Big Business Buys Silence of Toll Road Critical Newspapers

Foreign corporation in desperate lunge to quell massive popular dissent against Trans-Texas Corridor & North American Union

Prison Planet | January 29, 2007
Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones

A foreign toll road corporation has agreed to buy dozens of newspapers in Texas and Oklahoma that have up until now been harsh critics of the Trans Texas Corridor superhighway, a clear example of racketeering and a desperate lunge to silence dissent against the sellout of American infrastructure and the North American Union.

"Australian toll road giant Macquarie agreed Wednesday to purchase forty local newspapers, primarily in Texas and Oklahoma, for $80 million. Macquarie Bank is Australia's largest capital raising firm and has invested billions in purchasing roads in the US, Canada and UK. Most recently the company joined with Cintra Concesiones of Spain in a controversial 75-year lease of the 157-mile Indiana Toll Road," reports The Newspaper.com.

The Bush administration has embarked on a policy of selling off key U.S. infrastructure to the highest bidder - in most cases foreign owned corporations. The Indiana Toll Road, Virginia's Pocahontas Parkway, a Texas toll road from Austin to Sequin and The Chicago Skyway have all been siphoned off to foreign companies who will all enjoy billions in profits from American citizens forced to pay the tolls, while others will be thrown off their land and have their property revoked without just compensation following the trend of recent eminent domain rulings.

The framework on which the American Union is being pegged is the NAFTA Super Highway, a four football-fields-wide leviathan that stretches from southern Mexico through the US up to Montreal Canada. Its construction has already begun in Texas with no congressional oversight whatsoever. The Trans-Texas Corridor is being overseen by The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and the contract is owned by the Cintra corporation which in turn is owned by the King of Spain Juan Carlos. The project is being financed by the implementation of a toll that will be collected by means of GPS tracking devices installed in all vehicles and also envelops many connecting roads to the highway.

US citizens will be forced to adopt a de-facto national identification card and have their freedom of mobility defined by behavioral fealty to the government under proposals set to derive from NAFTA superhighway toll road systems and the implementation of the North American Union.

Sal Costello, founder of TexasTollParty.com, an organization committed to fighting the implementation of the international toll roads, joined Alex Jones on his nationally syndicated KLBJ show Sunday to discuss Macquarie's buyout of toll road critical newspapers.

"This issue is about a foreign corporation coming in and it's about editorial independence, it's buying these newspapers, dozens of them, and they've had hundreds of stories over the past couple of years slamming the Trans Texas Corridor," said Costello.

"They've been very vocal in educating their communities all over Texas - so you have these newspapers saying there's something wrong here it stinks," said Costello, characterizing the newspaper buyout as an act of desperation on behalf of Macquarie.

"These newspapers have been very vocal and this one corporation comes in and buys them up, buys the whole news group, which is dozens of them, and basically this kills editorial independence."

Host Alex Jones wondered aloud that if foreign corporations out of Spain and Australia can just wade in and buy up large swathes of newspapers then what would stop a notoriously censorship happy nation like Communist China doing the same? He cited former World Bank economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, who stated that the process of foreign corporations buying up U.S. infrastructure and media was part of the globalization endgame, where the America literally goes into receivership to other countries.



"Set aside the fact that they're foreign, that makes it worse, but let's say that they weren't foreign, let's say that the newspapers were trashing for example Kodak for some horrible thing they're doing and Kodak comes in and buys up all the papers, it's still wrong," said Costello, characterizing the process as criminal racketeering.

"It shows how dirty these special interests are but the folks that really pay for this in the long run is us because what they're really doing is they're after our land, they're after our roads and they're after our water."

Costello said that the only reason major newspapers are starting to report on the toll roads and highlighting the extortion tactics being employed to purchase them was because of the noise being made by the smaller media outlets, a chorus of dissent that will now be silenced once Macquarie's purchase is completed.

Jones said that the behavior of the foreign corporations involved was "off the charts" in buying the newspapers when one considers the vast public opposition to international and existing toll roads, which in some polls runs as high as 97 per cent.

He elaborated in saying that the international toll roads were the funding mechanism for the globalization, the North American Union and the destruction of U.S. sovereignty and issued a rallying call for the entire program to be defeated.

"Huge numbers of Texans will have to be moved off their homes, off their farms, off their ranches so that this foreign corporation can come in and profit," remarked Costello.