|
|
A New Paradigm of Economic Relations Calls for the North American Belt & Road Initiative, It’s Time to Put NAFTA To Rest!
7 August 2018
For almost a quarter century, the people of North America have watched the value of their lives cheapened by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), while the speculators on Wall Street have built bubble after popped bubble off their labor. NAFTA (and CAFTA, etc.) is designed to drive down the margins of profits for the family farmer, the skilled machinist, and the manual laborer, while increasing the profits of cartel arrangements in agriculture, manufacturing, and derivatives trading. Bankrupting the middle class by underselling them with cheap goods imported from sweat shops has created an economic vacuum filled by illicit black markets in narco-terrorism and addiction, mass immigration and human trafficking (including of children) in forced labor and sexual exploitation, vapid consumerism, xenophobia and racism, and dirty money laundering enabled by “too big to fail/jail” banks.
These “free trade” agreements are a failure economically, morally, scientifically, and culturally, because their intention is to make a few people very rich at the expense of everyone else. The NAFTA policy has been a “lose-lose” policy for all nations involved. It is time to junk this failed set of agreements, and replace it with an entire new set of relationships based on a new “win-win” approach to humanity. We should replace NAFTA with the North American Belt and Road Initiative (NABRI). The North American Belt and Road Initiative (NABRI) Both President Trump and the recently elected President of Mexico, Andre Manuel Lopez Obrador recognize NAFTA is a failure. Rather than rework NAFTA, I propose that the United States and Mexico, should adopt an entire new set of agreements, in an entire new spirit of cooperation, under the title of North American Belt and Road initiative, NABRI. The basis of NABRI is a rebirth of relations among the nations and territories of North America based on the principle of mutual, cooperative benefit among sovereign nations, and the end of poverty through building great projects that both improve the living standards of each country’s citizens, while linking the countries together through the sharing of trade and culture. Such a rebirth in U.S.-Mexican relations would break the century long tradition of banana republics ruled by drug gangs and offshore City of London money laundering playgrounds, and forge a new paradigm of growth and development for the whole world. Mexico has a historic opportunity to not only itself join the BRI, but to also use its special geographic and historic proximity to the United States to help bring the U.S. on board with that project as well, by proposing cooperative triangular ventures among 1) China, 2) the U.S., and 3) all of Ibero-America and the Caribbean. Such an approach is the only way to actually solve the deadly problems of grinding poverty, drugs, immigration, and the lack of a productive future for youth in Mexico, Central America, and the United States. As Mexican President Obrador stressed in his letter to President Trump, he says, “ I believe that the migrant problem should be addressed in a comprehensive manner, through a development plan that includes the Central American countries where millions of inhabitants do not have job opportunities and are forced to leave their villages to seek life and mitigate their hunger and poverty.” The North American Belt and Road Initiative will be the first step in answer to this problem with a development of the entire region of the Americas. Specific Areas for “Win-Win” Cooperation There are five specific areas of cooperation that the United States and Mexico can establish to transform the entire western hemisphere into an area free of the influence of narco-terrorists, their Wall Street and London drug banks, and looting by international cartel conglomerates. These areas of cooperation are: 1. Establish a North American Infrastructure Investment Bank — Based on the same concept as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), a new NAIIB would be a development bank contributed to by countries from all over the world for the purpose of seeing great projects all the way to completion. Unlike the IMF, World Bank, and vulture capitalists -which have strapped countries with usurious interest rates and unpayable debts, forcing them to privatize their social safety nets and sell off their sovereign resources and infrastructure- the NAIIB would offer low, fixed interest rates, to help nations fund great projects that alleviate poverty and increase trade. A new NAIIB would realize the Operation Juarez program to free these nations from such parasitical debts, originally proposed by Lyndon LaRouche over 30 years ago. 2. Build the 21st Century North American Water and Power Alliance — Originally proposed in 1964, NAWAPA is a massive water transfer and hydro power generation project from the rain intensive northwest coast of North America all the way into the arid regions spanning from California through Texas and northern Mexico, for drought relief and and agricultural revitalization. The plan was updated for the 21st Century in 2014 by the LaRouchePAC to emphasize nuclear power generation, new desalination technologies, and linking to other water projects in Mexico such as the PLHINO and PLHIGON. 3. The World Land-bridge — The Belt and Road Initiative is connecting the nations of Asia, Africa, and Europe through rail and high speed magnetically levitated rail. This has dramatically increased trade and exchange of ideas, both domestically and internationally for all nations involved. The natural link for this network of rail is the Bering Strait between Russia and Alaska, all the way through North America, bridging the Darien Gap, and down to the Strait of Magellan. These are not envisioned as rail “highways” between distant cities with no improvement along their path, but as “development corridors” that incorporate large rural swaths into the jobs programs and benefits. 4. Caribbean Basin Maritime Silk Road — The development of deep-water industrial ports in Mariel, Cuba and Ponce, Puerto Rico, will link cross-Atlantic cargo flows through the expanded Panama Canal and the planned Grand Nicaraguan Canal, as well as the proposed Tehuantepec Isthmus “dry canal,” for dramatically increased cargo flows to and from China and Asia. This will require the development of deep-water ports and related infrastructure on Mexico’s two coasts, as well as improvements to the Port of Houston, the largest port on Gulf Coast and biggest port in Texas, and other U.S. Gulf and Atlantic coasts. 5. Space Science —Cooperation in the advancement of space exploration and scientific breakthroughs must play a critical role in the advancement of economic relations and trade among nations. China has taken an important step in realizing the Space Silk Road. The United States must join in with other nations for the advancement of the common aims of mankind, in new breakthroughs and discoveries in Space Science. The United States through NABRI and joint space cooperation, can work with Mexico’s small space agency to transform it into a major driver of the scientific and technological development of the nation. Satellites will help forecast both hurricanes and earthquakes, fight the drug cartels, and improve monitoring of agricultural health. The launching of astronauts to the Moon and the ISS will both inspire the youth and conduct important scientific experiments in space. Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean will all benefit from the widespread dissemination of thermonuclear fusion technology, promised by the massive Helium-3 fuel supply to be mined from the Moon. The worst thing that Mexico or any nation throughout the Americas could do at this point, would be to throw in the towel against the horrors of narco-trafficking by legalizing drugs, as some are calling for, under the phony banner of a “negotiated peace” with the drug cartels, decriminalization, and the sophistry of so-called Transitional Justice—a fraud concocted by the international hit-men associated with George Soros, the notorious mega-speculator and the world’s leading drug legalizer. It’s time to shut down the drug cartels and financial speculators for good! The drug trade is controlled at the top by Dope, Inc., i.e. the big speculative British and Wall Street banks, and it can be destroyed by the same measures that will put the entire trans-Atlantic financial sector through bankruptcy reorganization, followed by the creation of a New Bretton Woods international system of productive credit. The adoption of NABRI will represent a new sea-change in mutual relations, growth, and development throughout the Americas. This is the direction the world is moving in, through the leadership of China and the Belt and Road Initiative. Both the President of Mexico and the United States have made clear their commitment to crushing the drug cartels and financier interest destroying both their nations, and to cooperate in providing a more productive economic future. The solutions presented above require that both the United States and Mexico must return to a system of direct national credit, modeled on the American system ideas of Alexander Hamilton, and which have been long championed and advanced by American Statesman and economist Lyndon LaRouche. The first step to realizing this new system of relations for Mexico and the United States along with other nations throughout North and South America, are already being taken by Mexican President Lopez Obrador in inviting both President Trump and Xi to his inauguration on Dec.1. Meetings are already taking place between leaders of the United States and Mexico and Mexico and China. The Belt and Road Initiative must be adopted by the United States and Mexico and become a unifying force. An Endorsement from Canada for the North American Belt and Road Initiative (NABRI) and the candidacy of Kesha Rogers for U.S. Congress (TX-9)
By Gilles Gervais CRC—Kesha Rogers, the Independent Candidate for the U.S. Congress running in this autumn’s midterm elections in Texas’ 9th. District (TX-9) has recently announced a proposal that would uniquely set the stage for resolving both the refugee crisis and the drug epidemic, among other urgent and numerous problems affecting all three nations presently operating under the faulty and now nearly defunct NAFTA Treaty. The proposal is called the North American Belt and Road Initiative (NABRI) and we of the Committee for the Republic of Canada [1] wholeheartedly endorse both the NABRI policy and the candidacy of Kesha Rogers for Congress![2] The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) of course refers to the policy initiated by China’s President Xi Jinping in 2013 which today has over 100 countries participating in either the Belt and Road Initiative land component or the Maritime Silk Road component.[3] Just over 10 years ago, nearly 100 patriots from Mexico, the United States and Canada had gathered, together with diplomats from 9 nations, in our nation’s capital, Ottawa, to hear U.S. Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche give a keynote speech[4] to an EIR international conference entitled: “The Strategic Importance of the Eurasian Land-Bridge: Canada and the Coming Eurasian World.” In the Questions and Answers period following the keynote speech, Lyndon LaRouche had the following to say on the common interests that tie Canada, United States, Mexico together: “...It’s extremely important for us in the Americas, especially in North America, to set a precedent, for the world, to, in a sense, admire. “…Now, we are not very strong on oligarchy, on aristocracy. We’ve had unpleasant experiences with that, and therefore, we are republics in our way of thinking. We think of ourselves as citizens, we think of ourselves as equal, at least in rights. And we pride ourselves on our cooperation, we pride ourselves on being beneficial to our neighbors—at least, most of the people I respect, do that. And so therefore, it’s extremely important, that if you cannot get this kind of cooperation in North America, I don’t think we can get it on the planet anywhere, at this point. “…I think there’s a natural tendency for an alliance, as neighbors, between Mexico, the United States, and Canada. I think that by saying, "We can be sovereign, we don’t have to globalize, we don’t have to give up our sovereignty—we can be sovereign. We all can be neighbors, and we can cooperate in a positive way, not to fight each other, but in joint projects of our common interest." It’s extremely important to do that.” “I’ve dealt with this: López Portillo was a dear friend of mine, in the time that we were working together, much closer than most people know. And I think it’s a very good thing to have a friend like López Portillo—now deceased—who was victimized by people who were oppressing Mexico at the time. And to remember a friend, and this friend, who did something good in his time for his people. He was frustrated in realizing what he was doing for his people. It’s a good thing to remember that, to honor that, and make his dream, which is a valid one, come true. It brings us all closer together, by knowing that we are cooperating with one another to a common interest.” An Inspiration to the Americas and the World It is our conviction that the citizens of Canada would embrace NABRI as a project of great value to present and future generations of North Americans. Internationally, these are greatly troubled times. Therefore the true self-interest of a citizen of Canada must necessarily be located not only in the condition of the nation bequeathed to its posterity as a whole but in our nation’s efforts to promote international policies that will lay the basis for establishing a more just new world economic order. Presently, a very large portion of the world’s population is demanding a more secure order in mankind’s affairs. If it be true that “Development is the New Name for Peace”, then it would certainly be within the reach of the people of Canada to collaborate with the United States and Mexico to establish NABRI as “an inspiration, a living example which this imperiled mankind of today’s world sorely needs”. Presently Canada is the only country in the Americas which has joined the Asian International Investment Bank (AIIB) [5] (on March 19, 2018). Let us immediately organize for the United States and Mexico to join and also the 7 Ibero American countries which are already listed as prospective members of AIIB. NABRI can become the gateway through which all of the Americas joins and participates fully in China’s BRI. Let us take this first important step to bring about “a community of shared future for humanity”. [1] BRICS / The New Silk Road / La Nouvelle route de la soie [2] candidacy of Kesha Rogers for Congress! [3] The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge, Vol. II [4] The Time Has Come To Rebuild With Peace [5] Canada: World Land-Bridge Gateway to the Americas |
