This week: The public and professional input period, or evidentiary hearings of the Cohen Commission ends today. The Commission had already wound down, when evidence of a deadly virus present here in the Pacific Northwest was made too public to ignore. It all paints another picture of corporate-government cooperation to obfuscate truth at the expense of the environment and public safety.

 

Listen. Hear.

 

 

It's Monday, December 19th, 2011. You may want to mark that date on your Calendar of Infamy, as it's the last day of the evidentiary hearing stage of the Cohen Commission. Cohen is the long-overdue investigation into the fate of west coast salmon stocks.

 

The public and professional input period, or evidentiary hearings, had already wound down, when evidence of a deadly virus present here was made too public to ignore. And there is the infamy.

 

It turns out now, the federal government has used its power, in the form of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, (CFIA) to intimidate scientists, even as the salmon farming industry attempted to discredit their findings. It all paints another picture of corporate-government cooperation to obfuscate truth at the expense of the environment and public safety.

Ingmar Lee is a long-time environment defender at the front lines of staying the destructive hand of industry and enlightening the ignorant to the great dangers facing his cherished Pacific Northeast ecosystem. Spending years confronting the damage wreaked by industrial logging, he is now making waves against the Tar Sands industries plying the waters off the coast of British Columbia to the peril of every living thing depending on the sea and forests for survival.

Ingmar Lee in the first half.

And; I said, "Hooray" last week when I heard of the death of Christopher Hitchens, as I cheer the departure of all who support the endless wars waged against the, mainly, women and children of the world. Hitchens, for all his accomplished writing, brilliance as public orator, and punishing effectiveness as a pugilistic debater was in the end, if not just, then merely another war monger. A few thoughts on the legacy of Hitch in the second half.

And; Victoria Street Newz publisher and CFUV broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will join us at the bottom of the hour to bring us news from the city's streets and beyond. But first, Ingmar Lee and B.C.'s War of the Waters.
 

G-Radio is dedicated to social justice, the environment, community, and

providing a forum for people and issues not covered in the corporate media.