“British Columbia’s policy wonk premier headed down to California Thursday where he met with Hollywood action hero Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to plant the first seeds of what’s being billed as an ambitious Pacific Coast green plan. The Los Angeles meeting between Gordon Campbell and the Terminator was a private affair where the two political leaders started to map a strategy for a green summit later this spring in British Columbia. Campbell said the two leaders want to launch a climate change initiative that could potentially include the Canadian and United States governments.”

“Argon Venture Partners, an early-stage venture capital investment firm, has announced the opening of its U.S. and Canada offices in Calgary, Alberta, and Silicon Valley, California. With two senior partner offices, Argon becomes the world’s first cross-border venture capital firm located in the U.S. and Western Canada. Argon will focus on early-stage opportunities in information technology, including semiconductors, systems, software infrastructure and related services. The firm has created unique relationships on both sides of the border. In Western Canada, Argon owns one of the top angel organizations, and has established unique relationships with technology transfer offices and government agencies.”

At least that is what the El Paso Times of Texas thinks:

San Diego: A 10-foot-high wall snakes along the U.S.-Mexico border south of here, and behind it another fence, steel mesh and even higher. Cameras sit atop 50-foot poles, and stadium lights can turn night here to day. It’s a daunting sight that looks utterly secure. Until you notice the dozens of divots. “Everywhere you see a divot, that’s where someone has gone over with a ladder,” said Damon Foreman, a young Border Patrol agent, pointing to the nicks across the top of the secondary fence. Sold for $5 on the Mexican side, the ladders are made of rebar and can be carried with one hand at a quick run. “Ten guys are over that fence in a minute,” Foreman said. For Department of Homeland Security officials trying to secure the country’s land borders, it’s a hard lesson: A $5 ladder trumps a $30 million fence.

“The Chinese company Hutchison Whampoa, owned by Chinese billionaire Li Ka Shing, controls 35 major ports in the world, including the four most important ports in Mexico. Hutchison is about to build a brand new port at Punta Colonet, a Baja California cove located just two hours south of the US border. Hutchison Ports Holding, part of the Hutchison Whampoa group, runs 35 ports including the Bahamas, Buenos Aires, and two in the Panama Canal. And again, it is owned by Li Ka Shing, China’s most influential billionaire who is known as ‘The Superman of the Orient’… Tijuana politician Jaime Martinez Veloz has alleged that Hutchison has a track record of power mongering and insider maneuvering in Mexico. Martinez said that Hutchison obtained the concession to operate the Lazaro Cardenas port using a method that Martinez described as ‘a vile swamp of transnational, governmental and business corruption.’ He added, ‘the favoritism and partiality of the Mexican port authorities towards the oriental consortium Hutchison has inexplicable reasons, but one day they will be known’. “

“The mega container port and rail project planned 150 miles south of San Diego at Baja California’s Punta Colonet will benefit the United States as well as Mexico, a top Mexican federal official said yesterday. ‘This is a very important project. It’s a project that should be taken in the interest of both nations. Even though it’s on Mexican soil, the United States should be interested in this project,’ said Manuel Rodríguez Arregui, the Mexican subsecretary of transportation overseeing the project… Plans call for the Colonet port to be as large as the Los Angeles and Long Beach facilities combined. The new port would occupy nearly 7,000 acres”.

“When it rains along the border, millions of gallons of sewage and industrial waste from Mexican slums and factories flow down the Tijuana River into the United States and end up in the Pacific Ocean _ a mess that closed the beach here to swimmers and surfers a total of 198 days last year. The U.S. government once thought it had the solution: pay a developer an estimated $700 million to build and operate a treatment plant in Tijuana, Mexico. Under the agreement, if the plant could sell clean water to Mexican factories, U.S. taxpayers would get some of their money back by taking a share of the proceeds. But seven years later, ground has yet to be broken. And the agreement between the U.S. and Bajagua LLC is looking more fragile than ever amid growing criticism that the no-bid contract would fatten the developer’s pockets and fail to contain the sewage. This month, the Bush administration proposed a treatment plant on U.S. soil _ which would effectively kill the Mexico venture.”

This has got to be an ominous development. The LA Times has reported the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were forced to pull their recruitment ads after they appeared on Internet sites run by the notorious 18th Street gang, thought to be one of the largest and most violent gangs in the world. According to Wikipedia:

The 18th Street Gang is a Los Angeles-based Latino/Hispanic street gang but the gang also is Asian and Native members. It is considered by many gang analysts to be the largest gang in the United States in terms of membership, and one of the most violent gangs in the world. It is estimated that there are over 20,000 members of 18th Street in Los Angeles County alone.

The 18th Street gang grew out of an older Los Angeles gang, the Clanton Street Gang (after the street that was their home base). In the 1940’s, Clanton Street was changed to 14th Place due to the high number of Zoot Suit Pachucos ‘hanging-out’, as well as the war effort’s need for simple addresses. The Clanton gang was active in Los Angeles for decades and comprised several generations of well-established Mexicans living in America; more recent Mexican immigrants and Chicanos that wanted to join Clanton were rejected. From these rejects the 18th Street gang was born.

The gang has since grown to be California’s largest street gang, with membership in the tens of thousands. Out of the this, it is estimated that about 60% of its members are illegal immigrants, according to a confidential report last year by the state’s Department of Justice. While the majority of the gang’s activities occur in Los Angeles, the gang is active throughout the United States and other countries, including Canada, Peru, Mexico, and El Salvador.

Members of the gang frequently tattoo “18″ or “XV3″ on their bodies (occasionally covering their entire bodies.) The gang is divided into five subsets or ’sides’: North, East, South, West and South Central Los Angeles. Furthermore, each side has its own cliques or mini gangs. 18th Street members often fight several rival gangs, the most notorious of which is the MS-13.

“Shares in (Corona-based) Hansen Natural Corp. got a boost Monday on news the company partnered with PepsiCo Canada to bottle and distribute its popular line of energy drinks. Monster Energy, Lost Energy, Joker Mad Energy and other Hansen energy products which will be distributed through Pepsi’s network in Canada. PepsiCo will employ its bottling systems, distribution facilities and sale force for the product line. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.”

Outrage, both real and staged, is growing as a result of the private recordings Governor Schwarzenegger made with his speech writer last year. A six-minute excerpt was first made public in September where Schwarzenegger and his Chief of Staff Susan Kennedy debated ethnic background of state Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia. After trying to decide whether she is Cuban or Puerto Rican, Schwarzenegger says: “They are all very hot. They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it”. Assemblywoman Garcia later said she was not offended by the remarks.

The tapes had been discovered on the Governor’s website by an aide to Democratic rival Phil Angelides, and Schwarzenegger clearly did not want any more of this information released. He essentially “called the cops” on Angelides by asking the State Police to investigate. Apparently as a result of the Police conclusion that no laws were broken in downloading material from a public government website, an additional remaining 3 1/2 hours has been made available from sources of the Los Angeles Times. Possibly the most damaging is where the Governor compare illegal immigrants to a guest who come into a family home where everyone is working, but who refuses to contribute and instead lays around reading a novel.

We see protesters carrying the Mexican flag, and stepping on the American flag, and speaking in Spanish and talking about, “We are going to stay”. So now imagine someone coming to your place and he has no place because his house burned down next door. Now, he comes to your house because of the misery he went through, or she went through, comes to your house now and you say, “Come on in for a week or two weeks until you get going.” And that person comes out and says, “I’m not going to move anymore. You know something, Gary? I’m here to fucking stay”.

The recordings are part of a brainstorming session, and in addition to saying things that might offend Latinos, he said some things they might like. He is apparently not in favor of any kind of mass deportations and doesn’t like the idea of a border wall.

“A Baja California legislative panel has publicly rejected plans for the development of a megaport at Colonet, saying state government officials have failed to live up to promises to provide details of the massive project… The port is expected to cost as much as $9 billion and be as large as the Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach combined. Although federal officials have begun courting global port and rail development companies and state officials reportedly have drawn a master plan, little information has seeped into the public domain.”

Daniel Weintraub of the Sacramento Bee has expressed the opinion that the most interesting part of the Governor’s private recordings is his “earthy, blunt assessment of the immigration issue”. This discussion, he thought, was “rare glimpse at a politician working through a tough issue, one on which he is conflicted, and seeing how his mind works” and, Weintraud says, “it wasn’t very pretty”. The Governor was speaking to his speechwriter Gary Delsohn at the time and said that the the 1986 amnesty had: “fucked the American people” because it legalized millions of immigrants while promising better enforcement of the border and employer sanctions, which never materialized”.

Governor Schwarzenegger compared the situation of illegal immigrants to “squatters” in Zimbabwe. “They come and land, you can’t then get rid of them”, he says. He then rather harshly compared them to house guests that come for a visit but don’t work and don’t leave, and he marveled at the “Plasa de Mexico” shopping mall that has been built in Linwood. “I was down there” he said, “Everyone only spoke Spanish, every shop was in Spanish, every sign was in Spanish. They create a Mexico within California”.

Schwarzenegger also said that it makes no sense to try to round up 12 million illegal immigrants or to split up extended families, and said he didn’t think the border fence would work because people could tunnel under it but he didn’t like it anyway because it reminds him of the Berlin Wall. “I come from a country where we had walls around castles, we had walls around houses, and we had walls around– we had the Berlin Wall- we had walls everywhere. But we always looked at the wall as kind of like the outside of the wall is the enemy. Are we looking at Mexico as the enemy? No, it’s not. These are our trading partners.”

The Sacramento Bee has publish transcripts of the Governor’s wide ranging opinions in these recording at this link.

Mexican drug-trafficking organizations have largely taken over the production and distribution of crystal methamphetamine in California, according to a report in the Arizona Republic. “As the raw materials become harder to get, small-time cooks are being put out of business. The Mexican cartels have rushed to fill the demand with California-based superlabs, which can produce more than 10 pounds of meth a day” the report said, “less sophisticated cooks are usually caught when neighbors notice chemical smells or suspicious people hanging around at odd hours. But the Mexican cartels have built their superlabs shacks in remote areas of California’s Central Valley”. The cartels’ labs in Mexico and California now produce about 80 percent of the meth in the United States, according to a November report by the U.S. National Drug Intelligence Center.

“The Boeing Co. and the Canadian government signed an agreement for four C-17 Globemaster III cargo jets. The freighters will be used by Canada’s Department of National Defence. One C-17 costs approximately $200 million and is built on Boeing’s production line in Long Beach.”

Too late for the Superbowl, but Mexican trucks loaded with avocados headed north to the border on Friday, marking the final elimination of a decades-old U.S. ban on its import. Hundreds of locals in the western town of Uruapan, Mexico, waved at two trucks carrying Hass avocados bound for California and Florida, which along with Hawaii were the last states to lift a ban put in place in the early 1900’s as a measure to prevent plant disease.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has formally invited California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to visit Canada. Harper and Schwarzenegger met in December at the airport in Mexico, where they were both attending the inauguration of President Felipe Calderon. The governor told Harper he wanted to come to Canada on a trade mission and the prime minister “encouraged him to come,” said Genevieve Desjardins, spokeswoman for the prime minister.
The Vancouver Sun