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

[Ted Moffett]

Roger et.al.

An issue such as the growing power of multinational corporations in the age
of increasing economic globalization is one reason I try to avoid the "left
wing" "right wing" labels that can oversimplify and stereotype complex
political/economic issues.  And certainly we see "conservatives" who usually
tend to support free markets and free enterprise, and opposing "left wing"
state regulation of capitalism, becoming critical when the captains of
international capitalism erode national sovereignty in the pursuit of
international "freedom" of markets, money and labor. Many on the "left" of
course are also big critics of multinational corporate power, though the
focus of the left is not as much on the patriotic issues of national
sovereignty of the USA, and more on exploitation of labor everywhere
(including the USA), human rights violations, corporations dodging US
environmental regulations to pollute in other nations when they move
factories, thus exporting pollution, etc.

But both the "right" and the "left" in the USA are tending to join together
on this issue to monitor and temper multinational corporate power. Witness
the "right" wing focus on stopping "illegal" immigration, an issue on which
President Bush appears to slant toward what some call the "liberal" side...
Could this be because Bush sides with capitalism, in need of cheap immigrant
labor, even if it does erode what some on the "right" see as a threat to
national sovereignty and our way of life?

>From this point of view, why do we have 160,000 troops in Iraq, to stop
terrorists, when our borders are so open that terrorists can just walk
across?  Why hasn't Bush given more attention to guarding our borders?  Has
terrorism been a ruse to move our military into the Middle East to guard the
oil resources and protect vulnerable regimes (such as in Saudi Arabia,
which, though a human rights denying dictatorship, linked to massive funding
for terrorist groups, and harboring Wahhabist extremists, receives US
military aid and backing, as long as they control their massive oil reserves
to insure access), while our border with Mexico is left open for cheap labor
to flow, despite the risk of terrorists entering?

This is one issue that has been hurting the Republican Party, given the
"right wing" focus on US border security that they perceive being ignored by
Bush et. al.

I am not advocating an anti-immigrant position, but just trying to expose
what seem like glaring contradictions in policy as we wage a "war on
terrorism."

We are in a new age of economic global organization that breaks down the
stereotypical views of who is "left wing" or "right wing."  President Bill
Clinton, usually viewed as "left," promoted multinational corporate power.
While former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan (who
received thousands of "liberal" votes in error in Palm Beach County in
Florida in Gore v. Bush 2000, due to the famed "butterfly ballot," "...the
mistakes cost Gore somewhere between 2000 and 3000
votes."(8)<http://election2000.stanford.edu/acluamicus.html#N_8_>
    http://election2000.stanford.edu/acluamicus.html

which alone gave Bush the White House), usually viewed as "right," has been
a major critic of the negative impacts on national sovereignty and the
working class in the USA, of the multinational corporate agenda represented
by the WTO, GATT and NAFTA.

So Buchanan is a critic of capitalism and Clinton a promoter of
capitalism...

Hillary Clinton, though she has "left" agendas such as universal health care
and more education funding, also buys into the multinational corporate
agenda, though she would not put it in these words.

Republican libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul is no fool on this
issue... Though I disagree with much of Paul's agenda, he clearly stands for
protecting US sovereignty and the US Constitution, ahead of the profit
interests of the multinational corporations, who, I think it is fair to
state, even if they are US based multinational corporations, do not always
have respect for the US Constitution or US domestic interests at heart.

Ted Moffett

On 10/8/07, lfalen <lfalen at turbonet.com> wrote:
>
> Careful here Ted. You are buying into a far right wing position. You could
> be in danger of being labeled a right winger. The Trilateral Commission has
> long been the bogeyman for such group as the John Birch Society. While there
> is some truth to their position, it should still be taken with a grain of
> salt. I believe that the US should not give up any sovranty on any issue to
> the United Nations and that Congress, not the the Executive branch should
> have the final say on treaties. The UN is primarily useful as a debating
> forum and the discussion of ideas that can then be taken to their respective
> members. It should not have governing authority.
> Roger
> -----Original message-----
> From: "Ted Moffett" starbliss at gmail.com
> Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 15:39:18 -0700
> To: Vision2020 vision2020 at moscow.com
> Subject: [Vision2020] Globalization & US Sovereignty:North American
> UnionLike European Union?
>
> > *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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