[Vision2020] Globalization & US Sovereignty:North American Union Like European Union?

[Ted Moffett]

*All:*
**
*The article referenced below makes the case, with documentation, to put it
bluntly, that we are pawns in the chess game played by the richest and most
powerful players in the global economic system... Though there may be
exaggeration of the extent of control of the economic elites, there is no
doubt this trend is a major factor controlling the domestic agenda of many
nations.  The increasing globalization of national economies linked to a
class of super rich and powerful individuals invested heavily in the largest
multinational corporations have a degree of power that weakens the
egalitarian ideals of participatory national democracies who assume they
control their domestic agendas.*
**
*Quick summary of the article's conclusion:*

The credo of The August Review is "Follow the money, follow the power." In
this view, the United States has literally been hijacked by less than 300
greedy and self-serving global elitists who have little more than contempt
for the citizens of the countries they would seek to dominate. According to
Trilateralist Richard Gardner's viewpoint, this incremental takeover (rather
than a frontal approach) has been wildly successful:
**
http://www.augustreview.com/issues/general/toward_a_north_american_union_200608181/?gclid=CJvYzqSi-44CFReQgQodchpexQ

A partial excerpt from this article:
**
*The Best Government that Money Can Buy *

Modern day globalization was launched with the creation of the Trilateral
Commission in 1973 by David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Its
membership consisted of just over 300 powerful elitists from North America,
Europe and Japan. The clearly stated goal of the Trilateral Commission was
to foster a "New International Economic Order" that would supplant the
historical economic order.

In spite of its non-political rhetoric, The Trilateral Commission
nonetheless established a headlock on the Executive Branch of the U.S.
government with the election of James Earl Carter in 1976. Hand-picked as a
presidential candidate by Brzezinski, Carter was personally tutored in
globalist philosophy and foreign policy by Brzezinski himself. Subsequently,
when Carter was sworn in as President, he appointed no less than one-third
of the U.S. members of the Commission to his Cabinet and other high-level
posts in his Administration. Such was the genesis of the Trilateral
Commission's domination of the Executive Branch that continues to the
present day.

With the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Trilateral Commission member
George H.W. Bush was introduced to the White House as vice-president.
Through Bush's influence, Reagan continued to select key appointments from
the ranks of the Trilateral Commission.

In 1988, George H.W. Bush began his four-year term as President. He was
followed by fellow Trilateral Commission member William Jefferson Clinton,
who served for 8 years as President and appointed fourteen fellow Trilateral
members to his Administration.

The election of George W. Bush in 2000 should be no surprise. Although Bush
was not a member of the Trilateral Commission, his vice-president Dick
Cheney *is*. In addition, Dick Cheney's wife, Lynne, is also a member of the
Commission in her own right.

The Hegemony <javascript:void(0)> of the Trilateral Commission over the
Executive Branch of the U.S. government is unmistakable. Critics argue that
this scenario is merely circumstantial, that the most qualified political
"talent" quite naturally tends to belong to groups like the Trilateral
Commission in the first place. Under examination, such explanations are
quite hollow.

Why would the Trilateral Commission seek to dominate the Executive Branch?
Quite simply - Power! That is, power to get things done directly which would
have been impossible to accomplish through the only moderately successful
lobbying efforts of the past; power to use the government as a bully
platform to modify political behavior throughout the world.

Of course, the obvious corollary to this hegemony is that the influence and
impact of the citizenry is virtually eliminated.

*Modern Day "World Order" Strategy*

After its founding in 1973, Trilateral Commission members wasted no time in
launching their globalist strategy. But, what was that strategy?

Richard Gardner was an original member of the Trilateral Commission, and one
of the prominent architects of the New International Economic Order. In
1974, his article "The Hard Road to World Order" appeared in Foreign Affairs
magazine, published by the Council on Foreign Relations. With obvious
disdain for anyone holding nationalistic political views, Gardner
proclaimed,

 *"In short, the 'house of world order' would have to be built from the
bottom up rather than from the top down. It will look like a great 'booming,
buzzing confusion,' to use William James' famous description of reality, but
an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will
accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault."*1 [emphasis
added]

In Gardner's view, using treaties and trade agreements (such as General
Agreement on Trade and Tariffs or GATT <javascript:void(0)>) would bind and
supercede constitutional law piece by piece, which is exactly what has
happened. In addition, Gardner highly esteemed the role of the United
Nations as a third-party legal body that could be used to erode the national
sovereignty of individual nations.

Gardner concluded that "the case-by-case approach can produce some
remarkable concessions of 'sovereignty' that could not be achieved on an
across-the-board basis"2

Thus, the end result of such a process is that the U.S. would eventually
capitulate its sovereignty to the newly proposed world order. It is not
specifically mentioned who would control this new order, but it is quite
obvious that the only 'players' around are Gardner and his Trilateral
cronies.

It should again be noted that the formation of the Trilateral Commission by
Rockefeller and Brzezinski was a response to the general frustration that
globalism was going nowhere with the status quo prior to 1973. The "frontal
assault " had failed, and a new approach was needed. It is a typical mindset
of the global elite to view any roadblock as an opportunity to stage an
"end-run" to get around it. Gardner confirms this frustration:

 *"Certainly the gap has never loomed larger between the objectives and the
capacities of the international organizations that were supposed to get
mankind on the road to world order. We are witnessing an outbreak of
shortsighted nationalism that seems oblivious to the economic, political and
moral implications of interdependence. Yet never has there been such
widespread recognition by the world's intellectual leadership of the
necessity for cooperation and planning on a truly global basis, beyond
country, beyond region, especially beyond social system."*3

The "world's intellectual leadership" apparently refers to academics such as
Gardner and Brzezinski. Outside of the Trilateral Commission and the
CFR<javascript:void(0)>,
the vast majority of academic thought at the time was opposed to such
notions as mentioned above.

*Laying the Groundwork: Fast Track <javascript:void(0)> Authority *

In Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, authority is granted to
Congress "*To regulate
commerce<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause>with foreign
nations
*." An end-run around this insurmountable obstacle would be to convince
Congress to voluntarily turn over this power to the President. With such
authority in hand, the President could freely negotiate treaties and other
trade agreements with foreign nations, and then simply present them to
Congress for a straight up or down vote, with no amendments possible. This
again points out elite disdain for a Congress that is elected to be
representative "of the people, by the people and for the people."

So, the first "Fast Track" legislation was passed by Congress in 1974, just
one year after the founding of the Trilateral Commission. It was the same
year that Nelson Rockefeller was confirmed as Vice President under President
Gerald Ford, neither of whom were elected by the U.S. public. As
Vice-President, Rockefeller was seated as the president of the U.S. Senate.

According to Public Citizen, the bottom line of Fast Track is that...

 *"...the White House signs and enters into trade deals before Congress ever
votes on them. Fast Track also sets the parameters for congressional debate
on any trade measure the President submits, requiring a vote within a
certain time with no amendments and only 20 hours of debate."4*

When an agreement is about to be given to Congress, high-powered lobbyists
and political hammer-heads are called in to manipulate congressional
hold-outs into voting for the legislation. (*See CAFTA
<javascript:void(0)>Lobbying Efforts) With only 20 hours of debate
allowed, there is little
opportunity for public involvement.

**Congress clearly understood the risk of giving up this power to the
President, as evidenced by the fact that they put an automatic expiration
date on it. Since the expiration of the original Fast Track, there been a
very contentious trail of Fast Track renewal efforts. In 1996, President
Clinton utterly failed to re-secure Fast Track after a bitter debate in
Congress. After another contentious struggle in 2001/2002, President Bush
was able to renew Fast Track for himself in the Trade Act of 2002, just in
time to negotiate the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and
insure its passage in 2005.

It is startling to realize that since 1974, Fast Track has *not* been used
in the majority of trade agreements. Under the Clinton presidency, for
instance, some 300 separate trade agreements were negotiated and passed
normally by Congress, but only *two* of them were submitted under Fast
Track: NAFTA and the GATT Uruguay Round <javascript:void(0)>. In fact, from
1974 to 1992, there were only three instances of Fast Track in action: GATT
Tokyo Round, U.S.-Israel Free Trade Agreement and the Canada-U.S. Free Trade
Agreement. Thus, NAFTA was only the *fourth* invocation of Fast Track.

Why the selectivity? Does it suggest a very narrow agenda? Most certainly.
These trade and legal bamboozles didn't stand a ghost of a chance to be
passed without it, and the global elite knew it. Fast Track was created as a
very specific legislative tool to accomplish a very specific executive task
-- namely, to "fast track" the creation of the "New International Economic
Order" envisioned by the Trilateral Commission in 1973!

Article Six of the U.S. Constitution states that "all Treaties made, or
which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the
supreme Law of the Land and the Judges in every State shall be bound
thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary
notwithstanding." Because international treaties supersede national law,
Fast Track has allowed an enormous restructuring of U.S. law without
resorting to a Constitutional convention (Ed. note: Both Henry Kissinger and
Zbigniew Brzezinski called for a constitutional convention as early as 1972,
which could clearly be viewed as a failed "frontal assault"). As a result,
national sovereignty of the United States has been severely compromised -
even if some Congressmen and Senators are aware of this, the general public
is still generally ignorant.

*North American Free Trade Agreement*
NAFTA was negotiated under the executive leadership of Republican President
George H.W. Bush. Carla Hills is widely credited as being the primary
architect and negotiator of NAFTA. Both Bush and Hills were members of the
Trilateral Commission!


With Bush's first presidential term drawing to a close and Bush desiring
political credit for NAFTA, an "initialing" ceremony of NAFTA was staged (so
Bush could take credit for NAFTA) in October, 1992. Although very official
looking, most Americans did not understand the difference between initialing
and signing; at the time, Fast Track was not implemented and Bush did not
have the authority to actually sign such a trade agreement.

Bush subsequently LOST <javascript:void(0)> a publicly contentious
presidential race to democrat William Jefferson Clinton, but they were
hardly polar opposites on the issue of Free Trade and NAFTA: The reason?
Clinton was *also* a seasoned member of the Trilateral Commission.

Immediately after inauguration, Clinton became the champion of NAFTA and
orchestrated its passage with a massive Executive Branch effort.

*Some Unexpected Resistance to NAFTA*

Prior to the 1992 election, there was a fly in the elite's ointment --
namely, presidential candidate and billionaire Ross Perot, founder and
chairman of Electronic Data Systems (EDS). Perot was politically
independent, vehemently anti-NAFTA and chose to make it a major campaign
issue in 1991. In the end, the global elite would have to spend huge sums of
money to overcome the negative publicity that Perot gave to NAFTA.

At the time, some political analysts believed that Perot, being a
billionaire, was somehow put up to this task by the same elitists who were
pushing NAFTA. Presumably, it would accumulate all the anti-globalists in
one tidy group, thus allowing the elitists to determine who their true
enemies really were. It's moot today whether he was sincere or not, but it
did have that outcome, and Perot became a lightning rod for the whole issue
of free trade.

Perot hit the nail squarely on the head in one of his nationally televised
campaign speeches:

 *"If you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can
move your factory south of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, hire
young -- let's assume you've been in business for a long time and you've got
a mature workforce - pay a dollar an hour for your labor, have no health
care - that's the most expensive single element in making a car - have no
environmental controls, no pollution controls, and no retirement, and you
didn't care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking
sound going south..."5 *[emphasis added]

Perot's message struck a nerve with millions of Americans, but it was
unfortunately cut short when he entered into public campaign debates with
fellow candidate Al Gore. Simply put, Gore ate Perot's lunch, not so much on
the issues themselves, but on having superior debating skills. As organized
as Perot was, he was no match for a politically and globally seasoned
politician like Al Gore.

*The Spin Machine gears up*

To counter the public relations damage done by Perot, all the stops were
pulled out as the NAFTA vote drew near. As proxy for the global elite, the
President unleashed the biggest and most expensive spin machine the country
had ever seen.

Former Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca was enlisted for a multi-million dollar
nationwide ad campaign that praised the benefits of NAFTA. The mantra,
carried consistently throughout the many spin events: "Exports. Better Jobs.
Better Wages", all of which have turned out to be empty promises

Bill Clinton invited three former presidents to the White House to stand
with him in praise and affirmation NAFTA. This was the first time in U.S.
history that four presidents had ever appeared together. Of the four, three
were members of the Trilateral Commission: Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and
George H.W. Bush. Gerald Ford was not a Commissioner, but was nevertheless a
confirmed globalist insider. After Ford's accession to the presidency in
1974, he promptly nominated Nelson Rockefeller (David Rockefeller's oldest
brother) to fill the Vice Presidency that Ford had just vacated.

The academic community was enlisted when, according to Harper's Magazine
publisher John MacArthur,

 *...there was a pro-NAFTA petition, organized and written my MIT's Rudiger
Dornbusch, addressed to President Clinton and signed by all twelve living
Nobel laureates in economics, and exercise in academic logrolling that was
expertly converted by Bill Daley and the A-Team into PR gold on the front
page of The New York Times on September 14. 'Dear Mr. President,' wrote the
283 signatories..."6*

**

Lastly, prominent Trilateral Commission members themselves took to the press
to promote NAFTA. For instance, on May 13, 1993, Commissioners Henry
Kissinger and Cyrus Vance wrote a joint op-ed that stated:

 *"[NAFTA] would be the most constructive measure the United States would
have undertaken in our hemisphere in this century."7*

Two months later, Kissinger went further,

 *"It will represent the most creative step toward a new world order taken
by any group of countries since the end of the Cold War, and the first step
toward an even larger vision of a free-trade zone for the entire Western
Hemisphere." [NAFTA] is not a conventional trade agreement, but the
architecture
of a new international system."*8 [emphasis added]

It is hardly fanciful to think that Kissinger's hype sounds quite similar to
the Trilateral Commission's original goal of creating a *New International
Economic Order*.

*On January 1, 1994, NAFTA became law: Under Fast Track procedures, the
house had passed it by 234-200 (132 Republicans and 102 Democrats voting in
favor) and the U.S. Senate passed it by 61-38. *

*-----*

*Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett*
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