Chertoff May Void Judge's Order to Halt Border Fence

AzStarNet.com reports:

The nation's top security official may use his power to unilaterally trump a federal court order halting construction of a fence on a stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is weighing whether to invoke a section of federal law that allows him to exempt border construction projects from any law, his press aide, Russ Knocke, told Capitol Media Services. That includes requirements for studies on environmental impacts of federally funded projects.

The move would not be unprecedented: Chertoff used the power at least twice since it was granted.

In 2005 he decided to build fencing near San Diego without conducting environmental studies. And in January he issued a waiver from all laws for a project along the edge of the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range in Southwestern Arizona.

The possibility of Chertoff again exempting his agency from environmental laws comes days after a federal judge in Washington stopped construction of a nearly two-mile stretch of fence at the foot of the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area southeast of Tucson. The conservation area, designated by Congress in 1988, is described on the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Web site as ecologically "one of the most important riparian areas in the United States."

The restraining order gives two environmental groups time to convince Judge Ellen Huvelle that plans for vehicle barriers in the river's floodway and washes leading into it will cause erosion and sedimentation that will harm the environment and affect species dependent on the river.

Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club also contend the BLM, which controls the area, did not seek public input on the project in performing an environmental assessment that took just three weeks. They contend the BLM should have prepared a more formal environmental impact statement.

Chertoff, however, can make the lawsuit, and judge's ruling, disappear simply by declaring the project exempt from the law the groups used to sue.

Knocke said Chertoff believes the lawsuit is without merit, saying the BLM's assessment concluded the project would not harm the area.

"We care about the border environment as much as anyone," Knocke said. "But when weighing a lizard in the balance with human lives, this border infrastructure project is the obvious choice."

Attorneys for Chertoff also argue that environmental damage from illegal border crossers is greater than anything that would occur from the barriers.

Nothing short of congressional action could stop Chertoff from exempting the San Pedro project from the environmental laws if he decides to do so.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., whose district includes the river, does not support repeal of Chertoff's power.

"Border security has to be a top concern in a state like this," said C.J. Karamargin, Giffords' press aide. He said the congresswoman believes federal officials "should have the tools they need to do the job."

Bob Dreher, vice president for conservation law for Defenders of Wildlife, said what might stop Chertoff from exempting the project from federal laws is, "They have to do, I think, the politically costly thing of publicly saying, 'We're above the law.' " He said that might be what kept Chertoff from waiving environmental laws for a similar border project in Texas.

While Giffords is unwilling to repeal the law, she is willing to apply pressure.

She is one of five members of Congress who wrote Chertoff last week asking him to delay further work on the project, prepare a full environmental impact statement and conduct public hearings, something not done before construction began late last month.

"Our communities support safe and secure borders and simply ask for adequate time to share their concerns with their government, as they have a right to do," reads the letter signed by Giffords as well as Rep. Raúl Grijalva, also a Tucson Democrat. Three members of the Texas congressional delegation also signed that letter.

In his January decision dealing with the Goldwater bombing range, a military training ground, Chertoff declared that the high number of people entering the country illegally through that stretch of the desert create an immediate need to build not just fencing but also vehicle barriers, towers, sensors and cameras.

That, he said, justified exemptions from the National Environmental Policy Act — the law being used by the two environmental groups to sue over the San Pedro project — as well as the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Wilderness Act, the National Historic Preservation Act and the National Wildlife Refuge Systems Administration Act.

Chertoff also exempted the project from another law, which requires his agency to follow certain administrative procedures.

Bush a 'Windshield Cowboy,' Mexico's Fox says

Former president's book dishes on world leaders

The Arizona Republic reports:

George W. Bush is a "windshield cowboy" who doesn't like horses. Fidel Castro has a strange habit of pulling on his ear after every bite of food. In Nigeria, its former president was likely to grab your buttocks in greeting.

Known for his tactlessness while in office, former Mexican President Vicente Fox has written a gossipy, English-language autobiography that has right-wing U.S. commentators buzzing and Mexicans rolling their eyes.

Revolution of Hope, which hit bookstores Thursday, is a departure for Mexico's former presidents, most of whom were party bureaucrats with a history of keeping their heads down and their mouths shut.

Fox's book shoots from the hip. He calls Bush "quite simply the cockiest guy I have ever met in my life," needles him on his "grade-school level" Spanish and says the U.S. president seemed afraid to ride a horse during a visit to Fox's ranch.

On more serious subjects, Fox says Bush tried to railroad him into supporting the Iraq invasion. He complains at length about U.S. immigration policy and says the United States is abandoning its free-trade roots.

"You don't write a book to please everybody, you write a book to tell the truth," Fox said during an interview with The Arizona Republic last week at his ranch near León, Mexico. "I wanted to go behind the scenes and convey the feeling that presidents are human beings, after all."

Other Mexican presidents have written memoirs, including two leaders from the 1980s and 1990s, Carlos Salinas de Gortari and Miguel de la Madrid. But such books were usually pretty dry, said Maria Gabriela Vázquez, a library-studies expert at Mexico's National School of Library and Archives Management.

That could be because all of Mexico's presidents from 1929 to 2000 were handpicked by their predecessor from the ranks of the all-powerful Institutional Revolutionary Party. In that system, discretion and loyalty were the main job requirements.

"It's not often that someone as clumsy as Fox expounds in word and print," Vázquez said.

But Fox says the furor over his snarkier musings - the book also says Bush struts like he's "carrying a watermelon under each arm" - ignores the book's bigger themes of free trade, migration and extending prosperity across the Western Hemisphere.

Fox recounted how his grandfather, an American from Cincinnati, came to Mexico to seek his fortune in the 1890s.

Joseph Fox worked his way up from night watchman at a carriage factory to prosperous plantation owner. He never learned Spanish.

"Here's my grandfather, coming from Cincinnati without a penny in his pocket, seeking his American Dream," Fox said. "That says something about the universality of immigration."

The book, co-written with Fox adviser Rob Allyn, deals at length with Fox's childhood, including the year he spent at a high school in Wisconsin. It traces his career as he rose to become the head of Coca-Cola Mexico, then quit to help rescue the family's farming businesses. And it follows his political rise from reluctant activist to governor of Guanajuato state, then the first opposition president in 71 years.

That's where Fox shows his gossipy side, cheerfully riffing about the rich and powerful he met as president.

Castro likes to drink buffalo milk, he writes. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has "Energizer Bunny hyperactivity." Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo once "proceeded to grasp me firmly by the buttocks" in a traditional greeting.

And here's Fox on seeing former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev's birthmark in person: "It's a little like your first view of the Golden Gate bridge. . . . You think, 'Wow, it really looks like that.' "

Fox also confesses his "gift of the gaffe," which often got him into trouble as president. The book offers a belated apology for a 2005 comment about American Blacks that infuriated the Revs. Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and other activists.

Fox devotes an entire chapter to how Bush lobbied him for Mexico's vote as the U.N. Security Council mulled a measure authorizing the invasion of Iraq. Fox says Bush was stubborn and high-handed as he tried to get developing countries behind the invasion.

"He wanted my support, I refused to commit it, and we hung up the phone," Fox says of a March 12, 2003, conversation with Bush. Eventually, the United States withdrew the Security Council motion rather than see it voted down.

Faced with a Congress controlled by rival parties, Fox failed to achieve many of his promised reforms. The book glosses over those failures, as well as the uneasy relationship between Fox and his successor, President Felipe Calderón.

In his own autobiography, The Disobedient Son, Calderón accuses Fox of forcing him to resign as secretary of energy in 2004 after Calderón revealed he wanted to run for president.

"He knew the rules," Fox told The Republic. "The rules were not to campaign for president when he had a government post."

Fox says he will continue to speak his mind. He is building a $20 million presidential library and think tank and says he plans to write a book about religion, a taboo subject in Mexican politics.

"I won't stop writing and saying what I feel," Fox said. "If you stop moving, if you restrain yourself, you die."

Court: Mexican Trucks Program To Proceed

The AP reports:

The Bush administration can go ahead with a pilot program to allow as many as 100 Mexican trucking companies to freely haul their cargo anywhere within the U.S. for the next year, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied a request made by the Teamsters union, the Sierra Club and the nonprofit Public Citizen to halt the program.

The appeals court ruled the groups have not satisfied the legal requirements to immediately stop what the government is calling a "demonstration project," but can continue to argue their case.

The trucking program is scheduled to begin Thursday.

In court papers filed this week, the Teamsters and Sierra Club argued there won't be enough oversight of the drivers coming into the U.S. from Mexico.

They also argued that public safety would be endangered in a hasty attempt by the government to comply with parts of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The trade agreement requires that all roads in the United States, Mexico and Canada to be opened to carriers from all three countries.

Canadian trucking companies have full access to U.S. roads, but Mexican trucks can travel only about 20 miles inside the country at certain border crossings, such as ones in San Diego and El Paso, Texas.

The government contends that further delays in the project will strain the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico.

In court filings this week, government lawyers said that the program is an important interim step in fulfilling the United States' obligations under NAFTA. They said that Mexican trucking companies would have to meet the same regulations governing U.S. trucking companies, and that in some cases the requirements are stricter.

Representatives of the Teamsters did not immediately return calls late Friday from The Associated Press, and a Sierra Club spokeswoman declined to comment immediately.

The program is designed to study whether opening the U.S.-Mexico border to all trucks could be done safely.

Congress ordered the Department of Transportation this year to launch a pilot program to investigate the issue. As the start date neared, the Teamsters and the Sierra Club claimed the public wasn't given enough opportunity to comment on a program that, as proposed now, won't yield statistically valid results.

The government says it has imposed rigorous safety protocols in the program, including drug and alcohol testing for drivers done by U.S. companies. In addition, law enforcement officials have stepped up nationwide enforcement of a law that's been on the books since the 1970s requiring interstate truck and bus drivers to have a basic understanding of written and spoken English.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the Department of Transportation agency charged with managing the program, said Friday that the court's decision is "welcome news for U.S. truck drivers anxious to compete south of the border and U.S. consumers eager to realize the savings of more efficient shipments with one of our largest trading partners."

However, the agency said it must still wait for final report by the inspector general and for Mexico to begin giving U.S. trucking companies reciprocal access before the program can begin.

The Teamsters had complained that the government has provided not details of the reciprocal agreement.

The Flow Of Illegal Immigrants To The U.S.

Rich Land, Poor People: Exports vs. Food Security in Mexico

The real reason for the stream of flight northward across the border,
is that post-NAFTA the Mexican Government has leased or sold out all
the ejidos - communally owned farmlands - to American Agribusiness.
NAFTA broke the people's ability to farm. Don't blame them for trying
to survive. Global fascism has stolen their farmlands. They can't
feed themselves anymore. If you don't like Mexican immigrants then
stop buying fruits and vegetables out of season and start buying
locally. Support your local farm markets.

As Oakley Biesanz, Octavio Madigan Ruiz, Amy Sanders, and Meredith Sommers write:

Global trade is bringing U.S. and Canadian consumers a year-round supply of fresh flowers; fresh and processed fruits such as tomatoes, melons, pineapples, strawberries, and mangos; and fresh vegetables such
as artichokes, cucumbers, cabbage, cauliflower, green beans, peppers, broccoli, snow peas, and asparagus. All these are flown in daily from Mexico. In addition, there are the traditional exports that feed Mexico's northern neighbors, such as sugar, coffee, bananas and cattle. During winter and spring, more than half the fresh vegetables consumed in the United States come from Mexico.

The growth of these exports has bittersweet outcomes, depending on one's perspective. These products have proven very profitable for foreign investors, transnational food corporations, and many large-scale Mexican farmers. These exports both satisfy the appetites of North American consumers and create jobs in Mexico. On the other hand, these exports have serious economic, personal, and environmental effects, and cause grave problems for small-scale farmers, or campesinos.

Mexico's Dual Agricultural Structure
Mexico has two agricultural systems, operating parallel to each other. Producing foods as cash crops for export is the primary goal of large-scale farmers. Although only about 15% of Mexico's land is arable, or suitable for cultivation, 88% of the arable land is used for cultivation of export crops and for grazing cattle. What large-scale farmers produce is determined by what brings the highest prices in international markets. Since the 1970s, most large-scale farmers have been producing the non-traditional crops listed above. They sell to transnational corporations that process or directly transport the products to warehouses and eventually to grocers.

Among those who benefit from the large-scale agricultural system are transnational corporations such as Del Monte, Green Giant, Heinz, United Brands, Castle and Cooke, PepsiCo, Ralston Purina, Campbell's, General Foods, Beatrice Foods, Gerber, Kellogg, Kraft and Nestle.

Rarely do these corporations own land. Instead, they contract with large-scale farmers. The corporations have capital to invest in technology, seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, transport systems, and marketing.

The other agriculture system involves about 60% of Mexico's farmers who have access to the remaining 12% of arable land. This includes individual small-scale farms that produce for local markets, and farms known as ejidos. Ejidos are a system of community-owned lands which, in some cases, have been owned "in trust" by communities for centuries.

Ejido lands were protected from sale as a result of the 1910 Mexican Revolution. However, a significant amount of ejido land passed into private hands during the 1980s and 1990s due to extreme credit pressures and changes to the Mexican Constitution. These constitutional changes allow, for the first time since the Revolution, the sale of ejido land to private owners. The changes were a crucial concession by Mexico to ensure the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993.

Ejido lands rarely have been more than subsistence farms, where corn and beans are grown for the consumption of campesinos and their families. They have, however, provided a way for poor families to at least provide basic grains for themselves. With the ongoing loss of ejidos to private producers and the general inability of campesinos to gain access to other arable land, there is a growing problem of malnutrition in Mexico. The World Bank estimates that half of all rural Mexican children are malnourished.

Furthermore, small-scale farmers have considerable difficulties competing with large-scale farms because they lack access to money for seeds, water, transportation and information required for success in agribusiness. They tend to be unfamiliar with non-traditional crops and production technology. Gaining entry into the export market is very difficult for small farmers, if that is what they choose to do.