Indigenous peoples and fishermen fighting California's Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative are part of an accelerating global movement against what activists say are thinly disguised attempts to fulfill the agenda of corporate globalization and the privatization of public trust resources.
In California, fishermen, environmentalists and Indian Tribes are pitted against MLPA officials and corporate environmental NGO representatives who are imposing marine protected areas along the coast from the Oregon border to the U.S.-Mexico border.
The rights of indigenous people and fishing families are rarely considered in the creation of these no-fishing and -gathering zones, be they installed in the Chagros Islands by the United Kingdom, the Sea of Cortez by the Mexican government or along the California coast under Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's MLPA.
Ironically, Leon Panetta, the current CIA Director, has been one of the strongest and outspoken supporters of California's MLPA. Panetta, when he led the Joint Oceans Commission, praised the MLPA for being "an inclusive, regional public process that involves sport and commercial fishermen, marine scientists, conservationists, divers, kayakers and educators" in an opinion piece in the San Jose Mercury News on August 30, 2008. However, far from being inclusive, the widely contested initiative excluded tribal scientists from the science advisory panels and failed to appoint any tribal representatives to the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Forces until 2010.
Frankie Joe Myers, Yurok Tribe member and Coastal Justice Coalition activist, exposed the refusal to incorporate tribal science and said that institutional racism underlies the fake science of the MLPA process during a direct action protest by a coalition of 50-plus tribes and their allies in Fort Bragg, California, on July 21, 2010.
"The MLPA process completely disregards tribal gathering rights and only permits discussion of commercial and recreational harvest," Myers said. "The whole process is inherently flawed by institutionalized racism. It doesn't recognize tribes as political entities, or tribal biologists as legitimate scientists."
Kashia Pomo Tribe wins victory in defense of gathering rights
Fortunately, the Kashia Pomo Tribe in Sonoma County won a major victory in defense of their tribal fishing and gathering rights on February 3, 2011. The California Fish and Game Commission in Sacramento voted to allow the Tribe to continue gathering and conducting ceremonies in a marine protected area at Stewarts Point. The decision made permanent a temporary provision that the Commission approved last year to allow the Tribe to continue fishing and gathering off the site for one year.
"Our people believe we first walked onto the Earth right there at Stewarts Point, and a lot of our traditions are passed down along that coast," said Reno Franklin, vice chair of the tribe, as quoted in today's article by Matt Weiser in the Sacramento Bee (http://www.sacbee.com/capitolandcalifornia).
In addition, the Fish and Game Commission on February 3 approved a unified marine protected area plan on the North Coast supported by many local stakeholders with provisions allowing for continued ceremonial and subsistence gathering by Tribes. Leaders of the Yurok Tribe and other North Coast Tribes have met with Natural Resources Resources Secretary John Laird to discuss the protection of their rights under the initiative.
The MLPA, overseen by oil industry, real estate, marina development and other corporate operatives, does nothing to protect ocean waters from water pollution, oil drilling and spills, corporate aquaculture, wave energy development, habitat destruction, military testing and human impacts on the ocean other than fishing and gathering.
The Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, a private corporation, funds the unpopular initiative. The David and Lucile Packard Foundation (Hewlitt-Packard) has contributed $8.2 million to fund MLPA hearings through the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, while the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (Intel) has donated $7.4 million to the widely contested process.
The Laguna Beach-based Marisla Foundation, founded by Getty Oil heiress Anne Getty Earhart, gave another $3 million. The Keith Campbell Foundation contributed $1.2 million to the MLPA through the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation. Finally, the Annenberg Foundation contributed $200,000.
African Union backs Mauritius over purported marine reserve
Around the world, similar marine initiatives are also under fire. The African Union recently backed Mauritius against the United Kingdom in the dispute over the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean. Secret cables between the U.S. and British governments released to the Guardian by Wikileaks disclosed how the "marine protected area" supported by Greenpeace and other corporate environmental groups was installed to deny the native Chagossians the right of return and allow alleged CIA interrogation of terror suspects on the U.S. military base at Diego Garcia.
In January the Assembly of the Union, meeting in Ethiopia, passed a resolution to "support fully the action of the government of the Republic of Mauritius at the United Nations General Assembly with a view to enabling Mauritius to exercise its sovereignty over the Archipelago." The union noted with "grave concern" that the United Kingdom had established a marine protected area around the Chagos Archipelago on November 1, 2010, "in a manner that was inconsistent with its international legal obligations, thereby further impeding the exercise by the Republic of Mauritius of its sovereignty over the Archipelago."
On December 20, Mauritius initiated proceedings against the United Kingdom over the legality of the proposed marine protected area, invoking the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and plans to challenge the move under other international law provisions.
"We do not regret the removal of the population, since removal was necessary for the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) to fulfill its 'strategic purpose,' " British Foreign Commonwealth Commissioner Colin Roberts wrote to his U.S. counterpart in May 2009. "Establishing a marine reserve might, indeed, be the most effective long-term way to prevent any of the Chagos Islands' former inhabitants or their descendants from resettling in the BIOT."
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband issued an embarrassing apology to members of Parliament in February 2008, admitting that two planes carrying prisoners of the U.S. war on terror had landed on the British-owned island of Diego Garcia in 2002 on their way to foreign territory as part of the "American extraordinary rendition program."
The marine reserve, the largest in the world, was pushed through by the U.K. government, the Obama administration and nine prominent environmental NGOs, ranging from the Pew Charitable Trust to Greenpeace, despite outrage by the Chagossians and human rights groups throughout the world.
"The fish have more rights than us," said Roch Evenor, secretary of the UK-based Chagos Support Association, who left the islands when he was four years old.
Zapatistas defend indigenous fishing rights in Colorado Delta
In Mexico, indigenous communities are struggling against fishing restrictions imposed by President Felipe Calderon's government. In 2007 the Cucapa Tribe of Baja California organized a Zapatista Peace Camp with Subcomandante Marcos and the Mayans that ran from February through May in support of their right to fish for corvina and other species in a federal marine reserve, the Biosphere Reserve of the Upper Gulf of California, in the Colorado River. Indigenous activists from throughout the U.S. and Latin America successfully defended tribal members against government harassment.
"The Cucapa are doing the same thing they have been doing for 9,000 years," Marcos said. "The Cucapa and other Indian people called for this camp in defense of nature so they can fish without detentions or being put in jail."
The marine reserve, rather than addressing the massive water diversions of water that led to fish declines in the Sea of Cortez and the reduction of the Colorado river at its mouth to a dry bed or trickle, penalizes the greatest defenders of the river and its ecosystem, the Cucapa.
It is eerily similar to the corrupt MLPA process, which does not address water pollution, habitat degradation, the export of Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta water, and other factors that have led to declines in Central Valley salmon and Bay-Delta Estuary fish in recent years. Rather than going after the real reasons for fish declines, these questionable marine protected areas target the most outspoken opponents of water diversions, water pollution, habitat degradation and overfishing.
Well, let's see what's going on as we head into this weekend:
• Even more pushback against the cone of silence, from Timm Herdt of the Ventura County Star, and the SacBee editorial board. It's not often Calitics lines up with mainstream journalism so neatly.
• Our friends at the Communications Workers of America (CWA) seem like they may be headed for a strike against AT&T. Hopefully the situation will be remedied before it gets to that point, and all will turn out well.
• The State Bar apparently is not backing down on having their state convention at the Manchester Hyatt in November. Doug Manchester, the owner of said Hyatt, gave $125,000 to the Yes on Prop 8 Campaign. Other groups have moved their confrences out of the hall, some at great expense, but the Bar apparently got a great deal and won't take a stand for equality over a bargain. San Francisco's LGBT Bar association, Balif, will be boycotting the event. You can check their letter here.
• The Governor nominated Karen Douglas to be the new Energy Commission chair. Douglas, a Democrat, was previously a commissioner and the director of the California Climate Initiative at Environmental Defense. Seems like a pretty solid pick from Mr. Post-Partisan.
• The LA Times takes a look at whether a true banking behemoth, Bank of America, can save itself. Despite the fact that it is ridiculously large, it's still an outstanding question. George Soros has been saying that the most fiscally prudent response would be to simply do what the Swedes successfully did a few years back: nationalize the banks.
One side effect of Leon Panetta's nomination to head the CIA is a growing lament from some quarters about the impact on reform in California. Panetta was the co-chair and leading public voice of California Forward, a centrist group dominated by business interests (there are two labor people on the board) and promoting Broderist attempts to fix California's problems that, by and large, avoided the core issues.
Unfortunately, Panetta's crusade as a reformer of California's dysfunctional government had only just begun. And his departure will leave a large void very difficult to fill, if not impossible....
[California Forward]'s early and outspoken support for Prop. 11 was particularly important because Panetta is a Democrat. Most of the Democratic establishment opposed the reform, fighting to keep the party's gerrymandering power in the California Legislature that it almost always controls.
As we tried to explain many times here, Prop 11 was a solution in search of a problem. Legislatively-drawn districts weren't the reason for the state's budget crisis, since most Californians have chosen to self-segregate by party. Nor does Prop 11 deal with the Republican extremism that is inherent to their movement. Funny how none of these "reformers" ever seem to call out Republicans who bear the primary responsibility for the budget crisis.
Panetta's other proposals follow this model, and espouse a centrism that veers at times into neo-Hooverism, a bipartisanship that in practice means implementing a Republican agenda. It's precisely the opposite of what California needs at this time. As Skelton described it back in June Panetta's plans included:
* Requiring new or expanded programs -- whether created by the Legislature or ballot initiative -- to contain a specific funding source. That could be either new taxes or money gleaned from another program that is eliminated.
* Regularly examining spending programs to determine whether they should be revised, reduced or rubbed out.
Skelton also mentions California Forward's support of open primaries, which courts have persistently ruled as unconstitutional and seem designed to weaken Democrats' ability to block Republican shock doctrines, not provide better reforms for the state.
What California really needs is loosened term limits, an end to the 2/3rds rule, and new tax revenues that solve the structural revenue shortfall. The centrist reforms Panetta championed won't get us where we need to go.
None of this is to say Leon Panetta is a bad guy - although I've not met him, I have known many people affiliated with his Panetta Institute of Public Policy at CSUMB who attest to his devotion to good government. I don't doubt that he was genuinely trying to improve the state. But his proposals were wide of the mark and were designed to satisfy a centrist ideology, not to make this state work again.
I hope Panetta is a success at the CIA - god knows that place needs reform. But his departure from the California reform movement may not be a disaster. Instead it may enable more fundamental changes, that get at the true problems we face, to get a wider audience.
The Governor is "restarting" budget talks today. Of course, "restarting" should read "using the same failed process that cannot possibly be successful." The Governor vetoed the only game in town because he's controlled by strings held by the Chamber of Commerce, who suddenly looked favorably on the virtues of bankrupting the state, and Arnold had to follow. The SacBee ed board puts it more judiciously.
Democrats agreed to a 2 percent cut in welfare grants, and some, but not all, of the environmental exemptions. They also have insisted that the governor first negotiate with unions before attempting to furlough state employees and eliminate some paid holidays.
In an interview and op-ed in The Bee Tuesday, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg suggested the deal blew up not because of policy differences, but because of political pressure placed on Schwarzenegger. Steinberg says the governor got "cold feet" over the Democrats' plan to raise taxes and fees through a majority vote.
There may be some truth to this. On Tuesday, the California Chamber of Commerce issued a statement urging the governor to veto the Democrats' plan, saying it included "unconstitutional and discriminatory tax increases." Since the chamber is one of the governor's few political allies, their stern opposition to increasing taxes by a simple majority vote may well have led Schwarzenegger to backpedal.
The ed board goes on to criticize Democratic leaders for not wanting to cut enough. You know, I thought a mid-year budget deal was designed to fix the budget for the current fiscal year. If we have two-year budget cycles now, it's news to me. I understand the logic of a two-year cycle, but the desire to fill an 18-month gap in January puzzles me and seems designed to further more draconian cuts.
And the continued ignoring of the elephant in the room and casting this as a failure of both sides to compromise is truly absurd. There has been nothing but compromise coming from the Democrats, not just now but for years. "Bipartisanship" has always meant "do whatever Republicans want" to the Very Serious Media. George Skelton today is lamenting the loss of Leon Panetta, as if a guy telling lawmakers they should have more drinks together is the answer to every problem the state faces.
This isn't rocket science. Lawmakers aren't allowed to do their jobs. We elect a representative government along majority votes, and them load them down with rules that prevent majority rule. It doesn't take a genius - or even Leon Panetta! - to fix that. Just an acknowledgement of the problem.
(Incidentally, a judge threw out the lawsuit from the Howard Jarvis crowd attempting to rule the work-around budget unconstitutional, since it was vetoed and therefore not germane. If it comes to such a work-around again, however, expect more lawsuits.)
It's more than a little surprising to me that the choice for CIA Director of Leon Panetta, who I considered a card-carrying Villager if there ever was one, is ruffling such feathers inside official Washington, particularly official Democratic Washington. At first blush this looked like whining about not being informed, but it seems like there's more there. Here's the relevant section from the LA Times:
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who this week begins her tenure as the first female chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said today that she was not consulted on the choice and indicated she might oppose it.
"I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA director," Feinstein said. "My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time." [...]
A senior aide to Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), outgoing chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that the senator "would have concerns" about a Panetta nomination.
Rockefeller "thinks very highly of Panetta," the aide said. "But he's puzzled by the selection. He has concerns because he has always believed that the director of CIA needs to be someone with significant operational intelligence experience, and someone outside the political realm."
Most of the intelligence professionals at the top over the past eight years had plenty of "experience" and that didn't work out too well. The one who came from the political arena, Porter Goss (who was a former spy), wasn't so objectionable to Dianne Feinstein - I mean she voted to confirm him, after all. Of course, he was a Republican, which makes everything OK.
But I don't think this is about Panetta's lack of experience; it's his wealth of it, which presages a change in culture inside the agency.
Panetta's selection suggests that Obama intends to shake up the agency, which has had little public accounting of its role in detaining top terror suspects and transferring others to regimes known to use torture, a procedure known as extraordinary rendition.
The CIA, which denies subjecting detainees to torture, is part of a 16-agency intelligence community whose annual budget now exceeds $47.5 billion. The agency keeps its own budget and number of employees secret. Its successes, too, are mostly kept secret while some of its failures reach front pages.
Panetta has suggested that Obama could do much to signal a break with Bush administration policies by signing executive orders during his first 100 days that ban the use of torture in interrogations and close the Guantanamo Bay prison.
"Issuing executive orders on issues such as prohibiting torture or closing Guantanamo Bay would make clear that his administration will do things differently," Panetta wrote Nov. 9 in a regular column he published in his local newspaper, the Monterey (Calif.) County Herald [...]
"He will be an outsider and I think the president wants an outsider's perspective on the CIA," said Lee Hamilton, a former Indiana congressman and a former chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence who heads the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. "The intelligence community has lost a lot of confidence with the American people and the Congress. I'm talking about 9/11, the Iraq war."
It's that he's an outsider with enough institutional power to actually make changes, and the moral compass to make those decisions based not on burying the past but rooting it out. THAT'S what has DiFi and Jello Jay spooked. In fact, they wanted Michael Hayden's right-hand man to take over (on the flip...)
I'm having some computer issues, but I have been able to notice that Leon Panetta, former White House Chief of Staff under Clinton, has been tapped for the CIA Director position. Digby references this article from Panetta from this year:
Even though we now know that there were intelligence officials who questioned the assertion, few leaders were willing to challenge this argument for war because they knew it might undermine public support for the president's decision to invade Iraq.
More recently, President Bush vetoed a law that would require the CIA and all the intelligence services to abide by the same rules on torture as contained in the U.S. Army Field Manual [...]
all forms of torture have long been prohibited by American law and international treaties respected by Republican and Democratic presidents alike.
Our forefathers prohibited "cruel and unusual punishment" because that was how tyrants and despots ruled in the 1700s. They wanted an America that was better than that. Torture is illegal, immoral, dangerous and counterproductive. And yet, the president is using fear to trump the law.
I hope he gets cracking on putting the CIA under the Army Field Manual. That would be a very good start.
As a side note, Panetta has been leading one of the most insufferable organizations in California's history, a high Broderist effort called California Forward, which thinks the biggest problem in the state is that lawmakers from both sides don't have drinks together anymore, or something. At least Panetta's influence on the state will be lessened. He's not my favorite guy by any stretch, but if he can manage to not have the CIA kidnapping and torturing anymore he can hold his head up high.
"I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA Director. I know nothing about this, other than what I've read," said Senator Feinstein, who will chair the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in the 111th Congress.
"My position has consistently been that I believe the Agency is best-served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time."
I know, I know, it's too easy. But what better headline can one come up with to assess the ridiculous and ineffective solutions proposed by Leon Panetta's high-powered, high cost group of high Broderists to solve the budget crisis?
* Requiring new or expanded programs -- whether created by the Legislature or ballot initiative -- to contain a specific funding source. That could be either new taxes or money gleaned from another program that is eliminated.
* Regularly examining spending programs to determine whether they should be revised, reduced or rubbed out.
* Also regularly reviewing tax loopholes to see if they're still needed: "Treat tax breaks like spending."
* Creating a rainy-day fund fed by unexpected tax gushes. When revenue dwindles, dip into the fund. Or use it for one-time public works projects or even tax rebates.
* Modernizing the tax system "to reflect the contemporary economy." Extend the sales tax to services while reducing the overall tax rate.
* Focusing on multiyear spending plans, rather than merely passing one-year budgets.
* Granting more power and responsibility to local governments.
* Changing the two-thirds majority vote requirement for budget passage. It wasn't suggested what the vote should be, but any change must be tied to "other reforms designed to improve performance, accountability and public trust."
Nowhere is the structural revenue shortfall discussed. Instead Panetta and friends take Republican framing to the budget, believing that the problem is too much spending. Nowhere are the state's pressing problems of underfunded education, health care, and public transportation discussed. It's as if those issues don't exist - as if this is 1985 and gas is at $1.20, a year at UC at $2,000, and health insurance plentiful and affordable.
The California Forward proposals are as backward-looking as anything we've yet seen, an effort to continue obsolete 20th century assumptions, an effort to avoid confronting 21st century realities.
Of course, it should come as no surprise that the group also embraces the unnecessary redistricting reform - an inherently pro-Republican proposal that should suggest where this group's allegiances actually lie.
Skelton takes their bait in his column, and argues - against all evidence - that the problem is simply that Republicans and Democrats won't talk to each other:
The reformers are prepared to take their proposals to the ballot in 2010 if they're ignored by the Legislature. But they're hoping the lawmakers will adopt at least incremental changes. A good time to start will be during this summer's budget negotiations. The reforms could "give Republicans a little comfort on spending and how tax dollars are used," Panetta theorizes.
But first the politicians have to start talking to each other.
Here's a suggestion: Turn off the BlackBerrys and cellphones.
Better yet, lock them in a desk. Look people in the eye. Smile. Sit down and deal.
This is ridiculous to the point of not understanding California politics. Someone as experienced as Skelton ought to know the real problem is with ideology and the rules. The 2/3 rule allows far-right Republicans to hold the state hostage to their rabid anti-tax views, which are not representative of the state's public opinion. It's not gerrymandering that enables this, or a refusal to talk - but the very real fact that the moment a Republican deviates from the firm anti-tax line the Club for Growth, the Howard Jarvis Association, the CRA and even the CRP will come down on that legislator like a ton of bricks. His or her primary opponent will be well-funded and his or her hopes of re-election and higher office are over.
How does Skelton not understand this?
Skelton, Panetta, and the other high Broderists wish it were 1974 all over again. It's not. It's a shame what remains of our state's media prefers nostalgic flights of fancy to realistic assessments of present-day issues.
"The principal dysfunction of Sacramento," Panetta says, "is similar to what's happening in Washington: the inability of the elected leadership to come together and arrive at necessary compromises for solutions to the problems we face."
And how do the politicians get prodded into doing that? "Those who are elected have to be convinced that governing is more important than winning. They have to believe that good government is good politics. If they don't, they'll keep on fighting in trench warfare."
I enjoy pixies and unicorns as well, but "magic bipartisanship" isn't the $16 million dollar answer here. It's actually quite a lot more simple.
• Eliminate the requirements that stalemate government and restrict the elected majority from doing the business of the state, in particular the 2/3 requirement for budgeting and taxes.
• Watch the productivity.
Most Californians are not in the mythical center; this is a fiction used to explain irresponsible government. If the state legislature would be allowed to do their job, suddenly this desperate desire for bipartisanship would melt away, and the party in power would rise or fall on the consequences of their actions. As it stands they're not allowed to have any consequences, and we all suffer.
Panetta and his compatriots offer the same warmed-over stew of redistricting reform (please, do redistrict Santa Monica and downtown LA and San Francisco and Marin County and make them competitive. Have fun with that) and open primaries (yes, because Louisiana is a bipartisan love-fest). Now, that doesn't mean he doesn't have some ideas that would at least have an impact.
Says Panetta: "We're not interested in walking off a cliff -- or simply issuing reports and letting them sit someplace. Our goal is to focus on reforms that we can, in fact, put in place."
But he adds that everything will be considered: Tax restructuring, including Proposition 13. School financing, including Proposition 98 guarantees. The two-thirds vote requirement for budget passage. (Why not at least return to how it was before 1962 when a budget that didn't increase spending by more than 5% could be passed on a majority vote?) Spending limits. (California had one before voters eviscerated it about 20 years ago.) Initiative reforms that would control ballot box budgeting.
Some of these are great, some not so much. But it's so clear that California legislators aren't allowed to do their jobs, and as long as that remains the case, nothing else will get done. And wrapping it up in this language of "bipartisanship" is almost criminally stupid. When you can't get yacht sales tax avoidance stricken by the minority party, when looking at tax breaks is treated like some kind of heresy, when "Budget Nun" Elizabeth Hill finally gives up because her policy prescriptions sit on a shelf, your problem isn't going to be cured by sitting in a circle and gazing longingly at one another. It's going to be solved by having a government that reflects the popular will.
You can mail my $16 million check to the Calitics home office.
