Gender impacts are often completely ignored within the hollow social impact assessments often conducted in the modern era. Oil patches and natural gas operations are overwhelmingly operated by young men who naturally go into small towns nearby after weeks in the bush. Alcohol and/or drug fuelled violence and rape often increase in communities dealing with such an influx, as do drug use, alcoholism and sexual exploitation. The effect on the community leads to further social breakdown and often violence against elders—especially after the “rush” of initial construction is over and the spike in money is gone, but the torn up earth is still there, along with fatherless children in many cases. The higher the rate in inequality and alienation during a "boom" cycle, the higher the levels of gender-biased impacts. The plans for the tar sands are the single largest project, and therefore "boom" based "collateral damage" could easily match anything seen before.
Anti-Olympic efforts come to Edmonton
SCOTT HARRIS / scott@vueweekly.com
September 24, 2008
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.
Portrait of a boomtown
Oil-sands projects bring big money, big headaches to remote Alberta city
By ED KEMMICK Of The Gazette Staff [Montana]
FORT McMURRAY, Alberta - On the outskirts of this town in northern Alberta, a billboard is plastered with the logos of a dozen or more trade unions. Underneath it reads: "This is what a union town looks like. Welcome to Fort McMurray."
This is also what a boom town looks like: heavy traffic everywhere, buildings going up all over town, help-wanted signs on every other marquee. Some people have taken to calling it Fort McMoney.
Full Call Out Here:
http://lists.oilsandstruth.org/pipermail/ost-announce/2008-September/000...
No Games on Stolen Native Land! Panel on 2010, tar sands and call to disrupt the "Spirit Train" (September 27 & 29)
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.
On September 27, 2008, several speakers from indigenous communities who
are being adversely effected on unceded territories in "British
Discussion Points on a Moratorium
No New Approvals-- of what?
July 29, 2008
City population growth to boost housing demand
Kathy McCormick, Calgary Herald
Published: Saturday, July 26, 2008
In spite of the lower number of housing construction starts this year, people are moving to Calgary -- and they're buying homes in the suburbs, says the latest city census.
Macdonald Stainsby gives http://h2opodcast.com/ an overview of the tar sands, their history in development, why now, the connection to the war on terror & Iraq, trade deals, expansion of the temporary foreign worker programs in such development, violation of indigenous nations' self-determination and environmental destruction unparalleled in the world. (Part I of II)
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Part II of II:
Macdonald Stainsby gives http://h2opodcast.com/ an overview of the tar sands, their history in development, why now, the connection to the war on terror & Iraq, trade deals, expansion of the temporary foreign worker programs in such development, violation of indigenous nations' self-determination and environmental destruction unparalleled in the world. Part II of II.
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Change in activists' tactics poses serious threat to 2010 Games: analyst
By Stephanie Levitz, The Canadian Press
VANCOUVER - Changing tactics by Canadian activists pose a serious threat to security
at the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver, security analysts say.
The usually fragmented, single-issue groups are converging and organizing in ways
never seen before in Canada, said Tom Quiggan, a former security consultant with the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Where there's usually a lull in protest activity in the years leading up to
Finally Canada's establishment newspaper gets it right! The proposed partial moratorium is indeed a PR greenwash smokescreen:
The housing crisis in Alberta, as it gets more and more desperate has as it's corollary more people-- in particular young, often racialized women-- working in the survival sex trade. This, like almost everything else in Alberta, comes from the extremity of the tar sands boom with no attention paid to human or environmental cost. The woman below is likely another victim of the tar sands.
--M
Sex trade slay
Fri, February 22, 2008
RCMP need the publics help with the latest homicide
By KEVIN CRUSH, SUN MEDIA
