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Documents are largely from what is referenced by interesting films, Prison Planet/Infowars and the Corbett Report. This database is a quick reference and for your analysis, more independent from others' interpretations. The database includes almost all source documents and articles from these films: Loose Change (Final Cut & 2nd Edition), Fabled Enemies, The Obama Deception, End Game, Martial Law 9/11, American Dictators, Matrix of Evil, Zeitgeist: Addendum, Who Killed The Electric Car?, The World According To Monsanto, Mind The Gap, and 7/7 Ripple Effect.
ACLU report card finds fault with Obama, rivals The American Civil Liberties Union has issued "Liberty Watch 2012," its report card for presidential candidates on issues like surveillance, torture, gay rights and immigration. No one gets an A, including President Obama.
Obama, the only Democrat among the 10 candidates rated, got a perfect score
four "torches"
on only one issue, allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, for his backing of the December 2010 law that repealed "don't ask, don't tell."
But he received lower marks on immigration, abortion rights and "closing Guantanamo Bay and indefinite detention," where his one-torch rating was attributed to backtracking on a promise to shut the prison for suspected terrorists and his support for holding their trials in military commissions.
The highest overall rating went to former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, a Republican-turned-Libertarian, who opposes the Patriot Act and
unlike Obama
supports the right of gays and lesbians to marry. Among the leading Republican candidates, libertarian-leaning Rep. Ron Paul also got a higher score than Obama despite low ratings in several categories.
The ACLU gave the Texas congressman high marks for opposing the Patriot Act and indefinite detention of suspected terrorists, condemning waterboarding and voting to repeal "don't ask, don't tell." But it criticized Paul's call for an end to "birthright citizenship" for children of illegal immigrants, his support of the law that denies federal marriage benefits to same-sex couples and his opposition to abortion. (San Francisco Chronicle)
Why Voters Tune Out Democrats BARACK OBAMA can’t catch a break from the American public on the economy, even though he prevented a depression and saved global capitalism.
Perhaps the president finds solace in knowing he’s not alone. During this period of economic crisis and uncertainty, voters are generally turning to conservative and right-wing political parties, most notably in Europe and in Canada.
It’s perplexing. When unemployment is high, and the rich are getting richer, you would think that voters of average means would flock to progressives, who are supposed to have their interests in mind — and who historically have delivered for them.
During the last half-century or so, when a Democratic president has led the country, people have tended to experience lower unemployment, less inequality and rising income compared with periods of Republican governance. There is a reason, however, that many voters in the developed world are turning away from Democrats, Socialists, liberals and progressives.
My vantage point on voter behavior comes through my company, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, and its work for center-left parties globally, starting with Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992. For the last decade, I have worked in partnership with James Carville conducting monthly polls digging into America’s mood and studying how progressives can develop successful electoral strategies. (I am also married to a Democratic congresswoman from Connecticut, Rosa L. DeLauro.) (New York Times)
Drug-bashing RI Republican charged with drug use Robert Watson, a high-ranking Republican state legislator in Rhode Island, is in hot water after being charged with driving under the influence of marijuana and possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia. Drug charges alone would be bad enough for a public official, but Watson, Rhode Island's House minority leader, is still remembered for his controversial anti-drug, anti-gay and anti-immigrant remarks.
In February, Watson said the Rhode Island legislature had their priorities right "if you are a Guatemalan gay man who likes to gamble and smokes marijuana." (The Raw Story)
Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? Financial crooks brought down the world's economy -- but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them By Matt Taibbi. Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer.
"Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that."
I put down my notebook. "Just that?"
"That's right," he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. "Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there."
Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people.
This article appears in the March 3, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. The issue is available now on newsstands and will appear in the online archive February 18.
The rest of them, all of them, got off. Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted. Their names by now are familiar to even the most casual Middle American news consumer: companies like AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. Most of these firms were directly involved in elaborate fraud and theft. Lehman Brothers hid billions in loans from its investors. Bank of America lied about billions in bonuses. Goldman Sachs failed to tell clients how it put together the born-to-lose toxic mortgage deals it was selling. What's more, many of these companies had corporate chieftains whose actions cost investors billions — from AIG derivatives chief Joe Cassano, who assured investors they would not lose even "one dollar" just months before his unit imploded, to the $263 million in compensation that former Lehman chief Dick "The Gorilla" Fuld conveniently failed to disclose. Yet not one of them has faced time behind bars.
"You put Lloyd Blankfein in pound-me-in-the-ass prison for one six-month term, and all this bullshit would stop, all over Wall Street," says a former congressional aide. "That's all it would take. Just once." (Rolling Stone)
Was Judge John Roll the actual target of the Giffords shooting? While most of the country has been focused on the tragic shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), the murder of Judge John McCarthy Roll, a federal judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, remains largely and strangely missing from most of the mainstream press coverage of this event.
Judge Roll, considered by some to be one of the most constitutionally-centered judges in history, was a defender of liberty who, prior to his murder, had begun working with Rep. Giffords to build a new courthouse and to assert Arizona's sovereignty in dealing with illegal immigration. In essence, Rep. Giffords and Judge Roll were effectively breaking down the false 'left/right' political paradigm that paralyzes Americans from fighting back against government tyranny. This unique alliance between 'left' and 'right', and the potential it had to dismantle a whole host of encroaching federal interventions in state affairs, may be one of the reasons why Judge Roll's murder is conveniently being left out of the spotlight.
Worth noting here is that Jared Lee Loughner's two primary victims were a significant and growing threat to the political status quo. Giffords is a Democrat, and Judge Roll was a conservative. But the two had begun working hand-in-hand to accomplish real goals for the people they served, both in Arizona and across the country. (Natural News)
Murdered Judge Defended Sheriff Mack Judge John M. Roll, murdered in Saturday’s shooting rampage in Tucson, was the leading judicial voice supporting former Graham County, Arizona Sheriff Richard Mack in his 1997 lawsuit against the federal government. Mack is a speaker, states’ rights advocate and author of The County Sheriff: America’s Last Hope.
Sheriff Mack observed in an interview on Alex Jones’ Jan. 10 radio broadcast that John Roll changed his life. He has quoted Roll in his books. In 1997, when Mack was sheriff of Graham County, he joined with Sheriff Jay Printz of Montana in filing a suit against the federal government regarding the Brady Act. The resulting Supreme Court decision found the Act unconstitutional.
The Brady Act not only would have required state and local officials to carry out and fund a federal mandate regarding gun regulations, but it also called for the arrest of any law enforcement officer who refused to enforce it. On the basis of these provisions, Mack and Printz filed suit, and were eventually joined by five other sheriffs around the nation. Mack recalled of the judge:
He was really worried about the sanctions against me (or any other sheriff) — he protected me. Judge Roll stood up for me in particular because I was the only one filing the lawsuit at the time. (The New American)
Judge John Roll respected among peers: Roll lauded as a law scholar with strong standards U.S. District Judge John Roll could have been a likely target for an angry gunman.
But his death Saturday in the melee near Tucson that killed six and wounded 13 others, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, was likely an unfortunate coincidence.
Roll, 63, chief judge for the U.S. District for Arizona, who sat on the bench since 1991, was in the middle of some of the state's most contentious court battles, many of them having to do with illegal immigration.
He was presiding over a federal court challenge to a ban on ethnic studies in the Tucson Unified School District when he died.
He had received death threats in 2009 during a civil-rights case in his courtroom filed by illegal immigrants against an Arizona rancher who made citizens' arrests.
Roll paid no attention to protests on both sides of the issue.
"Politics never bore on any of his decisions," said José de Jesus Rivera, a former U.S. attorney for Arizona who represented one side of the rancher case. But he was a courteous man, the kind who remembered your name, and your spouse's name.
He was not appearing with Giffords in any official capacity. It was a courtesy visit.
He told his family that after Mass on Saturday, he would stop by the supermarket in his neighborhood where Giffords was meeting with constituents to pay his respects to the congresswoman. (The Arizona Republic)
Judge's final actions key to federal charge for his murder The actions and motivations of U.S. District Court Judge John Roll just before he was shot dead at Rep. Gabrielle Giffords's campaign event in Tucson on Saturday are important for the public narrative about the tragedy, but they're also vital to the federal criminal charge for his murder.
The criminal complaint federal prosecutors filed Sunday against the alleged shooter, Jared Loughner, goes to some lengths to demonstrate that Roll didn't show up at the Giffords event just to say hello to the congresswoman, or on some whim after attending mass, as reports Saturday suggested. That storyline was fueled by Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, who said "because [Roll] knows Gabrielle very well, [he] came around the corner to say hi. Unfortunately he was in the wrong place at the wrong time."
By contrast, FBI agent Tony Taylor argues that Roll was at the event to talk to Giffords about ongoing problems related to a surge in the federal judicial caseload in Arizona--a problem which the judge has attributed to a boost in the number of federal agents sent to the area to address immigration and border-related crime.
Under federal law, the murder or attempted murder of a U.S. official, such as a judge, is only considered a federal crime if committed "while such officer or employee is engaged in or on account of the performance of official duties." In other words, if Roll simply stopped by the event to greet Giffords, who he's said to have been friendly with, or due to idle curiosity about what was happening there, his killing probably wouldn't be a federal offense. (Politico)
Colbert storms Capitol Hill for migrant workers There's nothing funny about the issue of migrant farm labor -- unless Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert is discussing it.
Colbert, accompanied by a media swarm, sarcastically testified on Capitol Hill Friday about the conditions facing America's undocumented farm workers. The popular host of "The Colbert Report" told members of a House Judiciary subcommittee that he hoped to bring attention to the workers' hardships.
"I certainly hope that my star power can bump this hearing all the way up to C-SPAN 1," he joked. (CNN)
Quakers, anti-war rallies on alert list Taxpayer-funded bulletins listed meetings of Tea Partiers, Quakers and Pittsburgh anti-war activists as potential security threats.
A year's worth of bulletins released Friday by the governor's office shows the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response warned state Homeland Security officials about events as far away as the Sinai and as easy to predict as looking at a calendar.
The reports ignited controversy earlier this week when opponents of Marcellus gas drilling learned that gas companies had received the "Pennsylvania Intelligence Bulletin" listing their planned participation in public hearings as part of a warning about potential terrorist threats to public infrastructure. (Pittsburg Tribune-Review)
'Buy American' a priority at 'three amigos' summit The global recession, climate change and the controversial Buy American program will be front and centre Sunday when North American leaders meet for two days of top-level talks in Guadalajara.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper joins U.S. President Barack Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon Sunday to forge a joint path forward for clean energy and continental might against competing global powerhouses. The annual gathering, dubbed the “three amigos” summit after it debuted in 2005, is designed to craft a multi-year framework for security and prosperity for North America in the face of an international financial crisis.
This time, though, the security and prosperity partnership and its streamlining of regulations is taking a back seat as the three leaders focus on the recession that has rocked the economies of all three countries. Harper is expected to take a strong stand against protectionist measures such as the U.S. Buy American plan which has hit some Canadian exporters hard.
The Guadalajara summit comes only a few weeks after Canada angered Mexico by slapping visa requirements on Mexican visitors – a move designed to stem the growing tide of Mexicans claiming refugee status in Canada.
Fighting the H1N1 flu virus, developing a common position on climate change and battling the growing problem of drug trafficking will also be on the agenda. (Edmunton Sun)
Scouts Train to Fight Terrorists, and More The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence (New York Times)
Global Elite Gather in D.C. "John has always supported free trade, even while campaigning before union leaders," said one. "Hil and Barack are pretending to be unhappy about some things, but that's merely political posturing. They're solidly in support." (American Free Press)
Trade the talk of summit, but controversy looms: Bush meets with North American leaders this week in New Orleans With free trade issues looming large in the race to replace him, President Bush this week convenes his final North American Leaders' Summit, focusing on trade, economic and security issues with counterparts from Mexico and Canada.
Bush is hosting Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in New Orleans for a two-day conference starting today. It is the fourth annual meeting of a summit that first convened in 2005 in Waco.
"We'd like to enhance and strengthen an already dynamic and strong relationship, to deepen the cooperation by building on the common interests of our citizens," said Dan Fisk, senior director of Western Hemisphere Affairs for the National Security Council. "The North American relationship works; we believe it works well for all three countries, but we also believe we can make it work better." (Houston Chronicle)
Concentration Camps in America If you type the phrase “concentration camps” into your Internet search engine, you will find page after page of references to martial law and the construction of concentration camps in the United States on behalf of the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
A close examination reveals that many of these references lack sufficient facts to support their conclusions; however, taken as a whole, there is an abundance of factual information showing an alarming trend in the deployment of federal and military forces to restrain and detain American citizens.
Among the Internet sites are those listing between 600 and 800 locations in the United States where the government is establishing “concentration camps.” Many of these are former or active military bases; however, several provide detailed information about their location and improvements, including maps, videos, and satellite photographs... (William John Cox)
GQ Icon: Colin Powell He was pushed aside in the run-up to war, but as he tells Walter Isaacson, he, too, bears some of the blame "Yes, there are a few dangerous nuts in Brooklyn and New Jersey who want to blow up Kennedy Airport and Fort Dix. These are dangerous criminals, and we must deal with them. But come on, this is not a threat to our survival! The only thing that can really destroy us is us. We shouldn't do it to ourselves, and we shouldn't use fear for political purposes—scaring people to death so they will vote for you, or scaring people to death so that we create a terror-industrial complex." (GQ)
Easterners could freeze in the dark At a meeting of the House of Commons' international trade committee earlier this month, Leon Benoit, the Conservative chairman, ordered me to stop my presentation as an invited witness. My remarks, he ruled, were not relevant. When his decision was successfully challenged by other members of the committee, Mr. Benoit adjourned the meeting and left the room.
I was astonished. I had spent several days preparing for my presentation, and two days in transit. Later, I learned that Mr. Benoit's behaviour may have been prompted by a secret guidebook for Conservative chairmen, designed to interrupt witnesses challenging government positions.
If so, it backfired. Suppression intrigues people. They want to know what caused the storm.
I was cut off after noting that the United States has a National Energy Policy (a NEP) that emphasizes self-sufficiency, energy independence and domestic ownership.
And while Canada, as part of our bilateral Security and Prosperity Partnership initiative, supports U.S. efforts to wean itself off Middle Eastern oil, I noted that we do not have a NEP of our own. (The Globe and Mail)
George W. Bush Is GOP's Bill Clinton: National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive Those of you who heard my radio program back in 2001 know that I predicted then that George W. Bush would do to the Republican Party much the same thing that Bill Clinton did to the Democratic Party. However, I must confess, I could not then realize the magnitude of that prediction.
Most of us remember that it was the election of Bill Clinton in 1992 that was the impetus for the Republican revolution of 1994. If you recall, a congressional election sweep of the magnitude of 1994 had not been seen in the previous seventy years. It is a truism that Bill Clinton helped to elect more Republicans than the Republican National Committee could ever dream about. Now, the same thing is happening with George W. Bush. In spades!
Amazingly, the two issues that I predicated my prediction on have materialized exactly as I said they would. I warned my audience in 2001 that George W. Bush had every intention of invading Iraq, and once there, did not plan to leave, but would probably seek to expand the war's theatre. I also predicted that Bush would seek to facilitate illegal immigration and create the working group to create a hemispheric government. (Canadian Free Press)
Presidents of U.S., Mexico to attend Ottawa summit U.S. President George W. Bush hopes to debunk a few negative misconceptions about post-9/11 North America when he arrives in Canada for a two-day summit this August.
He and Mexican President Felipe Calderon will arrive at a rural hotel resort near Ottawa for a summit with Prime Minister Stephen Harper that begins Aug. 21, sources in two countries told The Canadian Press.
The meeting has not yet been announced and the official agenda is still being finalized but U.S. officials are already fine-tuning the hopeful message they want to convey.
They plan to combat impressions that the U.S. and its continental neighbours have been -- or should be -- locking down their borders after 9/11 to the detriment of trade and human relationships.
"This is a region that works and that's a story that needs to be told,'' said one U.S. official. (CTV)
Securing the Promise of the Western Hemisphere [Rush Transcript; Federal News Service] ANN M. FUDGE: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on a Monday morning. I would again just like to welcome you to today's Council on Foreign Relations meeting. It's part of the C. Peter McColough Series on International Economics and is cosponsored with the council's corporate program and the Maurice Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies.
Before we begin, please remember to turn off your cell phones and other wireless devices.
I would like to remind the audience today that this meeting is on the record. And what I would like to do is very briefly introduce our speaker this morning, Secretary Gutierrez. He will be talking about Latin America, which has been a topic that has been of interest to many of the council members. So without any further delay, I will bring Carlos up and begin the program, so we will have much time for question and answers. (Council on Foreign Relations)
Texans fear US sovereignty will disappear down superhighway If it were built, the road would be one of the engineering wonders of the 21st century -a trade route a quarter of a mile wide, carving a path from Mexico through the heart of America to Canada.
In its most radical form, it would allow lorry drivers to travel hundreds of miles from the Mexican border deep into the US before reaching customs and immigration controls in Kansas. (London Telegraph)
Continental integration talks spark fierce debate in U.S.: A sweeping accord for the economic integration of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico has unleashed a firestorm of debate south of the border. Everyone from national congressmen and state legislators to bloggers and YouTubers are raising the alarm about the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), a plan to harmonize the countries' economic and security practices.
Criticism ranges from measured calls for stronger congressional oversight to hysterical charges that the "treasonous" deal will flood the U.S. with illegal aliens and terrorists.
"The deal will weaken the sovereignty of the U.S. It will create a North American Union" similar to the European model, warns Representative Virgil Goode, who, along with six other legislators, has tabled two resolutions opposing the deal in the U.S. House of Representatives. (Canada.com)
The U.S. and Mexico: A Newly Courting Couple? During his first visit to Washington after being elected president of Mexico, Felipe Calderon didn't sound that different from other Mexican presidents trying to make a splash here. He frequently repeated his desire to make Mexico "one of the best places to invest in the world," and added that Mexico's prosperity would help reduce the number of illegal immigrants coming to the U.S. Instead of having "people crossing the border looking for capital ... we need capital crossing the border looking for people," he said.
If some of us who heard him speak to Washington Post editors and reporters seemed a bit skeptical, you couldn't blame us. Not only had many of us heard similar pronouncements before, but here was a man who had won the presidency on such a close vote that the runner-up tried to form a parallel government and members of Congress sought to prevent Calderon from being sworn in.
But Calderon has acted swiftly and confidently since his chaotic inauguration in December. He deployed thousands of troops to half a dozen Mexican states plagued by a growing and gruesome wave of drug violence. And he cleared the way for the extradition of 15 drug traffickers to the United States, including some major figures such as Osiel Cardenas Guillen, head of the powerful Gulf Cartel.
There is even talk of substantially increasing U.S. monetary assistance, a heresy to some in this country but more realistic today considering the current climate. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, has introduced a bill in the U.S. Congress to provide Mexico $850 million in aid during the next five years, including funds for helicopters and police training.
There are obstacles to $850 million worth of cooperation. Many here believe that Mexico, as a middle-income country, has enough resources to help itself or is too corrupt to properly utilize funds. Mexicans too have been traditionally suspicious of U.S. intentions in their territory and, as Cuellar says, "We cannot erase that history." If more assistance does become a reality it would likely be targeted mostly for Mexico's poorer southern regions, according to a U.S. official. (Washington Post)
Subject: Virtual Hearing on Immigration -- Secure Borders First; To: Governor Rick Perry, Rep. William Thornberry, Sen. Kel Seliger, Rep. David Swinford, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison As part of Congress.org's virtual hearing on immigration reform, I want to share my views on this important issue. I support focussing on border security first.
I wanted to inform you of my feelings regarding the situation surrounding the porposed NAFTA superhighway which is being ram-rodded by a government entity called The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America now being referred to as the "SPP" which was actually formed in 2005.
(Which I'm sure you have heard of.) At a time when we are being drowned in a sea of illegal aliens AND at risk daily from Islamofascist terrorists.....the Bush administration is quietly advancing the construction of a massive Superhighway that will all but obliterate our borders with Canada and Mexico. (US Congress)
Secret Summit on Shared 'Security': Why was North America's power elite invited to Banff? Stockwell Day may have been there, but his office isn't saying.
Donald Rumsfeld may have been there, too. But again, no one seems to want to talk about it.
Last month, a secret meeting called the North American Forum was held in Banff. The theme of the three-day event was "Continental Prosperity in the New Security Environment."
Dozens of powerful figures from across North America attended. Many of the delegates are rumoured to have arrived at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel by bus in the middle of the night.
It all sounds a bit like a conspiracy nut's black-helicopter fantasy, but the North American Forum is real and so was the meeting. (The Tyee)
Our Sad Neglect of Mexico Whether you believe Mexican immigrants help or hurt the United States, there is one truth you have to accept: Work here pays much, much better. A low-skill Mexican worker earns five to six times as much in this country as back home, assuming he or she could find a comparable job there.
This truth is so obvious it seems a cliche and yet it remains mostly absent from the debate on how to reform U.S. immigration. For all the talk around the country of border enforcement, guest-worker programs, employer sanctions and driver's license restrictions, the sad fact is that none of these "solutions" addresses the root of the problem: a persistent and large income disparity between the United States and Mexico.
Even the most comprehensive and progressive immigration reform proposal in years, introduced this month by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), is more concerned with making U.S. immigration policy more humane than dealing with this income disparity. The bill crafts a guest-worker program -- creating new visa categories and quotas and a secure identification system for employers -- but provides only a vague indication that income disparity might be a problem or a responsibility to take on. (Washington Post)
Building a North American Community Report of an Independent Task Force;
Sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations with the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales
America’s relationship with its North American neighbors rarely gets the attention it warrants. This report of a Council-sponsored Indepen- dent Task Force on the Future of North America is intended to help address this policy gap. In the more than a decade since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect, ties among Canada, Mexico, and the United States have deepened dramatically. The value of trade within North America has more than doubled. Canada and Mexico are now the two largest exporters of oil, natural gas, and electricity to the United States. Since 9/11, we are not only one another’s major commercial partners, we are joined in an effort to make North America less vulnerable to terrorist attack.
This report examines these and other changes that have taken place since NAFTA’s inception and makes recommendations to address the range of issues confronting North American policymakers today: greater economic competition from outside North America, uneven develop- ment within North America, the growing demand for energy, and threats to our borders.
The Task Force offers a detailed and ambitious set of proposals that build on the recommendations adopted by the three governments at the Texas summit of March 2005. The Task Force’s central recommen- dation is establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community, the boundaries of which would be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter.
More than a decade ago NAFTA took effect, liberalizing trade and investment, providing crucial protection for intellectual property, creating pioneering dispute-resolution mechanisms, and establishing the first regional devices to safeguard labor and environmental standards. NAFTA helped unlock the region’s economic potential and demon- strated that nations at different levels of development can prosper from the opportunities created by reciprocal free trade arrangements.
Since then, however, global commercial competition has grown more intense and international terrorism has emerged as a serious regional and global danger. Deepening ties among the three countries of North America promise continued benefits for Canada, Mexico, and the United States. That said, the trajectory toward a more integrated and prosperous North America is neither inevitable nor irreversible.
In March 2005, the leaders of Canada, Mexico, and the United States adopted a Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), establishing ministerial-level working groups to address key secu- rity and economic issues facing North America and setting a short deadline for reporting progress back to their governments. President Bush described the significance of the SPP as putting forward a common commitment ‘‘to markets and democracy, freedom and trade, and mutual prosperity and security.’’ The policy framework articulated by the three leaders is a significant commitment that will benefit from broad discussion and advice. The Task Force is pleased to provide specific advice on how the partnership can be pursued and realized.
To that end, the Task Force proposes the creation by 2010 of a North American community to enhance security, prosperity, and opportunity. We propose a community based on the principle affirmed in the March 2005 Joint Statement of the three leaders that ‘‘our security and prosperity are mutually dependent and complementary.’’ 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.
A North American Advisory Council. To ensure a regular injection of creative energy into the various efforts related to North American integration, the three governments should appoint an independent body of advisers. This body should be composed of eminent persons from outside government, appointed to staggered multiyear terms to ensure their independence. Their mandate would be to engage in creative exploration of new ideas from a North American perspective and to provide a public voice for North America. A complementary approach would be to establish private bodies that would meet regularly or annually to buttress North American relationships, along the lines of the Bilderberg or Wehrkunde conferences, organized to support transatlantic relations. (Council on Foreign Relations)
Hands Across North America FOR all its bureaucratic faults, the European Union represents an important advance in the relations between nations, transforming once bitter and war-prone rivals into a model of cooperation, prosperity and community. The United States, on the other hand, blessed with two stable and peaceful neighbors, has no need for such a tight regional alliance. Or does it?
The meeting last week among the three North American leaders -- President Bush, President Vicente Fox of Mexico and Prime Minister Paul Martin of Canada -- at Mr. Bush's Texas ranch may have represented the beginning of serious discussion of that question. In their joint statement, the participants said their goal was a ''security and prosperity partnership'' for the continent. This shows a recognition that an absence of military conflict is not a good enough reason to avoid tighter regional alliances, particularly in a globalizing world where competition comes not only from other nations, but increasingly from other blocs of countries.
The idea that political stability could be a building block of economic prosperity and improved quality of life was something that Jean Monnet, the architect of the European Union, understood when he brought his long-term vision out of the ashes of a bitter war. And in 50 years, what was once simply a trade area has turned into a real political community, fostering peace and advancing the economic development of all its members.
By the time North Americans got serious about even limited continental cooperation, at the end of the cold war, it was enough to think solely in economic terms. Thus the North American Free Trade Agreement seemed sufficient to bring about prosperity and draw our countries closer together. But 11 years after it came into effect, Nafta is clearly an insufficient response to the 9/11 attacks, the strengthening of the euro, the rise of China as an economic and political power, and many other major challenges. We need to shut off the automatic pilot under which the countries of North America have been flying for the last decade.
We must move beyond just managing trade and into constructing a new relationship that has four principal goals: enhancing security cooperation; further strengthening economic ties; closing Mexico's development gap; and, certain to be the most controversial, building an institutional architecture to bring a North American community closer to reality.
First, security: the attacks of Sept. 11 and the rise of global terrorism show the need for a safety perimeter around the continent. The Mexican and the United States governments are deeply troubled by intelligence reports that Al Qaeda might be laying plans for an attack across America's southern border. But simply putting more guards and towers in the Arizona desert won't keep America safe. In place of the inefficient borders between the countries today, we need a policy on a strong external continental border.
Each country would of course keep sovereignty over the edges of its own territory, but each would have to meet border security requirements agreed upon by all three parties to ensure there are no weak links. This wall around the continent would, in turn, allow us to make internal North American crossings more flexible; the European model, with its uniform visa requirements, is worth following.
Finally, the key to achieving all these goals is creating permanent three-party institutions. Meetings like the one last week should be made annual, and the nations' defense, justice and intelligence chiefs should also meet every year to develop a common plan to fight terrorism, drug trafficking and immigrant smuggling. In time, the idea would be to create a permanent North American commission with cabinet-level representatives from each country; it would be charged not only with firming up nuts-and-bolts agreements on trade and security, but also with working toward an eventual goal of a true North American union.
Undoubtedly, this level of cooperation would be a hard sell to Americans, who would assume they would have the most to lose. But simply maintaining the status quo will not help the United States maintain its dominance in a changing world. Just as the Bush administration has articulated a radical strategy of military pre-emption in its national security strategy, it needs a similarly bold approach for defending the country's economic future.
Maybe, just maybe, the men gathered at the Crawford ranch could some day be seen as the Jean Monnets of their age, the founding fathers of the North American Community. (New York Times)
What Trumps What in the White House? President Bush's hasty embrace of federal intervention in the Terri Schiavo case -- followed by yesterday's partial retreat -- has some folks trying to ascertain the relative importance to the White House of such factors as the "culture of life," state's rights, activist judges, the gun culture, global catastrophes and brute political calculation.
Here's how one reader put it in my Live Online discussion yesterday: "Now we learn that the Republicans have a trumping order of issues. The sanctity of marriage trumps the rights of gays and state's rights, but the 'culture of life' trumps the sanctity of marriage and state's rights. . . . (Washington Post)
Transcript: Bush, Fox, and Martin Joint Press Conference: The following is a transcript of the joint press conference by President Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox, and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin BUSH: Thank you all for coming. It's my honor to welcome two friends to Baylor University.
First, I want to thank the Baylor University family for providing these facilities for us. Your hospitality is awesome.
I appreciate the meetings we've just had. Our relationships are important today. We intend to keep our relationships strong. Our relationships will be equally important for the years to come.
And so we had a good discussion about prosperity and security. Turns out the two go hand in hand. It's important for us to work to make sure our countries are safe and secure in order that our people can live in peace, as well as our economies can grow.
We've got a lot of trade with each other. We intend to keep it that way. We've got a lot of crossings of the border, and intend to make our borders more secure and facilitate legal traffic.
BUSH: We've got a lot to do. And so we charged our ministers with the task of figuring out how best to keep these relationships vibrant and strong. (Washington Post)
Viewing cable 05OTTAWA268, PLACING A NEW NORTH AMERICAN INITIATIVE IN ITS ECONOMIC POLICY CONTEXT An incremental and pragmatic package of tasks
for a new North American Initiative (NAI) will likely gain
the most support among Canadian policymakers. Our research
leads us to conclude that such a package should tackle both
"security" and "prosperity" goals. This fits the
recommendations of Canadian economists who have assessed the
options for continental integration. While in principle
many of them support more ambitious integration goals, like
a customs union/single market and/or single currency, most
believe the incremental approach is most appropriate at this
time, and all agree that it helps pave the way to these
goals if and when North Americans choose to pursue them. (WikiLeaks)
"Consular ID Cards in a Post-9/11 World" Testimony of Steve McCraw, Assistant Director of The Office of Intelligence, FBI Before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims on Consular ID Cards
Is America a Police State? Mr. Speaker:
Most Americans believe we live in dangerous times, and I must agree. Today I want to talk about how I see those dangers and what Congress ought to do about them.
Of course, the Monday-morning quarterbacks are now explaining, with political overtones, what we should have done to prevent the 9/11 tragedy. Unfortunately, in doing so, foreign policy changes are never considered.
I have, for more than two decades, been severely critical of our post-World War II foreign policy. I have perceived it to be not in our best interest and have believed that it presented a serious danger to our security.
For the record, in January of 2000 I stated the following on this floor:
Our commercial interests and foreign policy are no longer separate...as bad as it is that average Americans are forced to subsidize such a system, we additionally are placed in greater danger because of our arrogant policy of bombing nations that do not submit to our wishes. This generates hatred directed toward America ...and exposes us to a greater threat of terrorism, since this is the only vehicle our victims can use to retaliate against a powerful military state...the cost in terms of lost liberties and unnecessary exposure to terrorism is difficult to assess, but in time, it will become apparent to all of us that foreign interventionism is of no benefit to American citizens, but instead is a threat to our liberties. (US House of Representatives)
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