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If a commentary in the reactionary Washington Times tried to portray President Bush as an environmentalist, surely you'd
- question the motives
- challenge the sources
- carefully examine the spin
- do your best to decipher the ORWELLIAN LANGUAGE
- and you'd critically question the article's conclusions.
Wouldn't you????
Pasted below is an article published days ago in The Washington Times titled - "Bush the environmentalist?" It is about the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument --- the monument recently created by President Bush and welcomed with unquestioning support from just about everyone except me. On the day this monument was announced, I pointed out that there was "a hook in the Velveeta" and then, in a series of postings, went on the explain the nature of the hook.
Perhaps the appended article from The Washington Times, when read with the appropriate filters, will help reveal that hook to those who've not yet seen it.
It is a very big hook of unusual importance to those promoting the neoliberal agenda. Privatize the waters and the land will follow. That is the agenda --- is it not???
Sadly, subscribers to The Washington Times are unlikely to get anything from this story other than the message that George W. Bush did something good for the environment and that it's time "environmental extremists" stop dissing their man.
Scott
"During times of universal deceit, telling
the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-George Orwell
-------------- begin quoted -------------------
The Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20060627-090829-7599r.htm
Bush the environmentalist?
By Jane Lubchenco/David Festa
Published June 28, 2006
"The conservation of our natural resources and their proper use
constitute the fundamental problem which underlies almost every other
problem of our national life," President Theodore Roosevelt told
Congress in 1907.
A century later, President Bush literally looked over his shoulder at
a portrait of Teddy Roosevelt that hangs in the White House as he
shocked and awed his environmental critics by announcing earlier this
month the establishment of the world's largest marine conservation
area. The new Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument
will safeguard a remote, biologically rich string of islands, submerged
lands and their surrounding waters, totaling over 84 million acres --
38 times the size of Yellowstone Park.
This monument is an extraordinary victory for the environment and for
the recognition of Native Hawaiian traditional and cultural practices,
unparalleled in history. It's the result of 100,000 letters and 100
public meetings generated by a Hawaii-based network, or hui, of native
Hawaiian cultural practitioners, commercial, recreational and
subsistence fishers, kupuna (elders), divers, dedicated researchers and
local environmentalists with a national and international reach.
However, the need for public input is not over. Continued public
involvement will be of vital importance to ensure the creation of
strong regulations and an appropriate management plan. Securing funding
for strong enforcement and to support the newly expanded role of the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will be crucial to ensure that these
visionary protections do indeed protect this special place forever.
However, the story is actually even bigger than the headline- grabbing
pro-environmental action. In his remarks announcing the new monument,
President Bush outlined a common sense approach that will "halt the
steady decline of our nation's oceans and coasts" described by his U.S.
Commission on Ocean Policy and secure a bright future for sportsmen,
nature watchers and seafood lovers.
This approach has three parts.
1) Establish clear ground rules for how recreational and commercial
fishing should be conducted. That is what the Senate- passed bill to
reauthorize our federal fisheries management law -- known as the
Magnuson-Stevens Act -- would accomplish.
2) Align incentives so that ocean conservation can make good business
sense. The president and the Senate are committed to implementing a
market-based system of fishing quotas in which fishermen and
communities can have a stake in creating a sustainable supply of fish.
This is a step in the right direction.
3) Protect important areas of the ocean. That is what the president
has done by establishing the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands monument. As
the president said in his speech, "Our duty is to use the land and seas
wisely, or sometimes not use them at all." Setting aside areas to serve
as sanctuaries for ocean life can help recharge depleted fisheries,
recover the lost bounty of oceans, preserve and restore habitats,
provide important places for research, and allow us to pass on a better
ocean to our children and grandchildren.
President Bush's action demonstrated a genuine understanding of the
huge opportunity we have to reverse generations of decline in our
oceans. But time is short. The president and Congress need to take a
number of crucial steps.
The president should lobby the House of Representatives to pass the
Senate-passed version of the Magnuson-Stevens bill, so he can sign it
immediately. Already five years overdue, it is time to update our
national fisheries law.
Congress needs to overhaul the proposed Senate legislation governing
offshore fish farming, the National Offshore Aquaculture Act of 2005.
The current bill would establish flawed ground rules and economic
incentives that hurt, not help, ocean stewardship. Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger and California have shown the way with a state law that
delivers what the president asked for: fish farming that can provide a
"healthy source of food and reduce pressure on the ocean ecosystems."
It's time to put ocean management on a sound economic footing. The
president's Ocean Commission and the Pew Oceans Commission called for a
new ocean business plan, one that provides adequate resources for
research, enforcement and, where needed, assistance to fishing
communities and sportsmen to help them manage better. Yet, neither the
president nor Congress has acted on this recommendation.
The president's action is a late, but warmly welcomed start on ocean
stewardship. He has two and a half years left before he leaves office.
Teddy Roosevelt fit 18 National Monuments and many other conservation
actions into that length of time. In other words, it's not too late for
President Bush to create a legacy that our grandparents will talk about
with their grandkids while baiting a hook, putting a fish on the grill
or enjoying the exotic beauty of wild ocean denizens.
Jane Lubchenco, the Valley professor of marine biology at Oregon State
University, served on the Pew Oceans Commission and is a member of the
Joint Oceans Commission Initiative. David Festa is the oceans program
director for Environmental Defense and served during the Clinton
administration as director of policy and strategic planning at the
Department of Commerce.
----END---
For a short, somewhat humorous, primer on the issue of privatizing the
oceans, I recommend:
http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue27/BenYami27.htm .
For something longer and far more depressing, I recommend:
http://geog-www.sbs.ohio-state.edu/faculty/bmansfield/web/paper-pdfs%5CGeoforum-2004.pdf
Here are the first words from the introduction to this academic paper:
To the extent that neoliberalism, with its calls for letting ''the
market'' address myriad social and economic woes, has become the
dominant model for political economic practice today, it should be
expected that environmental governance, too, would be shaped by the
neoliberal imperative to deregulate, liberalize trade and investment,
marketize, and privatize Agnew and Corbridge, 1995; Overbeek, 1993;
Peck, 2001), and evidence of neoliberal approaches to the environment
is easily found (e.g. Anderson and Leal, 2001).
And here are a few words from my original post on this topic:
I suspect passage of Magnuson-Stevens is the hook. Why --- because
the Free-Market privatization folks at PERC have recently praised
President Bush for his environmental stand on fisheries
http://www.perc.org/perc.php?id=765 and PERC's Don Leal was recently
appointed to the President's Fisheries council
http://www.perc.org/perc.php?id=751 and because the issue of Ocean
Fisheries privatization is such a high priority for PERC
http://www.perc.org/topics.php?topic=9 and because the political fate
of Magnuson-Stevens has merited recent attention on PERC's website
http://www.perc.org/perc.php?id=795.
And that's not the only hook I suspect. Read the Whitehouse's
announcement and you'll see a lot of talk about cooperative
conservation, building a strong American off-shore aquaculture industry
and more. I suspect we're dealing with at least a treble hook.
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