Sandra Finley

2015-10-16 Texas Oil Tycoon T. Boone Pickens’ $700-Million NAFTA Lawsuit Against Ontario Nears End, NY Times & Huffington Post

Trade Deals, PPPs, Integration Canada-U.S. No Responses »

Oct 162015

UPDATE: see 2016-04-02 NAFTA Chapter 11: Tribunal rules against Texas oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens in lawsuit over Ontario wind farms

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(Note: Should you wish, New York Times, October 15 – a bit more detailed version of the Huff Post Canadian version below is at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/16/business/dealbook/for-pickens-wind-claim-may-be-last-power-play.html?_r=0 )

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http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/10/16/t-boone-pickens-ontario-lawsuit-nafta_n_8313942.html

By Daniel Tencer

T BOONE PICKENS

Founder and Chairman of BP Capital Management T. Boone Pickens participates in a discussion during a ‘birthday bash’ to celebrate his birthday at the 2015 Southern Republican Leadership Conference May 22, 2015 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Pickens has been suing the Liberal government in Ontario under NAFTA, arguing he has been the victim of “unfair” backroom deals involving the province’s green energy program. | Alex Wong via Getty Images

For the past four years, Texas oil billionaire and corporate raider T. Boone Pickens has been suing the Liberal government in Ontario under NAFTA, arguing he has been the victim of “unfair” backroom deals involving the province’s green energy program.

A NAFTA tribunal is expected to rule on Pickens’ $700-million lawsuit this month, The New York Times reported Friday, describing the dispute as the 87-year-old tycoon’s “last big battle.”

The case is one of many that has some social activists concerned that foreign businesses enjoy too much influence over policy under NAFTA’s chapter 11, which allows foreign investors to sue Canadian governments to protect their investments, without first going through Canadian courts.

A recent study from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives said 70 per cent of claims under NAFTA’s chapter 11 were targeted against Canada, making it the most-sued country under the trade agreement.

Pickens’ lawsuit alleges “abuse of power” and “undue political interference” in the handing out of contracts for wind power in Ontario, part of the province’s multi-billion-dollar green energy plan, launched in 2009.

The lawsuit, filed in 2011, claims that Pickens’ renewable energy company, Mesa Power, lost out on wind power contracts to Florida-based NextEra Energy because NextEra donated $18,600 to the governing Liberal Party before the 2011 provincial election. The suit says this gave NextEra exclusive access to government officials.

The lawsuit notes that NextEra’s chief lobbyist at the time, Bob Lopinski, was a former advisor to then-Premier Dalton McGuinty.

The New York Times reports:

A review of documents and emails between NextEra executives, lobbyists and government officials show that NextEra met and held calls with high-level officials at the Ontario Ministry of Energy, the premier’s office and the power authority, even as Mesa Power executives were told they could not speak to officials until contracts were awarded. When NextEra lobbyists requested more information, officials sometimes responded within hours.

Ontario granted NextEra $3.8 billion in energy contracts, the Times reports, adding that Pickens had hoped those contracts would be the cornerstone of the renewable energy company he founded in 2007.

The suit also claims the Ontario government imposed a variety of “prohibited” buy-local rules, which the suit says violates NAFTA rules.

The Ontario government rejects Pickens’ claims.

“The Ontario Power Authority (OPA) runs an open, fair, and transparent process to award clean energy contracts under the feed-in-tariff program, “ Brad Duguid, then the province’s energy minister, told the Globe and Mail in 2011.

“All companies are treated equally with the same opportunities to participate, regardless of whether they are Ontario-based or internationally-based.”

An OPA official told the Times that Mesa Power didn’t submit its applications properly.

“In my view, many of Mesa Power’s failures were caused by its sloppiness and lack of care in preparing its application, and the consequent failure to satisfy clearly defined criteria,” procurement manager Richard Duffy said.

The Times notes that Mesa and NextEra are actually often on the same side of policy and political issues — both Pickens and NextEra have backed Jeb Bush’s bid for the White House.

Pickens recently donated $100,000 to the Bush campaign, in the hopes that a Bush victory would lead to a green light for the Keystone XL pipeline.

Pickens is a big fan of the oilsands, arguing that full exploitation of the resource could make the U.S. independent of Middle Eastern oil.

In a letter published in the Calgary Herald earlier this year, Pickens apologized to the people of Canada for President Barack Obama’s decision to veto a bill that would have allowed Keystone XL to go forward.

2015-10-03 Group questions U of S prof’s Monsanto link, The Starphoenix

Freedom of Speech. (Remove some wrong postings from category), Genetically Modified, Take back the University 10 Responses »

Oct 162015

By Jason Warick

The University of Saskatchewan logo can be seen in this StarPhoenix file photo

Photograph by: Greg Pender , the StarPhoenix

A University of Saskatchewan professor is one of several prominent North American academics under fire for undeclared connections to agri-business giant Monsanto.

At Monsanto’s request, the scientists wrote papers supporting the global use of genetically modified crops, which were then disseminated widely by a marketing company hired by Monsanto.

Peter W.B. Phillips, graduate chair at the U of S Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, said there was no need to declare his connections because he was not paid and Monsanto did not ask him to alter his research.

Others disagree.

“Monsanto says ‘Jump’ and these scientists said ‘How high?'” said Gary Ruskin, co-director for US Right to Know, an advocacy group funded by American organic farm groups.

“This is not how publicly funded scientists should behave.”

According to documents obtained by U.S. Right to Know, Phillips and several other top agriculture experts were solicited to write articles by a senior Monsanto executive in 2013. They were asked to write pieces to correct the overwhelming amount of negative information about geneticallymodified organisms (GMOs) in the public sphere, according to the email.

“The key to success is participation by all of you – recognized leaders with the knowledge, reputation and communication experience needed to communicate authoritatively with the target groups,” the Monsanto email stated.

Monsanto suggested topics and headlines for each scientist. Once they agreed, a Monsanto-hired public relations firm informed them of their deadlines and how their papers would be “merchandised” and promoted widely.

In the end, the papers closely mirrored the pitch by Monsanto, Ruskin said.

Phillips was asked to write about the “burdensome regulations” that “stifle innovation” in the biotech industry.

“Critics might lead you to believe that genetically engineered crops are not tested or regulated. That is wrong,” read the opening line of the finished article by Phillips.

In his conclusion, Phillips stated: “Increased regulatory costs and an expanding approval process stifle innovation – the innovation that is needed to secure an adequate supply and, appropriate quality of food at affordable prices.”

A public relations firm hired by Monsanto emailed Phillips and the others to give them proposed deadlines and inform them of efforts to disseminate the papers.

Phillips’ eventual article, entitled Economic Consequences of Regulations of GM Crops, was published on agri-food and biotechnology websites. Phillips’ titles at the University of Saskatchewan and Johnson-Shoyama are mentioned at the top of the article, but there is no mention of Monsanto’s involvement.

Phillips said the information gathered in the paper is serving as the basis for a paper he’s submitted to an academic journal.

Phillips, holder of appointments to several other schools and departments at the U of S, said there was no need to declare his collaboration with Monsanto. In an interview, Phillips said he was not paid and works with a host of corporations, governments and non-governmental agencies.

“That’s part of my job,” he said. “The research world has changed.”

Ruskin, whose group accessed thousands of pages of emails and other documents linking the scientists and Monsanto, said North Americans should be able to trust their top university scientists, and that’s not possible when significant connections to corporations such as Monsanto are not disclosed.

The University of Saskatchewan was one of several universities, including Harvard, the University of Florida and Penn State, with undisclosed links to Monsanto revealed in the documents.

“I think it shows how universities are increasingly corporately controlled, and how science is under increasing corporate control,” Ruskin said.

Phillips admitted there is tension within universities and among academics about their role. Some believe research should not be affected at all by outside organizations, governments or the public. Phillips said he believes academics should be responsive to the needs of stakeholders. He said Monsanto holds the dominant market share in its industry, so it would be foolish to not communicate with the company.

Phillips said he was free to submit whatever he concluded, and that there was “pushback” by the academics to the suggested topics. When asked to provide any emails or names of other academics who disputed the topics, Phillips replied, “It’s not worth my effort to cover my back here.”

Ernie Barber, vice-president academic at the U of S, said researchers should definitely declare financial interests and it would be unethical to let outside officials or corporations dictate any research content. However, U of S researchers are expected to “share” their research widely, he said, adding he did not know all of the details of the Phillips case, since the details have only come out relatively recently.

“There should be no attempt whatsoever to mislead the public,” Barber said.

Monsanto Canada spokesperson Trish Jordan said the company partners with community groups, academics and others. She said Monsanto often works with academics, but “We don’t have any control over their message.”

2015-10-15 Proposal to University Senate: the University adopt the new economics as expeditiously as possible.

Climate, Freedom of Speech. (Remove some wrong postings from category), Take back the University No Responses »

Oct 152015

UNIVERSITY SENATE Oct 2015

PROPOSAL, NEW ECONOMICS

Submitted by Sandra Finley, Senate Member-At-Large

CLIMATE CHANGE is a most pressing issue. The world needs to do everything that can be done, and urgently. Individuals, especially leaders, need to be innovative and step up.

Economics that do not account for resource depletion and degradation are a major impediment to progress on climate change.

PROPOSE: Senators assist the University in identifying and replacing obsolete economic pedagogy with teaching and research on the new economics.

Economic indicators, the monitors by which we measure progress, give us feedback that we are doing just fine. But we know we are destroying the supports required by human beings to live on this Earth.

The holy grail of economic growth, measured by GDP, is leading us to a place no rational person would want to go. Our flawed indicators of success (GDP, economic development) measure the consumption of resources and attendant production of waste.

The mindless pursuit of a goal rooted in destruction has drastic consequences for those who come behind us, Our Children.

Oct 1- 4 CANUSSEE Conference, Canada U.S. International Society for Ecological Economics in Vancouver. I attended.

Ecological-economics is ONE part of the “new economics”. Through ecological-economics Senators can make a needed contribution while others travel The Road to Paris (the Paris Climate Talks in December).

MAY: Pope Francis’ encyclical on climate change

“Every effort to protect and improve our world entails profound changes in lifestyles, models of production and consumption, and the established structures of power which today govern societies.”

JULY: the Dutch Government was Ordered to Cut Carbon Emissions in Landmark Ruling

“This ruling is of enormous significance, and beyond our expectations,” he told the Guardian. “We had thought the legal system would not want to interfere in the political debate. But the scientific case is so strong, and the dangers so high that the court has ruled that the state is failing to adequately protect its citizens from the effects of climate change.” The judges ordered the Dutch government to pay all of Urgenda’s costs.

AUGUST: American Youths File Landmark Climate Lawsuit Against President Obama & U.S. Government NASA climate scientist Dr. James Hansen and his grand-daughter are part of Our Children’s Trust that filed the lawsuit.

What can the U of S Senate do? Be informed and find innovative ways to advocate.

Research presented at CANUSSEE tells that economics textbooks for introductory courses at Canadian Universities largely continue the curriculum taught when I attended the U of S College of Commerce 1967 – 71, almost half-a-century ago!

The teaching of mythology has a place, but not in economics.

Students should receive value for their money.

Three youtubes cover the ground on ecological economics very well. UBC is represented (Bill Rees) and the University of Vermont (Jon Erickson):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d05jEprJxtE “CRASH COURSE” in Ecological Economics (Jon Erickson)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhHH5meSLZI Nate Hagens // From Wall St. to Ecological Economics // Part 1 ]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxfGcwfYlAg Interview, William Rees – The Dangerous Disconnect Between Economics and Ecology. Institute for New Economic Thinking

It behooves us to determine what is being taught in the various economics classes, whether through Arts & Science, Ag Econ or Business Econ. Is the pedagogy sound?

Roy Romanow, former Premier of Saskatchewan, June 2012 Star Phoenix:

“The preoccupation with the GDP, which has become the all-encompassing surrogate for everything with respect to well-being, is wrong,” he said.

GDP does nothing to measure things like whether the quality of education meets current requirements, whether the environment matters or whether people are so busy they can’t spend time with their families, he said.

Taking an example close to home, the South Saskatchewan River: I noticed when the volume of water measured at Saskatoon was 20% of a hundred years ago. A small number of years later it was 16%. Today’s actions ensure that it will hit 10%, after which comes 5%. All because we do not have any economic measurements or goals that require the volume of water in the River to stabilize. All we have is mindless language around “economic development”, MORE withdrawals and demands. Always MORE is progress. The pervasive economic mythology assumes unlimited resources, even for example, when climate change is a known reality, even when the American West is running out of water. Even when the South Saskatchewan River is rated as the most endangered River in Canada.

Mobilizations are at the community level, you can see that in Saskatchewan in the Committee for Future Generations, in Idle No More, in the March Against Monsanto, in the Blue Dot movement.

Senate can help mobilize the University community to make an important contribution through changing our economic models of production and consumption.

Excerpt from World Happiness Report:

We live in an age of stark contradictions. The world enjoys technologies of unimaginable sophistication; yet has at least one billion people without enough to eat each day. The world economy is propelled to soaring new heights of productivity through ongoing technological and organizational advance; yet is relentlessly destroying the natural environment in the process. Countries achieve great progress in economic development as conventionally measured; yet along the way succumb to new crises of obesity, smoking, diabetes, depression, and other ills of modern life.

These contradictions would not come as a shock to the greatest sages of humanity, including Aristotle and the Buddha. The sages taught humanity, time and again, that material gain alone will not fulfill our deepest needs. Material life must be harnessed to meet these human needs, most importantly to promote the end of suffering, social justice, and the attainment of happiness. The challenge is real for all parts of the world.

. . . The realities of poverty, anxiety, environmental degradation, and unhappiness in the midst of great plenty should not be regarded as mere curiosities. They require our urgent attention, and especially so at this juncture in human history. If we continue mindlessly along the current economic trajectory, we risk undermining the Earth’s life support systems – food supplies, clean water, and stable climate – necessary for human health and even survival in some places. On the other hand, if we act wisely, we can protect the Earth while raising quality of life broadly around the world. We can do this by adopting lifestyles and technologies that improve happiness (or life satisfaction) while reducing human damage to the environment. “Sustainable Development” is the term given to the combination of human well-being, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability. We can say that the quest for happiness is intimately linked to the quest for sustainable development.”

Prince Charles . . . said: “The grim reality is that our planet has reached a point of crisis. The time for us to act is rapidly running out. We are facing what could be described as a ‘perfect storm’: the combination of pollution and over-consumption of finite natural resources; the very real risk of catastrophic climate change; unprecedented levels of financial indebtedness, and a population of seven billion that is rising fast.”

There is a pressing need to change our economic indicators. We have economic measurements that do

not provide the feedback we need in order to make intelligent decisions. These false indicators allow us to blissfully destroy the things we are dependent upon for life. They tell us we are making “progress”, which is anything but the truth.

Another example: The economic activity generated by a child with cancer or asthma involves drugs, radiation treatment, inhalers, nurses and doctors’ salaries, hotel accommodations for family and parents whose child is in hospital, ambulance rides, funerals – – altogether a lot of economic activity. The way in which we measure the economic activity generated by treating the 25% increase in childhood cancers and 40% increase in asthma in children tells us that we are doing just great! We have a thriving economy! We turn a blind eye to the poisons that are going into the environment to create the 25% increase in cancers and 40% increase in asthma in children (figures from the Canadian Institute of Child Health in about 1992). . . . And we simultaneously congratulate ourselves on the quality of our educational institutions. No thinking person would TEACH these economic indicators. They’d work hard with other people to make sure that we stopped deluding ourselves.

What looms ahead for your children is a much-degraded and more violent world if we are incapable of change.

The university is our knowledge base, it is responsible for helping the society to find solutions. If it does not help to address the fundamental problems of our society, the University is a significant part of the problem.

I propose that senators, working with faculty, students, governors and administrators make it a priority of the University to adopt, as expeditiously as possible, the new economics.

Respectfully submitted,

Sandra Finley

2015-07-22 Dutch Government Ordered to Cut Carbon Emissions in Landmark Ruling, The Guardian

Climate, Energy, Freedom of Speech. (Remove some wrong postings from category) No Responses »

Oct 142015

http://www.alternet.org/environment/dutch-government-ordered-cut-carbon-emissions-landmark-ruling

Dutch court orders state to reduce emissions by 25% within five years to protect its citizens from climate change in world’s first climate liability suit.

By Arthur Neslen / The Guardian

July 22, 2015

Photo Credit: El Greco/Shutterstock.com

A court in the Hague has declared the Dutch government’s climate policy illegal and ordered it to cut its emissions by at least 25 percent within five years, in a landmark ruling.

To cheers from climate campaigners in the court, three judges ruled that government plans to cut emissions by just 14-17 percent compared to 1990 levels by 2020 were illegal.

In the first climate change liability suit brought under human rights and tort law, Judge Hans Hofhuis said that the threat posed by global warming was severe and acknowledged by the Dutch government in international treaties.The state should not hide behind the argument that the solution to the global climate problem does not depend solely on Dutch efforts,” the judges’ ruling said. “Any reduction of emissions contributes to the prevention of dangerous climate change and as a developed country the Netherlands should take the lead in this.”

Some 886 plaintiffs organized by the Urgenda movement had accused the Dutch government of negligence for “knowingly contributing” to a breach of the 2C maximum target for global warming. The first hearing was held in April.

Professor Pier Vellinga, Urgenda’s chairman and the originator of the 2C target in 1989 said that the ruling was a breakthrough and would have a massive impact on similar cases being heard in countries such as Belgium.

“This ruling is of enormous significance, and beyond our expectations,” he told the Guardian. “We had thought the legal system would not want to interfere in the political debate. But the scientific case is so strong, and the dangers so high that the court has ruled that the state is failing to adequately protect its citizens from the effects of climate change.”

The judges ordered the Dutch government to pay all of Urgenda’s costs.

2015-08-25 American Youths File Landmark Climate Lawsuit Against President Obama & U.S. Government

Climate, Freedom of Speech. (Remove some wrong postings from category) No Responses »

Oct 142015

http://www.alternet.org/environment/american-youths-file-landmark-climate-lawsuit-against-president-obama-us-government

The plaintiffs claim that the government violated their constitutional rights by promoting the development of fossil fuels.

Our Children’s Trust

August 25, 2015

On August 12, International Youth Day, 21 young people from across the United States filed a landmark constitutional climate change lawsuit against the federal government in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon. Also acting as a plaintiff is world-renowned climate scientist Dr. James E. Hansen, serving as guardian for future generations and for his granddaughter, and Earth Guardians, representing young citizen beneficiaries of the public trust. The complaint asserts that, in causing climate change, the federal government has violated the youngest generation’s constitutional rights to life, liberty, property, and has failed to protect essential public trust resources.

The complaint alleges the federal government is violating the youth’s constitutional rights by promoting the development and use of fossil fuels. These young plaintiffs are challenging the federal government’s national fossil fuel programs, as well as the proposed Jordan Cove LNG export terminal in Coos Bay, Oregon. The plaintiffs seek to hold President Obama and various federal agencies responsible for continued fossil fuel exploitation. The federal government has known for decades that fossil fuels are destroying the climate system. No less important than in the civil rights cases, the plaintiffs seek a court order requiring the president to immediately implement a national plan to decrease atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide to a safe level: 350ppm by the year 2100.

In describing the case, one of the teenage plaintiffs and youth director of Earth Guardians, Xiuhtezcatl Tonatiuh Martinez, stated:

“The federal government has known for decades that CO2 pollution from burning fossil fuels was causing global warming and dangerous climate change. It also knew that continuing to burn fossil fuels would destabilize our climate system, significantly harming my generation and generations to come. Despite knowing these dangers, the defendants did nothing to prevent this harm. In fact, my Government increased the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere to levels it knew were unsafe.”

Another plaintiff, 18-year-old Kelsey Juliana, said:

“Our nation’s top climate scientists, including Dr. Hansen, have found that the present CO2 level is already in the danger zone and leading to devastating disruptions of planetary systems. The current practices and policies of our federal government include sustained exploitation and consumption of fossil fuels. We brought this case because the government needs to immediately and aggressively reduce carbon emissions, and stop promoting fossil fuels, which force our nation’s climate system toward irreversible impacts. A key example is approval of LNG pipelines and export terminals in Oregon. If the government continues to delay urgent annual emissions reductions, my generation’s well-being will be inexcusably put at risk.”

Based on the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the complaint argues that, despite knowing CO2 emissions cause dangerous climate change and ocean acidification, the federal government failed to restrict those emissions and continues to authorize fossil fuel projects that amplify the danger and foreclose the opportunity to stabilize the climate system. The lawsuit specifies the Jordan Cove Energy Project as one egregious instance in which the federal government intensified that danger to plaintiffs’ life, liberty and property. The plaintiffs seek judicial action no less important, from a strictly legal basis, than Brown v. Board of Education (right to equal educational opportunity) and Obergefell v. Hodges (right to marry). This case places indisputable climate science squarely in front of the federal judiciary, requesting an order forcing our government to cease jeopardizing the climate system for present and future generations.

“We uncovered shocking admissions by the White House and the Environmental Protection Agency: they have known for decades of the extreme dangers of fossil fuels,” noted Philip Gregory of Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, of Burlingame, California, counsel to the plaintiffs. “The complaint explains how the defendants have known since at least 1965 that CO2 emissions from fossil fuels would create perilous climate change, with enormous and harmful impacts for future generations — including our children. These disclosures also arose in the 1980s when Congress worked with the EPA to develop a national plan to keep atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at 350 ppm. Despite the government’s extensive knowledge of the dangers of CO2 emissions, and draft plans to reduce these emissions, the defendants continued to authorize and promote fossil fuel extraction, production, consumption, and all their associated emissions — to the grave detriment of future generations.”

“By 2020, the Jordan Cove Energy Project will be the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the whole state of Oregon,” stated 18-year-old Alex Loznak, one of the eleven Oregon youth plaintiffs. “Science tells us we must sharply cut back on CO2 emissions, but my federal government has given the green light to massive LNG exports from this terminal. If constructed, the terminal would process one billion cubic feet of natural gas per day, locking us into dependence on fossil fuels at a time when we should be transitioning toward a renewable energy economy. My family has owned a farm near the proposed pipeline route for almost 150 years, and I’m worried about the impacts that increased drought and wildfire will have on the farm unless we act now on climate change.”

The complaint includes each plaintiff’s individual story and the ways in which they are harmed by climate change now and will be in the future if the court does not order the federal government to decrease atmospheric concentrations of CO2 to a safe level. For example, youth plaintiff Tia Hatton, from Bend, Oregon, has experienced record low snowfall for the past three years, threatening her water supplies and winter sports. She knows carbon pollution confronts her and her generation with the specter of severe water shortages, and is concerned she will be forced to stop skiing competitively.

Levi Draheim, an 8-year-old plaintiff from Indialantic, Florida, lives with his family on a small barrier island between the Atlantic Ocean and a lagoon. Sea level rise is already seriously impacting their island, and Levi is worried he will have to move if it becomes worse.

Plaintiff Journey Zephier, a 15-year-old who lives in Kauai, Hawaii, is watching the island’s beaches erode away. The island’s decreased rainfall is resulting in lower river water levels, and his community is faced with serious water quality problems because saltwater is intruding upriver from sea level rise.

“This bold action by youth in the United States challenges federal government actions that are causing and exacerbating, rather than abating, the climate crisis,” said Roger Cox, attorney for URGENDA who recently secured a court order in the Netherlands ordering the Dutch government to decrease emissions. “Like the court found in our Dutch case, the U.S. government also has a duty to safeguard the climate for present and future generations, but when the government fails to do so, plaintiffs must be able to rely on the judicial branch to remedy the grave injustice being perpetrated by their own government.”

Cox added that “What the U.S. courts do in this case will have implications for the rest of the world, and for the degree of climate change we will all face in the years to come.”

Dr. James Hansen, director of the Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions program at Columbia University, stated: “We have a global climate emergency. Earth is out of energy balance, there is more energy coming in than going out. That energy drives warming of the ocean, ice sheet disintegration and sea level rise, stronger storms, more intense heat waves, droughts, fires and floods. Our Constitution guarantees young people equal protection of the law and the rights to life, liberty — including the pursuit of happiness — and property. These rights may not be denied by government action without due process of law.”

Dr. James Hansen, guardian for Future Generations, with his granddaughter and youth plaintiff, Sophie Kivlehan. (image: Our Children’s Trust)

According to Dr. Hansen, “Sensible means exist to rapidly phase down CO2 emissions, to wit, a rising carbon fee collected from fossil fuel companies with funds distributed to the public. Instead, our president proposes ineffectual actions, demonstrably short of what is needed, and persists in approving fossil fuel projects that will slam shut the narrowing window of opportunity to ensure a hospitable climate system. I aim to testify on behalf of young people. Their future hangs in the balance.”

“The purpose of this case is to obtain an order from a federal court requiring the United States government, including the president and specific federal agencies, to develop a national plan to protect our atmosphere and stable climate system,” said Julia Olson, executive director and chief legal counsel for Our Children’s Trust, and lead counsel on the litigation.

“These youth, as well as future generations, have constitutional due process and equal protection rights to be free from governmental harm to those resources … This lawsuit asks whether our government has a constitutional responsibility to leave a viable climate system for future generations. The federal government has consciously chosen to endanger young people’s right to a stable climate system for the short-term economic interests of a few. In light of the established science, federal approval of the Jordan Cove LNG Project cannot stand. This administration must no longer consign future generations to an uninhabitable planet.”

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2015-10-14 Three Youtubes, Ecological Economics

Climate, Economy / Political Economy, Freedom of Speech. (Remove some wrong postings from category), Sustainability, Take back the University No Responses »

Oct 142015

These 3 youtubes cover the ground on ecological economics very well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d05jEprJxtE “CRASH COURSE” in Ecological Economics (Jon Erickson)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhHH5meSLZI Nate Hagens // From Wall St. to Ecological Economics // Part 1 ]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxfGcwfYlAg Interview, William Rees – The Dangerous Disconnect Between Economics and Ecology. Institute for New Economic Thinking

2015-10-13 CIA torture survivors sue psychologists who designed infamous program, The Guardian

Culture and Ethics, Freedom of Speech. (Remove some wrong postings from category), George Bush war criminal, Rule of Law 2 Responses »

Oct 132015

There is a Must Watch video at the URL:

Survivors of CIA torture are suing the contractor psychologists who designed one of the most infamous programs of the post-9/11 era. Salim, one of the three ex-detainees in the suit, is a Tanzanian fisherman who says flashbacks from his ordeal in CIA custody are a permanent part of his life.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/13/cia-torture-survivors-sue-psychologists-aclu

TEXT of the article, for back-up purposes:

Psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen targeted by lawsuit
ACLU sues on behalf of suspects subjected to mock drowning and more

Survivors of CIA torture have sued the contractor psychologists who designed one of the most infamous programs of the post-9/11 era.

In an extraordinary step, psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen now face a federal lawsuit for their role in convincing the CIA to subject terror suspects to mock drowning, painful bodily contortions, sleep and dietary deprivation and other methods long rejected by much of the world as torture.

In practice, CIA torture meant disappearances, mock executions, anal penetration performed under cover of “rehydration” and at least one man who froze to death, according to a landmark Senate report last year. Versions of the techniques migrated from the CIA’s undocumented prisons, known as black sites, to US military usage at Guantánamo Bay, Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib in Iraq.

On behalf of torture survivors Suleiman Abdullah Salim and Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, as well as a representative of the estate of Gul Rahman – who froze to death in a CIA black site in Afghanistan – the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed the suit against Mitchell and Jessen on Tuesday in a federal court in Washington state, where the two currently reside. They seek compensatory damages of at least $75,000.

The suit calls the torture program a “joint criminal enterprise” and a “war crime” in which the CIA, Mitchell and Jessen colluded and from which Mitchell and Jessen financially profited.

Although numerous US government investigations have pierced the veneer of secrecy around the torture program, the program’s government architects have faced no legal reprisal. A Justice Department inquiry ended in 2012 without prosecutions. The new lawsuit, aimed not at government officials but the contractors Mitchell and Jessen, aims to break the trend.

“This case is about ensuring that the people behind the torture program are held accountable so history doesn’t repeat itself,” Steven Watt, one of the ACLU attorneys representing the three ex-detainees, told the Guardian.

“Impunity for torture sends the dangerous message to US and foreign officials that there will be no consequences for future abuses.

“This lawsuit is different from past ones because public government documents now provide exhaustive details on the CIA torture program, and they identify the people who were tortured and how it happened. The government has long abused the ‘state secrets’ privilege to prevent accountability for torture but at this stage, any claim that the torture of our clients is a state secret would be absurd.”

One of the litigants reacted to his torture by attempting to kill himself. Another was kept naked for “more than a month”, the suit alleges, and was subjected to “a form of waterboarding”.

Salim, a Tanzanian fisherman, said in a video published by the Guardian that flashbacks from his ordeal in CIA custody are a permanent part of his life. After five years in CIA and then US military custody, Salim’s captors released him unceremoniously from Bagram in August 2008, presenting him with a memo stating that the US determined him not to pose a threat to the US.

“You can’t sleep, you can’t eat, you can’t smell,” said Salim, who says his CIA captors chained his arms and legs to a metal hoop in his cell that forced him into a squatting position so uncomfortable it prevented him from sleeping. Like other detainees, Salim was doused in ice-cold water and then wrapped in a freezing plastic sheet. According to the lawsuit, Salim hid painkillers he was given in order to hoard a dose strong enough for an ultimately unsuccessful suicide attempt.

“Flashbacks come anytime, so much they make you crazy,” Salim said in the video.

Ben Soud, who now lives in his native Libya, was taken to a CIA black site in Afghanistan, and for extended periods permitted “sleep only for minutes at a time because of painful stress positions, constant blaring music, and guards banging loudly on the door of his cell every hour or so”, the suit claims. Guards paraded him naked around the black site for “15 minutes every half hour through the night and into the morning”, according to the Senate report.

Although the CIA only acknowledges waterboarding three detainees – Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abdul al-Rahim al-Nashiri – the lawsuit claims the agency subjected Ben Soud to a “form of waterboarding”.

“He was strapped to a wooden board that could spin around 360 degrees,” the suit claims.

“His interrogators spun him around on this board with a hood over his head covering his nose and mouth. While strapped to the board with his head lower than his feet, his interrogators poured buckets of cold water him. While they did not pour water directly over his mouth and nose, they threatened to do so if he didn’t cooperate.”

Ben Soud was also treated with the same frigid-water dousing and plastic-sheet coating that Salim received, only Ben Soud reported the freezing water being treated with a gel-like substance, causing it to stick to his body.

Famously, Jessen and Mitchell, former instructors in the military’s Survival Evasion Resistance Escape (SERE) program to counter torture, revised torture techniques from the SERE training and proposed to use them on CIA detainees.

They faced their first test case in the spring of 2002, after the CIA captured Abu Zubaydah, then thought to be a senior member of al-Qaida, and took him to Thailand. Although Zubaydah spoke openly with his FBI interrogators who sought to establish a rapport with him, Mitchell cabled the CIA’s Counterrorism Center “nearly every day” for permission to torture him.

CIA personnel, with Mitchell overseeing, waterboarded Zubaydah 83 times in the span of a month. Eventually, according to the Senate intelligence committee’s report – which gives Mitchell and Jessen the pseudonyms Grayson Swigert and Hammond Dunbar – Zubaydah would submit to torture after hearing his captors snap their fingers twice. They forced him into “confinement boxes”, one the size of a coffin and the other just two and a half feet square and 21 inches deep.

Now missing an eye, Zubaydah is still detained at Guantánamo Bay, although the CIA no longer believes he is a member of al-Qaida. The Senate intelligence committee concluded the torture techniques did not produce any useful intelligence; the CIA’s official position as of 2014 is that the question is unanswerable. But the 2002 test case convinced the CIA, supported by the Bush White House, of the value of torture.

The torture of Abu Zubaydah, who is not a party to the lawsuit, began weeks before the US Justice Department provided its August 2002 legal blessing, since withdrawn, to the CIA torture program. An adviser to Condoleezza Rice would later inform the Bush-era secretary of state that use of the techniques Mitchell and Jessen implemented amounted to a “felony war crime”.

A Spokane-based company the two founded, Mitchell and Jessen Associates, would secure $75m from the CIA in contracts, in addition to a further $6.1m from the agency for legal expenses in the event of criminal or civil action stemming from the contract. Although Barack Obama banned CIA torture by executive order on the second day of his presidency, the CIA continued to cover the company’s legal bills until 2012. Mitchell and Jessen themselves each received more than $1m from their contracts.

The suit does not claim that Mitchell and Jessen were present during the torture of Salim, Ben Soud and Rahman. But it derives their culpability through the application of the torture techniques – prolonged sleep deprivation, nudity, “stress positions”, cramped confinement – that the two psychologists provided to the CIA, which implemented the techniques.

“Defendants are directly liable,” the suit charges, “because they designed, developed, and implemented a program for the CIA intended to inflict physical and mental pain and suffering on Plaintiffs, and because Plaintiffs were tortured and subjected to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment as a consequence of their inclusion in that program.”

2006-04-27 Water. Wrap-up statement, Proposed Meridian Dam. Battle won.

Empowerment, Water No Responses »

Oct 122015

Banksters: Index

The Meridian Dam proposal has been halted in its tracks. The issue has been:

who has power and control, citizens or Government?

Note:

the battle to stop the proposed Meridian Dam (South Saskatchewan River) took approximately 8 months.
A year later we joined the battle to stop the proposed Highgate Dam (North Sask R$iver). http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=13469 The experience of the Meridian informed and powered the Highgate effort. The win came with comparative ease; people in the area of the River provided the main energy.
http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=15473 “Drought-proofing the Economy” is the information sent to Federal and Provincial Auditors. “Moving the economy into institutions”, conflicts-of-interest, incompetent public presentations by “doctors”, you name it!

———————-

A philosophical word first:

1) Step back and look at us, as eyes from the future will see us.

Running through our land we have this River which delivers water to the residents of Calgary, Medicine Hat, and Saskatoon. We have diversion schemes to take the water to many, many communities, some such as Regina and Humboldt a long way from the River. We drink the River’s water from our taps, we use it to wash our clothes, water our gardens and lawns, to water our livestock and to grow our crops. It is used to generate the electrical power for our stoves, refrigerators, and air conditioning. The gifts of the River are more than I can tell you here.

But which one of us has today given thanks for that River? What one of us has ever kneeled down on the banks of the South Saskatchewan River in humbleness and gratitude? Have you ever taken the time to REFLECT, to ACKNOWLEDGE what the River is to us? Imagine your life without the gift of water.

There are many societies that have understood their dependence. The things upon which the society is dependent are sacred. It is not superstition, it is Good Common Sense. You cherish the things upon which your life is dependent. Your grandchildren will be as dependent as you. You protect the gift so they, too, may enjoy the abundance you enjoy.

Outsiders do and will look at our Society in amazement: how is it that these people did not understand their relationship to the River? Can you imagine that they never expressed gratitude? Maybe that was why they could abuse their water supplies.

We display ignorance.

—————————

2) The Meridian Dam is one of the first such projects in Canada where environmental factors entered the process at the beginning. That is significant. Until the Meridian it has been acceptable that environmental factors be considered at a “later stage”.

The Meridian lays to rest (hopefully) another tradition: decision-making based on local impact. The Meridian decision was based on information about impacts on the WHOLE riverbasin, upstream and downstream. That is a significant and welcome departure.

The Meridian Dam is probably the first in Alberta and maybe in Canada to have reasonable cost estimates at the pre-feasibility stage (not grossly under-stated costs).

How did the changes come about? The answer is that citizens assumed responsibility for the outcome of the process, from the very beginning, from when inadequate Terms of Reference were on the books. People did not request permission to monitor and direct the process. They just DID it. The events are in #4 below.

——————

3) The Meridian Dam was about the power and control of INFORMATION and PROCESS. If you have control of information and process you have the ability to dictate outcome. Those opposed to the Dam won the battle by:

– having better information than those who wanted to build the Dam

– by creating a large body of well-informed people

– by assuming responsibility for the direction of process.

As much as anything, the battle was to change a “system”, to cause it to deliver good decisions based on an investigation of the WHOLE picture, not just convenient fragments.

If the ammunition was information,

the weapon for firing the ammunition was email.

Believing in the power of information, it was sent to those inside as well as outside Government. We were not secretive but gave up control of the information, thus offering the best chance for the truth to prevail. In the beginning we were sometimes worried about whether “they” might obtain the intelligence we gathered. But that attitude is bred of an adversarial attitude, reflected even in the words I use like “battle”, “ammunition”. Democracy should be a co-operative process.

The battle is my own and your own. The only reason it’s necessary is because, over time, I have handed over responsibility for my community to someone else, to Governments that have centralized power and control. I have ALLOWED them to take control. Democracy was never intended to be that way. Indeed life was never intended to be that way. I can never hand off responsibility for my life and the things that affect it, and my children, to someone else. I can’t PAY other people to fulfill my responsibilities for me. The Meridian has been a battle to take back control, and we have done it, as detailed below.

—————————–

4) WHAT HAPPENED

– The Alberta Dept of Environment and Saskatchewan Government decided to conduct a “preliminary feasibility study” for a proposed Meridian Dam. May 2001.

You can have great influence over the outcome of a study through the questions you require the study to answer. The original Terms of Reference intended by the Government were simple, antiquated and of the kind that predisposes the study to a decision to proceed to the next stage. A knowledgeable member of the public was alert and wrote up reasonable Terms of Reference. These Terms were extensively circulated. The inadequacy of the original Terms were so obvious when contrasted with the proposed Terms that the original were quietly abandoned. The first victory was getting reasonable Terms of Reference in place.

– Alberta Environment originally decided there was no need for any public consultation. The networking public decided there WAS a need for public consultation. They lobbied and the Governments agreed there should be consultation.

– The published Tender for the Meridian Dam Prefeasibility Study specified that the Consultants would consult with the people in the locale that would be the assumed beneficiaries of the Dam. The networking public said, “No, the project will impact on the entire length of the Riverbasin, and on the people in the provinces who will be required to pay for the project. They will be heard, too.” Intensive lobbying brought agreement that there would be public meetings in Calgary, Saskatoon and Lethbridge, in addition to local meetings.

– The Tender specified that the Consultants would obtain input from specified Government Departments. Again, the networking public said, “No, there is a lot of information outside Government Departments, and many knowledgeable people outside Government. ALL relevant information will be brought to bear.” The network assembled information and asked people to submit information. The public assumed they had a responsibility to do this. It was not necessary to obtain permission from anyone to do so.

– In specifying who WOULD be consulted (again, see the Tender), the Governments omitted CFB Suffield that lives right in the area that would be flooded. They also omitted the oil and gas industry that has millions of dollars invested in the area. The networking public decided these people would have valuable input, and that they SHOULD be consulted, right from the beginning. The network simply assumed responsibility for seeing that so far as it was able, all the parties that SHOULD know about the proposal, were aware of what was going on. People were contacted and information forwarded.

– The Governments said that the information could be sent to them, for them to convey to the Consultants. The networking public said, “No, we are capable and equal adults. We do not require someone else to communicate our work for us. We will make our submissions directly to the Consultants, the same as you are doing.” We did not ask permission. We just DID it. We ensured that people knew to whom to send the information.

– some Government people said, “Environmental considerations enter the process at a later stage”. We pushed, we asked, “By what logic? Why shouldn’t it be economic considerations that enter the process at a later stage?” There were people in Government that agreed with us. The Consultants received environmental information, excellent environmental information.

– We published historical information on the figures used to justify dam construction in the past: feasibility studies have always under-stated costs many times over. Several years after the dam is built, the benefits used as justification have not materialized. We let it be known that a repeat performance would not be acceptable.

– Local people knew there was a highway that would have to be re-routed, a bridge that carried twin pipelines, etc. Other people knew about a study related to irrigation, a publication, etc. We tracked down the far-removed people responsible for highways and bridges to confirm, “Are you planning to submit cost estimates to the Consultants?”. Too many times in the past there have been costly oversights. We let the Consultants know that they should expect to receive such-and-such information from such-and-such a person.

– The Governments held public meetings, very poorly publicized with little advance notice. The networking public assumed responsibility for getting the word to as many people as possible.

– The network gathered local, regional, national and international information related to the issue of rivers and dams. People learned about what was happening in neighbouring American states where over-diversion of water has led to a situation where various users are in sharp competition with each other, creating tensions in the society. The network knows about the pumping out of underground aquifers. By assembling and sharing information, a little bit from this person, a little bit from that person, a large body of aware and knowledgeable people was created. Information is empowering.

– It seems reasonable to conclude that the network reclaimed the responsibility of citizens in a democracy to determine the path that will be trod. They took back power and control by acquiring power and control over information and the decision-making process.

– What was accomplished was made possible by the ability of email to communicate large amounts of information quickly and inexpensively to large numbers of people. An informed public is a great incentive to arrive at the right conclusions.

LESSON: institutions are losing authority. Think of churches. It happens when there are abuses of power and failure to carry out assigned responsibilities. Through the Meridian exercise the Government has lost authority – some of the authority delegated to the Department of Environment has been taken back by citizens.

I invite all of you to join me in cyber-space tonight for a very large celebration. We will dance and sing and be joyful. We will be thankful for the River, for good decisions, and I think the River smiles on each of you.

——–

Cheers!

Sandra Finley

2015-03-10 Wikimedia vs. NSA: Major Lawsuit Challenges Government Surveillance of US Citizens, Common Dreams

Freedom of Speech. (Remove some wrong postings from category) No Responses »

Oct 092015

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/03/10/wikimedia-vs-nsa-major-lawsuit-challenges-government-surveillance-us-citizens

‘By tapping the backbone of the Internet, the NSA is straining the backbone of democracy.’

by Jon Queally, staff writer

The ACLU has filed a lawsuit, on behalf of Wikipedia and other organizations, challenging the constitutionality of the NSA’s mass interception and searching of Americans’ international communications. (Image: Available logos/with overlay)

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia and one of the most highly-trafficked websites in the world, announced Tuesday that it—alongside a host of civil liberty advocates, news outlets, and privacy rights organizations—has filed a lawsuit against the National Security Agency for violating the constitutional rights of its users by performing bulk surveillance and searching, without specific cause or warrant, the international Internet communications of all Americans including emails, web-browsing content, and search-engine queries.

The lawsuit, named as Wikimedia v. NSA, was filed by the ACLU on Tuesday. In addition to the Wikimedia Foundation (of which Wikipedia is a part), the other plaintiffs include: the conservative Rutherford Institute, The Nation magazine, Amnesty International USA, PEN American Center, Human Rights Watch, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Global Fund for Women, and Washington Office on Latin America.

Filed in federal court in Maryland where the NSA is headquartered, the lawsuit (pdf) argues that the NSA is violating the plaintiffs’ privacy rights under the Fourth Amendment and infringing on their First Amendment rights. The complaint also argues that what is called “upstream surveillance”—mass surveillance on all communications that pass through certain “backbone” structures of the network—exceeds the authority granted by Congress under the FISA Amendments Act.

The complaint reads, in part:

This lawsuit challenges the suspicionless seizure and searching of internet traffic by the National Security Agency (“NSA”) on U.S. soil. The NSA conducts this surveillance, called “Upstream” surveillance, by tapping directly into the internet backbone inside the United States — the network of high-capacity cables, switches, and routers that today carry vast numbers of Americans’ communications with each other and with the rest of the world. In the course of this surveillance, the NSA is seizing Americans’ communications en masse while they are in transit , and it is searching the contents of substantially all international text-based communications — and many domestic communications as well — for tens of thousands of search terms.

“By tapping the backbone of the Internet, the NSA is straining the backbone of democracy,” said Lila Tretikov, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation. “Wikipedia is founded on the freedoms of expression, inquiry, and information. By violating our users’ privacy, the NSA is threatening the intellectual freedom that is a central to people’s ability to create and understand knowledge.”

Largely exposed to the general public through internal NSA documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden and a steady stream of investigative reporting based on his disclosures, the groups object to how the NSA copies and combs through vast amounts of Internet traffic, which it intercepts inside the United States with the help of major telecommunications companies. According to the ACLU, the surveillance involves the NSA’s warrantless review of the emails and Internet activities of millions of ordinary Americans.

“This kind of dragnet surveillance constitutes a massive invasion of privacy, and it undermines the freedoms of expression and inquiry as well,” said ACLU staff attorney Patrick Toomey. “Ordinary Americans shouldn’t have to worry that the government is looking over their shoulders when they use the Internet.”

In an op-ed in the New York Times published Tuesday to coincide with the announcement of the lawsuit, Tretikov and Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, explain the reasoning behind the legal challenge. “Our lawsuit,” they write, “says that the N.S.A.’s mass surveillance of Internet traffic on American soil—often called ‘upstream’ surveillance—violates the Fourth Amendment, which protects the right to privacy, as well as the First Amendment, which protects the freedoms of expression and association. We also argue that this agency activity exceeds the authority granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that Congress amended in 2008.”

Because Wikipedia and other online services provided by the larger Foundation are viewable to the public “anonymously”—that is, without the need to create a user account or log in—and because many of the volunteers who maintain entries on the site do so with a distinct desire not to be monitored, Wales and Tretikov argue those people should “be able to do their work without having to worry that the United States government is monitoring” the content they’re accessing or their related online behavior.

“Unfortunately,” write Wales and Tretikov, the anonymity of Wikipedia users “is far from certain because, using upstream surveillance, the N.S.A. intercepts and searches virtually all of the international text-based traffic that flows across the Internet ‘backbone’ inside the United States.”

According to the ACLU:

The lawsuit is in some ways a successor to a previous ACLU lawsuit challenging the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program, Clapper v. Amnesty. The Supreme Court dismissed that case in February 2013 in a 5-4 vote on the grounds that the plaintiffs could not prove that they had been spied on. Edward Snowden has said that the ruling contributed to his decision to expose certain aspects of the NSA’s surveillance activities a few months later.

Among the Snowden disclosures were documents relating to upstream surveillance, which has since been confirmed by the government. Unlike the surveillance considered by the Supreme Court in Clapper, upstream surveillance is not limited to the communications of NSA targets. Instead, as we have since learned, the NSA is searching the content of nearly all text-based Internet traffic entering or leaving the country – as well as many domestic communications – looking for thousands of keywords such as email addresses or phone numbers.

One of the NSA documents revealed by Snowden included a slide that named Wikipedia, among other major websites, as a good surveillance target for monitoring what people do on the Internet.

As Toomey wrote in a blog post about the lawsuit on Tuesday, “Upstream surveillance flips the Constitution on its head. It allows the government to search everything first and ask questions later, making us all less free in the process. Our suit aims to stop this kind of surveillance.”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

2012-03-27 Cyber attack on NDP leadership vote involved more than 10,000 computers

Electronic voting No Responses »

Oct 092015

With thanks to Allison, through my facebook feed, in response to 2015-10-08 Calls for Electronic Voting. Election fraud. Canadians beware. Response to CBC.

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/ndp-leadership-vote-cyber-attack-involved-more-than-10000-computers

National Post Staff

GEOFF ROBINS/AFP/Getty ImagesCyber attack: A delegate votes on her iPad during the third ballot at the New Democratic Party (NDP) leadership convention in Toronto Saturday. Voting was extended after computer hackers targetted the vote.

NDP leadership vote cyber attack involved more than 10,000 computers

OTTAWA — A massive cyber attack involving more than 10,000 computers was behind the online voting chaos during Saturday’s NDP leadership vote, it was revealed today.

According to Scytl Canada, the company contracted by the party to conduct the vote, a deliberate large scale “distributed denial of service” (DDoS) attempted to deny NDP members access to the online balloting system.

WHAT IS A DDoS ATTACK?

A distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack attempts to crash or greatly slow down websites by inundating Internet servers with bogus external communications requests that deny legitimate users access.

Governments, banks, credit card companies and high-profile political or organisational websites are common targets of DDoS attacks, often launched as protests by the organization’s political or economic opponents.

“We deeply regret the inconvenience to NDP voters caused by this malicious, massive, orchestrated attempt to thwart democracy,” Susan Crutchlow, General Manager of Scytl said.

A forensic investigation is ongoing to locate the source of the attack, but the company said it has identified more than 10,000 “malevolent” IP addresses behind the “hundreds of thousands of false voting requests to the system.”

“The required organization and the demonstrated orchestration of the attack indicates that this was a deliberate effort to disrupt or negate the election by a knowledgeable person or group,” the company added.

The NDP first blamed the severe delays in the online voting on Saturday on a high volume of ballots, but later admitted it had become victim of a well orchestrated cyber attack.

While the attack temporarily slowed down the voting process, Scytl claimed its security system wasn’t penetrated. An onsite independent audit by Price Waterhouse Coopers confirmed that no ballots cast by credentialed NDP members were added, subtracted or changed.

The deadline to vote between first and second ballots was extended twice after the online system experienced slowdowns and crashes. The problems were repeated between the second and third ballots.

The end result of the technical glitches: a process that was supposed to see the second-ballot vote finished shortly after 12 ET instead saw the third-ballot voting not closed until almost 6 ET.

REUTERS/Mike CasseseA delegate rests between ballots during the NDP Leadership Convention in Toronto Saturday.

Party spokesman Brad Lavigne said on Saturday that the system had been hampered by an apparent cyber attack, but he said the votes had not been compromised and that the attack had only served to delay the process. NDP staff said all candidates had been aware of the voting problems and all had pledged to accept the result.

Voting for the fourth ballot was later extended by yet another hour, after complaints that members could not access the online system. Final results were not announced until after 9 ET. Party staff said the website that bit hit by a second denial-of-service attack, but it did not yet know who was behind them.

Crutchlow added that the voting system managed to repel the attack and the NDP responded appropriately: “When we diagnosed the problem and explained what we needed to do to respond, they were calm and cooperative and extended the voting time to ensure the integrity of the process, even in the face of media criticism and groundless speculation.”

65,108 members voted in the first ballot, an unexpectedly low number that meant fewer than 10,000 votes were cast once the convention opened on Friday. The total number of votes dropped further from the first to second ballot.

Thomas Mulcair eventually took 57% of the vote on the fourth and final ballot. Long-time organizer Brian Topp, a senior advisor to Mr. Layton, had 42% support.

With files from the National Post and Postmedia News

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