tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-125383052024-03-06T02:48:53.021-05:00Investigate This! Investigative Journalism With Alex RoslinWelcome to the investigative reporting blog of award-winning journalist Alex Roslin, author of the book Police Wife: The Secret Epidemic of Police Domestic Violence. Roslin was president of the board of the Canadian Centre for Investigative Reporting, and his awards include the Arlene Book Award of the American Society of Journalists and Authors. Below are samples of his work.Alex Roslinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05203588321742142651noreply@blogger.comBlogger58125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12538305.post-63733595875145579182018-12-13T10:17:00.000-05:002019-01-31T15:32:28.401-05:00Killer Nurse: How the system failed<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b><i>Elizabeth Wettlaufer murdered eight seniors in Ontario nursing homes over a period of nine years. Following the public inquiry, Alex Roslin explores how budget cuts, poor staffing and ageism in the long-term care system created an environment for the serial killer to run amok.</i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>(<i>ZOOMER Magazine</i>) November 2018, by Alex Roslin—</b>Elizabeth Wettlaufer made an odd discovery when she was hospitalized in the psychiatric ward. Thinking about murder made her anger go away. Sort of. Wettlaufer had a lot of anger </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">—</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> so much that she could barely concentrate. She was also quite depressed and had been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive behaviour.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">She was in the hospital because she had tried to kill herself with an overdose of medications. When that failed, she had stolen cleaning fluid from a hospital with the idea of drinking it to commit suicide. But then, she realized something.... </span><br />
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<i style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Read the article <a href="http://www.everythingzoomer.com/general/2019/01/11/system-failure-wettlaufer-murders/" style="font-weight: bold;" target="_blank">here</a>, get a copy of the magazine <b><a href="http://www.everythingzoomer.com/subscribe" target="_blank">here</a> </b>and read my Zoomer blog posts about the provincial inquiry into Wettlaufer's murder spree <b><a href="http://www.everythingzoomer.com/author/alex-roslin/" target="_blank">here</a></b>.</i>Alex Roslinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05203588321742142651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12538305.post-75451603164242451242018-12-12T16:22:00.002-05:002018-12-12T16:26:24.003-05:00Opinion: Quebec's BEI falls short of expectations<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b><i>Civilian-led watchdog was supposed to finally bring independence and transparency to investigations of violent incidents involving police.</i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>(<i>The Montreal Gazette</i>) December 11, 2018, by Alex Roslin—</b></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Recent weeks have seen a <b><a href="https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/montreal-cops-are-ignoring-police-watchdog-rules-civil-rights-activists" target="_blank">succession of controversies</a></b> about the secrecy and alleged pro-police bias of Quebec’s new police watchdog agency, the Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Created two and a half years ago to investigate officers involved in shootings and other serious incidents, the civilian-led BEI was supposed to finally bring independence and transparency to investigations.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">But the BEI is starting to look like a step backward. Of <b><a href="https://www.bei.gouv.qc.ca/enquetes/trouver-une-enquete.html" target="_blank">110 investigations</a></b> started so far, none has led to charges. That’s actually worse than before the BEI, when police were routinely accused of covering for each other when investigating fellow cops.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Before the BEI, 10 charges were filed in 526 investigations of police officers from 1999 to 2016, according to Quebec public security ministry <b><a href="https://www.securitepublique.gouv.qc.ca/police/quebec/encadrement-police/enquete-independante.html" target="_blank">data</a></b>. The charging rate back then was ultra-low — just 1.9 per cent — but at least it was better than the BEI’s dismal batting average of zero.... </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Read the full op-ed piece <b><a href="https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/opinion-quebecs-bei-falls-short-of-expectations?fbclid=IwAR3ecXLDw_XqKpDbiMOk9gEcRyiGCRYvO4f5mVjFVr-wj-C7vJTUqIFdN3o" target="_blank">here</a></b>.</i>Alex Roslinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05203588321742142651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12538305.post-62873363823132961842018-03-01T08:59:00.002-05:002018-03-05T16:15:20.029-05:00When Disaster Strikes<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>As the population ages and natural disasters grow increasingly calamitous, Alex Roslin says it's time emergency agencies developed plans to look after those who are always hardest hit</b></span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;">—</span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>seniors.</b></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/170827155336-nursing-home-rescue-la-vita-bella-dickinson-texas-flooding-nr-00000000-exlarge-169.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="438" data-original-width="780" height="179" src="https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/170827155336-nursing-home-rescue-la-vita-bella-dickinson-texas-flooding-nr-00000000-exlarge-169.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seniors flooded in a Texas nursing home when<br />
Hurricane Harvey hit in 2017. They were initially<br />
told no help was coming. This photo on Twitter<br />
finally got the seniors rescued.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>(<i>ZOOMER Magazine</i>) February 26, 2018</b></span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">—</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The floodwater from the Rivière des Prairies rose slowly at first, then quickly. Rene LeBlanc, 71, watched with great alarm a block away from the river, on Des Maçons Street in Montreal's West Island.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">LeBlanc had spent a lifetime thinking about disasters and risks of various kinds. Now retired, he had worked 45 years in insurance, specializing in loss prevention. When the river overflowed onto his street, he sprang into action.... <i>Read the full article <b><a href="https://www.pressreader.com/canada/zoomer-magazine/20180226/281582356093815" target="_blank">here</a></b>.</i></span>Alex Roslinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05203588321742142651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12538305.post-12917423300218859482017-06-12T16:19:00.000-04:002017-06-12T16:19:20.653-04:00The Secret Epidemic of Police Domestic Violence: How It Affects Us All<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">(<i>Domestic Violence Report</i>) February/March 2016, by Alex Roslin</span></b><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>—</b>In 2019, in Utica, New York, police investigator Joseph Longo, Jr. killed his estranged wife Kristin Palumbo-Longo in their home, stabbing her more than a dozen times. He then stabbed himself to death. One of the couple's four children discovered the horrifying scene upon coming home from school that afternoon.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Utica's then-Police Chief Daniel LaBella said the killing was completely unexpected</span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">—an incident "no one could have prevented or predicted." But Kristin's family filed a $100-million wrongful death suit saying city and police officials did not do enough about Longo's troubling behavior before the tragedy.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Kristin had contacted police at least five times in the weeks before she was murdered, saying she feared her husband might kill her and their kids. But police supervisors discouraged her from making reports or seeking a protection order, according to the lawsuit. In a preliminary ruling, a federal judge agreed that the police actions may have "enhanced the danger to Kristin and amounted to deliberate interference." The city settled the suit in 2013, paying the couple's children $2 million.... <i>Read the rest of the article <b><a href="http://www.civicresearchinstitute.com/online/article_abstract.php?pid=18&iid=1160&aid=7574" target="_blank">here</a></b>.</i></span></div>
Alex Roslinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05203588321742142651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12538305.post-57793639165230307642017-06-12T16:17:00.001-04:002017-06-23T10:28:26.415-04:00The Secret Epidemic of Police Domestic Violence: How It Affects Us All<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>(<i>Family & Intimate Partner Violence Quarterly</i>) Spring 2016</b></span><br />
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<b style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;"></b><b style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">Abstract: </b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">This article shines a light on the extremely risky landscape on which family members of abusive police officers are forced to live. In this piece, author Alex Roslin articulates the terrifying situation endured by many spouses of domestically violent police officers as they seek protection from a partner who happens to carry a gun, because he happens to be a police officer. Among the most intractable barriers to justice is the habitual extension of “professional courtesy” as per the “thin blue line” of police officers who “protect their own.” Casting this situation in an even more dire light is the fact that the rate of abuse perpetration by police officers is 15 times higher than in the general population. © 2016, Alex Roslin. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Alex Roslin is an award-winning investigative journalist and author of the book Police Wife: The Secret Epidemic of Police Domestic Violence, 2nd Ed. (Knowlton, Quebec: Sugar Hill Books, 2016), winner of the American Society of Journalists and Authors’ Arlene Book Award and a finalist for four other international book prizes.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Read the article <b><a href="http://www.civicresearchinstitute.com/online/article_abstract.php?pid=6&aid=7988&iid=1227" target="_blank">here</a></b>.</i></span>Alex Roslinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05203588321742142651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12538305.post-10286776364215845392017-02-13T13:51:00.000-05:002017-02-13T13:51:07.588-05:00Fire and Ice<b>ZOOMER Magazine</b><br />
<b>December 1, 2014</b><br />
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<i>[This article was nominated for a National Magazine Award. Read the full article <b><a href="https://www.pressreader.com/canada/zoomer-magazine/20141201/281522224401352" target="_blank">here</a></b>.]</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i><b>A year after a nursing home fire devastated a small Quebec town, Alex Roslin revisits that fateful night and asks whether continued political apathy on safety measures might expose how we value the vulnerable.</b></i><br />
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It was one of the coldest days of an unusually nasty winter, even for L'Isle Verte. A bracing northern wind blew all day out of the snowy Charlevoix Mountains. It tore across the frozen mouth of the St. Lawrence River, 25 kilometres wide at this point, and blasted the village of 1,400 nestled on the river's south shore, six hours northeast of Montreal.<br />
<br />
Fifty-two elderly denizens of L'Isle Verte huddled in the warmth in the Résidence du Havre seniors home, gazing out at the colourful row of ice fishing shacks that stood on the frozen river. They were used to harsh weather. Most had farmed the land and fished for smelt and herring all their lives. But even for such sturdy folk, this day -- Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2014 -- was a little much. Most hadn't ventured into the bitter weather and deep snows for days....Alex Roslinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05203588321742142651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12538305.post-4757609559208041222013-10-29T13:21:00.001-04:002017-02-13T13:41:15.844-05:00Dental Dilemma<b>Studies link dental x-rays to brain tumours, thyroid cancer, and low birth weight</b><br />
<i>
Growth in dental use of CT machines raises radiation exposures dramatically</i><br />
<br />
by Alex Roslin<br />
<i>The Georgia Straight</i><br />
August 14, 2013<br />
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<span class="leadin"><b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%; text-transform: uppercase;">CAROLE-ANNE STANWAY HAD</span></b></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">lived
with blinding headaches for 17 years before she decided enough was enough.</span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">The grandmother of five in Kelowna
finally asked her doctor for an MRI to see what was wrong. He refused to give
her a referral, saying the headaches were just from tension. He had put her on
Tylenol 3 and antidepressants, but those hadn’t helped.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Stanway got an MRI done privately
anyway, at a cost of $2,700. The result: she had three meningiomas, a type of
brain tumour.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">The good news was the tumours weren’t
cancerous. The bad news was the specialist didn’t want to remove them unless
they became cancerous because of the risk of brain damage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Stanway put up with the headaches for
five more years until, in 2002, they and other health problems forced her to
stop working as an assistant in a medical office. She’s been on disability
leave ever since.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 150%;"><b>Buffet of Pain Drugs</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">She has been prescribed a buffet of
pain drugs, which, along with noninsured medical procedures and travel to see
specialists, have drained her savings. The drugs reduced the pain for a while,
but her body quickly got used to them. Then they didn’t help anymore.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">She stopped taking the pain meds five
years ago after they started to cause her kidney problems. Some of the drugs
also gave her severe nausea. But she’s still on the antidepressants. “Chronic
pain is difficult to deal with otherwise,” she said in a phone interview from
her apartment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">A few months ago, her eyes started
moving uncontrollably while she was reading, likely a side effect of
meningioma, which can cause optic problems.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Stanway said doctors don’t know what
caused her meningiomas, but she thinks dental X-rays are a possible culprit. “I
had a lot of dental work done when I was younger. As children, we received a
lot of radiation.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="line-height: 19px;"><b>Brain Tumour Risk Higher</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">In a<b><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22492363" target="_blank"> study in the journal <i>Cancer</i></a></b> last
year, 1,433 people with meningioma were found to be two times more likely to
have had a “bitewing” dental X-ray as those without the illness. Those who
reported having a panorex scanning dental X-ray (which gives a two-dimensional
panoramic view of the mouth) before age 10 were 4.9 times more likely to have
meningioma.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Meningioma is the most common form of
primary brain tumour (tumours that start in the brain). Women get it more than
twice as often as men.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Other studies have linked dental
X-rays to thyroid cancer, breast cancer (in women who hadn’t worn a shielded
apron), saliva-gland tumours, and glioma (a cancerous type of brain and spinal
tumour).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Pregnant women who got a dental X-ray
were three times more likely to deliver a low-birth-weight baby (weighing less
than 2.5 kilograms), according to <b><a href="http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=198630&resultClick=3" target="_blank">a 2004 study</a></b> in the <i>Journal of the
American Medical Association</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Dental X-rays are the most common way
Americans are exposed to human-made radiation, the 2012 <i>Cancer</i> study
said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Yet despite growing awareness about
the risks of X-rays, radiation in many dental offices is actually rising.
That’s thanks to the explosive growth of 3-D cone-beam CT (computed tomography)
machines, which give off up to 60 times the radiation of a conventional dental
X-ray.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Read the entire story </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 13px; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1c8NZDTXxRdK6fMyRxvCsDt0IXfDZVpi9NwDwfmzVsbA/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">here</a></i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.]</span></b></div>
Alex Roslinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05203588321742142651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12538305.post-81108376324877065942013-08-14T10:29:00.001-04:002014-07-24T17:26:51.579-04:00Nanoparticles: A Tiny Question of Safety<b><i>Revolution Without Regulation</i></b><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>How do you get the ketchup to slide easily out of the bottle? Nanoparticles. They're the miracle technology we're using in everything from sunscreen to paint. But how much do we really know about nanotechnology and its potential impact on our health?</i><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 8.5pt; text-transform: uppercase;">BY ALEX
ROSLIN</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 8.5pt; text-transform: uppercase;">August 11, 2012</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">If you have Robert Schiestl over to your house,
don’t be surprised to see him peeking at ingredient labels on things in your
kitchen or bathroom.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">He can’t help it. Schiestl, a leading U.S. cancer
expert, instinctively reads the label before he buys or uses a host of products
— any food that’s partly white, toothpaste, sunscreen, shampoo,
over-the-counter medicine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">He’s trying to avoid nanoparticles, which a growing
pile of studies say may cause cancer, damage to organs and skin, Crohn’s
disease and environmental pollution.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Labels in Canada and the U.S. don’t have to say
whether a product contains nanoparticles — so to be completely sure, Schiestl
avoids all products with two ingredients that are increasingly used in
nano-form: titanium dioxide and zinc oxide.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">The tiny particles causing the concern are as
little as 10,000 times the width of a human hair and are measured in
nanometres, or billionths of a metre.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">They’re part of a revolutionary technology that’s
been touted as “the most powerful tool the human species has ever used” —
giving us the ability to build anything we can conceive molecule by molecule,
and potentially leading to healthier lives and cleaner energy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Governments, eager to get on the nanotechnology
bandwagon, have shovelled huge public subsidies into nanotech in the past
decade, fuelling its growth into a $250-billion-per-year global industry that
is expected to grow to $3 trillion by 2015.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">The subsidies have helped promote the use of
nanoparticles in thousands of goods — everything from food colouring to
scratch-resistant coating on eyeglasses and anti-bacterial agent in clothes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Nanotech has even answered the age-old problem of
getting ketchup out of the bottle. In 2007, German scientists developed a
super-slippery nano-coating for bottles that lets ketchup slide out more
easily.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Yet, more than a decade after nanoparticles started
being widely used in consumer products, they are still subject to virtually no
regulation in Canada, and little is known about their health impacts.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">[<i>Read the rest of this story <b><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1H6Bchfp3pgl4OITbR6AeQlK3FxISbvboFIuL7kRjMRg/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">here</a></b>. Also see "<b><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R5s443mPvxb94dCSJPbqrmRB-y7QIRhNzNfRtWiWfaY/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">How Nanoparticles Are Made?</a></b>" and "<b><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ga-JFhluUPx8-vnTvoW1_SVDjMmkB5cSAL7Ov20FPQA/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Sweets, Sunscreen, Toothpaste: Labels Tell Only Part of the Story</a></b>."</i>]</span></span></div>
Alex Roslinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05203588321742142651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12538305.post-30603661363518019532012-08-17T16:27:00.000-04:002014-07-24T17:28:53.928-04:00Nuclear Fishin'<span id="internal-source-marker_0.46668009646236897"></span><br />
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<span style="text-indent: 12.75pt;"><i>[This story was nominated for a Canadian Association of Journalists award for investigative reporting and by the Western Magazine Awards for a prize in the environment category. -AR]</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold; text-indent: 12.75pt;">Japanese tests have revealed high radiation levels in some Pacific Ocean seafood, creating concern among doctors at B.C. universities</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9iOWeBIS57BwyRmxtyJYdK2TuFTLb9dozf6KJ4kO4OCHxSyuQFqn1q85uFIi8LxZWwNqLuLFu04E_r_XSW8_C4bDHQ1L-YDWcJnPUK_mjHZClW0Yg8Q1oUI8Ee3jRc55K_kmhww/s1600/Fukushima-PacificFish-GeorgiaStraight-CoverImage-19jy12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9iOWeBIS57BwyRmxtyJYdK2TuFTLb9dozf6KJ4kO4OCHxSyuQFqn1q85uFIi8LxZWwNqLuLFu04E_r_XSW8_C4bDHQ1L-YDWcJnPUK_mjHZClW0Yg8Q1oUI8Ee3jRc55K_kmhww/s400/Fukushima-PacificFish-GeorgiaStraight-CoverImage-19jy12.jpg" height="400" width="256" /></a></div>
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by Alex Roslin<br />
<i style="text-indent: 12.75pt;">The Georgia Straight</i><br />
<span style="text-indent: 12.75pt;">July 19, 2012</span></div>
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.666105899726972" style="font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Are fish from the Pacific Ocean and Japanese coastal and inland waters safe to eat 16 months after the Fukushima nuclear disaster?</span></b></div>
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.666105899726972" style="font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Governments and many scientists say they are. But the largest collection of data on radiation in Japanese fish tells a very different story.</span></b></div>
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.666105899726972" style="font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In June, 56 percent of Japanese fish catches tested by the Japanese government were contaminated with cesium-137 and -134. (Both are human-made radioactive isotopes—produced through nuclear fission—of the element cesium.)</span></b></div>
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.666105899726972" style="font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And 9.3 percent of the catches exceeded Japan’s official ceiling for cesium, which is 100 becquerels per kilogram (Bq/kg). (A becquerel is a unit of radioactivity equal to one nuclear disintegration per second.)</span></b></div>
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.666105899726972" style="font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Radiation levels remain especially high in many species that Japan has exported to Canada in recent years, such as cod, sole, halibut, landlocked kokanee, carp, trout, and eel.</span></b></div>
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.666105899726972" style="font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of these species, cod, sole, and halibut, which are oceanic species, could also be fished by other nations that export their Pacific Ocean catch to Canada.</span></b></div>
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.666105899726972" style="font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The revelations come from the </span><a href="http://www.jfa.maff.go.jp/e/inspection/index.html"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Japanese Fisheries Agency’s radiation tests</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> on almost 14,000 commercial fish catches in both international Pacific and Japanese waters since March 11, 2011, when an earthquake and tsunami triggered multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.</span></b></div>
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.666105899726972" style="font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The wrecked plant spewed enormous amounts of radiation into the Pacific, where cesium levels near the Fukushima coast shot up to an astonishing 45 million times the pre-accident levels.</span></b></div>
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.666105899726972" style="font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Japan’s Fisheries Agency data is easily the most comprehensive on Fukushima’s radioactive impacts on the Pacific Ocean, home to the world’s biggest fishery and a major food source for more than a billion people.</span></b></div>
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.666105899726972" style="font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The numbers show that far from dissipating with time, as government officials and scientists in Canada and elsewhere claimed they would, levels of radiation from Fukushima have stayed stubbornly high in fish. In June 2012, the average contaminated fish catch had 65 becquerels of cesium per kilo. That’s much higher than the average of five Bq/kg found in the days after the accident back in March 2011, before cesium from Fukushima had spread widely through the region’s food chain.</span></b></div>
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.666105899726972" style="font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In some species, radiation levels are actually higher this year than last.</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">[Read the rest of this story </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aBE-MJWedc17uLM7nr4NScWUd1HGwOg2hJkKIV-xbqI/edit" style="font-weight: bold;" target="_blank">here</a><b> </b>and the original version on the Georgia Straight's website <b><a href="http://www.straight.com/article-735051/vancouver/japans-irradiated-fish-worry-bc-experts" target="_blank">here</a></b><span style="font-weight: normal;">.]</span></span></div>
Alex Roslinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05203588321742142651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12538305.post-23919017147776779652012-06-21T15:02:00.001-04:002014-07-24T17:30:42.190-04:00After Fukushima, fish tales<br />
<b>by Alex Roslin</b><br />
<b>January 14, 2012</b><br />
<b>The Montreal Gazette</b><br />
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After the world’s worst nuclear accident in 25 years, authorities in Canada said people living here were safe and faced no health risks from the fallout from Fukushima.</div>
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They said most of the radiation from the crippled Japanese nuclear power plant would fall into the ocean, where it would be diluted and not pose any danger.</div>
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Dr. Dale Dewar wasn’t convinced. Dewar, a family physician in Wynyard, Sask., doesn’t eat a lot of seafood herself, but when her grandchildren come to visit, she carefully checks seafood labels.</div>
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She wants to make sure she isn’t serving them anything that might come from the western Pacific Ocean.</div>
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Dewar, the executive director of Physicians for Global Survival, a Canadian anti-nuclear group, says the Canadian government has downplayed the radiation risks from Fukushima and is doing little to monitor them.</div>
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“We suspect we’re going to see more cancers, decreased fetal viability, decreased fertility, increased metabolic defects – and we expect them to be generational,” she said.</div>
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And evidence has emerged that the impacts of the disaster on the Pacific Ocean are worse than expected.</div>
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Since a tsunami and earthquake destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant last March, radioactive cesium has consistently been found in 60 to 80 per cent of Japanese fishing catches each month tested by Japan’s Fisheries Agency.</div>
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In November, 65 per cent of the catches tested positive for cesium (a radioactive material created by nuclear reactors), according to a Gazette analysis of <b><a href="http://www.jfa.maff.go.jp/e/inspection/index.html" target="_blank">data on the fisheries agency’s website</a></b>. Cesium is a long-lived radionuclide that persists in the environment and increases the risk of cancer, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, which says the most common form of radioactive cesium has a half-life of 30 years.</div>
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The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which monitors food safety, says it is aware of the numbers but says the amounts of cesium detected are small.</div>
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“Approximately 60 per cent of fish have shown to have detectable levels of radionuclides,” it said in an emailed statement.</div>
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“The majority of exported fish to Canada are caught much farther from the coast of Japan, and the Japanese testing has shown that these fish have not been contaminated with high levels of radionuclides.”</div>
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But the Japanese data shows elevated levels of contamination in several seafood species that Japan has exported to Canada in recent years.</div>
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In November, 18 per cent of cod exceeded a new radiation ceiling for food to be implemented in Japan in April – along with 21 per cent of eel, 22 per cent of sole and 33 per cent of seaweed.</div>
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Overall, one in five of the 1,100 catches tested in November exceeded the new ceiling of 100 becquerels per kilogram. (Canada’s ceiling for radiation in food is much higher: 1,000 becquerels per kilo.)</div>
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[Read the entire story <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NHaJXuotGoygbASyVDTMquvTCpG0YEMU16XT_Fnylrg/edit" style="font-weight: bold;" target="_blank">here</a>, and visit my investigative journalism blog <b><a href="http://albloggedup-investigative.blogspot.ca/" target="_blank">here</a></b>.]</div>
Alex Roslinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05203588321742142651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12538305.post-86072550419183849452012-06-21T14:55:00.000-04:002014-07-24T17:32:49.954-04:00Dirty Data: The Internet's Giant Carbon Footprint<div style="background-color: transparent; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; text-indent: 12.75pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>By Alex Roslin </b></span></div>
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<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 12.75pt; white-space: normal;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The Montreal Gazette</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; text-indent: 12.75pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">It's Saturday night, and you want to catch the latest summer blockbuster. You do a quick Google search to find the venue and right time, and off you go to enjoy some mindless fun.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; text-indent: 12.75pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Meanwhile, your Internet search has just helped kill the planet. Depending on how long you took and what sites you visited, your search caused the emission of one to 10 grams of carbon into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sure, it’s not a lot on its own – but add up all of the more than one billion daily Google searches, throw in 60 million Facebook status updates each day, 50 million daily tweets and 250 billion emails per day, and you’re seriously helping to melt some Greenland glaciers.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Internet has long promised a more efficient and greener world. We save on paper and mailing by sending an email. We can telecommute instead of driving to work. We can have a meeting by teleconference instead of flying to another city.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But all that Googling and Facebooking has spawned mind-boggling amounts of information. If all the data on the Internet was printed in books and stacked, it would stretch from Earth to Pluto 10 times, the Guardian newspaper has reported.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And the stack of books is growing more quickly than NASA’s fastest rocket.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ironically, despite the web’s green promise, this explosion of data has turned the Internet into one of the planet’s fastest-growing sources of carbon emissions. The Internet now consumes two to three per cent of the world’s electricity.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If the Internet was a country, it would be the planet’s fifth-biggest consumer of power, ahead of India and Germany. The Internet’s power needs now rival those of the aviation industry and are expected to nearly double by 2020.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The Internet pollutes, but people don’t understand why it pollutes. It’s very, very power-hungry, and we have to reduce its carbon footprint,” said Mohamed Cheriet, a green IT expert and professor in the engineering and automation department at Montreal’s École de Technologie Supérieure.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">[Read the entire story </span><b><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jSqcQUREB7trtgRL1hJUg7_EOC9clqyWizgJviXCdQA/edit?hl=en_GB" target="_blank">here</a></b>, and visit my investigative journalism blog <b><a href="http://albloggedup-investigative.blogspot.ca/" target="_blank">here</a></b>.]</span></div>
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Alex Roslinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05203588321742142651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12538305.post-89894066135247366832012-06-18T09:52:00.004-04:002014-07-24T18:38:56.298-04:00Afghanistan's Kandahar Airfield an Alleged Heroin Hotbed<span id="internal-source-marker_0.8147300316486508"></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">by Alex Roslin and Shaun McCanna</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Georgia Straight</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">December 29, 2011</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">[<i>Note: </i></span></span><em style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif, Helvetica; line-height: 18px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; white-space: normal;">This story was done in collaboration with the <b><a href="http://canadiancentreinvestigates.org/" target="_blank">Canadian Centre for Investigative Reporting</a></b> and was supported by a grant from the Open Society Foundations. The CCIR’s Bilbo Poynter contributed additional reporting.</em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif, Helvetica; line-height: 18px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; white-space: normal;">]</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Toor Jan was clearly nervous when he arrived at the guesthouse in Kandahar, Afghanistan. “If my boss found out I did this, he will shoot me,” the young heroin dealer told the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Georgia Straight</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in an interview.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Toor Jan (not his real name) described last March how he sold large amounts of heroin to Afghan translators working at two NATO bases in Kandahar who, in turn, resold the heroin to NATO soldiers.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Toor Jan said he and his partner were selling from 270 grams to one kilogram of heroin weekly to the translators working at Kandahar Airfield—until recently headquarters of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan—and at Kandahar City’s Camp Nathan Smith, former home of the Canadian provincial reconstruction team.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s enough to get 2,700 to 10,000 users high. The street value in Vancouver would be $54,000 to $200,000.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It works out to about 14 to 52 kilograms annually, worth up to approximately $10.4 million. (Toor Jan said his boss employs two other teams of dealers who sell similar amounts of heroin to translators at the NATO bases.) In comparison, Canadian police seize only about 70 kilos of heroin in an average year in all of Canada.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Toor Jan said he had heard that some foreign contractors also buy heroin and are involved in smuggling it through Kandahar’s airport but that they “normally deal with other people, not with small guys like us”.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Read the entire story <b><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hUNIfIk0XlA8k_wm4iudAZcdE4WwFfzi1dAoTkmMTag/edit" target="_blank">here</a></b>, and visit my investigative journalism blog <b><a href="http://albloggedup-investigative.blogspot.ca/" target="_blank">here</a></b>.]</span></div>
Alex Roslinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05203588321742142651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12538305.post-54147628843495838242012-06-18T09:45:00.005-04:002014-07-24T17:41:24.827-04:00What Are Officials Hiding About Fukushima?<span id="internal-source-marker_0.011479857610538602"></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">by Alex Roslin</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Georgia Straight</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">October 20, 2011</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-indent: 12.75pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; text-indent: 12.75pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Note: This story shared in a nomination for an investigative reporting award from the Canadian Association of Journalists in 2012.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-indent: 12.75pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">]</span></div>
<a href="http://www.straight.com/article-491941/vancouver/what-are-officials-hiding-about-fukushima"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></a><br />
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<a href="http://www.straight.com/article-491941/vancouver/what-are-officials-hiding-about-fukushima"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, Soviet officials were vilified for hiding</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the impacts from the public.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But when Japan’s Fukushima nuclear accident took place last March, public officials in Japan and Canada alike jumped straight into Chernobyl-style damage-control mode, dismissing any worries about impacts.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now evidence has emerged that the radiation in Canada was worse than Canadian officials ever let on.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A Health Canada monitoring station in Calgary detected radioactive material in rainwater that exceeded Canadian guidelines during the month of March, according to Health Canada data obtained by the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Georgia Straight</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Canadian government officials didn’t disclose the high radiation readings to the public. Instead, they repeatedly insisted that fallout drifting to Canada was negligible and posed no health concerns.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In fact, the data shows rainwater in Calgary last March had an average of 8.18 becquerels per litre of radioactive iodine, easily exceeding the Canadian guideline of six becquerels per litre for drinking water.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It’s above the recommended level [for drinking water],” Eric Pellerin, chief of Health Canada’s radiation-surveillance division, admitted in a phone interview from Ottawa. “At any time you sample it, it should not exceed the guideline.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">[Read the entire story <b><a href="http://www.straight.com/article-491941/vancouver/what-are-officials-hiding-about-fukushima" target="_blank">here</a></b>, and visit my investigative journalism blog <b><a href="http://albloggedup-investigative.blogspot.ca/" target="_blank">here</a></b>.]</span></span></div>
Alex Roslinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05203588321742142651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12538305.post-79380344402067453372012-06-18T09:39:00.002-04:002014-07-24T17:44:31.012-04:00"Safe" Radiation Levels After Japan’s Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Challenged by Citizens<b id="internal-source-marker_0.7759742452763021"></b><br />
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.7759742452763021"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>by Alex Roslin</i></span></span></b></div>
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.7759742452763021"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>The Georgia Straight</i></span></span></b></div>
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.7759742452763021"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>August 25, 2011</i></span></span></b></div>
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<span id="internal-source-marker_0.7759742452763021"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster, John Disney couldn’t help but worry. He was acting band manager of the Old Massett Village Council on the north tip of Graham Island in Haida Gwaii.</span></span></div>
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<span id="internal-source-marker_0.7759742452763021"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Canadian health officials were saying the </span><a href="http://www.straight.com/article-415211/vancouver/fukushima-brings-big-radiation-spikes-bc"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>radioactive fallout</b></span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> posed no health risk to Canadians. But Disney wasn’t convinced.</span></span></div>
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<span id="internal-source-marker_0.7759742452763021"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He sent samples of water, goat’s milk, and seaweed to a lab in Saskatoon for tests. The lab found 1.1 becquerels per litre of radioactive iodine in rainwater collected on March 28.</span></span></div>
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<span id="internal-source-marker_0.7759742452763021"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The lab told him the Canadian ceiling for iodine-131 in drinking water is six becquerels per litre. The rainwater wasn’t at the limit yet, but the sudden rise—over previously undetectable levels—worried Disney. He put out an alert to his community of 700, giving the numbers and advising residents to avoid drinking rainwater.</span></span></div>
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<span id="internal-source-marker_0.7759742452763021"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It [the iodine level] was coming up fast, and I didn’t know where it was going,” he said by cellphone from Old Massett (also known as Haida Village). “Quite a lot of people around here are on rainwater [drinking] systems.”</span></span></div>
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<span id="internal-source-marker_0.7759742452763021"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The responses from Health Canada and Environment Canada were scathing. “They said I didn’t know what I was doing and that there was nothing to worry about. I’ve got half the world telling me I’m an idiot,” Disney said.</span></span><br />
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.7759742452763021"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">...</span></span></b><br />
<b><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">[Read the entire story </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lk7Fx_htAvzrozM837_Y-FdgK5f6C0we1AMVXgQ6oOs/edit" target="_blank">here</a><span style="font-weight: normal;">, and visit my investigative journalism blog </span><a href="http://albloggedup-investigative.blogspot.ca/" target="_blank">here</a><span style="font-weight: normal;">.]</span></span></b></div>
Alex Roslinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05203588321742142651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12538305.post-47519172741765299302012-06-18T09:34:00.000-04:002014-07-24T17:45:57.790-04:00Japan’s Fukushima Catastrophe Brings Big Radiation Spikes to B.C.<span id="internal-source-marker_0.6423881324008107"></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>by Alex Roslin</i></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>The Georgia Straight</i></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>August 4, 2011</i></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After Japan’s Fukushima catastrophe, Canadian government officials reassured jittery Canadians that the radioactive plume billowing from the destroyed nuclear reactors posed zero health risks in this country.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In fact, there was reason to worry. Health Canada detected large spikes in radioactive material from Fukushima in Canadian air in March and April at monitoring stations across the country.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On March 18, seven days after an earthquake and tsunami triggered eventual nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, the first radioactive material wafted over the Victoria suburb of Sidney on Vancouver Island.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For 22 days, a Health Canada monitoring station in Sidney detected iodine-131 levels in the air that were up to 300 times above the normal background levels. Radioactive iodine levels shot up as high as nearly 1,000 times background levels in the air at Resolute Bay, Nunavut.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">[Read the entire story </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/15l9DXCw1ofhhGYp89fcZBMQ4yzbM1gqHZET21JnTJRQ/edit" style="font-weight: bold;" target="_blank">here</a><span style="font-weight: normal;">, and visit my investigative journalism blog </span><b><a href="http://albloggedup-investigative.blogspot.ca/" target="_blank">here</a></b><span style="font-weight: normal;">.]</span></span></div>
Alex Roslinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05203588321742142651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12538305.post-30809440904313050322011-10-17T15:43:00.001-04:002014-07-24T18:49:22.890-04:00Cleaning Up the Woodstove: How to enjoy the fire while reducing harmful smoke<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"></span><br />
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<b><i>by Alex Roslin</i></b></div>
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<b><i>Cottage Life</i></b></div>
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<b><i>October 2010</i></b></div>
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<i>[AR: This story won an award of merit in the environment category from the International Regional Magazine Association.]</i></div>
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We heat with wood eight months of the year at our home in the rolling Appalachians of Quebec’s Eastern Townships. How could we not love it? The crackle, the dancing flames, the smoky bouquet, the snug ambience—no wonder sparking a fire is the first thing cottagers do on an off-season weekend.</div>
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So we followed the news closely when, in April 2009, the City of Montreal banned all new installations of fireplaces and woodstoves. (Wood-pellet stoves are still legal.) In BC, where constricted mountain valleys collect thick clouds of woodsmoke, the Town of Golden prohibits new installations of woodstoves and fireplaces, and replacements for existing devices must be high-efficiency, low-emission models certified by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or the Canadian Standards Association (CSA). Houston, BC has gone a step further, requiring removal of non-certified units by the end of 2010.</div>
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The problem is the toxins that stoves and fireplaces exhaust outside, which then make their way back inside. Woodsmoke contains at least 100 dangerous pollutants, including particulate matter (commonly called soot), carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and other toxins, that can lead to headaches, asthma, and lung cancer. Environment Canada says burning wood in a non-EPA-compliant stove for nine hours releases as much particulate matter as a car driven 18,000 km. The question is, how can cottagers enjoy the fire while reducing health hazards?<br />
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[<i>Read the entire story at the Cottage Life website <a href="http://cottagelife.com/14193/diy/tips-diy/cleaning-up-the-woodstove"><b>here</b></a>, and visit my investigative journalism blog <b><a href="http://albloggedup-investigative.blogspot.ca/" target="_blank">here</a></b>.</i>]</div>
Alex Roslinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05203588321742142651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12538305.post-52539009666608150612011-08-03T15:59:00.004-04:002014-07-24T18:48:46.171-04:00Tiny Nanoparticles Could be a Big Problem<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">July 21, 2011</span></b><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">by Alex Roslin</span></b></div>
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<i><a href="http://straight.com/"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Georgia Straight</span></b></a></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">Nanotechnology was supposed to revolutionize the world, making us healthier and producing cleaner energy. But it’s starting to look more like a nightmare.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Nanomaterials—tiny particles as little as 1/100,000 the width of a human hair—have quietly been used since the 1990s in hundreds of everyday products, everything from food to baby bottles, pills, beer cans, computer keyboards, skin creams, shampoo, and clothes.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">But after years of virtually unregulated use, scientists are now starting to say the most commonly used nanoproducts could be harming our health and the environment.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">One of the most widespread nanoproducts is titanium dioxide. More than 5,000 tonnes of it are produced worldwide each year for use in food, toothpaste, cosmetics, paint, and paper (as a colouring agent), in medication and vitamin capsules (as a nonmedicinal filler), and in most sunscreens (for its anti-UV properties).</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In food, titanium-dioxide nanoparticles are used as a whitener and brightener in confectionary products, cheeses, and sauces. Other nanoparticles are employed in flavourings and “nutritional” additives, and to reduce fat content in “health” foods.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In the journal <em>Cancer Research</em> in 2009, environmental-health professor Robert Schiestl coauthored the <a href="http://www.cancer.ucla.edu/Index.aspx?page=644&recordid=298"><b>first comprehensive study</b></a> of how titanium-dioxide nanoparticles affect the genes of live animals. Mice in his study suffered DNA and chromosomal damage after drinking water with the nanoparticles for five days.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">“It should be removed from food and drugs, and there’s definitely no reason for it in cosmetic products,” said cancer specialist Schiestl, who is also a professor of pathology and radiation oncology at UCLA’s school of medicine.</span></span></div>
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<i>[Read the rest of the story <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gMPdin7pG-EuqIgt5mIzwSeg7UCLP3ZOy9W4EZaxd0o/edit?hl=en_GB"><b>here</b></a>. See the Straight's website version <a href="http://www.straight.com/article-404589/vancouver/tiny-nanoparticles-could-be-big-problem"><b>here</b></a>.]</i></div>
Alex Roslinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05203588321742142651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12538305.post-91770464295052977602011-05-30T06:52:00.005-04:002014-07-24T18:47:30.515-04:00Home-School Hurdles<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18.4pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;"><i>BY ALEX ROSLIN</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;"><i>The Montreal Gazette</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11.5pt;"><i>Saturday, May 27, 2011</i></span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">MONTREAL - Christine Gauthier is a home-schooling mom in rural Val des Monts in the Outaouais, but she is anything but isolated.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">She and her five kids, ages four to 18, are heavily involved in the region’s home-schooling support group, which has 180 families.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">“Home-schooling is growing exponentially,” says Gauthier, a non-practising lawyer.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">The families have near-daily get-togethers at each other’s houses for educational and social activities, including workshops on history, geography, theatre and tai chi. They also organize “school field trips” to apple orchards, museums and the science fair. They even hold their own Olympiads.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-size: 11.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">“It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it,” Gauthier says.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><i>[Read the full story <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p4zZuZaN2Rt8gNpoH_2fiaB1Jb60ahQqUU7AaDZUYXA/edit?hl=en_GB#"><b>here</b></a>. View the story at The Gazette's website <a href="http://www.montrealgazette.com/opinion/Home+school+hurdles/4853826/story.html"><b>here</b></a>.]</i></span></div>
Alex Roslinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05203588321742142651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12538305.post-90118516861182421542011-05-20T17:28:00.003-04:002014-07-24T18:46:28.179-04:00Little-Noticed Heroin Revival Hits Close to Home<div style="font-size: medium;">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">NATO's presence in Afghanistan has coincided with a sharp rise in opium production, leading to a global revival of heroin use.</span></b></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">by Alex Roslin</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Georgia Straight</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">May 12, 2011</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">[See the Georgia Straight site's version of this story <a href="http://www.straight.com/article-392101/vancouver/smack-comeback"><b>here</b></a>.]</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">In a nondescript three-storey building on
Cambie Street in the Downtown Eastside, Sherry Grant is at ground zero of a
little-noticed heroin revival.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">She hasn’t seen so many kids doing heroin
since the Nexus substance-abuse program, which she runs, started tracking
detailed statistics in 2005.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Nearly two times more of the program’s
young clients aged 14 to 24 say they’re using heroin—35 percent today compared
to 19 percent in 2005. “It’s crazy. We have definitely noticed an increase in
heroin use among youth we work with,” said Grant, whose program is part of the
Boys and Girls Clubs of South Coast B.C. “It’s cheaper and more accessible.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">The clients are getting younger, too. “It
used to be their first time was 18 or 20,” she said. “Now it’s somebody who’s
15.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">After years of declining use, smack is
back. A new generation of addicts—many younger than before—are getting hooked
on a rising tide of heroin pouring into Canada from strife-ridden Afghanistan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">In Vancouver, the number of heroin-related
criminal charges has shot up more than sixfold, from 72 in 2003—the year Canada
sent its first large military contingent to Afghanistan—to 445 in 2009,
according to Vancouver Police Department figures.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">The B.C. Coroner’s Office warned on May 5
that the province saw 20 heroin-related overdose deaths in the first four
months of 2011, more than twice the number last year for the same period. The
coroner said that unusually potent heroin may be to blame. But other provinces
are also seeing more heroin and more ODs. And the story is similar across the
U.S., Europe, and Asia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Canada-wide, police seizures of opium shot
up threefold between 2001 and 2008, from 31.5 kilograms to 96.9 kilos,
according to Health Canada, which tests seized drugs for police forces.
Seizures of heroin, an opium derivative, doubled from 66.6 kilos in 2001 to
133.4 kilos in 2008.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">According to UN figures, much of the blame
lies with a 15-fold increase in Afghan opium production since 2001, the year
Canadian soldiers helped the U.S. overthrow the country’s Taliban government.
Afghanistan now supplies 90 percent of the world’s opium.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Increased heroin supply worldwide and
falling prices are the little-noticed side effects of the western presence in
Afghanistan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Opium, banned under the Taliban regime,
now flourishes in Afghanistan under the noses of Canadian and U.S.
personnel—and often directly under the boots of Canadian soldiers, who are
occasionally pictured in newspapers walking through poppy fields while on the
prowl for Taliban rebels.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Opium generates $1.5 billion to $4 billion
for Afghanistan’s economy each year and accounts for 10 to 50 percent of the
country’s GDP, depending on harvests, according to reports from the UN Office
on Drugs and Crime. Depending on various factors, the poppy employs between 1.5
million and 3.3 million Afghans at different times of the growing season.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">A big part of all those billions goes into
the pockets and Dubai bank accounts of Afghan officials and warlords who are
our allies. The Taliban rebels, who are widely accused of profiting from the
opium trade, take in only two to 12 percent of total opium revenue, mostly by
taxing shipments, according to an April 2011 analysis by the journal Foreign
Policy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">One of the most conspicuous manifestations
of opium’s huge role is the Kabul neighbourhood of Sherpur, the country’s
wealthiest enclave. An empty hillside as recently as 2001, Sherpur now boasts
extravagant mansions that Afghans dub “poppy palaces” and “narcotecture”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">All this prompted Hillary Clinton to call
Afghanistan a “narco state” during the confirmation hearing prior to her
appointment as U.S. secretary of state.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">But that hasn’t stopped Canadian and other
western governments from cultivating friendly ties with Afghan officials and
warlords known or strongly suspected to be involved in the flourishing opium
trade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<b><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">One of Canada’s</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">closest allies in Afghanistan is the
so-called King of Kandahar—Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half brother of President
Harmid Karzai. Often known by his initials, AWK, he is the powerful head of the
provincial council in Kandahar province, where Canada’s 2,800 soldiers are
headquartered.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">He is also widely suspected of being
linked to opium trafficking. An October 2009 U.S. diplomatic cable released by
the whistle-blowing group WikiLeaks in November 2010 said AWK “is widely
understood to be corrupt and a narcotics trafficker”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Reports about Wali Karzai go back years. A
2006<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>Newsweek</em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>investigation quoted sources saying
AWK was a “major figure” in the opium trade. One Afghan Interior Ministry
official said he “leads the whole trafficking structure” in the country’s
south.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">(Wali Karzai has denied the claims of drug
involvement, saying there’s no proof.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">He has also been accused of vote-rigging
in the 2009 Afghan presidential election and engaging in widespread corruption.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">And despite it all, U.S. and Canadian
officials have entertained cozy ties with Wali Karzai. He has reportedly
received payments from the CIA, the New York Times stated in 2009. He was also
said to be renting a large compound outside Kandahar to the CIA and U.S.
special forces. “He’s our landlord,” one U.S. official was quoted as telling
the newspaper.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Wali Karzai has denied he’s on the CIA
payroll, but he acknowledges passing intelligence to coalition forces. “I’m the
only one who has the majority of intelligence in this region,” he told the
Times last year. “I’m passing tons of information to them.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">That intel seems to have helped shield
Wali Karzai from awkward questions about his alleged drug ties. “U.S. and
Canadian diplomats have not pressed the matter, in part because Ahmed Wali
Karzai has given valuable intelligence to the U.S. military, and he also
routinely provides assistance to Canadian forces, according to several
officials familiar with the issue,” the Washington Post reported in 2009.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Wali Karzai is far from being the only
Karzai with seemingly dirty hands. Another U.S. diplomatic cable, from April
2009, also released by WikiLeaks last November, said that President Karzai has
personally intervened in several drug cases. In one, he reportedly pardoned
five Afghan policemen convicted of transporting 124 kilos of heroin.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">President Karzai also raised eyebrows in
2007 when he appointed a convicted heroin dealer, Izzatullah Wasifi, as his
government’s anticorruption chief. “The Kabul government is dependent on opium
to sustain its own hold on power,” wrote Thomas Schweich, the former U.S.
counternarcotics coordinator in Kabul, in a<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>New
York Times</em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Magazine story in
2008.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<b><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Canada’s largest</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">development project in Afghanistan may
actually be fuelling the opium boom. Ottawa calls it Canada’s “signature
project” in the country: a $50-million scheme to rebuild the country’s
second-largest dam, the Dahla Dam, and a long-neglected network of irrigation
canals in Afghanistan’s main breadbasket region.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">This region of fertile farmland also
happens to be Kandahar’s main opium-growing belt, according to the UN’s 2010
Afghan Opium Survey.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">One of the districts that have benefited
from the Canadian irrigation scheme is Zhari, just west of Kandahar City. Since
2008, when the Canadian project began, Zhari has emerged as one of
Afghanistan’s key opium-growing areas. Opium cultivation there shot up by 70
percent from 2,923 hectares in 2008 to 4,978 in 2010, according to the UN
survey.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">The Dahla Dam itself is located in a
district called Shah Wali Kot, just northeast of Kandahar City. Opium
cultivation there has risen 45 percent since the Canadian project started, from
560 hectares in 2008 to 813 hectares last year.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">In Kandahar province as a whole, opium
production remained flat from 2005 to 2008, averaging about 14,000 hectares.
Then it suddenly shot up to 20,000 hectares in 2009 and almost 26,000 last
year.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Findings from the UN’s Office on Drugs and
Crime show that opium growers are benefiting from the rebuilt irrigation canals
and ditches. Its<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>2007 Afghan
Opium Survey</em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>reported that
37 percent of villages getting irrigation aid or other external assistance were
cultivating opium.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<b><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Halfway around</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">the world, more and more of this opium is
finding its way to Canada. Our heroin used to come mostly from Southeast Asia’s
“golden triangle”: Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam. That started to change
after 2001 when Afghanistan emerged as Canada’s number one supplier, according
to the RCMP’s annual drug reports.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">By happy coincidence, B.C. has been
partially buffered from the impacts. Vancouver Coastal Health had already
started to ramp up spending on addiction treatment due to a spike in heroin
overdoses in the 1990s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">VCH also funds and operates (with the PHS
Community Services Society) the Downtown Eastside’s Insite supervised-injection
facility, which cut OD deaths in the surrounding area by more than one-third,
according to a study published on April 18 in British medical journal the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>Lancet</em>. (That hasn’t stopped
the Harper government from trying to close Insite. The Supreme Court of Canada
is expected to rule later this year on whether or not Ottawa can revoke
Insite’s permit to operate, which has been upheld in two lower-court
decisions.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Meanwhile, there are signs of a heroin
comeback. “Heroin is making a bit of a resurgence,” Sgt. Shinder Kirk of the
Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit–B.C. said by phone from his office in
Surrey.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">The number of Native people in Vancouver
who died of illicit-drug overdoses went up from eight in 2001 to 14 in 2005
(the latest available data), according to a 2007 report for the Canadian
Community Epidemiology Network on Drug Use.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">B.C. students saw a “small but significant
increase” in heroin use between 2003 and 2008, the nonprofit McCreary Centre
Society’s “Adolescent Health Survey” reported in 2008.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<b><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Despite the extra money</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">for addiction services, fewer heroin users
are getting treatment. In 2001, only 18 percent of injection-drug users in
Vancouver had access to services like detox, a recovery house, counselling, or
a treatment centre. That number fell to seven percent in 2007, according to a
2009 report from the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">The centre’s report also found that more
injection-drug users were homeless (13 percent in 2001 versus 24 percent in
2007), and more had HIV (0.6 percent in 2001 compared to 2.4 percent in 2007).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">The numbers underscore growing problems
for heroin users, said Dave Murray, a volunteer at the Vancouver Area Network
of Drug Users. Murray himself used heroin for 15 years. “I lost everything I
owned. I generally went into a ditch,” he said, speaking over his cellphone as
he walked through the Downtown Eastside, where he lives.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">He gave up heroin three or four years ago
and now advocates for better services for heroin users.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Based on what he sees on the streets,
Murray said, he believes that more young people have been doing heroin in
Vancouver in recent years. And he said it’s getting harder for them to find
help, especially since the closure of the Miracle Valley substance-abuse
treatment centre outside Mission last year. “There are not enough treatment
spaces, that’s for sure,” he said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Heroin users typically wait one to three
months for a spot in a provincially funded treatment centre, Murray said. “What
do we do with the person while they’re waiting?” he asked. A user who has gone
through detox should have a “seamless” entry into a residential treatment
facility to have any chance of getting clean, he said. “If the person goes back
out into the community, chances are he will fail.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">After finishing a treatment program, users
can stay at a recovery house—a residence where they can try to get back on
their feet, find a job, and get away from old habits. But Murray said many
recovery houses in B.C. are “terribly run”, and recovering users there live in
“poor conditions”. Instead of closing, Murray said, Insite should be expanded.
The centre has room for only 12 injectors at a time—hardly enough for the
neighbourhood’s estimated 5,000 injection-drug users.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Murray is also troubled by the fast-rising
number of heroin-related arrests by Vancouver police. He thinks it suggests
there’s a new generation of heroin users out there who aren’t showing up yet in
other data. It also means the city is flouting its Four Pillars drug strategy
of prioritizing treatment, prevention, and harm reduction rather than
criminalizing users, he said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">“They’re putting more money into
enforcement; they’re building more prisons. Vancouver talks about Four Pillars.
It’s one pillar and three toothpicks. Three-quarters of the money goes to
enforcement,” he said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Vancouver police didn’t respond to a<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>Straight</em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>request for comment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Other provinces in Canada are also seeing
a growing heroin problem. In Toronto, the portion of Grade 7 to 12 students who
reported using heroin in the previous year almost doubled, from 0.6 to 1.1
percent, between 2001 and 2007, according to the Toronto-based Centre for
Addiction and Mental Health.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">But Canada’s heroin woes pale beside those
of Afghanistan itself. It has an estimated one million opiate addicts—eight
percent of the population. It’s another way the fates of ordinary Canadians and
Afghans have become joined in the past 10 years. After all, a poppy palace
doesn’t come cheap.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;">
<em>This story was done with research support from the <a href="http://www.canadiancentreinvestigates.org/"><b>Canadian Centre for Investigative Reporting</b></a>.</em></div>
Alex Roslinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05203588321742142651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12538305.post-37070111398423945432011-05-20T17:24:00.004-04:002014-07-24T18:45:26.606-04:00The Meat of the Matter<div style="font-size: medium;">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Insiders say Canada's meat-inspection system isn't keeping consumers safe from food-borne illnesses.</span></b><br />
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<b><br /></b></div>
</div>
<div>
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">by Alex Roslin</span></i></div>
<div>
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Georgia Straight</span></i></div>
<div>
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">October 21, 2010</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div>
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">[This story won the Canadian Association of Journalists award for best investigative reporting in a Canadian magazine in 2010. See the Georgia Straight site's version of the story <a href="http://www.straight.com/article-353673/vancouver/meat-matter"><b>here</b></a>.]</span></i><br />
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<i><br /></i></div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;">
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">At the end of a gravel road 20 kilometres
east of Fort St. John, Arlene Laughren’s house used to be her little piece of
heaven.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Now it’s like a prison.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Laughren moved here six years ago with her
husband, Keith Holmes, to raise horses, llamas, sheep, and chickens and to grow
vegetables on a 66-hectare hobby farm amid the picturesque coulees, hills, and
ravines by the Peace River.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Now most of the animals are gone and her
garden is overgrown with tall weeds. Laughren, 53, is stuck at home while her
husband is away at work. She has brain damage, memory loss, and poor balance.
She can no longer drive and hasn’t worked in more than two years—ever since she
got two brain abscesses after eating a bad ham sandwich.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">It was July 2008 when Laughren ate the ham
produced by Maple Leaf Foods while at the Fort St. John hospital. She was
getting treatment related to Crohn’s disease, which she has had since
childhood. Her medication suppressed her immune system and made her more
vulnerable to the Listeria monocytogenes bacteria on the ham.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Four days after the fateful meal, violent
headaches started and she began to feel dizzy. After two falls, hospital staff
gave her a CAT scan and saw something abnormal in her brain. Laughren was flown
by air ambulance to Vancouver, where she had brain surgery. Doctors traced the
abscesses to the ham, and she was diagnosed with the bacterial infection
listeriosis. She remained in a Vancouver hospital for five months of treatment,
followed by six weeks of rehabilitation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Two years later, Laughren says doctors
told her she will never work again. She used to counsel youth with difficulties
at the Fort St. John high school. “I really miss them,” she says.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Laughren was one of hundreds of Canadians
sickened—many with gastroenteritis—in the 2008 Maple Leaf listeria outbreak,
which caused 57 confirmed cases of listeriosis. Twenty-three died, including
one in B.C., and many, like Laughren, suffered permanent disabilities. A
government inquiry into the fiasco placed much of the blame on numerous
shortcomings in the government’s food-safety system.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">The Canadian Food Inspection Agency was
especially singled out. The so-called Weatherill inquiry said it didn’t have
enough meat inspectors and was poorly managed. For four years, inspectors had
failed to do all of the required audits of the Toronto Maple Leaf plant that
produced the tainted meat. The inquiry made 57 recommendations for
improvements.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">But more than a year later, food
scientists and the CFIA’s own meat inspectors say that most of the
recommendations have yet to be adopted and that Canada’s food supply may not be
safer than before.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">If anything, they say the level of
inspection of deli meats—the kind involved in the Maple Leaf episode—may
actually have declined. Meanwhile, the numbers of food poisonings and recalls
are rising. And new, controversial methods of producing meat are increasing the
risk of food-borne illnesses even more while raising other questions about the
meat on our plates.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">“The rates of listeria recalls in recent
years are amazing. It’s one after the other. The rates are going up; recalls
are going up. Something is fundamentally wrong,” says Kevin Allen, an assistant
professor of food microbiology at the University of British Columbia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">“It’s safe to say some of the sanitation
methods are not working as they should,” he says in a phone interview from his
office. “There is a lack of control in the food-production process.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Since the 2004 fiscal year, Canada has
seen a steady rise in the number of meat and poultry recalls each year,
according to data provided by the CFIA (which would not grant an interview to
the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>Georgia Straight</em>).
The number has more than doubled, from 44 in 2004 to 91 in 2008. B.C. has been
especially hard hit by food recalls. It experienced 605 recalls of all types of
food, including meat and poultry, between 2004 and 2008—or 26 percent of the
national total. Yet B.C. has only 13 percent of Canada’s population.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">And because most food-borne illnesses
never come to the government’s attention, the reported cases represent just a
tiny fraction of all the food poisonings—only one out of every 300 to 350
actual cases, according to the Maple Leaf inquiry. In fact, food-borne
illnesses sicken a whopping 11 to 13 million Canadians each year, according to
the Public Health Agency of Canada, and as many as 500 may die as a result.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Why are food<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>poisonings skyrocketing? Bob Kingston
has a good idea why: a hobbled meat-inspection system that’s a shadow of its
former self and that struggles to keep up with the fast-changing food industry.
If anything, he says, meat inspectors are even more taxed now than before the
Maple Leaf disaster.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Kingston worked for almost 30 years as a
federal quarantine inspector in Burnaby before becoming president of the
9,500-member Agriculture Union, which includes federal meat inspectors. Earlier
this year, his union gave Canada’s food-safety system a failing grade for
heeding so few of the Maple Leaf inquiry’s recommendations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">“You’re up to five or six plants per
inspector. I know inspectors who have told me they are responsible for 10
plants. If they actually want enforcement, it’s way over the top,” he says.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">“All you have time to do is glance at the
paperwork, see if it’s fine, and race to the next plant. If you have to do an
enforcement action, good luck finding time to do it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">The problem comes down to time. It takes
about 800 hours (or 20 weeks of full-time work) to meet inspection requirements
for a single processed-meat plant, according to union estimates. That doesn’t
include hundreds of additional hours needed for certifying imports and exports,
plus leave or vacation time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">“I feel for the inspectors,” says UBC’s
Allen. “Many are faced with an unruly workload. They’re really taxed right
now.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">According to the Weatherill inquiry,
government inspectors assigned to the Toronto Maple Leaf plant “appear to have
been stressed due to their responsibilities at other plants”. In September
2009, with a possible federal election looming, Ottawa promised to hire 70 new
meat inspectors to fill shortfalls identified in the inquiry. A year later,
only 40 of the new positions have been filled. Much of the money for the new
hires was simply taken out of other CFIA operations, Kingston says;
penny-pinching at the agency is so tight that it has cancelled training
initiatives and some offices have no money for pens or paper.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Even our neighbours are taking notice.
Last year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture told Canada it wasn’t meeting
U.S. standards for inspecting processed meat destined for export south of the
border. It demanded that Canadian meat inspectors check up on exporting plants
once every 12 hours, as U.S. standards require.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Canada increased the level of checks to
that standard. Meanwhile, plants making processed meat for Canadians are
inspected at the far more leisurely pace of only once a week. The CFIA says
inspectors spend more time during each of their weekly inspections of the
plants with Canadian-destined meat, so the total amount of inspection time is
the same as for U.S.–destined meat.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Kingston says this is “highly unlikely”.
He notes that the CFIA would have needed the equivalent of 50 extra full-time
inspectors to meet the greater frequency of USDA-mandated inspections. If the
level of inspection was really the same, he says, no new hires would have been
needed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">He also says plants visited more often
tend to have better safety records. “If an inspector comes once a day, a plant
behaves totally differently than when they know the inspector is coming only
once a week,” he says.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Because there is little money for the new
hires, the extra USDA-mandated inspections have resulted in astronomical levels
of overtime for the CFIA’s existing 260 processed-meat inspectors, Kingston
says. The additional burden means many inspectors are now faced with an even
greater workload than before 2008, he says.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">It wasn’t always like this. The
food-safety system and meat industry have both undergone a sea change since
1981, when Kingston became a union rep for federal agriculture department
employees, including meat inspectors. (He moved to the CFIA when it was created
in 1997.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">In the 1980s, beef was usually butchered
by hand in a large number of small meat-processing plants spread across the
country. Each one had a federal meat inspector assigned to oversee it
full-time. Mechanization of slaughterhouse operations and processing started to
transform the industry in the late 1980s and 1990s. Machines run by low-wage
operators started to replace trained butchers. The small plants were consolidated
into fewer, large operations—some on a massive scale. One plant in Alberta
processes 2,000 beef carcasses in a single day. Another in Manitoba goes
through 10,000 pigs daily.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">The machines might be more efficient, but
they’re also less able than a human hand to butcher an animal in a way that
avoids contaminating it with bacteria-laden feces, Kingston says. Also, when
there was a bacteria outbreak at one of the smaller plants, it was usually
pretty limited in scope. “Now if you do half a day’s run [of tainted product]
out of one of these big plants, you’ve contaminated half the continent,”
Kingston says.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">These were also the lean years of Brian
Mulroney’s budget cutbacks and deregulation. Ottawa was only too happy to
acquiesce to industry demands to reduce the burden of meat inspection.
Inspectors now found themselves responsible for several facilities each, as
opposed to one, even as the plants ballooned in size.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">At the same time, inspectors got go-easy
marching orders. Previously, when inspectors saw a problem—like unsanitary
conditions—they’d pull the plug on operations or slow production until the
issue was fixed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Starting in 2005, the federal government
took the deregulation a step further by quietly implementing a new food-safety
system that shifted much of the burden of policing to the meat industry.
Instead of shutting down a dirty facility, inspectors were instructed to issue
a “corrective action request”. A meat processor would now usually have 14 days
to respond with an explanation of how it would deal with the issue—and would,
in most cases, have another 60 days to implement changes. Companies can request
time extensions past the initial 60 days. They are routinely granted, Kingston
says.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">An inspector who shuts down a meat plant
today “would probably be disciplined unless he has approval from five levels of
management. He would be accused of being overzealous,” Kingston says.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">The new meat-inspection regimen was
slammed in the Maple Leaf inquiry, which said it was plagued by a shortage of
inspectors, poor planning, mismanagement, and lack of training for supervisors.
The Weatherill inquiry called on the CFIA to audit its new system; it is not
clear if that audit is still under way.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">At the same time<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>as Canada deregulated meat production,
other innovations were altering the very composition of the meat we eat and
creating new challenges for food safety. One of the greatest changes was
finding a profitable new use for fatty layers at the outer surfaces of a cow
carcass, known in the industry as “bench trim”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Once used mostly for pet food and cooking
oil, the fatty trimmings are now widely used in hamburger in Canada and the
U.S. The trimmings are combined with leaner cuts from many different cows,
frequently from various countries, the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>New
York Times</em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>reported in an
October 2009 investigation. Author Eric Schlosser (<em>Fast Food Nation</em>)
wrote in<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em>Rolling Stone</em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>back in 1998 that one U.S. fast-food
burger patty may contain meat from 40 to 100 different cows raised in as many
as six different countries.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">The low-grade cuts are more susceptible to
E. coli bacterial contamination because they come from parts of the cow that
are more likely to come into contact with feces. Trimmings were at the centre
of controversy in the U.S. last year after illness outbreaks linked to tainted
hamburger. The outbreaks prompted U.S. authorities to tighten inspection of
bench trim.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">More controversy has surrounded “meat
glue”. The “glue” is a natural protein derived from cow or pig blood. It allows
meat processors to stick together various lumps of meat into a regular-looking
steak, roast, or kebab. In the meat business, it’s known as “restructured beef”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Canada allows the product to be sold here,
but the European parliament rejected it for sale in the EU in May because of
concerns that artificial steaks could mislead the public. “Consumers in Europe
should be able to trust that they are buying a real steak or ham, not pieces of
meat that have been glued together,” Jo Lienen, chair of the parliament’s
environment committee, said during debate on the issue.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">The glue also raises food-safety issues,
says Keith Warriner, an associate professor of food science at the University
of Guelph, in a phone interview from his office. If there is a bacteria
outbreak, it’s much harder to figure out the source when chunks of meat from
multiple cows were combined.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Also, the products need to be fully
cooked, like ground beef, to kill bacteria. A regular steak is safe to eat
medium-rare because only its surface has bacteria. But when different cuts of
meat are blended together, the product may have contaminated surfaces on the
inside, and it has to be cooked to an internal temperature of 71 ° C (160 ° F).
This, Warriner says, could lead to confusion among consumers used to cooking
their steaks medium-rare (63 ° C, or 145 ° F).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Yet another innovation is “modified
atmosphere packaging”, the widespread practice of filling meat packaging with
adjusted levels of oxygen and other gases. The gases can keep meat from losing
its fresh-looking red hue. Shiv Chopra, an Ottawa food-safety expert and
retired Health Canada scientist, said in an e-mail that the technique is
“dangerous” because it may prevent shoppers from seeing when meat has gone bad.
UBC’s Allen agreed: “This can be misleading to consumers.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">It all adds up to huge challenges for a
tattered food-safety system. Kingston predicts more Maple Leaf–type incidents.
“It’s inevitable that more of this comes along if nothing changes.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Back at her<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>home outside Fort St. John, Laughren
is disheartened. “The one thing I thought would come from this is they would
improve food safety. But I don’t think there has been much of anything done.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">She gazes longingly at the horse saddle
hanging on a saddle rack in her living room. She used to ride in amateur
competitions, but now she doesn’t have enough coordination to ride a horse. She
is still waiting to receive part of a $27-million payout that Maple Leaf agreed
to make last year to settle several class-action lawsuits related to the
listeria outbreak. With thousands of claimants expected, the processing of
claims has been a time-consuming task.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Meanwhile, the Canada Revenue Agency is
hounding her husband for writing off his stay in Vancouver while he helped
Laughren recover from her brain surgery. Despite a doctor’s letter saying her
husband’s presence “was imperative for her treatment”, the taxman nixed the
write-off and is demanding back taxes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">“You just expect the government to be
watching our backs. But that’s silly,” Laughren says.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Her memory loss means she sometimes
forgets things like friends’ names and her phone number, but there’s one thing
she always remembers: her decision to never eat processed meat again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<br /></div>
</div>
Alex Roslinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05203588321742142651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12538305.post-10162280250162535102010-10-07T12:04:00.011-04:002012-06-27T11:05:13.889-04:00Global Warming Impacts Health<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"></span><br />
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: 12px;"><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Climate change threatens to trigger a widespread and devastating health crisis in Canada. Why are medical professionals and policy-makers slow off the mark?</span></i></b></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: 12px;"><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></i></b></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: 12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">by Alex Roslin</span></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: 12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Canadian Geographic</span></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: 12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">October 2010</span></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: 12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>[This article won a gold prize from the National Magazine Awards in the Editorial Package category and was a finalist for a second National Magazine Award in the Health & Medicine category.]</i></span></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: 12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Monday, July 5, 2010, was the kind of sticky, pavement-shimmering Montréal day that only kids at a water park could appreciate. And that is just where 14-year-old Mathieu Thibodeau-Ross found himself, heading for the whitewater rafting ride at the Mont Saint-Sauveur Water Park, 75 kilometres northwest of Montréal.</span></span><br />
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: 12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: 12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">The humidex was approaching 40°C a little after 11 a.m. when Mathieu started up the stairs to access the ride. He never made it to the top. Witnesses would later report that the teen started to wheeze and then collapsed. He was pronounced dead at the hospital, a victim of cardiac arrest.</span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: 12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: 12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">It will likely take several months for the Quebec coroner’s office to determine what role the high heat and humidity may have played in Mathieu’s fate. But it is already clear that the number of deaths spiked to unusually high levels during the hot spell which began on that blazing July day. By Thursday, Environment Canada was calling it the most intense heat wave on record in Montréal. With thick smog blanketing the city all week, 80 people died in Montréal from various causes on that Thursday alone — double the typical daily total. ...</span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span">[</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span">Read the rest of this story <b><a href="http://www.magazine-awards.com/multimedia/nmaf/awards_submission_archive_2010/12067.PDF">here</a></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span">.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span">]</span></span></div>Alex Roslinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05203588321742142651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12538305.post-73284242208853575582010-09-04T22:56:00.005-04:002014-07-24T18:58:15.927-04:00Who Dares to Speak...<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.5pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><i>BY ALEX ROSLIN</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.5pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><i>THE MONTREAL GAZETTE</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.5pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><i>Saturday, August 28, 2010</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.5pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><i>[See story at Gazette site <a href="http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/dares+speak/3453577/story.html"><b>here</b></a> and sidebar <a href="http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Wikileaks+Hitting+send+expose+dirty+secret/3453579/story.html"><b>here</b></a>.]</i></span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 16.5pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Dr. Shiv
Chopra still remembers the words his friend spoke a few days before he died.
"Every time I come here, I vomit," Dr. Chris Basudde, a fellow Health
Canada doctor, had said. "I feel sick. I can't take this."</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Chopra
told his friend to see a doctor and take some time off work. Days later, he was
stunned to learn that Basudde had died of a suspected heart attack.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Chopra
said he, Basudde and two other Health Canada doctors were living under enormous
stress and had seen their careers and lives turned upside down after they had
protested against plans to approve bovine growth hormone -which was eventually
banned from dairy production in 1999 -and other drugs they considered to be
unsafe.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">The four
doctors were subjected to harassment and isolated from each other in different
buildings, Chopra said. He got shingles that he attributes to the stress and
went on sick leave. Health Canada fired Chopra and the two other surviving
doctors in 2004, citing insubordination.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">They have
been fighting ever since to overturn their firings before a labour tribunal.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Chopra's
story shows the intense personal and professional stress whistleblowers
frequently face when they expose wrongdoing. Critics say it also shows how the
Harper government, which was first elected promising openness and transparency,
has failed to protect whistleblowers and, instead, has become obsessed with
stamping out criticism.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">So what
is a lone whistle-blower to do in times of ever-greater government secrecy?
Why, harness the magic of the Internet, of course.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">As
official channels of complaint fail, some whistleblowers in other countries are
exposing wrongdoing by turning to websites like<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://wikileaks.org/">WikiLeaks</a>,
which has published leaked U.S. military footage of a massacre of Iraqi
civilians and thousands of pages of classified U.S. military reports.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">And
whistle-blower advocates warn that Canadian government and corporate secrets
may also start turning up on such websites if Canada doesn't do more to protect
whistle-blowers.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">We've
come a long way since 1969 when Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg
painstakingly photocopied 7,000 pages of a classified U.S. military study on
the Vietnam War and smuggled them out in his briefcase -only to spend more than
a year trying to find a way to make the damning information public.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Nowadays,
the Pentagon Papers could have gone viral minutes after Ellsberg hit
"send."</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">***</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">When
Prime Minister Stephen Harper created an independent Public Sector Integrity
Commissioner to protect whistleblowers in 2007, Chopra was cautiously
optimistic. Here finally was someone who might investigate the doctors' claim
that Health Canada managers had pressured them to approve questionable drugs.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Three
years later, however, integrity commissioner Christiane Ouimet's office is
getting a failing grade from whistleblowers.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">"None
feel they have actually had satisfaction from the system. They're told to go
away and that their case won't be dealt with," said David Hutton, the
executive director of the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://fairwhistleblower.ca/">Federal Accountability Initiative for
Reform</a>, an Ottawa-based advocacy group that says it is in contact with
about 90 Canadian whistle-blowers.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Hutton is
calling on Harper to overhaul Canada's "fatally flawed"
whistle-blower protection system and to replace Ouimet, a career federal civil
servant, with someone more independently minded, noting that she has dismissed
almost every complaint she's got.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Hutton
said his group has heard from 15 federal government whistle-blowers who have
dealt with the integrity commissioner's office. "What we hear from
whistle-blowers is that her office is like a black hole. They feed all this
information, and they never hear back," he said.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">It's part
of a broader dysfunction in Canadian governments of stamping out internal
criticism and jealously guarding government secrets -a culture that has only
accelerated under Harper, Hutton said.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Harper is
under fire over silencing a long list of high-profile critics. They include
veterans ombudsman Pat Strogan and crime-victims ombudsman Steve Sullivan
(whose terms weren't renewed after they criticized the government), Canadian
Nuclear Safety Commission president Linda Keen (who was fired after she shut
down the Chalk River reactor due to safety concerns) and Statistics Canada boss
Munir Sheikh (who resigned recently after clashing with the government over
changes to the census).</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">The
integrity commissioner's office acknowledges it's launched few investigations.
Out of 156 complaints about wrongdoing or reprisals from potential
whistle-blowers reviewed in its first two years of operations, her office
decided only five of the cases warranted an investigation.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Ouimet
didn't find any wrongdoing or reprisal in a single case, according to her
office's<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.psic-ispc.gc.ca/quicklinks_liensrapides/publications-eng.aspx">first
two annual reports</a>.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Brian
Radford, senior counsel in Ouimet's office, defended the commissioner's record.
"I don't think we are surprised by the numbers ... when you look at the
complexity of the act and its precise jurisdiction."</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">But
Hutton is flabbergasted at the lack of results. "It's hard to believe
there has been no wrongdoing whatsoever, and that no one's suffered any
reprisals for reporting it, when her jurisdiction is 400,000 federal employees."</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Three
whistle-blowers told The Gazette they were disillusioned by how the integrity
commissioner's office handled their complaints of misconduct and punishment for
speaking out.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">One
manager said he experienced severe reprisals after reporting fraud involving
several million dollars in his department. Speaking on condition of anonymity
because an internal departmental investigation is still ongoing, he said he was
demoted, harassed, relocated to an isolated area and told not to speak to his
own supervisor.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">He said
extreme stress from the situation led to heart palpitations and memory loss,
forcing him to take an unpaid leave of absence.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">When he
informed the integrity commissioner's office, he said, he was told it sounded
"like a textbook case" of reprisal, but that his case wouldn't be
accepted because he had already filed an ongoing union grievance.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">"There
was a brick wall dealing with her office. They refused to communicate. I have
no confidence that she is there to do anything for me. Accountability just
doesn't exist," he said.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">A
now-retired regional director in another federal department said he, too, is
disillusioned with the integrity commissioner. Speaking anonymously because his
wife still works for the government, he said he faced reprisals after he
reported to superiors that department officials weren't following ministerial
policies.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">He said
he filed complaints about the wrongdoing and reprisals to the integrity
commissioner. After several months without results and suffering from
depression, he said, he withdrew his complaints and took early retirement.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">"They
were not helpful in anything," he said of the commissioner's office.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">***</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Chopra
said he has also gotten nowhere fast with the integrity commissioner.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">At his
five-acre spread in Manotick, 30 kilo-metres south of Ottawa, Chopra, 76, bides
his time tending to a large organic garden with his five grandchildren and
speaking out about food safety.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">He
chronicled his battle with Health Canada in a 2008 book titled<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Corrupt-Core-Memoirs-Health-Whistleblower/dp/097319457X">Corrupt
to the Core: Memoirs of a Health Canada Whistle-blower</a>.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">In it,
Chopra tells a cautionary tale of how a whistle-blower can get bogged down in
years of grinding legal and bureaucratic wrangling.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Chopra
and his colleagues first filed complaints in 2002 about the wrongdoing and
reprisals they say they witnessed at Health Canada. The complaints went to the
Public Service Integrity Officer, a predecessor to the current integrity
commissioner who was widely seen as too cozy with the government because he
worked at the Treasury Board.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">The
integrity officer agreed that one of the doctors had experienced a reprisal but
rejected their complaints about wrongdoing. The doctors appealed to the Federal
Court of Canada.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">In 2005,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://decisions.fct-cf.gc.ca/en/2005/2005fc595/2005fc595.html">the court
sided</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>with the doctors,
saying the integrity officer's bureau had erred in law and "failed to
conduct the investigation in accordance with its mandate."</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">The court
ordered the integrity officer to reexamine the complaints. The new integrity
commissioner took over the case in 2007.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Her
office dismissed the reprisal complaint last year, Chopra said.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">The
integrity commissioner's Radford said he can't comment on specific cases,
citing confidentiality concerns. But his office's annual report last year
mentions a reprisal complaint known simply as "<a href="http://www.psic-ispc.gc.ca/quicklinks_liensrapides/08_09_report_rapport-eng.aspx#Investigations">Case
4</a>" that was rejected and involves the same details as that of Chopra
and his colleagues.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">"It
was not in the public interest for the tribunal to hear this reprisal
complaint," the report said. "There was a need for finality in this
matter."</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">"That's
complete nonsense," Chopra says of the decision. "We're talking about
pressure to pass questionable drugs. How can that not be in the public
interest? Our lawyers sent them tons of stuff that was in the public interest."</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">The
integrity commissioner is dealing separately with the doctors' complaint of
wrongdoing at Health Canada. Its decision could come in its third annual report
due after Parliament resumes sitting in September.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Radford
refused to reveal the commissioner's decision, but he hinted that his office
feels Case 4 is really about a public-policy issue rather than misconduct.
"We felt the subject matter of the disclosure really concerns an issue of
public policy. Our office cannot substitute itself for a political
decision-maker."</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Chopra is
reserving comment until he sees the commissioner's report, but he was unhappy
about Radford's take. "If they say it's public policy, that's just kicking
the ball back and forth. Our complaint is we were being pressured not to apply
the law. Someone's going to have to be responsible to the public."</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Even
starting an investigation at the commissioner's office seems at times to be a
major ordeal. Its annual report last year gives one<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.psic-ispc.gc.ca/quicklinks_liensrapides/08_09_report_rapport-eng.aspx#Investigations">especially
telling example</a>.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Three
different complaints surfaced at the same time "alleging gross
mismanagement in the form of widespread and recurring contracting
irregularities. Given the responsibilities of the organization, the allegations
raised serious concerns about potential danger to public health and safety."</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">The
allegations were further "supplemented by corroborating information from
other sources, and it strongly suggested the possibility of wrongdoing."</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">At some
point, however, the three complainants got cold feet and didn't want to help
the commissioner's office any further. The commissioner, despite having all the
powers to subpoena witnesses of a full royal commission of inquiry, decided not
to investigate.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">"It
did not cross the threshold of evidence in law to require a formal
investigation," Radford said of the case.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">"The
disclosers never disclosed to us precise facts. Based on that, we did not see
anything irregular that would justify further investigation. ... We didn't
identify any deficiencies."</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Radford
said his office prepared a list of best practices it submitted to the
organization, but it didn't bother to follow up to see if anything changed.
"I don't think they adopted our best practices," he said.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">"We
did not request that they follow up with us. We do not know if they amended
their policies."</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">***</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Other
countries have taken far bolder steps to protect whistle-blowers and ferret out
wrongdoing.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Sweden
has some of the best legal protection for those who leak stories to the media.
Its constitution says authorities can't investigate a journalist's sources,
except in exceptional cases of national security. A confidential source can
even seek criminal charges against a journalist who reveals his or her identity
without consent.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Britain
has a<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.pcaw.co.uk/law/uklegislation.htm">whistle-blower-protection
law</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>covering virtually the
entire workforce (not just federal civil servants, like Canada's law).
Whistle-blowers there filed 1,761 complaints last year. Of those that went to a
public hearing, the whistle-blower won 22 per cent of the time.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Hutton
said that's far better than in Canada, where the rate is zero per cent.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">The U.S.
is in some ways seen as a mecca for whistle-blowers because of a culture of
celebrating the little guy who stands up to wrongdoing. Some whistle-blowers
have got Hollywood treatment, like New York cop Frank Serpico, who exposed
police corruption, and Erin Brockovich, who exposed industrial pollution.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">The U.S.
pioneered some of the world's first whistle-blower-protection laws in the 1970s
and 1980s, but one of its strongest tools dates back to the Civil War. Under
the False Claims Act, created after the Union Army was sold faulty rifles and
ailing donkeys, a whistle-blower can sue a federal contractor believed to be
defrauding the U.S. government and pocket part of any court-awarded payout.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Such
cases have become a major tool for fighting fraud in the pharmaceutical
industry. False Claims Act suits led to $6.3 billion (U. S.) in settlement
payments to the U.S. government related to fraudulent marketing of drugs between
2001 and 2009, according to a<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMsr0912039">New England Journal of
Medicine study</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>in May.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Whistle-blowers
received an average $3 million in each case.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">"The
U.S. is so different from us in terms of the openness in government. There is
all kinds of stuff our government hides from us that you'll actually find on
websites in the U.S.," Hutton said.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">But even
the U.S. is far from perfect. Most whistle-blowers say that even the money from
the False Claims cases was not worth the personal cost of coming forward,
including divorce, ruined careers and stress-related health problems, the New
England journal study found.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">In July,
Congress boosted the protection of corporate whistle-blowers as part of its
Wall Street Reform Law.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">But the
measures don't protect government employees, and critics say the Obama
administration has actually retreated on helping them.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">The Obama
justice department has vowed to aggressively pursue unauthorized leaks, and
according to a Newsweek report, even boasts of being more zealous than it was
under George W. Bush. It prosecuted three leaks in its first 17 months in
office. Previously, such prosecutions were rare.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Back in
Ottawa, Hutton said the clampdowns and failed protections are not in the
public's interest. "Most whistle-blowers get into this situation because
they're simply trying to do their job honestly."</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 16.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Chopra,
for his part, said he wouldn't hesitate to do it all over again despite the
hardships. "It was my duty to do so under Canadian law. One cannot think
of hardships when it is part of one's duty."</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">His
advice to other whistle-blowers: "Never do it for glory. Once you do it,
you will be riding a tiger. It will be him or you."</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">***</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 14.95pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Wikileaks:
Hitting "send" to expose a dirty secret</span></b><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 14.95pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Faced with
mounting secrecy and the failure of official channels of complaint,
whistle-blowers seem to be turning increasingly to the Internet and websites
pledged to expose government and corporate secrets, in the public interest.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 14.95pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">For
whistle-blowers, the sites allow them to expose secrets as fast as they can hit
"send." Critics argue the sites may endanger lives by posting
national security information.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 14.95pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">The best
known is<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://wikileaks.org/">WikiLeaks</a>, a nonprofit site run by Julian
Assange, an Australian-born former teen hacker.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 14.95pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">WikiLeaks
shot to prominence in April when it posted classified military footage of a
U.S. Apache gunship killing 12 Iraqi civilians, including two Reuters
journalists, and wounding two children.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 14.95pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">In Ottawa,
whistle-blower advocate David Hutton is watching WikiLeaks with growing
fascination.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 14.95pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Hutton,
the executive director of the Federal Accountability Initiative for Reform,
said sites like WikiLeaks could be a powerful new tool for whistle-blowers as
they face growing government secrecy, while official channels for complaints
seem to be failing.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 14.95pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">"WikiLeaks
could turn out to be the norm in the future. It may make it harder for
governments and corporations to keep dirty secrets," he said.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 14.95pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">WikiLeaks
caused more sensation in July when it published 77,000 classified U.S. military
documents painting a dismal picture of the war in Afghanistan. The reports
revealed details of U.S. commando units assigned to kill or capture insurgents,
secret Pakistani support for the Taliban and abusive and corrupt Afghan
authorities. The site promises to release another 15,000 Afghan-related files
in coming weeks along with a video showing a U.S. airstrike on Afghan civilians.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 14.95pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">The
Pentagon has reacted with fury, demanding the return of the documents. In July,
U.S. army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning was charged with leaking
classified information to WikiLeaks. The FBI is still exploring charges against
WikiLeaks itself.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 14.95pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Nonetheless,
the site could herald a new culture of whistle-blowing on steroids, free of
dependence on journalists or integrity commissioners to right wrongs.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 14.95pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">At the
same time, WikiLeaks could create a new model for gumshoe investigative
reporters who collaborate with websites to reveal whistle-blower information.
WikiLeaks gave early access to its Afghan files to the New York Times, the
Guardian of London and Germany's Der Spiegel, which analyzed the documents and
published<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/war-logs.html">lengthy reports</a>.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 14.95pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">The models
are still experiencing growing pains. Human-rights groups slammed WikiLeaks for
not deleting the names of Afghan civilians who helped Western forces. Assange
seems to have taken the criticism to heart, pledging to remove civilian names
from his next release.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 14.95pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Pentagon
Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg, for his part, has called Assange his
"hero" and praised his work as "exemplary."</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 14.95pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">"For
40 years I've hoped that someone would put out information on the scale that I
did, but in a more timely way than I did," he said in a PBS interview.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 14.95pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 9.5pt;">Hutton
notes, "People are concerned about WikiLeaks, but what level of concern
should we have that access to information is just a joke in this country?"</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Alex Roslinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05203588321742142651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12538305.post-89696082336903429452010-06-02T10:29:00.002-04:002014-07-24T18:59:37.448-04:00Plenty to Carp About<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">CLIMATE FILES</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Trying to hold the line against a big, hungry fish that would thrive in our ever-warmer waters</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By Alex Roslin</span></i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.cwf-fcf.org/en/resources/magazines/canadian-wildlife/"><b><i>Canadian Wildlife</i></b></a></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>May/June 2010</i></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">A highly invasive fish that could devastate the Great Lakes ecosystem has penetrated into Lake Michigan for the first time, and fish biologists say climate change will likely exacerbate its onslaught.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">“It’s a potential knockout blow for the Great Lakes,” says Scott Parker, a Parks Canada biologist who monitors invasive species at the Fathom Five National Marine Park in Georgian Bay. “They’ll dominate (native species) and have a huge impact.” </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">The notorious Asian carp, a voracious plankton-eater sometimes called the aquatic vacuum cleaner, grows to 45 kilograms and consumes up to 40 per cent of its weight daily. It has already decimated the ecosystems of the Mississippi and Illinois rivers and their once-diverse fisheries. Carp, which are virtually worthless commercially, now make up 90 per cent of the fish caught in those rivers.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">While a live Asian carp has yet to be found in Lake Michigan, a test used to detect the species’ <st1:stockticker st="on">DNA</st1:stockticker> in water indicates a live fish was very likely present in the immediate area, says Jennifer Nalbone, an invasive species specialist at Great Lakes United, a joint Canada-U.S. environmental group. This despite the fact that American authorities put up an underwater electric barrier in April 2009 in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, the only link between the carp-infested Mississippi River and the Great Lakes, to prevent the species from reaching the Great Lakes.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">Carp <st1:stockticker st="on">DNA</st1:stockticker> was first detected beyond the barrier in August. In subsequent months, more of it was found further down the canal and in two rivers that drain into Lake Michigan. This past January, the <st1:stockticker st="on">DNA</st1:stockticker> was detected in Chicago’s Calumet Harbor in the lake itself. [See the carp's progress on <a href="http://www.glu.org/en/asiancarp/map"><b>this map</b></a>.]</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">The discoveries have set off panic among Canadian and U.S. fish scientists, environmentalists and the $7-billion Great Lakes fishery. In mid-February, the White House hosted a summit on ways to stop the carp invasion. And Michigan and Ontario authorities have gone to court to get the state of Illinois to block the canal. <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Illinois</st1:place></st1:state> opposes the idea, saying it would hurt the state’s economy.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US"> “The <st1:stockticker st="on">DNA</st1:stockticker> evidence has certainly raised the sense of urgency,” says Nalbone, who faults authorities for not moving quickly enough and calls for a “very aggressive monitoring and eradication plan.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">Asian carp—a term that encompasses several invasive species of the fish such as bighead and silver carp—were imported to control nuisance algae in the southern states, but escaped into the Mississippi River during floods.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">Apart from displacing native fish, silver carp are infamous for jumping out of the water when startled by watercraft [see <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdcQ56OpxNE&feature=related"><b>video</b></a>], something Becky Cudmore, a biologist and invasive species expert with the Fisheries and Oceans Canada, experienced first-hand when she and other carp scientists headed out on the Illinois River. Carp started flying out of water all around, some soaring as high as three metres and many landing in the boat.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">One five-kilogram specimen smashed into Cudmore’s calf. “It left a good mark and numbed my leg for four hours,” she says. “It was very sobering. We really wouldn’t want them in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Canada</st1:place></st1:country-region>.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">Asian carp are a temperate-water fish, well suited to existing climactic conditions in the Great Lakes, even without global warming. But climate change will likely make the lakes even more susceptible to a carp invasion, says Bryan Neff, a biologist at the University of Western Ontario.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">“Climate change can destabilize the natural ecosystem in the lakes and make it more susceptible to invaders,” he says. “The ability of a native ecosystem to repel invaders would diminish.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">With climate change, for example, Great Lakes water levels will likely fall, which could in turn “cause native species to become more sensitive and susceptible to invasive species,” Neff says.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">Cudmore agrees. “Climate change will certainly help—not hinder—invasive species like the Asian carp.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US">Alex Roslin is an award-winning journalist in Lac Brome, Qc., and writes a blog on investigative reporting at AlBloggedUp.Blogspot.com.<o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<b>WARM UNWELCOME</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">Invasive species of wildlife and plants, which already cost $120 billion annually in the United States alone, are far more able to adapt to climate change than native species, <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0008878"><b>a new study</b></a> in the journal <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">PLoS One</i> says.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">Two Harvard scientists studied plant-flowering data going back 150 years in Massachusetts, including information collected by conservationist Henry David Thoreau around the famed Walden Pond.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">As the average temperature increased 2.4 degrees Celsius over this period, invasive plant species were able to advance their flowering time to be 11 days earlier than native species.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">As a result, invasive species have significantly increased their population significantly more than native plants like lilies and orchids, with nearly two-thirds of the species Thoreau documented seeing sharp declines or disappeared.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-indent: 9.0pt;">
<span class="apple-style-span"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black;">“These results demonstrate for the first time that climate change likely plays a direct role in promoting non-native species success,” co-author and Harvard biologist Charles Davis told <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100203111626.htm"><b>ScienceDaily.com</b></a>.</span></span></div>
Alex Roslinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05203588321742142651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12538305.post-16891170660481770862010-05-18T09:46:00.001-04:002014-07-24T19:07:35.342-04:00The New Home-schooling<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-outline-level: 4; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's twice as common today as it was a decade ago. But can "regular" families do it?</span></b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Alex
Roslin<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Today’s
Parent, </span></i><i style="text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">May
2010</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; mso-outline-level: 5; text-indent: 14.2pt;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">It had been snowing for a week straight in Mansonville, a mountain village nestled in the Appalachians, 150 kilometres east of Montreal. But there was no hope of a snow day for 10-year-old Kira Nichols — she’s home-schooled. So she doesn’t even need to get out of her PJs to hit the books.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Besides, Kira doesn’t need cajoling to start school. Before breakfast, she’s already spent an hour engrossed in Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls. After reading for a while in French, Kira turns her attention to math, practising fractions on some worksheets that her mom, Kim, printed from an educational website. Then she works on a short story that she’s writing about mythical creatures, plays Scrabble with Mom (building Kira’s vocabulary) and plays outside. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">School’s done for the day and it isn’t even time for lunch; Kira virtually never needs to spend more than two hours a day on academics to stay ahead of the school curriculum for her grade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Kira and Kim are part of a fast-growing movement: In Canada, the number of home-schooled kids has doubled in a decade to an estimated 60,000 to 80,000, or two percent of this country’s school-aged population. In the US, 1½ to 2 million kids are home-schooled — about 3½ percent of all school-agers — and that number is growing seven percent a year.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">What is home-schooling?<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Home-schooling — once considered fringe or “granola” — has come of age. Many universities are now courting home-schoolers and designing special admissions rules to allow them to enter without a high school diploma. And home-schooled kids are showing they can compete with their more traditionally educated peers on the academic playing field. Studies of Canadian and US home-schoolers found they outperform their public-school counterparts by solid margins in math, language ability, reading, social sciences and science. They even tend to beat private-schoolers, whose scores average in the 65th to 75th percentile in these areas, versus the 75th to 85th percentile showings of home-schoolers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Still not impressed? A study of more than 20,000 home-schoolers found that in grade four they are, on average, a grade ahead academically of their public and private school peers. By grade eight, they’re almost four grades ahead, even though the average home-schooler spends only three hours a day on academic learning, compared to the typical six-hour school day.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Presented with statistics like these, and the idyllic impression made by Kira and Kim, few would argue home-schooling is intriguing. But how doable is it really? And how can you tell if it’s a good fit for your family?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Home-schooling parents and even some education professionals say the first question is easy to answer. “It’s less daunting for parents than they might think,” Kim says assuredly. You don’t need to know how to develop a lesson plan or have any teaching experience. Parents can get all the curriculum materials they need from the Internet, by mail order or through swaps with other home-schooling families. (See <a href="http://www.todaysparent.com/schoolage/education/article.jsp?content=20100316_122141_13940&page=5#06"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">Resources</span></a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>for a list of helpful home-schooling websites.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">You can choose an existing teaching philosophy that reflects your family’s values and goals, or develop your own by combining teaching materials from several different sources. Approaches range widely, from the so-called traditional or school-at-home method, using the same textbooks and tests as your child would see in a public school setting, to “unit studies,” which encompass self-directed learning through books, worksheets, online resources and field trips, all the way to “unschooling,” where the idea is that learning opportunities are everywhere; a walk in the woods can turn into biology class and an evening walk, an astronomy lesson.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Abbi Miller’s parents were early proponents of unschooling, visiting places like the Grand Canyon in Arizona and Mount Rushmore in South Dakota to teach their children geography and history. “The world is your school” is how Abbi, now 25, sums up the approach. Looking back on her experience, she believes the more freedom kids are given to learn what interests them, the more likely they’ll be to retain their love of learning. A self-proclaimed “math geek,” Abbi was allowed to teach that subject to herself — something she did with great enthusiasm. “I would be like ‘Mom, I want more workbooks!’” she recalls.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Home-schooling successes<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">That kind of motivation and energy are a big part of home-schooling success. “The kid has to be not just willing, but highly motivated to do this,” says Gary Knowles, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education who’s worked as a school principal and a teacher of teachers for 30 years. He notes that chances of home-schooling success are better when families draw strongly on learning opportunities in the community — libraries, art galleries, museums, farms — and are open-minded and curious about the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Kim Nichols’ approach is to let her daughter, Kira, take the lead regarding what she wants to study. Mom helps set goals of how many hours should be devoted to various subjects each week, and answers questions when Kira gets stuck. Otherwise, she says, “Her schedule is pretty much her own.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">That kind of flexibility can be a boon to kids who like to dig deep into topics that interest them; a class doesn’t have to stop after the usual 45 or 60 minutes if a child is enthralled. And parents can custom-fit learning to nurture a young person’s interests and adapt to special needs, whether a child is gifted or having difficulties. Interestingly, a 2003 study of Canadian home-schoolers with cognitive limitations found they were performing at the same academic level as the average public-schooled kid.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">What the critics say<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Still, home-schooling isn’t for everyone. Knowles has been keeping tabs on several dozen home-schoolers for nearly three decades, as research for a book. He’s seen that home-schooling does not often work well when parents have major personality conflicts with their kids, or if a child isn’t fully on board for the experience. Cloistered environments in which children are taught intolerance or don’t get to meet a lot of other kids are also problematic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Even two children from the same family may be differently suited. Kim Nichols’ son, Jordan, 12, wanted to stop home-schooling last fall. Part of the reason for the switch was wanting to spend more time with male pals his age, of which there are few among home-schoolers in their remote area. Now, despite a two-hour round-trip commute by school bus to the regional high school he now attends, Kim says Jordan looks forward to school all weekend, has quickly made new friends there, and is doing “very well” academically. Meanwhile, Kira is still happy to learn at home with their mom, and she hooks up with a group of home-schooling buddies for regular educational and social get-togethers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Some critics say that this is where home-schooling falls down — in offering fewer opportunities for children to be with other children. “The best place for socialization and education is a public school,” insists Réjean Parent, president of Centrale des syndicats du Québec, the province’s largest teachers’ union.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Education professor Knowles disagrees. Socialization, he says, can be learned and not all school contexts are ideal for gaining these skills. “If you are a 13-year-old, who is to say that 1,300 other 13-year-olds are the best people to be responsible for socializing you?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Home-schooling parents must work to ensure their kids are in contact with peers, but it can be done. Hamilton mom Kristy Crawford, who home-schooled three of her five children, connected with other families through a local home-schooling association that organized “really cool” outings almost every day of the week — bowling, rock climbing, French lessons, visits to orchards, museums, libraries, historic villages. Similar groups exist in cities across Canada, and they are easy to find online.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Because children’s social — and academic — successes aren’t expressed in regular report cards, parents who home-school also need to take a different perspective on their children’s progress. “Don’t expect linear development,” Knowles advises. “Kids might go a long time without seeming to make progress. Parents who home-school have to take a more fluid or open view of kids’ learning.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">If that thought fills you with parental panic, perhaps home-schooling isn’t for you. But for parents like Kim Nichols, the rewards are numerous. “Being there when they learn something new — it’s like a miracle,” she says. “I want to be there for those times.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Home-schooled kids, happy adults?<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">What are home-schooled kids like once they’ve grown up? According to a study by the US National Home Education Research Institute, three-quarters of them will have at least some post-secondary education, compared to half the general population. That’s thanks, in part, to a fast-growing number of universities that accept home-schooled applicants, including Harvard, MIT and the West Point military academy in the United States, and the University of Toronto, York and McGill in Canada.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The study also found that those who were home-schooled are nearly twice as likely to volunteer as others their age.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">And a Canadian study found home-schoolers scored an average of 4.9 out of six on a life satisfaction test (with six being the best), compared to 4.2 for public-schoolers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12538305" name="05"></a><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Home-schooling and the law<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Across Canada, it’s perfectly legal to pull your child out of the public school system and teach her at home. However, provincial regulations (and individual school boards) impose varying conditions on home-schooling families.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">British Columbia is seen as a home-schooling mecca because its School Act gives parents the right to educate children at home in any way they choose, so long as they follow some kind of “educational plan.” Parents do need to register with a public or independent school, or a distance-learning institution. The province provides funds to the schools for each registered home-schooler, creating incentive for schools to work together with home-schooling families. Home-schoolers can even borrow computer equipment and textbooks from the schools. Policies are also quite liberal in Ontario and Alberta.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">At the other end of the spectrum is Quebec, whose provincial Education Act allows home-schooling, but says parents must provide education “equivalent to what is provided in school” and gives school boards power to scrutinize home-schoolers’ progress.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The remaining provinces and territories mostly fall somewhere in between.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12538305" name="06"></a></i><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><i>RESOURCES</i><o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Click on these websites for home-schooling tools and info:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">•<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #00b0f0;"><a href="http://www.lifelearning.ca/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #00b0f0;">lifelearning.ca</span></a></span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Excellent Canadian home-schooling resource info and articles from Life Learning magazine, started by Canadian home-schooling pioneer Wendy Priesnitz.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">•<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #00b0f0;"><a href="http://www.flora.org/homeschool-ca" target="_blank"><span style="color: #00b0f0;">flora.org</span></a></span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>The Canadian Home Based Learning Resource Page lists hundreds of links for learning resources, home-schooling support groups, as well as province-by-province info on legal issues.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">•<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #00b0f0;"><a href="http://www.homeedmag.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #00b0f0;">homeedmag.com</span></a></span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Home Education Magazine’s website has hundreds of free articles about home education, several blogs and a nice links library.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">•<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #00b0f0;"><a href="http://www.en.wikibooks.org/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #00b0f0;">en.wikibooks.org</span></a></span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Access nearly 36,000 pages of educational textbooks for free. Click on Wikijunior for books about math, science, social studies and more for babies to preteens.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">•<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #00b0f0;"><a href="http://www.happyhomeschooling.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #00b0f0;">happyhomeschooling.blogspot.com</span></a></span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Quebec mom Kim Nichols blogs about her home education adventures and offers a great set of links to resources.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Alex Roslinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05203588321742142651noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12538305.post-29517083795477066232009-12-28T14:15:00.001-05:002015-11-07T07:04:10.695-05:00US Military Psychics<div style="line-height: 13.5pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><b></b></span><b style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black;">The incredible tale of how the </span></span><st1:stockticker><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black;">CIA</span></span></st1:stockticker><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black;"> and American military spent $20 million trying to read people's minds.</span></span></b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black;">BY </span></span><st1:stockticker><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black;">ALEX</span></span></st1:stockticker><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black;"> ROSLIN<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></span></div>
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<b style="line-height: 13.5pt;"><st1:date day="23" month="11" year="2009"><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">November 23, 2009</span></st1:date></b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">MAISONNEUVE<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>[Read it on the Maisonneuve site <a href="http://maisonneuve.org/article/2009/11/23/us-miltary-psychics/" target="_blank">here</a>.]</i></span></div>
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<strong><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; color: black; font-family: inherit; padding: 0in;">Spies and psychics.</span></strong><span class="apple-converted-space"><b><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; color: black; font-family: inherit; padding: 0in;"> </span></b></span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">They are as different as chocolate and peanut butter, and conspiracy theorists love them both. Throw them together, however, into the same story, and you've got a whole new level of fun and insanity—Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup on a millennial, almost Biblical scale.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">So when word got out in 1995 that US military intelligence had been funding efforts to read people's minds for more than twenty years, the strange news inspired all sorts of excitement and derision—particularly when some of these same psychics expressed their belief in UFOs, time travel and alien-human hybrids.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">One of the first military mentalists to disclose details of the program was David Morehouse. In his 1996 book<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: inherit; padding: 0in;">Psychic Warrio</span></em><i>r</i>, he recounts how, as a soldier, he started to have strange visions and out-of-body experiences after a stray bullet hit his helmet during a training exercise. Instead of getting psychiatric treatment, Morehouse, a decorated Ranger and airborne captain, was enrolled in the military’s highly secretive Stargate program.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Stargate had begun at the Central Intelligence Agency (</span><st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">CIA</span></st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">) in the early 1970s, in conjunction with a couple of laser scientists from the Stanford Research Institute (</span><st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">SRI</span></st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">), a body affiliated with </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Stanford</span></st1:placename><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> </span><st1:placetype><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">University</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> that did a lot of research for the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">U.S.</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> government. One of the </span><st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">SRI</span></st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> scientists, Hal Puthoff, had already been dabbling in parapsychology when he was approached by </span><st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">CIA</span></st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> agents looking for a lab that could handle “a quiet, low-profile, classified investigation” outside normal academic lines.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">According to Puthoff, the boys from </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Langley</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> believed that the Russkies might be getting ahead in psychic experiments and felt that the </span><st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">CIA</span></st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">, too, needed to get involved—if only to figure out if the Soviets were capable of mind-controlling American generals.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Puthoff, a high-level Scientologist, claimed that he could “remotely view” things that he couldn’t physically see—such as information on a building directory inside a locked building. The boys at </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Langley</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> grew interested and, in 1972, the </span><st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">CIA</span></st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> started funding Puthoff and his “empaths” (often fellow Scientologists).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">These were heady, psychedelic times. The previous year, a US Army intelligence official, quoting an astrologer, had warned that “there is great danger that within the next 10 years the Soviets will be able to steal our top secrets by using out-of-body spies.” Soviet efforts at mind-reading would later be largely discredited as hoaxes, but fears of a psychic cold war had a receptive audience in the fringes of the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">US</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> national security establishment. Stargate possessed a veneer of science as well as the possibility of gaining formidable advantage over the enemy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">The military’s foray into crystal-ballism was also part of a broader attempt by US spies and solders to reinvent themselves in the dog days after </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Vietnam</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">. Within the </span><st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">CIA</span></st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">, there had always been tension between factions accustomed to more hard-edged tactics (such as the Phoenix program, which tortured and assassinated suspected Vietnamese peasant leaders) and those staff who favoured softer techniques—such as dusting Fidel Castro’s shoes with poisonous thallium to make his beard fall off. Now, in the earlier 1970s, the kooky coalition seemed to gain the upper edge.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">One of the gurus of this rethink was Jim Channon, an army lieutenant-colonel assigned to study ways of creating a more “spiritual” army. According to Jon Ronson in<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: inherit; padding: 0in;">The Men Who Stare at Goats</span></em>, Channon attended a retreat at the Esalen Institute for the Advancement of Human Potential in Big Sur. Led by mentor Michael Murphy, a founder of the New Age movement, Channon engaged there in Reichian rebirthing, primal arm wrestling (regular arm wrestling combined with guttural screaming) and naked hot-tub encounter sessions. When he emerged, Channon wrote a confidential report in 1979 that started: “The </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">U.S.</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> army doesn’t really have any serious alternative than to be wonderful.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Channon’s report proposed the creation of a First Earth Battalion of Zen-master super soldiers with telepathic powers. These “warrior monks” would carry ginseng regulators in their uniforms, divining tools and a loudspeaker to play indigenous music and words. They would also give their enemies “an automatic hug” and carry lambs into hostile countries, a symbol of their peaceful intent. They would learn how to fast, sense plant auras, pass through walls and “stop using mindless clichés.” “It is </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">America</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">’s role to lead the world to paradise,” he wrote.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">(Channon’s idea of using loud music to confuse the enemy was tested out a few years later on Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega. In 2003, in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Iraq</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">, US Army soldiers forced detainees to listen to children’s songs like “I Love You” from<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: inherit; padding: 0in;">Barney and Friends</span></em>. The technique continues to be used on al-Qaeda prisoners today—some of them, according to Ronson, locked blindfolded in burning hot metal shipping containers, forced into crouching positions and surrounded by barbed wire while the music plays loudly non-stop for days.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Far from being ridiculed, Channon’s report deeply moved a group of senior army officers, some brought nearly to tears, writes Ronson, because they held so many pent-up emotions from </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Vietnam</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">. Channon’s report also would serve as a vision for Stargate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Mind-reading by psychics was, in a sense, a logical extension of earlier and more invasive mind-control experiments that had been going on since World War Two. The MKULTRA project, started in 1953, attempted to emulate mind-control techniques used on </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">U.S.</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> prisoners by the Soviets, Chinese and North Koreans during the Korean War. Under the MKULTRA aegis, pregnant women were blasted with radiation, </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">US</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> army soldiers were dosed with LSD to study panic, US Navy sailors were exposed to sub-aural frequency blasts to erase memory, and a group of </span><st1:state><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Oregon</span></st1:place></st1:state><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> prison inmates had their testicles irradiated—invariably without full knowledge or consent by the subjects. In all, more than 150 individually funded research sub-projects—most of which, due to deliberately destroyed records, we know nothing about—existed within MKULTRA and related </span><st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">CIA</span></st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> programs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<strong><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; color: black; font-family: inherit; padding: 0in;">Soon after being founded</span></strong><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">, the Stargate remote viewing program was cancelled by the </span><st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">CIA</span></st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> and ended up in the hands of the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">US</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> military. The transfer was prompted by the 1975 Watergate scandal and ensuing Congressional investigation of the </span><st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">CIA</span></st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">, which scuttled many of its more controversial programs (including MKULTRA).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Many at the </span><st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">CIA</span></st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> were happy to see Stargate go. According to<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: inherit; padding: 0in;">The Wizards of Langley: Inside the </span></em></span><st1:stockticker><em><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; color: black; font-family: inherit; padding: 0in;">CIA</span></em></st1:stockticker><em><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; color: black; font-family: inherit; padding: 0in;">’s Directorate of Science and Technology</span></em><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">, one </span><st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">CIA</span></st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> man tells author Jeffrey Richelson that the official who had approved the program had been “out of his mind.” As a means of intelligence, he felt, Stargate was “useless” and “absolute bullshit.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Indeed, those early experiments had led to mixed results for spying purposes, Richelson reports. The psychics had some accurate visions, but a very large percentage of what they envisioned was vague or plain wrong. In one operation, the early program’s leading psychic, Pat Price, was given coordinates of a Soviet military base in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Kazakhstan</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">, which Air Force intel thought could be a centre for particle-beam research. In four sessions spanning four days, Price gave what an evaluator judged to be “an almost perfect description of someone’s first look at the Operations Area” of the facility—low one-storey buildings partially dug into the ground, with a large crane. But other specifics given by Price—a 500-foot antenna, an outdoor pool, a nearby airstrip—were completely inaccurate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Puthoff later touted the experiment as a success by pointing to the description of the large crane. But </span><st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">CIA</span></st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> officials didn’t agree, saying it amounted to lucky guessing. When Puthoff published some of his unclassified results in the journal<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: inherit; padding: 0in;">Nature</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>in 1974, an accompanying editorial comment called the paper “weak in design and presentation” and “disconcertingly vague” on details about the research methodology. A consistent problem was a lack of controls to ensure there had been no fraud.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">The psychic research was a “dumb exercise” that produced “lots of laughing,” according to a senior </span><st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">CIA</span></st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> scientist quoted by Richelson, but it was justified because of the psychic research gap with the Soviets. When the Washington Post reported on </span><st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">CIA</span></st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> support for paranormal research in 1977, Richelson reports </span><st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">CIA</span></st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> director Stansfield Turner acknowledged the agency had had a man gifted with “visio-perception” of places he had never seen—a reference to Pat Price—but, Turner said with a smile, the man had died two years earlier, “and we haven’t heard from him since.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Stargate’s new master, the US Air Force and the Defense Intelligence Agency (</span><st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">DIA</span></st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">), quietly chipped in funds to keep the experiments going in the mid-1970s and eventually set up its own in-house psychic spying unit, funded by the US Army Intelligence and Security Command. Stargate’s headquarters was a run-down block of buildings at the Fort Meade Army base in </span><st1:state><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Maryland</span></st1:place></st1:state><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">By the 1980s, remote viewers had participated in dozens of intelligence-finding missions. Military sessions usually involved five to ten viewers with months of training all focusing on the same target in several sessions in order to make up for the limited accuracy of each viewer. The focus of viewing attempts included foreign buildings, Soviet submarines, Americans held hostage in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Iran</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> during the crisis of 1979-80, and in 1981, Brigadier General James Dozier, who had recently been kidnapped in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Italy</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">. The unit was praised by President Jimmy Carter for finding a downed Soviet bomber in </span><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Africa</span></st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> in 1979 after other spies had failed. Other missions of the psychic unit, according to a 1995 story in the Washington Post, include attempts to locate plutonium in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">North Korea</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> and Muammar Gaddafi before the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">US</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> raid on </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Libya</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> in 1986.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Viewers also apparently tried their hand at some spacier stuff. One psychic took to trying to find the Loch Ness monster when there wasn’t any military work to do. (He determined that Nessie was actually a dinosaur’s ghost.) Another claimed to have killed a goat and his pet hamster by staring at them for days on end. And according to Ronson, a general in the program kept trying to walk through walls.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">But members of the program tended to belie the stereotyped image of flaky New Agers. One psychic, Paul Smith, was a young US Army intelligence officer, Arab linguist and a devout Mormon. Analytical and clipped in both his writing and personal manner, Smith had no previous interest in extrasensory perception. As he writes in<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: inherit; padding: 0in;">Reading the Enemy’s Mind: Inside Star Gate, America’s Psychic Espionage Program</span></em>, Smith was recruited into Stargate in 1983 in part because of his skepticism about remote viewing. The program apparently didn’t want the true believers. Early research had also uncovered something surprising: “remote viewing” (a fancy military term for clairvoyance, or sending your “mind’s eye” to see things far away) wasn’t the exclusive domain of a few gifted psychics. Anybody could learn how to do it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Although initially dubious, Smith says over the next seven years he became one of the army’s premier “remote viewers” and the main author of its extrasensory training manual. He would later serve as a tactical intelligence officer in the 101st Airborne Division in Operation Desert Storm/Shield. (David Morehouse, also a Mormon, entered the program in 1988 and trained under Smith.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">“My success rate was around 28 percent,” said one spy, Joe McMoneagle, to the Daily Mail newspaper this past January. “That may not sound very good, but we were brought in to deal with the hopeless cases. Our information was then cross-checked with any other available intelligence to build up an overall picture.” McMoneagle’s work eventually earned him the Legion of Merit, </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">America</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">’s highest military non-combat medal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">By one tally, of eighty-one projects between 1979 and 1982, twenty-one produced positive results, six were mixed, another six were terminated or not completed, and twelve were unsuccessful. The remaining thirty-eight received no evaluation or the results were not disclosed, according to Smith in<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: inherit; padding: 0in;">Reading the Enemy’s Mind</span></em>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Even investigative journalist Jack Anderson, one of the first reporters to expose Stargate in a Washington Post column as a misuse of government funds, became a believer in the program’s value. “In concept if not always in execution, it was worth taxpayers’ dollars,” he wrote in the foreword to Smith’s book.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">But many in the military remained skeptical. Fundamentalist Christians in the Army considered Stargate the Devil’s work. Nor was Stargate a well-supported program: lack of funds for renovations meant staff relied on scrap furniture to furbish much of their office. When one senator toured the program at </span><st1:place><st1:placetype><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Fort</span></st1:placetype><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> </span><st1:placename><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Meade</span></st1:placename></st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">, he apparently asked “where all the winos were” as he ascended the rickety steps.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">In 1995, the program’s enemies finally won. In the throes of downsizing after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the </span><st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">DIA</span></st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> decided to kill Stargate. But remote viewing had a few friends in Congress, who pressed the </span><st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">CIA</span></st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> to take back the program it had started 20 years earlier. Urged on by supporters like Senator Claiborne Pell—sometimes referred to as “The Senator from Outer Space”—Congress mandated the </span><st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">CIA</span></st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> to review the usefulness of the 20-year psychic program, which had cost $20 million. The </span><st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">CIA</span></st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">, unhappy at the prospect of welcoming home the controversial mentalists, contracted out the study to the nonprofit American Institutes of Research (</span><st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">AIR</span></st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">), which in turn brought in two outside experts, statistician Jessica Utts and psychology professor Ray Hyman.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">As a visiting scientist in the </span><st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">SRI</span></st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> program in the 1980s, Utts was a true believer in remote viewing, while Hyman was a longstanding debunker of all things paranormal, and a founding member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. They had butted heads over remote viewing before and this study would ultimately only reinforce their positions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Utts reviewed 26,000 remote viewing trials done in 154 experiments at </span><st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">SRI</span></st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">. Her conclusion: “The statistical results were so overwhelming that results that extreme or more so would occur only about once in every 10 to the 20th such instances if chance alone is the explanation… Obviously some explanation other than chance must be found.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Utts also studied 445 other trials in six more recent remote viewing experiments overseen by an internationally reputed panel of scientists (including a Nobel winner for physics) at Science Applications International Corporation. She claims to have found statistically significant results supporting psychic phenomena in four of the six experiments and calls the evidence for remote viewing “a lot stronger than for many effects we accept in everyday life. It’s on par with the effect of aspirin in preventing heart attacks.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Hyman was less charitable to Stargate than Utts. He admitted that the case for psychic functioning seemed better than ever, and conceded that the data was puzzling—“I do not have a ready explanation for these observed effects”—but remained unconvinced, primarily because “it is impossible in principle to say that any particular experiment or experimental series is completely free from possible flaws… especially [ones] that have not yet been discovered.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">English psychologist Richard Wiseman summed up the problem nicely in a recent article in the Daily Mail: “If I said that there is a red car outside my house, you would probably believe me. But if I said that a UFO had just landed, you’d probably want a lot more evidence. Because remote viewing is such an outlandish claim that will revolutionize the world, we need overwhelming evidence before we draw any conclusions. Right now we don’t have that evidence.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Hyman also noted a practical issue: remote viewers were said to be accurate about 20 percent of the time, but this wasn’t good enough for intel purposes. “Without any way to tell which statements of the views are reliable and which are not, the use of this information may make matters worse rather than better.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">The final report submitted by </span><st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">AIR</span></st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> to the </span><st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">CIA</span></st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> was damning and recommended against pursuing the program. Remote viewing had “failed to produce the concrete, specific information valued in intelligence reporting,” it said. The </span><st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">CIA</span></st1:stockticker><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> pulled the plug in 1995.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">But far from dying a quiet death, remote viewing gained a new life. Shutting down Stargate meant that formerly employed military psychics could now go public with their knowledge of the program itself—at length and in best-selling books—and set up private practices to continue their experiments.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Paul Smith and David Morehouse have both started private remote viewing training businesses. Remote Viewing Instructional Services, Inc. in Austin, Texas, founded by Smith, offers a 50-hour Basic Remote Viewing Course ($2,000) that includes a lecture from Hal Puthoff, the guy who helped kick off the whole thing back in the seventies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">In </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">San Diego</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> and </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">San Marcos</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"> (north of </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">San Diego</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">), David Morehouse Productions offers a series of classes, from two to five days in length ($495 to $1,290). Classes are co-taught by Morehouse’s wife, Patty, and fellow psychic Jason Appleby. Students include police officers, border guards and medical professionals interested in becoming more perceptive about people they deal with on the job. Practising their techniques “heightens your intuition almost immediately. Once you do it more, you start to notice it more in a waking state too, learning to trust your gut more,” Appleby said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">What about using remote viewing for evil—cheating at cards or figuring out a bank’s layout? Appleby says some students start off wanting to use it to make money, but quickly drop the notion because remote viewing has significant limitations and is hard work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">Besides, Appleby said, students are quickly awakened to a spiritual side of remote viewing. “There’s something really profound about looking at the paper record of a session, having proof that there is more than just the physical body. People spend their entire lives in different faiths looking for just a glimpse of something like that, and here it is. It’s really something extraordinary. I think it’s the most profound story of history.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;">(Reprinted from <a href="http://maisonneuve.org/pressroom/issue/summer/"><b>Issue 28</b></a>, Summer 2008)<span style="font-size: 9pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
Alex Roslinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05203588321742142651noreply@blogger.com