The NAFTA Superhighway Is Alive and Well

[Confederate Kahanist]

http://thenewamerican.com/index.php/world-mainmenu-26/north-america-mainmenu-36/3313-the-nafta-superhighway-is-alive-and-well




On March 19, 2010, Jerome Corsi’s weekly financial strategies newsletter, "RedAlert," reported that Canada‘s Manitoba province is devoting a portion of its website to promoting Canada’s portion of the NAFTA Superhighway system, the Mid-Continent Trade Corridor.

While interested parties, especially the State of Texas and many national publications, have downplayed or denied that plans even exist to build Superhighways from Mexico through Canada, our northern neighbors have gone full steam ahead with their plans to augment this system. The website displays a map showing the connection of the Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation Corridor with the much-vilified American NAFTA Superhighway (IH-35) just north of Fargo, North Dakota, at Winnipeg, Manitoba. As early as 2008, the website of CISCOR (Canadian Intelligent SuperCorridor) showed the same map, and both websites extol the virtues of a giant trade corridor, using the tired old language found threading its way through nearly all the websites and documents pertaining to this mess: "Intermodal in nature, the corridor allows cost-effective and safe movement of goods and people, minimizing both travel costs and time."

“Intermodal” is also known as “multimodal,” meaning that a container of goods offloaded at a deepwater port, say in Mexico or Canada, could be moved between boats, trains, or trucks without being unloaded. Or examined by Customs. Critics of the Superhighways have long contended that the Superhighways are not meant to benefit the U.S. populace, but that they are designed to implement an aim of the Security and Prosperity Partnership pushed by President George W. Bush: to erase the borders between Mexico, the United States, and Canada, in much the same manner as happened in the European Union, but of course, such a merger too was denied by officials — just as an impending continental government was denied by EU planners until it was already nearing completion. Containers destined for ports in either Canada or Mexico also avoid the union wages of longshoremen at California’s coastal ports. Corsi’s article claims that international trade is expected to double in the next 10 years, in spite of the global recession. Corridor promoters use this claim to justify the need for the system.

The Canadian website also references NASCO, saying that Manitoba’s Transportation Policy and Service Department is a member — big surprise. NASCO (North America’s SuperCorridor Coalition) claims as members many communities and trade organizations from Canada to Mexico and has been responsible for much of the spin generated to sell Americans on the highway. NASCO’s website, which has undergone yet another incarnation, includes a video claiming that a government’s two best investments are education and transportation infrastructure. (Never mind that the first is unconstitutional, and there's some question about the second.) The video unequivocally states that NASCO exists to “promote a sustainable, secure and efficient trade and transportation system.” And Manitoba is embracing it. Not so ironically, a couple of years ago, NASCO was denying the existence of the Trade Corridor that it now boasts about. NASCO claims to have generated partnerships between the public and private sectors for funding and to have members from all three countries — all that effort for something they claimed didn't exist.

It has never been a proper function of government to sell out its citizens through eminent domain (such as taking land for the highways that will hurt Americans), security compromises, and a deceit of the biggest nature. All of which have plagued anyone in the path of the American segment. The repeated lies show the sham: What it’s about is integrating three countries into a regional government.

The Manitoba Mid-Continent Trade Corridor website is simply a promotion of yet another segment of the SuperCorridor system, and puts forth no effort to deny that it is such. For those who listen to the finger-wetters who say the Corridor is dead, look again. No contracts have been cancelled, no construction on deepwater ports halted, and no containers from China rejected. That’s the whole point.