(Today’s column)
For about three weeks now, an e-mail about the collapse of the US economy before the summer of 2009 has been circulating. The text of the e-mail is a verbatim reproduction of a Web log entry by one Hal Turner who, until July of 2008, ran a donations-dependent Webcast show from his home in New Jersey. The gist of Turner’s claim:
“I announced during that same radio show that the US government was secretly minting new currency, THE AMERO and revealed a plot to intentionally bankrupt the United States to force integration with Canada and Mexico. Once merged, the US, Canada and Mexico would be a new entity called the North American Union.”
Much of Turner’s claims are rooted in the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America adopted on March 23, 2005 by Paul Martin, Prime Minister of Canada; Vicente Fox, President of Mexico; and George W. Bush, President of the United States. The SPP was intended to supplement the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta).
In May of the same year, the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan (sic) membership organization founded in 1921 and believed to be the singular most influential organization behind US foreign policy, came out with a report called “Building a North American Community.” Dr. Robert Pastor, a member of the task force that prepared the paper, introduced the amero as the currency of this North American community.
Pastor, however, is not the original proponent of the amero. It is a theoretical currency patterned after the Euro proposed by Canadian economist Herbert Grubel in 1999. The concept has its supporters and detractors but the fact is that “currency cooperation” is not new and it has worked in some countries.
For some reason, some conservative elements in American media started lambasting the idea as though it was totally anti-American. This is the train of thought adopted by Hal Turner when he all but tells his readers that the American citizen will starve if the proposal comes to fruition. He sensationalized a few cherry picked statements, brought them side by side, peppered them with terms like the amero and you’ve got a scary article that is making Americans gasp in horror. The message—dump your US dollars now because they will be worthless soon.
Now, here’s the curious thing. If you read through the CFR paper and pay close attention, it is really about America trying to get its hands on the resources of Mexico and Canada—in particular, the energy resources of Mexico—and offering, in return, the usual crap about joining forces to fight terrorism, etcetera. The American economy is dying and it is trying to extend its tentacles by grabbing resources of its two closest neighbors. And if the adoption of a common currency will clinch the deal, so be it.
The entire concept of a North American Union and Pastor’s proposal to adopt the amero are selfishly pro-American to the bone and here are people like Hal Turner saying it is all anti-American (is there any other interpretation for his statement that it is a “plot to intentionally bankrupt the United States?”). All right, if the adoption of the amero were an isolated thing, Turner might have a point. But if it is combined with policies spun from Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, with provisions about American access to resources of Mexico and Canada, it doesn’t sound like America is on the losing side. But Turner doesn’t really talk about all that. Instead, he tried to drive home his point by “proving” that the US Treasury has, in fact, started minting amero coins.
There’s a coin and medallion designer named David Carr who sells his stuff on his Web site, including “fantasy amero coins.” The photos of these coins were copied and circulated over the Internet. Then, Hal Turner released a video featuring uncannily similar coins and claiming they were minted by the US Treasury, had been shipped to China (to pay US debt) and that he had arranged with a government employee to have some smuggled out to him (Turner) so that they could be exposed to the public.
So, is this Hal Turner an agitator, a joker or what?
Turner was a frequent voice caller in the now defunct radio talk show of right-winger Bob Grant, broadcast by ABC’s flagship station, New York City’s WABC. Grant was considered a pioneer of the “angry” talk show format which, to illustrate to Filipino readers, simply means accusatory and inflammatory.
From the “fame” Turner managed to achieve through Grant’s show, he set up his own Internet radio show which was complemented by a Web site. Both are now offline but Turner still maintains a Web log in a free service site, Blogspot.
During the height of Turner’s fame— or infamy, depending on what your politics is—he issued statements such as resorting to the assassination of members of Congress who voted in favor of any law granting amnesty to illegal aliens, “looking for volunteers from the Klan, Aryan Nations, Nazis and Skinheads to join me in Baltimore this weekend for some good old vigilante justice” and “there was no Holocaust in World War 2.”
You be the judge as to whether Hal Turner’s claims deserve a second thought.
I’m going to have to say, I’ll eat my shoes when this happens, and you get to pass me the sauce.
I think americans as a people have discovered their voice in the recent elections. They’re good people in general, and from my experience living here for over 2 decades, only mean well. Sometimes they can just be lazy and misguided, but hey, what nation of people aren’t at times? This preposterous notion will have to be approved by a national vote, and it’s not something that can implemented easily. If I remember correctly, the Euro took forever to get approved (7 years was it?) and had strict requirements for member nations.
Considering the new nationalist movement going on here (not to mention the strong national pride in the “dollar”), I very much doubt something like the implementation of a new currency is realistic. Then again, we are going through a fairly unique slide into a protracted recession, so we never know what will happen.
I think your last statement says it all.
Still, it would be better overall if the issue could be discussed based on the substance of the SPP (the FAQ in the SPP website is pretty interesting) and the CFR rather than the sensationalized version of people like Turner, that CNN guy Lou whats-his-name and those people at World Net Daily (their roster of editorial writers include Pat Buchanan and Ann Coulter).
high fallutin aside.. from a grass root perspective,
notions of common currency – d’amero’, is so exotic. haha.
that talking points will span you a lifetime, seemingly to death.
a purely academic execrcise, spinning off incredibly high-brow agendas , and an inevitable offspring of world leader summits and egos.
Re an academic exercise. That was what it was until that Turner guy, that CNN anchor and the WND people decided to sensationalize it. Thing is, when something like this gets sensationalized, it is hardly ever in the context in which the original concept was hatched. The theoretical discussion is quite riveting.