MNN: NAFTA Super Autobahn, the Road to Hell

IS “NAFTA SUPER AUTOBAHN” THE ROAD TO HELL?

Kahentinetha Horn
Mohawk Nation News
May 18, 2007

The Bush Administration is planning to build a huge Highway from Mexico to Canada. The NAFTA Super “Autobahn” will be a four football fields wide car-truck-train-pipeline corridor from Mexico to Canada. It will be a 10-lane limited-access road with tolls. Jerome R. Corsi of “Human Events” has written extensively about this project which is being done on the quiet.The NAFTA autobahn is mainly going to transport our resources from one million square miles of unsurrendered Indigenous land in the northern part of Turtle Island, through the U.S and Mexico to the countries of the Pacific rim.Then the road will bring containers from the Far East to enter the United States through the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas, bypassing the Longshoreman’s Union on the docks of the west coast. The Mexican trucks, without the involvement of the Teamsters Union, will drive on what will be the nation’s most modern highway straight into the heart of Turtle Island. [See attached map]. We see more containers on trains that are miles and miles long coming from California ports heading east. The west coast is one of the places where they want to put unions out of business.So who benefits? Not the Mexicans! Maybe not even the Americans! Certainly not the Indigenous land and resource owners!The northeastern route will go along the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River, right through Haudenosaunee territory. Mega bridges to the northern reaches are already planned, one from Kahnawake to Montreal, one over the Ottawa River at Kanehsatake and another from Cornwall over to Akwesasne. Once again we Mohawks are in the way.The Mexican trucks will cross the border in fast lanes, checked only electronically by the new “SENTRI” system. The first customs stop will be a Mexican customs office in Kansas City, known as a “Smart Port”, built for Mexico by U.S. taxpayers. Containers from the Far East can be transferred there to trucks going east and west.Super roads are not a new idea. In 1933 Hitler and the Nazis finished the German “autobahn” during the Third Reich. It linked north and south Germany. It was promoted as creating jobs. It was actually built mostly by Russian prisoners of war. The military was involved in the planning to provide mobility for the movement of their troops and weaponry. They were designed with auxiliary airports with aircraft hidden in tunnels or camouflaged in nearby woods. [We don’t know what military auxiliary will be built alongside the NAFTA autobahn].In the end the German autobahn was useless during most of the war due to a shortage of gas and lack of trucks. Tanks and trucks were hard on the fragile surface. Much of the road was bombed. The bulk of the military traffic, men and material ended up being transported by rail. Eisenhower was inspired by the German Autobahn and created a U.S. interstate highway system in 1956.The concession for the tolls on the Texas portion of the NAFTA Autobahn was leased to a Spanish firm, “Cintra Concesiones de infra”. Rudy “911” Giuliani’s law firm represents Cintra exclusively. The state of Texas was paid $2.1 billion up front and $700 million yearly for 50 years. “Rudy Guiliani Capital Advisors” has been bought out by “Macquarrie”, an Australian Consortium which leases and operates U.S. and Canadian toll roads. It can be presumed that the whole corridor will be a private toll road which will need a private military force to protect it.“Euro Money Seminars” of the UK is teaching state and local U.S. governments how to lease public assets such as highways, water works, prisons and schools to international investment groups. One of Giuliani’s firms, “Giuliani and Partners”, has a component for leasing out private police forces.President Bush does not appear to be anxious to secure the Mexican border. Maybe he has to create express lanes first for the Mexican trucks that will be bringing containers into the heart of the U.S., to bypass U.S. union workers on the docks or in the trucks. 90% of trucking is now non-union because of government union busting.The only places where the unions are still strong are in major financial industrial cities like New York, Boston, Pittsburgh and Chicago. For example, fabricated steel coming in from non-union fabricators have to go to New Jersey, reload onto union trucks and then are driven into New York City by the Teamsters Union.It’s to kill off whatever is left of the unions. It’s to steal our resources. It’s to stop indigenous protest. It’s to eliminate anyone who wants to prevent the reestablishment of the oligarcic cultural elite who want to treat the rest of us like slaves.To get the public’s [forced] “cooperation” of those cities and towns that are in the way of the corridor, large corporations are being shut down, such as Domtar in Cornwall Ontario and General Motors in Massena New York. A few hundred million dollars has been taken out of the economy on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border. Lost jobs will lower house and property values which can then be grabbed cheaply or easily expropriated by NAFTA under the “eminent domain” stealing act.The public is mostly unaware of the coming North American Union that is planned for the United States, Canada and Mexico. Various U.S. government and state agencies and scores of private NGOs (non-governmental organizations) are working behind the scenes to create this highway. The U.S. government has set up an office in the Department of Commerce called the “SPP Office” for “Security and Prosperity Partnership”. The SPP Agreement was signed by Bush, President Vicente Fox, and then-Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Tex., on March 23, 2005.CN Rail and CP Rail in Canada are part of this. Let’s see how lucrative it is for them to steal our resources and to cooperate with multinational corporations and the governments they control. As of February 2007, the President and CEO of CN make more than the directors and senior management who make 2.2% of all outstanding shares. This is about $30 million. You can bet that when dividend time comes, they won’t be eating Kraft Dinner like the Indigenous people they stole the land and trust funds from to build the rail empire.CN has had record profits on the backs of employees who were fired thus resulting in safety issues. A newly appointed vice-president and chief safety officer was created to address derailments and toxic spills. Many railroad engineers have died due to poor maintenance all in the name of $$$.This autobahn will not benefit Turtle Island. It is a corridor to carry resources that are being stolen from us. It is transported through the U.S. to Mexico and then put it on ships to China and elsewhere. It appears like the U.S. public will not get anything out of it either. The investors and profiteers use U.S., Mexican and Canadian fronts on their various boards.Until 1999, the land in the north of Turtle Island was administered by the Canadian government. Then a “government” was set up similar to a band council, with no authority over resources. This control is still held by the federal government which can make deals to sell it all off to multinational corporations.This is a stupid plan. How will they defend such a long road? These extremes of self-centered despotism are not new. They have risen many times before. 2000 years ago the Han Dynasty in China forced people to do a lot of road work for almost nothing. The penalty for arriving late for work was death. Finally, when a river flooded and the people could not get to work on time, they rebelled and brought the dynasty down. Despotism always falls down in the end. This senseless project is doomed from the start. In the meantime the people will suffer a lot while the abuse builds itself up to the breaking point.If this megalomaniac nonsense isn’t questioned right now people can go through decades or even a century of suffering. The U.S. was founded on egalitarian principles they learned from the Haudenosaunee/Iroquois. The U.S. constantly forgets its inspirational sources. When Europeans arrived on our shores they were huddled masses yearning to be free. They were dirty, malnourished and abused. Now they abuse us.It’s time for everyone to throw off the shackles of abuse. We have to assert our rights, participate, share and laugh. We were not born to be slaves to corporate greed.
Kahentinetha Horn,MNN Mohawk Nation News;
kahentinetha2@yahoo.com & katenies20@yahoo.com;
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