by Jerome R. Corsi
Posted Jan 02, 2007
Film critic and talk show
host Michael Medved has decided to put in print on
Townhall.com the attack he has frequently
broadcast on radio against those of us who are opposing the North American
integration being pursued by the Bush Administration activity under the auspices
of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America.
Without
specifying exactly whom he is attacking, Medved uses his
Townhall.com piece to launch into
an emotionally charged diatribe against what he calls "a shameless collection of
lunatics and losers; crooks, cranks, demagogues, and opportunists" who are
whipping up a "mounting hysteria over the looming menace of a 'North American
Union.'" Medved then proceeds to characterize in equally emotionally charged
language the argument as "a secret master plan to join the U.S., Canada and
Mexico in one big super-state and then to replace the good old Yankee dollar
with a worthless new currency called 'The Amero.'" He further charges that
criticism of the Trans-Texas Corridor is another "delusion" that "involves the
construction of a 'Monster Highway' some sixteen lanes wide through Texas and
the Great Plains, connecting the two nations on either side of the border for
some nefarious but never-explained purpose."
Serious readers for
centuries are alert to recognize that ad hominem attacks generally mask an
inability to counter an argument on logical or evidentiary grounds. In the days
of Lenin, communist agitators took the ad hominem attack to a new level,
perfecting techniques to discredit their opponents with the intent to discourage
the public from listening to arguments that were serious and potentially fatal
criticisms of communism. Medved appears to be taking the advice of the radical
socialist activist Saul D. Alinsky, who articulated on page 128 of his 1971 book
"Rules for Radicals" his rule No. 5: "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon."
Yet, from personal experience I know that judged on facts
Medved has been found lacking. Medved has attacked me on his radio show over
articles I have written on these subjects, but when Medved charged that I am
anti-Semitic, I responded. I emailed Medved and in a subsequent phone call I
explained to him that in my 25-year financial services career I created two
mutual funds for the state of Israel, one with Bankers Trust and the other with
New England Funds, both with the endorsement of B'nai B'rith. After writing
"Atomic Iran," I was invited to Israel to address the Knesset, which I did in
June 2005. I asked Medved why he considered me anti-Semitic, especially when in
Jerusalem I am widely regarded as a friend to Israel. I invited Medved perhaps
to do some research of his own before going on the record against me, rather
than simply believing one or more of the obvious attack pieces that have been
circulated on the Internet by leftist apologists since I co-authored "Unfit for
Command."
Studying the tone of Medved's recent piece in
Townhall.com, I was reminded of
the abuse my co-author John O'Neill suffered on Oct. 22, 2004, when MSNBC senior
political analyst Lawrence O'Donnell began screaming "Liar! Liar!" at O'Neill
during an appearance on "Scarborough Country." Reading the
transcript of that
show, O'Donnell appeared to have lost his composure when he was unable to refute
O'Neill's defense of what we wrote in "Unfit for Command." Similarly, Medved has
reduced himself to spewing forth various strings of derogatory language boldly
proclaiming, for instance, that "there's no reason at all to believe in the
ludicrous, childish, ill-informed, manipulative, brain dead fantasies about a
North American Union."
Who then, besides myself, are those
who Medved calls on his readers to treat "with the derision and contempt they so
richly deserve" for propounding "this paranoid and groundless frenzy" over the
North American Union?
At the top of the list, we will proudly place
Phyllis Schlafly, who was one of the first to
write extensively about the plan to integrate the U.S.,
Mexico, and Canada. Lou Dobbs has devoted several segments of his CNN television
show, "
Lou Dobbs
Tonight," to a discussion of the North American Union. Resulting from a
Freedom of Information Act request, Judicial Watch has
obtained an
extensive set of documents detailing the extensive trilateral working group
activity going on in the executive branches of the U.S., Mexico, and Canada
under SPP. These documents add to the nearly
1,000 pages of
documents I received from SPP detailing the extent to which the SPP
trilateral working groups are "integrating" and "harmonizing" our administrative
laws and regulations with Mexico and Canada. Howard Phillips of the
Conservative Caucus has joined with Schlafly and me in forming
a coalition opposing North American integration.
Rep. Virgil Goode
(R.-Va.) introduced
H.C.R. 487 in the 109th Congress, "Expressing the
sense of Congress that the United States should not engage in the construction
of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Superhighway System or enter
into a North American Union with Mexico and Canada." Co-sponsoring this
resolution were Representatives Ron Paul (R.-Tex.), Tom Tancredo (R.-Colo.), and
Walter Jones (R.- N.C.).
"
Monster
highway" was a term coined by veteran journalist Wes Vernon in an October
2006 article on the Trans-Texas Corridor. Vernon's most recent article posted on
Accuracy in
Media thoroughly discusses the extensive research that has been done
concerning North American integration.
The Federal Highway
Administration (FHWA)
openly discusses
the plans of the Texas Department of Transportation to build over the next
50 years some 4,000 miles of Trans-Texas Corridor superhighways as having "as
many as six lanes for passenger vehicles and up to four lanes for large trucks,"
as well as "six rail lanes for high-speed passenger rail between cities,
high-speed freight, and conventional commuter and freight transit," and "a
61-meter (200-foot)-wide dedicated utility zone for water, oil, and gas
pipelines, and transmission lines for electricity, broadband, and other
telecommunications services." In the same document, the FHWA openly discusses
that NAFTA is the driving force behind the TTC project's determination to remove
584,000 acres in Texas from public tax rolls and to throw some 1 million Texans
off their homes, ranches, and farms, as these 4,000 miles of road are built over
the next 50 years.
A Texas Department of Transportation
website contains a
Master Development Plan , which produces an artist's drawing
of the four football-fields-wide TTC-35, which TxDOT plans to build roughly
parallel to I-35 from Laredo, Tex., to the border with Oklahoma. TTC-35 will be
financed by the Spanish investment consortium
Cintra Concesiones de
Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A., and the comprehensive development
agreement is available on the TxDOT official
TTC website. Final
public hearings on TTC-35 were held in the summer of 2006 and
construction is planned to begin in 2007.
Medved minimizes the TTC,
portraying it as business-as-usual road building. Yet no superhighway of this
magnitude or scope has ever been constructed in the United States, or anywhere
else in the world for that matter. Allowing foreign entities to control U.S.
infrastructure does raise important questions, including national defense
issues, as should have been amply demonstrated in the Dubai ports controversy. A
brochure on the
Kansas
City SmartPort website discloses that the goal of the I-35 corridor as
reconfigured by TTC-35 is to open Mexican ports such as Lázaro Cárdenas to
container ships from China and the Far East. Kansas City plans to place a
Mexican customs facility in the heart of their
"inland port." What is wrong with subjecting these questions to the bright light
of calm, rational, public debate? The evidence we are discussing is all on
public websites, many of them official governmental websites.
Regarding
SPP, Medved correctly notes that there is no law or treaty. Yet, somehow, Medved
misses the point. Our concern is that the absence of a treaty or law raises the
concern that SPP is a process that violates the Constitution. Somehow, the Bush
Administration is using what amounts to nothing more than press conference held
in Waco, Tex., on March 23, 2005, as sufficient constitutional authority to
integrate our administrative laws and regulations with those of Mexico and
Canada.
Again, the public record on SPP displays much more than a
"dialogue" between neighbor nations. The
organizational chart obtained by the Judicial Watch FOIA
request shows trilateral "working groups" that shadow U.S. government
departments and agencies, reporting to three cabinet officers, who in turn
report to the Homeland Security Council and the National Security Council, and
ultimately to the President. A
12-page document I obtained from the FOIA request to SPP
provided the names, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses of the executive branch
contacts in the three nations, as well as designating which working group each
bureaucrat was assigned to as a member. The "
2005 Report to Leaders" and the companion "
2006 Report to Leaders" on the Department of
Commerce SPP.gov website describe many different memoranda of understanding and
other trilateral agreements that have been signed by the working groups. Yet,
the vast majority of these memoranda of understanding and other trilateral
agreements have not been submitted to Congress for oversight or for
determinations regarding whether a treaty might be required for the agreement to
be valid within constitutional restrictions. What is wrong with the 110th
Congress scheduling some hearings to make sure Bush Administration has not
exceeded constitutional authority?
Nor does Medved address our concern
that the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America is following the
continental integration plan that led Europe over a 50-year period from an
initial coal and steel agreement to a European Common Market to full regional
government, the European Union, with a regional currency, the Euro. Currently
available documents, such as the memoirs of Jean Monnet, a key architect of the
European Union, make clear his long-standing antipathy toward the notion of
national sovereignty. Christopher Booker and Richard North's 2003 book, "
The Great Deception," makes clear that the elite creating the
European Nation knew that "it would be necessary to conceal from the peoples of
Europe just what was being done in their name until the process was so far
advanced that it had become irreversible."
Still, Medved persists in
claiming that the elite concepts of creating a North American Union or NAFTA
Super Highway are just Internet conspiracy theories. He charges in intentionally
undignified language that, "The same b*****ds and creeps and jug-heads and
drunks and reprobates (yes, they are all of the above) who are now scaring you
over SPP or NAU or the Monster Highway were busy 7 years ago peddling the Year
2000 computer bug crapola (which I consistently derided and denied on the air)."
Again, I must take exception. Mr. Medved, I defy you to find one word I ever
wrote about Y2k in any context. Why engage in ridicule, Mr. Medved, unless your
intention is to follow Mr. Alinsky's advice to discredit the arguments you can't
otherwise refute? Isn't it possible, Mr. Medved, that the attention drawn to the
Y2k problem in advance helped stimulate the massive expenditure of time, effort,
and money that was necessary to correct the computer glitch worldwide?
Medved dismisses the idea that there are intellectual
elitists whose globalist ambitions are advancing North American integration
following the methodology of disguise and deception that proved successful in
Europe. He offhandedly states that there was one article in the Council of
Foreign Relation's (CFR) Foreign Affairs journal "that suggested further
reducing trade barriers and economic obstacles in the style of the European
Union," suggesting that the article drew "spirited opposition and condemnation"
from CFR members. Again, Medved is deficient on his research.
The public
record, which evidently Medved has not examined, shows an extensive and fully
documented CFR effort aimed at advancing the North American integration agenda.
On Oct. 17, 2001, the Council on Foreign Relations held an Atlanta
roundtable meeting under the title, "
The Future of North American Integration in the Wake of the
Terrorist Attacks ." The CFR followed up by creating an
Independent
Task Force on the Future of North America , announced on Oct. 15, 2004.
In March 2005, the CFR task force issued its first report, a Chairmen's
Summary titled, "
Creating a North American Community." The CFR report was
issued jointly by the Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales (COMEXI) and
the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), two groups also on the record
as supporting North American integration. This report was written to be
published before the planned trilateral summit meeting to be held later that
month, on March 23, 2005, at Waco. The report reflected the consensus of the
task force's three chairs and three vice-chairs:
To build on the advances of the past decade and to craft an agenda
for the future, we propose the creation by 2010 of a community to enhance
security, prosperity, and opportunity for all North
Americans.
In May 2005, only two months after the Waco summit
meeting, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) released the final task force
report titled, "
Building a North American Community."
A co-chair of
the CFR task force was Dr. Robert Pastor of American Union. For over a decade,
Pastor has been writing extensively about the need to create a "North American
Community," the exact title that reappears in the above referenced CFR
documents. In his 2001 book, "Toward a North American Community," Pastor
directly supports the proposal to create a new regional common currency, the
Amero, as part of creating a North American Monetary Union. To implement this
idea, Pastor calls on page 114 of his book for the creation of a
U.S.-Canada-Mexico trilateral Central Bank of North America. The
concept of creating the Amero originated in a paper by
Canadian economist Herbert Grubel of the Simon Fraser Institute in Vancouver.
Again, in a almost unbelievably derogatory fashion, Medved suggests that
those of us who are objecting to North American integration are motivated by
intentions which would be fraudulent at a minimum and possibly even criminal.
Specifically, he argues that:
The entire chimera has been conjured up to scare people over
nothing— to solicit contributions to fight a non-existent threat, and then
when that threat never materializes the exploiters and charlatans who have
been lying to you about this can beat their chests and say, 'Look at that! We
stopped the globalists in their evil, diabolical plans to terminate American
sovereignty—now send us even more money.'
As proof
of this accusation, Medved cites a
Washington Times article, charging that the article "exposed"
the Minutemen as "blood-sucking exploiters." The Washington Times wrote about
the
Minuteman Civil Defense
Corps (MCDC), the organization identified with Chris Simcox. The
Minuteman Project
(MMP) organized by Jim Gilchrist is a completely different and totally
separate organization. Jim Gilchrist is my co-author on "Minutemen: The Battle
to Secure America's Borders," and I have placed my SPP FOIA documents on
StopSPP.com, a website managed
by Jim Gilchrist's MMP organization. While I have maintained friendly relations
with Simcox and his MCDC organization, I have never been formally associated
with either.
No Washington Times article has ever been written raising
questions about fundraising Jim Gilchrist or his MMP organization have
conducted. Once again, Medved might have done some research before leveling this
broad accusation against "the Minutemen." I am seriously considering joining Jim
Gilchrist and Marvin Stewart in a contemplated MMP lawsuit against Columbia
University for the
riot that prevented our speaking at Columbia University on the
evening of Oct. 4, 2006.
Perhaps Medved might have gotten his facts
square before Gilchrist and his legal counsel had the opportunity to read his
recent
Townhall.com outburst in print. As
we discuss thoroughly in our book "Minutemen," Gilchrist volunteered for the
Marines in 1967 and fought for 13 months in combat in Vietnam, just south of the
DMZ. Of his company of 210 men, some 72 were killed in action, about 35%.
Gilchrist founded the Minuteman Project out of a sense of patriotism, determined
to call up the Minutemen once again, this time to do the job of security our
border of Mexico that President Bush had been negligent in doing. Medved might
want to explain to Gilchrist why he considers his true motivation in creating
the Minuteman Project was to fundraise as a "blood-sucking exploiter." I am sure
Gilchrist's blood will boil.
Ironically, by not naming names, Medved in
his broad brush attack has demeaned and insulted dozens of other Americans whom
I did not have room here to mention, many who are noted conservative
commentators, all of whom have opposed in print or on the radio the push to
North American integration that began under President George H.W. Bush,
continued under President Bill Clinton, and is proceeding rapidly under
President George W. Bush. I would like to see Medved explain to Joseph Farah
that
WorldNetDaily is not motivated for a love of the United
States. Mr. Medved, is HUMAN EVENTS itself deserving of being treated with
"derision and contempt and disregard" because the publication has chosen to
print his rejoinder, as well as a series of articles I have written on the
subject since May 2006?
Medved ends his piece by claiming that those of
us opposing North American integration are "dissembling, and they know it, and
they ought to be ashamed." Again, I take exception. Everything I have written on
this subject, including this rejoinder, is heavily documented, generally with
Internet links to the original documents which substantiate my claims.
In conclusion, I view myself as a conservative who has no
hesitation to criticize a Republican President when the administration does not
rule in a conservative manner. I opposed Harriet Miers when President Bush
nominated her to the Supreme Court and I oppose the North American integration
we see proceeding under SPP.
I invite Medved to a public debate on these
questions. In making this invitation, I am willing to take the risk that
Medved's tone in his
Townhall.com piece does accurately
reflect his true emotional state. I do not recall ever before reading a piece
from a person who likes to represent himself as a responsible political
commentator that contained so many vituperative epithets or such extended
strings of invective, including invented words that are nowhere to be found, not
even in a dictionary of slang.
If Medved is getting close to the Larry
O'Donnell "liar, liar" stage when discussing North American integration, I will
take even that risk in issuing a challenge to debate. On the questions that
Medved shrilly characterizes as hysteria over a North American Union chimera, I
am willing to stand by the research and study that have carried me through
multiple decades of multiple careers, even if Medved is reaching the point where
he is "Unfit for Debate."
Mr. Corsi is the author of several books, including "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John
Kerry " (along with John O'Neill), " Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of
Oil " (along with Craig R. Smith), " Atomic Iran: How the Terrorist Regime Bought the Bomb and
American Politicians," and most recently, " Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America's Borders." He will
soon author a book on the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America
and the prospect of the forthcoming
