tagged w/ Keystone Pipeline
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WWH/CJE Sunday News Briefs - Today is “Shoot the messenger day” but you have to find me first!WWH/CJE Sunday News Briefs - Today is “Shoot the messenger day” but you... more
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Daryl Hannah;
Surveillance-proof app
Could a transfusion of young blood REALLY rejuvenate old people’s brains?
wealthy funded party conventions
BOY SCOUTS’ ‘PERVERSION’ FILES SET TO BE RELEASED
Bangladeshi arrested in alleged bomb plot
Apartheid Update:Israel counted calories to limit Gaza foodDaryl Hannah;
Surveillance-proof app
Could a transfusion of young blood REALLY... more
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The Canadian fossil fuel giant Transcanada (net earnings 2011: $1.5 billion) is encountering increased resistance from the “Tar Sands Blockade” in eastern Texas — now in its 18th day of an extensively constructed “tree sit-inThe Canadian fossil fuel giant Transcanada (net earnings 2011: $1.5 billion) is... more
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French beekeepers and the mystery of the blue honey
Daryl Hannah arrested
Pot plants ‘big as Christmas trees’ seized
‘Shut the f**k up, parents’
Racist, Homophobic, Woman hating, Corrupt Corporate Owned SCALIA SAYS No ABORTION, No GAY RIGHTS.French beekeepers and the mystery of the blue honey
Daryl Hannah arrested
Pot... more
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With the economy improving - Republicans have started attacking President Obama about rising gas prices. Some forecasts show gas prices hitting five dollars a gallon this summer - and the Right wants you to belive that high prices have something to do with President Obama's rejection of the Keystone pipeline - or maybe his refusal to expand drilling in Alaska - or just his downright hatred of America. They want you to belive that the United States has a shortage of oil - and that if the President were to just drill, baby, drill - then prices will plummet. But that's not true. It's not even close to true.
The United States isn't short on oil - it's awash in oil. In fact - we have so much oil that we're getting rid of much of it by shipping it overseas. As Bloomberg reported yesterday...for the first since 1949 - that's 62 years - the United States is now a net-exporter of oil products. That means we shipped more oil products out to places in South America, Europe, and Asia - than we imported in from around the world. In fact - every single day in 2011 - oil corporations ship about 460,000 MORE barrels of oil OUT of the country than were imported into the country that day. So if gas prices are rising because supplies in the US have dropped - then why are we getting rid of so much of it by exporting it? It's because the President can't legally tell multi-billion dollar transnational oil corporations where to sell their oil. And these corporations don't give a damn about gas supplies in the United States - because they're getting a way better deal taking their oil and selling it elsewhere. And that's what they're doing - and that's why they wanted the Keystone pipeline.With the economy improving - Republicans have started attacking President Obama about... more
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To announce denial of application for pipeline, but (of course) leaving door open for TransCanada to reapply after it comes up with an alternate route. IOW, SSDR.To announce denial of application for pipeline, but (of course) leaving door open for... more
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www.tomdispatch.com
Armed With Naïvete
Time to Stop Being Cynical About Corporate Money in Politics and Start Being Angry
By Bill McKibben
My resolution for 2012 is to be naïve -- dangerously naïve.
I’m aware that the usual recipe for political effectiveness is just the opposite: to be cynical, calculating, an insider. But if you think, as I do, that we need deep change in this country, then cynicism is a sucker’s bet. Try as hard as you can, you’re never going to be as cynical as the corporations and the harem of politicians they pay for. It’s like trying to outchant a Buddhist monastery.
Here’s my case in point, one of a thousand stories people working for social change could tell: All last fall, most of the environmental movement, including 350.org, the group I helped found, waged a fight against the planned Keystone XL pipeline that would bring some of the dirtiest energy on the planet from Canada through the U.S. to the Gulf Coast. We waged our struggle against building it out in the open, presenting scientific argument, holding demonstrations, and attending hearings. We sent 1,253 people to jail in the largest civil disobedience action in a generation. Meanwhile, more than half a million Americans offered public comments against the pipeline, the most on any energy project in the nation’s history.
And what do you know? We won a small victory in November, when President Obama agreed that, before he could give the project a thumbs-up or -down, it needed another year of careful review. (The previous version of that review, as overseen by the State Department, had been little short of a crony capitalist farce.) Given that James Hansen, the government’s premier climate scientist, had said that tapping Canada’s tar sands for that pipeline would, in the end, essentially mean “game over for the climate,” that seemed an eminently reasonable course to follow, even if it was also eminently political.
A few weeks later, however, Congress decided it wanted to take up the question. In the process, the issue went from out in the open to behind closed doors in money-filled rooms. Within days, and after only a couple of hours of hearings that barely mentioned the key scientific questions or the dangers involved, the House of Representatives voted 234-194 to force a quicker review of the pipeline. Later, the House attached its demand to the must-pass payroll tax cut.
That was an obvious pre-election year attempt to put the president on the spot. Environmentalists are at least hopeful that the White House will now reject the permit. After all, its communications director said that the rider, by hurrying the decision, “virtually guarantees that the pipeline will not be approved.”
As important as the vote total in the House, however, was another number: within minutes of the vote, Oil Change International had calculated that the 234 Congressional representatives who voted aye had received $42 million in campaign contributions from the fossil-fuel industry; the 193 nays, $8 million.
Buying Congress
I know that cynics -- call them realists, if you prefer -- will be completely unsurprised by that. Which is precisely the problem.
We’ve reached the point where we’re unfazed by things that should shake us to the core. So, just for a moment, be naïve and consider what really happened in that vote: the people’s representatives who happen to have taken the bulk of the money from those energy companies promptly voted on behalf of their interests.
They weren’t weighing science or the national interest; they weren’t balancing present benefits against future costs. Instead of doing the work of legislators, that is, they were acting like employees. Forget the idea that they’re public servants; the truth is that, in every way that matters, they work for Exxon and its kin. They should, by rights, wear logos on their lapels like NASCAR drivers.
Go to www.tomdispatch.com for the remainder of this article.www.tomdispatch.com
Armed With Naïvete
Time to Stop Being Cynical About... more
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The Scene. Whatever Joe Oliver and Peter Kent are actually accomplishing in their capacity as ministers of the crown, these two children of the 1940s have at least the basis of a promising buddy comedy.The Scene. Whatever Joe Oliver and Peter Kent are actually accomplishing in their... more
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Keystone Cop Out
http://takimag.com/article/keystone_cop_out/print
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