Sandra Finley

2014-04-04 Listing continued – April 4

 X1A Listing of emails sent by A.S. 2012-04-01 to 2012-12-30)  No Responses »
Apr 052012
 

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———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Ashu M. G. Solo <amgsolo@mavericktechnologies.us>
Date: Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 9:13 PM
Subject: Correction
To: Larry Waldinger, Vicki Strelioff , Patricia Farnese, Kaitlyn Harvey, Mark Bigland-Pritchard / Low Energy Design Ltd, Daeran Gall, Marlene  Wells, Victor Lau, John Murney

Sorry about another email.  I need to make one correction to my previous email:  Vic and John also told Finley to stop sending lies without proof.  Finley doesn’t care about being sued or she would have shut her mouth after I served her with a demand letter like any sensible person would, but she shamelessly kept on going and is now passing on information to Zimmerman to attack me.  Let them learn a lesson.  Shouldn’t Finley pay for causing me tension headaches?  Don’t forget to see the attachment in my previous email.

 

From: Ashu M. G. Solo [mailto:amgsolo@mavericktechnologies.us]
Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 7:38 PM
To: Larry Waldinger; Vicki Strelioff; Patricia Farnese; Kaitlyn Harvey; ‘Mark Bigland-Pritchard / Low Energy Design Ltd’;DaeranGall@gmail.com; marlene.wells@greenparty.ca; votelau@gmail.com; John Murney
Subject: YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS: DAMAGES TO LARRY, ME, AND OTHERS FROM SANDRA FINLEY’S CRIMES, LIES, AND ATTACKS
Importance: High

 

I’m being attacked again by Zimmerman, but with information that she got from Sandra Finley.  Zimmerman now knows who my dad is from Finley’s blog and knows about my concern for my family from Finley.  Zimmerman could have only gotten this information from Finley.  Finley has been giving Zimmerman EDA email conversations.  Finley is purposely endangering my family.  Zimmerman calls Finley her dear friend.  This is who you have as a friend.  Don’t forward this email to Finley or she’ll forward it to Zimmerman who will use it against all of us.

 

Larry has authorized me to tell you the following and you need to know this because you need to know what kind of slimebag you have as a friend.  Larry sent you two emails regarding an attack against him and his marriage by Sandra Finley.  The second email was misinterpreted by everyone including me.  Sandra Finley did indeed contact Larry’s wife to badmouth him with her after he had defended me.  Sandra Finley talked to Larry’s really devout Christian wife about Larry’s behind-the-scenes involvement in one of my many civil rights cases (you and the public don’t even know about a bunch of them).  Larry’s wife doesn’t agree with one of my civil rights cases and didn’t know about Larry’s behind-the-scenes involvement in one of them.  Many Christians consider my secularism cases to be an attack on their religion when I’m really just fighting for government religious neutrality and to eliminate the position of superiority that certain religions enjoy in government policy.  Larry’s wife knew that Larry supported my civil rights cases, but didn’t know that he was involved in one of them.  We trusted Sandra Finley with this information when we were friends and then she used this information against Larry.  Finley knew that this information would harm Larry and his marriage.  When Larry said in his second email that his wife already had her own opinions, he was stating the truth that she had her own opinions about my civil rights cases, but she didn’t know about Larry’s involvement in one of them.  People including me misinterpreted Larry’s second email to mean that Finley hadn’t talked to Larry’s wife at all.  This is incorrect.  Larry’s wife was really upset with Larry after she talked to Finley.  Larry said that his marriage and relationship with his wife haven’t been the same since then.  Attacking people is all fun and games for Finley, but Finley has harmed Larry’s relationship with his wife.

 

I think Larry didn’t clear up the truth about what Finley did because he felt sorry for her.  Finley was his campaign manager when he ran for the Legislative Assembly.  Finley is renting her house to Larry.  If Finley can turn on Larry and if she can turn on me, don’t you think she can turn on any of you?  How would you like if Finley badmouthed you to your wife, Mark?  How would you like if Finley badmouthed you to your husband, Vicki?  How would you like if Finley badmouthed you to your husband, Kaitlyn?  Well, Finley did that to Larry and she can do it to any of you.  You might not care if Finley attacks me, but how can you be friends with someone who would attack such a nice and congenial person like Larry with his wife?  This caused Larry to be depressed and drop out of the EDA as financial agent for a while.  I hope that you haven’t rescheduled the EDA meetings to a day when Larry works to keep him, the financial agent, from attending.  I hope that Finley wasn’t behind this idea.

 

Finley and Zimmerman caused me to develop a medical issue of tension headaches.  I got my first tension headache when Finley was attacking me.  Tension headaches are caused by stress.  My only stress was them attacking me and spreading lies about me and endangering my family.  I never had a tension headache prior to that.  My naturopathic doctor and myofascial release therapist told me that they think the attacks by Finley and Zimmerman caused me to get the tension headaches.  These tension headaches have caused me major pain on many occasions now and I need to take medication and get remedial massage therapy to stop them.  Is Finley gonna pay for this?  Yes, she will when I sue her.  Attacking people is all fun and games for Finley, but it has caused me medical issues on top of the damage to Larry’s relationship.

 

I hold all of you partly responsible for Zimmerman’s latest attack on me and the attack on Larry.  If you had told Finley to go to hell after what I told you about her before, if you had unfriended her on Facebook, if you had told her to get you off her email network, if you had cut ties with her, etc., she would have quickly realized that her behavior is extremely shameful, but none of you had the guts to do that.  None of you had the guts to do what had to be done.  And so she kept on attacking.

 

Finley’s bootlicking minion, Lois Mitchell, had the audacity to suggest that I badmouthed Larry to his wife, which is another reason why I want to clear this up.  Mitchell should be ashamed of herself for trying to put the blame on me for something I would never do.  Mitchell should also be ashamed of herself for the other disgraceful statements that she made about me.

 

I’M ATTACHING 8 ETHICS COMPLAINTS AGAINST FINLEY, which have been submitted to the Green Party of Canada.

 

Some people other than Finley may not like that I’m sending this email criticizing their buddy Finley.  Should you not know if one of us is badmouthing another of us to a person’s wife?  Should you not know if one of us is causing another of us to have medical issues?  Should you not know if one of us is attacking one of us, spreading lies about one of us, and endangering the family of one of us?  Patricia told me before to go to the ethics committee.  Well, the completely worthless GPC ethics committee hasn’t even started looking at my complaints against Finley filed over 2.5 months ago.  The Green Party of Saskatchewan can’t take action against her until she attempts to rejoin and I’m sure she won’t be allowed to rejoin because she is nothing but an unethical troublemaker.

 

Sandra Finley is a bad egg who has no qualms at all about fabricating lies about people, spreading lies about people, exaggerating statements about people and thereby changing their substance, and twisting things around so their meaning is totally different.

 

For example, Vic graciously said that he couldn’t be the GPS leader without the support of his wife.  Finley took that statement and twisted around to say that Vic would get divorced if he became leader and she told everyone that they can’t vote for Vic or he’ll get divorced.  This is an extremely disgraceful act by Finley.  Is someone who would do this someone who you want to be friends with or be a puppet for?  If I were married and Finley started spreading lies that I would get divorced if I got a Green Party position, I would be enraged.  Finley has no shame at all.  Finley is the one who is divorced once or twice.  I believe that Finley fooled her husband(s) at first, but they saw through her after being married to her.  Before I didn’t tell you who was the subject of this attack by Finley and just told you that Finley did this to a GPS nominee, but now I think it’s best that I tell you the whole story.

 

Sandra Finley has been greatly exaggerating an act of civil disobedience proposed by a Green Party member.  Finley has exaggerated this so much that she has changed the substance of what this person said.

 

Sandra Finley has been spreading lies about a private conversation between Elizabeth May and Victor Lau.  I’m not gonna tell you Finley’s lie because I will never spread lies about people, but I’ll tell you it’s a lie.  Finley has no knowledge of what was said between Elizabeth May and Victor Lau.  How could she?  Elizabeth May doesn’t tell Finley about her private conversations.

 

Finley had the audacity to accuse me of negative politics.  Ha ha ha ha ha.  This is like George W. Bush/Karl Rove accusing Alan Grayson of negative politics.  Unlike Finley, I don’t fabricate or spread lies about people.  I’ve filed civil rights cases against Don Atchison and Randy Donauer, I’ve been covered hundreds of times by the media for these cases, and I never told a lie about them.  Why would I lie?  I forcefully tell the truth.  Finley is the master of unethical negative politics and lies.

 

Nobody has ever stood up to Finley and that’s why she keeps attacking people and spreading lies about people.  Well, I’m standing up to her.  I’m gonna get her criminally charged for communicating false messages about me to others and sue her for libel and slander and get my ethics complaints against her processed.  And I’m gonna take NUMEROUS more lawful and ethical actions against her if she continues to attack me or anyone else.  I have many good friends in the media who strongly support my cases and can report what she has been doing.

 

The Saskatoon Police Service has accepted a criminal complaint against Zimmerman for communicating false messages, criminal harassment, and defamatory libel.  A summary of my criminal complaint against Zimmerman can be found at http://tonia-zimmerman-criminal.blogspot.ca and a summary of my civil claim against Zimmerman can be found at http://tonia-zimmerman-civil.blogspot.ca   Sgt. Gulka of the Saskatoon Police Service is investigating this case.  Also, I am getting him to investigate Finley for communicating false messages, criminal harassment, and defamatory libel.

 

Section 372(1) of the Criminal Code of Canada says, “Every one who, with intent to injure or alarm any person, conveys or causes or procures to be conveyed by letter, telegram, telephone, cable, radio or otherwise information that he knows is false is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.”  This is different than the defamatory libel section of the Criminal Code.  I think Zimmerman and Finley need some time in jail to learn some morals and stop attacking people.

 

If you didn’t want me to sue Finley, then you should have asked her to stop spreading lies about me and attacking me and others.  I believe that only Patricia and Larry asked her to stop sending lies about me.  Instead of opposing me suing Finley, you should have opposed her actions and taken action to stop her from spreading lies about me, so I wouldn’t need to sue her.  All of you should have done this.  If Finley had been truly duped by Zimmerman and had sent one complaint about me and then shut up, I wouldn’t sue her.  But Finley kept sending lies after I explained in extensive detail to her and all of you how Zimmerman was sending people lies about me.  Finley kept sending lies about me even after Larry and I pointed out to her that Zimmerman had a bunch of extremely obvious lies about me on her Facebook page, such as calling me bald.  You all know me.  Am I bald?  Finley has destroyed my reputation in the Green Party with lies and she has harmed my health.  What other recourse do I have to get compensation for this but to sue her?  How will Finley ever learn her lesson and stop lying about people and attacking people if I don’t sue her?  I’m doing this for every Green who has ever been slandered by Finley.

 

Some of you have known Finley for a long time and know what she has been doing and have turned a blind eye to it.  The approach of too many Greens toward Finley has been to see no evil, speak no evil, and hear no evil.  Well, that tradition has ended with me.  Tradition is the enemy of progress and growth.

 

Finley’s trick to gaining blind loyalty among Greens is to push people into different Green Party positions.  They then feel like they owe her and are loyal to her.  It’s like Finley has a bag full of presents to give out to people, but the presents are Green Party positions that she doesn’t own or lose anything by pushing people into.

 

Greens can’t see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil in regard to Sandra Finley.  That’s why she gets away with what she does.  That needs to change.  That needs to stop.  It needs to stop right now.  People let Finley walk all over them.  She has driven many people out of the party.  She drives anyone who isn’t loyal to her out of the party.

 

Sandra Finley isn’t interested in getting anyone elected.  She sees the Green Party as her cult.  She sees it as her social club where everyone worships her and is loyal to her.  When someone isn’t loyal to her and doesn’t worship her, she drives him out of the party.

 

Similarly, I trusted Sandra Finley with who my dad is when she was a friend and then she turned around and started cyberstalking my dad and putting information on her blog about him for who knows who.

 

Who the hell is Sandra Finley to question my qualifications?  She’s an unaccomplished, poorly educated, and perpetually unemployed troublemaker.  What does she know about academic research or the military?  Unlike Finley, I don’t need to exaggerate my qualifications.  I’m entitled to criticize Finley’s accomplishments because she spread lies about my accomplishments, but I’ll never lie because I’m better than her.

 

On her Twitter page, Finley calls herself a Green Party organizer:  https://twitter.com/Xcorporatocracy.  “Organizer” is an official Green Party position that Finley has never held.

 

On her Twitter page, Finley calls herself a writer.  If writing barely coherent blog posts and emailing them to a captive audience of her friends makes her a writer, then my friend’s six-year-old daughter who does the same is also a writer.  Does Finley even have a single publication?  How can someone call herself a writer without being published?  Blog posts aren’t publications.

 

At http://saskgreen.ca/candidates-executive-positions-2012 Finley calls herself a writer again and researcher.  This is ridiculous.  What research has Finley done?  How many research papers has Finley got published?  Finley isn’t a researcher.  I don’t think Finley knows what a researcher is.  Reading news and books doesn’t make someone a researcher.  Patricia, Lynn, Mark, and I have done academic research.  If reading news makes Finley a researcher, then who among us isn’t a researcher?  Is Lois Mitchell a researcher for reading the news?  Ha ha ha.  If so, she should add that to her biography too.

 

Why would Finley list her email network as the first thing in her biography?  Is this her biggest accomplishment in her extremely unaccomplished life?  Everyone has an email network.  Do we put this in our professional biographies?  If we put this in there, then what wouldn’t we put in there?

 

Finley claimed to have a degree in business.  If this is the case, why didn’t she list this in her biography at http://saskgreen.ca/candidates-executive-positions-2012 when she lists worthless bullshit like her email “network”?  I proved my military service after Finley spread lies about it.  Why doesn’t Finley prove that she has a degree?  Where’s her degree certificate?

 

Has Finley ever even had a job?  Who is she to question my military service when she doesn’t even have any past jobs listed at http://saskgreen.ca/candidates-executive-positions-2012?

 

How the hell was Finley qualified to be a GPS leader or federal or provincial Green Party nominee?  Most political party nominees in Canada are pathetically unqualified.  My research accomplishments make me more accomplished than anyone in the Green Party (I’m the creator of multidimensional matrix math, which will have an extremely major impact on the world), so Finley can go to hell from where she came.

 

I’M ATTACHING 8 ETHICS COMPLAINTS AGAINST FINLEY, which have been submitted to the Green Party of Canada.

 

Don’t forward this email to Finley or she’ll forward it to Zimmerman who will use it against all of us.

 

Ashu M. G. Solo

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2012-04-01 How the Big Energy Companies Plan to Turn the U.S. (and Canada) into a Third World Petro-State

 Corporatocracy or Democracy or Administrative State or WHAT?, Energy  No Responses »
Apr 042012
 

http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175523/

by Michael T.Klare

The “curse” of oil wealth is a well-known phenomenon in Third World petro-states where millions of lives are wasted in poverty and the environment is ravaged, while tiny elites rake in the energy dollars and corruption rules the land. Recently, North America has been repeatedly hailed as the planet’s twenty-first-century “new Saudi Arabia” for “tough energy” — deep-sea oil, Canadian tar sands, and fracked oil and natural gas. But here’s a question no one considers: Will the oil curse become as familiar on this continent in the wake of a new American energy rush as it is in Africa and elsewhere? Will North America, that is, become not just the next boom continent for energy bonanzas, but a new energy Third World?

Once upon a time, the giant U.S. oil companies — Chevron, Exxon, Mobil, and Texaco — got their start in North America, launching an oil boom that
lasted a century and made the U.S. the planet’s dominant energy producer. But most of those companies have long since turned elsewhere for new sources of oil.

Eager to escape ever-stronger environmental restrictions and dying oil fields at home, the energy giants were naturally drawn to the economically and environmentally wide-open producing areas of the Middle East, Africa – Latin America — the Third World where oil deposits were plentiful, governments compliant, & environmental regulations few or nonexistent.

Here, then, is the energy surprise of the twenty-first century: with operating conditions growing increasingly difficult in the global South, the major firms are now flocking back to North America. To exploit previously neglected reserves on this continent, however, Big Oil will have to overcome a
host of regulatory and environmental obstacles. It will, in other words, have to use its version of deep-pocket persuasion to convert the United States into the functional equivalent of a Third World petro-state.

Knowledgeable observers are already noting the first telltale signs of the oil industry’s “Third-Worldification” of the United States. Wilderness areas from which the oil companies were once barred are being opened to energy exploitation and other restraints on invasive drilling operations are being dismantled. Expectations are that, in the wake of the 2012 election season, environmental regulations will be rolled back even further and other protected areas made available for development. In the process, as has so often been the case with Third World petro-states, the rights and wellbeing of local citizens will be trampled underfoot.

Welcome to the Third World of Energy
Up until 1950, the United States was the world’s leading oil producer, the Saudi Arabia of its day. In that year, the U.S. produced approximately 270
million metric tons of oil, or about 55% of the world’s entire output. But with a postwar recovery then in full swing, the world needed a lot more energy while America’s most accessible oil fields — though still capable of growth — were approaching their maximum sustainable production levels. Net U.S. crude oil output reached a peak of about 9.2 million barrels per day in 1970 and then went into decline (until very recently).

This prompted the giant oil firms, which had already developed significant footholds in Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela, to scour the global South in search of new reserves to exploit — a saga told with great gusto in Daniel Yergin’s epic history of the oil industry, The Prize. Particular attention was devoted to the Persian Gulf region, where in 1948 a consortium of American companies — Chevron, Exxon, Mobil, and Texaco — discovered the world’s largest oil field, Ghawar, in Saudi Arabia. By 1975, Third World countries were producing 58% of the world’s oil supply, while the U.S. share had dropped to 18%.

Environmental concerns also drove this search for new reserves in the global South. On January 28, 1969, a blowout at Platform A of a Union Oil Company offshore field in California’s Santa Barbara Channel produced a massive oil leak that covered much of the area and laid waste to local wildlife. Coming at a time of growing environmental consciousness, the spill provoked an outpouring of public outrage, helping to inspire the establishment of Earth Day, first observed one year later. Equally important, it helped spur passage of various legislative restraints on drilling activities, including the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970, the Clean Water Act of 1972, and the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974. In
addition, Congress banned new drilling in waters off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico near Florida.

During these years, Washington also expanded areas designated as wilderness or wildlife preserves, protecting them from resource extraction. In
1952, for example, President Eisenhower established the Arctic National Wildlife Range and, in 1980, this remote area of northeastern Alaska was redesignated by Congress as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Ever since the discovery of oil in the adjacent Prudhoe Bay area, energy firms have been clamoring for the right to drill in ANWR, only to be blocked by one or another president or house of Congress.

For the most part, production in Third World countries posed no such complications. The Nigerian government, for example, has long welcomed foreign investment in its onshore and offshore oil fields, while showing little concern over the despoliation of its southern coastline, where oil company operations have produced a massive environmental disaster. As Adam Nossiter of the New York Times described the resulting situation, “The Niger Delta, where the [petroleum] wealth underground is out of all proportion with the poverty on the surface, has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years by some estimates.”

As vividly laid out by Peter Maass in Crude World, a similar pattern is evident in many other Third World petro-states where anything goes as compliant government officials — often the recipients of hefty bribes or other oil-company favors — regularly look the other way. The companies, in turn, don’t trouble themselves over the human rights abuses perpetrated by their foreign government “partners” — many of them dictators, warlords, or feudal potentates.

But times change. The Third World increasingly isn’t what it used to be. Many countries in the global South are becoming more protective of their
environments, ever more inclined to take ever larger cuts of the oil wealth of their own countries, and ever more inclined to punish foreign companies that abuse their laws. In February 2011, for example, a judge in the Ecuadorean Amazon town of Lago Agrio ordered Chevron to pay $9 billion in damages for environmental harm caused to the region in the 1970s by Texaco (which the company later acquired). Although the  Ecuadorians are unlikely to collect a single dollar from Chevron, the case is indicative of the tougher regulatory climate now facing these companies in the developing world. In a case resulting from an oil spill at an offshore field, a judge in Brazil has seized the passports of 17 employees of
Chevron and U.S. drilling-rig operator Transocean, preventing them from leaving the country.

In addition, production is on the decline in some developing countries like Indonesia and Gabon, while others have nationalized their oil fields or
narrowed the space in which private international firms can operate. During Hugo Chávez’s presidency, for example, Venezuela has forced all foreign firms to award a majority stake in their operations to the state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. Similarly, the Brazilian government, under former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, instituted a rule that all drilling operations in the new “pre-salt” fields in the Atlantic Ocean — widely believed to be the biggest oil discovery of the twenty-first century — be managed by the state-controlled firm, Petróleo de Brasil.

Fracking Our Way to a Toxic Planet
Such pressures in the Third World have forced the major U.S. and European firms — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell,
and Total of France — to look elsewhere for new sources of oil and natural gas. Unfortunately for them, there aren’t many places left in the world that possess promising hydrocarbon reserves and also welcome investment by private energy giants. That’s why some of the most attractive new energy markets now lie in Canada and the United States, or in the waters off their shores. As a result, both are experiencing a remarkable uptick in fresh investment from the major international firms.

Both countries still possess substantial oil and gas deposits, but not of the “easy” variety (deposits close to the surface, close to shore, or easily
accessible for extraction). All that remains are “tough” energy reserves (deep underground, far offshore, hard to extract and process). To exploit these, the energy companies must deploy aggressive technologies likely to cause extensive damage to the environment and in many cases human health as well. They must also find ways to gain government approval to enter environmentally protected areas now off limits.

The formula for making Canada and the U.S. the “Saudi Arabia” of the twenty-first century is grim but relatively simple: environmental protections
will have to be eviscerated and those who stand in the way of intensified drilling, from landowners to local environmental protection groups, bulldozed out of the way. Put another way, North America will have to be Third-Worldified.

Consider the extraction of shale oil and gas, widely considered the most crucial aspect of Big Oil’s current push back into the North American market. Shale formations in Canada and the U.S. are believed to house massive quantities of oil and natural gas, and their accelerated extraction is already helping reduce the region’s reliance on imported petroleum.

Both energy sources, however, can only be extracted through a process known as hydraulic fracturing (“hydro-fracking,” or just plain “fracking”) that uses powerful jets of water in massive quantities to shatter underground shale formations, creating fissures through which the hydrocarbons can escape. In addition, to widen these fissures and ease the escape of the oil and gas they hold, the fracking water has to be mixed with a variety of often poisonous solvents and acids. This technique produces massive quantities of toxic wastewater, which can neither be returned to the  environment without endangering drinking water supplies nor easily stored and decontaminated.

The rapid expansion of hydro-fracking would be problematic under the best of circumstances, which these aren’t. Many of the richest sources of shale oil and gas, for instance, are located in populated areas of Texas, Arkansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. In fact, one of the most promising sites, the Marcellus formation, abuts New York City’s upstate watershed area. Under such circumstances, concern over the safety of drinking water should be paramount, and federal legislation, especially the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974, should theoretically give the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the power to oversee (and potentially ban) any procedures that endanger water supplies.

However, oil companies seeking to increase profits by maximizing the utilization of hydro-fracking banded together, put pressure on Congress, and
managed to get itself exempted from the 1974 law’s provisions. In 2005, under heavy lobbying from then Vice President Dick Cheney — formerly the CEO of oil services contractor Halliburton — Congress passed the Energy Policy Act, which prohibited the EPA from regulating hydro-fracking via the Safe Drinking Water Act, thereby eliminating a significant impediment to wider use of the technique.

Third Worldification Since then, there has been a virtual stampede to the shale regions by the major oil companies, which have in many cases devoured smaller firms that pioneered the development of hydro-fracking. (In 2009, for example, ExxonMobil paid $31 billion to acquire XTO Energy, one of the leading producers of shale gas.) As the extraction of shale oil and gas has accelerated, the industry has faced other problems. To successfully exploit promising shale formations, for instance, energy firms must insert many wells, since each fracking operation can only extend several hundred feet in any direction, requiring the establishment of noisy, polluting, and potentially hazardous drilling operations in well-populated rural and suburban areas.

While drilling has been welcomed by some of these communities as a source of added income, many have vigorously opposed the invasion, seeing it as an assault on neighborhood peace, health, and safety. In an effort to protect their quality of life, some Pennsylvania communities, for example, have adopted zoning laws that ban fracking in their midst. Viewing this as yet another intolerable obstacle, the industry has put intense pressure on friendly members of the state legislature to adopt a law depriving most local jurisdictions of the right to exclude fracking operations. “We have been sold out to the gas industry, plain and simple,” said Todd Miller, a town commissioner  who opposed the legislation.

If the energy industry has its way in North America, there will be many more Todd Millers complaining about the way their lives and worlds have been “sold out” to the energy barons. Similar battles are already being fought elsewhere in North America, as energy firms seek to overcome resistance to expanded drilling in areas once protected from such activity.

In Alaska, for example, the industry is fighting in the courts and in Congress to allow drilling in coastal areas, despite opposition from Native American communities which worry that vulnerable marine animals and their traditional way of life will be put at risk. This summer, Royal Dutch Shell is expected to begin test drilling in the Chukchi Sea, an area important to several such communities.

And this is just the beginning. To gain access to additional stores of oil and gas, the industry is seeking to eliminate virtually all environmental
restraints imposed since the 1960s and open vast tracts of coastal and wilderness areas, including ANWR, to intensive drilling. It also seeks the construction of the much disputed Keystone XL pipeline, which is to transport synthetic crude oil made from Canadian tar sands — a particularly
“dirty” and environmentally devastating form of energy which has attracted substantial U.S. investment — to Texas and Louisiana for further processing. According to Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute (API), the preferred U.S. energy strategy “would include
greater access to areas that are currently off limits, a regulatory and permitting process that supported reasonable timelines for development, and
immediate approval of the Keystone XL pipeline.”

To achieve these objectives, the API, which claims to represent more than 490 oil and natural gas companies, has launched a multimillion-dollar campaign to sway the 2012 elections, dubbed “Vote 4 Energy.” While describing itself as nonpartisan, the API-financed campaign seeks to discredit and marginalize any candidate, including President Obama, who opposes even the mildest of version of its drill-anywhere agenda.

“There [are] two paths that we can take” on energy policy, the Vote 4 Energy Web site proclaims. “One path leads to more jobs, higher government
revenues and greater U.S. energy security — which can be achieved by increasing oil and natural gas development right here at home. The other path would put jobs, revenues and our energy security at risk.” This message will be broadcast with increasing frequency as Election Day nears.

According to the energy industry, we are at a fork in the road and can either chose a path leading to greater energy independence or to ever more
perilous energy insecurity. But there is another way to characterize that “choice”: on one path, the United States will increasingly come to resemble a Third World petro-state, with compliant government leaders, an increasingly money-ridden and corrupt political system, and negligible  environmental and health safeguards; on the other, which would also involve far greater investment in the development of renewable alternative energies, it would remain a First World nation with strong health and environmental regulations and robust democratic institutions.

How we characterize our energy predicament in the coming decades and what path we ultimately select will in large measure determine the fate of this nation.

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, a TomDispatch regular, and the author of The Race for What’s Left: The
Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources just published by Metropolitan Books.

2012-04-02 An amazing story unfolding in North America. non-violent resistance through Occupy

 Occupy Movement  1 Response »
Apr 022012
 

We are part of the Movement, creating and taking back democracy.

The wrestling of power away from corporate control has the potential for violence and chaos.

FEAR  –  ONLY IF YOU ARE KEPT IN THE DARK

In the years leading up to 2012, young people all over have been training each other in non-violent resistance.  I pretended I was “young” and attended a full two-day workshop a couple of years ago.  You meet the greatest people and come away empowered.  (Actually there were a few my age!)

AN INCREDIBLE EXAMPLE OF THE POWER OF THESE KIDS:   Two-and-a-half million people have viewed the youtube video.

The police are armed with some kind of gun and others with sticks and riot gear.  A policeman pepper-sprays along a row of university students sitting on the ground, arms linked, in protest.  Part of the protest is over Wall Street.   Normally people would have been enraged by the pepper-spray and the protest would have turned violent.   The casualties would have been written up and fear of protesting would have spread.

The police drag off some protesters, pinning down and hand-cuffing others.  The protesters seemed to have built on Sgt Shamar Thomas’ and other examples.  They mic-checked.   (Human microphone, explanation at  http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=3838 .)   The police try to advance on the protesters.  The chant begins: “Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you!”.   It continues relentlessly.   The police position weakens.  The chant changes to “Our University!  Our University!”.   The protestors then reverse the flow, advancing on the police, “Go!  We are giving you a moment of peace.  You can go”.  The police start backing up, herded by the protestors, the chant becomes   “You can go!  You can go!  You can go”.  And the police do leave!

As I say, it’s a pretty amazing display of restraint by the protestors, and new tools of non-violent resistance that overcame the brutality of the weapons lined up against them.  The protestors had resolve and showed no fear.

(The Sgt Shamar Thomas video is at http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=4884.  About 4 million people have viewed it.  He basically did what these students did, but all by himself.  Relentless repetition to the New York police of the message “There is no honor in this.”  until the police retreat.)

This is state-side.  Their victory is on our behalf.  With Lockheed Martin lurking in Canada, failures to enforce the law, and now rigged elections, I hope more and more Canadians step up and join hands.  Make the Government represent the public interest.  Fight corporate takeover of our institutions.

Tell the truth, like Chris Hedges  http://youtu.be/7zotYU21qcU.   (A great interview!)   And have no fear.

(Other “Occupy” postings, see www.sandrafinley.ca , on the right-hand side, under “Categories”, under “Corporatocracy”.)

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From: Ashu M. G. Solo [mailto:amgsolo@mavericktechnologies.us]
Sent: January-25-14 12:38 PM
To: Sandra Finley
Subject: RE: Apologies from Lois and Finley?

DID YOU NOTICE HOW NOBODY IS DEFENDING YOU EXCEPT FOR YOUR MINDLESS MINION LOIS?  THE REST OF THEM HAVE BRAINS AND KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING IS TOTALLY UNETHICAL, UNDEMOCRATIC, OBSESSIVE, AND KOOKY.  THE REST OF THEM HAVE ALL DISTANCED THEMSELVES FROM YOU OR CRITICIZED YOU.  JUST GO AWAY AND HOPE THAT PEOPLE FORGET ABOUT WHAT YOU DID.  YOU’RE BEST OFF STAYING IN B.C. BECAUSE EVERYONE WITH A BRAIN IN SASKATOON AND GPS HAS TOTALLY LOST RESPECT FOR YOU.

 

From: Ashu M. G. Solo [mailto:amgsolo@mavericktechnologies.us]
Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2014 8:45 PM
To: ‘Larry Waldinger’; ‘Kaitlyn Harvey’; ‘Vicki Strelioff’; ‘Lynn Oliphant’; ‘Lois Mitchell’; ‘Mark Bigland-Pritchard’; ‘Marlene Wells’; ‘Daeran Gall’
Subject: Apologies from Lois and Finley?

 

Where’s my apology from Lois for her suggesting that I turned Larry’s wife against him?

A friend said that people make the assumption I’m responsible because I’m a brown tough young veteran male with deep inset eyes.

Where’s my apology from Finley for her fabricating and spreading so many lies about me and endangering my family?

I endured so much hardship during military training and exercises and Finley/Zimmerman/Elvin Lau try to undo that hardship with lies.  It actually turns out that it was a fourth-hand lie that Finley was telling Victor and John about me.  Finley claimed that Zimmerman claimed that she heard from someone who heard from a colonel that I hadn’t served in the military.  Really?  Finley is gullible and stupid enough to believe a fourth-hand lie and report it to Victor and John as a fact.  I got all the proof in the world that I served in the military.  The Department of National Defence and my regiment can verify that I served.  And I will provide more absolute proof, so you can see absolute proof that Finley is spreading lies.

Finley really has made this EDA become totally dysfunctional and immersed in arguments.  I don’t know who’s gonna do the financial agent work Larry did.

Finley, we’ve all had ENOUGH.  Stop fabricating lies, stop spreading lies, stop attacking people, stop endangering people, stop driving people out of the parties, stop aiding a troll, and stop causing trouble.  I once respected you, Finley, but then I saw you turn from Jekyll into Hyde.  Shame on you, Finley.  Shame on you.

Ashu

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FW: Finley is now telling Victor that I faked my military credentials

—–Original Message—–
From: Ashu M. G. Solo [mailto:amgsolo@mavericktechnologies.us]
Sent: January-25-14 9:53 PM
To: Sandra Finley
Subject: FW: Finley is now telling Victor that I faked my military credentials

 

Your reputation is in the toilet and it keeps sinking further down.

 

—–Original Message—–

From: Ashu M. G. Solo [mailto:amgsolo@mavericktechnologies.us]

Sent: Thursday, January 16, 2014 3:43 AM

To: Patricia Farnese (patricia.farnese@greenparty.ca); votelau@gmail.com; Larry Waldinger (lwaldinger@gmail.com); Vicki Strelioff (vstrelioff@gmail.com); Kaitlyn Harvey (harvey.kaitlyn@gmail.com); ‘Mark Bigland-Pritchard / Low Energy Design Ltd’ (mark@lowenergydesign.com); John Murney (johnmurney@gmail.com)

Subject: Finley is now telling Victor that I faked my military credentials

 

Finley is now telling Victor that I faked my military credentials.  This is really over the top.  Finley lies without any shame whatsoever.  I’ve never faked anything.  Even if I did fake my military credentials, how would she know?  When did she get access to military personnel records?  Finley is really a slimebag throwing out all kinds of lies.  If you look at my Facebook picture, you can see me in the army wearing an army uniform and webbing and carrying a C-7 semiautomatic rifle that I’d have to be in the military to get access to.  I can produce my military certificate and TONS of other proof that I served in the military.  I’ve had enough of this bullshit with Finley.

This is your former buddy spreading these lies without shame.  Is this really someone worthy of being a Green?  Is this really someone worthy of being your friend?

Mark, what would you do if Finley was claiming you didn’t do your Ph.D?

Kaitlyn, what would you do if Finley was claiming you didn’t do law school?

Patricia, what would you do if Finley claimed you didn’t have some of your research publications?

Zimmerman is extremely skilled at painting herself as if she has done absolutely nothing wrong and is a “victim” of me when the truth is she has been spreading malicious lies about me.

PEOPLE NEED TO STOP LYING ABOUT ME.  I’VE HAD IT.

Ashu

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From: Ashu M. G. Solo [mailto:amgsolo@mavericktechnologies.us]
Sent: January-26-14 11:29 AM
To: Sandra Finley
Subject: BROADWAY BRIDGE FOR SALE

 

FINLEY,

 

I CAN SELL YOU THE BROADWAY BRIDGE FOR $1000.  YOU CAN MAKE YOUR MONEY BACK BY SETTING UP A TOLL BOOTH ON IT OR IF YOU WANT TO BE GREEN, YOU CAN CLOSE IT OFF TO CARS.

YOU’RE GULLIBLE AND STUPID ENOUGH TO BELIEVE ALL OF ZIMMERMAN’S LIES, SO I THOUGHT YOU’D BE GULLIBLE AND STUPID ENOUGH TO BUY A BRIDGE.

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