Divernan

Divernan's Journal

December 20, 2013

Chinese Goliath has invested BILLIONS in private Canadian energy interests.

The peoples of the First Nation and Canadian environmentalists are truly David versus Goliath, particularly with Prime Minister Harper's conservative government support for this dirty oil pipeline.
From the OP link:

"The Northern Gateway Project is being vehemently opposed by Indigenous Peoples who will not put their territories, waters and communities at risk," Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, President of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs. "We are prepared to go to the wall against this project. We have no choice."

Meanwhile, China's growing economy is hungry for Canadian oil. Chinese state-owned companies have invested billions in Canadian energy in the past few years.

"They follow this quite closely," said Wenran Jiang, an energy expert and special adviser to Alberta's Department of Energy.

He said Canada's regulator hasn't put any major conditions on the approval.

Here is an excellent, detailed and really shocking article spelling out how Canadian PM Harper has gutted environmental regulation, assessment, oversight and enforcement across the board in Canada, and in particular in regard to the dirty oil pipeline:

The Harper Conservatives and Their Dirty Oil Pipeline

The Harper Conservative majority government has “streamlined” the environmental assessment process to speed up development, by removing 3,000 projects from review by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA). Of course, nationwide, the big one that is still in there is the Enbridge “Northern Gateway” pipeline to carry tar sands crude from Alberta to Kitimat, BC, which this Alberta-based government wants very badly.

What is at stake environmentally is discussed in an Oct 7th Toronto Star article titled ‘Why Northern Gateway shouldn’t go near Great Bear Rainforest,’ by John Honderich, Chair of the Toronto Star‘s Board of Directors. It points out that recent legislation weakening the federal government’s obligation to do environmental protection is more than anything else aimed at preventing environmentalists, native groups, and the BC provincial government from blocking or delaying the construction of this pipeline which is intended to carry dirty tar sands oil from Alberta to Kitimat, BC to go onto oil tankers bound for the Asian market. The article notes that “the fierce opposition of the Coastal First Nations to the project is well known” and their rights to the land have never been ceded. The tankers departing from Kitimat would pass through dangerous waters: first the 2-3 km wide 70 km long Douglas Channel and then around 27 km long Gil Island with the channel narrowing by half. It was at the northern tip of Gil Island where in 2006 the BC Ferry Queen of the North missed a turn, ran onto the rocks, and sank. It is true that cargo vessels, e.g. ore carriers, have been carrying commercial cargo along this route for decades, but modern supertankers have never done so, and they are six to seven times as long as a typical ore carrier and need at least half a kilometre to alter course. Furthermore, a load of bauxite sinking to the bottom of the channel is much less of an environmental threat than “a supertanker disgorging millions of litres of molasses-like bitumen.” This area is the world’s second largest temperate rainforest, called the Great Bear Rainforest because of the spectacular population of black, grizzly, and kermode bears that live off the abundant salmon runs. By comparison, tankers loading at Valdez, Alaska and going out through Prince William Sound have it easy and safe: the exit from Valdez Arm and past Bligh Reef (where the Exxon Valdez went aground) into open Prince William Sound is about 30 km, and the tankers are always escorted by tugs. Two tugs escort each laden tanker through Prince William Sound and remain at Hinchinbrook Entrance until the vessel is twenty-seven kilometres out to sea. Will tugs escort tankers from Kitimat to the open sea? The nearest Coast Guard is in Prince Rupert, 135 km northwest of Gil Island.

There has been an informal moratorium on all oil tanker traffic off the coast of BC since 1972, renewed by the House of Commons in 2010 after the Harper government said there was no official moratorium. As for the Northern Gateway pipeline, all we have been told is that Enbridge, the pipeline’s owner, says it has a foolproof plan to manage all this. The area is one of the richest and most productive ecosystems on the planet, all based on the salmon. It is critical habitat for seventeen types of marine mammals, including the endangered blue, fin, right, sei and orca whales. Rivers critical for sixty percent of BC’s multi-million-dollar salmon catch run through the region.

During this year there has been a gutting of Environment Canada and Fisheries & Oceans Canada. Scientists whose research might conclude environmental damage have been fired. (Not “de-funded” because some of them are internationally renowned and could attract funding, and the Harper government doesn’t want that.) Government scientists are now followed around at international conferences by “minders” who make sure they don’t speak out of turn. Submitted papers that don’t follow the industry line are excluded. I experienced that personally – a submitted paper critical of massive dispersants use, as happened in the Gulf of Mexico, was rejected for a regular session of an Environment Canada conference in Vancouver, as too political and not really a technical paper. However, many papers promoting the use of dispersants were presented by industry and government attendees. The UK newspaper The Guardian published an article by their US environment correspondent Suzanne Goldenberg about a revolt by Canada’s leading scientists against sweeping cuts to government research labs and the government’s pro-industry policies, saying that Harper is accused of pushing through a slew of policies weakening or abolishing environmental protections – with an aim of expanding development of natural resources such as the Alberta tar sands. (N.B.: This is not Canadian partisan opinion.)

[The Oct 7th Toronto Star article is at : www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1267961—why-northern-gateway-shouldn-t-go-near-great-bear-rainforest ]
From issue #63

http://subterrain.ca/blog/108/the-harper-conservatives-and-their-dirty-oil-pipeline

December 9, 2013

Clinton's made over $50 million in fees from Big Corporate interests since leaving oval office.

We're talking personal income - not to mention the millions corporations have shelled out to the Clinton Foundation. Corporations consider those speaking fees/"donations" to be "good value" as the Brits would say, in that they will reap far more in tax cuts & loopholes, gutted safety regulations, no-bid govt. contracts, etc., should Hillary get in the Oval Office.

You'd think with over $50 million and a bad heart, he might choose to relax and enjoy what life he has left. What gives him joy is making ever more money and living the jet set life with the other one percenters.

December 5, 2013

Those few social issues are de minimis tokens compared to rampant corporate/1% favoritism.

And dangled to serve as low cost distractions. We have been jerked around for years by threats posed by Obama's catfood commission and multiple negotiations when it's deliberately "leaked" that chained CPI and other cuts to Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid are always on Obama's negotiating table and part of his grand plan. We're expected to tug our forelocks like a bunch of serfs and be grateful that so far the status quo has remained and these threatened changes have not been implemented? Meanwhile the current index used to calculate COLA in no way accurately or fairly reflects or properly weights the budget elements for seniors/retired Americans. Yes the formula for COLAs should be changed, but to make it MORE in line with financial reality, not less so.

ACA will be a great improvement for many, but it is NOT single payer and benefits Big Insurance by forcing many to buy their policies.

Protecting gays & women in the military is the right thing to do, but it conveniently does not cost the govt. anything to do so, and attracts no MIC special interests lobbying against it because there's no profit in those discriminations, and making the military more attractive to women/LGBT increases the reserve of cannon fodder for wars.

And America's "minimum wage" (emphasis on the MINIMUM) remains inhumane and disgraceful.

The last legislated increases in the federal minimum wage, in 2007 and 2008, raised it by steps from $5.15 in 2006 to $7.25 in 2009. That produced the highest purchasing power for the minimum wage since 1981 — but that was still less than its value in 1967.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/12/04/4668634/minimum-wage-increase-gets-a-push.html#storylink=cpy

If the minimum wage had grown at the same rate as the earnings of the top one percent of Americans the federal wage floor would be more than triple the current hourly minimum of $7.25. Instead, the minimum wage has been lower than a poverty wage ever since 1982.

The New York Times compiled those and other basic facts about the minimum wage into an infographic. Together with demographic data about who actually holds minimum-wage jobs — less than a quarter of the minimum-wage workforce are teenagers, and nearly four in ten are over the age of 30 — the graphic makes the fundamental case for fighting inequality and economic hardship by raising the minimum wage. The horizontal red line in the Times graphic indicates the hourly wage necessary for a single parent working full-time with one child to avoid poverty.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/12/01/3007011/minimum-wage-percent-leave-workers/

In the years since Bill Clinton left office, he's increased his personal (personal, NOT the Clinton Foundation) wealth by over $50 million. But the purchasing power of minimum wage employees has remained below the poverty level. What's wrong with this picture? Who's part of the one percent? Does anyone seriously believe that corporations and big money interests would be paying his exorbitant personal speaking fees OR contributing to his Foundation if they did not anticipate the possibility that the Clintons would regain the White House and remember who bankrolled them personally and politically?

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