tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86621859923542076672024-03-13T12:02:27.578-07:00grass!struggleIvan Doumenchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10567808421635209642noreply@blogger.comBlogger80125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662185992354207667.post-45803675593760382922011-10-17T20:22:00.000-07:002011-10-17T20:31:41.008-07:00Manufactured disaster<div style="text-align: left;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; text-align: center;">The ISA virus. Photo: Fisheries Research Service</td></tr>
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Sadly, we had it coming. It is now official. The European strain of Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA) has been reported today for the first time in Pacific wild salmon. It was found in sockeye caught on the central coast of British Columbia. Read the <a href="http://www.salmonaresacred.org/blog/alexandra-morton-sheer-reckless-negligent-behaviour-has-loosed-highly-infectious-fish-farm-infl">press release</a> from Salmon Are Sacred, and the stories <a href="http://news.google.ca/news/more?ds=n&pq=isav+virus+british+columbia&hl=en&sugexp=kjrmc&cp=7&gs_id=55&xhr=t&q=salmon+virus+british+columbia&rlz=1C1CHFX_enCA443CA443&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&biw=1024&bih=1165&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ncl=dZnOFdFaLfPHJfMq7eaWLVTfpT6KM&ei=xO6cTvWJNIKeiAL12cnMCQ&sa=X&oi=news_result&ct=more-results&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CC8QqgIwAA">all over the media</a>.</div>
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ISA is a deadly virus directly linked to fish farms. It has <a href="http://www.thefishsite.com/articles/598/the-global-spread-of-infectious-salmon-anaemia">decimated salmon stocks</a> in many countries since the 1980s such as Norway, Scotland, Chile. Entire ecosystems and coastal communities have been ecologically and economically devastated by this salmon equivalent of the Black Death. And now we learn we have it too.<br />
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With such a dangerous virus out in the open around the world for so many years, the question on everyone’s minds this morning was: how did we get to this? How did we allow this virus to even reach the shores of British Columbia? Surely by now, we know how to stop this thing, don’t we?<br />
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We actually do, and we have known for many years. Ban the import of Atlantic salmon hatchery eggs. In this age of total globalization, even farmed salmon eggs are no longer produced locally but rather thousands of miles away, usually in Europe. Those imported eggs are important, because scientists see them as the primary vector in the transmission of viruses such as ISA from one region of the world to the other.<br />
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Since the late 1980s, scientists in Canada and elsewhere have relentlessly alerted government against the risks of such egg imports. But Canada’s Department of Fish Farms chose instead to ignore those calls and adopted a policy of institutional recklessness to fulfill its mandate of serving industrial aquaculture. <a href="http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/Morton%20report-%20What%20is%20happening%20to%20Fraser%20sockeye%20Aug%2016%20%2800372318%29.pdf">A report</a> written by Dr. Alexandra Morton for the Cohen Commission before ISA was discovered in BC, and which was recently admitted as evidence in spite of furious objections on the part of government and industry lawyers, explains in detail how government has gambled with our wild salmon.<br />
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BC’s eggs, Morton explains, are shipped from a hatchery in Iceland called Stofnfiskur. The problem is that this particular hatchery does not meet the health safety standards of Canadian law. So technically, they couldn’t be imported. Don’t let that technicality stop the Department of Fish Farms, though! In a briefing dated 2004, DFF’s Director for the Pacific Region Laura Richards articulated the following key arguments in an effort to allow those eggs into Canada in spite of their non-compliance:<br />
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<li><i>“Two BC salmon farming companies wish to import Atlantic salmon eggs from Stofnfiskur, an Icelandic company which is not certified under the Canadian Fish Health Protection Regulations”</i></li>
<li><i>“Failure to provide permission for egg importation may trigger a trade challenge under the World Trade Organization …” </i></li>
<li><i>“Additionally, DFO could also be viewed as causing a competitive disadvantage of the aquaculture industry by denying them access to alternate strains”</i></li>
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Following this briefing, Alexandra Morton wrote to Justice Cohen in her report, “<i>Laura Richards was successful in her petition to allow eggs from a hatchery that does not meet Canada’s Fish Health Protection Regulations.</i>” By opening that regulatory backdoor for the industry, Dr. Richards may have allowed the ISA virus to enter British Columbia.<br />
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In that same report, Dr. Morton also showed that the ISA virus may have been present in BC for several years but that scientists on government payroll have chosen not to acknowledge that possibility. Dr Gary Marty, a lead veterinarian with the Province of BC, reported cases of classic lesions associated with ISA 1,100 times since 2006. Yet he never registered any of those repeated diagnoses – not a single time – as being the ISA virus itself, even though the disease was very well known worldwide and was routinely associated with fish farm operations similar to those found in British Columbia, and even though the symptoms matched the disease perfectly.<br />
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The problem in this matter is not so much Dr. Marty’s personal decision not to recognize those thousand diagnoses as being ISA. Rather, as Alex Morton noted in her report to Cohen, the problem is that “<i>Dr. Marty is the only government person we know of who is doing these examinations.</i>” Placed by his employer, the government of BC, in a position of complete monopoly over the diagnosis of ISA, Dr. Marty can literally say whatever takes his fancy about those symptoms. For that matter, he could have said that those fish died of old age. No other scientist is in a position to either confirm or challenge his conclusions, not having access to the same information as he does. And so, Marty’s statement that those classic symptoms of ISA are not actually ISA can never be scientifically disproved. It is, as Morton wrote to Cohen, a statement that “<i>could be repeated indefinitely</i>”.<br />
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And this is how a government maintains the status quo, preserves a position of business as usual no matter what may be happening in the real world. By manufacturing self-supporting scientific statements which cannot be challenged, the charade can be, in effect, maintained and repeated indefinitely. Of course, this is no longer called science, but dogma. And yes, it may occasionally find itself contradicted by real things that happen in the real world – such as herrings bleeding from their fins, Harrison sockeye dying by the hundreds of thousands without spawning, or the emergence of freakish bright-yellow pink salmon all over the Fraser River. But those are merely PR matters that need to be managed, a small price to pay for the perpetuation of the cozy relationship between government, industry, and the scientific establishment within the salmon-industrial complex.<br />
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How does the public fight back? As so many times before, Alexandra Morton is showing the way, and it’s actually simpler than it sounds. She is breaking the monopoly of knowledge that government is working so hard to maintain. She has taken the matter of salmon testing and diagnosis in her own hands. Earlier this month, she went in the field twice to test the salmon – and came back with evidence of severe hepatitis and pre-spawn mortality in the Fraser salmon. She struck a partnership with SFU professor Rick Routledge to send central coast sockeye for testing – and came back with the ISA virus. She has fearlessly denounced the ruthless policy of financial starvation and bureaucratic harassment inflicted by the Department of Fish Farms on one of her most talented scientists, Dr. Kristi Miller – and I will wage my money that Alex will succeed there too in breaking the knowledge impasse. Miller will eventually get her money and her research will resume and provide us with righteous answers.<br />
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Fighting back will require an array of initiatives. In this asymmetrical struggle against a bloated and hyper-powerful bureaucracy, our strategy is to initiate shocks which grow over time by taking a life of their own. One such initiative is called the “<a href="http://www.wildsalmoncircle.com/dfo-wont-fund-tests-on-salmon-disease-then-the-public-will/">Kristi Miller Fund</a>”. Back in September, Dr. Miller testified at the Cohen Commission that her research funding for the sockeye salmon had been cut off. In particular, she had applied for a grant to test farmed salmon for the virus signature that she had identified. She was asking for $18,750 – a pittance in research terms – but her hierarchy said sorry, we don’t have the money at this time.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_633217714"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://www.wildsalmoncircle.com/wp-content/themes/atahualpa/images//fundfish.png" width="198" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.wildsalmoncircle.com/dfo-wont-fund-tests-on-salmon-disease-then-the-public-will/">The Kristi Miller Fund</a></td></tr>
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What a slap in the face. We who were sitting in the public gallery at the Cohen Commission on that day were fuming with rage. Then someone said: “So they don’t have that money, eh? Heck! (actually she used another word) Let’s just raise the money ourselves so Kristi Miller can do her testing.” The Kristi Miller Fund was born. To date, about $6,000 of the money has been raised. That’s about a third, not bad. I suspect we will get way beyond the required $18,000 without even breaking a sweat, as soon as this particular initiative will have taken a life of its own and grown beyond control. People have given anywhere between $10 and $1,000. What matters really is not how much each person gives but rather how many people end up contributing to this Fund, that’s the metric I’ll be most interested in.<br />
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The purpose of this initiative is not to bail out government with our own paycheques. Rather, it’s to turn this petty, shameful move to starve Miller’s work into a media and PR nightmare for the government. Initiate a shock that will grow on its own and blow up in the bureaucracy’s face. When we have the money, we’ll hold a press conference and put up a big stink about it, hand out to the media a story that they will want to tell. The plan is to force Miller’s hierarchy to miraculously “find” the money that she was denied. It’s really about saving government from its own stupidity, helping the Department of Fish Farms to start its long, painful march towards detox. So than one day, it can break away from its incestuous relationship with industry and be – once again! – the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.<br />
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People have asked: what happens if the Department of Fish Farms refuses to take the money or if it suddenly finds money of its own to fund Miller? Where does the money go? Well, I think that answer is rather obvious. We will hand it over to Alexandra Morton, so she can do more testing and diagnosis independently of industry and government. That way, we will win on both counts. Miller will get her funding restored, and Morton will continue her heroic work to break the state monopoly over salmon knowledge.<br />
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<a href="http://www.wildsalmoncircle.com/dfo-wont-fund-tests-on-salmon-disease-then-the-public-will/">Follow this link</a> to pitch in your own two cents to the Kristi Miller Fund!<br />
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<br /></div>Ivan Doumenchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10567808421635209642noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662185992354207667.post-68466878041549125442011-10-06T10:12:00.000-07:002011-10-09T11:33:30.502-07:00Yellow salmon<br />
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Have you ever seen a bright yellow salmon before? With shock and horror, I give you one.<br />
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This photo was taken yesterday by Dr. Alexandra Morton and activist Anissa Reed on the banks of the Fraser river.<br />
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They found several such dead yellow fish yesterday during a field trip. Those salmon clearly died of jaundice. And when Alex opened one fish, she found a severely diseased liver, one which appeared to be covered with tumor-like growths.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Don't eat that liver!</td></tr>
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What is causing this deadly disease in so many of our salmon? Is it a virus? We don’t know. But we need to find out, right now.<br />
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Dr. Kristi Miller, the DFO researcher whose work has been recently published in the journal <i>Science</i>, has discovered a candidate virus which may be causing cancer and anemia in wild salmon. Yet last month, it was revealed at the Cohen Commission that she has been denied funding by DFO to test Atlantic salmon in fish farms for her virus. She was asking for $18,750 – a pittance in research terms – yet her DFO hierarchy told her that they didn’t have the money!<br />
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Why is DFO doing this? Why is it pretending that it does not have twenty thousand dollars to conduct critical tests on salmon disease? Why would it say that, when it was also revealed at the Commission that the federal government has given $145,000 to the fish farm industry to conduct “research” on how to make farmed salmon more palatable to the end consumer?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pre-spawn death</td></tr>
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As yellow salmon are dying on the banks of the Fraser, this DFO charade must stop. The people of this Province demand that viral tests be performed on fish farms - right now. Not next year. Not next month. Now.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/s720x720/307818_10150397570311253_745511252_10597775_1866385894_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/s720x720/307818_10150397570311253_745511252_10597775_1866385894_n.jpg" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">WTF are those whitish growths in that salmon's gills?!</td></tr>
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<br />Ivan Doumenchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10567808421635209642noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662185992354207667.post-72356946427502785002011-09-25T22:55:00.000-07:002011-09-25T22:55:59.189-07:00Are we losing our fish?I am receiving some terrible news from different people today. I don't understand it. So I'm just going to repost it without further comment.<br />
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I'll just add this: that this pretty much seems disease-related, definitely looks like a virus of some kind.<br />
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So first, I got this from Alex Morton earlier this afternoon:<br />
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And only a few minutes ago, I got this from Geoff Gerhart:<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">Just got some bad news today. I went to the BC rivers day at Britanna creek and was speaking with some people that have a source that has informed them that sockeye are dying by the thousands. They are going up to the birkeanhead river but are not making it before they spawn. The count is estimated at 90,000 dead so far. It has been reported to DFO but they are saying that there is no problem. People have asked DFO to test the fish but they will not do so at this time. I have also seen dead fish that have not spawned. I have seen this before but something is different about this.</span></blockquote>
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What is going on?! Are we losing our fish, not just our salmon, to a deadly virus?<br />
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I'm going to sign off for the night because this is more painful than I'd care to share. I may have to cry a little. Maybe tomorrow morning, who knows? I'll have some good news waiting for me in my inbox.<br />
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<br />Ivan Doumenchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10567808421635209642noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662185992354207667.post-9076492419145622062011-09-24T08:29:00.000-07:002011-10-01T10:12:05.432-07:00Wheat harvest in the city<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"></span><br />
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Hello friends in Vancouver,</div>
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Incredible news!</div>
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Yesterday night I was on my way for some party and since I was a bit early, I decided to stop for a few minutes at the Strathcona community garden to check on my garden plot.</div>
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It was already nightfall, so I didn’t expect to meet anyone in the garden. But instead, I found the garden teeming with life and gardeners inside and around the Garden House busy harvesting wheat!</div>
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The wheat, I learned, had been grown over the summer in a neighboring garden and dried in the Garden House for the past few weeks. Gardeners were now threshing - separating the seeds from the straw to complete the harvest.</div>
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The atmosphere in the Garden House was eerie and from another world. The smell of dried straw was intoxicating. As I watched the gardeners sift the grains and collect them in large buckets, I was transported to a time and place we don't belong to. </div>
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I took a few low-fi pictures on my iPhone which do a poor job in capturing the magic of the moment. </div>
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I never thought I would see that – people harvesting wheat in the city! Cabbages and tomatoes and beans are one thing. But that’s bread we’re talking about. What a milestone in the fight to regain our food sovereignty.</div>
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The gardeners were very much aware of the somewhat groundbreaking nature of their work, and some wondered jokingly whether this constituted or not the largest wheat harvest in Vancouver in recent decades...</div>
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Okay so now, here is the scoop:</div>
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<u>Today Saturday September 24, 2:00 PM there is a work party at the Strathcona community garden to continue the wheat harvest</u>.</div>
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(That’s at 800 Prior Street, at the Garden House behind the apple orchard)</div>
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I had plans for this afternoon, but I am definitely changing those to be part of this. Hope you can make it too!</div>
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According to the weather man today will be a glorious day and WE ARE GOING TO HARVEST WHEAT IN THE CITY!!</div>
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<span style="color: #888888;"></span><span style="color: #888888;"></span>Ivan Doumenchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10567808421635209642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662185992354207667.post-16377697150021605242011-09-12T22:52:00.000-07:002011-09-13T07:26:30.190-07:00The ugly face of state repression<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">Mitch Taylor, counsel for the government of Canada. Photo UBC Law Alumni Magazine, Winter 2008</span></td></tr>
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When Mitchell Taylor, the counsel representing Canada, rose last Thursday to cross-examine Alexandra Morton, we were expecting some payback time. For the past two weeks, through the <a href="http://grassstruggle.blogspot.com/2011/09/lion.html">mighty voice of her lawyer</a> Gregory McDade, Alex had exposed to broad light the incestuous relationship between government and industry inside the salmon-industrial complex.<br />
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The cases of conflict of interest, incompetence, and acts of sabotage within DFO had piled up at the Cohen Commission like as many dead fish. Mr. Taylor’s job was to level the playing field a little for the government of Canada by bringing as much discredit as possible onto Alexandra Morton. Character assassination was his mandate, a despicable but generally accepted practice in the legal profession. So we were definitely waiting for him on that terrain.<br />
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Taylor performed his duty meticulously. He insisted on calling his witness “Ms. Morton” rather than the customary “Doctor” used to address people holding a Doctorate. He attempted to bring her US degree into disrepute by alluding to her university as being “famous for political activism”. He systematically declined to discuss any of Morton’s numerous published scientific papers or any of their content, insisting rather that she was an “advocate against open net fish farms” and that her primary activity in life was to “write a blog” and to be “quite a prolific emailer”.<br />
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Mr. Taylor did something else, however, which was not expected of him and of a different nature altogether. Deliberately, he crossed a red line. He used a technical and overall minor incident to conduct a frontal assault against Alexandra Morton’s right to free expression.<br />
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The night before her cross-examination, Alexandra Morton had made a bad judgment call by posting a blog. Something that she had been doing routinely on an almost daily basis for the past several months. September 7, however, was the one night when she shouldn’t have done it, according to a rule of the court that specifies that a witness should not communicate about the ongoing proceedings while under oath. A honest mistake, Morton explained to the court the next morning. I thought that only my evidence, which the public had not yet heard, was included in the ban, I did not know that the material already made public and broadcast live on the Internet was included as well. She apologized to the court and her apology was graciously accepted by Justice Cohen, with apparently little consequence over the proceedings.<br />
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Not so for Mr. Taylor of Canada. He wanted to extract his pound of flesh out of Morton’s screw-up. So he put Morton’s September 7 blog on the screen – even though Morton had already removed it from her blog after realizing her mistake –, and he proceeded to dissect it line by line, punctuating every sentence with a <i>you violated the rules of this court</i> reprimand. It would have remained more of the same character assassination exercise, if it were not for what Taylor did next:<br />
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<i>Taylor: Let’s continue with your blogging, if we may Ms. Morton. Let’s look at the blog from August 31. This deals with the evidence that the veterinarians gave. If we go to page three, this appears to be a cartoon that you put on the blog of what appears to be the Commissioner speaking to those four witnesses. And the cartoon is showing flames coming from the pants of the witnesses and the words of the Commissioner are “pants on fire”. Ms. Morton, are you familiar with the saying “liar, liar, pants on fire”?</i><br />
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The sight of Mr. Taylor – a sinister figure if there ever was one in a courtroom – uttering on public record the phrase “liar, liar pants of fire” with his nasal daffy-duck voice while maintaining his expressionless poker face was truly hilarious. I could not help but join the rest of the crowd in a rowdy and joyful eruption of laughter.<br />
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This moment of comic relief passed quickly though, as I realized what had just happened. The <i>August 31</i> blog? Wait a minute. Morton was not under oath on that date. This was no longer about her breaking some obscure court rule. What was it, then? Oblivious to the laughter still shaking the public gallery, Taylor continued:<br />
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<i>Taylor: Do you agree with me that this cartoon is disparaging of those witnesses’ evidence?</i><br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">Morton: I thought this was a representation, without saying the words --</i><br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">Taylor: -- Are you saying they lied?</i><br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">Morton: How can you look at the symptoms of a disease, have somebody like Dr. Gary Marty report those symptoms as being the clinical signs of marine anemia, which a DFO scientist </i>[Kristi Miller] <i style="font-style: italic;">thinks the majority of Fraser sockeye are being killed and weakened by, and the vets above him, Peter McKenzie of Mainstream, and Dr. Mark Sheppard simply don’t recognize that that disease exists. That --</i><br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">Taylor: Ms. Morton --</i><br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">Morton: -- that cannot stand.</i><br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">Taylor: Ms Morton, this is not an opportunity for you to make a speech.</i><br />
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</i><i style="font-style: italic;"><i>Morton: Well don’t ask me questions, then.</i></i><br />
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Okay. Got it. I’m with you now, Mr. Taylor. What you are really getting at with this is that Alexandra Morton should not be criticizing the scientific and industrial establishment – <i>ever</i>, whether or not she is under oath. Because for one thing, this could be construed as libel, a punishable offense. And for another, as Taylor proceeded to explain, this is a morally reprehensible behavior:<br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">Taylor: Do you agree with me that it is against the code of conduct for a registered biologist to speak disparagingly of a colleague registered biologist? </i><br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">Morton: It is, yes. </i><br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">Taylor: Can we equally apply that, then, to the fact you should not be disparaging of other professionals such as veterinarians?</i><br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">Morton: Mr. Taylor, my personal code of conduct is that when I see an ecosystem being destroyed, I will use what tools I can that are fair and legal to try and represent that truth. And if --</i><br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">Taylor: -- all right, thank you.</i><br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">Morton: -- and if the cartoon was the only way to do it, that’s what I was going to do.</i><br />
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Taylor then brought up another of Morton’s blogs, dated September 5, and therefore also clearly outside of the “no comment while under oath” restriction period. In that blog, Morton referred to an incident where gas bubbles were spotted near a fish farm in the Broughton Archipelago. Called by residents to investigate, DFO biologist Kerra Hoyseth found an underwater pipe full of dead farmed salmon. In spite of her discovery, Hoyseth reported that there was no conclusive evidence as to the exact cause of the gas emanations and so she closed the file.<br />
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In her <a href="http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton/2011/09/unwanted-tresspass.html">September 5 blog</a>, Morton commented about this incident: <i style="font-style: italic;">“Everyone knows rotting causes gas. I suspect Hoyseth's first instinct was to be more truthful, but I think this painfully illustrates DFO's relationship with fish farms. How can I believe anything DFO says about salmon farms after this? Hoyseth did not tell me the truth. I feel badly for her, because I suspect this was what was expected of her. How many others in DFO are doing the same thing just to keep their job?”</i><br />
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Mr. Taylor charged at Morton head on:<br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">Taylor: You have no evidence that [Ms. Hoyseth] was not telling the truth, do you? You just don’t agree with what she was finding or her interpretation of it. You have a different interpretation.</i><br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">Morton: Mr. Taylor -- a pipe full of rotting salmon! Ms. Hoyseth, I am sure, understood that it could easily produce bubbles. But it was my interpretation that she did not want to report that to me, and so she glossed over the finding of that entire pipe full of rotting fish.</i><br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">Taylor: Thank you. You just answered it, because you used the word “interpretation”. Now, you say "How many others in DFO are doing the same thing just to keep their job?" You have no evidence to support that accusation that people in DFO don’t tell the truth just to keep their jobs, do you?</i><br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">Morton: I actually do. But I am not going to reveal all my sources, because they are scared.</i><br />
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Two things jump out of this extraordinary exchange. One, Morton is sending a stern warning back to Taylor and the members of the scientific-industrial establishment: Sue me if you dare! I will not come to court empty handed. The second is Taylor’s dorky <i>Aha I nailed you</i> answer over the word “interpretation”. How not to think of an Inquisition trial with the church prosecutor exclaiming: She uttered the word of God in vain, what more proof do we need?<br />
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Taylor then went to the next level of his attack against Morton. He put in question her right to peaceful assembly.<br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">Taylor: Ms. Morton, I want to ask you about some protests you may have participated in against fish farms, and there is nothing wrong with that of course. You have participated in protests against fish farms at the farm site, haven’t you?</i><br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">Morton: Yes.</i><br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">Taylor: And you did that in a way that you and others got very close to the actual site and pens and/or may have gone into the site itself. </i><br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">Morton: No, we never go into the pens.</i><br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">Taylor: I see. And you did that </i>[did what? Morton just told him they didn’t do it]<i> </i><i style="font-style: italic;">despite there being some signs that say No trespassing, quite prominent signs?</i><br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">Morton: First of all, there were no signs at that farm. Second of all, it is actually illegal to put a No trespassing sign on a marine farm that has a license of occupation. Mainstream tried that for a little while, but they were told to remove them. So it was a temporary situation because it was unlawful.</i><br />
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As you have gathered from Alex Morton’s razor sharp responses in the various exchanges quoted above, Mr. Taylor did not fare as well as envisioned in his original game plan. After she absorbed the initial shock of such brutal attacks against her person, Morton began to fight back like a goddess. As the day went, and as the lawyer for BC took turns with Canada in attempting to unseat Morton, she took full control of the battlefield. She would detect the traps embedded in the questions a mile away, she would avoid them effortlessly. Nay, she would turn them right back against the examining lawyer like as many lethal boomerangs. If you have not seen Alex Morton on the witness stand this last Thursday, you do not know yet what a salmon warrior truly looks like. Such is the overwhelming power of shining and uncompromising truth.<br />
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Being a Frenchman, the historical reference that naturally jumped at me as I witnessed that extraordinary day was that of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Joan_of_Arc">Joanne of Arc</a>, and how during her trial for witchcraft she turned her interrogators into a bunch of half-witted jackasses with their pre-canned mechanical questions. All that these two women needed to do in order to overcome the sophists and Pharisees tasked with prosecuting them, was to provide some simple, luminous, painfully truthful answers which needed no other support but themselves. It is a bit frightening to see how the interrogation techniques in matters of the state have not changed much since the 15th century. It is reassuring to see that the manner to respond to such techniques have not really changed either. Just speak the truth and let its magic do the work.<br />
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In the end, and for all his misgivings, Mr. Taylor has rendered a valuable public service to the people of this country. By choosing to conduct his cross-examination of Alex Morton in the way he did, he has revealed the ugly face of state repression in action. Morton has dared to expose the collusion of the government of Canada and the fish farm industry? The government responds by attacking her personally and viciously, threatening her over her constitutional right to free speech and free assembly.<br />
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The service that Mr. Taylor provided was certainly not worth the $25 million that we have disbursed on this Commission, and frankly I dare not ask how much his personal invoice for mudslinging Morton will amount to. The final answer to the worthiness of this Inquiry will have to come from Justice Bruce Cohen himself. It was noted by some, perhaps as a sign, that at the end of the day Cohen personally thanked Alex for standing as a witness and ostensibly called her “Doctor Morton”.<br />
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</i></i></i></i></i></i>Ivan Doumenchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10567808421635209642noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662185992354207667.post-2386734851989657852011-09-02T13:50:00.000-07:002011-09-27T09:31:53.931-07:00The Lion<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Photo Don Staniford.</span><br />
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<b>Gregory McDade</b>, Alexandra Morton’s lawyer, ruled the courtroom last week. He has reshaped the Cohen Commission’s most critical days – those dedicated to salmon disease and aquaculture – in his own image. The dull and mostly meaningless proceedings of the previous months have been transformed in a series of short, sometimes brutal, always thrilling single combats between McDade and the “expert” of the moment sent by the DFO machine to counter him. Those will remain as the McDade days. Does it mean that the man succeeded in everything he has attempted at the Commission? Far from it. But he has sent some shattering shock waves through the system and set in motion a process of exposing the salmon-industrial complex, with deep ramifications that we can only begin to envision today.<br />
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Recently, I got in the habit of referring to McDade on my Facebook as “the Lion”. It’s pretty tacky, I know. But it captures my personal enthusiasm for the man and for what he embodies. For one thing, with his generous moustache and sometimes unclean shave, he physically looks like one. Then, he definitely acts like one. He sees every cross-examination as a hunt – albeit one for truth rather than for flesh – which requires impeccable preparation and methodical execution. Patiently, McDade asks. He waits, circles, retreats, gets to know and appreciate his prey as he identifies its weaker points. He knows from his long experience as a hunter that he has until the very last minutes of his allocated time to deliver the deadly strike. That weak point may emerge as insufferable self-infatuation as in the case of Dick Beamish, or shocking incompetence as in that of Michael Kent, or an excessive penchant for logical argumentation as with Josh Korman. But whatever that weakness is, Greg McDade usually finds it.<br />
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A classic illustration of McDade’s technique was his <a href="http://www.facebook.com/note.php?saved&&note_id=198396513558111">cross-examination of Dr. Michael Kent</a> (ex-DFO, now professor of Microbiology at Oregon State University) over a report that Kent prepared for the Cohen Commission regarding pathogens. McDade proceeded in three successive strikes which each, taken individually, looked rather innocuous. But when he assembled them into a weapon, McDade delivered such a powerful blow to Kent’s credibility that subsequent witnesses to the Commission felt prudent to distance themselves from Kent’s work and name altogether. One. He established that the witness was primarily an expert in fish farm pathogens, rather than salmon pathogens in general. Two. He showed that Kent’s mandate with the Commission was to study <i>all </i>pathogens (both wild and farmed). Three. He demonstrated that Kent, contrary to both his field of expertise and clear mandate with the Commission, chose on his own accord to study only wild pathogens, inexplicably omitting those found in the fish farms. McDade didn’t openly say that the witness was guilty of dereliction of duty, but that’s pretty much the message that the audience received:<br />
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<i>McDade: Let's just be clear. You didn't spend any time studying the role of fish farms in the causation of disease.</i><br />
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<i>Kent: I disagree.</i><br />
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<i>McDade: Did you look at the fish health database?</i><br />
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<i>Kent: Which exhibit is that one?</i><br />
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<i>McDade: That's the actual spreadsheets and reports and fish health auditing that the fish farms make to the Province around fish health. Did you look inside those documents?</i><br />
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<i>Kent: I scanned them, there are quite a few. These are Excel sheets, right? I looked at them, they came to me quite late. I actually reviewed them this morning. I scanned them pretty extensively but I didn’t get through them at all in all sorts of detail.</i><br />
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<i>McDade: Did you have them when you did your report?</i><br />
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<i>Kent: No I didn’t.</i><br />
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<i>McDade: wouldn't that be relevant to your report, if there are diseases that are all over those spreadsheets?</i><br />
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<i>Kent: They would be useful. It’s not peer reviewed literature, but they would be useful.</i><br />
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<i>McDade: What’s the distinction from peer reviewed literature?</i><br />
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<i>Kent: It’s then validated by professionals. But it would be of use, but I – given the limitations that I had with my time, the most useful data were peer reviewed papers for the study.</i><br />
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<i>McDade: And so DFO hasn’t studied the matter, and there is no peer review paper on it, and so for you, it didn’t exist?</i><br />
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<i>Kent: No. I said it has less significance to me.</i><br />
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Another beautiful example was McDade’s <a href="http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=202236869840742">cross-examination of Dr. Josh Korman</a>, who wrote a report to the Commission on mortality rates observed in fish farms. Korman definitely loves the mathematical music of a logical argument, and that translates into a natural repugnance for intellectual dishonesty, unlike so many of McDade’s other customers at the Commission. McDade exploited that characteristic masterfully on a critical point involving the discovery that Chinook fish farms may have been directly linked to the recent ups and downs of the Fraser sockeye:<br />
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<i>McDade: So the Conville Bay farm was experiencing problems with symptoms that at least some thought was marine anemia. But what I was asking was this: if there were Chinook farms experiencing marine anemia in the Discovery Islands in 2007, but none at all in 2008, would that not be a significant matter that you would want to investigate? And that is the information that I get off of those spreadsheets.</i><br />
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<i>Korman: Yeah, that does line up with that pattern that you described. There are so many steps to determine that this was actually a big factor, right? Does that disease transmit? Does it cause death? All those steps we have been talking about. But certainly, it’s a hypothesis that is not unreasonable.</i><br />
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I came across a photo taken at this week’s salmon warriors rally at the Vancouver Art Gallery (the one posted on this blog) and I immediately went: that’s him – that lion is Greg McDade. A friend I showed the picture to remarked ironically that it was quite the lion indeed! with a rope tied around its neck. I shrugged that comment off by saying that no picture ever perfectly captures the essence of its subject.<br />
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The photo, I was to discover the next day, rope and all, was perfect. I had been acquainted with McDade’s professional expertise and class in a courtroom. I had not yet witnessed his personal courage when placed in a hostile environment. This was revealed to me last Wednesday when McDade rose to cross-examine four critical witnesses with veterinarian expertise. He started by pointing out that the employers of each witness were either the government or a fish farming corporation. He then added:<br />
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<i>McDade: So I take it that all of you gentlemen are supporters of the status quo. </i><br />
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<i>[silence]</i><br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">McDade: Let me ask that question differently. There is no one here that is an independent expert from the government and companies as to the structure. </i><br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">One of the witnesses: Maybe you should define “independent”?</i><br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">McDade: I just want to make a statement, Mr. Commissioner, that the choice of experts for this important panel on disease is missing any expert who can comment in opposition to the current structure. But we’ll work with what we’ve got, even if it’s working with one hand behind our back. </i><br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">Counsel for the Commission: The hearing plan has received Mr. McDade’s endorsement, so we will take that point, but I think it should be understood in that light. </i><br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">McDade: Well, the experts that we asked to call have not been called. You are not suggesting that we haven’t asked for other experts to be called?</i><br />
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<i style="font-style: italic;">Counsel for the Commission: No, certainly I have not suggested that. But the final hearing plan is one that has received, to differing degree, either support – or at least no objections – in the way of applications. </i><br />
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That was quite a way to start a cross-examination for a lawyer, to directly incriminate the very Commission that you are addressing! McDade had a very solid point, no question about it, one which had been eloquently <a href="http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton/2011/08/day-7-there-is-something-wrong-with-this-process.html">echoed by Alexandra Morton</a> in her blog that same morning. But to say in Justice Cohen’s face that, like the lion in my photo, he had to work with a hand tied behind his back? It was risky, it was bold, it was brilliant.<br />
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Like the Borgs in <i>Star Trek</i>, his opponents had adapted to McDade’s weaponry after only a few shots. They had been carefully briefed on how to dodge his questions by bouncing him back and forth from one “expert” to the next (I am no expert in this matter, but you should address this question to Dr. X who is not here today.) McDade knew he was not going to get anything out of that panel – especially under the ridiculous time constraints imposed by the Commission, as explained in Alex Morton’s blog. So McDade-the-lawyer went political. Lost for lost, let’s get something out of this day. The Cohen Commission, he implied on public record, is an integral part of the “current structure” and actively assists in the perpetuation of the “status quo”. Dodge this.<br />
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McDade’s credit rating with the Cohen Commission must have dropped by a few notches after that <i>sortie</i>. But he also scored a perfect AAA with those sitting in the public gallery. We roared with pleasure at his statement. Gregory “The Lion” McDade is in synchrony with the public sentiment over this whole Cohen Commission charade, and the $25 million that it is costing the taxpayer. I personally expect nothing to come out of Justice Cohen’s recommendations. But I do expect a hefty political backlash to hit “the structure” and shake it in its core. And that will be worth the price of admission of having to sit in silence and listen for hours to the endless lies of this elitist bunch of dorks.<br />
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Greg McDade, you have our gratitude for saying out loud what we have been carrying in silence for all those months.<br />
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</i>Ivan Doumenchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10567808421635209642noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662185992354207667.post-48511139023475801512011-08-28T22:54:00.000-07:002011-08-28T23:31:55.641-07:00Kristi’s choice<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/archive/01312/web-miller_jpeg_1312469cl-8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/archive/01312/web-miller_jpeg_1312469cl-8.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Dr. Kristi Miller (Head, Molecular Genetics, DFO). Photo Globe and Mail.</span><br />
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Reckless sabotage. Bureaucratic harassment. Financial starvation. A quasi-religious resistance to novelty. And a good dose of incompetence.<br />
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That is the mix that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has prepared for Kristi Miller, with the incredible result of bringing her critical research on salmon anemia to a complete halt. Or so we learned this past week at the Cohen Commission. As I write these lines, Kristi Miller’s research is fully stalled, with no money allocated to it and no clear indication on how long it may take to get it moving again.<br />
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How did they stop it? By using what scientists living at the top of the intellectual food chain do best: a mind game. Consciously or not (that part remains to be seen), senior management and high-ranking scientists of this bureaucracy have blocked Miller’s work by using a circular argument which holds in 4 simple statements:<br />
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1. We don't know that there is a disease.<br />
2. We won't take any action until we know that there is a disease.<br />
3. We make sure that our scientist cannot find whether there is a disease.<br />
4. Therefore, we don't know that there is a disease.<br />
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We don't have hard evidence of a pathogen affecting wild salmon, Dr. Michael Kent (ex-DFO, currently Professor of Microbiology at Oregon State University) stated on the Commission’s witness stand. Without more research, it is purely speculative to say that the virus uncovered by Kristi Miller was a significant factor in the 2009 collapse, said Dr. Kyle Garver, Research Scientist at DFO. Some of the interpretations and assumptions that Miller makes in her research may be speculative or overreached, said Dr. Christine MacWilliams, senior fish health veterinarian at DFO. (A stunning comment given that MacWilliams did not feel it was necessary to explain what she meant by that.)<br />
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To some extent, Kristi Miller herself adheres to such views about her research, notwithstanding the personal and unsubstantiated attacks carried by some of her colleagues. She agreed that there is no conclusive evidence yet linking virus to disease, or fish farms to wild salmon. But there are some pretty good indications that this may indeed be the case, “a smoking gun” as she put it to the Commission. There is a distinct genomic signature found in the Fraser sockeye, there is a virus which may be linked to that signature, there is evidence of anemia and leukemia in many infected wild salmon, and there is a dramatic decline in the sockeye population in the Fraser. And so, one may conclude, there is ample and urgent justification for pursuing Miller’s research forward at DFO’s earliest convenience.<br />
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Given the promising and novel nature of Miller’s findings and level of interest it has generated in the scientific community at large – her research was recently published in the journal <i>Science </i>–, the amount of resistance she has encountered at DFO from her own colleagues and management is staggering. In 2009 for example, Kristi Miller prepared a memo to her senior management alerting them over the “potentially devastating impacts” of the discovered disease on the sockeye. Dr. Kyle Garver, who was asked to review the memo, attempted to water down its contents. Alexandra Morton’s lawyer, Gregory McDade, asked Garver about this particular incident during a cross-examination at the Cohen Commission:<br />
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<i>McDade: When a senior scientist at your department says “potentially devastating impacts”, that's a significant finding for you, is it not?</i><br />
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<i>Garver: I'm sorry – for me?</i><br />
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<i>McDade: What I am trying to get here is a sense of what level of certainty you need about a potentially devastating impact to the sockeye salmon to actually take action, rather than more studies. How far do we have to go in proof?</i><br />
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<i>Garver: We’re following a scientific approach, so we need to establish that this sequence is indeed causing a disease.</i><br />
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<i>McDade: And you are not prepared to recommend an action to your senior people at DFO until you’ve done all of these laboratory studies and have found proof to your satisfaction?</i><br />
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<i>Garver: Until I find that this virus is causing disease, and that it is indeed transmissible, then I probably would not recommend action at this time.</i><br />
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The resistance to Miller’s findings at DFO did not always follow a strict scientific approach either, and sometimes verged on the irrational or even the supernatural. In a memorable meeting, for example, Dr. Christine MacWilliams explained to Kristi Miller that all possible pathogens affecting sockeye had already been discovered and that, therefore, there was no room for any “novel undescribed” pathogens. Science, MacWilliams was telling Miller, had ended its journey. There was nothing else to discover. We, at DFO, already hold all the knowledge that there is to hold. Search no more! All truth has been revealed. Another colleague, according to Miller, stated to her that he “did not believe that marine anemia truly exists”. As if the existence or nonexistence of such diseases was a matter of faith, rather than scientific observation.<br />
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Confronted with such a wall of resistance, Kristi Miller, a pragmatic person, decided to change her tack. They wanted a causal viral agent linking her genomic signature to an actual disease before she could pursue this further? Okay then, she’d focus her work on identifying that causal (or <i>etiological</i>) agent. So in 2009 she went to DFO management and to Genome BC, her major funder, asking for funding to identify the etiological agent. But they didn’t like it, Miller explained, “because our scientific advisory board wanted to keep the program as we had originally proposed”. So her funding request was denied. Talk about a catch 22. We won’t support your research because we don’t see a causal agent in there. But we won’t allow you to refocus your research on finding that causal agent either, because that’s not what had originally been proposed!<br />
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Another incident. In early 2011, Miller explained, the fish farm industry showed some signs of openness and agreed to go ahead with testing their Atlantic salmon. “But I was told later by one of the vets from one of the companies that they were advised against doing the testing by someone from DFO. So that’s as far as it went, I did not test the [farmed] fish for the signature.” Miller subsequently discovered that the person – or one of them, at least – who had killed her testing program with the industry was Christine McWilliams. Her again. What a drag, that woman. In a following meeting, according to Miller, McWilliams told in her face that “if we were to ask industry to voluntarily submit fish for testing, [she] would recommend to them that it would not be in their best interest to comply.”<br />
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Loud gasp in the Cohen Commission’s audience. But we were not done gasping yet, far from it. Shortly after came the bombshell previously mentioned: that Kristi Miller’s current funding to conduct her research on the Fraser sockeye has been reduced to, well, zero. My group is not the only one in this situation, there are several others, Miller quickly added coming to DFO’s rescue. Bu then, as if engaged in some dark inner battle with herself, she made the following comment: Well of course my group is the only large one in this situation. I have eleven people on my staff, whereas all other affected groups have one or two people at most.<br />
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It was also revealed during the same session that, just as Miller’s Science paper was being published, an order came straight out of Stephen Harper’s office banning her from addressing the media or any outside scientists. The pretext invoked for such an outrageous decision was a meaningless technicality involving a disagreement about some acronyms in the media lines. Again, Miller made a feeble and unconvincing attempt to shield her bosses: I was not the only scientist covered by that ban, she explained to the Commission. Well no, Ma’am, you were not. But you sure were the only one being published in Science that next morning.<br />
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What was very troubling in this incident, in addition to Harper’s direct intervention in a purely scientific matter, was that Miller’s senior management at DFO dropped her like a rock in this instance. The counsel who was conducting the cross-examination asked Miller:<br />
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<i>Q: So we’re just on the eve of the publication of your paper in Science. Essentially, you have a very important paper that’s being published in a very prestigious journal, and media are contacting you, and you are being told by Dr. Richards [Miller’s boss] that you have to go to Ottawa to get approval to talk to the media. Is that correct?</i><br />
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<i>A: Yes, absolutely.</i><br />
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This complete let-down of Miller by her management on the eve of a pretty significant day in her career was confirmed in an email, in which Dr. Richards wrote: “I understand your concern, but unfortunately there is nothing they [the PM’s communications office in Ottawa] can do.” Read: <i>Unfortunately there is nothing I am prepared to do</i>. If Richards had tried something – anything – to correct this awful situation, the email she wrote to Miller would no doubt have referred to it. But no, nothing. Just this one-liner.<br />
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A final cause for audience stupor in Kristi Miller’s testimony was this. In March 2011, a meeting was organized at DFO to brief Dr. Richards in preparation for her testimony in front of the Cohen Commission. The object, essentially, was to tell Richards what to say and not to say to Justice Cohen. At the meeting were present representatives from both Marine Harvest (the world’s biggest fish farm corporation) and the BC Salmon Farmers Association (the front group for the fish farm industry in BC). Miller must have sensed that there was something pretty stinky about such people sitting in such a meeting, because she said what sounded like two big fat lies to many people in the audience: (a) I was not aware that those industry people were at the meeting and (b) I don’t remember whether Dr. Richards was in attendance. I paused for a moment. Why in the world would Miller “forget” whether her boss what at that meeting or not? Was she trying to cover her again?<br />
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To see Miller defend the very people and bureaucratic machinery which are sabotaging her work recklessly on a daily basis was very troubling. Another extraordinary example of this Mother Theresa attitude was given when the counsel read to Miller a transcript in which her own boss, Dr. Richards, stated that Miller had “misrepresented” her words in regards to her being muzzled. Even though her boss was attacking her directly on public record, Miller gave the following angelical response:<br />
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<i>Q: You would not agree that this is a misrepresentation of what you heard from Dr. Richards, would you?</i><br />
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<i>A: What I would have not known at the time was whose decision it was [to muzzle me]. As I learned through the inquiry process, the decision not to allow me to speak to the press came out of the privy council office, not from DFO.</i><br />
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Many members of the activist community have spontaneously embraced Kristi Miller as a folk hero. And she is no doubt a heroic figure. She is interested in scientific truth, and she also departs from the DFO dominant culture in that she does appear to see scientific research as a means for solving human problems, such as the precipitous decline of the sockeye. She also shows a great degree of humanity, often expressed in the form of genuine frustration towards the DFO bureaucracy. And she displayed a high level of personal honesty and integrity in the vast majority of her responses. But she is also a product of the system, a DFO scientist raised and bred like all others to follow the same unwritten code of conduct. The prime directive of that code, of course, is that you never publicly criticize the agency no matter your grievances, that we are a family, that we solve our issues internally.<br />
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So she is a hero yes, but a tragic one. One which is stuck between two worlds: that of independent, unfettered, outcome-oriented research, and that of the self-serving bureaucracy which sees research as a means to its own perpetuation. Attempting to belong to both worlds, but unable to do so, Miller runs the risk of being part of neither. But does she have a choice?<br />
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As Meryl Streep in the classic film <i>Sophie’s Choice</i>, Kristi Miller has to choose between the child that she has grown and nurtured for so many years (her research on salmon anemia), and her oppressive and abusive mother, the DFO. She also has to deal on a daily basis with the growing hostility of her numerous siblings in that highly dysfunctional family, her fellow researchers, who don't understand what the hell is wrong with the rogue sister, why can’t she just be like the rest of us?<br />
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The fact that Kristi Miller has not yet given up on scientific truth, in spite of the incredible and often very personal pressures she has been enduring, is a tribute to her character and moral integrity. But how much longer can she last in such a toxic environment?<br />
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<b>Resources and action items:</b><br />
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<a href="http://www.superheroes4salmon.org/blog/week-1-review-skeletons-rattling-cohen%E2%80%99s-closet">Week 1 Review of the Cohen Commission</a>: The Skeletons Rattling in Cohen’s Closet. To get all the facts that emerged at the Commission this week, referenced with their sources.<br />
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<a href="http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton/">Alexandra Morton's blog</a>. To get the analysis.<br />
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<a href="http://www.salmonaresacred.org/blog/dr-kristi-millers-testing-fund-s-flooding-farmed-salmon-sampling"> Dr. Kristi Miller's Testing Fund</a>: *ACTION* Wild salmon supporters raising the $18,700 needed by Dr. Kristi Miller to test farmed Atlantic salmon for diseases and viruses. That amount was denied by DFO.<br />
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<a href="http://www.salmonaresacred.org/blog/wild-salmon-warrior-rally-why">Wild Salmon Warrior Rally</a>: *ACTION* Vancouver Art Gallery, Tuesday August 30, 2011<br />
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.Ivan Doumenchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10567808421635209642noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662185992354207667.post-35420023444623225662011-08-23T09:52:00.000-07:002011-08-23T10:51:16.638-07:00Salmon-industrial complex in damage control<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://media.greenradio.topscms.com/images/88/f8/79d6cf69428b8678e90ea52d6185.jpeg"><img align="BOTTOM" border="0" height="400" name="graphics1" src="http://media.greenradio.topscms.com/images/88/f8/79d6cf69428b8678e90ea52d6185.jpeg" width="258" /></a></span></div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Justice Bruce Cohen. Ready when you are with that disease data, buddy!</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span></div><div style="font-size: small; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The final chapter of Justice Cohen's inquiry in the 2009 sockeye collapse opened yesterday in Vancouver. Dedicated to the critical issues of salmon disease and aquaculture, this final set of hearings will take place over the next two weeks. It represents a major deal for the people in power. At stake is nothing less than the perpetuation of the cozy relationship which unites the “three amigos” of the salmon-industrial complex: the fish farm industry, the government, and the scientific establishment.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Back in November 2010, in his infinite wisdom Justice Cohen ordered the release of disease data collected over ten years in BC's fish farms. The industry has remitted the data as ordered by the judge, but it has also obtained that it be embargoed. Those who gained access to the data had to sign an undertaking not to disclose any of it until Cohen said so. According to a persistent rumor, that data is godawful damning: it will show that BC's salmon stocks have been hit by a massive viral outbreak for many years and that the industry, government, and perhaps even high-ranking scientists knew about it for all this time but decided to keep it a secret.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The public's patience, unlike Cohen's wisdom, is not infinite. Yesterday at the Commission, I heard some wonder aloud why the disease data had not been released yet, as Cohen had hinted it would be by now. The Commission's usually deserted public gallery was almost full, a pleasant and unusual sight which conveyed a clear message that people were now awaiting some concrete answers.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Those in power, of course, know that they have to respond to the public's expectations, and in particular that this bad-for-business disease data must be made available sooner rather than later, if only to avoid a rogue and uncontrolled wikileaks-style release of the entire dataset. But how to avoid a public backlash? What is the best strategy to soften the blow of such terrible and incriminating data, if any of this persistent rumor happens to be true?</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Yesterday at the Commission, the establishment laid its cards on the table. Before even releasing any data and knowing that such release is ultimately unavoidable, it preemptively deployed an elaborate damage-control strategy hinging on a simple yet effective message: Yes BC's salmon stocks have known a viral outbreak for many years, but so what? This strategy has been carefully planned and thoroughly rehearsed, as the tightly choreographed exchanges between counsels and witnesses revealed.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The first witness, Dr. Michael Kent (Professor, Microbiology & Biomedical Sciences, Oregon State University) started the day by stating right off the bat that it is very hard to study diseases in wild salmon stocks and that such diseases have consequently been understudied. He added: Yes there are pathogens in BC's wild salmon but I don't see a smoking gun, we don't have hard evidence of a pathogen affecting wild salmon.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Dr. Stewart Johnson (Head, Aquatic Animal Health, DFO) concurred with his fellow witness: there is an absence of any hard evidence of a correlation between pathogens and salmon decline. The bottom line is we can't predict that link between the presence of pathogens in the water, and the number of fry that will come out of an adult spawner. And there is also a great variability from year to year, he added for good measure.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And with that, the tone was set for the day. The same message came out of the four witnesses again and again, a message expertly multiplied and amplified by the capable counsels representing the Commission and government. That message was: we have viruses, we have high salmon mortality, but we don't have a clear link from one to the other.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The name of the game was to cultivate uncertainty, and the counsel for Canada was particularly adept at bringing out just that. "In a paper, he asked the panel of witnesses, you caution that results from different studies are difficult to compare, different methodological approaches and different species in regards to their specific susceptibility to infection. You have to be careful about how you take results from different studies. Is that right?"</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Panel of leading experts [<i>chorus</i>]: Right!</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Later, the counsel for Canada asked: “What I'm really getting at here is that when you have concurrent infections, in order to understand what are the contributing factors – if any – of the given pathogen, it's usually complex, because of the given interrelated concurrent nature of the affections that are at play. Is that correct? Do the members of the panel agree with that?”</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Panel of leading experts [<i>chorus</i>]: We agree with that!</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Counsel for Canada: “What I am hearing in this is that there is considerable uncertainty around this salmon anemia disease and no one is able to tie it to any disease so far.”</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Panel of leading experts [<i>chorus</i>]: Thou hearst well!</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Dr. Michael Kent felt obliged to qualify this last response by adding: Anemia can be caused by more than one agent, such as a parasite in addition to a virus. The virus is probably a cause but we cannot rule out other causes. Retrovirus are very common in animals, many of them are endogenous. So yes we did find a virus in our studies, but definitively was that the cause of the disease? We cannot say. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I call them here the “panel of leading experts” because that is precisely what the counsel for Canada called them on record. Counsel for Canada: “Is it fair to say that we have in you leading experts in your fields? Come on, don't be modest!” Panel of leading experts [<i>displaying signs of modesty</i>]: Well hmm if you say so okay then!</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">All counsels officiating yesterday did not show the same level of talent as their friend representing Canada. For some reason, the Province of BC decided to send out a rookie of a lawyer who immediately struck the wrong chord with the panel of 'leading experts'. She tried to obtain from the scientists something they would not give her: an actual denial of any linkage between the virus and the salmon. Fatal mistake. The fundamental principle guiding the entire day's proceedings (as the counsel for Canada had so masterfully understood) was uncertainty, not denial.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Counsel for BC: “Dr. Kent, have you concluded that no specific pathogen is a major cause to the decline of the Fraser sockeye?”</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Dr. Kent: No. I have concluded that we cannot identify any specific pathogen to be the cause of the demise of the Fraser sockeye. I know this may seem as splitting hairs but I am not saying we have excluded the possibility that a single pathogen has caused the demise of the sockeye.” </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The panel of scientists was telling the young counsel from BC (albeit in much more polite words than that) "don't push your luck, lady!" Sensing the danger, and perhaps getting a little worried about the looming cross-examination due to take place on the following day, the scientists were sticking to the script: there is no certainty one way or the other in regards to viruses and salmon.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One of the problems encountered by the panel and counsels in promoting this principle of uncertainty was the groundbreaking research conducted by Dr. Kristi Miller at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Her team's work established such linkage between viral infection and the decline of the salmon, and it has been recently saluted by the international scientific community through a publication in the journal Science. Meanwhile at home, Miller has been subjected to what can only be qualified as censorship and muzzling by her employer the DFO. Yesterday, some significant time was set aside to debunk Kristi Miller's research in no uncertain terms:</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Commission counsel: Could you comment on Dr. Miller's work?</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Dr. Christine MacWilliams (Fish Health Veterinarian – Salmonid Enhancement Program, DFO) : My interpretation of Kristi Miller's research based on the paper that I read is that some of the interpretations and assumptions being made were perhaps speculative or overreached. (Unfortunately, Christine MacWilliams did not explain the specific grounds on which she dismissed Kristi Miller's research, so we're going to have to take her word for it.)</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The amount of ammunition that yesterday's scientific panel handed over to the fish farm industry is staggering. All the industry will need to say next week when called to witness is, tobacco industry or Exxon-style: yes our farms are heavily diseased but hey! the science is not in, the correlation between pathogens and salmon decline is not established as per our panel of 'leading experts', and we need another 10 years of science at least to establish that. But don't worry! We'll make sure that this research does happen and we'll take care of the scientists' bills.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In that cozy threesome relationship I referred to earlier between industry, government, and scientific establishment, one may ask: what's in it for the scientists? Why would they line up with the industry and politicians rather than defend, say, the principle of objective scientific truth? <a href="http://grassstruggle.blogspot.com/2010/12/selective-science.html">In a previous blog</a>, I argued that scientists are not necessarily corrupt on an individual level, that actually most of them are fairly honest people. Rather, it's the research funding system itself which is corrupted to the bone, having been handed over to the the very industry which science is supposed to help watch over.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Dr. Stewart Johnson gave a spectacular illustration of that reality yesterday while testifying at the Cohen Commission. The strange thing is that he did not even realize he did! Describing a three-year research project which involved the study of migration patterns of Fraser sockeye from their spawning lake to the Strait of Georgia, he referred to the project's three-year funding and added almost in passing: "We received some support for this research from Marine Harvest". The fact that Mr. Johnson does not even perceive the existence of a conflict of interest here shows how deeply the scientific culture and code of ethics has been compromised by corporate funding.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As one of my fellow activists wrote in a live Facebook post during the Commission hearings: “If you leave it to the tobacco industry to detect cancer in smokers you'll get the same answer than when you leave it to fish farm apologists to find what's killing the sockeye.”</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-align: left; widows: 2;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
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Ivan Doumenchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10567808421635209642noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662185992354207667.post-70593364564588769392011-05-02T21:14:00.000-07:002011-05-02T21:23:12.913-07:00No more mistaking Red Conservatives for "Liberals"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYKQowS9LpioyQqHsAkyDCVbG-oD20WGHfbcCC1i2ViDVQ9MYnQToog0osOjJqL8a1nQ7buh4fN_7NGL5YWDRsea5vy67JAPRfGct1IYRsxNUViRTdBOFz3HbXOKDmenO0r35yjvxt6P0V/s1600/changingseats.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYKQowS9LpioyQqHsAkyDCVbG-oD20WGHfbcCC1i2ViDVQ9MYnQToog0osOjJqL8a1nQ7buh4fN_7NGL5YWDRsea5vy67JAPRfGct1IYRsxNUViRTdBOFz3HbXOKDmenO0r35yjvxt6P0V/s400/changingseats.jpg" width="187" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I find the <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/election-results/">following graph</a> from the Globe & Mail<i> </i><i>("CHANGING SEATS - Ridings gained or lost compared with the 2008 federal election")</i> by far the most interesting of the evening.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">At least 4 lessons learned:</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">1. Conservatives and NDP have shared the spoils of the night according to a neatly demarcated line: Conservatives taking most lost Liberal seats, NDP wiping out the Bloc.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">2. This means that disaffected Liberal voters have mostly gone Conservative, with only a minority going to NDP. Ergo, the Liberal Party is - always has been - a right wing party rather than a center or moderately left-leaning one notwithstanding that party's mythology.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">3. Simple math reveals then that Canada is clearly a conservative country: over 50% if we conservatively (pardon the punt) allocate half of tonight's remaining Liberal votes to the Conservatives. In this light, "strategic voting" and "Anything but Conservative" reveals itself to be ironic and tragically mistaken.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">4. If Liberals have any sense left in them (I am not certain that they actually do) then they will reach those same conclusions and rapidly swing to their right, to save whatever can be from this disaster. NDP should definitely celebrate tonight, because tomorrow they might find that they are rather lonely as a political formation, much more so than the Conservatives.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Activists, take a deep breath. Get over it. Go to sleep early. Prepare yourselves mentally and physically for some ridiculously uneven battles - which will need to be fought nonetheless.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Good news is, tomorrow the picture will be that much easier to read. No more mistaking Red Conservatives for "Liberals".</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">.</div>Ivan Doumenchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10567808421635209642noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662185992354207667.post-19945348458572457972011-02-24T20:16:00.000-08:002011-02-24T21:44:19.291-08:00Simple seeds<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsVGFKHsb022L2FVj_x5yJ2N2NlVsZOFlHsSehei55p6z3GCBR5Th_-kbFtyVN6q9rXZCYPFNqFJ6I9C0vMHyQtg-q9Hntu75iiKzFxmAuLJGSyT-6ylPTTE2NxvOA5VtJA79pzUEifxij/s1600/will.allen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsVGFKHsb022L2FVj_x5yJ2N2NlVsZOFlHsSehei55p6z3GCBR5Th_-kbFtyVN6q9rXZCYPFNqFJ6I9C0vMHyQtg-q9Hntu75iiKzFxmAuLJGSyT-6ylPTTE2NxvOA5VtJA79pzUEifxij/s400/will.allen.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Will Allen embodies the aspirations and contradictions of the urban farming movement. Photo <a href="http://www.growingpower.org/">Growing Power, Inc</a>.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">THE GREAT ecological crisis – our generation's gift to the world which will ensure that our names live in infamy long after we are gone – can be boiled down to the fundamental division between town and country.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">That old divide is one of environmentalist Derrick Jensen's central premises: civilization is an urban-centered culture based on the city's violent appropriation of resources from the surrounding land. It was also, long before him, a key point of Marx's critique of capitalism. As peasants are forced off the land and driven to the city to work in factories, the products of agriculture are also massively shipped to the city to feed its growing population. Soils, harvested bare and starved of organic nutrients, are unable to regenerate themselves. Like a drug addict, the land becomes dependent on regular supplies of chemical fertilizers produced in the cities. <span style="text-decoration: none;">Marx called this </span>starvation of the land<span style="text-decoration: none;"> </span>to the benefit of the city the <a href="http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2007/foster281107.html"><span style="text-decoration: none;">metabolic rift</span></a>.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">Such an imbalance is not meant to last. Even as the metabolic rift continues to deepen before our eyes at a frightful speed, the revolutionary response is already in motion. It does not, however, imply a nostalgic “return to the land” as some environmentalists offer simplistically. On the contrary, it consists of bringing the land into the city. It takes the form of an explosive urban farming movement which relies on new concepts such as vertical indoor farming, new technologies such as solar power and hydroponics, and rediscovered forms of political organization such as community-based participative democracy. </div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">A few weeks ago, I met one of the movement's gurus, Will Allen. About seven hundred people packed the Croatian Cultural Centre on Vancouver's Commercial Drive to hear him tell how he had started Growing Power Inc., a community-based urban farm in Milwaukee's inner city. </div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Food is the number one tool in community development</i>, Allen explained, <i>because food is what connects everyone to the world. We have worked with the juvenile justice system with kids who did some pretty awful stuff. They would grow plants and give them to shelters as part of their healing. We took over vacant lots where there were drug dealers, and they left. We called those operations “flower explosions”.</i></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">Urban farming has gone from a movement to a revolution</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">, he added.</span></span><i><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"> Five years ago, maybe 50 people would have been in this room. Now, I get crowds wherever I go. This is a below-the-ground movement, it has taken root</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">, he concluded unable to resist the agricultural punt.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">The crowd was cheering with enthusiasm. Half of the Drive's food growing community must have been in attendance that night, and they were roaring with pleasure, loving every part of it. I personally bumped into at least 20 people from my own rabble-rousing seed-loving network. It was clearly a night for radicals.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">Will Allen, however, was also surrounded by a different group of friends. This event, the PA system announced at the start, is proudly sponsored by the Real Estate Foundation of BC. Tucked under every chair, a brown bag was filled with goodies courtesy of organic cereal maker Nature's Path. Half a dozen representatives of the City of Vancouver were on stage or among the crowd, including deputy mayor Andrea Reimer who gave a hearty speech. The event itself was moderated by former NPA (yes, the real estate party) city councilor and mayoral candidate Peter Ladner. The corporate and government establishment – at least, its more green-leaning faction – had come in force to express its active support to Will Allen. </div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">This was not just a Vancouver oddity, either. According to a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/magazine/05allen-t.html">recent article</a> in the New York Times, Allen “has become a darling of the foundation world”, raking over a million dollars in grants in recent years from corporate charity household names such as the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Kellogg Foundation. During his slide show presentation, Allen showed some of his farming projects situated in the financial districts of America's largest cities, with manicured urban gardens growing in the shade of 80-floor skyscrapers or on the front lawns of high-tech corporate campuses in wealthy suburbs, all paid for by their happy hosting sponsors. Corporate America has identified Will Allen as a high value asset and has solidly latched onto him.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">Allen's personal history embodies some of the deeper contradictions which make the urban farming movement. The son of a South Carolina sharecropper and himself a long time inner-city activist, he is also a former professional basketball player and successful salesman for Procter & Gamble. Allen lives and works at the crossroads of worlds often at odds with one another, with very different understandings of the word “revolution”. In fairness, it is very tempting to accept those generous partnerships from such powerful and wealthy friends and, arguably, very foolish to reject them. But as hard as it may try, the urban farming movement will find that on the long run, it cannot reconcile its strategic goals with those of the industry. The best it can hope for is to establish tactical, short-lived alliances. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, the movement faces potential liquidation if it fails to understand this reality.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">To my right, the rock: the entrenched interests of America's corn belt, the Archer Daniels Midlands, Monsantos, and </span></span><b><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Tyson Foods</span></span></b><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> of the world, who are the heirs, beneficiaries, and guarantors of the metabolic rift.</span></span> They love the fact that crops and chemicals get shipped back and forth over long distances between country and city. They are outright pissed at the initiatives of Will Allen and other like-minded urban hipsters. <span style="font-weight: normal;">Their philosophy is that feeding the world is a serious business which should be left to grown-ups of the sort that sit on the boards of, well, Archer </span><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Daniels </span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Midland, Monsanto and </span><b><span style="font-weight: normal;">Tyson Foods</span></b><span style="font-weight: normal;">.</span> Initially dismissive of those awkward and smelly urban farmers, the industry is now getting slightly worried at the speed and magnitude of the revolution, and is gearing up for battle.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">To my left, the hard place: green capitalism. What's not to love about them? They channel the forces of the market, reform the system from the inside in order to make the world a better place. They are the Nature's Paths and Happy Planets which line the organic shelves of our supermarkets, and the hi-tech start-ups which invent every day new bleeding edge technologies and intensive processes to grow food inside high-rise downtown buildings. Their CEOs drive electric cars, establish partnerships with community heroes such as Will Allen, and run successfully for mayor in large cities like our own. Just like the “brown” capitalists of the American corn belt, green capitalists understand the magnitude of the urban farming revolution. Unlike their less forward-thinking friends however, they don’t plan to fight it but rather take its lead.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">Both shades of that industry, whether green or brown, operate according to the same general principles of the capitalist class. Strict division of labor between manual and mental tasks. Enclosure of the means of production, whether those means are land, seeds, technology, or know-how. The enclosure of the land is pretty straightforward and happened some time ago, through the combination of a forceful dispossession of the peasantry by the state, and a re-foundation of the legal apparatus with the effect of elevating private property to an inviolable principle. During this initial phase of capitalism, the commons were successfully outlawed.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">The enclosure of the seeds is more recent and required a certain level of scientific mastery, as well as a higher degree of legal sophistication in order to secure patent rights over something so inherently “public domain” as a seed. But that revolution is now accomplished, thanks to the combined efforts of Monsanto and governments worldwide which coerced their rural populations into accepting this transformation, with often tragic consequences as in India's ill-named “green revolution”.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">The enclosure of technology and know-how is a bit trickier and still very much a work in progress. Indeed, how does one suppress popular know-how over something as simple as growing food? The technology involved in growth is complex beyond comprehension, don't get me wrong. But it's already embedded in plants in the form of photosynthesis and other miracles of life, and provided at no charge to anyone who cares to throw a seed in the ground. To enclose and privatize such a free gift of nature, one needs to bury it behind layers of privately owned complexity which can then be unlocked in return for compensation.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">Have you noticed how vertical farming solutions offered by corporate start-ups are always ridiculously complex, even though those offered by community groups or your average Joe Doe in his basement tend to be simple as pie? <span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">Check out for example </span></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">the following <a href="http://www.valcent.eu/">sales pitch</a></span></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"> by an average start-up which sells (pardon the mouthful) “eco-technology growing solutions”:</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><blockquote style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">“<span style="font-style: normal;">The rotating hydroponic technology enables high-density vertical growing – more plants can be grown in less space producing crop yields of up to 20 times more than conventional farming methods. With the use of organic nutrients, </span></span><b><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">VertiCrop</span></span></b><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">™ and </span></span><b><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">AlphaCrop</span></span></b><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">™ can also be fully utilised for organic growing”</span></span></div></blockquote><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">Got it? Well, that is sort of the point of the ad. We know, you don't, if you buy this then you won't have to understand it. Simplicity usually does not make for very good patents, and vertical<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"> agriculture tends unfortunately to be rather simple. Bad business. Let me give you a silly but real example: in my apartment's second bathroom, I grow lettuce year-round in a bookcase. The technology and cost involved in that project are close to zero: a timer and a bunch of CFL lamps. I had to resolve a few hurdles, such as how to adjust the distance between the containers and the lamps as my lettuces grew larger. I needed surfaces that could move up and down, and Ikea's Billy</span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"> </span></span><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">bookcase came to my rescue to solve that problem. Well folks, it works! </span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">I</span></span></span></span><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"> can grow up to 12 lettuces at a time, and tonight we're having delicious, crunchy salad for dinner. It will feed my family, but it won't make me rich because a casual look at my system will allow you to build the same one in your home, and probably improve it dramatically. From my basic bookcase to more sophisticated hydroponics vertical farms, it's just a matter of degrees. </span> </div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"></span> </div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">With the help of people like Will Allen who</span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"> unlock knowledge and set it free</span></span><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">, it won't take very long for people to read through the vertical farm technology bullshit and use only those toys that they really need (a solar panel would be one of them), and therefore </span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">for the brilliant inventors of </span></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">VertiCrop</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">™</span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"> and AlphaCrop</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">™</span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"> </span></span></span><b><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"> to file for bankruptcy. Moving forward, the only viable long term option that will remain for the industry is good old repression against those pesky urban farmers. We will see the industry invoke property rights to deny growers access to land, lobby governments to enact more stringent “food safety” regulations and bury growers under red tape, and demand that authorities crack down on “illegal” and “unsafe” operations such as my little Ikea bookcase lettuce grow-op. </span></span></span></b> </div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><b><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">You think I'm out to lunch? Case in point. Mission, BC this past January. A house was </span></span></span></b><a href="http://www.theprovince.com/news/Mission+homeowner+fined+growing+cucumbers/4083756/story.html"><b><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">raided by the RCMP</span></span></span></b></a><b><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"> and its owner fined $5,200 for </span></span></span></b><b><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">–</span></span></span></span></span></span></b><b><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"> ahem </span></span></span></b><b><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">–</span></span></span></span></span></span></b><b><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"> growing cucumbers in his basement. A</span></span></span></b><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"> stark warning of times to come. Like every other revolution, the urban farming revolution will involve the use of force, violent struggle, loss of livelihood, and at times loss of freedom. No point pretending that corporate sponsors will always be our friends, because they won't. Time for us growers to grow up, and to understand what we are dealing with. Let's harden off a little in preparation for colder days.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">. </span></span></span></div>Ivan Doumenchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10567808421635209642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662185992354207667.post-865814593745893482011-01-19T18:56:00.000-08:002011-01-19T18:56:17.655-08:00The power of Bullshit<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://www.holisticwebs.com/sound/Thoth_background.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://www.holisticwebs.com/sound/Thoth_background.gif" width="236" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has invented an esoteric language which it uses to assert its power.</b> Photo holisticwebs.com</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">On January 17, the Cohen Commission resumed its hearings on the collapse of the 2009 Fraser sockeye. I decided to attend, because two DFO managers were called to witness on that day. Having heard the intense testimonies given by representatives of the First Nations back in December, I was curious. For three long days, <a href="http://grassstruggle.blogspot.com/2010/12/conflict-of-knowledge.html">aboriginal leaders had blasted</a> the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in the most compelling manner. How would that agency respond? Would it send some of its top gun communicators in an attempt to control the damage?</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"> </div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">It did not. Instead, it sent two archetypal technocrats who gave one the dullest and most abstruse testimonies on public record. It was dull to the point of being disturbing. Activists who have been following the Cohen proceedings have got into the habit of killing some DFO testimony time by playing “<a href="http://www.salmonguy.org/?p=3064">Bullshit Bingo</a>”. The rules of the game are simple: you come with a card that has a grid of pre-filled bureaucratic words such as 'benchmarks', 'baseline monitoring', 'adaptive management', etc., you cross the words out whenever a DFO witness uses them, and when you cross out an entire line – Bingo! </div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">Well folks, on January 17 DFO took the game of Bullshit Bingo to a whole new level. For the first hour, I was shell shocked. DFO Salmon Regional Resource Manager Jeff Grout was the first to speak. “One of the key elements that the forecasting model uses is a forward simulation which looks at historical spawning and recruitment data to try and understand what the performance might be of different harvest rules into the future”. “We use cumulative probability distribution”. “The relationships give a probability distribution on the range of possible returns”. “The probability of achieving the run is actually an inverse of what is being shown in this table”, etc., etc. for two straight hours. That man was a machine.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">The mid-morning recess was welcomed as holy water by everyone, as it made the technobabble stop for a full fifteen minutes. This allowed my brain to reboot and start making sense of what was truly happening on that day. No one in this room understands what is being said, my brain whispered to my ear. Even the Commission's legal counsel who had taken on the tedious task of leading the questioning (and did a rather good job at that) appeared lost on occasion. The other lawyers were deep into their morning nap. As for the good Commissioner Bruce Cohen, he was frantically shifting his attention from the witness to the counsel to his notes and back to the witness again, like a trapped mouse in a lab cage which hits the same wall again and again in a desperate search for the exit.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">And yet, those DFO bureaucrats sitting in the witness box were among those calling the shots in the field. They were making concrete life and death decisions over the salmon runs and the human and non-human communities depending on them. Those decisions, we learned that morning, were in large part based on “Frizzie”, a statistical forecasting model whose inner workings Mr. Grout was explaining to us. No doubt, this was a dry and arduous subject to grasp. But shouldn’t other people – shouldn’t I – make the effort of understanding it, given the enormous stakes involved? Isn’t the sharing of knowledge one of basic principles of our democracy? Bravely, I re-entered the court room after the recess, resolute on understanding what I was hearing.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">But soon, my brain was stunned to complete numbness again by the sound of Mr. <span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">Grout’s voice.</span> At one point the Commissioner’s counsel asked almost casually, as if to give us all a little breather, why DFO’s forecasting model used a 48-year time frame in the future. His answer<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">:</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><blockquote style="color: #274e13;"><div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"> <span style="font-size: small;"><i>In terms of the modeling work, there is a number of uncertainties associated with the model, including uncertainties about what the best model parameters would be to describe the population dynamics of these populations. There may be patterns in the annual abundance of the spawners that may change in the future, associated with a particular harvest rule. So we were wanting to look at the performance over a longer time frame to see what we might expect to have occurred. Through the various workshops, I think we also looked at different time frames during the planning period as well, but – One of the other reasons is that using a longer time frame gives you a better sense of where you expect the populations to potentially equilibrate from applying a particular harvest rule.</i></span></div></blockquote><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">After that, even the counsel was thrown off balance. A painful silence ensued as she was rummaging through her notes searching for a follow-up question which would allow her to temporarily conceal her newly-found state of cluelessness. She came up with this:</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><blockquote style="color: #274e13;"><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><i>Q: the model assumes – correct me if I'm wrong – that the past history of productivity in the past [sic] will be predictive of the behaviour of stocks in the future?</i></div></blockquote><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">Oh boy, that was deep. She was asking him in substance: are you telling us that your model makes predictions about the future based on the past? Well yes Ma’am, that’s usually what models do.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">But, being fundamentally a nice guy who is deeply passionate about his subject matter, Jeff Grout did not seem to notice the clumsiness of the counsel’s question, and responded almost enthusiastically with the following:</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><blockquote style="color: #274e13;"><div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"> <span style="font-size: small;"><i>A: The model itself uses the information from spawning and recruitment and distribution of the annual variations about that. In the initial formulations of the model, we were just looking at the historical spawner recruitment data, but in recent revisions to the model we have added elements allowing us to look at different productivity scenarios moving forward into the future – by that I mean you can look at a continuing decrease in recruits per spawner eventually, or maybe something that goes back to historical patterns, break it even, put in your own series of productivity in the future to see what the potential........................</i></span></div></blockquote><div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">I lost what he was saying after that because a fellow activist sitting next to me came to my brain’s rescue by exclaiming rather loudly into my ear “He lives in a cloud, that guy!” I stopped taking notes after that and went instead into meditation mode, as the esoteric blathering continued like a shopping mall music in the background.</div><div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"> </div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">Not a single time in his two last long cryptic responses did Mr. Grout use the word ‘salmon’ or ‘fish’, I realized. That can be seen as a problem, given that his job title is – after all – “Regional Resource Manager, <i>Salmon</i>”. Instead, he used terms such as ‘populations’, ‘spawners’, ‘harvests’, ‘recruits’ to abstract this magnificent animal into a set of mathematical variables which could fit in his equations. Mr. Grout does not deal with the living salmon, but instead with conceptual entities, statistical mind games, complex sudokus for PhDs which he is being paid by the taxpayer to resolve. The word ‘salmon’ in his job title? A mere embarrassment on his business cards, an awkward reminder that he, too, is after all a carbon-based organism receiving justification for his paycheck from another carbon-based organism which he only seldom gets to see or think about. The question for Mr. Grout I desperately wanted to whisper in the ear of the Commission counsel to help her get back on her feet was: “Mr. Grout, how many times have you left your corner office this year to go out in the field and see the Fraser sockeye in their natural environment?”</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">When the First Nations leaders testified before the Commission last month, one of their main complaints about DFO was the fact that this agency claimed to hold exclusive rights over salmon knowledge, that it dismissed aboriginal traditional knowledge as pseudo-science, and that it used it to assert a complete monopoly over decision making, in contradiction with its mandate to co-manage the resource with the First Nations. This resulted in a top-down neocolonial attitude whereby, according to the witnesses, DFO would unilaterally say to aboriginal communities: we in our wisdom have determined your fishing quotas for the year. Here they are. Sign here, or you don’t get to fish.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">Sitting in that room with Mr. Grout, I was definitely getting their point. A bureaucracy such as DFO really does epitomize the classical <a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch13.htm">division between manual and mental labor</a>, which in Marxist theory is one of the main instruments of control of the ruling class over the rest of society. We know. You don’t. And so we decide and we organize, and you get to execute according to our decisions and modes of organization. Here are your quotas. Go fish. Don’t ask how we got that number, our models wouldn’t mean anything to you anyways.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">You don’t believe that this is actually how DFO thinks? Well then, listen to the following exchange between the Commissioner’s counsel and DFO’s Area Director for the BC Interior,<strong><span style="font-weight: normal;"> Barry Rosenberger, who testified at the Commission on that same day:</span></strong></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><blockquote style="color: #274e13;"><div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"> <span style="font-size: small;"><i>Q: Do you think the stakeholder groups have the capacity to understand the issues that are presented to them for decision and feedback, including some of the technical work that we just touched on today?</i></span></div><div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"> <span style="font-size: small;"><i>A: The level of technical capacity for some of the groups varies for sure. Some of the groups definitely want and expect the Department to have that capacity, to bring them that information and them to be able to give input based on that. Other groups are trying to have people that understand all the models at the same level that we do.</i></span></div><div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"> <br />
</div><div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"> <span style="font-size: small;"><i>Q: Do you think the stakeholder groups need to understand the technical workings of the forecasting models in order to provide meaningful input?</i></span></div><div lang="en-US" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"> <br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><i>A: I do not. I don't know the technical workings of those models myself. We can't all have PhDs and all have the same expertise, and we're all going to be geneticists and modelers and whatever. We have to be able to get that information from someone. I don't think it's effective to expect that they are going to have 10 or 15 people developing their own models and having discussions around this.</i></div></blockquote><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">The strange thing, as one of my fellow activists with a scientific background remarked, is that the key principles behind DFO’s insufferably complex forecasting models are rather self-evident – actually, even lame – if one would accomplish (as she did) the superhuman effort of cutting through the bullshit. Her <i>aha!</i> moment came when Mr. Grout commented on a very complicated graph representing three possible return trends for the Fraser sockeye. All they are doing here, she told me afterwards, is take three basic scenarios – optimistic, middle of the road, and pessimistic – and provide the agency’s decision makers with those three options to pick from. </div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">What my friend was pointing to was the fact that the very language used by DFO bureaucrats was the main cause of their work's complexity, rather than the work itself. And why should we be surprised? We all know since Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking that the basic concepts of science – even special relativity, of all topics – can indeed be explained to the layperson if one chooses to leave a few details out. When one, instead, overburdens the listener with tedious jargon and unimportant minutiae, as Mr. Grout did for a whole day at the Cohen Commission, one is performing (unknowingly, I’ll grant him that) a political act which consists of locking knowledge away from people by using an encrypted code.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">There is another institution which has performed this type of encryption of knowledge for millennia in an effort to subjugate and control the masses, using the division of labor between intellectual and manual tasks to achieve its purpose – and that is religion. We know, you don’t. Only we the priests can speak to the gods, that is why you must work for us and provide us with regular offerings in wheat and gold. The primary tool of religious power over the masses is ignorance. And ignorance can indeed be manufactured, by transforming the simple into the complicated, by turning what everyone once knew into what only the initiated can now comprehend. Like the priests of the world's great religions, DFO bureaucrats have invented and honed over time an esoteric new language and set of rituals understandable only to them, which they call knowledge and use to hold power over what they call the "stakeholders".</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">The great irony in this knowledge power trip embodied by Messrs. Grout and <strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">Rosenberger</span></strong> is that DFO's forecasting models of the Fraser sockeye runs have been consistently and massively wrong over the past decade. For example in 2009, they predicted that 10 million salmon would return, when barely a million did. In 2010, determined not to make the same mistake again, they announced a ridiculously wide range of between 7 and 18 million salmon – and missed the mark again, as 32 million sockeye came rushing up the Fraser. In effect, DFO’s fancy and expensive models, which only they can (and claim they should) understand, are useless. </div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">One of the <a href="http://grassstruggle.blogspot.com/2010/12/conflict-of-knowledge.html">core demands</a> of the First Nations leaders when they testified before Justice Cohen was this: we need funding to hire our own biologists, so we can integrate modern science with our traditional knowledge of the salmon. They were spot on. This is indeed where the battlefront lies. Break the division between mental and manual labor maintained by DFO's self-serving bureaucracy and the legions of “independent” scientists who gravitate around it. Reclaim the knowledge from those who took it away and who are keeping it vaulted in a custom-designed apparatus of scientific-bureaucratic hocus pocus. Indigenous people have long known what we settlers are only now awakening to – that on the Fraser, like everywhere else, knowledge is power.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">. </div>Ivan Doumenchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10567808421635209642noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662185992354207667.post-21376401093489430192010-12-18T11:29:00.000-08:002010-12-18T13:30:42.936-08:00Conflict of knowledge (2)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: left;"><a href="http://www.firstnations.eu/img/06-0-1-salmon.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://www.firstnations.eu/img/06-0-1-salmon.jpg" width="335" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">An elder of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> cooking salmon, c. 1940. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo Vancouver City Archives, source </span><a href="http://www.firstnations.eu/development/eagleridge_bluffs.htm"><span style="font-size: x-small;">www.firstnations.eu</span></a></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><b>Part 2 </b></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">According to most aboriginal witnesses <b><sup><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">[1] </span></span></sup></b>who testified at the Commission this week, DFO's lack of interest in the aboriginal worldview goes farther than its dismissal of traditional knowledge. The agency is convinced that it is the only actor to possess valid (read “scientific”) knowledge in all things salmon, and so, it has quite logically concluded that it should also hold a monopoly over decision-making power. <i>DFO did consult with us in the beginning,</i> Joe Becker of the Musqueam said, <i>but now it's more like a dictatorship where agreements are presented to us on a take it or leave it basis, and if you leave it, then you don't get to fish</i>. Councillor June Quipp: <i>We have no part in the management of the fisheries. We may sit at a table with DFO people, but they believe we are so low on the totem pole, we have no authority. </i><span style="font-style: normal;">Chief Robert Mountain: </span><i>We have attended some of DFO's meetings, but we are not part of their decision making process. DFO communicates us its decisions. That needs to change. </i> </div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">One particular manifestation of this process of disempowerment, according to the witnesses, is a bad habit – or perhaps is it a conscious tactic? – developed by DFO to send subordinate staff, who have no negotiating mandate or decision power whatsoever, to meetings with the aboriginal leadership. This has the result of preventing any true negotiation from actually taking place, in spite of DFO's clear mandate to carry out such negotiations with the First Nations. Chief Robert Mountain: </span><i>W</i><i><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">e had our chiefs present at the table with DFO, and so we would like DFO to send their own decision makers, so that decisions can actually be made. Otherwise, we are not on a same footing.</span></i></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Grand Chief Clarence Pennier:</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><i>We need a good level of understanding with senior officials from DFO. Right now, we are just dealing with people who are coming to put documents on our table and tell us 'this is what you are entitled and not entitled to'. That does not constitute negotiation.</i></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><i>[ Question from legal counsel: Do you mean to say that DFO representatives who meet with you don't have a mandate to negotiate? ]</i></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><i>Answer: That's right. They don't.</i></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Such practices have led to the development of what several aboriginal witnesses have described as a culture of harassment and abuse of power on the part of DFO towards indigenous communities. The witnesses provided the Commission with numerous concrete examples of how this abusive relationship manifests itself.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Councilor June Quipp, about DFO's petty decisions over ceremonial rights to fish:</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><i>I recently put a request with DFO for a ceremonial permit. I asked them for the right to harvest one fish for a ceremony, and my request was denied. And this was in 2010!</i></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><i>DFO has recently taken upon themselves to define what constitutes our ceremonial practices. But they have only defined death so far. So – you have to die to be allowed to set the table.</i></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">Rod Naknakim, about the inadequate terms of the fishing permits granted by DFO:</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><i>Our fishing permit extends for only 12 hours for the entire season... It's hard to teach the young generations about fishing practices in such conditions, because you want to make sure you optimize your 12 hours on the water.</i></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">President Guujaaw of the Haida, about unequal treatment over access to the resource:</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><b><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">It became evident that DFO's efforts were focused specifically on our people. I was charged and convicted for taking 27 pink salmon and I spent 2 days in jail, while the industry took 750,000 from the same watershed without running into any difficulties.</span></i></b></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Councilor June Quipp again, about paternalistic and redundant sharing of “scientific information”:</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><i>DFO was organizing those telephone conference calls on global warming. One year, my sister noticed that the water in the river was warmer but also higher than usual. She gets on the conference call, where a DFO biologist makes that exact same comment. And so she told me: do I really need to get on a conference call to hear something that I already know?</i></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Chief William Charlie, about how DFO's dismissal of traditional knowledge has led that agency to make ill-informed decisions which were detrimental to the salmon: </div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><i>We would use torch lighting in the in shallow parts of the river. You would build a fire on your canoe which would attract the salmon and that would allow you to pick and choose which salmon you want to fish. This practice had been banned for years by DFO on “conservation” grounds. We have finally been able to reassert ourselves and make the case that it's a selective technique. </i> </div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">A particularly telling exchange took place between the lawyer representing the Ministry of Justice, who was defending the position of DFO, and Chief Newman of the Heiltsuk. This tense dialogue illustrates the two incompatible logics as well as the power struggle taking place over the salmon numbers:</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Dept. Justice:</span><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span><i>The number of fish allocated for food, social and ceremonial purposes (FSC) – those numbers have been stable for years, right?</i></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Chief Newman:</span><i>Yes. That's because DFO sets those numbers for us and we have no input whatsoever in setting them.</i></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Dept. Justice:</span><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span><i>But your nation does not even come near to using its allocation.</i></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Chief Newman</span><span style="font-style: normal;">: </span><i>Like I said earlier, things have been bad and so there are not enough fish for us to live on.</i></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Dept. Justice:</span><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span><i>But you don't meet your allocation –</i></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Chief Newman</span><span style="font-style: normal;">: </span><i>Because there is nothing for us to fish!</i></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Dept. Justice:</span><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span><i>You are not catching your allocation because the fish are not there?</i></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Chief Newman:</span><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span><i>That's right.</i></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Dept. Justice:</span><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span><i>There is no sense then in bumping up those numbers, since the fish are not there.</i></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Chief Newman:</span><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span><i>But we want the government to know what our needs are. If the fish do come back, we want to be able to harvest them.</i></span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">One of the most striking comments about DFO's disregard for aboriginal knowledge and culture came from Doctor Ron Ignace of the Skeetchestn: </span><sup><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">[2]</span></span></sup></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><i>There was a time when they tried to take the Indian out of the child. The way I see it now, the way the fisheries are being operated, it’s like they are trying to take the fish out of the Indian... The younger generation of the last 20 years have lost the knowledge of how to fish with a spear in the river... they have lost the language to communicate. That practice is lost to us.</i></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">The First Nations are responding to what they perceive as DFO's assault on their knowledge, culture, and way of life by formulating some key demands:</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><ol style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Reclaim control over their traditional knowledge. </span><i>We need funding from the government so we can hire our own biologists on the river</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, Grand Chief Clarence Pennier said. Councilor June Quipp: </span><i>We need our own biologists. We have many people who have a lot of knowledge, having lived on the river, knowing the signs and symbols that we use, people versed in our traditional knowledge.</i></div></li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Redefine co-management of the salmon resource to be precisely what it was supposed be: a “co” management between two equal partners. Chief William Charlie: </span><i>Co-management means that we can sit down and come up with ways to go forward, as opposed to DFO's attitude of 'this is the deal, sign here, or else you cannot fish'.</i></div></li>
<li><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Reassert the fundamental right of aboriginals to harvest fish for their traditional needs and subsistence. Assert that right by force, if needed. President Guujaaw of the Haida gave the following example involving Copper River: <i>it was a sockeye stream under management of DFO. It went down to a few hundred fish, so our people just took over the river. We did not fish there for several years, and today it's producing salmon again. </i> </div></li>
</ol><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.98in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">A more radical approach has been tested by the Haida over the years, rather successfully it appears: ignore DFO altogether, return it the favor of considering the “other party” as powerless and irrelevant. President Guujaaw:</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><i>We don't go to DFO for permits anymore. We have no respect for DFO in their management of the resources. Twenty-five years ago in Gwaii Haanas, we set up some blockades and we stopped logging in that area. The Federal government cut a deal. All our rights remain intact: we can hunt, fish, trap, live there, cut trees, and do all the things our ancestors did for generations without impacting the land. Now, management has really become management of the visitors in the area, determining the quotas of how many people we should allow in.</i></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">What a spectacular reversal of fortune for both the Haida and the salmon – Think about it. In the southern half of Haida Gwaii, stewardship of the salmon is no longer measured in the number of fish that can be harvested, but in the number of people who are allowed in! And it really does make sense, it simply requires another system of knowledge, of values, of economic priorities to take the place of the old one. </div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">I left those extraordinary three days of testimony wondering whether the Haida were not onto something with their unconventional, yet decisive, treatment of what must be called “the DFO question”. When a governmental institution behaves towards your people as a neo-colonial power, ignoring its most basic contractual and treaty obligations, dismissing your ancestral knowledge and culture as being child play, and – to add insult to injury – depleting the resource that it is supposed to protect while arrogantly lecturing you on what constitutes good stewardship, should you not indeed declare such an institution irrelevant and simply walk away from it?</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">To anyone who has attended some of the hearings at the Cohen Commission – not just those three days dedicated to the First Nations – it is pretty clear that this Inquiry has turned into the trial of DFO. Show up at the Commission on any random day, and you will have a good chance of either hearing some witness blast DFO, or some DFO bureaucrat attempt to survive the heavy artillery barrage fired at him/her by an army of lawyers representing groups who have to deal with DFO in their daily lives. This raises a fundamental question. Is DFO, this broken institution, reformable? Or is it simply beyond repair and must be abolished at the Federal government's earliest convenience, to avoid a growing section of civil society from following the lead of the Haida, and simply declaring DFO's authority not applicable to them? Perhaps one of the primary contributions of this Commission will be to help answer this fundamental question. To be continued, then, in January.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="http://grassstruggle.blogspot.com/2010/12/conflict-of-knowledge.html">(Part 1 of 2)</a> </div><div style="border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1px; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; padding: 0in 0in 0.03in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><sup><span style="font-style: normal;">[1]</span></sup><span style="font-style: normal;"> I am using quotes from aboriginal leaders which I transcribed to the best of my ability as the testimonies were being given at the Commission. While my transcriptions accurately convey the meaning of what was said, they may not always reflect the exact words used by the witnesses. For that, we will have the <a href="http://www.commissioncohen.ca/en/Schedule/">official transcripts</a> which should be posted on the Commission's website within the next couple weeks. To indicate that my quotes are true in their content yet not necessarily exact in their form, I am using italics and no quotes whenever quoting an aboriginal witness.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><sup><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">[2] </span></span></sup><span style="font-style: normal;">I was not present on the second day of the testimonials and so for those, I am relying on the transcripts provided by fellow activist Elena Edwards.</span><br />
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<span style="font-style: normal;">. </span></div>Ivan Doumenchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10567808421635209642noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662185992354207667.post-44977487214911240832010-12-18T11:13:00.000-08:002010-12-18T12:38:13.878-08:00Conflict of knowledge (1)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: left;"><a href="http://www.firstnations.eu/img/06-0-1-salmon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://www.firstnations.eu/img/06-0-1-salmon.jpg" width="335" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">An elder of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> cooking salmon, c. 1940. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo Vancouver City Archives, source <a href="http://www.firstnations.eu/development/eagleridge_bluffs.htm">www.firstnations.eu</a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><b>Part 1 </b></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">This past week, representatives of BC First Nations were called to testify before the Cohen Commission which is inquiring in the decline of the Fraser sockeye. The stated purpose of this week's hearings was to provide the Commission with insight in the worldview, cultural context and traditional knowledge of the aboriginal people in relation to the salmon. In total, 14 First Nations leaders appeared over a period of three days to provide their testimonies.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">The hearings rapidly turned into a frontal assault against DFO, as the various indigenous leaders took turns to convey the same message to Justice Bruce Cohen: the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is a tyrannical and incompetent agency which dismisses aboriginal traditional knowledge, routinely tramples over basic indigenous rights, and accelerates by its mismanagement the decline of BC's wild salmon.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">The attack on DFO was no accident, nor was it (at least solely) the result of the aboriginal leaders' personal frustration and sense of aggravation with this agency's incompetence. Rather, and more fundamentally, it was the expression of a head-on collision between two systems of knowledge, two incompatible worldviews.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">Most aboriginal witnesses started their testimonials<sup> [1]</sup> by explaining the meaning of “traditional knowledge”. The First Nations possess a unique and invaluable knowledge of the salmon which has been acquired over thousands of years and is passed from generation to generation through oral tradition and direct experimentation, under the guidance of a parent or elder. A key characteristic of that knowledge is that it is not acquired in the abstract inside a classroom, but through concrete interactions with the land and the living beings which inhabit it, leading to a direct empirical understanding of how things are connected to one another. <i>I grew up on a boat, </i><span style="font-style: normal;">Rod Naknakim of the Laich-Kwil-Tach said. </span><i>The entire village was involved in salmon fishing. My grandfather told me about his father being a fisherman</i>. <i>Fishing, </i><span style="font-style: normal;">Grand Chief Clarence Pennier of the Sto:lo said,</span><i> is a family function which you learn from your parents and grandparents.</i></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><b><span style="font-weight: normal;">Chief William Charlie of </span></b>the Chehalis: </div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><i>I used to fish with my grandfather. He would tell me which type of net I needed to bring to catch the fish that we would have in the water that season. I asked him: how do you know which fish we are going to have? He pointed to plants and birds and animals and said: when they are here, this is the kind of fish we get in the water. It's part of a system. (…)</i></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><i>We try to understand the full ecology cycle. When the pussy willows appear and the robins and black birds are coming around, that's when the early spring salmon come back.</i></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">Rod Naknakim:</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><i>I was always amazed how my grandfather knew the area and when the fish would come, and how many. He would whistle at the orca whales and they would rub against the boat. He was famous for predicting the size of a salmon run. He would get into fights with DFO, telling them 'there is a big run coming', and often he was right. The elders would know which run was which just by looking at a fish, mostly from its size and appearance. I used to know some of the differences myself when I was young.</i></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><b><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Chief Fred Sampson of the Siska: </span></span></b><b><sup><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">[2]</span></span></sup></b></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><i><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Our traditional knowledge is very important. My grandmother knew. She would wait till the mock orange blossoms were on the trees and say “now we will go fishing.” “Why not before?” I’d ask her. I could see the fish going by. She'd say, “those fish belong to somebody else, the people higher up the river. It is only when the mock orange blossoms come out that it is our turn to fish.”</span></span></b></i></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><b><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Chief William Charlie:</span></span></b></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><i>I have a cousin who works in one of the spawning channels. He works with SFU. He would say: this one spawned, this one didn't but tried to, etc. And the SFU people were able to sample the fish and verify and confirm what he was saying. That knowledge was passed on to him by his father and grandfather. We need to integrate this knowledge with technology and modern tools.</i></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">In this worldview, having practical knowledge of a particular ecosystem cannot be dissociated from living in that ecosystem and depending on it for daily subsistence. This is why the witnesses, as they spoke before the Commission, tended not to separate factual knowledge from cultural tradition from dietary habits from stewardship of their land. <i>Salmon are in our songs, dances, carvings</i>, Rod Naknakim said. <i>Twins in our family had their own salmon song to signify abundance,</i> Chief Robert Mountain of the Namgis said, and he then added: <i>when I was a child, we would live on the sockeye</i>, <i>we would eat sockeye three times a day and then we would have sockeye as snacks. </i>Councilor June Quipp of the Cheam:<i> we have to respect the salmon because it is such a big part of our lives. I teach my children and grandchildren about the meaning of the salmon and how we cannot waste that food.</i></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">Chief William Charlie:</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><i>Salmon contribute to the physical, spiritual, and social health of our people. When salmon has been a major part of your diet for so many generations, it becomes a part of you. It becomes soul food and medicine. You crave for it, you become anxious for it when the fishing season comes upon us.</i></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">When asked to define what stewardship of the salmon meant to him, Chief Charlie explained<i>: stewardship is how we conduct ourselves to ensure that all living things carry on. We don't want to be the generation responsible for losing something, especially not the salmon.</i></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">DFO, however, does not recognize aboriginal knowledge as being useful or relevant to its mandate and, according to the witnesses, dismisses it altogether as being pseudo- or at best anecdotal knowledge. When asked by her legal counsel how DFO deals with her culture and traditional knowledge, Councilor June Quipp responded: <i>They are in denial. They ignore our culture, they don't use their mandate to deal with it.</i></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><b><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Chief Fred Sampson: </span></span></b><b><sup><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">[2]</span></span></sup></b></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><i>The traditional ecological knowledge is not acknowledged, not respected by the scientists, by the management. We believe our traditional ecological knowledge is very important in caring for the fish. They </i><span style="font-style: normal;">[the scientists]</span><i> would say “you just don’t understand the science” and we will say, “no, you don’t understand the role that traditional ecological knowledge plays.”</i></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">That denial is unfortunate according to the witnesses, since DFO is itself perceived by many First Nations as being a deeply ignorant organization which would gain much from tapping into some of the accumulated aboriginal knowledge. Such knowledge would help them, for example, to avoid some basic and rather embarrassing mistakes as they fumble to gather information on fish stock sizes. Chief Robert Mountain:</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><i>When I was a commercial fisherman, we were wondering what DFO was doing, fishing on the biggest tides when it was dangerous. They were doing tests at the wrong times when there was no fish, so their numbers on how many fish were out there were not accurate. DFO was doing the wrong tests at the wrong times in the wrong areas – and that's too bad, because our elders had, and still have, that knowledge.</i></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;">The legal counsel of Chief Edwin Newman of the Heiltsuk produced a handwritten map maintained by the band, showing all the salmon-bearing streams and creeks in his territory. <i>Most of those streams don't bear salmon anymore because of bad logging practices</i>, Chief Newman commented as the map was being projected on the courtroom’s computer screens<i>. We attempted to restore some of them, but we were told not do that, not to interfere with that.</i> The map was entered as evidence in the Commission’s proceedings. On a similar note, Chief Robert Mountain commented: </div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.49in;"><i>I am concerned about the assessment done </i><span style="font-style: normal;">[by DFO]</span><i> in the creeks. A lot of creeks are not recorded, even though we would see tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of salmon in those streams and creeks.</i> <i>There was a noticeable drop in the past 20 years. I used to swim in streams with 20,000 sockeye, and now there are maybe 1,000 of them.</i><span style="color: black;"> </span> </div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="http://grassstruggle.blogspot.com/2010/12/conflict-of-knowledge_18.html">(Part 2 of 2) </a></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"></div><div style="border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1px; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; padding: 0in 0in 0.03in;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><sup><span style="font-style: normal;">[1]</span></sup><span style="font-style: normal;"> I am using quotes from aboriginal leaders which I transcribed to the best of my ability as the testimonies were being given at the Commission. While my transcriptions accurately convey the meaning of what was said, they may not always reflect the exact words used by the witnesses. For that, we will have the <a href="http://www.commissioncohen.ca/en/Schedule/">official transcripts</a> which should be posted on the Commission's website within the next couple weeks. To indicate that my quotes are true in their content yet not necessarily exact in their form, I am using italics and no quotes whenever quoting an aboriginal witness.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><sup><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">[2] </span></span></sup><span style="font-style: normal;">I was not present on the second day of the testimonials and so for those, I am relying on the transcripts provided by fellow activist Elena Edwards.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
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</div>Ivan Doumenchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10567808421635209642noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662185992354207667.post-52630416849083722392010-12-14T17:45:00.000-08:002010-12-14T20:59:23.408-08:00Selective science<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjezJ1XPYjgpYWaduiIODd63gtjbOc9SQDc1LWi_06oBAl7BcwfqMoRw-jQkDOzPsobTFggFe_h-pkb6NuxMwjesbrPOfeuDAJJBE52t1eDUP35SolDdKZf2wMiL2E_UsZN9O_SBK5Axdnv/s1600/adamsriver3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjezJ1XPYjgpYWaduiIODd63gtjbOc9SQDc1LWi_06oBAl7BcwfqMoRw-jQkDOzPsobTFggFe_h-pkb6NuxMwjesbrPOfeuDAJJBE52t1eDUP35SolDdKZf2wMiL2E_UsZN9O_SBK5Axdnv/s320/adamsriver3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Fraser sockeye - a run facing a unique "boom and bust" challenge. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo Isabelle Groc, <a href="http://tidelife.com/">Tidelife Photography</a>.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">An important blog <a href="http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton/2010/12/where-are-we-at-with-salmon-feedlots.html">posted today</a> by Alexandra Morton deals with the role of science in the ongoing struggle to save BC’s wild salmon.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
She starts by giving a quick analysis of a <a href="http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-wild-salmon-decline-sea-lice.html">scientific paper</a> published yesterday which discounts sea lice as a primary cause to recent wild salmon declines. “The authors state they won the trust of the Norwegian feedlot companies”, she writes, “and present conclusions that run counter to science published across the North Hemisphere. They don't report on why their results are such distant outliers to the scientific weight of evidence that wild salmon populations go into steep decline wherever there are salmon feedlots. They suggest something else must be killing young wild salmon near salmon feedlots, but they don't [say] what that could be.”<br />
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Further down in her blog, while not discounting climate change as a long-term factor in the Fraser sockeye decline, she remarks that other sockeye runs did not boom and bust as the Fraser run did and “so it would seem the Fraser sockeye are facing a unique challenge and that ocean conditions assist or aggravate whatever the problem is.” She then adds the following:</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><blockquote style="color: #444444; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">“Of concern is that scientists are not talking about the evidence that DFO has found a "novel" virus that appears to be compromising specifically the Fraser sockeye that travel north out of the Fraser through fish feedlot effluent. The technique examines the RNA of the sockeye and this has never been done before in fish. However, the methods are sound and suggest a retro virus is infecting the majority of Fraser sockeye that travel along the east coast of Vancouver Island. It is not being found in the sockeye that come in from the open ocean via Juan de Fuca. In a <a href="http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/files/leaked-briefing.pdf">leaked briefing</a> [obtained] by the Globe and Mail, it would appear DFO believes this is one of the three most likely causes of the 2009 collapse and yet no one is mentioning it.”</blockquote><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Alex Morton’s comments reinforce <a href="http://grassstruggle.blogspot.com/2010/12/salmon-think-tank-gives-lesson-in.html">my own direct observation</a> that some scientists appear to be engaged in what I can only describe as a practice of “selective hypothesis making” consisting in over-emphasizing certain scientific explanations while downplaying others, with no detectable consistency or method as to how such selections are being performed.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
That's a big problem, because scientists enjoy a natural prestige and legitimacy in society by the sole virtue of being who they are. A PhD, a professorship carries a certain weight – one may say inertia – in our collective belief systems. As such, and unlike what the dominant mythology would have us believe, a scientist’s opinion is anything but neutral.<br />
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How to account for this tendency by some scientists to engage in selective hypothesis formulating? Scientists at least in their overwhelming majority are honest and highly ethical individuals, and therefore plain corruption or sell-out to the highest bidder does not account for that phenomenon. A more plausible explanation lies in the considerable (and truly irresistible) pressures being exerted on research teams by market forces in a fashion very similar to those applied on a routine basis upon our politicians.<br />
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Large transnational corporations, unlike civil society, have long abandoned the myth of "scientific neutrality" and have instead identified scientists and researchers for what they are: a malleable political material carrying a strong potential for influencing public opinion, and as such a force which ought to be channeled to one’s benefit. Since most scientists have too high moral standards – or opinions of themselves – to be simply bribed, the research system itself needed to be corrupted. This has been accomplished over the past 30 years of neoliberal regime through the systematic privatization of research funding. I challenge the reader to identify more than a handful of large research projects in North America today which do not rely mainly on private funding for their perpetuation (after one has discounted US military research, which represents a totally different beast and I won't even touch it here).<br />
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In a system of privatized research financing, researchers no longer have a choice but to comply with, or at least take significantly into account, the exogenous pressures which corporations exert upon them. They are submitted to market forces, having to sell their research projects like so many commodities, competing with one another for access to funds, forced to give their funding sources a say in the nature, direction, and results of their research. Research directors would be highly irresponsible not to allow this to happen, given that their research team’s payroll and livelihood for the next few years may indeed depend upon it.<br />
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It’s a subtle game, of course. First, there are often intermediate funding organizations with neutral-sounding names standing between research labs and their corporate sponsors, making linkages from one to the other harder to trace. Second, researchers don’t decide consciously and cynically to dismiss a perfectly valid hypothesis in favor of a doubtful one in order to please a private funder. Rather they learn, often at an unconscious level, to modify the research directions that they provide to their staff. To ponder every word in their communications with the public in a manner that does not unnecessarily aggravate powerful interests. To master the art of compromise, of performing daily self-censure on peripheral aspects of their research so as not to endanger what they consider to be the core. In a word, they learn the difficult, mostly foreign to their culture, yet necessary, trade of politics.<br />
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And guess what? We activists engaged in the fight against “evil” corporations are no different, not in the slightest. We slant, bend, interpret science in a direction favorable to our own agendas on a continual basis just as corporations, governments, and scientists do. Truth is not an idea which somewhat awaits in hiding to be uncovered. It is a dialectical process. A synthetic, contradiction-ridden knowledge base which is continuously set in motion and transformed by a succession of crises and clashes. This is, after all, how evolution works. To think that scientific truth is any different would be foolish. </div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">We who are participating in the struggle to save the Fraser salmon from extinction are actively engaged in one such clashes of knowledge. The fight for truth is always political in nature. In the case of scientific truth, that political struggle must be waged using scientific tools. If we pay attention to the manner in which Alex Morton responds to the research paper published yesterday, she does not respond using ideology. Instead, she uses rigorous scientific methodology, asking for example why the authors don’t explain how their findings are such distant outliers to previously gathered scientific evidence – a basic question in the scientific peer-review process. In a follow-up post, she adds: "If these authors want to champion their methods they need to explain why it is more accurate [than that of previous research teams]."<br />
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The sooner we accept and embrace the objective reality that scientific truth is a hard-fought, hard-won political struggle which is waged using a rigorous scientific arsenal – and yeah, a healthy but always marginal dose of polemics –, the quicker we may get to work on counteracting the tremendous power that large corporations have mustered in influencing and controlling the production of scientific knowledge.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">.</div>Ivan Doumenchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10567808421635209642noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662185992354207667.post-56218707120499176882010-12-09T22:33:00.000-08:002010-12-10T10:16:12.281-08:00Salmon think tank gives lesson in (political) science<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://www.alaska-in-pictures.com/data/media/5/creek-spawning-salmon_4634.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="263" src="http://www.alaska-in-pictures.com/data/media/5/creek-spawning-salmon_4634.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: left;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Alaska sockeye have not undergone the same population swings as here in BC: a stream in Alaska. Photo alaska-in-pictures.com</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">Last Monday, a panel of scientists convened at the SFU Harbour Centre to present its preliminary findings on the dramatic variations in the Fraser sockeye populations. In a single year between 2009 and 2010, those runs went from catastrophic (1.7 million) to legendary (29 million).</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The main message of Monday's presentation, at least I think, was intended to be one of scientific caution in the face of a bewildering swing of events. This year’s record return has opened a lot of questions, panel chair Mark Angelo offered as an introduction. Surprises should no longer surprise us, John Reynolds of SFU said, it is the new norm and only safe prediction as we ride this rollercoaster. There is an expectation that we scientists can explain all of this, Brian Riddell of the Pacific Salmon Foundation added, but we can't really. – Etc. You get the idea. The humble “I know that I know nothing” Socratic paradox. And in all fairness, if uncertainty was the only finding that those scientists could produce in the aftermath of such contradictory events, I would have been fine with that. </span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Scientific caution, however, did not last for very long on Monday night as John Reynolds gave us a quick run through the main causes identified by the panel for the sockeye's wild swings. There is a confluence of two or three factors, Reynolds said, and in our opinion a primary one is climate. There was a dramatic cooling of the North Pacific Ocean in 2008, he explained, and the panel feels very strongly that it played a massive role in the 2010 turnaround of the Fraser sockeye.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">A massive role? That's a massive statement coming from a scientific panel which had just finished explaining that we really don’t understand much about what's happening to our salmon. Ten minutes into the presentation, and the panel was telling us in essence: sorry folks, climate change did it, there is really nothing you can do, go home and we'll keep you posted. The implicit corollary to this statement, of course, was pretty clear to the 150 people in attendance: if climate change is indeed the primary factor, then fish farms have nothing to do with the decline of the sockeye. As for the specific details of how the panel had reached such a compelling conclusion, Dr. Reynolds did not deem necessary to explain them to the audience. Without further ado, we were ushered on to the next topic.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">That next topic, it turned out, was worth its while. It was a presentation of the findings of an original field research conducted by Brian Riddell. It involved the radio-tagging of two hundred Fraser sockeye smolts which allowed the researchers to plot their routes as they left Chilco Lake down the Fraser and then through the Georgia Strait. Only 40 smolts made it alive to the mouth of the river, and 5 to the top of Queen Charlotte Sound, suggesting that some very heavy mortality rates were occurring first inside the river, and then in the Georgia Strait before the juveniles could reach the open ocean. Riddell concluded his presentation by making a rather sound recommendation that scientists should focus their field research efforts on Johnstone Strait, a narrow stretch of water in Northeast Vancouver Island which the sockeye travel every year and which is relatively easy to monitor.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">And with that, we moved on to the question period. The panel had managed the exploit of reaching that stage of the evening without even using a single time (to the best of my recollection) the two phrases which were on everyone else's minds: “fish farm” and “salmon virus”. The audience, however, was less kind to the fish farm industry than the panel members. People made it immediately clear through their questions that there were some other strong hypotheses to explore in addition to climate change. The first question of the public was about salmon viruses; the second, about fish farms. A recent Globe and Mail <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/brain-lesions-linked-to-sharp-drop-in-sockeye-stocks/article1783546/">Freedom of Information request</a> has revealed, the first member of the audience said, that DFO has known for almost a year about a viral infection causing brain lesions to the Fraser sockeye. Why has DFO omitted to inform the public about such a critical piece of information? Kristi Miller, a research scientist with DFO, has been studying this potential viral disease for some time, he continued. Yet her work is being systematically embargoed and almost never mentioned in scientific conferences and research panels across the province – Why?</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Brian Riddell gave one of those Byzantine and tautology-rich responses which senior researchers well honed in the practice of bureaucracy hold the secret to. This disease is virus-like, he said, it has not yet been formally identified as a virus. The samples and data are being sent around to labs. Unhealthy fish have higher mortality rates – so we don't know if deaths are solely caused by the lesions. It's a very long process which has to go through a stringent embargo. It is premature to say that there is a link between virus, brain lesion, and higher mortality rates, he concluded. </span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I learned later that night from Alexandra Morton, who is herself a trained biologist and has read Miller's research, that we already know that this brain lesion is contagious. Contagion typically involves some form of organism such as a virus, and so in fact there is already a strong presumption that we are indeed dealing with a virus.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In a follow-up question about the high mortality rates observed in the Fraser River, Riddell dismissed viral disease as a possible cause, because the seven days that the salmon take to travel down the river do not provide enough time for a virus to run its deadly course. But his dismissal relies on two assumptions that (a) the virus has a rather long incubation period (unlike the common flu for example which only needs two days) and (b) the fish were healthy when they left their holding lake.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The second person to address the panel noted that the Harrison River – a tributary of the Fraser – has witnessed a good sockeye run in 2009 while the rest of the watershed system crashed. Is it a coincidence, he asked, that this particular healthy sockeye run is also among the rare ones which travel South through the Juan de Fuca Strait, a route which has almost no fish farms on it, while most others use the fish farm-infested North route through Johnstone Strait? Good question, we don't have enough data on the Harrison sockeye, was the laconic answer by the scientific panel. One of the panelists did venture out of the safe zone, however. He acknowledged that fish farms did represent a significant change to the conditions in Johnstone Strait, along with climate change. Finally! Someone on the panel had uttered the 'F' word (as in <i>farms</i>).</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I came out of this panel presentation my head spinning with questions. Why make climate change the overriding factor in the instability of the BC sockeye runs? The climate change hypothesis is weak to say the least in accounting for the dramatic boom-bust cycles that BC has known over the past decade, for several reasons. Neighboring Alaska has known very good, and more importantly, very steady salmon runs in the past decade while ours were swinging up and down like a broken thermostat. Alaska's clockwork regular sockeye harvest numbers should give us pause, and make us wonder what is specifically wrong with our own runs. In BC proper, the climate change hypothesis does not appear to account very well for intra-regional differences either. The Harrison sockeye run's good numbers during the otherwise catastrophic 2009 year is a case in point. Another one is the fact that so many Northern BC runs have fared poorly this year, during the so-called “legendary” run of 2010. </span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Alaska sockeye harvests</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">(source: <a href="http://www.adfg.state.ak.us/">Alaska Department of Fish and Game</a>)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">2005 43.3 million</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">2006 41.8 million</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">2007 46.3 million</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">2008 39.1 million </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">2009 43.3 million </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">2010 41.0 million</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I am not dismissing climate change which could very well be a factor in long-term sockeye declines. Rather, I am saying to this panel: if you want to make climate change your primary cause in the sockeye's short-term misfortunes while dismissing other good hypotheses as you did on Monday, you're going have to do much better than a few broad generalizations on the shifting climate conditions over the Northern Pacific in 2008. Why be so trigger-happy on climate change, yet so conservative and reluctant to acknowledge Kristi Miller's virus hypothesis, which – if I believe my sources – is about to be published in the journal <i>Nature</i>? And what's so hard to believe about that hypothesis anyways? After all, a virus is what wiped out Chile's salmon fisheries only two years ago.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">One (non-scientific) problem with the viral disease hypothesis, of course, is that it may create a strong link between salmon decline and fish farms. That is what the Chilean case has so tragically illustrated. The climate change hypothesis, on the other hand, carries the great advantage of being a rather “soft” and non-confrontational thesis, one that is not liable to aggravate some powerful interests such as the aquaculture industry. This is not to suggest that this scientific panel is being dishonest or corrupt about its scientific positions, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that. But, in a time of extreme scientific uncertainty over BC's wild salmon runs, climate change is a good “middle of the road” position to adopt if one is seeking to park oneself in a-wait-and-see spot, if one wants to somehow hedge one's bets and stay put until things decant a little, scientifically speaking, and until it becomes safe again to commit oneself to a strong scientific hypothesis (whether viral disease or other) without having burnt too many bridges along the way. In a word, the climate change hypothesis is good politics. </span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Invoking climate change as the primary cause behind BC's wild salmon's decline, however, is anything but neutral. It is extraordinarily disempowering for people, it gets the fish farm industry off the hook before we even get to study their fish disease data, it undermines critical scientific research such as that carried by Kristi Miller on the viral infections, it allows both the BC government and DFO – this broken institution – to continue their bankrupt policies of business as usual. It is a scientifically lazy niche to occupy, all the while some concrete and heroic scientific research work needs to be urgently accomplished on the ground. Brian Riddell's smolt radio tagging project, and his proposed monitoring of Johnstone Strait, are prime examples of such critical work. Miller's infection work is obviously another one. Studying the Harrison River sockeye may yet be another one, since the panel acknowledged on Monday that the data for that key run is lacking.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This panel needs to remain focused on its core scientific mandate. Acknowledge that the scientific community is unable to reach meaningful conclusions on the Fraser sockeye for the time being. Demand, as it claims to have done in the past, that the fish farm industry release all of its disease-related data to the scientific community and the general public by way of an open website (and not only to Justice Bruce Cohen for the sole purpose of his Inquiry). Continue to promote critical hands-on field research to gather more data. And stop dangling climate change as a catch-all explanation to everything – unless, that is, they are onto something specific which looks as promising as Miller's research on the viral disease. In which case, they need to tell us what it is they have discovered. What they did instead on Monday night is to tell us that “it's climate change, now go play in your room”. It's just too short an explanation for so big an issue. And I, for my part, don't like to be patronized.</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">.</span></div>Ivan Doumenchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10567808421635209642noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662185992354207667.post-87776156175925788952010-12-03T09:23:00.000-08:002010-12-04T09:32:21.930-08:00What Is a College Degree Worth in China?<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/12/02/opinion/02rfd-image/02rfd-image-custom7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="218" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/12/02/opinion/02rfd-image/02rfd-image-custom7.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A job fair for college graduates in Hefei, China. Photo New York Times.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>An interesting New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/12/02/what-is-a-college-degree-worth-in-china?hp">panel discussion</a> about the value of college degrees in China. The article frames the problem in the following terms:<br />
<br />
<blockquote style="color: #444444;">"While China's economy keeps growing at a rapid pace, the dim employment prospects of many of its college graduates pose a potential economic problem.<br />
<br />
According to recent statistics, the average Chinese college graduate makes only 300 yuan, or about $44, more a month than the average Chinese migrant worker. In recent years, the wages of college graduates have remained steady at about 1,500 yuan a month. Migrant workers' wages, however, have risen to 1,200 yuan.<br />
<br />
If China's graduates are unable to capitalize on their costly investment in education, then is it worthwhile for students to obtain a college degree? What does the imbalance say about China's education system and its economy in general?"</blockquote><br />
We're hitting here one of the classical choke points of capitalism: surplus-value has to be extracted somewhere from workers in order for capitalists to make a profit. Today, that somewhere is China.<br />
<br />
As one of the panelists puts it,<i> "Despite all the hoopla that foreign analysts have heaped on China’s growth, the economy remains driven by manual labor, low-cost and low-margin manufacturing. (...) Knowledge production requires an elite but an extraordinarily small number of workers. As a result, it cannot absorb many college graduates."</i> The room for a Chinese middle class is thus extremely narrow, hence the chronic oversupply of worthless college degrees.<br />
<br />
China's way out of this contradiction (within the limits of capitalism, that is) is to build its own economic empire, i.e. export its manufacturing jobs to undeveloped regions such as Africa, keep its "command and control" jobs in China, and have its own middle class live off the exploitation of Africa's manual labor, as the U.S. and Europe have done for the past century throughout the world. Until the next crisis of overproduction. Meanwhile, entire generations of Chinese college graduates are condemned to fight over the few qualified jobs available in their country - thousands of applicants for every job, it is said.<br />
<br />
<br />
.Ivan Doumenchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10567808421635209642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662185992354207667.post-33431611267194171632010-12-02T23:46:00.000-08:002010-12-02T23:46:40.043-08:00Saying No to logging on Flores Island<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://wildernesscommittee.org/sites/all/files/imagecache/width_348/FloresIMG_1333.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://wildernesscommittee.org/sites/all/files/imagecache/width_348/FloresIMG_1333.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Flores Island, Clayoquot Sound. Photo Wilderness Committee.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>This from the Wilderness Committee:<br />
<br />
<blockquote style="color: #444444;">We have recently learned that there is a plan to log a pristine old growth valley on Flores Island in the heart of Clayoquot Sound. The company has marked out its planned cutting areas and is preparing right now to obtain logging road and cutting permits from the Provincial Government.</blockquote><br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #444444;"><a href="http://wildernesscommittee.org/sven/write_now_save_clayoquot_sounds_ancient_forests_being_logged">Write the Minister of Natural Resource Operations</a>, Steve Thomson now and ask that no road or cut permits be issued for Flores Island or any other intact areas in Clayoquot Sound's rare, ancient temperate rainforest.</span><br style="color: #444444;" /><br style="color: #444444;" /><span style="color: #444444;">Together we can get this done!</span><br style="color: #444444;" /><br style="color: #444444;" /><span style="color: #444444;">Joe Foy | National Campaign Director</span><br style="color: #444444;" /><span style="color: #444444;">Wilderness Committee</span> </blockquote><br />
<br />
My letter to the Minister:<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote style="color: #444444;">Dear Mr. Thomson,<br />
<br />
Okay this one – hopefully – should be really easy for you to decide upon.<br />
<br />
Who in the world is this company which wants to log the trees of Flores Island? Have they lost their senses? What a silly move on their part. Logging Flores is not going to happen, it's as simple as that. It won't happen, I might add, with or without your government's consent. You would have entire communities – and not just the local ones – walking massive marches to Victoria and raising human shields and going all guerrilla on you before the first giant tree of Flores is allowed to be felled.<br />
<br />
What government in its right mind would want to tie its name to such a doomed adventure? I know the Liberals have made some pretty outlandish decisions in the past few years, but here is one where you are actually liable to side with the decent, reasonable, normal people, rather than with the occult corporate forces which your government usually serves so obediently.<br />
<br />
Your government should try “good decision” before it is ousted out of power, just for size. Come on Mr. Thomson, you can do it!<br />
<br />
Ivan Doumenc<br />
Vancouver, BC</blockquote><br />
.Ivan Doumenchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10567808421635209642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662185992354207667.post-70794555771312716882010-11-20T18:32:00.000-08:002010-11-20T18:38:18.414-08:00India's best export<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Arundhati_Roy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="362" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Arundhati_Roy.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption">Arundathi Roy. Photo Wikimedia</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Activists fighting private power projects in British Columbia are so absorbed in their local struggle, that we easily forget how much this battle is truly global in nature. That point was carried home back in 2001 in a book by Indian novelist, essayist and activist Arundathi Roy, <i>Power Politics</i>.<br />
<br />
The book tells the story of the controversial 400MW Maheshwar hydropower project on the Narmada river in central India's state of Madhya Pradesh, which according to watchdog organization International Rivers will submerge, if completed, the fertile lands and homes of about <a href="http://www.internationalrivers.org/en/south-asia/india/maheshwar-dam">100,000 people</a>.<br />
<br />
That private project was initially structured as a joint venture between US incineration giant Ogden Energy Group and Indian textile company S. Kumars. Since then it has descended, as so many other projects of its kind, into an investors' nightmare and Ogden has walked away. But the project has managed to survive and is now 80% complete, in spite of fierce resistance by the valley's population, continuous and repeated environmental and contractual violations at every step of the way, legal battles of epic dimensions, and a recent order by the central Indian government to temporarily interrupt construction - an order contemptuously ignored by the developer which has <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLMMB_VYm58">continued construction</a> of the dam with the support of the state government.<br />
<br />
Arundathi Roy's book is available at the Vancouver Public Library's central branch (Call # <a href="http://ipac2.vpl.ca/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=12903065B1DQ4.60109&profile=pac&source=%7E%21horizon&view=subscriptionsummary&uri=full=3100001%7E%21278301%7E%210&ri=1&aspect=subtab97&menu=search&ipp=20&spp=20&staffonly=&term=ARUNDHATI+ROY&index=.AW&uindex=&aspect=subtab97&menu=search&ri=1">320.954 R88p</a>) and is worth being read cover to cover, but here are a few passages particularly relevant to our own situation in British Columbia:<br />
<br />
<blockquote style="color: #666666;"><span style="color: #444444;"></span><span style="color: #444444;">The cost of the electricity [produced by this project] at the factory gate will be 13.9 cents per kilowatt hour, which is 26 times more expensive than existing hydroelectric power in the state, 5.5 times more expensive than thermal power, and 4 times more expensive than power from the central grid. (It's worth mentioning here that Madhya Pradesh today generates 1,500 megawatts more power than it can transmit and distribute.)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #444444;">Though the installed capacity of the Maheshwar project is supposed to be 400 megawatts, studies using 28 years of actual river flow data show that 80% of the electricity will be generated only during the monsoon months, when the river is full. What this means is that most of the supply will be generated when it's least needed.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #444444;">S. Kumars has no worries on this count. [...] They have an escrow clause in their contract, which guarantees them first call on government funds. This means that however much (or however little) electricity they produce, whether anybody buys it or not, for the next 35 years they are guaranteed a minimum payment from the government of approximately $127 million a year. This money will be paid to them even before employees of the bankrupt State Electricity Board get their salaries. […]</span><span style="color: #444444;"></span> <span style="color: #444444;"></span></blockquote><br />
<blockquote style="color: #666666;"><span style="color: #444444;">To date, S. Kumars hasn't even managed to produce a list of project-affected people, let alone land on which they are to be resettled. Yet, construction continues. S. Kumars is so well entrenched with the state government that they don't even need to pretend to cover their tracks. […]</span> </blockquote><blockquote style="color: #666666;"><br />
<span style="color: #444444;">What they don't realize is that the fight is on. Over the last three years, the struggle against the Maheshwar Dam has grown into a veritable civil disobedience movement, though you wouldn't know it if you read the papers. The mainstream media is hugely dependent on revenue from advertising. S. Kumars sponsors massive advertisements for their blended suitings. After their James Bond campaign with Pierce Brosnan, they've signed India's biggest film star - Hrithik Roshan - as their star campaigner. It's extraordinary how much silent admiration and support a hunk in a blended suit can evoke. […]</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #444444;">Over the last two years, tens of thousands of villagers have captured the dam site several times and halted construction work. Protests in the region forced two companies, Bayernwerk and VEW of Germany, to withdraw from the project.”</span></blockquote><br />
<br />
The similarities between India's Maheshwar project and our own “run-of-river” schemes are painfully evident, only perhaps a little more extreme in their Indian manifestation. Roy's book demonstrates that there is not only a global agenda of private appropriation of public resources. There is also a proven methodology, a transferable know-how, a reusable template according to which such appropriations are performed. What is being done to our rivers in BC today by the ruling class has been tried and tested and fine-tuned elsewhere in the world many times over. <br />
<br />
As such, when fighting our local battles to reclaim our commons from the ruling class, it's simply not good enough to keep it local. Thinking globally while acting locally is a slogan which does not cut it anymore. We must act globally too, constitute a transnational movement of organized political resistance which actively connects like-minded movements worldwide. <br />
<br />
Elsewhere in her book, Arundathi Roy writes that what we need is a new kind of politics:<br />
<br />
<blockquote style="color: #444444;">“Not the politics of governance, but the politics of resistance. The politics of opposition. The politics of forcing accountability. The politics of slowing things down. The politics of joining hands across the world and preventing certain destruction. In the present circumstances, I'd say that the only thing worth globalizing is dissent. It's India's best export.”</blockquote><br />
Such an organized political resistance is indispensable indeed if we are not to constantly reinvent the wheel at every new local battle, and therefore inevitably lose every such battle as we fruitlessly attempt to reinvent its particular rules of engagement.<br />
<br />
We all know that the climate summit in Cancun next month will amount to nothing at all in terms of measurable results. Yet it could achieve a lot - possibly even more than Copenhagen, precisely because it will be relieved of the pressure of having to deliver any "results" - in terms of building the global organized political force of resistance that Roy and other leaders are calling for. An organization which will federate and reconcile heterogeneous and often mutually class-antagonistic movements such as climate justice and anti-WTO, landless peasant and indigenous rights, armed insurgencies as in India's northern and eastern regions and classical industrial workers' movements as the ones now emerging in China. A movement which unifies topics and regions under a common struggle to rid the world of the plague of neoliberalism.<br />
<br />
In other words - and to shamelessly use some outdated and historically tainted terminology - what we need today is an International.<br />
<br />
.Ivan Doumenchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10567808421635209642noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662185992354207667.post-44878261679216041782010-11-02T08:00:00.000-07:002012-02-18T10:27:40.555-08:00How Marine Harvest stole the fish farms<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://www.socialearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/aquaponics.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption">An enclosed, land-based aquaponics fish farm. Photo socialearth.org</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.socialearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/aquaponics.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
The public overwhelmingly supports Alexandra Morton's campaign to remove open-pen fish farms from BC's waters. In particular, Alex's recent demand that fish farms disclose all their disease-related data since the beginning of their operations is extremely well received in the general public. It is fair to say that, today, the campaign has gained tremendous momentum and could be reaching critical mass. Victory is now a clear and distinct possibility.<br />
<br />
Those observations made a recent conversation I participated in all the more distressing.<br />
<br />
I was meeting with an old friend at a coffee shop and he introduced me to two of his friends. The conversation rapidly landed on the topic of fish farms. They were both enthusiastically sympathetic to Alex's cause. I was cruising, enjoying the pleasure of finding myself in such friendly territory without even having to work at it. Then one of them said: you know, the problem with farmed salmon is that it tastes awful. The wild salmon has this “gamy” flavor which cannot be replicated in a fish farm.<br />
<br />
Whoa, hold it there buddy. I was stupefied by what I had just heard. Is that what we have reduced the wild vs. farmed salmon issue to – a mere consumer debate?<br />
<br />
I told my new acquaintance that if, tomorrow morning, Marine Harvest got its act together, took all of its fish farms out of the ocean and brought them inland into properly contained systems, I would applaud loudly. That, moreover, if Marine Harvest took the additional steps of rendering its farming operations sustainable by (a) finding alternative feed sources to ocean fishing by-catch and (b) ensuring the proper recycling of its waste – I would become Marine Harvest's most faithful customer.<br />
<br />
As for the actual taste of salmon, I told him, I couldn't care less. <br />
<br />
I love the taste of sockeye, don't get me wrong. It's one of my most intense and rewarding culinary pleasures in life. But I would give it up without hesitation if that could save this magnificent species from extinction. Hell, I've already done that! I have hardly eaten any sockeye in the past 3 years because of collapsing runs. In 2010, I have feasted on sockeye knowing full well that I may have to renounce it for good as early as next year. Because – no matter how tasty the flesh of a sockeye is – it does not come close to the transformative experience of <a href="http://grassstruggle.blogspot.com/2010/10/salmon-connections.html">watching the sockeye return</a> to its river to spawn.<br />
<br />
Why in the world did I have to remind this well-intentioned person of such basic and self-evident truisms about wild and farmed salmon? How did we ever get here?<br />
<br />
It made me realize that Marine Harvest's impact goes further than just the potential eradication of the wild salmon itself. Another secondary and far reaching impact is that, through its operations, this corporation is instilling in people a deep and long lasting hatred for fish farming in general. The problem is that if we start hating fish farms, we and the oceans are in deep, deep trouble indeed.<br />
<br />
Fish farms were supposed to be a positive and workable solution to the awful plague of ocean overfishing. High-tech farms, that is: farms which are enclosed, running in a closed cycle, producing their own feed through a combination of plants, worms, non-carnivorous fish, and predator fish (a technique sometimes known as <a href="http://www.socialearth.org/aquaponics-the-answer-to-sustainable-farming">aquaponics</a>). Farms which do not overcrowd their fish or replicate in the ocean the scourge of land-based factory farming.<br />
<br />
In our ongoing struggle to save our wild salmon, it appears that we are – once again! – fighting on the terms set by the corporations rather than our own. We are asked to choose between two impossible evils: destructive, overcrowded, ridiculously low-tech operations consisting literally of a net thrown in the ocean which the industry has the nerve to call “fish farms”. Or, the continuation of mindless overfishing of the ocean, down to the very last wild fish. Are we learning anything yet? We must reject <i>both </i>alternatives and proudly advance our own progressive agenda, our own solution to the tragic depletion of our oceans: fish farms!<br />
<br />
In that regard, we must listen to Alex Morton's core message more carefully. She is and has always been a fervent advocate of contained land-based fish farms, provided that they are run under sustainable conditions. We need to ensure that we remain focused on that message and that we communicate it clearly to the general public. We LOVE fish farms and we WANT them, and Marine Harvest's operations DO NOT constitute fish farms.<br />
<br />
As such, any part of our campaign that depreciates farmed salmon (e.g. popular slogans such as “farmed salmon sucks”, “tastes awful”, is a “freak of nature”, “has two heads”, etc.) is misplaced and actually counterproductive. We should instead glorify this magnificent animal, the Atlantic salmon, and recognize it as our objective ally in the battle to save its brother the Pacific salmon. Atlantic salmon are good! They taste good! They could taste even better with the proper application of technology and know-how! Contained, high-tech fish farming is good! The overfishing of wild salmon is evil! Marine Harvest's usurpation of the term “fish farm” to describe its nets in the water is evil!<br />
<br />
Perhaps a more progressive, although slightly more complex, slogan for the general public would be something along the lines that “We want to reclaim fish farms from Marine Harvest”.<br />
<br />
As I indicated at the beginning of this post, there is a distinct and reasonable probability of us actually winning this campaign. This poses the practical question of what happens <i>after </i>we win. <br />
<br />
1. Will we win on time? Will it give the wild salmon a chance to rebound, recover, and adapt to other threats such as overfishing, loss of habitat, and (perhaps) climate change? <br />
<br />
2. What will be the cost of this victory to the reputation of aquaculture and fish farming in general? A key question indeed, given that we need fish farms to save our oceans and, therefore, our wild salmon.<br />
<br />
Once Marine Harvest has been forced to remove its despicable open-pen fish operations from our waters, do we just mindlessly go back to overfishing the ocean and eradicating our wild salmon through criminal mismanagement, DFO-style? No, of course not! From there, we move on to fish farms. Real fish farms, enclosed, high-tech, sustainable ones. <br />
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By denigrating fish farms as we sometimes do, we are cutting the branch we are sitting on. We are contributing to bankrupting in advance any chance of establishing viable commercial aquaculture operations as an alternative to killing our oceans. Yes, we need to - and we will - get Marine Harvest's factory nets out of the water. But we also need to stop undermining fish farms. Now. <br />
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.Ivan Doumenchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10567808421635209642noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662185992354207667.post-31916638802462819592010-10-28T08:26:00.000-07:002010-10-28T21:10:01.792-07:00Wild salmon alliances<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photos Don Staniford</span></td></tr>
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The canoe landing protocol which First Nations travelers observe when they reach another nation's shores is a very formal one. I was fortunate to witness it on several occasions during the <a href="http://salmonaresacred.org/paddle-wild-salmon">Paddle for Wild Salmon</a>, a one-week journey down the Fraser River from Hope to Vancouver which a group of 100 paddlers recently undertook to demand that fish farms release their diseased fish data. It's a beautiful and powerful protocol, which takes place as follows.<br />
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The hereditary chief and members of the welcoming nation gather on the beach singing and drumming. The approaching travelers raise their paddles in vertical position, letting the canoes glide gently towards the shore as a sign of non-aggression. The canoes are brought to a full stop a few feet away from the shoreline and rafted together to face the welcoming party. One of the indigenous members of the flotilla addresses the chief. He states his name and nation of origin, explains that he and his fellow paddlers are traveling on a journey to protect the wild salmon and asks permission for his party to come ashore and get some rest before continuing on. The chief states his own name and role and responds that his nation shares the concern of the travelers over the future of the wild salmon. He welcomes them to come ashore and invites them to rest and break bread. Both speakers use their loud voices to ensure that all can hear, they choose words and expressions carrying particular meaning, and emphasize their speeches with expressive gestures such as grabbing a handful of water or sweeping the horizon with an extended arm. <br />
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I raise my hands to who you are, one of the chiefs <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBv6L7fE6vk&feature=youtube_gdata_player">said to the paddlers</a> on one such occasion. I call you now my brothers and sisters that travel on this water with an open heart and mind of hope. I see the salmon heads that decorate the front of your canoes as an expression of the message that you are carrying to the bigger people [swooping gesture towards Vancouver], which tend to take care of our water in the wrong way.<br />
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I joined the paddle on its fifth day. As we disembarked in Musqueam at the end of the day, I was drawn in by the incredible intensity of this beautiful protocol. In the oral tradition of the First Nations, such ceremonies carry great cultural significance and also constitute a basis of agreement between two groups. The people who are gathered hear the specific terms of the exchange and can bear witness to what was said and agreed upon: in the absence of paper, the witnesses constitute the agreement.<br />
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The Musqueam people took us to their large communal room for the evening where they had prepared a sumptuous feast in our honor. After dinner, chiefs and representatives from various nations who had responded to Alexandra Morton's call for action sang and talked about the wild salmon. A young man sang a beautiful healing song from his nation, which he said he felt was fitting since we were on a journey to heal the wild salmon for our children and grandchildren. He then added: what a wonderful time to be alive, what a great responsibility, what a task we have in front of us, what a honor! Chief Marilyn Baptiste from the Xeni Gwet'in nation said a few words about the struggle that her people is waging to save Fish Lake from annihilation by a mining company. She explained that her nation may have no choice but take direct radical action to protect their lake.<br />
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Of all the leaders gathered in Musqueam that night, the only one who did not talk publicly was Alexandra Morton. Instead, she stood in the circle which had formed around the speakers and silently listened to everything which was being said. By traveling to the First Nations over the past weeks and months to meet them face-to-face, by spending so much time in gatherings and circles like this one, by listening in silence to the peoples and their struggles and their songs again and again, by breathing in their culture on a daily basis, Alex has succeeded where historically most environmentalists have failed in this Province – to establish durable, viable, long-term alliances with the First Nations, federating indigenous and ‘settlers’ alike under the common banner of the wild salmon. She has also, by mixing nations and their issues together in rooms such as this one, provided the First Nations with opportunities to build and strengthen alliances of their own.<br />
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The contrast between Alex’s approach and the shallow ‘take it or leave it’ deals that large corporations impose on their own terms to local bands over resource-extraction projects, couldn't be more striking. How many CEOs and politicians have spent one night – let alone entire weeks – sleeping on the floor of a band’s common room and taken the time to actually listen to what they had to say? It was particularly comforting to environmentalists such as myself to acknowledge the presence of representatives of the Homalco nation, who had joined the Paddle in Musqueam after an epic canoe journey across the Salish Sea with travelers from other nations. One will indeed recall that the Homalco were at the center of Plutonic Power's PR campaign over its Bute Inlet private power mega-project. With the help of controversial Klahoose elected chief Ken Brown, Plutonic had secured a deal which it had advertised in triumphant media releases stating that the company was “working” with the First Nations. The Bute project has since then collapsed, and so have the alleged benefits that Brown had hastily promised to his people. For their part, the alliances that Alex has initiated with nations such as the Homalco are made to stand the test of time.<br />
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The next morning we paddled from Musqueam to Jericho Beach. The atmosphere on the water was relaxed and joyful. People were singing and cracking jokes from one canoe to another. We were at that stage in every journey when people have become very familiar and comfortable with one another, when latecomers have been properly integrated to the mix by those of the first hour. The tide was coming out, the current and the wind were pushing us, and the sun joined in for the better part of the paddle contrary to Environment Canada’s dire predictions. After a quick stop at Spanish Banks to grab a snack we were back on the water, but then the radio called in to tell us that one of the hereditary chiefs meant to greet us at Jericho was running late, and so we were kindly asked to raft together and kill some time on the water. We gracefully obliged, remarking among ourselves that no matter who you are or what you do in life, you always seem to be waiting for some chief.<br />
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That downtime on the water turned out to be one of the high moments of the journey, according to people who had been on it since the first day. As we are floating in one big raft in the middle of the Bay, one of the First Nations leaders stands up and gets us into some singing. We sing well on that morning, in unison with a loud and clear voice. In that very moment, we are indeed one voice, one salmon nation united in a common purpose. We all bear witness that the alliance between the peoples of this land for the healing of the salmon has been enacted. As witnesses, we constitute the alliance. After the singing, Alex is invited to say a few words. She looks at us with her beautiful smile and simply says: Well, I think we'll get to keep our wild salmon after all.<br />
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The following day is Monday, and it is a work day for us paddlers as much as it is for most Vancouverites. This is the day when we deliver our message to the Cohen Commission that the fish farms must release their fish disease data – <i>all </i>their data since their operations started, not a limited dataset from some handpicked farms as the industry just did to counter our paddle in the media. It's a simple demand, really: release all your data. If you can’t, what are you hiding? To that effect, we paddle one last time from Jericho to Vanier Park. The strong wind and heavy rain are whipping our faces, and what was supposed to be a leisurely paddle turns out to be one of the hardest legs of the journey. For those long minutes we feel like the wild salmon, struggling hard against the elements to reach the destination where we know we must be. My eight-year old daughter who joined us for this last leg is shivering with cold but soldiering on, bravely casting her small paddle into the water with the rest of us. My heart is throbbing with pride.<br />
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After disembarking at Vanier Park, we march to the Cohen Commission in downtown Vancouver where Alex delivers our message to Justice Cohen in person, and we get a wild salmon rally going at the Art Gallery. As I distribute salmon stickers and information fliers to passers-by – most of them extremely sympathetic to our cause –, I look up at the glass tower where Mr. Cohen is holding his hearings. He is listening to us behind one of those windows, I think. Well, he better be. Because a lot of good people have worked their asses off on their own time and money to deliver him that message.<br />
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At the after-rally party, Alex Morton said the following: I'm not sure yet if we made a difference or not. Change is not incremental. Marilyn Baptiste will die for her land and that's the level where we need to be. I think that now, I’m just going to sleep. I'm a shell right now. When you're in the middle of this, you run on the energy.<br />
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I hear your words of caution about whether or not we have made a difference, Alex. But I beg to differ. That difference has been made already, thanks to the deep roots of unity that you have planted along with the other leaders who answered your call. This alliance of the wild salmon, of which I caught a glimpse during my few days on the paddle, is not going to vanish away. Not this time. Someone had to initiate that alliance, and you did. Good on you. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts. You may sleep now.<br />
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</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span></div>Ivan Doumenchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10567808421635209642noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662185992354207667.post-14233034156522765752010-10-22T09:00:00.000-07:002012-01-19T12:54:45.548-08:00The force of anger<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Betty Krawczyk. </span><br />
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Last September, Crown Counsel took veteran environmental activist Betty Krawczyk <a href="http://bettysearlyedition.blogspot.com/">to a new level</a> in her struggle with the BC legal system. She is now facing – at least in theory – the prospect of life in prison for having temporarily and non-violently stood in the way of trucks and heavy machinery. To that effect, Crown Counsel has submitted two rulings to the court involving repeat violent pedophiles who had raped their own children, indicating that those rulings were relevant to Betty's case. That's quite an irony when one considers that this grandmother has spent her golden years standing up against large corporations which were raping the environment.</div>
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A few days ago, Crown Counsel announced that in the BC Rail corruption trial it had reached a guilty plea deal with the defendants, and therefore the case was closed before Gordon Campbell and his former finance minister Gary Collins could be called to testify. For some detailed analysis of this development, I refer you to Rafe Mair's indispensable and surgical <a href="http://rafeonline.com/">daily blog</a>. The two defendants, Basi and Virk, are reported to have signed a non-disclosure agreement with the Crown whereby they are contractually obligated to take to the grave the secrets of this case. In its wisdom, the Crown also found it appropriate to stick the BC taxpayer with the defendants' legal bills in the amount of $6 million.</div>
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Each of these announcements is stunning in its own right, but they take their full significance when put in resonance with one another. Together, they underscore the growing rift between the ruling class' infinite leniency towards itself, and its extreme severity and growing repressive stance towards ordinary citizens.</div>
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Such moves by the Attorney General's office are usually carefully calculated. In the case involving Betty, the goal is to send a chill wave through the activist community by making an example of a high-profile iconic figure. The calculation is that this obvious overkill on the part of the Crown will (a) feed our instinct of fear and increase our general sense of powerlessness and apathy, and (b) possibly set a useful legal precedent in the event that new generations of radicalized Betties would come of age.</div>
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And indeed, if it were carried through, the Crown's threat against Betty would probably be successful in achieving that goal. Increased repression and criminalization of nonviolent and non-criminal acts of civil disobedience does cause well-meaning people to pause and think harder about the consequences of their actions before they act. Who wants to go to jail for 10 months – let alone a lifetime – for holding back a bunch of construction trucks for a week or two? Certainly not me.</div>
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And yet, how little does the elite class understand the laws of dialectics! Clearly, they do not see that through their actions they are awakening and enabling the very monster that they are trying to keep locked away. They are, in their mode of reasoning, the tributaries of formal logic. In their worldview, something can never be simultaneously something else. People are either scared or they are not. They are either apathetic or politically active. If you successfully scare them into a state of apathy, you have by all measures accomplished your mission, case closed. Sometimes after a time of relative calm people grow agitated again, and so then you scare them again by stepping up the repression by a couple notches. Causes are followed by effects. A simple world, really.</div>
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In contrast dialectics, which can be defined as the study of the general laws of motion, describes the permanent state of change of things - which are, quite literally, always simultaneously themselves and something else. One huge practical benefit of dialectics as a methodology is that it is adept in all things contradictory. Whereas formal logic is incapable of explaining contradiction and generally dismisses it as a form of error, dialectics thrives on it. The dialectician actively seeks contradiction everywhere, sees it always as an opportunity and never as a problem, reads in its distinct pattern an indication that change is about to occur - that things are about to be set in motion.</div>
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Well folks – things are about to be set in motion. The elite class' contradictory treatment of the rule of law, their ridiculous leniency towards themselves paired with their increasingly repressive stance towards the rest of us, throws us, in turn, into a deep state of contradiction. We are deeply conflicted between our growing fear of repression against dissent, which leads us to apathy, and our growing revulsion of the elite class' appropriation of the judicial apparatus to their own benefit, which leads us to anger and therefore dissent.</div>
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As a social force, anger follows the same general laws as any physical force found in nature. A force which is repressed does not vanish away. Rather, it accumulates behind the obstacle which retains it and grows in magnitude until the obstacle comes under stress. And when the force is eventually released, it takes the form of a violent explosion which brings the obstacle down. Today, the obstacle constituted by the elite class' judicial apparatus is finding itself under considerable stress, pressured as it is by the forces of anger accumulating behind it.<span style="font-size: small;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Those pressures will continue to grow in years to come, as our rulers' judicial schizophrenia does not happen in a vacuum. It takes place in a global socioeconomic context of systematic looting of the public commons which I had referred to in an earlier blog post as a </span><a href="http://grassstruggle.blogspot.com/2010/09/awakening.html"><span style="font-size: small;">modern form of barbarism</span></a><span style="font-size: small;">. It is because they are robbing us that the world's elite class must allocate an increasing amount of their resources to both controlling us and getting themselves off the hook whenever they get caug</span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-attachment: scroll; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat repeat;">ht. G</span></span><span style="font-size: small;">ordo and friends did not invent the neoliberal ideology which transfers the public commons into private hands: they are simply doing what the members of their global class are meant to do. And so, they have no option but continue to crack down on activists like Betty while bailing themselves out, thus accelerating the conditions for a massive social explosion. They are objectively working on the side of the revolution. All I can say to them is – keep it up, brothers!</span></div>
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In my frequent moments of powerlessness and apathy, I take personal comfort in one particular law of dialectics, the law of transformation of quantity into quality. Water when cooled down to zero degree turns to ice not gradually, but all at once. Change when it happens is usually not incremental but instantaneous and brings along a new qualitative reality. There are thresholds when suddenly we are not in Kansas anymore. That is what, for example, makes the threat of climate change so godawful terrifying. This law helps me answer the nagging question of why are we keeping our heads down, even as the elite class continues to abuse us on a daily basis. Marxist commentator Rob Sewell <a href="http://www.marxist.ca/content/view/18/51/">wrote</a>:<br />
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“Just as colossal subterranean pressures that accumulate and periodically break through the earth's crust in the form of earthquakes, so gradual changes in the consciousness of people lead to an explosion which is turned into a class struggle. The "cause" of the qualitative change may be something quite small and incidental, but it has become "the last straw that breaks the camel's back", to use a popular (dialectical) expression. It has become the catalyst whereby quantity changes into quality.”</blockquote>
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"A catalyst" is also what Rafe Mair called Betty in a <a href="http://thecanadian.org/k2/item/281-rafe-12">recent column</a>. He is spot on. That, indeed, has been Betty's historical significance in this province. By using disproportionate legal weaponry against her, the judicial apparatus has only succeeded in speeding up the very chemical reaction which it was trying to avoid. The Crown has realized the magnitude of its error and is now in damage control. It has recently circulated the following statement <a href="http://murraydobbin.ca/2010/09/24/the-liberal-government-versus-betty-krawczyk/">on the blogosphere</a>, referring to Crown prosecutor Mike Brundrett's submission to the court of the two pedophile rulings:<br />
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"While making submissions to a Court the Crown may refer to cases for the legal principles they set out. That does not mean that the Crown equates the background facts of those cases with the case before the Court. In the context of Ms Krawczyk’s appeal, the Crown is not analogizing acts of civil disobedience with sexual offences."</blockquote>
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Too late, Mr. Brundrett. The reaction is already initiated, the contradiction has been expressed. You are no longer in control in this matter. The laws of motion are in control.<br />
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.Ivan Doumenchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10567808421635209642noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662185992354207667.post-57243416325769987272010-10-20T22:20:00.000-07:002010-10-21T11:43:00.708-07:00Salmon connections<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKKKUAyjYfgfAF5y483RgZNvlrsa1-rDwJen9XId_kKkrAwMfYThyISqgItttocNyrZuDcndP_L5htH18D_D_Uzxnw9BB6SdjmZZbbhpRwmcfkYJSiouysm0ppd4m5lEkYNTZ9U9gcODc7/s1600/02.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx4lTy4WahF0ATpRTTBivzbiAO-OytyNKqsfzv_BCIVYK3XIdV_7Xz3UDc-KLROPWpEl02e5Bi6NbQPSI6wv8Gjg8OVYWSGYHMeLk27Ka55Na25SFd1HC6IabIFbBkjiQrx1ED0V7e2X4h/s1600/01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx4lTy4WahF0ATpRTTBivzbiAO-OytyNKqsfzv_BCIVYK3XIdV_7Xz3UDc-KLROPWpEl02e5Bi6NbQPSI6wv8Gjg8OVYWSGYHMeLk27Ka55Na25SFd1HC6IabIFbBkjiQrx1ED0V7e2X4h/s400/01.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photos Isabelle Groc, <a href="http://www.tidelife.com/">Tidelife Photography</a>.</span><br />
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It was, we were told, the run of the century. So we decided to give ourselves adequate time at the Adams River. We settled for three full days with nothing else to do but sit with the sockeye and watch them undergo their magnificent transformation.<br />
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We walked off the parking lot and onto the river trail and realized right away that this year was of a different order of magnitude. We were stunned. The river was filled with thousands upon thousands of sockeye grouped in gigantic schools every two to three hundred meters, which were so dense that they looked like herring balls. I had been to the Adams four times already, but for the first time I was seeing the red river that elders sometimes talk about and which I had, until now, dismissed as a legend.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7jFy9uOvGggnztTM_sx6qR4tANnTPH_s7XnJOJJffPMeAZtcziI16bzdE07IxRHRgap3G_oasvsrPXfPikDwDSTGyllRGJhHfgdd-cFNRFA6s0Kr9CItMd8rEOKt3lvdcRgs3NV9x2Ide/s1600/adamsriver2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7jFy9uOvGggnztTM_sx6qR4tANnTPH_s7XnJOJJffPMeAZtcziI16bzdE07IxRHRgap3G_oasvsrPXfPikDwDSTGyllRGJhHfgdd-cFNRFA6s0Kr9CItMd8rEOKt3lvdcRgs3NV9x2Ide/s400/adamsriver2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
The other striking anomaly was the number of people massed on the river banks. I was habituated from previous years to walk the Adams in virtual solitude. This time, my family and I had to struggle to make our way through the crowd. There were many bodies in the water for sure, but also many bodies standing out of it. All these people staring and pointing and smiling at the salmon: if there ever existed tangible connections between humans and salmon, I was surely looking at one.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKKKUAyjYfgfAF5y483RgZNvlrsa1-rDwJen9XId_kKkrAwMfYThyISqgItttocNyrZuDcndP_L5htH18D_D_Uzxnw9BB6SdjmZZbbhpRwmcfkYJSiouysm0ppd4m5lEkYNTZ9U9gcODc7/s1600/02.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br />
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Kids were pulling their parents by the sleeve crying 'This way!' with their strident high-pitched voices. An old man who was hooked up to a respiration system was wheeling his bulky oxygen bottle along the bumpy trail towards the river bank. High-end urban people dressed in designer fashion clothes were rubbing shoulders with local folks dressed like you and me. Thomson River University students were exchanging amused comments with a congregation of nuns. Canada was standing on the banks of that river, and so too was the rest of the world if one believed the world map at the main entrance where people were invited to pin their place of origin and which was, literally, overflowing with pins.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKKKUAyjYfgfAF5y483RgZNvlrsa1-rDwJen9XId_kKkrAwMfYThyISqgItttocNyrZuDcndP_L5htH18D_D_Uzxnw9BB6SdjmZZbbhpRwmcfkYJSiouysm0ppd4m5lEkYNTZ9U9gcODc7/s1600/02.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKKKUAyjYfgfAF5y483RgZNvlrsa1-rDwJen9XId_kKkrAwMfYThyISqgItttocNyrZuDcndP_L5htH18D_D_Uzxnw9BB6SdjmZZbbhpRwmcfkYJSiouysm0ppd4m5lEkYNTZ9U9gcODc7/s400/02.JPG" width="400" /></a><br />
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The salmon, for their part, were oblivious of this human run taking place above their heads. Or were they? A badly diseased female – her decaying skin literally peeling off her head – was stubbornly guarding her nest in spite of a group of onlookers standing no more than four feet away from her. When a little girl came running down towards the bank, however, the fish took off like an arrow. The girl screeched to a standstill having realized the commotion she had caused in the water, and the fish came back. They were definitely watching our every move and we were no doubt impacting them.<br />
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The powerful stench of decaying dead fish was actually pleasant to my nose, probably because of its distinctive oceanic character which I was surprised and stimulated to find here, some five hundred kilometers away from the shoreline. One of the sockeye's many great powers is its ability to bend the laws of geography by turning a remote BC Interior area such as the Shuswap into a coastal region for an entire month every year.<br />
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At lunch, I sat down with a retired couple who had traveled from Penticton to salute the salmon. I wonder, I asked them, if people come here because they are just curious or because they are truly impacted by the salmon. I think it's a bit of both, the man replied. And if they arrived just curious they will leave impacted, he added.<br />
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People who visit the Adams for longer than an afternoon soon realize that the place is smaller than it appears and can easily be covered on foot. So they relax and usually settle for one or two personal favorite spots where they linger, come back, identify specific individuals among the masses of salmon, and start noticing the subtle and stunningly beautiful details of a sockeye's final hours. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtGWS4ZnTUKJWOt1DzlDNu8cI_cxarnsl-ddOO6g1cV2NAKEtko0YaRL9jCqnU-_tU2lmWpC_Cqq5xSOqwhloaq4F63uomHLyv6E9U9ENwbnBjgAVZ70UIhLR6qbkNQvHROKXydtcTjq-t/s1600/adamsriver5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtGWS4ZnTUKJWOt1DzlDNu8cI_cxarnsl-ddOO6g1cV2NAKEtko0YaRL9jCqnU-_tU2lmWpC_Cqq5xSOqwhloaq4F63uomHLyv6E9U9ENwbnBjgAVZ70UIhLR6qbkNQvHROKXydtcTjq-t/s400/adamsriver5.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
In one of my own favorite spots, I focused on a salmon couple guarding their nest. I had known for some time that sockeye could be pretty aggressive animals. What I noticed this time around was the other side of that reality – companionship. There was a strict division of labor between that male and that female as they fought off intruders. The female chased other females, the male other males. They almost never attacked the opposite sex, except in one instance when the male appeared to be in trouble, to which the female immediately responded by bravely stepping into the fight. Another observation drew me closer to those two fish than I could expect. Every time one of the two partners chased off an intruder, it would then perform a full circle to come back to the nest from behind and, upon arrival, it would give a quick rub to the other, as if to say ‘I'm back’. <br />
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It is not all just happy and nice at the Adams River. One group of people who could definitely use a little more relaxation and observation time in their own personal favorite spots are the so-called underwater “wildlife photographers”. I use quotes here because, frankly, those particular photographers which I got to observe at the Adams didn't appear to care much about their subject. I saw many of them walk or stand in spawned sections of the river, destroying nests, chasing salmon away, and producing plumes of silt in their wake. <br />
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I confronted one of those individuals who brushed me off as an ignorant moron. Some “wildlife photographers” clearly believe that the basic rules of conservation do not apply to them, perhaps because they feel that what they are doing is far too important to have to worry about such petty details as not stepping on eggs, or perhaps because they take comfort in carrying around some pretty expensive phallic-shaped objects. I don't know and frankly I don't care, but I do know that their mindset is that of trophy hunters, not “wildlife photographers”. Those who act in such ways are parasites to the wildlife that they claim to photograph. I wish that the profession would crack down more forcefully on these rogue individuals through peer pressure and ostracism if needed. <br />
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My wife told me of another physical encounter between human and salmon that she witnessed, and which took on a whole different meaning. A Shuswap elder woman came down to the river with her grandson to salute the sockeye. She showed him how to touch a fish without startling it. It was, according to my wife, a very delicate, technical, and gradual process which the little boy carried out successfully. The salmon did not move as it was being gently stroked. Shushwap elder woman and her grandson on the one hand, Canon-bearing trophy hunters on the other. Two colliding and incompatible worldviews, one respectful and the other one not, yet both involving a physical interaction with the animal.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAkqC8cfv-ltXoYuW2apijzmx-qJWXFwA-_NdB-hwPez3MD8ztQuFOTn8GPYZnq8FCIoqpCdfGA_4D9PCqTjXayU7YYEdAw3eIJpY9XlC5updMVOLKSs84gbyV8QVzwg7p8B3d5sTGsuZ8/s1600/adamsriver4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAkqC8cfv-ltXoYuW2apijzmx-qJWXFwA-_NdB-hwPez3MD8ztQuFOTn8GPYZnq8FCIoqpCdfGA_4D9PCqTjXayU7YYEdAw3eIJpY9XlC5updMVOLKSs84gbyV8QVzwg7p8B3d5sTGsuZ8/s400/adamsriver4.jpg" width="275" /></a></div><br />
Another favorite spot of my wife and myself is the river mouth where the salmon enter into the Adams River from Shuswap Lake. There is an extremely shallow stretch of water there, about 10 meters long and perhaps two inches deep, which the salmon must cross in order to reach the river. They are forced to get literally out of the water and dash their way to safety. A sockeye sprinting above the surface of the water is more exhilarating to watch than the Olympic 100 meters final.<br />
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Because that river mouth is so treacherously shallow, the sockeye were particularly careful when entering it. They would gather at its entrance and wait, sometimes for hours, conflicted between their instinct of reproduction which told them Go! and that of survival which told them Don't! As new salmon kept arriving from the lake behind (the run was not yet finished), the waiting party would gradually grow until it would reach a critical mass. At that point one fish bolder than the others would venture into the river mouth, immediately followed by a bunch of others. And so, following the principle of force in numbers, the sockeye would almost always enter the Adams River as a group.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjezJ1XPYjgpYWaduiIODd63gtjbOc9SQDc1LWi_06oBAl7BcwfqMoRw-jQkDOzPsobTFggFe_h-pkb6NuxMwjesbrPOfeuDAJJBE52t1eDUP35SolDdKZf2wMiL2E_UsZN9O_SBK5Axdnv/s1600/adamsriver3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjezJ1XPYjgpYWaduiIODd63gtjbOc9SQDc1LWi_06oBAl7BcwfqMoRw-jQkDOzPsobTFggFe_h-pkb6NuxMwjesbrPOfeuDAJJBE52t1eDUP35SolDdKZf2wMiL2E_UsZN9O_SBK5Axdnv/s400/adamsriver3.jpg" width="400" /></a> <br />
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In a sense this is where we activists are today – at the mouth of the river, frightened by invisible corporate predators and ill-defined legal threats, waiting for one if us to make the first move. That one, historically, has been Alexandra Morton in the battle for wild salmon. Rather than a “leader”, she is better described as an individual who is bolder and more determined than most of us. She has made that first move, and now we are all seizing the opportunity to make a run with her. That was the meaning of Alex's <a href="http://grassstruggle.blogspot.com/2010/05/on-migration-small-trickles-become.html">march to the Victoria legislature</a> last May. It is the meaning of this week's paddle down the Fraser River, and the ensuing walk to the Cohen Commission in downtown Vancouver next Monday. If only we were able to show up in great numbers in one location, as the Adams sockeye did this year, we would be an irresistible force indeed.<br />
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For the next few nights after this, I dream of the sockeye. You are home, I tell them. Do what you have to do, and come back. We are lost without you.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1gptD7xUdxHEdxvrAk9XIImO7xaxf-BOUwbYItxM76NmZnzEqW9AJhdwPy3rIHIUKXCeEfvAO94mCy-R3Qx0QCXLWX4JNUv26Oe1Cf_JCw9QrQTp77LX4ZliSUMz9xjyXrZgo3mu1uSOj/s1600/adamsriver1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1gptD7xUdxHEdxvrAk9XIImO7xaxf-BOUwbYItxM76NmZnzEqW9AJhdwPy3rIHIUKXCeEfvAO94mCy-R3Qx0QCXLWX4JNUv26Oe1Cf_JCw9QrQTp77LX4ZliSUMz9xjyXrZgo3mu1uSOj/s320/adamsriver1.jpg" width="219" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>This weekend's <a href="http://www.salmonaresacred.org/paddle-wild-salmon">calendar of events</a></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.salmonaresacred.org/paddle-wild-salmon"></a><b></b></div><br />
<b>What</b>: Celebration at Jericho Beach to Welcome the Paddle<br />
<b>When</b>: <span class="date-display-single">Sunday, October 24, 2010 - <span class="date-display-start">12:00</span><span class="date-display-separator"> - </span><span class="date-display-end">16:00</span></span><br />
<span class="date-display-single"><span class="date-display-end"><b>Where</b>: </span></span><a href="http://vancouver.ca/parks/rec/beaches/jericho.htm">Jericho Beach, Vancouver</a><br />
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<b>What</b>: Stand up for Justice for Wild Salmon (Cohen Commission)<br />
<b>When</b>: <span class="date-display-single">Monday, October 25, 2010 - <span class="date-display-start">10:00</span><span class="date-display-separator"> - </span><span class="date-display-end">15:00</span></span><br />
<span class="date-display-single"><span class="date-display-end"><b>Where</b>: </span></span><a href="http://maps.google.ca/maps?oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=vanier+park&fb=1&gl=ca&hq=vanier+park&hnear=North+Vancouver,+BC&cid=0,0,3624285395705200431&ei=Ldq2TKe_NISusAPo28CcCQ&sa=X&oi=local_result&ct=image&resnum=2&ved=0CB4QnwIwAQ">Vanier Park</a>, then 701 W. Georgia, then <a href="http://maps.google.ca/maps?oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=vancouver+art+gallery&fb=1&gl=ca&hq=vancouver+art+gallery&hnear=North+Vancouver,+BC&cid=0,0,13084578711602297423&ei=cNq2TKDyKoGosQO77sTiCA&sa=X&oi=local_result&ct=image&resnum=2&ved=0CDEQnwIwAQ">Vancouver Art Gallery</a><span class="date-display-single"><span class="date-display-end"> </span></span><br />
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.Ivan Doumenchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10567808421635209642noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662185992354207667.post-14980509691992594772010-10-13T21:16:00.000-07:002010-10-13T21:21:48.800-07:00Calling all wild salmon people<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://salmonaresacred.org/sites/default/files/images/calling-all.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://salmonaresacred.org/sites/default/files/images/calling-all.jpg" width="492" /></a></div><br />
The <a href="http://salmonaresacred.org/paddle-wild-salmon">Paddle for Wild Salmon</a> kicks off in Hope on October 19 and ends in downtown Vancouver on the 25th, to coincide with the opening day of the <a href="http://www.commissioncohen.ca/en/">Cohen Commission’s</a> evidential hearings on the disappearance of last year's Fraser River Sockeye run.<br />
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I'll be personally joining the flotilla on October 23, 24, and 25 (I'll be embarking in New Westminster) and I'll report back on the event on this blog.<br />
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But before that, I'm taking my family to <a href="http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton/2010/10/adams-river-again.html">Adams River</a> this coming weekend, where we will salute the run of the century - over 30 million sockeye, OMG!! I'll definitely report on that as well.<br />
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If you feel like joining me for the paddle next week, simply RSVP to the email posted below. You are advised to do that ASAP, as spaces on the boats are said to be filling up quickly.<br />
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Hope to see you on the water! <br />
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<blockquote style="color: #444444;"><div>Hello all Paddlers from far and wide,</div><div></div><div>If you have received this email, it means that we have you on our paddle participant list, and we expect that you are coming along on the paddle. </div><div>If we are mistaken, then please email back as soon as possible and let us know so we can give your seat to someone else. </div><div>If you haven't confirmed the days you are coming along, or are not sure about anything at all after reading the attached document, please contact Alexis Baker, Nicole MacKay, or Elena Edwards at the email addresses below.</div><div></div><div>For the paddling itinerary, visit us here - <a href="http://salmonaresacred.org/itinerary-paddle" target="_blank">http://salmonaresacred.org/itinerary-paddle</a></div><div></div><div> If you know people who want to join up, or have friends that you have signed up that we do not have contact details for, please forward them this email and have them RSVP to: <a href="mailto:info@salmonaresacred.org" target="_blank">info@salmonaresacred.org</a> and <a href="mailto:oceananele@hotmail.com" target="_blank">oceananele</a><a href="mailto:oceananele@hotmail.com" target="_blank">@hotmail.com</a> or by telephone to Elena - 1+ (604)820-0088 </div><div></div><div>As we draw closer to the actual day and carry on with our journey, </div><div>we will most easily be reached through Don Staniford's cell phone 1 (250) 230-1172</div><div><br />
The send off BBQ and celebration is at the Telte-Yet Camp Site in Hope is in one week! </div><div>Please come between 5 pm and 8 pm on October 19th to the<b> <span dir="ltr">Telte-Yet Camp Site - 600 Water, Hope, BC V0X 1L0</span> - <span dir="ltr">(604) 869-9481</span></b></div><div><br />
Many Thanks, and see you soon.</div></blockquote><br />
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.Ivan Doumenchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10567808421635209642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662185992354207667.post-61348836784988809272010-10-05T19:04:00.000-07:002010-10-05T19:05:08.703-07:00Gordo to increase private power rates<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://thetyee.cachefly.net/Views/2009/07/06/rally-1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://thetyee.cachefly.net/Views/2009/07/06/rally-1.png" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-size: x-small;">We sure can do it again: <span class="Apple-style-span">Anti-IPP rally in Kaslo, British Columbia. Photo Damien Gillis</span></span><br />
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An <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/bc-launches-power-program-to-take-on-ontario/article1742590/">interesting announcement</a> by the BC government this morning, which fits into my blog post <a href="http://grassstruggle.blogspot.com/2010/10/site-c-neoliberal-plan-b.html" target="_blank">from yesterday</a>.<br />
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The BC government is considering an increase - not decrease - to its premium rates paid to IPPs. As it stands, those rates (~$100 per MWh) are already considerably higher than the spot market average price (~$50 per MWh). So Campbell is about to make a bad deal for the BC ratepayer even worse.<br />
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Why would he do that? Because BC is finding it increasingly difficult to attract good investors to its private power adventure, in a context of continued recession in the US (call it a "jobless recovery" if you like), the emergence of new renewable energy players such as California's solar industry, a growing energy overproduction crisis on the continent, and therefore a situation of increased competition among governments - in this case, BC is trying to outbid Ontario's own generous offerings to the private power industry. <br />
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In other terms, Campbell is now fishing at the bottom of the barrel, trying to attract second rate investors now that the bigger ones appear to be walking away, or to get the big ones back with much higher payoffs.<br />
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This is extremely problematic, especially when it is coupled with the Site C project being carried out in parallel. The BC taxpayer is being hit by a double whammy: on the one hand, s/he is asked with Site C to produce at his/her own cost a surplus of energy that s/he does not need, and which will be sold at basement bargain rates to the mining industry and other regional polluters (there is rumor of sending Site C's energy to the Tar Sands); on the other hand, s/he will be required to purchase energy that s/he does not need at outrageous rates ($150 per MWh?) from private producers in 40-year contracts, which will also be sold at dirt cheap rates to private mines.<br />
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This is theft. How do we intend to protect our property?<br />
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<span style="color: #888888;"></span><br />
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<span style="color: #888888;"></span>Ivan Doumenchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10567808421635209642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8662185992354207667.post-81578961191520384502010-10-04T13:06:00.000-07:002010-10-04T16:32:37.030-07:00Site C, the Neoliberal Plan B<div class="separator" style="background-color: #f3f3f3; clear: both; color: black; text-align: left;"><a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/2926070.bin?size=620x400" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="257" src="http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/2926070.bin?size=620x400" width="400" /></a></div><div style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span id="internal-source-marker_0.14655237952771927" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Gordon Campbell selling Site C, April 2010. Photo Vancouver Sun</span></span></span></div><div style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: black;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Many in British Columbia have noticed the curious coincidence between the ongoing agony of the “run-of-river” private power scheme, and the sudden resurgence of Site C as one of our government’s top priority policy objectives.</span><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">That timing is not coincidental, but reveals instead an organic link between private power and Site C - a publicly managed 900 MW dam project to be located on the Peace River. Put simply, Site C is Gordon Campbell’s Plan B in his pursuit of the neoliberal agenda, in the event that the collapse of the private power adventure is confirmed in months to come.</span><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">For those opposed to private power in this province, what an extraordinary year 2010 has been! No doubt (and barring any last minute catastrophe) this will go down in our collective memories as our finest hour, our </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">annus mirabilis</span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. Let’s summarize.</span><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">January</span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. Plutonic Power announces its decision to put its gigantic Bute Inlet private power project on hold for 12 months. Two months later, in March, it announces that the project is <a href="http://grassstruggle.blogspot.com/2010/03/bute-inlet-power-project-on-ropes.html">suspended indefinitely</a>.</span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> It is probable - although none of it has transpired publicly - that General Electric, the project’s financier, killed the Bute once it realized that the risks involved in this $4bn project had escalated dramatically, both in terms of its disastrous public image and the increasing uncertainty about whether BC would even be allowed to sell its energy to California. </span><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">April</span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. The modest-size Tyson Creek private power project is temporarily shut down, two months after going online, due to large amounts of sediments being deposed in the nearby fish-bearing Tzoonie river. The incident has brought the entire environmental assessment process into disrepute, as regional districts <a href="http://www.coastreporter.net/article/20100918/SECHELT0101/309189998/-1/sechelt/scrd-grills-province-and-feds-over-tyson-creek">have discovered to their dismay</a> </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">that some of the most textbook risks such as - duh - the potential sedimentation impact of a lake delta, have been completely left out of the impact studies.</span><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">May</span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. BC’s other private megaproject, Kleana Power’s Klinaklini project in Knight Inlet, <a href="http://www.klinaklini.info/2010/05/bc-hydro-pulls-plug-on-klinaklini-river-power-project/">is killed</a></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> by BC Hydro after environment minister Barry Penner publicly voices concerns about the project’s potential environmental impacts. The rumour goes that this project was so disastrous environmentally that the government could simply not afford to support it. I will also argue that at that stage of the game, the BC Liberals had already decided to shift their priorities back to Site C.</span><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">September</span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. The California legislature says no - again! - to importing BC’s private energy, in spite of the Campbell government’s herculean lobbying efforts. California’s renewable power bill died of neglect on the senate floor, without even being voted upon. Not that it changed much for Campbell anyways, since the California legislators refused to change that bill’s language to qualify BC’s private power as “green”. And why would they? Their political duty is to protect the state’s fledgling solar energy industry - and its badly needed jobs - from the unfair competition of their northern neighbor’s subsidized private energy.</span><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This year’s amazing developments are coming after another pretty good year, 2009, which saw among other things the <a href="http://grassstruggle.blogspot.com/2009/08/ipps-various-shades-of-no.html">West Kootenays rise</a> </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">against the Glacier-Howser private power project, and the BC Utilities Commission deliver a resounding </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">slap in the face</span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> to the Campbell government by ruling that its private power scheme was “not in the public’s interest”.</span><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">On the face of it, Site C signals that Gordon Campbell has finally received the message from the public loud and clear. You don’t like private power? Well okay, he appears to be saying, let me give you instead a good old-fashioned </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Bennett-style </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">public project, one that puts BC Hydro back in the driver’s seat, one that even the NDP won’t be able to object to. </span><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Politically, it’s a savvy narrative. But the problem lies in its failure to address two nagging questions:</span><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span></div><ol style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: black; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><li style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">British Columbia does not need the additional power provided by Site C, any more than it needed that provided by Bute Inlet and the Klinaklini. That point was made clear time and again during the anti-private power campaign. Even BC Hydro acknowledged that fact in its <a href="http://www.bchydro.com/etc/medialib/internet/documents/info/pdf/info_2007_conservation_potential_review_summary_report.Par.0001.File.info_2007_conservation_potential_review_summary_report.pdf">2007 Marbek Report</a></span><span style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. And if the purpose of producing this surplus energy was to export it, as the Campbell government was finally forced to acknowledge in 2009, that route has now been closed by California’s lawmakers.</span></span></li>
</ol><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: black; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span><br />
<div style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: black; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Question #1: if we don’t need it and California doesn’t want it, for whom exactly are we producing Site C’s energy?</span><span style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span></div><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: black; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span><br />
<ol start="2" style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: black; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><li style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The BC government is actively pursuing a transmission line project which is under-reported in mainstream media and therefore remains mostly under the public radar, the Northwest Transmission Line. This $400 to 600m project consists of a 500-kilometre line from Terrace to Dease Lake. Whoa, hold it there - </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">from Terrace to Dease Lake?</span><span style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> What’s up there? A handful of diesel-powered rural and First Nations communities which, by the admission of the BC government itself, will <a href="http://thetyee.ca/News/2009/09/21/northwesttransmission/">not get linked</a> </span><span style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">to the grid after this new transmission line is completed. </span></span></li>
</ol><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: black; font-size: small;"></span><br />
<div style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: black; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Question #2: why are we spending half a billion dollars to build a Transmission Line to Nowhere, one which will fail to get a single community off diesel?</span><span style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span></div><div style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">With incredible candor, the Mining Association of British Columbia provides a compelling answer to both aforementioned questions in the form of the following map, appearing in a <a href="http://www.highway37.com/i/pdf/MABCReport_Electrification_of_Highway_37.pdf">2008 report</a> which underscores the benefits of the projected transmission line for the mining industry:</span></span></div><div style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><img height="640" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/PKwfpbPJ2h5ciV02nf7k-iEZV18iHJBhk3drWxFiC1935zdhYjWq1ZwqQ527j2C1fiEG-zVLNfBOeKHmVvtSWs7xcQzJ5C3zo_EsAJoesQkB7_9z8A" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" width="451" /><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The MABC’s report further acknowledges that “demand for power in the northwest is driven largely by the mining sector”, and adds that “the potential economic benefits to the province of constructing the Northwest Transmission Line appear considerable” and are “extremely dependent upon the various mining projects identified in this report”. </span><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">And it’s really as simple as that. Site C’s excess energy, paired with this new transmission line, will serve to power private mining ventures in Northern BC. Mines consume enormous amounts of energy, and none of those projects north of Terrace would be economically viable without a very large supply of cheap, publicly subsidized energy. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the neoliberal hat, one being used today all around the world. Large transnational corporations apply their enormous political leverage to obtain from local governments full access to the country’s public resources - both energetic and financial - to the detriment of local populations. It’s a textbook case of the “enclosure of the commons”. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Campbell’s initial plan was to cater to two of his constituent groups in a single move. (a) Hand BC’s rivers over to the private power industry - the so-called IPPs -, purchase the entirety of the energy produced at outrageously high rates (~$100/MWh) on public funds through exclusive 40-year contracts, and sell that energy back at half the cost (~$50/MWh) on the North American spot market, while (b) catering to the mining industry by providing them with an ample oversupply of cheap energy thanks to the IPP gold rush, and by “investing” provincial and federal taxpayer money in a transmission line which would serve no other purpose in life but to power up those mines. This has nothing to do with sound economics or rational market-driven cost cutting measures. It has everything to do with the looting and pillaging of public resources by an elite class constituted of mutually serving corporate executives and government officials.</span><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Part (a) of Campbell's plan is now falling apart, partly because of the massive public outcry, partly because of the greater economic context of a deepening recession which is now morphing into an outright depression, a situation which exacerbates the likelihood of an energy oversupply in North America, and which has, in turn, triggered California’s lawmakers to deny entry to BC’s private energy. </span></span></div><div style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: black;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">And so Campbell is now adapting to the new circumstances and refocusing on part (b) of his plan, the mines. What used to be a sophisticated scheme involving multiple players and several interrelated markets, has now devolved into a coarser and more classical case of good old “third world” appropriation of public wealth by a small group of private players. According to the new Plan B, corporations will now be allowed to make money by </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">purchasing </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">dirt cheap energy from the public, instead of </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">selling </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">it at outrageous rates to the public as was initially envisioned. This shift in the looting strategy reflects the simple fact that, since the 2008 financial meltdown, the energy market has become a buyer's rather than a seller's market.</span><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Frankly, after the promising year 2009 and the glorious year 2010, I am a little worried about 2011. I don’t think that the activist community has fully grasped yet the scope and magnitude of the danger looming ahead, if the BC Liberals are allowed to carry out their plan. If we don’t react rapidly and mount a strong response to this latest phase of the neoliberal assault on our common resources and wealth, 2011 could become a year of major setbacks and great disillusion. Let’s gear up for that next battle.</span><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span>.<br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span></div>Ivan Doumenchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10567808421635209642noreply@blogger.com0