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| Birds of Our Coast by Sylvia Erlund |
I drove home along the (unfrozen - a bit of worrisome climate change signaling there) Skeena watching for signs of the impending eulachon run on a beautiful sunny day.
In the mailbox sits the latest Guardian Weekly with a big fat headline: "US 'dark money' funds sceptics: Billionaries give $118m to anti-climate groups: Secret donations used to discredit science". Sigh. Stephen Harper and Joe Oliver might call Canadian charities money-launderers for "radical" American environmental groups, but I wonder if they're taking a close look at how much of this anti-science funding is finding its way north.
Okay, so that's really depressing. I turn the page to find another headline: "Canada's spy chiefs target anti-frackers". It describes how all the money given to security services post 9/11 (after they found we were at a low-risk from foreign terrorists) has been re-directed. "It's the new normal now for Canada's security agencies to watch the activities of environmental organizations."
"In a Canadian senate committee on national security and defence meeting last week, Richard Fadden, the director of CSIS, said it is more worried about domestic terrorism, acknowledging that the vast majority of spying is done within Canada. Fadden said it is 'following a number of cases where we think people might be inclined to acts of terrorism'."
Gadzooks, Batman, do you think they were there in Prince Rupert? (I did stop into the JRP hearings being held in the casino basement and there were banks of lawyers, technicians, and a greeter at the door.)
It's not funny, really. Anyone who reads history knows how the slow erosion of rights is a very effective tactic to silence opposition. Intimidating citizens is another. But I'm hoping we're smart enough to figure these guys out. The energy industry is getting so bad in Alberta, more and more people there are getting the creeps. One farmer's response is to say "Hey CSIS - here's my number."
We have to continue to do the work governments should be doing for us - using our heads and hearts and money to protect what gives us life itself - and that ain't fossil fuels. Me, I'm casting a ballot for the Positive Energy Quilters and their UnspOILed Coast Quilt Project.
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| Creatures Great and Small |
Thanks for shining a spotlight on the UnspOILed Coast Quilt Project. Six of the Positive Energy Quilters spoke at the Enbridge hearings, and this is what I said about fund-raising for the cause.
ReplyDelete"The quilters were both offended and amused by allegations that opposition to the Northern Gateway project is funded by money-laundering foreign radicals. We know that countless ordinary everyday people like ourselves are contributing their skills, talents, and unpaid volunteer work, as well as their hard-earned cash, to keep oil tankers off our coast.
We display the quilts covered with black fabric oil blobs, then invite viewers to make a donation and take off an oil blob. We also sell the quilts, and we sell greeting cards and home-baked cookies at the movie nights we host, and at other events related to oil-spill issues. We have raised $5,393. for the No Tankers campaign of Dogwood Initiative, and $600. for Art Against Enbridge."
Regarding concerns about government spying on environmentalists, it was an eye-opener to read that many of us may be labelled "multi-issue extremists", according to an informative Vancouver Observer article at http://www.vancouverobserver.com/politics/investigations/canadian-security-intelligence-service-spying-citizens-alarming-rate-fois .
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