statism watch

Martin Mittelstaedt, The Globe and Mail
July 18, 2008

The expansion of parkland by Canadian governments over the past year has been “extraordinary” and likely represents the most significant enlargement of the country’s system of nature reserves on record, says the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society.

The Ottawa-based society, the main national lobbying group for more park creation, issued the assessment in a review it conducted of government announcements on nature reserves over the one-year period before Canada’s Parks Day, which is set for tomorrow.

The expansions were led by the creation of the Thaydene Nene National Park in the Northwest Territories, a tract of wilderness six times the size of Prince Edward Island that is home to grizzly bears and tundra wolves. The enlargement of the Nahanni National Park Reserve, also in the NWT and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, shifted another tract of nearly the same size into the protected category.

The amount of land protected in the Northwest Territories alone in the past year was equal to about 25 Prince Edward Islands.

In Nova Scotia, the government has committed to having 12 per cent of the province’s land within protected areas by 2015, while Quebec’s announced park expansions over the past year raise its total land base within nature reserves to 6 per cent from 4.9 per cent, according to the review.

The parks and wilderness group had never bothered to conduct such an annual assessment because the halting pace of park creation left it with very little to comment upon. “This is the first year we have done this kind of review and we were inspired to do it because there were so many announcements,” said Ellen Adelberg, a spokeswoman for the group.

But new nature reserves are being created so quickly that, between the time last Friday when the group finished its review and this week, there was one additional major announcement: On Monday, the Ontario government said it would protect half of the province’s northern boreal forest from development.

The group said it believes the fast pace of parkland expansion reflects public interest in the environment, which remains a top-of-mind issue for many Canadians, despite more recent worries over energy prices and the health of the economy.

The environment is “still very high on the public agenda as an issue of concern,” Ms. Adelberg said. “It certainly reflects Canadians’ values about protecting our natural heritage.”

Given public interest in the topic, politicians also find making announcements on nature-reserve expansions an almost irresistible source of publicity, with both Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty personally doing so over the past year.

Although environmentalists have been at odds with the Harper government over how to deal with climate change, the relationship between groups interested in land conservation and the Conservatives has been much more cordial.

Ms. Adelberg said that, at her group’s first meeting with Environment Minister John Baird, he told them that wilderness preservation was one of his interests.

“He made it very clear to us … that wilderness protection was an extremely high priority for him,” she said, “and we’ve seen that same sentiment reflected in Prime Minister Harper’s comments.”

Source | See Also: Ontario places vast boreal area under protection, 22% of province off limits to development | Get set – the future starts now | Manitoba’s boreal forest touted for UNESCO status |  Today’s suburbs, tomorrow’s slums? | Oil, oil everywhere? Well, just maybe | Road tolls, a bitter pill that works | World has enough oil reserves, says BP boss | Is it time for toll roads?

Michael Bristow, BBC News
July 18, 2008

Workmen have torn down the home of a Beijing family that was refusing to move to make way for redevelopment.

A demolition crew pulled down the house early on Friday, according to people gathered outside the site.

Bedecked with posters, slogans and flags, the city-centre shack had been attracting attention from neighbours and passers-by.

The Yu family were refusing to move because they said the compensation being offered was far too low.

It was not immediately clear where the family is now living. Family members were not answering their phones.

Later, the local government admitted it had taken matters into its own hands after negotiations with the Yu’s broke down.

“Because they had unreasonable requests and refused to relocate… they were forcibly moved,” said a statement posted on a government-run website.

…

‘Violent dispossession’

Earlier this week, a Swiss-based organisation estimated that up to 1.5 million people have been moved from their Beijing homes because of the Olympics.

The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions said this had taken place over an eight-year period leading up to this summer’s games.

“[The] authorities have used tactics of harassment, repression, imprisonment and even violence against residents and activists,” it said.

China disagrees with these figures. It says just 6,000 families have been moved to make way for Olympic building projects.

Full Story | See Also: Fisherman, 78, faces eviction to make room for container terminal | Beijing families forcibly relocated for Olympics | Toronto rallies denounce Burma, China regimes | China’s Men In Blue | ICBC Deposes Citigroup as Chinese Banks Rule in New World Order

Shaun Waterman, UPI
July 18, 2008

Undercover Maryland state troopers infiltrated three groups advocating peace and protesting the death penalty — attending meetings and sending reports on their activities to U.S. intelligence and military agencies, according to documents released Thursday.

The documents show the activities occurred from at least March 2005 to May 2006 and that officers used false names, which the documents referred to as “covert identities” – to open e-mail accounts to receive messages from the groups.

Also included in the 46 pages of documents, obtained by the Maryland chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, is an account of an activist’s name being entered into a federally funded database designed to share information among state, local and federal law-enforcement agencies on terrorist and drug trafficking suspects.

ACLU attorney David Rocah said state police violated federal laws prohibiting departments that receive federal funds from maintaining databases with information about political activities and affiliations.

The activist was identified as Max Obuszewski. His “primary crime” was entered into the database as “terrorism – anti govern(ment).” His “secondary crime” was listed as “terrorism – anti-war protestors.” The database is known as the Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, or HIDTA.

“This is not supposed to happen in America,” said Mr. Rocah. “In a free society, which relies on the engagement of citizens in debate and protest and political activity to maintain that freedom … you should be able to attend a meeting about an issue you care about without having to worry that government spies are entering your name into a database used to track alleged terrorists and drug traffickers.”

Mr. Rocah called the surveillance “Kafka-esque insanity.”

Full Story | See Also: CSIS Spying on Natives, Olympic Dissidents