Kitimat residents vote no on gateway pipeline

KITIMAT, B.C. - The residents of Kitimat, B.C. have voted against the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline project in a non-binding plebiscite.

The ballot count from Saturday's vote was 1,793 opposed versus 1,278 who supported the multi-billion dollar project — a margin of 58.4 per cent to 41.6 per cent.

The results from two polling stations and an advance vote all showed a clear majority for the “No” side.

Oil And Gas Sector Biggest Producer Of Greenhouse Gases In Canada

TORONTO - An environmental analyst says the rise of oil and gas production as Canada's biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions adds further weight to calls for the federal government to bring in long-promised regulations for the oil industry.

The Environment Canada report quietly released Friday reveals the energy sector has now surpassed transportation as the largest generator of the climate-change causing gases.

China on the take

Why a purge of corrupt party kingpins raises alarms for both China and its trade partners

When Xi Jinping made his famous promise one year ago to wipe out both the “tigers and flies” of Chinese corruption, you could have forgiven the average Chinese worker for scoffing at his new president. Past anti-corruption sweeps have hauled in self-dealing officials by the hundreds of thousands—more than 182,000 punished last year alone, declared the Communist party’s disciplinary arm a few weeks ago, with McDonald’s-like triumphalism. Yet the country’s bloated ruling class continued to thrive, while the true kingpins of a system ridden with graft and kickbacks—senior party leaders—remained untouched. Historically, critics note, the authorities have been a lot more keen to swat insects than to hunt big game.

The Super Rich Are Richer Than We Thought, Hiding Huge Sums, New Reports Find

A new pair of reports suggests that the super rich are richer than we thought.

The first report by Professors Emmanuel Saez (UC Berkeley) and Gabriel Zucman (LSE and UC Berkeley) addresses the question of how to measure total wealth, finding that there is an increasing concentration in the top one-thousandth.

So where is all this wealth going? The second report, by Zucman, demonstrates that a lot of the money is held in offshore tax havens -- far more than previously known.New York Times columnist Paul Krugman summed up the numbers Friday, arguing that they tell us "something important about how the world really works."

"At the commanding heights of the US economy, hiding a lot of one’s wealth offshore is probably the norm, not the exception," Krugman wrote.

Read the full papers on wealth concentration here, and the one on offshore tax havens here.

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I Served My Country. Then It Kicked Me Out.

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DEA Raided This Woman's House After She Shopped At A Garden Store

Angela Kirking never thought shopping for garden supplies would lead to agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration waking her up with guns drawn, but that's what happened last October.

"I bought a bottle of organic fertilizer, a 16-ounce bottle," said Kirking, a 46-year-old face-paint artist. "Three weeks later I was raided by DEA."

The DEA is refusing to answer questions about the law enforcement operation targeting an Illinois garden store that has netted Kirking and at least 10 other people. But Kirking and her lawyer contend it's a case of misplaced priorities and federal overreach. They're asking why the DEA is treating ordinary customers of a garden store selling hydroponic equipment as if they were major drug dealers.

Risk Of 'Gas War' Grows As Ukraine Halts Payments To Russia

KIEV, April 12 (Reuters) - Ukraine said on Saturday it was suspending payments to Russia for deliveries of gas, ratcheting up the tension in a standoff that has the potential to leave European Union states cut off from the Russian gas supplies on which they depend.

In eastern Ukraine, where groups of pro-Russian activists have been emboldened by the Kremlin's annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, a band of armed men in mismatched camouflage outfits seized a police station in the town of Slaviansk.

Mozillagate, Brendan Eich and Right-Wing Hypocrisy

In early April, Brendan Eich resigned his new position as CEO of Mozilla following an uproar over the $1,000 donation he made in 2008 to California’s anti–gay marriage Proposition 8 campaign. Ever since, conservatives—obsessed as they are with their putative culture war victimization—have been screaming about a new age of political oppression. “It is one of history’s little ironies that some of our current batch of prim-faced, puritanical, intolerant, and miserable thought police call themselves, of all things, ‘gay,’ something they manifestly are not,” huffed a National Review editorial. “The treatment handed out to Mr. Eich by them and their non-gay supporters is contemptible.” Rush Limbaugh ranted against “fascists on the left,” while Newt Gingrich lamented the “new fascism, which says if you don’t agree with us 100 percent, we have the right to punish you.”

The future of democracy is urban

The tipping point for cities likely went unnoticed. It could have been a baby born in a large hospital in Lagos. It might have been a Chinese farmer moving to Shanghai. Or perhaps it was the quiet passing of a grandparent in the Amazon.

Whatever it was, the result was dramatic. In 2009 and for the first time in history, more people lived inside urban areas than outside of them. Where are we five years later? With the World Urban Forum taking place this week in Medellin, Columbia, it’s a good time to ask.

First Nations education bill fails the test

Politics is a messy business, so it is helpful to have clarity now and then. 

Certainly, partisan posturing often can muddy the issues and impede progress. On First Nations issues, entrenched positions and a high volume of uninformed rhetoric from both sides doesn’t help either. As a result, before the bill had been tabled many blindly rejected the new education legislation, while others absurdly insisted it should be adopted.