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Fort Fairfield Journal, February 27, 2008, p. 1

In May, 2005 U.S. President George W. Bush; Mexican President, Vicente Fox; and Canadian Prime Minister, Paul Martin met at Baylor University, in Texas and unveiled their plan for a North American Union (NAU) under the guise of a “security and prosperity partnership.”

According to the U.S. State Department, later that same year, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms launched its “Southwest Border Initiative” to attack the firearms-trafficking infrastructure of criminal organizations working across the border. The State Department press release describes a de facto hemispherical police force developing “new programs to share tracing capabilities with the Mexicans, close off trafficking corridors, expand actionable, real-time intelligence cooperation and aggressively pursue prosecution.”

Under the guise of a drug interdiction program, the police forces and parts of the executive branches of the three governments have been quietly merged into a supranational government/militarized police power.

According to a State Department memo, “Both governments are profoundly committed to the concerted bilateral strategic and tactical cooperation necessary to combat effectively this criminal activity...and to achieve the broader regional and international cooperation necessary to prevail in this fight.”

The most recent development in the NAU government’s police force was presented at the Merida Summit in March, 2007, where President Bush met with new Mexican President Felipe Calderon and agreed on the priority of “expanded bilateral and regional cooperation to advance these crucial shared objectives.”

The so-called Merida Initiative is a new security cooperation initiative with Mexico and the countries of Central America in order to combat the threats of drug trafficking, transnational crime and terrorism in the Western Hemisphere.

According to Phil Bosse, staff member of U.S. Senator Susan Collins’ (R-ME) office the program will be transnational in nature and would require the U.S. to provide $1.4 billion to it over the next three years.

“This past October, President Bush requested $550 million in the War Supplemental authorization for the multi-year program,” said Bosse, “to provide such things as helicopters, surveillance aircraft, inspection equipment, technical advice and training and communication technologies.”

“The FY2008 war supplemental contained $500 million and $50 million for Mexico and Central America respectively to fund the first year of the program.”
The money is described by Bosse as “not a loan,” but rather, it appears to be a grant with no expectation of repayment to the U.S.

Senator Collins, who is ranking member on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee was asked by the Fort Fairfield Journal for comment on this apparent supranational merger of governmental power between the U.S. and Mexico, but declined to issue a statement.

As a new, regionalized police force the NAU police will still wear the patches of their home country, but will be effectively merged under the Merida Initiative. According to the State Department memo, “The Merida Initiative represents a new and intensified level of bilateral cooperation that marks a new stage in the bilateral cooperation that characterizes the strong relationship between the two countries.”

The Merida Initiative is intended to “bolster Mexican domestic enforcement efforts, bolster U.S. domestic enforcement efforts and expand bilateral and regional cooperation that addresses transnational crime” at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer.

According to a Brookings Institution article written by Diana Negroponte, “Under the terms of this Initiative, the United States will commit 41% of the $500 million grant to military equipment, which will include six brand new Bell 412 helicopters and two Casa 245 twin-engine aircraft. Accompanying both is a two year agreement to provide maintenance and spare parts. This represents a significant improvement over the gift of Hueys in the 1990s under the Excess Defense Articles Program.”

The NAU police force operates in a de facto status since the Strategic and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), while functioning as a treaty, was not presented to the Senate for ratification, as the US Constitution requires of all treaties with foreign nations.

While the U.S. Senate has not had the opportunity to ratify the SPP treaty, or anything like it, they have acquiesced their consent by agreeing to fund the programs under it, such as the Merida Initiative.

Future goals of the SPP/NAU governmental agreement are a North American Emergency Plan, North American Critical Infrastructure Program, North American Investment Fund, North American Competitiveness Council and joint port security exercises, to name just a few.

Recently, the U.S. Census Bureau replaced its U.S. Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system with the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) in order to comply with the new regional governance agreement of the NAU leaders.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s website, “NAICS was developed in cooperation with the US Economic Classification Policy Committee, Statistics Canada, and Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Estadistica, Geografia e Informatica.

While the U.S. continues to maintain literal “borders” and is taking steps to restrict border crossings with the requirement of all U.S. citizens to obtain a passport and use it to cross, the paradox is the SPP is virtually eliminating the borders with respect to police powers, economic infrastructure and government bureaucracies by merging them into one cohesive, cooperative unit. To that end, a regional highway system is currently being constructed in the Midwest to facilitate the expeditious movement of goods between Mexico, the U.S. and Canada.

Because of political backlash and a potentially angry citizenry, the leaders of the NAU have shied away from using the term “North American Union,” or making any grand announcements of the existence of its programs, because of the animosity Europeans have shown toward their system of union. Instead, the synonym “partnership” is being used with “security and prosperity” as the buzzwords to help deflect criticism away from the project to merge all countries from Canada to Central America into a single economic, political and police-state superstructure.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT ), the US Census Bureau and now the Merida Initiative are working together to form a North American Union in spirit and in function, even if not necessarily by name.