Election issue: Canada’s war on science

End the Assault on Science! STEVE RUTCHINSKI

Science – natural and social – is what distinguishes a society on the high road of civilization from a society that is retrogressive, turning its back on truth and scientific pursuit, imposing instead irrationalism arising from prejudice. Today that would be neo-liberal prejudice or narrow self-interest of the rich at the expense of the rights of people by virtue of being human and interests of society itself.

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Actions across Canada defend scientific integrity and collective bargaining

Gatineau

Workers in the federal public sector demonstrated across the country May 19 addressing the concerns of Canadians with the Harper government’s interference in public scientific research and refusal to engage in real negotiations for public sector collective agreements.

Lessons from the bunker fuel spill in Vancouver’s harbour

Government cutbacks undermine public health and safety. ANNE JAMIESON

King Stephen – “Canada For Sale” by Royal Prerogative. Photo is from a June 25, 2011 rally of some 3,000 Newfoundlanders on the St. John’s waterfront against the decision of the Harper government to close the Marine Rescue Centre. | Tim O’Brien, The Muse

Sometime in the afternoon of April 8, bunker fuel started leaking from a ship anchored in English Bay in the outer harbour of the Port of Vancouver as it waited to load its cargo of grain at the docks. At 5:10 pm, a recreational boater noticed a large oil slick and called 911. The call was passed on to the Canadian Coast Guard, the designated lead agency for incidents like this. A Port Metro Vancouver boat appeared on the scene around 6:00 pm.

This day in 1919: Exposure of Washington’s academics as spies

Franz Boas (1858-1942)

1919 (20 December): Under the heading “Scientists as Spies,” The Nation, a liberal journal based in New York, published on this date a letter by Franz Boas, the father of academic anthropology in America. Boas was one of the most prominent opponents of the then popular pseudo-science of eugenics and “scientific racism”, the fascist concept that race is a biological concept and that human behaviour is best understood through the typology of biological characteristics and not social and cultural factors.

Boas publically charged that four American anthropologists, whom he did not name, had abused their professional research positions by conducting espionage in Central America for the U.S. armed forces during the First World War – precisely when U.S. imperialism had aggressively occupied Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti and was conspiring against the Mexican Revolution. Boas strongly condemned their actions, writing that they had “prostituted science by using it as a cover for their activities as spies.” 

Harper government, Obama regime muzzling its scientists

By STEVE HORN, cross-posted from DeSmogBlog

In recent years, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has come under fire for disallowing scientists working for the Canadian government to speak directly to the press.

An article published in August by The New Republic said “Harper’s antagonism toward climate-change experts in his government may sound familiar to Americans,” pointing to similar deeds done by the George W. Bush Administration. That article also said that “Bush’s replacement,” President Barack Obama, “has reversed course” in this area.

MASKING THE PAST: The Franklin expedition and the Harper government’s assault on the past

In The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism, Volume 3 (by Frederick Whymper and published by Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co.), we see an illustration of “The Erebus and the Terror among Icebergs.” The drawing (illustration 43) appears in Chapter 22, entitled “Franklin’s Last Voyage,” opposite page 206.

On Sept. 9, the day Harper announced that he was going to send “dozens” of elite special operations troops to Iraq, it camouflaged the announcement through media diversion. As Thomas Walkom reported in the Toronto Star, “Harper seized headlines by personally announcing the discovery of remains from the ill-fated 1845 Franklin expedition. In fact, the sunken wreckage had been discovered in the Arctic Sunday (two days before, that is, Sept. 7 –TS). Yet in a strange coincidence, news of the find was kept under wraps until the day of the Iraq hearings.” A “strange coincidence”? The manipulation and falsification of history for self-serving ends by this government is not unique. ADAM KOSTRICH

The so-called discovery of a ship from Sir John Franklin’s lost expedition made many headlines this month. The Harper government’s celebration of the ostensible find seems two-faced given the government’s present relationship with Canada’s archaeologists.

Harper gutting of federal libraries ’like a book burning’

The Harper government, with its anti-social, anti-national and neo-liberal agenda, is shutting down a “world class” collection on freshwater science and protection, ANDREW NIKIFORUK* reports in The Tyee. We also list other federal library closures (9) and consolidations (27).