It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, May 05, 2019
Mass. Judge Refuses to Halt Pro-Palestinian Event at UMass Featuring Roger Waters & Linda Sarsour STORY MAY 03, 2019
GUESTS Sut Jhally professor of communication at the University of Massachusetts and founder and executive director of the Media Education Foundation, which organized the event, “Not Backing Down: Israel, Free Speech, and the Battle for Palestinian Human Rights.” Rachel Weber attorney and member Jewish Voice for Peace, Western Massachusetts chapter.
“Not Backing Down: Israel, Free Speech, and the Battle for Palestinian Human Rights.” That’s the title of an event set to take place Saturday at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. After three anonymous UMass students filed a lawsuit to stop the event, a judge ruled Thursday the event can proceed, saying, “There’s nothing that comes even close to a threat of harm or incitement to violence or lawlessness.” We get an update from Sut Jhally, event organizer and professor of communication at the University of Massachusetts, and Rachel Weber, attorney and member Jewish Voice for Peace, Western Massachusetts chapter.
UBC Grace Nosek, in red, sits at a table of students including 15-year-old Nina Rossing, pictured at the computer. They are working together to combat climate change.(Submitted by Grace Nosek)
The project, which is in its pilot phase, was created after its organizer, UBC PhD law student Grace Nosek, visited students around Vancouver to ask them how they felt about climate change.
She says her questions were overwhelmingly met with pessimistic outlooks.
"Extinction, the end of the world and the death of all animals," was the general response from students, Noseksaid, speaking with Stepehn Quinn, the host of CBC's The Early Edition.
She says she wanted to give young people hope and a way to affect change.
"We feel like there's a moral prerogative to give them a sense that there's a future...that they can have agency on climate," she said.
Inspiring climate ambassadors
Nina Rossing, like many of her friends at Prince of Wales Secondary, has known about climate change for a while but never felt she could really make a difference until she joined the workshop.
"I realized how much power I held and how much power this generation holds. That could change the world," said 15-year-old Rossing.
Hundreds of students walked out of classes Friday afternoon to protest government inaction on climate change in downtown Vancouver.((Evan Mitsui/CBC))
She says simple decisions like buying less clothing and changing the type of light bulb used at home could make a significant impact if everyone were to commit to making a difference.
Since taking part, Rossing has also reached out to her local MLA, Melanie Mark, as well as Education Minister Rob Fleming to demand more education on climate change in B.C. schools.
"We do learn the science behind climate change, but we're not really told how we can act [to fix it], she said.
"That is, I think, a huge problem."
'The scale of hope'
The program launched two weeks ago and Nosek says she has already noticed the effect empowering one person has on others.
Students rally in downtown Vancouver Friday to call for government action on climate change.((Evan Mitsui/CBC))
She says she has watched Rossing inspire hundreds of other students to take ownership over the planet.
"The scale of hope is the is the only thing, in my mind, that takes on the scale of the crisis," said Nosek.
In the fall, she intends to launch workshops in schools across Vancouver.
TransCanada shareholders agree to drop ‘Canada’ from the name
Russ Girling, President and CEO of TransCanada Corp., says the new name, TC Energy, acknowledges the company’s origin as TransCanada while signalling that it has evolved. (Mike Ridewood/The Canadian Press). Photo courtesy of CBC.
TransCanada Corp. is officially dropping the “Canada” from its name, but CEO Russ Girling isn’t saying he expects it will make it any easier to get pipelines approved in Canada or the United States.
The Calgary-based company is now to be called TC Energy Corp., after shareholders approved the change at its annual meeting Friday.
“The name TC Energy acknowledges our origin as TransCanada PipeLines, while adding the word ‘energy’ speaks to the breadth of our business, which includes pipelines, power generation and energy storage,” Girling told the meeting.
“But to be clear, this is a name change, not a brand name. We are very proud of who we are and what we do.”
He declined to talk to reporters after the event.
The company said the change recognizes its growth into the United States and Mexico, including through its recent US$13-billion purchase of U.S. natural gas transporter Columbia Pipeline Group.
It has about 7,000 employees in North America, with 3,500 in Canada, 3,200 in the U.S. and 300 in Mexico.
But some analysts suggest it’s also a chance to distance itself from Canada, where difficulty in getting pipeline projects approved has been blamed for a glut of oil that caused steep discount pricing last fall and prompted the Alberta government to curtail production starting in January.
“I think the name change is semantics,” U.S.-based analyst Jennifer Rowland of Edward Jones wrote in an email.
“I don’t think it attracts new investors, but I do think it’s a subtle, or not so subtle depending on how you view it, way to de-emphasize Canada as some investors are leery of investing in Canada given the government intervention in free markets in Alberta and the difficult regulatory environment for energy.”
TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta into the U.S. was first proposed in 2008, rejected by then-president Barack Obama in 2015, approved by President Donald Trump in 2016 and again in March, but remains on hold awaiting court rulings in Montana and Nebraska.
The court delays mean the project will not be able to start construction in the U.S. this year, Paul Miller, president of liquids pipelines, confirmed during an afternoon conference call with financial analysts.
The project could still be unfinished if a new federal government is elected in the U.S. in 2020, he added, but it’s hoped all permits and approvals will be in hand by then and a new administration won’t affect bringing the project on stream.
Shareholders at the meeting voted almost 90 per cent against a motion sponsored by the Pension Plan of the United Church of Canada that would have required the company to report on how it is meeting international standards for Indigenous people’s rights.
They went along with the company’s recommendation to reject the motion as unnecessary given its existing policies.
The official approval of the name change came as the company reported a first-quarter profit of $1 billion of $1.09 per share, up from $734 million or 83 cents per share a year ago.
Revenue for the first quarter totalled $3.49 billion, compared with $3.42 billion in the first quarter of 2018.
On a comparable basis, TransCanada says it earned $987 million or $1.07 per share for the quarter, up from $864 million or 98 cents per share a year ago.
Analysts on average had expected a profit of 99 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters Eikon.
HYPOCRITE IT IS TIME TO DECRIMINALIZE ALL DRUGS AS THE LE DAIN COMMISSION RECOMMENDED BACK UNDER HIS DADDY PRIME MINISTER TRUDEAU SRThe Commission of Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs, often referred to as the Le Dain Commission after its chair Dean Gerald Le Dain, was a Canadian government commission that was begun in 1969 and completed its work in 1972.
Trudeau resists pressure to decriminalize drugs in face of opioid crisis
OTTAWA — Donna May says she’ll no longer tolerate a nod or weepy eyes from politicians over the opioid epidemic — it’s claimed the lives of too many people she loves.
May wants action in the form of drug decriminalization and she’s far from alone in her plea.
The death of May’s 55-year-old brother a year ago in Bolton, Ont., broke her emotionally.
“We have the ability to stop these deaths and we are stepping back from doing what is right,” she says.
“I lost my brother just a year ago, even after losing my daughter and being able to say to him, ‘Look it, all these drugs are poison.”’
May has spent years advocating with mumsDU — “moms united and mandated to saving the lives of Drug Users” — after the death of her 34-year-old daughter Jacey in 2012.
Jacey was a mother of three who developed a fentanyl addiction and ran afoul of the law. She was introduced to opioids through a prescription after she was injured falling down a flight of stairs onto a concrete basement floor.
Seven years after her death, government interventions on the opioid crisis have not prevented thousands more, May says.
“I’m afraid unless we do something that’s effective and immediate, we are going to see a huge increase in the overdose crisis,” she says. “It hasn’t ended. It hasn’t even subsided. It is just growing at exponential rates across Canada.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has refused to pursue decriminalization, even though he’s faced pressure from grassroots Liberal party members and his own caucus.
Last April, at a convention in Halifax, the Liberal rank and file passed a non-binding resolution on decriminalizing simple possession and consumption of all illicit drugs.
Trudeau shot the idea down. “On that particular issue, as I’ve said, it’s not part of our plans,” he said.
During the first nine months of last year, the Public Health Agency reported 3,286 Canadians lost their lives to apparent opioid-related overdoses, bringing the total to more than 10,300 between January 2016 and September 2018.
Fentanyl and other fentanyl-related substances continue to be a major driver of this crisis, the agency added.
In response to the staggering death toll, B.C.’s chief public-health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry recently called for B.C. to decriminalize the possession of controlled substances for personal use, in a 50-page report titled “Stopping the Harm.”
She said her province can’t wait for Ottawa to act, adding that decriminalizing the possession of even hard drugs is an important step to “stem the tide of unprecedented deaths.”
“I have called on the federal government to move toward regulating access to currently controlled drugs, with a focus on reducing harm associated with the use of those substances, as well as the harms associated with the current prohibition-based regulatory regime and its application,” she said.
“But in the context of the continuing overdose crisis that is affecting families and communities across B.C., the province cannot wait for action at the federal level. Immediate provincial action is warranted, and I recommend that the Province of B.C. urgently move to decriminalize people who possess controlled substances for personal use.”
There is widespread global recognition that the war on drugs and the resulting criminalization and stigmatization of people who use them has not reduced drug use but instead has increased health harms, the report added.
The federal NDP has also called for decriminalization, along with a growing number of health experts.
“I certainly think that it can begin a discussion in this country about where we are going and are we on the right track as it relates to drugs, mental health and addictions,” Dr. Jeffrey Turnbull, a former president of the Canadian Medical Association and the previous chief of staff at the Ottawa Hospital, said in a recent interview. A major part of his work is tending to the medical needs of homeless and street-involved people in Ottawa.
“Can we continue to put all these people in our jails or shouldn’t we try and deal with this as a problem of health rather than justice?”
For her part, Canada’s chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam is careful to say the federal government is not prepared to decriminalize illicit street drugs “as it stands.”
A major factor in rising overdose numbers is high-potency fentanyl and carfentanil being passed off as lower-strength opioids in street drugs. The more powerful drugs are easier to transport and sell but when users don’t know the potency of the substances they’re taking, overdoses are a big risk.
“We can do much more, I think, in looking at what are the different ways that we can provide people who are using drugs a ‘safer alternative,’ ” Tam says.
Health Canada is funding some pilot projects, Tam says, such as providing pharmaceutical-grade hydromorphone to people who are using street drugs “in an attempt to get them away from the toxic supply.”
The department should be pursuing a safer supply on a broad basis rather than in scattered pilots, May says, adding she sees decriminalization as the “only next step.”
Trudeau’s resistance to it amounts to a “huge disappointment”, she said.
“He gives us his pat answers without any explanation as to why he stands behind these answers and they just don’t make sense,” she says.
“If you take all the reasoning behind why he’s legalized cannabis and you apply it — all those reasons to the opiate crisis, there’s a clear direction that he should be going in the decriminalization (route).”
By Kristy Kirkup — The Canadian Press
with files from Andy Blatchford
Employee advocates call for greater protections for overnight workers after Saanich hotel robbery
WATCH: Employee advocates are calling for greater protections for overnight workers after the robbery of a Saanich hotel Thursday morning. Dramatic surveillance video shows thieves overpowering a lone hotel clerk. Mary Griffin reports.
Unifor union representative Jeannie Blaney watched the shocking surveillance video of the May 2nd, Howard Johnson Hotel, and Suites robbery and is voicing her concern for the hotel clerk, who was dragged by the suspects to a back room and tied up.
“I’ve dealt with workers who’ve experienced that, and it’s horrific,” Blaney said.
Now Unifor is pushing for strengthening protections for graveyard shift workers.
“I would like to see two co-workers at the desk,” Blaney said.
That used to be the law in B.C. Working at a gas station in Maple Ridge, employee Grant DePatie died in 2005 after being dragged by a driver who refused to pay. But the Liberals changed Grant’s Law in 2012. The Retail Action Network’s Eric Nordal wants the two-person rule back.
“Working in late night industries like this where you are handling a lot of cash, workers are constantly at risk,” Nordal said.
Spencer Lackmanec knows first hand the dangers of working at night.
“We’re calling on the government, the NDP, to re-implement those parts of Grant’s Law that were taken away,” Lackmanec said.
In the fall, five U.S. hotel chains, including the corporate owners of the Howard Johnson hotels, Wyndham Hotels, agreed to supply workers with panic buttons.
“If you are panicking, and you know you’ve got something around your neck. And you could press it, and police would be notified right away,” Blaney said.
Saanich police confirm the victim in Thursday’s robbery did not have a panic button.
THEY ARE CALLED WORKING ALONE REGULATIONS WE HAVE THEM IN ALBERTA, AND HAVE INCLUDED HAVING PANIC BUTTONS OR SOME FORM OF COMMUNICATION ALSO NOW PREPAYING FOR GAS IN ORDER TO PROTECT GAS STATION WORKERS ON NIGHT SHIFT
Fair Albertans! It appears that many Alberta companies did not receive the UCP e-mail: she-devil Rachel Notley, who was elected eight months after world oil prices began a steep fall, used her black magic to climb into a time warp to reduce those prices. Then she and her New Diabolical Party caused investors all over the world to have heart attacks by investing in schools and health care and even daycares for commoners when every good soul knows that they should have been abandoing such unworthy projects for deep corporate cuts for billionaires.
Now God's sidekick (well, Stephen Harper's sidekick, which is just as good, no?) has been elected by the good people of Alberta to right the wrongs created by the she-devil and her alleged accomplice, the scion of the evil leader of Mordor, P.E. Trudeau. Sir Jason KKKenney, warding off all those who would imprison him for a few little nasty tricks against that chump of a Brian Jean, has told the world that he will build pipelines to everywhere and let oil companies pay less in corporate tax than the province will spend building infrastructure for them and providing an educated and healthy labour force for them. (Don't be glum about such cuts, you silly bleeding-heart leftists. Don't you know that the rich will trickle wealth down to you and you can join Americans in patronizing private health and education services, which may be a trifle expensive but make you feel so much more like free men and women than those socialist schools and hospitals that don't even own credit card machines).
And an oil company has shut down and a dozen plan to follow???? Who's writing that script? It must be the she-devil herself or maybe the international socialist conspiracy???? Everyone knows that when we kneel to the super-wealthy that via the invisible hand of the market, they will enrich us all.
SMALL ALBERTA OIL COMPANIES MAY CLOSE IN LARGE NUMBERS
A sign is located near a Trident Exploration natural gas well near the community of Didsbury, Alta. Trident blamed low commodity prices and a lack of export pipeline capacity, among other reasons, for shutting down this week. (Kyle Bakx/CBC)
Alberta's persistently low oil and gas prices have claimed another victim as Calgary-based Trident Exploration ceased operations this week.
Several other companies could suffer the same fate.
Trident's board of directors resigned, 94 people are without work and a large number of oil and gas assets now have no owner. The company, predominantly focused on natural gas, had approximately 3,650 wells, 240 facilities and 500 pipelines, according to the Albey Regulator
While there is no official list of how many firms have declared bankruptcy since the oil price crash in late 2014, many companies declared bankruptcy or entered creditor protection. In the last year alone, at least a dozen companies have become insolvent, according to Insolvency Insider, an industry newsletter.
Plenty of companies are in rough shape, said Daryl Bennett who works with small energy companies through his positions with the Action Surface Rights Association and Alberta Surface Rights Federation.
"It's going to get a lot worse," he said during a phone interview from his home in Taber, in southern Alberta. "There are close to 31 companies right now that are close to going insolvent."
Since the beginning of January, heavy oil in the province has sold for more than $40 US per barrel and even climbed above $50 US this month. Still, this week, the Petroleum Services Association of Canada lowered its 2019 drilling forecast for the second time.
It now anticipates 5,300 oil and gas wells will be drilled in Canada, down from a revised estimate of 5,600 wells in January and a 20 per cent drop from its original 6,600 forecast in November 2018.
'They don't have the money'
Meanwhile, natural gas prices have remained low for several years and Bennett said those companies are the ones hurting the most.
"[For] a lot of them, it's a cashflow problem. They don't have the money," he said.
Trident blamed low commodity prices and a lack of export pipeline capacity, among other reasons for shutting down.
The Alberta Energy Regulator said it will now examine whether any of the company's operations are a risk to the public and the environment. It will also ensure "Trident's infrastructure is transferred to responsible operators, safely decommissioned, or, as a last resort, transferred to the Orphan Well Association."
As more companies go bankrupt, the Orphan Well Association has seen its inventory of wells, pipelines and other facilities rise sharply in recent years. The association is funded by industry, and fees charged to the sector have increased to help deal with the large backlog of work.
A recent study from consulting firm XI Technologies of Calgary found the number of companies producing oil and gas in Western Canada has dropped by almost 300 or 17.5 per cent since 2014.
Last month, one landowner group suggested cleaning up all of the old and unproductive oil and gas wells in Alberta will cost between $40 billion and $70 billion.
Corrections
An earlier version of this story said Trident had 4,400 wells. In fact, the company has approximately 3,650 wells, 240 facilities and 500 pipelines, according to the Alberta Energy Regulator.
WHAT HAPPENS TO ALBERTA OIL WHEN DRIVERLESS ELECTRIC CARS AND/OR MASS ELECTRIFICATION OF PUBLIC TRANSIT ARE INTRODUCED SWIFTLY?---AND WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER BELIEVE A WORD FROM VIVIAN KRAUSE
Apart from Opposition Leader Rachel Notley's excellent speech, almost nothing was reported in the corporate media from the Alberta Federation of Labour convention. That reflects the fact that no media organization in Canada now has a "labour beat" whereas 50 years ago, every daily newspaper had a labour beat and in some cases, e.g. in Windsor and Sudbury, it was the major beat. Before the premier spoke on Saturday afternoon, not a single corporate media reporter was in the room at the AFL biennial meeting. I was one of the speakers and so I heard the reports each morning indicating that there were zero media people present.
More's the pity. One of the best speeches was by Energi News columnist Markham Hislop. Hislop demonstrated that the claims of the UCP during the election, fronted by Vivian Krause, who mostly earns her income as a speaker for the oil, gas, and minining industries, regarding oilsands opponents in Canada, are misleading, to say the least. The media, he noted, almost never report how much money the anti-oilsands-expansion campaigns have received. Hislop noted that at their peak they received about $4 million from various funders. He called that a "rounding error" versus the $10 billion a year that the oilsands companies have earned in profts in recent years despite the economic downturn of their industry. They easily outspend the environmentalists in making their case.
Krause and Jason Kenney have suggested that the environmentalists are simply puppets of big American oil companies whose charitable foundations fund Canadian anti-oilsands work so as to strand Canadian oil and buttress the American industry. But that makes no sense. The Rockefellers made their fortune from oil but are no longer part of that industry. And the charitable foundations did not concoct a plan to hire Canadian environmentalists. The reverse happened. The environmentalists approached foundations for funding. But, noted Hislop, that funding slowed to a trickle when former Premier Notley announced her Climate Leadership Strategy in November, 2015. The foundations believed that strategy balanced environmental and energy industry needs even if the anti-oilsands organizations did not. So, most of the money that Krause and Kenney claim that they want to stop reaching environmentalists stopped reaching them long ago.
Anyway,the environmentalists whom Krause wants to pretend are agents of American oil barons are not just anti-oilsands, they are against all oil. Increasingly, so is the whole world. Hislop is a strong supporter of the Notley government's efforts to reduce Alberta reliance on oil extraction in favour of upgrading of the oil and sponsoring renewables, as well as diversifying the economy away from just fossil fuels. He pointed out that a relatively small decline in oil demand tanked global oil prices in 2014. It led to oil companies using artificial intelligence to lower their costs (and therefore jobs) so that they could continue to thrive while energy prices are low. They aren't going to increase their labour intensity if miraculously oil prices come back to 2014 values; they will instead just make super-profits.
In any case, at some point, perhaps in 20 years, though it could come much sooner, and when it comes it will be overnight, demand for oil will fall precipitously. Sixty percent of oil is used for transportation and a swift introduction of driverless, electric cars could cut that transportation demand in half quickly. That would put oil prices in the basement and expensive-to-produce, low-quality oil like the oilsands product might be cut out of the market completely.
Or mass electrification of urban transit in Asia, already developing quickly, could take a giant leap, with impacts similar to what driverless vehicles might cause.
In both cases, if Alberta is caught without an economy that has made a big transition from the oil economy to a new, low-carbon economy, Alberta would find itself in a huge crisis. And the paranoids like Kenney and Krause, not the environmentalists, would be to blame for that lack of readiness.
"Ohio" is a protest song written and composed by Neil Young in reaction to the Kent State shootings of May 4, 1970, and performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. It was released as a single, backed with Stephen Stills "Find the Cost of Freedom," peaking at #14 on the Billboard Hot 100. Although a live version of the song was included on the group's 1971 double album Four Way Street, the studio versions of both songs did not appear on an LP until the group's compilation So Far was released in 1974. The song also appeared on the Neil Young compilation album Decade, released in 1977
Permafrost is thawing in the Arctic so fast that scientists are losing their equipment
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Instead of a few centimetres of thaw a year, several metres of soil can destabilize within days
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Abrupt permafrost thawing has caused a large landslide into a side channel of the Mackenzie River in the Northwest Territories. Permafrost in some areas of the Canadian Arctic is thawing so fast that it's gulping up equipment left there to study it. (Carolyn Gibson/Canadian Press)
"The ground thaws and swallows it," said Merritt Turetsky, a University of Guelph biologist whose new research warns the rapid thaw could dramatically increase the amounts of greenhouse gases released from ancient plants and animals frozen within the tundra.
"We've put cameras in the ground, we've put temperature equipment in the ground, and it gets flooded. It often happens so fast we can't get out there and rescue it
"We've lost dozens of field sites. We were collecting data on a forest and all of a sudden it's a lake."
Turetsky's research, published this week in the journal Nature, looks at the rate of permafrost thaw across the Arctic and what its impact could be on attempts to limit greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.
It's been known for years that the vast belts of frozen soil that underlie much of the North are thawing as the Arctic warms. That releases greenhouse gases as organic carbon from plants and animals, once locked away in the ice, thaws and decomposes.
'Crazy liquefication'
Climate scientists have assumed a slow, steady erosion of permafrost and a similar pace of carbon release. Turetsky and her colleagues found something different.
Instead of a few centimetres of thaw a year, several metres of soil can destabilize within days. Landscapes collapse into sinkholes. Hillsides slide away to expose deep permafrost that would otherwise have remained insulated.
Thawing permafrost and ice are visible along the coast of the Mackenzie Delta. (Roger MacLeod/Natural Resources Canada)
"Permafrost at [that] depth, even 100 years from now, probably would still be protected in the soil," she said. "Except here comes this really crazy liquefication where this abrupt thaw really churns up this stuff."
Wildfires, becoming larger and hotter every year over the Canadian boreal forest, are also causing rapid permafrost thaw.
Nearly one-fifth of Arctic permafrost is now vulnerable to rapid warming, Turetsky's paper suggests. Plenty of it is in Canada, such as in the lowlands south of Hudson Bay.
Soil analysis found those quickly thawing areas also contain the most carbon. Nearly 80 per cent of them hold at least 70 kilograms of carbon per cubic metre.
That suggests permafrost is likely to release up to 50 per cent more greenhouse gases than climate scientists have believed. As well, much of it will be released as methane, which is about 30 times more potent as a heat-trapping gas than carbon dioxide.
"These are minimum estimates," Turetsky said. "We've been very conservative."
Despite the rapid thaw, it'll be decades before the extra carbon release starts to influence global climate. "We've got a bit of time."
The abrupt collapsing of permafrost, however, will affect northerners long before that.
"The landscape is going to be affected more and more every year by permafrost degradation," Turetsky said.
"We've got a lot of people living on top of permafrost and building infrastructure on top of permafrost. It's enough to sink northern budgets."
Corrections
An earlier version of this Canadian Press story incorrectly said methane is about 30 per cent more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. In fact, it's about 30 times more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.
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