An alternative news source to the mainstream media. Important stories relating to current geopolitical events and charting future trends. Real news, ---no bullshit. (Est. 2007)
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"Victory will never be found by taking the line of least resistance."
Winston Churchill
If people no longer expect objectivity from their political and legal systems, then all justice will be reduced to a power struggle between conflicting and irreconcilable perspectives, a struggle in which the most dominant and pervasive bias will replace fair and impartial process as the character of justice. But if objectivity in law and politics is everywhere supplanted by conflict between subjective interests, then the side of economic privilege and established authority will always retain dominance. A society in which people no longer expect representatives of its major institutions even to attempt to render objectivity in their professional demeanours is a society whose major institutions are in a crisis of ethical legitimacy. In such a society, there is wide spread cynicism regarding the possibility of fair political process because it seems impossible that impartial, unbiased dispositions could exist to enact such processes.
"We believe that some morning people will awake to discover with surprise that quite a few gentle and kind things have begun to have offensive and lethal characteristics."
"Here are some examples (among many) of the sorts of “unrestricted warfare”: resources warfare (grabbing riches by plundering stores of resources); cultural warfare (leading cultural trends along in order to assimilate those with different views); and international law warfare (seizing the earliest opportunity to set up regulations)…."
By the Chinese definition of "Unrestricted Warfare" it's clear they are waging war on us.
China Hacks India’s Defense Ministry
"Thousands of confidential government files were compromised, such as Indian state security intelligence, and information on surface-to-air missile and radar programs from the Defense Research and Development Laboratory."
Cyber and nuclear attack greater threat than terrorism ever was
"Asked to imagine a worst-case scenario cyber-attack on the US, General Alexander said a software failure across the US could knock out power networks for an extended period throughout the country, and cause more damage and disruption than the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York."
Mainland China military buildup targets Taiwan
"For the past few years, the PLA has been conducting military exercises which focus on the scenario of taking an island should possible military conflict occur, the QDR also said."
Human rights group names almost 20,000 involved in persecuting Falun Gong
"Falun Gong is a spiritual practice based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. It became a target for persecution in 1999, after former regime leader Jiang Zemin became afraid of how attractive the teachings of Falun Gong were to the Chinese people. Jiang Zemin saw Falun Gong as a challenge to the Party’s attempt to control how people in China think. "
Ruins of Detroit. Once the engine of middle class prosperity
Why the West is in Decline.
(A)
1. The failure of civilizations is a failure of leadership.
2. Our civilization has failed as evidenced by its wealth
being used to build up rivals. Rivals buy control of what used to belong to us with
wealth we outsourced to them.
3. Therefore, our selection process does not produce capable
leaders.
(B)
1. Economic power currently buys political power.
2. Economic power does not = leadership skill.
3. Economic power does not = representation of the
national interest.
4. Economic power does not care about national
security or sovereignty.
(C)
1. Just as there was a separation of Church and State, there
now must be a separation of Economic power from Political power.
2. Economic Inequality is much less corrosive to society than
Political Inequality.
3. We are facing a crisis that requires the power of the
national mind to be harnessed in order to generate as many solutions as
possible.
4. Currently, only economic power is allowed representation
in politics, to the exclusion of the people. This monopoly on power must be
broken.
5. Therefore, money must be removed from politics. Electoral
systems must be reformed to regulate the influence of established political
parties and eliminate the infrastructure of their campaign war machines. Voting
systems should be amended to offer the people real opportunity to participate.
Elections should be about ideas, not money.
6. Political parties are a great threat to national security;
they put their own interest above that of the nation. We must always be on
guard against the political-industrial complex; the potential for the
disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
The decline of the West is systemic. It is not in any one failed
policy or leader but a result of an evolved form of organization that has led
to a state of constant failure and an inability to adapt to a changing external
environment.
If you are living in the West chances are you live under the
control of two or more dominant political parties. The existence of more than
one party provides you with some protection from human rights abuse because if
one party goes to far in its abuse of the people the other party will win the
next election. While better than living under one party control, this is still
not an ideal system and is not what true democracy looks like.
Political parties are machines that run on money whose
objective is to win elections. Messages are tightly controlled, photo-ops
carefully choreographed, talking points annoyingly repeated. Entire staffs are
hired to develop marketing plans designed to strategize what segments of the
market are to be targeted at what time and with what message. The entire
political process has become dehumanized. Politics has become big business most
likely due to the fact that the cogs who currently occupy the machine share the
same trained incapacities of a modern business “education”.
Brand names win elections not ideas. In these modern times
no one wins after an election has been held. No one but the powerful interests
behind the major political parties and the well-paid shills who occupy the
seats once designated for representatives of the people.
Is it any wonder why no one shows up to vote, why no one
gets involved? Many know full well how the system works and what reasonable
person would want to commit their life to towing the party line. It takes a
certain breed of arrogance and incompetence to suckle at the public trough as a
career backbencher. It takes another breed of psychopathy to steal from the
public as an unelected senator.
They have made the cynical calculation that the people don’t
care. That the majority have fallen for the cult of the self and worship
materialism, the god of distraction. You must prove them wrong. The public
interest will only ever be defended by the public. Therefore, any political
system that hopes to serve the public interest must not exclude the great
majority of its citizens from participation in the political process.
Political equality is the great equalizer. If we could enact
reforms that would break the monopoly of power held by the established parties,
then each locality would be free to elect local representatives based on the
ideas of the individual candidates. Those representatives would not be
constrained by the dictates of the parties. They would be free to actually
represent their constituents.
The campaign would not be fought by wealthy organizations in
30-second substance-less ads on national television; it would be fought in the
webpages of official party policy documents and in local debates and local
speeches among local citizens. The campaign would not be a battle for control
of territory but a conversation among neighbors who are concerned about the
issues facing them.
The objective would not be party victory; it would be
national victory.
The objective would not be party victory; it would be national victory.
The problem we face in modern democracy is a lack of choice.
We have major parties that operate within the rigid framework of the modern political-industrial
complex. This constrains our decision making process and limits our potential
policy options.
Not every citizen has access to a national campaign
organization and a state of the art voter database. Does the existence of those
privileges justify the monopoly on power enjoyed by those who poses them?
This state of affairs is bringing about our long-term
national suicide.
All because those with privilege put the preservation of
privilege above the preservation of the nation. This is the definition of
globalism; loyalty to wealth, status, and private business venture over loyalty
to the continued existence of your sovereign nation. This is the neo-liberal
ideology of the global aristocracy.
We are living in a New World Order where national boarders
are being replaced with class boarders. One world where the worst aspects of
communism and capitalism have combined to create a hybrid monster system of
global scope.
If your nation is to survive and not be absorbed into this
global feudalism you need to separate economic power from political power.
-No political advertising permitted, all debate takes place
in local forums, local candidates, stick to the issues and no corporate
control/sponsorship of the forums
-No campaign staff permitted, no “strategic outreach” teams/
marketing contractors, candidates should be able to stand on their own two feet
and speak their truth, candidates should stand amongst each other with
political equality, this way the established powers with big campaigns would
not monopolize the process, this way decisions would be made based more on
policy and less on the ability to get the message out through a national
organization, no public relations/ spin doctors
-No government money used to advertise policies of parties
currently in power
- Limit campaign donations to $20 per citizen per year with
no tax deduction given
-No corporate donations, no lobbying, no special access to
public officials
-No party control over how representatives choose to vote,
all votes = free votes
-Enact a single transferable ballot proportional
representation system, whereby parties who only get a minority of the votes do
not get 100% power and voters can vote freely based on conscience without being
forced into strategic voting
-Bring democracy to the senate, or any other legislative
body filled with appointed “representatives”
-Ensure that watchdog organizations are not appointed/
controlled by the people they are supposed to be watching
-Ensure the speaker of the house is non-partisan, is
selected either through promotion from within the civil service or elected as
an independent
-Increase oversight of the financial affairs of
representatives to prevent corruption
-Index the pay and benefits of representatives to the
average pay and benefits of the people, give them an incentive to improve
things for the country not just the 1%
-Authorize the security services to keep a close eye on
representatives to prevent foreign interference in our political affairs
The idea is that if the monopoly on power held by the major
parties were broken we would have a much better chance at reversing the decline.
As things stand the major parties endorse outsourcing while much of the public
does not. There is a fairly commonly held view that we outsourced our economy
to China, and if the public were ever allowed a chance to bring the jobs home
they would take it.
Take for example the last American election. Both candidates
had to say that they were against outsourcing and they would re-negotiate trade
agreements as they always say but never do. Americans knew nothing would change
but they only had two parties to vote for and both have allowed American
industrial capacity to be outsourced over the past 30 years. America did not
have a real choice.
Break the old party monopolies, divorce money from power,
and we have a chance.
Globalization
levels the playing field, in a way that makes it hard for developed
countries to compete. A country with a lower cost structure (lower wages
and benefits for workers, more inexpensive coal in its energy mix, and
more lenient rules on pollution) is able to out-compete a typical OECD
country. In the United States, the percentage of US citizen with jobs
started dropping about the time China joined the World Trade
Organization in 2001. - See more at:
http://www.economywatch.com/economy-business-and-finance-news/12-reasons-why-globalisation-is-a-major-problem-gail-tverberg.26-02.html#sthash.kewzAwZz.V7JoIdKS.dpuf
Globalization
levels the playing field, in a way that makes it hard for developed
countries to compete. A country with a lower cost structure (lower wages
and benefits for workers, more inexpensive coal in its energy mix, and
more lenient rules on pollution) is able to out-compete a typical OECD
country. In the United States, the percentage of US citizen with jobs
started dropping about the time China joined the World Trade
Organization in 2001. - See more at:
http://www.economywatch.com/economy-business-and-finance-news/12-reasons-why-globalisation-is-a-major-problem-gail-tverberg.26-02.html#sthash.kewzAwZz.V7JoIdKS.dpuf
The
failure of one country has the potential to pull many others down, and
with it much of the system. - See more at:
http://www.economywatch.com/economy-business-and-finance-news/12-reasons-why-globalisation-is-a-major-problem-gail-tverberg.26-02.html#sthash.kewzAwZz.V7JoIdKS.dpuf
" Beijing is now a major financial partner in
Hollywood, a place where money has always trumped art, let alone truth.
Communist China will now take a direct hand in the manufacturing of
what American audiences see. "
" The main goal is to desensitize the American
people to Communist China's growing military power, outright aggression
against its neighbors, and the continuing brutal oppression of its own
people. "
" These are also developments which China's
smiling Communist elite do not want Americans to think about. We are to
think of the Peoples Republic in terms of valuable business partners
and graceful practitioners of Tai Chi. "
The 17-page document is a "Multicultural Strategic Outreach Plan"
aimed at co-ordinating party, caucus and government resources to
"re-engage with ethnic voters and media." It includes plans to work on a
media strategy, build a database of contacts and find "quick wins" such
as apologizing for past injustices. - See more at:
http://thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHook/2013/02/27/BC-Libs-Outreach/#sthash.UJh00ypO.dpuf
The 17-page document is a "Multicultural Strategic Outreach Plan"
aimed at co-ordinating party, caucus and government resources to
"re-engage with ethnic voters and media." It includes plans to work on a
media strategy, build a database of contacts and find "quick wins" such
as apologizing for past injustices. - See more at:
http://thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHook/2013/02/27/BC-Libs-Outreach/#sthash.UJh00ypO.dpuf
The 17-page document is a "Multicultural Strategic Outreach Plan"
aimed at co-ordinating party, caucus and government resources to
"re-engage with ethnic voters and media." It includes plans to work on a
media strategy, build a database of contacts and find "quick wins" such
as apologizing for past injustices. - See more at:
http://thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHook/2013/02/27/BC-Libs-Outreach/#sthash.rPEMcv2B.dpuf
" Since then, the administration – including the president himself and his nominee to lead the CIA, John Brennan
– has been repeatedly asked whether this authority extends to US soil,
i.e., whether the president has the right to execute US citizens on US
soil without charges. In each instance, they have refused to answer. "
" Foreign hires are not additions to the work force, but replacements. The
corporations force their American employees to train the foreigners,
and then the American employees are discharged. Obviously, if skilled
employees were in short supply, they would not be laid off. Moreover, if
the skills were in short supply, salaries would be bid up, not down,
and the 36% of those who graduated in 2011 with a doctorate degree in
engineering would not have been left unemployed. The National Science
Foundation’s report, “Doctorate Recipients From U.S. Universities,” says
that only 64% of the Ph.D. engineering graduates found a pay check. "
" By focusing on the bottom line at all costs, corporations are destroying
the US consumer market. Offshoring jobs reduces labor costs and raises
profits, but it also reduces domestic consumer income, thus reducing the
domestic market for the corporation’s products. For awhile the
reduction in consumer income can be filled by the expansion of consumer
debt, but when consumers reach their debt limit sales cannot continue to
rise. The consequence of jobs offshoring is the ruination of the
domestic consumer market. "
" To sum up, the corporations’ focus on the bottom line has
disconnected US incomes from the production of the goods and services
that the American people consume, thus weakening and ultimately
destroying the domestic consumer market. The Fed’s focus on saving
banks, which mindless deregulation allowed to become “too big to fail,”
has created a bond market bubble of negative real interest rates and a
dollar bubble in which the dollar’s exchange rate has not declined in
keeping with the large increase in its supply. Both the corporations and
the Fed have created a stock market bubble based on profits obtained
from labor arbitrage (the substitution of cheaper foreign labor for US
labor) and from banks speculating with the money that the Fed is
providing to them.
This situation is untenable. Sooner or later something will pop these bubbles, and the consequences will be horrendous. "
" The current economic model assumes that perpetual growth is possible
on our fragile and finite planet. This economic model is dependent on
consumption and the waste that accompanies consumption means that most
of what we buy is cheap and ends up in our waste streams within six
month of purchase. The economy is financed by debt and debt levels are
unsustainable and growing. Virtually all levels of government,
individuals and families carry too much debt compared to their income.
The globalized economy was made possible by cheap fossil fuels and
globalized trade. Fossil fuels are no longer cheap and most countries’
economies are contracting.
BC Greens will work with British Columbians to plan for and
transition to an economy based in place and community where trade is
local and based in durable goods and services. "
" How does the Chinese Communist Party justify control of all of
China’s institutions today — economic, political, military and cultural?
If Marxism is mocked behind closed doors by a new economic elite and
tens of millions of Chinese young, what can cause the nation to continue
to respect and obey a Communist Party and its leaders, besides the gun?
The answer of Europe in the 1930s is China’s answer today.
Nationalism, tribalism, patriotic war if necessary, will bring the
masses back. If the Chinese nation is being insulted, if ancestral lands
are occupied by foreigners as in olden times, the people will rally
around a regime that stands up for China. Nationalism will keep Chinese
society “under control while you go forward.” "
" China’s assertion that almost all of the South China Sea and adjacent
waters are part of its territory seems to be growing more dangerous with
each passing week. "
" Having dominated East and
Southeast Asia for all but the last two centuries of the past two
millennia, China is chafing at the current US-led regional order of
sovereign states, in which even the smallest enjoys the same rights,
privileges, and protection as the largest. Modern China has benefited
enormously from this arrangement; nonetheless, there is keen resentment
that the Chinese civilization-state’s vast achievements over several
thousand years offer China no special status.
To
a people imbued with a deep sense of superior moral worth, historical
achievement, and victimization by foreign powers, this state of affairs
is unjust and unnatural. It follows that pulling back from any
territorial dispute with smaller and inferior states would be seen as a
humiliating defeat, rather than a step toward ensuring long-term
regional stability. "
" The information revolution has created a more global, interdependent,
and transparent world than ever. But this has
led, in turn, to an anxious, Balkan-ising quest for identity. "
" According to Abe,
relations between China and Japan have been suffering due to unintended
consequences of moves by the Communist Party of China to retain its
legitimacy. China’s economic opening led to unequal prosperity,
eliminating the Party’s main pillar of support, equality. To counter
that, the Chinese government pursued a two-prong strategy of economic
growth and patriotism. Economic growth required Beijing to expand its
sourcing of commodities, moving China naturally onto the sea. Meanwhile,
patriotism, tinged with anti-Japanese teaching, has come to pervade the
educational system and society.
Abe argued that China
is pursuing a path of coercion or intimidation, particularly in the East
and South China seas, as part of its resource-acquisition strategy.
Anti-Japanese undercurrents in Chinese society due to the inculcation of
patriotism have won domestic support for the assertive Chinese actions. "
" The statement calls for the Chinese regime to release all prisoners of
conscience, and requests that the Taiwanese government and other
governments implement legislation to prohibit organ transplantation
using organs from illicit sources. "
" The existence of many individual camps and ghettos was previously known
only on a fragmented, region-by-region basis. But the researchers, using
data from some 400 contributors, have been documenting the entire scale
for the first time, studying where they were located, how they were
run, and what their purpose was. "
" Coming across the message “this page cannot be displayed” while browsing
the Internet is a common experience for Chinese netizens, and is often a
sign the content was removed by Internet censors. "
" The Party aims to bring 400 million people to
cities over the next decade as the new leadership of
president-in-waiting Xi Jinping and premier-designate Li Keqiang seek to
turn China into a wealthy world power with economic growth generated by an affluent consumer class. "
" Maine’s state legislature is stepping out to confront a problem
Washington has been avoiding, taking action to guard the electrical grid
system in the state against a natural or man-made electromagnetic pulse
attack. "
" Unions, citizen groups, and environmentalists have joined a growing chorus alarmed about a secretive investment deal with China, voicing their support yesterday for a First Nation's lawsuit seeking to halt the agreement.
The groups said they are concerned about the lack of public consultation and aboriginal consent, and provisions allowing companies to sue governments over legislation, contained within the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA). "
" "This deal would critically impact every provincial government's ability to make autonomous decisions directly affecting the well-being of their citizens," said Hupacasath First Nation councillor Brenda Sayers. "Our environmental laws have been gutted, so there's very little environmental protection or process around how resources are removed... This is a very big deal for Canada. It is critical for Canadians, at this point in time, to pay attention to this."
The lawsuit presents an opportunity to educate people about the "secretive and extreme" FIPA deal, said Jamie Biggar, executive director of Leadnow.ca. After the agreements came to light last autumn, the advocacy organization fundraised more than $30,000 among its 225,000 members to support Hupacasath's injunction request. "
" "The reason why these negotiated behind closed doors -- the reason this is not going to Parliament and why it's not being brought in front of the public -- is because, for past trade agreements, the government has realized the public does not support [them]," "
" "These free trade agreements give corporations power over governments, and limit a government's ability to put regulations and laws in place to protect the rights of citizens, the land and natural resources of our country," she said. "If corporations think that rules and regulations to protect our labour rights, human rights or our environment get in their way, they can sue our government.
"With no debate or consultation, the Harper government is prepared to undermine our rights -- labour rights we have fought for as unions, human rights, democratic rights and the right to protect our environment, and most importantly, the rights of First Nations over lands and resources."
With tensions rising in the province over Enbridge's proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, and Kinder Morgan's plans to expand its own pipeline from the Alberta oil sands, some have suggested the real intent of the FIPA may be to lock in oil exports to Asia. "
"According to ancient Chinese general Sun Zi (孫子), or Sun Tzu, author of the famous military classic “The Art of War” (孫子兵法), this is the ultimate strategy that should always be attempted first before resorting to battle.
Sun Zi believed that the skillful leader subdues the enemy’s army without fighting, captures the enemy’s cities without attack, and overthrows the enemy’s nation without a lengthy operation."
" If the Canada-China FIPA passes, China’s companies could sue Canada if any Canadian government - including our provinces - makes any decision that put our health, jobs and environment before their profit. Worse yet, these suits would be decided by unaccountable arbitrators in secret courts outside our legal system.
That’s not how Canada is supposed to work. We live in a democratic federation, and our provinces should have to consent to any major federal decision that would undermine their authority. Our provinces can defend their constitutional powers from FIPA. If Christy Clark, BC’s premier, acts now to defend the rights of British Columbians, she could stop Harper from locking us into FIPA for 31 years. "
" Four months ago, Prime Minister Harper quietly announced that he wanted to pass the biggest trade deal in a generation without a single vote in Parliament. Your campaign raised the alarm about the danger of FIPA’s secret investor-state courts. You united Canadians, divided Harper’s caucus and made him think twice about ratifying this bad trade deal. The Hupacasath First Nation are taking this FIPA to court to defend their rights. "
" FIPA would expose Canada to lawsuits from China’s massive companies in secret investor-state courts -- outside Canada’s legal system -- that have a track record of systematically ruling against the interests of Canadians. Under this system, Canada has already been sued more than any industrialized country in the world. Investor-state lawsuits undermine our democratic control. "
" Our provinces have defended our rights before. In the 1990s, BC played a leadership role in the successful fight against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). A BC legislative committee publicly studied the MAI and expressed serious concerns about the fact that it would expose Canada to investor-state arbitration. It found that if the federal government fails to gain the express consent of the province, “the Province must vigorously defend its authority on behalf of all British Columbians."
Let’s call on our premiers to use every tool they have - political and legal - to stop the Canada-China FIPA from being ratified unless the secret investor-state courts are removed, public consultations are held in every province, and our provinces consent to the deal through a democratic vote in their legislature. "
With hope and respect, Emma, Jamie, Matthew and the whole Leadnow.ca team
" "China has a “deeply ingrained” need to spar with Japan and other Asian neighbors over territory, because the ruling Communist Party uses the disputes to maintain strong domestic support, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in an interview.
Clashes with neighbors, notably Japan, play to popular opinion, Abe said, given a Chinese education system that emphasizes patriotism and “anti-Japanese sentiment.” "
Brainwashed School Children in China 2009
China Anti Japanese Student Brainwashing 2012
How can you support your leaders when they provide support for the objectives of the Communist Party of China and it's campaign of one-world hatred and oppression. We should not do business or provide resources to a force that is so anti-human. Below is footage of what martial law under Chinese Communist occupation looks like. Is Canada next?
In Tibet you can be arrested for merely walking outside your door and saying:
"long live the Dali Lama".
It's sad, the Chinese have been trained to hate from a young age, like the Hitler youth.
At one point you can see about 50 Chinese with guns cuffing a scared old woman and laughing.
LEAKED Video from Tibet Show China's Ongoing Brutal Repression On Tibetans
This is what martial law looks like, we have to stop the New World Order.
" Of the 104 Tibetans who set themselves on fire since February 2009, 22 were under the age of 18, Save Tibet said. They have taken part in the fiery protests to demonstrate against the Chinese regime’s policies in Tibetan areas, calling for cultural and religious freedom, as well as the return of the Dalai Lama. "
" He related a recent discussion he had with a doctor: A patient told the doctor that they would not be attending treatment the following day, because they were going to China, where their donor was about to be shot. “That’s a chilling prospect,” Shoebridge said, “and one which we have a moral duty to address.” "
" While Chinese officials admit—after years of denials —that organs come from prisoners, they do not specify which types of prisoners. Available evidence suggests that in large part, the organs have come from practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has been persecuted in China since 1999.
The research of two Canadians, human rights lawyer David Matas, and former parliamentarian David Kilgour, indicates that from 2000 to 2005, 41,500 organs were harvested from Falun Gong prisoners. The consultation paper produced as part of Shoebridge’s bill amendment includes reference to the Kilgour-Matas report. Gutmann estimates the figure was 65,000 by 2008. "
" To most Canadians this curious disclosure seems confounding, if not paradoxical. How can "the economic engine" of Canada run five government deficits in a row yet promise prosperity for the nation? Is no one in charge? "
"Terry Lynn Karl, the acclaimed author of Paradox of Plenty, describes the petromania resource curse more directly: Easy access to oil wealth lowers "financial discipline within bureaucracies and leads to reckless budgetary practices. Most importantly, it preempts efforts to mobilize domestic resources through taxation" which, in turn, creates more dependence on oil."
" Alberta must "redirect the revenues gained from the sale of resources away from the government's budget and toward saving," conclude the pair. "
" "As we noted previously this is the solution to the problem of energy price volatility that has been successfully employed by energy-rich Norway and that has been frequently urged upon the Alberta government. Unfortunately, it is a solution that has eluded the government of Alberta." "
"Easy wealth seems to discourage hard thinking, the same way scarcity stimulates innovation."
" In a petro state politicians and business leaders become so tied to the perverse incentives of mining oil, says Terry Lynn Karl, that they "develop networks of complicity based on the classic exchange between the right to rule and the right to make money." "
" How do you know when you live in petro state? Here are some key signs:
When your government pays 30 per cent of its road, education, and hospital bills with finite and volatile hydrocarbon revenue.
When your province posts five budget deficits in a row during a so-called "bitumen boom."
When the government approves 100 bitumen projects over a ten-year period without a cumulative impact assessment.
When your government fires the Chief Elections Officer, Lorne Gibson, in 2009 for doing his job and reporting on widespread electoral fraud.
When your government estimates that cleaning up toxic waste in the tar sands will cost more than $20 billion but asks industry to set aside only $1 billion.
When the province's oil and gas regulator argues in Queen's Court that it owes "no duty of care" to Albertan landowners or the province's groundwater.
When a bunch of Calgary lawyers decide that the best market for their self-branded "ethical oil" are Chinese national oil firms directed by the world's leading moral philosophers, the Communist Party of China. "
" Governments and financial analysts who think unconventional fossil fuels such as bitumen, shale gas and shale oil can usher in an era of prosperity and energy plenty are dangerously deluded, concludes a groundbreaking report by one of Canada's top energy analysts. "
" The latest panaceas championed by industry and media talking heads are too expensive and will deplete too rapidly to provide either energy security or independence for the United States, concludes the 62-year-old geologist who worked for Natural Resources Canada for 32 years as a coal and gas specialist. "
Unconventional fossil fuels all share a host of cruel and limiting traits says Hughes. They offer dramatically fewer energy returns; they consume extreme and endless flows of capital; they provide difficult or volatile rates of supply overtime and have "large environmental impacts in their extraction." "
" The Chinese regime for the first time admitted the existence of so-called “cancer villages”—areas near factories and polluted waterways where cancer rates have increased to startlingly high levels.
Over the years, Chinese environmental activists have said there is a strong link between increased cancer rates and industrial pollution—in part due to corrupt officials looking the other way when developers and businesses violate environmental regulations. Investigative journalist Deng Fei in 2009 showed some of the worst-hit areas using Google maps. "
" The $33-million lawsuit alleges that Encana, one of Canada's largest natural gas producers, drilled and fracked shallow coal bed methane wells directly in the local groundwater supply between 2001 and 2004 near Rosebud, Alberta and thereby polluted Ernst's water well with enough toxic chemicals and methane to make it flammable. "
Ai Weiwei world famous artist Persecuted for belief in Compassion
Notice how the Conservatives try to avoid saying anything about China when questioned. Harper was on TV the other day saying that the best way to open up closed societies was to engage them in commerce. The opposite is what is happening, the dictatorships are getting stronger and influencing our democracies with all the money we outsourced to them. This has only made the enemy stronger, and provided the communist tyrants legitimacy.
Harper lets communist China have free rein over Canadian telecommunications
" …Government and private-sector systems are attacked by hackers, organized crime and state actors [China anyone? this government won’t say] on a “constant basis,” said [public safety minister] Toews…
Now I guess they think those types don’t work during Ottawa’s night:
…the [Canadian Cyber Incident Response] centre [within Public Safety Canada] was still not operating on a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week basis, as originally intended, shutting down weekdays at 4 p.m. Ottawa time and closing for the weekend. The government plans to extend those hours to 9 p.m., seven days a week, but not round-the-clock… "
" Even Canada's own intelligence agencies have warned the Harper government of the risks of throwing open the door to Chinese telecom companies.
Despite all the warnings, the federal and Ontario governments have rolled out the red carpet to Huawei, officially praising the Chinese company's partnerships in Canadian telecom projects with Telus, Bell, SaskTel and WIND Mobile.
During a recent visit to China, for instance, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he was "honoured" to have witnessed the signing of large contracts for Huawei to provide Telus and Bell with the latest LTE high-speed wireless networks across Canada. "
" “The Canadian government has been somewhat remiss in its approach to the problem” of cyber security, said Queen’s University professor and internet security expert David Skillicorn. "
" The company said it intended to use the so-called long-wall technique to harvest coal from its Murray River mine and insisted the Chinese workers were needed for their specialties in the use of it. "
"But according to documents obtained by the union, HD Mining's application to the B.C. Ministry of Natural Resource Operations in June 2011 shows during a two-year bulk sample collection period the company had no plan to employ the long-wall technique. "
" Documents obtained through the Access to Information Act show it came, in part, from the pipeline industry.
The Canadian Energy Pipeline Association met with senior government officials in the fall of 2011, urging them not just to streamline environmental assessments, but also to bring in "new regulations under (the) Navigable Waters Protection Act," a CEPA slide presentation shows. "
" The complaint arises from a sweeping Conservative communications policy under which federal scientists must get permission before speaking publicly — permission that is often denied, delayed or limited to approved talking points. "
" In recent years Wall Street banks helped a wave of foreign energy companies including Chinese, Norwegian and Japanese firms buy up shale oil and gas leases across North America, even though too few wells had been drilled to assess their longevity and quality.
"Shale gas accounted for $46.5 billion in deals in the U.S. alone in 2011," explains Rogers. "The mergers and acquisitions market for shale assets exploded in the prior two years directly in sync with the downward descent of natural gas prices. In much the same way as mortgage backed securities bolstered the banks' profits before the downturn, energy M&A had now become the new profit centre within these banks." "
" He also warns that all citizens should prepare for "high and likely volatile oil prices," and that governments should be "educating their citizenry of the risk of contraction to minimize potential future social discord." "
If we are concerned about the availability of energy, why is the government in such a rush to ship the oil to foreign dictators.
The Tyee began raising awareness of the gaps in the regulation of municipal politics in 2007. "It is entirely possible for offshore money to buy a municipal election in British Columbia," said Patrick Smith, a political scientist at Simon Fraser University, quoted in the series "City Hall for Sale."
"And it would be easy for the recipient of that money to hide it from public view," Smith said. "I think that's pretty stunning." "
" The sale of government assets will raise $475 million. "
Selling off property to pay the bills, selling off non-renewable resources for a piece of what they are worth, does that sound like strategic fiscal management to you?
OpenMedia's Steve Anderson - Crafting a connected future
