Cheney to visit Alberta for Big Oil (September 8)

[paineinthearse]

http://www.rabble.ca/news_full_story.shtml?x=41335

Cheney to visit Alberta for Big Oil

Here in Canada, we should greet Cheney as a war criminal, as his (nominal) boss Bush was greeted last year.

>by Derrick O'Keefe
September 1, 2005

U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney will make a visit to Canada in early September. His itinerary, though, isn't likely to take him near the nation's capital in Ottawa, as he plans to stick to the more familiar territory of oil-rich Alberta. Cheney's trip highlights once again the priorities of the U.S. administration. Dick will be here to size up the vaunted tar sands of Alberta which, despite still difficult and costly extraction, some tout as the world's largest reserve of hydrocarbons. On September 8, Cheney will have a high-level “invitation-only” dinner in Calgary with western premiers Ralph Klein and Gordon Campbell, with the evening's host being none other than the “non-partisan” Fraser Institute, an influential right-wing “think-tank. ”

The Fraser Institute is a familiar source for dissemination of conservative ideas, particularly for those on Canada's West Coast. Its press releases are all too often run as news stories — especially in CanWest-Global productions — no matter how recycled their latest “findings,” such as their tiresome annual school “rankings” aimed at discrediting public education. Nevertheless the swagger that the Institute's long-time mouthpiece Michael Walker displayed in announcing the V.P.'s dinner is worth noting. “It's a private dinner for a few friends of ours with the vice-president. It's by invitation-only,” Walker told the Edmonton Sun.

In an interview with The Georgia Straight, Walker was at pains to avoid the perception that members of the federal government might deserve some credit for the Veep's impending visit: “We invited Vice-President Cheney to come to Canada, although I heard yesterday, now, the deputy prime minister is claiming she invited him. He is coming up for a private visit with myself and another friend of his up in Alberta, where we'll go off up in a lodge for a variety of purposes. ”

Michael Walker's bombast, though, shouldn't come as a surprise. You might recall him from his delightful cameo in the documentary The Corporation. Playing himself, a right-winger amongst a cast of left-wing talking-heads, Walker delivers at once perhaps the film's most frightening and comic moment, declaring that “every square inch” of the world's air, water and land ought to be privatized. No one should be surprised, either, by this free market zealot's loyalty and devotion to Dick Cheney. They work for the same people, after all. George W. Bush picked Cheney to draft the vaunted Energy Policy that was one of the Administration's first orders of business in 2001. Then, along with the war in Iraq, Bush and Cheney ignored the Kyoto Accord on climate change at the urging of oil giants like Exxon. The world's largest oil company just happened to contribute $60,000 to the Fraser Institute in both 2003 and 2004.

more....

Derrick O'Keefe is a co-chair of the StopWar coalition in Vancouver, and a founding editor of Seven Oaks Magazine.

[aquart]

1. People keep giving us Dick's schedule, but we don't see Dick.

[ThoughtCriminal]

2. I was looking for the Vice President

I was just wondering if he maybe had some ideas on say... Saving lives on the Gulf Coast. Or maybe a comment or two.

The last picture I can find of him was from August 19 and the only news item I can find today is that he's doing a GOP fundraiser in Missouri on the 19th.

More of the kind of quality governing from people who hate government.

[paineinthearse]

3. Indeed. Due to his failure to appear, some here speculate that (gulp)

VPoUS has passed on! This VP is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-VPoUS!!

See (and please nominate) http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2052543