Mexico ‘Stunned’ After Trump Approves Border Wall

Trump’s orders give the Department of Homeland Security six months to plan how to build the wall, which will be initially funded by money from Congress.

Staff | Torstar, Jan 25 2017

Fear and humiliation turned to anger and betrayal Wednesday in Mexico, as U.S. President Donald Trump made good on his campaign threats against a neighbour and ally of nearly 100 years.

Trump signed two executive orders Wednesday, the first authorizing the construction of his promised wall along the Mexican border, and the second blocking federal grants to so-called sanctuary cities that don’t arrest illegal immigrants. The orders also call for 10,000 additional immigration officers and 5,000 Border Patrol agents.

The move, which is a dramatic shift in U.S. immigration policy, was not unexpected, but the timing caught Mexico off guard, coming just days before President Enrique Pena Nieto is due to meet Trump at the White House.

“We are stunned,” said Agustin Barrios Gomez, a former Mexican congressman and co-chair for North America of the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations. “There is a consensus building that we don’t want to negotiate under threat. American national security and prosperity directly depend on a stable and co-operative Mexico.”

Mexicans across the political spectrum called for Pena, who has never agreed to pay for the wall, to cancel his Jan. 31 visit. So far the leader, whose approval ratings are below 25 per cent, has opted for conciliation over confrontation.

Trump’s orders give the Department of Homeland Security six months to deliver a report detailing how to build the wall, which will be initially funded by money from Congress.

Trump continues to insist Mexico will repay the estimated $8-billion cost of the 1,600-kilometre wall through a variety of means, including increasing fees on visa applications, charging more for border crossing cards and/or taxing remittances of Mexican Americans.

The second order broadens the definition of who immigration agents can apprehend and deport within the U.S., allowing agents to adopt a broader definition of “criminal.”

Although Pena didn’t officially respond Wednesday, top-ranking officials threatened to pull out of negotiations over the reworking of the North American Free Trade Agreement if Trump continues to insist Mexico fund the wall project.

“There are very clear red lines that have to be drawn,” Ildefonso Guajardo, secretary of the economy, told Televisa on Tuesday. It’s a question of respecting sovereignty.” Guajardo travelled to Washington on Wednesday with Mexico’s foreign minister.

Vicente Fox, a former Mexican president, was more forthright, tweeting to Trump’s press secretary: “Sean Spicer, I’ve said this to @realDonaldTrump and now I’ll tell you: Mexico is not going to pay for that f—ing wall.”

Jorge Castaneda, a former foreign minister, told the New York Times: “It’s like we are Charlie Brown and they are Lucy with the football. Pena is a weak president in a weak country at a weak moment, but he has to find a way to get some official backbone.”

The U.S. may have as much to lose as Mexico if the countries stop co-operating on trade and national security, including drug smuggling and migration.

NAFTA, which includes Canada, is the world’s largest trade agreement and the region is an interdependent global supply chain where parts often cross borders several times while products are assembled. More than six million jobs in the U.S. depend on Mexico. Fully 40 cents of every dollar the U.S. imports from Mexico comes from content produced in America.

Mexico would have liked to present a common front with Canada in any NAFTA renegotiations, but that is unlikely to happen, say experts. Canada does not share the same border and security issues.

“Canada doesn’t see common cause with Mexico and has a long history of looking out for itself,” noted Ted Alden, a trade expert with the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Failure to Adjust: How Americans Got Left Behind in the Global Economy.

Canada also does not have a trade surplus with the U.S., while Mexico does.

Trump has not clearly explained how tearing up NAFTA will create jobs. Although some manufacturing jobs were lost to free trade, many were eliminated because of automation and improved productivity.

The U.S. should have focused more on retraining workers, cutting corporate taxes, investing in infrastructure and helping workers hurt by import competition, Alden said.

 [SOURCE]

U.S., Canada Ban Offshore Drilling in Arctic Waters

Obama is making a last-ditch effort to sustain his environmental agenda by restricting offshore drilling. (Yuri Gripas/Reuters)

U.S. President Barack Obama uses 1950s-era law called the Outer Continental Shelf Act

The Associated Press: Dec 20, 2016

President Barack Obama on Tuesday designated the bulk of U.S.-owned waters in the Arctic Ocean and certain areas in the Atlantic Ocean as indefinitely off limits to future oil and gas leasing.

The White House announced the actions in conjunction with the government of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, which also placed a moratorium on new oil and gas leasing in its Arctic waters, subject to periodic review.

“Today, President Obama and Prime Minister Trudeau are proud to launch actions ensuring a strong, sustainable and viable Arctic economy and ecosystem, with low-impact shipping, science based management of marine resources, and free from the future risks of offshore oil and gas activity,” the statement read.

U.S. President Barack Obama is designating the bulk of U.S.-owned waters in the Arctic Oceanand certain areas in the Atlantic Ocean as indefinitely off limits to future oil and gas leasing. (Elaine Thompson/Associated Press)

The move helps put some finishing touches on Obama’s environmental legacy while also testing president-elect Donald Trump’s promise to unleash the nation’s untapped energy reserves.

Obama is making use of an arcane provision in a 1953 law to ban offshore leases in the waters permanently. The statute says that “the president of the United States may, from time to time, withdraw from disposition any of the unleased lands of the outer Continental Shelf.”

Environmental groups hope the ban, despite relying on executive powers, will be difficult for future presidents to reverse. The White House said it’s confident the president’s directive will withstand legal challenge and said the language of the statute provides no authority for subsequent presidents to “unwithdraw” waters from future lease sales.

The Atlantic waters placed off limits to new oil and gas leasing, which hold the volume equivalent of 31 Grand Canyons,  stretches off the coast of New England south to Virginia.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tours a tugboat in Vancouver harbour on Tuesday. The federal Liberal government says Canada will ban offshore and gas licensing in Arctic waters. (Jonathan Hayward/Canadian Press)

The administration cited environmental concerns to justify the moratorium. The president also issued a statement noting the minimal level of fuel production occurring in the Arctic. Obama said just 0.1 per cent of offshore crude production came from the Arctic in 2015, and at current oil prices, significant production would not occur in future decades.

“That’s why looking forward, we must continue to focus on economic empowerment for Arctic communities beyond this one sector,” Obama said.

Still, industry officials objected to Obama’s proclamation, calling it “last minute political rhetoric.”

“Instead of building on our nation’s position as a global energy leader, today’s unilateral mandate could put America back on a path of energy dependence for decades to come,” said Dan Naatz of the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

In issuing a permanent ban, Obama appears to be trying to tie the hands of his successor. Trump has vowed a domestic energy revolution and is filling his cabinet with nominees deeply opposed to Obama’s environmental and climate change actions.

Environmental groups were calling for a permanent ban even before the presidential election, but Trump’s victory has provided greater urgency for them and for businesses that rely on tourism and fishing. Trump has said he intends to use all available fuel reserves for energy self-sufficiency — and that it’s time to open up offshore drilling.

“This decision will help protect existing lucrative coastal tourism and fishing businesses from offshore drilling, which promises smaller, short-lived returns and threatens coastal livelihoods,” said Jacqueline Savitz, a senior vice-president at the advocacy group, Oceana.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/obama-ban-offshore-drilling-arctic-atlantic-1.3905384

 

North Dakota First US State To Legalize Weaponized Police Drones

North Dakota drones armed with ‘less lethal’ weapons

Revolution News

Thanks to a last-minute push by a pro-police lobbyist, it is now legal for law enforcement in North Dakota to fly drones armed with ‘less lethal’ weapons such as rubber bullets, tear gas, tasers, sound cannons and pepper spray.

Less lethal weapons can kill. At least 39 people have been killed by police Tasers in 2015 so far, according to The Guardian. Bean bags, rubber bullets, and flying tear gas canisters have also killed and maimed people in the U.S. and abroad.

When State Rep. Rick Becker introduced H.B. 1328, the law both banned weaponized drones and established a procedure for law enforcement to seek a warrant before using drones in searches. Only the warrant requirement survived.

After the state officially signed Becker’s original bill into law back in April, the state house committee then allowed North Dakota Peace Officer’s Association lobbyist Bruce Burkett to amend HB 1328. Burkett’s amendment reversed the original bill’s course on outlawing the weaponization of drones, instead changing the bill’s language to allow drones to carry “less than lethal” weapons.

“This is one I’m not in full agreement with,” Becker said at a hearing in March, The Daily Beast reported. “In my opinion there should be a nice, red line: drones should not be weaponized. Period.”

“When you’re not on the ground, and you’re making decisions, you’re sort of separate,” Becker added. “Depersonalized.”

The American Civil Liberties Union argues that police drones are a new kind of threat to that compromise between security and liberty. The group supports laws to restrict law enforcement’s use of them, and makes a compelling case that absent such restraints the technology is fundamentally at odds with the Bill of Rights.

In April Police in northern India began using drones that fire pepper spray on people who protest. In the UK the CAA says that drones can’t be flown within 150 metres of a congested area or any open-air gathering of more than 1,000 people. Nor can they be flown within 50 metres of any vehicle or person who isn’t flying the aircraft. Having drones that fire pepper spray at people would, therefore, not be allowed in the UK.

http://revolution-news.com/first-us-state-legalizes-weaponized-police-drones/

TransCanada Seeking Approval For Another Cross-Border Pipeline

Pipes sit at the TransCanada Corp. Houston Lateral Project pipe yard in Mont Belvieu, Texas, U.S., on Wednesday, March 5, 2014. (Scott Dalton/Bloomberg)

The Globe and Mail

TransCanada Corp. is seeking approval for another cross-border pipeline even as its contentious Keystone XL project languishes in the U.S. political system.

The Calgary-based company this week submitted an application to the U.S. State Department for its $600-million Upland pipeline, a proposal that would bring U.S. crude north at a time Canadian oil production is testing the limits of existing export capacity.

The project is designed, in part, to connect fast-rising crude supplies from North Dakota’s Bakken oil play with the company’s planned Energy East pipeline, which faces mounting opposition in Canada. Initial capacity would be 220,000 barrels per day starting in 2020, rising to 300,000 barrels over time, spokesman Mark Cooper said.

The Upland pipeline requires a presidential permit because it crosses the U.S.-Canada border – a process that has delayed the company’s much larger, $8-billion (U.S.) Keystone XL pipeline for years.

“Upland is about ensuring maximum North American benefits for the energy we produce and making sure it gets to market in the safest, most efficient and environmentally sound way possible,” Mr. Cooper said in an email.

The pipeline would start near Williston, N.D., funneling 70,000 barrels of crude a day of contracted volumes into Energy East at an interconnection in Saskatchewan. The project would also connect with other pipelines within and outside the state.

The $12-billion Energy East pipeline is designed to ship more than one million barrels a day from western oil fields as far as Canada’s East Coast. TransCanada this month delayed the project by at least a year amid concerns a related export terminal in Quebec would harm beluga whales.

 Source: http://fw.to/AiBOh5

Obama intends to quietly kill off Keystone XL bill: White House

Crews work on construction of the TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline near County Road 363 and County Road 357, east of Winona, Texas on Dec. 3, 2012. (AP / The Tyler Morning Telegraph, Sarah A. Miller)

Alexander Panetta, The Canadian Press

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Barack Obama is about to make good on his oft-stated threat to veto legislation to build the Keystone XL pipeline, a spokesman announced Monday.

“I would anticipate that, as we’ve been saying for years, the president would veto that legislation,” Obama spokesman Josh Earnest told a press briefing.

“And he will.”

The Republican-controlled Congress passed the legislation earlier this month, and plans to send it to the president Tuesday. The president then has 10 days to send it back to Congress unsigned — which constitutes a veto.

Earnest said that’s exactly what the president will do. And he’ll do it quietly, without a public event.

“I would not anticipate a lot of drama or fanfare.”

The announcement is a blow to the pipeline’s prospects, but not quite a fatal one. The big Keystone XL decision could come soon, in a separate regulatory process controlled by the president.

Obama has repeatedly said it’s not Congress’s role to approve or reject cross-border infrastructure. The White House says courts have consistently declared that the constitutional responsibility for that belongs to the president, and that the process was most recently spelled out in a 2004 executive order signed by George W. Bush.

The years-long, oft-delayed process is expected to wrap up soon, though the White House has not set a deadline date.

Members of Congress have also mused that if the president both vetoes the pipeline bill and rejects the project through the regulatory process, they’ll come back with another Keystone XL bill that attaches the pipeline to omnibus legislation that the president will be tempted to sign.

Polls show a plurality of Americans support the project.

The sponsor of the Keystone bill announced it would be sent to Obama on Tuesday. Republicans could have sent it a week earlier, before lawmakers left Washington for a one-week recess. But they decided to hold off until this week, forcing Obama to make his decision with his opponents back in town.

“The administration has delayed this important infrastructure project for over six years, despite a series of environmental reviews, all of which conclude that the project will have no significant environmental impact,” said a statement from North Dakota Republican Sen. John Hoeven.

“It has been more than enough time to make a fair decision on the merits of the project… The will of the American people and Congress is clear. I encourage the president to sign this legislation.”

Hoeven issued that statement Monday morning. The White House responded with its veto announcement just after noon.