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How the Harper Government Committed a Knowledge Massacre

98 points by triplesec 13y ago

draq 13y ago
So data and information are irreversibly lost? In the Age of Internet?
- triplesec 13y ago
  Apparently so. It's not an article with a response from the government agents responsible or with first-hand detail on why or how the digitisation didn't happen, and why universities or a foundation didn't take on the load, or even the argument about what reasoning led to the closures in the first place, but if even half true, it's severe enough to be worth looking into.
- sami36 13y ago
  Not all data & information created is meant to be saved till eternity.Plus, some of it comes with privacy implications, even when dealing with documents pertaining to the deceased.
- throwwit 13y ago
  Next best thing is to bury truth with falsehoods... http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/02/08/crtc-may-ease-ban-on-broadcasting-false-news/ http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/02/08/crtc-may-ease-ban-on-broa... This story doesn't belong on HN IMO. But it is a pretty bad trend, among many others, that does deserve some attention.
- pjc50 13y ago
  In some ways, it's even easier for information to be lost in the digital age; unless it's in regular use, it can end up on crumbling tapes in an obsolete format that cannot be understood. There are various underfunded efforts to recover and transcribe old NASA data that suffer from this.
Asparagirl 13y ago
This phenomenon is certainly not limited to the Harper government, nor to Canada. Just the other day, Franklin county, North Carolina destroyed boxes of priceless 19th century records, including court records, by bringing them to an animal shelter to be burned. Photo from Twitter: http://pic.twitter.com/ZjEPcajo8U http://pic.twitter.com/ZjEPcajo8U Here's the unbelievable part: the local historical society and local genealogists volunteered to re-house and rescue the records FOR FREE and the county still said no, refused to let them examine the records, and destroyed them anyway! Full story here: http://stumblingintheshadowsofgiants.wordpress.com/2013/12/21/160-year-old-documents-intentionally-destroyed-in-franklin-county-n-c/ http://stumblingintheshadowsofgiants.wordpress.com/2013/12/2...
- throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago
  Not exactly the "full story" when it omits the facts that support differing conclusions. That's sort of the opposite of "full story". Some moderating details: * Documents were damaged by a mold that is hazardous to health * State archivist claims the documents were of "low historical value" * Archivist claims some were confidential, and couldn't be legally released to 3rd party http://www.wral.com/historians-lament-destruction-of-franklin-county-records/13229922/ http://www.wral.com/historians-lament-destruction-of-frankli...
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - Asparagirl 13y ago
    Those "moderating details" are inane. The Heritage Society was willing to take the risk of storing and possibly digitizing the documents, some of which were moldy and some of which were not. Indeed, members of the Heritage Society were the ones providing the initial manpower (and masks and sanitizer) to clean out the building basement where they were found, including the broken furniture and muck. If they're willing to take documents in that condition, having already seen it first hand, why should the state be paternalistic about it? Furthermore, some of the records were clearly NOT of limited value: "The following is a description of the early investigation, accounted by Ms. Torrent of Franklin County Heritage Society; “Immediately we found Chattel Mortgages from the 1890′s, court dockets from post civil war to prohibition, delayed birth certificate applications with original supporting documents (letters from Grandma, bible records, birth certificates, etc), county receipts on original letterhead from businesses long extinct, poll record books, original school, road and bridge bonds denoting the building of the county, law books still in their original paper wrappings, etc., etc. etc. The list goes on and on. Our original feelings of shock that the records were there and in such bad condition led to feelings of joy that they were still there and that someone had thought to retain them for us to discover so many years later. Each book or box opened produced a new treasure. A letter, stamped and in the original envelope, from a Franklin County soldier serving in France during the First World War asking the court to be sure his sister and his estate was looked after while he was away. A naturalization paper from the late 1890s for an immigrant from Russia escaping the tyranny of the Czar. A document from County Commissioners in the early years of road building requesting another county repair their road as it entered the county. Lists of county employees and what their wages were in 1900. A court document paying the court reporter who took the depositions in the “Sweat Ward” case, (Ward beheaded a man in the 1930s and later became the last man to be lynched in the county). Postcards, county bills, audits, cancelled checks, newspaper clippings, store ads from long gone businesses. Boxes and boxes of court cases covering the years of prohibition, a docket from an individual accused of running a “baudy house” within the city limits, a photo tucked now and then inside a book, one of the courthouse unseen since the 1920s. Again, nothing was in any order and many of the boxes were combinations of records from many decades." What an amazing, amazing collection of documents! But sorry, it's all ashes now.
throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago
"Many scientists have compared the war on environmental science to the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe. Hutchings muses, "you look at the rise of certain political parties in the 1930s and have to ask how could that happen and how did they adopt such extreme ideologies so quickly, and how could that happen in a democracy today?" Well of course it's just like the rise of fascism. And the "knowledge massacre" is, as the word denotes, essentially a genocide. Thank you, HN.
- cstross 13y ago
  Here, let me jog your memory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik (Apologies, but Godwin's Law seems unavoidable in this context. Yes, here's a historic example of a no-shit Fascist party who fired lots of academics because of their ethnicity or their field of expertise and replaced them with a whole fabricated fake "science" that was ideologically acceptable to them. Note: burning libraries was explicitly part of the program.) It's excessive to call Harper's government "fascist" (although Harper has prior form for hard-right politics: http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2011/04/19/03610.html http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2011/04/19/0... ), but this is indisputably a tactic used by fascist movements.
  - throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago
    Holy shit I just got a reply from Charlie Stross! Honestly, I don't see the parallel at all. GoC isn't trying to rewrite science: it's closing scientific institutions (minor ones) as part of budget cuts. Certainly it's not doing so out of a nationalist campaign against scientists of a specific race, which is what defines fascism (isn't it?). Arguably it's a politicization of science, if it's intended to suppress climate science; but that has nothing to do with fascism, it's just bad policy.
    - sp332 13y ago
      Fascism is a kind of authoritarianism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism It's extremely conservative but not necessarily racist.
3pt14159 13y ago
Take this article with a grain of salt. You normally can't quietly and quickly shut these types of things down. It would be on the CBC and especially something like this would be very hard to pull off. Here is why: 1. Obvious environmental concerns about oceans and fisheries. 2. The conservative base is pro-government regulation of fisheries. 3. The conservative base is sentimental, and destroying first copies of anything would piss them off. 4. Newfoundlanders (man is it hard not to write "Newfies") gave up a shit ton of prosperity after joining Canada by having the government come in and regulate their fish stocks. (To be fair, they didn't have much choice. If they had kept going there would be nothing left in 5 to 10 years. No I'm not exaggerating it was fucking bad.) For the conservative government to do something that widely flies in the face of that would be to piss off an entire province. 5. The government is under a lot of flack by gutting the census and by muzzling federal employed scientists, this would make voters across Canada balk. 6. Canada is fighting off illegal Chinese and Portuguese fishing boats. These libraries contain information that is useful if we're ever going to get reparations from them. 7. No clear motive for doing so. It isn't like big oil has made a giant spill and the conservatives are trying to cover up the environmental damage or anything. 8. I fail to see this being reported on the CBC, and they would be all over this.
- oulipian 13y ago
  Regarding 4 (Newfoundland): the Harper government pretty much pisses off the entire provice on a weekly basis. Harper's conservative base is out west, Newfoundlanders certainly don't think much of him. Peter Penashue was the only Conservative MP voted in here in the last election, and he's gone now, thankfully.
- jbooth 13y ago
  Those are all good reasons not to do this. But "nobody smart would do that" doesn't refute the reporting. You could come up with a similar list of common-sense reasons not to start wars in the middle east but in the US we do that like every 5 years.
  - slurry 13y ago
    Yes, we might call this the "no one would ever fight a land war in Asia" fallacy.
vfclists 13y ago
Sounds like the 21st century equivalent of book burning? Control over knowledge and its dissemination is the primary weapon in the arsenal of the state. Military hardware comes after.
- sixthloginorso 13y ago
  Could be, given that book burning was always more of a symbolic act to intimidate the supporters of the ideas contained in the book rather than just the act of destroying information. What could the purpose of burning records of environmental research centers and monitoring stations possibly be, for what's pocket change to a first world Government? I have just read this, not being from Canada, but this Harper fellow seems to have an internal war with the institutions of the State in charge of the monitoring and protection of the environment and a budget deficit, so he went forth and dismembered the one in charge of water, despite what his advisers said, and what's common sense nowadays, that water ecology is in danger world wide after heavy abuse.
  - ecocentrik 13y ago
    There are countless historical examples of the burning of books and cultural artifacts to suppress ideology and culture. The Catholic Church was a constant destroyer and perverter of opposition cultures for political power. A few examples are: Savonarola's Bonfire of the Vanities, the Spanish Inquisition, the conquest of the new world... The total destruction of information is an act of political conquest. It eliminates the ability to use that information to form an opposition in the future and it delegitimizes any current opposition. I'm seeing at least two other mentions in Canadian press: http://o.canada.com/technology/environment/harper-government-cutting-more-than-100-million-related-to-protection-of-water/ http://o.canada.com/technology/environment/harper-government... http://thetyee.ca/News/2013/12/09/Dismantling-Fishery-Library/ http://thetyee.ca/News/2013/12/09/Dismantling-Fishery-Librar...
  - vfclists 13y ago
    The 'State' here means the Roman state or Babylonian state as some people describe it. The administrative and other publicly funded institutions of countries tend to be confused with the 'State' as they same name is used for both of them. The former is intertwined with and virtually controls the latter. The 'State' was responsible for 2 world wars that killed close to 100 million people in addition to the 30 million or so killed by the Communists (in between the wars) and the 6 million killed in the Holocaust, and explained them under 'ideology'. And it is the same 'State' that is creating enmity and hatred between the 'Christians' and 'Muslims', as a pretext for future genocidal conflicts, a recent example of which is happening in the Central African Republic. Confusing them is to suppose that groups of civil servants sitting around suddenly come up with the idea of killing millions of people and suddenly obtain the resources to accomplish those goals.
dobbsbob 13y ago
Herr Harper also had coast guard bases eliminated that only cost a paltry amount per year and instead blew $20 million on his new weird ministry of religious freedom office nobody wants.
danso 13y ago
So whatever happened to calling the government to get a quote on record about this? Is "trust but verify" not known at HuffPo? Or is Canada on an extended holiday?
- gaius 13y ago
  The former.
steven2012 13y ago
If I understand it correctly, Canada had 3 elections in the span of 5 years, and Harper was elected as the prime minster 3 times in a row. To be more precise, the Conservatives had 2 minority governments and 1 majority government, with Harper being the leader of the Conservatives. Sorry, but just like the Bush era, by voting someone in again and again, and knowing his agenda, it basically legitimizes anything he does. I think Canadians already knew who he was and his behavior, and to imagine him getting voted in 3 times in a row, well, this isn't on Harper, it's on the Canadians for voting him in. It's a real shame though that Harper is such a tyrant that he would allow this destruction of historical data. That's not someone I would want as my leader, and I hope in the next election his party gets voted out. But for that to happen there has to be a better alternative, and apparently so far there hasn't been one.
- yelnatz 13y ago
  As a Canadian voter over the last 5 years this fact is really frustrating. Everyone knows he sucks; Other parties get a lot of hype, and the future seems bright. But when the results come in, Conservatives always win. I just don't get it man.
  - dorfsmay 13y ago
    You don't get it? Split vote on the center/left (liberal, ndp, green), and liberal leaders who lack intellect or charisma or both.
    - throwwit 13y ago
      Exactly... where ~40% of the pop vote leads to a majority government & incontestable omnibus bills.
- rcfox 13y ago
  > To be more precise, the Conservatives had 2 minority governments and 1 majority government ... And all it took was some country-wide election fraud[1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Canadian_federal_election_voter_suppression_scandal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Canadian_federal_election_...

98 points by triplesec 13y ago

draq 13y ago

So data and information are irreversibly lost? In the Age of Internet?

triplesec 13y ago
Apparently so. It's not an article with a response from the government agents responsible or with first-hand detail on why or how the digitisation didn't happen, and why universities or a foundation didn't take on the load, or even the argument about what reasoning led to the closures in the first place, but if even half true, it's severe enough to be worth looking into.
sami36 13y ago
Not all data & information created is meant to be saved till eternity.Plus, some of it comes with privacy implications, even when dealing with documents pertaining to the deceased.
throwwit 13y ago
Next best thing is to bury truth with falsehoods... http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/02/08/crtc-may-ease-ban-on-broadcasting-false-news/ http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/02/08/crtc-may-ease-ban-on-broa... This story doesn't belong on HN IMO. But it is a pretty bad trend, among many others, that does deserve some attention.
pjc50 13y ago
In some ways, it's even easier for information to be lost in the digital age; unless it's in regular use, it can end up on crumbling tapes in an obsolete format that cannot be understood. There are various underfunded efforts to recover and transcribe old NASA data that suffer from this.

Asparagirl 13y ago

This phenomenon is certainly not limited to the Harper government, nor to Canada. Just the other day, Franklin county, North Carolina destroyed boxes of priceless 19th century records, including court records, by bringing them to an animal shelter to be burned. Photo from Twitter: http://pic.twitter.com/ZjEPcajo8U http://pic.twitter.com/ZjEPcajo8U Here's the unbelievable part: the local historical society and local genealogists volunteered to re-house and rescue the records FOR FREE and the county still said no, refused to let them examine the records, and destroyed them anyway! Full story here: http://stumblingintheshadowsofgiants.wordpress.com/2013/12/21/160-year-old-documents-intentionally-destroyed-in-franklin-county-n-c/ http://stumblingintheshadowsofgiants.wordpress.com/2013/12/2...

throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago
Not exactly the "full story" when it omits the facts that support differing conclusions. That's sort of the opposite of "full story". Some moderating details: * Documents were damaged by a mold that is hazardous to health * State archivist claims the documents were of "low historical value" * Archivist claims some were confidential, and couldn't be legally released to 3rd party http://www.wral.com/historians-lament-destruction-of-franklin-county-records/13229922/ http://www.wral.com/historians-lament-destruction-of-frankli...
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- Asparagirl 13y ago
  Those "moderating details" are inane. The Heritage Society was willing to take the risk of storing and possibly digitizing the documents, some of which were moldy and some of which were not. Indeed, members of the Heritage Society were the ones providing the initial manpower (and masks and sanitizer) to clean out the building basement where they were found, including the broken furniture and muck. If they're willing to take documents in that condition, having already seen it first hand, why should the state be paternalistic about it? Furthermore, some of the records were clearly NOT of limited value: "The following is a description of the early investigation, accounted by Ms. Torrent of Franklin County Heritage Society; “Immediately we found Chattel Mortgages from the 1890′s, court dockets from post civil war to prohibition, delayed birth certificate applications with original supporting documents (letters from Grandma, bible records, birth certificates, etc), county receipts on original letterhead from businesses long extinct, poll record books, original school, road and bridge bonds denoting the building of the county, law books still in their original paper wrappings, etc., etc. etc. The list goes on and on. Our original feelings of shock that the records were there and in such bad condition led to feelings of joy that they were still there and that someone had thought to retain them for us to discover so many years later. Each book or box opened produced a new treasure. A letter, stamped and in the original envelope, from a Franklin County soldier serving in France during the First World War asking the court to be sure his sister and his estate was looked after while he was away. A naturalization paper from the late 1890s for an immigrant from Russia escaping the tyranny of the Czar. A document from County Commissioners in the early years of road building requesting another county repair their road as it entered the county. Lists of county employees and what their wages were in 1900. A court document paying the court reporter who took the depositions in the “Sweat Ward” case, (Ward beheaded a man in the 1930s and later became the last man to be lynched in the county). Postcards, county bills, audits, cancelled checks, newspaper clippings, store ads from long gone businesses. Boxes and boxes of court cases covering the years of prohibition, a docket from an individual accused of running a “baudy house” within the city limits, a photo tucked now and then inside a book, one of the courthouse unseen since the 1920s. Again, nothing was in any order and many of the boxes were combinations of records from many decades." What an amazing, amazing collection of documents! But sorry, it's all ashes now.

throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago

"Many scientists have compared the war on environmental science to the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe. Hutchings muses, "you look at the rise of certain political parties in the 1930s and have to ask how could that happen and how did they adopt such extreme ideologies so quickly, and how could that happen in a democracy today?" Well of course it's just like the rise of fascism. And the "knowledge massacre" is, as the word denotes, essentially a genocide. Thank you, HN.

cstross 13y ago
Here, let me jog your memory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik (Apologies, but Godwin's Law seems unavoidable in this context. Yes, here's a historic example of a no-shit Fascist party who fired lots of academics because of their ethnicity or their field of expertise and replaced them with a whole fabricated fake "science" that was ideologically acceptable to them. Note: burning libraries was explicitly part of the program.) It's excessive to call Harper's government "fascist" (although Harper has prior form for hard-right politics: http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2011/04/19/03610.html http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2011/04/19/0... ), but this is indisputably a tactic used by fascist movements.
- throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago
  Holy shit I just got a reply from Charlie Stross! Honestly, I don't see the parallel at all. GoC isn't trying to rewrite science: it's closing scientific institutions (minor ones) as part of budget cuts. Certainly it's not doing so out of a nationalist campaign against scientists of a specific race, which is what defines fascism (isn't it?). Arguably it's a politicization of science, if it's intended to suppress climate science; but that has nothing to do with fascism, it's just bad policy.
  - sp332 13y ago
    Fascism is a kind of authoritarianism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism It's extremely conservative but not necessarily racist.

3pt14159 13y ago

Take this article with a grain of salt. You normally can't quietly and quickly shut these types of things down. It would be on the CBC and especially something like this would be very hard to pull off. Here is why: 1. Obvious environmental concerns about oceans and fisheries. 2. The conservative base is pro-government regulation of fisheries. 3. The conservative base is sentimental, and destroying first copies of anything would piss them off. 4. Newfoundlanders (man is it hard not to write "Newfies") gave up a shit ton of prosperity after joining Canada by having the government come in and regulate their fish stocks. (To be fair, they didn't have much choice. If they had kept going there would be nothing left in 5 to 10 years. No I'm not exaggerating it was fucking bad.) For the conservative government to do something that widely flies in the face of that would be to piss off an entire province. 5. The government is under a lot of flack by gutting the census and by muzzling federal employed scientists, this would make voters across Canada balk. 6. Canada is fighting off illegal Chinese and Portuguese fishing boats. These libraries contain information that is useful if we're ever going to get reparations from them. 7. No clear motive for doing so. It isn't like big oil has made a giant spill and the conservatives are trying to cover up the environmental damage or anything. 8. I fail to see this being reported on the CBC, and they would be all over this.

oulipian 13y ago
Regarding 4 (Newfoundland): the Harper government pretty much pisses off the entire provice on a weekly basis. Harper's conservative base is out west, Newfoundlanders certainly don't think much of him. Peter Penashue was the only Conservative MP voted in here in the last election, and he's gone now, thankfully.
jbooth 13y ago
Those are all good reasons not to do this. But "nobody smart would do that" doesn't refute the reporting. You could come up with a similar list of common-sense reasons not to start wars in the middle east but in the US we do that like every 5 years.
- slurry 13y ago
  Yes, we might call this the "no one would ever fight a land war in Asia" fallacy.

vfclists 13y ago

Sounds like the 21st century equivalent of book burning? Control over knowledge and its dissemination is the primary weapon in the arsenal of the state. Military hardware comes after.

sixthloginorso 13y ago
Could be, given that book burning was always more of a symbolic act to intimidate the supporters of the ideas contained in the book rather than just the act of destroying information. What could the purpose of burning records of environmental research centers and monitoring stations possibly be, for what's pocket change to a first world Government? I have just read this, not being from Canada, but this Harper fellow seems to have an internal war with the institutions of the State in charge of the monitoring and protection of the environment and a budget deficit, so he went forth and dismembered the one in charge of water, despite what his advisers said, and what's common sense nowadays, that water ecology is in danger world wide after heavy abuse.
- ecocentrik 13y ago
  There are countless historical examples of the burning of books and cultural artifacts to suppress ideology and culture. The Catholic Church was a constant destroyer and perverter of opposition cultures for political power. A few examples are: Savonarola's Bonfire of the Vanities, the Spanish Inquisition, the conquest of the new world... The total destruction of information is an act of political conquest. It eliminates the ability to use that information to form an opposition in the future and it delegitimizes any current opposition. I'm seeing at least two other mentions in Canadian press: http://o.canada.com/technology/environment/harper-government-cutting-more-than-100-million-related-to-protection-of-water/ http://o.canada.com/technology/environment/harper-government... http://thetyee.ca/News/2013/12/09/Dismantling-Fishery-Library/ http://thetyee.ca/News/2013/12/09/Dismantling-Fishery-Librar...
- vfclists 13y ago
  The 'State' here means the Roman state or Babylonian state as some people describe it. The administrative and other publicly funded institutions of countries tend to be confused with the 'State' as they same name is used for both of them. The former is intertwined with and virtually controls the latter. The 'State' was responsible for 2 world wars that killed close to 100 million people in addition to the 30 million or so killed by the Communists (in between the wars) and the 6 million killed in the Holocaust, and explained them under 'ideology'. And it is the same 'State' that is creating enmity and hatred between the 'Christians' and 'Muslims', as a pretext for future genocidal conflicts, a recent example of which is happening in the Central African Republic. Confusing them is to suppose that groups of civil servants sitting around suddenly come up with the idea of killing millions of people and suddenly obtain the resources to accomplish those goals.

dobbsbob 13y ago

Herr Harper also had coast guard bases eliminated that only cost a paltry amount per year and instead blew $20 million on his new weird ministry of religious freedom office nobody wants.

danso 13y ago

So whatever happened to calling the government to get a quote on record about this? Is "trust but verify" not known at HuffPo? Or is Canada on an extended holiday?

gaius 13y ago
The former.

steven2012 13y ago

If I understand it correctly, Canada had 3 elections in the span of 5 years, and Harper was elected as the prime minster 3 times in a row. To be more precise, the Conservatives had 2 minority governments and 1 majority government, with Harper being the leader of the Conservatives. Sorry, but just like the Bush era, by voting someone in again and again, and knowing his agenda, it basically legitimizes anything he does. I think Canadians already knew who he was and his behavior, and to imagine him getting voted in 3 times in a row, well, this isn't on Harper, it's on the Canadians for voting him in. It's a real shame though that Harper is such a tyrant that he would allow this destruction of historical data. That's not someone I would want as my leader, and I hope in the next election his party gets voted out. But for that to happen there has to be a better alternative, and apparently so far there hasn't been one.

yelnatz 13y ago
As a Canadian voter over the last 5 years this fact is really frustrating. Everyone knows he sucks; Other parties get a lot of hype, and the future seems bright. But when the results come in, Conservatives always win. I just don't get it man.
- dorfsmay 13y ago
  You don't get it? Split vote on the center/left (liberal, ndp, green), and liberal leaders who lack intellect or charisma or both.
  - throwwit 13y ago
    Exactly... where ~40% of the pop vote leads to a majority government & incontestable omnibus bills.
rcfox 13y ago
> To be more precise, the Conservatives had 2 minority governments and 1 majority government ... And all it took was some country-wide election fraud[1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Canadian_federal_election_voter_suppression_scandal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Canadian_federal_election_...