| GLOBALIZATION - LOOKING GLASS NEWS | |
|
US divided by superhighway plan |
|
|
by Craig Howie news.scotsman.com Entered into the database on Friday, June 16th, 2006 @ 13:00:59 MST |
|
(See article below - Bush Administration Quietly Plans NAFTA Super Highway) A MASSIVE road four football fields wide and running from Mexico to
Canada through the heartland of the United States is being proposed amid controversy
over security and the damage to the environment. The "nation's most modern roadway", proposed between Laredo in Texas
and Duluth, Minnesota, along Interstate 35, would allow the US to bypass the
west coast ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to import goods from China and
the Far East into the heart of middle America via Mexico, saving both cost and
time. However, critics argue that the ten-lane road would lay a swathe of concrete on
top of an already over-developed transport infrastructure and further open the
border with Mexico to illegal immigrants or terrorists. According to a weekly Conservative magazine published in the US, the US administration
is "quietly yet systematically" planning the massive highway, citing
as a benefit that it would negate the power of two unions, the Longshoremen
and Teamsters. Another source claimed the highway was a "bi-partisan effort" with
support from both Republicans and Democrats that would reduce freight transport
times across the nation by days. Under the plan - believed to be an extension of a strategic transportation
plan signed in March last year by the US president, George Bush, Paul Martin,
the then prime minister of Canada, and Vincente Fox, the Mexican president -
imported goods would pass a border "road bump" in the Mexican port
of Lazaro Cardenas, before being loaded on to lorries for a straight run to
a major hub, or "SmartPort", in Kansas, Oklahoma. Border guards and customs officers would check the electronic security tags
of lorries and their holds at a £1.6 million facility being built in Kansas
City, before sending them on to the road network that links the US cities of
Chicago, Minneapolis and Detroit with Ottawa, Winnipeg and Vancouver across
the Canadian border. Rail tracks and pipelines for oil and natural gas would run alongside the road.
Following the release of a 4,000-page environmental study, construction of
the first leg of the Trans-Texas Corridor is reportedly due to begin next year,
backed by US state and governmental agencies and a Spanish private sector company,
Concessions de Infraestructuras de Transporte. Tiffany Melvin, the executive director of Nasco, a non-profit organisation
which has received £1.4 million from the US Department of Transport to
study the proposal, said: "We're working on developing the existing system;
these highways were developed in the 1950s and we have number of different programmes
we're working on to provide alternative fuels and improve safety and security
issues. "We get comments that we are working to bring in terrorists and drug dealers,
but this is simply not true. "This is a bi-partisan effort that will ultimately improve our transportation
infrastructure. "Trade with China is increasing greatly, and the costs of our transportation
system are ultimately born by the consumer. "We do offer links to Canada and Mexico, but we are working on the trade
competitiveness of America. We are planning for the future." Eric Olson, the transportation spokesmen for the California-based Sierra Club,
a national environmental awareness organisation, said the road would cause significant
damage. "Something on that scale would have a massive environmental impact,"
he said. "Building a large-scale new highway does not seem like the best solution.
"There is a great need for fixing our existing roads and bridges. That
needs to be a priority before we start building new massive road projects." ______________________ Bush Administration Quietly Plans NAFTA Super Highway by Jerome R. Corsi Quietly but systematically, the Bush Administration is advancing the
plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide, through
the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo,
Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn. Once complete, the new road will allow containers from the Far East to enter
the United States through the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas, bypassing the
Longshoreman’s Union in the process. The Mexican trucks, without the involvement
of the Teamsters Union, will drive on what will be the nation’s most modern
highway straight into the heart of America. The Mexican trucks will cross border
in FAST lanes, checked only electronically by the new “SENTRI” system.
The first customs stop will be a Mexican customs office in Kansas City, their
new Smart Port complex, a facility being built for Mexico at a cost of $3 million
to the U.S. taxpayers in Kansas City. As incredible as this plan may seem to some readers, the first Trans-Texas
Corridor segment of the NAFTA Super Highway is ready to begin construction next
year. Various U.S. government agencies, dozens of state agencies, and scores
of private NGOs (non-governmental organizations) have been working behind the
scenes to create the NAFTA Super Highway, despite the lack of comment on the
plan by President Bush. The American public is largely asleep to this key piece
of the coming “North
American Union” that government planners in the new trilateral region
of United States, Canada and Mexico are about to drive into reality. Just examine the following websites to get a feel for the magnitude of NAFTA
Super Highway planning that has been going on without any new congressional
legislation directly authorizing the construction of the planned international
corridor through the center of the country. NASCO, the North America SuperCorridor
Coalition Inc., is a “non-profit organization dedicated to developing
the world’s first international, integrated and secure, multi-modal
transportation system along the International Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation
Corridor to improve both the trade competitiveness and quality of life in
North America.” Where does that sentence say anything about the USA?
Still, NASCO has received $2.5 million in earmarks from the U.S. Department
of Transportation to plan the NAFTA Super Highway as a 10-lane limited-access
road (five lanes in each direction) plus passenger and freight rail lines
running alongside pipelines laid for oil and natural gas. One glance at the
map of the NAFTA Super Highway on the front page of the NASCO
website will make clear that the design is to connect Mexico, Canada,
and the U.S. into one transportation system. Kansas City SmartPort Inc. is
an “investor based organization supported by the public and private
sector” to create the key hub on the NAFTA Super Highway. At the Kansas
City SmartPort, the containers from the Far East can be transferred to trucks
going east and west, dramatically reducing the ground transportation time
dropping the containers off in Los Angeles or Long Beach involves for most
of the country. A
brochure on the SmartPort website describes the plan in glowing terms:
“For those who live in Kansas City, the idea of receiving containers
nonstop from the Far East by way of Mexico may sound unlikely, but later this
month that seemingly far-fetched notion will become a reality.” The U.S. government has housed within the Department of Commerce (DOC) an
“SPP office” that is dedicated to organizing the many working
groups laboring within the executive branches of the U.S., Mexico and Canada
to create the regulatory reality for the Security and Prosperity Partnership.
The SPP agreement was signed by Bush, President
Vicente Fox, and then-Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Tex., on March 23,
2005. According to the DOC website, a U.S.-Mexico Joint Working Committee
on Transportation Planning has finalized
a plan such that “(m)ethods for detecting bottlenecks on the U.S.-Mexico
border will be developed and low cost/high impact projects identified in bottleneck
studies will be constructed or implemented.” The report notes that new
SENTRI travel lanes on the Mexican border will be constructed this year. The
border at Laredo should be reduced to an electronic speed bump for the Mexican
trucks containing goods from the Far East to enter the U.S. on their way to
the Kansas City SmartPort. The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is overseeing
the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) as the first leg of the NAFTA Super Highway.
A 4,000-page environmental
impact statement has already been completed and public
hearings are scheduled for five weeks, beginning next month, in July 2006.
The billions involved will be provided by a foreign company, Cintra Concessions
de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A. of Spain. As a consequence, the TTC
will be privately operated, leased to the Cintra
consortium to be operated as a toll-road. The details of the NAFTA Super Highway are hidden in plan view. Still, Bush
has not given speeches to bring the NAFTA Super Highway plans to the full attention
of the American public. Missing in the move toward creating a North American
Union is the robust public debate that preceded the decision to form the European
Union. All this may be for calculated political reasons on the part of the Bush
Administration. A good reason Bush does not want to secure the border with Mexico may be that
the administration is trying to create express lanes for Mexican trucks to bring
containers with cheap Far East goods into the heart of the U.S., all without
the involvement of any U.S. union workers on the docks or in the trucks. Mr. Corsi is the author of several books, including "Unfit
for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry" (along
with John O'Neill), "Black
Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil"
(along with Craig R. Smith), and "Atomic
Iran: How the Terrorist Regime Bought the Bomb and American Politicians."
He is a frequent guest on the G.
Gordon Liddy radio show. He will soon co-author a new book with Jim
Gilchrist on the Minuteman Project. _________________________ Read from Looking Glass News Bush border policy linked to Carlyle deal? North American Union to Replace USA? BIS Calls For Global Currency |
|