Last edited Sun Sep 15, 2013, 12:03 PM - Edit history (1)

Nothing left living, all the trees clear cut, machinery of a size and scale that's almost unimaginable.....and the smell of petroleum and sulphur over everything.

It astounds me that this is allowed to continue in this day and age.

with a few about this place last year. I had no idea it existed, until one Canadian couple said that there were plenty of jobs there, but began to describe the place. From what they said it is a nightmare hell on earth, with people living like cyborgs in this nasty wasteland and a huge drug problem to add to it. They said they never saw anything like it and they were very well traveled.

Oh, and the Canadians? I love them. They are the best people on earth and ALWAYS in a great mood.

They're attracted there by nearly guaranteed employment and huge wages, but nobody mentions the problems you point out (or the cost of living). A few people I know left - to be honest, fled - the place after a few years because they could see what it was doing to them, and a few others stayed too long and were, ah, changed by the experience.

It's a really weird place in general. To kids growing up in Nova Scotia or Newfoundland, it's an economic holy grail - and then you get there...

Oh the irony.

What a mess.

What a thought...

Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp organized the first Farm Aid concert in 1985 to keep family farmers on their land. At that time, family farmers were in a fight for their livelihoods and their farms in an economic situation that closely mirrors what so many Americans face today. Since that first concert, Farm Aid has been a relentless champion for family farmers. Through the dedicated hard work of its board of directors, which added Dave Matthews in 2001, many thousands of donors, and the nearly four hundred artists who have generously donated their time and performances, Farm Aid is now the longest running benefit concert series in America.
Support farmaid

Some choice clips from these patriots live at Farm Aid 1985....

OK on further research, they are not all from 1985, however the sentiment still stands.

RR

There's so much to sing about, protest about but we don't hear it.

Remember the No Nukes concerts? I don't think Neil played those, but possibly CSN played, or at least two of them, Crosby and Nash I think.

Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt played... I forget who else.

Where is all that today?

An Ominous Alliance: Militiamen Showing Up in Wisconsin as Mining Co. 'Security'



Imagine taking a hike in your local woods and coming upon characters toting semi-automatic weapons, dressed in camo and wearing masks. Then imagine finding out they are militia-movement followers hired by a mining operation to protect against "eco-terrorists." That's what's been happening to people living in northern Wisconsin lately...Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones has been on the scene and monitoring these developments:

Local activist Rob Ganson, 56, first came upon three heavily armed guards while leading a small group on a hike to view the mining site. (The drilling site is on private land, but the owner has been given a tax break in exchange for keeping it open to public use.) The guards, said Ganson, carried semi-automatic guns, were dressed in camouflage, and wore masks covering their faces...After they determined that the guards worked for Arizona-based Bulletproof Security, Ganson and the other activists posted their photos of the guards online, drawing local and national news coverage of the mine, a proposed four-mile-long, 1,000-feet-deep open pit operation in Ashland and Iron counties. In June, the company began exploratory drilling in the region for taconite, a type of iron ore used in steel.

Last Wednesday, the mining company, Gogebic Taconite—G-Tac for short—a subsidiary of the West Virginia-based Cline Group, pulled the armed guards after finding that the security firm lacked permits to work in the state. A spokesman for the company has said that the Bulletproof guards will be back once they're properly licensed.

One of the activists in the area, however, told Mother Jones on Monday that a new group of armed guards—including one whose shirt bore the insignia for Watchmen of America, a militia group active in at least 21 states—was on patrol last Thursday, the day after Gogebic Taconite pulled the Bulletproof guards. This was followed shortly by heated denials from the Watchmen...

As Mary Catherine O'Connor at Outside reports, this is all taking place in a context where the mining officials are labeling local protesters "eco terrorists" and using the flimsiest of pretexts to bring in militia-style thugs to intimidate the locals.

Let's hope Americans remember that in Italy and Germany, fascists first gained political traction and moved out of the fringe of politics in the 1920s when they were hired by large landowners and businessmen as thugs to beat up and harass union organizers and land reformers, all under the rubric of calling them "communists". This is an ominous development indeed.

http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/ominous-alliance-militiamen-showing-

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023340239

Dresden might be better, though the tar sands will release a lot more greenhouse gases than the firebombing of a city.

Those coal related mountain top removals in West Virginia would be a pretty good comparison to the tar sands.

at least they have a job. Whee!