The Oil Industry and Pipelines - What the NDP has been saying all along

Calgary Herald: NDP Leader Mulcair says oilsands access should be opened up, but not with new pipeline

Yes. A better/cleaner/safer plan all around would be to process this stuff in Canada (preferably closer to the source IMHO) and then ship out the refined material.

Also, collect more royalties from the companies that are extracting the oil (the royalty levels are insanely low right now) and use those to help the manufacturing industry across Canada. And make the extractors pay for the clean-up of the waste products and the pollution they create. Makes sense. 

This is more or less what the NDP has been saying all along (although the corporate media and the Conservatives across Canada have been doing a great job of making you think that the NDP is not for this but is instead against the oil industry and "The West". - These  are bare-faced lies about the NDP policy and anyone with more than 2 brain cells can see that these are lies. Observe the polls showing the NDP support continually increasing/staying high, while the Con support keeps dropping. Most Canadians are not dummies).

But the corporate Harper government (a.k.a. looters in suits) doesn't want this - they just want to keep things going as is and damn the consequences (as the corporations will make more money if they don't have to be responsible for the consequences).

And, can we get rid of the subsidies the Canadian government pays to the companies extracting oil from the Tarsands who are making $ billions in profit?!!! These made sense in the beginning to entice companies to begin extracting - but they don't make any sense now that the processes are established already and these companies no longer need the subsidies.

Going To The Wall In Defense Of Mulcair

Great post by Erin Weir - The Progressive Economics Forum:

"Mulcair has articulated a balanced approach to resource development that would generate more public revenue, a more competitive exchange rate, and more manufacturing jobs. Saskatchewan is well positioned to help implement and benefit from this approach by raising provincial resource royalties."

Read the whole post here.

So much of the MSM are focusing only on the Conservative party talking points - oh, Mulcair and the NDP are against the West and against developing oil and resources. This is so much hogwash. Mulcair and the NDP are FOR development and FOR the West. What they would like to see is a more balanced approach that would improve the environmental situation around extracting resources, as well as a more balanced approach regarding royalties which would bring in more money for Canada. All of this would help Canadian manufacturing across Canada, as well as create a lot more Canadian jobs.

Rethink Alberta

CBC News - Canada - Anti-oilsands ads target Alberta tourism
Regardless of whether they compare the Alberta oilsands to what is
happening in the Gulf of Mexico, you have to admit that the damage and
pollution happening in Alberta due to the way the oilsands are being
mined is something that should be of great concern to Albertans and
Canadians. Hopefully, these ads will wake up enough people and put
enough pressure on government and the oil companies to shape up, or, at
least be begin to wake people up about the problems with the oilsands.

Watch the Rethink Alberta video ad here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmd5dtZd4lc

See also:
Toronto Star: Anti-oilsands ad urges tourists to "Rethink" visit to Alberta.

Greenspiration News Jan 20, 2010

Greenspiraton News

I receive an email regularly called Greenspiration News
Here is the latest edition:

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Help Haiti - Drop the Debt - Sign the Petition

Cancel Haiti's existing debt and ensure new aid is provided in the form of grants.

Sign the petition: http://one.org/international/actnow/haiti/index.html?rc=haitipaste

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Statement by the Canadian Peace Alliance

Humanitarian relief urgently needed in Haiti, not militarization of aid

http://www.acp-cpa.ca/en/HaitiEarthquake.html

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Where Was the World When Haiti Really Needed It?

Why did it take a natural tragedy for this? Haiti's sorry history of American occupation, brutal dictatorial and military rule, the flood of refugees trying to escape the nation's destitution, the perennial food crisis's, the wave of devastating hurricanes that tore through the country in one month in 2008, the US, Canada and France's meddling in the nation's internal politics, and the grinding poverty is well known.

Haiti's corrupt, repressive military rulers and government officials get standard blame for the country's chronic poverty and bankruptcy. There's much truth to that. But Haiti is also a relentless victim of crushing and never ending debt servitude to the IMF and foreign banks, vicious labor exploitation, and the blind eye US aid policies that stunt Haiti's farm and manufacturing growth.

The nation's debt burden would sink virtually any developing nation. Haiti is compelled to shell out nearly $1 million a week to pay off its debt to the World Bank and the IMF; debt incurred by the Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier regimes and their successor military governments in the early 1990s propped up by the US. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Where-Was-the-World-When-H-by-earl-ofari-hutchin-100114-591.html

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Our role in Haiti's plight

Much of the devastation wreaked by this latest and most calamitous disaster to befall Haiti is best understood as another thoroughly manmade outcome of a long and ugly historical sequence.

http://www.rabble.ca/news/2010/01/our-role-haitis-plight

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The Right Testicle Of Hell: History Of A Haitian Holocaust

There's no such thing as a 'natural' disaster. 200,000 Haitians have been slaughtered by slum housing and IMF "austerity" plans.

http://www.countercurrents.org/palast170110.htm

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Cuba is Missing... From US Reports on the International Response to Haiti’s Earthquake

In fact, left unmentioned is the reality that Cuba already had over 400 doctors posted to Haiti to help with the day-to-day health needs of this poorest nation in the Americas, and that those doctors were the first to respond to the disaster, setting up a hospital right next to the main hospital in Port-au-Prince which collapsed in the earthquake.

Far from “doing nothing” about the disaster as the right-wing propagandists at Fox-TV were claiming, Cuba has been one of the most effective and critical responders to the crisis, because it had set up a medical infrastructure before the quake, which was able to mobilize quickly and start treating the victims. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/15-6

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Haitian Earthquake: Made in the USA
Why the Blood Is on Our Hands

In Haiti this week, don't blame tectonic plates. Ninety-nine percent of the death toll is attributable to poverty.
So the question is relevant. How'd Haiti become so poor?

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/14-13

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Naomi Klein Issues Haiti Disaster Capitalism Alert: Stop Them Before They Shock Again

Journalist and author Naomi Klein spoke in New York last night and addressed the crisis in Haiti: “We have to be absolutely clear that this tragedy—which is part natural, part unnatural—must, under no circumstances, be used to, one, further indebt Haiti and, two, to push through unpopular corporatist policies in the interest of our corporations. This is not conspiracy theory. They have done it again and again.”http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/14/naomi_klein_issues_haiti_disaster_capitalism

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Food Not Troops for Haiti! End the Military Occupation!

Sign the petition:

http://iacenter.org/haitipetition/

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What You Can Do to Help Haiti

http://canadahaitiaction.ca/

http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/sarah-van-gelder/how-to-help-haiti

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/01/help-and-hear-haiti

http://www.care2.com/causes/human-rights/blog/how-to-help-haiti/

Fast for Haiti to Raise $$ for Aid: http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=592&Itemid=1

http://www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti

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NO to prorogation!

YES to democracy!

Pissed off about the prorogation of Canadian Parliament? Help send a clear message to Prime Minister Harper: take to the streets on Sat. Jan. 23.

Sat. Jan. 23 Nationwide rallies - 50 cities across Canada take to the streets!

Details at: http://noprorogue.ca/

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First Prorogue, then Eviscerate

Harper's agenda has a simple goal: destroy the Canadian social safety net.

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2010/01/11/DobinProrogue/

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‘Petro-pirates’ robbing Alberta’s resources

Flushing justice down the pipeline with Wiebo Ludwig’s arrest

Why is a bomber targeting EnCana's oil facilities and why is the RCMP targeting Wiebo Ludwig? Because Alberta is not a democratic province. It is a province controlled by international corporations that see profit and extraction of natural resources as their prime object.

http://www.ffwdweekly.com/article/news-views/viewpoint/petro-pirates-robbing-albertas-resources-5079/

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Mawkish, maybe. But Avatar is a profound, insightful, important film

- By George Monbiot

Cameron's blockbuster offers a chilling metaphor for European butchery of the Americas. No wonder the US right hates it

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/jan/11/mawkish-maybe-avatar-profound-important

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Investors urge governments to act on climate change

Investors say hands are tied until governments act

Investors representing $13 trillion in assets are calling on governments around the world to act more decisively to adopt policies to address climate change, saying they are vowing to respond with a windfall of private investments to finance renewable and efficient energy.

"We are ready and willing to up the ante to finance the transition to a low carbon global economy, but you need to have the courage to act," Mindy Lubber, the president of investor-environmentalist coalition Ceres, said at the Investor Summit on Climate Risk.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1423262220100114?type=marketsNews

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Pick-your-own vegetables to replace flowers in high street

Climate change and food shortage issues prompt Lancashire town to consider growing edible crops in public

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/12/pick-your-own-vegetables-street

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Past Decade the Hottest on Record

The first decade of the twenty-first century was the hottest since recordkeeping began in 1880. The year 2005 was the hottest on record, while 2007 and 2009 tied for second hottest. In fact, 9 of the 10 warmest years on record occurred in the past decade.

http://www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/indicators/C51/global_temperature_2010

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Landmark Ruling: animals fed on GM components ARE different

In a landmark ruling, the NZ Commerce Commission has accepted evidence from Prof Jack Heinemann, from an exhaustive review of the literature and on the basis of his own extensive professional experience, that animals fed on GM components ARE different from those which are reared using non-GM feed. This is a direct challenge to EFSA and FSA, who have maintained consistently that there are no differences between GM- fed and non-GM-fed animals, and that there is therefore no need for labelling or segregation of feed supplies to meet consumer demand for GM-free products.

http://www.gmfreecymru.org/documents/landmark.html

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MSC/ES – Multiple Chemical Sensitivities /Environmental Sensitivities

People with any other disability are allowed appropriate health care and related aids, tax breaks, subsidies, insurance benefits, accommodations, and accessible housing. People with chemical injury, with MCS/ES, are denied access and even obstructed at every turn.

Linda Sepp lives in Toronto, disabled and housebound from severe Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, Environmental Sensitivities, Fibromyalgia, and Electro HyperSensitivity. Read her blog here:http://lindasepp.wordpress.com/

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Naomi Klein: How Corporate Branding Took Over the White House

Ten years after the publication of "No Logo", Klein looks at how Obama created a brand that won him the Presidency. Will his failure to live up to his lofty brand cost him?

http://www.alternet.org/story/145218/naomi_klein%3A_how_corporate_branding_took_over_the_white_house?page=1

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HOME

For those who have not yet seen this movie, "Home" is a visually stunning, educational and brutally honest depiction about the impact of our lifestyles on our planet. I’ve circulated the link before, but it deserves a second announcement.

It’s 93 minutes, and you can watch it online here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU

Why Are Canadian Troops In Afghanistan?

The government and media spoon feed us lies about what is going on in Afghanistan.

Check out this article from Murray Dobbin ...

This situation reveals how naive we are as a nation. That old adage — the first casualty of war is truth — applies here in spades because this war is based on lies, including:

• This has nothing to do with oil and gas pipelines.
• This is a fight against terrorism. (The truth: It's an occupation being resisted by indigenous militants.)
• The current Afghan government is democratic. (The truth: Many senior figures should be tried for war crimes, and others are drug lords.)
• Girls are now going to school. (Really? How many?)
• Bombing villages will provide them with security.
• We can “win.”

What we are doing in Afghanistan is unsupportable. But what we are doing to ourselves is not so obvious. We are corrupting Canada's own institutions, including our military, our foreign service, our foreign aide program, and our public broadcaster. Worst of all, as long as we stay in Afghanistan, we are corrupting our political culture.


For more background on what NATO is doing in Afghanistan, read this article by the Canadian Peace Alliance from April 2006:

Why are we in Afghanistan?

The people of Afghanistan want peace. The occupiers and their puppet and former Unocal employee, Hamid Karzai, want oil.

>by Canadian Peace Alliance
April 10, 2006

Canada has 2250 Canadian soldiers stationed in Kandahar Afghanistan. The soldiers are fighting alongside about 8,000 U.S. soldiers and are under the command of Operation Archer in support of the U.S. led “Operation Enduring Freedom.” It is expected that command of the Canadian units will shift to NATO control by 2007.

Canada is operating along the southern border between Pakistan and Afghanistan in Kandahar province. This is a crucial area for two reasons: it is the location of Taliban strongholds and it is the proposed route for the multibillion dollar Trans-Afghan pipeline.

It is no secret that since the collapse of the Soviet Union, U.S. oil companies have been keen to exploit Caspian Sea oil and gas. They lobbied the Clinton administration to have a pipeline built from Turkmenistan in the north through Afghanistan to ports in Pakistan. They see even more opportunity with George Bush as president.

Afghanistan is important to U.S. oil companies because it is the only route that would provide total control for them. The other possible routes for the pipeline run through Iran, an enemy of the U.S., China, a competitor of the U.S., or Russia, an unreliable and heavily armed ally.

The Department of National Defence says that Canadians, and the other international forces, are there to “reinforce the authority of the Afghan government in and around Kandahar and help local authorities stabilize and rebuild the region.”

Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan is considered a U.S. puppet by most Afghans. His authority outside Kabul is merely symbolic. Local control in the provinces is left to a mix of opium gangsters, former Taliban commanders and tribal elders. Mark Schneider, president of International Crisis Group has said, “It's not merely about drug money financing candidates. Drug lords are candidates.”

The United States and the Karzai Administration are, in most cases, happy to work and make deals with these local rulers. According to of Human Rights Watch the majority (60 per cent) of those elected to the Afghan parliament in the October 18, 2005 elections were these local criminals and power brokers or their associates.

U.S. forces and allied local warlords are responsible for human rights abuses in the country. According to Human Rights Watch: “U.S. forces operating against Taliban insurgents continue to generate numerous claims of human rights abuses against the civilian population, including arbitrary arrests, use of excessive force, and mistreatment of detainees … Local military and police forces, even in Kabul, have been involved in arbitrary arrests, kidnapping, extortion, torture and extrajudicial killings of criminal suspects.

“Outside Kabul, commanders and their troops in many areas have been implicated in widespread rape of women, girls and boys, murder, illegal detention, forced displacement, and other specific abuses against women and children, including human trafficking and forced marriage.”

According to the much-publicized remarks of General Rick Hillier, Canadians are in Afghanistan to “kill detestable murderers and scumbags.” The reality is that we are supporting some of the worst human rights abusers the country has ever seen. This deadly combination of abuses by both U.S. forces and their local allies ensures that Canadians will face growing resistance from the Afghan people.

State of reconstruction

We are told that the Canadian soldiers will be engaging in development work as part of their mission. This type of intervention, generally referred to as the 3-D approach (disarmament, diplomacy and development) has come under heavy criticism from NGOs for confusing the process and endangering aid workers. It is argued that having the development component so intertwined with the defense operation results in corruption and the use of development initiatives as bribes to local authorities and civilians. It also eliminates the possibility of development work being neutral in the conflict.

According to a report in the Guardian, Vickie Hawkins, acting head of the of Médecin Sans Frontières mission in Afghanistan said the international humanitarian group left Afghanistan for these very reasons.

The U.S.-led coalition has made the situation worse by blurring the line between humanitarian work and military operations. During the war in 2001, Hawkins said, U.S. soldiers were driving around in civilian clothes in white cars, taking on the appearance of humanitarian aid workers. Last May, the Pentagon was forced to apologize for dropping leaflets in southern Afghanistan which promised humanitarian assistance if local people gave the coalition information about the Taliban and al-Qaida.

She despaired that military campaigns were employing “hearts and minds” strategies more and more often, making it difficult for aid workers to maintain their aura of all-important impartiality. “If armies are handing out food assistance and medical equipment, it becomes harder for locals to tell the aid workers from the occupiers.”

Opium

Revenue from poppy cultivation — between $2-3 billion annually — is now double the amount of international aid. Ironically, the money coming from opium production is now the chief source of “reconstruction funds” in the country. Afghan farmers have little option but to produce poppies and will continue to do so. It is the only crop that will generate enough money to survive on.

The British Government, worried that most of the heroin ending up on UK streets came from Afghanistan, began an eradication program for poppy cultivation. Afghan farmers were promised aid and new seeds in return for ending their production but the aid never arrived and many have returned to poppy cultivation. Attempts at a new eradication program will likely end in conflict unless there is a real commitment to provide viable alternatives to the farmers.

Fraser Nelson, a Scottish journalist, of summarizes the contradiction, “Today, some two million Afghans rely on opium poppies for their livelihood, generating $2.7bn of illegal wealth. They will not give this up readily, nor will the farmers whose desire to feed their families is stronger than their desire to placate NATO.” i

British Prime Minister Tony Blair stated that, “The Taliban regime is funded in large part on the drug trade — 90 per cent of all heroin sold in Britain originates from Afghanistan. Stopping that trade is directly in our interests.”

The Taliban has many faults but by May 2001 it had virtually eradicated opium production. The resurgence in poppy production is a consequence of the US invasion and continuing occupation.

Canadian corporations in the Caspian

According to the of Energy Information Administration there are proven reserves of between 17 and 44 billion barrels of oil and 232 trillion cubic feet of gas in the Caspian region. Production of these reserves is very limited. As of 2004, only about 11 per cent of the region’s gas reserves, which equal those of Saudi Arabia, were under production.

On December 27, 2002 Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan signed an agreement to build a 1500 kilometre long Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline — a $3.2 billion project expected to deliver 30 billion cubic metres of natural gas a year. The only stumbling block to finally realizing this deal is the lack of stability in Afghanistan.

In September, 2004 a joint Omani-Canadian delegation led by Yusuf bin Alavi, foreign minister of Oman, and Jean Chrétien, former Prime Minister of Canada, of met in Turkmenistan to negotiate a deal between Edmonton based Buried Hill Energy and the government of Turkmenistan to develop the Serdar block in the Caspian area.

This is not the first or only time that the former Prime Minister, a man responsible for sending thousands of Canadian soldiers to Afghanistan, has intervened on behalf of Canadian corporations for contracts in the area. On the same trip Chrétien met with Saparmurat Niyazov, the self proclaimed president for life of Turkmenistan, and of discussed potential involvement from Canadian corporations in the Trans-Afghan pipeline.

On October 20, 2004 Thermo Design of received a contract worth $42 million for the production of an LPG and gas condensate plant in Turkmenistan that would produce 50,000 tons of LPG and 200,000 tons of condensate gas (light gasoline) annually.

The hypocrisy of signing multi-million dollar deals with one of the worst human rights abusers in the region while simultaneously of arguing that Canada's soldiers are bringing peace is obvious. It is also standard operating procedure for successive governments of Canada to ignore issues of human rights if there is money to be made in international deals. These facts call into question the real reasons why Canada is in Afghanistan.

The people of Afghanistan want peace. The occupiers and their puppet and former Unocal employee, Hamid Karzai want oil. We have seen the U.S. and its Allies in this scenario before. Whether in Chile in 1973 when the U.S. sponsored a coup to make sure that the copper mines were not nationalized or in Iraq where they have killed more than a million people to control the oil resources, they will brutally enforce a corrupt and divisive political process to keep the people divided so they can pillage the land of its resources. They don't care who is in power or what type of society they are creating.

In this case they are building a society based on corruption, drugs and violence. Canada is now the cop trying to impose these realities on the people of Afghanistan.

For further reading and information, please visit the Canadian Peace Alliance.

Canada, America's Fuel Tank

Take back our resources for Canada.

Watch the video for information:

Tar Sands: Fuel Tank for US Empire
by Gordon Laxer

USA, Oil, War and the US Dollar

Le Revue Gauche brought this to light in his recent post Petro Dollars and the US Debt
The full story is here at Court Fool.info

Basically, if you are not familiar with this and you want the short summary:

The World mainly trades oil for US dollars. This artificially boosts the value of the US Dollar, and gives the US a lot of buying power in the world. So, it is in the USA's best interest for everyone to keep trading oil for US Dollars.
If the big oil producing nations switched to trading oil for another currency, then the US dollar would drop drastically and the US would be in big trouble. It would also affect the rest of the world economy, but the US would suffer the worst of it. At very worst it might turn the US into a third world nation as the creditors clamour for their money. The US is in debt over its eyeballs to the rest of the world right now.

So, when I Iraq switched to trading oil for Euros (the US dollar then dropped sharply) , the US invaded them under false pretences (WMD) to take control of their oil. And now Iraq trades in US dollars again and the US dollar has climbed back up a bit.

The US wants to get rid of Chavez in Venezuela because he nationalized oil and instead of selling it for US dollars, he trades it in a barter system for goods and services.

Iran has been trading in Euros instead of the US dollar since 2003. Because of a falling out between the 2 countries and the US embargo against Iran, Iran does not trade any oil to the US now. So, it is no wonder that the US is fabricating the story that Iran is planning on making nuclear weapons. The US wants to solve its problem again by going to war and taking control of the oil in Iran and make it go back to trading in US dollars.

Read the story at Court Fool.info for all the details on this issue.

What should Canada do to avoid problems with this in the near future? Canada should slowly diversify its holdings to currency from other countries, increase trade with other countries and reduce the amount of US dollars we have. So, when the sh*t hits the fan, we are not dragged down with the US.