The Harper administration in Canada is taking a page from George W. Bush’s book, by keeping their scientists on a leash:
Environment Canada and Health Canada now tightly control media access to researchers and orchestrate interviews that are approved.
Environment Canada has even produced “media lines” for federal scientists to stick to when discussing climate studies they have coauthored with Weaver and are based on research paid for through his university grants.
“There is no question that there is an orchestrated campaign at the federal level to make sure that their scientists can’t communicate to the public about what they do,” says Weaver, adding that the crackdown is seriously undermining morale in federal labs. “Science is about generating new knowledge and communicating it to others.
Science is apparently the enemy of conservatives everywhere. (via)
Linda Featheringill
What the hey?
Is this for real?
I can’t imagine what the government’s motive is but it really looks counterproductive to me. And it will not work in the best interest of the Canadian people. They could be cutting off one of the main engines of scientific progress, the free and open interactions between people looking at the same issue.
4tehlulz
Fuck you Alberta.
david mizner
Thank Allah we have a pro-science administration in this country. Wait, what?
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/10/nation/la-na-science-obama-20100711
Ash Can
@Linda Featheringill: But today’s “conservatives” don’t care about all that. To them, keeping the masses ignorant helps keep them in power, and staying in power is everything, even if they have to destroy their own country to do it (because once the country starts really going to shit, they can gather up their riches and flee).
I’m still shaking my head that an otherwise-enlightened nation like Canada could cast so many votes for Harper’s party.
ErinSiobhan
Don’t even get me started about the Harper administration and their penchant for misrepresenting truth, love of secrecy, and insistence on complete control. They have been trying to put a muzzle on Environment Canada scientists since they were elected four years ago.
They also have a tendency to purge the civil service of those who hold views that oppose the Conservative view of the world. Witness the dismissal of the veteran’s ombudsman, who actively criticized government treatment of veterans. Or the removal of the RCMP’s head of the Canadian Firearms program, who opposed the planned abolition of the long gun registry. Or how about the resignation of the head of Statistics Canada, who opposed the goverment plan to change how census data is collected?
The Republic of Stupidity
Along w/ intelligence, facts, ‘the truth’, reality, humor, irony, empathy…
beltane
Maybe conservatism is more a psychological phenomenon than it is a political philosophy. They are authoritarians who seek to amass power by whatever means possible for the purpose of shaping reality to their own will. They are greedy, yes, but there is more to it than that.
burnspbesq
@4tehlulz:
Alberta’s been fucked for quite some time, thank you very much. Extraction of oil from “tar sands” is giving rise to an unimaginably bad ecological disaster.
Moses2317
Science only counts in the reality based community, not at tea parties or Republican National Committee outings to bondage-themed strip clubs.
Winning Progressive
WereBear
I’ve been coming to that conclusion for the past few years now.
It was bad enough in the Renaissance; now, the pace of scientific accumulation has blown their heads apart.
Maybe, back in the day, it was evolutionarily constructive to have someone say, “Now slow down, Og, this wheel thing is confusing me. There’s nothing wrong with a good travois!”
But I dunno.
SapphireCate
@WereBear:
Obligatory Mitchell and Webb link:
“Bronze bronze bronze bronze! What’s wrong with stone?!”
Comrade Javamanphil
@SapphireCate: That’s numberwang!
El Cid
Though her specialty was medicine (as opposed to the post’s direct topic), this crusading liberal regulatory (and feminist, really) hero is worth remembering or learning about today.
El Cid
@Comrade Javamanphil: BMX Bandit & Angel Summoner!
WereBear
@SapphireCate: Yeah.
I still don’t see what’s wrong with figuring out where we are going wrong.
But I guess I’m a nut!
Linda Featheringill
@beltane:
conservatism as a philosophy:
Yes. A lot of what passes for conservatism these days is authoritarianism.
I’ve known several authoritarian beasts [humans]. Sometimes I wonder if authoritarianism is a religion. People who hold that philosophy certainly robe it in righteous indignation and moral judgments. This is especially so when what they are propounding does not correlate with what is actually in the Bible.
Through the years, I’ve often wondered just who these people are worshiping. It certainly isn’t the God of the Old Testament or the Jesus and Disciples of the New Testament.
Idolatry is rife across the land.
RedKitten
@ErinSiobhan:
This. Exactly this.
And the bugger of it all is that if the Liberals hadn’t nominated Stephane Dion (bless his heart, but the man had the personality and charisma of a mushroom), we wouldn’t be dealing with this foolishness right now.
The thing is that Harper gets a lot of support from Alberta and from rural areas. The long-gun registry REALLY pissed off a lot of rural people, and Harper’s plan to abolish it won him a lot of support.
Plus, because of our retarded electoral system, you might have people voting for him simply as a result of voting for their local conservative for MP.
I remember being REALLY torn on that when Bill Casey was still a Conservative. I love Bill. Bill is awesomesauce. But when he was still in the party, I had to hold my nose to vote for him, because a vote for him meant a vote for Harper. My region is pretty solidly Conservative anyway, though, so it’s not like my one vote made a difference. But once Bill got booted out of caucus for standing up to that shark-eyed shithead, it was great — I could vote for him with a clear conscience. But Harper’s so goddamn petty that he knows our region voted for Bill as a way to send a message. And ever since then, federal funds for local projects have been pretty scant.
Honestly, Harper is GWB’s little doppelganger, and would love nothing more than to set up the entire civil service with Conservative yes-men. Thank heavens that Paul Martin was at the helm when Bush asked us to join his little Iraq adventure. If Harper had been in office, he would have offered our soldiers as human shields for your soldiers.
BTW: I saw a minivan from Tennessee yesterday with a license plate reading “RAPTURE”. I thought at first it was a Blondie fan, but then the cross-shaped magnetic car decals told me otherwise. Why should I trust anybody on the road who looks FORWARD to leaving this earth?
Comrade Mary
But hey, at least Harper’s been shamed out of that hockey rink project.
Oh, wait. The man can’t feel shame. Never mind.
Comrade Javamanphil
@david mizner:
Entirely lacking from that story is any examination of whether the Obama administration COULD get rid of those mid-level scientists and managers holding up progress. Burrowing-in is an entirely known phenomenon and yet the LA Times chooses not to look for it in this case? (Or, if they did, make mention of that fact.) That’s an enormous omission. Kind of like letting the snow grifter make crap up about the Statue of Liberty. Non sequitur aside, I think it’s dubious to conclude based on this story that the administration is not pro-science.
Linda Featheringill
@RedKitten:
You should have flagged him down and asked if you could have all his stuff when he leaves.
:-)
Maxwel
Why am I not surprised? Being conservative anymore means that you must be divorced from reality.
WereBear
I do think it’s a mental illness. Caused by rotten parenting.
The Republic of Stupidity
@burnspbesq:
For anyone unfamiliar w/ this, here are some nice pictures to go along w/ the thought…
It’s as bad as mountain top coal removal, if not worse…
Shrillhouse
We say “Harper government” rather than “Harper administration.” But yes, science is indeed the enemy of conservatives everywhere, not just in America.
The tar sands in Alberta are a crime against nature and a national disgrace. It’s as if we looked at the mountain-top removal coal mining in Appalachia and thought “You call THAT ecological devastation? We can top that! We’re going to turn half the country into a moonscape!”
DougJ
I suspect it is much worse there, to be honest with you, based on things I have heard from Canadian scientists about how the budgets are controlled.
El Cid
Michael Lind summarizes how right wing Republican soshullism works in Uh-merika.
All Power To The Dixie Soviets!
El Cid
F***. I quoted an essay from Michael Lind on Republican military Keynesianism, it’s good, but I forgot it used the “soshullism” word so likely the comment won’t appear for the next 2 or 3 months.
So, here.
geg6
@WereBear:
I agree. And no, I’m not kidding or even engaging in hyperbole.
In order to be a conservative, you must either be developmentally disabled or clinically insane. There is no middle ground or “common sense” conservatives. I used to think so, but not so much in the last 10 years.
El Cid
Ok. Someone please explain to me why linking to a Salon article gets me moderated.
Howlin Wolfe
And ignorance is their friend.
Mark
@RedKitten
Wait? You’re a Tory? Why? In a part of rural Nova Scotia with 9% unemployment of all places? Are you a masochist who likes voting against their own interests?
RedKitten
No, no, no. I’m not a Tory. I only voted for Bill because I look at the person, not just the party. And this guy was seriously a fantastic MP who fought hard for his constituents and managed to get stuff done. I would have voted for Bill regardless of what party he was in. Fortunately, he was registered as Independent last time, so my vote was for him, not for the Conservatives.
Now that he’s resigned, I’m back to voting based on the party, because frankly, none of the actual people stand out. And trust me, Harper will NOT be getting my vote.
Mark
@ShrillHouse
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Science is the enemy of people across the political spectrum.
If I told you that someone refused to be vaccinated, would you bet on them being a Republican or a Democrat?
If I told you that someone thought their neighbor’s wireless internet would give them cancer, who do you think they’d vote for?
The list goes on and on, and it’s not different than the brain salad that denies evolution or global warming. If we elected Dennis Kucinich president, the administration would accuse scientists of covering up the truth and shilling for corporations.
Mark
@RedKitten
I suppose that’s better, but Casey still cast a lot of votes during his 1988-93 term that hurt Canada. I wasn’t surprised to see NS turn orange over the last two decades. It’s amazing that the rest of the maritimes still votes against their interests.
Brachiator
So much for Canada as the enlightened model that the US should follow.
@Mark:
RE: science is indeed the enemy of conservatives everywhere, not just in America.
Very true.
Origuy
@El Cid:
The URL had the S word in it.
mds
@RedKitten:
And afterwards, the Grits decided that they still had one foot and some bullets left, so they anointed someone with Dion’s charisma, but without the decency. Thankfully, Canada has a multiparty system, so they don’t have to be rewarded for Iggy. Then again, Canada also has first-past-the-post that allows the Tories to win even when a majority of the electorate votes center-to-left. Sheesh. Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop making barricades.
mds
Well, the high-profile celebrity know-nothings are (probably) Democratic voters, but there’s plenty of rank-and-file conservatives who don’t trust vaccination.
Again, not as strongly correlated as you think. My fundamentalist “McCain is too liberal” parents have a knee-jerk reaction to the word “radiation” that has led them to worry about power lines, cell phones, etc.
Googling “colloidal silver” might also be of use when one wishes to attribute medical woo to one portion of the political spectrum.
And when there’s knowledge-based pushback against woo, it tends not to come from modern Republicans. And no, Penn and Teller don’t count as scientists.
It’s ignorance that’s the common element, and despite the usual need to establish false equivalence, conservatives have made hostility to knowledge much more of a mark of pride. Crunchy granola liberals in California might send their kids to school without their vaccinations, but fundamentalist right-wingers are sending their kids to church schools or home schooling where they’ll never have a chance to learn anything.
Well, yes it is, because successfully derailing any attempts to mitigate anthropogenic climate change screws everyone over, whether they believe in it or not. People who holler about EM fields and cancer haven’t been able to ban electricity, or prevent us from modernizing our power grid. (Other factors are doing that, primarily stupidity about “government spending” from across the political system … by which I mean, conservatives.) Get back to me when Congressional Democrats as a bloc run on a platform of abolishing vaccination, or have a state party platform dedicated to same.
ricky
Too bad REAL progressive blog commenters in America don’t take a page from Canada as well.
Gotwolfy
@mds: Dion someone with decency yeah right! Mister pan b! There’s no way he could be elected because event with the stupid Bloc you still need some Quebec mp to get elected in canada
polyorchnid octopunch
As a Canadian, I personally hope that Harper and his Harris retreads in the cabinet get humiliated in the next election; I would love to see Clement, that lying book-cooking mofo Flaherty, and the young-earth creationist in charge of science and tech in Canada Goodyear staked out and smeared with honey next to an anthill (metaphorically politically speaking, of course) after the next election.
As soon as I saw that Flaherty was Finance minister, I knew that we were about as badly screwed as it’s possible to be. How can you put someone who was flat-out proven to be a lying sack of sputum when he ran the books in Ontario and lied to the public about the actual state of the books during an election in charge of the country’s finances, unless you’re a completely cynical hack who’s out to destroy the country in the name of your plutocratic religious nutjob masters?
That’s Harper, right there… I didn’t like Mulroney very much, but I kind of miss him now.
Resident Firebagger
Of course, this would be yet another area where Obama has more or less followed Bush’s lead…
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/10/nation/la-na-science-obama-20100711
Sister Inspired Revolver of Freedom
Speaking as a Canadian, Harper is a fatuous dick head who, when Jean Chreitan refused to drag Canada into the Iraq War, took out a full page ad castigating the then Liberal government for cowardice, in several American newspapers. That is the depth to which this man will sink . He will attack his own country for defying the great almighty W.
Sister Inspired Revolver of Freedom
@4tehlulz: Can’t say as I blame you, the way Alberta keeps voting the same old, same old incompetents.
MTiffany
“Science is apparently the enemy of conservatives everywhere.”
Well yeah… science is about reality and facts. And facts have a well known liberal bias.