By Mike De Souza - Tuesday, December 09, 2008

OTTAWA - Oilsands production is releasing four billion litres of contaminated water into Alberta's groundwater and natural ecosystems every year, according to a new national report that was immediately dismissed as "false" by the provincial government...The annual volume of water pollution in 2007 would have been enough to fill Toronto's Rogers Centre, but could be stopped if the federal government started enforcing its Fisheries Act, the report says.

Everyone's Downstream II: Stop Playing Games With Our Lives
To be held November 22nd, 23rd at

The Edmonton Native Friendship Centre
11205 101 Street NW

This event is co-presented by OilSandsTruth.org [OST] with the Indigenous Environmental Network [IEN]

And on Friday November 21, 2008 at the University of Alberta:

“I look forward to attending the Prime Minster’s conference and showcasing that Alberta’s competitive, diversified economy presents tremendous opportunity for investment from Israel,” said Stevens. “Our jurisdictions have strong ties and my goal is to explore and expand our economic and social linkages.”

The remainder of Stevens’ time in Israel will be spent meeting with private and public sector leaders to attract business and investment in Alberta, and promote trade and collaborative research and development. Israeli companies are already active in Alberta’s oil sands and Stevens believes that both jurisdictions can share best practices in nanotechnology.

On September 29, 2008 around 30 protesters greeted the Canadian Pacific Railway “Olympic Spirit Train” as it brought its propaganda machine through Edmonton. Highlighting that the train and the Olympic Games are interlinked with the same corporations carrying out the largest industrial project on earth known as the Tar Sands, protesters disrupted the “spirit train” celebrations with the spirit of resistance. Under the slogan of “No Games, No Tar Sands on Native Land!” demonstrators from the the community of Fort Chipewyan in “Alberta” came in solidarity to act with Native 2010 Resistance, the Olympics Resistance Network, Edmonton Anarchist Black Cross and the Indigenous Environmental Network to let the public know what’s wrong with the Olympics and the Tar Sands.

"Particularly in big cities, we've got people that have grown up in a different culture, and they don't have the same background in terms of the stable communities we had 20, 30 years ago in our cities...and don't have the same respect for authority or people's person or property...Talk to the police. Look at who's committing these crimes...They're not the kid that grew up next door."

--"Calgary Centre" Member of Parliament and Conservative candidate Lee Richardson

While it is still 18 months before athletes competing in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games start arriving on Canada’s West Coast, last week’s closing ceremonies to wrap up the Beijing Paralympic Games signalled that the eyes of the Olympic-watching world would now fully shift focus to Canada.

And just as China discovered in the months leading up to the Beijing Olympics, while the Games may bring a flood of corporate sponsorship, new athletic infrastructure and international media attention, they are also inextricably linked with the politics of the host country and rife with controversies about who benefits and who suffers as a result of preparations to host the sporting world.

By Andrew Nikiforuk - September 21, 2008

Fred McDonald, a Métis trapper and storyteller extraordinaire, often questioned the reasoning and science behind the proliferation of toxic ponds and end-pit lakes. Before he died in 2007 of kidney failure, McDonald lived in Fort McKay, an Aboriginal community 72 kilometres north of Fort Saskatchewan. The stench of hydrocarbons from the surrounding mines often hangs heavily in the air there, and in 2006, an ammonia release from a Syncrude facility hospitalized more than 20 children...["]We are slowly losing everything."

The famous Hollywood movie Dead Man Walking made common parlance of the term for a person on death row leaving his cell for the last time, heading for execution. The person about to be executed will walk towards where they will take their last breath, and “dead man walking” is a term about those last steps.

The truly perverse thing about the situation is that the individuals being executed would otherwise likely live many more years, and have nothing physically wrong with them. The same can be said of a huge forested area in the middle portion of Alberta’s vast Athabasca Region, south of the small Métis and First Nations community of Anzac.

Maps of Tar Sands Development
Oil Sands Truth

The purpose of these maps is to show all existing development related to tar sands throughout Alberta for the first time. Many of the maps also include approved and/or proposed industrial development. It is likely that no authorities want to see all of the proposed development gathered in one place for others to see, interpret and be able to react to accordingly. Consequently there are no such government provided map sources.

On September 29th, 2008 (Monday), the 2010 Olympic Winter Games "Spirit Train" will be coming to Edmonton, Alberta. A call out has been issued by the Olympics Resistance Network (appended below)

By Chris Arsenault - September 07, 2008

Executives from Nexen energy, which has major investments in northern Alberta's heavy oil industry, and Tony Clement, chair of a Canadian cabinet committee on energy security, met with Democratic candidate Barack Obama's top energy advisor Jason Grumet late last week to cement the "energy partnership" during the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado...[T]here is no doubt that Canadian oil is among the world's most climate unfriendly fuels.

A mutant fish with two mouths was caught in northern Alberta, near the Canadian province's Athabasca oil sands...

Small community near Alberta [tar sands] has disproportionate number of bile duct disease...

[...T]hree environmental groups abandoned a nine year-old effort [August 19] to negotiate environmental responsibility in the [tar sands] region.

Ahni

In recent years, the Peguis First Nation, a community of 7,200 in northern Manitoba, has been faced with a drug abuse epidemic. Last fall, [...t]he northern community opted to enact a bylaw that stipulates banishment as a penalty for anyone caught dealing drugs, and that requires all band members to pass a drug-screening test.

Northern and Indian Affairs Canada (INAC) is not impressed.

Jack Woodward and the Beaver Lake Cree aim to change Canadian law -- and their success likely would throw a huge wrench into Alberta's tar-sands oil production.

The suit pits the Beaver Lake Cree band against the governments of Canada and Alberta, asking the court to rule invalid the government authorization for thousands of petroleum projects on the band's core territory.

FORT MCMURRAY, Alberta, Canada - Eleven Greenpeace activists entered Syncrude’s Aurora North Tar Sands facility north of Fort McMurray today, erecting a banner that transformed the opening of a tailings pond pipe into the “mouth” of a giant skull, spewing toxic sludge. Shortly after 8:00 am, two Greenpeaceers blocked the pipe by shutting down the valve before chaining and locking themselves to the control box.