2011-02-23 Doughton, Sandi; Heim, Kristi. “Does Gates funding of media taint objectivity?” Seattle Times.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was founded in 1994. By 2007 they were listed as among the US most generous philanthropists. “Better-known for its battles against global disease, the Gates Foundation has also become a force in journalism. The foundation’s contributions to nonprofit and for-profit media have helped spur coverage of global health, development and education issues. But some people worry that its growing support of media organizations blurs the line between journalism and advocacy.”

Davies, Nick. 2008-07. “Qui veut en finir avec le modèle de la BBC: L’émotion n’existe pas? Alors, inventez-la!” Le monde diplomatique.

2008 Guardian journalist Nick Davies published Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media in which he critically examined the changing face of journalism in the UK since the 1970s. This reporter with a distinguished record in investigative journalism claims that “the British newspaper industry, its regulators and the PR machine that supplies it” accept, report and spread “lies, distortions and propaganda” in a culture of “churnalism” not objective, investigative reporting (Riddell 2008). “Il documente les règles permettant à n’importe quel rédacteur d’usiner une « information » sans chair, sans risque et parfois sans vérité — mais respectueuse des principes du marketing : privilégier les enquêtes au rabais, éviter de froisser les institutions, se porter au devant des désirs supposés du lecteur, alimenter la panique morale… (Davies 2008-07).” He revealed how the public has come to accept misinformation (the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq) as it is so widely spread by a mass media culture in which fewer journalists are hired and those that remain are discouraged from taking the time to verify the credibility of sources.

Riddell, Mary. 2008-02-03. “Failures of the Fourth Estate: Flat Earth News by Nick Davies turns the spotlight on the workings of the press.” The Observer.

Davies, Nick. 2008. Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media. London: Chatto & Windus.

Ligaya, Armina. 2007-09-07. “Media monopoly: Media consolidation: Can Aussie model stop the moguls? CBC News in Depth.

CBC. 2007. “Media Ownership in Canada: a timeline.”

2006 in An Inconvenient Truth, directed by Davis Guggenheim, Al Gore described how the mass media provides misinformation about consensus in the scientific community regarding climate change 2004 showed. He contrasts the findings of 928 Science magazine survey of all peer-reviewed scientific studies of climate change in which there were no articles questioning the fact that global warming caused by increased carbon dioxide in the earth’s environment is occurring at a rate and speed greater than any climate event in the past. Concurrently 53 percent of articles, etc in the mass media articles concluded that there is conflicting and/or inadequate evidence regarding global warming. Until Gore’s film was released consumers of the mass media who relied solely on them for information regarding climate change received deliberate misinformation preventing them from responding democratically to environmental risks.

2001 In the wake of 9/11 there was a dramatic increase in the number of blogs.

2001 The producers of the series West Wing created a pivotal episode entitled Isaac and Ishmael where real, virtual and everyday embodied real were inextricably linked. The series exists in the liminal space occupied by docudrama, fictionalized journalism, news as fiction, psychodrama, realpolitical analysands, flesh and blood real and the imaginary real. The series reveals behind-the-scenes ethical sell-offs of the fictional (or nearly real) political epicentre of the planet. The Democratic President capable of blinking has a real world Ivy League CV . He is an economist trained in the London School of Economics.

Hackett, Robert A.; Gruneau, Richard. 2000. The Missing News: Filters and Blind Spots in Canada. Ottawa: Centre for Policy Alternatives/Garamond Press Inc.

2000 The Sarejevo Commitment At the beginning of the 21st

Century men and women of the media register their commitment to integrity and public service. This document was launched at a World

2000-09-30 Media Assembly, SARAJEVO 2000, and signed by participants on 30 September 2000.

We, men and women of the media – professionals at all levels, from publishers and producers to cub reporters and students of journalism; from the print and digital media, television and radio, book publishing, cinema and theatre, advertising and public relations, music and the performing and creative arts – met here in the bruised, historic and beautiful city of Sarajevo, pay our homage and respect to the millions of humanity whom we inform, entertain and educate.

Late 1990s The Federal Government cut the CBC budget dramatically. CBC cut its workforce by a third.

Hackett, Robert A.; Zhao, Yuezhi. 1998. Sustaining Democracy? Journalism and the Politics of Objectivity. Toronto: Garamond Press Inc.

Bird; Roger?; Winter, James. 1998-01-01. “The End of News: How the News Is Being Swamped by Information, Manipulation and Entertainment. And How This is a Threat to Open, Democratic Society.” Canadian Journal of Communication [Online], 23(4). January 1. Available: http://www.cjc-online.ca/viewarticle.php?id=493.

Barlow, Maude; Winter, James. 1997. The Big Black Book: The Essential Views of Conrad and Barbara Amiel Black. Toronto: Stoddart.

Bagdikian, Ben H. 1997. The Media Monopoly. 5th ed. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Herman, Edward, and Robert McChesney. 1997. The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Global Capitalism. London, UK: Cassell.

Winter, James. 1996. Democracy’s Oxygen: How Corporations Control the News. Montreal: Black Rose Books.

Menzies, Heather. 1996. Whose Brave New World? The Information Highway and the New Economy. Toronto: Between The Lines.

1996-05 ”The Winds of Change conference, which took place in Calgary in May 1996, brought together approximately 70 leading right-wing thinkers and activists in an effort to bring unity to conservative forces before the next federal election, expected in 1997. The goal, according to organizer David Frum, was to discuss the prospects for a merger between the Reform and Progressive Conservative parties. The stark reality facing Conservatives is that a continued fracturing of the right-wing vote is likely to ensure not only a victory for Jean Chretien’s Liberals in 1997 but that the Liberals remain in power indefinitely. Frum believed that a vigorous airing of views behind closed doors, steps to develop a common agenda, and the bon amie of personal contact would create the momentum that was needed. . . . First, in the 1980s and 1990s the corporate community has funnelled considerable resources into so-called think tanks. The Vancouver-based Fraser Institute (1974), the C. D. Howe Institute in Toronto (1958), and the Canada West Foundation (1970) in Calgary are among the most influential policy-oriented research institutes. They often make headlines with timely and sometimes controversial reports on public policy issues, do contract work for governments, hold conferences and seminars, and do their own community outreach and media liaison work. Right-wingers might argue that the left in Canada has its own think tanks in the form of some university-based research centres. Of course, even the most objective scholarship might seem threatening to those who hold strong ideological views. These centres lack both the financing and the muscle that is available to the corporate-sponsored institutes. Indeed, as university budgets and federal funding for basic research have been cut back, corporate money has become more important in financing research. Corporations tend to support projects from which they can benefit directly (Taras 1996).

1996 Hollinger took over Southam, Canada’s largest newspaper chain.

1996 The US Congress passed The Telecommunications Act that “raised the ceiling on the size of national TV networks and virtually removed restrictions on the ownership of different types of media in the same market (Hackett and Zhao 1998:4).”

1995 – 1996 There were unprecedented multibillion-dollar-mergers in North American media.

1995 Sovereignty Referendum in Quebec

1995 “In 1995, according to Project Censored, the U.S. press underplayed or ignored these stories, among others: “In 1995, according to Project Censored, the U.S. press underplayed or ignored these stories, among others: the massive deregulation of telecommunications; $167 billion in annual subsidies to business, whose elimination could enable the U.S. government to balance its budget without slashing social programs; lax enforcement of U.S. child labour laws, resulting in thousands of injuries and even death of children in the workplace; $100 billion or more lost annually in medical fraud; ABC’s cancellation of a hard-hitting documentary on the tobacco industry at the same time as a tobacco company filed a $10 billion libel suit against Capital Cities/ABC; the U.S. chemical industry’s fight to prevent the banning of methyl bromide, a toxic zone-killing pesticide; the death through error or negligence of up to 180,000 patients in US hospitals each year (Hackett and Zhao 1998;182).”

McQuaig, Linda. 1995. Shooting the Hippo: Death by Deficit and Other Canadian Myths. Toronto: Viking.

Silva, Edward. 1995. More Perishable than Lettuce or Tomatoes: Labour Law Reform and Toronto’s Newspapers. Halifax, NS: Fernwood.

Hackett, Robert; Gilsdorf, Bill; Savage; Philip. 1992. “News Balance Rhetoric: The Fraser Institute’s Political Appropriation of Content Analysis.” Canadian Journal of Communication. 17:1: 15-36.

Kellner, Douglas. 1992. The Persian Gulf TV War. San Francisco, CA: Westview Press.

Hackett, Robert. 1991. News and Dissent: The Press and the Politics of Peace in Canada. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Franklin, Ursula. 1990. The Real World of Technology. Concord, ON: Anansi.

Chomsky, Noam. 1989. Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies. Toronto: CBC Enterprises.

Hallin, Daniel. 1989. The “Uncensored War”: The Media and Vietnam. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Herman, Edward, and Noam Chomsky. 1988. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon.

Postman, Neil. 1985. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Showbusiness. New York: Penguin.

Bagdikian, Ben H. 1971. The Information Machines: Their Impact on Men and the Media. New York: Harper & Row.

1970s “The late French social theorists Michel Foucault, during the 1970s, wrote of “discursive regimes” — of how power is imbricated with knowledge, not by directly imposing censorship or coercion from outside, but indirectly and internally, through the criteria and practices that “govern” the production of statements. [] Foucault collapses all truth claims into power, self-interest and the internal validity rules of particular discourses (Hackett and Zhao 1998:7) (Hackett and Zhao 1998:6)”

Tichenor, Phil. 1970s.

CBC Radio. 1970. “How free is Canada’s press?” March 23, 1970.

Grant, George. 1969. Technology and Empire. Concord, ON: Anansi.

Simpson, Jeffrey. 2010-07-14. “Relax, folks, we won’t be channelling Fox News North.” Globe and Mail. Jeffrey claimed that Kory Teneycke’s proposed SunTV would be angry, pithy and loud conservatism not populist as Teneycke claimed.

Taber, Jane. 2010-09-01. “Margaret Atwood takes on ‘Fox News North’.” Globe and Mail. “Atwood to sign a petition demanding that Quebecor’s SunTV news channel proposed by Sun Media be stopped by the Canadian government.” Quebecor is owned by media tycoon Pierre Péladeau.

Who’s Who

Pierre Karl Péladeau owns Quebecor which owns Sun Media. IN 2009 Quebecor hired Kory Teneycke, PM Stephen Harper’s former director of communications, as its vice-president of development. Quebecor owns Sun Media and its desired new channel, to be called SunTV, has been dubbed “Tory TV” and “Fox News North” by its critics (Taber 2010-09-01). Both Teneycke and Péladeau argue against excessive government. Péladeau argued against more basic cable channels. Péladeau owns both Vidéotron TVA. Péladeau promotes competition.

Sacre Blues: An Unsentimental Journey Through Quebec By Taras Grescoe

Quebecor hired Kory Teneycke, Mr. Harper’s former director of communications, as its vice-president of development. Quebecor owns Sun Media and its desired new channel, to be called SunTV, has been dubbed “Tory TV” and “Fox News North” by its critics (Taber 2010-09-01). “The idea of a broadcast offering that drew on the Sun Media paper and web machine isn’t entirely new, and when Mr. Teneycke pitched Quebecor chief Pierre Péladeau on the idea, he said, the tycoon was intrigued enough to give him a contract in 2009 to build the business case (more).

“Measurement of hours worked by industry, as labour is the single most important factor of production. Currently, there are many problems associated with the accurate measurement of hours worked, in particular when disaggregated by industry. Specific challenges in this context include successfully combining information from the two main statistical sources, enterprise and household surveys, and measuring labour input and compensation of selfemployed persons. A cross-classification of hours worked by productivity-relevant characteristics of the workforce (education, experience, skills, etc.) would also be highly desirable (OECD).”

“Labour remains the single most important input to many production processes. From a perspective of production analysis, and ignoring quality differences for the moment, labour input is most appropriately measured as the total number of hours worked. Simple headcounts of employed persons will hide changes in average hours worked, caused by the evolution of part-time work or the effect of variations in overtime, absence from work or
shifts in normal hours. However, a number of statistical issues arise regarding the measurement of hours actually worked. One of them is the best use of available statistical sources, in particular establishment and household surveys. Consequently, the quality of hours-worked estimates, and their degree of international comparability, are not always clear (education, experience, skills, etc.) would also be highly desirable. . . Because a worker’s contribution to the production process consists of his/her “raw” labour (or physical presence) and services from his/her human capital, one hour worked by one person does not necessarily constitute the same amount of labour input as one hour worked by another person. There may be differences in skills, education, health and professional experience that lead to large differences in the contribution of different types of
labour. A differentiation of labour input by type of skills is particularly desirable if one wants to capture the effects of a changing quality of labour on the growth of output and productivity. Explicit differentiation is, however, data- and research-intensive. As a minimum, time series of hours worked, broken down by one differentiating characteristic have to be available, alongside corresponding statistics for average compensation, broken
down by the same characteristic. Measurement problems are compounded when explicit differentiation of labour input by industry is sought. Aggregation of undifferentiated labour input across detailed industries can provide some form of implicit differentiation.. . . Training expenses. Distinguishing labour from capital income is but one of a number of other measurement issues associated with the measurement of labour compensation. One such issue
concerns training expenses that constitute a form of investment in human capital. The acquisition of knowledge, skills and qualifications increases the productive potential of the individual concerned and is a source of future economic benefit to them and to their employer. Different from physical assets, however, investment in training does not lead to the acquisition of assets by an employer that can be easily identified, quantified and valued for balance-sheet purposes. Thus, the SNA 93 states that they continue to be classified as intermediate consumption, even though it is recognised that they may bring future benefits (OECD).”

1997-07-02 East Asia crisis began in Thailand.

1995 John Vickers. 1995. Concepts of Competition. in the economics of imperfect information, imperfect competition, and dynamic ….. 22 The following discussion is based on Meyer and Vickers (1994). ….. explicitly about the dynamic process of competition. One can ask how the … In the last 10 years the most important advances in the theoretical analysis of …

1989 The Greenwald-Stiglitz theory of adjustment provided an explanation based on capital market imperfections arising …

1986 Bruce C. Greenwald & Joseph E. Stiglitz: “Externalities in Economies with Imperfect Information and Incomplete Markets,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 90, May 1986, 229-264. 1985 Greenwald, B and J. E. Stiglitz. “Externalities in Economies with Self-Selection Constraints. Princeton. Under which set of circumstances is an economy Pareto efficient? What are pecuniary externalities? moral hazard,

“There is not a complete set of markets; information is imperfect; the commodities sold in any market are not homogeneous in all relevant aspects; it is costly to ascertain differences among the items; individuals do not get paid on a piece rate basis; and there is an element of insurance (implicit or explicit) in almost all contractual arrangements, in labor, capital, and product markets. In virtually all markets there are important instances of signaling and screening. Individuals must search for the commodities that they wish to purchase, firms must search for the workers who they wish to hire, and workers must search for the firm for which they wish to work. We frequently arrive at a store only to find that it is out of inventory;” or to find a queue waiting to be served. The cumulative effects of such small instances can be very large. Stiglitz argued that Pareto improvements could be effected through government policies such as commodity taxes. Their methodology identified the presence of inefficiencies and enabled them to identify the appropriate direction of policy intervention and observable measures of their successful application. distortions: information imperfection, market failure, knowledge of the cross elasticities of demand unavailable, ex net effect of accident rates related to taxation of alcohol; distortions include imperfect information, incomplete markets, the costs of obtaining information and running markets are real. In large economies even though the action of an individual has a very small effect on price, the change in price affects a large number of individuals and the total welfare effect is the product of the magnitude of the change in the price times the number of individuals who are affected. This does not go to zero as the size of the economy gets larger.”

1973 “Another point of debate in the 1970s and 1980s was whether output should be measured net or gross of depreciation. Depreciation measures the loss of the market value of a capital good between consecutive periods. One notes that this gross/net distinction of output relates to depreciation and not
to the treatment of intermediate inputs. Denison (1974) advocated a concept of output net of economic depreciation on the grounds that it traces improvements in welfare more closely than output measures that are gross of depreciation. A group of researchers, including Dale Jorgenson and Zvi Griliches, on the other hand, argued that output must be measured gross of depreciation if it is to conform to the logic of production theory. Hulten (1973) provided a theoretical underpinning for the Jorgenson/Griliches approach. Today, a large majority of productivity research uses output measures
gross of depreciation (OECD).

1942 The economic theory of productivity measurement goes back to the work of Jan Tinbergen (1942) and independently, to Robert Solow (1957). They formulated productivity measures in a production function context and linked them to the analysis of economic growth (OECD).

1920s “Perhaps the clearest link between economist’s changing views of competition and their support of antitrust in the post 1920s era is found in the structure-conduct performance paradigm of industrial organization theory (DiLorenzo and High 1988: 431).”

1911-1913 “Edgeworth’s analysis of the law of returns is one of his most important contributions to economic theory. In fact he examines increasing returns in relation to marginal and average costs, separately considered (Edgeworth 1911a, 1911b). Moreover, his 1913 article
has probably the first diagram of the U-shaped average and marginal cost curve, and the demonstration that the marginal costs curve intersects a U-shaped average costs curve at its minimum (1913: 214, fig. 3).” Edgeworth, F.Y. (1911a). Contribution to the theory of railway rates. The Economic Journal. 21 (83): 346-370; Edgeworth, F.Y. (1911b). Contribution to the theory of railway rates.-II. The Economic Journal,. 21 (84): 551-571; Edgeworth, F.Y. (1912). Contribution to the theory of railway rates.-III. The Economic Journal. 22 (86): 198-218; Edgeworth, F.Y. (1913). Contribution to the theory of railway rates. IV. The Economic Journal. 23 (90): 206-226.

1976 The Chicago school of economics rejected government regulation of natural monopoly, public enterprise, and any antitrust policy beyond preventing the restriction of output, combating cartels, horizontal mergers and predatory practices (Posner 1976, Bork 1978) (more).

1899 Norwegian-American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) published his influential book entitled The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions which is considered to be the first iteration of the term “neoclassical economics.” In neoclassical economics, the economic value is based on the relationship between costs of production and “subjective elements,” later called “supply” and “demand.” This came to be known as the Marginal Revolution in economics, and the overarching theory that developed from these ideas came to be called neoclassical economics. (Weintraub, E. Roy. 2002. History of Political Economy). Veblen observed that menial and labor-intensive jobs (that actually, pragmatically contributed more to society according to Veblen) were assigned to the lowest classes who were subjugated. Members of the emerging ruling classes (Veblen’s leisure class) emulated the behavior in more traditional higher-status groups (priests and nobility and their retinue, for example) . The higher status of the leisure class was reflected in 1899 by the fact that white-collar workers had higher salaries than manual laborers. He noted that businessmen do not produce goods and services, but simply shift them around whilst taking a profit. He thus argued that the modern businessman is no different from a barbarian, in that he uses prowess and competitive skills to make money from others, and then lives off the spoils of conquests rather than producing things himself.

1896 Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto introduced the concept of Pareto optimality or efficiency in his studies of economic efficiency and income distribution. According to his definition, a society is Pareto optimal when no member of that society can improve their condition without lowering the condition of another member. The concept of Pareto optimality can be applied to GP in order to build succinct tools to overcome these intrinsic deficiencies. In a GP environment, Pareto optimality/efficiency is defined as

1894-03. Ely, Richard T. 1894-03. “Natural monopolies and the Workingman: a programme of social reform.” North American Review, vol. 188. no. 448. pp. 294-304. Ely believed that economics was an inductive historical subject, not deductive and mathematical.

“There are various undertakings which are monopolies by virtue of their own inherent properties. Recent discussions have made these businesses well known. They are railways, telegraphs, telephones, canals, irrigation works, harbors, gasworks, street-car lines, and the like. Experience and deductive arguments alike show that in businesses of this kind there can be no competition, and that all appearances which resemble competition are simply temporary and illusory. It will be observed that these undertakings are nearly all of them comparitively new. They are an industrial field which has recently been opened. They are a non-competitive class of industries super-imposed upon the world of competitive industries vix agriculture, manufacture and commerce. They have nearly all come into existence in the present century, and their growth has been so marvellous that they now represent a large proportion of all the wealth in the civilized world. It has even been claimed that railways alone in the United States comprise one-fifth of the entire wealth of the country. This is doubtless an exaggerated estimate, but it is probably an under-estimate to claim that all these businesses represent one-fourth part of the entire wealth of our industrial civilization. Moreover, their nature is such that every other kind of business is either directly or indirectly dependent upon them. Their significance becomes at once manifest. The manner in which they are managed must affect very materially the entire population, and in particular the wage-earner.”

1880 R. T. Ely began writing popular articles on a burning issue of the day—the relationship between labor and capital.

1873 Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner published their novel entitled The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. They satirized graft, greed, materialism, and corruption in public life in post-Civil War America.

1870 “The marginal revolution saw the introduction of the idea of marginal utility into economics in the early 1870s by Jevons, Walras and Menger. This change in economic theory was a slower process than the word ‘revolution’ suggests, and, to understand the changes associated with it, it is necessary to explore the scientific, social and political context in which they occurred (more).” Neoclassical economics attempted to erect a positive, mathematical and scientifically grounded field above normative politics.

1850 English-speaking economists generally shared a Classical Theory regarding value and distribution based on the work of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Robert Malthus, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx. “The value of a bushel of corn, for example, was thought to depend on the costs involved in producing that bushel. The output or product of an economy was thought to be divided or distributed among the different social groups in accord with the costs borne by those groups in producing the output (more).”

1850 Samuel Taylor Coleridge in “Essays on His Own Times” argued that, “The annals of the French Revolution prove that the knowledge of the few cannot counteract the ignorance of the many . . . the light of philosophy, when it is confined to a small minority, points out the possessors as the victims rather than the illuminators of the multitude.”

1836 Porter’s Progress of the Nation

1813-15 Cannan, Edwin. 1982. “The Origin of the Law of Diminishing Returns.” Economic Journal. Vol. 2.

1801 Recreations in Agriculture. Natural History, Arts, and Miscellaneous Literature. 1801, vol. iv., pp. 374376 vi. 405407

1795 British Parliament has enacted 738 enclosure bills since 1775. As the price of corn increased, the number of enclosure acts increased.

1798 Malthus, Thomas. 1798. “An Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and Other Writers.” London. Printed for J. Johnson, in St. Paul’s Church-Yard. He challenged the possibility of the organic perfectibility of man referring to Steele’s fictional Isaac Bickerstaff (1798:53). “The improvement of the barren parts would be a work of time and labour; and it must be evident to those who have the slightest acquaintance with agricultural subjects, that in proportion as cultivation extended, the additions that could yearly be made to the former average produce must be gradually and regularly diminishing (Malthus 1798).”

1793 Godwin, William (1756-1836). “Avarice and Profusion.” Chapter in Enquiry concerning Political Justice, and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness. This essay started the general question of the future improvement of society.

1793-01-08. Every man is to be prosecuted who shall appeal to the people by the publication of any unconstitutional paper or pamphlet; and it is added that men are to be punished for any unguarded words that may be dropped in the warmth of conversation and debate. The first conviction of this kind, which the author was far from imagining to be so near, was of a journeyman tallow-chandler, January 8, 1793, who, being shown the regalia at the Tower, was proved to have vented a coarse expression against royalty to the person that exhibited them (Godwin 1793).

1776 Adam Smith. “An Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations.”

“The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations. According therefore as this produce, or what is purchased with it, bears a greater or smaller proportion to the number of those who are to consume it, the nation will be better or worse supplied with all the necessaries and conveniences for which it has occasion. But this proportion must in every nation be regulated by two different circumstances; first, by the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which its labour is generally applied; and,
secondly, by the proportion between the number of those who are employed in useful labour, and that of those who are not so employed. Whatever be the soil, climate, or extent of territory of any particular nation, the abundance or scantiness of its annual supply must, in that particular situation, depend upon those two circumstances (Smith 1775).”

“Dr Adam Smith has very justly observed that nations as well as individuals grow rich by parsimony and poor by profusion, and that, therefore, every frugal man was a friend and every spendthrift an enemy to his country. The reason he gives is that what is saved from revenue is always added to stock, and is therefore taken from the maintenance of labour that is generally unproductive and employed in the maintenance of labour that realizes itself in valuable commodities. No observation can be more evidently just (Malthus 1798).”

1781 William Godwin (1756-1836) seriously questioned the role of the monarchy in enlightened times planting the seeds for his book entitled Enquiry concerning Political Justice, and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness.

1775 British Parliament began to enact enclosure bills.

1709-04-12 Richard Steel published his first journal entitled The Tatler “to expose the false arts of life, to pull of the disguises of cunning, vanity, and affectation, and to recommend a general simplicity in our dress, our discourse, and our behavior” Steele wrote under a pseudonym of Isaac Bickerstaff (name borrowed from Jonathan Swift who used it as a pseudonym) and gave Isaac Bickerstaff an entire, fully-developed personality. For example he gave him a fictitious genealogy traced back to a short, dark-skinned knight of King Arthur’s round table who began an inter-generational project of physical improvement of offspring by judicious choice of partners which at one point included a milk maid Maud who “spoiled” their blood but “mended” their constitutions. Steele described his motive in writing The Tatler as “to expose the false arts of life, to pull of the disguises of cunning, vanity, and affectation, and to recommend a general simplicity in our dress, our discourse, and our behavior”.

Coal-fired power stations are major emitters of CO2, the most important greenhouse gas (GHG). Brown coal emits 3 times as much CO2 as natural gas, black coal emits twice as much CO2 per unit of electric energy. “Emissions of sulphur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NO and NO2) have traditionally been the main concern. Proven technologies, such as flue gas desulphurisation, selective catalytic reactors, low NOxburners and fluidized bed combustion, are available – albeit at a cost – to reduce these emissions. Recently, pending legislation on air toxics, especially mercury, on fine particulates, and on GHG emissions has emerged as a more formidable challenge. Canada’s GHG emissions from electricity generation in 2004 were 130 Mt. The overwhelming proportion, about 75%, was from the use of coal (NRCAN 2010).”

The world’s power demands are expected to rise 60% by 2030.[5] With the worldwide total of active coal plants over 50,000 and rising,[6] the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that fossil fuels will account for 85% of the energy market by 2030.[5]

The five largest power plant sources of NOx in Canada are coal plants in Alberta, Ontario and Saskatchewan. The large emitters in Canada are mainly coal plants located in central Alberta, southern Saskatchewan, southern Ontario, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. New Brunswick and Newfoundland also have one oil-fired plant each with large SO2 emissions. The 60 highest mercury-emitting power plants in the United States (or 18 percent of the those listed in Table 3.9) produced 50 percent of the total annual emissions from such facilities. Fourteen facilities produced 90 percent of the power plant mercury emissions in Canada, with annual emissions ranging from 275 kilograms to 1.0 kilogramIn Canada, the highest emitting facility produced 14 percent of the total annual emissions from the Canadian electricity sector (CEC 2004).

Mercury is a toxic substance that accumulates in the environment. Mercury emissions from power generation result from the combustion of coal, which
contains mercury. These emissions can be deposited locally and transported throughout the globe. Canada deposits 9 T of mercury but receives 100 T of emissions. Mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants in North America are generally unregulated, although efforts are underway in Canada and the
United States to develop control programs. For example, Alberta adopted a reduction target of 50 percent from 2003 power plant mercury emissions
by the end of 2009.

“Mercury control technology is highly efficient and available for all coal types. Activated Carbon Injection (ACI) is the primary technology being used to reduce mercury emissions from new and existing coal plants. Data from power plants shows that the tested boilers achieved, on average, reductions in mercury emissions of about 90 percent. (2011-03. Mercury Alert: Cleaning up Coal Plants for Healthier Lives).”

Who’s Who

Carbon Management Canada (CMC)

Secretariat of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) of North America (SO2, NOx, mercury, CO2) “Consortia of companies, like the Canadian Clean Power Coalition or the Clean Energy Group in the United States, are coming together to promote the production and use of alternate or renewable energy sources. Other companies are partnering with counterparts in developing countries to create Clean Development Mechanisms (CDMs) that will help to address the looming threat of global warming. In a similar vein, several states and provinces have set in place or are contemplating firm commitments to significantly reduce mercury emissions at coal power plants in the next several years (e.g., Alberta, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Wisconsin).” This report includes lists of power plants and their emissions (2002 statistics).

Alberta Environment Ambient Air Monitoring Strategy for Alberta.

Integrated Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting Framework (IMERF)

Cumulative Effects Management System (CEMS)

The Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act

Clean Air Strategic Alliance (CASA) was established in March 1994 as a new way to manage air quality in Alberta. CASA is a multi-stakeholder partnership. It is composed of representatives selected by industry, government and non-government organizations. Every partner is committed to a comprehensive air quality management system for Alberta.

A timeline of selected events related to the social history of high-emitting coal-fired plants

2025 33 of 51 of Canada’s coal-fired plants will reach the end of their economic lives.

2011-06-08. “Coal Comfort: EPA Cracks Down on the U.S.’s Dirtiest Mercury-Emitting Power Plants” Scientific American. “Twenty of the top 25 mercury-emitting coal-fired utilities in the U. S. are located within 80 to 160 kilometers of some of the largest metropolitan areas in the nation.”

2011 Canada’s Environment Minister Jim Prentice had promised to firm up new standards to force electricity producers to phase out older, high-emitting coal-fired plants and require newer facilities to match the emissions of gas fired plants.

2011-04-26 The Saskatchewan government through SaskPower is moving ahead with their Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) project into $1.2-billion retrofit of Boundary Dam generating station. The $1.2-billion project will rebuild one of its old coal power plants to pump its greenhouse gas emissions underground. The new CCS clean coal power plant is the first of its kind and size anywhere in the world. The project is located at the Boundary Dam Power Station, Estevan and it will be completed in 2013 – 2014 (Leader Post).”

The project will be the world’s first commercial CCS system and it will capture an estimated 1 million tons of CO2 emission per year. That is equivalent to taking 200,000 vehicles off the road.

2011-05-23/27. McLinden’s “An overview of ∧ air quality activities at Environment Canada.”.

2011-03-22 The Government of Canada contributed an additional $899,000 in funds to a Carbon Management Canada (CMC) gasification project in Regina, Saskatchewan (Carbon Management Canada).

2011-03 Coal-fired power plants are the primary source of toxic mercury air emissions in the U.S. Mercury pollution contaminates our land and waters, causing serious human health impacts… [T]he top emitters of mercury in the U.S. (25 coal-fired plants) contribute nearly a third of all mercury emissions from the electric sector while only providing 8% of U.S. electricity. Nearly half of all U.S. river-miles and lake-acres were under water contamination advisories. This includes 100% of Great Lakes Coastal Waters Lake Acres. Eighty percent of all water contamination advisories in the U. S. were issued because of mercury contamination. (2011-03. Mercury Alert: Cleaning up Coal Plants for Healthier Lives).

2010-06-23 Canada’s Environment Minister Jim Prentice promised to phase out older coal-fired power plants to cut the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, moving toward gas fired plants. According to Prentice: “Our regulation will be very clear. When each coal-burning unit reaches the end of its economic life, it will have to meet the new standards or close down. No trading, no offsets, no credits.” The measure is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the country by 15 megatonnes. Along with the proposed regulations, Prentice also announced the government would contribute C$400 million ($384 million) for its share of a fund set up under the Copenhagen accord to help impoverished countries cope with climate change.

2010-10-14 “Coal remains a key component of Canada’s diverse energy supply picture, accounting for as much as 20% of electricity generation. Six of Canada’s provinces rely to some degree on coal to supply electrical power, with three (Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan and Alberta) almost fully reliant (NRCAN).”

2009 “Since 1999, mercury air emissions from U.S. coal-fired power plants have decreased by almost 27 percent: from over 48 tons in 1999 to 35 tons in 2009 (2011-03. Mercury Alert: Cleaning up Coal Plants for Healthier Lives).”

2009-09-09. Valupadasa, Prasad. 2009-09-09. “Alberta mercury regulation for coal-fired power plants.” Fuel Processing Technology. Volume 90, Issue 11, November 2009, Pages 1339-1342

Abstract: “Alberta stakeholders, through the Province’s Clean Air Strategic Alliance (CASA), identified mercury as the pollutant of highest priority for control from coal-fired power plants. Working with CASA, the Province finalized a new Mercury Emission from Coal-Fired Power Plants Regulation [Mercury Emissions From Coal-fired Power Plants Regulation, March 2006, Alberta Regulation 34/2006, Alberta Queen's Printer, Regulation may be found at http://www.gov.ab.ca/qp.] [1]. The regulation places the province at the forefront of controlling mercury emissions from the sector on a global level by driving actions to reduce mercury emissions from existing coal-fired power plants in the province by at least 50% by 2010. Requirements also include continuous improvement provisions for further mercury reductions beyond 2010 based on technology advancement over the next 10 years. This paper summarises the regulation, the work the province undertook at the provincial and national level in its development, and status of implementation actions.”

2009 Alberta electricity companies, “TransAlta, ATCO, and EPCOR, teamed with GE Energy to conducted full-scale evaluation of sorbent injection in Sundance Unit 5 operated by TransAlta. Sundance Unit 5 fires a Western Canadian sub-bituminous coal and is equipped with cold-side ESP for PM control. Goals of the program were to evaluate: (1) the ability of achieving 70% or greater mercury reduction using activated carbon injection in long-term tests (30 days), (2) the effect of sorbent injection on ESP performance and opacity in long-term testing, and (3) the effects of combustion conditions on “natural” mercury removal in fly ash. DARCO Hg-LH was injected upstream of ESP at average injection rate of 2.1 lb/MMacf and achieved an average mercury removal of 80%. During the test, the sorbent injection rate was varied from 0.55 lb/MMacf to 8 lb/MMacf with mercury removals from 65% to > 95%. The continuous 30-day DARCO Hg-LH injection testing demonstrated that 70% mercury removal could be achieved at DARCO Hg-LH injection rate of 1.2 lb/MMacf. Tests were conducted to optimize combustion conditions to improve “native” mercury capture in the fly ash. Testing demonstrated that combustion conditions that resulted in reduction of NOx emissions also corresponded to reduced mercury emission. Mercury emissions were reduced by up to 50% and NOx emissions by up to 35% from baseline levels as a result of changes in the way Unit 5 operated. Integration of sorbent injection with combustion conditions reduced requirements for sorbent injection by 20–30%. Testing has demonstrated that sorbent injection did not have an effect on opacity and ESP performance. Keywords: Mercury; Sub-bituminous coal; Activated carbon; Sundance 5; Cold ESPs.”First full-scale demonstration of mercury control in Alberta.”

2008 Collectively, power plants were responsible for 72 percent of mercury air emissions in the U.S. (2011-03. Mercury Alert: Cleaning up Coal Plants for Healthier Lives).

2008-08-21 Saskatchewan Power Corporation (SaskPower) studied a Clean Coal Project. The intention would be to build a coal-fired plant that would effectively capture all carbon dioxide emissions. The cost of such a plant was so high that SaskPower decided to not construct such a plant until later. Instead the required capacity will be obtained from power plants fuelled by natural gas. It would have been The first coal-fueled plant capable of capturing and burying carbon dioxide. Canada, had committed C$1.4 billion ($1.34 billion) on the plant planned to incorporate oil recovery in the plans to offset costs, a different approach than the U.S., which canceled a similar plant in 2007 (Whitten:Canada to Move Ahead on `Clean-Coal’ Plant After U.S.’s Fails.)”

2006. Alberta: “Mercury Emission from Coal-Fired Power Plants Regulation.”

Valupadas, Prasad. 2006-03 “The New Fired Power from Coal Plants Regulation.” Excellent summary, easy to read graphics and clear mapping of issues.

2005-12 In Alberta these high-emitting coal-fired power plants had subsisting approvals governing them: 1 Battle River* 1512-02-00; 2 Sundance** 9830-01-00; 3 Sheerness 123-02-00; 4 Genesee 773-02-00; 5 H.R. Milner 9814-01-00; 6 Wabamun 10323-02-00; 7 Keephills 10324-01-00″ Mercury Emission from Coal-Fired Power Plants Regulation.”

2004 Secretariat of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) of North America. North American Power Plant Air Emissions

2004 Canada’s GHG emissions from electricity generation in 2004 were 130 Mt. The overwhelming proportion, about 75%, was from the use of coal (NRCAN 2010).”

1996 The World Bank launched its Clean Coal Initiative.

Webliography and Bibliography

Whitten, David. 2008-08-21. “Canada to Move Ahead on `Clean-Coal’ Plant After U.S.’s Fails.” Bloomberg.

Brown, Terry. Lissianskib, Vitali. 2009-09-17. “First full-scale demonstration of mercury control in Alberta.” Fuel Processing Technology. Volume 90, Issue 11, November 2009, Pages 1412-1418.

McLinden, Chris. 2011-05-23-27. “An overview of ∧ air quality activities at Environment Canada.” Air Quality Research Division. Environment Canada
MACC Conference on Monitoring and Forecasting Atmospheric Composition. 23-27 May 2011

Valupadasa, Prasad. 2009-09-09. “Alberta mercury regulation for coal-fired power plants.” Fuel Processing Technology. Volume 90, Issue 11, November 2009, Pages 1339-1342

Abstract: “Alberta stakeholders, through the Province’s Clean Air Strategic Alliance (CASA), identified mercury as the pollutant of highest priority for control from coal-fired power plants. Working with CASA, the Province finalized a new Mercury Emission from Coal-Fired Power Plants Regulation [Mercury Emissions From Coal-fired Power Plants Regulation, March 2006, Alberta Regulation 34/2006, Alberta Queen's Printer, Regulation may be found at http://www.gov.ab.ca/qp.] [1]. The regulation places the province at the forefront of controlling mercury emissions from the sector on a global level by driving actions to reduce mercury emissions from existing coal-fired power plants in the province by at least 50% by 2010. Requirements also include continuous improvement provisions for further mercury reductions beyond 2010 based on technology advancement over the next 10 years. This paper summarises the regulation, the work the province undertook at the provincial and national level in its development, and status of implementation actions.”

Emissions from coal-fired plants in general

Fact sheet

Coal-fired power plants are responsible for almost three-quarters (35 tons) of all mercury air emissions in the U.S. (2011-03. Mercury Alert: Cleaning up Coal Plants for Healthier Lives).

Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). 2011-03. (Mercury Alert: Cleaning up Coal Plants for Healthier Lives).

http://snurl.com/1iesxr

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KuxqIh91k90Cch6DHpIyT9GrzBGNfZ7Q36QoOqUd5s4/edit?hl=en

c. 1780   BCE Hammurabi Code and  local

563      BCE Origins of Buddhism with the birth of Siddhartha Gautama
450      BCE Publication of ancient Roman laws, the Twelve Tables
400      BCE Plato’s Republic
106      Diplomatic ties are established between the Chinese and the Persians.
250      The prophet Mani Paraclete (210-275) from Western Persia founded the Manichaeism religion which attempted to unite all existing religions, particularly Zoroastrianism and Christianity. The Manichaean apocalyptic cosmology doctrine declared the existence of a Dualism within the universe, which was like as a battlefield between two equal forces of good and evil, Jehovah (Creator) and Satan (Created). The Dualist doctrine was widely accepted late Middle Ages.
c. 370 Augustine lived near Carthage, which was in in the Roman state of Numidia (present day Tunisia and Algeria.) Augustine read Greek philosophers, such as Plotinus and adopted his neo-Platonic thought. He attempted to organize an Athenian-like gathering of philosophers and intellectuals who were seekers of truth.
c. 370 The Huns invade Europe from the Central Asian steppe.
410      Rome fell to Arian Christians, a heretical sect. Augustine wrote of this in his Exegesis (critiques) of Genesis, Romans, and other books of the Bible. In Confessions, the first autobiography in Western history, Augustine wrote about memory, will, and time. The City of God examines why Rome fell to Arian Christians (a heretical sect) in 410. It contains observations and commentary which are still relevant today, including a section which some believe is the beginning of the concept of a ‘just war’. He wrote voluminously works that were adopted by the Roman Catholic religion.
430.     Hippo, (Carthage) was surrounded by Vandals.
476      Fall of the Western Roman Empire
565      Emperor Justinian I’s Corpus Juris Civilis (Body of Civil Law) is a classic illustration of Natural Law doctrine combining the best of classical Greco-Roman law with Christianity. The code includes honest living, inflict no harm on others and give everyone his due.
570      The birth of Muhammad.
618      The Tang dynasty is established in China.
625      Through the Constitution of Medina the clans accepted Muhammad as the Prophet of God and formed an alliance, or federation forming a political community. Non-Muslims such as Jews and Christians were members of the community as protected people, as long as they conformed to its laws. This established a precedent for the treatment of subject peoples during the later conquests. Christians and Jews, upon payment of a yearly tax, were allowed religious freedom and, while maintaining their status as non-Muslims, were associate members of the Muslim state.
629      Mohammad reentered and conquered Mecca without bloodshed and in a spirit of tolerance which established an ideal for future conquests.
632      Death of the Prophet Mohammad in Mecca marks the beginning of the expansion of the Arab Muslim Empire.
636      Muslims Caliphs consolidated the support of the tribes within the Arabian Peninsula and subsequently funneled their energies against the powerful empires of the East: the Sassanians in Persia and the Byzantines in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt; extended Islam’s temporal rule over Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Persia. The Muslim state had extended its sway over all of Syria and blunted the power of the Byzantines. The Byzantine ruler Heraclius had rejected the letter from Mohammad. The Muslim state administered the conquered territories with a tolerance almost unheard of in that age. At Damascus, the Muslim leader assured Christians and Jews that their persons, churches and properties would be respected. Throughout the Byzantine Empire, already weakened by religious dissension, Muslims gained power by offering religious tolerance to Jews and Christians. Muslim leaders protected languages and cultures in countries they controlled.
680-740 Shantarakshita was an influential Buddhist philosopher of a syncretic school combining Madhyamaka and Yogachara doctrines and contributing to the last flowering age of Buddhism in India.
657-61   The establishment of the Arabic Umayyad Caliphate in Damascus and the origin of the Sunni-Shi’ite split in Islam. At Siffen near the Euphrates,  a major schism divided Moslems into two groups Sunnis or Sunnites and the Shi’is (also called Shi’ites or Shi’ah) that continues to divide Moslems today. Iran is mainly Shi’ites while Iraq is primarily Sunnites.
713      Muslims expanded control over vast regions of Asia, Africa and Europe. They passed into Spain, defeated the Visigoths, and by 713 had reached Narbonne in France. In the next decades, raiding parties continually made forays into France and in 732 reached as far as the Loire Valley, only 170 miles from Paris. There, at the Battle of Tours, or Poitiers, the Arabs were finally turned back by Charles Martel. The religious motivations of the early Caliphs was tarnished by desires for political and economic expansion. Moslems were not unified as they were in the early years following Mohammad’s death.
724-43   During the reign of the Umayyad caliph Hisham, the Arab empire reached its greatest extent. The  Syrian Umayyads buiilt some of the most beautiful existing buildings in the Muslim world the  Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, and the lovely country palaces in the deserts of Syria, Jordan, and Iraq. They also organized a bureaucracy able to cope with the complex problems of a vast and diverse empire, and made Arabic the language of government. The Umayyads, furthermore, encouraged such writers as ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Muqaffa’ and ‘Abd al-Hamid ibn Yahya al-Katib, whose clear, expository Arabic prose has rarely been surpassed.
740-790 Kamalashila was an influential Buddhist philosopher of a syncretic school combining Madhyamaka and Yogachara doctrines and contributing to the Last flowering of Buddhism in India.
759-80   The Uighurs converted to Manichaeism under Khan Mei-yu.
800–1100s Turkish (Ottoman?) Muslims invaded India
786:     “Harun al-Rashid was Abbasids caliphate in 786 in the Golden Age of Islam. The Golden Age was a period of unrivaled intellectual activity in all fields: science, technology, and (as a result of intensive study of the Islamic faith) literature – particularly biography, history, and linguistics. Persian miniature depicts students with a teacher of astronomy – one of the sciences to which scholars of the Golden Age made great contributions. ‘Abbasid writers also developed new a genres of literature such as adab, the embodiment of sensible counsel, sometimes in the form of animal fables; a typical example is Kalilah wa-Dimnah, translated by Ibn al-Muqaffa’ from a Pahlavi version of an Indian work. Writers of this period also studied tribal traditions and wrote the first systematic Arabic grammars. During the Golden Age Muslim scholars also made important and original contributions to mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and chemistry. They collected and corrected previous astronomical data, built the world’s first observatory, and developed the astrolabe, an instrument that was once called “a mathematical jewel.” In medicine they experimented with diet, drugs, surgery, and anatomy, and in chemistry, an outgrowth of alchemy, isolated and studied a wide variety of minerals and compounds. Important advances in agriculture were also made in the Golden Age. The ‘Abbasids preserved and improved the ancient network of wells, underground canals, and waterwheels, introduced new breeds of livestock, hastened the spread of cotton, and, from the Chinese, learned the art of making paper, a key to the revival of learning in Europe in the Middle Ages. The Golden Age also, little by little, transformed the diet of medieval Europe by introducing such plants as plums, artichokes, apricots, cauliflower, celery, fennel, squash, pumpkins, and eggplant, as well as rice, sorghum, new strains of wheat, the date palm, and sugarcane.  Photo: Muslim scientists developed the astrolabe, an instrument used long before the invention of the sextant to observe the position of celestial bodies.”
800 –    Muslims built a superior civilization in Andalusia, southern Spain. Reigning with wisdom and justice, they treated Christians and Jews with tolerance, with the result that many embraced Islam. They also improved trade and agriculture, patronized the arts, made valuable contributions to science, and established Cordoba as the most sophisticated city in Europe.
861      Turks once used mainly for military protection, began to dominate the Muslim caliphate. Under the Turks, Central authority began to decline.
900      In c.900 the Moorish city of Cordoba, southern Spain, had a population of 500,000, compared to about 38,000 in Paris. According to the chronicles of the day, the city had 700 mosques, some 60,000 palaces, and 70 libraries – one reportedly housing 500,000 manuscripts and employing a staff of researchers, illuminators, and book binders. Cordoba also had some 900 public baths, Europe’s first street lights.
900      The Jews arrived in Prague as merchants building a rich, cultured community in spite of centuries of persecution including confinement within a walled section of the city. Jews were not persecuted by those Muslim traders who followed Mohammad’s teachings of tolerance.
906      The end of the Tang dynasty in China.
940      The conversion of the Qarakhanids and Uighurs from Buddhism to Islam under Satuq Bughra Khan. Manchaen religion dies out?
986      The Russians, in search of a religion, contact Muslim missionaries from Khwarezm, but decide not to adopt Islam.
988      The conversion of the Russians to Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
1000    A small pocket of Christian resistance began to grow into a Christian Reconquest which was successful due to the lack of unity among Muslims.
1000? “The famous Muslim theologian Al-Ghazali, whose greatest work, the Revival of the Sciences of Religion, was a triumph of Sunni theology taught for a time at the nizamiyah schools at Baghdad and at Nishapur. Nizam-al-Mulk was the patron of the Muslim poet and astronomer ‘Umar al-Khayyam (Omar Khayyam), whose verses, as translated by Edward FitzGerald in the nineteenth century, have become as familiar to English readers as the sonnets of Shakespeare.”
1100s Attar, a Persian Sufi wrote his masterpiece The Conference of the Birds, described as an epic allegory of the seeker’s journey to God. All the birds of the world convene to choose a king. German novelist Hermann Hesse’s “Journey to the East” has been compared to this poem (Attar 1100s).
1095    Pope Urban II called for a truce among European rulers between the oppositional factions of the Eastern Orthodox and Western Christian churches, to aid the Eastern Orthodox Byzantines against the Muslims urging them to take the Holy Land from the Muslims.
1187-1280s       Moslem ruler Saladin counterattacked against the Crusaders. Saladin recaptured Jerusalem. The Europeans mounted a series of further crusading expeditions against the Muslims over the next hundred years or so, but the Crusaders never again recovered the initiative. Confined to the coast, they ruled small areas until their final defeat at the hands of the Egyptian Mamluks at the end of the thirteenth century.
1160- Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi (1141-1204), from Azerbaijan, in the southeastern region of the Caucasus Mountains, collected a number of folk versions of this originally Bedouin tale from the North Arabic tribe of Amir in western Saudi Arabia (7th century CE) and shaped them into a single narrative of more than 4,000 stanzas which has been compared for its beauty and depth to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (Maclean 2000). The Khamsa (Quintet), which includes “Layli and Majnun,” “Khusrau and Shirin,” and several other stories in verse. (Bashiri 2002). The story of Layli (Layla) and Majnun is the classic love tale of the Middle East which is also prized by Sufi mystics as a profound spiritual allegory of the soul’s search for and ultimate union with God.
1193    Moslems attacked and conquered Magadha, the heartland of Buddhism in India Buddhist Monasteries in India, like Nalanda, were destroyed.
1169    The English first arrived in Ireland.
1206    Chingiz Khan becomes khan of the Mongols.
1215–94 Mongol emperor, Kublai Khan Mongol founded the Chinese Yüan. The empire reached its greatest territorial extent with Kublai’s final defeat (1279) of the Sung dynasty of China; however, his campaigns against Japan, Myanmar, Vietnam, and Indonesia failed. He recruited men of all nations for his civil service, but only Mongols were permitted to hold the highest government posts. He promoted economic prosperity by rebuilding the Grand Canal, repairing public granaries, and extending highways. He fostered Chinese scholarship and arts. Although he favored Tibetan Buddhism (Lamaism), other religions (except Taoism) were tolerated. Kublai encouraged foreign commerce, and his magnificent capital at Cambuluc (now Beijing) was visited by several Europeans, notably Marco Polo, who described it. It was long thought to be the city Xanadu, featured in Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan. ( Saunders 1988). China had four classes: The tiny privileged Mongolian minority; secondly, the se-mu jen (“persons with special status”), such confederates of the Mongols as Turks or Middle Eastern Muslims [Marco Polo may have been one of these?]; thirdly, the han-jen (northern Chinese); fourthly and lastly man-tzu, “southern barbarians”, the numerical majority which was ¾ of China from Sung China. There were also many slaves.
1209    The Muslim Uighurs, under Barchuq, submit to Mongol rule.
1207-1273 Jalal Al-Din Rumi, Afghani Muslim Philosopher, religious scholar, wrote the Mathnawi which highlights the various hidden aspects of Sufism, the relationship between God and man, man and man, and man with the worldly life. Rumi influenced literature, culture, metaphysics, philosophy in Central Asia and Islamic countries.
1215    Magna Carta (Great Britain)
1200 – 1400 Small Arab kingdoms flourished in the mountains of Andalusia, Spain. It was then that they created Granada and the Alhambra described as “the glory and the wonder of the civilized world.”
1238    The Alhambra, Spain was begun in 1238 by Muhammad ibn al-Ahmar who, to buy safety for his people when King Ferdinand of Aragon laid siege to Granada, once rode to Ferdinand’s tent and humbly offered to become the king’s vassal in return for peace.
1242    The Mongols stop their westward advance at the gates of Vienna.
1247    Beginning of Construction of Gothic style Strasbourg Cathedral.
1248    Al-Ahmar kept his promise to Spanish monarch, King Ferdinand of Aragon and helped Christians against Muslims in the siege of Seville in 1248. Over the years, what started as a fortress slowly evolved under Ibn al-Ahmar’s successors into a remarkable series of delicately lovely buildings, quiet courtyards, limpid pools, and hidden gardens. Later, after Ibn al-Ahmar’s death, Granada itself was rebuilt and became, as one Arab visitor wrote, “as a silver vase filled with emeralds.”
1290s Egyptian Marluks Muslims defeated the Christian Crusaders in the final expedition mounted by the Crusaders.
750s – 1250s? “The creation of the office of the vizier was only one of the innovations the ‘Abbasids brought to statecraft. Another was the development of the Umayyad postal system into an efficient intelligence service; postmasters in outlying provinces were the eyes and ears of the government and regular reports were filed with the central government on everything from the state of the harvest to the doings of dissident sects. Under the ‘Abbasids too a whole literature was created for the use and training of the clerical classes that had come into being. Since all government business was by now transacted in Arabic, manuals of correct usage were written for the instruction of non-Arabic speakers who had found government employment. There was also a vast literature on the correct deportment of princes, as well as anthologies of witty sayings and anecdotes with which to enliven one’s epistolary style. Trade flourished under the ‘Abbasids. Because Islamic rule unified much of the Eastern world, thus abolishing many boundaries, trade was freer, safer, and more extensive than it had been since the time of Alexander the Great. Muslim traders, consequently, established trading posts as far away as India, the Philippines, Malaya, the East Indies, and China.”
1220    “Genghis Khan leading the Mongols, a confederation of nomadic tribes, that had already conquered China, attacked the Muslims. In 1220 they took Samarkand and Bukhara. By mid-century they had taken Russia, Central Europe, northern Iran, and the Caucuses. In 1258, the Mongols invaded and devastated Baghdad. The Mongols adopted the religion of Islam but destroyed much of Islamic civilization. They killed or deported numerous scholars and scientists and destroyed libraries with their irreplaceable works. The result was to wipe out much of the priceless cultural, scientific, and technological legacy that Muslim scholars had been preserving and enlarging for some five hundred years.”
1260    The Mongol Yüan dynasty is established in China under Kublai Khan. 1215–94, Mongol emperor, founder of the Yüan dynasty of China. From 1251 to 1259 he led military campaigns in S China. He succeeded (1260) his brother Mongke (Mangu) as khan of the empire that their grandfather Jenghiz Khan had founded. The empire reached its greatest territorial extent with Kublai’s final defeat (1279) of the Sung dynasty of China; however, his campaigns against Japan (see kamikaze), Myanmar, Vietnam, and Indonesia failed. Kublai’s rule as the overlord of the Mongol empire was nominal except in Mongolia and China. He recruited men of all nations for his civil service, but only Mongols were permitted to hold the highest government posts. He promoted economic prosperity by rebuilding the Grand Canal, repairing public granaries, and extending highways. He fostered Chinese scholarship and arts. Although he favored Tibetan Buddhism (Lamaism), other religions (except Taoism) were tolerated. Kublai encouraged foreign commerce, and his magnificent capital at Cambuluc (now Beijing) was visited by several Europeans, notably Marco Polo, who described it. It was long thought to be the city Xanadu, featured in Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan. Kublai’s name is also spelled Khubilai, Kubilai, Koublai, and Kubla. (See J. J. Saunders, The History of the Mongol Conquests (1971); M. Rossabi, Khubilai Khan (1988).)
1283    By the Middle Ages, major trading centers existed including the route past Chillon castle, Villeneuve near Geneva, Switzerland, residence of the counts of Savoy.
1357    In Prague, the Charles Bridge was built by King Charles IV over the Vltava River. The bridge is lined with 30 Baroque statues. To one side of the river is the old Jewish Town.
1300s Prague’s large Jewish community was confined to a walled-in section of town where like most Jews in Europe they were frequently under attack.
1348    A plague broke out in Villeneuve, Switzerland near Geneva. The town’s Jews were accused of plotting with Christian accomplices to poison the water supply, and large numbers of both were tortured in Chillon’s dungeons before being burned alive.
1389    In Prague 3,000 Jewish men, women and children were cornered and slaughtered in the infamous Easter massacre.
1403    Bedlam, London, England, was used as a hospital for patients with mental disorders.
1440    Gutenberg completed his wooden press which used metal moving type (de la Mare 1997).
1453    “Although the Crusades achieved no lasting results in terms of military conquest, they were important in the development of trade, and their long-range effects on Western society – on everything from feudalism to fashion – are inestimable. Ironically, they also put an end to the centuries-old rivalry between the Arabs and Byzantines. By occupying Constantinople, the capital of their Christian allies, in the Fourth Crusade, the Crusaders achieved what the Arabs had been trying to do from the early days of Islam. Although the Byzantine Empire continued until 1453, when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks, it never recovered its former power after the Fourth Crusade, and subsisted only in the half-light of history during its remaining years.” For the West, however, the Crusaders’ greatest achievement was the opening of the eastern Mediterranean to European shipping. The Venetians and Genoese established trading colonies in Egypt, and luxury goods of the East found their way to European markets. In the history of the Middle Ages, this was far more important than ephemeral conquests. Control of the Eastern trade became a constantly recurring theme in later relations between the European countries and the East, and in the nineteenth century was to lead to widespread Western intervention.”
1455    Gutenberg completed work on his 42 Line Bible (de la Mare 1997).
1462    The attack on Mainz by soldiers of the Archbishop of Nassau, caused printers to flee the city and spread their skills around Europe (de la Mare 1997).
1490s The decline of the overland trade routes, including the Silk Road, due to a new emphasis on trade by sea marked the end of the first wave of globalization.
1482    In a trivial quarrel, the Muslim kingdom split into two hostile factions and, simultaneously, two strong Christian sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, married and merged their kingdoms. As a result, Granada fell ten years later.
1492    Christopher Columbus, under King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, first arrived in the heavily populated, peaceful, prosperous Island of Hispaniola, West Indies. On January 2, Ferdinand and Isabella ended Islamic rule of Spain. Catholic Spain conquered the Alhambra, the cultural summit of 15th century Muslim culture.
1497    “Vasco da Gama led a fleet of four Portuguese ships around Africa and in 1498 found a new sea route to India from Europe. Dutch, British, and French frigates and merchantmen followed and began establishing trading outposts along the shores of the Indian Ocean, eventually undercutting both Venetian shipping and the Mediterranean trade on which the Middle East had thrived for millennia. This new route would prove devastating for the Muslim traders who had provided the European countries with imports from the Far and Middle East through the Ottoman caravans.
1492-1542 Catholic Spaniards attracted by the gold of the West Indies cruelly killed, terrorized and destroyed native peoples, almost decimating the entire indigenous population. Eye witness Las Casa estimated the genocide of 15 million First Peoples of the West Indies. He estimated that only two hundred survived (Las Casas 1542).
1517    Martin Luther protested against the Catholic Church which heralded the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, a sixteenth-century religious movement.
1520-66 “The Muslim Ottoman Empire reached its peak in size and splendor under the sultan called Suleiman the Magnificent, who ruled from 1520 to 1566 and was known to the Turks as Suleiman the Law-Giver. But from the middle of the sixteenth century on the empire began to decline. This process got under way as the office of the Grand Vizier gradually assumed more power and indifferent sultans began to neglect administration.”
1542    Las Casas published the Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies based on his eye-witness observations in the West Indies.  Las Casa reported that the island of Cuba was almost completely depopulated. San Juan (Puerto Rico) and Jamaica were deserted and devastated. He compared the islands off northern Cuba to the lush gardens of the King of Seville. All the First Nations were killed or enslaved. One shipload of Natives escaped with the help of one Spanish Christian. The vast mainland was described as longer than the distance between Seville and Jerusalem. The First Nations were described as rational, prosperous, noble and peaceful. Las Casas described the motivation of the Spanish Catholics as the desire for gold (Las Casas 1542).
1520    Martin Luther was excommunicated from the Catholic Church for attacking papal authority.
1521    Martin Luther argued for justification by faith at the Diet of Worms rejecting the need for priests as intermediaries between God and man. This marked the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Many princes adopted this doctrine.
1533    Rabelais integrated street language including folk humour, the carnivalesque and the grotesque mixed with Latin to parody the official worlds of religion — Roman Catholic Church — and state —and the Holy Roman Empire (AGO 2000; Rabelais 1533 [1955]). Bakhtin compared the Russian Revolution to the early Renaissance through an analysis of the work of Rabelais. Inhabitants of Renaissance Europe as described in the literature of Rabelais (Bakhtin 1940 [1968]) experienced radical change during the time threshold between the dark ages and the higher renaissance.
1516-1555: Charles I ruled Spain and then the Holy Roman Emperor as Charles V during the Renaissance.
1555-1598 Philip II married Mary I of England Philip II. This is the period studied by Fernand Braudel.
1509-1547 Henry VIII ruled England.
1547-1553 Edward VI ruled England
1553-1558 Mary I ruled England
1558-1603 Elizabeth I ruled England
1515-1547 France: Francis I ruled France
1547-1584 Ivan the Terrible ruled Russia
1486-1519 Maximilian I was the Holy Roman Emperor
1519-1558 Charles V was the Holy Roman Emperor
1558-1564 Ferdinand I was the Holy Roman Emperor
1520-1566 Suleman Kanuni (the Lawgiver) was Sultan of the Ottoman Empire which expanded from Mecca, through northern Africa, to the Black Sea… During his rule trade routes prospered between London, the Rhine Valley, the Danube valley, Kiev, Algeria, Egypt and Istanbul.
1541    John Calvin established a puritan theocracy in Geneva.
1540    A confederacy of nations was formed in North American called The League of Iroquois composed of Seneca, Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida and Cayuga. The governing council of the confederacy made decisions on issues that affected all tribes and acted as arbitrator for inter-tribal affairs. Each tribe dealt with their domestic affairs without interference from the other confederate members (Daugherty 1982).
1545-63 Dark Ages in Europe with the Roman Catholic Church in control.
1545-7   The Catholic Church issued the decrees of the Council of Trent initiating the Catholic or Counter Reformation which included the censorship of books (1545-63). Those who violated the law stood being excommunicated. Britain from the 16th century regulated the press through licensing (Medialaw 2001).
1546-7   Charles V inspired by the Catholic Counter Reformation attacked the Protestant Princes.
1557    France in 1557 passed the death penalty for importing forbidden books: “experience has shown the king of France how prejudicial to the state is the liberty of the press (Medialaw 2001).”
1530-36 Swiss patriot and historian François de Bonnivard supported the revolt of Geneva against Charles III of Savoy, who imprisoned him from 1519 to 1521. He was again imprisoned from 1530 to 1536 in the castle of Chillon, romanticized in Lord Byron’s poem “Prisoner of Chillon.” Released by the Bernese, he later became a Protestant. Geneva honored him with a pension. His chronicle of Geneva was first published in 1831 (Bonnivard 1560) See also Byron and Henry James’ Daisy Miller.
1576    Martin Frobisher, attempted to find the Northwest Passage. He encountered Inuit on Resolution Island. Five sailors jumped ship and became part of Inuit mythology. The homesick sailors tired of their adventure attempted to leave in a small vessel and vanished. Frobisher brought an unwilling Inuk to England.
1590s Legends claim that Prague’s Rabbi Judah Loew (1520-1609), one of the most respected and beloved sages in Eastern Europe built Golem a man of clay, to protect the persecuted members of the Jewish community of Prague.
1608    The creation of the Protestant Union (The Evangelic Union) an alliance of princes and city’s supported by Holland, England and France led by (Frederick IV) the Elector of Palatinate (TBC).
1609    The creation of the Catholic League led by Maximilian of Bavaria and aided by the Emperor. Bohemian Phase (1618-1625 commencement of hostilities)
1618    Ferdinand Hapsburg of Austria elected King of Bohemia and begins his Catholic reformatory policies.
1618    Bohemian Protestant rebels invade the royal palace in Prague throwing two of the Kings ministers out of the windows (known as the Defenestraition of Prague). Protestants call for help from the Duke of Savoy and Ferdinand of Austria.
1612    Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor [The Western Catholic Church associated with Rome] Rudolph II’s Imperial Court was cultural and spiritual centre of Central Europe in the late Renaissance on the eve of the Thirty Years War. Rudolph II collected Paintings, sculpture, alchemical experiments, astrological tables, herbal medicine, living beasts and bottled demons in a single point in time and space – his Kunstkammer or Cabinet of Curiosities. Tycho Brahe and his assistant Johannes Kepler changed the face of the heavens. [Note: Kepler’s model of the snowflake and the munitions pile?] Here artists such as Arcimboldo and Spranger wove eroticism, scholarship, and mysticism into complex allegorical masterpieces. “During the period of Rudolph II, the Jewish Town in Prague prospered. Jews could practice certain kind of handicrafts, open goldsmith shops and sell their goods outside the ghetto [?MFB] (Havel 1997).
1620    Johanne Kepler, a Protestant in the Upper Austrian Province defended his mother who was accused of being a witch during the witch hunts of 1615-6.
1618    The Thirty Years War began. The German and Austrian regions were devastated. Counter Reformation measures put pressure on Protestants who were persecuted.
1619    The last set of city walls in Europe enclosed the new settlement of Londonderry built by merchants from London in the Ulster plantation. It was a symbol of the final triumph of English colonialism over the Irish chieftains (Megastories).
1620    Puritans drew up the “Mayflower Compact,” agreeing to abide by “just and equal laws” framed by leaders of their own choosing.
1620    With the battle on the chalk slopes of White Mountain, a Bavarian Catholic army attacked Prague which was protected by the Bohemian forces under a Hungarian nobleman. Catholic army won and Protestantism was banned in all of Bohemia.
1628    Petition of Right (Great Britain)
1641    The Court of Star Chamber was controlled by the monarch and was so named because its seat was in the royal palace of Westminster in a room with stars painted on the ceiling. In the seventeenth century, the court was used by sovereigns James I and Charles I to suppress opposition to their authority. The court met in secret and dealt out excessive and cruel punishment. The Star Chamber was finally abolished in 1641 (Guy 1977).
1640-6   English Civil War partially in response to the imposition of the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings imposed by Charles I and the Archbishop of Canterbury. English society was already individualistic, with less communal ownership and interdependency than in mainland Europe. In reaction to this state imposed system the Levelers insisted on rights that reside with individuals protected by a Lockean natural law. English common law, the Magna Carta and the Petition of Right protected individual liberty. Levelers denounced the Norman yoke which they claimed corrupted common law tradition.
1600s The Merchant Adventurers Company held the sole right for trade in textiles in England.
1644    “John Milton published his famous Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, the work was illegally dispersed through the underground London printing network; its spread was a vindication of the very argument contained within. […] In 1695 censorship was allowed to lapse from the statute  book, in recognition that it had become ineffective (Elliott 1989).
1648 – 1793 War of Kings: Westphalian Monarchical, Territorial States fought wars to expand
bureaucracies, armies, mercantalistic economic strength, territories (Ostergaard 1994). In 2000 the US advances the notion of “failed states” in international affairs, which provides a mandate for the sole remaining superpower to stage regime changes in any nation deemed a failed state in the world order of nation states that has existed since the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 (Liu 2002).”
1651    Thomas Hobbes Leviathan 1651 (Hobbes 1651[1996]) marks the beginning of Enlightenment thinking  on human nature and society (Viner Role of Providence; Hirschman, Passions; and Myers). Hobbes’ argued that humans are natural enemies to one another because they are by nature, self-centred and materialistic. “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short” (Hobbes quoted in Myers 32 cited in Rassekh 2002). The realist mode of thinking (statist logic of George Kennan, Henry Kissinger) is traced to the writing of Hobbes and later Machiavelli (Falk 2000a:22). – Thomas Hobbes Leviathan 1651 marks the beginning of the Enlightenment philosophers on human nature and society. (Viner Role of Providence; Hirschman, Passions; and Myers) Hobbes’ argued that humans are natural enemies to one another because they are by nature, self-centred and materialistic. “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short” (Hobbes quoted in Myers 32 cited in Rassekh 2002:) Hobbes and Locke developed concepts of civil society as distinct from the state (Hobbes 1651[1996]).” Debates on small and big government related to the interface between civil society and state continue today and return to the Hobbes versus Locke debates of the Enlightenment.
1679    Habeas Corpus Act (Great Britain)
1688    The Glorious Revolution (Great Britain) was a bloodless coup d’etat in which the Protestant William of Orange was invited to become king to replace the Catholic King James II.
1688    The town of Londonderry, Ireland closed its gates to the Catholic James II who was fighting to regain the throne of England that he had lost in the ‘Glorious Revolution.’
1689    Locke enunciated the freedom to choose one’s belief system, “No one by nature is bound unto any particular church or sect, but everyone joins himself voluntarily to that society in which he believes he has found that profession and worship which is truly acceptable to God. The hope of salvation, as it was the only cause of his entrance into that, so it can be the only reason to stay there…A church, then, is a society of members voluntarily united to that end (Locke 1689).”
1689    English Bill of Rights (Commons 1689 [2002])
1690    Two Treatises of Government by John Locke outlines concept of natural law distinguishing between civil society and state; civil security and role of government,  self-preservation versus laws made by the society to preserve society, laws of the society confine the liberty individual has by the law of nature (Locke 1690).
1729    Jonathan Swift published his ironic essay on a Modest Proposal for alleviating the misery of the impoverished Irish (Swift 1729 [1973]).
1744    The first person to propose a union of all the colonies and to propose a federal model for it was the Iroquois Chief Canassatego speaking at an Indian-British assembly in Pennsylvania (Weatherford 1988).
1755    On November 1 Lisbon, Portugal was hit by a devastating earthquake. The Roman Catholic Church claimed this was evidence of divine justice punishing the wicked inhabitants of the city. Enlightenment scholars like Voltaire rejected the claim of divine intervention arguing that the pious city would have been spared on a Sunday morning by a just diety, not destroyed.
1757    Edmund Burke published the “Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful” (Burke 1757). Burkian empirically based theory of the sublime as fear inspired by nature, would become an integral part of Romanticism in the arts. Recent scholarship has linked the poetics of Romanticism with the politics of colonialism, Rousseau, slavery, the exotic Other, Orientalism. See Wordsworth, Coleridge, Novalis, Goethe (Persyn 2002). For Burke, “when danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they may be, and they are delightful. For a contemporary reading of Burkean sublime and Kant see (Vere 2001).”
1790    Burke, Edmund. (1790) Reflections on the Revolution in France (Burke 1790).
1762    Jean-Jacques Rousseau  (1762)  The Social Contract
1763    The Royal Proclamation directed that all lands for future settlement and development in British America must first be cleared of the “Indian” title by Crown purchase. The proclamation reaffirms First Nations’ rights to the land and resources, however, conditions are placed on the rights to hunt.” The Royal Proclamation was the defining document in the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in North America (1763).
1773    “Edmond Burke prophetically recognized the first partition of Poland in  1773, (Burke 1755) as the beginning of the crumbling of the old international order. The principle of the balance of power had been historically invoked to preserve the independence of European states, to secure weak or small states against Universal Monarchy. Poland was the first nation in the European system to be partitioned out of existence without a war, a source of great satisfaction to the participating powers: Russia, Austria and Prussia. The event showed that in a world where great powers had risen, controlling modern apparatus of state, it was dangerous not to be strong. A century later, Africa, lacking strong governments, was also partitioned without war among the states of Europe.  Furthermore, the partition of Poland profoundly altered the balance of power in Europe.  Emerging Western European powers, such as France and England began championing the cause of Polish resistance and nationalism for geopolitical reasons (Liu 2002).”
1774    First Continental Congress (United States).
1774    U. S. Independence from Great Britain- Colonies won their wars with aid of Native American Nations.
1775    Official U.S. Indian Policy began when the Second Continental Congress created three Indian departments — Northern, Middle, and Southern —headed by commissioners who reported directly to Congress. Patrick Henry and Benjamin Franklin served as commissioners (Hirschfelder 1993).
1775-1781         American Revolution
1776    “As early as May of 1776, Congress had passed a resolution advising the colonies to form new governments “such as shall best conduce to the happiness and safety of their constituents.” Within a year after the Declaration of Independence, all but three states had drawn up constitutions.” (USDSO-IIP)”
1776    Declaration of Independence (United States)
1776    Common Sense by Thomas Paine
1783    “On September 3, 1783, American and British representatives signed articles of peace — the Treaty of Paris – - in which Britain acknowledged the independence, freedom, and sovereignty of the 13 former American colonies, soon to be states (USDSO-IIP)”
1784    Joseph Brant dictated Treaty of Fort Stanwick non-native claim to country by conquest (Submitted by Thompson, Carol. 2001. Akwesasne)
1789    The US Constitution
1789    French Revolution. The victors of 1789 founded a Constitutional Monarchy. Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
1790    The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and Citizen by Olympe de Gouges
1791    The Rights of Man (1791-1792) Thomas Payne
1791    Bill of Rights of the United States
1791    Property ownership was the qualification for suffrage as outlined in Lower Canada’s Constitutional Act. Women were allowed to vote. Rosalie Papineau , the mother of Louis-Joseph Papineau was among the first women to vote. The Act was changed to deprive women of the vote.
1792    A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft
1792    In August of 1792, the Paris Commune, the local city government run by zealous Parisian revolutionaries held a violent demonstration which overturned the newly founded 1789 Constitutional Monarchy and denounced the Monarchy as enemies of the Revolution. The Parisian revolutionaries rejected the National Constituent Assembly and the first Legislative Assembly elected under that constitution.  They called for National Convention to a write a constitution of a Republic. In the new constitution all men, not just the wealthier “active citizens” could vote for the electoral colleges that chose delegates. In reality the vote was controlled by the Jacobin leadership with leaders such as Danton declaring, “France is not republican. We can only establish a Republic by the intimidation of its enemies.” Danton justified the massacres during the Terror as necessary part of this intimidation. The National Convention did not fully represent public opinion in France. The more radical Montagnard Jacobins on the Left side of the National Convention under the leadership of Danton and Robespierre, took control over the Girondists on the Right.
1793-4   The Reign of Terror: The centralized Parisian anti-Christian, French National Convention was pitted against: the Royalists: Austria, Prussia, Britain and Holland; the Federalists who advocated decentralization, to limit Parisian centralized power especially the anti-Christian Parisian leaders; the Christian Democrats, representing, la peuple, the sans-culottes, men and women too who distrusted government and wanted radical changes. They claimed a democratic motivation which was a new use for the term. During the Reign of Terror, about 20,000 people died for being royalists, Girondins, federalists, or Hébertists, in other words urban radicals including Jacobin Montagnard Danton.
1794    The French Revolution was perceived as a secular religion of a dynamic minority that professed human equality, reason — and nationalism, equal partners in a great mission to create a better civilization free of slavery.
1793 – 1918 The War of Peoples or Nation-States began with the Atlantic-Democratic Revolution (Palmer 1959?) (Ostergaard 1994) R. R. Palmer asserts, “The war of kings is over; the war of peoples has begun.”
1794    The Jay Treaty is negotiated and completed. The Treaty asserts that First Nation People are not subjects of Great Britain and the United States and that First Nation People may pass borders unmolested. It was signed with Great Britain to avert a second war with the colonies. See contemporary First Nations artist Mcmaster.
1795    Johann Friedrich Blumenbach was a German anatomist and naturalist who established the most influential of all racial classifications, invented the name Caucasian in 1795, in the third edition of his seminal work, De Generis Humani Varietate Nativa. He claimed that the beauty of the people of this region was uncontested. Blumenbach’s definition cites two reasons for his choice–the maximal beauty of people from this small region, and the probability that humans were first created in this area. Mount Caucasus, is a mountain in the mountain range that straddles Russia and Georgia. Blumenbach believed that the autochthones of the Caucasian race (and therefore the human race) originated in this area in Georgia (Blumenbach 1775).
1788    One of the principal thinkers of ‘Strum und Drang’ , Goethe’s published on his travels in Italy. He was both fascinated and repulsed by the Rabelaisque Roman Carnival which he declared could not be written; it had to be experienced firsthand. Goethe’s work was profoundly influenced by the French Revolution, contemporary Weimar politics, his scientific research into plant metamorphosis, and colour theory. For more on carnival see Bakhtin ‘s 1940 Rabelais and His World in 1940 (Gardiner 1992:45; Goethe 1789).
1795    Kant’s Perpetual Peace (1795) a companion piece to the Critique of Judgment dramatically affected the contemporary German-speaking art circle in Rome. The painter Jakob Asmus Carstens and the critic Carl Ludwig Fernow, learned Kant in Rome in a politically charged atmosphere as Napoleon “liberated” Italians from the Austrians in 1800. Traveling artists supplied the expatriates with texts by Kant, which were read as complementary. Kant may have envisioned aesthetics as separate from politics (in addition to setting and time), but his short political book was read as a companion piece. For a discussion of this see Cheetham (2001).
1796    Bonaparte prepares to invade Italy from Nice to liberate Italy from Austrians. Bonaparte describes liberating army as generous enemies (Bonaparte 1796 [1947]).
1796    Seven Nations Treaty of Canada was signed. (www.wampumchronicles.com) (submitted by Smoke, Rena. 2001. Akwesasne)
1798    Napoleon successfully invaded Egypt which was part of the waning Muslim Ottoman Empire. This signaled the beginning of the end of the Ottoman Empire.
1800    Napoleon I (1800) “If I let the press do what it would like to do, I would be out of office in three months (Medialaw 2001).”
1800    Napoleon made Italy part of his empire. In 1814 Austrian, English, Prussian and Swedish allied forces defeated Napoleon. Italy was partitioned in 1815. In 1861 Italy was united under Garibaldi and Cavour into the Kingdom of Italy.
1806    At the Battle of Jena, Napoleon defeated the Prussian monarchy.
1814    The Times of London introduced the first steam-press (Keep, McLaughlin, and Parmar).
1800s The labour press began to publish describing a social landscape in which the rights to justice, equality and property of artisans, mechanics, trades people were impeded (Hackett and Zhao 1998:16).
1807    Great Britain abolished the slave trade.
1812    The war between Great Britain and the United States: by reason of hostilities the United States considers the Jay Treaty null and void.
1814    The Treaty of Ghent permited First Nation People to cross the border of Canada and the United States without being assessed duties on their “proper goods and peltries.” However, each government would enact legislation in respect to this treaty.
1816    Hegel (and Comte) depicted the accomplishments of the human mind — with its ultimate in the intellectual — as the pivotal force behind historical epochs. The state of Prussia in 1816 was the state of intelligentsia. Hegel proclaimed the end of history. The ideals of liberty and equality were to be imminently universalized. It was a victory of western ideals of freedom and equality embodied in a liberal democratic state (Brym 2001).
1812-1930 Bedlam, a ‘madhouse, was moved from Liverpool Street to Lamberth Street, London, in what is now the Imperial War Museum. In the 18th and 19th centuries Bedlam — like a public hanging — was considered to be a place of public diversion, entertainment or spectacle (Foucault 1963). In 1735 Hogarth made reference to Bedlam in an engraving that parodied the half-penny. It showed a demented Britannia with wild, flying hair – his country, he is obliged to tell us, has ended up in the madhouse (Hogarth 1735).
1815-36 The English working class used newspapers as a vital way of contributing to an unfolding class (Gregory 1999)consciousness (Hackett and Zhao 1998:27).
1820    Great Britain imposed a pact on Arab tribes on the coast of the Arabian Gulf.
1830s France occupied Algeria.
1832    Daumier was imprisoned for his lithograph of King Louis-Philippe as Rabelais’s gluttonous Gargantua forcing the starving masses to satisfy his insatiable need for wealth by placing all their valuables on a conveyor belt that fed directly into his cavernous mouth, as he sat on his throne excreting rewards and honours to the politicians below.
1834    Daumier’s lithograth Rue Transnonian, 15 April 1834 depicted the aftermath of a massacre of sleeping men, women and children in Parisian working class district. During a public insurrection a National Guardsman was wounded and his troop murdered all the inhabitants of the house from which the shots were fired (Gregory 1999).
1835    A jury acquitted editor/politician Joseph Howe accused of criticizing the authorities. The law of seditious libel was effectively struck down (Hackett and Zhao 1998:15).
1839    Britain occupied Aden, in Yemen, at the strategic entrance to the Red Sea as the Ottoman Empire crumbled. Aden was once part of the territory of the Sabeans.
1840s Both within and outside Europe, new civilizations were discovered. On the one hand the notion and fact of popular culture as an alternative to established high culture made its imprint from the 1840s (Ostergaard 1994).
1841    Frederick Douglass is invited to speak at American Anti-Slavery Society meeting.
1842    The Treaty of Treaties on State Lack of unilateral Authority to conduct Land Transactions.
1844    Marx published the Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts.
1845-51 One million Irish Catholics died and another million emigrated because of genocidal policies. In 1841 there were over 8 million Irish Catholics. The Irish famine is the most tragic historical example of the devastating impact, mainly on the most marginalized and disadvantaged, of protectionism and local monopoly of control over goods and services.
1845   Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is published
1848    The Declaration of Sentiments sets the agenda for the US women’s movement.
1848    Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
1848    First Women’s rights convention. The early feminists who studied the moeurs of the Iroquois are: Matilda Joslyn Gage (1848); Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1848); Alice Fletcher; Laura M. Sheldon Wright; Erminnie Smith (Smithsonian Institute); Carrie S. Burnham. (submitted by Benedict, April. 2001. Akwesasne) Frederick Douglass attends first women’s rights convention
1851    Harriet Tubman, made numerous trips between the southern slave states and Canada conducting groups of escaping slaves to freedom.
1851    Mary Ann Shadd formed the Anti-Slavery Society in Toronto
1853    Mary Ann Shadd published The Provincial Freeman. She was the first Black woman to publish a newspaper in North America.
1850 – 1867 “Both the Leader and the Globe in their views of democracy expressed the central position of mid-Victorian liberalism. Both declared for a wide, popular electorate but still wanted a qualified franchise to recognize property and intelligence, and to prevent the rule of ignorance and mere numbers…. There was in this mid-century Canadian press little of the spirit of American Jeffersonian or Jacksonian democracy with their faith in the natural worth of the common man. 9”
1856    Dred Scott case: the Supreme Court decision.
1860s The Qillarsuaq family fled Pond Inlet for safety in Thule (Lynge 1993:32).
1863    Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, declaring the freeing of slaves in all the areas then in rebellion against the U.S. (USDSO-IIP)
1863    John Stuart Mill published the first consistent exposition of Utilitarianism.
1860    The events of the 1860′s, rebellion in Jamaica and Ireland and agitation for franchise reform at home, and the critique of laissez faire associated with them, precipitated a transformation of Liberalism (Lee 1996).
1865    Jules Verne wrote From the Earth to the Moon (1865)
1866    Frederick Douglass meets with President Andrew J to discuss black suffrage.
1867 – 1960 “The federal and provincial legislatures had the primary responsibility for safeguarding human rights principles inherited from the United Kingdom (Holmes 2001:3).”
1867    A Russian Foreign Minister, Eduard de Stoekle, sold Alaska to the American Foreign Minister William Sweard for 7 million dollars (Lynge 1993:34).
1868    The Federal Government of Canada is given authority under Section 91(24) of the Constitution Act 1867, “to make laws for the Peace, Order, and Good Government of Canada,” including laws about “Indians and lands reserved for Indians.” (Mainville, Elmer and Flinders, Lori 2001)
1869    The Subjection of Women by John Stuart Mill
1869    On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
1869    “Ferdinand de Lesseps, with the backing of the French emperor, completed what would become, and still is, one of the key shipping arteries of the world, the Suez Canal.”
1871    The anthropologist Edward B. Tylor’s introduced the concept of primitive culture in 1871. The idea became popular through Tylor’s influential work and it entered the dominant discourse. Tylor set European civilization and western progress as the standard by which all others cultures should be measured (Ostergaard 1994).
1870    Manitoba Act of 1870 Indian Title. First Nations peoples were starving, demoralized, weakened by disease and plagued with alcoholism. White settlers arrived in increasing numbers. In the midst of despair natives began to speak of the Fifth Generation, a future time when there would be a rebirth of their people (York 1990:262).
1872    The Ontario Workman was founded. The labour newspaper expressed Enlightenment sentiments: “Co-operation is a principal that has shone upon the world through the progress of intelligence, and that it will gradually grow with the intelligence of the masses we have no doubt. It, or some like system, will gradually supersede the serf system of the past (Hackett 1998:21).”
1873-7   Economic slump in Britain as US industry expands.
1870    The unification and militarization of Germany.
1870s “A vignette in the Saturday Review, a popular English Victorian magazine, is typical of mid-century attitudes to race and working class life: “The Bethnal Green poor… are a caste apart, a race of whom we know nothing, whose lives are of quite different complexion from ours, persons with whom we have no point of contact…”(Malik 2001)
1871    George Chesney novel The Battle of Dorking (1871) predicted war in Europe as nations felt threatened by Germany’s unification and militarization.
1873    Intensive expansion of the Californian gold fields, the opening-up of Africa and Asia, the development of imperialism. Capitalism prevails as do Victorian values and social policy.  In 19th century Britain, the State was either passive or punitive “prevailing contemporary interpretations of poverty and deprivation, and the diverse responses to them. Several key issues are enunciated: the division of responsibility for welfare as between the individual and the State; the sources of impetus for social policy formulation and the intervention of the State; the contradictory requirements of laissez faire and safeguarding the public good; the relative influence of morality and pragmatism in social policy formulation.” Victorian values
1870-1940 France is ruled under the Third Republic starting with Napoleon III. His minister, Baron Haussmann undertook urban renewal projects provided public parks, “widened boulevards lined with uniform facades, and brought the railway to the centre of Paris. Benjamin considered Haussmann to be an artist of demolition whose tranformations consisted in clearing urban areas of slum housing by moving the poor to the suburbs. Urban renewals were undertaken in the name of progress and Paris was the symbolic epi-centre of progress. Benjamin argued that there was indeed no real progress or change, only a rearranging of the old. Daumier also criticized Haussmann’s negative impact on everyday life in Paris as pedestrians could no longer easily cross the streets, and damp, dark basement apartments became infested with mushrooms.
1880    The Department of Indian Affairs is created to enforce the Indian Act.
1880s The US founded Knights of Labor was spreading across Canada. (Hackett 1998:28)
1881    The International Paris Electrical Exposition was held leading to predictions that the future would be dominated by science, technology and electricity. The America Thomas Edison’s Electric Company exhibited incandescent devices, a model of the Edison central-station lighting system showed an arrangement of incandescent lights within a complete electrical distributing system, including novel appliances and controls of the Edison system, and his first Jumbon generator which was “direct-connected” to its driving engine. Hammer exhibited the wax cylinder phonograph at the exposition (Harding 1881 [1986]).
1881    France occupied Tunisia
1882    Britain took control of Egypt.
1882    Thomas Edison’s central station on Holborn Viaduct in London began operation. Edison exhibited at the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London.  He established companies in London and Paris to manufacture electric light system components and to install central stations in Europe and the United Kingdom.  He established electric light companies in Latin America. He opened the Pearl Street central station in the Wall Street district of New York.
1883    Mount Krakatoa, in Java erupted killing 50,000 people and drastically contributing to global climate change for months after the explosion. The blast was heard around the globe.
1884    The Indian Act was amended to outlaw sundances, potlatches and thirst dances by the federal government. Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald called the potlatch a debauchery of the worst kind declaring that […] it and similar ceremonies encouraged barbarity, idleness and waste, interfered with more productive activities and generally discouraged acculturation. (Francis 1995)
1884    The Fabian society of Great Britain was founded by a group of upper middle class British intellecturals who promoted utopian socialist principles. Welfare state defined by Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-1864) in response to the growing social inequalities of liberal capitalism. Lassalle argued that the state should nationalize industries, redistribute national income, and provide social security. Prominent Fabians included Sidney and Beatrice Webb (1859-1947, 1858-1943), Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) and Harold J. Laski (1893-1950), Bertrand Russell, H.G. Wells, Sir Julian Huxley, Aldous Huxley, John Maynard Keynes. In America liberal ideals are similar to fabian socialism. John Dewey, President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, B.F. Skinner, Betty Friedan, Francis Crick, Isaac Asimov promote(d) liberal ideals. It was replaced by Keynes theories in the 1930′s.
1885    Sidney and Beatrice Webb, George Bernard Shaw and others published the Fabian Essays which was based on Bismarck’s Prussian model of bureaucratic planning and management for public welfare.
1887: “Nisga’a Chiefs travel by water to Victoria to discuss the Nisga’a Land Question. They are turned away on the steps of the legislature by Premier William Smithe (PWGS 2001).”
1889    “Aboriginal fishers are excluded from commercial fishing until 1923 (PWGS 2001).”

1800s Utilitarianism advocated the goal of the greatest good of the greatest number instead of democracy based on natural rights and reason. Utilitarianism was better accepted by the ruling order, the middle class. They were concerned that democracy would lead to mob rule. (Hackett 1998:19) (Hackett and Zhao 1998) Utilitarianism and democracy are held in a long-standing tension in the United States.
1890    Jacob Riis exposed the poor living conditions of the tenement slums in How the Other Half Lives (1890) and inspired significant tenement reforms. Progressive Period
1891    Emma Borlum wrote “One day I showed some astonishment at seeing a young Indian woman, in the absence of her husband, give two horses to a friend. She looked at me very coldly and said: “These horses are mine.” I excused myself saying that in my country a woman would consult her husband before giving such expensive presents. The woman answered proudly: “I would not be a white woman!” (Indian Roots, 1990) (submitted by Benedict, April. 2001. Akwesasne)
1891    T. P. Thompson was Canada’s most prominent labour journalist. He was forced to close his newspaper when his readers turned to the commercial dailies. “It is much to be regretted that the wage earners are so stupidly blind to their own interests that they cannot see the advantage of having a live outspoken journal to plead their cause. 33” (Hackett 1998:28)
1893    Sanford Dole with the help of US troops overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy. Queen Liluokalani was held prisoner in the Iolani Palace in Honolulu by Dole’s government. She was summarily tried, found guilty of treason and forced to abdicate the royal throne of Hawaii in late 1896. It was while she was imprisoned in the palace that she wrote the song “Farewell to Thee,” which is better known as “Aloha Oe.” See Israel Kamakawiwo’ole.
1893    Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, born in India studied to become a lawyer in educated in Britain was hired by a Muslim law firm to work in South Africa.
1894    Italian astronomer Schiaparelli taking advantage of the proximity of Mars to earth reported seeing “canali” leading to speculation about the possibility of martian life.
1895    Sidney and Beatrice Webb, founded the London School of Economics (L.S.E.)
1895    Traditional Ceremonies are made a Criminal Offence and Punishable by law. The Punishment would be 2 to 6 months in prison. The Canadian Governments’ position was that ceremonies were a “horrible fabrication of lies,” medicine people were “sinister,” and both were a “waste of time.” (Mainville, Elmer and Flinders, Lori 2001)
1896    “Theodor Herzl published a pamphlet called Der Judenstaat (“The Jewish State”), in which he advocated British-backed Jewish colonization in Argentina or Palestine – with the hope of eventually creating a sovereign Jewish state. Herzl’s writings and personal advocacy led to the formal development of Zionism, a political movement dedicated to the creation of such a state, and eventually focusing on Palestine. The Zionist claim to Palestine was mainly based on the fact that there had been periods of Hebrew rule in Canaan and the land west of the Jordan River between 1300 B.C. and A.D. 70.”
1898    The Dreyfus affair attracted much attention pitting clericals and the military camp against those Georges Clemenceau called “les intellectuals.” In Central and Eastern Europe in the 1860s the term “intelligentsia” denoted liberals, socialists, and other critics of authority (Brym 2001).”
1898    President McKinley overturned President Cleveland objections to annex Hawaii. The US Navy wanted a secure Hawaiian base at Pearl Harbor in preparation for war with Spain. (the US battleship “Maine” blew up in the harbor of Havanna, Cuba.) Hawaii was already an important supply base for US ships in the Pacific.
1898    The American bison was an endangered species. Scientists were aware of the concept of species extinction.
1898    Socialist and visionary H. G. Wells wrote the War of the Worlds (Wells 1898).
1899    The poet Charles Mair traveled into the far Northwest as secretary to the Half-Breed Script Commission appointed by the government in Ottawa to carry out negotiations related to Treaty Eight with the native people of northern Alberta (Francis 1995).
1899    Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in England struck down a British Columbia law that prohibited anyone of Chinese descent from working in the mines. The provincial law interfered with the federal jurisdiction over naturalization and aliens. However, the Privy Council upheld the British Columbia legislation that denied the vote to Canadians of Asiatic descent. Suffrage was a provincial jurisdiction (Holmes 2001:5).
1900?    The “Pass System” is introduced. This was to discourage participation in Traditional Ceremonies and rescind First Nation Peoples right to cross borders.(Mainville, Elmer and Flinders, Lori 2001) In 1885? the Department of Indian Affairs instituted a pass system. No outsider could come onto a reserve to do business with an Aboriginal resident without permission from the Indian agent. (submitted by Smoke, Rena. 2001. Akwesasne)
1901    The Department of Indian Affairs issues a “Short Hair Order” to European educated First Nation individuals in an attempt to ensure that they reject their traditional lifestyles. (Mainville, Elmer and Flinders, Lori 2001)
1901    With tribal institutions seriously undermined by military defeat and the land base broken up through allotment the BIA began to intrude on the daily lives and personal habits of the people in their care. The Commissioner of Indian Affairs issued a circular to agents in the field detailing BIA actions toward Indian customs that should be modified or discontinued. Hirschfelder, A.1993. The Native American Almanac. New York. Prentice Hall. (submitted by Bruyere, Daniel. 2001. Akwesasne)
1904    A 90-year-old First Nations elder from Alberta was sentenced to two months of hard labour for participating in a forbidden dance ceremony (York 1990:264).
1904    The Shame of the Cities (1904), Lincoln Steffens Progressive Period
1904-5   German sociologist and economist published his most famous work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Weber was not a Marxist but he was influenced by Karl Marx’s writings. Weber argued that capitalist institutions can trace their ‘spiritual’ roots to Martin’s Luther’s protests against the Catholic Church in 1517 which heralded the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Weber focused specifically on Calvinism, present day Presbyterianism which is based on the doctrine of predestination: God preordains individual salvation (Weber 1904-5 [1958])
1905    The Canadian federal, and provincial governments, and by the Moose Factory First Nation (now known as Moose Cree First Nation) signed Treaty Nine. This treaty recognized the rights of the Moose Cree people of this region. Signatures for the Moose Cree people were; Simon Smallboy, George Tappaise, Henry Sailor, John Nakogee, John Dick, Simon Quatchewan, John Jeffries, Fred Mark, Henry Utappe, Simon Cheena. (submitted by Earl Cheechoo)
1906    Gandhi,  lawyer, born in India, trained in Britain, working for a Moslim law firm in South Africa,  launched a campaign of nonviolent resistance satyagraha at a mass meeting in Johannesburg to protest British Government’s discrimination against Indians which included invalidating the Indian marriage. Gandhi was labeled a terrorist for his activities. When asked what he thought of Western civilization Gandhi replied, “I think it would be an excellent idea.”
1908    “Herbert Croly’s The Promise of American Life is often described as the manifesto of Progressivism; but this is not wholly apt. For one thing, it was published in 1908, by which time the progressive movement was at its peak, and had resulted in many of the reforms of city government, civil service recruitment, and anti-corruption measures for which it was known. Croly was more plausibly described – as he was by Theodore Roosevelt – as the author of a doctrine of “new nationalism.”” http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us:8080/publications/hongkong/ryan.htm
1910   Art critics such as Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler incorporated the Kantian notions of “the analytic/synthetic distinction, the thing-in-itself and disinterestedness, and the formal autonomy of the work of art as a way of conceptualizing and justifying cubism (Cheetham 2001:78).”
1910    “Prime Minister Laurier promises to settle the land question.” ((PWGS) 2001)
1910    The Progressive Era (1910 – 1918) Social and political upheavals of the early twentieth century transformed the role played by government in American society. The relationship between the governed and those governing was also changing. Women in the United States began demanding suffrage in 1848 at the Seneca Falls convention. [1] For over seven decades, women’s suffrage supporters protested their lack of full citizenship by protests writing, lecturing, wrote, marching, lobbying, and practicing civil disobedience. In 1920 the 19th Amendment granted women the vote. (1920) MFB
1910    Pablo Montana the opening of the reservation to white homesteaders
1910    That act was a blatant violation of the tribes 1855 treaty with the United States. Watertown Daily Times 2001 02 18. (submitted by Terrance, Peter. 2001. Akwesasne)
1911    Italy seized Libya.
1913    “Nisga’a Land Committee submits its Petition to the British Privy Council in London.” (Haig-Brown 1995:61).
1914    It was not until the outbreak of the great war in 1914 that the simple equation of Europe and civilisation ceased to hold sway. Only as a result of the terrors of this mass-industrialised war and its outcome in the form of revolutions, nationalist hysteria, facism and Nazism, the awareness of crisis became all-pervasive. As a result, self-doubt has come to dominate most discourse on Europe ever since to such a degree that it has become virtually impossible to use the words Europe and civilisation in the same breath. Instead it has become normal to talk of the “so-called European civilisation” (Ostergaard 1994).
1914-18  New amendments were made to the Indian Act making it even harsher in regards to banning ceremonies.
1914    Manitoba Premier Roblin stated his opposition to votes for women
1914   “Nellie McClung and the Political Equality League staged a mock “Women’s Parliament” in the Walker Theatre in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The women played the parts of the members of parliament, with Nellie as the premier. They debated the pros and cons of granting men the vote, exposing the sanctimonious and contradictory arguments used by male politicians to deny female suffrage. Receiving a deputation of vote-seeking men pushing a wheelbarrow full of petitions, Nellie congratulated them on their “splendid appearance,” but told them “man is made for something higher and better than voting (coolwomen.org).””
1915    Horace Kallen’s “Democracy versus the Melting Pot,” published in two installments in the Nation in 1915.
1916    “John Dewey’s “Nationalizing Education,” published in Journal of Education, 1916. (Jane Addams and John Dewey had observed in Chicago during the 1890s that deracination had happened but not a corresponding process of reracination, and a good deal of Dewey’s educational theory reflected his concern for what you might call the reracination of urban children and migrant children alike.)” “One characteristically Deweyan touch was the claim that American nationality is constituted by democracy, while a second was his insistence that the “hyphen” is good when it attaches, bad when it separates. Dewey was by this time–1916–the most famous educational theorist in the world, and it was an anxiety about the misuse of the educational system for polemical and propaganda purposes that led him to write this essay and several others in defense of pluralism in American education Ryan (1995).”
1914-1918 World War I
1914-18 Women contributed to WWI often engaging in work usually assigned to men.
1914-1918 Western countries penetrated the Middle East during the First World War. The Ottoman Empire sided with Germany. Great Britain encouraged and supported the Arab Revolt against the Turks. Britain promised Arabs aid independence from the Ottoman Turks. The Arabian campaign was romanticized in T. E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) and in Lawrence’s own writings. The Arab Revolt contributed substantially to the Allied victory.
1916    The report of the 1912-6 McKenna-McBride royal commission on the condition of Indian Affairs in BC was published revealing that First Nations were vocal in expressing concerns about administration as governments and missionaries exerted more influence and increased their power. As governments and missionaries increased their presence on reserves First Nations representatives voiced concerns about opening discussions on education that would misinterpreted as an acceptance of the extinguishment of land title (Haig-Brown 1995:50-4).
1917    Declaration of the Rights of the People of Russia
1917    The Russian Revolution was a particularly violent eruption of conflict along ideological lines. The impact spread beyond Russian boundaries pitting communism, facism-Nazism against liberal democracy and communism against liberal democracy (Ostergaard 1994) (Palmer 1959). Bakhtin compared the Russian Revolution to the early Renaissance through an analysis of the work of Rabelais. Inhabitants of Renaissance Europe as described in the literature of Rabelais (Bakhtin 1940 [1968]) experienced radical change during the time threshold between the dark ages and the higher renaissance. Russians in the years before and after 1917 lived in the temporal borderlands between Czarist Russia and post-revolution Russia. Rabelais integrated street language including folk humour, the carnivalesque and the grotesque mixed with Latin to parody the official worlds of religion — Roman Catholic Church — and state —and the Holy Roman Empire (AGO 2000; Rabelais 1533 [1955]).
1919    “At the end of WWI France and Great Britain secretly agreed to partition most of the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire between them and eventually obtained mandates from the League of Nations: Britain over Iraq, Palestine, and Transjordan; France over Syria and Lebanon. The mandates were inconsistent with British promises to the Arabs and, furthermore, contrary to the recommendations of President Wilson’s King-Crane Commission, a group sent to the Middle East in 1919 specifically to ascertain the wishes of the Arab peoples.”
1919    Paris Peace Conference ends World War I. In WWI there were 37 million casualties, including 9 million dead combatants.
1919    International Labour Organization founded
1919    Engineer then President Herbert Hoover founded the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace within Stanford University is a public policy research center devoted to advanced study of politics, economics, and political economy—both domestic and foreign—as well as international affairs. The Hoover Institution originated as a specialized collection of documents on the causes and consequences of World War I.  Herbert Hoover 31st US, “The principles of individual, economic, and political freedom; private enterprise; and representative government were fundamental to the vision of the Institution’s founder. By collecting knowledge, generating ideas, and disseminating both, the Institution seeks to secure and safeguard peace, improve the human condition, and limit government intrusion into the lives of individuals.”
1919    Treaty of Versailles signed.
1919-33 Weimar Constitution was adopted in 1919. The democratic Weimar Republic was wrought with lawlessness, disorder, dissension and economic chaos such as massive inflation in 1923 which severely affected both the German middle and working classes. There was widespread dissatisfaction with the Weimar government. Extreme opposition from right wing forces including the military argued that left wing politicians, Communists, and Jews had caused the havoc. The 1920’s economic recovery was overly dependent on American loans. In 1929, the economic crisis engendered by the Wall Street Crash of 1929 hit German economy badly. In 1933 unemployment reached 6.1 million. In this environment of social instability and dissatisfaction with the government, the German population was ready for a Nazi alternative. The Jewish community was blamed for German economic problems.
1920    The Indian Act is amended to make education compulsory and include both voluntary and involuntary enfranchisement.
1921    The RCMP raided a potlatch on Vancouver Island confiscating artifacts such as masks (York 1990:264).
1920    American Civil Liberties Union founded
1920    Walter Lippman and Charles Merza accused The New York Times of reporting the Russian Revolution by “seeing not what was, but what men wished to see. (Hackett 1998:40)”
1920    Opening session of the League of Nations
1920    US women win the right to vote
1921    Agnes Macphail was the first woman elected to the House of Commons. She fought for women’s rights, penal reforms, world government, disarmament and the end of militarism.
1921    Reza Khan, an Iranian military officer, toppled the Iranian government (Walsh 2001).
1921-24                          Knud Rasmussen, a Greenlandic-Danish expedition leader completed the longest journey ever made by dog sledge from Thule to Nome.
1921    National Socialist German Workers’ Party, a right-winged party of demobilized soldiers was led by Führer Adolf Hitler by 1921. Hitler appealed to national pride, militarism, and a commitment to the Volk and a racially “pure” Germany, condemning Jews. [Antisemitic feelings prevailed in Europe for centuries.]
1924    “Nisga’a Nation allotted 76 square kilometres of reserve land.” ((PWGS) 2001)
1925    Reza Khan seized power in Iran taking the Persian name of Shah Pahlavi (Walsh 2001).
1926    General strike Baldwin’s role in causing ?
1927    Slavery Convention (League of Nations)
1927    Heidegger published Being and Time. See Levinas who acknowledged Heidegger contributions to philosophy while lamenting his affiliation with Nazism. (Heidegger 1927). In his lectures in the 1930s Heidegger believed that poets emerged at the beginning and end of a weltanschauung. He considered the Romantic Hölderlin to be a prophet of a nation coming into being seyn. By 1943 the Holderin was widely celebrated by Third Reich (Holderlin and Santner 1797)
1927    The Indian Act is amended to make it illegal to, “receive, obtain, solicit, or request from any Indian any payment for the purpose of raising a fund or providing money for the prosecution of any claim.”
1927    The Indian Act prohibited the political organization of Natives beyond local levels of government effectively denying Natives the right to organize and lobby.
1929    Scheduled air services begins along the Mackenzie Valley (Alia 1994:109).
1929    The Persons Case five women from Alberta (Emily Murphy, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney, Irene Parlby and Henrietta Muir Edwards) successfully appealed the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision that women were not qualified persons within the meaning of the British North America Act, to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council of the House of Lords in England.
1929    A group of historians under Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre initiated a journal and a school devoted to studying the “Annales d’histoire économique et sociale” in which they reject traditional historiography.
1930s Surnames given by Soviet government to Siberian Yuit people (Alia 1994:109).
1930    John Dewey engaged in debate with University of Chicago president,   Robert Hutchins–a dispute sparked by Dewey’s negative review of Hutchins’ book The Higher Education in America (1936). This debate over liberal arts curricula is similar to the 1980s – 2000 debates between the academic left and right. Dewey’s progressive education advocated the education of informed citizens in an environment of intellectual independence. Students were being prepared to participate as citizens in a democracy aware of their rights and responsibilities. His methods were participatory. “Hutchins maintained that the principal function of higher education was to imbue a select group of intellectually superior students with the great truths of Western culture. His book bluntly concluded: “Education implies teaching. Teaching implies knowledge. Knowledge implies truth. The truth is everywhere the same. Hence education is everywhere the same Ryan (1995 citing Hutchins 1936:279).”
1930s Alexandre Kojeve, a brilliant Russian emigre taught a highly influential series of lectures on Helgelian concepts at the Parisian Ecole Practique des Hautes Etudes which impacting on Sartre, Aron and postwar existentialism. Kojeve developed the Hegelian concept of the end of history coinciding with the creation of a liberal democracy protecting man’s universal right to freedom which exists with the consent of the governed. Kojeve believed that the heroic creation of the European Common Market was the embodiment of liberal democracy. See (Fukuyama 1989).
1930s Great Depression
1930′s   Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal”
1930    John Maynard Keynes published “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren” (1930, Nation and Atheneum) which would spark a Keynesian Revolution of economic theory, whose influence would continue well into the 1970′s. President Richard Nixon declared that even he was a Keynesian. (Keynes 1935-36)
1933    Hitler was appointed Chancellor. Nazi party was the largest political party in the German Reichstag. This marked the end of the Weimar Republic.
1934    Marcel Mauss published ‘Techniques of the Body,’ (1992 [1934]) in which he described the lengthy process of corporeal apprenticeship bodies undergo to acquire culturally specific bodily techniques specific such as how to dig a hole in the ground. Mauss observed how English and French spades were designed specifically for culturally defined ways of digging. He deduced that a society’s material culture equally recalls particular bodily postures and attitudes (Roderick 1998).
1935    Leni Riefenstahl’s documentary Triumph of the Will celebrated the Nazi Regime. It is the classic propaganda film.
1935    The American Newspaper Guild’s code of ethics upheld the value of objectivity: “The newspapermen’s first duty is to give the public accurate and unbiased news reports. (Hackett 1998:40)”
1936    The Olympic Games took place in Berlin in spite of human rights violations in Germany.
1936    Ayn Rand’s first novel, We the Living, criticized totalitarianism particularly Soviet-style communism which had taken everything from her family. Rand strongly promoted individual rights to property.
1937    Seattle labour strike against media magnate Hearst and his policies. Strikers called for a 40-hour work week.
1937    Quebec’s “authoritarian premier, Maurice Duplessis introduced the Padlock Act to shut down what it considered to be “Bolshevik or communistic” publications. The Supreme Court overturned the Padlock Act in 1957 (Hackett 1998:79).”
1937    Alberta Press Bill. The Government of Alberta granted the Social Credit Board — a government agency — the power to prohibit the publication of a newspaper, to force a newspaper to make corrections the Board considered inaccurate. The Social Credit Board wanted to protect the weakened Alberta economy and encourage the public to accept the government policies enforced to correct the province’s economic downturn. The Supreme Court found that Alberta’s prohibition threatened the freedom of the press. The prohibition also impacted on banking, interest and legal tender that were under federal not provincial jurisdiction (Holmes 2001:7).
1937    Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek fled the capital Nanking and the Chinese National army abandoned the city which was then occupied by Japanese military.  Japanese soldiers went on a rampage of killing, looting, and raping. During the Rape of Nanking at least 190, 000 people were killed. 20, 000 Chinese women were raped. Fleeing soldiers and civilians, including women, children, and old men were brutally and cruelly tortured and killed. The Rape of Nanking was subject to an enquiry at the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. However, there has been criticism from the Chinese that the second holocaust was forgotten and apologies for the atrocities have been seriously inadequate. A recent popular account by 29-year-old Chinese American Iris Change has met with much controversy with both positive and negative critiques (Entenmann 1998). Richard Falks discusses the Rape of Nanking and the reawakening of obstinate memories of the massacre, in light of the need for the US to re-examine the atrocities committed by its own military actions in WWII. He argues that American society has been reluctant to confront accusations of its own injustice especially in relation to African American and indigenous peoples (Falk 2000:203)
1939    The Supreme Court of Canada ruled the Inuit were entitled to the same health, education and social services as the Indians were granted in the 1876 Indian Act (Hessel 1998:190).
1939    Hitler published Mein Kempf in which he described his philosophy of racial purity and his weltanschauung.
1939    The concept of iconology was developed by Abby Warburg and refined by Panofsky both at the Warburg Institute, in Hamburg, London and in the United States. Iconology (Panofsky 1939) provided the paradigmatic theoretical underpinning of   all critical histories in this century (Mitchell 1986 and Holly 1997). Erwin Panofsky’s writing became more empirical and less theoretical after Panofsky emigrated from Germany to the United States. In spite of this famous turn, Panofsky continued to use Kantian philosophy especially as a sign of humanism that might combat authoritarianism. For a deeper discussion see (Cheetham 2001). Panofsky elitist, ethnocentric approach located Western civilization, particularly Gothic France and Renaissance Italy, as the pinnacle of civilization upon which all art forms from all times, cultures and places were judged.
1939-1945         World War II
1930-40s            Disc numbers (Alia 1994:109).
1939    Panofsky published Studies in Iconology which situated him as one of the pivotal founders of the discipline of art historical interpretation or Kunstwissenschaft offering grand Hegelian schemes accounting for a diachronous process in which historians center on highpoints of Western civilization, particularly on French Gothic and the Italian Renaissance using these as a template for interpreting and evaluating all other works of art from all other times and places. See also Warburg (Panofsky 1939).
1941    During WWII British and Russians forced Reza Shah, a German ally, to abdicate his throne to his son (Walsh 2001).
1940    Christie v. York Corporation S.C.R. 139 The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the claim of a black man who had been refused service in a tavern. The Supreme Court of Canada defended the right to freedom of commerce over freedom from discrimination. Merchants could choose customers (Holmes 2001:5).
1940s The 1940′s also saw the birth of Mohawk journalism with the publication of Akwesasne’s first newspaper, Kawehras! (“It Thunders!”) by a young Ernest Benedict, who later went on to establish Akwesasne Notes and the North American Indian Travelling College in the late 1960′s and early 70′s. (submitted by Arquette, S. Akwesasne)
1941    President Roosevelt gives the “Four Freedoms” address
1940s RCMP conducted a census of Inuit populations. They assigned the infamous identification numbering system that imposed the wearing of numbered discs. These disc numbers were dropped during “Operation Surname” in the 1960s.
1940s Japanese Canadians had their property confiscated and were forced into internment camps during WWII. This had a profound consciousness-raising effect on Canadians (Holmes 2001:7).
1941    The Atlantic Charter, signed in 1941 by Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill announced the intention of the Allied powers to fight the Axis powers. The Charter encouraged citizens to defend their nations and to assert their rights and “the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live.” (Churchill, did not intend to dismantle the British Empire and to grant sovereignty to the British colonies. “We mean to hold our own. I have not become the King’s First Minister to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.” In spite of this, colonial subjects were inspired by the Charter and began to press for self-determination.
1941    Arctic Institute of North America (AINA) is founded jointly by Canadians and Americans (Alia 1994:109).
1942    The Beveridge Report was published advocating the setting up of a Keynesian welfare state in the United Kingdom with an emphasis on citizenship and social equality. The report delineated the role of the State in the direction of labour, control of food supply, emergency medical service, empowerment of women, provision of nurseries and child care.
1942    Declaration of the United Nations
1944    F. A. Hayek published his The Road to Serfdom on the relation between individual liberty and government authority. Hayek argued against any form of socialism, communism or increasing government control through collectivist ideas. He warned they would “would inevitably lead not to a utopia but to the horrors of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy” (Fukuyama 1989).
1944    The British government published its White Paper on Employment Policy committing the government to aim for Keynesian full employment objectives.
1944    “The Bretton Woods conference of 1944 set up the post-World War II international economic system. Within this agreement countries would maintain fixed exchange rate parities vis-a-vis one another and could rely on one another for loans through the International Monetary Fund. Countries accessing these funds had to abide by IMF rules in order to provide macroeconomic equilibrium. The IMF could demand that debtor nations implement macroeconomic policy adjustments in order to bring the balance of payments back to a sustainable level. In the case of extreme debt disequilibrium the IMF could demand a devaluation of the debtor’s nation’s currency.
1944    Ontario’s Racial Discrimination Act prohibited the publication, display or broadcast of anything indicating an intention to discriminate on the basis of race or creed. This pioneering statute was significant in that it declared that racial and religious discrimination was against public policy. Therefore the judiciary could not subordinate human rights to the interests of commerce, contract or property (Holmes 2001:8).
1945    Charter of the United Nations
1945    “Before 1945, the only rights individuals had under international law were in the treaties abolishing the slave trade, the Geneva and Hague conventions that regulating the conduct of war and the minority rights treaties concluded after Versailles. But these were rights held only by virtue of membership in particular groups and in specific situations. It is only since l945 that the individual acquired legal personality in international law. This simple fact matters more than the rights enumerated in the Declaration (Ignatieff).”
1945-1946         The Nuremberg Trials world leaders pledged “Never again…” promising that there would be intervention to prevent genocide and making world leaders subject to accountability.
1945    “Yalta. With the defeat of Nazi Germany imminent, the Big Three Allies meet in the Crimean resort town of Yalta from February 4-11. Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin agree to jointly govern postwar Germany, while Stalin pledges fair and open elections in Poland.” CNN Interactive: The Cold War
1945-51”Between 1945 and 1951, this universal individual was enfranchised, not just in the Universal Declaration, but in the UN Charter; the Nuremberg case law; the Genocide Convention; the Geneva Conventions; the European Convention on Human Rights; and the UNESCO statement on race, in which prominent anthropologists undertook a scientific exorcism of Dr Pannwitz’ `aquarium effect’ (Ignatieff).
1945-6   Canada threatened to deport Japanese Canadians.
1946-9   During this period of Pre-McCarthy McCarthy figures such as Nixon, Parnell Thomas and J. Edgar Hoover strongly criticized left-leaning journalists and advocates of public housing.
1940-50s            The ideas of German Jewish refugee and political scientist, Leo Strauss became popular. He reiterated a self-interested Hobbseian human subject, rejected any form of deluded idealism and mass tyranny and advocated realpolitics. He encouraged forceful leadership willing to make unpopular decisions based on pragmatic realism.
1946    “Eleanor Roosevelt is elected as head of the United Nations Human Rights Commission; She begins to draft the Declaration of Human Rights; She initiates the creation of Americans for Democratic Action, a group which focuses on domestic social reform and resistance against Russia and the developing Cold War.”
1946    Canada took arbitrary measures in dealing with the Gouzenko spy affair
1945 – 1950 Fabian’s program is carried out by the British Labour government. Nationalisation of some of the basic industries The creation of the ‘Welfare State’ Rejection of Marxism which is equated with the doctrine of totalitarian Stalinism Pressing for greater democracy Greater participation of the workers in the control of the nationalized industries Fabian socialism through a British Labour government “implemented welfare and health care benefits, governmental economic management and political ‘consensus’ within a framework of increasing consumerism.” Postwar The post-war social problems – increasing unemployment in the distressed areas, low standards of health and diet, rising maternal and infant mortality rates, housing shortage. Political uncertainty – minority governments and growth of Fascism and Communism. Economic crisis, fall in demand and growth of ideas to ‘plan the way out of crisis’. Planning as formative idea, the growth of municipal planning schemes of slum clearance, building of planned estates,targeted aid for distressed areas, formation of planning groups for social research (PEP). The Keynesian revolution. The projected economic policy of demand management and government investment for the creation of employment. The growth of mass consumption in areas of Britain, increase in health insurance and hospital provision, innovation of assembly line Fordist production methods.
1946-89 Cold War was a war between two superpowers separated by divergent ideologies of communism and liberal democracy (Ostergaard 1994).
1946    Canada and the United States build weather stations, signal stations and air-defence posts in the North (Crowe 1991:180 cited in Alia 1994:109).
1946    Canadian Army’s Arctic military exercise “Operation Muskox” at Baker Lake. Major Cleghorn noted the high quality of carvings in the Keewatin area and suggested this potential be developed.
1947    India was granted independence ending British rule (1740s – 1947).This is a major victory for Gandhi’s nonviolence movement which began in 1906. Congress partitioned the country into India and Pakistan. This is another step towards de-colonialization.
1947    M.V. Nascopie sinks off Cape Dorset. To some this becomes the symbol of the end of one era and the beginning of another.  Canadian government assumed responsibility for Inuit welfare in the late 1940s. (Hessel 1998:8)
1947    Truman Doctrine: On March 12, President Truman requests $400 million in aid from Congress to combat communism in Greece and Turkey. The Truman Doctrine pledges to provide American economic and military assistance to any nation threatened by communism. .” CNN Interactive: The Cold War
1947    The Marshall Plan named after General George C. Marshall, then Secretary of state was a post-war foreign aid plan which became the European Recovery Program.
1946-1948         The Tokyo Trials
1947    Canada becomes the first Commonwealth country to gain its own citizenship act when the Canadian Citizenship Act takes effect on January 1, 1947. Prior to that, Canadians were considered British subjects residing in Canada, not Canadian citizens. Prime Minister Mackenzie King received the first citizenship certificate. (Mainville, Elmer and Flinders, Lori 2001)
1948    Eleanor Roosevelt speaks on “The Struggles for the Rights of Man” at the Sorbonne during a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in Paris; She threatens her resignation from the UN if Truman does not recognize the newly formed state of Israel; She joins her daughter, Anna, for a radio discussion program on ABC.
1948    Universal Declaration on Human Rights 1948 Charter of the United Nations: “We the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeded generations from the scourge of war […] and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights …” The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations. This was a declaratory not legally binding document (Holmes 2001:7).
1948    Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (United Nations)
1948    Canada played a prominent role in the United Nations and in the development of a language of human rights. This motivated Canadians to improve the domestic situation of human rights protection.
1948    Charter of the Organization of American States
1949    “Nisga’a Chief Frank Calder is elected to the B.C. legislature.” ((PWGS) 2001)
1949    Geneva Conventions
1949    China. In June, Chinese communists declare victory over Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces, which later flee to Taiwan. On October 1, Mao Tse-tung proclaims the People’s Republic of China. Two months later, Mao travels to Moscow, where he negotiates the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance.” CNN Interactive: The Cold War
1949    The Supreme Court of Canada became the final appeal court in Canada replacing the Privy Council of the United Kingdom. However, the Canadian judiciary continued to rule on issues of rights only in terms of the division of legislative powers between provinces and the federal government (Holmes 2001:6).
1949    In his 1949[1969] publication La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe II, Fernard Braudel irreversibly transformed the way history  was written. The social science turn in historiography was propelled forward by Braudel’s methodology based on “la longue durée”. Braudel examined white writings on the surface of the profound oceans to explore societies in relation to their geographic environments, social structures, their trade routes and their intellectual histories. Braudel examined the geography, political economies and sociology of the cities, Venice, Milan, Genoa and Florence in the age of Phillip II. Images of the immobility of time in Borges map contrast with the rapid acceleration of time in traditional history where centuries and millenia were encapsulated into the lives of singular heroic figures from Alexander the Great, Caesar, Gengis Khan, Louis XIV to Napoleon (Braudel 1949[1969]).
1950    Establishment of northern communities (Alia 1994:109).
1950    James Houston arrives in Inukjuak on a project with the Canadian Handicrafts Guild and the federal government (Alia 1994:109).
1950    Inuit first vote in Canadian election (Alia 1994:109).
1951    NWT includes elected as well as appointed members (Alia 1994:109).
1950s Alberta’s Conservative Premier Ralph Klein described the 1950s as a Golden Age when Canadians “looked to the newspapers for their information, and … to governments for answers.” Klein and many others were convinced that in the 1950s “The news simply reported on “reality,” and political journalism treated politicians and authority figures with enough respect that they could communicate with their publics without worrying about the distorting lenses of the media.” (Hackett 1998:136)” This cognitive certitude was pervasive. It existed in academia as well.
1951    The first guide for teachers on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was published. (Symonided 1998:xi)
1951    A UNESCO publication entitled “On Race and Race Differences” declared that capacity for intellectual and emotional development was not influenced by inherited racial genes; that biological differences within the same race may be greater that between races (UNESCO 1951).
1950s The realist mode of thinking (statist logic of George Kennan, Henry Kissinger) is traced to the writing of Hobbes and Machiavelli (Falk 2000a:22).
1951    Refugee Convention (United Nations)
1951    “Parliament repeals provisions of the Indian Act that outlawed the Potlatch and prohibited land claims activity (PWGS 2001).”
1952    Levi-Strauss was one of a team of renowned anthropologists who studied the race question in modern science in UNESCO funded research and in response to the horrors of genocidal politics of the holocaust (Levi-Strauss 1952)
1952    U.S.-sponsored coup topples the Guatemalan government of President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. Guzman was the elected leader of Guatemala. He passed a law which the US considered to be too socialists. The agrarian reform law re-distributed unused lands from holdings over 223 acres to landless campesinos. At this time, the US-based United Fruit Company (UFC) was Guatemala’s biggest landowner, but no more than 15% of its 550,000 acres   were under cultivation. As a result, the government expropriated 400,000 acres, offering compensation based on the UFC’s own figures which had under-valued the land for tax   purposes (Costello 2001).”
1953    European Commission on Human Rights founded
1950s-60s: Naationalization was common during the postwar period with social democratic or socialist governments.
1953    Department of Northern Affairs and Natural Resources formed; Arctic division is devoted solely to Inuit (Alia 1994:109).
1953    Pahlavi Reza Shah was briefly deposed. United States intervened in covert operations to restore the antidemocratic Shah to power in Iran (Falk 2000b:46).
1953    Stalin dies. Korean War ends. “Soviet leader Joseph Stalin dies of a stroke on March 5. On July 27, an armistice is signed ending the Korean War, with the border between North and South roughly the same as it had been in 1950. The willingness of China and North Korea to end the fighting was in part attributed to Stalin’s death.” CNN Interactive: The Cold War
1954    “After a long siege, Vietnamese communists under Ho Chi Minh defeat French colonial forces at Dien Bien Phu on May 7. In July, the Geneva Accords divide the country at the 17th parallel, creating a North and South Vietnam. The United States assumes the chief responsibility of providing anti-communist aid to South Vietnam.” CNN Interactive: The Cold War
1954    United States intervened in covert operations to overthrow the Arbenz government in Guatemala (Falk 2000b:46).
1955    On January 12, Dulles, U.S. Secretary of State announced the doctrine of Massive Retaliation threatening to use full-scale nuclear power against the Soviet Union in response to communist aggression anywhere in the world. CNN Interactive: The Cold War
1955    Work begins on Distant Early Warning (DEW) line (Alia 1994:109).
1955    Inuit families are moved from Inukjuak and Pond Inlet to Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord in the High Arctic (Alia 1994:109)..
1956    At the XXieth Party Congress Krushchev delivered his “secret speech ” in which he attacked and denounced the errors and brutalities of Joseph Stalin. No one had dared to do that before. It was the central most important event of the decade. It in effect made Khrushchev the father of the later Gorbachev Revolution (Rempel).”
1957    Russian author, Boris Pasternak published his novel, Doctor Zhivago in Italy which was admired world-wide. His hero from the Russian intelligentsia managed to retain his own human values at the cost of his life, in the midst of the turbulence of the Revolution and Civil War, and the early Soviet system.
1957    John Diefenbaker came to power. He was an advocate of entrenched human rights.
1957    The International Labour Organization recommended the need for adoption of international standards to govern the relations between indigenous peoples and states.
1957    The Indian Act is amended; the criminal offence of Traditional Ceremonies is removed as well as the Pass System. However, this information is not shared with First Nations Leaders and Individuals. (Mainville, Elmer and Flinders, Lori 2001)
1957    Abraham Okpik, George Koneak, Ayaruak and Shingituk make a “historic first appearance at the Eskimo Affairs Committee meeting in Ottawa (Crowe 1991:203 cited in Alia 1994:109).
1958    First Inuit community council formed at Baker Lake (Alia 1994:109).
1959    Declaration of the Rights of the Child (United Nations)
1959    Fidel Castro and his socialist forces took power in Cuba overthrowing the conservative government of Fulgencio Batista. Castro nationalized the sugar industry and signed trade agreements with the Soviet Union.  In 1960 Castro took over U.S. assets on the island.” CNN Interactive: The Cold War
1959    Nixon, Richard. “Kitchen Debate”
1959    Federal government started cooperatives for Native people (Alia 1994:109).
1959    Houston introduced printmaking at Cape Dorset (Alia 1994:109).
1958    A group of Inuit whalers near Tuktoyatuk discovered all the fish in an inland lake had been killed because of pollutants. Political consciousness was raised from this incident and eventually Inuit formed the Committee on Original Peoples Entitlement (CORE) (? :287).
1960s The Fair Practices Act was not made for Nunavut. It was made for the Northwest Territories years ago, and was adopted by Nunavut. That act is more like laws which were in place in the rest of Canada in the early 1960s.  During the workshop, the Fair Practices Officer for Nunavut, Mr. Bill Riddell, described his difficult job, including what it is like to have the responsibility to both investigate and resolve human rights complaints (Amagoalik 2001).
1960-07-15        Kennedy “accepted the Democratic nomination in a speech that he delivered before 80,000 people at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on July 15, 1960. It became known as the New Frontier speech. The candidate spoke of an old era ending and said that “the old ways will not do.” He spoke of “a slippage in our intellectual and moral strength.” He said: “The New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises; it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them. It appeals to their pride, not to their pocketbook. It holds out the promise of more sacrifice instead of more security.” What Kennedy hoped to foster was a renewed sense of national purpose in which shared values were reinforced in an atmosphere of heightened civic participation and mutual sacrifice. That was the way, he said, “to get this country moving again.” His voice was in sync with the spirit of the times. Americans were fired with the idea that they could improve their circumstances, right wrongs and do good. The Interstate Highway System, an Eisenhower initiative, was under way. The civil rights movement was in flower. And soon Kennedy would literally be reaching for the moon (Herbert 2010-11-23).”
1960    Declaration of the General Assembly of the United Nations called for an end to colonialism. Third world national liberation struggle picks up momentum.
1960    The CIA was involved in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in the 1960, Cuba to subdue the Communist uprising led by Fidel Castro.
1960    Twenty year old, Rachel Erkloo and her husband Elijah left Pond Inlet and went to Ottawa to work with the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs. Pond Inlet inhabitants were “independent, proud and who took care of one another, and of everyone. They took proper care of the children and made sure that they were properly equipped and knowledgeable for the future challenges that lay ahead in their lives […] Children were born in the community, with traditional midwifery being practiced.” Clothing was skin clothing made by the women of Pond Inlet (Rachel Erkloo cited in Amagoalik 2001 ).
1960    First Nation People of Canada were granted the right to vote in Canadian elections (Federal, Provincial, and Municipal).
1960    A French language CBC journalist complained that the CBC reporting was “objective to the point of being virginal. 13” (Hackett 1998:39)
1960    Canadian Bill of Rights enacted by Parliament. The Charter of the Bill of Rights differs from these laws by being part of the Constitution of Canada.  Canadian Bill of Rights was introduced as a statute not a constitutional Bill of Rights by PM John Diefenbaker, a civil rights advocate.  A constitutional Bill of Rights would have required the consent of all the provinces (Brooks 2000:273) Overview.
1960 – 1982 Canadian Bill of Rights: Human rights codes were enacted at both the federal and provincial levels. The courts were expressly invited to take a more active role in settling controversial human rights issues. They didn’t (Holmes 2001:13).
1960s Conservative think tanks, business, politicians and media scholars describe the 1960s news media as left-liberal and anti-authority. A new breed of journalists was branded as adversarial, “gotcha”, disruptive and cynical. (Hackett 1998:136).
1960s 60s & 70s saw revival of Marxist analysis. The Criticizes Welfare State as oppressive, stigmatising, and supportive of capitalism.
1961    United Nations Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples
1961    Amnesty International founded.
1961    A non-profit Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) was created to counteract the mediocrity of the three existing commercial profit-driven television networks which provided only a “vast wasteland.” The non-profit network was to promote excellence as defined by a group of cultural elite for the public good. PBS was funded by the Ford Foundation and by the federal government. It has been criticized as being an instrument of liberal Democrats.
1961    At the height of the Cold War both the Soviet Union and the United States Union had enough weapons of mass destruction between them to destroy the planet a dozen times. Canadian artist Kurelek experimented with various painterly media in the security of his bomb shelter. American school children had regular drills similar to Canadian fire drills. They were taught to hide under their desks for safety in the event of a nuclear attack.
1962    Ontario adopted the first human rights code to consolidate various anti-discrimination provisions including those related to race, creed, colour, nationality, ancestry, place of origin. Ontario established a commission and full-time staff to administer and enforce the law.
1962    The Cuban Missile Crisis. Americans failed in their attempt to invade the Bays of Pigs, Cuba.  In response to the attack, the Soviet Union installed nuclear missiles in Cuba capable of reaching most of the continental United States. After U-2 flights confirm their existence, Kennedy ordered a naval blockade of Cuba on October 22 until the Soviet Union removes its missiles. On October 28, the Soviets agreed to remove the missiles, defusing one of the most dangerous confrontations of the Cold War. CNN Interactive: The Cold War
1962    Port Huron Statement of the Students for a Democratic Society
1962    Inuit in Districts of Keewatin and Franklin vote in a federal election for the first time (Alia 1994:110).
1962    Andre Gunder Frank moved to Latin America where he researched and published on the dependency theory, underdevelopment in Latin America and the world system. His focus changed after the 1973 military coup in Chile (Frank 1967).
1960? Gustavo Gutierrez was the originator of the theology of liberation which incorporated Frank’s theory of dependency and underdevelopment (Frank 1967).
1963    Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (United Nations)
1963    Organization of African Unity founded
1964    Free Speech Movement at Berkeley
1964    Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society Speech
1964    Residential school at Churchill, Manitoba is closed (Alia 1994:110).
1964    Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. North Vietnamese patrol boats fired on the USS Mattox in the Gulf of Tonkin on August 2. On August 7, the U.S. Congress approves the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, granting President Johnson authority to send U.S. troops to South Vietnam. CNN Interactive: The Cold War
1965    Abraham Okpik was appointed the first Native Member of the NWT council (Alia 1994:110).
1965    Resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations recognized that colonialization perpetuated racism. It was also recognized that Indigenous Peoples are frequently denied their political, economic, social and cultural rights. Cultural rights include “Shared belief of indigenous people in cooperation and harmonious relations are recognized as fundamental source of international law.”
1966    Simonie Michael becomes first Inuk and Aboriginal person to be elected to the NWT council (Alia 1994:110).
1966    “In an anti-communist coup, General Suharto toppled Indonesian President Bung Sukarno on March 12. At least 500,000 alleged communists and ethnic Chinese were slaughtered in army-organized massacres during the next two years.” CNN Interactive: The Cold War. General Suharto came to power in 1965 with a “boiling bloodbath” that was “the West’s best news for years in Asia” (Time), a “staggering mass slaughter of Communists and pro-Communists,” mostly landless peasants, that provided a “gleam of light in Asia” (New York Times). Woolcott offered some illustrations of “Kissingerian realism.” Noting with diplomatic understatement that “the United States might have some influence on Indonesia at present,” he reported that Kissinger had instructed US Ambassador David Newsom to avoid the Timor issue and cut down Embassy reporting, allowing “events to take their course.” Newsom informed Woolcott that if Indonesia were to invade, the US hoped it would do so “effectively, quickly, and not use our equipment”—90% of its weapons supply. Indonesia has a population of 200 million people living on its 17,000 islands; only China, India and the US have larger populations. (The capital, Jakarta, is on the island of Java, where about three-fifths of Indonesia’s population lives.) Indonesia’s army and government are among the most brutal in the world. In 1975, East Timor had a population of about 690,000. In the twenty years since then, more than 200,000 East Timorese have died as a result of the Indonesian occupation (Jardine  and Chomsky 1995).
1965-80 The Berger Inquiry and the politics of transformation in the Mackenzie Valley.
1966    In 1964, the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration (responsible at that time for Indian Affairs) commissioned the Survey of the Contemporary Indians of Canada, directed by Harry Hawthorn and M.-A. Tremblay. Published in 1966 following months of meetings with bands, the report examined the social, economic and educational position of Indians in the different regions of Canada.
1966    United Nations adopts the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
1966    International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights   (Symonides 1998)
1966    International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Symonides 1998)
1966    United Nations adopts the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
1966    Simonie Michael becomes first Inuk and Aboriginal person to be elected to the NWT council (Alia 1994:110).
1967    Andre Gunder Frank published Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America proposing a Neo-Marxist theory that adapted Lenin’s theory of imperialism to geopolitical regions that were not colonialised but were underdeveloped and suffered with lack of health care, inequality. See also modernization and dependency theories. His dependency theory was widely adopted in the social sciences. Frank’s dependency theory was incorporated into the theology of liberation (Frank 1967).
1967    The leaders of the Nisga’a Tribal Council retained the services of Justice Berger to sue the government of B.C. to obtain recognition of their Aboriginal title (Berger 1999a).
1967    Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (United Nations)
1967-70              Royal Commission on the the Status of Women.
1968    In the case Murdoch vs Murdoch, Irene Murdoch, the wife of Alberta rancher Alex Murdoch, lost her court case against her husband in which she claimed the right to the capital benefits of a full partnership in her twenty five year marriage. Her case was dismissed as an irritant and her work trivialized by the courts which considered her work as ranch wife to be unexceptional even though she had run the ranch for about five months of each year single-handedly. Although the Supreme Court recognized her contributions, it was deemed that she did no more than any other wife, and therefore, could not make any claim to a partnership with her husband. In the early 1970s, Irene Murdoch sued her husband for a share of the family ranch. Eventually taking her fight all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, this case was instrumental in bringing to the attention of the public the sorry state of matrimonial property laws in Canada. In 1973, Murdoch was finally granted a lump sum maintenance payment, but the court did not recognize her partnership in the household.
1968    The National Indian Brotherhood was formed in 1968 to present the interests of status Indians to the federal government. © Public Works & Government Services, Canada (1995). sub. Flinders, Lori.
1968    Prague Spring. “On January 5, reformer Alexander Dubcek becomes general secretary of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia, pledging the “widest possible democratizations” as the Prague Spring movement sweeps across the country. Soviet and Warsaw Pact leaders send an invasion force of 650,000 troops in August. Dubcek is arrested and hard-liners are restored to power.”
1968    Proclamation of the Tehran Conference on Human Rights (Symonides 1998)
1968-71 Project Surname (Alia 1994:110)
1969    The Canadian Government attempts to “rid the country of the Indian problem” with the “White Paper.” Under pressure from the Manitoba Indian Brotherhood and other First Nations across Canada, the government shelves the White Paper, but those concepts and policies will resurface with each government in power.(Mainville, Elmer and Flinders, Lori 2001)
1969    The White Paper of 1969 ignored the policy recommendations of the Hawthorn Report and presented only another thinly disguised form of the assimilationist goal based on a candid rejection of any special aboriginal rights. Native leaders angrily rejected the White Paper, presenting their own Red Paper, entitled ‘Citizen Plus,’ to the government. © Public Works & Government Services, Canada (1995). sub. Flinders, Lori.
1969    American Convention on Human Rights.
1969    International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (United Nations)
1970    Greer’s Female Eunuch raises consciousness of women’s liberation (Greer 1970).
1970    RCSW landmark report established the first bench-marks of equality for Canadian women. Recommendations included paid maternity leave, fair employment practices and changes to the Indian Act so aboriginal women did not lose their status when they married non-status men. The report inspired the creation of a number of women’s groups that worked to implement these changes including the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. Feminists reveal flaws in Welfare State policies including a neglect of gender issues and incorporation of gender bias through ideas of motherhood and family as evidenced in social institutions whose role is social welfare: health, social security, health and housing.
1970    Public Broadcasting Services produced a number of blockbuster miniseries including Clark’s Civilization (Clark 1970).
1970    Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (ITC) a national political association, formed by Inuit students living in the south. Inuit politics was born. Before the 1970s the co-op was the only organized voice Inuit had (Myers 1980:139). The ITC moved from Edmonton, AB to Ottawa, ON in 1972. Eventually regional organizations emerged to represent the diversity of a population of over 30, 000 peoples spread across Canada’s polar regions: Committee on Original Peoples Entitlement (COPE),  Kitikmeoq Inuit Association, Keewatin Inuit Association, the Baffin Association, Makivik Corporation (Newfoundland) and the Labrador Association. The Tungavik Federation of Nunavut was created as umbrella organization for those east of the MacKenzie Delta region.
1970    Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act during the October Crisis. 450 activists, journalists and writers were arrested under suspicion of being sympathetic to the separatist movement (Hackett 1998:79).
1970    Sir Kenneth Clark’s BBC popular television series Civilisation was aired by PPS. Clark compared an African mask that belonged to Roger Fry to the marble head of the Apollo of the Belvedere that Napoleon looted from the Vatican. “Whatever its merits as a work of art, I don’t think there is any doubt that the Apollo embodies a higher state of civilisation than the mask (Clark 1970).”
1970    The decade brought dramatic change to Pond Inlet. “The community had become dependant on government for handouts, rations and welfare. The strong, self-reliant people were changed […] Hardly anybody was practicing the traditional ways of survival: hunting, taking care of oneself or one another. We were even shocked to learn that even many of the men had stopped hunting altogether. The people were desperately long for Inuit traditional foods (Rachel Erkloo cited in Amagoalik 2001 ).
1971    Alaska Native claims settled.
1971    Inuit Tapirisat of Canada founded (Alia 1994:110).
1971    Nixon signed the Alaska Land Claims Settlement Agreement (ANCSA), a contentious agreement that spawned others in Canada (Lynge 1993:22).
1970s “The Royal Canadian Mounted Police placed left-wing groups and producers of left-wing periodicals under surveillance (Hackett 1998:79).”
1972    Rosemary Brown became the first Black woman to be elected to a provincial legislature.
1972    Watergate scandal toppled President Nixon.
1972    The Arab-Israeli War in 1972 sparked sharp increases in oil prices, put pressures on the economies of Third World countries and partly contributed to the debt crisis of the international system.
1973    Western control of the Middle East was extended since WWI setting the stage for one of the most tragic and intractable conflicts of modern times: the conflict over Palestine which has, since 1948, ignited four wars, sent masses of Palestinian Arabs into exile, contributed to the energy crisis of 1973, and, from 1975 on, fueled the civil war in Lebanon.”
1973    A bloody military coup, with U.S. connivance, overthrew Chile’s elected Marxist president Salvador Allende…. The new military regime unleashed a reign of terror that saw thousands of Chileans arrested, tortured, murdered, and/or exiled. Political parties were banned, the press was censored, and freedoms of speech and assembly were restricted. The junta pursued decidedly free-enterprise economic policies, but it took sixteen years for some semblance of liberal democracy to be restored (Hackett 1998:166).”
1970 – 73 United States intervened in covert operations to destabilize the Allende government in Chile (Falk 2000b:46).
1973    “The Calder Decision: the Supreme Court of Canada rules that the Nisga’a had held aboriginal title before settlers came but the judges split evenly on whether aboriginal title continues to exist.” ((PWGS) 2001) In the Calder case, the Nisga’a Tribal Council asked the courts to support their claim that Aboriginal title had never been extinguished in the Nass Valley, near Prince Rupert. Although the court ultimately ruled against the Nisga’a on a technicality, the case is important because in Calder the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Aboriginal title is rooted in the “long-time occupation, possession and use” of traditional territories. As such, title existed at the time of original contact with Europeans, regardless of whether or not Europeans recognized it. After the Calder decision, Canada agreed to begin negotiating treaties to define Aboriginal rights to land and resources (1973).
1973    The government finally acknowledged a limited responsibility for native land claims, and the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND) was instructed to resolve such claims through a new policy announced in 1973. © Public Works & Government Services, Canada (1995). sub. Flinders, Lori.
1973    National Indian Brotherhood (NIC) publication Indian Control of Indian Education is cited as the first expression of concern about education however allusions to this struggle were published in the early 20th century (Haig-Brown 1995:50).
1973    The Supreme Court of Canada gave judicial recognition to the place of Aboriginal rights in Canadian law. Berger worked for six years for the Nisga’a Tribal Council on a law suit against the government of B.C. to obtain recognition of their Aboriginal title On that day, Canada entered the modern era of treaty-making (Berger 1999a).
1973: “Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (ITC) begins a study of Inuit land use and occupancy which eventually demonstrates the extent of Inuit aboriginal title in the Arctic. This study forms the geographic basis of the Nunavut Territory (GN 2000).” See also (Freeman 1976).
1973    The Arctic Peoples’ Conference is held in Denmark (Alia 1994:110)
1973    The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Irene Murdoch, an Alberta rancher, was not entitled to a share of the ranch she and her husband built up over 25 years. Women across Canada were galvanized to fight an injustice, in particular, those women of Irene’s age who knew first hand of the work and effort that a “wife” puts in to the sustenance and growth of a farm, ranch or family business. Marilou McPhedran, a LEAF founding mother, still tells the story of being in law school at the time and having her previously uninvolved mother calling her and asking her what she was going to do about it. There was such a strong public outcry following the decision, that provinces across Canada made significant changes in their laws affecting matrimonial property (LEAF).
1974    United Nations establishes the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery
1974    The Fraser Institute was established. The Fraser Institute is a pro-business think tank and lobby group.  1970′s New Right gained strength as Welfare State crumbled. New Right accused Welfare State of interference with market economy. New Right claimed that Welfare State removes consumer choice, reduced individual initiative and responsibility causing a dependency on welfare benefits. New Right Thatcherism favoured the private sector, reduces taxation, reduced inflation and de-institutionalised by directing groups out of public institutions and back into the family and community.
1975    Declaration on the Protection of All Persons From Being Subjected to Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (United Nations)
1975    “The communist Khmer Rouge takes power in Cambodia on April 16. Cambodia’s educated and urban population is forced into the countryside as part of a state experiment in agrarian communism. Under the regime of Pol Pot, as many as 3 million Cambodians die from 1975 to 1979.” CNN Interactive: The Cold War
1975    East Timor declared its independence. President Suharto of Indonesia responded by invading East Timor. Shortly afterwards Suharto hosted US President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at a state dinner. (Jardine  and Chomsky 1995).
1975    Other regional groups of Human Rights Watch formed after military takeovers in Chile in 1973, in East Timor in 1975, in Argentina in 1976, and after the Chinese Democracy Wall Movement in 1979 (Human Rights Watch 1994).
1975    Helsinki Accords.
1975-6   James Bay agreement and northern Quebec claims settlement (ICC) (Alia 1994:110).
1975    Mohawks of Kanesatake, near Oka, filed an official land claims for loss of territory depriving them of sufficient land for living. Their claim was delayed for nine years. This triggered the Oka Crisis of 1990 (York 1990:277).
1976    ITC proposed the creation of a Nunavut Territory as part of a comprehensive settlement of Inuit land claims in the Northwest Territories. The Nunavut Proposal calls for the Beaufort Sea and Yukon North Slope areas used by the Inuvialuit to be included in the Nunavut Territory (GN 2000).
1976    The Inuvialuit split from ITC to negotiate a separate land claim agreement lured by the prospect of development in the Beaufort Sea area (GN 2000).
1976    “Nisga’a begin negotiating with Ottawa. BC government attends as observer. The federal government adopts a “comprehensive land claims policy.” The Nisga’a claim is the only one in BC started under this new policy (PWGS 2001).”
1976    A federal electoral boundaries commission recommends dividing the Northwest Territories into two federal electoral districts: Nunatsiaq and the Western Arctic. This recommendation is put in effect for the 1979 federal election (GN 2000).
1976    “By the l970′s, the Cold War had evolved into a system of complicity, in which the West agreed to keep silent about human rights abuses in return for Soviet co-operation in the maintenance of geopolitical order. The Helsinki Final Act of 1976 was intended to ratify this regime of complicity. The West acquiesced in a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe in return for guarantees of human rights protection within the Soviet area of influence. At Helsinki the communist world finally acknowledged that there were not two human rights cultures in the world but one. This ideological concession was meant to be symbolic only, but it had unexpected results. First in Poland, then in Czechoslovakia and finally throughout Eastern Europe, rights groups sprang up to demand that their regimes keep the promises made at Helsinki. Human rights language enabled Eastern Europeans to hoist their rulers on their own petards (Ignatieff).”
1976    The Canadian Immigration Act takes effect. The Act spells out the principles of Canadian immigration policy and imposing on the government the responsibility to plan immigration arrivals for the future. It also creates a separate class for refugees to distinguish them from immigrants, and establishes Canada’s first refugee determination system.(Mainville, Elmer and Flinders, Lori 2001)
1976    Military takeover in Argentina
1977    PBS broadcasts two viewpoints about economics: Milton Friedman’s (1977) Free to Choose and Galbraith’s (1977) Age of Uncertainty. Friedman’s is funded by the Olin Foundation.
1977    Eben Hopson, mayor of Borrough, Alaska a pioneer in aboriginal peoples land claims hosted a preparatory meeting prior to the creation of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (Lynge 1993:20).
1977    Inuit Circumpolar Conference adopted Inuit as the designation for all Eskimos, regardless of local usages (1996) Arctic Perspectives.
1977    Since the Canadian Human Rights Act was adopted almost 25 years ago the status of women in Canada has improved markedly. It is striking, however, that more than one in five complaints received by the Commission this past year involved discrimination on the grounds of sex. This signals that we cannot remain complacent about gender equality, nor think that the battle has been won. Perhaps surprisingly, the percentage of sex discrimination cases has not diminished over the past three years, but has in fact slowly increased. The types of complaints received have also become more complex. Discrimination is often subtle — hidden in laws, systems, or actions that, on their face, seem fair and reasonable.” (CHRC 2002f)
1977    The federal government enacted the Canadian Human Rights Act that had strictly federal jurisdiction (Holmes 2001:9).
1978    Democracy Wall Movement: young activists called for democracy as the “Fifth modernization,” demanding the ouster of “Maoists,” Deng Xiaoping came back to power (Wang 1998)
1979  Foucualt, Michel, Discipline and Punish, 1979, New York: Vintage.
1979-81 Iran held 52 Americans hostage (Wallechinsky).
1979    Iranian Revolution sparked sharp increases in oil prices, put pressures on the economies of Third World countries and partly contributed to the debt crisis of the international system.
1979    The oil crisis caused by Arab-Israeli War and Iranian Revolution deeply affected lender policies and made it extremely difficult for Third World countries to repay debts.
1979    “In the l950s, most emerging nations were so anxious to sign up to the modernising project that they ratified international human rights treaties in somewhat the same way that they sought to have their own airlines: as part of a general wager on modernisation. But when modernisation and state building ran into difficulties, a cultural backlash against the individualist bias of human rights language began. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 provided the focus and the leadership for this revolt (Ignatieff).”
1979    Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini led the Iranian Revolution which pitted anti-western and Islamic nationalists against the pro-western Shah. The Islamic Republic of Iran became a model  for other Islamic nations (Walsh 2001).
1979    The Chinese Democracy Wall Movement.
1979    Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (United Nations)
1979    Rising cost of the Welfare State becoming burdensome. New Right argues against welfare costs.
1980    Margaret Thatcher and conservative Republican Ronald Reagan championed neo-liberal market-oriented backlash.
1980    Pacific Rim countries enjoyed high growth rates and surging export markets.
1980    In Nuuk, Alaska Inuit from Canada, Alaska and Greenland formed the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (Lynge 1993:20).
1980    At its Annual General Meeting in October, ITC delegates unanimously pass a resolution calling for the creation of Nunavut (GN 2000).
1980    Arrel H. Gibson concluded that “Colonists copied (Iroquois) democratic procedures and models.” (submitted by Benedict, April. 2001. Akwesasne)
1980 – 1981      “In 1980 a Royal Commission on Newspapers, chaired by Tom (Kent), rang the alarm bell as daily newspapers fell into fewer and fewer corporate hands, and concentration reached ‘dangerous levels’. Now Kent says ‘the issue is democracy….the greater the power, the more it is abused’ as Black drives up the profit ratios on his papers, and reduces the quality and diversity of the media to Canadians as a whole.” The Tom Kent Royal Commission on Newspapers reported that “The great majority [of Canadians] believe that newspapers and the mass media in general, have responsibilities to the public different from those of other businesses.” The mass media is expected to function in public interest, not just economic self-interest (Hackett 1998:1). “It is those newspapers with a large advertising market to protect and with a readership all social classes of society that have taken the initiative of setting up existing press councils…. The various press councils established in Canada until now are seeking to perpetuate the social consensus which has ensured the success of the so-called omnibus newspapers …. Whose formula is specifically designed towards advertising led consumer patterns and whose basic unit is the traditional family (Hackett 1998:92).”
1981    Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
1981    The United Nations Human Rights Committee agrees to hear the case of Sandra Lovelace, an Aboriginal woman from the Tobique reserve in New Brunswick Like Jeanette Lavall and others, Lovelace claims that the Indian Act is discriminatory. In 1981, the Committee finds Canada in breach of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
1981    African Charter on Human and People’s Rights
1981    Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief (United Nations)
1982    Native leaders argued for and received a role in the constitutional process of 1982. A significant result was the recognition and affirmation in the Constitution Act, 1982 of “existing Aboriginal and treaty rights” for all Aboriginal peoples of Canada, Indian, Métis and Inuit. Subsequent action on constitutional issues and Indian self-government was less successful, however, owing to the resistance of the provinces and lack of consensus among Indian organizations. Between 1978-85, discussions of Aboriginal issues entered the constitutional arena where legal questions dominated the debates.
1982    The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms decisively changed the face of Canadian politics. “The Charter has legalized our politics (Michael Mandel).” Rights are more likely to be decided by the courts that by the elected legislature. The language and venues of rights have also changed with the Charter. Individuals, institutions and even governments use litigation to influence public policy. 1, 000 Charter cases a year are heard by the courts. (Brooks 2000:266). Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guaranteed Canadians fundamental rights and freedoms. The judiciary was accorded the constitutional mandate necessary to rule on substantive validity of legislation. The courts ensure that the rights and freedoms granted by the Charter are respected (Holmes 2001:3). Constitution Act ended the authority of the British Parliament in Canada. “The Constitution of Canada is the supreme law of Canada and any law that is inconsistent with the provisions of the Constitution is, to the extent of the inconsistency, of no force or effect.” As a result, the Charter expressly modified the tradition of parliamentary supremacy with the principle of constitutional supremacy and thereby ushered in a while new era of judicial review (Holmes 2001:11).”
1982    Constitution Act Charter of Rights of Freedom “The Charter came into effect on April 17, 1982. It was part of a package of reforms contained in a law called the Constitution Act, 1982. One section of the Charter, section 15, came into effect only on April 17, 1985, three years after the rest of the Charter. This delay gave governments time to bring their laws into line with the equality rights in section 15.” Overview Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms enshrined “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication,” subject to “such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” Legal scholar Harry Glasbeek “predicted that the Charter’s freedom of expression clause could be used “to defend individuals generally and the media in particular from state controls, but not individuals or their defender, the state, from private interests,” thus helping the private press “to retain its sovereignty as a purveyor of information and opinion.47” In effect free speech is interpreted as a property right of corporate entities, not as a human right of individual citizens. (Hackett 1998:80) “Constitution of Canada recognizes and affirms existing aboriginal rights.” (PWGS 2001)
1983    REAL Women organization was created as a conservative backlash against progress made by feminists.
1980s:   Privatization, a term probably coined by UK’s The Economist, spearheaded by the Thatcher and Reagan administrations as part of their strongly neo-liberal policies, became the trend.
1984    Meares Island case, B.C. Supreme Court, ongoing. In 1984, Nuu-chah-nulth people and other protesters blocked the access of MacMillan Bloedel to Meares Island. The Province of B.C. regarded the vast majority of the island as Crown land, but the protesters claimed allowing logging on Meares Island interfered with Aboriginal title. A court injunction was sought to halt MacMillan Bloedel’s operations until the claim had been resolved. The B.C. Supreme Court denied the request, but the B.C. Court of Appeal, which does not usually hear appeals in such injunction cases, overturned that ruling. The court indicated that Aboriginal claims should be resolved by “negotiations and by settlement … in a reasonable exchange between governments and the Indian nations.”The Meares Island case is adjourned by agreement of the Nuu-chah-nulth, MacMillan Bloedel, the Province and Canada. The injunction on logging is still in effect and none of the parties has requested the trial resume (2003).
1984    Guerin decision, Supreme Court of Canada, 1984: In the Guerin case, the Musqueam Indian Band sued the federal Crown for breach of trust concerning the leasing of reserve land to a golf club in the late 1950s. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the federal government had a “fiduciary responsibility” for Aboriginal people – that is, a responsibility to safeguard Aboriginal interests – which it had breached. Chief Justice Brian Dickson described First Nations’ interests in their lands as a “pre-existing legal right not created by the Royal Proclamation…the Indian Act…or any other executive order or legislative provision.” The ruling was especially significant because it recognized pre-existing Aboriginal rights both on reserves and outside reserves (1984).
1984    Sir Anthony Parsons, British ambassador to Iran from x to y, published The Pride and Fall: which described how Pahlavi Reza Shah considered Iran to be part of Western civilization, separated by an accident of geography. Arab invasions with its Islamic religion had suffocated Iranians innate talents and abilities. Parsons noted that with the power of governance firmly in the hands of the Ayatollah, he was vulnerable to the same fate as the deposed Shah in 1973: in the minds of the populous, he could be blamed for social ills. Even the most tyrannical dictators need a minimum of popular acquiescence for survival (Parsons 1984).
1984    Brian Mulroney elected Prime Minister of Canada
1984    Using statistics from the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, NDP MP Margaret Mitchell raises the issue of wife battering during a speech in the House of Commons. Male MPs respond with laughter and catcalls.
1984    Pauktuutit, the Inuit Women’s Association, is incorporated.
1980s “1980s, the Government recognized Aboriginal self-government as an inherent right and set about to negotiate individual or group self-government agreements with First Nations. The plan was that as communities came under their own self-government regimes, the Indian Act would eventually wither away. That, however, has not been the case because although negotiations have been continuous, agreements have been few.”(CHRC 2002d)
1980s United States raised interest rates on national and foreign debt to protect its own economy. The US economy had supposedly suffered because of instabilities in the price of oil. Countries —like Brazil — that were heavily indebted, found themselves constrained by unmanageable payments of raised interest rates. Brazil was forced to go to the International Monetary Fund for emergency funds. The IMF insisted on deep, drastic cuts into basic social services, such as health and education, as a condition of the emergency loans.
1983    Inuit participants in the workshop emphasized that the equality of all persons is fundamental.   Participants at the workshop learned that in 1983, the Nunavut Constitutional Forum held extensive public discussions throughout Nunavut about what the Nunavut Government should look like.  Members of the Nunavut Constitutional Forum believed that the non-Inuit minorities in Nunavut were entitled to assurances that their human rights would be protected and respected in Nunavut (Amagoalik 2001).
1983    Therefore, in the first blueprint for the government of Nunavut in the early 1980s, one of the key recommendations was that a strong human rights act be an important part of the Nunavut Constitutional Forum’s model for Nunavut: Building Nunavut, 1983, published by the Nunavut Constitutional Forum (Amagoalik 2001).
1985    United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (“The Beijing Rules”)
1985    Bill C-31 is introduced. Bill C-31 gave “status” to “Indian women and their minor children” who had married “non-Indians.” The First Nations wanted these new population numbers to be taken into account in calculating shortfalls of Treaty Lands.(Mainville, Elmer and Flinders, Lori 2001)
1985    The United Nations World Conference on Women was held in Nairobi. Canadian women played a leading role in the adoption by the UN of the Nairobi Conference Report: Forward-Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women.
1985    ?Madame Justice Bertha Wilson became the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada.
1985    The Supreme Court was divided into two wings — a philosophy of activism and a philosophy of deferring to the legislators (Holmes 2001:11).
1986    Declaration on the Right to Development (United Nations)
1986    “The preparations for the World Assembly provide an opportunity for debate in Canada on current policies and practices affecting seniors. One area that deserves attention is the provision in the Canadian Human Rights Act that permits employers under federal jurisdiction to force employees to leave the workforce at a set age. Although the federal Government abolished mandatory retirement for its employees in 1986, the Act still permits it for federally regulated private employers.” (CHRC 2002a)
1987    Dianna Ortiz, a Catholic nun working among the Maya in Guatemala’s highlands was arrested, tortured, raped, in a Guatemala City detention centre when she was mistaken for another Dianna who was a guerilla fighter After her release it was revealed that her tormentors had American collaborators (Schulz 2001: 137).
1987    Madame Justice Claire L’Heureux-Dube was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada.
1988    Brian Mulroney elected Prime Minister of Canada
1989    “Gorbachev renounces the Brezhnev Doctrine which pledged to use Soviet force to protect its interests in Eastern Europe. On September 10, Hungary opens its border with Austria, allowing East Germans t o flee to the West. After massive public demonstrations in East Germany and Eastern Europe, the Berlin Wall falls on November 9.” CNN Interactive: The Cold War. “The Eastern European revolutions that seemed to arise out of concern for global democratic values quickly deteriorated into a stampede in the general direction of free markets and their ubiquitous, television-promoted shopping malls (Barber 1992).”
1989    “East Germany’s Neues Forum, that courageous gathering of intellectuals, students, and workers which overturned the Stalinist-like regime in Berlin in 1989, lasted only six months in Germany’s mini-version of McWorld. Then it gave way to money and markets and monopolies from the West. By the time of the first all-German elections, it could scarcely manage to secure three percent of the vote. Elsewhere there is growing evidence that glasnost will go and perestroika — defined as privatization and an opening of markets to Western bidders — will stay (Barber 1992).”
1989    International politics moved out of its western dominated phase (Ostergaard 1994).
1989    Fukuyama published 1989 The End of History and the Last Man in which he declared an unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism and the ultimate triumph of the West and Western liberal democracy over all other regimes (Fukuyama 1989).
1989    The end of the cold war, ideological passivity of China, spread of market liberalism set the stage for a new period in human rights. The new western political ideology claims that only democratic forms of governance are legitimate and promote human rights (Falk 2000b:47).
1989    China cracked down on pro-democracy activists in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. This was denounced by Clinton when he was campaigning for the US Presidency.
1989: Economist John Williamson coined the term Washington Consensus to describe the list of ten policy recommendations made by ‘academics, policy makers and the better-informed segments of the world’s populations’ for poor countries willing to reform their economies. The western world assumed that there was a clear consensus on the necessary steps towards prosperity.
1989    European Torture Convention
1989    Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations)
1989    Madame Justice Beverley McLachlin was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada.
1989    Genevièe Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Havernick, Barbara Mafia Klueznick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, and Annie Turcotte are killed when Marc Lépine opens fire in Montreal’s École Polytechnique before turning his weapon on himself. The Montreal Massacre, as it comes to be known, provokes discussion throughout the country about violence against women and gun control.
1989-99 Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo (AP 2002).
1990    Americans with Disabilities Act
1990    Ontario Superior Court judge ruled that unreasonable amounts of time spent by accused persons in jail violates s. 11B of the Charter (Brooks 2000:265).
1990    Quebec Police attacked a Mohawk barricade triggering the Oka Crisis.
1990    Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the South African anti-apartheid leader visited a remote Indian reserve in northeastern Ontario with international media shaming the federal and provincial governments on the international arena (York 1990:277).
1990    In 1990, changes were made to the comprehensive claims policy in an attempt to expedite the process. A Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples was set up with a broad mandate to examine in detail the relations, both historical and contemporary, among the Aboriginal and Euro-canadian peoples of Canada. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples is the most extensive commission ever to examine these issues in Canada. It produced its reports and provided documentation of its hearings in 1995-96.
1990    “British Columbia formally enters Nisga’a negotiations.” (PWGS 2001)
1990    Sparrow decision, Supreme Court of Canada. “In the Sparrow case, a member of the Musqueam Indian band appealed his conviction on a charge of fishing with a longer drift-net than permitted by the terms of the band’s fishing license under the Fisheries Act. He based his appeal on the argument that the restriction on net length was invalid because it was inconsistent with Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 — the section of the Act that recognizes and affirms existing Aboriginal and treaty rights. The Sparrow case was the first in which the Supreme Court of Canada was called on to interpret what Section 35 actually meant. In overturning Sparrow’s conviction, the court ruled that the Constitution Act provides “a strong measure of protection” for Aboriginal rights. Any proposed government regulations that infringe on the exercise of those rights must be constitutionally justified. It further ruled that: “Aboriginal and treaty rights are capable of evolving over time and must be interpreted in a generous and liberal manner; governments may regulate existing Aboriginal rights only for a compelling and substantial objective such as the conservation and management of resources; and, after conservation goals are met, Aboriginal people must be given priority to fish for food over other user groups (1990).”
1990    Determined, intelligent, sophisticated and resourceful aboriginal leaders shifted the balance of power between the federal government and aboriginal peoples through a brilliant strategy that led to the failure of the Meech Lake Accord. Elijah Harper was the final actor but it was largely because thousands of natives formed a time-consuming parade of speakers that paralyzed the compulsory public hearings in Manitoba that were to precede the final signatures (York 1990:273).
1990    Tungavik Federation of Nunavut (TFN) and representatives of the federal and territorial governments sign a land claims agreement-in-principle in April. The agreement supports the division of the Northwest Territories and provides for a plebiscite on boundaries (GN 2000).
1991: “Soviet Union collapses. While vacationing in the Crimea, Gorbachev is ousted in a coup by Communist hard-liners on August 19. The coup soon falters as citizens take to the streets of Moscow and other cities in support of Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who denounced the coup. Military units abandon the hard-liners, and Gorbachev is released from house arrest. He officially resigns on December 25 as the Soviet Union is dissolved.” CNN Interactive: The Cold War
1991    Dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
1991-1995 Prosecutors began their arguments on the 61 counts of war crimes, including genocide, that Mr. Milosevic faces for the 1991-1995 Croatian and Bosnian wars (AP 2002).
1991    “A tripartite framework agreement is signed.” (PWGS 2001)
1991    Exhibitors at the 1991 Cannes film festival expressed growing anxiety over the “homogenization” and “Americanization” of the global film industry when, for the third year running, American films dominated the awards ceremonies (Barber 1992).
1991: ‘Joseph Stiglitz, chief economist at the World Bank addressed a conference in Prague on theme of ‘Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?’ (Who guards the guards themselves?’) in a situation of rapid privatization. He acknowledged that there were major disagreements between economists. Stiglitz was opposed by Jeffrey Sachs, a Harvard economics professor, and Lawrence Summers, a colleague of Sachs and now the Treasury Secretary. ”They thought you needed to pursue privatization rapidly and that infrastructure would follow,” Stiglitz says. ”It was a divide then (Lloyd 1999).”
1990    Iraq invaded Kuwait
1990s Non-westerners complained about human rights language that was biased in favour of western values while ignoring Asian values and Islamic perspectives (Falk 2000b:8).
1992    Ombudsman Barry Mullin’s column criticized his own paper, the Winnipeg Free Press, for its coverage of the Los Angeles riots. The continent’s major news story was carried on the back pages while front page carried soft stories. The newly appointed Thomson publisher disagreed with Mullin’s level of independence. Mullin’s departure heralded journalists’ concern for autonomy (Hackett and Zhao 1998:93).
1992    Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (United Nations)
1992    Rio’s Global Forum and Earth Summit
1992    United Nations Conference on Environment and Development was held in Rio de Janeiro. At this conference it was recognized that extreme poverty and social exclusion of vulnerable groups persisted and inequalities had become increasingly dramatic in spite of economic development. At this conference the term sustainable development referred to “economic development, social development and environmental protection as interdependent and mutually reinforcing components (Symonides 1998:3).”
1992    U.N.’s International Year of the World’s Indigenous Peoples.
1992: Nunavut Land claim agreement: “In January, TFN and government negotiators come to an agreement on the substantive portions of a final land claims agreement for the Nunavut region. The agreement contains commitments for the creation of a Nunavut territory and government, subject to a boundary plebiscite and the conclusion of the Nunavut Political Accord. This Accord would detail the timetable and process for establishing Nunavut (GN 2000).”
1992: “In October, TFN and government representatives sign the Nunavut Political Accord, setting the creation of Nunavut as April 1, 1999 (GN 2000).
1992: “In November, in a Nunavut-wide vote, the Inuit of Nunavut ratify the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement (GN 2000).”
1992    Soviet delegates became full Inuit Circumpolar Conference members. (Alia 1994:110)
1992    Television Northern Canada (TVNC) begins broadcasting in January (Alia 1994:110).
1992    There is a recognized ethical turn in the work of Jacques Derrida (Critchley 1992).
1992    The Supreme Court of Canada rules in the case of Olive Dickason, a 72-year-old professor of native history at the University of Alberta. The Court finds that in the context of the tenure system, discrimination based on age is reasonable and justifiable. Like many women, Dickason began her academic career in later life, having taught for only ten years before hit the mandatory retirement age of 65.
1993    “Delgamuukw Decision: BC Court of Appeal rules that Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en people have “unextinguished, non-exclusive aboriginal rights, other than right of ownership” to much of their traditional territory.” (PWGS 2001)
1993    Vienna Human Rights Conference revealed the ideological schism between the Western bloc of liberal democracies embodied in European and North American countries and diverse ideologies of fifty non-Western countries including Communist Cuba, Buddhist Myanmar, Confucian Singapore, Vietnam, North Korea, China, Muslim Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan and Libya which the West lumped together as Asian-Islamic.
1993    The final document of the World Conference of Human Rights stressed the importance of human rights education, training and public information (Symonides 1998:xi).
1993-2003 The decade 1993-2003 was declared the UN decade for Indigenous Peoples.
1993    Scathing report by CHRCThere were no real improvements for Canada’s natives. 1993 statistics “also show that their rates of unemployment, disease, suicide, incarceration and abuse continue to exceed the national average. In Africa, in Eastern Europe, in Asia and Latin America, the carnage often obliterates any semblance of rights, he said. “And even in Western Europe and North America there are disquieting signs of racism and ethnic disharmony.”
1993    Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious or Linguistic Minorities
1993    Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women
1993    UN Security Council establishes the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
1993    United Nations establishes the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
1993    “Canadian Human Rights Commission first focused on the situation of he Innu in 1993 when it undertook a special study of grievances brought to the Commission’s attention regarding their treatment by the federal Government. That study found that the Government had not fulfilled its constitutional and moral responsibilities to the Innu. It recommended a number of measures to correct.” (CHRC 2002d)
1993    Nunavut Act was signed in May. In June, the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act and the Nunavut Act are adopted by Parliament and receive Royal Assent (submitted by Smoke, Rena. 2001. Akwesasne).
1993    The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Catherine Peter, a housewife was entitled to compensation for the contributions she had made during her marriage.
1993    Boris Yeltsin suppressed parliamentary resistance in Moscow
1994-5  Boris Yeltsin waged war against Chechenya.
1994    United States retreated from Somalia. This weakened the UN efforts to help victims of gross human rights abuse. 1992 – 1994 UN/US intervention in Somalia was a failure. “The lesson of Mogadishu” established the Mogadishu line, the line over which the US military could not pass. Once that number of US soldiers were killed, Americans would refuse to support the war (Falk 2000b:45).
1994    The response of the Mexican government to the Chiapas rebellion may have been more moderate because of the Zapatistas’ use of the Internet to communicate with their sympathizers world wide (Hackett and Zhao 1998:191). The EZLN [Zapatista National Liberation Army] staged an uprising in Chiapas against the Mexican government, catching both the Administration of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari and an admiring world that had been marveling at Mexico’s market reforms by surprise (Naim 1999).
1994: January 1, 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA] signed in 1993 by Canada, Mexico, and the United States came into effect.
1994    Cairo Population Conference
1994    President Clinton encouraged trade with mainland China in spite of human rights abuses. “Let me ask you the same question I have asked myself,” he said, “Will we do more to advance the cause of human rights if China is isolated?” “Clinton in his presidential campaign had sharply attacked Bush for extending trade privileges to China in the years following the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, accusing him of “coddling criminals (Devroy 1994).”
1994    UN Security Council establishes the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda Rwandan 1994 genocide
1994    United States opposed a strong UN effort to curtail genocide of the Tutsi population by the Hutus in Rwanda. This too weakened the UN efforts to help victims of gross human rights abuse. It is also an indication of the intertwined relationship between human rights and geopolitics. Rwanda has little geopolitical importance (Falk 2000b).
1994    Maxwell Yalden, the Chief of the Canadian Human Rights Commission reported that ‘Aboriginal peoples are still at the bottom of the social and economic ladder no matter which indicator you look at.’ It notes that last year was the U.N.’s International Year of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, but that did not lead to real improvements for Canada’s natives. The year’s statistics “also show that their rates of unemployment, disease, suicide, incarceration and abuse continue to exceed the national average,” says the report. The failure to achieve a real solution to the problems facing Canada’s aboriginal people “can only continue to tarnish Canada’s reputation and accomplishments,” the report warns. The Commission report says Canada’s natives are not alone in experiencing human rights abuses. It says the “unacceptable treatment of women, racial unease and the systematic exclusion of disabled people” are also real concerns. The report says the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Employment Equity Act must be amended and strengthened. The disabled, women, the elderly, gays, visible minorities and aboriginals need more protection against discrimination and more access to jobs and services (IPS 1994).”
1994    Representatives of indigenous peoples crafted the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. (Falk 2000:50) A key concept of the Draft is that indigenous peoples are distinct and separate from other peoples, yet equal and fully entitled to claim the right of self-determination. The 1948 Declaration failed to recognize that indigenous peoples do not necessarily share the “foundational secularist, modernist, and statist assumptions of the human rights mainstream (Falk 2000:51).” Indigenous peoples were not considered to be part of the process of establishing what was universal (or normal) that is norm-creating process. (Falk 2000:51) “At the very least, they insist that the traditionalist alternative be legitimized, and to the extent necessary, safeguarded. Such a concern is far from symbolic, as such peoples are being displaced and their lands plundered in many parts of the world — perhaps most flagrantly in Amazonia and South Asia. The importance that indigenous peoples attach to self-determination is bound up with their claims of autonomy and with the history of their encounters with settlers intent on destroying them and their way of life (Falk 2000b:51).”
1994    Richard Nixon observed, “Today China’s economic power makes US lectures about human rights imprudent. Within a decade it will make them irrelevant. Within two decades it will make them laughable (Huntington 1997:195).”
1995    In 1985, the government passed Bill C-31 to this end. Native women in New Brunswick were among those most active in bringing about the return to the reserves of women who regained their status under the Bill. But resistance to their return by generally male leaders has been a divisive force in many Aboriginal communities. In a highly publicized decision, the Federal Court ruled in July 1995 in favour of the Bill C-31 registrants following the Twinn v. R. case which pivoted on the constitutional right of bands to determine membership and prohibit the admission of Native women and children reinstated through Bill C-31. © Public Works & Government Services, Canada (1995). sub. Flinders, Lori
1995    Beijing Declaration was the Fourth World Conference on Women  where women from 187 Nations negotiated the Beijing Declaration & Platform for Action. The Platform for Action names 12 critical areas of concern -poverty, education, health care, violence, militarization, economic structures, politics & resources, power & decision-making, mechanisms to promote women’s advancement, human rights, media, environment and the girl child.
1995    The World Summit for Social Development was held in Copenhagen. The Copenhagen Declaration and Programme of Action was adopted. The Copenhagen stressed the urgent need for countries to deal with social problems such as poverty, unemployment and social exclusion (Symonides 1998). This was the largest gathering ever of world leaders. The declarations, programmes included a pledge to put people at the centre of development, to conquer poverty, to ensure full employment, to foster social integration (Development 1995).
1995    “There is a consistent request that the quality of Native education be equal to that received by non-Native students without obliterating the history of First Nation cultures (Haig-Brown 1995:50).”
1995    Robert Putnam published his influential article “Bowling Alone” in which he argued for a renewed invigorated civil society (Cohen 1998).
1995 – 2004 United Nations declared this the Decade for Human Rights Education (Symonides 1998)
1995    Sovereignty Referendum in Quebec
1995    United States led the UN effort to preserve the democratic process in Haiti and protect Haitians against the brutalities of the military junta. The United States was concerned about the number of Haitian refugees attempting to enter the US illegally (Falk 2000b:44).
1995-6:  “Footprints in New Snow and Footprints II, documents written by the Nunavut Implementation Commission, recommended that certain headquarter and regional functions of the Nunavut government be decentralized to communities. Footprints II is used as the blueprint for the foundation of the Government of Nunavut (GN 2000).”
1995–6 Unprecedented multi-billion-dollar-mergers in North American media.
1996    On August 21st, 1996, Chief Justice Lamer, writing for the Supreme Court of Canada, in R. v. Van Der Peet (1996) 137 D.L.R. (4th) 289; [1996] 2 S.C.R. 507, said: “In my view, the doctrine of aboriginal rights exists … because of one simple fact: when Europeans arrived in North America, aboriginal peoples were already here, living in communities on the land, and participating in distinctive cultures, as they had done for centuries. It is this fact, and this fact above all others, which separates aboriginal peoples from all other minority groups in Canadian society and which mandates their special legal, and now constitutional, status (Berger 1999b; Lamer 1996) .”
1996    “When the Royal Commission report was issued in 1996 the Canadian Human Rights Commission called on the Government to carefully consider the recommendations and quickly implement the key ones. Some recommendations have been implemented, but many more have been gathering dust for more than five years.” (CHRC 2002d)
1997    The Universal Declaration of Democracy was adopted by the Parliamentary Union in Cairo. Elements of democracy include ensuring that every citizen has an effective voice in public affairs and popular control over government (Symonided 1998:3).
1997    Substantial numbers of countries experienced financial crisis. Bail out relief programs structure adjustments that produce political turmoil and massive impoverishment. Ex Indonesia (Falk 2000a:28).
1997: “The Office of the Interim Commissioner is established to help prepare for the creation of Nunavut. It is responsible for setting up an operational government ready to function effectively on April 1, 1999 (GN 2000).
1998    “Amendments to the Nunavut Act are adopted by Parliament and receive Royal Assent (GN 2000).”
1998    The former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was in Britain for medical treatment. A Spanish court requested Pinochet’s extradition to face charges relating to crimes of state involving Spaniards who were in Chile during Pinochet’s rule. The English House of Lords voted in favour of the extradition so that Pinochet’s alleged responsibility for crimes against humanity could be prosecuted in Spain. A second court ruled Pinochet was too old to stand trial. Anti-Pinochet factions were pitted against Chile’s pro-Pinochet ruling party. The tension here is between peace — covering up old wrongs — and justice — making dictators accountable for their crimes. There is also a tension between respecting the state’s claim to protect it’s former ruler and the international community’s claim for justice (Falk 2000a:26).”
1998    “In 1998 the Diplomatic Conference in Rome adopted the Statute for the International Criminal Court. Once entered into force, the Court may exercise its jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The Statute contains elaborate definitions of these crimes, often referred to as “gross human rights violations” or “violations of international humanitarian law (Boot 2002).”
1998    “On August 4, the Nisga’a Treaty is initiated in Gitlakdarnix, making news around the world.” (PWGS 2001)
1998    Canadian Supreme Court judges faced criticism from all sides for using the Charter to strike down government policies. In the United States during the 1960s and 1970s Supreme Court judges expanded the rights of the criminally accused, banned prayer from public schools, declared that women had a constitutional right to abortion, required the busing of children to achieve racial integration of schools. Judicial activism is not always popular with the general public. Judges are accused at times of judicial imperialism (Brooks 2000:289).
1999    NATO carried on a 78-day air war over the fate of Kosovo. Belgrade was involved in an ethnic cleansing campaign against Kosovar Albanians. NATO bombed Belgrade into submission (Falk 2000b:3).
1999    When Tony Benn announced his retirement from Westminster, it marked the end of Fabianism in Britain (Hyland and Marsden 1999).
1999    Seattle showdown pitting loosely connected NGOs against the World Bank and IMF.
1999    John Lloyd published his influential article “Who Lost Russia? (Lloyd 1999)”
1999    The Supreme Court of Canada made the unpopular ruling about the possession of child pornography in a case in British Columbia (Brooks 2000:289).
1999    Madame Justice Louise Arbour was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada.
1999    Beverley McLachlin appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.
1999    Supreme Court judges left Ottawa and traveled together to Winnipeg to get closer to the people. However this public relations exercise resulted in meetings with other members of the legal profession (Brooks 2000:289).
1999    The Supreme Court of Canada ruled (Corbiere) that, “s. 77(1) of the Indian Act, which requires that band members be “ordinarily resident” on the reserve in order to vote in band elections, violates s. 15(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.” Hence – all citizens of First Nations, not just those residing on reserve, could vote in elections. (Mainville, Elmer and Flinders, Lori 2001)
1999    “Meiorin and Grismer decisions, the Supreme Court of Canada made it clear that when deciding whether an employee is fit for work, he or she must be tested against a realistic standard that reflects the unique capabilities and inherent dignity of each individual. Accommodation up to the point of undue hardship must be an integral part of such an assessment. Two important Human Rights Tribunal decisions handed down in 2001 helped to further define the duty to accommodate.”(CHRC 2002b)
1999: “The Nunavut Territory and Government come into existence on April 1 (GN 2000).
2000    United Nations outlines: Basic principles on the use of restorative justice programmes in criminal matters
2000    “The Committee also urged the Government to respond to the Canadian Human Rights Act Review Panel’s 2000 Report by adding express references to key international human rights instruments to the Canadian Human Rights Act and providing the Commission with adequate resources for human rights promotion and education, legislation, and policy review.” (CHRC 2002d)
2000    In August, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia wrote President Bush in August that relations between SA and US had reached a crossroads, where hardliners in the SA kingdom who were both anti-American and hard-line Muslims were gaining a stronghold. Prince Abdullah had concerns that he could have the same fate as the Shah of Iran (Walsh 2001).
2000    “On September 14, Wilp Si’ayuukhi Nisga’a, Lisims government’s new legislative and administrative building, opens as the formal seat of Nisga’a government in Gitlakdamix. A new era begins.”((PWGS) 2001)
2000    Filipono activist Bello director on Focus on the Global South summarized the historic September 2000 Prague Castle debate between activist representatives from civil society and the Bretton Woods Institutions, the World Bank and IMF directors James Wolfensohn and Horst Kohler. The encounter was hosted by Czech president Vaclav Havel and chaired by Mary Robinson, the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner and former President of Ireland (Bello 2000).
2001    “As one small contribution to the World Conference and the fight against racism, the Canadian Human Rights Commission in 2001 published a casebook describing the types of complaints, recourses, and remedies available to deal with discrimination on the grounds of race, colour, and national or ethnic origin.” (CHRC 2002e)
2001    “New legislation in Ontario the Ontarians with Disabilities Act, gives some idea of how such a new approach to disability rights might work. This Act allows for the establishment of barrier-free standards on accessibility matters such as building access and public transportation. All governmental institutions, including municipalities, school boards, and hospitals, are now required to publish yearly plans on the steps they are taking to remove barriers to access and employment. They are also required to establish accessibility advisory councils. A special agency has been established to advise the Ontario government on accessibility matters. Human rights advocates have criticized the legislation for a lack of clear goals and enforcement procedures, and its reliance on voluntary compliance. Nevertheless, it is the first example in Canada of standards-based barrier removal legislation.” (CHRC 2002c)
2001    War on terrorism continues in Afghanistan
2001    United Nations General Assembly designated the Year 2001 as “the Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations”.
2001    “A world conference against racism was convened in South Africa in late August by the United Nations to bring states together to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance. As history has shown time and again, this is a daunting challenge.” A World Conference against Racism held in Durban, South Africa. Racism includes acts of discrimination based on race from xenophobia to acts of intolerance. But is also includes acts of discrimination based on religion, national or ethnic origin, or language. The latter were not adequately included in the discussions. Parallel meetings of national human rights institutions led to a consensus action plan. “The National Institutions’ Declaration, with negotiations chaired by the Canadian Commission, was adopted by consensus. It set out a range of areas for concrete action and cooperation, including on issues such as human rights education and promotion, racism in the media, conducting public inquiries, and sharing best practices among national human rights institutions in how to investigate, mediate, and adjudicate complaints of racism.”((CHRC) 2002e)
2001    September 11
2001    “The Minister of Indian Affairs conducted consultations on the Indian Act throughout 2001. While not dismissing negotiated self-government agreements, the Minister called for new governance legislation to enable First Nations governments to respond more effectively to their citizens’ needs and for these citizens to be better able to hold their leaders to account. The legislation would also address other critical issues, such as the rights of Aboriginal women.” ((CHRC) 2002d)
2001    In Teheran nationalist riots led often by the swelling numbers of unemployed youth defy the Iranian government calling for more religious and social reforms. Iran’s ruling power is divided between the more liberal President and clerical power of Khomeini who has, in effect become the Shah.
2002    “As a follow-up to the Declaration, in 2002 the Commission will be undertaking a comparative study on best practices of human rights commissions in addressing racism. This will contribute to an International Conference of National Human Rights Institutions on the same subject in the spring of 2002. Of particular note, the National Institutions Declaration called on governments to adopt action plans against racism, and the Commission has urged the Canadian Government to move forward quickly with a Canadian national action plan.” ((CHRC) 2002d)

Selected Bibliography

1763. “Royal Proclamation.” http://www.bloorstreet.com/200block/rp1763.htm
1920. “The 19th Amendment.” in The United States Constitution, Sixty-sixth Congress of the United States of America. http://www.archives.gov/exhibit_hall/charters_of_freedom/constitution/19th_amendment.html
1973. “Calder decision.” Supreme Court of Canada. http://www.bchydro.com/ard/initiatives/initiatives927.html
1984. “Guerin Decision.” Supreme Court of Canada. http://www.bchydro.com/ard/initiatives/initiatives927.html
1990. “Sparrow decision.” Supreme Court of Canada. http://www.bchydro.com/ard/initiatives/initiatives927.html
2003. “Meares Island case, B.C. Supreme Court, ongoing.” http://www.bchydro.com/ard/initiatives/initiatives927.html
? “Chapter 8: Native Organizations.” Pp. 281- in Native Peoples in Canada.
AGO. 2000. “The Grotesque in the Work of Cindy Sherman.” http://www.ago.net/www/information/exhibitions/modules/sherman/grotesque.html
Alia, Valerie. 1994. Names, Numbers, and Northern Policy: Inuit, Project Surname and the Politics of Identity. Halifax: Fernwood Publications.
Amagoalik. 2001. “Introduction: Human Rights Consultation Workshop.” in Human Rights Consultation Workshop. Iqaluit, NU. http://www.nunavutcourtofjustice.ca/library/Publications/HumanRight20010429.htm
AP. 2002. “Milosevic trial moves into second phase.” in Globe and Mail Online. Toronto. http://www.globeandmail.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/front/RTGAM/20020926/wmilo09262/Front/homeBN/breakingnews
Attar 1100s The Conference of the Birds Persia Poetry Mystic The Conference of the Birds
Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1940 [1968]. Rabelais and his World. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Barber, Benjamin R. 1992. “Jihad vs. McWorld.” The Atlantic Monthly 269:53-65. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/foreign/barberf.htm
Bashiri, Iraj. 2002. “Azerbaijan: An Overview.” http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/bashiri/Azerbaijan/Azerbaijan.html
Bello, Walden. 2000. “The Prague Castle Debate: A Few Questions for Mr. Wolfensohn and Mr. Kohler.” in Focus on Trade #55. Prague, Czech Republic. http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/bwi-wto/wbank/2000/bello.htm
Berger, Thomas R. 1999a. “The Importance of the Nisga’a Treaty to Canadians.” in Corry Lecture. Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. http://www.kermode.net/nisgaa/no_frames/berger2.html
—. 1999b. The Importance of the Nisga’a Treaty to Canadians. Kingston, Ontario: Corry Lecture, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. http://www.kermode.net/nisgaa/no_frames/berger2.html
Bonaparte, Napoleon. 1796 [1947]. “Napoleon’s Speech to French Army in Nice before Invasion of Italy as Generous Enemies.” Pp. 404-406 in Pageant of Europe, edited by Raymond Phineas Stearns. New York: Harcourt Brace and Company. http://www.dickinson.edu/~rhyne/232/Two/Nap_speeches.html
Bonnivard, François de. 1560. “the Geneva Chronicles.” http://switzerland.isyours.com/e/guide/lake_geneva/chillon.history.p.html
Boot, Machteld. 2002. Genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes: nullum crimen sine lege and the subject matter jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, vol. 12, Edited by School of Human Rights Research series. Antwerpen: Intersentia. http://www.law.uu.nl/english/sim/library/acq0202.asp
Braudel, Fernand. 1949[1969]. La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe II, vol. 1. Paris, FR: Flammarion. http://www.armand-colin.com/cgi-bin/bookf.pl?is=2200372248
Brooks, Stephen. 2000. Canadian Democracy: An Introduction. Don Mills: Oxford University Press Canada.
Burke, Edmund. 1755. Reflections on the Revolution in France. New York, New York: Liberal Arts Press. http://www.bartleby.com/24/3/
— 1757 Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful http://hogarth.chez.tiscali.fr/biography/biography.htm
—. 1790. Reflections on the Revolution in France: And on the Proceeding in Certain Societies in London Relative to That Event in a Letter Intended to Have Been Sent to a Gentleman in Paris. New York, New York: Liberal Arts Press. http://www.bartleby.com/24/3/
Cheetham, Mark A. 2001. Kant, Art, and Art History: Moments of Discipline. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
(CHRC). 2002a. “Age.” Canadian Human Rights Commission, Ottawa, ON.
—. 2002b. “Health of Human Rights in Canada: Ready for Duty.” Canadian Human Rights Commission. http://www.chrc-ccdp.ca/ar-ra/RapportAnnuel2001/AR01RA/annualReport_10_rapportAnnuel.asp?l=e. http://www.chrc-ccdp.ca/ar-ra/RapportAnnuel2001/AR01RA/annualReport_10_rapportAnnuel.asp?l=e
—. 2002c. “Health of Human Rights in Canada: Removing Barriers.” Canadian Human Rights Commission. http://www.chrc-ccdp.ca/ar-ra/RapportAnnuel2001/AR01RA/annualReport_9_rapportAnnuel.asp?l=e. http://www.chrc-ccdp.ca/ar-ra/RapportAnnuel2001/AR01RA/annualReport_9_rapportAnnuel.asp?l=e
—. 2002d. “Health of Human Rights in Canada: The Aboriginal Peoples of Canada.” Canadian Human Rights Commission. http://www.chrc-ccdp.ca/ar-ra/RapportAnnuel2001/AR01RA/annualReport_7_rapportAnnuel.asp?l=e. http://www.chrc-ccdp.ca/ar-ra/RapportAnnuel2001/AR01RA/annualReport_7_rapportAnnuel.asp?l=e
—. 2002e. “Health of Human Rights in Canada: The World Conference Against Racism.” Canadian Human Rights Commission. http://www.chrc-ccdp.ca/ar-ra/RapportAnnuel2001/AR01RA/annualReport_6_rapportAnnuel.asp?l=e. http://www.chrc-ccdp.ca/ar-ra/RapportAnnuel2001/AR01RA/annualReport_6_rapportAnnuel.asp?l=e
—. 2002f. “Sex Discrimination.” Canadian Human Rights Commission http://www.chrc-ccdp.ca/ar-ra/RapportAnnuel2001/AR01RA/annualReport_13_rapportAnnuel.asp?l=e, Ottawa, ON. http://www.chrc-ccdp.ca/ar-ra/EE00-EME00/AR-RA/Annual_Report_14_Rapport_annuel.asp?l=e
PBS-WGBH 1970 The Skin of our Teeth Series Clark, Lord Kenneth The Skin of our Teeth Television series http://www.chariscorp-wordgems.com/history.clark.one.html
Cohen, Jean L. 1998. “American Civil Society Talk.” in Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy. Maryland School of Public Affairs. http://www.puaf.umd.edu/IPPP/summer98/american_civil_society_talk.htm
Commons, Lords Spiritual and Temporal and. 1689 [2002]. “English Bill of Rights.” Westminster, UK: The Avalon Project at Yale Law School, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School, New Haven, Connecticut. http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/england.htm
Critchley, Simon. 1992. The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas. Oxford: Blackwell.
Daugherty. 1982.
de la Mare, Pierre. 1997. “An Industry Born: Printing has an illustrious history.” http://www.dotprint.com/fgen/history1.htm
Development, World Summit for Social. 1995. “The Copenhagen Declaration for Social Development.” New York, UN. http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/wssd/index.html
Devroy, Ann. 1994. “Clinton Grants China MFN, Reversing Campaign Pledge.” The Washington Post 114:2. http://the-tech.mit.edu/V114/N27/china.27w.html
Elliott, Nick. 1989. “The Levelers: Libertarian Revolutionaries.” The Freeman 39. http://www.libertyhaven.com/theoreticalorphilosophicalissues/earlyclassicalliberalism/levelers.html
Entenmann, Robert. 1998. “Review of Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II.” http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/55/481.html
Falk, Richard A. 2000a. “Framing Global Justice.” in Human Rights Horizons: The Pursuit of Justice in a Globalizing World. New York: Routledge.
—. 2000b. Human Rights Horizons: The Pursuit of Justice in a Globalizing World. New York: Routledge.
Foucault, Michel. 1963. Madness and Civilisation [1961]. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Vintage Books. http://www2.vuw.ac.nz/adamartgal/chartwell-essays/2001johnston.html
Francis, C. Daniel. 1995. The Imaginary Indian. Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp Press.
Frank, Andre Gunder. 1967. Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America. New York: Monthly Review Press. http://csf.colorado.edu/agfrank/research.html
Freeman, Milton. 1976. “Inuit Land Use and Occupancy Project : a Report.” Department of Indian and Northern Affairs (DIAND), Ottawa, ON.
PBS-WGBH 1977 Free to Choose Series Friedman, Milton Robert Chitester and Allen Wallis Free to Choose Television series
Fukuyama, Francis. 1989. “The end of history and the last man.” The National Interest Summer. http://www.wku.edu/~sullib/history.htm
PBS-WGBH 1977 Age of Uncertainty Series Galbraith, John Kenneth Age of Uncertainty Television series http://collections.ic.gc.ca/heirloom_series/volume5/10-13.htm
Gardiner, Michael. 1992. The Dialogics of Critique: M. M. Bakhtin and the Theory of Ideology. London and New York: Routledge.
GN. 2000. “The Road to Nunavut: A Chronological History.” http://www.gov.nu.ca/road.htm
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. 1789. Torquato Tasso.
Greer, Germaine. 1970. “The Female Eunuch.”
Gregory, Sharon. 1999. Exhibition brochure for Daumier. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada.
Guy, John A. 1977. The Cardinal’s Court: The Impact of Thomas Wolsey in Star Chamber.
Hackett, Robert A. and Yuezhi Zhao. 1998. Sustaining Democracy? Journalism and the Politics of Objectivity. Toronto, ON: Garamond Press Inc. obj/hac/sus
Haig-Brown, Celia. 1995. “Historical Fragments: First Nations Control in British Columbia.” Pp. 50-76 in Taking Control: Power and Contradiction in First Nations Adult Education. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press. ABO/HAI/TAK
Harding, Robert S. 1881 [1986]. “The International Paris Electrical Exposition.” http://americanhistory.si.edu/archives/d8069e.htm
Havel, Václav. 1997. “Rudolph II and Prague: The Imperial Court and the Residential City as a Cultural and Spiritual Centre of Central Europe.” Exhibition, Prague, Czech Republic: President of the Czech Republic. http://www.vol.cz/RUDOLFII/index.html
Heidegger. 1927. Being and Time Sein and Zeit. http://commhum.mccneb.edu/PHILOS/stealing2.htm
Herbert, Bob. 2010-11-22. “A Gift From Long Ago.” New York Times.
Hirschfelder, A. 1993. The Native American Almanac. New York, NY: Prentice Hall.
Hobbes, Thomas. 1651[1996]. “Leviathan.” in Democracy Reader, edited by Ravitch. New York, New York: Oxford University Press.
Hogarth, William 1735 A Rake’s Progress Etching and engraving. Eight plates. Approx: 12 1/2 ins x 16 ins. Ref: Paulson: 132 – 9. A Rake’s Progress http://www.haleysteele.com/hogarth/plates/rake.html
Holderlin, Friedrich and Eric L. Santner. 1797. “Hyperion, oder der Eremit in Griechenland.” http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/holderli.htm
Holmes, Nancy. 2001. “Human Rights and the Courts in Canada.” Parliamentary Research Branch.
Huntington, Samuel P. 1997. The Clash of Civilizations, vol. 72. http://www.alamut.com/subj/economics/misc/clash.html
Ignatieff, Michael. 1998. “Out of danger.” http://www.oneworld.org/index_oc/398/ignatieff.html
IPS. 1994. “Canada: Treatment of Indians main rights problem, says board.” in InterPress Service. http://nativenet.uthscsa.edu/archive/nl/9404/0040.html
Jardine , Matthew and Noam Chomsky. 1995. East Timor:  Genocide in Paradise. Tucson, AZ: Odonian Press. http://www.officeoftheamericas.org/books/genocide_in_paradise/genocide_contents.htm
Keep, Christopher, Tim McLaughlin, and Robin Parmar. “Johannes Gutenberg and The Printed Book.” http://www.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0228.html
Kent, Tom. 2002. “Concentration with Convergence: Goodbye Freedom of the Press.” Policy Options. http://www.irpp.org/po/archive/oct02/kent.pdf
Keynes, John Maynard. 1935-36. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money.
Lamer, Chief Justice. 1996. “R. v. Van Der Peet.” Ottawa, ON: Supreme Court of Canada. http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/csc-scc/en/pub/1996/vol2/html/1996scr2_0507.html
Las Casas, Bartolomé de. 1542. “Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies.” http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bdorsey1/41docs/02-las.html
LEAF. “LEAF Homepage.” http://www.leaf.ca/about-begin.html
Lee, Richard E. 1996. “Cultural Studies as Geisteswissenschaften? Time, Objectivity, and the Future of Social Science.” in Literature Between Philosophy and Cultural Studies. Notre Dame, IN: American Comparative Literature Association. http://fbc.binghamton.edu/rlcs-gws.htm
Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1952. Race and History. Paris: UNESCO.
Liu, Henry C.K. 2002. “Failed States and Failed Markets.” Post-Keynesian Thought. http://csf.colorado.edu/forums/pkt/2002I/msg00511.html
Lloyd, John 1999. “The Russian Devolution.” The New York Times Magazine, August 15, 1999. http://vms.cc.wmich.edu/~97levintova/Ny.html
Locke, John. 1689. “Letter Concerning Toleration.”
—. 1690. “Second Treatise of Government: Social Contract Theory of Government.” in Of the Ends of Political Society and Government, vol. Chapter IX. gopher://wiretap.area.com:70/00/Library/Classic/locke2nd
Lynge, Aqqaluk. 1993. The Story of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference. Nuuk, Greenland: Atuakkiortoq.
Maclean, Jack. 2000. “The Parable of Majnun and Layli.” in Mysticism and the Baha’i Faith: Irfan 2001 Conference. London School of Economics. http://bahai-library.org/irfan/colloquia/28abstracts.html
Malik, Kenan. 2001. the changing meaning of race. Oxford. http://www.kenanmalik.com/lectures/race_oxford1.htm
Medialaw. 2001. ” Historical Roots of Media Regulation.” http://www.medialaw.com.sg/march152001.htm
Megastories. The Walls The Plantation of Ulster 1614 – 1619. http://www.megastories.com/ireland/derrymap/walls.htm
Naim, Moises. 1999. “Fads and Fashion in Economic Reforms: Washington Consensus or Washington Confusion?” Foreign Policy Magazine.
Panofsky, Erwin. 1939. Studies in Iconology.
Parsons, Anthony. 1984. The Pride and the Fall: Iran, 1974-1979: Jonathan Cape.
Persyn, Mary. 2002. “The Sublime Turn Away from Empire: Wordsworth’s Encounter with Colonial Slavery, 1802.” Romanticism on the Net 26.
PWGS. 2001. “One Hope, One Nation, One Year: Nisga’s Final Agreement 2001 Annual Report 52/53.” Public Works and Government Services.
Rabelais, François. 1533 [1955]. Gargantua and Pantagruel. Translated by J. M. Cohen: Harmondsworth
Penguin books.
Roderick, Ian. 1998. “Habitable Space.” Space and Culture.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1762. The Social Contract or Principles of Political Right. Translated by G. D. H. Cole: Constitution Society.
Ryan, Alan. 1995. John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Swift, Jonathan. 1729 [1973]. “A Modest Proposal.” in The Writings of Jonathan Swift. New York: Norton.
Symonides, Janusz. 1998. Human Rights: New Dimensions and Challenges: Manual on Human Rights. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Dartmouth Publishing Company Ltd. / UNESCO Publishing. hum/sym/hum
UNESCO. 1951. On Race and Race Differences.
Vere, Bernard. 2001. “The Emasculation of the Sublime: Jacob Epstein’s Rock-Drill (1913-14).” London Consortium’s Kant-Art Ethics and Antiquity Student Assignment.
Wallechinsky, David. 1999. The People’s Almanac Presents the Twentieth Century: History With the Boring Parts Left Out: Overlook Press.
Walsh, Jack. 2001. “The Fate of the Shah: . . . and the dissolution of Iran’s Western trajectory.” in National Review.
Weatherford, Jack. 1988. Indian Givers. New York: Fawcett Columbine.
Weber, Max. 1904-5 [1958]. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Wells, H. G. 1898. The War of the Worlds.
York, Geoffrey. 1990. The Dispossessed: Life and Death in Native Canada. London, UK: Vintage Press.

[1]  Two hundred women, (including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott) and forty men gathered to claim the vote for women. were  to make the claim for full citizenship.

List of urls
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/23/opinion/23herbert.html
http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/EPS/PES-Yearbook/97_docs/edgoose.html
http://www.nationalreview.com/weekend/history/history-walshprint110301.html
http://www.londonconsortium.com/kantvere0001.doc
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/nonfiction_u/swiftj_modest/modest_all.html
http://mtprof.msun.edu/Win1997/GonshRev.html
http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2002/v/n26/005700ar.html
http://www.constitution.org/jjr/socon.htm
http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/pr/agr/nfa9_e.pdf
http://www.nationalreview.com/weekend/history/history-walshprint110301.html
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/seminar/1999/reforms/Naim.HTM#I

1641 The first modern Western philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650) wrote Meditationes de Prima Philosophia (Meditations On First Philosophy) in which he provided a philosophical groundwork for the possibility of the sciences. According to Gary Gutting (2005) Foucault’s reading of Descartes’ work is central to French philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault’s (1926-1984) iconic book (1961) entitled Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique (The History of Madness) in which he offered a textual interpretation of Descartes’ “Of the Things of Which We May Doubt” in the first section of Descartes’ Meditations On First Philosophy (1641).

1900 “From the moment of its invention, the psychoanalytic method thrilled Freud and his followers. In one stroke, it seemed, Freud had given us a technique that promised radical therapeutic results for previously untreatable illnesses, and that also offered a scientific approach to exploring the human soul. As time went on, however, questions arose about the power of the method to cure. When indications for analysis were broadened so that not only the symptom neuroses but also the character disorders were treated, the very concept of cure became increasingly vague. Eventually, even claims that symptoms could be permanently abolished seemed infused by wishful thinking. Freud himself became a therapeutic pessimist. Despite these developments, everybody could see that something happens in the consulting room that grips the human imagination. In the course of analyzing his patients, Freud evolved a vision of human nature so compelling that it shaped the intellectual life of an entire

1930 Swiss psychiatrist and pioneer in the field of existential psychology, Ludwig Binswanger (1881– 1966), published his book in German entitled 1930 : Traum und Existenz (Dream and Existence). Binswanger studied with psychologists Carl Jung, Eugen Bleuler and Sigmund Freud. Although he had fundamental differences with Freud regarding psychiatric theory, Binswanger and Freud remained friends until the latter’s death in 1939. “From 1911 to 1956, Binswanger was medical director of the santatorium in Kreuzlingen. He was influenced by existential philosophy and the works of Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, and Martin Buber. Binswanger is considered the first physician to combine psychotherapy with existential ideas, a concept he expounds in his 1942 book; Grundformen und Erkenntnis menschlichen Daseins (Basic Forms and the Realization of Human “Being-in-the-World”). In this work he explains existential analysis as an empirical science that involves an anthropological approach to the individual essential character of being human.[1] In his study of existentialism, his most famous subject was Ellen West, a deeply troubled anorexia nervosa patient. (wiki).

1946 French philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault (1926-1984), studied at the École Normale Supérieure during the heyday of existential phenomenology. Lectures by Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger were particularly important at that time. He was also influenced by Jean Hyppolite’s interpreations of Hegel and Louis Althusser’s structuralist reading of Marx. Michel Foucault translated the book entitled Traum und Existenz (1930) by Swiss psychiatrist and pioneer in the field of existential psychology, Ludwig Binswanger (1881– 1966) into French and also provided an essay-introduction. Foucault was influenced by both existentialism and Marxism in these early years but turned away from both.

1949 French philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault (1926-1984) 1948: licence de philosophie (can teach secondary school), 1949: licence de psychologie, 1951: agrégation de philosophie (can be university lecturer), 1952: Diplôme de psycho-pathologie, Institut de psychologie, Paris

1955-1959 French philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault (1926-1984) The most striking example of this mode of Foucault’s thought is his first major work, The History of Madness in the Classical Age (1961). This book originated in Foucault’s academic study of psychology (a licence de psychologie in 1949 and a diplome de psycho-pathologie in 1952) and his work in a Parisian mental hospital, but it was mainly written during his post-graduate Wanderjahren (1955-59) through a succession of diplomatic/educational posts in Sweden, Germany, and Poland. A study of the emergence of the modern concept of “mental illness” in Europe, The History of Madness is formed from both Foucault’s extensive archival work and his intense anger at what he saw as the moral hypocrisy of modern psychiatry. Standard histories saw the nineteenth-century medical treatment of madness (developed from the reforms of Pinel in France and the Tuke brothers in England) as an enlightened liberation of the mad from the ignorance and brutality of preceding ages. But, according to Foucault, the new idea that the mad were merely sick (“mentally” ill) and in need of medical treatment was not at all a clear improvement on earlier conceptions (e.g., the Renaissance idea that the mad were in contact with the mysterious forces of cosmic tragedy or the 17th-18th-century view of madness as a renouncing of reason). Moreover, he argued that the alleged scientific neutrality of modern medical treatments of insanity are in fact covers for controlling challenges to a conventional bourgeois morality. In short, Foucault argued that what was presented as an objective, incontrovertible scientific discovery (that madness is mental illness) was in fact the product of eminently questionable social and ethical commitments.

1961 French philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault (1926-1984), published Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique (The History of Madness). Foucault, an archaeology of discourse undertaken using a methodology of philosophical historian. Gary Gutting, the Notre Dame Chair in Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, argued that Foucault “engaged in the traditional critical project of philosophy in a new historical manner. He also critically engaged with the work of traditional philosophers.” Foucault’s work influenced Giorgio Agamben, Edward Said, Pierre Bourdieu, Ian Hacking, Judith Butler, Friedrich Kittler, Arnold Davidson, Gilles Deleuze, Donna Haraway, Hubert Dreyfus, Paul Rabinow, Jacques Rancière, Hans Sluga, Nikolas Rose, Partha Chatterjee, Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt, Felix Guattari, R. D. Laing and his relatively unknown associate David Cooper.

1967 David Cooper first used the term anti-psychiatry in his book entitled Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry (1967). Cooper was not very influential and he did not clarify how he defined this term. It may have been anti-psychiatry as ant–mainstream psychiatry or anti-soul healing.

1969-1984 Michel Foucault was Professor of the History of Systems of Thought at the ultra-prestigious Collège de France.

1984 Michel Foucault died of AIDS.

Who’s Who

Gary Gutting holds the Notre Dame Chair in Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author, most recently, of Foucault: A Very Short Introduction and French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, and is founder and editor of Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.

Webliography and Bibliography

Cohen, Patricia. 2007-11-25. “Freud Is Widely Taught at Universities, Except in the Psychology Department.” New York Times.

Descartes, René, (1596-1650) “Of the Things of Which We May Doubt.” Meditation I. in Meditationes de Prima Philosophia (Meditations on First Philosophy).

Greenberg, Jay. 1995. “Self-disclosure: Is It Psychoanalytic?” Contemporary Psychoanalysis. 31:193.

Gutting, Gary. 2005. Ed. “The Cambridge Companion to Foucault.” Cambridge Companions to Philosophy. Cambridge University Press.

Gutting, Gary. 2008-09-17 [2002-04-02]. “Michel Foucault.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Redmond, Jonathan; Shulman, Michael. 2008-06. “Access to Psychoanalytic Ideas in American Undergraduate Institutions.” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (JAPA).

urls:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/weekinreview/25cohen.html

http://www.classicallibrary.org/descartes/meditations/4.htm

http://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=cps.031.0193a

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault

http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521840828&ss=exc

http://www.ipa.org.uk/pdf/AAPSA%20FINAL%20REPORT%2010K%20MINDS%206-30-08.pdf

???? BCE Kabbalah and Hassidism, based on an ancient Midrashic source (Bereishit Rabbah 14:9) describe five levels of the soul, the animating life or consciousness within man: Nefesh (“creature” — the lower soul) relates to behavior and action, Ruach (“spirit”) relates to the emotions, Neshamah (“inner soul”) relates to the mind and intelligence, Chayah (“living one”) relates to the bridge between the first flash of conscious insight and its super-conscious origin. Experiencing awareness of God as continually crating the world, Yecidah (“single one”) relates to the ultimate unity of the soul in God, as manifest by pure faith, absolute devotion and the continuous readiness to sacrifice one’s life for God. The Ba’al Shem Tov taught that everything exists in three dimensions: Worlds, Souls, and Divinity. “Worlds” is the lowest, the physical dimension; “Souls” is the middle, the spiritual dimension; “Divinity” is the highest, Godly dimension. This concept of soul is similar to Plato’s (380 BC) three parts of the soul: phylakes: rational (intellectual), thymos: spirited (courageous) and appetitive (sensual-desire).

399 BCE The classical Athenian philosopher Socrates was convicted of corrupting the youth and impiety asebeia: of ‘failing to acknowledging the city’s deities and introducing new deities. The jury composed of Athenian citizensdetermined his guilt and Socrates was sentenced to death by drinking a toxic hemlock drink.  Socrates’ students’  Plato and Xenophon wrote accounts of the trial.

“Stoic courage is not an invention of the Stoic philosophers. They gave it classical expression in rational terms; but its roots go back to mythological stories, legends of heroic deeds, words of early wisdom, poetry and tragedy, and to centuries of philosophy preceding the rise of Stoicism. One event especially gave the Stoics’ courage lasting power-the death of Socrates. That became for the whole ancient world both a fact and a symbol. It showed the human situation in the face of fate and death. It showed a courage which could affirm life because it could affirm life. And it brought a profound change in the traditional meaning of courage. In Socrates the heroic courage of the past was made rational and universal. A democratic idea of courage was created as against the aristocratic idea of it. Soldierly fortitude was transcended by the courage of wisdom. In this form it gave “philosophical consolation” to many people in all sections of the ancient world throughout a period of catastrophes and transformations (Tillich 1952) .”

380 B.C. Plato wrote Laches, or Courage. Trans. Jowett, Benjamin. In this Dialogue, Lysimachus, son of Aristides, Melesias, son of Thucydides, their sons, Nicias, Laches and  Socrates. The grandfathers Aristides and Thucydides were courageous in battle. However, their sons Lysimachus and Melesias who live together, are ashamed that they were brought up spoiled and protected and cannot share their own stories of courage with their sons Aristides and Thucydides because they have never seen battle. They seek out the advice of the elders Nicias, Laches and Socrates so they can teach courage to their sons. Using the Socratic method they come to the conclusion that they do not know what courage is. Socrates finally asks, “Then courage is not the science which is concerned with the fearful and hopeful, for they are future only; courage, like the other sciences, is concerned not only with good and evil of the future, but of the present and past, and of any time?” Unable to answer they decide that they should all seek out the best teacher so they could study the nature of courage alongside their sons regardless of the expense or even ridicule of their peers. Socrates ended the Dialogue by citing Homer, “Modesty is not good for a needy man. Let us, then, regardless of what may be said of us, make the education of the youths our own education.”

360 B.C. Plato wrote The Republic. Trans. Jowett, Benjamin. There are three parts of the human soul: phylakes: rational (intellectual), thymos: spirited (courageous) and appetitive (sensual-desire) which correspond to the three part of an ideal state: 1) guardians or Philosopher-Kings, 2) soldiers or enforcers and 3) worker class of merchants and simple laborers. The enforcers ensure that the dictates of reason from the philosopher kings are obeyed by all. The enforcers require courage informed by spiritedness or thymos which is related to victory, anger, honour and excelling. Tillich (1952) described the phylakes or Philosopher Kings as the “armed aristocracy, the representatives of what is noble and graceful. Out of them the bearers of wisdom arise, adding wisdom to courage.” Plato believed that though education each part of the ideal state or individual could refine the necessary virtues. For example soldiers could be educated through music and gymnastics to be spirited persons using persuasion not force to guide them to justice, to prevent dissension, tyranny, harshness, cowardice or enslavement to flattery. However, Plato also believed that these roles in society were transmitted through generations. Rulers’ sons became rulers, soldiers’ sons became soldiers and citizens’ sons were simply citizens. Tillich argued that in spite of the central bridging position of the thymos-spiritedness-courage-will between the reason and desire, Platonic thought was dualistic. Tillich claimed that from Descartes to Kant western philosophers maintained that duality and eliminated the middle man, the center of the soul, the thymoeides.

Socrates and Adeimantus discuss courage: Citizens who are either courageous or cowardly will not make the city courageous or cowardly. The city is courageous to the extent that the city itself maintains clearly that which is to be feared and not to be feared according to the legislators. Courage is a kind of salvation. If the white ground dyers use is not prepared and dressed carefully, then the true sea-purple dye will not take in full perfection and will take on a washed-out look. If the ground is well prepared then whatever is dyed becomes a fast colour and will not fade with washing. Soldiers who are educated in music and gymnastic are being prepared so they will “take the dye of the laws in perfection, and the colour of their opinion about dangers and of every other opinion was to be indelibly fixed by their nurture and training, not to be washed away by such potent lyes as pleasure –mightier agent far in washing the soul than any soda or lye; or by sorrow, fear, and desire, the mightiest of all other solvents. And this sort of universal saving power of true opinion in conformity with law about real and false dangers I call and maintain to be courage.” A wild beast or a slave has uneducated unspirited courage which is excluded from this definition of courage.

65 CE Nero ordered Seneca to commit suicide. In Tacitus’ narrative Seneca’s only concern then becomes to have his death resemble that of Socrates. He reproaches his friends to remember that his soul is immortal that they should not express grief. Wise men show equanimity. “Where were those precepts of wisdom, where was the rational attitude against disaster, which they had mediated for so many years?” Seneca’s wife insists that she too will commit suicide (although she is rescued from death). Both Seneca and his wife slit their arms but their advanced age slows the flow of blood. Even after Seneca slit the veins of his knees and legs other means had to be used to end his life.

“The description of Stoic courage by a man like Seneca shows the interdependence of the fear of death and the fear of life, as well as the interdependence of the courage to die and the courage to live. He points to those who “do not want to live and do not know how to die.” He speaks of a libido moriendi, the exact Latin term for Freud’s ”death instinct.” He tells of people who feel life as meaningless and superfluous and who, as in the book of Ecclesiastes say: I cannot do anything new, I cannot see anything new! This, according to Seneca, is a consequence of the acceptance of the pleasure principle or, as he calls it, anticipating a recent American phrase, the “good-time” attitude, which he finds especially in the younger generation. As, in Freud, the death instinct is the negative side of the ever-unsatisfied drives of the libido, so, according to Seneca, the acceptance of the pleasure principle necessarily leads to disgust and despair about life. But Seneca knew (as Freud did) that the inability to affirm life does not imply the ability to affirm death. The anxiety of fate and death controls the lives even of those who have lost the will to live. This shows that the Stoic recommendation of suicide is not directed to those who are conquered by life but to those who have conquered life, are able both to live and to die, and can choose freely between them. Suicide as an escape, dictated by fear, contradicts the Stoic courage to be. The Stoic courage is, in the ontological as well as the moral sense, “courage to be.” It is based on the control of reason in man. But reason is not in either the old or the new Stoic what it is in contemporary terminology. Reason, in the Stoic sense, is not the power of “reasoning,” i.e. of arguing on the basis of experience and with the tools of ordinary or mathematical logic. Reason for the Stoics is the Logos, the meaningful structure of reality as a whole and of the human mind in particular. “If there is,” says Seneca, “no other attribute which belongs to man as man except reason, then reason will be his one good (Tillich 1952) .”

170-180 CE Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus was Roman emperor from 161 to his death in 180. He was the last of the “Five Good Emperors”, and is also considered one of the most important Stoic philosophers. While on campaign between 170 and 180, Aurelius wrote his Meditations in Greek as a source for his own guidance and self-improvement. He had been a priest at the sacrificial altars of Roman service and was an eager patriot. He had a logical mind and his notes were representative of Stoic philosophy and spirituality. Meditations is still revered as a literary monument to a government of service and duty. The book has been a favourite of Frederick the Great, John Stuart Mill, Matthew Arnold, Goethe and Wen Jiabao. His stoic ideas often involve avoiding indulgence in emotion, a skill which, he says, will free a man from the pains and pleasures of the material world. He claims that the only way a man can be harmed by others is to allow his reaction to overpower him. An order or logos permeates existence. Rationality and clear-mindedness allow one to live in harmony with the logos. This allows one to rise above faulty perceptions of “good” and “bad.” wiki

“Stoic courage is not an invention of the Stoic philosophers. They gave it classical expression in rational terms; but its roots go back to mythological stories, legends of heroic deeds, words of early wisdom, poetry and tragedy, and to centuries of philosophy preceding the rise of Stoicism. One event especially gave the Stoics’ courage lasting power-the death of Socrates. That became for the whole ancient world both a fact and a symbol. It showed the human situation in the face of fate and death. It showed a courage which could affirm life because it could affirm life. And it brought a profound change in the traditional meaning of courage. In Socrates the heroic courage of the past was made rational and universal. A democratic idea of courage was created as against the aristocratic idea of it. Soldierly fortitude was transcended by the courage of wisdom. In this form it gave “philosophical consolation” to many people in all sections of the ancient world throughout a period of catastrophes and transformations (Tillich 1952) .”

c 85 to 105 AD. “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father (Matthew 10:29).” This citation is used to argue for the Calvinist concept of predestination, whereby God controls every minute action and individuals have no power over their own fate. They must put all their trust and faith in God. Tillich refers to this as a belief in the God upstairs which he argued needs to be conceptualized as the God above God. Shakespeare refers to this citation in Hamlet (1599-1602).

1126 – 1198 Ibn Rushd (Arabic: ابن رشد‎) Averroes (1126 – 1198) renowned Muslim scholar who founded a school of philosophy known as Averroism. He has been described by some as the founding father of secular thought in Western Europe (Fakhry 2001) and “one of the spiritual fathers of Europe (De Libera 1991:121).”

c. 1256 Sa’di (1184-1292) wrote The Gulistan or Flower-Garden.

1505 German theologian and Augustinian monk Martin Luther (1483-1546), leader of the Reformation became an Augustinian monk in his early twenties only to reject the corruption of the Catholic Church in 1517. Throughout his years in the monastery he struggled with doubt, uncertainty and sought enlightenment including five years of study in humanism and the Bible in its original Hebrew and Greek.

1517 German theologian and Augustinian monk Martin Luther (1483-1546), leader of the Reformation, posted his 95 Theses in which he asked his superiors to put an end the the profitable sale of indulgences to the door of the Wittenberg church.

1521 The Pope excommunicated Martin Luther (1483-1546) from the Roman Catholic Church. Martin Luther (1483-1546) was in danger of being murdered for his radical stance. While in exile for his own safety in Wartburg Castle in Eisenach, hiding under the name, Junker Jörg (Knight George), Luther suffered extreme doubts that bordered on paranoia.

“It has rightly been said that Albrecht Dürer’s (1471-1528) engraving, “Knight, Death, and the Devil (1519),” is a classic expression of the spirit of the Lutheran Reformation and it might be added of Luther’s courage of confidence, of his form of the courage to be. A knight in full armor is riding through a valley, accompanied by the figure of death on one side, the devil on the other. Fearlessly, concentrated, confident he looks ahead. He is alone but he is not lonely. In his solitude he participates in the power which gives him the courage to affirm himself in spite of the presence of the negativities of existence. His courage is certainly not the courage to be as a part. The Reformation broke away from the semicollectivism of the Middle Ages. Luther’s courage of confidence is personal confidence, derived from a person-to-person encounter with God . . . (Tillich 1952:162)

“The acceptance by God, his forgiving or justifying act, is the only and ultimate source of a courage to be which is able to take the anxiety of guilt and condemnation into itself. For the ultimate power of self-affirmation can only be the power of being-itself . Everything less than this, one’s own or anybody else’s finite power of being, cannot overcome the radical, infinite threat of nonbeing which is experienced in the despair of self-condemnation. This is why the courage of confidence, as it is expressed in a man like Luther, emphasizes unceasingly exclusive trust in God and rejects any other foundation for his courage to be, not only as insufficient but as driving him into more guilt and deeper anxiety. The immense liberation brought to the people of the idth century by the message of the Reformers and the creation of their indomitable courage to accept acceptance was due to the sola fide doctrine, namely to the message that the courage of confidence is conditioned not by anything finite but solely by that which is unconditional itself and which we experience as unconditional in a person-to-person encounter. As the symbolic figures of death and the devil show, the anxiety of this period was not restricted to the anxiety of guilt. It was also an anxiety of death and fate. The astrological ideas of the later ancient world had been revived by the Renaissance and had influenced even those humanists who joined the Reformation. We have already referred to the Neo-Stoic courage, expressed in some Renaissance pictures, where man directs the vessel of his life although it is driven by the winds of fate. Luther faced the anxiety of fate on another level. He experienced the connection between the anxiety of guilt and the anxiety of fate. It is the uneasy conscience which produces innumerable irrational fears in daily life. The rustling of a dry leaf horrifies him who is plagued by guilt. Therefore conquest of the anxiety of guilt is also conquest of the anxiety of fate. The courage of confidence takes the anxiety of fate as well as the anxiety of guilt into itself. It says “in spite of” to both of them. This is the genuine meaning of the doctrine of providence. Providence is not a theory about some activities of God; it is the religious symbol of the courage of confidence with respect to fate and death. For the courage of confidence says “in spite of” even to death. Like Paul, Luther was well aware of the connection of the anxiety of guilt with the anxiety of death. In Stoicism and Neo-Stoicism the essential self is not threatened by death, because it belongs to being-itself and transcends nonbeing. Socrates, who in the power of his essential self conquered the anxiety of death, has become the symbol for the courage to take death upon oneself. This is the true meaning of Plato’s so-called doctrine of immortality of the soul. In discussing this doctrine we should neglect the arguments for immortality, even those in Plato’s Phaedon, and concentrate on the image of the dying Socrates. All the arguments, skeptically treated by Plato himself, are attempts to interpret the courage of Socrates, the courage to take one’s death into one’s self -affirmation. Socrates is certain that the self which the executioners will destroy is not the self which affirms itself in his courage to be. He does not say much about the relation of the two selves, and he could not because they are not numerically two, but one in two aspects. But he makes it clear that the courage to die is the test of the courage to be. A self-affirmation which omits taking the affirmation of one’s death into itself tries to escape the test of courage, the facing of nonbeing in the most radical way (Tillich 1952:167-9).”

“Luther had experiences which he describes as attacks of utter despair (Anfechtung), as the frightful threat of a complete meaninglessness. He felt these moments as satanic attacks in which everything was menaced: his Christian faith, the confidence in his work, the Reformation, the forgiveness of sins. Everything broke down in the extreme moments of this despair, nothing was left of the courage to be. Luther in these moments, and in the descriptions he gives of them, anticipated the descriptions of them by modern Existentialism. But for him this was not the last word. The last word was the first commandment, the statement that God is God, It reminded him of the unconditional element in human experience of which one can be aware even in the abyss of meaninglessness. And this awareness saved him (Tillich 1952:169).”

1536 Influential French theologian, and pastor during the Protestant Reformation, John Calvin (1509 – 1564) published his seminal work Institutes of the Christian Religion after leaving the Roman Catholic Church c. 1530.

Erich Fromm in “Selfishness and Self-Love” (1939) rejected Calvin’s harsh recommendation of self-hatred, “We are not our own therefore neither our reason nor our will should predominate in our deliberations and actions. We are not our own; therefore, let us not propose it as our end, to seek what may be expedient for us according to the flesh. We are not our own; therefore, let us, as far as possible, forget ourselves and all things that are ours. On the contrary, we are God’s; to him, therefore, let us live and die. For, as it is the most devastating pestilence which ruins people if they obey themselves, it is the only haven of salvation not to know or to want anything by oneself but to be guided by God who walks before us . . .  Man should not only have the conviction of his absolute nothingness. He should do everything to humiliate himself. For I do not call it humility, if you suppose that we have anything left… we cannot think of ourselves as we ought to think without utterly despising everything that may be supposed an excellence in us. This humility is unfeigned submission of a mind overwhelmed with a weighty sense of its own misery and poverty; for such is the uniform description of it in the word of God (Calvin 1536 cited in Fromm 1939).”

158o Michel de Montaigne’s collection of 105 essays were published in one manuscript entitled Essais, inventing the literary form of essay, a short subjective treatment of a given topic. His pessimistic writing filled with skepticism and disgust with the Catholic-Protestant vicious rivalries were uncharacteristic of Renaissance literature.

1599-1601 William Shakespeare wrote the play “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” which is one of the most powerful and influential plays in the English language. Shakespeare chose as its setting, the Protestant modern nation of Denmark while Ophelia’s funeral was medieval and Catholic. Shakespeare mentioned Wittenberg cathedral the setting of Luther’s protest that provoked the Reformation. Shakespeare appears to be speaking the concept of predestination, wherein God controls every minute event, when his character Hamlet responds to Horation suggestion of reading the future, saying, “Not a whit, we defy augury. There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all. Since no man, of aught he leaves, knows what is’t to leave betimes, let be (Hamlet Act 5, scene 2, 217–224).”

In the section entitled “Being, Nonbeing, and Anxiety” Tillich claimed, “The late Middle Ages was not a period of doubt; and the anxiety of emptiness and loss of meaning appeared only twice, both remarkable occasions, however, and important for the future. One was the Renaissance, when theoretical skepticism was renewed and the question of meaning haunted some of the most sensitive minds. In Michelangelo’s prophets and sibyls and in Shakespeare’s Hamlet there are indications of a potential anxiety of meaninglessness (Tillich 1952:60).”

“Modern humanism is identical with ancient Stoicism that it may be called Neo-Stoicism. Spinoza is its representative. In him as in nobody else the ontology of courage is elaborated. In calling his main ontological work Ethics he indicated in the title itself his intention to show the ontological foundation of man’s ethical existence, including man’s courage to be. But for Spinoza as for the Stoics the courage to be is not one thing beside others. It is an expression of the essential act of everything that participates in being, namely self-affirmation. The doctrine of self-affirmation is a central element in Spinoza’s thought. Its decisive character is manifest in a proposition like this: “The endeavour, wherewith everything endeavours to persist in its own being, is nothing else but the actual essence of the thing in question” (Ethics iii. prop. 7). The * Latin word for endeavor is conatus, the striving toward something. This striving is not a contingent aspect of a thing, nor is it an element in its being along with other elements; it is its essentia actualis conatus makes a thing what it is, so that if it disappears the thing itself disappears (Ethics ii, Def . 2 ) . Striving toward self-preservation or toward self-affirmation makes a thing be what it is. Spinoza calls this striving which is the essence of a thing also its power, and he says of the mind that it affirms or posits (affirmat sive ponit) its own power (Tillich 1952) .”

Tillich concludes, Spinoza asks, “Why is it that the way of salvation (salus) which he has shown is being neglected by almost everyone? Because it is difficult and therefore rare, like everything sublime, he answers in the melancholy last sentence of his book. This was also the answer of the Stoics, but it is an answer not of salvation but of resignation (Tillich 1952).”

1646-1716 The German rationalist philosopher, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), is one of the great renaissance men of Western thought.  Leibniz eliminates the polarity of power and exertion, being in potentia and being in actu.  Terms like dynamis, potentia (Leibnitz) as characterizations of the true nature of being prepare the way for Nietzsche’s ”will to power.”

“In later writings such as the Monadology, Leibniz describes this using the Aristotelian/Medieval idea of entelechy: the becoming actual or achievement of a potential. This word is derived from the idea of perfections. What becomes actual strives to finish or perfect the potential, to realize the complete concept, to unfold itself perfectly as what it is in its entirety. This active power is the essence of the monad. Leibniz has several different names for this property (or closely related properties) of monads: entelechy, active power, conatus or nisus (effort/striving, or urge/desire), primary force, internal principle of change, and even light (in “On the Principle of Indiscernibles”). This activity is not just a property of human souls, but of all types of monads. This inner activity must mean not only being the source of action, but also being affected (passivity), and of resisting (inertia). Again, what one calls “passivity” is just a more complex and subtle form of activity. Both a monad’s activity and resistance, of course, follow from its complete concept, and are expressed in phenomena as causes and as effects. Change in a monad is the intelligible, constantly, and continuously (recalling here the principle of continuity discussed above) unfolding being of a thing, from itself, to itself. “Intelligible” here means: (i) according to sufficient reason, not random or chaotic; and (ii) acting as if designed or purposed, as if alive–hence Leibniz’s contribution to the philosophical tradition of “vitalism” (Burnham 2005).”

1809 Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854) one of the three most influential thinkers in the tradition of ‘German Idealism’ (along with J.G. Fichte and G.W.F. Hegel) led the Existentialist attack against Hegel.

“The revolt against Hegel’s Essentialist philosophy was accomplished with the help of Existentialist elements present, though subdued, in Hegel himself. The first to lead the Existentialist attack was Hegel’s former friend Schelling, on whom Hegel had been dependent in earlier years. In his old age Schelling presented his so-called “Positive Philosophic,” most of the concepts of which were used by the revolutionary Existentialists of the 19th century. He called Essentialism “negative philosophy” because it abstracts from real existence, and he called Positive Philosophic the thought of the individual who experiences and thinks, and decides within his historical situation. He was the first to use the term “existence” in contradicting philosophical Essentialism. Although his philosophy was rejected because of the Christian myth which he reinterpreted philosophically in Existentialist terms, he influenced many people, notably Soren Kierkegaard (Tillich 1952:13).”

1830 Auguste Comte’s Course of Positive Philosophy

1843 Lord Gifford heard a series of lectures by American lecturer, author, essayist, poet, and popular philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) in Edinburgh. Emerson who began his career as a Unitarian minister in Boston, achieved worldwide fame as a lecturer and the author. Drawing on English and German Romanticism, Neoplatonism, Kantianism, and Hinduism, Emerson developed a metaphysics of process, an epistemology of moods, and an “existentialist” ethics of self-improvement. He influenced generations of Americans, from his friend Henry David Thoreau to John Dewey, and in Europe, Friedrich Nietzsche, who takes up such Emersonian themes as power, fate, the uses of poetry and history, and the critique of Christianity (Goodman 2002 [2009]).”

Folksonomy: Edinburgh, Emersonian, power, fate, poetry, critique of Christianity, Gifford, Nietzsche, Self-Reliance, History, The Over-Soul, Fate, English Romanticism, German Romanticism, Neoplatonism, Kantianism, Hinduism, substance, Hindu incarnation, St. Bernard, metaphysics of process, epistemology of moods, existentialist, existentialism, self-improvement, ethics, Thoreau, Dewey, transcendentalism,

1844 In May 1844, while living in Windsor, in England, American theologian and Swedenborgian, Henry James Sr. (1811-1882), father of the philosopher William James, novelist Henry James, and diarist Alice James, was sitting alone one evening at the family dinner table after the meal, gazing at the fire, when he had the defining spiritual experience of his life, which he would come to interpret as a Swedenborgian “vastation,” a stage in the process of spiritual regeneration. This experience was an apprehension of, in his own words, “a perfectly insane and abject terror, without ostensible cause, and only to be accounted for, to my perplexed imagination, by some damned shape squatting invisible to me within the precincts of the room, and raying out from his fetid personality influences fatal to life.” James’s “vastation” initiated a spiritual crisis that lasted two years, and was finally resolved through the thorough exploration of the work of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), the Swedish scientist, religious visionary and teacher, and mystic. James became convinced that, as he put it, “the curse of mankind, that which keeps our manhood so little and so depraved, is its sense of selfhood, and the absurd abominable opinionativeness it engenders.” He remained attached to Swedenborg’s thought for the rest of life, and never traveled without carrying Swedenborg’s works with him. James returned to the United States in 1845 and began a lifetime of lecturing about his spiritual discoveries. He devoted his mornings to writing, and published a number of discursive, rather repetitive volumes devoted to the exposition of his thought. (See the list of his major writings below.) wiki

1858-1864 The internationally-recognised Schulpforta accepted the fourteen-year-old Nietzsche because Nietzsche was talented in both music and language. Nietzsche’s father, a Lutheran minister, died of brain injury when Nietzsche was only five. At the Schulpforta Nietzsche was introduced to literature including ancient Greek and Roman.

1865-66 Twenty-one-year old Nietzsche was first introduced to the works of Arthur Schopenhauer which would greatly influence his own writing. The next year he read Friedrich Albert Lange’s History of Materialism. “Lange’s descriptions of Kant’s anti-materialistic philosophy, the rise of European Materialism, Europe’s increased concern with science, Darwin’s theory, and the general rebellion against tradition and authority greatly intrigued Nietzsche. The cultural environment encouraged him to expand his horizons beyond philology and to continue his study of philosophy.” wiki

1867 Twenty-three-year-old had to leave the Prussian army because of a bad riding accident so he returned to his studies.

1868 Nietzsche met Richard Wagner.

1868 Twenty-four-year old Nietzsche was given a tenured track position as professor of classical philology at the University of Basel. Nietzsche renounced his Prussian citizenship and remained stateless for the rest of his life.

1869-1872 The founder of the Baha’i Faith, Baha’u'llah (1817-1892), while imprisoned in the prison of Acca, wrote the following letter to Manikji Limji Hataria (1813-1890), a Parsi-Zoroastrian scholar who fought for the civil rights of the Zoroastrians in Iran. Zoroastrians who immigrated to India to escape persecution in Iran centuries earlier ( known as the Parsis in India) flourished as merchants, educators and writers. The Parsis in Bombay (now Mumbai) allied with the British East India Company and facilitated British colonialism. Baha’u'llah (1817-1892) had met Manikji Limji Hataria (1813-1890) in Baghdad in 1854. In 1854-4 Manikji Limji Hataria (1813-1890) was gathering data for his report (1855) on the increased persecution of Zoroastrians in Persia. Manikji Limji Hataria (1813-1890),  a British citizen, had excellent relations with the French ambassador, Count de Gobineau and the British ambassador in Persia, Sir Henry Rawlinson. Manikji Limji Hataria (1813-1890) obtained an audience (1860-05-15) with Nasir al-Din Shah and the oppressive tax on Zoroastrians was removed.  Baha’is and Zoroastrians were among the many religious groups harshly persecuted in Iran.  Manikji Limji Hataria (1813-1890) championed the cause of the promotion of pure non-Arabicised Persian (Parsiy-i-sari). Baha’u'llah who spoke Arabicised Persian, Arabic and Parsiy-i-sari, used Parsiy-i-sari for this letter which responded to specific questions asked by his friend Manikji Limji Hataria (1813-1890).

British orientalist Edward Granville Browne (1862-1926) who met with Baha’u'llah in XXXX translated part of this in his article entitled, “Three Epistles to the Zorastrians,” published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 24 in 1892. Neshati, Ramin Neshati provided a revised translation and introduction in 2001.

“Praise be unto Him, the Eternal Seer, who through a dewdrop of the ocean of His Generosity raised up the firmament of existence, begemmed it with the stars of knowledge and summoned mankind to the court of perception and understanding! This dewdrop, which is the Primal Word of the Almighty, is at times called the Water of Life for it quickens the lifeless souls in the desert of ignorance and at other times it is known as the First Rays. When this radiance shone forth from the Sun of Wisdom, the Primary Movement was made manifest through the bounty of the Incomparable, the Wise One. He is the Knower, the Merciful! He is sanctified above every statement and attribute! The seen and the unseen fail to attain a measure of His understanding. The world of being and everything therein bears witness to this Utterance. Thus it is established that the First Bestowal of the Almighty is speech and its acceptance by Him is conditioned upon wisdom. It is the First Instructor in the School of Existence and the Primal Emanation of God. All that is visible is but through the radiance of its Light and all that is revealed is through the appearance of its Knowledge. All names originate from His Name and the start and end of all affairs are in His Hand. Your letter reached this Captive of the world in this prison. It brought happiness, increased friendship and renewed the remembrance of former times. Praise be unto the Possessor of the Universe for permitting our meeting in the land of Arabia. We met, we conversed and we listened. It is hoped that forgetfulness shall not follow that encounter, that the passage of time shall not erase its remembrance from the heart and that from what was sown shall sprout the flora of friendship, verdant, luxuriant and imperishable. You have asked about Divine Names. The All-Knowing Physician hath His finger on the pulse of mankind. He perceiveth the disease, and prescribeth, in His unerring wisdom, the remedy. Every age hath its own problem, and every soul its particular aspiration. The remedy the world needeth in its present-day afflictions can never be the same as that which a subsequent age may require. Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and center your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements. We can well perceive how the whole human race is encompassed with great, with incalculable afflictions. We see it languishing on its bed of sickness, sore-tried and disillusioned. They that are intoxicated by self-conceit have interposed themselves between it and the Divine and infallible Physician. Witness how they have entangled all men, themselves included, in the mesh of their devices. They can neither discover the cause of the disease, nor have they any knowledge of the remedy. They have conceived the straight to be crooked, and have imagined their friend an enemy. Incline your ears to the sweet melody of this Prisoner. Arise, and lift up your voices, that haply they that are fast asleep may be awakened. Say: O ye who are as dead! The Hand of Divine bounty profereth unto you the Water of Life. Hasten and drink your fill. Whoso hath been re-born in this Day, shall never die; whoso remainteth dead, shall never live. You have written regarding languages: Arabic and Persian are both good, for that which one desires of a language is to attain insight into the discourse of the narrator and this can be obtained from either tongue. However, as in this day the Sun of Wisdom shines forth from the horizon of Persia this language is all the more praiseworthy. O friend! When the Primal Word appeared in these latter days, a number of the heavenly souls heard the Melody of the Beloved and hastened toward it, while others, finding the deeds of some at odds with their words, stayed far and were deprived from the radiance of the Sun of Knowledge. Say, O ye sons of earth! Thy Lord, the Pure One, proclaims: In this glorious Day whatever will purge you from corruption and will lead you towards peace and composure, is indeed the Straight Path. Purity from the stains of desire means detachment from all things that occasion loss and abate human nobility, which in turn comes about when one favors his own words and deeds, notwithstanding their merit. Serenity is attained when one becomes the well-wisher of all who are on earth. He who is informed will readily testify that if all the peoples of the earth were to attain to these Heavenly Utterances they would by no means be prevented from the Ocean of Divine Generosity. The heaven of righteousness has no Star, and shall not have any, brighter than this. The first Utterance of the Wise One is this: O ye sons of earth! Turn away from the darkness of alienation and seek the radiance of the Sun of Unity. This is that which shall benefit the people of the world more than aught else. O friend! The Tree of Utterance has no better a Blossom and the Ocean of Wisdom has no brighter a Pearl than this. O ye sons of wisdom! Flimsy as it may be, the eyelid yet prevents the eye from seeing the world and all that is therein. Consider then what would result when the curtain of greed veils the vision of the heart. Say, O people! The darkness of avarice and envy obscures the light of the soul even as clouds eclipse the radiance of the sun. He who listens with the ear of intelligence to this Utterance shall unfurl the wings of freedom and soar with great ease toward the heaven of understanding. When the world was environed with darkness, the Sea of Generosity was set in motion and Divine Illumination made visible the deeds. This is that same illumination foretold in the heavenly books. Should the Almighty desire it, He will sanctify the hearts with pure speech and shine the Light of the Sun of Unity upon the souls and thereby regenerate the world. O people! Words must be demonstrated through deeds, for the latter is the true witness of the former. Words alone shall not quench the thirsty nor unlock the doors of sight to the blind. The Heavenly Wise One proclaims: A harsh word is like unto a sword, while gentle speech like unto milk. In this manner will the children of the world attain to knowledge and improve their lot. The Tongue of Wisdom proclaimeth: He that hath Me not is bereft of all things. Turn ye away from all that is on earth and seek none else but Me. I am the Sun of Wisdom and the Ocean of Knowledge. I cheer the faint and revive the dead. I am the guiding Light that illumineth the way. I am the royal Falcon on the arm of the Almighty. I unfold the drooping wings of every broken bird and start it on its flight. The Peerless Friend says: The path of freedom has been opened! Hasten ye! The Fount of Knowledge is gushing! Drink ye! Say O friends! The tabernacle of unity hath been raised; regard ye not one another as strangers. Ye are the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch.  Truly I say: Whatsoever abates ignorance and augments knowledge has been and shall be pleasing to the Creator. Say, O people! Walk under the shadow of Justice and Righteousness and take shelter under the pavilion of Unity. Say, O thou possessor of sight! The past is the mirror of the future; see and be apprised thereof that perchance you may recognize the Friend and not be the cause of His displeasure. In this day, the best fruit from the Tree of Knowledge is that which benefits mankind and improves his condition. Say! The tongue bears witness to My Truth; do not defile it with falsehood. The soul is the treasury of My Mystery; do not surrender it to avarice. It is hoped that in this Dawn, through which the universe has been illumined with the rays of the Sun of Understanding and Knowledge, we may attain to the good pleasure of the Beloved and drink from the Ocean of Divine Recognition. O friend! As ears are few to hear, for some time now the Pen has been silent in its own chamber, to such an extent that silence has overtaken utterance and has been deemed more favorable. Say, O people! Words are revealed according to capacity, so that newcomers may stay and beginners may make progress. Milk must be given according to prescribed measure, such that the babes of the world may enter into the Realm of Grandeur and be established upon the Court of Unity. O friend! We have seen the pure ground and have sown the seed of knowledge thereupon. Now it is left to the rays of the sun…will they singe the seedling or cause it to grow? Say: In this day, through the greatness of the Peerless, the Wise One, the Sun of Knowledge has appeared from behind the veil of the soul. All the birds of the meadow are inebriated through the wine of Understanding and are content with the remembrance of the Beloved. Well is it with him who comprehends.
(Baha’u'llah 1869 [1929]).”

Baha’u'llah. 1869. Lawh-i -Manikchi Sahib (Tablet to Manikchi).

1870-1871 Twenty-six-year old Nietzsche served as a voluntary as orderly during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871). He was an eye-witness to traumatic events.

1870 William James  (1842 – 1910), experienced  his own “vastation” at the age of 28 resulting in his breakdown as he searched for his true vocation. He had successfully passed his exams as medical doctor at Harvard University but never practiced medicine.  He wrote about this phenomenon in “The Varieties of Religious Experience,”

“The worst kind of melancholy is that which takes the form of panic fear. Here is an excellent example, for permission to print which I have to thank the sufferer. The original is in French, and though the subject was evidently in a bad nervous condition at the time of which he writes, his case has otherwise the merit of extreme simplicity. I translate freely. ”Whilst in this state of philosophic pessimism and general depression of spirits about my prospects, I went one evening into a dressing-room in the twilight to procure some article that was there; when suddenly there fell upon me without any warning, just as if it came out of the darkness, a horrible fear of my own existence. Simultaneously there arose in my mind the image of an epileptic patient whom I had seen in the asylum, a black-haired youth with greenish skin, entirely idiotic, who used to sit all day on one of the benches, or rather shelves against the wall, with his knees drawn up against his chin, and the coarse gray undershirt, which was his only garment, drawn over them inclosing his entire figure. He sat there like a sort of sculptured Egyptian cat or Peruvian mummy, moving nothing but his black eyes and looking absolutely non-human. This image and my fear entered into a species of combination with each other. That shape am I, I felt, potentially. Nothing that I possess can defend me against that fate, if the hour for it should strike for me as it struck for him. There was such a horror of him, and such a perception of my own merely momentary discrepancy from him, that it was as if something hitherto solid within my breast gave way entirely, and I became a mass of quivering fear. After this the universe was changed for me altogether. I awoke morning after morning with a horrible dread at the pit of my stomach, and with a sense of the insecurity of life that I never knew before, and that I have never felt since. It was like a revelation; and although the immediate feelings passed away, the experience has made me sympathetic with the morbid feelings of others ever since. It gradually faded, but for months I was unable to go out into the dark alone. Compare Bunyan: “There was I struck into a very great trembling, insomuch that at some times I could, for days together, feel my very body, as well as my mind, to shake and totter under the sense of the dreadful judgment of God, that should fall on those that have sinned that most fearful and unpardonable sin. I felt also such clogging and beat at my stomach, by reason of this my terror, that I was, especially at some times, as if my breast-bone would have split asunder…. Thus did I wind, and twine, and shrink, under the burden that was upon me; which burden also did so oppress me that I could neither stand, nor go, nor lie, either at rest or quiet.” ”In general I dreaded to be left alone. I remember wondering how other people could live, how I myself had ever lived, so unconscious of that pit of insecurity beneath the surface of life. My mother in particular, a very cheerful person, seemed to me a perfect paradox in her unconsciousness of danger, which you may well believe I was very careful not to disturb by revelations of my own state of mind. I have always thought that this experience of melancholia of mine had a religious bearing.” On asking this correspondent to explain more fully what he meant by these last words, the answer he wrote was this: ”I mean that the fear was so invasive and powerful that if I had not clung to scripture-texts like ‘The eternal God is my refuge,’ etc., ‘Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden,’ etc., ‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ etc., I think I should have grown really insane.” For another case of fear equally sudden, see HENRY JAMES: Society the Redeemed Form of Man, Boston, 1879, pp. 43 ff.

Whereas Henry Sr. battled his demons with mysticism, William wielded philosophical arguments. This led to various philosophical positions — most profoundly, the assertion of the will’s primacy, even in choosing what to believe. “My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will,” he recorded in his journal, in 1870. The key to so much of James’s thought is his hand-to-hand combat with his own sick soul, his (willed) belief that the will can — that it must — insert itself into the fight and determine how the man shall experience the world. The heroic mind, he wrote in his groundbreaking “Principles of Psychology” (1890), “can stand this Universe,” finding “zest in it” by a “pure inward willingness to face the world with those deterrent objects there.” James put his whole will behind willingness, behind seeking zest and standing life. He eventually began teaching psychology and philosophy at Harvard University (1873-1907). During these years and after his retirement he wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and the philosophy of pragmatism. ”Philosophers of life and pragmatists tried to derive the split between subject and object from something which precedes both of them “life” and to interpret the objectified world as a self -negation of the creative life (Dilthey, Bergson, Simmel, William James (1842 – 1910)  (Tillich 1952:13).”  William James

1870 The German Empire was established on the ruins of the Prussian Empire. Nietzsche followed the establishment and the rule of of Otto von Bismarck with skepticism.

1870 Nietzsche delivered his inaugural address at the University of Basel entitled “Homer and Classical Philology”.

1870 During this post war period Nietzsche began his lifelong friendship with theologian  Franz Overbeck.

1873 Nietzsche’s friend  Russian philosopher, Afrikan Spir published his book entitled Denken und Wirklichkeit. Afrikan Spir influenced Nietzsche at this time.

1873 Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) wrote “On Truth and Lie in the Extramoral [Nonmoral] Sense” 1873 which was published posthumously. Heidegger referred to this in his book entitled Being and Time (1929).

“We can compare it to a tiny grain of sand; more than a kilometer of emptiness extends between it and the next grain of its size; on the surface of this tiny grain of sand lives a stupefied swarm of supposedly clever animals, crawling all over each other, who for a brief moment have invented knowledge (Heidegger 1929:4).”

1870s Nietzsche regularly attended lectures by his colleague the historian Jacob Burckhardt which had a significant influence on him.

1872 Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) published The Birth of Tragedy.

1876 Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) published The Untimely Meditations.

1878 [1879, 1880] Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) published Human, All Too Human.

1881 Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) published The Dawn.

1882 Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) published Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (The Gay Science).

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) first used the phrase “Gott ist tot” (the death of God, God is dead) in The Gay Science (1882) in the sections entitled “New Struggles”,”The Madman”, “The Meaning of our Cheerfulness”. In the section entitled “The Madman” (1882) Nietzsche primarily addresses the particular anxieties faced by atheists who must retain a value system in the absence of a divinity, God and a divine order.

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? (Nietzsche 1882 in the chapter entitled “The Madman.”

1883–1885 Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) published Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra).

“Nietzsche is the most impressive and effective representative of what could be called a “philosophy of life.” Life in this term is the process in which the power of being actualizes itself. But in actualizing itself it overcomes that in life which, although belonging to life, negates life. One could call it the will which contradicts the will to power. In his Zarathustra, in the chapter called “The Preachers of Death” (Pt. I, chap. 9), Nietzsche points to the different ways in which life is tempted to accept its own negation: “They meet an invalid, or an old man, or a corpse and immediately they say: ‘Life is refuted!’ But they only are refuted, and their eye, which seeth only one aspect of existence.” Life has many aspects, it is ambiguous. Nietzsche has described its ambiguity most typically in the last fragment of the collection of fragments which is called the Will to Power. Courage is the power of life to affirm itself in spite of this ambiguity, while the negation of life because of its negativity is an expression of cowardice. On this basis Nietzsche develops a prophecy and philosophy of courage in opposition to the mediocrity and decadence of life in the period whose coming he saw (Tillich 1952:27-8).” Like the earlier philosophers Nietzsche in Zarathustra considered the “warrior” (whom he distinguishes from the mere soldier) an outstanding example of courage.” ‘What is good?’ ye ask. To be brave is good” (I, 10), not to be interested in long life, not to want to be spared, and all this just because of the love for life. The death of the warrior and of the mature man shall not be a reproach to the earth (I, 21). Self-affirmation is the affirmation of life and of the death which belongs to life. Virtue for Nietzsche as for Spinoza is self-affirmation. In the chapter on “The Virtuous” Nietzsche writes: “It is your dearest Self, your virtue. The ring’s thirst is in you: to reach itself again struggleth every ring, and turneth itself (II, 27). This analogy describes better than any definition the meaning of self-affirmation in the philosophy of life: The Self has itself, but at the same time it tries to reach itself. Here Spinoza’s conatus becomes dynamic, as, generally speaking, one could say that Nietzsche is a revival of Spinoza in dynamic terms: “Life” in Nietzsche replaces “substance” in Spinoza. And this is true not only of Nietzsche but of most of the philosophers of life. The truth of virtue is that the Self is in it “and not an outward thing.” “That your very Self be in your action, as the mother is in the child: let that be your formula of virtue! ” (II, 27.) Insofar as courage is the affirmation of one’s self it is virtue altogether. The self whose self-affirmation is virtue and courage is the self which surpasses itself: “And this secret spake Life herself unto me. ‘Behold,’ said she, 1 am that which must ever surpass itself ” (II, 34) . By italicizing the last words Nietzsche indicates that he wants to give a definition of the essential nature of life. “. . . There doth Life sacrifice itself for power!” he continues, and shows in these words that for him self-affirmation includes self -negation, not for the sake of negation but for the sake of the greatest possible affirmation, for what he calls “power.” Life creates and life loves what it has created but soon it must turn against it: “so willeth m[Life's] will.” Therefore it is wrong to speak of “will to existence” or even of “will to life”; one must speak of “will to power,” i.e. to more life. Life, willing to surpass itself, is the good life, and the good life is the courageous life. It is the life of the “powerful soul” and the “triumphant body” whose self -enjoyment is virtue. Such a soul banishes “everything cowardly; it says: bad that is cowardly” (III, 54) . But in order to reach such a nobility it is necessary to obey and to command and to obey while commanding. This obedience which is included in commanding is the opposite of submissiveness. The latter is the cowardice which does not dare to risk itself. The submissive self is the opposite of the self-affirming self, even if it is submissive to a God. It wants to escape the pain of hurting and being hurt. The obedient self, on the contrary, is the self which commands itself and “risketh itself thereby” (II, 34). In commanding itself it becomes its own judge and its own vei?rim. It commands itself according to the law of life, the law of self -transcendence. The will which commands itself is the creative will It makes a whole out of fragments and riddles of life. It does not look back, it stands beyond a bad conscience, it rejects the “spirit of revenge” which is the innermost nature of self-accusation and of the consciousness of guilt, it transcends reconciliation, for it is the will to power (II, 42 ) . In doing all this the courageous self is united with life itself and its secret (II, 34). We may conclude our discussion of Nietzsche’s ontology of courage with the following quotation: “Have ye courage, O my brethren? . . . Not the courage before witnesses, but anchorite and eagle courage, which not even a God any longer beholdeth? . . . He hath heart who knoweth fear but vanquisheth it; who seeth the abyss, but with pride. He who seeth the abyss but with eagle’s eyes, he who with eagle’s talons graspeth the abyss: he hath courage” (Nietzsche 1886 TSZ IV:4:73 cited in Tillich 1952).

“‘And what is the saint doing in the forest?’ asked Zarathustra. The saint answered: ‘I make songs and sing them; and when I make songs, I laugh, cry, and hum: thus do I praise God. With singing, crying, laughing, and humming do I praise the god who is my god. But what do you bring us as a gift?’ When Zarathustra had heard these words he bade the saint farewell and said: ‘What could I have to give you? But let me go quickly lest I take something from you!’ And thus they separated, the old one and the man, laughing as two boys laugh. But when Zarathustra was alone he spoke thus to his heart: ‘Could it be possible? This old saint in the forest has not yet heard anything of this, that God is dead!’”

Zarathustra calls for a new morality in the form of the übermensch, the new man, the overman:

‘Dead are all the Gods: Now do we desire the overman to live.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)’s phrase “Gott ist tot” (the death of God, God is dead) became popularized through his book entitled Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which is most responsible for popularizing the phrase. German soldiers were given copies of this book during WWI and it was interpreted by the right-wing as promoting militaristic values.

“I having been for many years deeply and firmly convinced that the true knowledge of God, that is, of the Being, Nature, and Attributes of the Infinite, of the All, of the First and the Only Cause, that is, the One and Only Substance and Being, and the true and felt knowledge (not mere nominal knowledge) of the relations of man and of the universe to Him, and of the true foundations of all ethics and morals, being, I say, convinced that this knowledge, when really felt and acted on, is the means of man’s highest well-being, and the security of his upward progress . .  (Gifford 1885-08-21).”

Folksonomy: Emersonian, metaphysical ideology, religious ideology,

1886 Paul Tillich was born in in Starzeddel, then a province of Brandenberg, Germany (now part of Poland) (Addison). Tillich was brought up by the Romantic movement, through which he sensed and realized his particular relation to nature and history (Wu 1999).

1900 Paul Tillich’s family moved to Berlin when his father was called to a position as a Lutheran pastor (Addison).

1901-1902 William James delivered the Gifford Series of Ten Lectures on Natural Religion entitled The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature at the University of Edinburgh.

1904 Paul Tillich graduated from Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium, an advanced high school for preliminary university education. During these years, he studied the philosophy of Fichte and Kant (Wu 1999).

1911-1912 Paul Tillich received a doctoral degree in philosophy from the university of Breslau, and earned the licentiate in theology from the university of Halle in 1912. Between 1904 and 1911 Tillich matriculated in several universities located in Berlin, Tubingen, and Halle where he became familiar with the works of Schleiermacher, Hegel, and Shelling (Wu 1999).

1912 Paul Tillich was ordained as a minister in the Lutheran Church (Addison).

1914-1918 Paul Tillich served as military chaplain in World War I and witnessed the terror and cruelty of the war. Through this experience Tillich realized that much of his classical philosophy was inadequate 1919 to 1924 (Wu 1999).

1920 Miguel Asin Palacios suggested that Dante had drawn on Ibn ‘Arabi’s writings for his Divine Comedy. (Paul Tillich (1952:129) described [La Divina Commedia] as the “greatest poetic expression of the Existentialist point of view in the Middle Ages. . . [La Divina Commedia] remains, like the religious depth psychology of the monastics, within the framework of scholastic ontology. But within these limits it enters the deepest places of human self-destruction and despair as well as the highest places of courage and salvation, and gives in poetic symbols an all-embracing existential doctrine of man.”)

1919-1924 Paul Tillich was at the University of Berlin where he lectured on the philosophy of religion by presenting the theology of culture which related religion to politics, art, philosophy, depth psychology, and sociology respectively (Wu 1999).

1924 Paul Tillich taught at the University of Marburg where the neo-orthodoxy theology of Karl Barth was incredibly popular. In this university, cultural problems, social and political ideas were all excluded from the theological agenda (Wu 1999).

1924 Tillich met Martin Heidegger the University of Marburg and was deeply influenced by Heidegger’s thought. In Tillich’s words, Heidegger’s thought could be described as the “existentialism in its 20^th century form” (Kegley and Bretall. Ed. 1964:14 cited in Wu 1999). For Tillich, Heidegger’s existentialism was not a new way of thinking. Rather, it is an analytical pattern which took Tillich as far back as the thoughts of Hegel, Schelling, and Kierkegaard. Synthesizing what he had learned from Schelling, Kahler and Kierkegaard and Husserl, Tillich reflected himself in his subsequent theological works with tremendous indebtedness to the thought of Existentialism (Wu 1999).”

Thomson,  J. Arthur. 1925. Concerning Evolution. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.

Millikan, Robert Andrews. 1927. Evolution in Science and Religion. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.

Compton, Arthur H. 1927. The Freedom of Man. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.

Hocking, William Ernest. 1928. The Self: Its Body and Freedom. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.

Russell, Henry Norris. 1927. Fate and Freedom. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.

Brown, William. 1930. Science and Personality. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.

Montague, Wm. Pepperell. 1930. Belief Unbound: A Promethean Religion for the Modern World. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.

Weyl, Hermann. 1932. The Open World: Three Lectures on the Metaphysical Implications of Science. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.

Jennings, H. S. 1933. The Universe and Life. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.

1912-1933 Tillich lectured on philosophy and theology at many universities, including Berlin, Dresden and Frankfurt. He also spent four years serving as a military chaplain during World War I. His philosophical and theological views developed as he gained exposure to varied academic environments, from the neo-orthodoxy of Karl Barth to the existentialism of Heidegger (Addison).

1933 Paul Tillich was dismissed from his teaching position in Germany because of his liberalism and opposition to the Nazi movement (Addison).

1933? Reinhold Niebuhr, whom he had met in Germany, offered Paul Tillich a position at the Union Theological Seminary in New York (Addison).

1940 Paul Tillich became a U.S. citizen.

Simpson, James Young. 1934. Nature: Cosmic, Human and Divine. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.

Dewey, John. 1934. A Common Faith. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.
Needham, Joseph. Order and Life. 1936. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.

Macmurray, John. 1936. The Structure of Religious Experience. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.

Jung, Carl Gustav. 1938. Psychology and Religion. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.

Barcroft, Sir Joseph. 1939. The Brain and Its Environment. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.

1939 Fromm, Erich. 1939. “Selfishness and Self-Love.” Psychiatry. Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Process. Washington (The William Alanson Psychiatric Foundation), Vol. 2 (1939), pp. 507-523.

“Erich Fromm has fully expressed the idea that the right self-love and the right love of others are interdependent, and that selfishness and the abuse of others are equally interdependentBut despair is also the despair about guilt and condemnation. And there is no way of escaping it, even by ontic self-negation. Suicide can liberate one from the anxiety of fate and death as the Stoics knew. But it cannot liberate from the anxiety of guilt and condemnation, as the Christians know. This is a highly paradoxical statement, as paradoxical as the relation of the moral sphere to ontic existence generally. But it is a true statement, verified by those who have experienced fully the despair of condemnation. It is impossible to express the inescapable character of condemnation in ontic terms, that is in terms of imaginings about the “immortality of the soul.” For every ontic statement must use the categories of finitude, and “immortality of the soul” would be the endless prolongation of finitude and of the despair of condemnation (a self -contradictory concept, for “finis” means “end” (Tillich 1952).”

1944 In May just before the liberation of Paris, Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist play entitled Huis Clos (No Exit) was first performed at the Vieux-Colombier. Sartre’s most famous quotation, “l’enfer, c’est les autres” “Hell is other people” is from Huis Clos. Garcin, Serrano and Estelle Rigault are locked inside a gigantic room which seems to get hotter and hotter although that may only be psychosomatic, triggered by anxiety. They realize thourgh time that the sharing of their own sins, memories and experiences is their self-inflicted torture. When Garcin finally demands that the exit be opened, the actors are frozen in place too anxious for the unknown to leave.

“But despair is also the despair about guilt and condemnation. And there is no way of escaping it, even by ontic self-negation. Suicide can liberate one from the anxiety of fate and death as the Stoics knew. But it cannot liberate from the anxiety of guilt and condemnation, as the Christians know. This is a highly paradoxical statement, as paradoxical as the relation of the moral sphere to ontic existence generally. But it is a true statement, verified by those who have experienced fully the despair of condemnation. It is impossible to express the inescapable character of condemnation in ontic terms, that is in terms of imaginings about the “immortality of the soul.” For every ontic statement must use the categories of finitude, and “immortality of the soul” would be the endless prolongation of finitude and of the despair of condemnation (a self -contradictory concept, for “finis” means “end”). The experience, there fore, that suicide is no way of escaping guilt must be understood in terms of the qualitative character of the moral demand, and of the qualitative character of its rejection. Guilt and condemnation are qualitatively, not quantitatively, infinite. They have an infinite weight and cannot be removed by a finite act of ontic self -negation. This makes despair desperate, that is, inescapable. There is “No Exit” from it (Sartre). The anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness participates in both the ontic and the moral element in despair. Insofar as it is an expression of finitude it can be removed by ontic self -negation: This drives radical skepticism to suicide. Insofar as it is a consequence of moral disintegration it produces the same paradox as the moral element in despair: there is no ontic exit from it. This frustrates the suicidal trends in emptiness and meaninglessness. One is aware of their futility (Tillich 1952:56).”

1950 Paul Tillich presented his lecture entitled “Being and Courage” at the Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. 27th series held at Yale University. The lecture was published as the first chapter of his publication entitled The Courage to Be (1952).

1951 Paul Tillich book entitled Systematic Theology was published.

Folksonomy: liberalism, neo-orthodoxy, idealism, realism, Protestant theology, Roman Catholic theology, philosophical theology, correlation method, interpretation, systematic theology,

1952 Paul Tillich’s lectures were compiled into the publication entitled The Courage to Be.

“The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt (Tillich 1952).”

1953–1954 Paul Tillich presented lectures entitled “Systematic Theology.”

1953–1954 Paul Tillich presented lectures entitled “Systematic Theology: Existence and the Christ.”

1953–1954 Paul Tillich presented lectures entitled “Systematic Theology: Life in the Spirit.”

1954 Paul Tillich took up a position at Harvard University

1959 Henry Corbin’s book (1958) entitled L’Imagination Creatrice dans le Soufisme d’Ibn ‘Arabi was translated into English. In the introduction of the 1997 reprint/publication Harold Bloom wrote ”Henry Corbin’s works are the best guide to the visionary tradition…. Henry Corbin, like Scholem and Jonas, is remembered as a scholar of genius. He was uniquely equipped not only to recover Iranian Sufism for the West, but also to defend the principal Western traditions of esoteric spirituality.”  His book on ’Ibn ‘Arabi is “a profoundly moving and beautiful volume [that] stands as one of the great works of theology and comparative philosophy of the 20th century.”

1962-1965 Paul Tillich taught at the University of Chicago.

1986 On the occasion of his 100th anniversary of Paul Tillich’s birth, Writings on Religion with introduction by Robert P. Scharlemann was published.

2000 Peter J. Gomes wrote the “Introduction” to Paul Tillich’s publication The Courage to Be.

Folksonomy

self-affirmation, anxiety, doubt, Heidegger, existentialism, Karl Barth,

Webliography and Bibliography

Addison, Sam. No Date. “Gifford Lecture Series – Biography – Paul Tillich.”

Corbin, Henry. 1958. L’Imagination Creatrice dans le Soufisme d’Ibn ‘Arabi. Collection Homo Sapiens. Paris: Flammarion. Review

Burnham, Douglas. 2005. “Leibniz: Metaphysics.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

De Libera, Alain. 1991. Averroès et l’averroïsme. PUF: p.121.

Donaghy, John Albert. 1990. “Spiritedness in Plato’s “Republic”: The education of to thymoeides.” PhD dissertation. Boston College.

Fakhry, Majid. 2001. Averroes:  His Life, Works and Influence.  Oneworld Publications.

Gilford, Lord Adam. 1885-08-21 “Lord Adam Gifford’s Will.”

Goodman, Russell. 2002 [2009]. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Gomes, Peter J. 2000. ”Introduction” in Tillich, Paul. 1952 [2000]. The Courage to Be.

James, William. 1901-1902. “The Sick Soul.” in The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. Gifford Series of Ten Lectures on Natural Religion. Delivered at the University of Edinburgh.

Tillich, Paul. 1952. The Courage to Be.

Wu, James. 1999. “Paul Tillich: Biography and Systematic Theology I. Boston Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology.

McInerny, Ralph; O’Callaghan, John. 1999-2009. “Thomas Aquinas.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Selected Publications in the Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.

Thomson,  J. Arthur. 1925. Concerning Evolution. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.

Hocking, William Ernest. 1928. The Self: Its Body and Freedom. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.

Russell, Henry Norris. 1927. Fate and Freedom. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.

Brown, William. 1930. Science and Personality. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.

Sa’di. c. 1256. The Gulistan. Trans. Ross, James. 1890. The Gulistan of Sadi. Sacred Books of the East Series. London.

Montague, Wm. Pepperell. 1930. Belief Unbound: A Promethean Religion for the Modern World. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.

Weyl, Hermann. 1932. The Open World: Three Lectures on the Metaphysical Implications of Science. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.

Jennings, H. S. 1933. The Universe and Life. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.

Dewey, John. 1934. A Common Faith. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.

Needham, Joseph. Order and Life. 1936. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.

Macmurray, John. 1936. The Structure of Religious Experience. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.

Barcroft, Sir Joseph. 1939. The Brain and Its Environment. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.

Jung, Carl Gustav. 1938. Psychology and Religion. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy. Yale University.

Trackbacks

http://www.giffordlectures.org/Author.asp?AuthorID=169

http://www.giffordlectures.org/will.asp

http://people.bu.edu/wwildman/WeirdWildWeb/courses/mwt/dictionary/mwt_themes_755_tillich.htm

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/laches.html

http://bahai-library.org/provisionals/lawh.manikji.html

http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/assr_0003-9659_1959_num_7_1_1704_t1_0167_0000_3

Timeline of events related to popular culture

1923 In his early twenties Carl Stalling (1891– 1972)  was conducting his own orchestra and improvising on the organ at the legendary Isis Movie Theatre in Kansas City (Goldmark 1997).

1924 Twenty-Frank Churchill (1901-1942) became accompanist at the Los Angeles radio station KNX (AM).  He “played piano for honky-tonks in Tijuana, Mexico, followed by an orchestra in Tucson, Arizona. He returned to Hollywood in 1924, and despite his lack of formal education in music, Frank won a contract as an accompanist and soloist with radio station KNX and later recorded for RKO-Radio Pictures (Disney Legends).”

1924-05 The Max Fleischer’s series of animated short films with synchronized soundtracks entitled “Song Car-Tunes” made in DeForest Phonofilm were shown.

1926 An animated short film with synchronized soundtracks entitled “My Old Kentucky Home (1926)” was shown.

1927-06 Producer Pat Powers attempted unsuccessfully to take over Lee DeForest’s Phonofilm Corporation. Phonofilm Corporation was financially weakened and did not sue Powers when he illegally cloned Lee DeForest’s innovative synchronized soundtrack technology.

1927 Producer Pat Powers hired a former DeForest technician, William Garrity, to illegally produce a cloned version of the Phonofilm system, which Powers dubbed “Powers Cinephone.” Producer Pat Powers convinced Disney to use Cinephone for a few sound cartoons such as Steamboat Willie, The Gallopin’ Gaucho, and Plane Crazy (all 1928) before Powers and Disney had a falling-out over money — and over Powers hiring away Disney animator Ub Iwerks — in 1930.

1928-09-01 Paul Terry’s animated short film with synchronized soundtracks entitled “Dinner Time” was released.

1928-05 The first Walt Disney Mickey Mouse animated cartoon entitled “Plane Crazy (1928)” was released with Carl Stalling’s musical scores. Goldmark claimed that Stalling introduced a new form of music that did not exist before

1928 (Goldmark 1997). Producer Pat Powers convinced Disney to use an illegally cloned version of the Lee DeForest’s Phonofilm Corporation synchronized soundtrack system, dubbed the “Powers Cinephone” in the production of “Plane Crazy (1928).”

1928 (Goldmark 1997). Producer Pat Powers convinced Disney to use an illegally cloned version of the Lee DeForest’s Phonofilm Corporation synchronized soundtrack system, dubbed the “Powers Cinephone” in the production of “”Gallopin’ Gaucho (1928).”

1928 In Kansas City Carl Stalling also composed several early cartoon scores for Walt Disney’s animated comedy shorts, including Plane Crazy and Gallopin’ Gaucho. Goldmark claimed that Stalling introduced a new form of music that did not exist before 1928 (Goldmark 1997).

1929 Walt Disney discouraged his studio from using copyrighted music in his films to avoid royalty payments (Kaufman 1997).

(Helm and Hepburn 2009-10 p.15) also question what will happen if the economic recession lasts for years. Will consumers be able to pay the much higher costs of wind generation as it becomes a significant part of total capacity (and bills), rather than making its present marginal contribution? The politics of energy prices will continue to play its part.

They argue that renewable are an expensive way of reducing emissions in the short term although they are important in the long term. A crash programme in wind is not the best way to address global warming (Helm and Hepburn 2009-10 p.17) .

How much renewable energy (such as wind farms) can be sent through new transmission lines, paid for by the public and/or ratepayers?

How much will it cost to maintain backup generating reserve to cover times when the wind is intermittent?

What is the cost of stabilizing the power grid when wind supplies more power than demand?

How much government subsidization and tax benefits for should be directed towards the wind industry versus other forms of energy?
.

In June of 2009 T. Boone Pickens (b. 1919-) claimed that he was very interested in Alberta as a potential site for his giant wind farms if he could make a better deal in Alberta than in Texas. He is already priming the Alberta business community. The Calgary Herald publishes anything Pickens is willing to offer to them. While he has carefully massaged his media image to be tauted as environmentally friendly and he has generously gifted the University of Calgary, his methods are shrewd, buying what others see as useless until they realize how much control he has over their oil, water and/or energy supply. He is persistent, single-minded and worked for decades to one by one change relevant laws in his favour in the Canada River watershed in Texas to gain the control he needed. Pickens donated $2.25 million in 2006 to establish the Boone Pickens Centre for Neurological Science and Advanced Technologies at the the Hotchkiss Brain Institute, University of Calgary, which was created by Pickens’ long-time friend Calgary Flames co-owner Harley Hotchkiss with a gift of $15 million in 2004. In June 2008 Pickens donated another $25 million to research at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute which is the largest donation ever given to the University of Calgary by a single person and the only philanthropic donation Pickens has made outside the U.S. Pickens, who has an estimated net worth of $3 billion, has given away $700 million from 2003 to 2008. Pickens lived in Calgary briefly in the 1960s working as a geologist ( “CBC 2008-06-20).”

“In the renewables category, wind is likely to be the main technology. Energy efficiency might help to reduce demand, but not necessarily.” Helm and Hepburn (2009-10) point out that there is no clear definition of renewables. If we define renewables by examining the source of energy that ‘renews’ itself, wind and tides for example—”the extraction of energy from them is argued not to reduce their future availability. The trouble with this sort of definition is that, on the one hand, it excludes a whole host of energy sources which policy-makers clearly want to include, such as biomass and biogas, and, on the other, fast-breeder nuclear reactors might almost qualify. The second approach is to define renewables as low carbon, but here again there are serious problems. For example, is the switch from coal to gas—which clearly lowers carbon emissions—‘low carbon’? Or, more obviously, does nuclear qualify? This ambiguity creates flexibility, which is politically very convenient, but also creates uncertainty for investors. If, however, the overarching question is about reducing carbon emissions—the justification for the high-level target—the only practical definition is the low-carbon one, and therefore one that includes at least nuclear. This result is one that most in the renewables camp wish to avoid, either because nuclear might turn out to be more economic than wind and tidal power, or for more ideological reasons and concerns about waste.”

Wind Turbines

According to T. Boone Pickens (b. 1919- ), the Texas oil tycoon, “he could be selling wind, water, natural gas, or uranium; it’s all a matter of supply and demand. “(Berfield 2008).” See also Mapping Blue Gold

Who’s Who

Copenhagen Climate Council is an Anti-Kyoto organisation which “works against most US government efforts to address climate change.” The self-defined ”global climate leaders” are in fact business leaders as CEOs of major global corporations, hoping to seize “seize the unique opportunity which the Copenhagen Summit 2009 offers to do something good for the global environment and at the same time do good business.” The U.N.’s post-Kyoto, post-2012 negotiations will be finalised in Copenhagen in 2009. Global business leaders issued “The Copenhagen Call” at the close of the World Business Summit on Climate Change on May 26 where CEOs discussed “how their firms can help solve the climate crisis through innovative business models, new partnerships, and the development of low-carbon technologies. They will send a strong message to the negotiating governments on how to remove barriers and create incentives for implementation of new solutions in a post-Kyoto framework.” The Climate Council is represented by Don Pearlman, an international anti-Kyoto lobbyist who was a paid adviser to the Saudi and Kuwaiti governments who followed the US line against Kyoto. Ms Dobriansky met Don Pearlman to “solicit [his] views as part of our dialogue with friends and allies (Vidal 2005-06-08).”

Paula Dobriansky, US under-secretary of state for President George Bush’s administration between 2001 and 2004, sought the advice of anti-Kyoto Exxon executives on what climate change policies Exxon might find acceptable and thanking them for their active involvement in helping to determine climate change policy. These exchanges were revealed in the US State Department briefing papers, “documents, which emerged as Tony Blair visited the White House for discussions on climate change before next month’s G8 meeting [2005], reinforc[ing] widely-held suspicions of how close the company [Exxon] is to the administration and its role in helping to formulate US policy(Vidal 2005-06-08).”

The Global Climate Coalition GGC, dominated by Exxon, is the main anti-Kyoto US industry group. President Bush considered Exxon “among the companies most actively and prominently opposed to binding approaches [like Kyoto] to cut greenhouse gas emissions(Vidal 2005-06-08).”

T. Boone Pickens (b. 1919- ) Pickens, the Texas oil tycoon, who made his fortune in oilpatch investments, is now planning on building the world’s largest wind farm in Texas. In 2008 he introduced “The Pickens Plan, [which called] for the United States to cut its dependence on foreign oil by more than one-third by making natural gas and wind power much bigger parts of America’s energy supply.” (CBC 2009-06-17.) He proposes that the private sector build thousands of wind turbines that could potentially supply one-fifth of electricity in the U.S. He claims wind power would replace natural gas in power generation; natural gas could then replace diesel and gasoline as a transportation and the U.S. could become free from its foreign oil dependency. He insists that Canadian oil is not considered to be “foreign.” ( “CBC 2008-06-20).”

Pickens who sees water as blue gold and already owns more of it than any other American. He thirsts to increase his water assets. “T. Boone Pickens [...] owns more water than any other individual in the U.S. and is looking to control even more. He hopes to sell the water he already [had in 2008], some 65 billion gallons a year, to Dallas, transporting it over 250 miles, 11 counties, and about 650 tracts of private property. The electricity generated by an enormous wind farm he is setting up in the Panhandle would also flow along that corridor. As far as Pickens is concerned, he could be selling wind, water, natural gas, or uranium; it’s all a matter of supply and demand. “(Berfield 2008).”

In June of 2009 he claimed that he was very interested in Alberta as a potential site for his giant wind farms if he could make a better deal in Alberta than in Texas. He is already priming the Alberta business community. While he has carefully massaged his media image to be tauted as environmentally friendly and he has generously gifted the University of Calgary, his methods are shrewd, buying what others see as useless until they realize how much control he has over their oil, water and/or energy supply. He is persistent, single-minded and worked for decades to one by one change relevant laws in his favour in the Canada River watershed in Texas to gain the control he needed. Pickens donated $2.25 million in 2006 to establish the Boone Pickens Centre for Neurological Science and Advanced Technologies at the the Hotchkiss Brain Institute, University of Calgary, which was created by Pickens’ long-time friend Calgary Flames co-owner Harley Hotchkiss with a gift of $15 million in 2004. In June 2008 Pickens donated another $25 million to research at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute which is the largest donation ever given to the University of Calgary by a single person and the only philanthropic donation Pickens has made outside the U.S. Pickens, who has an estimated net worth of $3 billion, has given away $700 million from 2003 to 2008. Pickens lived in Calgary briefly in the 1960s working as a geologist ( “CBC 2008-06-20).”

T. Boone Pickens engineered a shrewd takeover of an 8 acres stretch of scrub-land near Amarillo, Roberts County, Texas. The acquisition of this land was “central to Pickens’ plan to create an agency to condemn property and sell tax-exempt bonds in the search for one of his other favorite commodities: water. Approval of the water district was all but certain as Texans voted [November 2007] in state and local elections. By law, only the two people who actually live on the eight acres will be allowed to vote: the manager of Pickens’ nearby Mesa Vista ranch and his wife. The other three owners, who will sit on the district’s board, all work for Pickens. Pickens “has pulled a shenanigan,” said Phillip Smith, a rancher who serves on a local water-conservation board. “He’s obtained the right of eminent domain like he was a big city. It’s supposed to be for the public good, not a private company.” Pickens and his allies say no shenanigans are involved. Once the district is created, the board will be able to issue tax-exempt bonds to finance construction of Pickens’ planned 328-mile, $2.2 billion pipeline to transport water from the Panhandle across the prairie to the suburbs of Dallas and San Antonio. If Pickens can’t find a buyer for the bonds or for his water – and he hasn’t yet – he might buy the bonds himself to jump-start the project, said his Dallas-based lawyer, Monty Humble of Vinson and Elkins. The board will spend about $110 million to buy the right-of-way for the pipeline, using the power of eminent domain to acquire property if necessary, Humble said. Still, Pickens faces obstacles. To help pay for construction, he plans to piggyback wind power on the water infrastructure. He plans wind farms on the ranchland and wants to run electricity cables along the right-of-way of Mesa’s water pipeline. All told, the wind and water project is expected to cost more than $10 billion. Pickens said he has about $100 million invested so far. “This is a $10 billion project,” he said in an interview. “It better be profitable.” Most of all, he needs a group of confirmed buyers for his water. That’s in part because of political resistance to his plan for acquiring water rights. Several Dallas-area water districts have refused to sign up. “We have real concerns about private control of water,” said Ken Kramer, director of the Texas Sierra Club. “Water is a resource, yet in some respects it is a commodity. It’s as essential to human life as air. That puts water in a different class.” John Spearman Jr., a Roberts County rancher and chairman of the Panhandle Groundwater Conservation District, is one of many local critics who contend that Pickens’ water play could upset conservation efforts and seeks to profit from shortages of a vital resource. “He has the legal authority to do it,” Spearman says. “We can’t stop him (Woellert 2007-11-07.”

Meera Karunananthan, water campaigner for The Council of Canadians opposes an expanded Alberta water market. “The water market system is absolutely not the solution. We consider water to be a human right. When you allocate according to the laws of the market, then you see water going to those who can pay the most. So it goes to the highest bidder.” She argues the government should instead create a hierarchy of water use, allocating to those who need it most — including the environment (Klaszus 2009-06-25).

The Kyoto Protocol is a protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC or FCCC), an international environmental treaty The Kyoto Accord was first negotiated in Kyoto, Japan in December 1997, to “establish a legally binding international agreement, whereby all the participating nations commit themselves to tackling the issue of global warming and greenhouse gas emissions.” The objective was to stabilize and reconstruct “greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” The Kyoto negotiations built upon the research of The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which predicted an average global rise in temperature of 1.4°C (2.5°F) to 5.8°C (10.4°F) between 1990 and 2100. The agreement finally came into force on 16 February 2005 when following ratification by Russia ratified it on 18 November 2004. As of 14 January 2009, 183 countries and the European Community ratified the agreement. The Kyoto Protocol include “commitments to reduce greenhouse gases that are legally binding; implementation to meet the Protocol objectives, to prepare policies and measures which reduce greenhouse gases; increasing absorption of these gases and use all mechanisms available, such as joint implementation, clean development mechanism and emissions trading; being rewarded with credits which allow more greenhouse gas emissions at home; minimizing impacts on developing countries by establishing an adaptation fund for climate change; accounting, reporting and review to ensure the integrity of the Protocol; compliance by establishing a compliance committee to enforce compliance with the commitments under the Protocol.” wiki

Vivendi water is the backbone of Vivendi company according to Maud Barlow, with c. 295,000 people working just in their water department alone. So these companies came onto the scene first in France interestingly enough because France flirted with the privatization of water first then moved over to Great Britain under Margaret Thatcher and then with the World Bank backing them have moved all through the third world where they are failing every single solitary place that they are operating.

Manthan Adhyayan Kendra centre, based in the Narmada Valley, was founded by Shripad Dharmadhikary in October 2001 to research, analyse and monitor water and energy issues. Manthan’s two major themes of work are (a) large dams, irrigation and hydropower and (b) Privatisation and commercialisation of water and power in India. Dharmadhikary was a full time activist of the Narmada Bachao Andolan for 12 years, the mass organisation of people affected by large dams on the Narmada river in India. He was closely associated with the World Commission on Dams from its inception to its follow up UNEP-Dams and Development Project. He has recently completed a study on hydropower dam building in the Himalayas for International Rivers titled Mountains of Concrete. Other publications include Unravelling Bhakra, the report of a three year study (2001-12 through 2004-12) led by him of the Bhakra Nangal project. This study claims to completely overturn many of the popular notions and perceptions associated with the Bhakra Nangal Project. Currently, Manthan is working on the issues and impacts of privatisation of the water sector in India, including a study of the Public Private Partnership (PPP) model that is being pushed in the water sector, and the implications – financial, economic, social, environmental and access – of large scale privatisation of hydropower.

Professor Cathy Ryan, Department of Geoscience and the BScEnvironmental Science Program, University of Calgary “has inspired inspired an undergraduate research programin Environmental Science, as part of which students work in partnership with government, private sector and non-governmental collaborators to collect and analyze original data. The results of these studies are reported back to community stakeholders at enthusiastically-attended open houses.Meanwhile, Professor Ryan’s active contributions to local watershed groups (among them, Friends of Fish Creek, Elbow River WatershedPartnership, Nose Creek Watershed Partnershipand the Bow River Basin Council) are further evi-dence of a community engagement that extends beyond the normal call of academic duties. As a Board Member of the Bow River Basin Councilfrom 2004 to 2008, she provided technical advice and was an invited speaker and presenter on research activities that informed local landuse policymaking.The value of Professor Ryan’s input, and a furthermeasure of her community service, is manifest infrequent invitations to participate in regional,municipal, provincial and national workshops. Beyond simply sharing research findings, these presentations help to guide groundwater man-agement initiatives, including a successful 2006 municipal bylaw proposal for Environmental Setbacks for the Bow and Elbow Rivers. Currently, Professor Ryan is also the Assistant Program Director for the Central American WaterResources Management Network, a training net-work designed to better enable Central American universities and local communities to protect their water resources. Professor Ryan has published on Central American hydrogeology and water quality, in addition to her research in Alberta.Professor Ryan’s research interests include thefate of agricultural, human, and industrial wastes in groundwater and surface water. An examination of the impact of Calgary waste water on theBow River led in turn to a part-time sabbatical appointment as a Senior Water Policy Advisor to the City of Calgary. Professor Ryan subsequently received the City of Calgary Environmental Achievement Award in June 2008. Professor Ryan received her BASc in Geological Engineering from Queen’s University and her MSc and PhD (1994) in Earth Sciences from the University of Waterloo. She is also an adjunct professor in the Schulich School of Engineering, and has been a member of the Faculty Association since 1997 (University of Calgary 2009 awards).”

World Bank “The initial hopes for privatisation were so high that donor spending on infrastructure fell in the expectation that the private sector would take up the slack. For example, World Bank lending for infrastructure investment declined by 50 per cent during 1993-2002, with much of this directed towards preparing firms for privatisation. In 2002, Bank lending for water and sanitation projects, in particular, was only 25 per cent of its annual average during 1993-97. At the same time, the World Bank increased its support for private investment in utilities through its International Finance Corporation (IFC) and its Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). While Bank lending to public electricity utilities dropped from about $2.9 billion in 1990 to only $824 million in 2001, its sector lending to private investors rose from $45 million to $687 million. Lending about $20 billion to water supply projects over the last 12 years, the World Bank has not only been a principal financier of privatisation, it has also increasingly made its loans conditional on local governments privatising their waterworks. The ICIJ’s study of 276 World Bank water supply loans from 1990 to 2002 showed that 30 per cent required privatisation – the majority in the last five years (Molina and Chowla 2008-09-26.“)

World Water Council 2009 Report

Water Poverty Index This paper provides discussion of ways in which an interdisciplinary approach can be
taken to produce an integrated assessment of water stress and scarcity, linking physical estimates of water availability with socioeconomic variables that reflect poverty, i.e., a Water Poverty Index to contribute to more equitable solutions for water allocation. A ‘‘Water Poverty Index’’ would enable progress toward development targets to be monitored, and water projects to be better targeted to meet the needs of the current generation, while securing water availability for the needsof future generations, as recommended in the Brundtland Report (WCED 1987). It is known that poor households often suffer from poor water provision, and this results in a significant loss of time and effort, especially for women. Sullivan provided a summary of different approaches to establish a Water Poverty Index by linking the physical and social sciences to address this issue (Sullivan, Caroline. 2002 “Calculating a Water Poverty Index.” World Development. 30:7: 1195–1210).”

Sir Richard Branson Founder and CEO, Virgin Group, (Ultra High Net Worth (UHNW) is on The Copenhagen Climate Council. He “has recently pledged all profits from his Virgin air and rail interests over the next 10 years to combating rising global temperatures. However, the estimated $3bn will be invested in Virgin Fuels. Much of the investment will focus on biofuels, an alternative to oil-based fuels made from plants. [...] “…in our particular case we are putting all the profit we have got from our airline business into trying to develop clean fuels so that hopefully one day we can actually have fuels that we can fly our plains by, that will not do any damage to the environment (Branson).”

Selected Watersheds

Bow River watershed

The San Joaquin River watershed originates in Martha Lake (California) and winds through California for 530 km flowing into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and then San Francisco Bay. The basin area is 83,000 km2.

Selected Timeline of Events Related to Watersheds: Licensing Blue Gold or Managing a Human Right

1728 Mennonite brothers, the Bechtels, came to America in the early 1700s from Switzerland.

1846 German-born Heinrich Kreiser (aka Henry Miller) (Ultra High Net Worth (UHNW) immigrated to the United States arriving in California in 1850. The Miller and Lux company became the largest producer of cattle in California and one of the largest landowners in the United States, owning 1,400,000 acres (5,700 km2) directly and controlling nearly 22,000 square miles (57,000 km2) of cattle and farm land in California, Nevada, and Oregon. The Miller and Lux Corporation was headquartered in Los Banos, California, on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. Miller played a major role in the development of much of the San Joaquin Valley during the late 19th century.

early 1900s The Alberta agricultural irrigation industry acquired massive water licences. Since then they have relied on the first-in-time, first-in-right licensing system which gave priority to whoever got water licences first (Klaszus 2009-06-25).. In Alberta, water has been traditionally allocated on the “first-in-time, first-in-right” principle for both surface and ground water. The older the licence, the higher that user is on the priority list. This allows the owners of the first licenses issued to access the full amount of water issued before newer licensees have access, regardless of use. Furthermore, water licenses granted under this principle have no expiry date. However, licenses issued under the Water Act are now issued for a fixed period. In a review of Canadian Water Politics (2008) Chris McLaughlin, CEO of the Niagara Escarpment Foundation agreed with the book’s insightful comments that “the historical path dependency of current water allocation privileges – first-in-time, first-in-right – continues to favour entrenched agricultural, industrial and commercial interests who had their water claims institutionalized in law well before the value of “sustainability” was recognized. The reality inhibits institutional change, especially the adaptation of institutions to evolving water conflicts and other shifts social-ecological realities (McLaughlin 2009:31).”

1913 Oil tycoon, John D. Rockefeller, who became the world’s first billionaire, was the wealthiest person in the modern history of the world. Ultra High Net Worth (UHNW)

1930s The Bechtel Six Companies, a joint venture of construction companies built The Hoover Dam, named after President Herbert Hoover). This hydroelectric dam on the Colorado River was at that time the largest civil engineering project ever undertaken.

1940s Friant Dam was constructed as part of the federal Bureau of Reclamation’s Central Valley Project in the 1940s. Its purpose was to divert the waters of the San Joaquin to maximize their use to help people, both to irrigate crops and to provide groundwater recharge. Most of the waters of the San Joaquin River are diverted into canals so that the river remains dry for a 17 miles (27 km) except when flood control requires additional releases from the dam.

1950s Using raw materials from watersheds, seas, forests and soils 80% of the global industrial growth since the 1880s occurred since 1950. Industrial production grew more than fifty-fold from 1887-1987. There was already a $13 trillion world economy in 1987 Our Common Future.

1963-10-22 Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru opened the 740-feet high Bhakra multipurpose hydroelectric project claiming to ushering an era of agriculture development, Nehru had aptly declared Bhakra ‘the temple of modern India’.

1966-08 Helsinki Rules on the uses of the Waters of International Rivers. 1966-08. Adopted by the International Law Association at the 52nd conference, held at Helsinki. Report of the Committee on the Uses of the Waters of International Rivers. London: International Law Association (1967).

1969 The world’s first ministry of environment was established in Japan in 1969.

1970 Canada introduced its Ministry of the Environment.

1971 Ontario introduced its Ministry of the Environment.

Late 1970s Most OECD countries had a comprehensive framework of laws and regulations concerning waste and pollution.

1987 “State of the environment: National reports.” Nairobi: UNEP.

1984-1987 The World Commission on Environment and Development reported that between October 1984. and April 1987: “The drought-triggered, environment-development crisis in Africa peaked, putting 36 million people at risk, killing perhaps a million; A leak from a pesticides factory in Bhopal, India, killed more than 2,000 people and blinded and injured over 200,000 more; Liquid gas tanks exploded in Mexico City, killing 1,000 and leaving thousands more homeless; The Chernobyl nuclear reactor explosion sent nuclear fallout across Europe, increasing the risks of future human cancers; Agricultural chemicals, solvents, and mercury flowed into the Rhine River during a warehouse fire in Switzerland, killing millions of fish and threatening drinking water in the Federal Republic of Germany and the Netherlands; An estimated 60 million people died of diarrhoeal diseases related to unsafe drinking water and malnutrition; most of the victims were children (WCED 1987).”

1987. The World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) published their report entitled “Our Common Future,” known as the Brundtland Report.

1987 Report of the Expert Group Meeting on Strategic Approaches to Freshwater Management

1989 “[The] government of Argentina embarked on a major privatization program, and water and sewage were not excluded (Orwin 1999-08).” This contract [was] terminated in 1999. Problems with quality and cost prompted the new government, which had been in opposition when the contract was negotiated, to take the action. The major partner in the consortium, Vivendi, sued the region for compensation ( Orwin 1999-08).”

1992-04 Three Gorges Dam, so enormous it would become the world’s biggest dam, sparked the biggest political debate in Communist China’s history in the National People’s Congress, China’s annual parliament. Nearly one-third voted against the dam or abstained – an unprecedented figure (Coonan 2006-03-17.

1992 The degree of water privatization in Canada and the United States was minimal. While more than half of the American water utilities were privately owned, and while cities such as Indianapolis and Atlanta were increasingly contracting out their water and sewage services, public utilities remained the norm in large cities; in 1992, they served 85 per cent of the U. S. population ( From Orwin 1999-08).

Early 1990s “[C]ritics in both the public and the private sector had questioned the appropriateness of a regulatory approach based on what was called “the old system of command and approaches such as economic instruments or voluntary measures. At the same time, governments were facing strong fiscal pressures to reduce the cost of their operations in order to stop the downward spiral of growing deficits and debt. These fiscal pressures were given ideological impetus by political parties that favored deregulation, downsizing and privatization (Ministry of the Environment research 2000).”

1992 Production Tax Credit (PTC) Under present law, an income tax credit of 2.1 cents/kilowatt-hour is allowed for the production of electricity from utility-scale wind turbines. This incentive, the renewable energy production tax credit (PTC), was created under the Energy Policy Act of 1992.

1993 “The initial hopes for privatisation were so high that donor spending on infrastructure fell in the expectation that the private sector would take up the slack. For example, World Bank lending for infrastructure investment declined by 50 per cent during 1993-2002, with much of this directed towards preparing firms for privatisation. In 2002, Bank lending for water and sanitation projects, in particular, was only 25 per cent of its annual average during 1993-97. At the same time, the World Bank increased its support for private investment in utilities through its International Finance Corporation (IFC) and its Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). While Bank lending to public electricity utilities dropped from about $2.9 billion in 1990 to only $824 million in 2001, its sector lending to private investors rose from $45 million to $687 million. Lending about $20 billion to water supply projects over the last 12 years, the World Bank has not only been a principal financier of privatisation, it has also increasingly made its loans conditional on local governments privatising their waterworks. The ICIJ’s study of 276 World Bank water supply loans from 1990 to 2002 showed that 30 per cent required privatisation – the majority in the last five years (Molina and Chowla 2008-09-26.“)

1994 Ontario passed the Environmental Bill of Rights.

1994 In Ecuador the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) giving a grant to the government to set up the necessary reforms of pricing and regulatory procedures to encourage further privatization in the water and sewage sector. By 1999 The government of Ecuador planned on privatizing all water utilities, for the sake of financing further investment ( Orwin 1999-08).

1995-06 Mike Harris as Premier of Ontario , declared a “Common Sense Revolution” in which he announced that Ontario was “open for business” promised to cut red tape and get government (particularly the Environment ministry) “out of the face” of business. Over the next two years, the budget of Moe was cut nearly 50% and the staff was reduced by more than 40% . The impact of these cuts on the capacity of Moe to serve the public interest in relation to the taro operations was cited in print media coverage of the controversy (Ministry of the Environment (MOE) research 2000).”

1995-11 The World Bank offered large loans to Bogota, Columbia to convert the dysfunctional municipal monopoly into a privatized utility.

Postel, S. L. (1996). Dividing the waters: food security, ecosystem health, and the new policies of scarcity. Worldwatch Paper No. 132, P29. Washington, DC:
Worldwatch Institute.

1996-12 The government of Chili “introduced a bill to fully privatize state-run water works, the first such legislation in South America. It faced strong opposition even within the ruling coalition but the bill was passed with some compromises, including a stipulation that the government must maintain 35 per cent equity, with some of the remainder being owned by the company employees. In April 1997, the government announced its intention to privatize wastewater treatment as well. The privatization package was finally approved in January 1998, and 55 per cent of the utilities involved were expected to be privatized by March 1999. ( From Orwin 1999-08).

1997-03 The 1st World Water Forum was held in Marrakech, Morocco.

1997-07 La Paz and El Alto, Bolivia “turned their water and sewerage systems over to the French company Lyonnaise des Eaux in July 1997, despite large protests and agitations by the opposition, which periodically paralysed both municipalities. Interestingly, the coalition in favour of the agreement included not only the governments and the water companies but the labor unions as well, who helped ensure the completion of the process. Lyonnaise des Eaux own[ed] 34 per cent of the new company, while a combination of Bolivian and Argentine directors own[ed] the rest ( Orwin 1999-08).”

1998 Postel, S. L. 1998. “Water for food production: will there be enough in 2025?” Biosciences. 28:629–637.

1998-09-17 Orwin’s report on the privatization of water reveals his enthusiasm for the privatization of water and sewage systems. Vivendi and Suez-Lyonnaise des Eaux joined to vie for the concession for Rio de Janeiro’s water and sewage systems. At that time some of Brazil’s municipal governments that own[ed] the water and sewage systems sought private sector help. Aguas de Limeira, a joint venture between the French conglomerate Lyonnaise des Eaux and Companhia Brasileira de Projectos e Obras, provided water and sanitation to the 250,000 people of the Sao Paulo suburb of Limeira. Degremont, Lyon built two water purification plants in Sao Paulo: one for Sao Miguel (population 700,000) and one for Novo Mondo (population 1,000,000) [...] Vivendi acquired 30% shares in Sanepar, which serves seven million people in the state of Parana. ( Orwin 1999-08).”

1998 Author Shripad Dharmadhikary writes: “the Bank’s process of generating knowledge is flawed and exclusionary. It excludes common people, and their traditional expertise and knowledge. The Bank’s knowledge is frequently created by highly paid, often international, consultants, who have little knowledge of local conditions. The knowledge creation is mostly directed towards arriving at a pre-determined set of policies – privatisation and globalisation. This knowledge creation is often selective, in that information, evidence or experiences that do not support these pre-determined outcomes are ignored. The book is based on case studies of the Indian water sector review in 1998, the Bank-support Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (see Update 56), water privatisation in Delhi, and a project for water restructuring in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Dharmadhikary finds that “[the Bank's] policies have cut people’s access to water, led to environmental destruction, resulted in displacement and destitution of people, stifled better options for water resource management, have had huge opportunity costs, and privileged corporate profits over social responsibility and equity.”

1999 “In Canada, virtually all water and sewage systems [were] publicly owned and operated. However, privatization [was] very slowly getting off the ground in Ontario, where private companies serve[d] 500,000 people,(2) approximately 4.5 per cent of the provincial population. There [was] also some scattered private participation in Alberta and British Columbia, and privatization [was] being considered by two of the larger Maritime cities ( Orwin 1999-08).”

1999 The Inter-American Development Bank approved a $70-million loan to reform regulatory systems so as to encourage private sector involvement in Bolivia. Bolivia had begun “major restructuring of the water sector in 1991, which involved the transfer of powers from the central level to the municipal level ( Orwin 1999-08).”

1999 As the water crisis deepens countries are depleting groundwater resources accumulated over thousands of years. In India alone the water table dropped by as much as 3m in 1999. As groundwater is exploited, water tables in parts of China, India, West Asia, the former Soviet Union and the western United States were already dropping by 2004 according to a special 2004 report (Kirby 2004-10-19).

2000-03 The Second World Water Forum in The Hague, The Netherlands “generated a lot of debate on the Water Vision for the Future and the associated Framework for Action, dealing with the state and ownership of water resources, their development potential, management and financing models, and their impact on poverty, social, cultural and economic development and the environment. The Ministerial Declaration identifed meeting basic water needs, securing food supply, protecting ecosystems, sharing water resources, managing risks, valuing water and governing water wisely as the key challenges for our direct future. 15,000 people were involved in the Vision related discussions; there were 5,700 participants in the Forum; there were 114 ministers and official of 130 countries at the Ministerial Conference; 500 journalists; 32,500 visitors at the World Water Fair.”

2000 “The UN-backed World Commission on Water estimated in 2000 that an additional $100bn a year would be needed to tackle water scarcity worldwide (Kirby 2004-10-19).”

2000-04 Water Sciences Branch, Water Management Division, Alberta Environmental Service Limnologist Anne-Marie Anderson reported that the lake levels of Muriel Lake (northeast of Edmonton and close to the hub of oil sands activity, including Imperial’s Cold Lake operation) were monitored since 1967. The lake reached its maximum in 1974, a very wet year but since then water levels declined steadily, a drop in lake level of nearly 3 m in 2000 from 6.6 m in 1962. As a result of the drop in lake levels, shoreline width has increased considerably. This amounts to perhaps a 50 to 60% loss in the volume of water. There are also concerns that the decline in water levels is resulting in a deterioration of lake water quality and fishing. (Anderson 2000-04). Dr. Bill Donahue of the University of Alberta’s Environmental Research and Studies Centre said his research at Muriel Lake suggested that the oil companies’ appetite for water was having a long-term effect. Although heavy rains in 1997 replenished many other lakes in the area, but the level of Muriel Lake is falling again. Mr. Donahue said the addition of chemicals to water used in oil recovery and the fact that much of the recycled water ends up in deep underground reservoirs meant that ”ultimately, it is lost from the normal water cycle (Simon 2002-08-09)..” “The Muriel Lake Basin Management Society was formed in 1999 in response to these severe losses of water. In 2002, Dr. Bill Donahue, with the support of Dr. Dave Schindler, the Gordon Foundation, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada, and ERSC, began a study to determine the local and regional water budgets. Drs. Bill Donahue and Alex Wolfe also began a study of the history of water quality, biology, and climate change in Muriel Lake.”

2000-03 Goals set forth at the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in New York.

2001 The International Freshwater Conference was held in Bonn.

2002 The World Summit on Sustainable Development was held in Johannesburg.

2002-02-15 President Bush pledged to reduce “greenhouse gas intensity” by 18 % from 2002 to 2012. New York Times journalist Paul Krugman cautioned however that the algorithm to calculate “greenhouse gas intensity” divides “greenhouse gas intensity” by the gross national product GDP which by most forecasts will expand by 30% from 2002 to 2012. This proposal then will allow a substantial increase in (mainly carbon dioxide, released by burning fossil fuels) that cause global warming. Krugman argued that the Bush administration exaggerated the economic costs such as the destruction of millions of jobs if the Kyoto Protocol’s environmental regulations were implemented. In 2001 Dick Cheney claimed that environmental rules had caused a shortage of refining capacity.(Krugman 2002-02-15)

2002-08-09 Western Canada had its worst drought in decades and environmentalists, farming groups and others called for tighter control of the oil industry. New York Times Business journalist claimed that Alberta’s oil companies use nearly half as much water as the million people in Alberta’s commercial center, Calgary. [...] The energy industry makes up about a quarter of Alberta’s economy. Processes of extracting oil from conventional wells and from oil sands are water-intensive: c. 10 barrels of water are needed to extract one barrel of oil. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers claimed that about 55% of Alberta’s oil output, totaling 1.55m barrels a day, is now brought to the surface with the help of enhanced water-assisted methods. The water used in the oil sands “ends up in deep underground reservoirs meant that ”ultimately, it is lost from the normal water cycle(Simon 2002-08-09).“

2002-11-27 Water was formally recognized as a human right for the first time when the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights adopted the ‘General Comment’ on the right to water, and described the State’s legal responsibility in fulfilling that right. “The human right to drinking water is fundamental to life and health. Sufficient and safe drinking water is a precondition for the realization of human rights.” (UNESCO 2002-11-27).

2003-03 The 3rd World Water Forum held in Kyoto, Shiga and Osaka, Japan “took the debate a step further also within the context of the new commitments of meeting the goals set forth at the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in New York (2000), the International Freshwater Conference in Bonn (2001) and the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg (2002). The large number of participants ensured that a variety of stakeholders and opinions were represented aiming at accepting differences and finding a common way forward.” There were 24,000 participants, 1000 journalists and 130 ministers in attendance.

2004 A federal judge ruled the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in violation of California law for not letting enough water flow which has resulted in the depletion of the historic Chinook salmon population on the San Joaquin River which it is claimed, once supported the southernmost salmon run in North America.

2004-10-19 BBC News Online environment correspondent, Alex Kirby, explored fears of an impending global water crisis. In 2004 1/3 of the world’s population were already living in water-stressed countries. By 2025, this is expected to rise to two-thirds. His report includes some potential solutions including new technologies that could clean up polluted waters and so making more water useable, more efficient agricultural water-use practices, drought-resistant plants, collecting rainfall, dams, desalinisation. Many of these solutions would require huge quantities of affordable, useable energy sources which also poses an enormous challenge. Kirby concluded, “We have to rethink how much water we really need if we are to learn how to share the Earth’s supply (Kirby 2004-10-19).”

2005-02-16 The Kyoto Protocol climate change conference leading up to the Kyoto Accord was first debated in Kyoto, Japan in December 1997, to “establish a legally binding international agreement, whereby all the participating nations commit themselves to tackling the issue of global warming and greenhouse gas emissions.” The objective was to stabilize and reconstruct “greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” The Kyoto negotiations built upon the research of The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which predicted an average global rise in temperature of 1.4°C (2.5°F) to 5.8°C (10.4°F) between 1990 and 2100. The agreement finally came into force on 16 February 2005 when following ratification by Russia ratified it on 18 November 2004. As of 14 January 2009, 183 countries and the European Community ratified the agreement. The Kyoto Protocol include “commitments to reduce greenhouse gases that are legally binding; implementation to meet the Protocol objectives, to prepare policies and measures which reduce greenhouse gases; increasing absorption of these gases and use all mechanisms available, such as joint implementation, clean development mechanism and emissions trading; being rewarded with credits which allow more greenhouse gas emissions at home; minimizing impacts on developing countries by establishing an adaptation fund for climate change; accounting, reporting and review to ensure the integrity of the Protocol; compliance by establishing a compliance committee to enforce compliance with the commitments under the Protocol.” wiki

2005-06-08 John Vidal, environment editor for the Guardian based on according to US State Department papers, claimed that pressure from ExxonMobil, the world’s most powerful oil company, and other industries, influenced President George Bush in his decision to not sign the Kyoto global warming treaty(Vidal 2005-06-08).

2005-06-09 BBC reported that Philip Cooney, Chief of Staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, “which helps devise and promote the administration’s policies on environmental issues [...] removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that had already been approved by government scientists.” According to the New York Times Cooney “made dozens of changes to reports issued in 2002 and 2003, and many appeared in final versions of major administration climate reports.” Rick Piltz formerly from the office of co-ordinates U. S. government climate research resigned and reported the watered down reports to the New York Times. Philip Cooney, a lawyer by training has no scientific education. He was a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest oil industry trade group. He is a lawyer by training, with no scientific background. (BBC 2005-06-09).

2006-03-22 The 4th World Water Forum was held in Mexico City with seven days of debates and exchanges. Close to 20,000 people from throughout the world participated in 206 working sessions where a total of 1600 local actions were presented. Participants included official representatives and delegates from 140 countries out of which 120 mayors and 150 legislators, 1395 journalists experts, NGOs, companies, civil society representatives were involved. The Ministerial Conference brought together 78 Ministers.

2006-03 According to an article by (Coonan 2006-03-17, environmentalists viewed the 2006 completion of the Three Gorges dam on the Yangtze River in China, the world’s biggest, as a monstrous natural catastrophe. Between one to two two million people were moved because their homes were flooded by the rising water of the reservoir. Environmental activist and journalist Dai Qing, the most famous opponent of Three Gorges dam, wrote a book entitled Yangtze! Yangtze!, for which she was imprisoned for 10 months in a maximum security prison and faced with the treat of the death sentence. She opposed the dam because of the lack of public debate, the lack of independent analysis. “Further along the river, construction of Xiloudu dam has begun, which will be the third biggest in the world when it is finished. Three other dams are in the exploration stage near Xiloudu – including one that will flood the beautiful Tiger Leaping Gorge in Sichuan province. All four of these dams together will produce more electricity than the Three Gorges dam (Coonan 2006-03-17.”

2007 The Province of Alberta’s budget showed a surplus of $8.5 billion. Alberta is the economic engine of Canada but it is also the country’s worst industrial greenhouse gas emitter. Calgary-based EnCana alone earned profits of $6.4 billion, a record-breaking sum. An energy war is predicted between Eastern and Western Canada (Kohler 2007-10-08).

2007-10-08 Journalist Kohler reviewed William Marsden’s (2007) book entitled em>Stupid to the Last Drop in which outlined the environmental threats posed by Alberta’s energy industry, claiming that the [province of Alberta were] going to be the “architects of their own destruction.” “Left unfettered, Alberta’s energy sector will, by the end of this century, transform the southern part of the province into a desert and its north into a treeless, toxic swamp. Driven both by global warming and oil and gas developments, temperatures in Alberta will soar by as much as eight degrees. The Athabasca River will slow to a trickle, parching the remainder of the province’s forests and encouraging them to burst into flame, generating vast quantities of CO2. (Kohler 2007-10-08).”

2007 Despite comprising only a fraction of Canada’s households, the wealthiest families control almost half the investable assets: $1.3-trillion of $2.4-trillion. The “vast majority” of that $1.3-trillion held by wealthy families is controlled by the decamillionaires. They are the ones with “family offices.” Tim Cestnick, of WaterStreet Family Wealth Counsel, set the threshold for High New Worth HNW as $5-million to $20-million in net worth and for Ultra High New Worth UHNW at $20-million-plus. Bederman classified households with $1-million to $5-million as “mass millionaires.” There were 335,000 such households in Canada in 2007. There were 60,000 “penta millionaires” (with net worths of $5-million to $10-million) and 20,000 decamillionaire households with more than $10-million in 2007. Despite comprising only a fraction of Canada’s households, the wealthiest families control almost half the investable assets: $1.3-trillion of $2.4-trillion. The “vast majority” of that $1.3-trillion held by wealthy families is controlled by the decamillionaires. They are the ones with “family offices “Chevreau, Jonathan. 2007-05-14).“

2007-10-03 Funded by a $30 million grant from the Government of Alberta through Alberta Ingenuity, (whose President and CEO is Dr. Peter Hackett) the Alberta Water Research Institute (chaired by Dr. Lorne Taylor, the former Minister of Alberta Environment) claim they will fund innovative, practical water research that will “tackle some of Alberta’s most pressing water-related environmental issues, including habitat decline, biodiversity loss, water flow and water quality. [T]he research will involve a multi-disciplinary approach — including biologists, engineers, economists and other social scientists — to provide the knowledge water users, managers, industry, policy makers and consumers to help them make informed choices. [T]he Alberta Water Research Institute works in collaboration with The Alberta Energy Research Institute (AERI).” Their work focusses on Water Treatment and Recycling; Oilsands Tailings Treatment with water recycling; reducing water use in electrical power generation

2007-11-07 T. Boone Pickens engineered one of a shrewd takeover of an 8 acres stretch of scrub-land near Amarillo, Roberts County, Texas. The acquisition of this land was “central to Pickens’ plan to create an agency to condemn property and sell tax-exempt bonds in the search for one of his other favorite commodities: water. Approval of the water district was all but certain as Texans voted Tuesday in state and local elections. By law, only the two people who actually live on the eight acres will be allowed to vote: the manager of Pickens’ nearby Mesa Vista ranch and his wife. The other three owners, who will sit on the district’s board, all work for Pickens. Pickens “has pulled a shenanigan,” said Phillip Smith, a rancher who serves on a local water-conservation board. “He’s obtained the right of eminent domain like he was a big city. It’s supposed to be for the public good, not a private company.” Pickens and his allies say no shenanigans are involved. Once the district is created, the board will be able to issue tax-exempt bonds to finance construction of Pickens’ planned 328-mile, $2.2 billion pipeline to transport water from the Panhandle across the prairie to the suburbs of Dallas and San Antonio. If Pickens can’t find a buyer for the bonds or for his water – and he hasn’t yet – he might buy the bonds himself to jump-start the project, said his Dallas-based lawyer, Monty Humble of Vinson and Elkins. The board will spend about $110 million to buy the right-of-way for the pipeline, using the power of eminent domain to acquire property if necessary, Humble said. Still, Pickens faces obstacles. To help pay for construction, he plans to piggyback wind power on the water infrastructure. He plans wind farms on the ranchland and wants to run electricity cables along the right-of-way of Mesa’s water pipeline. All told, the wind and water project is expected to cost more than $10 billion. Pickens said he has about $100 million invested so far. “This is a $10 billion project,” he said in an interview. “It better be profitable.” Most of all, he needs a group of confirmed buyers for his water. That’s in part because of political resistance to his plan for acquiring water rights. Several Dallas-area water districts have refused to sign up. “We have real concerns about private control of water,” said Ken Kramer, director of the Texas Sierra Club. “Water is a resource, yet in some respects it is a commodity. It’s as essential to human life as air. That puts water in a different class.” John Spearman Jr., a Roberts County rancher and chairman of the Panhandle Groundwater Conservation District, is one of many local critics who contend that Pickens’ water play could upset conservation efforts and seeks to profit from shortages of a vital resource. “He has the legal authority to do it,” Spearman says. “We can’t stop him (Woellert 2007-11-07.”

2008-06-12 In 2008 he introduced “The Pickens Plan, [which called] for the United States to cut its dependence on foreign oil by more than one-third by making natural gas and wind power much bigger parts of America’s energy supply.” (CBC 2009-06-17.) “T. Boone Pickens [...] owns more water than any other individual in the U.S. and is looking to control even more. He hopes to sell the water he already has, some 65 billion gallons a year, to Dallas, transporting it over 250 miles, 11 counties, and about 650 tracts of private property. The electricity generated by an enormous wind farm he is setting up in the Panhandle would also flow along that corridor. As far as Pickens is concerned, he could be selling wind, water, natural gas, or uranium; it’s all a matter of supply and demand. “(Berfield 2008).” Business Week

2008-05-08 The U.S. Senate committee gave its approval to restore a 240 km stretch of the dried-up San Joaquin River and the historic Chinook salmon run spawning area. The settlement agreement, supported by almost every member of the California congressional delegation, anticipated spending as much as $800 million U.S. with farmers paying c. $330 million, and the rest from California bonds and the federal government.

2008-06 T. Boone Pickens a Texas oil tycoon, who sees water as blue gold and already owns more of it than any other American. He thirsts to increase his water assets and he is now showing a great interest in Alberta. While he has carefully massaged his media image to be tauted as environmentally friendly and he has generously gifted the University of Calgary, his methods are shrewd, buying what others see as useless until they realize how much control he has over their water supply. He is persistent and worked for decades to change laws in his favour in the Canada River watershed in Texas. Pickens donated $2.25 million in 2006 to establish the Boone Pickens Centre for Neurological Science and Advanced Technologies at the the Hotchkiss Brain Institute, University of Calgary, which was created by Pickens’ long-time friend Calgary Flames co-owner Harley Hotchkiss with a gift of $15 million in 2004. In June 2008 Pickens donated another $25 million to research at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute which is the largest donation ever given to the University of Calgary by a single person and the only philanthropic donation Pickens has made outside the U.S. Pickens, who has an estimated net worth of $3 billion, has given away $700 million from 2003 to 2008. Pickens lived in Calgary briefly in the 1960s working as a geologist ( “CBC 2008-06-20).”

Johnson, Keith. 2008-05-15. “Texas Wind: Boone Pickens’ Big, Big Bet.” Wall Street Journal. “Oilman T. Boone Pickens’ love affair with wind isn’t brand new—he’s been touting the idea of “peak-free” energy since he decided to build America’s biggest wind farm in Texas. What’s different is the way he’s going about it. Pickens: I’ll build it, if you won’t come (Associated Press) Mesa Power, Mr. Pickens’ new energy firm, placed a huge turbine order with GE Thursday, the first step toward the eventual 4 gigawatt wind farm. What’s striking is that he’s plowing ahead on the project even though federal subsidies for wind power are up in the air, so to speak. Either he’s confident that Congress will have renewed clean-energy tax credits by the time the Pampa project breaks ground in two years—or there are other big drivers for wind power besides the federal trough. We’ve mentioned before the U.S. wind power industry is going gangbusters in spite of concern over the tax-credit renewal (which isn’t any closer today, despite another attempt by the House to give wind subsidies another year.) But Texas is the biggest wind-power state in the U.S., itself the fastest-growing wind power market in the world. So what’s driving that? Consumer appetite for cleaner energy, even if it costs more? State renewable-energy standards that oblige utilities to get a certain share of their juice from wind (and solar and the like)? What doesn’t appear to have tilted the tables in favor of Mesa’s multi-billion dollar bet is Texas’ renewable-energy transmission system, the Competitive Renewable Energy Zones. Though Mr. Pickens said in Thursday’s press release that he plans to run his wind farm’s energy through those deregulated transmission lines, the issue is far from decided. There’s a squabble over how much renewable energy can be sent through the new transmission lines, paid for by ratepayers. But the old oilman might rewrite the rules entirely: As the Dallas Morning News reported today, Mesa might end-run utilities regulators altogether: If they don’t [designate a line to the Pampa project], Mr. Pickens said, he’ll just build his own private transmission line. That could rock the traditional regulatory framework of a grid paid for by all power users and extend Texas’ experiment in deregulation to a whole new side of the industry. Even though that could tack on an extra $2 billion to the cost of the Pampa wind farm, Mesa might be calculating that the economics are compelling enough at a time of rising energy demand and dwindling power alternatives. Or maybe it’s just another game of Texas Hold ‘Em.”

2009-02-17 “Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (passed in February 2009), Congress acted to provide a three-year extension of the Production Tax Credit (PTC) through December 31, 2012. Additionally, wind project developers can choose to receive a 30% investment tax credit (ITC) in place of the PTC for facilities placed in service in 2009 and 2010, and also for facilities placed in service before 2013 if construction begins before the end of 2010. The ITC then qualifies to be converted to a grant from the Department of Treasury. The Treasury Department must pay the grant within 60 days of an application being submitted. Grant applications must be filed through this online portal. Further information is available in AWEA’s summary of the Treasury Grant Program.” “Production Tax Credit for Renewable Energy: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (H.R. 1), signed into law by President Obama on February 17, 2009, extended the production tax credits (PTC) and investment tax credits (ITC), which have been critical to the growth of the renewable energy sector, and added a new a new incentive, Treasury grants taken in lieu of tax credits, designed to promote the growth of renewables despite the economic downturn. Companies that generate wind, solar, geothermal, and “closed-loop” bioenergy (using dedicated energy crops) are eligible for the PTC which provides a 2.1-cent per kilowatt-hour (kWh) benefit for the first ten years of a renewable energy facility’s operation. Other technologies, such as “open-loop” biomass (using farm and forest wastes rather than dedicated energy crops), incremental hydropower, small irrigation systems, landfill gas, and municipal solid waste (MSW), receive a lesser value tax credit of 1.0 cent per kWh. The PTC for wind, which as the largest producer of renewable energy has the greatest impact on the budget, was extended an additional two years, until the end of 2012. The PTC for incremental hydro, geothermal, MSW, and bioenergy was extended until the end of 2013. The bill also extends the PTC for electricity produced by wave and tidal energy through 2013 (UCS).” There is concern that the PTC provides tax relief for oil companies like UK-based BP and Netherlands-based Shell, who use renewables as a way of avoiding taxes.

2009-06-29 In California the debate has become increasingly polarized between agriculture and environmental interests over the distribution of water in the face of a three year drought that has left 450,000 acres unplanted in California as well as causing the third collapse of the salmon industry as the San Joaquin River spawning grounds dried up. (In 2004 a federal judge ruled the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in violation of California law for not letting enough water flow which has resulted in the depletion of the historic Chinook salmon population on the San Joaquin River which it is claimed, once supported the southernmost salmon run in North America. ) In Fresno County alone, normally the US most important agriculture county, farmers cannot plant in 262,000 acres because of a lack of water.Cone 2009-06-29).

CBC. 2009-06-17. “Texas oil billionaire eyes Alberta wind power.”

Notes

1. March 22nd is World Water Day

2. Since moving to Calgary, Alberta we have been following our source of city water. The Bow Glacier was stunningly beautiful last August. But like glaciers worldwide it is receding. The Elbow River which also flows through Calgary was very high this year even though much of Alberta’s farmland was experiencing a devastating drought. We’ve installed rainbarrels, planted drought-resistance perennials, overseeded our water-thirsty Kentucky grass with Sheep’s Fescue and generally tried to be more water wise, I am following water stories. Alberta has four major rivers tha drain most of the province: 1. The Peace and 2. Athabaska rivers drain the northern half of Alberta with their waters joining water from Lake Athabaska to form Alberta’s largest river, the Slave River, which flows into the Northwest Territories and on to the Arctic Ocean; 3. The North Saskatchewan River winds through the foothills and parkland of central Alberta. 4. The South Saskatchewan River, which is fed by three rivers that arise in the mountains, makes it way through dry farmland and prairie. The North and South Saskatchewan rivers join in the province of Saskatchewan and become the Nelson-Churchill system, and their waters eventually reach Hudson Bay There is also the smaller Beaver River, which flows through the heart of the Lakeland Region and then into the Churchill system and the Milk River, which passes briefly into Alberta
from Montana before returning south to flow finally to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico (Mitchell, Prepas and Crosby 1990:3) For a detailed map and more information visit Alberta Water

2. Moore Lake, c. 280 km northeast of Edmonton is a very popular recreational lake in Alberta’s Lakeland Region. Moore Lake is part of the Beaver Lake watershed. It is a headwater lake with outlets from the east shore into Hilda and Ethel Lakes and eventually into the Beaver River (which flows through the heart of the Lakeland Region and then into the Churchill system and the Milk River, which passes briefly into Alberta from Montana before returning south to flow finally to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico (Mitchell, Prepas and Crosby 1990:275).” “Moore Lake is underlain by the Muriel Lake Aquifer. In [1990] the principal water sources for regional water needs were the aquifers and not the lake. The largest water users in the area [were] the oil sands industries. Oil sands and petroleum and natural gas leases in the Moore drainage basin are held by several companies, including Esso Resources and Husky Oil. The oil sands permits allow the companies to test and set up drilling operations for subsurface oil deposits, including those under the lake surface. There are no signficant gas pools in the area. As a result of Alberta Environmental studies of the water resources in the Cold Lake-Beaver River basin in the early 1980s, a long-term plan for water resources management in the Cold Lake region was adopted by the government in 1985. Under the provisions of this plan, Moore Lake will not become a major water supply for the oil industry. Major industrial water users will be required to obtain their water from a pipeline from the North Saskatchewan River (Mitchell, Prepas and Crosby 1990:275).”

3. History of Moore Lake and the Beaver River. “Woodland Cree occupied the region when the fur traders first arrived. The Beaver River, to the south of Moore Lake, was part of a major fur trade route from Lac Isle-a-la-Crosse, Saskatchewan to the Athabaska River. The first fur-trading post in the area was Cold Lake House. It was established by the North West Company in 1781 on the Beaver River near the present-day hamlet of Beaver Crossing (Mitchell, Prepas and Crosby 1990:273).”.” “Moore Lake is underlain by the Muriel Lake Aquifer. In [1990] the principal water sources for regional water needs were the aquifers and not the lake. The largest water users in the area [were] the oil sands industries. Oil sands and petroleum and natural gas leases in the Moore drainage basin are held by several companies, including Esso Resources and Husky Oil. The oil sands permits allow the companies to test and set up drilling operations for subsurface oil deposits, including those under the lake surface. There are no signficant gas pools in the area. As a result of Alberta Environmental studies of the water resources in the Cold Lake-Beaver River basin in the early 1980s, a long-term plan for water resources management in the Cold Lake region was adopted by the government in 1985. Under the provisions of this plan, Moore Lake will not become a major water supply for the oil industry. Major industrial water users will be required to obtain their water from a pipeline from the North Saskatchewan River (Mitchell, Prepas and Crosby 1990:275).”

4. For amusement I am also reading an entertaining science fiction called Watermind that begins with a foaming journey of nano technology from Alberta down the Milk River flowing down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico collecting toxic waste and data all along the way.

5. Western-style lifestyles and diets which are heavy on beef require much more water than healthier cereal or pulse-based diets (1 kg of grain-fed beef needs at least 15 cubic metres of water, while a 1 kg of cereals needs only up to three cubic metres). Pulse crops (including Dry beans, Kidney bean, haricot bean, pinto bean, navy bean, Lima bean, butter bean, Azuki bean, adzuki bean, Mung bean, golden gram, green gram, Black gram, Urad, Scarlet runner bean, Dry peas, Garden pea, Chickpea, Garbanzo, Bengal gram Black-eyed pea, blackeye bean, Lentil) commonly consumed with grain, provide a complete protein diet. Pulses are 20 to 25% protein by weight, which is double the protein content of wheat and three times that of rice. Pulses are sometimes called “poor man’s meat”. Pulses are the most important dietary predictor of survival in older people. In the Seven Countries Study legume consumption was highly correlated with a reduced mortality from coronary heart disease.

6. This Google Map below (a work in progress) traces some of the areas of concern regarding our watersheds where substantial control concentration of access, rights and strategic assets are quietly being acquired by individuals or individual families. The most troubling of these includes T. Boone Pickens who sees water as blue gold and already owns more of it than any other American. He thirsts to increase his water assets and he is now showing a great interest in Alberta. While he has carefully massaged his media image to be tauted as environmentally friendly and he has generously gifted the University of Calgary, his methods are shrewd, buying what others see as useless until they realize how much control he has over their water supply. He is persistent and worked for decades to change laws in his favour in the Canada River watershed in Texas.

7. Tim Cestnick, founder of WaterStreet Family Wealth Counsel, in 2007 set the threshold for High Net Worth HNW as $5-million to $20-million in net worth and for Ultra High Net Worth UHNW at $20-million-plus.

My Google Map: Blue Gold

Selected Bibliography

Anderson, Anne-Marie. 2000-04. “An Evaluation of Changes in Water Quality of Muriel Lake.” Limnologist, Water Sciences Branch, Water Management Division, Environmental Service.

Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society.

Barlow, Maud; Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water.

Barlow, Maud. 2004-03. Maude Barlow, CBC Interview. CBC.

CBC. 2008-06-20. “Billionaire hands U of C unexpected $25M gift.”

Brownsey, Keith. “Enough for Everyone: Policy Fragmentation and Water Institutions in Alberta” in Sproule-Jones, Mark; Johns, Carolyn; Heinmiller, B. Timothy. 2008-11-20. Canadian Water Politics: Conflicts and Institutions. McGill-Queen’s University Press. pp. 133-156.

CBC. 2009-06-17. “Texas oil billionaire eyes Alberta wind power.”

CBC. 2009-03-06. “Wind power: The global race to harness wind.”

Clarke, Tony; Barlow, Maude. The Battle for Water.

Cone, Tracie. AP. 2009-06-29. “Battle over water heats up in drought-stricken California.” USA Today.

Coonan, Clifford. 2006-03-17. “The dammed: Environmentalists watch and wait for opening of world’s largest dam.” The Independant.”

Dillon, Sam. 1998-01-28. “Mexico City sinking into depleted aquifer.”

Government of Ontario. 1998-03-09. “Government’s role in operation of water and sewage treatment systems to be reviewed.” Office of Privatization News Release. Toronto: Queen’s Park.

Helsinki Rules on the uses of the Waters of International Rivers. 1966-08. Adopted by the International Law Association at the 52nd conference, held at Helsinki. Report of the Committee on the Uses of the Waters of International Rivers. London: International Law Association (1967).

Idelovitch, Emanuel, and Ringskog, Klas. 1995-05. Private Sector Participation in Water Supply and Sanitation in Latin America. Washington: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank.

Kirby, Alex. 2004-10-19. “Water scarcity: A looming crisis?” BBC.

Klaszus, Jeremy. 2009-06-25.“Alberta poised to expand water market: Showdown looms as province reviews licensing system.” News.

Karunananthan, Meera. 2009-03-18. “Access to Sanitation Reserved for the VIPs at World Water Forum.” AlterNet.

Kohler, Nicholas. 2007-10-08. “Doomsday: Alberta stands accused: A huge fight between East and West — over the oil sands — is just starting.” Macleans.

Krugman, Paul. 2002-02-15. “Ersatz Climate Policy“. New York Times.

Marsden, William. 2007. Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta Is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (And Doesn’t Seem to Care).

McGillivray, Mark. 2005. Inequality, Poverty and Well-being. Helsinki, Finland. Palgrave Macmillan.

McLaughlin, Chris. 2009. “Instituting Change: Book Reviews.” Alternatives Journal. 35:34: 31.

Mitchell, Patricia ; Prepas, Ellie E.; Crosby, Jan M. Eds. 1990. Atlas of Alberta Lakes. University of Alberta Press.

Molina, Nuria; Chowla, Peter. 2008-09-26. “The World Bank and water privatisation: public money down the drain.”

Olivera, Oscar. 2006-07-19. “The voice of the people can dilute corporate power.” The Guardian.

Orwin, Alexander. 1999-08. “The Privatization of Water and Wastewater Utilities: An International Survey.” Environment Probe.

Postel, S. L. 1996. “Dividing the waters: food security, ecosystem health, and the new policies of scarcity.” Worldwatch Paper No. 132, P29. Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute.

Postel, S. L. 1998. “Water for food production: will there be enough in 2025?” Biosciences. 28:629–637.

Sen, A. 1995. “Mortality as an indicator of economic success and failure.” Discussion paper 66. London School of Economics and Political Science.

Simon, Bernard. 2002-08-09. “Alberta Struggles to Balance Water Needs and Oil.” New York Times.

Sproule-Jones, Mark; Johns, Carolyn; Heinmiller, B. Timothy. 2008-11-20. Canadian Water Politics: Conflicts and Institutions. McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Sullivan, Caroline. 2002. (“Calculating a Water Poverty Index.”World Development. 30:7: 1195–1210.

Vidal, John. 2005-06-08. “Revealed – how oil giant influenced Bush“. The Guardian.

The World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED). 1987.”Our Common Future.” Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Woellert, Lorraine. 2007-11-07. “Pickens makes a multibillion-dollar water play: Pipeline would transport Panhandle water to big-city suburbs.” Bloomberg News.

Chevreau, Jonathan. 2007-05-14. “Truly Affluent Require Wider Type of Service.” Financial Post.

Johnson, Keith. 2008-05-15. “Texas Wind: Boone Pickens’ Big, Big Bet.” Wall Street Journal.

Helm, D. D. and C. Hepburn, C. Eds. 2009-10. EU climate-change policy-a critique. From: “The Economics and Politics of Climate Change”. Oxford University Press.

Glenn R Schleede: “Big Money” Discovers the Huge Tax Breaks and Subsidies for “Wind Energy” While Taxpayers and Electric Customers Pick up the Tab. 2004.

Even now, the wind industry is clamoring for an extension beyond 2008 of the lucrative “Production Tax Credit” (PTC) that was first enacted in 1992 during the Administration of George H. W. Bush. (The wind PTC idea can be traced to Ken Lay of Enron fame. [ii]) The US EIA recently estimated that in 2007 alone the wind PTC alone permitted “wind farm” owners to avoid nearly $700 million in federal taxes, thus shifting that tax burden to ordinary taxpayers who can’t escape their tax liabilities.

Economic activity which mainly uses raw materials such as waterways, sea, forests and soils, increased to a (GWP) (Gross World Product): (purchasing power parity exchange rates) of $23 trillion by 2002; $51.48 trillion by 2004 and $59.38 trillion by 2005 and in 2008 (market exchange rates) it was $60.69 trillion. Yet global wealth does not translate into an increase in global well-being. Extremes of wealth and poverty have increased and according to TD Bank Financial Group Economists Drummond and Tulk (2006) wealth disparities will intensify. In Canada alone, the wealthiest or Ultra High New Worth (UHNW) families, who comprise only a fraction of Canada’s households, controlled almost half the investable assets: $1.3-trillion of $2.4-trillion in 2007. The “vast majority” of that $1.3-trillion held by UHNW with family offices Chevreau, Jonathan. 2007-05-14).“

Mavericks, tycoons and risk-takers, (many of whom became the Ultra High Net Worth (UHNW) individuals and families – people capable of seeing resources as opportunities and knowing how to manage them to their own advantage, are western heroes. As long as enough of the resources trickled down, translating into a reasonable quality of life for most people in the form of jobs, assets, properties, vehicles, services and common recreation and parklands, we remained in a love-hate relationship with the the elite who had status, wealth and/or power. In 1992 Ulrich Beck described a world where the unintended consequences of the production of the former were no longer benefiting the latter. Certitude in access to fundamentals like clean air, water, sufficient food, housing was eroding in places that had never doubted before. And how the UHNW are becoming even more enriched by using raw materials such as waterways, sea, forests and soil, is troubling.

The Bruntland Commission reported (1987) that since 1977 public concern had been seized by the realization that crises once considered to be separate and therefore more containable – such as environmental crisis, development crisis, energy crisis, (by 2009 include food crisis, water crisis, poverty crisis, financial crisis) – were in fact, global. The dissolving of boundaries between the neat compartmentalization of the globe and its resources into nation states and sectors (energy, agriculture, trade), and within broad areas of concern (environment, economics, social) which made them once seem as one-by-one problems with solutions, were already understood to be much more far-reaching and complex. The one-world one-earth future was no longer a utopian dream or dystopian nightmare, just a pragmatic reality Our Common Future.

Risk Management: Shrinking Watersheds and Aquifers

The most vulnerable to social exclusion, the most impoverished have been hit harder than ever before and their numbers are growing. We have the technical and scientific capacity to link data from different sources and scales and to make this information widely available through Web 2.0 or the social media – crucial information regarding public policies, legal aspects, ethics, (moral mathematics?) etc of the depletion of aquifers, watersheds, and the re-routing of limited water resources. Who is producing reliable assessments of extremes of water wealth and poverty? Without access to balanced, objective information how can we expect to have the individual, political and institutional will to establish objective criterion for indexing water resource use and management? With information, can we hope for knowledge and dream of wisdom?

Groundwater Processes are Virtually Unknown

“Many of Canada’s freshwater resources are under stress because of increasing municipal and industrial use and impacts from human activities. To ensure protection of public health and the aquatic environment, Canadians need state-of-the-art treatment plants capable of removing a growing array of pollutants from wastewaters. This includes emerging contaminants such as pharmaceuticals and endocrine-disrupting chemicals disposed of in the sewage system, pathogens such as the Corona virus, and nutrients that feed unwanted and potentially toxic algae growth. In Alberta, groundwater processes are virtually unknown. The full long-term impacts of water use by the oil and gas industry are poorly understood, and future expansion of this industry will rely on improved, cost-effective water conservation and management practices. Dr. Tom Harding of the University of Calgary’s Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy does on research areas the recycling and reuse of water in oil and gas production (ISEEE).”

Is water a commodity or a human right?

According to T. Boone Pickens (b. 1919- ), the Texas oil tycoon, “he could be selling wind, water, natural gas, or uranium; it’s all a matter of supply and demand. “(Berfield 2008).” See also Mapping Blue Gold

According to the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (UNESCO) water was formally recognized as a human right for the first time when [they] adopted the ‘General Comment’ on the right to water, and described the State’s legal responsibility in fulfilling that right. “The human right to drinking water is fundamental to life and health. Sufficient and safe drinking water is a precondition for the realization of human rights.” (UNESCO 2002-11-27).

According to BBC News Online environment correspondent, Alex Kirby, who explored fears of an impending global water crisis in his 2004 article when 1/3 of the world’s population were already living in water-stressed countries, “We have to rethink how much water we really need if we are to learn how to share the Earth’s supply (Kirby 2004-10-19).”

According to The World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED). 1987.”Our Common Future.” “Water is essential for life, and an adequate water supply is a prerequisite for human and economic development. It hasbeen recognized that human behavior can have an impact both on water, and on the global ecosystem, and that there is a need to regulate that behavior in order to stabilize and sustain our future (WCED, 1987 cited in Sullivan 2002). Global water resources are limited, and only through a more sustainable approach to water management, and more equitable and ecologically sensitive strategies of water allocation and use, can we hope to achieve the international development targets for poverty reduction that have been set for 2015 (DFID, 2000).”

According to University of Alberta’s Dr. Bill Donahue, Alberta treats water ”as an inexhaustible resource [...] The disconnect between supply and demand is not sustainable (Simon 2002-08-09)..”

“Water, an increasingly valuable multiple-use resource, is the source of continuing conflict in Canada and abroad. Its use and control presents significant challenges to governments, stakeholders, and citizens. Canadian Water Politics explores the nature of water use conflicts and the need for institutional designs and reforms to meet the governance challenges now and in the future. The editors present an overview of the properties of water, the nature of water uses, and the institutions that underpin water politics. Contributors highlight specific water policy concerns and conflicts in various parts of Canada and cover issues ranging from the Walkerton drinking water tragedy, water export policy, Great Lakes pollution, St Lawrence River shipping, Alberta irrigation and oil production, and fisheries management on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Canada – with its Great Lakes, three oceans, and border with the US – provides an ideal reference point for studying water use rivalries, conflicts, and governance. By exploring the controversies surrounding water management in Canada, Canadian Water Politics is an essential source for citizens, officials, academics and students, and contributes to our understanding of natural resource management and environmental policy at home and globally (Review of Sproule-Jones, Johns and Heinmiller 2008-11-20).”

Who’s Who

The Brundtland Commission, formally the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), created by the United Nations in 1983, to address growing concern “about the accelerating deterioration of the human environment and natural resources and the consequences of that deterioration for economic and social development.” In establishing the commission, the UN General Assembly recognized that environmental problems were global in nature and determined that it was in the common interest of all nations to establish policies for sustainable development. (WCED 1987). Their report entitled “One Common Future” recommended securing water availability for the needs of future generations. “On the development side, in terms of absolute numbers there are more hungry people in the world than ever before, and their numbers are increasing. So are the numbers who cannot read or write, the numbers without safe water or safe and sound homes, and the numbers short of woodfuel with which to cook and warm themselves. The gap between rich and poor nations is widening – not shrinking – and there is little prospect, given present trends and institutional arrangements, that this process will be reversed (WCED 1987:1).”

Copenhagen Climate Council is an Anti-Kyoto organisation which “works against most US government efforts to address climate change.” The self-defined ”global climate leaders” are in fact business leaders as CEOs of major global corporations, hoping to seize “seize the unique opportunity which the Copenhagen Summit 2009 offers to do something good for the global environment and at the same time do good business.” The U.N.’s post-Kyoto, post-2012 negotiations will be finalised in Copenhagen in 2009. Global business leaders issued “The Copenhagen Call” at the close of the World Business Summit on Climate Change on May 26 where CEOs discussed “how their firms can help solve the climate crisis through innovative business models, new partnerships, and the development of low-carbon technologies. They will send a strong message to the negotiating governments on how to remove barriers and create incentives for implementation of new solutions in a post-Kyoto framework.” The Climate Council is represented by Don Pearlman, an international anti-Kyoto lobbyist who was a paid adviser to the Saudi and Kuwaiti governments who followed the US line against Kyoto. Ms Dobriansky met Don Pearlman to “solicit [his] views as part of our dialogue with friends and allies (Vidal 2005-06-08).”

Maud Barlow is the National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians- A citizen’s watchdog organization with over 100,000 members. One of their ongoing campaigns is that water is a public trust which belongs to everyone. She is also the co-author of Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water.

Bechtel Corporation (Bechtel Group) is the largest engineering company in the United States, ranking as the 7th-largest privately owned company in the U.S. With headquarters in San Francisco. wiki Bechtel was forced to back down on its efforts to taking control of the Cochabamba, Bolivia water supply and privatizing it in 2000 when Bolivian protesters were joined by overwhelming international support. Bechtel Corporation, one of the world’s largest engineering and construction services companies has been owned and operated by the Bechtel family since incorporating the company in 1945. It was founded by Warren A. Bechtel (1872 – 1933) in 1898. The current Bechtel CEO is Riley P. Bechtel, one of the richest men in the United States. wiki

Paula Dobriansky, US under-secretary of state for President George Bush’s administration between 2001 and 2004, sought the advice of anti-Kyoto Exxon executives on what climate change policies Exxon might find acceptable and thanking them for their active involvement in helping to determine climate change policy. These exchanges were revealed in the US State Department briefing papers, “documents, which emerged as Tony Blair visited the White House for discussions on climate change before next month’s G8 meeting [2005], reinforc[ing] widely-held suspicions of how close the company [Exxon] is to the administration and its role in helping to formulate US policy(Vidal 2005-06-08).”

Dr. Bill Donahue of the University of Alberta was quoted in the New York Times: Alberta treats water ”as an inexhaustible resource [...] The disconnect between supply and demand is not sustainable (Simon 2002-08-09)..” Dr. Bill Donahue of the University of Alberta’s Environmental Research and Studies Centre said his research at Muriel Lake suggested that the oil companies’ appetite for water was having a long-term effect. Although heavy rains in 1997 replenished many other lakes in the area, but the level of Muriel Lake is falling again. Mr. Donahue said the addition of chemicals to water used in oil recovery and the fact that much of the recycled water ends up in deep underground reservoirs meant that ”ultimately, it is lost from the normal water cycle (Simon 2002-08-09)..” “The Muriel Lake Basin Management Society was formed in 1999 in response to these severe losses of water. In 2002, Dr. Bill Donahue, with the support of Dr. Dave Schindler, the Gordon Foundation, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada, and ERSC, began a study to determine the local and regional water budgets. Drs. Bill Donahue and Alex Wolfe also began a study of the history of water quality, biology, and climate change in Muriel Lake.” Limnologist Anne-Marie Anderson reported that the lake levels of Muriel Lake (northeast of Edmonton and close to the hub of oil sands activity, including Imperial’s Cold Lake operation) were monitored since 1967. The lake reached its maximum in 1974, a very wet year but since then water levels declined steadily, a drop in lake level of nearly 3 m in 2000 from 6.6 m in 1962. As a result of the drop in lake levels, shoreline width has increased considerably. This amounts to perhaps a 50 to 60% loss in the volume of water. There are also concerns that the decline in water levels is resulting in a deterioration of lake water quality and fishing. (Anderson 2000-04).

Exxon the US’s most valuable company valued at $379bn (£206bn) dominates The Global Climate Coalition GGC, and is the main anti-Kyoto US industry group. President Bush considered Exxon “among the companies most actively and prominently opposed to binding approaches [like Kyoto] to cut greenhouse gas emissions [...] Paula Dobriansky, US under-secretary of state for President George Bush’s administration between 2001 and 2004, sought the advice of anti-Kyoto Exxon executives on what climate change policies Exxon might find acceptable and thanking them for their active involvement in helping to determine climate change policy. These exchanges were revealed in the US State Department briefing papers, “documents, which emerged as Tony Blair visited the White House for discussions on climate change before next month’s G8 meeting [2005], reinforc[ing] widely-held suspicions of how close the company [Exxon] is to the administration and its role in helping to formulate US policy(Vidal 2005-06-08).”

The Global Climate Coalition GGC, dominated by Exxon, is the main anti-Kyoto US industry group. President Bush considered Exxon “among the companies most actively and prominently opposed to binding approaches [like Kyoto] to cut greenhouse gas emissions(Vidal 2005-06-08).”

Oscar Olivera, was secretary of the Bolivian Federation of Factory Workers. In 2006 he addressed the World Development Movement conference held in Britain on the theme of “Whose Rules Rule.” He was a protest leader against water privatisation by the US-based multinational company Bechtel when Bechtel came to Cochabamba, Bolivia with the intention of taking control of the water supply and privatizing it in 2000. Olivera won the 2001 Goldman environment prize.

T. Boone Pickens (b. 1919- ) Pickens, the Texas oil tycoon, who made his fortune in oilpatch investments, is now planning on building the world’s largest wind farm in Texas. In 2008 he introduced “The Pickens Plan, [which called] for the United States to cut its dependence on foreign oil by more than one-third by making natural gas and wind power much bigger parts of America’s energy supply.” (CBC 2009-06-17.) He proposes that the private sector build thousands of wind turbines that could potentially supply one-fifth of electricity in the U.S. He claims wind power would replace natural gas in power generation; natural gas could then replace diesel and gasoline as a transportation and the U.S. could become free from its foreign oil dependency. He insists that Canadian oil is not considered to be “foreign.” ( “CBC 2008-06-20).”

Pickens who sees water as blue gold and already owns more of it than any other American. He thirsts to increase his water assets. “T. Boone Pickens [...] owns more water than any other individual in the U.S. and is looking to control even more. He hopes to sell the water he already [had in 2008], some 65 billion gallons a year, to Dallas, transporting it over 250 miles, 11 counties, and about 650 tracts of private property. The electricity generated by an enormous wind farm he is setting up in the Panhandle would also flow along that corridor. As far as Pickens is concerned, he could be selling wind, water, natural gas, or uranium; it’s all a matter of supply and demand. “(Berfield 2008).” In June of 2009 he claimed that he was very interested in Alberta as a potential site for his giant wind farms if he could make a better deal in Alberta than in Texas. He is already priming the Alberta business community. While he has carefully massaged his media image to be tauted as environmentally friendly and he has generously gifted the University of Calgary, his methods are shrewd, buying what others see as useless until they realize how much control he has over their oil, water and/or energy supply. He is persistent, single-minded and worked for decades to one by one change relevant laws in his favour in the Canada River watershed in Texas to gain the control he needed. Pickens donated $2.25 million in 2006 to establish the Boone Pickens Centre for Neurological Science and Advanced Technologies at the the Hotchkiss Brain Institute, University of Calgary, which was created by Pickens’ long-time friend Calgary Flames co-owner Harley Hotchkiss with a gift of $15 million in 2004. In June 2008 Pickens donated another $25 million to research at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute which is the largest donation ever given to the University of Calgary by a single person and the only philanthropic donation Pickens has made outside the U.S. Pickens, who has an estimated net worth of $3 billion, has given away $700 million from 2003 to 2008. Pickens lived in Calgary briefly in the 1960s working as a geologist ( “CBC 2008-06-20).”

T. Boone Pickens engineered a shrewd takeover of an 8 acres stretch of scrub-land near Amarillo, Roberts County, Texas. The acquisition of this land was “central to Pickens’ plan to create an agency to condemn property and sell tax-exempt bonds in the search for one of his other favorite commodities: water. Approval of the water district was all but certain as Texans voted [November 2007] in state and local elections. By law, only the two people who actually live on the eight acres will be allowed to vote: the manager of Pickens’ nearby Mesa Vista ranch and his wife. The other three owners, who will sit on the district’s board, all work for Pickens. Pickens “has pulled a shenanigan,” said Phillip Smith, a rancher who serves on a local water-conservation board. “He’s obtained the right of eminent domain like he was a big city. It’s supposed to be for the public good, not a private company.” Pickens and his allies say no shenanigans are involved. Once the district is created, the board will be able to issue tax-exempt bonds to finance construction of Pickens’ planned 328-mile, $2.2 billion pipeline to transport water from the Panhandle across the prairie to the suburbs of Dallas and San Antonio. If Pickens can’t find a buyer for the bonds or for his water – and he hasn’t yet – he might buy the bonds himself to jump-start the project, said his Dallas-based lawyer, Monty Humble of Vinson and Elkins. The board will spend about $110 million to buy the right-of-way for the pipeline, using the power of eminent domain to acquire property if necessary, Humble said. Still, Pickens faces obstacles. To help pay for construction, he plans to piggyback wind power on the water infrastructure. He plans wind farms on the ranchland and wants to run electricity cables along the right-of-way of Mesa’s water pipeline. All told, the wind and water project is expected to cost more than $10 billion. Pickens said he has about $100 million invested so far. “This is a $10 billion project,” he said in an interview. “It better be profitable.” Most of all, he needs a group of confirmed buyers for his water. That’s in part because of political resistance to his plan for acquiring water rights. Several Dallas-area water districts have refused to sign up. “We have real concerns about private control of water,” said Ken Kramer, director of the Texas Sierra Club. “Water is a resource, yet in some respects it is a commodity. It’s as essential to human life as air. That puts water in a different class.” John Spearman Jr., a Roberts County rancher and chairman of the Panhandle Groundwater Conservation District, is one of many local critics who contend that Pickens’ water play could upset conservation efforts and seeks to profit from shortages of a vital resource. “He has the legal authority to do it,” Spearman says. “We can’t stop him (Woellert 2007-11-07.”

Meera Karunananthan, water campaigner for The Council of Canadians opposes an expanded Alberta water market. “The water market system is absolutely not the solution. We consider water to be a human right. When you allocate according to the laws of the market, then you see water going to those who can pay the most. So it goes to the highest bidder.” She argues the government should instead create a hierarchy of water use, allocating to those who need it most — including the environment (Klaszus 2009-06-25).

The Kyoto Protocol is a protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC or FCCC), an international environmental treaty The Kyoto Accord was first negotiated in Kyoto, Japan in December 1997, to “establish a legally binding international agreement, whereby all the participating nations commit themselves to tackling the issue of global warming and greenhouse gas emissions.” The objective was to stabilize and reconstruct “greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” The Kyoto negotiations built upon the research of The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which predicted an average global rise in temperature of 1.4°C (2.5°F) to 5.8°C (10.4°F) between 1990 and 2100. The agreement finally came into force on 16 February 2005 when following ratification by Russia ratified it on 18 November 2004. As of 14 January 2009, 183 countries and the European Community ratified the agreement. The Kyoto Protocol include “commitments to reduce greenhouse gases that are legally binding; implementation to meet the Protocol objectives, to prepare policies and measures which reduce greenhouse gases; increasing absorption of these gases and use all mechanisms available, such as joint implementation, clean development mechanism and emissions trading; being rewarded with credits which allow more greenhouse gas emissions at home; minimizing impacts on developing countries by establishing an adaptation fund for climate change; accounting, reporting and review to ensure the integrity of the Protocol; compliance by establishing a compliance committee to enforce compliance with the commitments under the Protocol.” wiki

Vivendi water is the backbone of Vivendi company according to Maud Barlow, with c. 295,000 people working just in their water department alone. So these companies came onto the scene first in France interestingly enough because France flirted with the privatization of water first then moved over to Great Britain under Margaret Thatcher and then with the World Bank backing them have moved all through the third world where they are failing every single solitary place that they are operating.

Manthan Adhyayan Kendra centre, based in the Narmada Valley, was founded by Shripad Dharmadhikary in October 2001 to research, analyse and monitor water and energy issues. Manthan’s two major themes of work are (a) large dams, irrigation and hydropower and (b) Privatisation and commercialisation of water and power in India. Dharmadhikary was a full time activist of the Narmada Bachao Andolan for 12 years, the mass organisation of people affected by large dams on the Narmada river in India. He was closely associated with the World Commission on Dams from its inception to its follow up UNEP-Dams and Development Project. He has recently completed a study on hydropower dam building in the Himalayas for International Rivers titled Mountains of Concrete. Other publications include Unravelling Bhakra, the report of a three year study (2001-12 through 2004-12) led by him of the Bhakra Nangal project. This study claims to completely overturn many of the popular notions and perceptions associated with the Bhakra Nangal Project. Currently, Manthan is working on the issues and impacts of privatisation of the water sector in India, including a study of the Public Private Partnership (PPP) model that is being pushed in the water sector, and the implications – financial, economic, social, environmental and access – of large scale privatisation of hydropower.

Professor Cathy Ryan, Department of Geoscience and the BScEnvironmental Science Program, University of Calgary “has inspired inspired an undergraduate research programin Environmental Science, as part of which students work in partnership with government, private sector and non-governmental collaborators to collect and analyze original data. The results of these studies are reported back to community stakeholders at enthusiastically-attended open houses.Meanwhile, Professor Ryan’s active contributions to local watershed groups (among them, Friends of Fish Creek, Elbow River WatershedPartnership, Nose Creek Watershed Partnershipand the Bow River Basin Council) are further evi-dence of a community engagement that extends beyond the normal call of academic duties. As a Board Member of the Bow River Basin Councilfrom 2004 to 2008, she provided technical advice and was an invited speaker and presenter on research activities that informed local landuse policymaking.The value of Professor Ryan’s input, and a furthermeasure of her community service, is manifest infrequent invitations to participate in regional,municipal, provincial and national workshops. Beyond simply sharing research findings, these presentations help to guide groundwater man-agement initiatives, including a successful 2006 municipal bylaw proposal for Environmental Setbacks for the Bow and Elbow Rivers. Currently, Professor Ryan is also the Assistant Program Director for the Central American WaterResources Management Network, a training net-work designed to better enable Central American universities and local communities to protect their water resources. Professor Ryan has published on Central American hydrogeology and water quality, in addition to her research in Alberta.Professor Ryan’s research interests include thefate of agricultural, human, and industrial wastes in groundwater and surface water. An examination of the impact of Calgary waste water on theBow River led in turn to a part-time sabbatical appointment as a Senior Water Policy Advisor to the City of Calgary. Professor Ryan subsequently received the City of Calgary Environmental Achievement Award in June 2008. Professor Ryan received her BASc in Geological Engineering from Queen’s University and her MSc and PhD (1994) in Earth Sciences from the University of Waterloo. She is also an adjunct professor in the Schulich School of Engineering, and has been a member of the Faculty Association since 1997 (University of Calgary 2009 awards).”

World Bank “The initial hopes for privatisation were so high that donor spending on infrastructure fell in the expectation that the private sector would take up the slack. For example, World Bank lending for infrastructure investment declined by 50 per cent during 1993-2002, with much of this directed towards preparing firms for privatisation. In 2002, Bank lending for water and sanitation projects, in particular, was only 25 per cent of its annual average during 1993-97. At the same time, the World Bank increased its support for private investment in utilities through its International Finance Corporation (IFC) and its Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). While Bank lending to public electricity utilities dropped from about $2.9 billion in 1990 to only $824 million in 2001, its sector lending to private investors rose from $45 million to $687 million. Lending about $20 billion to water supply projects over the last 12 years, the World Bank has not only been a principal financier of privatisation, it has also increasingly made its loans conditional on local governments privatising their waterworks. The ICIJ’s study of 276 World Bank water supply loans from 1990 to 2002 showed that 30 per cent required privatisation – the majority in the last five years (Molina and Chowla 2008-09-26.“)

World Water Council 2009 Report

Water Poverty Index This paper provides discussion of ways in which an interdisciplinary approach can be
taken to produce an integrated assessment of water stress and scarcity, linking physical estimates of water availability with socioeconomic variables that reflect poverty, i.e., a Water Poverty Index to contribute to more equitable solutions for water allocation. A ‘‘Water Poverty Index’’ would enable progress toward development targets to be monitored, and water projects to be better targeted to meet the needs of the current generation, while securing water availability for the needsof future generations, as recommended in the Brundtland Report (WCED 1987). It is known that poor households often suffer from poor water provision, and this results in a significant loss of time and effort, especially for women. Sullivan provided a summary of different approaches to establish a Water Poverty Index by linking the physical and social sciences to address this issue (Sullivan, Caroline. 2002 “Calculating a Water Poverty Index.” World Development. 30:7: 1195–1210).”

Sir Richard Branson Founder and CEO, Virgin Group, (Ultra High Net Worth (UHNW) is on The Copenhagen Climate Council. He “has recently pledged all profits from his Virgin air and rail interests over the next 10 years to combating rising global temperatures. However, the estimated $3bn will be invested in Virgin Fuels. Much of the investment will focus on biofuels, an alternative to oil-based fuels made from plants. [...] “…in our particular case we are putting all the profit we have got from our airline business into trying to develop clean fuels so that hopefully one day we can actually have fuels that we can fly our plains by, that will not do any damage to the environment (Branson).”

Selected Watersheds

Bow River watershed

The San Joaquin River watershed originates in Martha Lake (California) and winds through California for 530 km flowing into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and then San Francisco Bay. The basin area is 83,000 km2.

Selected Timeline of Events Related to Watersheds: Licensing Blue Gold or Managing a Human Right

1728 Mennonite brothers, the Bechtels, came to America in the early 1700s from Switzerland.

1846 German-born Heinrich Kreiser (aka Henry Miller) (Ultra High Net Worth (UHNW) immigrated to the United States arriving in California in 1850. The Miller and Lux company became the largest producer of cattle in California and one of the largest landowners in the United States, owning 1,400,000 acres (5,700 km2) directly and controlling nearly 22,000 square miles (57,000 km2) of cattle and farm land in California, Nevada, and Oregon. The Miller and Lux Corporation was headquartered in Los Banos, California, on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. Miller played a major role in the development of much of the San Joaquin Valley during the late 19th century.

early 1900s The Alberta agricultural irrigation industry acquired massive water licences. Since then they have relied on the first-in-time, first-in-right licensing system which gave priority to whoever got water licences first (Klaszus 2009-06-25).. In Alberta, water has been traditionally allocated on the “first-in-time, first-in-right” principle for both surface and ground water. The older the licence, the higher that user is on the priority list. This allows the owners of the first licenses issued to access the full amount of water issued before newer licensees have access, regardless of use. Furthermore, water licenses granted under this principle have no expiry date. However, licenses issued under the Water Act are now issued for a fixed period. In a review of Canadian Water Politics (2008) Chris McLaughlin, CEO of the Niagara Escarpment Foundation agreed with the book’s insightful comments that “the historical path dependency of current water allocation privileges – first-in-time, first-in-right – continues to favour entrenched agricultural, industrial and commercial interests who had their water claims institutionalized in law well before the value of “sustainability” was recognized. The reality inhibits institutional change, especially the adaptation of institutions to evolving water conflicts and other shifts social-ecological realities (McLaughlin 2009:31).”

1913 Oil tycoon, John D. Rockefeller, who became the world’s first billionaire, was the wealthiest person in the modern history of the world. Ultra High Net Worth (UHNW)

1930s The Bechtel Six Companies, a joint venture of construction companies built The Hoover Dam, named after President Herbert Hoover). This hydroelectric dam on the Colorado River was at that time the largest civil engineering project ever undertaken.

1940s Friant Dam was constructed as part of the federal Bureau of Reclamation’s Central Valley Project in the 1940s. Its purpose was to divert the waters of the San Joaquin to maximize their use to help people, both to irrigate crops and to provide groundwater recharge. Most of the waters of the San Joaquin River are diverted into canals so that the river remains dry for a 17 miles (27 km) except when flood control requires additional releases from the dam.

1950s Using raw materials from watersheds, seas, forests and soils 80% of the global industrial growth since the 1880s occurred since 1950. Industrial production grew more than fifty-fold from 1887-1987. There was already a $13 trillion world economy in 1987 Our Common Future.

1963-10-22 Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru opened the 740-feet high Bhakra multipurpose hydroelectric project claiming to ushering an era of agriculture development, Nehru had aptly declared Bhakra ‘the temple of modern India’.

1966-08 Helsinki Rules on the uses of the Waters of International Rivers. 1966-08. Adopted by the International Law Association at the 52nd conference, held at Helsinki. Report of the Committee on the Uses of the Waters of International Rivers. London: International Law Association (1967).

1969 The world’s first ministry of environment was established in Japan in 1969.

1970 Canada introduced its Ministry of the Environment.

1971 Ontario introduced its Ministry of the Environment.

Late 1970s Most OECD countries had a comprehensive framework of laws and regulations concerning waste and pollution.

1987 “State of the environment: National reports.” Nairobi: UNEP.

1984-1987 The World Commission on Environment and Development reported that between October 1984. and April 1987: “The drought-triggered, environment-development crisis in Africa peaked, putting 36 million people at risk, killing perhaps a million; A leak from a pesticides factory in Bhopal, India, killed more than 2,000 people and blinded and injured over 200,000 more; Liquid gas tanks exploded in Mexico City, killing 1,000 and leaving thousands more homeless; The Chernobyl nuclear reactor explosion sent nuclear fallout across Europe, increasing the risks of future human cancers; Agricultural chemicals, solvents, and mercury flowed into the Rhine River during a warehouse fire in Switzerland, killing millions of fish and threatening drinking water in the Federal Republic of Germany and the Netherlands; An estimated 60 million people died of diarrhoeal diseases related to unsafe drinking water and malnutrition; most of the victims were children (WCED 1987).”

1987. The World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) published their report entitled “Our Common Future,” known as the Brundtland Report.

1987 Report of the Expert Group Meeting on Strategic Approaches to Freshwater Management

1989 “[The] government of Argentina embarked on a major privatization program, and water and sewage were not excluded (Orwin 1999-08).” This contract [was] terminated in 1999. Problems with quality and cost prompted the new government, which had been in opposition when the contract was negotiated, to take the action. The major partner in the consortium, Vivendi, sued the region for compensation ( Orwin 1999-08).”

1992-04 Three Gorges Dam, so enormous it would become the world’s biggest dam, sparked the biggest political debate in Communist China’s history in the National People’s Congress, China’s annual parliament. Nearly one-third voted against the dam or abstained – an unprecedented figure (Coonan 2006-03-17.

1992 The degree of water privatization in Canada and the United States was minimal. While more than half of the American water utilities were privately owned, and while cities such as Indianapolis and Atlanta were increasingly contracting out their water and sewage services, public utilities remained the norm in large cities; in 1992, they served 85 per cent of the U. S. population ( From Orwin 1999-08).

Early 1990s “[C]ritics in both the public and the private sector had questioned the appropriateness of a regulatory approach based on what was called “the old system of command and approaches such as economic instruments or voluntary measures. At the same time, governments were facing strong fiscal pressures to reduce the cost of their operations in order to stop the downward spiral of growing deficits and debt. These fiscal pressures were given ideological impetus by political parties that favored deregulation, downsizing and privatization (Ministry of the Environment research 2000).”

1992 Sullivan (1992) called for the political will and institutional acceptance so that individual countries would be enable to produce their own integrated assessments of water poverty. She recommended the use of participatory action research at the community level to involve and educate local people in terms of their water needs enabling them to better understand, communicate and negotiate with policy makers. “By providing information about household welfare, and water stress at the household and community level, this locally generated data can form the core of the Water Poverty Index (WPI).

1993 “The initial hopes for privatisation were so high that donor spending on infrastructure fell in the expectation that the private sector would take up the slack. For example, World Bank lending for infrastructure investment declined by 50 per cent during 1993-2002, with much of this directed towards preparing firms for privatisation. In 2002, Bank lending for water and sanitation projects, in particular, was only 25 per cent of its annual average during 1993-97. At the same time, the World Bank increased its support for private investment in utilities through its International Finance Corporation (IFC) and its Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). While Bank lending to public electricity utilities dropped from about $2.9 billion in 1990 to only $824 million in 2001, its sector lending to private investors rose from $45 million to $687 million. Lending about $20 billion to water supply projects over the last 12 years, the World Bank has not only been a principal financier of privatisation, it has also increasingly made its loans conditional on local governments privatising their waterworks. The ICIJ’s study of 276 World Bank water supply loans from 1990 to 2002 showed that 30 per cent required privatisation – the majority in the last five years (Molina and Chowla 2008-09-26.“)

1994 Ontario passed the Environmental Bill of Rights.

1994 In Ecuador the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) giving a grant to the government to set up the necessary reforms of pricing and regulatory procedures to encourage further privatization in the water and sewage sector. By 1999 The government of Ecuador planned on privatizing all water utilities, for the sake of financing further investment ( Orwin 1999-08).

1995-06 Mike Harris as Premier of Ontario , declared a “Common Sense Revolution” in which he announced that Ontario was “open for business” promised to cut red tape and get government (particularly the Environment ministry) “out of the face” of business. Over the next two years, the budget of Moe was cut nearly 50% and the staff was reduced by more than 40% . The impact of these cuts on the capacity of Moe to serve the public interest in relation to the taro operations was cited in print media coverage of the controversy (Ministry of the Environment (MOE) research 2000).”

1995-11 The World Bank offered large loans to Bogota, Columbia to convert the dysfunctional municipal monopoly into a privatized utility.

Postel, S. L. (1996). Dividing the waters: food security, ecosystem health, and the new policies of scarcity. Worldwatch Paper No. 132, P29. Washington, DC:
Worldwatch Institute.

1996-12 The government of Chili “introduced a bill to fully privatize state-run water works, the first such legislation in South America. It faced strong opposition even within the ruling coalition but the bill was passed with some compromises, including a stipulation that the government must maintain 35 per cent equity, with some of the remainder being owned by the company employees. In April 1997, the government announced its intention to privatize wastewater treatment as well. The privatization package was finally approved in January 1998, and 55 per cent of the utilities involved were expected to be privatized by March 1999. ( From Orwin 1999-08).

1997-03 The 1st World Water Forum was held in Marrakech, Morocco.

1997-07 La Paz and El Alto, Bolivia “turned their water and sewerage systems over to the French company Lyonnaise des Eaux in July 1997, despite large protests and agitations by the opposition, which periodically paralysed both municipalities. Interestingly, the coalition in favour of the agreement included not only the governments and the water companies but the labor unions as well, who helped ensure the completion of the process. Lyonnaise des Eaux own[ed] 34 per cent of the new company, while a combination of Bolivian and Argentine directors own[ed] the rest ( Orwin 1999-08).”

1998 Postel, S. L. 1998. “Water for food production: will there be enough in 2025?” Biosciences. 28:629–637.

1998-09-17 Orwin’s report on the privatization of water reveals his enthusiasm for the privatization of water and sewage systems. Vivendi and Suez-Lyonnaise des Eaux joined to vie for the concession for Rio de Janeiro’s water and sewage systems. At that time some of Brazil’s municipal governments that own[ed] the water and sewage systems sought private sector help. Aguas de Limeira, a joint venture between the French conglomerate Lyonnaise des Eaux and Companhia Brasileira de Projectos e Obras, provided water and sanitation to the 250,000 people of the Sao Paulo suburb of Limeira. Degremont, Lyon built two water purification plants in Sao Paulo: one for Sao Miguel (population 700,000) and one for Novo Mondo (population 1,000,000) [...] Vivendi acquired 30% shares in Sanepar, which serves seven million people in the state of Parana. ( Orwin 1999-08).”

1998 Author Shripad Dharmadhikary writes: “the Bank’s process of generating knowledge is flawed and exclusionary. It excludes common people, and their traditional expertise and knowledge. The Bank’s knowledge is frequently created by highly paid, often international, consultants, who have little knowledge of local conditions. The knowledge creation is mostly directed towards arriving at a pre-determined set of policies – privatisation and globalisation. This knowledge creation is often selective, in that information, evidence or experiences that do not support these pre-determined outcomes are ignored. The book is based on case studies of the Indian water sector review in 1998, the Bank-support Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (see Update 56), water privatisation in Delhi, and a project for water restructuring in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Dharmadhikary finds that “[the Bank's] policies have cut people’s access to water, led to environmental destruction, resulted in displacement and destitution of people, stifled better options for water resource management, have had huge opportunity costs, and privileged corporate profits over social responsibility and equity.”

1999 “In Canada, virtually all water and sewage systems [were] publicly owned and operated. However, privatization [was] very slowly getting off the ground in Ontario, where private companies serve[d] 500,000 people,(2) approximately 4.5 per cent of the provincial population. There [was] also some scattered private participation in Alberta and British Columbia, and privatization [was] being considered by two of the larger Maritime cities ( Orwin 1999-08).”

1999 The Inter-American Development Bank approved a $70-million loan to reform regulatory systems so as to encourage private sector involvement in Bolivia. Bolivia had begun “major restructuring of the water sector in 1991, which involved the transfer of powers from the central level to the municipal level ( Orwin 1999-08).”

1999 As the water crisis deepens countries are depleting groundwater resources accumulated over thousands of years. In India alone the water table dropped by as much as 3m in 1999. As groundwater is exploited, water tables in parts of China, India, West Asia, the former Soviet Union and the western United States were already dropping by 2004 according to a special 2004 report (Kirby 2004-10-19).

2000-03 The Second World Water Forum in The Hague, The Netherlands “generated a lot of debate on the Water Vision for the Future and the associated Framework for Action, dealing with the state and ownership of water resources, their development potential, management and financing models, and their impact on poverty, social, cultural and economic development and the environment. The Ministerial Declaration identifed meeting basic water needs, securing food supply, protecting ecosystems, sharing water resources, managing risks, valuing water and governing water wisely as the key challenges for our direct future. 15,000 people were involved in the Vision related discussions; there were 5,700 participants in the Forum; there were 114 ministers and official of 130 countries at the Ministerial Conference; 500 journalists; 32,500 visitors at the World Water Fair.”

2000 “The UN-backed World Commission on Water estimated in 2000 that an additional $100bn a year would be needed to tackle water scarcity worldwide (Kirby 2004-10-19).”

2000-04 Water Sciences Branch, Water Management Division, Alberta Environmental Service Limnologist Anne-Marie Anderson reported that the lake levels of Muriel Lake (northeast of Edmonton and close to the hub of oil sands activity, including Imperial’s Cold Lake operation) were monitored since 1967. The lake reached its maximum in 1974, a very wet year but since then water levels declined steadily, a drop in lake level of nearly 3 m in 2000 from 6.6 m in 1962. As a result of the drop in lake levels, shoreline width has increased considerably. This amounts to perhaps a 50 to 60% loss in the volume of water. There are also concerns that the decline in water levels is resulting in a deterioration of lake water quality and fishing. (Anderson 2000-04). Dr. Bill Donahue of the University of Alberta’s Environmental Research and Studies Centre said his research at Muriel Lake suggested that the oil companies’ appetite for water was having a long-term effect. Although heavy rains in 1997 replenished many other lakes in the area, but the level of Muriel Lake is falling again. Mr. Donahue said the addition of chemicals to water used in oil recovery and the fact that much of the recycled water ends up in deep underground reservoirs meant that ”ultimately, it is lost from the normal water cycle (Simon 2002-08-09)..” “The Muriel Lake Basin Management Society was formed in 1999 in response to these severe losses of water. In 2002, Dr. Bill Donahue, with the support of Dr. Dave Schindler, the Gordon Foundation, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada, and ERSC, began a study to determine the local and regional water budgets. Drs. Bill Donahue and Alex Wolfe also began a study of the history of water quality, biology, and climate change in Muriel Lake.”

2000-03 Goals set forth at the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in New York.

2001 The International Freshwater Conference was held in Bonn.

2002 The World Summit on Sustainable Development was held in Johannesburg.

2002-02-15 President Bush pledged to reduce “greenhouse gas intensity” by 18 % from 2002 to 2012. New York Times journalist Paul Krugman cautioned however that the algorithm to calculate “greenhouse gas intensity” divides “greenhouse gas intensity” by the gross national product GDP which by most forecasts will expand by 30% from 2002 to 2012. This proposal then will allow a substantial increase in (mainly carbon dioxide, released by burning fossil fuels) that cause global warming. Krugman argued that the Bush administration exaggerated the economic costs such as the destruction of millions of jobs if the Kyoto Protocol’s environmental regulations were implemented. In 2001 Dick Cheney claimed that environmental rules had caused a shortage of refining capacity.(Krugman 2002-02-15)

2002-08-09 Western Canada had its worst drought in decades and environmentalists, farming groups and others called for tighter control of the oil industry. New York Times Business journalist claimed that Alberta’s oil companies use nearly half as much water as the million people in Alberta’s commercial center, Calgary. [...] The energy industry makes up about a quarter of Alberta’s economy. Processes of extracting oil from conventional wells and from oil sands are water-intensive: c. 10 barrels of water are needed to extract one barrel of oil. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers claimed that about 55% of Alberta’s oil output, totaling 1.55m barrels a day, is now brought to the surface with the help of enhanced water-assisted methods. The water used in the oil sands “ends up in deep underground reservoirs meant that ”ultimately, it is lost from the normal water cycle(Simon 2002-08-09).“

2002-11-27 Water was formally recognized as a human right for the first time when the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights adopted the ‘General Comment’ on the right to water, and described the State’s legal responsibility in fulfilling that right. “The human right to drinking water is fundamental to life and health. Sufficient and safe drinking water is a precondition for the realization of human rights.” (UNESCO 2002-11-27).

2003-03 The 3rd World Water Forum held in Kyoto, Shiga and Osaka, Japan “took the debate a step further also within the context of the new commitments of meeting the goals set forth at the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in New York (2000), the International Freshwater Conference in Bonn (2001) and the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg (2002). The large number of participants ensured that a variety of stakeholders and opinions were represented aiming at accepting differences and finding a common way forward.” There were 24,000 participants, 1000 journalists and 130 ministers in attendance.

2004 A federal judge ruled the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in violation of California law for not letting enough water flow which has resulted in the depletion of the historic Chinook salmon population on the San Joaquin River which it is claimed, once supported the southernmost salmon run in North America.

2004-10-19 BBC News Online environment correspondent, Alex Kirby, explored fears of an impending global water crisis. In 2004 1/3 of the world’s population were already living in water-stressed countries. By 2025, this is expected to rise to two-thirds. His report includes some potential solutions including new technologies that could clean up polluted waters and so making more water useable, more efficient agricultural water-use practices, drought-resistant plants, collecting rainfall, dams, desalinisation. Many of these solutions would require huge quantities of affordable, useable energy sources which also poses an enormous challenge. Kirby concluded, “We have to rethink how much water we really need if we are to learn how to share the Earth’s supply (Kirby 2004-10-19).”

2005-02-16 The Kyoto Protocol climate change conference leading up to the Kyoto Accord was first debated in Kyoto, Japan in December 1997, to “establish a legally binding international agreement, whereby all the participating nations commit themselves to tackling the issue of global warming and greenhouse gas emissions.” The objective was to stabilize and reconstruct “greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” The Kyoto negotiations built upon the research of The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which predicted an average global rise in temperature of 1.4°C (2.5°F) to 5.8°C (10.4°F) between 1990 and 2100. The agreement finally came into force on 16 February 2005 when following ratification by Russia ratified it on 18 November 2004. As of 14 January 2009, 183 countries and the European Community ratified the agreement. The Kyoto Protocol include “commitments to reduce greenhouse gases that are legally binding; implementation to meet the Protocol objectives, to prepare policies and measures which reduce greenhouse gases; increasing absorption of these gases and use all mechanisms available, such as joint implementation, clean development mechanism and emissions trading; being rewarded with credits which allow more greenhouse gas emissions at home; minimizing impacts on developing countries by establishing an adaptation fund for climate change; accounting, reporting and review to ensure the integrity of the Protocol; compliance by establishing a compliance committee to enforce compliance with the commitments under the Protocol.” wiki

2005-06-08 John Vidal, environment editor for the Guardian based on according to US State Department papers, claimed that pressure from ExxonMobil, the world’s most powerful oil company, and other industries, influenced President George Bush in his decision to not sign the Kyoto global warming treaty(Vidal 2005-06-08).

2005-06-09 BBC reported that Philip Cooney, Chief of Staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, “which helps devise and promote the administration’s policies on environmental issues [...] removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that had already been approved by government scientists.” According to the New York Times Cooney “made dozens of changes to reports issued in 2002 and 2003, and many appeared in final versions of major administration climate reports.” Rick Piltz formerly from the office of co-ordinates U. S. government climate research resigned and reported the watered down reports to the New York Times. Philip Cooney, a lawyer by training has no scientific education. He was a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest oil industry trade group. He is a lawyer by training, with no scientific background. (BBC 2005-06-09).

2006-03-22 The 4th World Water Forum was held in Mexico City with seven days of debates and exchanges. Close to 20,000 people from throughout the world participated in 206 working sessions where a total of 1600 local actions were presented. Participants included official representatives and delegates from 140 countries out of which 120 mayors and 150 legislators, 1395 journalists experts, NGOs, companies, civil society representatives were involved. The Ministerial Conference brought together 78 Ministers.

2006-03 Uruguay, Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador and other countries drafted a counter declaration at the 2006 World Water Forum when the official ministerial declaration did not include water as a human right (Karunananthan 2009-03-18).

2006-03 According to an article by (Coonan 2006-03-17, environmentalists viewed the 2006 completion of the Three Gorges dam on the Yangtze River in China, the world’s biggest, as a monstrous natural catastrophe. Between one to two two million people were moved because their homes were flooded by the rising water of the reservoir. Environmental activist and journalist Dai Qing, the most famous opponent of Three Gorges dam, wrote a book entitled Yangtze! Yangtze!, for which she was imprisoned for 10 months in a maximum security prison and faced with the treat of the death sentence. She opposed the dam because of the lack of public debate, the lack of independent analysis. “Further along the river, construction of Xiloudu dam has begun, which will be the third biggest in the world when it is finished. Three other dams are in the exploration stage near Xiloudu – including one that will flood the beautiful Tiger Leaping Gorge in Sichuan province. All four of these dams together will produce more electricity than the Three Gorges dam (Coonan 2006-03-17.”

2000 Oscar Olivera’s article in The Guardian described how the water wars began in Cochabamba, Bolivia when Bechtel, a large multinational, came there with the intention of taking control of the water supply and privatizing it in 2000.Olivera 2006-07-19.”

2006-08-31 The Alberta provincial government under Premier Stelmach closed southern Alberta river basins to new water licences when they realized they had over-allocated water. Some growing municipalities with junior licences began the long and laborious process of negotiating transfers water licenses from willing irrigators and other senior licensees (Klaszus 2009-06-25).. “Alberta Environment announced the province will no longer accept new water licence applications for the Bow, Oldman, and South Saskatchewan sub-basins. Water allocations may still be obtained through water allocation transfers. The newly minted water management plan, the first of its kind in Alberta, will ban new demands from the three rivers, which are part of the South Saskatchewan River basin that feeds water to Calgary, Red Deer, Lethbridge, Brooks and Medicine Hat (Alberta Water).”

2006-2009 According to Alberta Environment about 30 water licence transfers have occurred between junior and senior licensees since 2006 when Premier Stelmach closed southern Alberta river basins to new water licences (Klaszus 2009-06-25).

2007 The Province of Alberta’s budget showed a surplus of $8.5 billion. Alberta is the economic engine of Canada but it is also the country’s worst industrial greenhouse gas emitter. Calgary-based EnCana alone earned profits of $6.4 billion, a record-breaking sum. An energy war is predicted between Eastern and Western Canada (Kohler 2007-10-08).

2007-10-08 Journalist Kohler reviewed William Marsden’s (2007) book entitled em>Stupid to the Last Drop in which outlined the environmental threats posed by Alberta’s energy industry, claiming that the [province of Alberta were] going to be the “architects of their own destruction.” “Left unfettered, Alberta’s energy sector will, by the end of this century, transform the southern part of the province into a desert and its north into a treeless, toxic swamp. Driven both by global warming and oil and gas developments, temperatures in Alberta will soar by as much as eight degrees. The Athabasca River will slow to a trickle, parching the remainder of the province’s forests and encouraging them to burst into flame, generating vast quantities of CO2. (Kohler 2007-10-08).”

2007 Despite comprising only a fraction of Canada’s households, the wealthiest families control almost half the investable assets: $1.3-trillion of $2.4-trillion. The “vast majority” of that $1.3-trillion held by wealthy families is controlled by the decamillionaires. They are the ones with “family offices.” Tim Cestnick, of WaterStreet Family Wealth Counsel, set the threshold for High New Worth HNW as $5-million to $20-million in net worth and for Ultra High New Worth UHNW at $20-million-plus. Bederman classified households with $1-million to $5-million as “mass millionaires.” There were 335,000 such households in Canada in 2007. There were 60,000 “penta millionaires” (with net worths of $5-million to $10-million) and 20,000 decamillionaire households with more than $10-million in 2007. Despite comprising only a fraction of Canada’s households, the wealthiest families control almost half the investable assets: $1.3-trillion of $2.4-trillion. The “vast majority” of that $1.3-trillion held by wealthy families is controlled by the decamillionaires. They are the ones with “family offices “Chevreau, Jonathan. 2007-05-14).“

2007-10-03 Funded by a $30 million grant from the Government of Alberta through Alberta Ingenuity, (whose President and CEO is Dr. Peter Hackett) the Alberta Water Research Institute (chaired by Dr. Lorne Taylor, the former Minister of Alberta Environment) claim they will fund innovative, practical water research that will “tackle some of Alberta’s most pressing water-related environmental issues, including habitat decline, biodiversity loss, water flow and water quality. [T]he research will involve a multi-disciplinary approach — including biologists, engineers, economists and other social scientists — to provide the knowledge water users, managers, industry, policy makers and consumers to help them make informed choices. [T]he Alberta Water Research Institute works in collaboration with The Alberta Energy Research Institute (AERI).” Their work focusses on Water Treatment and Recycling; Oilsands Tailings Treatment with water recycling; reducing water use in electrical power generation

2007-11-07 T. Boone Pickens engineered one of a shrewd takeover of an 8 acres stretch of scrub-land near Amarillo, Roberts County, Texas. The acquisition of this land was “central to Pickens’ plan to create an agency to condemn property and sell tax-exempt bonds in the search for one of his other favorite commodities: water. Approval of the water district was all but certain as Texans voted Tuesday in state and local elections. By law, only the two people who actually live on the eight acres will be allowed to vote: the manager of Pickens’ nearby Mesa Vista ranch and his wife. The other three owners, who will sit on the district’s board, all work for Pickens. Pickens “has pulled a shenanigan,” said Phillip Smith, a rancher who serves on a local water-conservation board. “He’s obtained the right of eminent domain like he was a big city. It’s supposed to be for the public good, not a private company.” Pickens and his allies say no shenanigans are involved. Once the district is created, the board will be able to issue tax-exempt bonds to finance construction of Pickens’ planned 328-mile, $2.2 billion pipeline to transport water from the Panhandle across the prairie to the suburbs of Dallas and San Antonio. If Pickens can’t find a buyer for the bonds or for his water – and he hasn’t yet – he might buy the bonds himself to jump-start the project, said his Dallas-based lawyer, Monty Humble of Vinson and Elkins. The board will spend about $110 million to buy the right-of-way for the pipeline, using the power of eminent domain to acquire property if necessary, Humble said. Still, Pickens faces obstacles. To help pay for construction, he plans to piggyback wind power on the water infrastructure. He plans wind farms on the ranchland and wants to run electricity cables along the right-of-way of Mesa’s water pipeline. All told, the wind and water project is expected to cost more than $10 billion. Pickens said he has about $100 million invested so far. “This is a $10 billion project,” he said in an interview. “It better be profitable.” Most of all, he needs a group of confirmed buyers for his water. That’s in part because of political resistance to his plan for acquiring water rights. Several Dallas-area water districts have refused to sign up. “We have real concerns about private control of water,” said Ken Kramer, director of the Texas Sierra Club. “Water is a resource, yet in some respects it is a commodity. It’s as essential to human life as air. That puts water in a different class.” John Spearman Jr., a Roberts County rancher and chairman of the Panhandle Groundwater Conservation District, is one of many local critics who contend that Pickens’ water play could upset conservation efforts and seeks to profit from shortages of a vital resource. “He has the legal authority to do it,” Spearman says. “We can’t stop him (Woellert 2007-11-07.”

2008-06-12 In 2008 he introduced “The Pickens Plan, [which called] for the United States to cut its dependence on foreign oil by more than one-third by making natural gas and wind power much bigger parts of America’s energy supply.” (CBC 2009-06-17.) “T. Boone Pickens [...] owns more water than any other individual in the U.S. and is looking to control even more. He hopes to sell the water he already has, some 65 billion gallons a year, to Dallas, transporting it over 250 miles, 11 counties, and about 650 tracts of private property. The electricity generated by an enormous wind farm he is setting up in the Panhandle would also flow along that corridor. As far as Pickens is concerned, he could be selling wind, water, natural gas, or uranium; it’s all a matter of supply and demand. “(Berfield 2008).” Business Week

2008-05-08 The U.S. Senate committee gave its approval to restore a 240 km stretch of the dried-up San Joaquin River and the historic Chinook salmon run spawning area. The settlement agreement, supported by almost every member of the California congressional delegation, anticipated spending as much as $800 million U.S. with farmers paying c. $330 million, and the rest from California bonds and the federal government.

2008-06 T. Boone Pickens a Texas oil tycoon, who sees water as blue gold and already owns more of it than any other American. He thirsts to increase his water assets and he is now showing a great interest in Alberta. While he has carefully massaged his media image to be tauted as environmentally friendly and he has generously gifted the University of Calgary, his methods are shrewd, buying what others see as useless until they realize how much control he has over their water supply. He is persistent and worked for decades to change laws in his favour in the Canada River watershed in Texas. Pickens donated $2.25 million in 2006 to establish the Boone Pickens Centre for Neurological Science and Advanced Technologies at the the Hotchkiss Brain Institute, University of Calgary, which was created by Pickens’ long-time friend Calgary Flames co-owner Harley Hotchkiss with a gift of $15 million in 2004. In June 2008 Pickens donated another $25 million to research at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute which is the largest donation ever given to the University of Calgary by a single person and the only philanthropic donation Pickens has made outside the U.S. Pickens, who has an estimated net worth of $3 billion, has given away $700 million from 2003 to 2008. Pickens lived in Calgary briefly in the 1960s working as a geologist ( “CBC 2008-06-20).”

2008-09-26 Molina and Chowla argued that the World Bank has been a principal financier of privatisation and has increasingly made its loans conditional on local governments privatising their waterworks. The ICIJ’s study of 276 World Bank water supply loans from 1990 to 2002 showed that 30 per cent required privatisation – the majority in the last five years (Molina and Chowla 2008-09-26.“). The initial hopes for privatisation have faded as governments work towards de-privatization of water services (Molina and Chowla 2008-09-26.“)

2009-03-18The Council of Canadians, Our Water Commons, Food and Water Watch and other organizations held a panel at the official World Water Forum to launch a report highlighting success stories of communities working to protect the water commons through a communitarian approach to water management and calling for the recognition of water as a human right.Karunananthan 2009-03-18. .”

2009-03-16 to 2009-03-22 The world’s biggest water-related event, with over 25,000 participants, the Fifth World Water Forum was held in Istanbul, Turkey on the theme of “Bridging Divides for Water.”

2009-06 Jim Webber, general manager of the Western Irrigation District wants the province to respect the first-in-time, first-in-right licensing system to prevent an economic disaster for the 400+ farms east of Calgary and a handful of communities, including Strathmore (Klaszus 2009-06-25).

2009-03-29 The United States Congress appropriated $88 million to help fund the restoring of salmon spawning grounds as part of a bill providing wilderness protection to more than 2 millions acres in nine states.

2009-06-29 In California the debate has become increasingly polarized between agriculture and environmental interests over the distribution of water in the face of a three year drought that has left 450,000 acres unplanted in California as well as causing the third collapse of the salmon industry as the San Joaquin River spawning grounds dried up. (In 2004 a federal judge ruled the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in violation of California law for not letting enough water flow which has resulted in the depletion of the historic Chinook salmon population on the San Joaquin River which it is claimed, once supported the southernmost salmon run in North America. ) In Fresno County alone, normally the US most important agriculture county, farmers cannot plant in 262,000 acres because of a lack of water.Cone 2009-06-29).

CBC. 2009-06-17. “Texas oil billionaire eyes Alberta wind power.”

Notes

1. March 22nd is World Water Day

2. Since moving to Calgary, Alberta we have been following our source of city water. The Bow Glacier was stunningly beautiful last August. But like glaciers worldwide it is receding. The Elbow River which also flows through Calgary was very high this year even though much of Alberta’s farmland was experiencing a devastating drought. We’ve installed rainbarrels, planted drought-resistance perennials, overseeded our water-thirsty Kentucky grass with Sheep’s Fescue and generally tried to be more water wise, I am following water stories. Alberta has four major rivers tha drain most of the province: 1. The Peace and 2. Athabaska rivers drain the northern half of Alberta with their waters joining water from Lake Athabaska to form Alberta’s largest river, the Slave River, which flows into the Northwest Territories and on to the Arctic Ocean; 3. The North Saskatchewan River winds through the foothills and parkland of central Alberta. 4. The South Saskatchewan River, which is fed by three rivers that arise in the mountains, makes it way through dry farmland and prairie. The North and South Saskatchewan rivers join in the province of Saskatchewan and become the Nelson-Churchill system, and their waters eventually reach Hudson Bay There is also the smaller Beaver River, which flows through the heart of the Lakeland Region and then into the Churchill system and the Milk River, which passes briefly into Alberta
from Montana before returning south to flow finally to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico (Mitchell, Prepas and Crosby 1990:3) For a detailed map and more information visit Alberta Water

2. Moore Lake, c. 280 km northeast of Edmonton is a very popular recreational lake in Alberta’s Lakeland Region. Moore Lake is part of the Beaver Lake watershed. It is a headwater lake with outlets from the east shore into Hilda and Ethel Lakes and eventually into the Beaver River (which flows through the heart of the Lakeland Region and then into the Churchill system and the Milk River, which passes briefly into Alberta from Montana before returning south to flow finally to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico (Mitchell, Prepas and Crosby 1990:275).” “Moore Lake is underlain by the Muriel Lake Aquifer. In [1990] the principal water sources for regional water needs were the aquifers and not the lake. The largest water users in the area [were] the oil sands industries. Oil sands and petroleum and natural gas leases in the Moore drainage basin are held by several companies, including Esso Resources and Husky Oil. The oil sands permits allow the companies to test and set up drilling operations for subsurface oil deposits, including those under the lake surface. There are no signficant gas pools in the area. As a result of Alberta Environmental studies of the water resources in the Cold Lake-Beaver River basin in the early 1980s, a long-term plan for water resources management in the Cold Lake region was adopted by the government in 1985. Under the provisions of this plan, Moore Lake will not become a major water supply for the oil industry. Major industrial water users will be required to obtain their water from a pipeline from the North Saskatchewan River (Mitchell, Prepas and Crosby 1990:275).”

3. History of Moore Lake and the Beaver River. “Woodland Cree occupied the region when the fur traders first arrived. The Beaver River, to the south of Moore Lake, was part of a major fur trade route from Lac Isle-a-la-Crosse, Saskatchewan to the Athabaska River. The first fur-trading post in the area was Cold Lake House. It was established by the North West Company in 1781 on the Beaver River near the present-day hamlet of Beaver Crossing (Mitchell, Prepas and Crosby 1990:273).”.” “Moore Lake is underlain by the Muriel Lake Aquifer. In [1990] the principal water sources for regional water needs were the aquifers and not the lake. The largest water users in the area [were] the oil sands industries. Oil sands and petroleum and natural gas leases in the Moore drainage basin are held by several companies, including Esso Resources and Husky Oil. The oil sands permits allow the companies to test and set up drilling operations for subsurface oil deposits, including those under the lake surface. There are no signficant gas pools in the area. As a result of Alberta Environmental studies of the water resources in the Cold Lake-Beaver River basin in the early 1980s, a long-term plan for water resources management in the Cold Lake region was adopted by the government in 1985. Under the provisions of this plan, Moore Lake will not become a major water supply for the oil industry. Major industrial water users will be required to obtain their water from a pipeline from the North Saskatchewan River (Mitchell, Prepas and Crosby 1990:275).”

4. For amusement I am also reading an entertaining science fiction called Watermind that begins with a foaming journey of nano technology from Alberta down the Milk River flowing down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico collecting toxic waste and data all along the way.

5. Western-style lifestyles and diets which are heavy on beef require much more water than healthier cereal or pulse-based diets (1 kg of grain-fed beef needs at least 15 cubic metres of water, while a 1 kg of cereals needs only up to three cubic metres). Pulse crops (including Dry beans, Kidney bean, haricot bean, pinto bean, navy bean, Lima bean, butter bean, Azuki bean, adzuki bean, Mung bean, golden gram, green gram, Black gram, Urad, Scarlet runner bean, Dry peas, Garden pea, Chickpea, Garbanzo, Bengal gram Black-eyed pea, blackeye bean, Lentil) commonly consumed with grain, provide a complete protein diet. Pulses are 20 to 25% protein by weight, which is double the protein content of wheat and three times that of rice. Pulses are sometimes called “poor man’s meat”. Pulses are the most important dietary predictor of survival in older people. In the Seven Countries Study legume consumption was highly correlated with a reduced mortality from coronary heart disease.

6. This Google Map below (a work in progress) traces some of the areas of concern regarding our watersheds where substantial control concentration of access, rights and strategic assets are quietly being acquired by individuals or individual families. The most troubling of these includes T. Boone Pickens who sees water as blue gold and already owns more of it than any other American. He thirsts to increase his water assets and he is now showing a great interest in Alberta. While he has carefully massaged his media image to be tauted as environmentally friendly and he has generously gifted the University of Calgary, his methods are shrewd, buying what others see as useless until they realize how much control he has over their water supply. He is persistent and worked for decades to change laws in his favour in the Canada River watershed in Texas.

7. Tim Cestnick, founder of WaterStreet Family Wealth Counsel, in 2007 set the threshold for High Net Worth HNW as $5-million to $20-million in net worth and for Ultra High Net Worth UHNW at $20-million-plus.

My Google Map: Blue Gold

Selected Bibliography

Anderson, Anne-Marie. 2000-04. “An Evaluation of Changes in Water Quality of Muriel Lake.” Limnologist, Water Sciences Branch, Water Management Division, Environmental Service.

Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society.

Barlow, Maud; Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water.

Barlow, Maud. 2004-03. Maude Barlow, CBC Interview. CBC.

CBC. 2008-06-20. “Billionaire hands U of C unexpected $25M gift.”

Brownsey, Keith. “Enough for Everyone: Policy Fragmentation and Water Institutions in Alberta” in Sproule-Jones, Mark; Johns, Carolyn; Heinmiller, B. Timothy. 2008-11-20. Canadian Water Politics: Conflicts and Institutions. McGill-Queen’s University Press. pp. 133-156.

CBC. 2009-06-17. “Texas oil billionaire eyes Alberta wind power.”

CBC. 2009-03-06. “Wind power: The global race to harness wind.”

Clarke, Tony; Barlow, Maude. The Battle for Water.

Cone, Tracie. AP. 2009-06-29. “Battle over water heats up in drought-stricken California.” USA Today.

Coonan, Clifford. 2006-03-17. “The dammed: Environmentalists watch and wait for opening of world’s largest dam.” The Independant.”

Dillon, Sam. 1998-01-28. “Mexico City sinking into depleted aquifer.”

Government of Ontario. 1998-03-09. “Government’s role in operation of water and sewage treatment systems to be reviewed.” Office of Privatization News Release. Toronto: Queen’s Park.

Helsinki Rules on the uses of the Waters of International Rivers. 1966-08. Adopted by the International Law Association at the 52nd conference, held at Helsinki. Report of the Committee on the Uses of the Waters of International Rivers. London: International Law Association (1967).

Idelovitch, Emanuel, and Ringskog, Klas. 1995-05. Private Sector Participation in Water Supply and Sanitation in Latin America. Washington: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank.

Kirby, Alex. 2004-10-19. “Water scarcity: A looming crisis?” BBC.

Klaszus, Jeremy. 2009-06-25.“Alberta poised to expand water market: Showdown looms as province reviews licensing system.” News.

Karunananthan, Meera. 2009-03-18. “Access to Sanitation Reserved for the VIPs at World Water Forum.” AlterNet.

Kohler, Nicholas. 2007-10-08. “Doomsday: Alberta stands accused: A huge fight between East and West — over the oil sands — is just starting.” Macleans.

Krugman, Paul. 2002-02-15. “Ersatz Climate Policy“. New York Times.

Marsden, William. 2007. Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta Is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (And Doesn’t Seem to Care).

McGillivray, Mark. 2005. Inequality, Poverty and Well-being. Helsinki, Finland. Palgrave Macmillan.

McLaughlin, Chris. 2009. “Instituting Change: Book Reviews.” Alternatives Journal. 35:34: 31.

Mitchell, Patricia ; Prepas, Ellie E.; Crosby, Jan M. Eds. 1990. Atlas of Alberta Lakes. University of Alberta Press.

Molina, Nuria; Chowla, Peter. 2008-09-26. “The World Bank and water privatisation: public money down the drain.”

Olivera, Oscar. 2006-07-19. “The voice of the people can dilute corporate power.” The Guardian.

Orwin, Alexander. 1999-08. “The Privatization of Water and Wastewater Utilities: An International Survey.” Environment Probe.

Postel, S. L. 1996. “Dividing the waters: food security, ecosystem health, and the new policies of scarcity.” Worldwatch Paper No. 132, P29. Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute.

Postel, S. L. 1998. “Water for food production: will there be enough in 2025?” Biosciences. 28:629–637.

Sen, A. 1995. “Mortality as an indicator of economic success and failure.” Discussion paper 66. London School of Economics and Political Science.

Simon, Bernard. 2002-08-09. “Alberta Struggles to Balance Water Needs and Oil.” New York Times.

Sproule-Jones, Mark; Johns, Carolyn; Heinmiller, B. Timothy. 2008-11-20. Canadian Water Politics: Conflicts and Institutions. McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Sullivan, Caroline. 2002. (“Calculating a Water Poverty Index.”World Development. 30:7: 1195–1210.

Vidal, John. 2005-06-08. “Revealed – how oil giant influenced Bush“. The Guardian.

The World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED). 1987.”Our Common Future.” Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Woellert, Lorraine. 2007-11-07. “Pickens makes a multibillion-dollar water play: Pipeline would transport Panhandle water to big-city suburbs.” Bloomberg News.

Chevreau, Jonathan. 2007-05-14. “Truly Affluent Require Wider Type of Service.” Financial Post.