Since this incident came to light, the attempt by the center to gain accreditation has failed. So it, according to news reports closed its doors. It had been operating under provisional credentials and previously lax laws. The Trois-Rivières center claims to have successfully treated about 1200 patients.

However when pressed about conversions to Scientology, the head of the center stated that they “don’t track what happens to most people after they leave the Trois-Rivières program”. Now with addiction, getting an addict to stop is relatively easy; its keeping them off in the long term is the trick.

Narconon is NOT narc-anon. Narc-anon is an offshoot of Al-anon…or Alcoholics Anonymous with use the 12 step program. It started in the early 1950s. It does not charge its members. It is not designed to ‘get people off drugs’ but to ‘keep them off drugs’.

That is a major point of difference here between the two Narcs.

NarcOnon, is part of the Scientology web of entities and was established in the late 1960s. Its treatment is based upon L. Ron Hubbard’s “The Fundamentals of Thought”. It was developed by a former felon William C. Benitez and was formally incorporated into Scientology in 1972.

The principle behind the treatment is based on the idea that addition is caused by fat. That is drugs are absorbed by body fat while getting stoned. When not high, the drug is released by the fat causing the craving for the drug and thus the addition.

The theory

Treatment is to ‘detox’ the body by essentially sweating it out. It also includes high doses of vitamins, lots of liquids, exercise, balanced diet and plenty of sleep. Now, there are some drugs that can be absorbed by fat but they are not the biggies…like Cocaine, Meth or PCP. There is also a fundamental issue with the idea that ‘slowly released drugs’ would ‘cause’ cravings. It’s more likely to lessen them.

So, this technique, although not biologically effective, might work for your pot smoker or those not ‘physically addicted’, however those who are physically addicted, such as the boy we started this story with, withdrawal is not only painful but potentially fatal.

Thanks AAPSJ.org

What the center claimed to be psychotic behaviour is what you get during withdrawal and why more responsible entities like Narc-Anon, leave detox to doctors and only step in afterwards. For some forms of addiction stopping “cold turkey” can be fatal. Even those addicts who are not at risk of death, withdrawal symptoms can last months which is why Methadone, among other ‘replacement’ drugs, is used.

Okay, so medically it’s dubious at best and dangerous at worst. There is also the issue of conversion. Now Scientology claims that it does not use the centers as a venue to recruit members but because of the secretive nature of the ‘church’, it’s hard to substantiate that claim. What is true is that part of the treatment is “training routines”, which are essentially Scientology’s regular “audit” sessions with a narco twist.

The following quote comes from a California State Health Department review of a Narconon center receiving state funding in the 70s.

“The exercise of direct eye contact tolerance (staring into the coach’s eyes) in “eyes open,” and the seeking of an emotional weak spot or “button” and a corresponding emotional response to it in the bullbaiting routine. The bullbaiting exercise seems to involve principally physical characteristics that may be used to embarrass or humiliate an individual and condition him to accept and control his responses to these verbal threats to his body image.”

One of the mechanisms that Scientology used both to convert and retain converts is to destroy their self-esteem…essentially brain wash them as well as recording what is said in their Auditing Sessions and using that for a threat of black-mail in the future.

The last way we will discuss, but I am sure not the actual last way, Narconon is slimy, is its method of ‘finding’ patients. It is simple capitalism I guess, what they do is offer a commission for every patient that goes through treatment. Reports from insiders say that of the $30,000 treatment fee, $3,000 of that is paid to the ‘recruiter’.

So even if we ignore the other parts, this seems…well, slimy. To be fair, high-end treatment centers…of Hollywood stars ilk can cost that much a month but the Narconon centers are not this kind. They are more akin to 14,000 and that is for those who do not qualify for healthcare funding. I noticed in my research that EVERY center stated one of the requirements of acceptance was that the client must already be detoxed.

Perhaps the real tragedy here is not that Narconon exists but that the reason this mother sent her child there was because there were no publicly funded treatment spots open…that she turned to Narconon out of desperation. As the gospel of austerity reigns the globe, it is important to remember that we formed societies for a reason…and it’s not to make the CEO rich. Societies are the pooling of resource to create an environment that will benefit all.

We create government NOT to manipulate the country to improve the health of the economy; the role of good government is to manipulate the economy (et al) to improve the health of the country…of society. This cannot be done by restricting access to health services like drug-rehabilitation. It not only costs lives and the suffering of others but in the long run it has a far greater cost on society itself. This cost is charged at first quickly by an underclass on the street stealing and damaging public property…cost in policing and incarceration.

Cost mounts as these people show up at hospital emergency rooms requiring expensive emergency care (well this is service we still feel morally obligated to provide…for now). Most costs accrued from loss of production, participation and inclusion of the addicts directly as their talents and energies are lost to society.

Cost paid by the families suffering indirectly as they feel less attached to the society that has sat back and allowed this tragedy to occur. Cost paid in the long run as society itself has no value by valuing only the dollar.

This week:

- Celebrity cannibalism,
- There’s too much water in the oceans ,
- Taxes, the real story (Part 2 of 3 interview with Seth Klein),
- has the identity of Jack the Ripper finally been discovered?

Download the episode here!

Topics:
Celebrity cannibalism

We discuss the recent “auctioned dinner” of an artist who cooked his amputated genitalia. On top of other recent stories, has cannibalism become acceptable and a new celebrity fad? 

Find out more:

• Japanese artist cooks, serves own genitals at banquet
• The Dutch are gross (UPDATE: The Dutch are liars)

There’s too much water in the oceans

New research shows that there is more water in the oceans of the globe. We thought it was because of global warming but there appears to be another ancient source.

Groundwater withdrawals as a percentage of groundwater recharge

The disappearing water from Indian

Find out more:

• Human Use of Water Found to Contribute to Sea-Level Rise
• Source found for missing water in sea-level rise
• Model estimates of sea-level change due to anthropogenic impacts on terrestrial water storage
• Disappearing Vancouver

Taxes, the real story

Don’s sits down with Seth Klein in the Radio Free Thinker virtual studio and discusses Taxes, the real story: What comprises our ‘taxes’, are they progressive or regressive, do corps. pay their share and what is a Fair Tax Counsel?.

Seth Klein is director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives for BC.

Find out more:

• Canadian Centre for Policy Alternative
• Putting fairness back into Canada’s tax system
• Corporate tax cuts not delivering on job creation—study

Has the identity of Jack the Ripper finally been discovered?

We discuss the mythology of Jack the Ripper and a new book that makes a (poor) case that the ripper may have been a woman.

Find out more:

• The Enduring Mystery of Jack the Ripper
• ‘Jackie’ The Ripper: was the serial killer a woman?
• Birmingham author claims Jack the Ripper was a WOMAN
• Whitechapel murders

Unveiling the Universe

CERN Director General Rolf Heuer will speak at Science World at TELUS World of Science to engage the public with the many scientific adventures taking place at CERN, including ephemeral neutrinos that apparently disobeyed Einstein’s laws, doppelganger-like anti-atoms likely never before seen in the universe, and the frantic search for the one fundamental particle to rule them all, the Higgs.

When: Sunday June 3, 2012 @ 6pm
Where: Science World
Cost: Free tickets
NOTE: OMNIMAX seating sold out

“Casseroles Night in Canada”

“Casserole” demonstration set for Vancouver in support of Quebec protesters. The clanging of pots and pans is set to make its way to Vancouver this Wednesday evening as part of a series of country-wide protests being organized in support of student demonstrations in Quebec.

When:Wednesday, May 30 @ 8pm
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
Cost: Free

Skeptics in the Pub – New West

The Skeptics in the Pub Port Moody has moved to New Westminster. It is now right beside the Columbia Skytrain Station at The Met Bar and Grill.Why not start off with a Sunday brunch and some sKepticism. Since this new location is transit friendly I expect to see a great turnout of Vancouver skeptics.

Where: The Met Bar and Grill (411 Columbia Street, New Westminster, BC)
When: Sunday, June 3, 2012 @ 1pm
Cost: Free

Pontifical Academy of Life’s Feb. 24 conference on diagnosing and treating infertility was a “Planned Parenthood-like meeting” that caused great scandal. They were upset because it was a Vatican meeting open to the public yet “consisted in promoting uncritically what the church teaches to be intrinsically bad.”

The Pontifical Academy for Life is a Pontifical Academy of the Roman Catholic Church dedicated to promoting the Church’s consistent life ethic. It also does related research on bioethics and Catholic moral theology.

Founded in 1994, the Academy is dedicated to “study, information and formation on the principal problems of biomedicine and of law, relative to the promotion and defense of life, above all in the direct relation that they have with Christian morality and the directives of the Church’s Magisterium”

In the past, the academy invites only like-minded professionals to speak at its conferences to ensure a consistency in moral views. The participants were expected to provide scientific advice but advice ‘faithful’ to the catholic doctrines. However the academy’s new president seems to be too enlightened. He decided to be a bit more open with the advice the academy was receiving by inviting people who did not necessarily share the churches view on conception, natural death, etc…

At the February conference five of the first seven presentations dealt with the pill, artificial insemination and in-vitro fertilization from a purely neutral standpoint, neglecting any moral references.

This enraged some of the academies members. The rector of Academy of Philosophy in Liechtenstein wrote the academy was “losing its full and pure commitment to the truth and its enthusiastic service to the unreduced magnificent church teaching on human life in its whole splendor.”

He continued “This alone is a great evil for a public congress sponsored by (the academy) because a neutral scientific description of methods of infertility treatment has absolutely no place in our academy, which was explicitly founded to deal with these matters in the light of anthropological, theological and moral truth”.

The academy’s co-ordinating secretary rejected the criticism stating “the academy was a scientific research institution “open to dialogue with the scientific world.”

However this may reflect a growing dispute within the Catholic hierarchy as Pope Benedict pushed back against some of the modernizing reforms of Pope John Paul and attempts to return the church and ALL its institutions, such as religious orders, hospitals and academies, to a more traditional Catholic identity.

In March, it hastily cancelled a stem cell research conference whose speakers included scientists whose work involves human embryonic stem cells, which is opposed by the church.

She was supposed to do a concert in the capital Jakarta on June 3, 2012. However for the past month there were big concerns by the local authorities as well as her concert producers of the security threat that she would face and the potential danger that could be caused to the local area if violence occurred.

The problems began when Gaga started planning for her “Born This Way Ball” tour for the city of Jakarta, which was going to be her largest concert in Asia. Indonesian Council of Ulema (MUI) chairman Cholil Ridwan, who is a high ranking member of Indonesia’s Muslim authorities, claimed that Gaga’s concert was “intended to destroy the nation’s morality,” and compared her show to a harem.

Won’t someone think of the children?

Things got worse when M. Mahendradatta, of the Islamic Defenders Front, a hard line conservative hate group known for violent attacks, suggested that Gaga promoted Satanism and:

“She’s a vulgar singer who wears only panties and a bra when she sings and she stated she is the envoy of the devil’s child and that she will spread satanic teaching…We will stop her from setting foot on our land. She had better not dare spread her satanic faith in this country. Her style is vulgar, her sexual and indecent clothes will destroy our children’s sense of morality. She’s very dangerous.” – source

Fearing also the corruption of innocent young Indonesians, he also said:

“Whether you like it or not, Lady Gaga teaches [fans] to worship the devil,” he said. “That goes against the teachings of any religion. We don’t approve of that.” -source

This prompted the Jakarta police to consider canceling the show. They were obviously concerned that the concert could provoke violence but apparently Gaga’s wardrobe might also violate the nations laws on pornography as well. There was some communication between concert organizers and the authorities but ultimately a compromise couldn’t be reached and now, officially, the concert was cancelled.

I have to admit that I respect Gaga’s decision on this. Here’s why: She could have majorly toned down her performance (as other singers have done in order to get a concert permit) she could have not sung certain songs or worn more conservative clothing… but even if she had agreed to all these stipulations, there was no guarantee that she would have gotten approval for her concert and more importantly, she would have gotten no guarantee that there wouldn’t be violence from religious radicals anyway.

She could have stuck to her guns and gone ahead with the concert (someone getting a permit) and risked violence against herself and her fans.

She could have compromised her ethics and artistic integrity (and probably made lots of money off those tickets that nearly sold out in the first week they were available) but instead she chose not to. She’s disappointed her fans in Jakarta, but she may have prevented a disaster. She also promised to do something “special” for them via twitter.

So overall, she kept her integrity, kept her ethics, didn’t compromise the things that made her famous and wealthy for a bit more wealth… and she recognized that her impact had she gone ahead anyway could have been dangerous.

Best, she made the idiots and bullies look like idiots and bullies.

SkyTrain – Social service or free-loader haven?

Okay, first I should explain why I thought this a topic for our show. I have been having an on-again off-again discussion/debate with a number of my friends about the way I feel vilified by TransLink. Most of these discussions have been heated and hollow. By hollow I mean relying on anecdotal evidence, vague impression about authority and the absence of hard information. So I thought I would attempt to rectify my ignorance…and I suspect a number of our listeners…on the issue about TransLink and what has been called “Fare Theft”…yes, double meaning intended.

There has been a lot of changes to our regional mass transit system. Due to some criminal instances on SkyTrain, there was the introduction of the Transit Police, complete with hand guns. This was to make the transit system safer for passengers because there would be a dedicated security force to protect the ridership.

Now it is true that there have been some horrific crimes in the past, in 2009, they were responsible for the enforcement of 28,000 incidences…A lot. However, when you factor in that almost 25,000 “crimes” were for ‘fare evasion’, it seems…well, really? They spend most of their time checking tickets? Of the other crimes less than half, a noteworthy number none the less, were for ‘violent’ crimes…although most of these were theft.

The Transit police came under fire this year after it was revealed that they are expected to issue at least eight violation tickets per shift as part of “reasonable performance” measures.

Now the Transit cops cost of our system anywhere from 20-40 million depending on your accountant. Let’s assume the lower figure – 21million. Let’s assume that they catch their quota of 8 and that in turn they discourage ten times that number…there are 161 officers…do the math…carry the 1…so they save/recoup for TransLink less than $50,000. Let’s add a fudge factor in an order of magnitude…to let’s say they recoup $5 million…again let’s do the math…that’s a net loss of at least $15 million a year. In a year where TransLink says it has a $45 million shortfall on the horizon.

We all noticed that in the lead up to the Olympics “Green Shirts” appeared at the SkyTrain stations to “help tourists” navigate the city. We also notice that they, with the assistance of “transit cops”, their primary duty seems to be ensuring no-one commits the immoral sin of ‘hitching’ a free ride. In the infinite wisdom of our rulers, they have decided to add ‘turnstiles’ or “fare-gates” and all SkyTrain Stations.

The project, which is currently underway, will cost the fare payer and taxpayer (most of the money is coming from the provincial and federal government)…it will cost us $171 million not including upkeep. The gates are to be up and running next year and will ‘save/recoup’ TransLink $7 million a year in lost fares.

Pause for effect…Okay, maybe you missed that. They are spending $171 million to save $7 million. Assuming they get the return they expect….which is unlikely, turnstiles in London and other cities usually reduce ‘truant’ ridership by only half that amount…but let’s be optimistic, at 171 and 7 we can expect the system to pay for itself in 25 years…and that is assuming the system will not need replacement due to age before that date.

This strikes me as the classic case as penny wise and pound foolish…TransLink also claims it will make the station safer because as we know, criminals…are allergic to turnstiles. Okay, I may keep vagrants out of some stations (never a problem when I ride, and I ride and pay daily) and perhaps prove to be impossible for the very drunk…who can be a nuisance on occasion. However, for the drug dealers and petty criminals, the $2.50 will just be a minor cost of doing business.

And of course the big ‘foolish’ assumption is that the people who don’t pay CAN but choose not to…I assume our rulers believe them morally evil people. Well, the truth is a notable number of the ‘fare-cheats’ are the homeless or working poor who literally cannot pay the fare and often still NEED to use the transit system.

Now there is an issue that needs to be dealt with…I don’t think this the effective way, but I mentioned it earlier, TransLink is expected to have a budget shortfall of $45 million in 2013. A significant amount of that is to pay for increased service; notably rapid buses for Surrey, Langley and Cloverdale and a bus along Port Mann Bridge. Put on hold are also an additional 600,000 hours of transit service across they lower mainland.

Let us remember why we have a mass transit system itself. First, the original idea is that a significant number of citizens cannot afford personal transit…i.e. a car. They are not only expensive to buy but to licence, insure and maintain…not to mention the cost of gas. Mass transit provides a cost effective way for the middle class and working poor mobility and to get to work.

Of course another reason mass transit exists is its efficiency; which can be measured in at least three ways. First, there are fewer cars on the road meaning less traffic. For those who think traffic is bad now, imagine a 100,000 more people on the road in their own cars?

It’s efficient environmentally as well. We have a hybrid system of electric and fossil fueled busses, but even if they were all diesel, less pollutants (including the global killing CO2) are emitted. There are fewer particles to irritate allergies or asthmatics…less smog…and it’s just easier to breathe.

It’s also efficient for when we do wise up as a civilization and goes completely carbon free, it will be easier to replace a thousand busses than a million cars.

Now, TransLink needs funding. We could jail people attempting to sneak a ride, but ultimately, as we have just discussed, that cost more than it gains. We could raise fares, however that would only serve to lower ridership…thus lowering revenue and you start a spiral downward where eventually the system is allowed to wither away.

There have been some wise suggestions though. There could be a relatively small levy applied to every vehicle sold in the GVRD. This could raise, upwards, to a $30 million a year. A minor increase on property taxes…1-3% would be enough…for a property worth $800,000 that would be an extra $50 a year. There could also be a small surtax on gas, which would not only help TransLinks budget, it would encourage more ridership and reduce our CO2 footprint. As little as a 2% increase…that’s less than $2 a tank-fill would cover the costs.

I guess ultimately my point is I hate feeling like a potential criminal every time I take the SkyTrain. Of all the great injustices that occur in our great city ‘fare-jumpers’ do not seem to warrant a dedicated security force…it does not warrant implementing a police state. What it does do is distract us from the real issues regarding public transit…that it needs to be expanded, access increased and adiquite and reliable funding provided by society. Vilifying the ridership over pennies missed will not garner the real money the system needs and deserves.

However I heard something rather disturbing regarding the Women in Secularism conference.

During one of the talks, Jen McCreight mentioned that she was warned about male speakers at conventions behaving badly:

“I accidentally set off a lot of discussion with something I said during a panel. I say “accidentally” because I wasn’t planning on talking about this specific point, nor did I think it would result in such a reaction. I remarked that when I was about to attend my first major atheist/skeptical conference, multiple people independently sent me unsolicited advice about what male speakers to avoid at the con. The same speakers were mentioned by different individuals, with warnings that they often make unwanted and aggressive sexual advances toward young pretty women and that I should not be alone with them.”

This is not the kind of thing that fills me with hope for the skeptical freethought movement. The idea that there are well known skeptical/humanists speakers behaving in a misogynistic and/or inappropriate fashion with women speakers is deeply upsetting.

Obviously we skeptics wish to hold ourselves to a level of accountability and behaviour that sets us apart from the groups out there that we typically criticize (the Catholic Church, cults, Scientology etc)

It’s also disturbing because we are also supposed to be representing the values of humanism – a moral and ethical system based on enlightened views of society. Surely this includes treating women with respect and not harassing them?

Predictably this conversation almost immediately derailed as people started accusing Jen of having some sinister agenda or in the case of one blogger, calling her ugly.

The question is how to move forward knowing this is a problem. Stephanie Zvan at Almost Diamonds wrote a piece about what conference organizers need to do to ensure that their conventions are free of harassment. Already various groups are in the process of creating public policies on anti-harassment.

Another floating meme out there is a “blacklist” of speakers who consistently behave badly. First, does one exist and second, why hasn’t it been made public. The answer appears to be “no” and “because it doesn’t exist.” There’s no list out there that gets circulated to all the women in the free thought community about who’s a jerk. However there is an informal level of communication in which people talk behind-the-scenes about shared experiences.

The problem with that is that its behind-the-scenes and while useful to speakers, leaves the attendee’s out of the loop when it comes to their safety and enjoyment of conferences. So why not go public with this information? Surely if it’s a big deal these women should say exactly who is causing problems?

Umm, Elevator-gate anyone?

The last time a woman spoke up about something that made her uncomfortable at a conference she got rape and death threats.

Another reason why no public blacklist exists is because these behind-the-scenes talkings are informal. It would be hard for a new speaker to know what is a rumor and what actually happened. Further, they lack any hard evidence, no video of harassment, no audio, no police reports or anything that would prevent someone from being sued for liable or having their career destroyed by someone more powerful than them.

Basically one of the most effective solutions to this will be conference organizers having a firm grasp on writing a anti-harassment policy and circulating it to their speakers. The speakers need to know, going in to the conference, what will be tolerated and won’t be tolerated. They need to know that and they also need to know that breaching those terms might also put future speaking options in jeopardy because conference organizers are going to pass on information about who plays nice and who doesn’t to other groups and organizers.

Where I’m struggling is whether conferences should go public with what they learn. My concern is that say a conference wants to bring in speaker X, who is a big name will draw in lots of people. This person is very popular and appears on TV and writes books and everyone loves him. But, he also has a reputation of being a jerk to female speakers. The conference organizers can chose not to invite this person but what if the attendees start saying “why aren’t you inviting X?” What if that adversely impacts their ability to get large crowds to their conference?

Suppose some of the smaller conferences (the ones that get about 200 – 500 people out) adopt these policies, but one or more big conferences (the ones that get about 1000 – 3000 people out) don’t? My concern is that unless the attendees know why speaker X isn’t getting invited, they may just chalk it up to the idea that a particular conference can’t afford him or that maybe the conference organizers don’t like him or something.

It could be premature to start worrying about this. And could also be largely irrelevant, after all, what are our priorities here? Getting lots of people to conferences or making our conferences more safe and appealing to everyone?

The Experimental Lakes Area, a region of 58 lakes near Kenora, Ont., that scientists have used for groundbreaking experiments and it will be shut down as a result of budget cuts by March 2013, in addition there will be about 400 layoffs in Winnipeg’s regional Fisheries and Oceans Canada office.

The closure of the ELA has provoked some harsh criticism for the government.

To quote Harvard University aquatic sciences Prof. Elsie Sunderland:

“I was pretty shocked, This is one of the foremost research projects and places to do research in the world. To have it shut down is just appalling. It’s just embarrassing.”

To quote Cynthia Gilmour, a senior scientist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Maryland:

“I was stunned, The ELA has contributed to environmental policy for 40 years, and the long-term records alone on temperature and ice cover are absolutely invaluable.”

At the ELA scientists test a verity of different environmental focused research issues. They monitor long term ecological impact of various pollutants, human impact on fresh water, and how to develop successful strategies for dealing with these dangers to fresh water and the ecosystem. The big difference between what was happening at the ELA compared to other research facilities is that the ELA is doing long running experiments, in some cases, decade long research. There isn’t another place like that in the world.

The effect that research at the ELA has had is far reaching. Before moving to Harvard, Sunderland, originally from Nova Scotia, worked for years creating policy at the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Research done at the experimental lakes on the effects of mercury on fish and waterways was discussed at the highest levels of the EPA and helped form the basis of new regulations on coal-fired power plant emissions. Those new rules became official in December.

Work on the lakes has also led to continent-wide policy shifts on acid rain, changes to the way hydro dams are built, a ban on phosphorus in detergents and huge advancements in the battle against the green algae that fouls Lake Winnipeg beaches every summer.

This summer, ELA staff and researchers from Trent University were slated to begin a new long-term project on the effects of nanoparticles, an emerging multi-billion-dollar technology, on waterways and fish.

Federal officials say the ELA no longer “aligned with the department’s mandate and is not responding to our research priorities.” Ottawa hopes a university or the provinces will take over funding the project.

“It makes more sense to allow it to be owned and operated by those who will benefit from this unique research facility,” said Erin Filliter, spokeswoman for federal Fisheries Minister Keith Ashfield.

In reality this sort of project is well out of the reach of a university.  For one, this is decade-long research, and based on how research is done at the ELA – where scientists will deliberately pollute an area and run tests on the ecosystem, would not be feasible for a university which would have to cut through a lot of bureaucratic red tape to do something like that.

Unfortunately this has fallen on deaf ears. The MP for Kenora, Conservative Greg Rickford claims he used to “brag” about the ELA but apparently the affection he once felt is gone now. He also echoed the sentiment that a university should take over the research at the ELA.

But even university departments are reacting with skepticism at this idea that a massive project like the ELA could be realistically continued by a university.

“The federal government is expecting universities to step up… It’s a very different kind of commitment to do the work that Experimental Lakes has done and continues to do. I’m not sure how we’re going to fill that void.” – John Gunn,  Director of the Vale Living with Lakes Centre at Laurentian University in Sudbury. (empathasis mine)

Okay, so this all sounds fine but I bet your saying “listen, I’m all for science but we need to be careful with money right now right? We can’t afford to go spending billions on lake science.” The annual budget for the ELA is 2 million.

To compare, the cost per year of the Harper governments new fleet of fighter jets is about 1.2 billion.

Note, the ELA apparently does tours of their facility. If you’re in the area I suggest you give them a shout and see about seeing what they do there first hand while you still can.

The recently successful though partly thwarted mobilization of environmental groups to stop both the Keystone Pipeline to the US and the Northern Gateway Pipeline across northern BC has made our government a bit…well….bitchy.

In January, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver issued a public letter – diatribe, more like – denouncing “environmental and other radical groups” who “hijack” regulatory bodies and “use funding from foreign special interest groups to undermine Canada’s national economic interest.”

As part of the new budget they are trying to limit ‘foreign’ interference in Canadian politics by ramping up a crackdown on charities that do “too much” political advocacy.

According to Canada’s charity laws, a charity can only dedicate 10% of its resources to political advocacy. There are exceptions made for ‘exceptional’ events and I quote “For example, an environmental conservation charity may decide to mobilize public support in favour of an international environmental treaty by taking out a full-page advertisement in a national newspaper (thereby devoting more than 10% of its total resources that year to political activities) because it reasonably considers that ratifying the treaty would help the charity achieve its goals.”

This budget includes an additional $8,000,000 for Revenue Canada to ensure charities are being only 10% political. A lot of this money is to perform audits which not only cost the taxpayer money to perform but is also a burden on the charity which must pay for its end of the audit. I don’t think I would mind this so much if it did not seem like such cheap politics.

But then again, maybe it is not cheap politics but political opportunism. The public know this is petty but not part of some grand scheme to weaken our regulator defences? Or is it?

They are eliminating the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, originally established in the 1990s to advise the prime minister, which regularly produced reports that challenged the business and environmental policies of the government, particularly regarding climate change.

Couple this with that absence of federal criticism or even acknowledgment of the millions of dollars corporations are spending to promote their industries…corporations that are almost exclusively foreign owned. When our government goes to treaty talks we have taken up the habit of bringing along industry lobbyist. Most notably during the recent talks to limit the arms trade to troubled regions of the world; we brought a gun lobbyist. Coincidently we also took the stand that selling ‘hunting and sporting’ guns should be unregulated. No foreign influence I am sure.

Add to these the new budget  eviscerated the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act as well as it looks like the majority of job cuts due to spending cuts in the budget are targeting scientists who study thinks like the effects of pollutants on the environment.

So, again why should we as skeptics care?

We often will accuse ‘less skeptic’ types of creating boogeymen where this is none. That there is no great conspiracy to take over the world, pollute our water or kill our children.

To make this claim though, we must have a relative confidence in our regulatory system and the machinery of democracy. If the only people allowed to talk in our democracy are the mega-corps…the only ones providing funding to research…we no longer have the certainty that there may not actually be something in the water. We may not be certain that our politicians are, mostly, working for us. We may not be certain that when the government says “this is safe” or “there is no risk to the environment” that we can trust them or even that they need worry about being truthful.

If the machinery for the public to question government…to challenge the power of the corporations…if that machinery is reduced or lost, we all lose. The changes being made to attack environmental groups will not help skepticism but merely fuel a new generation of conspiracy minded fanatics…and sadly we may not be able to honestly say they are wrong.

This week:

- Space X launch,
- Dangers of overselling vaccination ,
- Canada’s endangered scientist,
- Austerity: does it work (Part 1 of 3 interview with Seth Klein).

Download the episode here!

Topics:
Space X Launch

Space X successfully launched the Falcon 1 rocket carrying the Dragon cargo capsule to restock the International Space Station. 

Find out more:

• NASA, SpaceX Hail Dragon/Falcon 9 Launch
• Canadarm2 to Catch SpaceX’s Dragon

Dangers of overselling vaccination

New research shows that overselling vaccination causes people to be less likely to get their children vaccinated.

Find out more:

• When Pro-Vaccine Messaging Backfires
• Debunking Vaccination Myths: Strong Risk Negations Can Increase Perceived Vaccination Risks

Canada’s endangered scientist

We discuss the Harper governments budget cuts and the extreme harm they are having on Canada’s scientific community and research. We focus on the Experimental Lakes Area.

Find out more:

• Scientists lash Harper government for pulling plug on Experimental Lakes Area
• Harper and the environment are like oil and water
• 99 stupid things the government spent your money on

Austerity: does it work

Don’s sits down with Seth Klein in the Radio Free Thinker virtual studio and discusses austerity: what it is, does it work and is our governments following the austerity bandwagon.

Seth Klein is director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives for BC.

Find out more:

• Canadian Centre for Policy Alternative
• Federal budget drags Canada into age of austerity
• Euro RX – the alternatives to austerity

2012 Best Illusion of the Year Contest

The contest is a celebration of the ingenuity and creativity of the world’s premier visual illusion research community. Visual illusions are those perceptual experiences that do not match the physical reality. Our perception of the outside world is generated indirectly by brain mechanisms, and so all visual perception is illusory to some extent. The study of visual illusions is therefore of critical importance to the understanding of the basic mechanisms of sensory perception, as well as to cure many diseases of the visual system. The visual illusion community includes visual scientists, ophthalmologists, neurologists, and visual artists that use a variety of methods to help discover the neural underpinnings of visual illusory perception.

Illusions of note:

Floating Star – Where when you look at a static image of a ‘blotty’ star on a blotty background, the star appears to be moving.

TBA – When you look at two moving dots directly they move in straight lines but when you look at them with your peripheral vision, they appear to be moving an arch.

The Flashed Face Distortion Effect – When you are looking at two images of faces with a small space between them. You are to focus on the central point while the images on each side are exchanged with other faces. All the images are normal people…however the effect is ‘horrific’.

2012 Best Illusion of the Year Contest

In Search of a Better World: The Utopian Imagination

Another Philosphers’ Cafe forum where Tiffany Werth of SFU asks if what we imagine can shape what is possible.

When: May 23 at 7pm

Where: Waves coffee shop at 900 Howe

Cost: Free

Canadian Copyright Law for Composers

MusicBC’s Bob D’Eith will give a workshop on navigating Canadian copyright laws.

When: May 25 from 2-4pm

Where: CMC BC Creative Hub – 837 Davie

Cost: Free

E-volving Democracy: Online Voting Public Dialogue

This is the first in the “E-volving Democracy” dialogue series highlighting current issues related to technology, democracy, and the theory and practice of collective decision-making.  This event is designed for anyone who wants to make change happen – including democracy and social justice activists, open source coders and hackers, philosophers and academics, facilitators, convenors and skeptics.

The session will include a panel discussion featuring Andrew MacLeod (legislative reporter, The Tyee); Steve Wolfman (Computer Science, SFU) and Fathima Cadre (UBC Law and anti-online voting advocate). In small group discussions, participants will identify and prioritize conditions they believe a proposed online voting system would have to satisfy before it could be used in good conscience in a public election.

When: May 26 from 2-5pm

Where: The Hive Vancouver – 128 W. Hastings

Cost: by donation

slutTALK: The (Un)Conference

In-depth conversations about rape culture, victim-blaming, and sexual stigma. Speakers will include representatives from Women Against Violence Against Women, the B.C. Coalition of People with Disabilities, and the F Word Media Collective.

When: May 26 from 1-4pm

Where: WISE Hall – 1882 Adanac

Cost: by donation

Seth Klein of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives stated it best “None of these spending cuts are actually necessary.  A balanced budget could be achieved just one year later than Flaherty’s target, without inflicting any of the damage.”

BUT I will suspend my usual rant about whether we should be stimulating an economy during a recession…something all but the most ideologue Friedman-ittes recommend…no, I would like to look at what was cut and its potential impact on the skeptical community.

First, it is no secret that Harper personally and the conservative movement in general has always considered a corporate-independent source of news unacceptable or at least uncomfortable. To this aim, Harper has (and to be fair Paul Martin as Liberal finance minister and leader before him) constantly attempted to undermine the financial base of the CBC.

The CBC has gone from a completely publicly funded institution whose primary aim was to provide an independent source of news and promotion of the uniquely Canadian culture to an emaciated version of its goals.

As funding for the CBC was cut, the CBC has become more and more dependent on corporate advertising. It is not coincidental that as politicians have attempted to starve the CBC out of existence its ability to be both effective and independent of its advertisers has diminished.

In a line made famous by Grover Norquist I will paraphrase what has been attempted. They wish to shrink the CBC to a size they can drown it in the bathtub.

The worst effect this has on the CBC is not only the reduced funding but the unpredictability of such funding. Prior to the election Minister of Canadian Heritage James Moore stated that “We have said that we will maintain or increase support for the CBC. That is our platform and we have said that before and we will commit to that”.

Of course now that they no longer have deal with being a minority in parliament, this majority government doesn’t care. Harper’s group has shown time and again they don’t give a damn what the people want…what is best for Canada…their main, (dare I say) only concern is promoting their own agenda.

So, why should we care? I did say I would be taking a skeptical view of this issue. Well as Ethan has mentioned many times on the show before, his favorite CBC show…I suspect maybe one of his top 10 favorite show currently on, is Marketplace. Market place has taken some very tough stands that annoy corporations.

Now, as the CBC becomes more dependent on advertisers there will be pressure put upon shows like the CBC now airs to not ‘agitate’ its funding base. It is common operating practice for CTV and Global which has no show like Market Place or the Nature of Things…they know who pays the bills and jump to that master.

There is more than the independence angle. The CBC will be shedding almost 700 jobs. These are the people who do the interviewing and investigations around the world…or who will not be soon. The CBC’s ability to be a source of international independent (that is independent of other agencies like FOX news or CNN) is being destroyed. Soon the CBC will be a re-tweeter of news from other agencies or worse. Lacking the manpower to produce news, they will rely on a practice common in the USA now (and I suspect on our corporate news channels) where corporate press-releases and faux-news videos are broadcast as real news simply to fill the space and cut down on cost.

The loss of jobs also means whole regions of this country will lose their CBC presence, notably the Maritimes this time, after the prairies were decimated in previous budget cuts. We are a large county and one of the things that bound us together…created a Canadian identity was the CBC. As more and more of our voices are silenced, regionalism will grow and Canada will cease to be a culture but merely a warehouse repository for American/Asian raw materials.

And of course, let’s not forget the support the CBC gives to the Canadian arts. Regional programing like This Hour Has 22 Minutes…the Red Green Show…artist like the Barenaked Ladies, OLP, Nickelback would likely have never been if it were not for the CBC.  Now most ‘young’ people don’t think of the CBC as a cultural incubator…when was the last “hit” show produced by the CBC?

This is part of the fallout; the cutting of the CBC has been occurring since the Mulroney years…to live up to its mandate of serving public interest, the CBC first strangled its child “the arts”…in the hopes of keeping the rest of the broadcast family alive. Kids today don’t think of the CBC as entertaining because that role has already been cut to irrelevance; now the Harper government wished to finish the job…and it may well succeed if we remain silent.

Part of the problem is unreliability of the funding. The CBC never knows what its budget will be year to year. The CBC MUST play politics to ensure, or more often limit loses to, its budget. We could adopt a funding scheme like they have in the UK for the BBC.

In the UK every household watching TV must pay a licence fee…about 230$ a year. Canada, does not have the cultural history of such a licence, but a simple guarantee of a certain percentage of tax revenues as little as 0.08% or even a surtax could suffice. This would allow the CBC to know what it could expect long into the future and plan expenditures and development accordingly. It would also free it from both playing politics and being a target of politicians.

Why should we as skeptics care? As skeptics we rely on factual information from a variety of reliable sources. As Canadians we take pride in our culture. This is why we should care…why we should remember when the time comes to elect a Canadian government.