NAMI News
The latest trinational news.Monday, December 08, 2008
Border security drone flown from Arizona to Canadian border.
Phoenix Business Journal, December 8, 2008 - “The U.S. Customs & Border Patrol has sent a surveillance drone it uses to patrol Arizona’s border with Mexico to the Canadian border for similar work. The federal security agency flew the Predator B drone from Fort Huachuca U.S. Army base in Sierra Vista to Grand Forks, N.D. where it will monitor the U.S./Canadian border.” Read more.
Wildbirds Impacted by Extraction of Tar-Sands Petroleum.
Blogger News Network, December 8, 2008 - “A newly released report details how extraction of tar-sands petroleum is directly impacting populations of wild birds in the boreal forest area of northern Alberta, Canada. “Danger in the Nursery: Impact on Birds of Tar Sands Oil Development in Canada’s Boreal Forest” was released in early December by the Natural Resources Defense Council, Boreal Songbird Initiative and Pembina Institute. The 39-page report identifies several ways in which tar-sand development is affecting populations of a myriad of species ...” Read more.
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Canada’s Dollar Falls on Oil’s Drop to Lowest in Almost 4 Years.
Bloomberg, December 4, 2008 - “Canada’s dollar fell the most in two weeks as oil plummeted and Parliament was suspended at the request of Prime Minister Stephen Harper in an attempt to save his minority government. The currency has weakened 22 percent this year as crude, which accounts for about a tenth of Canada’s export revenue, fell 70 percent since its July 11 peak. The government’s first order of business will be a budget scheduled for Jan. 27, and Harper called on the opposition to work with his administration to help the country’s ailing economy.” Read more.
Environment: Millions of birds at risk from tar sands: report.
Vue Weekly Edmonton, December 4, 2008 - “Millions of birds that depend on the Boreal forest could be lost over the next half-century due to planned tar sands development in northern Alberta, according to a new report. “The Boreal forest tar sands area is incredibly important for birds as a breeding habitat and as a globally important flyway for a great adundance and diversity of wetland-dependent birds,” reads the report. “Unfortunately the rapidly expanding industrial tar sands oil extraction operations increasingly put these birds at risk.” The report, entitled Danger in the Nursery, estimates that between six million and 166 million birds could be lost over the next 30 to 50 years due to a combination of surface mining, landings on toxic tailings ponds and habitat destruction and fragmentation from infrastructure related to in-situ operations.” Read more.
Energy Goals a Moving Target for States.
NY Times Business, December 4, 2008 - “In hopes of slowing global warming and creating “green jobs,” Congress and the incoming administration may soon impose a mandate that the nation get 10 or 15 percent of its electricity from renewable sources within a few years. Yet the experience of states that have adopted similar goals suggests that passing that requirement could be a lot easier than achieving it. The record so far is decidedly mixed: some states appear to be on track to meet energy targets, but others have fallen behind on the aggressive goals they set several years ago.” Read more.
Hospitals Now a Theater in Mexico’s Drug War.
NY Times, December 4, 2008 - “The sedated patient, his bullet wounds still fresh from a shootout the night before, was lying on a gurney in the intensive care unit of a prestigious private hospital here late last month with intravenous fluids dripping into his arm. Suddenly, steel-faced gunmen barged in and filled him with even more bullets. This time, he was dead for sure.” Read more.
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Canadian Ministers Get Cold Shoulder in Washington.
Embassy Magazine [CA], December 3, 2008 - “Between financial and auto bail-out fever and the intense interest in Obama cabinet appointments, it was not altogether surprising that the first forays of senior Canadian officials to “transitional” Washington were duds. Fortunately, the President-elect’s early cabinet selections give hope that Canada-U.S. relations will improve. It was perfectly understandable that Obama chose not to hold parallel meetings with Prime Minister Harper or other heads of state during the Washington G20 summit on November 15, but the poor reception for Federal Industry Minister Tony Clement and Ontario Minister of Economic Development, Michael Bryant a week later was bewildering.” Read more.
Oil, gas companies say credit, not falling prices, worries them most.
DFW Star-Telegram, December 3, 2008 - “Oil and gas companies say the credit crunch is a bigger worry than falling petroleum prices, even though few say they have canceled or significantly delayed exploration projects and even fewer expect to cut field staff, according to a new survey by consultant BDO Seidman. The survey’s findings, collected from 100 chief financial officers at U.S. energy companies, showed that 57 percent of the CFOs ranked tighter access to credit as their biggest financial challenge in 2009, compared with 21 percent who named lower prices and 12 percent who cited the retention of skilled workers. The survey of big multinationals as well as independent producers was taken in October and November, Chicago-based BDO Seidman said.” Read more.
Proposal Ties Economic Stimulus to Energy Plan.
NY Times Politics, December 3, 2008 - “President-elect Barack Obama and leaders in Congress are fashioning a plan to pour billions of dollars into a jobs program to jolt the economy and lay the groundwork for a more energy-efficient one. The details and cost of the so-called green-jobs program are still unclear, but a senior Obama aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a work in progress, said it would probably include the weatherizing of hundreds of thousands of homes, the installation of “smart meters” to monitor and reduce home energy use, and billions of dollars in grants to state and local governments for mass transit and infrastructure projects.” Read more.
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
‘2025’ Report: A World of Resource Strife.
Foreign Policy In Focus, December 2, 2008 - “A new report by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) on the emerging strategic landscape, “Global Trends 2025,” has attracted worldwide attention because it forecasts a future environment in which the United States wields less power than it does today and must contend with a constellation of other, newly ambitious great powers. “Although the United States is likely to remain the single most important actor,” the report notes, “the United States’ relative strength — even in the military realm — will decline and U.S. leverage will become more constrained.” Of all the many revealing findings in the study, this has been the most widely quoted.” Read more.
The Importance of Trade: NAFTA Bolsters U.S. Economy.
Border Trade Alliance [publish date, January 2008, linked here December 2008] - “The second day of 2008 marked the end of the remaining tariffs on agricultural products traded between the United States and Mexico, achieving a remaining objective of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Tri-lateral trade between NAFTA members, the United States, Canada and Mexico has increased dramatically since the 1994 inception of the landmark trade liberalization accord. Despite the success that the North American trade bloc has achieved, U.S. political candidates vying for votes in the contentious presidential primaries have shown lackluster support for NAFTA. Several candidates have remarked that if elected they would revisit the terms of the agreement. While perhaps a popular sentiment politically or at least a deft political strategy of deflecting attention from pressing domestic issues the numbers supporting the importance of trade for the U.S. economy speak for themselves.” Read more.
Great perils of the Great Lakes.
Christian Science Monitor, December 2, 2008 - “On a starry night, the 730-foot Canadian Leader, the last bulk-carrying steamship built on the Great Lakes, slips silently past illuminated buoys near Montreal on a five-day voyage up to Thunder Bay, Ontario, on Lake Superior. After unloading titanium ore at the St. Lawrence River port of Sorel, the ship is proceeding empty toward the upper lakes. With the recent economic downturn, there is less demand for her typical upbound cargo of iron ore pellets. “ Read more.
Monday, December 01, 2008
Mexico Has Made Big Strides on Economic Policy.
Wall St Journal, December 1, 2008 - “Much has been written about the “cultural” divide between Norte Americanos and Latinos. But with the burst of the asset bubble, we’ve learned that politicians, north and south, react similarly in the face of economic crisis. This commonality occurred to me over breakfast in New York last week with Mexico’s minister of finance, Agustin Carstens. The University of Chicago-trained economist was explaining the rationale behind President Felipe Calderón’s “stimulus” package. I kept thinking about President-elect Barack Obama’s promised further spending spree on this side of the border. The Mexican version is not nearly as ambitious but the concept is the same.” Read more.
Calderón’s Legislative Hits and Misses.
Dallas Morning News, December 1, 2008 - “Pension reform: After a grueling fight with government workers’ unions, Mr. Calderón gets his first major reform through Congress, which creates individual retirement accounts for public workers (they had already existed for private workers) in order to save the pension fund from bankruptcy ...” Read more.
Maude Barlow Interview.
The Progressive, December 2008 Issue - “Maude Barlow loves to quote a line of poetry from Gerard Manley Hopkins, “There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.” Born in Nova Scotia, this dynamite advocate for water justice says, “Water is a commons, a public trust, and a human right.” A global water justice movement has emerged to establish water as a right, which can’t be bought or sold for profit. One of the most prominent voices in that movement is Maude Barlow.” Read more.
Note: We have an interview with Maude Barlow here on this website. Click here to listen.
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