Invasive Lobsters To The Vancouver Sun, August 7, 2016: If the Hon. Dominic LeBlanc’s bureaucrats and negotiators think that “scientific evidence is far from certain” that American lobsters pose no threat to European lobsters, then they haven’t sought or listened to scientific advice. American lobsters do not occur naturally in Europe and would be a dangerous invasive, alien, exotic species. The two are different species, but can interbreed. The world is full of ecological disasters caused by introduction of exotic species, but we have only to look at British Columbia to see the dangers. These examples are only three of many: exotic milfoil fowling Okanagan Lake, alien knapweeds ruining cattle pastures throughout our interior grasslands and introduced mysid shrimp destroying trout fisheries in Kootenay and Arrow Lakes. No credible scientist would recommend any trade actions that could result in introducing our species into their waters.

Re: What Happens After Mosul: After ISIL is Defeated, Kurdish Forces May Push for Independent Territory, by Matthew Fisher October 18, 2016 to The Vancouver Sun: So what if the Kurds seek independence? The Kurds are the only good guys in this whole cruel, chaotic catastrophe. Saddam Hussein gassed them by the thousands, back when there really were weapons of mass destruction. Yet beyond organizing an effective, semi-autonomous administration of their own territory in northern Iraq in the postwar governance vaccuum, they have never said, or in actions suggested, that they sought territorial expansion or subjugation of others. Their Peshmerga fighters have been the only effective military force on the ground in the region and they have only fought for defense of their land, and to help others under attack by the jihadis. In 2014, when ISIL massacred whole villages of Yasidis except for the young women whom they sold into sex slavery, who came to the aid of survivors clustering on a remote mountain? Not Canada, politically afraid to put “boots on the ground”. Not Iraqi forces, who ran away. Not the USA or the UK, although they dropped supplies from aircrafft. Only the Peshmerga came to save the Yasidis. In Turkey, no doubt the PKK have committed atrocities, but far fewer than the government of Turkey has committed against them in a brutal, sustained campaign of intimidation. But Turkish Kurds have elected members to Turkey’s parlimant, participating in such democracy as is available to them. In Syria, Peshmerga fighters have liberated Kurdish villages from ISIS, but have refused to be drawn into the wider conflicts. Yes, Kurds have been accused of driving Arabs out of their territory in Iraq, but their side of this story is that these were “foreigners” whom Saddam Hussein had forcibly settled in Kurdish territory. Arming Kurds can only serve humanitarian goals in the short term. In the long term it is unlikely to lead to calls for sovereignty, but even if it does, it would solve more problems than it creates. What is wrong with self-determination for a people with their own language and culture who are abused by every country that their ancestral homeland covers?

From August 4, 2015 to The Vancouver Sun: Daphne Braham (Compassionate Canada has lots its way) is right: this is no longer the Canada we love and thought we knew. In 1970 I left a country (USA) that was conflicted internally and going around the world deposing democratically elected presidents and installing dictators. I chose Canada, tranquil internally and known as a neutral peacemaker internationally. I drove to the border and presented my credentials. Immigrants needed 50 points: so many points for a university education (check), so many for a job offer (I was going to a $200/month plus room and board job), so many for being married (the marriage was over, but I still had the license), cash (I had about $200, just enough to prove I wasn’t indigent), and so on. In an hour I was a Landed Immigrant, and in five years, a Citizen. How different now, when people arriving at the border, just like I did, are thrown in jail by the boatload, and immigration has declined to a trickle, even as the need escalates exponentially! Braham quotes former Senator Pat Carney writing to Immigration Minister Chris Alexander suggesting that we “bring in 100,000 of them [Syrian refugees] to Canada immediately,” of the 4,088,078 registered by the United Nations. Canada is a big land with few people and lots of resources. From 2002 to 2006 I worked in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan assessing the impact of 1.4 million refugees that had fled Kuwait in 1990 when Iraq invaded. They came to a country, about the size of British Columbia, with virtually no natural resources, that was still struggling to integrate an influx of about 2.1 million Palestinian refugees after the 1967 and 1973 wars. During 2003, I watched droves of Iraqis fleeing the war debark from the Baghdad–Amman busses, adding another 200,000 to Jordan’s stressed population. By August 2014, some 608,000 Syrian had crossed into Jordan. Their main refugee camp near Mafraq was a pastoral paradise when I saw it last in 2006, shepherds grazing their goats, sheep and camels in a sea of grass. If tiny Jordan, bereft of natural resources, can take in so many millions of desperate people, how can Canada not follow Carney’s advice and accept at least 100,000 immediately, as a first start?

Tuaregs in the Sahara

In our headlong rush to drive Islamic jihadists out of Mali and Algeria, Canada and its allies should take care to distinguish between al Qaida-linked militants and the largely peaceful (if sometimes rebellious), native Tuareg nomads. Tuaregs have legitimate grievances. From the early Islamic period on, they operated vast caravan networks across the Sahara. Besides commodities such salt and silver (Tuaregs are renowned for their silver craftsmanship), they traded books. Wealthy trade centres such as Timbuktu became centres of scholarship. The 600 year-old university there was capable of housing 25,000 students and had one of the largest libraries in the world with half a million or more manuscripts. Today the university, mosques and private collections still hold a treasure trove of ancient knowledge and history, earning UNESCO designation as a World Heritage Site. The colonial powers in the 19th and early 20th Centuries developed farming communities in the Sahel, the broad grassland that runs right across Africa south of the Sahara. They brought black slaves and serfs from further south northward to farm, depriving the Tuareg and other Saharan/Sahelian nomad peoples of their dry-season foraging areas. After the Colonial period, the traditional Tuareg homeland was divided among half a dozen modern nations. In the 1960s, misguided international aid agencies drilled wells and further encouraged “sedentarization” of the nomads, resulting in overgrazing around natural oases and water developments. Resulting desertification disrupted the pastoral patterns and caused large-scale loss of wildlife habitat—this is why big game animals such as addax, oryx, gazelles, ibex and Barbary sheep, which were a key part of Tuareg culture, have disappeared. Loss of forage for livestock resulted in repeated famines in various parts of the Sahel since 1968. The famines of 1973–1975 and 1984 were especially severe and burned into our minds the plight of starving people in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Biafra (now returned to Nigeria) and other Sahelian countries. Climate change that began to be felt in the 1980s, first identified by Canadian wildlife biologists A. R. E. Sinclair and J. M. Fryxell in a 1985 journal article, made it worse. The human tragedies were caused not by lack of rainfall, but by massive starvation of livestock because of overgrazing. Tuaregs resisted French colonial invasion of their homelands in the late 19th Century and some have been rebelling off and on in various Northern African countries ever since. But many just want to make a living and keep their culture. Although largely prevented from migrating south in the dry season, they still bring their livestock north to the mountains of Morocco, where their camps and flocks of sheep, goats and camels, sometimes numbering more than 1,000 animals, are a colourful part of the scenery. The markets in towns all along the northern edge of the Sahara are enlivened with Tuareg nomads selling beautiful handicrafts. For a modern view of Tuaregs, read “In Search of Nomads” by John Ure,” 2003. The nomads are not the aggressors in the current crisis, but victims. If anyone doubts this, just recall only months ago when foreign jihadists took overran Timbuktu. In an echo of the Taliban destruction of the giant Buddha sculptures at Bamiyan, Afghanistan, in 2001, al Qaida-linked militants began destroying ancient monuments in Timbuktu that the Tuareg people had proudly maintained for centuries. This is not to say that Tuareg individuals or groups have not joined the Islamists’ militancy; or vice- versa for pragmatic reasons on both sides. But Islamists need Tuaregs (for their camel transport and desert refuges) more than Tuaregs need Islamists. Nomadic cultures, a crucial step in human evolution and a unique component of modern cultural diversity, are disappearing everywhere that they occur because of their inherent conflict with expanding settlements and development. If Western governments and our African allies treat Tuaregs sensitively, there is an opportunity to separate the Islamists from their local support while addressing long-standing governance issues.

British Columbia Carbon Credits

From 24 March 2012: “Carbon credits! Honey, we can make millions! All we have to do is refrain from logging around the cabin. The government will give us money.” “That’s crazy.” “No, it’s a government program. Our 17 acres covered with trees...that’s a lot of carbon dioxide getting sucked out of the atmosphere.” “They’re just little trees. They won’t be big enough to log for two hundred years.” “Doesn’t matter. Trees are trees. Each one could make a 2 x 4, at least. Anyway, no one is measuring them. ” “But the first eight years we owned the property, we did nothing but burn logging slash left by the previous owners. Didn’t that emit carbon dioxide?” “That was ‘site preparation.’ Remember those 100 Douglas-fir seedlings we planted? Reforestation! More carbon credits.” “That was 1992. The carbon credit law was only passed in 2007.” “That’s the beauty of it: it’s retroactive!” “Yeah, but they’re still baby trees. What about all the grown-up trees we cut for building logs?” “Right! Those logs are still there, sequestering away. Four sides, 10 logs high: 40 trees. At a cubic meter of carbon dioxide per tree, that’s 40 cubic meters per year of carbon dioxide we’re sequestering...every year!” “...and the trees we cut for firewood every year? That pours carbon dioxide up the chimney?” “It stops us from using coal! More carbon credits! We’ll make a fortune!" “That’s crazy.” “Honey, it’s saving the planet. And it’s the law here in BC.”

Destruction of Aleppo

From 5 August 2012: Even knowing that it is unconscionably tacky to bemoan a personal loss when people are fighting and dying in the streets, the battle for Aleppo hurts me personally. It is yet another of the world’s most exciting places I’ll never see because it is being ruined by war. In all the commentary in the news media lately, not a single report that I have read has mentioned the ancient, historic souq, or market, of old Aleppo. It is the largest covered market in the world, with an approximate length of 13 kilometers and labyrinthine alleyways, many covered by ancient stone arches, adding to a total length of 32 kilometers. At 50 centuries, it is the world’s oldest. A souq in any language is the soul of a country. Tourists flock to Istanbul to see its famous, ancient spice market, which would fit into a small corner of Aleppo’s souq. I have never been to Aleppo. While working in Jordan 10 years ago, I read an article about the souq of Aleppo in the Jordanian Times and resolved to see it sometime. Alas, with the Syrian rebels digging into the old city and battling the government with captured tanks while government jets and helicopters bombard it, I fear there may not be much left to see when the fighting stops. Aleppo’s souq is the latest in a long line of the world’s most valuable cultural heritage sites ruined by war. The first on my personal wish list to fall was the Khyber Pass between Afghanistan and Pakistan. I read about it in 1962 in a short story by Dorothy Gilman Butters in the Ladies Home Journal, “Sorrow rides a fast horse.” In it, a mother, grief-stricken from the death of her husband, takes her two children on a whirl-wind trip around the world. In the Khyber Pass, her family and their elderly guide are captured by bandits. Their leader speaks to the guide, who translates. “Are they going to capture us?” she asks anxiously. “They already have, “says the guide. They don't want just the money, the food, and the donkeys. They want the woman and the children. The guide says sadly, “It must by your qismat—your fate—to stop here.” She says harshly, “My qismat? Tell this man I must travel like the wind—that is my qismat. Tell him that Sorrow rides behind me on a fast horse—if he listens closely, he may hear the hoof beats. Tell him that if he captures me, he will capture Sorrow as well—because where I go Sorrow goes and where I stop, Sorrow will stop.” The bandits confer. Their leader finally makes a statement. The guide translates: “He says it has been a hard year, with many people dead in their village. Sheep have sickened and died. He says they do not wish for more Sorrow. If Sorrow follows behind you then you must leave these mountains at once. You must not stop even to sleep.” To ensure their prompt departure, the bandits guide them through the Khyber Pass. After reading this story at age 15, I wanted to see the Khyber Pass for myself. Sadly, I waited too long and Sorrow returned. Traders on the Silk Road traversed it. Darius the Great, King of Persia from 522 to 486 BC, took his army through it. So did Alexander the Great in 326 BC. In 1220 Genghis Khan led his Mongol army through it to conquer Arabia. Britain fought three wars over it from 1839 to 1919. Rudyard Kipling immortalized it in “Ballad of the King’s Jest”: “When spring-time flushes the desert grass, Our kafilas wind through the Khyber Pass. Lean are the camels but fat the frails, Light are the purses but heavy the bales, As the snowbound trade of the North comes down To the market-square of Peshawur town.” Kipling set the one of the central events in his book, Kim, in the Khyber Pass and called it “a sword cut through the mountains.” The book describes “the great game,” the cold war between Britain and Russia for imperial hegemony in Afghanistan. Winston Churchill, then a young newspaper correspondent, in 1897 said of the Khyber Pass, “Each rock and hill along the pass had a story to tell! “ In December, 1979, when Russia seized Afghanistan, one of their invasion routes was eastward from Kabul through the Khyber Pass. In the 1980s, the mujahedeen used it to attack the Russians. In 2001, the USA used it to attack the Taliban. The world was outraged when the Taliban destroyed the monumental statues of the Buddha at Bamiyan, but hardly murmured when the Baghdad Archaeological Museum was left unprotected by invading American forces two years later. That museum, founded by Gertrude Bell nearly a century ago, was another on my list. Bell was a British adventurer and archaeologist who in 1913 defied Ottoman authorities in Damascus, bought some camels, hired a guide, and marched into the desert in search of rumoured wonders of the ancient world. Mapping and cataloguing ancient ruins, along the way she met and befriended the Shaykhs of the major Bedouin tribes in the Arabian Peninsula. She escaped Turkish authorities near what is now Amman, Jordan, and was jailed in Ha’il, in what is now Saudi Arabia, by the Emir Muhammad al Rashid. Her writings opened up the Arabian deserts to the world, and her knowledge of the Bedouin tribes made her a valuable mentor to C. E. Lawrence (“of Arabia”, who was no scholar and just in it for the glory) and advisor to Winston Churchill and the other Western leaders in the First World War and its aftermath. It was she who actually put pen to paper and drew the boundaries of the new nations of Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. Her friendship with King Faisal facilitated founding of the Baghdad Archaeological Museum, using her own collection as a start. For nearly a century it was the best in the world for Middle East history and prehistory. Now the museum, like the artifacts it once housed, is a relic. Another place I always wanted to see was Timbuktu, in what is now Mali. Although its very name evokes, in Western culture, one of the most remote places on the planet, it was, since the 12th Century, a center of Arab scholarship. It hosts an Islamic university and houses tens of thousands of priceless manuscripts from a time when Europe had hardly emerged from the Dark Ages. In April of this year it was overrun by Tuareg rebels, and just weeks ago, in July, Islamists began destroying ancient tombs of Muslim saints. Timbuktu no doubt will still be worth visiting when peace returns, but it won’t be the same. This has happened so often in my life that I feel as if the culture of my species is being bled dry. When the Japanese occupied Korea in the Second World War, they destroyed and stole much of the country’s ancient heritage; and during the Cultural Revolution in China, zealots destroyed countless thousands of Buddhist temples. I’ve seen some in both countries that were later rebuilt, but there is a sadness in seeing only modern reconstructions. Each time, we all lose something precious. It is the cultural equivalent of the ancient Chinese torture, “death by a thousand cuts.” As a child, I read about the splendour of the ancient monuments at Angkor Wat, an ancient Khmer kingdom in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge, for all their other failings, protected it, but after their fall in 1979, in the governance vacuum, an industrial-scale army of thieves stripped most of its beautiful carvings and statues. I finally did see Angkor Wat, but the missing statues and art, crudely hacked from the stones, were so depressing that I almost wish I hadn’t. In the 18th through early 20th Centuries, European and North African wars were led by aristocrats, and these educated gentlemen went to great lengths to avoid destroying the cultural heritage of their enemies, realizing that war is transitory and heritage is forever. I doubt that the military officer training at Sandhurst,Saint-Cyr, West Lincoln, Dresden, Anapolis and West Point covers these subjects in much detail. All war is wrong, but war that targets cultural heritage is especially heinous. It is time to re-introduce a more sensitive tone to military campaigns in all venues possible (such as international treaties and officer training) and elevate the level of cultural crimes in international courts to crimes against humanity. ___________________

Conservative government destroys good science

On June 7, 2012, I maile the following letter to Mr. Ashfield with copies to the Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Minister Kent: The Hon. Keith Ashfield, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans House of Commons Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6 Dear Mr. Ashfield: Not being a fisheries or aquatic biologist, you might think my colleagues and I would have scant knowledge of or interest in the Experimental Lakes. Not so. In my career, as a biologist, section head and division manager with Environment Canada, I have had many times to hire biologists with fisheries, aquatic biology, or limnology training. The first thing I looked at on their applications was whether they had Experimental Lakes experience during university. That was the way to know that they had both superior training by Canada’s elite science faculty, and real-world experience. I could depend on these young scientists to recognize a Daphnia when they saw one, to know a hypo- from a hyperlimnion, and to fix an outboard motor when it konked on the way home from a survey. Even if their jobs had nothing to do with aquatic biology, I knew that these were the best people to serve Environment Canada, and the country. The Experimental Lakes sites and program have produced generations of Canada’s top scientists and were the foundation for innumerable masters’ and PhD theses and scientific publications by scholars from all over the world. Students and scientists working there discovered the effects of phosphorus in detergents and acid rain, allowing my former Department to eliminate these scourges of lake ecosystems. It is the best and longest running lake biology experiment in the world—there is nothing else like it. It would be short-sighted indeed to cancel funding for it. Sincerely, Lee Harding, PhD cc: The Hon. Stephen Harper, Prime Minister The Hon. Peter Kent, Minister of the Environment