BANNER IMAGE
THE IMPENDING MERGER OF CANADA, THE USA AND MEXICO INTO ONE POLITICAL UNIT: THE NAU
Compiled by Pauly Fongemie
Introduction and Commentary by Pauly Fongemie
Compiled Sources Provided Within the Segments

 
INTRODUCTION------------SAINT VENANTIUS, MARTYR-------------POINTS OF FOCUS

INTRODUCTION
Pauly Fongemie

While George Bush pursues a reckless policy abroad, engaging in an untenable and unjust war in Iraq which will serve to make that country safe for Islam's most radical elements, emboldening Iran, the pragmatic ally of atheistic Russia, he has abandoned his chief duty at home as commander-in-chief---safeguarding our borders.

He tells the American people that "we are fighting a war on terror". You cannot see terror as an entity, although you can certainly feel it and observe its effects; terror is not a country or even a group of identifiable people within a discrete locale. I suspect that the use of the term, "war on terror" is the dilettante's way of expressing what he dares not: Terrorism [or the act of terror] is a strategy of the foe festering in hostile cells that are metastasizing throughout the world, not the enemy itself. One ostensible enemy is militant Islam, dare I say it? which is at war with western societies. We cannot fight a military war on terror any more than we can inaugurate a campaign to wipe out anger or hatred, for these are spiritual battles, nor can we engage terrorists as a specific target, apart from a sporadic, successful sortie, simply because those who are so radical as to use terrorism as their first weapon of choice, are by virtue of their being outside the borders of reason, resigned to wage unrelenting guerilla warfare, exploding onto the scene at unknown places and unexpected times, otherwise there would be no advantage to using terror as a weapon. This kind of enemy has no use for a just war and its limits, it is prepared to sacrifice every last man woman and child, if need be, rather than cede an inch of ground. Islam by the 'sword' is once more on the march to eviscerate the last of Christendom, now but a facade, and its proxy---whatever is non-Islamic. Western nations that were once part of Christendom and or its legacy cannot fight a war of this magnitude on these terms, simply because we are still somewhat civilized, however dumbed-down and degraded to the point of a culture that refuses to reject savagery of almost every kind. We are inherently bound to the tenets of the natural law, although we pretend it no longer exists---a spark of hope for the present.  The primary war we must win is the one we wage against the war against Tradition here at home.

As we have abandoned the natural social borders of respect for the sanctity of human life at its most vulnerable moments, of modesty, of purity, we are now in turn, cavalier about our national border like night following dusk. This is not coincidental, for as there is no coincidence with God, so there is no coincidence with human nature. It is the soul that "dies" first, then the body, or as the old saw goes, "the fish rots from the head."

To engage a diehard suicidal, maniacal enemy, as we have been doing---Islamist jihadists and their backers who have their own designs for world domination---we have to go to where they are, therefore the theater of war in purely deployment terms is abroad, in rugged terrain, on three fronts at present and spreading; most importantly, it is war on their terms, not ours. As always we make a bad bargain with a tentative ally here and there, allies that would rather be our enemy in the long run, and often become so. We failed to learn from our alliance with the murderous Stalin during the second World War, which resulted in our wretched abandonment of much of Catholic eastern Europe to the barbaric, slow death of Communistic annihilation.

We lead disparate lives: Theirs, one of hardship, cruelty, and great discipline, ours of largesse, indulgence, and apathy. From not having enough to eat to having too much to eat too much of the time. Euphemistically and not so. There is a fire in their belly beyond hunger, a craving to dominate and destroy, until they have reduced Christianity to a fable and then blame the Jews for it? Or will they revel in taking the credit? Ours is to be entertained and to celebrate perpetual adolescence at its worse, in this world. They look to another world. Virtue for its own sake is a thing laughable now in these environs. Theirs, a culture that recognizes a false god and places him in charge that will tolerate no blasphemy, a sham blasphemy to be sure. Ours, a culture that pays lip service to the True God, content to reject His sovereignty, consign it to the trash bin as politically incorrect and culturally insensitive, elevating authentic blasphemy to a civil right par excellence, while honoring the false gods of everyone else. The Age of Enlightenment's apotheosis. Sometimes I am not certain which is the fiercest enemy or in whom it resides. Them or us. I am not equating Islamic jihadism with the dissipation of the West at all, nor positing an immoral equivalency, but rather suggesting that we have let ourselves become vulnerable, to such an extent that we are easily blinded. And in this way we become our own enemy. One's greatest strengths or virtues degenerate into vices or weakness when humility and its sister, purity, are cast aside and even mocked, if only indirectly. All such things have their own trajectory. A contrariness of spirit, which is a specialty of modern America, reaps its own reward, so to speak.

There is only one way to prepare for the coming holocaust, and the hoped for destruction of the remains of western civilization which was formed from the heart and soul of the Catholic Church, no matter who says otherwise, and despite the Protestant foundation of the land we call home, and that is: to strengthen our own defenses here, while we still can, first and foremost to secure our borders, speaking only on the natural level for now, at the same time culling through the immigration prospects to ensure that we are not opening our doors to those who plan to infiltrate and conquer us from within as in Europe. We are not in good shape, but Europe is in its death throes as a Catholic culture. Still, it once was Catholic at least. If it can happen there, what must be our prospects, the United States, which has always been in protest against the social reign of Christ the King or the Catholic social order? The Protestant ethos releases the individual to his private conscience as infallible---the highest authority in practical terms if not principle---thereby the chaos of inevitable social disunity and anarchy, the autonomy and cult of self, the glorification of diversity as if a superior strength. Now Protestants as a whole seem to be very good people who do not intend this nor do they realize the philosophical roots of our current disintegration. This being said:

 We are militarily strong, technologically superior, capable of victory if we do not spread ourselves throughout the world where we have not been invited by an ally in imminent danger.

At the same time it is imperative that we reinvigorate the notion of the natural law and civic virtue, self-restraint and a sense of shame: that moral degeneracy is not just a matter of personal choice, for no one is autonomous, if we are to maintain a nation worthy of the name. To achieve this we have to exert the will to forego the madness of political correctness, which empowers our foe because it suffers no such delusion nor permits this irrational "principle" to hamstring its undertakings. Militant Islam is irrational, for certain, but at least it has its limits---the nihilism of political correctness. It has countless sympathizers here in the United States who use our paranoia of being thought of as 'unjustly discriminatory' to get us to consider its every demand, at least to the point of taking these absurdities as serious. Our own irrational application of just laws is a source of terror, the fear of reprisal by lawsuit where the average citizen is too impoverished to defend himself. Eventually the liberal courts will go the way of the Islamists. They only have to keep up the barrage, using our own laws against us which have become distorted through a loss of common sense. They may be madmen, but they are not crazy. Many public schools now permit and or even mandate Muslim teachings and practices where the one true God, cannot even be mentioned or the names of two of His holy days either. But Allah, ah, All is allowed. This is called "diversity". More like perversity! Spiritual apathy and moral decay lead to the blinding of reason itself. The enemy knows it and knows that we no longer know it. This is half the battle.

 If we are secure as a nation, physically and morally, socially united as a family, guerilla attacks from without and within can be checked to the point where at least only an occasional assault might succeed, since human beings are prone to error under the best of situations. But we must will to be secure and to be virtuous above all. Lulled by a seeming prosperity---an unprecedented high stock market, another ruse---and the thought that Homeland [In]Security is the vanguard against invasion, the impending loss of nationhood is far from our thoughts. Of course, most of us do not live on the borders of Arizona, Texas and New Mexico. It is said that most of us do not actually feel any safer, but if this is true we are not responding in like terms. In the distance the drum roll of vanquishment can be heard yet still, ever so faintly---its cadence barely audible, drowned out by the easy sloganeering of competing interests who have no desire for nationhood, but raw power for the sake of dominance. Their allegiance lies ultimately elsewhere, shackled to the underworld of the Prince of this world. They just know better what is best for you and me! Elitism at its ruinous worse.

George Bush and those who believe as he does, which includes most Democrats and far too many Republicans in public positions, are in the process of dismantling the very meaning of nationhood itself. Instead of building a border phalanx, a sturdy wall, they are erecting a giant Leviathan---prefigured by the Trojan Horse of "free trade" American-style---the NAU, see below, page 2. Beware of Publicrats [members of the One Party system, the nanny state---totalitarian oligarchy of the Republican-Democratic collusion] and career men in the State Department bearing promises of a brighter future, if only we place our trust in them. Machiavellian princes. The "war on terror" as conducted today serves not only to weaken our will by fracturing us into opposing camps on that which we would ordinarily be united; it depletes our coffers, guaranteeing spiraling higher prices for energy and higher and higher taxes---assured by the election of a Democratic president and a Democratically-controlled Congress; leaves us too easily amenable to the loss of liberty, diminishes our resolve to repel anarchy, thus blinding us to the much more serious, imposing peril: the war on America at home! The war in Iraq is the diversion of diversions, bar none. How so? you may ask. We used to talk about NAFTA and related treaties but now all we talk about is Iraq, when we aren't enthralled with celebrity, another reckless diversion.

Let me provide the most frightening set of facts and statistics, already known, without surmise or guesswork; then I will suggest what can reasonably be done as a practical matter, by ordinary patriots who love ordered liberty and love their country above their very lives. We may not succeed but we cannot give up, this is craven; someone has to fight the good fight; let it be us, if only us. Read on, my friends.

Before we begin any endeavor it behooves us to define the scope of discussion and the terms employed therein, the bedrock of normalcy, which consists in asking:

What is ordered liberty, until recently, the premise for our shared responsibilities and the separation of powers, and what comprises a nation?

Ordered liberty is the logical extension and political expression of the natural law, which is the most elemental aspect of Divine law imprinted in the hearts of men by their Creator, and which can be grasped through reason as a coherent whole and explained---it comprises the following:
A nation is a sovereign entity composed of a people, although of various cultural origins, united under a common language and unity of purpose framed by a set of laws enacted by the duly informed people of that nation through its legally chartered, recognized representative bodies, either a monarchy or a constitutional republic, consistent with the natural law; it is enclosed within a specified border, whether contained within a single land mass or dispersed [the United States], i.e., it has moral immunity from invasion by another, by its very definition, and physical immunity, which must be maintained for the security of its people through permanent vigilance, the price of liberty: a sovereign nation is not subject to the laws and precepts of other countries or groups of countries with unjust designs; sovereignty is the extension or application of the natural law of the family and its domicile to that of the greater domicile, one's homeland. Just as one's home has a legally recognized parameter, without which the ability to maintain it would be rendered impossible, so, too with a country. Now, it is true that the term, nation, can refer to a people itself, apart from a physical territory, such as the Iroquois nation; and one's physical home can be a boat or a tent. A boat has a designated parameter, just as a tent has, the location being mobile rather than stationary. The Iroquois people have common characteristics that make up a "social" border. The boat and tent, are owned by those who belong to a particular country or countries, sometimes with dual citizenship, but there is one country that generally claims them for the purpose of civic duty, versus the other. No man can serve two standing armies at one and the same time. And these are deemed the exception, and not the rule; A nation can withstand an exception here and there, but it cannot survive the exception becoming the norm and vice-versa. Likewise a family may own more than one home, in different countries, but it is still the same family, a recognized entity of "boundaries", bonds in law and in nature through marriage and procreation. Like the Iroquois people, such a family has "social" borders, without which the meaning of a family disintegrates and the family as a family itself ceases to be, with merely a collection of people with the same common name.

This presentation is grounded in these two principles, cogently summed up as follows:

There is a right and a wrong, which reason can know and validate; the practice of which is the natural law, without which enforcement, society is impossible and there is but brute force and a servile existence, worse than that of the animal kingdom, despite draconian measures. Tyranny, which robs man of his dignity and humanity is a kind of ritualized order, often, but it is not ordered liberty. That the very existence of a nation depends on its sovereignty, which includes protection of its borders, both physical and moral. This is justice in its most basic form.

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May 18, 2007, Feast of St. Venantius, Martyr

SAINT VENANTIUSSt. Venantius was born at Camerino in Italy; at the age of fifteen he was seized because he was Christian and taken before a judge. As it was found impossible to shake his constancy either by threats or promises, he was condemned to be scourged, but was miraculously saved by an Angel. Then they tried burning him with torches suspended over a low fire so he would suffocated from the smoke. The judge's clerk, admired the resolve of the Saint, and seeing an Angel robed in white, who trampled out the fire and again set free the youthful Martyr, proclaimed his faith in Christ, was Baptized with his whole family, and shortly after won the Martyr's crown himself. Venantius was then dragged before the governor, who, unable to make him renounce his faith, cast him into prison with an apostate, who vainly strove to tempt him. Then this governor ordered his teeth and jaws to be broken, and had him thrown into a furnace, from which the Angel once more  rescued him. The Saint was again led before the judge, who at sight of him fell headlong from his seat and died, crying, "The God of Venantius is the true God; let us destroy our idols." When the governor was told of this, he ordered Venantius to be thrown to the lions; but these brutes, forgetting their natural ferocity, crouched at the feet of the Saint. Then, by order of the despot, the young Martyr was dragged through a heap of brambles and thorns, but again God manifested the glory of His servant; the soldiers suffering from thirst, the Saint knelt on a rock and signed it with a cross, when immediately a jet of clear, cool water spurted up from the spot. This miracle converted many of those who beheld it, whereupon the governor had Venantius and his converts beheaded together in the year 250.

We ought to recall the lesson of St. Venantius when read about the secret tribunals, in section no. 5.

The Points of Focus:

1. NAFTA [North American Trade Agreement], and the Real Cost to American Business and Industry.
If you are familar with NAFTA, you might want to skip this section.  The rest are riveting, must read segments for any American patriot, with nos. 4 and 5 paramount, if time is a factor.
2. The Trans-Texas Corridor of NAFTA.
3. Illegal Aliens.
4. The Path from NAFTA to NAU [North American Union].
5. Non-American Tribunals Created by NAFTA to Supersede the US Constitution.
6. The Designs and Perspective of Mexico.
7. The European Union, Model for Disaster.
8. What Can we Reasonably Hope to Accomplish to Combat this Seven-Headed Hydra?

1. NAFTA [North American Trade Agreement],
and the Real Cost to American Business and Industry.

I had occasion to hear two women, whom I did not know, conversing about two other women they knew. One had been so successful in her career that she was wealthy, leaving her children with millions. The other had not been so monetarily rewarded. The speakers did not mention if the second woman had the same aspirations as the first; it did not seem to matter to them. Both were in agreement that the wealthy women's children were less worthy of honor "because they had inherited their wealth, did not participate in the American dream." The words in quotes are precisely their words. I thought this quite odd. For indeed, the millionaire had achieved part of the American dream to which some of us aspire. Truth be told, some of us do not share those dreams, we dream of Heaven while we hope to be free of basic want and those diseases which can be cured,  a decent standard of living in other words, and not subject to despotic whim so as to render to Almighty God thanksgiving and praise, worship and supplication in a land where we are still somewhat free to do so. Many of our forebears came to America to escape war and internecine bloodshed, disease and sheer poverty; becoming a millionaire was not even a glimmer in their eye, enough food was as well as a better education for their children. But there were and are those who do aspire to wealth, as apparently the woman in question had. She had started from the bottom and worked her way up the corporate ladder as the phrase goes. And her children profited. Perfectly natural, perfectly legal, very very normal. Who could argue with this? I have no idea why she worked to achieve great wealth, perhaps she dreamed of funding hospitals for the poor and the like, perhaps not. Perhaps the acquisition of wealth was secondary, an offshoot of career success. That is her business, not ours, and not that of the two women who were angry that her children were also wealthy. This is irrational, for, if according to them, and it was, most definitely, that "the American dream" includes wealth---legally, honestly attained---then, why is it so wrong that her children also benefit? They were in earnest that they, too, start at the bottom. I found this strange, because the women who were engaging in this diatribe before our ears were also financially well-heeled. And both are mothers as I understood things. Now, I do hope, to be consistent and non-hypocritical, that they intend to disinherit their own children, so that they, too, can start from the bottom, in order to be valid Americans of honor. I won't hold my breath. Americans are notorious for reminding each other of the deadly sin of avarice, while forgetting another equally deadly sin, envy. It is not wealth itself that endangers the soul, it is the lust for it, or greed. Envy is a another form of greed actually.

And this brings us to the North American Free Trade Agreement, the supposed pantheon of the American dream extended to the entire North American continent, which includes Mexico. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect on January 1, 1994.

Pres. Clinton signed NAFTA into law in 1993, on December 8, Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Various dates are given by historical archives, but this is the official date as I could determine. Congress passed NAFTA, then it was signed into law, then the three countries signed it. This may account for the discrepancy. Unfortunately this date is now also associated with the Great Deception. When it was signed its impact was to be evident within 15 years, bringing prosperity and improving the standard of living, especially for Mexico, which in turn was to help Americans. In 1994 Canada and Mexico and the United States were signatories.

President Clinton described the agreement as "just a first step," stressing that he wanted to reach out to other Latin American countries in an effort to spread 'free trade' throughout the hemisphere, hoping to move even closer to a hemisphere-wide 'free trade' area.

"Free Trade" with Mexico et al did not originate with Clinton. In fact, Ronald Reagan first proposed a free trade agreement between the U.S. and Mexico in his 1980 presidential campaign, backed by the supposedly conservative Heritage Foundation, another Trojan Horse vehicle for the insidious leftward turn of the "One Party in Power." It acts like a Trojan Horse because it is both liberal and conservative: Conservative in that it favors an equitable tax and reports forthrightly through some of its key policy analysts, such as Robert Rector, that if the "Immigration Reform Bill" compromise passes, the Z-Visa provision would result in a negative $17,000 per capita, a loss, to the taxpayer, and this factors in the supposed new payroll taxes added to fund the moribund social security system. [The O'Reilly Factor, FOX News, May 18, 2007.] Bankruptcy in other words.  Then, on the other hand, on its website---I did not bookmark the page because I did not know I would be using it in a report later: I am sure a search of the archives will bring it up---the Foundation boasted at the time of its active role in NAFTA. The ploy used to gain public support, that is, not to upset the apathy that is the hallmark of much of public life, was, no surprise, sloganeering and the politics of destruction, right out of the manual of the Clinton machine, the ad hominem ridicule, to wit what Heritage called "The Politics of Fear vs. the Politics of Hope." A phrase to remember. Eminent, politically skilled, morally upright writers and commentators who disagreed with NAFTA were heckled in so many words, by being decried as "American Firsters" as if there was something un-American about being for American sovereignty. Of course Heritage point men fed this lethal poison to the media which is always willing to give the shaft to men of principle and who personally lead upright lives. Pat Buchanan, for one, was portrayed as another Joseph McCarthy for all practical purposes, a tad more than just ironic since he was being called un-American for being pro-American. Have you now or ever been a champion of Americans first and foremost???? Have you now or ever been a protectionist????

President George Washington, for starters, could not have passed the Heritage cabal smell test by its strange, contrary standards. A peculiar name for an organization seeking to undermine our heritage.

NAFTA is not about "free trade" because manipulated trade has trade-offs by its very nature and thus unfair, burdensome costs are always a part of the mix. Left to their own devices, without outside interference normal men can trade equitably, and do, simply because to not do so makes no sense. The bully on the block is soon shunned. This is basic economics and axiomatic. NAFTA arranges matters so that the biggest bullies [the preferred good guys] shun those who won't comply, then demolish them anyway. Backwards, and brutish.

Actually NAFTA is the Trojan horse or the hidden structure for an experiment in regional government. The elites in power, often unelected but more powerful than if they had been, elites in the policy think tanks, lobbying groups, adjuncts to public school teacher unions, the media, the law schools, and so forth, are hoping to expand to inter-regional and eventually world government with a whole new court structure. NAFTA is the engine that drives the ever-speeding train, or in this case, I should say eighteen wheelers.

The New American magazine informs us that "Across the board, sector by sector and industry by industry, NAFTA has destabilized the economy, leading to job loss and lower standards of living for American workers." [NA 2007 Special Report, p. 10.]

And the website, The Free Republic, wrote:

"It is now three years since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) became law. The results are in: NAFTA is a disaster for workers in the United States, Mexico and Canada.

"The U.S. and Canada have lost thousands of jobs because of NAFTA. Mexico is trapped in a severe economic crisis in which workers bear the largest burden as their working conditions worsen. The U.S.-Mexico border was a health and environmental disaster when the NAFTA agreement was signed in 1994. Today, the border area is worse because of additional health and environmental problems caused by the impact of NAFTA.

"Despite this, the Administration, influenced by business lobbyists, wants to apply NAFTA to Chile and the 27 countries known as the Caribbean Basin, and ultimately to all of South and Central America."

On September 26, 2006, the Economic Policy Institute [EPI] issued a failing report card to NAFTA in its joint briefing paper by its economist, Robert E. Scott, by Prof. Carlos Salas of Mexico's El Colegio de Tlaxcala, and by Bruce Campbell of the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives. All three agreed that NAFTA has been an overwhelming disaster.

Here is a summary of their findings, followed by the actual record.

Scott on NAFTA-related problems in the United States: "In the United States workforce, NAFTA has contributed to the reduction of employment in high-wage, traded-goods industries, the growing inequality in wages, and the steadily declining demand for workers without a college education." He added that those who have lost high-wage jobs have had to take substantial pay cuts to get jobs in the growing service-sector economy. The employment trend has resulted in a much lower standard of living for many Americans.

"Growing trade deficits with Mexico and Canada have pushed more than 1 million workers out of higher-wage jobs and into lower-wage positions in non-trade related industries." And, "Thus, the displacement of 1 million jobs from traded to non-traded goods industries reduced wage payments to U.S. workers by $7.6 billion in 2004 alone."

 Salas on the situation in Mexico which has not differed substantially from that in the United States: "Since NAFTA took effect, Mexico has experienced a continual increase in the precarious nature of employment."

Campbell in re the effects on the Canadian economy: "Not only has NAFTA failed to deliver the goods it promised, its effect on the well-being of a large majority of Canadians and on the social cohesion of society has been negative."

Despite this report, "internationalist policy analysts at leading think tanks and within the Bush administration, as well as in both Canada and Mexico, have been pushing hard for further integration of the three NAFTA nations, something many have begun to call a North American Union. Built on the creaky foundation of NAFTA, such a union would be an unmitigated disaster of world-historical proportions because NAFTA itself, as an examination of important sectors of the economy shows, has been and continues to be nothing short of catastrophic in its effects." [TNA 1997 Special Report, p. 11.]

TRUCKING

You are also referred to an eye-opening, frightening account of illegal aliens transporting military vehicles written and researched by Michelle Malkin, HERE.

The din of the sound of the wheels of Mexican trucks thunders in the United States because NAFTA mandated that the highways of all three nations be open to trucking of all three countries. Until recently, our government still harbored safety concerns and confined Mexican trucks to a narrow corridor along the border. That is all about to change and swiftly.

Already a test program has approved over 100 Mexican firms to have access to all 50 states. The program is not one of reciprocity: it is meant for Mexican trucking firms to increase their tonnage from Mexican posts directly into the United States along the NAFTA Superhighway. See below, page 2, No. 2.

There is no parallel for American firms, no reciprocity. Small American trucking firms [Owner-Operator, independent firms] will lose business and these means the jobs of American citizens. The plan does not factor in the cost of upkeep of American roads. The Mexican infrasructure will not be harmed because American firms will not be going to Mexico, at least not in the foreseeable future and nowhere near parity. America bears the burden. Big business of both countries want this plan because it means cheap labor, increasing profits. The New American [TNA] reports that Fleetowner Magazine, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association or OOIDA warns that "competition from Mexican carriers will eventually overwhelm U.S. fleets because Mexican drivers are paid 25% to 50% less than most domestic drivers."

 TNA Magazine writes that "investigative reporter Charles Bowden reported on condition of the Mexican trucking industry last August. Bowden talked to drivers who worked for days on end, sometimes driving for 48 hours without a break. 'The men earn about $1,100 a month.' And the pay is for a workload that can be handled only with assistance from narcotics.

"The Mexican drivers Bowden talked to insisted that they can only stay awake on their long and frequent journeys across Mexico by using what they euphemistically term "magic dust.'  . . . "the truckers 'are all family men who run the highways at least 25 days a month and they are mad about two things---that nobody can run these long hauls without cocaine and crystal meth, and now and then some marijuana to level out the rush.' " [TNA Special Report, pp. 11-12.]

ELECTRONICS

Since the late 1930s until the last 30 years, US electronics provided a boon for its citizens. It was the USA that produced the best and most advance technology, both for the home consumer and industry, everything was made in the nation, by American workers. While foreign competition began in full just over twenty years ago, America was able to meet it headlong without damage to the economy or the loss of jobs of Americans. But not after NAFTA. At this point, even the Japanese had to move some of their production to Mexico to keep up and Japan is not a signatory to NAFTA. Imagine! Many US firms followed suit, taking American jobs---family paychecks---with them.

According to the TNA Special Report, and as reported on the website, Americans for Legal Immigration, ALIPAC, Sen. Joseph Liberman, Democrat of Connecticut issued a Senate study documenting the impact of what we all now call "outsourcing". The study demonstrated that this trend is "still contributing to historically high levels of unemployment among electronics, software and computer engineers in the United States." Liberman's study also stressed that the "loss of Research and Development infrastructure could have important ramifications for our ability to create high-wage, high technology jobs in the future."

Let us take just one company that most of us our familiar with, Sony. The Pittsburg-Tribune Review released a report about the company this past March, in which it revealed "In announcing layoffs and moving assembly of rear-screen projection TVs to Mexico, Sony said it will relocate to New Stanton production of its Bravia LCD televisions from Mexico and convert the technology center to an immense distribution center.

"Seventeen years ago Sony agreed to take over the former Volkswagen assembly plant in the Hempfield-East Huntingdon area of Westmoreland County. The company said it would invest $300 million to manufacture 1 million color picture tubes annually, and the state anted up $40 million in incentives.

"Now, Sony Technology Center-Pittsburgh no longer manufactures anything, only assembles Grand Wega and SXRD rear-projection TVs; and that business moves to Mexico this year."

ALIPAC reports that Oscar F. Contreras, visiting fellow at Mexico's El Colegio de Sonora, and Rhonda Evans of the University of California, Berkeley, had a more ominous assessment of NAFTA's effects on the U.S. electronics. In a 2002 they wrote: "All stages of TV production, including design, the manufacture of key components, and final assembly shifted from the U.S. to northern Mexico in the wake of the agreement.

The drain on electronics continues. In Pittsburgh, 900 jobs in the industry have been lost at the city's Sony Technology Center as the company moves capacity to Mexico.  . . . The way things go with Sony is that things start in Japan, then they bring the idea to the U.S. to refine it, then when they're really ready to ramp up production, they'll take it to Mexico."

Edward Taylor, former head of business planning for Sony's U.S. TV operations, confirmed this for the Pittsburgh-Tribune Review.

PROFESSIONALS

If you think that NAFTA is in the process of relocating blue-collar jobs, you are in for a surprise. Perhaps you may not be, if you use electronic and or computer technological assistance via software company help sources. Just a week ago I had no computer as my software had blown because of some instability problem that required correction. My computer specialist was away for a few weeks, so I called my service provider, using the 800 number it publishes. The man at the other end of the phone was based in Canada. Now he was very nice and tried to assist me, but why does it take a specialist from Canada when we have all kinds right here in Maine? My provider is an US-based firm. I had to speak with a software company and the man at the other end of the phone was from India. You say that India is not part of NAFTA so this is irrelevant. Not exactly, as you will soon read about; NAFTA is part of someting much bigger, that includes India as a country of preference.

Communication was a bit bumpy to say the least with that man, as I am sure he found it so with me.

According to V-Bulletin White-collar American professionals will also see their jobs disappear and their standard of living fall as NAFTA's professional standards and licensing practices and requirements are harmonized across the continent. The effect will be a substantial downward pressure on white-collar compensation, something strongly advocated by no less than former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan who is on record as hoping for this. Honest folks.

This is from ALIPAC:

"At a conference on maintaining the competitiveness of U.S. capital markets on March 13, Greenspan said that it was essential to flood the United States with foreign professionals in order to drive down salaries of high earners. Our skilled wages are higher than anywhere in the world, Greenspan said, according to Bloomberg News. If we open up a significant window for skilled workers, that would suppress the skilled-wage level."

TNA Special Report adds that this could be put into effect "by harmonizing licensing and professional requirements across all three nations. Doing so would result in a larger supply of licensed professionals, driving down rates paid for professional services and possibly driving some in the United States out of business, while simultaneously making it harder for new U.S. professionals to get established. In accounting, the harmonization of licensing began very early in the evolution of NAFTA. The CPA Journal reported in 1995: 'In addition to harmonizing accounting standards, there is also an initiative to extend licensing to the professionals of other NAFTA countries,  . . . partly as a consequence of the predecessor U.S./Canada free trade agreement." [p. 13]

TIMBER

A lifelong Mainer, and having a grandfather who worked his entire life in the logging business, this next section is particularly difficult to write about.

Several business websites have documented the following for insiders only. I know this because the topic is listed but the public is not permitted to access the articles. Why? One of the sites is pro-Regional. One of its participating companies deals with beauty salons, so you see no sector is safe once the cookie monster starts chomping away. The Canadian-US imbroglio began in the early 1980s. So I had to use sources that overlapped but have credibility and are known for impeccable research.

This is from TNA Special Report and ALIPAC:

NAFTA provided for a subsidy to the Canadian timber industry.

"To offset the subsidy, the U.S. assessed tariffs against Canadian lumber. In 1991 a review of U.S. tariffs was conducted by a panel convened under the authority of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade that uniquely highlighted the trade agreement's destruction of national sovereignty after NAFTA took effect in 1994. Beginning as early as 1982, U.S. timber producers charged that Canadian lumber was trading at artificially low prices in the U.S. market because Canadian timber is mostly owned by provincial governments that set stumpage prices at artificially low levels."

The NAFTA courts, yes Virginia, there are such things as NAFTA courts, convened under Chapter 19 of the agreement, found for Canada against the US. "The Commerce Department finally settled on a tariff of 10.8 percent in 2005. But in March of 2006, the NAFTA panel again found in Canada's favor, stating that Canadian subsidies were too small to be of any consequence." But according to the Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports, "Canada's lumber subsidies are destroying the U.S. lumber industry, threatening its workers with mounting unemployment, and denying many tree farmers a market for their timber crops.

"The NAFTA rulings forced the United States to agree to a new Softwood Lumber Agreement [SLA] with Canada that will result in a massive refund totaling $4.3 billion for duties collected on lumber imports from Canada. In exchange, Canadian lumber exporters will pay an 'export charge' collected by Canada on exports to the United States whenever the price of softwood lumber in the United States falls below certain specified amounts per 1,000 board feet."

Some Canadian provinces are not respecting the terms of the SLA. According to a March 5 Reuters report, "on Capitol Hill, Senators pressed USTR [U.S. Trade Representative] head Susan Schwab on the deal in a hearing last month. Last week, Sen. Larry Craig, an Idaho Republican, asked Schwab to begin steps for consultations. 'I am very concerned that this agreement is about to come apart at the seams,' Craig said," according to the report."

If we have these problems with NAFTA, just hold on until NAU finishes the onslaught.

V-Bulletin writes:

"The NAFTA rulings forced the United States to agree to a new Softwood Lumber Agreement (SLA) with Canada that will result in a massive refund totaling $4.3 billion for duties collected on lumber imports from Canada. In exchange, Canadian lumber exporters will pay an “export charge” collected by Canada on exports to the United States whenever the price of softwood lumber in the United States falls below certain specified amounts per 1,000 board feet."

"A logger in Maine [has been charged] with clear-cutting 70 acres of his own 210-acre parcel . . . In the logging business for 55 years, [Robert] Sherwood's main crime was failing to have an official harvest plan prepared by a licensed forester."---"Maine Problem," Resource Roundup, April 2007, page 5. Address: PO Box 790, Spearfish, South Dakota 57783. Phone: 970-856-6086. E-mail. Website.

SMALL BUSINESS

It was during the first of the illegal alien workday strikes and protests, May of 2006, that I first heard of the Mexican-US Chamber of Commerce. It supported the impudent demonstration. Almost every town and small city in the US has had a Chamber of Commerce since I was a kid. This was the place one went to locate those businesses that were on the up and up, if one was unfamiliar with the company name or a licensed individual just like the Better Business Bureau. The Chamber of Commerce promoted mostly home-grown businesses. The CC was part and parcel of growing up in small town USA, along with hot dogs on the Fourth of July and Catholic churches that were open during the day for a visit to the Blessed Sacrament. Now the CC should be CCM, Commerce for Canada and Mexico, since NAFTA. Why is your local CC co-operating with Mexican interests, some who have no desire for assimilating or immigrating legally, the old fashion, honest way,  over that of ordinary Americans whose parents and grandparents obeyed the law?

In fact, NAFTA is just plain trouble for small businesses, period. Remember, small business owners and operators are the backbone of commerce in the US. This is the way it should be and is in keeping with Catholic social principles. Pope Benedict XVI has just spoken out against capitalism, capitalism as is practiced throughout the international community, keeping wages as low as possible, the trend to fewer and larger conglomerates that lose sight of the human family. NAFTA capitalizes on the wrong side of these kind of capitalists. It is also partly communistic, which the Pontiff also decries, because it unjustly redistributes the goods of the earth without consulting those most affected; NAFTA is not about a just wage, a working wage for families, but profits and power alone. NAFTA is a specialized form of racketeering and monopoly. It purportedly was designed to assist the poorer elements of the three signatories, but all it has done is make the poor in Mexico poorer,  the rich there richer by pouring profits into the pocketbooks of those who do not want to pay a just wage virtually guaranteeing the onslaught of vast numbers of illegal aliens. NAFTA is proving to be successful---at reducing the middle class to the ranks of the working poor with increased family debt and the poor as a the carrot to entice us to think we need more of the same. Sheer madness! What good does it do to make war on the middle class, who are hardly robber barons? What good does it do to encourage illegal aliens to flood into the US because the situation in Mexico is worse thanks to NAFTA---big business and government corruption profits there, not the worker? What happens when the illegals overrun the USA and themselves and the USA is no longer the country they think they were coming to? When but the few will be able to access adequate health care? The only thing that comports with common sense and an understanding of Original Sin, is the powers that be want the dissolution of our nation as a nation. It must be deliberate! America is fast becoming a third world country; the disease and eventual tyranny that follows in the wake of economic downturn for the base of any society is upon us as well. With the rise in immigration from Third World countries, especially illegal alien migration, disease that was once checked is surging back. One example is tuberculosis, one strain of which is resistant to drugs. How does destroying middle class families and toppling health care resources help the poor? These are the ones hardest hit by NAFTA.  As the phrase goes, to ask the question is to answer it. Sure, Americans are spoiled, but that is a moral problem, not an economic one. Spoiled Americans are also hard-working, dedicated to helping others when the chips are down. We Americans have our vices, but we have our virtues, one of which is our renowned generosity, the greatest in the world perhaps matched only by that of the Australians. I don't know of anyone, any average American who is not an international trade meister that wants to see people's incomes artificially depressed. But this also includes themselves. This isn't selfish, it's just plain common sense and normal. If the middle class people I know thought that by becoming poor themselves they could improve the lot of the world, most would embrace it, but they know from experience that everyone but those who have resistant proof bulwarks in offshore banks and the like, just becomes poorer and sicker. They may be indulgent with their children, poorly served by modern politically correct education, unsure how to challenge its hegemony, and too obsessed with celebrity, but they are not completely stupid. Not yet, anyway. There is still hope. Why is it that "the American dream" is now a nightmare? By design? Yes! So that demoralized, confounded, frightened and disoriented, we won't be able to fight back, repel the invasion from within?

NAFTA has been trouble for many small businesses. According to V-Bulletin and TNA Special Report:

  Businessman Brian Coons, president of Brico Welding & Fab of Chesterfield, Michigan, knows all too well the kind of trouble. According to Crain’s Detroit Business, a business journal serving the Detroit area, Coons "lost contracts to Mexican and Canadian competitors that he said don't have nearly the wage and health insurance expenses carried by U.S. manufacturers." Low wages in Mexico meant competitors there could undercut prices while favorable exchange rates meant that competitors in Canada could do the same. "NAFTA has drained us dramatically," Coons told Detroit Business. "Let's say I had an aluminum fabrication job, 100 pieces at $38 a piece. [A customer] can send it to Canada or Mexico and get 30 percent off."

Plastics firm Berman and Associates is another small business in Michigan that faced trouble in the wake of NAFTA, losing bids to firms in Canada and Mexico. "We were getting underbid by 25 to 40 percent," company president Jan Roncelli told Detroit Business reporter Terry Kosdrosky. "We lost jobs because we could not compete. That's into the profit margin. U.S. manufacturers don't reap the benefits of free trade."

The anecdotal evidence that NAFTA presents substantial problems for small business corresponds with the real trend of lost market share across the board for U.S. companies. The U.S. Business and Industry Council [USBIC], a group that represents small-and medium-sized firms, documents that 111 out of 114 U.S. industries saw market share shrink in the years after NAFTA. According to Paul Johnson of the North Carolina High Point Enterprise, the USBIC data show that during an eight-year post-NAFTA period, "the level of import penetration at least doubled in 26 industry sectors. By 2005, 24 industries had lost 50 percent or more of their U.S. market to imports." For small businesses, NAFTA has meant both the loss of existing clients and future income opportunities. And because many Americans depend on small businesses for jobs, the NAFTA hit on small business means hard times for the middle class.

AGRICULTURE AND IMMIGRATION

"For thousands of years corn has been grown as a staple crop in southern Mexico. Until the mid-1990s, small Mexican farmers tended the land, following the traditions of their ancestors, protected by trade barriers from competition from America's heavily subsidized and more efficient corn growers. NAFTA changed all that. In just over a decade, wrote St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Bill Lambrecht in 2005, 'An estimated 1 million farmers in rural Mexico have lost their livelihoods.' "

The loss of farm jobs in Mexico directly affects the US, by causing an increase in alien immigration and drug smuggling. Citing ALIPAC: "The idea was that bringing greater growth to Mexico, fewer Mexicans would need to leave. Mexico said, 'we want to export our tomatoes, not our people.' But, in fact, it led to greater migration," said Deborah Meyers of the Migration Policy Institute. Farmers who stayed behind turned to cultivating marijuana.
 
"The amount of marijuana seized annually along the Mexican border has doubled to 1.1 million pounds since 1994, the year NAFTA took effect."

"NAFTA has had other effects on agriculture as well. In the wake of the trade agreement, large farms growing fresh fruit and vegetables sprung up in the Mexican sun with the intent of selling cheap produce in the U.S. market. Not only did this have the potential to undercut U.S. farmers growing the same crops, the new farms further destabilized the Mexican agriculture market."

The Washington Post reported on January 7, that after NAFTA, "Huge farms have been developed to grow artichokes, tomatoes and other produce for the U.S. market. But those farms, many launched with American investment, typically pay about $13 a day. That's not enough to keep workers from leaving: They can make three to four times as much in even the lowliest U.S. jobs."

TNA Special Report writes: "What's worse, produce deemed unfit for the U.S. market is sold in Mexico at cut-rate prices, driving out small producers. Then they go north too. Mexican farmer Ruben Rivera is one such small producer whose livelihood has been destroyed by NAFTA. According to the Washington Post, 'He used to grow tomatoes and onions, hiring 150 workers to help at harvest. Now he doesn't even bother to plant.' It's cheaper to buy leftover produce from the big producers than it is for him to grow his own. 'For people who can grow huge scale for export, NAFTA has been good,' Rivera, whose three sons live in Georgia and send $800 home to Mexico per month, told the Washington Post. 'For people like us, it's been a bloodbath.' "

AUTOMOBILE MANUFACTURING

Are you like me, do you find these statistics, these facts startling and alarming?!!

Well, read on.

According to ALIPAC "The Big Three auto makers, direct employers of hundreds of thousands of American workers, are losing gigantic sums of money and laying off workers in droves."

 Who among us has not heard the nightly news reports about this factory and that factory moving out of the country?

Again, from ALIPAC: "Last year Ford alone lost $12.7 billion; Chrysler lost only $1.48 billion, but it was enough for Germany's Daimler to start looking for a way to divest themselves of their unstable American partner. The huge losses are leading to equally large layoffs. Ford, for one, is laying off over 30,000 employees in North America, many of them in the United States, and is closing a number of U.S. factories. The controversial closure in Atlanta, long the home of Ford Taurus production, came despite the fact that the plant 'has ranked among the top 10 most productive assembly plants in North America, as reported by Harbour Consulting,' according to a Ford Fact Sheet. Like Ford, General Motors is cutting 30,000 jobs and closing a number of U.S. factories.

"The problems of the Big Three can't all be attributed to NAFTA. But while Americans lose high paying jobs in the auto industry, Mexican workers who are paid much, much less can expect more work. In 2005, in the midst of losing $10.6 billion, GM was ramping up the production of trucks at its Mexican factories. 'We're short on trucks. Dealers don't have them in all the colors and with all the options that people want,' Gilbert Duhn, a GM manager, told the San Antonio Express-News. 'We've started building more trucks in Mexico.'

"Ford is doing the same thing, producing its new family of midsize cars, including the Ford Fusion, Mercury Milan, and Lincoln Zephyr, at its Hermosillo plant in Mexico. In fact, Mexico has become a major center for the manufacture of cars and trucks that are intended for sale in the United States. According to Business Week, 'Three-quarters of Mexican-made vehicles are exported to the U.S., largely by Detroit's Big Three but also by German giant Volkswagen.' Those are cars that could have been built in America by Americans."

The pressure on U.S. car manufacturers to move to a low-cost environment is so overwhelming that they are doing exactly that.

 Korean economist Ho Yeon Kim says that Mexico has always had low 'site costs'---meaning low wages, amenities and taxes---adding that NAFTA had "significantly lowered Mexico's 'situation costs' [defined as costs for transport of raw materials and finished products], but that Mexico would not be attractive for small car production unless other 'non-tariff barriers' were overcome or reduced."  Although the loss of tens of thousands of jobs in Detroit's U.S. factories may not have been directly caused by NAFTA, it is almost certain that it has the capacity to prevent them from ever returning to the United States.

LONGSHORE WORKERS

TNA Special Report and V-Bulletin: "If you are a longshoreman and you work at one of the nation's West Coast ports, especially Los Angeles or Long Beach, NAFTA has an ugly surprise in store for you: your job will soon be gone.

"In order to facilitate the shipment of Chinese goods to the United States, freight will be brought to huge and improved ports, like that at Lazaro Cardenas in Mexico, according to author and investigative journalist Jerome Corsi, 'bypassing the Longshoreman’s Union in the process.' Interestingly, the port in Lazaro Cardenas is owned by Hutchison Port Holdings, a subsidiary of Hutchison Whampoa, the Chinese firm operated by billionaire Li Ka-shing that now operates the Panama Canal's anchor ports of Cristobal and Balboa following a controversial takeover in the 1990s.

"After unloading at Mexican ports, freight will be loaded onto Mexican trucks for shipment to the United States, bypassing Teamsters and U.S. independent owner-operators as well as larger American trucking firms. According to Corsi, the Mexican trucks 'will drive on what will be the nation's most modern highway straight into the heart of America.'

"The plan to ship Asian goods into the United States through NAFTA corridors linking up with Mexican ports has even begun to draw the ire of socialists. Richard Vogel, writing for the socialist Monthly Review, argues that this NAFTA-based plan 'signals the beginning of the assault on labor in the north, which could eventually result in the offshoring of hundreds of thousands of transportation jobs to the south and undermine the working class on both sides of the border significantly.' Among those who will be most affected will be America's dockworkers."

NAFTA ONLY THE BEGINNING

    During the NAFTA debates, the American people were deliberately kept in the dark that the proposed arrangement would be the starting point for further political integration of Canada and Mexico with the United States, which was the original scheme all along. The few oppositionists who had the acumen to sense this and bring it up were ridiculed and shouted down as ignorant and "protectionist".

"Speaking at the Canadian-American Business Council Luncheon on June 24, 2003 in Washington, D.C., then-U.S. Secretary of Commerce Donald L. Evans, referring at the time to efforts to build a Free Trade Area of the Americas [FTAA], noted that NAFTA was only a starting point for regional integration. 'NAFTA was just the beginning,' Evans enthused. 'President Bush has said that "We have a great vision before us: a fully democratic hemisphere, bound together by good will and free trade." '

"The FTAA ran into intense opposition but internationalist planners didn't give up. Instead, following the motto that NAFTA is just a beginning, they hit upon a new plan: North American Union. In a 2005 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal obnoxiously entitled 'North America the Beautiful,' internationalist theorists John Manley, Pedro Aspe, and William Weld argued that, over the last decade, 'the pace of economic integration within North America has outstripped the capacity of the Nafta framework.' To rectify that, they proposed that the leaders of the NAFTA nations 'should announce a plan to establish a North American security and economic community by 2010.' "

"The op-ed came just a few days after a meeting on March 23, 2005 of the heads of state of the NAFTA nations. At the meeting, then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin joined with President Bush and former Mexican President Vicente Fox in taking the first step toward that economic community by constructing the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America---the next step on the road to a North America Union.

"The economic dislocations of NAFTA have been terrible; just imagine how bad they will be under a more fully implemented plan for regional governance. If ever there was a time for the country to abandon NAFTA, now is that time---before the nation is maneuvered into a North American Union it can ill afford." [V-Bulletin, Ibid.]

Continued next page.


ABOUT THE IMAGE:

We selected an autumn scene that included a steep precipice for the background of the Immaculata: Our Lady as the Immaculate Conception is the patroness of the United States; America is on the verge of a disastrous merge which will bring us into the full fledge winter of our discontent, the dissolution of the nation and economic slavery for the majority of those who do not hold political parity.


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