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We’re scrolling through the MEXUS Compact on Competitiveness, when zingo, up comes the subhead “Energy Security”. Oh boy, here we go again. Don’t forget to check out the “leadership” list at the end:

With the fourth largest crude oil reserves in the Western Hemisphere, Mexico nonetheless imported $2.4 billion of gasoline and $1.5 billion of natural gas in 2003. This staggering reality, the result of Constitutional requirements that restrict foreign investment in the hydrocarbons sector, was exacerbated in 2004 by higher import volumes and
international prices.
As a result, Mexico’s energy sector, central to the country’s economy and a legitimate source of national pride, faces the challenge within the framework of its Constitution of drawing substantial foreign investment flows to modernize, expand, and improve production.

Increased production would help Mexico meet its growing domestic demand for energy, while allowing increased exports to augment the inflow of revenues
and to realize corresponding benefits. Without making conditions more attractive for private investors in the near term, PEMEX, Mexico’s national oil company will be unable to sustain its role as the primary underwriter of Mexico’s annual budgetary needs over
time.

Additionally, unless Mexico finds cost-effective means to raise production, overall security and competitiveness within North America will be impacted.

From the MEXUS “Compact on Competitiveness”

The business community respects and deeply appreciates the political sensitivities toward private investment in the Mexican state-owned energy sector, even as we believe that Mexico would greatly benefit by liberalizing its energy sector.

By partnering with US and Canadian energy companies, Mexico can position itself to meet domestic demand as well as increase its reserves and revenues while contributing to growth in energy dependent sectors.

US and Canadian energy companies are interested in becoming actively engaged in Mexico’s energy market and are willing to invest much needed financial, management, and technological resources to increase energy availability and efficiency in North America.

Specifically, recent claims to vast deepwater oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico could be a boost to the country’s total energy output and national income. Tapping into these new sources, however, will require Mexican Congressional
approval and increased cooperation with foreign companies that have the technical and financial strength required to undergo such complicated explorations. Without such cooperation, Mexico will be unable to reap the full benefits of deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

As well, US and Canadian companies tend to promote a culture of philanthropy including support for schools, hospitals, and the arts that would bring benefits to Mexico beyond sector-specific investments. The first step would be to create an appropriate investment framework to allow for such foreign investment on market terms.

Appendix I
US-Council, MEXUS Leadership Team

ChevronTexaco Corporation
Eastman Kodak Company
First Data Corporation
Ford Motor Company
Kissinger McLarty Associates
Manatt Jones Global Strategies
Merck & Company
MetLife
Miller & Chevalier Chartered
Nextel International/NII Holdings
The Procter & Gamble Company

The views expressed in this report are the collective opinions of individuals representing companies
associated with the US-Mexico Business Committee and/or the Council of the Americas. They are not
necessarily the views of the companies themselves.

Greetings all. The very latest monthly information on the criminal enforcement of immigration cases shows that January prosecutions were almost 18% higher than they were in December and over 100% higher than they were five years ago. TRAC’s January Monthly Update Bulletin also provides specific data on the most frequently used laws, busiest districts
and most active judges. To see this timely report go to http://trac.syr.edu/immigration and click on “Reports and Bulletins.”

Also note the two reports on Protecting the Borders. Both provide insights about President Bush’s immigration plan. One report, for example,
shows that in the last ten years Border Patrol agents have more than doubled but “apprehensions” of aliens declined by about ten percent. A second report shows that Border Patrol staff increased at a faster rate
under President Clinton than in the Bush years. Both reports have sector-by-sector data.

David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
Syracuse University

Reviewing the Mar del Pata Plan of Action forged at the Fourth Summit of the Americas in Argentina last year (Nov. 2005) we find the two footnotes most instructive. In both cases, the USA delegation refuses to honor the precedence of international rights for workers and migrant workers.
For example, here is paragraph 18 as agreed to by the Summit of the Americas, emphasis added:

18. To adopt measures to encourage the full and effective exercise of the rights of all workers, including migrant workers, as well as application of core labor standards, such as those contained in the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and its follow-up, adopted in 1998. Explore ways for the ILO to provide technical advisory services to member states to help them accomplish that objective.

In the following footnote to paragraph 18, the USA prefers the authority of state law to “core labor standards” of the ILO. Instead of “full and effective exercise” of international rights, the USA prefers to “promote respect”:

Paragraph 18: The United States reserves on this paragraph and prefers instead the following text: “Protect and promote the rights of all workers, including migrant workers in accordance with the legal framework of each country, and applicable international law, and promote respect for the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and its follow-up. Explore ways for the ILO to provide technical advisory services to Member States to help them accomplish that objective.”

And here is the summit’s paragraph on migrant workers with emphasis added:

To strengthen constructive dialogue on international migration, with a view to full recognition of human rights of migrant workers, reduce their vulnerable conditions at work, as well as advocate effective compliance of the principle of equality and non-discrimination at work in accordance with international instruments in this area and, thereby, ensure that migration is an orderly process that benefits all parties and boosts productivity at the global level.

Compare this to the second and last footnote attached to the summit plan by the USA:

Paragraph 20: The United States notes that this language was discussed in connection with the declaration and consensus was achieved, including the United States, on the basis of the following language: “increase Inter-American cooperation and dialogue to reduce and discourage undocumented migration as well as to promote migration processes in accordance with the legal system of each state and applicable international human rights law.”

Activists from the USA who would argue for the precedence of international rights for border affairs, workers, and migrant workers may argue that they have the rest of the Americas on their side. In this case, where do real Americans stand?

By Jose Angel Gutierrez

Originally published en espanol in La Estrella newspaper of Fort Worth, reprinted by permission of author.

I read several newspapers recently and pieced together a growing pattern across the country: deportation raids against Mexicans are with us again. The Border Patrol is not raiding plants and employers looking for illegal Asians or Africans or Canadians. The Border Patrol is only hunting for Mexicans. It is the hot topic.

This is nothing new but it is alarming as always. The human cost is terrible on the person deported, family, relatives, and especially children. The US has recruited Mexicans with one hand dating back to the beginning of 1910s. The US welcomed Mexican labor coming across fleeing the Revolution of 1910. The Border Patrol was not even in existence then. It came about in 1925.
In the 1920’s Mexicans were deported because they were forming labor unions in the US. Labor organizing in the US means communism to the business people and their hired politicians. US Attorney General Palmer deported many Mexicans in what he called the Palmer Raids.

During the Depression of the 1930s Mexicans were once again deported because we were taking jobs from “Americans” and asking for welfare. Everyone was looking for a job and welfare then but we were the scapegoats. When World War II broke out, the US needed labor and the Bracero Program began in 1942. We were welcomed then provided we worked like slaves for cheap wages and no benefits. The program lasted until 1964.

In the middle of the Bracero Program, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the deportation of Mexicans once again in the 1950s. The program was a military excercise called Operation Wetback. In the 1960s President Kennedy created the Alliance for Progress for Latin America and recognized all of us as Americans. In the US, white people believe they are the only Americans. But the Cuban Revolution broke out and again Mexicans were pushed out in favor of Cubans coming to the US.

In the 1970s President Reagan sent troops in to Central America and many refugees came to the US. In 1986 the US Congress attempted to legalize some immigrants and deport those that were not eligible. Since then, the Border Patrol has been on constant raid posture.

I am alarmed not at the deportations but at the new contract to build detention centers given to Halliburton Corporation, the company Vice President Cheney worked for before this position. The Halliburton subsidiary, KBR has received $385 million dollars to build more detention centers.

The press release from http://www.Halliburton.com reads: “the contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment exisiting ICE Detention and Removal Operations Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S. or to support the rapid deployment of new programs.”

In the middle of World War II, the US government ordered the arrest and detention of thousands Americans of Japanese ancestry because they might be disloyal to the US. The US government did not arrest Italians, Spaniards, or Germans and they were at war also. I wonder if the “rapid deployment of new programs” is an election plan before November to conduct massive raids and roundup thousands of Mexicans in a get-tough display of power?

By Greg Moses

CounterPunch / OpEdNews

These three sentences prove why Generals are not paid to determine political policy:

“The border should not be militarized,” said National Guard Chief Steven Blum at Thursday’s press conference in Austin. “We made a conscious choice not to use the National Guard as a police force. We should intervene to save lives, not to take them.”

If the plain speaking General were paid to make policy, we would stop at the first sentence and scrap the deployment of National Guard to the border. But there’s more.

In the logical transition that Blum makes from police to military between sentences two and three, his propositions make it seem like the real function of a police force is to take lives not save them. Again, this kind of plain speaking would have policy consequences quite different from the ones being made by politicos. Especially if we add to the consequences of police work the entire network of jails and prisons, we could ask, are the police saving lives or taking them?

The third sentence on its own terms suggests sending the Guard to rescue people from the border desert, preventing the summer death toll from climbing with the heat. But as if to interrupt the startling revolution inaugurated by his logic, the General gives us three more sentences to hear.

“This is not a military mission,” Blum said. “This is not militarizing. This is not an invasion.”

Here, with his thrice repeated invocation of the great Hegelian “this”, the General switches his propositions from universals to existentials, proving Hegel’s thesis that “this” can be anything, anywhere, anytime.

In “this” the General speaks just the facts: he is not commanding a military mission, his troops are not militarizing anything, and (presumably since the Guard will keep to this side of the Rio Bravo, etc.) this is not an invasion.

Is it the general’s fault that he is speaking exactly from where he has no real business being? And isn’t it only a matter of time before this happens to any other general in the USA?

Added Paul McHale, the Pentagon’s assistant defense secretary for Homeland Defense: “We would send the wrong message to our friends and neighbors to the south to have a large, visible buildup along the border.”

Back to universals. A border buildup would send the wrong signal. You have to supply what follows. Are we not sending troops to the border? Yes we are. Are they not visible or large? In this question lies the crossroads to our logical challenge.

If the military force is visible and large, it will send the wrong signal to “our friends to the south.” If we are not sending the wrong signal, “our friends” should try to see it as invisible and small (and there is a case to be made for this along a line that stretches a couple thousand miles.)

But the military deployment of 6,000 troops, half of whom will stand guard along the border, must be visible and large enough for something. Otherwise, why is the Pentagon’s man standing here? So let’s leave aside for now the likelihood that we are sending the wrong signals to our friends.

If the troops being deployed by the Pentagon are not police, and if they are not military, then what are they large and visible enough to accomplish? And however we answer the question, don’t we already have the marks of a demoralizing mission from a military point of view? Another nonmission with a nonpurpose that troops will be ordered to do?

In fact, the troops will be large and visible enough to stand as uniformed symbols of something. But what? What is being signified in this pure surface of a nonmission in uniform? Collective fear? State identity? Here we begin to see a psy-ops borderland where (in the language of Slavoj Zizek) the real meets reality right along the line where we make our existence into what we need to be.

To answer the question of what this mission is, one must ask the egos of the people for whom this signifying is taking place.

Which brings us to the saddest part nearly, because the saddest thing isn’t the need of millions to see this pure image of the uniform standing between self and the Other. One hardly expects to be free of “friends and neighbors” such as these, who know that they need it.

The saddest part is the indifference of millions for whom, even in times instructive as these, the haunting by this pure, uniformed symbol only serves to ask why we have failed to speak the truth: you’re dead, now go away! Thanks to Austin American-Statesman reporter Mark Lisheron for these quotes taken from the Friday paper. They echo KVUE’s live television report from Camp Mabry: the military is not militarizing.