Keystone XL: White House Backs Pipeline That Will Ship U.S. Oil Overseas

WASHINGTON -- The White House is throwing its support behind a decision by TransCanada to build a portion of the Keystone XL pipeline, even though the project will result in more oil going overseas and potentially higher gas prices.

TransCanada announced Monday that it plans to begin building the southern part of the pipeline, which would ship crude oil from Cushing, Okla., to the Gulf of Mexico.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said President Barack Obama "welcomes" the news that the Canadian pipeline company is moving ahead with its plans, despite the fact that the administration halted work on the cross-border portion of Keystone through 2013 -- a move that sparked outcry among congressional Republicans -- until TransCanada works out a new route through Nebraska that avoids ecologically sensitive areas.

"As the President made clear in January, we support the company's interest in proceeding with this project, which will help address the bottleneck of oil in Cushing that has resulted in large part from increased domestic oil production, currently at an eight year high. Moving oil from the Midwest to the world-class, state-of-the-art refineries on the Gulf Coast will modernize our infrastructure, create jobs, and encourage American energy production," Carney said in a statement.

Corporate Personhood Case Forces Supreme Court To Hack New Path

WASHINGTON -- On Tuesday morning, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument on whether corporations, like real people, can be held liable in American courts for international human rights violations.

The issue has divided four appeals courts over the past year and a half, as Democrat-appointed judges have uniformly voted for corporate liability while all but one Republican-appointed judge has come down for corporate immunity.

If that pattern holds in the Supreme Court, then the five justices appointed by Republican presidents will surely be hit with more accusations of pro-business bias: Having all voted in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission to extend to corporations the First Amendment right of actual people to independently spend unlimited sums in this country's elections, they will in the current case have refused to hold corporations responsible, as real people are, for their roles in atrocities abroad.

That kind of application of corporate personhood would be enough to make a casual observer's head explode.

Stratfor Emails Published By WikiLeaks Reveal Private Intelligence

LONDON — Private intelligence firm Stratfor is in the business of shedding light on the world for its many clients. On Monday, anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks was the one shedding light on Stratfor, saying it had more than 5 million of the company's emails and would publish them in collaboration with two dozen international media organizations.

The small selection so far published on WikiLeaks' website gives a look at the daily routine of the Texas-based think tank, whose clients range from local universities to global megacorporations. One described a $6,000-a-month payment made to a Middle Eastern source, another carried bits of gossip dropped by a retired spy, and many were filled with off-color office banter.

An initial examination of the emails turned up a mix of the innocuous and the embarrassing, but WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange promised more explosive material in the coming weeks.

"What we have discovered is a company that is a private intelligence Enron," Assange told London's Frontline Club, referring to the Texas energy giant whose spectacular bankruptcy turned it into a byword for corporate malfeasance.

Leveson Inquiry: 'Culture Of Illegal Payments' At The Sun; Rebekah Brooks Tipped Off About Extent Of Hacking Probe

LONDON (AP) -- Rupert Murdoch's top-selling U.K. tabloid, The Sun, had a culture of making illegal payments to corrupt public officials in return for stories, a senior police officer said Monday, as Murdoch announced that the paper's first-ever Sunday edition had sold more than 3 million copies.

Sue Akers, a Metropolitan Police deputy assistant commissioner, told Britain's media ethics inquiry that the newspaper openly referred to paying its sources and that such payments had been authorized at a senior level.

Her comments came the day Murdoch's company paid former teen singing sensation Charlotte Church 600,000 pounds ($951,000) in a phone-hacking settlement for violating her and her family's privacy.

Akers said Sun journalists had paid not only police officers but also military, health and other government officials. One official received a total of 80,000 pounds over several years, Akers said, and one journalist had been given more than 150,000 pounds in cash to pay his sources. She said payments went far beyond acceptable practices such as buying sources a meal or a drink.

Akers said "a network of corrupted officials" had provided The Sun with stories that were mostly "salacious gossip."

Economic shock treatment for the world

The entire world seems to be one huge advertisement for The Shock Doctrine. Naomi Klein showed in her revelatory book how the corporate-political-military-media complex exploits crises to further impose their harsh right-wing agenda -- even when they themselves created the crisis. In a sane world, the economic meltdown and deep recession of the past four years would have led at minimum to stringent regulation of financiers and speculators plus programs to assist their victims. But in this world, you have to be nuts to believe in a sane world.

In reality, everything that's happened in the past several years has gone to further empower and enrich the 1 per cent (or maybe the 5 per cent) at the expense of the rest of us. Look anywhere you want. What else does the universal demand for austerity programs mean? What else does the sudden concerted attack on public sector workers mean? What else does the intransigent line taken by multinational corporations against their unions mean? What else does the demand for "right-to-work" laws mean? What else does the widespread attack on seniors' pensions mean?

Look at poor Greece. Ms. Klein could have invented it as a pure case study for her thesis. Big economic problems, it's true. So how do you fix them? As a Greek journalist wrote matter-of-factly in The New York Times, the latest bailout program imposed by the IMF, the European Union and the European Central Bank "almost guarantees recession."

Are the oil sands holding Ontario up or hollowing it out?

A fascinating public debate has broken out between the premiers of Alberta and Ontario. Alison Redford kicked off the festivities by calling on Dalton McGuinty to acknowledge that spinoffs from oil sands development are worth billions to the Ontario economy:

“We in Alberta have a resource that matters to the rest of the country,” Ms. Redford recently told members of the Small Explorers and Producers Association of Canada in Calgary, “It’s not enough for Alberta to be talking about the importance of Keystone in the United States. We need the Premier of Ontario talking about that. We need the Premier of Quebec talking about that, and of course, we have the Prime Minister of Canada talking about that.”

The ink on that Globe story was barely dry before McGuinty made nearly the opposite argument: that Alberta’s resource economy is driving up the dollar and sucker-punching Ontario manufacturers and exporters.

“So if I had my preferences as to whether we had a rapidly growing oil and gas sector in the West or a lower dollar, I’ll tell you where I stand: with the lower dollar.”

That sounds kind of defeatist, but it’s possible to see where McGuinty is coming from. The Globe stories I’m using for this post both quote the same study on oil-sands fallout for Ontario:

According to the Canadian Energy Research Institute, the province enjoys the lion’s share of oil-sands benefits outside Alberta. Between 2010 and 2035, Ontario is expected to see $63-billion in economic spinoffs and 65,520 oil-sands-related jobs.

$63 billion over 25 years, or $2.52 billion per year on average, is a lot of simoleons. But you need to remember how deep a hole Ontario is in:

Ontario lost nearly $154-billion worth of direct economic activity between July 2008 and December 2011 from lost factory sales alone. That’s $3.7-billion every month.

Those lost factory sales aren’t all Redford’s fault, and it’s a mug’s game to guess how the sector would have evolved if oil had been $40 cheaper, but they are McGuinty’s problem, and he seems to be sensitive about it all.

Original Article
Source: Maclean's
Author: Paul Wells

Cheat, lie, break the law? Chances are, you’re rich

The wealthy really are different from everyone else: They’re more likely to cheat, lie, and break the law.

At least that’s the unflattering conclusion of a team of professors from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and the University of California, Berkeley, who ran a battery of tests involving more than 1,000 people, seeking to answer the question of whether being rich or poor influenced ethical behaviour.

In results from seven separate studies, they found a consistent tendency among those they termed “upper-class” to be more likely to break the law while driving, take valued goods from others, lie in negotiations, cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize and endorse unethical behaviour at work.

The reason for the ethical difference was simple, according to the paper being published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a leading U.S. science journal. Wealthier people are more likely to have an attitude that greed is good.

Rae apologizes after Liberal staffer admits to ‘Vikileaks’ attack

The Liberals have admitted that a staff member in their research bureau was responsible for publishing personal details of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews’s divorce on Twitter – an embarrassing admission at a time when the party is accusing the Harper government of its own dirty tricks.

Interim Leader Bob Rae told reporters that Liberal staff member Adam Carroll was responsible for the “Vikileaks” campaign that relayed personal attacks on Mr. Toews in retaliation for the introduction of a Conservative bill that would give police new Web-snooping powers.

Mr. Rae said it was the Clerk of the House of Commons who had told the Liberals that Mr. Carroll’s name had been linked to Vikileaks after Mr. Toews asked for an investigation. The Conservatives had initially accused the New Democrats of being behind the site.

“I met with Mr. Carroll this morning. We went over what he did. He was extremely apologetic,” Mr. Rae said. “He’s a perfectly nice, hard-working individual who showed a real error in judgment.”

'Not terribly likely' Harper didn't know about robocalls, say opposition MPs

PARLIAMENT HILL—Close ties between the Conservative campaign director for the 2011 federal election and Prime Minister Stephen Harper indicate Mr. Harper must do more than he has so far to demonstrate he and top party officials were unaware of fraudulent “robocalls” and other harassing phone calls placed to Liberal and NDP voters during the campaign and on voting day, opposition MPs say.

Without directly challenging a statement from Mr. Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) last week that neither he nor the Conservative Party had any knowledge of the electoral interference, which PostMedia and the Ottawa Citizen reported last week is under Elections Canada investigation, opposition MPs told The Hill Times Mr. Harper has an obligation to divulge all he knows now about the affair.

“Given that Stephen Harper is clearly a control freak, who controls just about everything that goes on, it’s not terribly likely that he wouldn’t have known,” Green Party leader Elizabeth May (Saanich-Gulf Islands, B.C.) told The Hill Times.

Rae names firm with Tory links in election calls

Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae pointed to Conservative-affiliated firms Monday, demanding Prime Minister Stephen Harper hand over relevant information to Elections Canada for their investigation into strange phone calls made during the 2011 federal election.

The Conservatives have denied a connection between the party's national campaign and mysterious telephone calls to voters in as many as 40 ridings. Some of the calls were harassing or abusive and implied they were on behalf of the Liberals or NDP. Others were live or automated calls directing people to the wrong polling stations on election day, May 2, 2011.

Automated calls to voters in Guelph, Ont., have been traced to Racknine, a call centre in Edmonton that was used by at least nine Conservative campaigns in the last election.

In question period, Rae said it was hard to believe the government's answers when the party controlled the information that went to the companies it uses during campaigns. He pointed to Racknine and to Campaign Research, a firm that offers voter identification and get-out-the-vote services.

"The party that has control of the information … with respect to Racknine, with respect to Campaign Research, with respect to in-person calls, robocalls at midnight, during the day," Rae said.

"They're the ones who have to come forward with the information. When is the prime minister of Canada going to take some degree of personal responsibility for what is taking place in the country?"

Campaign Research is the firm that ran a campaign last fall on behalf of the Conservatives in which callers told Mount Royal residents that Montreal MP Irwin Cotler was stepping down from his seat.

Campaign Research said that wasn't in the script provided to callers. Conservative MPs said it was a telephone campaign to identify potential supporters for the next federal election in 2015.

Both Campaign Research founders, Nick Kouvalis and Richard Ciano, have been active in the Conservative Party at the federal and provincial levels.

'Sweeping allegations'

Harper called Rae's comments "broad, sweeping allegations."

"Frankly, in most cases we don't know any details of what the basis of these allegations are. So if the Liberal Party actually has such information, let it provide it to Elections Canada and Elections Canada can investigate it," Harper said.

Interim NDP Leader Nycole Turmel said the calls were all "about trying to stop people from voting, whatever the technology."

"Fixing elections means that by-elections could be called. People could end up in jail," she said.

Liberal and NDP campaigns in 38 ridings say they were hit with the calls. Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre told Evan Solomon, host of CBC's Power & Politics, on Monday that the party has identified 15 ridings in which Conservative supporters got "troubling" calls. Green Party Leader Elizabeth May says her B.C. riding was also targeted.

NDP MP Pat Martin, also speaking to Solomon, said Campaign Research is threatening to sue him for libel over comments he made about the firm.

Former Liberal MP Anthony Rota, who lost his bid for a fourth term in Nipissing-Timiskaming, Ont., by 18 votes, says voter suppression tactics could have cost him the election.

"What I was hearing was, 'Elections Canada told us to go to the wrong poll.' Or they were sending them across town to vote in another location," he told CBC's Julie Van Dusen on Sunday.

MPs were in their ridings on a break week when Postmedia and the Ottawa Citizen revealed Elections Canada is investigating automated robocalls that tried to send voters in Guelph to the wrong polling station.

Harassing callers implied they were Liberals

But other ridings are reporting live calls sending voters to the wrong polling stations, and there are more reports of harassing calls that implied they were from the Liberal Party.

"In our case, the calls were mostly calls impersonating our campaign, being made at all hours of the night," said former Liberal MP Martha Hall Findlay, who lost her Willowdale riding in Toronto by 900 votes.

In some cases, Jewish voters were getting repeated calls during meal time on the Saturday Sabbath.

Other people, generally in ridings with tight races between the Liberal and Conservative candidates, reported late-night calls asking for donations or repeated calls during the day. The reports date back to mid-April.

Cotler, the subject of misleading calls last fall that told voters he was resigning his seat, says he was also targeted during the election.

"Constituents in my riding received misleading robocalls as to where they would be voting," he said Monday morning.

"Those misleading robocalls we reported to the chief electoral officer at the time with respect to the riding. We said that those calls were not only misleading in their facts but also misleading in their characterization of their origin. The people who were called in my riding were sometimes told that they were called by Liberals with respect to that information."

Cotler says Jewish voters in his riding were also hit with calls on the Sabbath, a time his campaign team had decreed no calls would be made.

"That's how we found out about it, because there was some outrage about the fact that they did receive a call on the Sabbath by people who purported to be Liberals."

Elections Canada reported last year it was looking into allegations of mysterious phone calls in Eglinton-Lawrence, a Toronto riding where Conservative Joe Oliver beat Liberal incumbent Joe Volpe. That investigation hasn't been closed.

Jeff Harrietha, a supervisor at a call centre in Northern Ontario, said some staff are thrown into the calls without any training.

"As far as the pollers were concerned, it was like a three-month job, so they would come in with a resume and be on the phone within 15 minutes," said Harrietha, who worked for Responsive Marketing Group, which the Conservatives contracted during the election. Harrietha said he sometimes had to step in when staff weren't polite.

Calls deemed unacceptable

Conservative MP Ed Holder said the misleading calls are unacceptable and "if it's happened at all … should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law."

Holder said his campaign didn't use outside firms and "used our own resources" to get messages to voters, with the exception of calls for "activities or events during the campaign itself."

"We didn't use those calls," Holder said.

Holder's Liberal opponent, Doug Ferguson, released audio Monday of a recorded message deliberately sending a voter to the wrong location well out of her neighbourhood.

Ferguson said until everyone started comparing notes last week they did not realize how widespread these calls were. And the Liberals had other worries after May 2, he pointed out.

"We took a shellacking and, frankly, we weren't in a position to do any serious follow-up," he told CBC Radio's Karina Roman.

Tory staffer quits

Last Friday, a Conservative staffer who had worked on the campaign in Guelph left his job on Parliament Hill. Michael Sona made the news during the election campaign with allegations he'd tried to grab a ballot box at the University of Guelph, arguing it was an illegal poll. He left his job in the office of Eve Adams, parliamentary secretary to the minister of veterans' affairs.

On Sunday, Defence Minister Peter MacKay pointed to Sona's resignation and told CBC News the party doesn't need to investigate any further.

"I think they've identified the individual that was involved in this, and this is certainly not something our party condones," he said.

The opposition parties argue that's impossible, given the enormous lists of telephone numbers needed to orchestrate a cross-Canada campaign and the costs associated with live calls.

Original Article
Source: CBC
Author: Laura Pyton