"Nobody is proposing a North American Union," declared Robert Pastor, correctly identified as the father of the NAU and author of "Towards a North American Community: Lessons from the Old World for the New," a book published by the Council on Foreign Relations Press in association with the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales. Pastor may insist the elite of the three countries, at the behest of transnational corporations, are not interested in a merged superstate, but his argument betrays the fact the former national security advisor dreams of an American version of the European Union.
Pastor is an advocate of NAFTA on steroids, or "NAFTA Plus." According to Miguel Pickard, in "the early 1990s, when NAFTA negotiators were still wrangling over arcane language, Pastor was proposing ways to 'improve' the treaty. According to Pastor, NAFTA was off to a bad start, since negotiators were mostly seeking to dismantle trade tariffs. For Pastor it was crucial to find ways of integrating the three countries, similarly (but with important differences) to what the Europeans had done since the 50s. Years later, Pastor would bemoan that NAFTA's promise had gone unfulfilled, since it lacked a 'grand vision' for the three countries, i.e., a much richer perspective than the emphasis put on trade." In other words, NAFTA was simply a trade treaty minus the "grand vision" of global integration.
Pastor, in a conversation with Jerome R. Corsi, "was careful to distinguish that his proposals were designed to create a North American Community and that he never has proposed to create a North American Union as an EU-style regional government," thus Pastor's insistence "nobody is "proposing a North American Union."
But this is, to say the least, deceptive. "The idea seems to be to put new structures in place that change the look of the landscape," writes Corsi. "[WorldNetDaily] pointed out to Pastor that this step-by-step approach is the same approach taken to create the European Union. The memoirs of Jean Monnet, regarded as the architect of European unity, finally disclosed he had used a strategy of deceit, knowing his plan to form a European Union would never succeed if it were openly disclosed."
"Pastor in an article entitled 'NAFTA is Not Enough,' argued for an incremental process that could head toward the creation of the NAU, all the while providing cover for participating politicians and governments to deny that creating the NAU was their goal," Corsi argues in a News with Views editorial. In the article, Pastor provides key details on how this stealth process works:
While the three governments of North America are unlikely to step into the debate on long-term goals at the current time, nongovernmental organizations, research institutes, and universities should fill the void with new ideas and old-fashioned cross-border dialogue.
Short of this sort of shadowy incrementalism, the NAU project may be dropped on the fast track by other means, according to Corsi. "Dr. Pastor seems to prescribe that a fear formula is all that is needed for the American people need to begin begging SPP to produce the NAU right now. Pastor openly writes as if the next 9/11 terrorist attack or a future outbreak of some health epidemic such as the avian flu could be just what the NAU doctor ordered as the prescription for the American people to abandon sovereignty in favor of super-regional government control, all in the interest of 'security' leading to 'prosperity.' Or, is it 'prosperity' which necessitates more 'security' via surrender to Big Brother government?"
In predictable fashion, the corporate media is tasked with characterizing those who document the emerging NAU as tinfoil hatters, nut cases, mental patients, conspiracy theorists, etc.
For instance, neocon Charles Krauthammer told Fox News: "I love this stuff because if you ever doubt your own sanity, all you have to do is read this stuff and realize that you're okay" (see video), while "conservative" Michael Medved lamented what he calls the "paranoid and groundless frenzy… fomented and promoted by a shameless collection of lunatics and losers; crooks, cranks, demagogues and opportunists, who claim the existence of a top secret master plan to join the U.S., Canada and Mexico in one big super-state," never mind the above, well-documented. "I'm sorry to sound cynical and intolerant about this stupidity, but I'm furious, actually – ashamed to be part of a proud medium (conservative talk radio) that increasingly encourages this paralyzing, puerile paranoia," apparently a reference to Alex Jones and others who continue to flesh out the "incremental" conspiracy Medved refuses to acknowledge.
Drake Bennett writes for the Boston Globe:
Government officials say a continental union is out of the question, and economists and political analysts overwhelmingly agree that there will not be a North American Union in our lifetimes. But belief in the NAU — that the plans are very real, and that the nation is poised to lose its independence — has been spreading from its origins in the conservative fringe, coloring political press conferences and candidate question-and-answer sessions, and reaching a kind of critical mass on the campaign trail. Republican presidential candidate and Texas congressman Ron Paul has made the North American Union one of his central issues.
Government officials of the sort, no doubt, that told us Saddam Hussein was about use weapons of mass destruction against the United States or that the air at Ground Zero in New York was safe to breathe.
Finally, it is no mistake the Boston Globe has rolled Ron Paul into its diatribe of transparent denial, as Paul must be roundly discredited and characterized as a kook, primarily because a Paul presidency would most certainly put an end to Robert Pastor's dream of an American version of the European Union once and for all.
