Bill C-15 could fill Canadian prisons with drug offenders
By Carlito Pablo
Will Bill C-15 kill the twin scourge of illegal drugs and gang violence?
source
Libby Davis
NDP MP,Vancouver East
“There’s a lot of information, both in the United States and in Canada, that shows that mandatory minimum sentencing regimes for drug offences are ineffective. This is all about window-dressing for the Conservatives’ crime agenda. They want to impress people with their tough-on-crime approach. One thing that will happen is that it could very much overcrowd our prisons. We find the bill to be misdirected and based on a very faulty premise. It’s based on the U.S.’s war on drugs, which has been a complete failure.”
Ed Fast
Conservative MP, Abbotsford
“What Bill C-15 does is it’s connecting the sale of drugs to aggravating factors. If there’s a sale or production or growing of drugs that occurs and violence is present, we will put those guys behind bars. But we also want to make sure that low-level dealers that are dealing in drugs simply because they’re addicted can actually get the help that they deserve. We believe it’s a balanced approach. We’re not going after the marijuana users. We’re going after the guys who really present an ongoing danger to our community.”
Ujjal Dosanjh
Liberal MP, Vancouver South
“Bill[s] C-14 and [C-]15? We have said that we’ll support both of them. We agree with tougher penalties for serious and violent and chronic offenders. But that alone isn’t going to do the job. That’s why we believe this government is failing significantly in their drive to deal with the issue of crime. They’re failing Canadians because they’re not emphasizing crime-preventing, they’re not providing resources for youth programs, they’re not providing actual police officers on the ground, [and] they’re not providing prosecutors.”
Adrianne Carr
Deputy leader, Green Party of Canada
“The Green party doesn’t support mandatory sentencing because it has proven to not work. It’s coming from this tough-on-crime perspective. What we’ve seen is that our court system wastes extraordinarily high resources in prosecuting the petty criminals involved in drug cases, particularly marijuana. We should be legalizing marijuana, which has been suggested by the Senate of Canada and the Fraser Institute, and these are hardly radical institutions. What we have to do is delink the profit motive from drugs.”
On March 2, the Pew Center on the States, a Washington, D.C.–based think tank, released a report on the staggering growth of the American correctional system.
Entitled One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections, the report noted that “sentencing and release laws passed in the 1980s and 1990s put so many more people behind bars that last year the incarcerated population reached 2.3 million and, for the first time, one in 100 adults was in prison or jail.”
It also cited the tremendous increase in the number of people on probation or parole, such that “combined with those in prison and jail, a stunning 1 in every 31 adults, or 3.2 percent, is under some form of correctional control.”
Why is this relevant to Canada?
“We only need to go south of the border and see a nation that enacted mandatory minimums related to drug offences from the mid-1980s on,” criminologist Susan Boyd told the Georgia Straight. “It didn’t reduce violence and drug use. So here we are saying, ‘We’re going to do this.’ ”
Boyd—an associate professor at UVic and research fellow at the Centre for Addictions Research of B.C.—was referring to the reintroduction in Parliament by the Conservative government of a bill that proposes mandatory minimum jail sentences for drug offenders.
If passed into law, Bill C-15 would, among its other provisions, throw people caught with one marijuana plant into the slammer for a minimum of six months. If growing a single plant is done on a property that belongs to another person or in an area where it may present a hazard to children, minimum jail time is nine months.
Worse, the bill seeks to increase the maximum penalty for this particular offence to 14 years.
Vancouver’s so-called Prince of Pot, Marc Emery, who is fighting extradition on charges of selling marijuana seeds to American growers, is a potential U.S. prison statistic.
Emery was handing out leaflets condemning drug prohibition, along with his wife, Jodie, on the south side of the city when the Straight asked him about Bill C-15. “Anything that puts more people in jail for drugs is going to fill prisons,” he said. “It’s a very expensive and failed policy that will only bring us more misery.”
The Pew Center on the States report pointed out that many states in the U.S. “appear to have reached a ‘tipping point’ where additional incarceration will have little if any effect on crime”.
In Washington state, which shares a border with B.C., the report stated, “from 1980 to 2001, the benefit-to-cost ratio for drug offenders plummeted from $9.22 to $0.37.
“That is, for every one dollar invested in new prison beds for drug offenders, state taxpayers get only 37 cents in averted crime,” it noted. “An updated analysis from 2006 found that incarceration of offenders convicted of violent offenses remained a positive net benefit, while property and drug offenders offered negative returns.”
Conservative Abbotsford MP Ed Fast deflected criticism that mandatory jail times haven’t worked in the U.S.
“First of all, on the issue of deterrence there’s contradicting evidence,” Fast told the Straight. “I don’t base my support for the legislation on the deterrent effect. I base it on the prophylactic effect of the legislation. Prophylactic means taking repeat, violent offenders out of our communities for longer periods of time.”
Bill C-15 is a reincarnation of Bill C-26, which the Conservatives introduced in November 2007.
In February 2008, a few months after Bill C-26 was tabled in Parliament, Boyd started sending Prime Minister Stephen Harper a weekly letter in an attempt to educate the Conservative leader about harm reduction and drug regulation.
Boyd did this for a year, and she sent her 52nd and final letter in early February this year. Bill C-15 was introduced on February 27, a day after the Conservatives filed Bill C-14, which toughens penalties for gang-associated violent activities.
As an educator, Boyd has this to say about mentoring Harper: “The prime minister gets a failing grade on drug policy.”
The economics of prisons in Canada
> Total correctional-services expenditures in 2005-06: almost $3 billion
> Share spent on custodial services or prisons: 71 percent
> Associated policing and court costs in 2005-06: more than $10 billion
> Number of correctional facilities in Canada in 2005-06: 192
> Annual cost of incarcerating a federal female prisoner in
2004-05: $150,000 to $250,000
> Annual cost of incarcerating a federal male prisoner in 2004-05: $87,665
> Daily cost of incarcerating a provincial prisoner in 2004-05: $141.78
> Daily cost of alternatives such as probation, bail supervision,
and community supervision: $5 to $25
Source: prisonjustice.ca
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Sunday, May 02, 2010
Sweeping New Powers
Sweeping New Powers Would Threaten Privacy: Watchdog
BC Government wants to amend law to allow much more collection and sharing of personal data.
By Andrew MacLeod,
25 Mar 2010, TheTyee.ca
source
Public bodies would collect, share your personal information without consent.
The British Columbia government wants sweeping new powers to collect and share citizens' private information and store it outside of Canada. Officials argue the powers would help them better serve the public, but a privacy advocate says British Columbians should be worried about the government's plans.
Representatives of the B.C. government presented their 88-page submission to a March 24 meeting of a special committee struck to review the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. Such a review happens every six years. The transcript is here.
The government proposes public bodies be able to collect and share people's personal information without their consent. Non-public bodies such as the police, social service providers and non-governmental organizations would be able to do the same.
It would also change the act to allow information to be stored outside of Canada, overturning a provision put in place to protect British Columbians from the long arm of the United States' Patriot Act.
"It's the scope of the thing," said Vincent Gogolek, the policy director for the Freedom of Information and Privacy Association watchdog group. "They really are looking to change the basis of the act to remove people's control over their own information."
'Shared across the universe'
Millennium Water - Home of the Olympic and Paralympic village.
The government's submission says it wants the act amended "to allow for indirect collection by, and disclosure to and between all relevant public bodies, without consent, for purposes of integrated program or activity."
Even non-public bodies including "government and police agencies in other jurisdictions" could indirectly collect and disclose personal information without consent, under the proposal.
This would be done where it's "of benefit to the citizen and necessary to the delivery of the service or program," or for public health and safety.
"They want it shared across the universe," said Gogolek. "NGOs, the RCMP, all over the place. . . They don't want any supervison of that. . . and that's a problem."
The information at stake includes some of the most personal things about people, he said. Information about medical history, mental health, addictions, housing and criminal records would be included, he said. "This is stuff you don't want bouncing around all over the place."
People have a right to keep control of their information and how it is used, Gogolek said, adding it's not good enough for the government to just say, "trust us."
"This will be used monitoring and checking up on people," he said. The government argues that it has become more horizontal and the law needs to change to match its new structure, he said. "I've got a bit of a problem with that and I suspect the committee might have a bit of a problem with that."
The government is making the pitch as it embarks on a $180-million integrated case management system that will be used by both the children and families and housing and social development ministries.
The government has entered a six-year deal with Deloitte Inc. to develop the system, despite warnings the system will create new privacy risks.
Patriot Act worries
Perhaps even more contentious is the provincial government's desire to store more information outside the country.
Here's how the submission to the committee puts the request: "Amend the provisions in the FOIPP Act prohibiting the storage of information outside of Canada to take into account IT developments and advancements that make jurisdictional boundaries artificial."
The change would include, "social networking and other internet tools and mechanisms that can promote stronger citizen engagement and [would] take advantage of commercial and economic opportunities for storage and management of information including 'cloud computing.'"
The provision requiring information stay in Canada dates back to soon after the B.C. Liberals took office in 2001. They were contracting out the management of health records, just as the United States government responded to the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center by bringing in the Patriot Act, parts of which allowed for the collection of large amounts of information.
The province's chief information officer, Dave Nikolejsin, presented the government's submission to the committee. He described why they want the restrictions on foreign data storage changed: "How we are able to do some of our alternative service delivery projects is dictated, because a lot of the organizations that bid on opportunities like that and attempt to do business with us are not Canadian businesses. We have to go through machinations that other jurisdictions don't in order to make sure that the data stays in Canada."
"Alternative service delivery" is the wording the government uses to describe contracting out public services. He named Alberta and Ontario as provinces B.C. competes with that don't have similar restrictions on data storage.
"This was hugely controversial and the government was forced to bring it in because of the Patriot Act," said Gogolek. "The Patriot Act is still there." The president of the United States may have changed, but the law has not, he said.
Expanding definitions
Gogolek also takes issue with a couple of changes suggested by the attorney general and the solicitor general.
One would extend the definition of "law enforcement," allowing public bodies to refuse access to a greater number of records. Originally the idea was to prevent information that would compromise a particular investigation from being released. As Gogolek puts it, you legitimately don't want the U.N. Gang able to request records about how the police are investigating the U.N. Gang.
"They want to expand it from investigations to crime prevention," said Gogolek. That would make lots of records that are now releasable secret, he said. "It's got to be realistic. You can't just raise hypotheticals."
The government also asked the committee to rewrite the law so it can refuse access to security video from jail cells. That would be in direct contradiction to a two-year-old ruling by former information and privacy commissioner David Loukidelis, said Gogolek.
"They seem grumpy about that," he said. Knowing that video from jail cells may find its way into public is incentive for the people who work in jails to follow the law, he said. That incentive would be removed if people knew the footage could never be released, he said. "I don't think it's a good way to go."
The acting information and privacy commissioner, Paul Fraser, is scheduled to present to the committee next week.
Gogolek said his group, which presented to the committee last month, will also be looking for a way to respond to the government's submission. [Tyee]
Andrew MacLeod is The Tyee's Legislative Bureau Chief in Victoria. You can reach him here.
BC Government wants to amend law to allow much more collection and sharing of personal data.
By Andrew MacLeod,
25 Mar 2010, TheTyee.ca
source
Public bodies would collect, share your personal information without consent.
The British Columbia government wants sweeping new powers to collect and share citizens' private information and store it outside of Canada. Officials argue the powers would help them better serve the public, but a privacy advocate says British Columbians should be worried about the government's plans.
Representatives of the B.C. government presented their 88-page submission to a March 24 meeting of a special committee struck to review the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. Such a review happens every six years. The transcript is here.
The government proposes public bodies be able to collect and share people's personal information without their consent. Non-public bodies such as the police, social service providers and non-governmental organizations would be able to do the same.
It would also change the act to allow information to be stored outside of Canada, overturning a provision put in place to protect British Columbians from the long arm of the United States' Patriot Act.
"It's the scope of the thing," said Vincent Gogolek, the policy director for the Freedom of Information and Privacy Association watchdog group. "They really are looking to change the basis of the act to remove people's control over their own information."
'Shared across the universe'
Millennium Water - Home of the Olympic and Paralympic village.
The government's submission says it wants the act amended "to allow for indirect collection by, and disclosure to and between all relevant public bodies, without consent, for purposes of integrated program or activity."
Even non-public bodies including "government and police agencies in other jurisdictions" could indirectly collect and disclose personal information without consent, under the proposal.
This would be done where it's "of benefit to the citizen and necessary to the delivery of the service or program," or for public health and safety.
"They want it shared across the universe," said Gogolek. "NGOs, the RCMP, all over the place. . . They don't want any supervison of that. . . and that's a problem."
The information at stake includes some of the most personal things about people, he said. Information about medical history, mental health, addictions, housing and criminal records would be included, he said. "This is stuff you don't want bouncing around all over the place."
People have a right to keep control of their information and how it is used, Gogolek said, adding it's not good enough for the government to just say, "trust us."
"This will be used monitoring and checking up on people," he said. The government argues that it has become more horizontal and the law needs to change to match its new structure, he said. "I've got a bit of a problem with that and I suspect the committee might have a bit of a problem with that."
The government is making the pitch as it embarks on a $180-million integrated case management system that will be used by both the children and families and housing and social development ministries.
The government has entered a six-year deal with Deloitte Inc. to develop the system, despite warnings the system will create new privacy risks.
Patriot Act worries
Perhaps even more contentious is the provincial government's desire to store more information outside the country.
Here's how the submission to the committee puts the request: "Amend the provisions in the FOIPP Act prohibiting the storage of information outside of Canada to take into account IT developments and advancements that make jurisdictional boundaries artificial."
The change would include, "social networking and other internet tools and mechanisms that can promote stronger citizen engagement and [would] take advantage of commercial and economic opportunities for storage and management of information including 'cloud computing.'"
The provision requiring information stay in Canada dates back to soon after the B.C. Liberals took office in 2001. They were contracting out the management of health records, just as the United States government responded to the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center by bringing in the Patriot Act, parts of which allowed for the collection of large amounts of information.
The province's chief information officer, Dave Nikolejsin, presented the government's submission to the committee. He described why they want the restrictions on foreign data storage changed: "How we are able to do some of our alternative service delivery projects is dictated, because a lot of the organizations that bid on opportunities like that and attempt to do business with us are not Canadian businesses. We have to go through machinations that other jurisdictions don't in order to make sure that the data stays in Canada."
"Alternative service delivery" is the wording the government uses to describe contracting out public services. He named Alberta and Ontario as provinces B.C. competes with that don't have similar restrictions on data storage.
"This was hugely controversial and the government was forced to bring it in because of the Patriot Act," said Gogolek. "The Patriot Act is still there." The president of the United States may have changed, but the law has not, he said.
Expanding definitions
Gogolek also takes issue with a couple of changes suggested by the attorney general and the solicitor general.
One would extend the definition of "law enforcement," allowing public bodies to refuse access to a greater number of records. Originally the idea was to prevent information that would compromise a particular investigation from being released. As Gogolek puts it, you legitimately don't want the U.N. Gang able to request records about how the police are investigating the U.N. Gang.
"They want to expand it from investigations to crime prevention," said Gogolek. That would make lots of records that are now releasable secret, he said. "It's got to be realistic. You can't just raise hypotheticals."
The government also asked the committee to rewrite the law so it can refuse access to security video from jail cells. That would be in direct contradiction to a two-year-old ruling by former information and privacy commissioner David Loukidelis, said Gogolek.
"They seem grumpy about that," he said. Knowing that video from jail cells may find its way into public is incentive for the people who work in jails to follow the law, he said. That incentive would be removed if people knew the footage could never be released, he said. "I don't think it's a good way to go."
The acting information and privacy commissioner, Paul Fraser, is scheduled to present to the committee next week.
Gogolek said his group, which presented to the committee last month, will also be looking for a way to respond to the government's submission. [Tyee]
Andrew MacLeod is The Tyee's Legislative Bureau Chief in Victoria. You can reach him here.
Saturday, May 01, 2010
Killing Peace: Israeli Defense Force Targets Non-Violent Demonstrators
What Threat Did I Pose The Israeli Soldiers?
By Eva Bartlett
source
25 April, 2010
In Gaza
The latest in a growing number of non-violent protesters shot by well-armed Israeli soldiers, three unarmed demonstrators –two Palestinians and one international–were
injured this afternoon by Israeli soldiers’ firing with live ammunition at a protest east of El Meghazi, central Gaza Strip. One week prior, Mahmoud Shawa, 19, was shot just below his knee by an Israeli soldier while demonstrating near the Nahal Oz crossing, eastern Gaza. March 30, four Palestinians were shot by armed Israeli soldiers while participating in non-violent demonstrations against the Israeli-imposed "buffer zone". Three of the four were injured by bullets or bullet shrapnel to their legs, while the fourth was shot in the head.
Bianca Zammit, 28, from Malta was one of three injured by the Israeli soldiers’ shooting today. Zammit, an International Solidarity Movement (ISM) colleague was standing roughly 3 metres to my left, both of us roughly 50 metres from the Green Line border fence separating Gaza and Israel. At the time that Zammit was shot, she was filming the Israeli soldiers’ assault with live ammunition on the unarmed Palestinian protesters, mainly youths, in front of us, who had run up to post flags on the border fence and re-claim the land Palestinians have been run off of by the unilateral Israeli declaration of a no-go zone.
In theory, this "buffer zone" is 300 metres, running from south to north on the Palestinian side of Gaza’s border. In reality, the off-limits area annexes far more than the 300 metre band of land the Israeli authorities state are off-limits: Palestinian civilians have been killed and injured by Israeli shooting and shelling up to 2 km from the border. As well, workers gathering stones and steel for re-sale for construction purposes are routinely abducted by Israeli soldiers and taken into Israeli detention. These people have been driven by siege-induced poverty and desperation to this low-paying work in the border regions.
Shortly before Zammit was shot, a young Palestinian woman –Hind al Akra, 22– participating in the protest was hit by shrapnel from an Israeli-fired bullet which struck nearby her. The shrapnel lodged in her stomach. At the time of treatment in Deir al Balah’s Al Aqsa hospital, it was deemed that Akra would likely need surgery to remove the shrapnel from her abdomen.
The first to be shot today was 18 year old Nidal al Naql, a teen among those nearest the fence. He was targeted in his right thigh. Thankfully, the bullet missed any artery–the terrain of the area is rolling, rough ground, making the evacuations of the injured more time-consuming and difficult.
*[photo: Rada Daniell]: a remote-controlled machine gun tower, one of many along the border fence used to shoot at Palestinians, including farmers, workers and civilians on their land.
Like those youths shot and injured on Land Day, and the youth of last week, Zammit says when she is healed and able to walk, she will return to the demos, as will the Palestinians, every week, raising their voices against the annexation of their land and targeting of civilians.
"What threat did I pose the Israeli soldiers? What threat did any of us pose them?"
Canada: Follow the Bouncing Harper
“Legal obligations”
by Andrew Coyne
Saturday, May 1, 2010
source
Day three after the Ruling that Saved Our System of Government, and the Tories have achieved their initial objective: total strategic confusion. Is Stephen Harper now prepared to accept opposition demands that a parliamentary committee be given access to the documents in the Afghan detainees affair? Or is he digging in his heels, as unwilling to compromise as ever?
I don’t know. But a clue to the Prime Minister’s state of mind can be found in his repeated invocation of the government’s “legal obligations.” Responding to questions in the House Wednesday, Harper said, variously:
Mr. Speaker, as I have said, we look forward to both complying with your ruling and with the legal obligations that have been established by statutes passed by this Parliament.
and
The government has certain obligations that are established under statutes passed by this Parliament. We obviously want to proceed in a way that will respect both of those things, and of course we will be open to any reasonable suggestions to achieve those two objectives.
and
You have delivered a decision. Obviously, the government seeks to respect that decision. At the same time, it seeks to respect its obligations established by statute and passed by this Parliament.
and
The government seeks at all times to respect all of its obligations. To the extent that some of those obligations may be in conflict, there are reasonable ways to accommodate that and we are open to reasonable suggestions in that regard.
and
The government cannot break the law, it cannot order public servants to break the law, nor can it do anything that would unnecessarily jeopardize the safety of Canadian troops.
You can appreciate the Prime Minister’s dilemma. He is obliged to balance two competing claims: on the one hand, to comply with the Speaker’s ruling enjoining him to respect the House’s demand that he produce the documents; and on the other, to comply with his “legal obligations” not to produce them. Don’t you see? The Speaker is asking him to break the law.
What’s a Prime Minister to do? Parliament has passed legislation, notably the Canada Evidence Act, forbidding the government or its employees from disclosing certain documents. And yet here is one of the Houses of that same Parliament, the Commons, backed by its Speaker, demanding that he should disclose those same documents. What could be more reasonable than to seek some way to balance those competing demands?
Except the whole argument’s bogus. No one is asking the Prime Minister to break the law. The conflict of which he complains exists only in his head. This was a key point in the Speaker’s ruling: a law may impose a general prohibition on the release of certain documents, but unless it expressly states that the ban applies to Parliament, it doesn’t. The presumption, that is, is in favour of parliamentary privilege.
I quote from page 20 of the Speaker’s ruling, where he cites House of Commons Procedure and Practice, pp. 978-9:
No statute or practice diminishes the fullness of the power rooted in the House privileges unless there is an explicit legal provision to that effect, or unless the House adopts a specific resolution limiting the power. The House has never set a limit on its power to order the production of papers and records.
The same point is made in the letter from the Commons Law Clerk, Rob Walsh, to the Commons special committee on Afghanistan last December. The committee, he wrote
is at all times to be seen as carrying out its constitutional function of holding the Government to account. This is fundamental to responsible government and more particularly to the relationship between the Government and the House and its committees… The law of parliamentary privilege provides that this relationship operates unencumbered by legal constraints that might otherwise seem applicable…
This is not an exception to the law; it is the law. It does not mean the House of Commons is above the law, or that members may break the law with impunity. It means statute law does not trump the law of parliamentary privilege, which is of constitutional weight.
Moreover, Walsh argues, even if parliamentary privilege did not apply, Crown privilege — the “long-standing legal presumption that a statute does not apply against the Crown unless this is provided expressly in the statute” — does. The Canada Evidence Act, in particular, may forbid others from releasing certain types of information, but it does not prevent the government from doing so. Quite the contrary: two provisions of the Act expressly permit government this discretion.
In other words, the whole “legal obligations” thing is a canard. It’s the same dodge the government was using from the start, when it claimed to be releasing all “legally available” information. The government is under no legal constraint not to disclose information to the committee. On the other hand, it is legally constrained to comply with the comittee’s demands for documents, as enforced by a vote of the House on December 10.
In case there was any doubt, the issue was raised in Parliament, Walsh notes, at the time the Canada Evidence Act was drafted. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice responded:
It would not be the intention of the bill to alter the current status of Parliament’s subpoena powers and privileges…
Having stated this for our parliamentary record so that the intention of the House is clear, an amendment was made to the bill … yesterday for the same purpose of clarifying our intention that Parliament’s privilege to send [for] persons, papers and records not be affected by this legislation.
Indeed, the Justice department concedes as much in its reply to the Law Clerk’s letter. “Section 38 of the Canada Evidence Act has no application to parliamentary committee proceedings,” it acknowledges, appealing instead to “the values that inform legislation passed by Parliament,” and to “the parliamentary convention that injurious information should not be disclosed in a parliamentary setting.”
So if the prime minister is still invoking his “legal obligations,” it can only mean his position hasn’t changed a whit. When he speaks of the need to balance one obligation against another, it really means he intends to defy the Speaker and stonewall Parliament.
I’m with colleague Wells, then: the negotiations into which the government has lately entered are in all likelihood a diversion. The aim is to stall, and probe for divisions within and between the parties, notably the Liberals’ palpable fear of an election. The differences between government and opposition will be made to appear as if they were over questions of detail, rather than fundamental principles. So that when, inevitably, the negotiations break down, the government will sigh and claim that it went the extra mile, as it strove to balance its conflicting obligations, but was thwarted by an intransigent and unreasonable opposition.
ADDENDUM: The Speaker is not, as Norman Spector says, the Pope. He is, however, likely to be the last word on this subject, at least until the Commons itself speaks. (The Speaker can only rule on whether there is a prima facie case for a breach of privilege. It is for the House to decide whether the government is in contempt, together with whatever remedies it sees fit.)
It’s always open to the government to refer the whole matter to the Supreme Court, as Norm says, but the Court is not obliged to answer every question put to it, still less to answer as the government would wish. And there is simply no way on God’s green Earth that the Court is going to tread upon parliamentary privilege.
This is one of the holiest precepts in English constitutional law. It’s the reason they fought the Civil War. It’s one of the central demands upheld in the Bill of Rights of 1689: The courts may not intrude upon the inner workings of Parliament — any more than the King can.
by Andrew Coyne
Saturday, May 1, 2010
source
Day three after the Ruling that Saved Our System of Government, and the Tories have achieved their initial objective: total strategic confusion. Is Stephen Harper now prepared to accept opposition demands that a parliamentary committee be given access to the documents in the Afghan detainees affair? Or is he digging in his heels, as unwilling to compromise as ever?
I don’t know. But a clue to the Prime Minister’s state of mind can be found in his repeated invocation of the government’s “legal obligations.” Responding to questions in the House Wednesday, Harper said, variously:
Mr. Speaker, as I have said, we look forward to both complying with your ruling and with the legal obligations that have been established by statutes passed by this Parliament.
and
The government has certain obligations that are established under statutes passed by this Parliament. We obviously want to proceed in a way that will respect both of those things, and of course we will be open to any reasonable suggestions to achieve those two objectives.
and
You have delivered a decision. Obviously, the government seeks to respect that decision. At the same time, it seeks to respect its obligations established by statute and passed by this Parliament.
and
The government seeks at all times to respect all of its obligations. To the extent that some of those obligations may be in conflict, there are reasonable ways to accommodate that and we are open to reasonable suggestions in that regard.
and
The government cannot break the law, it cannot order public servants to break the law, nor can it do anything that would unnecessarily jeopardize the safety of Canadian troops.
You can appreciate the Prime Minister’s dilemma. He is obliged to balance two competing claims: on the one hand, to comply with the Speaker’s ruling enjoining him to respect the House’s demand that he produce the documents; and on the other, to comply with his “legal obligations” not to produce them. Don’t you see? The Speaker is asking him to break the law.
What’s a Prime Minister to do? Parliament has passed legislation, notably the Canada Evidence Act, forbidding the government or its employees from disclosing certain documents. And yet here is one of the Houses of that same Parliament, the Commons, backed by its Speaker, demanding that he should disclose those same documents. What could be more reasonable than to seek some way to balance those competing demands?
Except the whole argument’s bogus. No one is asking the Prime Minister to break the law. The conflict of which he complains exists only in his head. This was a key point in the Speaker’s ruling: a law may impose a general prohibition on the release of certain documents, but unless it expressly states that the ban applies to Parliament, it doesn’t. The presumption, that is, is in favour of parliamentary privilege.
I quote from page 20 of the Speaker’s ruling, where he cites House of Commons Procedure and Practice, pp. 978-9:
No statute or practice diminishes the fullness of the power rooted in the House privileges unless there is an explicit legal provision to that effect, or unless the House adopts a specific resolution limiting the power. The House has never set a limit on its power to order the production of papers and records.
The same point is made in the letter from the Commons Law Clerk, Rob Walsh, to the Commons special committee on Afghanistan last December. The committee, he wrote
is at all times to be seen as carrying out its constitutional function of holding the Government to account. This is fundamental to responsible government and more particularly to the relationship between the Government and the House and its committees… The law of parliamentary privilege provides that this relationship operates unencumbered by legal constraints that might otherwise seem applicable…
This is not an exception to the law; it is the law. It does not mean the House of Commons is above the law, or that members may break the law with impunity. It means statute law does not trump the law of parliamentary privilege, which is of constitutional weight.
Moreover, Walsh argues, even if parliamentary privilege did not apply, Crown privilege — the “long-standing legal presumption that a statute does not apply against the Crown unless this is provided expressly in the statute” — does. The Canada Evidence Act, in particular, may forbid others from releasing certain types of information, but it does not prevent the government from doing so. Quite the contrary: two provisions of the Act expressly permit government this discretion.
In other words, the whole “legal obligations” thing is a canard. It’s the same dodge the government was using from the start, when it claimed to be releasing all “legally available” information. The government is under no legal constraint not to disclose information to the committee. On the other hand, it is legally constrained to comply with the comittee’s demands for documents, as enforced by a vote of the House on December 10.
In case there was any doubt, the issue was raised in Parliament, Walsh notes, at the time the Canada Evidence Act was drafted. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice responded:
It would not be the intention of the bill to alter the current status of Parliament’s subpoena powers and privileges…
Having stated this for our parliamentary record so that the intention of the House is clear, an amendment was made to the bill … yesterday for the same purpose of clarifying our intention that Parliament’s privilege to send [for] persons, papers and records not be affected by this legislation.
Indeed, the Justice department concedes as much in its reply to the Law Clerk’s letter. “Section 38 of the Canada Evidence Act has no application to parliamentary committee proceedings,” it acknowledges, appealing instead to “the values that inform legislation passed by Parliament,” and to “the parliamentary convention that injurious information should not be disclosed in a parliamentary setting.”
So if the prime minister is still invoking his “legal obligations,” it can only mean his position hasn’t changed a whit. When he speaks of the need to balance one obligation against another, it really means he intends to defy the Speaker and stonewall Parliament.
I’m with colleague Wells, then: the negotiations into which the government has lately entered are in all likelihood a diversion. The aim is to stall, and probe for divisions within and between the parties, notably the Liberals’ palpable fear of an election. The differences between government and opposition will be made to appear as if they were over questions of detail, rather than fundamental principles. So that when, inevitably, the negotiations break down, the government will sigh and claim that it went the extra mile, as it strove to balance its conflicting obligations, but was thwarted by an intransigent and unreasonable opposition.
ADDENDUM: The Speaker is not, as Norman Spector says, the Pope. He is, however, likely to be the last word on this subject, at least until the Commons itself speaks. (The Speaker can only rule on whether there is a prima facie case for a breach of privilege. It is for the House to decide whether the government is in contempt, together with whatever remedies it sees fit.)
It’s always open to the government to refer the whole matter to the Supreme Court, as Norm says, but the Court is not obliged to answer every question put to it, still less to answer as the government would wish. And there is simply no way on God’s green Earth that the Court is going to tread upon parliamentary privilege.
This is one of the holiest precepts in English constitutional law. It’s the reason they fought the Civil War. It’s one of the central demands upheld in the Bill of Rights of 1689: The courts may not intrude upon the inner workings of Parliament — any more than the King can.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Scared for the Sacred Headwaters
BC’s most endangered waterway remains threatened despite extended moratorium
Groups call for ban on coalbed methane drilling in Sacred Headwaters
For Immediate Release – April 29, 2010
Hazelton, BC – A permanent ban on coalbed methane drilling is required to protect wild salmon habitat in B.C.’s Sacred Headwaters say Northwest B.C. groups. The groups were reacting to government speculation that the current two-year drilling moratorium will remain in place beyond 2012.
“The B.C. government demonstrated leadership by putting the moratorium in place in 2008, but extending the moratorium does not resolve the issue. It’s time to take the final step toward permanent safeguards for the Sacred Headwaters,” said Pat Moss with Friends of Wild Salmon.
In 2008, the BC government imposed a moratorium on Shell’s coalbed methane exploration for a minimum of two years – and not exceeding four years – to allow time for First Nations and other communities to determine the impact of development on water. On a Global TV program on Monday, Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources Blair Lekstrom stated that, the moratorium had to continue “until there is consultation and agreement with local communities…it looks as though 2012 would be the expiration of the agreement.”
“I think government is trying to do the right thing,” said Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition executive director Shannon McPhail. “We have seen the disturbance coalbed methane causes on the land – even under the best case scenarios – and it’s simply unacceptable. Rather than conducting further studies and consultation, which will only reaffirm our opposition, let’s use the extension period to create a long-term solution for the Sacred Headwaters.”
Both Friends of Wild Salmon and the Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition are calling on the B.C. government to permanently safeguard the Sacred Headwaters instead.
“A permanent ban on drilling would end the conflict, protect B.C.’s most endangered waterway and provide long-term certainty. Coalbed methane would be a huge source of greenhouse gases; foregoing its development would be consistent with the government’s green energy agenda. It would be a win-win for government, residents and our wild salmon,” said McPhail.
Located in northern B.C. east of Iskut, the Sacred Headwaters is the shared birthplace of three of the province’s most important salmon rivers: the Skeena, Nass and Stikine. It is often called the “Serengeti of the North” for its abundant wildlife populations. Earlier this month, the BC Outdoor Recreation Council listed the Sacred Headwaters as B.C.’s most endangered waterway.
For more information, please contact:
Shannon McPhail, Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition Executive Director – (250) 842-2494 or Cellular (250) 842-8738
Pat Moss, Friends of Wild Salmon Coordinator – (250) 847-9693 or Cellular (250) 877-9745
Groups call for ban on coalbed methane drilling in Sacred Headwaters
For Immediate Release – April 29, 2010
Hazelton, BC – A permanent ban on coalbed methane drilling is required to protect wild salmon habitat in B.C.’s Sacred Headwaters say Northwest B.C. groups. The groups were reacting to government speculation that the current two-year drilling moratorium will remain in place beyond 2012.
“The B.C. government demonstrated leadership by putting the moratorium in place in 2008, but extending the moratorium does not resolve the issue. It’s time to take the final step toward permanent safeguards for the Sacred Headwaters,” said Pat Moss with Friends of Wild Salmon.
In 2008, the BC government imposed a moratorium on Shell’s coalbed methane exploration for a minimum of two years – and not exceeding four years – to allow time for First Nations and other communities to determine the impact of development on water. On a Global TV program on Monday, Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources Blair Lekstrom stated that, the moratorium had to continue “until there is consultation and agreement with local communities…it looks as though 2012 would be the expiration of the agreement.”
“I think government is trying to do the right thing,” said Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition executive director Shannon McPhail. “We have seen the disturbance coalbed methane causes on the land – even under the best case scenarios – and it’s simply unacceptable. Rather than conducting further studies and consultation, which will only reaffirm our opposition, let’s use the extension period to create a long-term solution for the Sacred Headwaters.”
Both Friends of Wild Salmon and the Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition are calling on the B.C. government to permanently safeguard the Sacred Headwaters instead.
“A permanent ban on drilling would end the conflict, protect B.C.’s most endangered waterway and provide long-term certainty. Coalbed methane would be a huge source of greenhouse gases; foregoing its development would be consistent with the government’s green energy agenda. It would be a win-win for government, residents and our wild salmon,” said McPhail.
Located in northern B.C. east of Iskut, the Sacred Headwaters is the shared birthplace of three of the province’s most important salmon rivers: the Skeena, Nass and Stikine. It is often called the “Serengeti of the North” for its abundant wildlife populations. Earlier this month, the BC Outdoor Recreation Council listed the Sacred Headwaters as B.C.’s most endangered waterway.
For more information, please contact:
Shannon McPhail, Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition Executive Director – (250) 842-2494 or Cellular (250) 842-8738
Pat Moss, Friends of Wild Salmon Coordinator – (250) 847-9693 or Cellular (250) 877-9745
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Mainstream Green Groups Cave On Climate
Published on Tuesday, April 20, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Mainstream Green Groups Cave In on Climate
Dangerously Allow Industry to Set Agenda
by Gary Houser and Cory Morningstar
source
"Governments will not put young people and nature above special financial interests without great public pressure. Such pressure is not possible as long as big environmental organizations provide cover. So the best hope is this -- individuals must demand that the leaders change course or they will lose support." - Dr. James Hansen
With climate scientists warning that we are in a global emergency and tipping points leading to runaway catastrophe will be crossed unless carbon pollution is rapidly reduced, one would expect groups identified as environmental defenders to be shifting into high gear. Instead, we are witnessing the unspeakably tragic spectacle of a mainstream environmental movement allowing itself to be seduced and co-opted by the very forces it should be vehemently opposing. At the very moment when moral leadership and courage are needed the most, what we see is a colossal failure of both - with potentially irreversible consequences for our civilization. If Congress chooses an inadequate response to the crisis, policies can get "locked in" which virtually guarantee that these tipping points are crossed. These organizations are using their significant financial resources to create a public impression that the "environmental community" has given its "stamp of approval" to this policy and to marginalize the voices of the genuine grassroots activists who represent the heart and soul of the climate movement. With nothing less than the future of the planet at stake, these groups must now be publicly challenged and held accountable for their actions.
The stage has been set for this necessary debate by publication of Johann Hari's excellent commentary entitled "The Wrong Kind of Green". In this piece, Hari provides important insight into some of the relevant history. He describes how in the 1980s and 1990s some of the larger environmental groups began to adopt a policy often called "corporate engagement". The basic idea was that by participating in "partnerships" with corporations - some involving receipt of monetary contributions - there would be opportunity to exert positive influence.
It is not possible to look into the minds of those who promoted this shift. Perhaps there was a sincere hope that corporations would be moved toward more responsible behavior. Whatever the case, the critically important task at this time is not to evaluate possible motives but rather the real life consequences. To do so honestly, all self-interested blinders must be set aside.
The truth is that this policy has created a "slippery slope" leading to severely compromised stances - nowhere more apparent than in regard to the over-arching issue of climate. In 2007, a coalition was formed between corporations and environmental organizations called the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, or USCAP - whose purpose was to influence U.S. climate legislation. Some of the large groups that joined were Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the Nature Conservancy, and National Wildlife Foundation. In January 2009, USCAP presented its proposals and these became the framework of the Waxman-Markey bill.
The physical context is that previously projected worst case scenarios are already being surpassed and humanity is running out of time. Ice is melting far more rapidly than expected, releasing the "albedo effect" where open water absorbs more heat and accelerates further melting. The normally quite cautious National Science Foundation is ringing alarm bells about the methane - a greenhouse gas over 30 times as powerful as CO2 - now venting from the Siberian seabeds. According to the NSF statement: "Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming." These are only two examples of "reinforcing feedbacks" that can significantly move the process closer to tipping points.
Within a context so dire that in reality a war-time level of mobilization is needed, what kind of legislation is being offered? First of all, the emission reduction targets themselves - apart from the theoretical strategies for achieving them - categorically ignore the science. The goals do not even aim at stabilization at 350 ppm (let alone the lower figures more likely to be necessary) and the time frame for enacting meaningful reductions is not even remotely close to the speed needed to prevent disaster.
Beyond the issue of targets is that of reduction strategies. USCAP would like to see a trillion dollar carbon market put into place, where traders can claim "pollution rights" to the sky and seek profits from the exchange of such "rights". Such a system - which would determine whether life-supporting ecosystems survive or collapse - would be placed into the same manipulative hands on Wall Street that brought on the financial meltdown. As this commentary goes to press, several traders in the European carbon market (the world's prototype) have been arrested in connection with a massive fraud estimated at $6.75 billion. While some of us lay in the street in nonviolent civil disobedience to block this immoral atrocity (including one of the authors), NRDC and EDF are sending their own people to promote it at carbon trade conferences.
The next immoral concession is to allow the industry to "buy" its way out of actually reducing emissions by supporting so-called "offsets" - such as forest preservation projects in the developing world. Sounding plausible in theory, offsets are actually riddled with verification issues and defects such as loggers simply moving elsewhere. But the bottomline "wrong" here is that any form of offsetting should never be looked at as an alternative to reducing emissions. It should only be seen as an additional action to take.
Then there is the unbelievable capitulation represented by the removal of EPA authority to regulate coal-burning. Now that the EPA has finally been empowered by the Supreme Court to act against a carbon-fueled ecocide, this ability has been effectively stripped from the House bill without a murmur from the USCAP "greens". The result of all these concessions is a pathetically weak bill that the Congressional Budget Office estimates will not even begin to reduce emissions until 2018. Other studies indicate that if all available offsets are used, reductions could actually be postponed an astonishing 19 years until 2029.
The USCAP "greens" proclaim that their positions are being driven by "political expediency". But there is a stunning "disconnect" which these groups have been reticent to address. How does one negotiate with a melting iceberg? Can the inexorable laws of physics be placed "on hold" while emission reductions are scuttled in a process of political "horse-trading"? What is the meaning of "expediency" when it leads to the collapse of society as we know it? John Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Reseach, stated at the "4 Degrees and Beyond" conference at Oxford that "political reality must be grounded in physical reality or it is completely useless".
The Sierra Club is experiencing what may be a positive change in leadership and to its credit has not adopted the policy of "corporate engagement" described, yet it has failed to truly mobilize its base against the dangerous shortcomings of the USCAP endorsed legislation. In 2008, the Sierra Club bestowed its highest honor - the John Muir Award - to climate scientist Dr. James Hansen. In presenting the award, Sierra Club President Allison Chin said: "He is truly a hero for preserving the environment". How does the Sierra Club reconcile the honoring of this man for warning the world and then essentially ignore his core message that present climate legislation is based on false solutions that will waste precious time?
NRDC and EDF, on the other hand, have gone far beyond mere silence. While their websites claim a dedication to public service ( NRDC's motto is "The Earth's Best Defense"), they have been actively promoting the USCAP accomodation. If they had not lost sight of their original missions, they would have sought out members of Congress willing to stand up to the fossil fuel industry and used their resources (in 2008, NRDC had an operational budget of 87 million dollars) to throw weight behind them. Instead of emboldening this kind of voice, they have done the exact opposite by allowing industry to define what is "feasible".
The real climate movement - the one with its backbone intact and composed of grassroots activists and principled groups like Friends of the Earth and Center for Biological Diversity - is already in a "David versus Goliath" situation as it tries to confront the most powerful lobby in the country. But that task has been made infinitely more difficult by these big budget groups using their money to isolate and "box in" the smaller ones.
We close this commentary with the following direct appeal to both the leadership and the members of these groups that have chosen the path of accommodation:
The verdict is in. Your experiment in "corporate engagement" has resulted in a disastrous failure that now threatens the planet. We fully expected the massive campaign from the fossil fuel industry to strip any substance from this legislation. But you have blindsided those of us who are fighting with all our hearts for the future of the earth. Your coffers have grown and now you are using this money to drown us out.
Your stance does not represent those in the grassroots movement, many of whom are young and see the disasters that are looming within their own lifetimes. In your comfortable offices, you do not speak for those willing to put themselves on the line and engage in nonviolent civil disobedience against the very forces you seek to accomodate. The rationale for your corporate "partnerships" was the issue of exerting influence. But the question begging to be asked is who influenced whom? Though your treasury is more full, what truly has been gained and what has been lost?
Your intentions may have been honorable, but the agenda of "defending earth" has been hijacked. Along the way, your vision became blurred and you lost sight of this mission. In this "experiment', you are the ones who have been "had". It now appears to have been a terrible Faustian bargain, and we are all paying the price. At the very moment of greatest need for an empowered public advocacy in the face of the most overwhelming threat in human history, your leadership is not to be found.
Your accommodation and your defense of abominably weak Congressional legislation has already had a destructive global impact. It was this legislation that set the bar intolerably low in Copenhagen and instigated a "race to the bottom". The entire world-wide movement for climate sanity has become blocked by the denial, blindness, and paralysis embodied in U.S. climate policy. When you take this stance in the name of "defending the earth", you are actually creating an insidious and dangerous deception.
For the sake of the planet, we appeal to your organizations to reclaim the integrity of your original visions. The position you presently advocate will squander the precious little time we have to implement true reductions before the irreversible tipping points are crossed. The stakes could not be higher. We ask that you join hands with the grassroots activists and groups and support the following eight points:
1) Officially recognize that we are truly in a global emergency and that irreversible tipping points are likely to be crossed if humanity does not act in time;
2) Officially recognize that this emergency is of such a magnitude that a war time level of mobilization is needed in order to effectively deal with it;
3) Stand squarely for the necessity that climate legislation be based on the setting of emission reduction targets and a time frame which are defined by the science;
4) Due to the severe ecosystem damage that will ensue in response to a 2 degree (celsius) rise, an overall goal of no more than one degree (celsius) rise must be sought;
5) Clearly renounce cap and trade and offsets as false solutions that will squander precious time;
6) Stand squarely against any attempt in Congress to strip EPA of its authority to regulate carbon;
7) Support a comprehensive approach to the crisis that combines elements of legislation, regulation, and public investment;
8) Support a legislative component based on a continually rising carbon fee with a 100% distribution of the proceeds to U.S. citizens, with the amount of the fee determined by an emission reduction schedule driven by science.
We also ask the members of these groups to withhold their organizational support until their leadership recognizes the necessity of these changes. On this defining issue of our time, may we strive to remove the barriers that divide us and work together.
Gary Houser is a public interest writer, documentary producer, and activist with Climate SOS seeking to raise awareness within the religious community (here) about the moral issues at stake and working to create a more empowered climate movement.
Cory Morningstar, in addition to being a mom, is an activist with Canadians for Action on Climate Change and has collated latest scientific findings here.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/20-1
Mainstream Green Groups Cave In on Climate
Dangerously Allow Industry to Set Agenda
by Gary Houser and Cory Morningstar
source
"Governments will not put young people and nature above special financial interests without great public pressure. Such pressure is not possible as long as big environmental organizations provide cover. So the best hope is this -- individuals must demand that the leaders change course or they will lose support." - Dr. James Hansen
With climate scientists warning that we are in a global emergency and tipping points leading to runaway catastrophe will be crossed unless carbon pollution is rapidly reduced, one would expect groups identified as environmental defenders to be shifting into high gear. Instead, we are witnessing the unspeakably tragic spectacle of a mainstream environmental movement allowing itself to be seduced and co-opted by the very forces it should be vehemently opposing. At the very moment when moral leadership and courage are needed the most, what we see is a colossal failure of both - with potentially irreversible consequences for our civilization. If Congress chooses an inadequate response to the crisis, policies can get "locked in" which virtually guarantee that these tipping points are crossed. These organizations are using their significant financial resources to create a public impression that the "environmental community" has given its "stamp of approval" to this policy and to marginalize the voices of the genuine grassroots activists who represent the heart and soul of the climate movement. With nothing less than the future of the planet at stake, these groups must now be publicly challenged and held accountable for their actions.
The stage has been set for this necessary debate by publication of Johann Hari's excellent commentary entitled "The Wrong Kind of Green". In this piece, Hari provides important insight into some of the relevant history. He describes how in the 1980s and 1990s some of the larger environmental groups began to adopt a policy often called "corporate engagement". The basic idea was that by participating in "partnerships" with corporations - some involving receipt of monetary contributions - there would be opportunity to exert positive influence.
It is not possible to look into the minds of those who promoted this shift. Perhaps there was a sincere hope that corporations would be moved toward more responsible behavior. Whatever the case, the critically important task at this time is not to evaluate possible motives but rather the real life consequences. To do so honestly, all self-interested blinders must be set aside.
The truth is that this policy has created a "slippery slope" leading to severely compromised stances - nowhere more apparent than in regard to the over-arching issue of climate. In 2007, a coalition was formed between corporations and environmental organizations called the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, or USCAP - whose purpose was to influence U.S. climate legislation. Some of the large groups that joined were Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the Nature Conservancy, and National Wildlife Foundation. In January 2009, USCAP presented its proposals and these became the framework of the Waxman-Markey bill.
The physical context is that previously projected worst case scenarios are already being surpassed and humanity is running out of time. Ice is melting far more rapidly than expected, releasing the "albedo effect" where open water absorbs more heat and accelerates further melting. The normally quite cautious National Science Foundation is ringing alarm bells about the methane - a greenhouse gas over 30 times as powerful as CO2 - now venting from the Siberian seabeds. According to the NSF statement: "Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming." These are only two examples of "reinforcing feedbacks" that can significantly move the process closer to tipping points.
Within a context so dire that in reality a war-time level of mobilization is needed, what kind of legislation is being offered? First of all, the emission reduction targets themselves - apart from the theoretical strategies for achieving them - categorically ignore the science. The goals do not even aim at stabilization at 350 ppm (let alone the lower figures more likely to be necessary) and the time frame for enacting meaningful reductions is not even remotely close to the speed needed to prevent disaster.
Beyond the issue of targets is that of reduction strategies. USCAP would like to see a trillion dollar carbon market put into place, where traders can claim "pollution rights" to the sky and seek profits from the exchange of such "rights". Such a system - which would determine whether life-supporting ecosystems survive or collapse - would be placed into the same manipulative hands on Wall Street that brought on the financial meltdown. As this commentary goes to press, several traders in the European carbon market (the world's prototype) have been arrested in connection with a massive fraud estimated at $6.75 billion. While some of us lay in the street in nonviolent civil disobedience to block this immoral atrocity (including one of the authors), NRDC and EDF are sending their own people to promote it at carbon trade conferences.
The next immoral concession is to allow the industry to "buy" its way out of actually reducing emissions by supporting so-called "offsets" - such as forest preservation projects in the developing world. Sounding plausible in theory, offsets are actually riddled with verification issues and defects such as loggers simply moving elsewhere. But the bottomline "wrong" here is that any form of offsetting should never be looked at as an alternative to reducing emissions. It should only be seen as an additional action to take.
Then there is the unbelievable capitulation represented by the removal of EPA authority to regulate coal-burning. Now that the EPA has finally been empowered by the Supreme Court to act against a carbon-fueled ecocide, this ability has been effectively stripped from the House bill without a murmur from the USCAP "greens". The result of all these concessions is a pathetically weak bill that the Congressional Budget Office estimates will not even begin to reduce emissions until 2018. Other studies indicate that if all available offsets are used, reductions could actually be postponed an astonishing 19 years until 2029.
The USCAP "greens" proclaim that their positions are being driven by "political expediency". But there is a stunning "disconnect" which these groups have been reticent to address. How does one negotiate with a melting iceberg? Can the inexorable laws of physics be placed "on hold" while emission reductions are scuttled in a process of political "horse-trading"? What is the meaning of "expediency" when it leads to the collapse of society as we know it? John Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Reseach, stated at the "4 Degrees and Beyond" conference at Oxford that "political reality must be grounded in physical reality or it is completely useless".
The Sierra Club is experiencing what may be a positive change in leadership and to its credit has not adopted the policy of "corporate engagement" described, yet it has failed to truly mobilize its base against the dangerous shortcomings of the USCAP endorsed legislation. In 2008, the Sierra Club bestowed its highest honor - the John Muir Award - to climate scientist Dr. James Hansen. In presenting the award, Sierra Club President Allison Chin said: "He is truly a hero for preserving the environment". How does the Sierra Club reconcile the honoring of this man for warning the world and then essentially ignore his core message that present climate legislation is based on false solutions that will waste precious time?
NRDC and EDF, on the other hand, have gone far beyond mere silence. While their websites claim a dedication to public service ( NRDC's motto is "The Earth's Best Defense"), they have been actively promoting the USCAP accomodation. If they had not lost sight of their original missions, they would have sought out members of Congress willing to stand up to the fossil fuel industry and used their resources (in 2008, NRDC had an operational budget of 87 million dollars) to throw weight behind them. Instead of emboldening this kind of voice, they have done the exact opposite by allowing industry to define what is "feasible".
The real climate movement - the one with its backbone intact and composed of grassroots activists and principled groups like Friends of the Earth and Center for Biological Diversity - is already in a "David versus Goliath" situation as it tries to confront the most powerful lobby in the country. But that task has been made infinitely more difficult by these big budget groups using their money to isolate and "box in" the smaller ones.
We close this commentary with the following direct appeal to both the leadership and the members of these groups that have chosen the path of accommodation:
The verdict is in. Your experiment in "corporate engagement" has resulted in a disastrous failure that now threatens the planet. We fully expected the massive campaign from the fossil fuel industry to strip any substance from this legislation. But you have blindsided those of us who are fighting with all our hearts for the future of the earth. Your coffers have grown and now you are using this money to drown us out.
Your stance does not represent those in the grassroots movement, many of whom are young and see the disasters that are looming within their own lifetimes. In your comfortable offices, you do not speak for those willing to put themselves on the line and engage in nonviolent civil disobedience against the very forces you seek to accomodate. The rationale for your corporate "partnerships" was the issue of exerting influence. But the question begging to be asked is who influenced whom? Though your treasury is more full, what truly has been gained and what has been lost?
Your intentions may have been honorable, but the agenda of "defending earth" has been hijacked. Along the way, your vision became blurred and you lost sight of this mission. In this "experiment', you are the ones who have been "had". It now appears to have been a terrible Faustian bargain, and we are all paying the price. At the very moment of greatest need for an empowered public advocacy in the face of the most overwhelming threat in human history, your leadership is not to be found.
Your accommodation and your defense of abominably weak Congressional legislation has already had a destructive global impact. It was this legislation that set the bar intolerably low in Copenhagen and instigated a "race to the bottom". The entire world-wide movement for climate sanity has become blocked by the denial, blindness, and paralysis embodied in U.S. climate policy. When you take this stance in the name of "defending the earth", you are actually creating an insidious and dangerous deception.
For the sake of the planet, we appeal to your organizations to reclaim the integrity of your original visions. The position you presently advocate will squander the precious little time we have to implement true reductions before the irreversible tipping points are crossed. The stakes could not be higher. We ask that you join hands with the grassroots activists and groups and support the following eight points:
1) Officially recognize that we are truly in a global emergency and that irreversible tipping points are likely to be crossed if humanity does not act in time;
2) Officially recognize that this emergency is of such a magnitude that a war time level of mobilization is needed in order to effectively deal with it;
3) Stand squarely for the necessity that climate legislation be based on the setting of emission reduction targets and a time frame which are defined by the science;
4) Due to the severe ecosystem damage that will ensue in response to a 2 degree (celsius) rise, an overall goal of no more than one degree (celsius) rise must be sought;
5) Clearly renounce cap and trade and offsets as false solutions that will squander precious time;
6) Stand squarely against any attempt in Congress to strip EPA of its authority to regulate carbon;
7) Support a comprehensive approach to the crisis that combines elements of legislation, regulation, and public investment;
8) Support a legislative component based on a continually rising carbon fee with a 100% distribution of the proceeds to U.S. citizens, with the amount of the fee determined by an emission reduction schedule driven by science.
We also ask the members of these groups to withhold their organizational support until their leadership recognizes the necessity of these changes. On this defining issue of our time, may we strive to remove the barriers that divide us and work together.
Gary Houser is a public interest writer, documentary producer, and activist with Climate SOS seeking to raise awareness within the religious community (here) about the moral issues at stake and working to create a more empowered climate movement.
Cory Morningstar, in addition to being a mom, is an activist with Canadians for Action on Climate Change and has collated latest scientific findings here.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/20-1
DANDELIONS: Miracles in your front yard
DANDELIONS: Miracles in your front yard (plus dandelion tincture recipe)
April 17, 2010 by Myra Eddy
source
The dandelion is a much maligned meadow plant, a native of Europe. Americans fiercely and defiantly dig out and poison this miracle plant, for no obvious reason other than they think they should. I started thinking for myself, and I have found out quite a bit about this miracle plant.
All parts of the dandelion are useful, for many things. The blossom of the dandelion is beautiful to behold. I can’t think of a plant that reminds me more of the beauty of the sun in early spring. The heads can be collected and made into wine. Dandelion wine is a great thing to make with friends, as debudding the heads is a time consuming activity that is enjoyable in a crowd of good conversation. (Link to wines and fermentation article.) Dandelion buds and flowers can also be breaded and deep fried for a southern culinary delight (anything tastes good breaded and deep fried!). My daughter would also attest to the usefulness of dandelion heads after they flower in their abilities to manifest wishes. Just remember, don’t tell what you wish and believe it will happen as hard as you can.
Dandelion leaves are one of the most nutritious of all greens. According to a USDA health bulletin: “dandelions are nature’s richest green vegetable source of beta-carotene, from which Vitamin A is created, and the third richest source of Vitamin A of all foods, after cod-liver oil and beef liver! They also are particularly rich in fiber, potassium, iron, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus and the B vitamins, thiamine and riboflavin, and are a good source of protein.” Grown in nutritious soil, dandelions may also be rich in micronutrients “such as copper, cobalt, zinc, boron, and molybdenum, as well as Vitamin D.” Like all leafy greens, dandelions are also contain a lot of calcium, protein Vitamin C, and fiber.
In early spring, before flowering, dandelion leaves are quite tasty and tender. After flowering and prolonged heat from the sun, the leaves tend to get tough and more bitter. However, dandelion leaves can still be eaten in cooked foods, which helps reduce any anxiety regarding the texture and taste. Personally, I like the wild taste of dandelions, and the bitterness perks up my liver like nothing else. Dandelion roots can be roasted and used for a coffee-like drink.
Dandelions are incredibly healthy for our bodies. Does this health come from the abundance of vitamins and minerals? Or is it just that dandelions are an awesome natural medicine with no known side effects? Dandelions are particularly useful for supporting the liver. The function of the liver is to detoxify our bodies, and as civilized people, we are in desperate need of that. Not only does the liver process and discard actual toxins, it also processes the hormones produced by our bodies in response to our emotions. Dandelions function as a diuretic, aiding our bodies to rid itself of toxins through our urine. Dandelions also contain inulin, and have an effect on blood sugar levels, as well as helping to lower blood pressure.
Of course, I am not a doctor, and I am not promising dandelions will cure what ails you. But if you’re looking to function in and maintain a state of health, dandelions are worth checking into.
Recipe for dandelion tincture:
1. Gather big beautiful healthy looking dandelions, in full bloom.
2. Wash, then chop into ½- to 1-inch pieces, and pack tightly into jars.
3. When the jar is full, pour in alcohol. I used alcohol that was around 75%. You can use something like Everclear, and dilute it with water.
4. Snap a lid on, and your part of making the dandelion tincture is finished!
5. Each day, take a minute to push the dandelion parts back under the alcohol.
6. In six to twelve weeks, strain out the dandelion pieces and put the finished tincture into jars.
7. Take daily for good health!
Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
* Eating Dandelions
* Taraxcacon in Bloom
* Annual Praise for Dandelions
Friday, April 23, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Bush's mother drops RCMP lawsuit
Ian Bush's mother drops RCMP lawsuit
April 21, 2010
CBC News
Linda Bush says she could not justify putting herself and her family though the personal turmoil of a lawsuit.Linda Bush says she could not justify putting herself and her family though the personal turmoil of a lawsuit. (CBC)
The mother of Ian Bush, a man who was shot dead in an RCMP detachment in northern B.C., has dropped her lawsuit against the Mounties.
At a news conference held Wednesday with the RCMP, Linda Bush said that she is abandoning the lawsuit in connection with the death of her son, Ian Bush, because of changes the force has undertaken.
Ian Bush, 22, was shot in the back of the head at the RCMP detachment in Houston shortly after he was arrested for having an open beer at a hockey game in October 2005.
Linda Bush said the cost of the court case would have exceeded any damages she could have hoped to win and she could not justify putting herself and her family though the personal turmoil of a lawsuit.
'The only thing we really want is not within our reach.'—Linda Bush, mother of Ian Bush
"Nothing we can do will give Ian's life back to him, so the only thing we really want is not within our reach" she said at the news conference in Vancouver.
Bush said she decided to drop her lawsuit without any settlement after B.C. RCMP showed they were committed to have future deaths in custody investigated by external investigators.
"I have great expectations here," Bush said. "I don't really feel that I need to forgive. What I need to do is concentrate on their attitudes in the future.
Police promise changes
The RCMP are awaiting provincial changes to the way in-custody deaths are investigated in B.C, said Chief Supt. Craig Callens, deputy criminal operations officer for the province.
In the meantime, the force has brought in changes to ensure deaths in custody and other serious police incidents are subject to outside investigations, Callens said.
"The RCMP wants to ensure that our operations are as transparent as possible," he said.
"Public perception of police accountability is as important as anything. We recognize that we require that public trust."
Callens also outlined an existing program to install and upgrade video monitoring equipment in all 120 RCMP stations and detachments in B.C. by 2012.
4 inquiries into death
The death of Ian Bush was the subject of four investigations by the RCMP and external agencies, said Callens
The officer involved said he was attacked by Bush and shot him in self-defence. The two were alone in the station at the time of the shooting.
Ian Bush was shot at the Houston, B.C., detachment in October 2005 by an RCMP officer. Two inquiries have concluded the officer acted in self-defence.Ian Bush was shot at the Houston, B.C., detachment in October 2005 by an RCMP officer. Two inquiries have concluded the officer acted in self-defence. (CBC)
An internal RCMP inquiry into the shooting cleared the officer of any wrongdoing.
Linda Bush later launched her lawsuit against the RCMP.
A second inquiry by the Commission for Complaints Against the RCMP concluded in 2007 that the police internal investigation into the shooting was adequate and timely and that the officer was justified in using lethal force.
After the report was released, Linda Bush said she disagreed with the commission's conclusion.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2010/04/21/bc-ian-bush-rcmp-statement-linda.html#ixzz0lmrrRNCq
April 21, 2010
CBC News
Linda Bush says she could not justify putting herself and her family though the personal turmoil of a lawsuit.Linda Bush says she could not justify putting herself and her family though the personal turmoil of a lawsuit. (CBC)
The mother of Ian Bush, a man who was shot dead in an RCMP detachment in northern B.C., has dropped her lawsuit against the Mounties.
At a news conference held Wednesday with the RCMP, Linda Bush said that she is abandoning the lawsuit in connection with the death of her son, Ian Bush, because of changes the force has undertaken.
Ian Bush, 22, was shot in the back of the head at the RCMP detachment in Houston shortly after he was arrested for having an open beer at a hockey game in October 2005.
Linda Bush said the cost of the court case would have exceeded any damages she could have hoped to win and she could not justify putting herself and her family though the personal turmoil of a lawsuit.
'The only thing we really want is not within our reach.'—Linda Bush, mother of Ian Bush
"Nothing we can do will give Ian's life back to him, so the only thing we really want is not within our reach" she said at the news conference in Vancouver.
Bush said she decided to drop her lawsuit without any settlement after B.C. RCMP showed they were committed to have future deaths in custody investigated by external investigators.
"I have great expectations here," Bush said. "I don't really feel that I need to forgive. What I need to do is concentrate on their attitudes in the future.
Police promise changes
The RCMP are awaiting provincial changes to the way in-custody deaths are investigated in B.C, said Chief Supt. Craig Callens, deputy criminal operations officer for the province.
In the meantime, the force has brought in changes to ensure deaths in custody and other serious police incidents are subject to outside investigations, Callens said.
"The RCMP wants to ensure that our operations are as transparent as possible," he said.
"Public perception of police accountability is as important as anything. We recognize that we require that public trust."
Callens also outlined an existing program to install and upgrade video monitoring equipment in all 120 RCMP stations and detachments in B.C. by 2012.
4 inquiries into death
The death of Ian Bush was the subject of four investigations by the RCMP and external agencies, said Callens
The officer involved said he was attacked by Bush and shot him in self-defence. The two were alone in the station at the time of the shooting.
Ian Bush was shot at the Houston, B.C., detachment in October 2005 by an RCMP officer. Two inquiries have concluded the officer acted in self-defence.Ian Bush was shot at the Houston, B.C., detachment in October 2005 by an RCMP officer. Two inquiries have concluded the officer acted in self-defence. (CBC)
An internal RCMP inquiry into the shooting cleared the officer of any wrongdoing.
Linda Bush later launched her lawsuit against the RCMP.
A second inquiry by the Commission for Complaints Against the RCMP concluded in 2007 that the police internal investigation into the shooting was adequate and timely and that the officer was justified in using lethal force.
After the report was released, Linda Bush said she disagreed with the commission's conclusion.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2010/04/21/bc-ian-bush-rcmp-statement-linda.html#ixzz0lmrrRNCq
Monday, April 19, 2010
Who should care about the future of the university?
Who should care about the future of the university?
Does the University Have
a Future in the Network Society?
by Ian Angus l t r u t h o u t
Who should care about the future of the university? Why should they care?
The university used to be an elite institution that most working people rarely encountered. The training and socialization that the elite classes received prior to taking up leading positions in government and industry was arguably as much of a rite of passage as a search for enlightenment.
Of course, there were always those few for whom the love of knowledge and the reading of great texts was a consuming passion. But if one were concerned only with them, there would be few larger social issues to be raised about the university in society.
The situation is different now.
[For complete article reference links, please see source at Truthout here.]
In the United States and Canada, about a quarter of the working population has completed a university degree. Increasing attendance in higher education is an international trend that is deeply rooted in economic and technological changes. It is a trend that is not likely to reverse and countries that do not keep up will be confined to marginal status.
It has been said that we live in a knowledge society and there is no doubt that contemporary society is deeply committed to the extension of knowledge and its rapid utilization in innovations. This is true not only of scientific and technical knowledge, but also of social scientific and even humanistic pursuits to the extent that they can be oriented to the market. To this extent, the future of the university should provoke widespread social concern. Add to this the fact that the university has in recent years changed to such a degree that it hardly resembles what previous generations experienced under that name.
The corporate university has been waging a battle for some years now against the remaining features of the public university. The major means of this battle has been fiscal. Public funding of universities has consistently fallen for decades now and major issues about the functioning and purposes of the university need to be addressed. This fall in government funding has gone hand in hand with seeing education as simply an aid to the individual in confronting the job market, so that any larger social or public purposes lose their purchase. University administrations, on the whole, have avoided addressing larger questions of the social role of education or the current restructuring of the university directly because of their bureaucratic, rather than political, approach to university functioning. They have presented the new fiscal environment as an inescapable force that has inevitably turned them toward corporate sources of funding.
The university used to exist in a complex, double relationship to the modern state and the capitalist economy - in one sense dependent on them for resources and support and in another sense independent enough to make the claim to know the whole. The university was clearly inside society as a social institution dependent on other, more powerful institutions. But it was also outside society in the sense that its partial independence provided a standpoint from which the whole of society, history and nature could be represented as a form of knowledge. Knowledge understood as an organized totality - subdivided, but unified in a structural whole - that refers to and represents the world is the specifically modern form of knowledge. Knowledge in this specifically modern form confers structure and meaning on the modern university. This location and mission of the university has changed and much discussion thus far has emphasized the social and economic, that is to say, corporate factors, that have brought this about.
In the short term, one can resist the corporate model and call on the remaining resources of regions and the nation-state to protect the legacy of the public university. But we can't turn the clock backward. The citizenship role of the public university in the national economy cannot be reinstated in the same form in a global economy. Also, changes in the storage and transmission of knowledge means that the library has passed as the center of higher learning. How can humanistic studies be saved by being transformed? How can they face these new conditions with confidence in its past and a plan for facing the future?
Corporate factors are not the only ones at work here. Institutions are also being transformed by the contemporary interpenetration of technology and science - which can be called techno-science - that has brought about changes in knowledge production and transmission. These factors are always in practice bound up with social and economic forces, but they are not reducible to them. Under any conceivable social-economic regime, the contemporary transformations of knowledge undermine the traditional structure and rationale for the university and require a new, creative response - that is to say, techno-science is a product of modern society and not just of capitalism. These changes were well summed up in the recent statement by a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) official: "the university has lost its monopoly on the creation of knowledge." But this is a negative statement, a summary of what is no longer the case. Difficult as it is in a time of transition such as our own, real understanding requires some positive, content-filled account of the transformations that are underway.
The double, inside/outside relationship of the modern university to society meant that the university was both a social institution and a relatively independent standpoint from which the whole (of society, history and nature) could be represented in the form of knowledge. The end of the double relationship means that the university is in danger of being subsumed within society to become exclusively, one-sidedly, a servant of social interests. We can see emerging a university thoroughly immersed in socio-technical networks identical with those of the society as a whole. This indistinction between university and society implies the end of a standpoint from which one can represent the whole in the form of knowledge and the beginning of the production of forms of knowledge that have a directly social function. Knowledge-production becomes an action alongside other actions rather than a representation of the whole field of action.
The classic modern university, in its commitment to teaching and research, was based in the modern concept of knowledge: knowledge divided into specialized domains and yet unified in the role of enlightenment within the individual. The educated individual thus could participate rationally as a citizen in democratic self-government. The social role of knowledge is not imposed on the university from without, but is rooted in its own mission. But the specialization of contemporary research, the multiple and diverse applications to which it gives rise, its centrality to economic gain, can no longer be held within the precarious unity of its classical form. We live in a knowledge society, not only with the knowledge-based university and, while social application is constant and unproblematic, the question becomes whether there is any standpoint from which one can think the whole of society, history and nature.
In recent years, the idea of a network has come into increasingly common use in the social sciences and humanities. It is used both as a description of new social and technical relationships and also as an image, or metaphor, for the structure of society as a whole. The network society is that society in which information has become the dominant mode for the storage, processing, transmission and reception of knowledge. Here, we must be careful to understand knowledge not in the modern way as the representation of the world, but as a constitutive component of it. Knowledge, as externalized in technologies based in information, has become a central component of the process of production. The technology of information is not an isolated phenomenon, but is the active force shaping social possibilities in its own image. Also, information is pervasive, based on a networking logic, flexible and characterized by the convergence of technologies into an integrated system. The network society relegates hierarchy, control and repression to merely local features of the system and operates on a logic of linking and horizontal transfer.
It is no accident that the network, with its transversal flows and absence of hierarchy, for many commentators represents a utopia of social equality, a utopia that seems today to be within our grasp. For others, the loss of reflexivity and the lack of a standpoint from which to judge the whole is a symptom of decline. It is commonplace these days to style the latter as simply conservative and the former as simply liberal or progressive, but the situation is actually more complex. The question of the future of the university can be honed into two issues: What is the role of the university when it becomes one of many producers of knowledge in the form of technical innovation to the network? Is there a standpoint for reflexion from which the network can be described and evaluated for what it is? In a nutshell, what remains of the university's commitment to public knowledge and to social reflexion when it is reduced to being a node within a network?
It is important to keep in mind that while the network is transversal rather than hierarchical, an open rather than a closed system, that does not mean that it has eliminated social conflict and disagreement. The network is constantly changing due to the continuous introduction of new technologies that require changes in social organization. The manner of this social organization is not predetermined and is often subject to social contestation. In short, every new addition to the network raises more than one possibility of its incorporation; the actual manner of its incorporation advantages one group over another. Network society is thus traversed by social movements that struggle with established powers over the direction of innovations. There are many of these movements. Network society is not based on one basic social struggle or conflict, but upon an open-ended series of conflicts that are pointed out and addressed by a plurality of social movements.
In fact, it is even a more basic matter than social movements. Because the network is constantly changing, it destabilizes the identities of those who work and live within it, leading to a search for a viable identity within the current state of the network. This anxiety about identity within the network is what coalesces within social movements and drives them to contest specific innovations. The network is criss-crossed by power relations such that struggles over identity influence the actual form of innovations. Each of these movements poses issues about how to understand the current state of the network. These issues have entered the university and pose interesting philosophical and political questions for thinkers. This independence yet relationship between social movements and university-based researchers and teachers is the most interesting new phenomenon that has kept the university alive as a publicly relevant institution. The notion of the public is no longer confined to the political institutions of representative democracy, but has become a space of social reflexivity over the form of innovation and its relation to established and emergent powers. The university exercises its best contemporary role when it brings thoughtful reflection to bear on such public issues.
Rather than describe the phenomena that disturb the equilibrium of the network in detail, I would like to emphasize the logic of such disruption, since it is from these sources that the contemporary university can keep alive its public relevance: Continuous innovation in the network produces an anxiety about identity that leads to a search for identity with both individual and social dimensions. Social movements raise public issues about the current state of the network that can be usefully explored by university-based researchers and influence the public through their teaching, writing and expressions in other media. While the network appears to be a seamless pattern of transversal relations, it is actually a tensional pattern in which each relationship can be opened to public debate. What is going on when this occurs?
Let us look at the bit of information from which the network society is built. The bit of information is closed in upon itself, but open to an infinity of potential relationships. Similarly, network society does not offer a stable identity to its participants, but enlists them in a constantly changing set of relationships. But simply adding on more relationships does not constitute an identity. An identity is constructed when bits of information are connected into a meaningful whole. Such a meaningful whole can only be constructed when one's specific location in the network becomes the locus of a totalization, a vision of the whole. To state it in a formula: a node becomes an identity insofar as it embraces its place. Information becomes localized as knowledge, which is ultimately self-knowledge; the infinite spatio-temporality of the network becomes the lived time in place of a specific identity. This is the contemporary form of self-reflexion that could ground a new concept of enlightenment.
Information treats knowledge as a completed thing rather than an ongoing search. Even though the production process of knowledge disappears into information, it still takes place in the network society, though off stage, as it were, in the struggle for identity. The network is parasitic on the production of knowledge that it uses as information. Actually, one needs to distinguish two notions of knowledge here: it is certainly possible to produce new innovations through following out the implications of information already present in the network. However intelligent one might have to be to do this, it is confined to the recombination of existing information. Knowledge production, in the pregnant sense in which I am describing it here, refers to the meaningful whole from which bits of information are derived. In this sense, it is inseparable from the construction of identity. The anxiety about identity produced by the network thus motivates a search for self-knowledge that can produce new knowledge and not simply recombinations of information. It is not by attempting to restore a monopoly of knowledge that the university can find a contemporary public function, but by taking seriously the anxiety about identity and entering into the production of self-knowledge. At this point, the contemporary function of the university reaches back to touch its humanistic roots. The search for self-knowledge initiated by Socrates can take on a social function in the network society.
Ian Angus is a philosopher and social critic who teaches humanities at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. This is an excerpt from his recent book "Love the Questions: University Education and Enlightenment," published by Arbeiter Ring Publishing, which can be found here. His earlier book, "Emergent Publics: An Essay on Social Movements and Democracy," is from the same publisher.
Does the University Have
a Future in the Network Society?
by Ian Angus l t r u t h o u t
Who should care about the future of the university? Why should they care?
The university used to be an elite institution that most working people rarely encountered. The training and socialization that the elite classes received prior to taking up leading positions in government and industry was arguably as much of a rite of passage as a search for enlightenment.
Of course, there were always those few for whom the love of knowledge and the reading of great texts was a consuming passion. But if one were concerned only with them, there would be few larger social issues to be raised about the university in society.
The situation is different now.
[For complete article reference links, please see source at Truthout here.]
In the United States and Canada, about a quarter of the working population has completed a university degree. Increasing attendance in higher education is an international trend that is deeply rooted in economic and technological changes. It is a trend that is not likely to reverse and countries that do not keep up will be confined to marginal status.
It has been said that we live in a knowledge society and there is no doubt that contemporary society is deeply committed to the extension of knowledge and its rapid utilization in innovations. This is true not only of scientific and technical knowledge, but also of social scientific and even humanistic pursuits to the extent that they can be oriented to the market. To this extent, the future of the university should provoke widespread social concern. Add to this the fact that the university has in recent years changed to such a degree that it hardly resembles what previous generations experienced under that name.
The corporate university has been waging a battle for some years now against the remaining features of the public university. The major means of this battle has been fiscal. Public funding of universities has consistently fallen for decades now and major issues about the functioning and purposes of the university need to be addressed. This fall in government funding has gone hand in hand with seeing education as simply an aid to the individual in confronting the job market, so that any larger social or public purposes lose their purchase. University administrations, on the whole, have avoided addressing larger questions of the social role of education or the current restructuring of the university directly because of their bureaucratic, rather than political, approach to university functioning. They have presented the new fiscal environment as an inescapable force that has inevitably turned them toward corporate sources of funding.
The university used to exist in a complex, double relationship to the modern state and the capitalist economy - in one sense dependent on them for resources and support and in another sense independent enough to make the claim to know the whole. The university was clearly inside society as a social institution dependent on other, more powerful institutions. But it was also outside society in the sense that its partial independence provided a standpoint from which the whole of society, history and nature could be represented as a form of knowledge. Knowledge understood as an organized totality - subdivided, but unified in a structural whole - that refers to and represents the world is the specifically modern form of knowledge. Knowledge in this specifically modern form confers structure and meaning on the modern university. This location and mission of the university has changed and much discussion thus far has emphasized the social and economic, that is to say, corporate factors, that have brought this about.
In the short term, one can resist the corporate model and call on the remaining resources of regions and the nation-state to protect the legacy of the public university. But we can't turn the clock backward. The citizenship role of the public university in the national economy cannot be reinstated in the same form in a global economy. Also, changes in the storage and transmission of knowledge means that the library has passed as the center of higher learning. How can humanistic studies be saved by being transformed? How can they face these new conditions with confidence in its past and a plan for facing the future?
Corporate factors are not the only ones at work here. Institutions are also being transformed by the contemporary interpenetration of technology and science - which can be called techno-science - that has brought about changes in knowledge production and transmission. These factors are always in practice bound up with social and economic forces, but they are not reducible to them. Under any conceivable social-economic regime, the contemporary transformations of knowledge undermine the traditional structure and rationale for the university and require a new, creative response - that is to say, techno-science is a product of modern society and not just of capitalism. These changes were well summed up in the recent statement by a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) official: "the university has lost its monopoly on the creation of knowledge." But this is a negative statement, a summary of what is no longer the case. Difficult as it is in a time of transition such as our own, real understanding requires some positive, content-filled account of the transformations that are underway.
The double, inside/outside relationship of the modern university to society meant that the university was both a social institution and a relatively independent standpoint from which the whole (of society, history and nature) could be represented in the form of knowledge. The end of the double relationship means that the university is in danger of being subsumed within society to become exclusively, one-sidedly, a servant of social interests. We can see emerging a university thoroughly immersed in socio-technical networks identical with those of the society as a whole. This indistinction between university and society implies the end of a standpoint from which one can represent the whole in the form of knowledge and the beginning of the production of forms of knowledge that have a directly social function. Knowledge-production becomes an action alongside other actions rather than a representation of the whole field of action.
The classic modern university, in its commitment to teaching and research, was based in the modern concept of knowledge: knowledge divided into specialized domains and yet unified in the role of enlightenment within the individual. The educated individual thus could participate rationally as a citizen in democratic self-government. The social role of knowledge is not imposed on the university from without, but is rooted in its own mission. But the specialization of contemporary research, the multiple and diverse applications to which it gives rise, its centrality to economic gain, can no longer be held within the precarious unity of its classical form. We live in a knowledge society, not only with the knowledge-based university and, while social application is constant and unproblematic, the question becomes whether there is any standpoint from which one can think the whole of society, history and nature.
In recent years, the idea of a network has come into increasingly common use in the social sciences and humanities. It is used both as a description of new social and technical relationships and also as an image, or metaphor, for the structure of society as a whole. The network society is that society in which information has become the dominant mode for the storage, processing, transmission and reception of knowledge. Here, we must be careful to understand knowledge not in the modern way as the representation of the world, but as a constitutive component of it. Knowledge, as externalized in technologies based in information, has become a central component of the process of production. The technology of information is not an isolated phenomenon, but is the active force shaping social possibilities in its own image. Also, information is pervasive, based on a networking logic, flexible and characterized by the convergence of technologies into an integrated system. The network society relegates hierarchy, control and repression to merely local features of the system and operates on a logic of linking and horizontal transfer.
It is no accident that the network, with its transversal flows and absence of hierarchy, for many commentators represents a utopia of social equality, a utopia that seems today to be within our grasp. For others, the loss of reflexivity and the lack of a standpoint from which to judge the whole is a symptom of decline. It is commonplace these days to style the latter as simply conservative and the former as simply liberal or progressive, but the situation is actually more complex. The question of the future of the university can be honed into two issues: What is the role of the university when it becomes one of many producers of knowledge in the form of technical innovation to the network? Is there a standpoint for reflexion from which the network can be described and evaluated for what it is? In a nutshell, what remains of the university's commitment to public knowledge and to social reflexion when it is reduced to being a node within a network?
It is important to keep in mind that while the network is transversal rather than hierarchical, an open rather than a closed system, that does not mean that it has eliminated social conflict and disagreement. The network is constantly changing due to the continuous introduction of new technologies that require changes in social organization. The manner of this social organization is not predetermined and is often subject to social contestation. In short, every new addition to the network raises more than one possibility of its incorporation; the actual manner of its incorporation advantages one group over another. Network society is thus traversed by social movements that struggle with established powers over the direction of innovations. There are many of these movements. Network society is not based on one basic social struggle or conflict, but upon an open-ended series of conflicts that are pointed out and addressed by a plurality of social movements.
In fact, it is even a more basic matter than social movements. Because the network is constantly changing, it destabilizes the identities of those who work and live within it, leading to a search for a viable identity within the current state of the network. This anxiety about identity within the network is what coalesces within social movements and drives them to contest specific innovations. The network is criss-crossed by power relations such that struggles over identity influence the actual form of innovations. Each of these movements poses issues about how to understand the current state of the network. These issues have entered the university and pose interesting philosophical and political questions for thinkers. This independence yet relationship between social movements and university-based researchers and teachers is the most interesting new phenomenon that has kept the university alive as a publicly relevant institution. The notion of the public is no longer confined to the political institutions of representative democracy, but has become a space of social reflexivity over the form of innovation and its relation to established and emergent powers. The university exercises its best contemporary role when it brings thoughtful reflection to bear on such public issues.
Rather than describe the phenomena that disturb the equilibrium of the network in detail, I would like to emphasize the logic of such disruption, since it is from these sources that the contemporary university can keep alive its public relevance: Continuous innovation in the network produces an anxiety about identity that leads to a search for identity with both individual and social dimensions. Social movements raise public issues about the current state of the network that can be usefully explored by university-based researchers and influence the public through their teaching, writing and expressions in other media. While the network appears to be a seamless pattern of transversal relations, it is actually a tensional pattern in which each relationship can be opened to public debate. What is going on when this occurs?
Let us look at the bit of information from which the network society is built. The bit of information is closed in upon itself, but open to an infinity of potential relationships. Similarly, network society does not offer a stable identity to its participants, but enlists them in a constantly changing set of relationships. But simply adding on more relationships does not constitute an identity. An identity is constructed when bits of information are connected into a meaningful whole. Such a meaningful whole can only be constructed when one's specific location in the network becomes the locus of a totalization, a vision of the whole. To state it in a formula: a node becomes an identity insofar as it embraces its place. Information becomes localized as knowledge, which is ultimately self-knowledge; the infinite spatio-temporality of the network becomes the lived time in place of a specific identity. This is the contemporary form of self-reflexion that could ground a new concept of enlightenment.
Information treats knowledge as a completed thing rather than an ongoing search. Even though the production process of knowledge disappears into information, it still takes place in the network society, though off stage, as it were, in the struggle for identity. The network is parasitic on the production of knowledge that it uses as information. Actually, one needs to distinguish two notions of knowledge here: it is certainly possible to produce new innovations through following out the implications of information already present in the network. However intelligent one might have to be to do this, it is confined to the recombination of existing information. Knowledge production, in the pregnant sense in which I am describing it here, refers to the meaningful whole from which bits of information are derived. In this sense, it is inseparable from the construction of identity. The anxiety about identity produced by the network thus motivates a search for self-knowledge that can produce new knowledge and not simply recombinations of information. It is not by attempting to restore a monopoly of knowledge that the university can find a contemporary public function, but by taking seriously the anxiety about identity and entering into the production of self-knowledge. At this point, the contemporary function of the university reaches back to touch its humanistic roots. The search for self-knowledge initiated by Socrates can take on a social function in the network society.
Ian Angus is a philosopher and social critic who teaches humanities at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. This is an excerpt from his recent book "Love the Questions: University Education and Enlightenment," published by Arbeiter Ring Publishing, which can be found here. His earlier book, "Emergent Publics: An Essay on Social Movements and Democracy," is from the same publisher.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Premier Gordon Campbell's Site C dam
Premier Gordon Campbell's Site C dam is starting to look like a done deal
By Charlie Smith
http://www.straight.com/article-317013/vancouver/premier-gordon-campbells-site-c-dam-starting-look-done-deal
siteCweb.jpg
Illustration shows what the 60-metre-high Site C dam would look like on the Peace River near Fort St. John.
Don't kid yourself. Premier Gordon Campbell may have decided to build the Site C hydroelectric dam around the same time as then-B.C. Progress Board chairman David Black recommended doing this in a newspaper article back in April 2004.
But it wasn't going to help Campbell's northeastern MLAs by announcing this before the 2005 or the 2009 elections.
With the last election out of the way, Campbell will likely declare on Monday (April 19) that his government is moving to the third of a five-stage process that will determine the future of the proposal.
This will create an impression among some that this is not a done deal.
This third stage, which is expected to last two years, involves dealing with regulatory issues and the environmental assessment of the project.
Keep in mind that in Campbell's B.C., environmental assessments never thwart major capital projects. Especially ones as big as the Site C dam, which will cost up to $6.6 billion and would flood the Peace River valley between the Peace Canyon Dam and the point where the Peace and Moberly rivers connect.
And if the B.C. Utilities Commission gets in the way--like it did with run-of-river power projects--a Campbell-led government will likely change the law to ensure that the Site C dam will still go ahead.
That will be followed by stage four (detailed design and engineering) and stage five (construction).
The 1,100-metre-long Site C dam would be located seven kilometres southwest of Fort St. John, and would generate enough electricity for about 460,000 homes. Behind it would be an 83-kilometre reservoir, which would flood approximately 5,340 hectares.
Even though this will be one of the biggest announcements of Campbell's political career, the Site C dam wasn't even mentioned in the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources service plan this year.
Here are some things I'll be watching for in Monday's announcement:
* Whether Campbell will admit that the power generated by the Site C dam will be used to help companies extract bitumen from the Alberta tar sands, which would belie any claims that this is a green energy project.
* Whether Campbell will provide reporters with an estimate of how much energy generated from the Site C dam will cost per kilowatt-hour.
* Whether Campbell will link the pending environmental assessment of the Site C dam to concerns about peak oil, which is a topic he has steadfastly avoided discussing while promoting the Gateway roadbuilding program in Metro Vancouver.
Related article: Peace River power play over potential Site C dam
Follow Charlie Smith on Twitter at twitter.com/csmithstraight.
-0-
B.C. to press ahead on Peace dam
By Tom Fletcher - BC Local News
Published: April 18, 2010 3:00 PM
Updated: April 18, 2010 3:47 PM
http://www.bclocalnews.com/fraser_valley/ahobserver/news/91432174.html
Premier Gordon Campbell and Energy Minister Blair Lekstrom are headed north to the W.A.C. Bennett dam Monday, for an announcement widely expected to be moving ahead with the Site C hydroelectric dam.
The announcement, set for 11:30 a.m. at the dam near Fort St. John, features a satellite feed for live television coverage.
The B.C. government signaled its intentions for the proposed third dam on the Peace River in February's throne speech, which promised major transmission line upgrades to Alberta, Saskatchewan and the United States. Extension of the grid will connect the booming natural gas industry in northeastern B.C., and allow clean energy exports, the government said in its agenda-setting speech for the year.
Lekstrom has had a report from BC Hydro since December on the project, which has been studied on and off for decades. He is expected to send the project to environmental assessment, the third stage of a five-stage process that will extend for several more years.
BC Hydro's latest estimate of the project cost is between $5 billion and $6.6 billion, but much of the engineering work was done 25 years ago. New site work and community consultations were done for phase two.
Site C would flood a reservoir more than 9,000 hectares in size, narrowly confined to the river valley downstream of the W.A.C. Bennett and Peace Canyon dams. Its 60-metre-high dam and six generating units would recover more energy from water already held upstream, and generate one third as much power as the W.A.C. Bennett dam with a reservoir one 20th the size of Williston Lake.
The B.C. government has also promised new clean energy legislation this year that will simplify the regulatory process for independent power projects. Earlier, it required BC Hydro to obtain new energy from contracted private facilities, but confirmed that if Site C is built it would be owned and operated by the Crown corporation.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Viewed from Germany
The View from Germany
by Katha Pollitt
My German friends here are bewildered by the resistance to healthcare reform in America. They just don't get what the fuss is about. After all, thanks to Bismarck, that notorious red, Germans have had some version of national health insurance since 1884. The current system contains some of the very features that have driven Americans to throw themselves into the tea. It's mostly public -- about 90 percent of the population is in the government system, with about 10 percent, mostly the wealthy and the self-employed, covered by private insurance. There's an individual mandate: You have to be covered, just the way, as my friend Barbara put it, you have to have insurance for your car. Coverage is not cheap, about 15 percent of your salary, but your employer pays nearly half, and there are government subsidies for low-income workers. Sound familiar? Do companies pass their payments on to you in the form of lower wages (or higher prices)? Probably a little bit, said Vera, but it is well worth it. I'll say: Germany has one of the best healthcare systems in the world, and it costs a lot less than ours -- 10.7 percent of GNP in 2005, versus our 15.2 percent. My husband has visited doctors and dentists here, and found them both excellent and amazingly accessible. Why, my friends wonder, would Americans not want something like it?
Perhaps it is because a government powerful enough to give us healthcare insurance would be strong enough to... take away our guns? The American obsession with guns is another thing that just looks weird here. German gun laws are strict. Permits are barred to people with histories of violent behavior or addiction to drugs or alcohol: To get a hunting license requires taking a challenging course on weapons and wildlife and passing a stiff exam (many fail); don't even think about carrying that licensed gun in public unless it is unloaded and in a locked container. As for the political value of the Second Amendment in defending the Republic, the idea that homeowners could hold off a tyrannical government with their individual weapons is bound to look ridiculous to people who have actually experienced fascism. By the time the government is able to put you in a concentration camp, it has overwhelming force behind it -- and much, if not most, of the populace as well. Pro-gun people like to use the example of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, but the thing about that noble act of defiance is that's all it was: The Nazis smashed the resistance and shipped the survivors off to Treblinka in no time. Because of that history, it's clearer here that if you want to preserve democracy, you don't need a lot of do-it-yourselfers clomping about in the woods; you need a strong civil society, including respect for elections that don't happen to go your way.
Speaking of elections, if you believe opinion polls, roughly a third of all Americans regard Barack Obama as a flaming communist Muslim from Kenya, and 14 percent suspect he is the Antichrist himself. But here's a reality check: if Obama were a German politician, he would fit comfortably somewhere between Chancellor Angela Merkel and her free-market coalition partner Guido Westerwelle. That's because the whole electoral spectrum here is several degrees to the left of the US range; Westerwelle, a Free Democrat, is the only politician who campaigns on the neoliberal platform espoused by American politicians of both parties: competition, lower taxes, mistrust of government, the evils of welfare, the magic of the market and the virtues of making lots of money. In February he shocked the nation by comparing the welfare state to the "decadence" of the late Roman Empire. In the United States, such statements barely make the news. In fact, in the United States the only thing that would shock anyone about Westerwelle is that he's openly gay. As for Merkel, it's true that Germany is in some ways a more sexist society than the United States, with ordinary life still arranged around stay-home mothers: Sunday store closings; school days that end at lunchtime; working mothers derided by their neighbors as cold, cruel Rabenmütter (raven mothers); and women trapped on the lower rungs of the professions (only 13 percent of German professors are female). But you have to acknowledge that Germany has us beat in female political representation. It's not just Merkel: 32.8 percent of MPs are women.
Like the rest of Europe, Germany has problems galore. Unemployment is high; immigration, while low by US standards, has inspired xenophobia and ultranationalism; there have been big cutbacks in social programs, including healthcare and education. But as an American, I can't tell you how refreshing it is to experience a politics in which "welfare" is not a dirty word and elections don't revolve around people who think the world is 10,000 years old and can't even spell the "N-word" they plaster on their placards and posters.
Katha Pollitt’s most recent book is The Mind Body Problem:Poems (Random House).
Copyright © 2010 The Nation – distributed by Agence Global
by Katha Pollitt
My German friends here are bewildered by the resistance to healthcare reform in America. They just don't get what the fuss is about. After all, thanks to Bismarck, that notorious red, Germans have had some version of national health insurance since 1884. The current system contains some of the very features that have driven Americans to throw themselves into the tea. It's mostly public -- about 90 percent of the population is in the government system, with about 10 percent, mostly the wealthy and the self-employed, covered by private insurance. There's an individual mandate: You have to be covered, just the way, as my friend Barbara put it, you have to have insurance for your car. Coverage is not cheap, about 15 percent of your salary, but your employer pays nearly half, and there are government subsidies for low-income workers. Sound familiar? Do companies pass their payments on to you in the form of lower wages (or higher prices)? Probably a little bit, said Vera, but it is well worth it. I'll say: Germany has one of the best healthcare systems in the world, and it costs a lot less than ours -- 10.7 percent of GNP in 2005, versus our 15.2 percent. My husband has visited doctors and dentists here, and found them both excellent and amazingly accessible. Why, my friends wonder, would Americans not want something like it?
Perhaps it is because a government powerful enough to give us healthcare insurance would be strong enough to... take away our guns? The American obsession with guns is another thing that just looks weird here. German gun laws are strict. Permits are barred to people with histories of violent behavior or addiction to drugs or alcohol: To get a hunting license requires taking a challenging course on weapons and wildlife and passing a stiff exam (many fail); don't even think about carrying that licensed gun in public unless it is unloaded and in a locked container. As for the political value of the Second Amendment in defending the Republic, the idea that homeowners could hold off a tyrannical government with their individual weapons is bound to look ridiculous to people who have actually experienced fascism. By the time the government is able to put you in a concentration camp, it has overwhelming force behind it -- and much, if not most, of the populace as well. Pro-gun people like to use the example of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, but the thing about that noble act of defiance is that's all it was: The Nazis smashed the resistance and shipped the survivors off to Treblinka in no time. Because of that history, it's clearer here that if you want to preserve democracy, you don't need a lot of do-it-yourselfers clomping about in the woods; you need a strong civil society, including respect for elections that don't happen to go your way.
Speaking of elections, if you believe opinion polls, roughly a third of all Americans regard Barack Obama as a flaming communist Muslim from Kenya, and 14 percent suspect he is the Antichrist himself. But here's a reality check: if Obama were a German politician, he would fit comfortably somewhere between Chancellor Angela Merkel and her free-market coalition partner Guido Westerwelle. That's because the whole electoral spectrum here is several degrees to the left of the US range; Westerwelle, a Free Democrat, is the only politician who campaigns on the neoliberal platform espoused by American politicians of both parties: competition, lower taxes, mistrust of government, the evils of welfare, the magic of the market and the virtues of making lots of money. In February he shocked the nation by comparing the welfare state to the "decadence" of the late Roman Empire. In the United States, such statements barely make the news. In fact, in the United States the only thing that would shock anyone about Westerwelle is that he's openly gay. As for Merkel, it's true that Germany is in some ways a more sexist society than the United States, with ordinary life still arranged around stay-home mothers: Sunday store closings; school days that end at lunchtime; working mothers derided by their neighbors as cold, cruel Rabenmütter (raven mothers); and women trapped on the lower rungs of the professions (only 13 percent of German professors are female). But you have to acknowledge that Germany has us beat in female political representation. It's not just Merkel: 32.8 percent of MPs are women.
Like the rest of Europe, Germany has problems galore. Unemployment is high; immigration, while low by US standards, has inspired xenophobia and ultranationalism; there have been big cutbacks in social programs, including healthcare and education. But as an American, I can't tell you how refreshing it is to experience a politics in which "welfare" is not a dirty word and elections don't revolve around people who think the world is 10,000 years old and can't even spell the "N-word" they plaster on their placards and posters.
Katha Pollitt’s most recent book is The Mind Body Problem:Poems (Random House).
Copyright © 2010 The Nation – distributed by Agence Global
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
The Dish That Ate the World
Sushi is Wrecking the Planet
By David Steele
The Canada Earthsaver Summer 2010
http://www.earthsave.ca/files/2010_Spring_Earthsaver_web.pdf
Sushi is wrecking the planet. It may sound like hyperbole, but unfortunately it is not. While this popular repast is not alone in the endeavor, stated plainly, sushi is one of the most environmentally damaging foods one could possibly eat. About all one can say in its favor is that very little of it is made with beef.
Let's start with the basics. All sushi is made with rice; lots of it. That's not good. It may surprise you, but rice is in the same league as beef when it comes to global warming.
Most people know these days that beef cattle are among the biggest emitters of global warming gases on earth. One hundred million tonnes of methane are belched from these cows and bulls every year. What most people don't know is that rice is just as bad. One hundred million tonnes of methane seep from rice paddies, too, the latest studies tell us. Depending on whether you count methane's effects over 100 or 20 years, that's the equivalent of between 2.3 and 7.2 billion tonnes of CO2 flowing into the atmosphere from the cattle and another 2.3 to 7.2 billion tonnes of CO2 from the rice we produce each year. Together they are emitting the methane equivalent of one-fifth to two-thirds of all of the carbon dioxide from all of the
fossil fuels we burn across the world every year. Of course, as it is the staple food of the bulk of humanity, rice feeds an awful lot more people than beef does, and its production involves a lot less animal suffering. But it is still a very bad player in the climate crisis.
It would be bad enough if the damage associated with sushi were limited to this rice-based acceleration of global warming. But, of course, rice content is only a small part of the sushi problem. Being composed largely of fish, sushi's popularity is enormously more damaging than that.
The harvest of fish that fill the sushi we eat is playing an enormous role in the decimation of the world's oceans. As the World Wildlife Fund tells us, Atlantic populations of bluefin tuna - the most popular sushi fish - have dropped 80% since 1978. Last year, one million of these giant predators were plucked from the sea. Since the total population of these fish is estimated at 3.75 million and it takes 10 to 12 years for these tuna to reach sexual maturity, the prospects for these fish are extraordinarily bleak.
Other species are similarly affected. Worldwide, the scale of ocean fishing has increased enormously in the last 60 years. In 1950, a total of less than 30 million tonnes of fish were pulled from the sea, including illegal and unreported catches. By 1990, this had surged roughly 6-fold to 180 million tonnes, some 30% of which was
'illegal.' Not surprisingly, the populations of the fish in the sea are way, way down. This is especially true of the big ones - tuna, cod, halibut, swordfish, shark, flounder - which are down more than 90% from their 1950 levels. Fishing at this intensity cannot be maintained; despite an ever-growing fishing fleet, the annual catch is now down to about 140 million tonnes. By 2050 scientists predict
that the seas will be pretty much empty.
We and our sushi habit are driving this decimation. 80% of all the fish caught in 2006 were eaten in the developed world. In North America and Europe, we eat an average of well over 40 lbs of fish per person each year. This is the highest aggregate level of fish consumption in the world. With over 1 billion Europeans and North Americans, our total consumption dwarfs that of even Japan whose 127 million people consume 57 lbs each.
What can we do about? Since it seems that the world's governments are incapable of responding to this crisis - astonishingly, just last month Japan managed to block a proposed ban on the trade of even the most endangered bluefin tuna - it is up to us. If ocean life is to be saved, we're going to have to stop eating sushi and pretty much all other fish. If we don't do it now, we certainly will do it later - when there are no fish left to eat.
By David Steele
The Canada Earthsaver Summer 2010
http://www.earthsave.ca/files/2010_Spring_Earthsaver_web.pdf
Sushi is wrecking the planet. It may sound like hyperbole, but unfortunately it is not. While this popular repast is not alone in the endeavor, stated plainly, sushi is one of the most environmentally damaging foods one could possibly eat. About all one can say in its favor is that very little of it is made with beef.
Let's start with the basics. All sushi is made with rice; lots of it. That's not good. It may surprise you, but rice is in the same league as beef when it comes to global warming.
Most people know these days that beef cattle are among the biggest emitters of global warming gases on earth. One hundred million tonnes of methane are belched from these cows and bulls every year. What most people don't know is that rice is just as bad. One hundred million tonnes of methane seep from rice paddies, too, the latest studies tell us. Depending on whether you count methane's effects over 100 or 20 years, that's the equivalent of between 2.3 and 7.2 billion tonnes of CO2 flowing into the atmosphere from the cattle and another 2.3 to 7.2 billion tonnes of CO2 from the rice we produce each year. Together they are emitting the methane equivalent of one-fifth to two-thirds of all of the carbon dioxide from all of the
fossil fuels we burn across the world every year. Of course, as it is the staple food of the bulk of humanity, rice feeds an awful lot more people than beef does, and its production involves a lot less animal suffering. But it is still a very bad player in the climate crisis.
It would be bad enough if the damage associated with sushi were limited to this rice-based acceleration of global warming. But, of course, rice content is only a small part of the sushi problem. Being composed largely of fish, sushi's popularity is enormously more damaging than that.
The harvest of fish that fill the sushi we eat is playing an enormous role in the decimation of the world's oceans. As the World Wildlife Fund tells us, Atlantic populations of bluefin tuna - the most popular sushi fish - have dropped 80% since 1978. Last year, one million of these giant predators were plucked from the sea. Since the total population of these fish is estimated at 3.75 million and it takes 10 to 12 years for these tuna to reach sexual maturity, the prospects for these fish are extraordinarily bleak.
Other species are similarly affected. Worldwide, the scale of ocean fishing has increased enormously in the last 60 years. In 1950, a total of less than 30 million tonnes of fish were pulled from the sea, including illegal and unreported catches. By 1990, this had surged roughly 6-fold to 180 million tonnes, some 30% of which was
'illegal.' Not surprisingly, the populations of the fish in the sea are way, way down. This is especially true of the big ones - tuna, cod, halibut, swordfish, shark, flounder - which are down more than 90% from their 1950 levels. Fishing at this intensity cannot be maintained; despite an ever-growing fishing fleet, the annual catch is now down to about 140 million tonnes. By 2050 scientists predict
that the seas will be pretty much empty.
We and our sushi habit are driving this decimation. 80% of all the fish caught in 2006 were eaten in the developed world. In North America and Europe, we eat an average of well over 40 lbs of fish per person each year. This is the highest aggregate level of fish consumption in the world. With over 1 billion Europeans and North Americans, our total consumption dwarfs that of even Japan whose 127 million people consume 57 lbs each.
What can we do about? Since it seems that the world's governments are incapable of responding to this crisis - astonishingly, just last month Japan managed to block a proposed ban on the trade of even the most endangered bluefin tuna - it is up to us. If ocean life is to be saved, we're going to have to stop eating sushi and pretty much all other fish. If we don't do it now, we certainly will do it later - when there are no fish left to eat.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
FN opposition to Enbridge oil pipeline
BC First Nations coalition declares opposition to Enbridge oil pipeline
By Tamsyn Burgmann (CP) – Mar 23, 2010
VANCOUVER, B.C. — Dozens of orcas, hundreds of thousands of seabirds and millions of salmon were wiped out when the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spilled 40 million litres of crude oil into Alaskan waters.
Twenty-one years later, a coalition of British Columbia First Nations says such a disaster can never be allowed to happen again, and declared it will do whatever it takes to stop a proposed pipeline from the Alberta tar sands to the B.C. coast.
More than 150 First Nations, businesses, environmental organizations and prominent Canadians have signed on to the campaign to stop the pipeline proposed by Calgary-based Enbridge Inc. (TSX:ENB)
They say the risk of an oil spill is just too great.
"We all believe the Enbridge Gateway pipeline project is a threat to the very existence of our culture and our way of life," Art Sterritt, executive director of the Coastal First Nations, told reporters Tuesday.
"There are some who believe the Enbridge project is a done deal. It isn't. It is over."
The Northern Gateway Project would see two 1,170-kilometre pipelines stretching from the tar sands near Edmonton to the northern B.C. coast town of Kitimat.
Crude would flow, crossing more than 1,000 streams and rivers, mountain ranges, avalanche-prone terrain and rainforest ecosystems before being loaded onto upwards of 150 tankers annually for export.
The majority of the landscape to be covered is traditional B.C. First Nations land.
"It would be both unwise and irresponsible for Enbridge to ignore us or our constitutionally protected rights and title in British Columbia," Sterritt said.
The Coastal First Nations, who are heading the declaration, are an alliance of communities on B.C.'s north and central coast, including the islands of Haida Gwaii.
Enbridge declined an interview request, citing the fact that it's in the final stages of a regulatory application with the National Energy Board.
But the company has touted the benefits of the project, saying more than 4,000 construction jobs and thousands more indirect jobs would be created, while generating hundreds of millions in tax revenue for both provinces.
The company has said ships have safely carried petrochemicals out of the Kitimat port for 25 years, and they will, in fact, make safety improvements.
In an email, the company said it must still undergo a "comprehensive and rigorous regulatory review process to ensure the project is in the interest of the Canadian public."
But Sterritt said after five years of scientific research and community consultations, the groups that have signed onto the campaign believe "no good" can come from the project.
It could jeopardize the land, water, people and wildlife for generations to come, say those opposed.
"We don't ... make this declaration blindly or lightly, we make it from an informed position," said Gerald Amos, a director of Coastal First Nations.
He said a blockade on the water is possible if the project goes ahead.
Along with 28 B.C. First Nations, the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs and some aboriginal groups from Alberta, environmental groups including the David Suzuki Foundation and the Pembina Institute also signed on to the campaign.
Author Margaret Atwood, Vancouver Canuck Willie Mitchell and 10 Canadian Olympians, including Kristina Groves, are also on board.
Environmentalist Vicky Husband said she believes two additional pipelines would allow an increase in production in the Alberta tar sands of up to 30 per cent.
"If we actually believe in taking steps to deal with climate change, the tar sands needs to be phased out," she said. "Otherwise, Canada will be a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, ongoing."
Premier Gordon Campbell said the project will not proceed if it's deemed too dangerous for the environment.
He said the government wants to build an economic future for B.C. First Nations, "in a way that meets all of our environmental standards."
The New Democrats called on the government to drop the project, but B.C. Energy Minister Blair Lekstrom said B.C. residents want more money for health care, social programs and roads.
"All of that comes from our resource industry - and we have to find that balance," he said.
By Tamsyn Burgmann (CP) – Mar 23, 2010
VANCOUVER, B.C. — Dozens of orcas, hundreds of thousands of seabirds and millions of salmon were wiped out when the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spilled 40 million litres of crude oil into Alaskan waters.
Twenty-one years later, a coalition of British Columbia First Nations says such a disaster can never be allowed to happen again, and declared it will do whatever it takes to stop a proposed pipeline from the Alberta tar sands to the B.C. coast.
More than 150 First Nations, businesses, environmental organizations and prominent Canadians have signed on to the campaign to stop the pipeline proposed by Calgary-based Enbridge Inc. (TSX:ENB)
They say the risk of an oil spill is just too great.
"We all believe the Enbridge Gateway pipeline project is a threat to the very existence of our culture and our way of life," Art Sterritt, executive director of the Coastal First Nations, told reporters Tuesday.
"There are some who believe the Enbridge project is a done deal. It isn't. It is over."
The Northern Gateway Project would see two 1,170-kilometre pipelines stretching from the tar sands near Edmonton to the northern B.C. coast town of Kitimat.
Crude would flow, crossing more than 1,000 streams and rivers, mountain ranges, avalanche-prone terrain and rainforest ecosystems before being loaded onto upwards of 150 tankers annually for export.
The majority of the landscape to be covered is traditional B.C. First Nations land.
"It would be both unwise and irresponsible for Enbridge to ignore us or our constitutionally protected rights and title in British Columbia," Sterritt said.
The Coastal First Nations, who are heading the declaration, are an alliance of communities on B.C.'s north and central coast, including the islands of Haida Gwaii.
Enbridge declined an interview request, citing the fact that it's in the final stages of a regulatory application with the National Energy Board.
But the company has touted the benefits of the project, saying more than 4,000 construction jobs and thousands more indirect jobs would be created, while generating hundreds of millions in tax revenue for both provinces.
The company has said ships have safely carried petrochemicals out of the Kitimat port for 25 years, and they will, in fact, make safety improvements.
In an email, the company said it must still undergo a "comprehensive and rigorous regulatory review process to ensure the project is in the interest of the Canadian public."
But Sterritt said after five years of scientific research and community consultations, the groups that have signed onto the campaign believe "no good" can come from the project.
It could jeopardize the land, water, people and wildlife for generations to come, say those opposed.
"We don't ... make this declaration blindly or lightly, we make it from an informed position," said Gerald Amos, a director of Coastal First Nations.
He said a blockade on the water is possible if the project goes ahead.
Along with 28 B.C. First Nations, the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs and some aboriginal groups from Alberta, environmental groups including the David Suzuki Foundation and the Pembina Institute also signed on to the campaign.
Author Margaret Atwood, Vancouver Canuck Willie Mitchell and 10 Canadian Olympians, including Kristina Groves, are also on board.
Environmentalist Vicky Husband said she believes two additional pipelines would allow an increase in production in the Alberta tar sands of up to 30 per cent.
"If we actually believe in taking steps to deal with climate change, the tar sands needs to be phased out," she said. "Otherwise, Canada will be a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, ongoing."
Premier Gordon Campbell said the project will not proceed if it's deemed too dangerous for the environment.
He said the government wants to build an economic future for B.C. First Nations, "in a way that meets all of our environmental standards."
The New Democrats called on the government to drop the project, but B.C. Energy Minister Blair Lekstrom said B.C. residents want more money for health care, social programs and roads.
"All of that comes from our resource industry - and we have to find that balance," he said.
Thursday, April 08, 2010
Israel-Based Human Organ Ring Busted
Police smash Israeli organ-trafficking ring
BBC
A retired army brigadier general is among six suspects arrested by Israeli police investigating an organ-trafficking ring, police say.
The organisation offered as much as $100,000 (£65,600) for kidneys, which were transplanted by doctors in poor countries, a sting operation uncovered.
Police said they had been "shocked" by the extent of the smuggling ring.
Retired Gen Meir Zamir, arrested in connection with the trafficking, won a medal of valour in the Yom Kippur War.
'Dream come true'
The trafficking ring came to light after a 50-year-old woman from Nazareth came to police.
We ran an undercover investigation and we were shocked by the proportions of this
Superintendent Ahron Galor
She told them she was flown to Azerbaijan where doctors removed her kidney.
On her return to Israel she was expecting to be given $100,000, but she never received the money.
Another 18-year-old man complained to police after he was offered $80,000 and flown to the Philippines to have the operation.
"We ran an undercover investigation and we were shocked by the proportions of this," Police Superintendent Ahron Galor told Ynet News.
"We learned there are many people willing to sell a kidney for just £10,000. These are people who have severe financial difficulties, for whom such a sum is a dream come true."
Forging documents
The traffickers advertised online, suggesting there was another solution for people who had been waiting for kidney transplants for years.
They offered the kidneys for sale for $140,000.
As well as Gen Zamir, two lawyers were among those arrested in the sting operation.
The lawyers are suspected of forging documents which said the recipient and donor were related.
Police said members of the ring tried to cover their tracks by hiding the Israeli medical records of the donors.
This made it hard for donors to be treated if they became sick following the surgery.
SEE ALSO
Israel organs claim row deepens
08 Sep 09 | Middle East
Netanyahu enters Sweden organ row
23 Aug 09 | Middle East
Israel fury at Sweden organ claim
21 Aug 09 | Middle East
RELATED INTERNET LINKS
Ynet
BBC
A retired army brigadier general is among six suspects arrested by Israeli police investigating an organ-trafficking ring, police say.
The organisation offered as much as $100,000 (£65,600) for kidneys, which were transplanted by doctors in poor countries, a sting operation uncovered.
Police said they had been "shocked" by the extent of the smuggling ring.
Retired Gen Meir Zamir, arrested in connection with the trafficking, won a medal of valour in the Yom Kippur War.
'Dream come true'
The trafficking ring came to light after a 50-year-old woman from Nazareth came to police.
We ran an undercover investigation and we were shocked by the proportions of this
Superintendent Ahron Galor
She told them she was flown to Azerbaijan where doctors removed her kidney.
On her return to Israel she was expecting to be given $100,000, but she never received the money.
Another 18-year-old man complained to police after he was offered $80,000 and flown to the Philippines to have the operation.
"We ran an undercover investigation and we were shocked by the proportions of this," Police Superintendent Ahron Galor told Ynet News.
"We learned there are many people willing to sell a kidney for just £10,000. These are people who have severe financial difficulties, for whom such a sum is a dream come true."
Forging documents
The traffickers advertised online, suggesting there was another solution for people who had been waiting for kidney transplants for years.
They offered the kidneys for sale for $140,000.
As well as Gen Zamir, two lawyers were among those arrested in the sting operation.
The lawyers are suspected of forging documents which said the recipient and donor were related.
Police said members of the ring tried to cover their tracks by hiding the Israeli medical records of the donors.
This made it hard for donors to be treated if they became sick following the surgery.
SEE ALSO
Israel organs claim row deepens
08 Sep 09 | Middle East
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Saturday, April 03, 2010
From the Jason Kenney WTF? File
Runners denied entry into Canada
By Alison Korn, Special to QMI Agency
Athletes or refugees?
The head of the organizing committee for the 17th World University Cross Country Championship is “disappointed and embarrassed” by the fact that runners from several countries have been denied visas to the event, to be held April 11 in Kingston.
Athletes and officials from China, Sri Lanka and Nepal have been told by Citizenship and Immigration Canada that they won’t be allowed to enter Canada because there’s a risk they may not return home afterwards. Tajikistan’s team has been denied visas because they competed in the Asian Athletics Championships, an IAAF-sanctioned event in Iran. Five other countries are still waiting to hear.
Shane Lakins, president of the organizing committee, fumed that the rejections are ruining Canada’s reputation for hosting world championship sporting events.
“World class athletes travel the world,” Lakin said. “If as a normal citizen of Tajikistan you went to Iran and then want to come to Canada, I get the red flags, but this is an athlete competing for their country at an internationally sanctioned competition.
“On the heels of a very successful Vancouver Olympics you would think Canada would have their act together when it comes to allowing athletes into the country to participate at world championship events, but (we) are finding this is not the case. We are disappointed and embarrassed that athletes will not have the opportunity to represent their countries at a prestigious world championship event because of bureaucracy getting in the way of common sense. It makes us wonder how Canada was able to successfully host the recent Olympic Games.”
But there’s a big difference between the Vancouver Winter Olympics and these cross-country championships — namely, the countries of origin of the athletes. While most winter sport nations are wealthy, with athletes who don’t tend to defect, summer sports like cross-country running are practiced widely in poorer countries and are more likely to have athletes abandon their team and make refugee claims.
The most glaring example was the 2001 Francophone Games in Ottawa. More than 100 participants made requests for protection after the event.
“In the past, several international events have resulted in delegates not respecting Canada’s immigration law by not leaving when they had promised they would,” Rejean Cantlon of Citizenship and Immigration Canada said in an email. “A number of factors are considered by visa officers prior to issuing a visa. These factors include the person’s ties to the home country, the purpose of the visit, the person’s family and economic situation, the overall economic and political stability of the home country, and invitations from Canadian hosts. When a visa officer refuses an application, it is because the applicant does not meet the requirements set out in Canada’s immigration law.”
In an interesting coincidence, this week Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced sweeping changes to Canada’s clogged refugee system. His office noted that Canada’s slow-moving asylum system also attracts more claims per capita than any comparable Western democracy and 58% of these claims are unfounded. The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada now has approximately 60,000 asylum claimants waiting for a decision on their claim with the average hearing occurring in 19 months.
But for all the thousands who are scamming the system, there is also the story of wrestler Daniel Igali, who competed for Nigeria at the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Victoria, B.C. and stayed on. After receiving Canadian citizenship, Igali won gold for Canada at the 2000 Olympics, has run for political office, earned a masters degree and established a charitable foundation.
I’d say we’re pretty lucky he stayed.
http://www.torontosun.com/sports/othersports/2010/04/02/13449491.html
By Alison Korn, Special to QMI Agency
Athletes or refugees?
The head of the organizing committee for the 17th World University Cross Country Championship is “disappointed and embarrassed” by the fact that runners from several countries have been denied visas to the event, to be held April 11 in Kingston.
Athletes and officials from China, Sri Lanka and Nepal have been told by Citizenship and Immigration Canada that they won’t be allowed to enter Canada because there’s a risk they may not return home afterwards. Tajikistan’s team has been denied visas because they competed in the Asian Athletics Championships, an IAAF-sanctioned event in Iran. Five other countries are still waiting to hear.
Shane Lakins, president of the organizing committee, fumed that the rejections are ruining Canada’s reputation for hosting world championship sporting events.
“World class athletes travel the world,” Lakin said. “If as a normal citizen of Tajikistan you went to Iran and then want to come to Canada, I get the red flags, but this is an athlete competing for their country at an internationally sanctioned competition.
“On the heels of a very successful Vancouver Olympics you would think Canada would have their act together when it comes to allowing athletes into the country to participate at world championship events, but (we) are finding this is not the case. We are disappointed and embarrassed that athletes will not have the opportunity to represent their countries at a prestigious world championship event because of bureaucracy getting in the way of common sense. It makes us wonder how Canada was able to successfully host the recent Olympic Games.”
But there’s a big difference between the Vancouver Winter Olympics and these cross-country championships — namely, the countries of origin of the athletes. While most winter sport nations are wealthy, with athletes who don’t tend to defect, summer sports like cross-country running are practiced widely in poorer countries and are more likely to have athletes abandon their team and make refugee claims.
The most glaring example was the 2001 Francophone Games in Ottawa. More than 100 participants made requests for protection after the event.
“In the past, several international events have resulted in delegates not respecting Canada’s immigration law by not leaving when they had promised they would,” Rejean Cantlon of Citizenship and Immigration Canada said in an email. “A number of factors are considered by visa officers prior to issuing a visa. These factors include the person’s ties to the home country, the purpose of the visit, the person’s family and economic situation, the overall economic and political stability of the home country, and invitations from Canadian hosts. When a visa officer refuses an application, it is because the applicant does not meet the requirements set out in Canada’s immigration law.”
In an interesting coincidence, this week Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced sweeping changes to Canada’s clogged refugee system. His office noted that Canada’s slow-moving asylum system also attracts more claims per capita than any comparable Western democracy and 58% of these claims are unfounded. The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada now has approximately 60,000 asylum claimants waiting for a decision on their claim with the average hearing occurring in 19 months.
But for all the thousands who are scamming the system, there is also the story of wrestler Daniel Igali, who competed for Nigeria at the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Victoria, B.C. and stayed on. After receiving Canadian citizenship, Igali won gold for Canada at the 2000 Olympics, has run for political office, earned a masters degree and established a charitable foundation.
I’d say we’re pretty lucky he stayed.
http://www.torontosun.com/sports/othersports/2010/04/02/13449491.html
Women of Beit Hanoun Go "Over the Top"
Palestine: Women of Beit Hanoun
Go "Over the Top"
by Chris Cook
Saturday, 04 November 2006
[Israel's accelerated bombing and killing in Gaza this week reminded me of this old one from 2006. It followed shortly the invasion of Lebanon. This then from the wayback file.]
The symbol of the end of the 'Gilded Age' and ultimate refutation of Hope in the still young 20th Century, the ‘Trenches’ of the First War, horrors filled with dead farm boys a-swim in mud, blood, rats and the reek of futility was given an eerie revisiting today in Palestine.
Through the courtesy of BBC television, we witnessed not the flower of Europe's manhood going "over the top," but the women of Palestine, desperate to shield their sons, husbands, fathers, and brothers from the relentless, and pitiless, and murderous Israeli Defence Force (IDF), mounting the barricade to face naked the guns.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
The "War to End All Wars" failed of course to fulfill its billing, just as all its predecessors failed to fulfill theirs. No, this waste of innocents, the insatiable maw that was the "Great War," was not finale but merely prelude to grosser horrors to come.
Emblematic of the grim dehumanization the future promised, images of doomed soldiers sent "over the top," out of their trench shelters, to march slowly into the remorseless machinery of modern warfare is the legacy of that bloody century: We are the inheritors today of a moral degeneracy culminating on our television screens, where we can watch men of high station joke about distant women and children destroyed, rent to pieces by bombs and bullets and worse, as we eat supper.
The women clambered over the earthen walls, as the foot soldiers of the distant war past had, with hope but no assurance they would survive, but unlike those long dead Tommy’s and Huns, they went over the walls thrown up by Israeli bulldozers to stop the killing, not participate in it; they challenged the humanity of those Jewish soldiers surrounding their Mosque, daring them to stay their hand, challenging them to show mercy and become men again.
Perhaps some held their fire. Perhaps others aimed high, or wide of the burkas; but clearly others did not. I watched the women fall to the ground dead tonight. Not "insurgents," "terrorists," or "Hamas;" not "Hezbullah," "al Qaida," nor "Taliban," but mothers, sisters, daughters, wives, mercilessly shot down by cowards; robot warriors who failed, outside a mosque in Beit Hanoun, to claim their humanity. Failed, just as the cowards in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and every other place where soldiers and their masters surrender duty to conscience and kill.
The men that rushed into the firestorm in aid of the stricken Heroines came under fire today too, as so often they have before in Palestine, falling victim to Israel's Defence Force and its so-called "Rules of Engagement;" rules [sic] allowing men desert decency, deny mercy, and treat every being in their range as a "legitimate" target of war.
Cases of criminal outrage against humanity committed by the IDF within what survives of Palestine are legion: Think Lebanon in many multiples. It is a wonder women would climb into that gallery, face the assassins of so many of their kith and kin, and deliver to the killers a chance to redeem their humanity, or not.
Here's a look at Google News of Israel’s recent doings in Gaza.
That’s just today, tomorrow is another, and the next day another; all days of brutality, meted out over the months and years and decades in Palestine.
Where even the "greatest" war ended, its dead planted in rows like so much wheat, in this killing field the crosshairs never cease, and the flower of the nation are yet cut down with no end in sight.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
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