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  ----- Original Message ----- Subject: World Affairs Brief -- April 27, 2001
WORLD AFFAIRS BRIEF April 27, 2001 Copyright Joel M. Skousen. Quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen at http://www.joelskousen.com

THE QUEBEC SUMMIT: GLOBALIST RESTRUCTURING OF THE AMERICAS
Last weekend’s Summit of the Americas in Canada took on an ominous tone of seriousness. It is the third in a series of talks that are destined to increase in frequency until long range NWO objectives for diminished national sovereignty are met. American and Canadian globalist leaders are pushing to forge an EU-style regional government in the Americas, and US President George W. Bush is right in the thick of it--following in his father’s NWO footsteps. The conference was hosted by leftist Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien--a personal friend of Bill Clinton and a committed globalist of the most servile kind.

All of the speeches intended for public consumption stressed the benefits of free trade and prosperity, but none of that counts for much, in real-life terms. It’s the control agenda being forged behind closed doors that really matters. The big players, the US and Canada, have brought with them special teams of globalist lawyers with pre-prepared drafts of the new Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Remember this acronym--you’ll be hearing much more about this in the future. Bush is already seeking “fast track” authority to put this control agenda in place, which proves he is a knowing participant in this portion of the NWO plan. Fast track authority gives the president and his bureaucrats the power to clinch separate agreements with each country during negotiations without coming back to Congress for debate--a very dangerous precedent. Congress’ only choice is to accept or reject the final package.

Each of the Third World nations present is also accompanied by advisors and lawyers, but of a different variety. In contrast to the US and Canada, they are in Quebec to lobby for special treatment and exceptions to the uniform control agenda being outlined by US trade representative Robert B. Zoellick and his CFR-trained team. Each of these developing nations is struggling with problems of economy- draining socialism, massive indebtedness to the IMF, and indigenous Marxist revolutionaries threatening their very political survival.

NAFTA (precursor to the new, broader FTAA) had many complex side agreements which provided for special exceptions for certain countries to the general controls enacted. These have been a constant source of discord, especially as many of these agreements or “codicils” were kept secret. In Canada, for example, the individual Provincial leaders originally insisted on special language to protect local industries within each province from competition. But their own national government deceived them during the NAFTA ratification process. During negotiations the Provincial leaders were led to believe that their reservations to NAFTA had been accepted, but unbeknownst to them, the specific wording in each Provincial leaders’ portfolio was changed on the copies they actually signed. One of the top level secretaries, Shelley Ann Clark (executive assistant to Germain Denis, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's personal appointee to the NAFTA negotiations), blew the whistle on this affair. Subsequently, the Canadian government had the original NAFTA agreement locked up for reasons of “national security” and it is not currently available for inspection even to the Provincial leaders who signed it.

President Bush is now insisting that the trade agreement should include no codicils that “destroy the spirit of free trade.” But his purpose is not so much to promote free trade; that’s merely the bait. Rather, his purpose is to move the process ahead in a manner such that all nations will be bound by the same regional tribunals--with no exceptions. That is going to be a hard sell unless Bush can tone down the image of control that current “Free Trade” agreements have. Small countries are objecting to having to meet the same draconian environmental regulations that are presently hobbling America’s energy industry, for example--regulations that environmental lobbyists in Quebec are demanding. The union movement in the US and Canada is also trying to impose on all small countries the same high union pay scale we have so as to make sure no business can shop for cheaper wage rates abroad. Bush, trying to play both sides said, “In other words, a free trade agreement focuses on commerce....While I understand that some unionists are interested in making sure there's labor protections, I don't want those labor protections to be used to destroy the free trade agreement.” What Bush is really saying is that he wants the leftist agenda watered down initially in order to get all nations on board, and then the FTAA’s tribunals will be able to ratchet up the controls without any specific nation’s consent.

The big loser in this current tug-of-war will be Mercosur, Brazil’s coalition of South American countries which have worked hard to forge a true cooperative free trade pact that does not involve the kinds of control mechanisms imbedded in NAFTA and especially the newly proposed FTAA. Things have not always gone smoothly for Mercosur as Brazil and its partners have had to overcome years of dependence upon high import tariffs that stifle industrial growth. Just when Mercosur was making real progress and getting ready to expand, along comes this newest “free trade” initiative from the US which threatens to overwhelm the less intrusive Mercosur.

Pushing Democracy—A Special Brand of “Fairness”
There are 34 potential joiner nations in this proposed FTAA form of regional government. Only Fidel Castro’s Cuba was excluded, for obvious reasons. There was considerable talk during the summit of extending democracy to all nations in the hemisphere. President Bush was directly referring to Cuba when he told the others that he looked forward to the day when all countries in the Americas would be included. PM Chretien joined in the chorus of praise for democracy, noting that “democracy may vary from place to place” (hoping to expand the definition sufficiently to include Cuba when it makes some token compromises). He then warned that the Organization of American States (OAS)--a very leftist organization funded by US taxpayers--will closely monitor each nation and decide which ones are “approved democracies.” Nations whose outcomes are not sufficiently Socialist will be censured because of election irregularities or “unfair campaign practices.” As I pointed out in a previous brief, this is precisely the type of intervention the OAS engaged in while monitoring the election in Peru during the previous election cycle. Now that former President Fugimori has been exiled and the OAS’s preferred globalist candidate Alejandro Toledo is leading in the current polls, they seem to be satisfied that “democracy has triumphed” in Peru.

BUSH ADMINISTRATION YIELDS TO ENVIRONMENTALIST CRITICISM
Conservatives thought they finally had something to cheer about when President Bush announced he will not abide by the Kyoto Treaty mandating arbitrary remedies for the bogus global warming scenario. Reacting to sustained European and domestic environmentalist pressures, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage announced that the US will propose a new plan to curb global warming, which will differ from the Kyoto Protocol only administratively by seeking the participation of developing countries, as well as industrialized nations. (It seems like every time there is a major sellout of conservative interests, Richard Armitage surfaces as the hatchetman.) In other compromises, EPA Secretary Cristine Todd Whitman has decided the agency would uphold a strict last-minute Clinton-era rule protecting "wetlands" from dredging. President Bush is said to have praised the action. According to NewsMax.com, Whitman also announced she will not oppose another last minute Clinton regulation on the environment: the Clinton rule on mandatory reporting of lead emissions required of smaller companies which use a mere 100 pounds a year of lead. Each of the EPA’s regulatory requirements are very costly to small companies.

BRITAIN IN SERIOUS DECLINE
The UK is suffering under its most severe onslaught since WWII--both by mother nature and by government run amuck. Spring rains have been torrential, even for this normally wet climate. It has been the wettest 12 months in two centuries. Flooding is affecting large portions of all the British Isles. Fields are soggy, rivers are overflowing, and even train schedules are hampered by a rash of weather-related accidents. Add this to the massive livestock epidemics of mad cow and foot and mouth disease and Britain seems spiraling out of control.

For a nation with a penchant for cradle to grave government regulation and control, British confidence is being severely shaken. The government’s heavy-handed manner of treating the current livestock epidemic is not only infuriating to the farmers but questionable at best. After ordering massive slaughter of suspected infected livestock, the government is caught in a deteriorating quandary of what do with the carcasses. Mass graves were dug and then undug after fears of groundwater contamination surfaced. Torching the piles of carcasses would be even more hazardous due to airborne pathogens. Mad cow disease is particularly virulent because the protein-like progenitors of the disease (called prions) are apparently immune to even high temperature incineration. There are persistent rumors about these livestock epidemics being man-made. One report claims that a vial of foot and mouth disease is missing from one of the government laboratories. Although I’m certainly not one to turn a deaf ear to conspiracy, sometimes the sheer volume of charges leaves one incapable of tracking down the truth. I am not able to confirm this one.

Tourism is plummeting as Americans and Europeans fear the worst. Tourist agencies field questions from Americans as wild as whether they should bring their own food or not. Some of the tourists’ fears are well founded. Upon return to their home countries, Americans and Europeans are scrutinized by immigration and health officials. The Red Cross is even proposing new regulations in the US banning Americans who have been to Britain in the past 6 months from giving blood.

With April’s subway strike in London, combined with normally high prices and clammy weather, London is no longer the preferred destination it was last year. Britain is also in serious moral decline. Illegitimate births and sexually transmitted diseases are at an all time high. Drug use is as bad in metropolitan English cities as it is in America. Greater England’s rate of violent crime is also increasing. Years of legal and illegal immigration into Britain have led to the growth of ghettos and increased ethnic tensions. Despite years of gun control laws, weapons related crimes are on the rise, and the British people are relatively undefended.

Worst of all, Britain’s core legal and financial roots are under attack from the European Union and the Labor Government of Tony Blair. NWO leaders want the British Pound Sterling replaced by the flimsy Euro and are using every trick of subterfuge to bypass the growing resistance of the British people. A variety of British civil rights are under threat as well, including the rights of free speech, free press, and freedom of religion. Antonia Feitz writes that one of Parliament’s most powerful safeguards is under threat from the EU. British legal tradition requires that no parliament can bind another one, but EU treaties are irrevocably binding. Under the EU principle of acquis communautaire, once a piece of legislation originating in the EU has been incorporated in an individual nation's law it can't be revoked, even by a new government. This is an example of piecemeal loss of sovereignty that is threatening all nations in the EU.

Criticizing the EU and its policies is now illegal under a new interpretation of Article 51 of the proposed EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. The European Commission also, according to Feitz, wants to change Article 7 of the Amsterdam Treaty so as to be able to punish any country that installs a parliamentary coalition that two-thirds of the EU countries consider a potential threat to European values and principles. This is specifically aimed at Austria’s inclusion of Jorg Haider’s right-wing Freedom Party in the current governing coalition, but it could also be applied to the British Tories should they choose to elect an anti-EU slate of Members of Parliament (MP).

Antonia Feitz also wrote that one Tory member of the EU parliament told a fellow Tory, Roger Helper, that Westminster will be gone in 10 years. In both Europe and in the UK, national parliaments are destined to become clearing houses for EU-created policies, rules and regulations. “England will effectively be no more,” she said. “Instead, its 12 regions (England will be just 12 out of the over 100 proposed administrative regions of Europe) will be governed from Brussels. The current British autonomous assemblies in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland will be given ‘independence’ under EU policies, but will ultimately be even worse off. Instead of constituting 3 of the 5 political units in the UK, they will become just 3 of more than 100 political units in the EU--with far less effective power. Nine more regional assemblies have been proposed for the rest of England, Greater London being the next. The regional assemblies will play no part in the EU's legislative process. They will simply decide how their EU-allocated budgets will be spent in limited areas like health and education. Their only political voice is through the Council of the Regions, whose recommendations are not binding.”

The US would do well to learn from what is going on in Britain vis-a-vis the EU. This is the same pattern of gradual change our own government intends to implant upon Americans through the FTAA.
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