Social Impacts. Overnight injections of migrant workers will not build healthy communities and can have severely adverse impacts on existing communities, especially those of indigenous nations on their traditional lands. Such development brings vices and long term displacement too often. Drugs, alcohol and associated violence spreads. Hunting becomes difficult when the land is threatened, leading to a further loss of culture and tradition. In towns like Fort McMurray there is no planning for the future, but merely consumption in the present. However transient the individuals may be, the populations will not leave, as “development” takes on a logic all its own. All levels of run away development are subordinate to that development, not social need.
Chevron to appeal ruling on Richmond refinery
Tom Abate, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, July 9, 2009
(07-08) 18:40 PDT -- Chevron Corp. will appeal a judge's order that it halt an upgrade to its Richmond refinery and revise its environmental review, a ruling that the company blames for causing more than a thousand layoffs.
"We think the judge was wrong," refinery manager Mike Coyle said Tuesday, as he showed off two huge furnaces at the center of the dispute.
The 2010 Plan to Crush Our Freedoms
Olympics security overkill: Why so afraid of protest?
By Rafe Mair
20 Jul 2009,
TheTyee.ca
Less than two weeks ago, Bud Mercer, head of the Vancouver 2010 Integrated
Security Unit looking after security for the 2010 Olympics, raised with
Vancouver City Council the specter of the violent clashes that rocked World
Trade Organization meetings in Seattle and Quebec City.
To combat these forecasted dangers, the taxpayer is spending one billion
dollars, at last count, and using 16,000 police and armed forces personnel!
Road to coast preferable to highway
Guy Quenneville
Northern News Services
Published Monday, July 20, 2009
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - In Lou Covello's mind, the NWT and Nunavut chamber's most controversial suggestion is not the development of mining towns but the construction of a road through the Slave Geological Province - host to a considerable concentration of mineral deposits - from Yellowknife to the Coronation Gulf.
The proposed road would be more economically rewarding than the Mackenzie Valley Highway, said Covello, the president of the NWT Nunavut Chamber of Mines.
Alberta seeks input on bitumen royalties
By Jason Fekete, Calgary Herald
July 21, 2009
CALGARY - The Stelmach government is expected to ask energy producers today for their interest in a new provincial bitumen royalty-in-kind policy, as the premier faces mounting criticism for failing to keep his promise to stem the flow of oilsands to the United States.
RCMP seek input on providing culturally sensitive security during 2010 Games
By Charlie Smith - Publish Date: July 19, 2009
Olympic security officials have approached a local multicultural organization for help in providing culturally sensitive security during the 2010 Games.
On behalf of Sukhvinder Vinning, vice president of the Multifaith Action Society, former Vancouver city councillor Nancy Chiavario has sent an e-mail announcing an opportunity for people to discuss issues pertinent to their faiths with an RCMP officer.
The pieces are in place
By Chris Dunker
Daily Sun staff writer
Tuesday, Jul 14, 2009
On its way from Alberta, Canada to Pavoka, Ill., the Keystone Pipeline, being constructed and operated by the TransCanada Corporation, will soon be passing through the region near Steele City.
Keystone Pipeline is a $5.2 billion project that will ultimately flow oil from Alberta to refineries in Illinois. Despite a tropical June, contractors are pushing to finish the job through Nebraska in 2009.
It MUST be noted that Opti-- whose parent corporation is Ormat, an Israeli energy company-- needs to make this commercial venture work for several reasons, the most important being that this "project" would help provide the technology to make Israel "energy self-sufficient". Destroying the Negev is high on the priority list for Israel; this project is nothing but a laboratory for future exploitation of the vast (yet crappy quality) oil shale in historical Palestine.
Chevron: Invest in Richmond's Future
New America Media, Commentary, Jeff Ritterman
Jul 19, 2009
The Beaver Lake Cree Nation vs the Tar Sands
July 15th, 2009
The following article was written by Drew Mildon, a lawyer at the Canadian law firm Woodward and Company. Woodward and Company is overseeing the Beaver Lake Cree Nation law suit against the Government of Canada.
At what price 'white man's money'?
The candidates vying to succeed Grand Chief Phil Fontaine next week pretty much agree that economic development is the key to prosperity for Canada's native people. Many others, however, fear the cost. The Globe and Mail's Shawn McCarthy reports
Shawn McCarthy OTTAWA - From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Saturday, Jul. 18, 2009
Each spring, Art Sterritt and his family gather at his wife's ancestral home among B.C.'s Gitga'at people to harvest seaweed, clams and cockles on the shores of Hartley Bay near Kitimat.
