Divernan
Divernan's JournalChinese 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
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 pipelines 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 BCs multi-million-dollar salmon catch run through the region.
[The Oct 7th Toronto Star article is at : www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1267961why-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
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.
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
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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