendment or to one issue, but there is no way to assure that the Convention would obey. After a Convention is convened, it will be too late to stop the Convention if we don't like its agenda.... A new Convention could plunge our Nation into constitutional confusion and confrontation at every turn, with no assurance that focus would be on the subjects needing attention. I have discouraged the idea of a Constitutional Convention, and I am glad to see states rescinding their previous resolutions requesting a Convention. In these [constitutional] Bicentennial years, we should be celebrating [the republic's] long life, not challenging its very existence.
Of like opinion was the late Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Arthur Goldberg, writing an op-ed piece for the Miami Herald in 1986:
A few people have asked, "Why not another constitutional convention?"
... One of the most serious problems Article V poses is a runaway convention. There is no enforceable mechanism to prevent a convention from reporting out wholesale changes to our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Moreover, the absence of any mechanism to ensure representative selection of delegates could put a runaway convention in the hands of single-issue groups whose self-interest may be contrary to our national well-being.
Professor Christopher Brown, University of Maryland School of Law, wrote in 1991 in response to an inquiry into the effect of Article V in the context of the movement for a convention for a balanced federal budget amendment: "After 34 states have issued their call, Congress must call 'a convention for proposing amendments.' In my view the plurality of 'amendments' opens the door to constitutional change far beyond merely requiring a balanced federal budget."
Article V also requires that all amendments, whether proposed by Congress or a convention, become part of the Constitution only when ratified by three-fourths (38) of the states. Proponents of constitutional conventions point to the fact that 13 states can block bad amendments merely by withholding ratification. It is not quite that simple. First, truly bad amendments, those dismantling the Constitution and its most basic provisions, are the province of insiders — those ultimately seeking to place this nation under formal control of unelected bureaucrats and to dismantle the safeguards of liberty found in federalism and the Bill of Rights. They would use media hype and spin to its full advantage in pressing for ratification of radical amendments. Second, the ratification process is a protection against bad amendments only if the convention does not fiddle with the ratification process.
Law of the Land Ignored Once Before
A similar situation arose as America replaced the Articles of Confederation with the present Constitution. The nation technically continued to operate under the Articles of Confederation until the Constitution was ratified. Article X of the Confederation document required that all Alterations (its term for amendments) had to be ratified first by Congress and then by all of the states.
As the work of the constitutional convention of 1787 was concluded, the Founding Fathers were aware that the political climate of the day was not solidly enough behind the new Constitution to secure such unanimous approval. Their remedy was simply to ignore the law of the land — Article X of the Articles of Confederation — and provide a new plan for ratification. They added Article VII to the new Constitution, which allowed it to go into effect upon approval of nine states. Non-ratifying states were left out in the cold as individual "nations." Realizing this, the last four states ratified quickly once the first nine had done so.
The strategy worked, and we gained a superb Constitution in the process. But it was done in defiance of the existing law, which required Alterations to the Articles to be ratified by Congress and all states. What is the lesson? The rules of ratification were illegally, but effectively, changed once in our history. Can anyone confidently declare that it could never happen again?
Are There Safe and Effective Remedies?
Jurisdictions of federal courts are under the control of Congress. Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution empowers Congress to provide exceptions to, and regulations of, the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. All inferior federal courts are created by act of Congress, which has complete control over their jurisdictions. Congress can remove from their jurisdictions any authority to hear and determine cases involving same-sex "marriage" issues and further deny to them authority to consider cases in which a same-sex "marriage" performed in one state is denied "full faith and credit" in another state. Article IV, Section 1 of the Constitution requires all states to give full faith and credit to the public acts, records and judicial proceedings of sister states. Though the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution was written in a manner to protect a state from having another state's laws — such as a same-sex "marriage" law — forced upon it, activist courts have previously ignored the intent of the Constitution to fulfill a political agenda. By controlling the jurisdiction of the federal courts, the danger of history repeating itself is nullified.
It is not a complete remedy; individual states would remain free to allow such marriages if they choose to do so. This may not be a tolerable result for those seeking the marriage amendment constitutional convention. It does, however, provide a large measure of protection from federal intervention. Anyone interested in protecting the sanctity of traditional marriage should contact both of his U.S. senators and his congressman to ask their sponsorship and support for legislation enforcing the Article III, Section 2 power of Congress to remove the definition of marriage from the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and to remove it from the jurisdictions of all other federal courts.
Additional Danger of a New Amendment
There is an additional cost to placing the definition of marriage under federal control, as a constitutional amendment would do. A disturbing trend records the steady flow of power toward the federal level at the expense of the states. As Congress, the executive branch, and the courts amass powers unto themselves, the states have shrunk in importance to Dickens-like caricatures of their former selves. A federal constitutional amendment defining marriage would transfer yet another traditional state power and prerogative into federal hands. States can ill afford such a loss and yet continue to maintain a viable level of the dual sovereignties which define federalism. The number of states which embrace same-sex "marriage" is very small, and with diligence, their citizens can reclaim exclusive traditional marriages. But once more power is lost to the federal government, it is inexorably gone.
Protection against a constitutional convention will not be gained until all existing applications calling for a convention are rescinded. It is a slow, laborious process that is accomplished state by state, yet it can and must be done.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/artman/publish/article_4166.shtml
jawmoke: we are glad to have you here now. Remember, it was novices that stood with their rusty muskets facing the most formidable army in the world. It was novices that helped Andrew Jackson crush The Second Bank of the United States. It was novices that stemmed the tide of the first Con-con. BTW, Gideon was a novice.
Globalism's toll mounting for U.S. citizens
By Phyllis Schlafly
Monday, August 21, 2006
It's not just U.S. ports that are fast slipping into foreign ownership; it's highways, too. A Spanish company, Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A., has bought the right to operate a toll road through Texas and collect tolls for the next 50 years.
Hearings held by the Texas Department of Transportation this summer attracted hundreds of angry Texans.
Called the Trans-Texas Corridor, TTC, on which construction is planned to begin next year, this highway would bisect Texas from Oklahoma to its border with Mexico. Plans call for a 10-lane limited-access highway to parallel Interstate 35. It would have three lanes each way for passenger cars, two express lanes each way for trucks, rail lines both ways for people and freight, plus a utility corridor for oil and natural gas pipelines, electric towers, cables for communication, and telephone lines.
Central to this plan is a massive taking of 584,000 acres of farm and ranch land at an estimated cost of $11 billion to $30 billion - property then lost from the tax rolls of counties and school districts. After the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London, Conn., no one need wonder about the power of eminent domain to take private property.
The Trans-Texas Corridor will be the first leg of what has been dubbed the NAFTA Super Highway to go through heartland America all the way to Canada. This would be a major lifeline of the plan to merge the United States into a North American Community.
Plans are already locked in for Kansas City Southern de Mexico Railroad to bring Chinese goods in sealed cargo containers from the southern Mexican port of Lazaro Cardinas direct to Kansas City, Mo. Mexican trucks will be able to drive more sealed containers up the fast lanes of the NAFTA Super Highway, inspected only electronically if at all, and making their first customs stop in Kansas City.
In response to recent articles in conservative publications about the sovereignty, freedom and economic dangers that will result from President George W. Bush's creating the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America in Waco, Texas, in March 2005, the partnership has issued an unconvincing rebuttal.
This Security and Prosperity Partnership document starts by declaring, "Our three great nations share a belief in freedom, economic opportunity, and strong democratic institutions." That's false; Mexico is a corrupt country where a few families control all the wealth while the rest of the people are kept in abject poverty with no hope of economic opportunity.
The rebuttal states that partnership's mission is to make "our businesses more competitive in the global marketplace." That's globalist doubletalk that means producing U.S. goods with cheap foreign labor, thereby destroying the U.S. middle class.
The rebuttal states that the project wasn't "signed" by Bush at Waco. But when Bush went to Cancun, Mexico, in March 2006, he proclaimed the first anniversary of whatever he had agreed to in Waco in 2005, and he sent Michael Chertoff to Ottawa to take "an important first step" toward whatever Bush did or didn't sign in Waco.
The rebuttal denies that the partnership's working groups are secret, but the Security and Prosperity Partnership won't release the names of who is serving on them. The rebuttal denies that the partnership will "cost U.S. taxpayer money" because it is using "existing budget resources" (no doubt coming from the fairy godmother).
Thanks to the Internet, we can often find out more about the doings of the Bush administration from the foreign press than from U.S. media. A Spanish-language article written from a Mexican perspective one year ago fully described the plan for the "deep integration" of the three North American countries.
Economist and researcher Miguel Pickard explained that although the plan is sometimes called NAFTA Plus, there will be no single treaty text and nothing will be submitted to the legislatures of the three countries. The elites plan to implement their shared vision of "a merged future" through "the signing of 'regulations' free of citizen review." Pickard revealed a series of three meetings of a new entity called the Independent Task Force on the Future of North America. After secretly conniving in Toronto, New York and Monterrey, Mexico, the task force called for a unified North American Border Action Plan (i.e., open borders among the three countries), and the three countries then signed "close to 300 regulations."
The United States was represented at the meeting by Robert Pastor, who has been working for years to promote North American integration. Pickard revealed that Pastor is in "constant dialogue" with Jorge G. Castaneda, Vicente Fox's foreign relations adviser. Pickard is convinced that George W. Bush is "vigorously pushing" the idea of a "North American community." Pickard concluded that the schedule calls for beginning with a customs union, then a common market, then a monetary and economic union, and finally the adoption of a single currency (already baptized as the "amero" by Pastor).
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/PhyllisSchlafly/2006/08/21/globalisms_toll_mounting_for_us_citize...
Howdy to everyone. I believe that the NUMBER ONE CAMPAIGN ISSUE to be the repeal of The Federal Reserve. Here's a rather simple, but helpful link; enjoy. http://www.freedomtofascism.com/index.html
Has anyone received email touts for LITL?
I have a problem with Pluto being declassified and into the ranks of an out-of-shape, dwarf planet. What sort of appeal will there be from a space invasion of midget aliens?
jdz: LOL, one of those other sources wouldn't have been The Contrarian Report?
JonBenet story bumped for this breaking news.
Judge to Rule if 'Meowing' Is Harassment
Aug 24, 7:45 AM (ET)
JEANNETTE, Pa. (AP) - Meow. A district judge has been asked to decide whether that word is a harmless taunt or grounds for misdemeanor harassment. Jeannette police charged a 14-year-old boy for "meowing" whenever he sees his neighbor, 78-year-old Alexandria Carasia.
The boy's family and Carasia do not get along. The boy's mother said the family got rid of their cat after Carasia complained to police that it used her flower garden as a litter box.
The boy testified Tuesday that he only meowed at the woman twice. Carasia testified, "Every time he sees me, he meows."
The boy's defense attorney, David Martin Jr., argued that the charge should be dismissed.
"This should never have been filed," Martin said. "This is not something that police should be wasting their time with or wasting the court's time."
Jeannette District Judge Joseph DeMarchis decided to wait 90 days before ruling. DeMarchis said his decision will be based on how the boy and his neighbor get along in the meantime.
Maybe, I put this on the wrong board:
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=12892113
Alpha Raging Bull
Three bulls heard via the grapevine that the rancher was going to bring yet
another bull onto the ranch, and the prospect raised a discussion among
them.
First Bull: "Boys, we all know I've been here 5 years. Once we settled our
differences, we agreed on which 100 of the cows would be mine. Now, I don't
know where this newcomer is going to get HIS cows, but I ain't givin' him
any of mine."
Second Bull: "That pretty much says it for me, too. I've been here 3 years
and have earned my right to the 50 cows we've agreed are mine. I'll fight
'im till I run him off or kill 'im, but I'M KEEPIN' ALL MY COWS."
Third Bull: "I've only been here a year, and so far you guys have only let
me have 10 cows to "take care of". I may not be as big as you fellows (yet)
but I am young and virile, so I simply MUST keep all MY cows."
They had just finished their big talk when an eighteen-wheeler pulls up in
the middle of the pasture with only ONE ANIMAL IN IT: the biggest
Son-of-Another-Bull these guys had ever seen! At 4,700 pounds, each step he
took toward the ground strained the steel ramp to the breaking point.
First Bull: "Ahem...You know, it's actually been some time since I really
felt I was doing all my cows justice, anyway. I think I can spare a few
for our new friend."
Second Bull: "I'll have plenty of cows to take care of if I just stay on
the opposite end of the pasture from HIM. I'm certainly not looking for an
argument."
They look over at their young friend, the 3rd bull, and find him pawing the
dirt, shaking his horns, and snorting.
First Bull: "Son, let me give you some advice real quick. Let him have
some of your cows and live to tell about it."
Third Bull: "____, he can have ALL my cows. I'm just making sure he knows
I'M a bull!"
IRISHBULL: why? It looks dead. (Groan)
Churak: because you might seem fairly silly posting to dead folks.
im a survivor: but try including the cyber doughnuts and, hey, throw on some rainbow sprinkles.