Not So Fast, Gov'nor

From CorridorWatch.org

When did you first hear about the Trans-Texas Corridor?

It's shocking just how few Texans know about this massive super-highway-rail-utility project launched by Governor Perry in 2002. Ten vehicle lanes, six rail tracks, utilities, pipelines, state concessions (gas stations, restaurants, motels, stores, warehouses, etc.) all on 4,000 miles of toll roads that will consume more than one-half million acres of Texas.

Everyone should understand that this isn't another Interstate Highway. It not just a jumbo-sized highway. This Corridor project is a very wide, very flat, extremely limited access, mostly toll, highway-rail-utility corridor. To cross the Corridor at any point will require a quarter-mile long overpass.

It will connect to Interstate and other major highways. However, by design it will not provide easy, if any, access to the communities it passes by. It will not spur commercial development along its frontage like our Interstate Highways. There will be no frontage. There will be no opportunity for the owners of property it abuts to develop new or expanded businesses with access to the Corridor. Moreover, it has provisions in the plan and the law to place all possible traveler services on the corridor itself.

Every mile of Corridor will consume 146 acres of land. That's property that will become state owned land - removed from county and school district tax rolls everywhere it extends.

So the Texans decided that this is one boondoggle that won't roll over them.

VICTORY!

At last, CDA Moratorium Bill (HB1892) has PASSED.
Today's House vote 139 to 1

The next stop is the Governor's Desk.

HB1892 passed last week in the Senate 27 to 4 and today in the House by a vote of 139 to 1. The lone supporter was Rep. Mike Krusee. Those margins don't invite a veto, but Governor Perry is poised with pen in hand. He has until Monday, May 14th to send the bill back with his veto and objections. If he doesn't act by that date the bill will automatically become law.

The Trans Texas Corridor is effectively stopped for 30 months.

Today's action puts the breaks on the TTC and initiates a study process that will bring to light the numerous flaws surrounding the project.

Job well done.

Thank you everyone. Members of CorridorWatch and our numerous friends and allies in the fight have won a tremendous victory for the state of Texas and its citizens. You should know that nearly everyone believed that what you have accomplished today was impossible. Yes, it was hard. And yes, there's still a lot to do. But what we have done together this session will provide the time and encouragement to take our fight to the next level.

CorridorWatch especially applauds the Senators and Representatives who listened to our concerns and led the charge inside the Capitol. Without their efforts we would have been lost.

Special Economic Zones

Want to see what's going to happen here in America, when the men playing God get all their pieces on the board? C.S. Lewis had a name for men like CFR foreign-policy-set members... he called them "men without chests". It is with such men we will have to fight.

Actually, with the land being taken for the Trans-Corridor Highway, it's already begun. And some Texans don't intend to stand idly by and watch their land being taken by Imminent Domain.



This from CFR's website:
Daily Analysis

India’s Growing Pains

Indian activists protest government land seizures

April 4, 2007
Prepared by:
Lee Hudson Teslik

India’s torrid economic expansion over the past five years delighted investors internationally, but the inevitable shakeouts of rapid growth are starting to rub some nerves raw at home. Thousands of Indian farmers battled police (Telegraph) in the country’s West Bengal state in March, protesting government plans to confiscate their land and turn it into a special economic zone (SEZ). After fourteen deaths and chastisement from groups like Amnesty International, the state abandoned its plans for the SEZ. But after reviewing the SEZ policy, India’s Prime Minister announced in late March that new zones will continue to go up across India (Jurnalo).

Special economic zones typically offer tax breaks to encourage multinational corporations to set up shop in a developing country. The companies in turn help the host country by bringing jobs, tax revenues, and direct investment. China has nurtured SEZs with great success since 1980 (People’s Daily), most notably at a massive 126-square-mile economic zone in Shenzhen. Launching SEZs often requires large swaths of land to be set aside—or forcibly confiscated, with reimbursement rates dictated by the government. Although India’s SEZs have used much smaller pieces of land than China’s, India’s population density makes clearing space for businesses a politically incendiary proposition, as is detailed in this paper by the Society for the Study of Peace and Conflict (SSPC), an Indian think tank.

Compared to China, India joined the SEZ game quite recently. The country first implemented SEZs in 2000, but the zones only exploded in popularity after the 2005 SEZ Act (PDF) expanded the program of benefits they offered. Applications for new SEZs spiked, and as of January 2007, the Indian government had approved plans for 237 projects (Economic Times).

At the time of the 2005 bill, India’s commerce minister predicted new development spurred by the act would create five hundred thousand Indian jobs (Frontline) by the end of 2007. Business leaders gave even rosier projections. The chief executive officer of Reliance Industries, an Indian manufacturing conglomerate spearheading two major SEZ projects, said in an interview with India's Rediff news agency that each of Reliance’s twenty-five-thousand-acre projects could create up to five million Indian jobs.

But controversy swirled around the zones from the start. Some analysts doubted the noble-sounding goal of job creation, wondering whether SEZ projects might be little more than a “land grab” (World Bank PSD Blog). Others questioned the business rationale for the projects. Some economists, for instance, said that rather than promoting new business, the zones might simply be granting tax breaks to companies already eager to build in India (Economist).

The most aggressive opposition by far, however, has come from the farmers and other Indians whose land stands to be taken. The Reliance project alone aims to swallow up forty-five villages, according to the SSPC paper cited above. With more than two hundred SEZ projects approved, and over three hundred more applications pending (IPS), March’s riots were a grim reminder that patience could quickly wear thin on one of India’s most ambitious development initiatives.
-------------------------------------------

Society for the Study of Peace and Conflict

Rajat Kumar Kujur
Article No:103

February 7, 2007

Special Economic Zone: The New Conflict Ground in India

More than a decade of opening of India, the Special Economic Zone (SEZ), probably has become the most controversial economic reforms announced in recent time. While some consider it as India’s supersonic engine of growth, others severely criticize it as the latest land grab instrument in the hands of the industrialists. Serious discourses on models of development, displacement and rehabilitation, employment generation, foreign investment, primacy of industry over agriculture are being raised in justification as well as against the whole concept of SEZ. Despite the heated argument as of January 2007, the Union Government has given final approvals to 237 SEZs and in-principle nod to about 165 zones. Besides, 300 more applications are in the process of approval.

.......The threat of massive displacement from agricultural areas has been the main focus of these agitations. Strange but true the opposition to SEZs is taking the shape of a loose alliance of incongruent outfits which include activists like Medha Patkar, former Prime Minister V P Singh, many NGOs and even outfits owing allegiance to Left extremists.

All this is nothing but a gigantic play for power/money. It has nothing whatever to do with the will of the people, or the rights of people. It is in a word, Corporatism on a global scale.

It's not going away.
And it's gonna be nasty.

Americans Being Blind-Sided

Heavy stuff tonight: First off, this 21 min video on the North American Union. Make time to watch it. You need to know this. The presenter goes chronologically through the steps laying the groundwork for the SPP/NAU, using maps, interviews, etc. It's the most cogent explanation that I've seen for what is taking place in the back halls of Congress. So, make sure you watch it.

And here is another piece of the puzzle...but after you read this article (below) on the Euro, be sure you take a look at the A Modest Proposal To The Trilateral Commission - by Robert Pastor.

Pastor's "Modest Proposal" is short, deadly.

And here's why it's bad for TEXAS, not to mention the rest of America. ARRGgghh. Why is it so bad for America? Our Judicial system is about to be trumped by a Global Judicial system. see here and here.

North American Union
Debut of the 'amero'
Pope John Paul II, Euro

By Judi McLeod
Canada Free Press
Thursday, December 14, 2006

The People's Republic of China, long lauded by America's enemies as the world's next economic power, will be the country that will force the creation of the `North American Union' (NAU).

Kofi Annan's former pointman, Canadian Maurice Strong, has been boasting from Chinese soil that China soon would be replacing America as economic king, using the jingo that's the official language at Turtle Bay.

The billions of dollars China has invested in the flagging American economy will be worthless. They will have to negotiate the exchange rate to the new amero. This will then force the creation of the North American Union.

The cloak of the NAU, fashioned in secrecy, will be thrown over an unsuspecting public, erasing the borders of three countries. Mexico, which already has legions of its citizens living and working inside America, is, in effect already inside the NAU. Their governments will inform the American and Canadian people that there is no option but the bread line.

Unfortunately, the plan, which has been in place for some time, now, has been all but ignored by the mainstream media.

One of the signs that the NAU is on its way is the collapse of the American greenback dollar paving the way for the debut of the 'amero'.

“Two analysts who have reconstructed money supply data after the Fed stopped publishing it argue a coming dollar collapse will set the stage for creating the amero as a North American currency to replace the dollar,” (WorldNetDaily, Dec. 13, 2006).

The euro followed the same blueprint of stealth and surprise. It was already issued as replacement currency before the masses could coalesce to fight it.

Who ever would have dreamed that the euro of a secular bureaucracy one day would be accepted for use at the Vatican? Pope John Paul II, who repeatedly condemned the “moral drift” of secular Brussels, sanctioned an official Euro for the Vatican.

In appearance, the Vatican coin looks very much like other Euro coins. But on the flip side of the coin, the image of Pope John Paul II faces left.

“By permitting his image on this new coin, John Paul II has given another symbolic and powerful stimulus to the European Union, which with the issuance of the Euro, is taking an important step towards the Universal Republic,” said Atila Sinke Guimarnes in Daily Catholic.

Was it all that long ago when people said the formation of the European Union was impossible? Today, the EU European holds 27 nations under its authority with other countries lined up for membership.

In the US, experts are now predicting that the collapse of the dollar is imminent.

“People in the U.S. are going to be hit hard,” says Bob Chapman publisher of The International Forecaster newsletter. “In the severe recession we are entering now, Bush will argue that we have to form a North American Union to compete with the Euro.”

“Creating the amero,” Chapman explained, “will be presented to the American public as the administration's solution for dollar recovery. In the process of creating the amero, the Bush administration just abandons the dollar.”

While the amero is being groomed to enter stage left, another phenomenon has been gathering steam outside of media headlines.

The North American Union, which got its start in secrecy, has been pulled out of the closet by a grass-roots effort, that will force it onto the agenda when Nancy Pelosi and Company open the 100th congress next month.

Pressed on by Conservative Caucus Chairman Howard Phillips; WND columnist and author Jerome Corsi; activist and American icon Phyllis Schlafly, leaders of the 50-member strong coalition are poised to halt any effort by the U.S. to enter into a North American Union with Mexico and Canada.

Members of Schlafly's Eagle Forum have been in training for the past two months to lobby on Capitol Hill when Congress convenes.

The resolution—sponsored by Republican Reps. Virgil Goode Jr. of Virginia, Tom Tancredo of Colorado, Walter Jones of North Carolina, and Ron Paul of Texas—expresses “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 (NAU) with Mexico or Canada.”

It's no idle boast when Phillips says, “this could be the most important project on which we've ever worked.”

Armed with the Internet release of about 1,000 documents, obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request to the Security ad Prosperity Partnership of North America, the coalition has the potential to embarrass the governments of all three countries.

According to Corsi, “the documents show the White House is engaging in collaborative relations with Mexico and Canada—outside the U.S. Constitution.

Very little about the NAU has been covered by the Canadian media.

The documents can be viewed here, on a special website set up by the Minuteman Project.

The stage has been carefully set and only intervention will stop North America from taking the same stealth route that Europe took in creating the European Union and its legal tender the Euro.

North American Union Isn't Going Away
by Jerome R. Corsi

So, does this mean the Pope is the new Caesar? Actually, that wouldn't be anything new. Popes in the Vatican have always been ruthless. I refer any doubters to:

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Catholic Church by Malachi Martin