Increasingly, we are reading, seeing and hearing reports in the media about the clash that can result when human development and wildlife come up against each other. The spread of human habitation, farming and projects sometimes conflicts with wild animals' habitats, and their migration and hunting habits.
This video report from the New York Times offers an interesting look at how people and governments in Central America are trying to accommodate jaguars, as expansion spreads into the big cat's territory:
May 13, 2010
May 12, 2010
April 28, 2010
Parliament trumps PM; What's next?
House of Commons Speaker Peter Milliken's ruling against the Conservative government on the Afghan detainee issue may be a victory for Parliament, and indeed for the democratic process. And that's important.
But now what?
This historic ruling in Canadian politics stems from the country's controversy over the way detainees captured by Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan were treated after they were handed over to Afghan authorities. Many were tortured once in Afghanistan's custody. The controversy here has been about whether the Canadian government knew about the probability of torture but maintained the policy of handing over prisoners anyway. Such a practice would put Canada in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Prime minister Stephen Harper's government has been stonewalling, refusing opposition and media demands to provide answers and releasing heavily blacked-out documents on the case. The Conservatives are hiding behind the excuse that releasing pertinent details would jeopardize national security and Canadian military operations in Afghanistan. But the equally plausible explanation is that the government is holding back the details because it doesn't want to incriminate itself.
The Speaker's ruling, while shaking a finger at the government's antics, is a very thoughtful attempt at trying to resolve the situation through compromise. He wants the government and the Opposition to agree within two weeks on a way to have the uncensored documents examined without jeopardizing national security.
The possible outcomes have all been well reported in the past 24 hours. The two sides could come up with an agreement. The government could appeal the Speaker's ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada, but everyone seems to think that's unlikely, and even if Harper chooses that route the Court may well refuse. The government could co-opt one of the opposition parties to back down. Or Harper could force a snap election.
The possible compromise solutions have also been well elucidated. One involves swearing in certain MPs so they'd have the security clearance to view the uncensored documents. Another involves changing the mandate of a retired judge, Frank Iacobucci, who's already looking at the secret documents, at the government's request, to determine how much detail it could safely release. Problem is, he's under instruction to report back only to the government, not publicly. Under those constraints the government would be under no obligation to tell us what Iacobucci said. His mandate, though, could be changed so that he reports back to Parliament, instead of the government.
But here's the really important issue out of all this: will Canadians ever find out what's in these documents? Having MPs cleared for security and examining them - even having Iacobucci report to Parliament on his findings - may not yield answers if those people are sworn to secrecy beforehand. And such a demand could be the government's price for not triggering an election.
Surely the answer is straightforward. Let an impartial party examine the documents and report back to Parliament. If any details are found that are genuinely important to national security, then that party, or Parliament, could simply say so, without revealing what they are.
However, if, as I and many Canadians suspect, the details reveal that the Harper Conservatives knew about the torture but failed to act, that should be made public.
But now what?
This historic ruling in Canadian politics stems from the country's controversy over the way detainees captured by Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan were treated after they were handed over to Afghan authorities. Many were tortured once in Afghanistan's custody. The controversy here has been about whether the Canadian government knew about the probability of torture but maintained the policy of handing over prisoners anyway. Such a practice would put Canada in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Prime minister Stephen Harper's government has been stonewalling, refusing opposition and media demands to provide answers and releasing heavily blacked-out documents on the case. The Conservatives are hiding behind the excuse that releasing pertinent details would jeopardize national security and Canadian military operations in Afghanistan. But the equally plausible explanation is that the government is holding back the details because it doesn't want to incriminate itself.
The Speaker's ruling, while shaking a finger at the government's antics, is a very thoughtful attempt at trying to resolve the situation through compromise. He wants the government and the Opposition to agree within two weeks on a way to have the uncensored documents examined without jeopardizing national security.
The possible compromise solutions have also been well elucidated. One involves swearing in certain MPs so they'd have the security clearance to view the uncensored documents. Another involves changing the mandate of a retired judge, Frank Iacobucci, who's already looking at the secret documents, at the government's request, to determine how much detail it could safely release. Problem is, he's under instruction to report back only to the government, not publicly. Under those constraints the government would be under no obligation to tell us what Iacobucci said. His mandate, though, could be changed so that he reports back to Parliament, instead of the government.
But here's the really important issue out of all this: will Canadians ever find out what's in these documents? Having MPs cleared for security and examining them - even having Iacobucci report to Parliament on his findings - may not yield answers if those people are sworn to secrecy beforehand. And such a demand could be the government's price for not triggering an election.
Surely the answer is straightforward. Let an impartial party examine the documents and report back to Parliament. If any details are found that are genuinely important to national security, then that party, or Parliament, could simply say so, without revealing what they are.
However, if, as I and many Canadians suspect, the details reveal that the Harper Conservatives knew about the torture but failed to act, that should be made public.
April 24, 2010
Trouble at the CBC? You don't say.
But things seem to have reached a new pitch of near David Mamet-like dysfunctionality.
It's gone public due the leak of an internal survey of CBC Radio national reporters. It measured reaction to a recent re-organization, completing the integration of radio and television resources. The overall rate of discontent indicated by the survey is pegged at about 95 per cent.
I spent the majority of my working life in CBC Radio News - several decades. I left three years ago, just before the integration with TV was implemented. However, I didn't need a survey to tell me there was moroseness in the workplace. At every get together with former colleagues there have been complaints, bemoanings, requests for advice. And, in the past year, assurances that this was "the worst it's ever been".
I know the place can at times seem hopeless. There was a period in the late '70s/early '80s that was particularly bad. So my reaction to these observations was generally: "you just haven't been there long enough" and "things will get better".
But when I started hearing these complaints from people who had been there long enough, I began to wonder. And now this survey. You have to admit, a 95 per cent level of dyspepsia is pretty catastrophic for any organization. The results, though, speak to long-standing issues at the CBC which have only been getting worse.
One is bureaucracy. In my 30+ years there, it always had a split personality. On one hand were the editors, writers, producers and on-air personalities who created the programming. On the other, multiple layers of mandarins in management whose prime concerns were the corporation's bureaucratic functionings and their own self-interest. Managers often appeared less interested in the product and moreso with endless rounds of meetings and self promotion. To that end an inordinate amount of time would be devoted to coming up with new organizational concepts, often represented by buzz words or phrases: synergy, creative renewal, integration. In the latest iteration, they've dropped the "creative" part and simply called it CBC News Renewal. Managers are so busy trying to carry out the latest initiative of their superiors that it's often as if the product - the programming - is an afterthought. They would vehemently deny this, but it has been my observation over the years.
It looks like the increasingly heavy bureaucracy has finally encroached on the programming operations. Specific comments in the survey are noteworthy. Here are a few:
"99% of ny experience with this [new news gathering] entity results in double the phone calls and e-mails I used to receive."These are all hallmarks of a bureaucracy: I don't know who's in charge, who's accountable, things are run by a committee.
"It is unclear who is accountable."
"Instead of having a straightforward conversation with one person, there is now a team, none of whom seem to speak to one another."
The survey speaks to other established problems. One is quite obvious to listeners and viewers. Since leaving the CBC and becoming a consumer instead of a participant it's much clearer to me: repetition. When you're working and generating material for one program area, you're not as aware of it because you don't have time to listen to the other programming as much. When you're a consumer of the product it becomes quite evident, as encapsulated in this quote from the survey: there's now an emphasis on "ensuring each platform has the same line-up". That means CBC Radio, TV and the website are all covering the same things.
If, during the course of the day, you've heard World Report, the main morning newscast, some of The Current, an Hourly newscast or two, the World at Six, As It Happens and The National you'll find the repetition almost unbearable. I admit few people hear this much programming in a day, and if you do you'll probably go batty. But even if your hear just a few of those things you'll notice the same stories being repeated over and over.
In fact, if you catch BBC World on TV as well, by the time you get to The National all the news on the show will seem old.
One of the biggest complaints about this integration is the detrimental effect it's having on CBC Radio. In fact, it didn't take a great brain to predict that TV would subsume radio simply because it's more powerful as a corporate entity and sucks up way more resources.
[Assignments] "often...seem like TV stories being assigned to radio" is one reporter's observation about the new integrated assignment system. Indeed, the survey even points out the problem, unintentionally, by asking, among other things, whether the recent changes to World Report, which include increased "use of syndicated TV sound" have improved the program (more than 80% of respondents said no).
Not a surprise. TV sound is meant to go with pictures. On the TV. It's not radio sound. Somehow this basic concept seems to elude CBC managers, but not the network's audience. Here's a comment from one listener, ironically under the age of 25, the holy grail demographic the CBC is falling over itself to attract lately:
"The loss of essence of radio news pours out of the speakers every time an audio clip of a TV report plays".
Using sound on the radio is an effective tool. But it can't just be any old sound. It needs to be evocative, it needs to be specifically pegged to something in the announcer's or reporter's script. It above all should be used judiciously. Throwing any old bit of white noise on the radio, which happens increasingly on the CBC's news broadcasts, simply causes listeners to turn to their radios and say: "What the hell's that?", missing the next sentence or two of the script in the process. If you can't tell whether the sound is a tank in the Middle East or a blender in someone's kitchen then it's useless. TV sound is often unsuitable to radio, though there are exceptions.
In fact, listeners and viewers in general are aware of an overall decline in the CBC's quality. Here's an online comment from another listener:
"People who have never listened to radio are being hired to run CBC Radio."
That's not true actually, though the listener is onto something. The real problem is that people with little or no background in journalism are being hired to run radio news. Their experience nowadays tends to derive more from radio programming generally, not from news reporting or editing. There's a difference even between news and current affairs, never mind the vast gulf between news and, say, variety programming. A good radio programmer may not make a good journalist, but the distinction is becoming blurred and is even infecting TV. (I saw a red flag years ago when a one-time manager sat me down and asked: "What's the difference between news and entertainment?" I walked away thinking: "Uh-oh". It has finally seeped into the corporate media culture).
The corporate reaction to the leak, and its reaction to the reaction, has been predictable.
A large percentage of CBC employees don't feel there's anyone they can talk to. Over the years the Mother Corp. has acquired the aura (internally - this wouldn't necessarily be perceptible to its audience) of a Communist-style politburo. And by that I don't mean left-wing (leftist tendencies at the CBC are exaggerated by the corporation's critics). I mean in the bureaucratic sense, in the sense that questioning of some corporate fig's bright new policy, dissent such as that expressed in the survey, is, well, discouraged. People who work there, in increasing numbers, are afraid that to voice these sorts of feelings personally would brand them. They would be deemed not team players, or dinosaurs. Or, at the very least, management might listen but then nothing would happen.
In asking her question, Jennifer McGuire is demonstrating management's blindness to this problem, which constitutes a good portion of CBC's morale issues.
Another person in an executive position is quoted as observing that it's unfortunate the survey was leaked on the Internet: "I think we just hurt each other here. We should be able to have these debates and share opinions without having it go out on the Internet".
She's right. In a healthy corporate environment such debates and expression of opinion should be possible. But that's the problem. The CBC is not a healthy corporate environment.
One of the most common topics of conversation at the Corp. is when people will be eligible for early retirement. "How much longer do you have," is heard often enough in hallways. It's like people filling out a prison sentence. I have been told repeatedly since I left that: "You got out at the right time".
There are many problems in the running of what should be a valuable Canadian cultural institution. One of the biggest is that CBC managers tend to ignore problems. That's because they don't want to admit to having made bad decisions, mistakes or instituting poor policies. There's nothing wrong in a healthy corporation with acknowledging problems or mistakes, as long as they're identified and dealt with deftly. That's part of the reason healthy corporations are healthy. The CBC approach tends to be to let the problem fester for a few years, then shelve it while declaring it a great success, instead of dealing with it.
I'm not sure this survey will bring a different result.
I think the CBC is important for Canada. For one thing, it is the country's only national radio network. It's a lifeline in terms of communication, connectedness, to remote areas and small communities. It promotes Canadian culture, and therefore identity. Or at least, that's what it should be doing. But it's going astray. It's getting mired up in a tangle of inept leadership. It's not even sure what it wants to be any more. It insists it doesn't compete with the private broadcasting sector, yet tries to do so. For some perverse reason, just when it's on the verge of having its biggest audience ever handed to it on a silver platter (the baby boomers, who constitute the CBC's traditional older audience) it's decided to chase a younger demographic. All it's succeeded in doing is pissing off its core audience while while proving ineffective in attracting a large younger cohort of listeners. Those who do gravitate to the CBC are looking for its distinctive tone. They're trying to escape the targetted younger programming of the CBC's competition (or at least trying to supplement it by adding something different to their diet).
The CBC has lost its compass.
In closing, I have to say a few things in my defence, since CBC honchos will react to this with their predictable utterances. Jennifer McGuire has already complained about the online response to the survey's findings as being partly from disgruntled former CBC employees.
Yes, I am a former CBC employee. No, I am not disgruntled.
I don't suffer from a "boy, that place has sure gone downhill since I left" perspective. The downhill process started long ago.
I'm not a dinosaur.
Nor am I against change (another typical corporate response: "They just don't like change". In fact, most people don't mind change. What they don't like is change for the worse).
I am disappointed at the sloppy way in which, as a corporation, the CBC seems to careen, like a pinball, from one internal crisis to another. At the lack of vision of its leaders.
I'm sad for many former colleagues still there whom I like and respect toiling under a very unhappy period of their lives. And I'm sad that so many CBC listeners feel let down by what is, after all, their broadcaster.
It doesn't have to be this way. It shouldn't be.
The Survey
The Leak
Jennifer McGuire's response
April 18, 2010
Beatles vs Jesus: Lennon was right
Let's set the record (if you will) straight, since the Vatican has chosen to re-open this tempest in a chalice.
When John Lennon remarked in March, 1966, about The Beatles that "...we're more popular than Jesus now..." he was right.
At the time The Beatles were more popular than anything, as far as anyone could tell. But there was more to it than that. In fact, the period marked a distinct turn toward secularism. People were increasingly skeptical of organized religion. Church attendance was down.
The prevalent mood was caught in a Time magazine cover that April - after Lennon made his remark but before it had turned into a controversy - posing the question: "Is God Dead?".
Yes, at that point, at least, The Beatles were more popular than Jesus.
Lennon made the comment to Maureen Cleave in an interview for the London Evening Standard. It was one of many observations in the wide-ranging chat and no one in Britain paid it any attention. Cleave was later to say that they were used to the Beatles - Lennon especially - making deliberately pointed statements.
It wasn't until the comment was lifted from that interview and featured in an American teen publication called Datebook that the backlash started. But even then, it was pretty much confined to the American bible belt of the south. Conservative/religious disc 
jockeys and newspapers started calling for boycotts and burnings of Beatle products. Overnight, teenaged Beatle fans in states like Georgia turned out to smash records and throw their Beatle paraphernalia on bonfires. These gatherings resembled nothing less than Nazi book burnings. The Bible-thumping teens who eagerly turned out to toss their Fab Four fuel onto the flames looked to the rest of us like yokels from another planet.
There's speculation that in pronouncing its forgiveness of The Beatles, the Vatican is making a feeble attempt to lighten its image. Ringo Starr, in the only official Beatle reaction so far, observes that the Vatican has a lot more to talk about than his former band: namely, the scandal over sexually predatory priests.
Still, maybe the Vatican's learned something over the centuries. Some wags have observed that it took a lot less time to absolve The Beatles than Galileo (note to Pope Urban VIII, wherever you are: he was right).
As for me, I'll wager that The Beatles are still more popular than Jesus.
Maureen Cleave's original interview:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/carousel/pob/pob24.html
Lennon's response:
Time magazine's article:
www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,835309,00.html
When John Lennon remarked in March, 1966, about The Beatles that "...we're more popular than Jesus now..." he was right.
At the time The Beatles were more popular than anything, as far as anyone could tell. But there was more to it than that. In fact, the period marked a distinct turn toward secularism. People were increasingly skeptical of organized religion. Church attendance was down.
The prevalent mood was caught in a Time magazine cover that April - after Lennon made his remark but before it had turned into a controversy - posing the question: "Is God Dead?".
Yes, at that point, at least, The Beatles were more popular than Jesus.
Lennon made the comment to Maureen Cleave in an interview for the London Evening Standard. It was one of many observations in the wide-ranging chat and no one in Britain paid it any attention. Cleave was later to say that they were used to the Beatles - Lennon especially - making deliberately pointed statements.
There's speculation that in pronouncing its forgiveness of The Beatles, the Vatican is making a feeble attempt to lighten its image. Ringo Starr, in the only official Beatle reaction so far, observes that the Vatican has a lot more to talk about than his former band: namely, the scandal over sexually predatory priests.
Still, maybe the Vatican's learned something over the centuries. Some wags have observed that it took a lot less time to absolve The Beatles than Galileo (note to Pope Urban VIII, wherever you are: he was right).
As for me, I'll wager that The Beatles are still more popular than Jesus.
Maureen Cleave's original interview:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/carousel/pob/pob24.html
Lennon's response:
Time magazine's article:
www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,835309,00.html
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