Dear Colleague,

As you know, President Obama has REJECTED American jobs to appease radical environmentalists by refusing to approve permits to go forward with the Keystone XL Pipeline. The permit process has been going on for three years, and now the actions of the Obama Administration have postponed it again, delaying a project that would bring thousands of jobs to Americans and more energy independence.

The Obama Administration had until February 21 to look at the facts and make an educated decision on the Keystone XL project, but instead, he chose to jump-the-gun and have the State Department announce it will kill the permits necessary for work to get started on the pipeline.

This is a blatant political decision that postpones Obama having to make a real decision on the approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline until after his re-election campaign, putting his own job ahead of the creation of American jobs and economic improvement.

Americans NEED the jobs from Keystone.
Americans NEED the energy from Keystone.

The good news is that its still not too late to revive the Keystone XL Project.

Keystone is resubmitting their application and needs us to do our part to speak out in support of American jobs and American energy independence.

Resourceful Earth is going to take the fight to the President. We will make him hear loud and clear that the American people want jobs and reliable energy now.

You can sign the petition at the links below and use these sample posts to share with your networks:

• [FACEBOOK] http://on.fb.me/yomDu2
  Sign the petition! Urge the Obama Administration to approve the Keystone XL pipeline by the February 21 deadline.
• [TWITTER] Sign the petition: http://bit.ly/A8K2mV
  Urge #Obama to approve the #KeystoneXL pipeline by the February 21 deadline! #YesKXL

Please pass this information and petition links on to your readers, friends, family and colleagues.

Over 78 percent of Americans want this project to go forward. Please do what you can to make sure the President knows how strongly we feel about American jobs and energy independence!

Thank you!

Beth Shaw
Resourceful Earth News
beth@resourcefulearthnews.org

Also see:

• Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) Pushes Ahead on the XL Pipeline

The “New Class Elite” demographic that Obama relies on for campaign funds are the mortal enemies of America’s middle class and working poor.

This leftist/pro-jihadi/radical-eco elite are the ones perpetrating class warfare, and they consider themselves accountable to no one. As members of this elite see it, their quality of life and, indeed, their continued existence, depend on their use of government power to deny opportunities to the rest of us. They have become America’s Soviet-style nomenklatura.

They are killing the American Dream.

Volokh Conspiracy: The Fragmenting of the New Class Elites, or, Downward Mobility

Kenneth Anderson • October 31, 2011 11:27 am
Glenn Reynolds is correct in his weekend post to point to the social theory of the New Class as key to understanding the convulsions in the middle and upper middle class; I’ve written about it myself here at VC and in a 1990s law journal book review essay. The angst is partly income, of course — but it’s also in considerable part, as Glenn notes, “characterized as much by self-importance as by higher income, and is far more eager to keep the proles in their place than, say, [Anne] Applebaum’s small-town dentist. It’s thus not surprising that as its influence has grown, economic opportunity has increasingly been closed down by government barriers.” [emphasis added]

The problem the New Class faces at this point is the psychological and social self-perceptions of a status group that is alienated (as we marxists say) from traditional labor by its semi-privileged upbringing — and by the fact that it is actually, two distinct strands, a privileged one and a semi-privileged one. It is, for the moment, insistent not just on white-collar work as its birthright and unable to conceive of much else. It does not celebrate the dignity of labor; it conceived of itself as existing to regulate labor. So it has purified itself to the point that not just any white-collar work will do. It has to be, as Michelle Obama instructed people in what now has to be seen as another era, virtuous non-profit or government work. Those attitudes are changing, but only slowly; the university pipelines are still full of people who cannot imagine themselves in any other kind of work, unless it means working for Apple or Google. [emphasis added]

The New Class has always operated across the lines of public and private, however, the government-university-finance and technology capital sectors. It is not a theory of the government class versus the business class — as 1990s neoconservatives sometimes mistakenly imagined. As Lasch pointed out, it is the class that bridges and moves effortlessly between the two. As a theory of late capitalism (once imported from being an analysis of communist nomenkaltura) it offers itself as a theory of technocratic expertise first – but, if that spectacularly fails as it did in 2008, it falls back on a much more rudimentary claim of monopoly access to the levers of the economy. Which is to say, the right to bridge the private-public line, and rent out its access. [emphasis added]
[...]
In social theory, OWS is best understood not as a populist movement against the bankers, but instead as the breakdown of the New Class into its two increasingly disconnected parts. The upper tier, the bankers-government bankers-super credentialed elites. But also the lower tier, those who saw themselves entitled to a white collar job in the Virtue Industries of government and non-profits — the helping professions, the culture industry, the virtueocracies, the industries of therapeutic social control, as Christopher Lasch pointed out in his final book, The Revolt of the Elites.

The two tiers of the New Class have always had different sources of rents, however. For the upper tier, since 1990, it has come through its ability to take the benefits of generations of US social investment in education and sell that expertise across global markets — leveraging expertise and access to capital and technological markets in the 1990s to places in Asia and the former communist world in desperate need of it. As Lasch said, the revolt and flight of the elites, to marketize themselves globally as free agents — to take the social capital derived over many generations by American society, and to go live in the jet stream and extract returns on a global scale for that expertise. But that expertise is now largely commodified — to paraphrase David Swenson on financial engineering, that kind of universal expertise is commodified, cheaply available, and no longer commands much premium. As those returns have come under pressure, the Global New Class has come home, looking to command premiums through privileged access to the public-private divide — access most visible at the moment as virtuous new technology projects that turn out to be mere crony capitalism. [emphasis added]

“Crony capitalism” is nothing more than a euphemism for government pork-barrel corruption. “Green jobs” were a scam from the get-go. For just one example, see: Big Government: George Soros Helped Craft Stimulus, Then Invested in Companies Benefiting.

The lower tier is in a different situation and always has been. It is characterized by status-income disequilibrium, to borrow from David Brooks; it cultivates the sensibilities of the upper tier New Class, but does not have the ability to globalize its rent extraction. The helping professions, the professions of therapeutic authoritarianism (the social workers as well as the public safety workers), the virtuecrats, the regulatory class, etc., have a problem — they mostly service and manage individuals, the client-consumers of the welfare state. Their rents are not leveraged very much, certainly not globally, and are limited to what amounts to an hourly wage. The method of ramping up wages, however, is through public employee unions and their own special ability to access the public-private divide. But, as everyone understands, that model no longer works, because it has overreached and overleveraged, to the point that even the system’s most sympathetic politicians understand that it cannot pay up.
[...]
Read it all here.

Neither the working poor, nor the middle class, are to blame for perpetrating class warfare during the run-up to the 2012 elections. The blame for that belongs to Barack Hussein Obama and his many supporters among the leftist power elite:

Rush: Obama Publicly Writes Off White, Working Class Voters as Advertisement to His Base

December 01, 2011

RUSH: James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal. He’s got a great blog called The Best of the Web Today, and he wrote about this yesterday.

This New York Times story, this column by Thomas Edsall on Monday where the regime, the Obama campaign says to white working class families: We’re not interested in your votes; we don’t care. Now, Taranto’s point yesterday was (summarized): “Okay, fine. If after election strategery, why advertise it? Why talk about it? Why assign one of your minions to go out and write an op-ed about it in the New York Times? Why get people like Limbaugh talking about this?” And, frankly, it’s a great point, and I, El Rushbo, I must admit, I hadn’t considered that angle. I did raise a question: Imagine if the Republicans had done something similar. Imagine if whoever the Republican nominee is, after securing the nomination, says, “You know what? To hell with the Hispanic vote! We don’t care. We’re not interested in it. We’re gonna win this election without them.” Can you imagine the hell that would rain down on the Republican Party and that nominee?

Here you’ve got an assigned editorial, no doubt from the White House or Plouffe or whoever is running the campaign for Obama. They put it in the op-ed page of the New York Times, which guarantees it gets out. It guarantees it gets discussed just like remember that picture of Hillary and Bill dancing on the beach down at the Virgin Islands somewhere in their swimsuits a couple of weeks before the Monica Lewinsky story hit? The picture ran in one paper. It ran on the cover of the LA Times. At the press briefing somebody stands up and asks McCurry, “Wa, wa, what’s the story behind that picture?”

Everybody said, “What picture?”

That’s how they got it out. They wanted that picture out, and it was later discovered that Bill and Hillary were dancing with no music. The whole thing was staged just like the rocks on the beached at Normandy. It was all staged. So here you have this guy Thomas Edsall, he used to write to for the Washington Post, now writes for the Huffing and Puffington Post, and whatever liberal publication will have him. He’s out there saying, “We’re gonna win this election without white working-class voters.” Why advertise it? Why advertise that? Well, the theory to explain it, the theory in answer to the question is that Obama’s in such bad shape with his base that that’s how he’s going to rally them.

He is in such bad shape, they’ve got to roll the dice. In order to secure the base — the takers, the people who aren’t doing diddly-squat, the people who have been made dependent on government for everything — he has to run against the bitter clingers; keeping his coalition of artists and professors and professor assistants, so forth, all that intact (plus the 47% that don’t pay taxes and all the people on welfare to one degree or another). The theory is that it’s so bad you advertise that as a way of getting the minorities that make up your base locked in. It’s another example of division, of course: Promoting hatred, resentment, envy, all of that.

Now, you stop and think of it. Insane? It is. I’ve thought it’s stupid from the get-go. I never did understand why advertise it. That was part of my incredulity. I just never expressed it ’til I saw Taranto wrote about it, but that was the one thing about it that had me curious. Aside from the act itself. I mean, the idea that they really don’t think they can win if they pursue policies that will be supported by white working class voters? Imagine that, just by itself, and then they go out and advertise it.

More here.

Environmentalism has turned out to be not only a scam and a vehicle for corruption and government tyranny, but also one more club that the leftist elite can use to hit the middle class and working poor over the head. After all, they are not the ones who will be freezing in the dark.

Spectator: Environmentalism and the Leisure Class

By William Tucker on 1.20.12 @ 6:08AM
[...]
This week President Obama handed down what may prove to be one of the most fateful decisions of his entire administration when he rejected the plan to build the Keystone XL Pipeline carrying oil from the tar sands of Canada to the refineries of Houston. The decision did not win him one new vote but was crucial in protecting his environmental flank. The movie stars and Sierra Club contributors were getting restless and had drawn the line in the sand.

In turning down Keystone, however, the President has uncovered an ugly little secret that has always lurked beneath the surface of environmentalism. Its basic appeal is to the affluent. Despite all the professions of being “liberal” and “against big business,” environmentalism’s main appeal is that it promises to slow the progress of industrial progress. People who are already comfortable with the present state of affairs — who are established in the environment, so to speak — are happy to go along with this. It is not that they have any greater insight into the mysteries and workings of nature. They are happier with the way things are. In fact, environmentalism works to their advantage. The main danger to the affluent is not that they will be denied from improving their estate but that too many other people will achieve what they already have. As the Forest Service used to say, the person who built his mountain cabin last year is an environmentalist. The person who wants to build one this year is a developer. [emphasis added]

Environmentalism has spent three decades trying to hide this simple truth. How can environmentalists be motivated by self-interest when they are anti-business? Doesn’t that align them with the working classes? Well, not quite. You can be anti-business as a union member trying to claim higher wages but you can also be anti-business as a member of the aristocracy who believes “trade” and “commercialism” are crass and not attuned to the higher things in life. Environmentalism is born from the latter, not the former. It has spent decades trying to pretend it has common cause with the working people. With the defeat of the Keystone Pipeline, this is no longer possible. Too many blue-collar and middle-class jobs have been sacrificed on the altar of carbon emissions and global warming.

In 1977, I wrote a cover story for Harper’s called “Environmentalism and the Leisure Class,” my first story for a national magazine. Environmentalism was very young at the time — born supposedly on Earth Day in 1970 — but had already achieved a seat in the upper echelons of the Carter Administration. These freshly appointed bureaucrats began canceling dams, preaching the sins of fossil fuels, and raising obstacles to nuclear power. In its place they promised distant, over-the-horizon technologies of wind and solar energy. I remember one iconic photograph of Andrew Young, Carter’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, holding a pyramid over his head on Earth Day in the fashionable superstition that pyramids had mysterious powers to concentrate the sun’s rays.

My story in Harper’s was built around the devastating 1977 New York City blackout (the subject of the book The Bronx is Burning) and the almost forgotten fact that Con Edison had been trying for 15 years to construct an upstate power plant designed to prevent blackouts. The Storm King Mountain facility was a pumped storage plant 40 miles up the Hudson that stored power overnight by pumping water uphill and then releasing it the next day to generate hydroelectricity. The idea was to avoid building more coal plants in New York City. As an added attraction, the utility never failed to mention, the floodgates could be opened in an instant to provide power in the event of an emergency, while ordinary generators took the better part of an hour to get up to speed.

Pumped storage was considered an engineering marvel of the time and many were built. There are now about 30 around the country. In the Hudson Highlands, however, Con Ed had unwittingly disturbed a nest of New York aristocrats who had escaped from the city in the 19th century. As Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (who now lives in the area) would write 30 years later without a trace of irony:

The committee [the Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference] quickly found support among the well-heeled residents of the Hudson Highlands. Many of its founding members were the children and grandchildren of the Osborns, Stillmans, and Harrimans, the robber barons who had laid out great estates amid the Highlands’ spectacular scenery and whose descendants had fought fiercely since the turn of the century to preserve the views for themselves and the public. [John Cronin and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., The Riverkeepers,Scribner, 1997.]

Well-connected both in New York society and the editorial pages of the New York Times, Scenic Hudson began an opposition campaign that eventually engulfed the entire city. The battle to “Save Storm King” was the nation’s first great environmental crusade, becoming a legal landmark when the Federal District Court allowed Scenic Hudson to intervene on environmental grounds for the first time in history. The case is still cited. Several Scenic Hudson members went on to found the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Throughout the campaign Scenic Hudson insisted they were not opposed to electricity but only this particular way of generating it…What became obvious, however, was that at bottom they were opposed to everything. Industrial progress itself was the enemy…

What finally focused my attention on the aristocratic roots of environmentalism, however, was a chapter in Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class. Although the book is justly famous for coining “conspicuous consumption” and “conspicuous waste,” there is a lesser-known chapter entitled “Industrial Exemption” that perfectly describes the environmental zeitgeist. Veblen posed the question, why is it that people who are the greatest beneficiaries of industrial society are often the most passionate in condemning it? He provided a simple answer. People in the leisure class have become so accustomed affluence as the natural state of things that they no longer feel compelled to embrace any further industrial progress… [emphasis added]

My article generated 150 letters, including a response from a member of the Federal Power Commission who said that construction of new power plants wasn’t necessary. I was often criticized, however, for claiming only affluent people are concerned about the environment. The one response I ever got from the press was in the middle of Three Mile Island when National Public Radio called to ask, “What do you say about all those farmers worried about radiation? They’re not aristocrats, are they?”

But that was not the point. It is not that the average person is not concerned about the environment. Everyone weighs the balance of economic gain against a respect for nature. It is only the truly affluent, however, who can be concerned about the environment to the exclusion of everything else. Most people see the benefits of pipelines and power plants and admit they have to be built somewhere. Only in the highest echelons do we hear people say, “We don’t need to build any pipelines. We’ve already got enough energy. We can all sit around awaiting the day we live off wind and sunshine.” [emphasis added]

Environmentalists have spent decades trying to disguise these aristocratic roots, even from themselves. They work desperately to form alliances with labor unions and cast themselves as purveyors of “green jobs.” But the Keystone Pipeline has brought all this into focus. As Joel Kotkin writes in Forbes, Keystone is the dividing line of the “two Americas,” the knowledge-based elites of the East and West Coasts in their media, non-profit and academic homelands (where Obama learned his environmentalism) and the blue-collar workers of the Great In-Between laboring in agriculture, mining, manufacturing, power production and the exigencies of material life. [emphasis added]

It’s going to be very difficult to erase that line during the election.

Read it all here.

Obama: My Plan Makes Electricity Rates Skyrocket

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by BattleBornPAC on Mar 18, 2009
Barack Obama: “Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” (January 2008)
http://www.BattleBornPAC.com

Update: Great minds think alike…

• Jeffrey Klein: Obama Preventing Our Catalyst to Exit Recession Now
  (h/t: Noisy Room)

  President Obama’s refusing to permit the Keystone XL Pipeline last week has nothing to do with “environmental concerns” arising from it crossing the Ogallala Aquifer, and everything to do with an even more sinister agenda that could keep the middle class in economic straits for a generation or more.

  First, he wants to keep [fossil fuel] energy prices high, according to Thomas J. Pyle, CEO of the American Energy Alliance, in his January 20, 2012 FOXNews article.

  “The reality at the White House has nothing to do with protecting the environment — it’s about reinforcing a myth of energy scarcity on the United States and driving up the price of energy…

  Read it all here.

• Sultan Knish: Food Fights and Class Warfare
  

  …Conspicuous conservationism has made America a poorer country, destroyed millions of jobs and outsourced them overseas. Now it’s beginning to make America a hungrier country. In a moment of horrifying tone deafness that makes Marie Antoinette seem enlightened, the left is cheering that fewer Americans are eating meat, without seeming to understand that it’s because fewer Americans are able to afford it because of their economic policies.

  What the left’s food police can’t accomplish with nudges and shaming, they can finish off with policies and regulations that end up raising the price of food or by making it too difficult to sell. As the left tries and fails to sell the general public on conservation as a status symbol, it moves in the heavy bureaucratic artillery.

  It isn’t unusual for elites to use the legal system to enforce their own values on the general public, though it was the kind of thing that the universal franchise was supposed to put a leash on, but there is something grim about their growing preoccupation with the habits and mortality of the population. It’s the kind of concern that has a habit of ending in eugenics and the more medicine is universalized, the easier it is to start cutting off access to medical treatment for those who haven’t been nudged far enough in the right direction.

  Social medicine politicizes food consumption and a globalized economy politicizes food production. And the politicized American plate has less on it and at a higher price. While the left obsessively pursues its mission of destroying fast food in the name of lowering social medicine costs and being fairer to farmers, what they are truly accomplishing is to take affordable and filling food off the shelves, as they have done with countless other products that they have targeted.

  By the time the left was done with Russia, it had gone from a wheat producer to a wheat importer and many basic food staples were hard to come by even in a country filled with collective farms. Finding modern day examples of that isn’t hard. We only have to look as far south as Venezuela to see empty store shelves under the weight of government food policies. But one day that may be the local grocery store if the left gets its way.

  Read it all here.

• Angelo M. Codevilla: America’s Ruling Class – and the Perils of Revolution
  

  As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors’ “toxic assets” was the only alternative to the U.S. economy’s “systemic collapse.” In this, President George W. Bush and his would-be Republican successor John McCain agreed with the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual commitment of some 10 trillion nonexistent dollars in ways unprecedented in America. They explained neither the difference between the assets’ nominal and real values, nor precisely why letting the market find the latter would collapse America. The public objected immediately, by margins of three or four to one.

  When this majority discovered that virtually no one in a position of power in either party or with a national voice would take their objections seriously, that decisions about their money were being made in bipartisan backroom deals with interested parties, and that the laws on these matters were being voted by people who had not read them, the term “political class” came into use. Then, after those in power changed their plans from buying toxic assets to buying up equity in banks and major industries but refused to explain why, when they reasserted their right to decide ad hoc on these and so many other matters, supposing them to be beyond the general public’s understanding, the American people started referring to those in and around government as the “ruling class.” And in fact Republican and Democratic office holders and their retinues show a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits, opinions, and sources of income among one another than between both and the rest of the country. They think, look, and act as a class.

  Although after the election of 2008 most Republican office holders argued against the Troubled Asset Relief Program, against the subsequent bailouts of the auto industry, against the several “stimulus” bills and further summary expansions of government power to benefit clients of government at the expense of ordinary citizens, the American people had every reason to believe that many Republican politicians were doing so simply by the logic of partisan opposition. After all, Republicans had been happy enough to approve of similar things under Republican administrations. Differences between Bushes, Clintons, and Obamas are of degree, not kind. Moreover, 2009-10 establishment Republicans sought only to modify the government’s agenda while showing eagerness to join the Democrats in new grand schemes, if only they were allowed to. Sen. Orrin Hatch continued dreaming of being Ted Kennedy, while Lindsey Graham set aside what is true or false about “global warming” for the sake of getting on the right side of history. No prominent Republican challenged the ruling class’s continued claim of superior insight, nor its denigration of the American people as irritable children who must learn their place. The Republican Party did not disparage the ruling class, because most of its officials are or would like to be part of it.

  Never has there been so little diversity within America’s upper crust. Always, in America as elsewhere, some people have been wealthier and more powerful than others. But until our own time America’s upper crust was a mixture of people who had gained prominence in a variety of ways, who drew their money and status from different sources and were not predictably of one mind on any given matter. The Boston Brahmins, the New York financiers, the land barons of California, Texas, and Florida, the industrialists of Pittsburgh, the Southern aristocracy, and the hardscrabble politicians who made it big in Chicago or Memphis had little contact with one another. Few had much contact with government, and “bureaucrat” was a dirty word for all. So was “social engineering.” Nor had the schools and universities that formed yesterday’s upper crust imposed a single orthodoxy about the origins of man, about American history, and about how America should be governed. All that has changed.

  Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters — speaking the “in” language — serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government.

  Read it all here.

You may be pleasantly surprised!

Part 1:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by SDAMatt2a on Jan 16, 2012

Ezra goes to Banff to meet up with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr and friends – the Waterkeeper Alliance – to ask them their opinion on Ethical Oil vs Conflict Oil.

First up: Ed Begley, Jr & Kenny Loggins.

WARNING: Ezra plays a Loggins “tune” from the 80′s. You have been warned.

Part 2:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by SDAMatt2a on Jan 16, 2012
[...]
In this segment: Kevin Sorbo, Giancarlo Esposito, Edward James Olmos, Mimi Rogers, Camryn Manheim

Part 3:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by SDAMatt2a on Jan 16, 2012
[...]
In this segment: Jennifer Finnigan, Alicia Silverstone, Alec Bladwin

Part 4:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by SDAMatt2a on Jan 16, 2012
[...]
John Paul Jones DeJoria of Patrón Tequila fame surprises the hell out of Ezra.

From: Sandra Wirtz
To: 1389 Blog
Sent: Sunday, January 15, 2012 11:29 AM
Subject: Obama Administration’s Grand Canyon mining ban has far-reaching consequences

Dear 1389,

Since your blog occasionally covers environmental and energy issues, I thought your readership might appreciate some insight on Sec. of Interior Ken Salazar’s decision to impose a 20-year mining ban in a million-acre buffer area around Grand Canyon National park from this week.

American Resources Policy Network’s (the organization for which I serve as research director and blogger) principal Dan McGroarty just wrote a column for RealClearWorld.com on the ban, the implications of which stretch beyond what the media is reporting.

Ostensibly put in place over water quality concerns associated with proposed uranium mining, the ban not only needlessly caters to environmentalists, as there is little evidence to support these claims; the decision amounts to what Dan McGroarty calls “a case of unilateral nuclear disarmament, applied to the energy sector.” Given that it would also fence off a number of other minerals on which we’re highly import-dependent as a nation, the ban stands to threaten our strategic and economic future.

Please help us spread the world on the dire consequences of the ban by sharing this with your readers. Feel free to contact me with any questions you may have.

Thank you,

Sandra Wirtz
Director of Research & Staff Blogger
American Resources Policy Network
www.americanresources.org

The Tides Foundation is another George Soros front organization.
Vivian Krause has the story:

$US 10 Million for 43 Organizations in a “TAR SANDS” Campaign. Paid for by Tides USA (2009/2010)

(h/t: Alberta Oil Peon)

Acting in concert, environmental organizations are campaigning against the Alberta oilsands, and more broadly, against the export of Canadian oil. Banning oil tanker traffic on the strategic, north coast of British Columbia, as environmental organizations are demanding, would block exports of Canadian oil to China and other Asian countries. No oil tankers means no oil exports.

In both the U.S. and Canada, a large number of these environmental organizations are all funded by a single American foundation: The Tides Foundation (“Tides USA”).

According to U.S. tax returns for 2009 and 2010, Tides USA has paid a total of $10.2 Million to 44 organizations that campaign against Canadian oil. The top recipient was Corporate Ethics International which runs RETHINK ALBERTA, a campaign to pressure the Alberta government by depicting Alberta in a negative light.

In 2010 alone, the Sierra Club was paid $420,000, Environmental Defense Canada Inc. was paid $250,000 and Greenpeace Canada was paid $200,000 for participation in the “Tar Sands Campaign,” according to 2010 tax returns for Tides USA.

As reported in The Financial Post, in 2009 the U.S. Tides Foundation and Tides Canada funded a total of 36 organizations that campaign against the development of the Alberta oilsands. Of these, 26 organizations were funded by the Tides USA.  The total granted to these organizations by Tides USA was $3.6 Million for 2009, according to U.S. tax returns.

In 2009, Tides Canada Foundation paid at least $7 million to 20 organizations that campaign against Canadian oil, according to analysis of Tides Canada’s U.S. tax returns. In 2009, fully half of Tides Canada’s grants went towards projects on a small but very strategic part of the Canadian coastline: the north coast of B.C., right smack where oil tankers export bound for Asia would need to travel.
[...]
Detailed breakdown of Tides Foundation anti-oil contributions here.

Also see:

• Ethical Oil
• Our Decision: Canada’s Northern Gateway Pipeline
• Kathryn Marshall: The Northern Gateway Pipeline is a Canadian Decision
• Discover the Networks: Tides Foundation and Tides Center
• 36 Organizations Against Alberta Oil Paid by TIDES USA & TIDES CANADA (2009 only)

From YouTube:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by lilcompeau on Nov 4, 2011

More at Alaskan Songs.

Chiquita’s spin doctors are lying like rugs.

From YouTube:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by SDAMatt2a on Dec 22, 2011

International banana giant Chiquita appears to be softening its stance on using fuel from Canadian oilsands, saying that “misinformation” has been circulated by certain groups.

In a letter sent to the Alberta Enterprise Group dated Dec. 21, Chiquita Brands International senior vice-president Manuel Rodriguez said his company “is not boycotting or banning” Canadian oil.

“Today Chiquita sources, and will continue to source, Canadian oil,” the letter states.

The letter also says that over the last week there’s “been a significant amount of misinformation circulated by certain groups regarding our efforts to reduce our carbon footprint, specifically related to use of fuel. While we have commitments to reduce our carbon footprint across a range of activities, press reports have inaccurately stated that we have boycotted or banned Canadian oil. We are concerned about this too, and want to take this opportunity to set the record straight.”

But in November, the same Chiquita vice-president wrote a letter to the U.S.-based environmental group ForestEthics, saying the company will avoid “where possible, fuels from tar sands refineries and to adopt a strategy of continuous improvement towards the elimination of those fuels.”

The Edmonton-based Alberta Enterprise Group, a business lobby organization, called this month for Canadians to counter-boycott Chiquita. Group spokesman David MacLean said the newest letter, along with messages to other Canadian trade organizations, has satisfied his group that Chiquita has dropped its “anti-oil-sand” stance.

“It’s pretty mealy-mouthed. But for us, as a business advocacy organization, it’s good enough, it satisfies our requirement that they do not unfairly target the Canadian oil sands,” MacLean said.

Environmental groups have long expressed concerns about the rising greenhouse gas emissions from the oil sands, along with the heavy impacts on water, land and wildlife.

- Calgary Herald

Canada-Wide Boycott of Chiquita Banana

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by SDAMatt2a on Dec 19, 2011

The Alberta Enterprise Group (AEG) is calling for a boycott of Chiquita Brands International after it agreed to avoid fuels derived from oilsands crude.

ForestEthics announced Thursday it was working with the company to eliminate shipping of Chiquita bananas with fuel from refineries that use the crude.

“This is greenwashing at its worst. What we have here is a company that has such a terrible human rights record around the world that’s desperate to shine the spotlight on someone else,” said David MacLean, AEG’s vice-president of communications and policy. “Remember, this is a company that pleaded guilty to funding terrorist groups in Colombia and paid a $25 million fine in the United States.”

He added it is now the subject of an historic lawsuit by the families of thousands of Colombians who died at the hands of terrorist groups in that country.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) is calling on Chiquita to provide a social responsibility report on alternatives to Canadian crude and then explain its decision, CAPP spokesman Travis Davies said .

“We’ve got a really good record of continuous improvement on both environmental and social performance that stands up to any jurisdiction, obvious marketing aside,” he added.

“Canada’s tarsands is all risk and no benefit for leading American brands like Chiquita that are resolved to reduce environmental problems, so they are working hard to get tarsands out of their transportation footprint,” said Aaron Sanger of ForestEthics.

At Chiquita’s recent annual conference with trucking companies, CEO Fernando Aguirre announced the company’s new process to ensure that fuel from refineries using oilsands crude is not being used for ground transportation of Chiquita products, according to the ForestEthics announcement.

The Ohio-based company announced last month its intention to relocate its head office to Charlotte, N.C., to make its operations more efficient.

Chiquita accounts for roughly one-quarter of the United States’ banana market, and the millions of bananas it sells every day arrive at stores in diesel-fuelled and refrigerated heavy-duty vehicles, said the announcement.

“Chiquita is joining other companies, cities, farmers, workers and many others in drawing the line at tarsands,” Susan Casey-Lefkowitz of the Natural Resources Defense Council said.

ForestEthics said it has identified nearly 50 U.S. refineries already using synthetic oil derived from the oilsands to make trucking fuel.

ForestEthics claims oilsands crude is produced by one of the most energy-intensive and “greenhouse gas spewing” extraction processes in history.

Out of the 90 plus oilsands operations in Alberta, only about five are mines with the remainder using varying forms of in-situ processes.

“Thoughtful companies that have been targeted by ForestEthics in the past have reconsidered their decisions to single out oilsands after coming to understand the facts. I would point to Bed, Bath & Beyond, Gap, Timberland (and) Levis as recent examples,” noted Davies.

Oilsands crude has similar CO2 emissions to other heavy oils and is 6% more intense than the U.S. crude supply average on a wells to wheels basis, reports CAPP’s Upstream Dialogue. Since 2007, government regulations on GHG emissions have resulted in reductions of 23 megatonnes, the same as taking 4.8 million cars off the road.

With 0.5% of the world’s population, Canada produces 2% of global GHGs. Oilsands account for 6.5% of Canada’s GHG emissions and 0.1% — 1/1,000th — of global GHGs.

According to Environment Canada, when comparing GHG emissions by sector, transportation accounts for the largest chunk with 27.5%.

Davies pointed out that statements such as the one made by Kate Colarulli of The Sierra Club calling oilsands crude the dirtiest oil on Earth reveal a certain lack of understanding or attempts to mislead the public.

“Whether you’re looking at GHGs or water performance or social performance, Canadian oilsands stack up very well. Our whole goal is continuous improvement; we’re going to keep that going forward. California heavy, more GHG intensive; Venezuelan, Nigerian the same, and take a look at their social records as well,” he challenged.

The reality is that energy derived from the Canadian oilsands is high quality, conflict free, heavily regulated and transparent, added MacLean.

“Chiquita should educate itself about global energy supply and the Canadian oilsands. Until these companies get up to speed on the facts, Canadians should take their business elsewhere.”

Misguided Green-Washing: Alberta Business Group Calls for Chiquita Boycott

EDMONTON: Alberta Enterprise Group (AEG) is urging all Canadians to boycott international brand Chiquita Bananas in light of their decision to boycott energy derived from the Canadian Oil Sands under the banner of San Francisco-based environmental group Forest Ethics.

“The reality is that energy derived from the Canadian oil sands is high quality, conflict free, heavily regulated and transparent,” said AEG President Tim Shipton. “Turning your back on Canadian oil means more barrels of oil produced by the likes of Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Nigeria. A company like Chiquita, which ships bananas around the world and burns more fossil fuels than some small countries, ought to know better.”

Oil sands crude is 50 per cent of the crude oil supply in western Canada, mixing with conventional sources — all of which is refined into liquid transportation fuels such as gasoline and diesel fuel.

The US Midwest is also highly dependent on western Canadian crude with one-third of the crude supply in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Wisconsin coming from Western Canada. In 2009-10 the oil sands industry had $11.5 billion impact on the United States economy and created 172,000 person years of employment.

Across Canada, some 112,000 jobs are directly or indirectly supported by the oil sands industry. In 2009 Oil Sands companies contracted $810 million in goods and services from aboriginal-owned businesses. “Chiquita should educate themselves about global energy supply and the Canadian Oil Sands,” said Shipton.

“Greenhouse gas emissions from oil sands crude is comparable to other sources and are steadily improving as are other key environmental benchmarks. Until these companies get up to speed on the facts, Canadians should take their business elsewhere.”

-30-

AEG members employ more than 50,000 Canadians in the energy, manufacturing, construction and retail industries and generate billions of dollars in economic activity each year.

How fresh are packaged salads?

Forget Fresh Express®. Who needs salad that is pre-cut and washed with bad-smelling and bad-tasting chlorine, anyway?

According to About.com, “The stuff bought whole and chopped on the kitchen counter is definitely more healthful.” Preservatives stop the aging process so that packaged salads appear fresh, but they don’t prevent loss of the nutritive content over time. You can do much better with fresh ingredients.

I am neither a great chef nor much of a salad-eater, but even I can handle this:

Serbian Salad

Dressing:
Mix ahead of time and refrigerate:
2/3 cup sunflower oil or olive oil
1/3 cup vinegar (red wine, balsamic, or apple cider)
6 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
1 tablespoon fresh parsley, snipped
1/2 teaspoon basil
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1/2 teaspoon marjoram
1/4 teaspoon crushed cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Salad:
Toss in a bowl with the dressing:
6 tomatoes, coarsely chopped
2 cucumbers, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 onion, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 green bell pepper, seeds and pulp removed, coarsely chopped
1 small hot pepper, seeds and pulp removed, finely chopped (optional, use gloves!)
Crumbled feta cheese (optional)

From YouTube

(h/t: Moose and Squirrel and Blazing Cat Fur)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by garyinfoserve on Dec 1, 2011

Rex comes to the defence of Canada’s oil sands as the country faces scrutiny at a climate conference in Durban, South Africa.

Ezra Levant & Mark Steyn: Section 13 & Obama

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by sdamatt2 on Nov 25, 2011

Mark Steyn joins Ezra Levant to discuss Conservative MP Brian Storseth’s private member’s bill calling for the repeal of section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) which deals with hate speech.

In the second segment they discuss Obama’s love for tyrants.

Also see:

• Mark Steyn will be at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto Dec. 1, 2011
• Call to Arms for Free Speech in Canada

In the article BDS Is Fascism, Gramfan reminded us that proponents of the socialist agenda work hand in glove with those of the Green + Green agendas, forming a Red + Green + Green axis.

In a nutshell, those are our enemies, and this is how they have been operating:

Daniel Greenfield: The Islamist-Environmentalist Alliance

Saudi Arabia has no better friend than the Sierra Club, and the Emirates have no better salesmen than the environmentalists who keep the country hooked on conflict oil. The administration’s sabotage of the Keystone XL project through delays aimed at killing the pipeline is a cynical act of cowardice, and it’s a shot in the arm to the very regimes that it claims to oppose.

The Islamist Spring has mainly hit Arab governments without a huge oil industry, leaving them dependent on patronage, whether from the United States in the case of Egypt, or Iran in the case of Syria. The economic downturn tightened belts and drove mobs into the streets where Islamists and socialists funneled them into anti-government rallies for their own benefit.

Qatar has been smugly stirring up trouble for the rest of the region through Al-Jazeera and laughing at its enemies from behind a shield of oil barrels and Western public relations firms. Libya, the one oil power to fall to the Islamists, would have still been ruled by its cross-dressing madman if NATO aircraft and special forces had not come to the rescue of the Al-Qaeda-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.

Saudi Arabia has an even bigger stack of oil barrels, and on top of that black pyramid is a degenerate royal family wearing crowns of terrorism and tyranny. Iran has its own pyramid with hanging women dangling off it and the corpses of murdered student protesters floating in the crude. And if the environmentalists really cared about any of that, at least to the extent of wanting to end the wars, then they would be laying a pipeline that would funnel money out of the House of Saud​and the Mullahs back to the United States of America.

Instead billions have been poured into the People’s Republic of China, which lends us the money to pay for the solar and wind power components that we buy from them, and after the handful of watts from green power have been exhausted to spread joy and peace across parts of Vermont and Oregon, the country goes back with hat in hand to the grinning petroleum plutocracies.

No activist group in America has promoted the growth of tyranny around the world the way that the environmentalist movement has. Every time drilling equipment stands idle because it might endanger the home of the spotted purple mock warbler or the congealed nanny state lizard, the cash registers and card readers in the malls of Dubai ring in another payday.
[...]
The tyrants would still be around, but with one hand out for money they wouldn’t be all that much of a threat. It’s no coincidence that the craziest and most vicious tyrants in the Middle East are found squatting on the dirty thrones of oil regimes. Compare Saddam, the Ayatollahs, Gaddafi and the House of Saud to Mubarak or the Jordanian monarchy. Even Assad’s violent tantrums are brought to you by the oil wells of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Environmentalists agree with most of this, knowingly nod their heads and go back to singing the praises of green jobs. Their solution is to cut the flow of money by forcing Americans to cut back and investing in high cost and low efficiency alternative energy programs. Even if their approach were moral and legal, which it is not, it would still be a hopeless failure. Even expensive oil will beat even more expensive green power, and fighting political tyranny abroad by implementing it at home is no solution.

Every time environmentalists kill a project in America, they revive it overseas with less oversight, more pollution and without the human rights. The death of Keystone XL means more pollution in China and war in the Middle East. Crusading environmentalists helped kill America’s industries and kept the regime in Beijing alive. The tanks that rolled over the democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square were as green as their environmentalist backers. Both of them painted in the resplendent color of American money.

Islam’s second act was funded by the same policies that gave the People’s Republic an opportunity to transform its population into our non-EPA, non-union and no minimum wage workforce. And the petrodollars still keep pumping out of the United States and into the regimes funding the growing Islamic sphere of influence. A sphere that is moving to enclose us.

The ANWAR drilling that never happened was money that went into arming and training a new generation of Al-Qaeda recruits, into firing Hamas rockets at Israeli schools and filling the pockets of the Revolutionary Guards​ commanders in Iran. Every time another resource development project dies, another Mullah gets his suicide squad wings.
[...]
Read it all.

Ironically, America’s homegrown socialists – whether in the Obama Administration and the Democrat party, in the #Occupy movement, in academia, in the mainstream media, and in various leftist lobbying groups and “think tanks” – are far to the left of their counterparts in Communist China. I am not claiming that mainland China is no longer communist, only that, in many important respects, we have become more communist while they have become less so.

A bad day for democracy in Australia, following on the heels of the judgement against Andrew Bolt’s right to free speech.

The West is falling badly, and democracy is losing its grip.

All politicians lie – we know that, but have a look at the video clip of Gillard’s pre-election promise (below) and I can’t really see any way that it can be misinterpreted.

She did not win in her own right but forged a coalition with the Marxist Greens, and a few ‘independents”, to hold onto power here.

Her political opponent, Tony Abbott, in spite of the leftist media bias, did remarkably well. Gillard’s party managed to entice the “independents” to stick with her.

Most Australians did not want this tax but she rammed it down their throats, much like Obamacare was rammed down the throats of American citizens.

I cannot help but wonder sometimes why politicians bother to read polls when they have absolutely no intention of taking any notice of what the average citizen really wants.

I have said before on other blog posts:

Is there any leader in the West who has not literally declared war against his/her own people?

I cannot think of anyone but am open to suggestions.

At one point I thought Netanyahu was an exception but today we find he is releasing over 1000 prisoners (a/k/a jihadists) to obtain the release of Gilad Shalit.

Don’t misunderstand me – I am happy for Gilad Shalit – but now Netanyahu has placed his people, many more than one soldier, in harm’s way.

He has caved in to the demands of Hamas.

If he were going to do that anyway then why didn’t he do it years ago? Israel’s current situation is more precarious than what it was when Gilad Shalit was first captured.

Sadly, I see no Reagan or Churchill on the horizon.

Video of Julia Gillard’s pre-election promise:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by lodders86 on Feb 24, 2011

The Opposition says a $26 a tonne tax will add $300 a year to household electricity bills and 6.5 cents a litre to petrol or about $4 to fill up an average family car.

Gillard has to convince voters that a Government that has spectacularly stuffed up much smaller schemes such as home insulation, green loans and solar rebates can efficiently handle this massive change to the economy.

The public will rightly be sceptical.

Tax triumphalism not a good look

by Chris Kenny in The Australian

THE disconnect between the political/media fishbowl and mainstream Australia is often stark.

We have seen a clear demonstration of that with the Prime Minister and her team applauding, kissing and congratulating each other [emphasis added] on the passage of their carbon tax bills through the House of Representatives.

Only yesterday Newspoll showed a massive primary vote split of 49 to 29 between the dominant, anti-carbon tax Coalition and the struggling, pro-carbon tax Labor government.

Climate change ranked as the lowest priority of the main issues for voters, and even then, more people thought the Coalition would handle the issue best. Polls have shown that well over half the population opposes the carbon tax and little more than a third support it.

Simply, the tax is unpopular.

Yet in the rarefied atmosphere of Canberra, Labor MPs publicly pat themselves on the back for passing it.

The political myopia of this self-congratulation is stunning. It only makes a bad situation worse.

Labor promised not to introduce a carbon tax and there is already a good deal of anger from voters about the broken promise. It is being expressed through talkback radio, letters to newspapers, and polling results.

So the optics of jubilant politicians is terrible politics: triumphalism at the trashing of a pledge.

Away from Canberra, in the real world, the television pictures will only antagonise voters.

It suggests to voters that the government does not care what they think.

It solidifies a perception of politicians being out of touch – isolated from the daily concerns of voters.

Julia Gillard says she broke her word on the carbon tax because of political necessity and for a higher ideal – healing the planet. If we take that as a given, then a smart politician would look to pass the measure more in sorrow than triumph.

If Ms Gillard really wants to take voters with her on this crusade, she needs to tell them that it was with a heavy heart that she broke her word.

If the Prime Minister gets voters to listen, she might be able to convince some of them that the carbon tax is worthwhile.

But voters won’t listen if they think Labor is celebrating how it turned its back on the wishes voters expressed through the ballot box last year.

Obviously enough, mainstream Australians like to be treated with appropriate respect.

Someone in the Prime Minister’s office should be aware of these optics. The government should have been seen to pocket the win, in a sober fashion, with no sense of triumphalism.

Menzies House: The Grand Deception, The Ultimate Betrayal

John Citizen examines the Gillard Governments contempt for free speech:

Only hours ago the Carbon Tax legislation passed through the House of Representatives and Julia Gillard completed her ultimate betrayal of the Australian Nation and its people. Gillard’s unholy alliance with the Greens has now been sealed; irrevocable and beyond redemption. The government of Australia, regardless of its ideology, is charged with protecting and promoting the interests of this, the greatest of nations on Earth. By doing this deal with the Greens Gillard has demonstrated her casual disregard for the people, with her sole objective being maintenance of power, regardless of the cost. And make no mistake, there will be costs…

The Labor Heartland will bear much of the economic burden, as manufacturing is forced off-shore, unable to compete with economies that are not held back by this illogical tax. Families will find their struggle to keep their heads above water even harder, with this unnecessary tax simply adding more pressure to already tight family budgets. Scraping some money together for luxuries or treats for the kids will become impossible, as Gillard and Brown pursue their doctrine of economic suicide. The pair of economic illiterates will wring every last available dollar out of hard working Australians, all for the single-minded goal of advancing their socialist agenda. To borrow – and alter sightly – a quote from the great Winston Churchill: “Never before will so many lose so much because of the incompetence of so few…”

Read the rest.

The Bolt Report – global warming special

Feel free to pass this on. People need to know that scientists dispute what the Government claims is settled.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by ten on Oct 8, 2011

Episode 23. Special climate panel discussion with Professor Garth Paltridge, Professor Peter Ridd and Professor Bob Carter.

EthicalOil.org has the story:

Saudi Arabia moves to censor Canadian TV ad

TORONTO, CANADA – The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, an oil rich dictatorship, has moved to censor a Canadian television ad that educates Canadian consumers about the oppression of women in Saudi Arabia and the role played by Saudi oil exports in enabling this oppression. The ad can be viewed here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

“This is a brazen act of domestic political interference by a foreign dictatorship that neither understands nor respects the rights of women or freedom of speech,” said Alykhan Velshi, executive director of EthicalOil.org, a grassroots advocacy organization that educates consumers about their choice between ethical oil from Canada’s oil sands and conflict oil from dictatorships like Saudi Arabia. “Each time we buy Saudi conflict oil we are funding their oppression – and now their attempts at Saudi-style censorship of Canadian TV. This is the ad Saudi Arabia doesn’t want Canadians to see.”

On September 6, 2011, Telecaster Services from the Television Bureau of Canada, the advertising review and clearance service funded by Canada’s private broadcasters, notified EthicalOil.org that it had received a cease and desist letter from lawyers for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia demanding that approval for EthicalOil.org’s ad be withdrawn. Telecaster Services had approved the ethical oil spot on August 18, 2011 and the ad subsequently ran and completed its run of schedule on the Oprah Winfrey Network (Canada).

The cease and desist letter was sent by Norton Rose, a global law firm with Canadian offices. Norton Rose attorney Rahool Agarwal has confirmed his representation of Saudi Arabia to EthicalOil.org’s legal counsel. Despite repeated requests Norton Rose has refused to provide ethicaloil.org’s legal counsel with the material sent to the Telecaster on behalf of the Saudi dictatorship.

In response to the Saudi dictatorship’s move, EthicalOil.org is taking the following actions:

1. The ad has been put back on the air. Starting today the Sun News Network is airing the spot.
2. Velshi has written to His Excellency Osamah A. Al Sanosi Ahmad, the Saudi Arabian Ambassador in Canada, informing him the ad has been put back on the air and challenging him to a televised debate about the ad and its contents.
3. Velshi has alerted Foreign Minister John Baird and Dean Allison, Chairman of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade about the incident in writing, calling on the government and the parliamentary committee to investigate a foreign dictatorship trying to censor what Canadians can and cannot see on their televisions.

For more information, contact:
Alykhan Velshi
EthicalOil.org
Alykhan@ethicaloil.org

Commenter Shobhna Kapoor requests:

Please express your outrage at this Saudi bullying to Stephen Harper at pm@pm.gc.ca.

More here:

• Ezra Levant: Extremists’ oil protest puzzling
• Book by Ezra Levant: Ethical Oil: The case for Canada’s oilsands
• Sun News: Pipeline protest a big bust
• Blazing Cat Fur: Ezra Levant Mocks CBC’s Beloved Pipeline Protest
• Blazing Cat Fur: Saudi Threats a SLAPP in the Face

Julia Gillard is taking Australia down the European road. And I think in more ways than this one!

She has no mandate for this tax. Her immigration and multiculturalism policies will make us more like Eurabia.

Easy to understand this considering she is a “remould the world” Fabian Socialist.

(see picture of Fabian Society’s window inscription above.)

The Australian: Talks on ETS link with Europe, says Julia Gillard

AUSTRALIAN and European Union officials will discuss how to link their emissions trading schemes in the future, Prime Minister Julia Gillard says.

Ms Gillard met European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso in Canberra today and discussed climate change and a raft of other issues.

The prime minister said Europe was a pioneer in reducing carbon emissions having established an ETS six years ago.

“Both Australia and the EU recognise that carbon markets are the most cost-effective way of reducing greenhouse gases and creating clean energy jobs,” Ms Gillard told reporters.

“The president and I have agreed today to establish senior officials talks to discuss economy-to-economy measures we can jointly undertake to link our emissions trading schemes at the appropriate time in the future.”

The leaders also discussed global economic challenges, trade liberalisation, and establishing a treaty-level agreement between Australia and the EU.

Mr Barroso praised Ms Gillard’s plan to price carbon.

“Australia’s decision to put a price on carbon emissions in our view is an important step,” he said.

The European Commission president said a price on carbon was the “most cost effective way” to attack climate change and was a “great green business opportunity.”

Mr Barroso also said the European Commission had sought a mandate from its 27 member states to negotiate a cooperation framework treaty with Australia.

He said the mandate could be signed next month.

“It will serve as an umbrella for the many areas of our thriving cooperation.”

More here:

Further reading: Daily Telegraph: Ethnic mix thrown into curriculum, latest on multiculturalism to “teach” our young.

Watch YouTube: Fabian Society Exposed.