Michael Riordon

the view from where I live

Category Archives: Corporate


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The Nazis burned books. Under the current regime in Canada…

…they are dumped in landfill.

Save science librariesCanada’s Science Library Closures Mirror Bush’s Playbook.   Details here.   More detail in The Tyee’s follow-up story, here.

This is the next step in an escalating right-wing war on honest science and public knowledge, both of which the authorities fear and despise.

Their target, says Canadian paleolimnologist John Smol, is “pesky data” that challenges the government’s corporate agenda.  They’ve already gutted a long hit list of vital research programs in Canada, including the world famous Experimental Lakes Area research facility.

John Smol: “The ELA has been a jewel in Canada’s crown – go to any water conference in the world, you just have to say ELA and everyone knows what you’re talking about.  And it costs nothing to maintain.  $2 million, what’s that, a penny per Canadian, so we don’t get toxic algae blooms, acid rain?  It’s like claiming to save medical costs by not letting people have tests and checkups, the long-term data you need to maintain health. The ELA is exactly the kind of thing responsible government should be doing.  So why are they closing the ELA?  Because it provided pesky data, that’s why.”

(Follow this story in Pesky Data: unspun science for dangerous times.  Coming in 2014 from Between the Lines.)

Scientists and other citizens who value public knowledge are resisting the destruction.  At a public protest in Ottawa, thousands of scientists carried banners declaring:  No Science, No Evidence; No Truth, No Democracy.  The stakes are that high.

I have no illusions about the real impact of petitions.  But at least the current leaders need to know that some of us are opposed.  Here is an opportunity to say so.

Evidence for Democracy is a Canadian organization of scientists and citizens “who care passionately about the role that evidence needs to play in decision-making.”  Recently they sent out this urgent appeal:

Irreplaceable scientific information is disappearing due to the recent closure of seven libraries run by Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) and a number of Environment Canada and Natural Resources Canada libraries.

Scientists are saying that many of the books, reports and data at these libraries have already been discarded or destroyed without being properly digitized.

This priceless information is essential for the protection and security of Canada’s waterways.  In particular, historical data and information provides the only baseline by which changes in the state of Canada’s aquatic ecosystems and fisheries resources can be evaluated.  Without such trend data, assessing the impacts of policy and management decisions is impossible.

Please send a message to the federal party leaders and your member of parliament calling on them to stop closing our science libraries, and to ensure that the remaining information from the closed libraries is made available in a timely fashion.

Please add your voice and help stop this erosion of vital public knowledge.

Thank you,
Katie Gibbs (conservation biologist), Executive Director, Evidence for Democracy

P.S. The CBC’s Fifth Estate episode, Silence of the Labs, is now available online. You can watch it here.


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Canadian government spies on tar sands opponents

Shocking, but not surprising:

tar sandsPhoto: vtdigger.org

Through Access to Information searches, investigative journalist Matthew Millar reveals in the Vancouver Observer that the National Energy Board, a federal agency, coordinates a secret ongoing surveillance campaign against Alberta tar-sands opponents.  The NEB collaborates with CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service), the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which has its own national security apparatus), as well as private corporations implicated in the Alberta tar-sands and proposed  pipelines.

This makes sense only as an (ideo)logical extension of the Harper regime’s faithful service to the oil and gas industry, combined with the paranoia of a repressive regime, as in:

Anger erupts over Harper’s ‘enemy’ list.  The National Post, July 17, 2013.

Government labels environmentalists “terrorist threat” in new report.  The Vancouver Observer, Feb 10, 2012.

Stay tuned…

What’s Next? when science, nature and power collide.  Coming in 2014 from Between the Lines, Canada.


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Good news: Suicide Seeds Are Dead… in Brazil… for the moment…

In a great bit of news for World Food Day, a key Brazilian congressional committee today withdrew the consideration of legislation that would have allowed the sale and use of Terminator Technology, also known as suicide seeds.

Terminator seedsThe Constitutional Commission of the Brazilian House of Representatives was slated to consider Bill PL 268/2007 this morning, but decided instead to withdraw it from the agenda – taking into account the social concerns raised by the national and international mobilization in opposition to the bill.  Further, the President of the Commission pledged that as long as he is at the helm, he will not allow the bill back on the agenda.

“This should be taken as a victory for Food Sovereignty and Farmers’ Rights around the world. Social movements, farmers’ organizations and CSOs both in Brazil and internationally have made it crystal clear that Terminator has no place in our food, fields or future,” said Silvia Ribeiro, Latin American Director for ETC Group. “This is great news for World Food Day.”

The ETC Group (Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration) does essential work with international grassroots allies like Via Campesina, to resist mad science and corporate control of food production around the world.

The full story is here.

This story and others  will be pursued in Bacon’s Garden: travels in nature, science and power, forthcoming from Between the Lines in spring 2014.


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Science is objective: true or false?

After teaching plant agriculture for 32 years at Guelph University, Associate Professor Ann Clark ‘retired’ in 2010 to a farm in eastern Ontario.  It would be her refuge and her lab.

Clark designed the farm to be “post-oil.”  Here she can try out experiments for which research Monsanto Business Incubatorfunding always eluded her.  Since neither of her teaching specialties, grasses and organic agriculture, tends to generate proprietary profits, the corporate funders that increasingly dominate research funding were not interested.

From the late 1990s on, Ann Clark became an eloquent critic of the impacts that GMOs (genetically modified organisms) can have on livestock, farm survival and the environment.  Unsought by her and unpaid, this new public role did not foster Clark’s career.  “Academic suicide, some of my colleagues called it,” she says.  “By their standards I’m not a very good scientist.”

By what standards can they judge as ‘not good’ a scientist who has inspired countless students, farmers and citizens with her knowledge and integrity?  “The problem is,” she replied, “I can’t accept one of the central tenets of their dogma: that science is objective.  When I got my PhD I fully believed that it is.  But then one of my PhD examiners backed me into a corner where I had to acknowledge that personal values will inevitably determine what questions you ask as a scientist, and the questions you ask will inevitably pre-determine the range of answers you’ll get.”

This view is powerfully confirmed by the ongoing battle over a study by French scientist Gilles-Eric Séralini & his co-researchers, on impacts of Monsanto’s genetically modified maize and its associated herbicide Roundup.

Hours after the study was published in 2012, a vicious, well-orchestrated assault erupted against Séralini.  “This is so disturbing,” says Ann Clark.  “Very often industry research doesn’t ask the right questions.  He  asked some of the right questions, and for that he’s under attack.”

In response, Clark joined with eight other scientists to publish an open letter supporting Séralini, and to “raise the profile of fundamental challenges faced by science in a world increasingly dominated by corporate influence.”  Signed by an impressive roster of scientists in many countries, the October 2012 letter cites other researchers who’ve been attacked for studies questioning GMOs and Monsanto.

Read more:

Ann Clark’s vision of post-carbon farming and food production is here:  The future is organic: But it’s more than organic!

Corporate Push for GMO Food Puts Independent Science in Jeopardy.  Vandana Shiva, The Asian Age, December 2012.

Growing Maize Disaster (in Mexico).  ETC Group, December 2012.

FDA [Food and Drug Administration, US] Quietly Pushes Through Genetically Modified Salmon.  Anthony Gucciardi, Natural Society, December 2012.


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Drones: coming home to roost?

Drone adRemote-controlled drones are used for aerial surveillance and assassination of designated enemies.  Until recently most of the targets have been at a safe remove, over there where other people live.  Now drones operate over the United States, and they will soon be flying over our heads in Canada.

In addition to military duties, drones will also do a range of civilian tasks in Canada.  Profit potential is considered to be quite exciting.

Dazzling leaps in science and technology tend to obscure uncomfortable questions about control and consequence.  David Lyon has built a career on asking such questions.  I met Professor Lyon, an international authority on surveillance and identification systems, at his office in Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario.  With quiet intensity he detailed what he sees and thinks, and what questions arise.  For example:

“Several companies are setting up just now to manufacture drones in Canada – clearly they believe they can corner some part of this expanding market.  Primarily they would produce surveillance drones, but even those raise significant questions.  If you look at their marketing materials, they want to provide drones for private security companies to scan public events – sporting events, political demonstrations, picket lines, that sort of thing.  These drones would operate in conjunction with facial recognition technology, generating very precise high-resolution images.  This raises deeply important moral and ethical questions – or at least it ought to – for example about the kinds of things this technology allows us to do from a great distance, remotely, with impunity.*  How do such vital questions go missing so easily?  How have we managed to create a world like this?”

*  Dreams in Infrared: The Woes of an American Drone Operator.  Spiegel Online International, 12/14/2012.

Transport Canada looks at loosening restrictions on unmanned aerial vehicles.  CBC News, August 2012.

The Coming Drone Attack on America.  The Guardian UK, 22 December 2012.

Protect global internet freedom: OpenMedia.ca.

Liquid Surveillance: A Conversation.  Zygmunt Bauman and David Lyon, 2012.