Miscellaneous material to end your weekend. – As Thomas Walkom notes, it’s an open question as to who will take up the cause of defending universal public health care in Canada – but easy to figure out who poses the greatest threat to it: Writing in The Globe and Mail
Continue readingTag: Tar Sands
One pipeline down, one to go
So Obama has sunk the Keystone XL pipeline—at least temporarily. He has said Trans Canada can apply again, so perhaps he’s just being an election-year tease. Nonetheless, it’s a victory against the tar sands monolith. And that’s what it’s all about, not just shutting down a pipeline, but shutting down
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: Regulators throwing loaded dice
Propaganda is a tool favoured by leaders who suppose unthinking citizens can’t determine the common interest. Noam Chomsky says it is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state. The tar sands extraction industry and parasitical agents like Ethical Oil, along with Stephen Harper’s government, are investing
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Without Facts on Their Side, Oil Shills Try to Buy Keystone Support on Twitter
As the internet reacts to the State Department's bold decision to deny the Keystone XL pipeline proposal, you're likely to come across the moans and cries of the stumbling Goliaths of Big Oil. Having lost the Keystone XL battle, the oil industry and its shills in Washington are falling back on
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Keystone XL Pipeline Would Increase Oil Prices in Midwest
Screen shot 2012-01-18 at 10.14.20 AM.png Twitter is ablaze with the news that the State Department will announce today that the original TransCanada presidential permit application is dead in the water. Details are murky, so stay tuned for more, but what this likely means is that the State Department will
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Seth Klein somewhat jokingly offers up 10 reasons for upper-class tax increases. But particularly paired with the Cons’ fixation with tax-free savings accounts to further hand free money to the rich, this part looks like it’s worth some further focus: #4: The maximum
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: When is "Foreign" Money and Influence, Not "Foreign" Money and Influence?
The Harper government has tried a new strategy in pushing through the Gateway Pipeline. Apparently, we are now under attack by “foreigners”. “Foreign” money is driving the debate. “Foreign” radicals are trying to stop progress. And yet “foreign” ownership of the Tar Sands has accelerated since they took power. Our
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: The Enbridge Board: A foreign Special Interest Group
Joe Oliver.jpg If Canadian Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver is looking for ideologues and "foreign special interest groups" who are trying to interfere with the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline hearings, he need look no farther than the Board of Directors of pipeline proponent Enbridge Inc. Oliver got his lapels all flecked
Continue reading350 or bust: There’s Nothing “Ethical” About Tar Sands Oil
If anybody reading this is wondering about whether or not Canada’s tar sands oil is “ethical” or not, this presentation by photographer Garth Lenz, from TEDx Victoria this past November, will leave no doubt: * More links: Garth Lenz.com Indigenous Environmental Network: Tar Sands Campaign
Continue readingCanadian Progressive World: Naomi Klein Debunks “Ethical Oil” Fiction
As she delivers this brilliant rebuttal of the corporate-funded Ethical Oil fiction, Naomi Klein brands herself “an expert in corporate crap”. We don’t have ethical oil in Canada. We’ve tar sands oil, which is like …Read More
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: So This is Ethical Oil?
The American conservatives appear to be adopting, or at least sharing, tactics being used by the Canadian conservatives to get what they want. Intimidation and corruption. The Republican controlled Congress is voting on a bill that would force President Obama to make a decision on TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline by November 1. An unprecedented
Continue readingHarper—the prime minister of oil
In the paranoid corridors of Harperworld, opponents of tar sands development are radicals. And the most dangerous among the radicals are those who receive funding from foreigners. This is a rather curious accusation coming from Stephen Harper. After all, he faithfully serves the oil industry, much of which is foreign-owned.
Continue reading350 or bust: Alberta Oil Sands Crude: Not As Conflict-Free As “Ethical Oil” Proponents Wish
* Yesterday I posted a clip from Power & Politics where EthicalOil.org’s spokesperson Kathryn Marshall happily sprayed paranoid, inflammatory rhetoric around the room about how “environmentalists” who are speaking out against the Northern Gateway Pipeline are funded by “foreign” interests while clamming up about whether or not her group gets
Continue readingChristy, what are you thinking? BC Liberals hire Harper aide and Enbridge lobbyist Ken Boessenkool as chief of staff.
If you ever wanted to know which side of the political spectrum the BC ‘Liberals’ fall, it’s pretty obvious by now it’s neither centre nor left. When a supposed centre-left political party hires a lobbyist whose previous tenure involved working as senior policy advisor and strategist to Stephen Harper and lobbying for Enbridge and Suncor,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Carol Goar criticizes the tax giveaways that have blown a massive hole in the federal budget: But there is one area of government activity that will escape (Tony Clement’s budget-slashing) scrutiny. Every year Ottawa gives up billions of taxes in deductions, exemptions, deferrals,
Continue readingChristy, what are you thinking? BC Liberals hire Harper aide and Enbridge lobbyist Ken Boessenkool as chief of staff.
If you ever wanted to know which side of the political spectrum the BC ‘Liberals’ fall, it’s pretty obvious by now it’s neither centre nor left. When a supposed centre-left political party hires a lobbyist whose previous tenure involved working as senior policy advisor and strategist to Stephen Harper and lobbying
Continue readingfirst word, tree.: Pink Herrings: Ethical (Sp)Oil and Pride (in Pipelines)
“Make a hard Right-turn at the Town of Wedgepolitics and keep going Straight until you’ve reached the City of Bigotry and Political Strategy.” Directions for Harper’s recent wedge-issue of choice, driven to distract, that questions the validity of marriage licences granted to non-resident couples in Canada. This issue is too risky
Continue reading350 or bust: Canadians Ignore the Warning Lesson of Haiti’s Environmental Destruction At Our Peril
Today marks two years since the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti where more than 200,000 died and an estimated 1 million were left homeless. We are used to hearing that Haiti is a very poor country, yet rarely do we hear that at one point in its history, Haiti was the
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: Toward amoral petro-state
An Open Reply to Joe Oliver’s Propaganda for the Petro State ENERGY & EQUITY: Nikiforuk joins the fray. Andrew Nikiforuk, The Tyee “Canada’s Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver has just pulled a Hugo Chavez: he’s penned a formal and desperate attack on democracy and interfered in the nation’s allegedly impartial
Continue readingsomecanuckchick dot com: When will Ethical Oil release its donor list?
Ethical Oil was quick to slam environmental groups for taking US money… It appears Ethical Oil accepts funds, via PayPal, from around the world — including the USA. Just out of curiosity, when will Ethical Oil release its donor list?
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