Because They Ain't White

Terror victims receive little government aid: report

While the old Reform Party and its incarnations as the Canadian Alliance and now the Conservative party of Canada, made victims rights a key in their law and order platform, the majority of the victims lobby are of course white. And they speak English. Others need not apply.

Especially those who face state terror. Which was why Maher Arar had to sue the Canadian Government.



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Jamestown; the beginning of Globalization

Recent archeology at Jamestown reveals that globalization begins with the creation of the colony. They were producing trade goods for the indigenous peoples, who had already had contact with other explorers previously.

A trade economy was being introduced into North America with Jamestown. Export trade would come later with the growing of tobacco, but the original settlement was reliant upon production of trade goods with the native population.

Which may be why the indigenous peoples were not later enslaved for the tobacco farms since they were trading partners.

Instead African slaves were used because of their experience growing tobacco like crops.

And thus Globalization is the outgrowth of the Jamestown colony and its role in Atlantic History.

Historians Eye Jamestown's Legacy on 400th Anniversary

JEFFREY BROWN: And we explore our growing understanding of Jamestown now with Karen Kupperman, professor of history at New York University. She's written widely about early American settlements and is author of "The Jamestown Project."

Karen Kupperman, who were these people? And what does the new archaeology tell us about their experience?

KAREN KUPPERMAN, History Professor, New York University: Well, as the piece said, there were around about 100 men and boys. There were several boys at Jamestown, and they played very important roles, actually.

And they came, I think, principally to set up a trade post. I think that was what they were hoping to do. I don't think the English initially thought in terms of colonization. Colonization was very, very expensive. And in the English case, every expedition, every ship had to be paid for by private investment.

So the investors were looking to find a product in America that they could get in trade with the Indians and keep a very small, permanent contingent here, I think.

JEFFREY BROWN: And what about their experience is new? What has changed in our thinking, in your thinking about this?

KAREN KUPPERMAN: Well, the archaeology is extremely important, because it shows us, as Bill Kelso said, that the colonists are, from the beginning, engaged in really purposeful activity. They're making products that the Indians want. They brought sheets of copper with them, and they're actually making items to Indian specifications.

And the archaeologists have not only found evidence of that within the fort, but they've also found Jamestown made items in Powhatan's capital, at Werowocomoco, for example. So there's evidence of all kinds of activity that's going on. So they really are, through trial and error, trying to build the kind of economic base that the company was asking them to.

JEFFREY BROWN: Annette Gordon-Reed is professor of law at New York Law School and professor of history at Rutgers University. She's the author of "The Hemings Family of Monticello: An American Story of Slavery.

" Annette Gordon-Reed, what jumps out at you about it, particularly picking up on that, the economic seed here that was born at Jamestown?

ANNETTE GORDON-REED, New York University Law School: Well, really, in 1619, of course, you get the first Africans who come to Jamestown. And there are different theories about what their first role was, but certainly it was the beginning of Africans being involved in the cultivation of tobacco, which, of course, begins the slave society in Virginia, and that spreads across the United States, or what was not the United States at that time, but in the American colonies.

Premiere of NOVA documentary on Werowocomoco/Jamestown

Work of William and Mary students and faculty figure prominently in “Pocahontas Revealed,” an episode of the PBS program NOVA, to be broadcast Tuesday, May 8.

“Pocahontas Revealed” focuses on discoveries and revelations that have come to light since the 2003 discovery of Werowocomoco, home of Pocahontas and the capital town of her father, Powhatan. Excavation of the York River Werowocomoco site, on the farm of Bob and Lynn Ripley, continues to yield new information about Powhatan, his people, and their relationship with the Jamestown colonists.

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Air India and the Conservatives

The Air India tragedy lays at the feet of our last Conservative government under then PM Brian Mulroney. A not unimportant political fact.

It was then covered up by the Liberals, whom were indebted to the RCMP for being the political guard dogs of the State; burning barns in Quebec, deporting Leonard Peltier, etc. etc.

And while the gnu Conservative government put in place the public inquiry, they had no choice after Bob Rae's report to the Liberal government on their screw up. And like their Liberal predecessors they continue to cover up for the RCMP.

But it was the Conservative government of the day that screwed up. Chickens, home, roost.

From day one the Air India bombing was seen as an Indian affair, not a Canadian one. The racism that led to this tragedy and its cover up is now finally seeing the light of day.

The fact Mulroney first called Gandhi to express condolences on the loss of life on the plane when most of the passengers were Canadians has long been criticised.

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Racist Canadian Mounted Police

The RCMP has always had a racial prejudice against Indians....even before the Air India bombing.

The Air-India bombing was viewed for too long as an Indian affair instead of a Canadian tragedy, Bob Rae said Sunday, in his first public comments since new testimony revealed a warning that terrorists were targeting the doomed flight.

That racism impacts how they treat Aboriginal peoples as well as Indian immigrants, and other visible minorities, even today.


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We Are Not Crooks

Now here is a stunning bit of logic from our law and order government in Ottawa.

It reminds me of Richard Nixon's famous quote; "I Am Not A Crook."

As we all know innocent people have nothing to hide.

An official from the Prime Minister's Office recently followed a journalist off Parliament Hill, then approached the reporter to challenge a story about the PMO's refusal to disclose how Harper's travelling hairdresser is being paid.

The official told the reporter three times that accountability measures are for crooks, not honest people.

It appears to be a theme in the Harper government.

While stressing the need for clear rules and transparency for others, the cabinet continues to tightly control information, censor documents and only selectively disclose ministerial expenses.

See:

Harpers Fascism

Leo Strauss and the Calgary School

Post Modern Conservatives.

Why The Conservatives Are Not Libertarians

Liberals The New PC's

Trotsky on Harper

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Canadian Shooters Use Long Guns

Revisiting A Canadian Tragedy

As America grieves the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre, we take you back to 1975, when a shooting spree at a school in Brampton, Ontario, shocked the country. We bring you eyewitness accounts, and we'll find out what we've learned.

CBC Sun Day report ran this amazing piece of forgotten history. I left the following comment on their web site;

"I too did not know about the Brampton tragedy and I thank you for using this opportunity to present this in light of the Virgina Tech massacre. I note that the comment made by Carole MacNeil was that the first such shooting in a school occurred here in Edmonton in 1959. "

The situation between these high school shootings and the later Taber, Dawson and Virginia Tech massacres show we do not have enough psychological counseling prior to such incidents, rather we provide it after the fact.

The other point to remember is that so far all the shootings in Canada including Edmonton, Brampton, the Lapine shooting in Montreal, the Taber shootings, and Dawson College, unlike the situation in the U.S., were all done using long guns, rifles.

The same long guns that the Harpocrites don't want registered. Because after all law abiding duck hunters and farmers use them too.

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Just Say No

The Alberta Tories continue their war on.....affordable housing and rent controls....delegates at the Alberta PC AGM reject rent controls.

"Rent controls and all other sorts of initiatives are sort of like a drug," delegate Jon Lord, a former Tory legislature member, told delegates prior to the vote. "They're very addictive, and they're difficult to get off of once you start down that road."

So having access to affordable housing makes you like a junkie. Under the Tories you can go join all the other folks who have addictions living on the street.

But of course the fact is we have had rent controls in Alberta before, and yes they were brought in however reluctantly by this very same PC party. But of course lets not let the facts get in the way of the myth of the free market.

Even Coun. Terry Cavanagh, who once had the job of phasing out provincial rent controls, urged Stelmach to look seriously at bringing them back.

Alberta introduced rent controls in 1975, when inflation soared. Coun. Terry Cavanagh was chairman of the provincial rent decontrol board that oversaw the phase-out of the controls between 1977 and 1980.

Cavanagh said Sunday that Stelmach should consider rent controls again, regardless how delegates voted. Its something the province has to look at, when you have people whose rents are going from $550 to $1,100.

Their wages arent going up 100 per cent, he said. Its going to be difficult for them to pay.
The Conservative convention heard rent controls are addictive and, once begun, are hard to end.

Cavanagh said controls phased out in an orderly fashion when he ran the decontrol board. Landlords were allowed limited annual increases so that, once an apartments rent exceeded a certain amount, controls came off.

That way the pricier units, presumably occupied by higher-income tenants, came off controls first, he said.

You might wonder what time period the PC's are stuck in....Rick Bell in his Calgary Sun column says the chosen people who attended the AGM come from the time of Howdy Doody...that glorious post WWII boom period which had no inflation....

Talk about the blind leading the blind. The majority of the Tory party are like the Beverly Hillbillies next to Unsteady Eddie's Green Acres cabinet.

They are a good cross section of Alberta ... in 1962.

Remember they didn't even know there was a boom until last year. Their crowd has been in power so long they don't care what mere mortals think.

That's why we are treated to the illogic of Lovable Lloyd Snelgrove, the power behind the Tory throne with the fancy handle of President of the Treasury Board, shamelessly thinking if he limits gouging to once a year instead of twice annually, it's "a good start."

Lloyd is the guy who doesn't make much sense when he defends scuttling the government's own task force's idea of two-year guidelines: inflation plus 2% plus more for added expenses, hardly a draconian design.

Then he says temporary rent controls won't encourage investment in new housing. Lloyd, read the affordable housing report. A cap on rent hikes is seen as a short-term deal.

Besides, without rent controls, where's all this supposed building of rental units now?

Yep during this long boom with no rent controls we have actually seen apartment construction decline in Alberta.

So if there are no rent controls what will the government do instead to stop the gouging?

"Gouging? Landlords are gouging? That's news to me" says Honest Ed the Chief Tory Salesman

Guess he missed the Stats Can Report on housing, and all the articles published in Calgary this past year.

Stelmach must have thought he looked compassionate when he talked to reporters about how upset he is with landlords gouging tenants with huge rent increases.

"I've heard about these absolutely astronomical rent increases that really are un-Albertan," Stelmach said in advance of his speech to the Tories' annual convention in Edmonton. "We have to look after the vulnerable. A thousand- dollars-a-month increase is beyond reason."

The $1,000-a-month increase was a reference to the story, raised by Alberta's NDP during question period on Thursday, of a 74-year-old widow in Edmonton facing a tripling of her rent from $595 a month to $1,595.

Indeed, for a few moments his message was all about compassion and how his government was angry with unscrupulous landlords. And he hinted that maybe his government will revisit its opposition to rent controls depending on what happens during debates at this weekend's convention.

But then some Calgary journalists began poking at Stelmach. Why was he so upset with the story of one Edmonton woman? Didn't he realize Calgary tenants have been hit by huge rent increases for months?

That's when Stelmach unwittingly unholstered the gun and took aim at himself.

"I wasn't aware of anybody getting a $1,000 increase," he said. Bang.

The Calgary journalists were gobsmacked. They have been writing stories about Calgarians being hit by $1,000 rent increases since last August. There have been so many of those stories that journalists have stopped reporting on them and have moved on to heartbreaking tales of tenants being gouged by $2,000 a month rent hikes.

And here's Stelmach saying he's not aware of what's going on in Alberta's largest city. He tried to look compassionate but ended up looking clueless

So the Tories solution is to meet landlords and tell them gouging, whatever that is, is not nice. And then threaten them...with rent controls.....I can see Boardwalk REIT shaking in their boots right now.....

The hikes are making a mockery of Stelmach's promise to do what's right for all Albertans. In a free enterprise economy, the kind the Stelmach government supports, he's doing what's right for all Alberta landlords. The only thing guiding the economic tiller is Adam Smith's invisible hand. The problem is this hand is steering the government towards the rocks.

Stelmach has ruled out rent controls as un-Conservative. Without rent controls, however, some landlords are jacking up people's rents so high that Stelmach has complained they're "un-Albertan."

So, what's a government to do when hoisted on its own ideological petard?

It goes behind closed doors and threatens landlords that unless they stop exercising their rights in a free market economy -- the very rights that the government purports to support -- the government might have to take drastic action against landlords, including, say government sources, the possibility of rent controls.

Lots of folks are coming to Alberta to work, lots of Alberta businesses need workers, but workers have nowhere to live. One would think that this simple equation workers = renters would sink into the troglodyte Tories tiny dinosaur brains.

Housing a priority for eastern jobseekers

Which means that once again we have a government that has no plan for dealing with the boom and the resulting housing crisis. Except to repeat that famous Klein line; "let the eastern bastards freeze in the dark."

See:

Housing

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Twas A Dark And Stormy Night

Probably the best representation either by painting or photogrpahy of Queen Elizabeth in a long time, done by Annie Leibovitz.

While younger than the Queen, Leibovitz is also now in the prime of her life, and so this poignant portrait finds commonality between the subject and the photographer.

Note that it is lit by twilight, with storm clouds looming, shadow and light, the evening or her reign, how apocryphal. The portrait following is even darker. And just as stunning. Reminding one of the days of Bulwer-Lytton who scribbled a dark and stormy night at the end of Victoria's reign.

While the Queen visits Jamestown to celebrate the founding of capitalism in the new world, her last visit to Virginia was when she was twelve. The Queen of modernism in photography captures her spirit in the fin de siecle of her reign.

H/T to Cathie From Canada

Celebrity photographer Miss Leibovitz created the image by digitally superimposing her picture of the Queen against the moody backdrop of the Palace lake and ominous black clouds.

The effect is eerily reminiscent of pictures from Scottish Widows' well known ad campaign.

It is the second official portrait to be unveiled in a week by Miss Leibovitz, who is best known for magazine portraits - including one of a naked John Lennon hugging Yoko Ono hours before his death.

Her previous image showed the Queen sitting, gazing wistfully out of an open window. It was inspired by a similar photograph Cecil Beaton took of her mother.

SEE:

History of Slavery

1666 The Creation Of The World

The Origin of American Conspiracy Theories

The Truth Shall Set Ye Free

Free Trade: Primitive Accumulation of Capital

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Not So Good News

The rich get richer and the rest of us run in one place says the latest Stats Can report.

Incomes for senior families and single people remained virtually unchanged, the report showed, at $40,400 and $21,400 respectively.

However, the report also noted that the gap between the highest-income and lowest-income families in Canada widened to $105,400 in 2005, up from $83,800 in 1980.

The gap between the families with the lowest and highest incomes, an indication of income inequality, widened during the past decade, the agency said

Average after-tax income in 2005 was $128,200 for the 20% of families with the highest incomes, compared with $22,800 for the 20% with the lowest.

SEE:

Canada's Wealthy, Still

Productivity

Taxes

Wealth

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HIJABS AND HABITS

Expressing our oppression as women in solidarity with our sisters. And since this call for solidarity comes from a Catholic there is no difference between the hajib and the habit. Both are symbols not of liberation but of patriarchy.

I am calling out to every woman in this world who, regardless of her ethnic origin, religious background or even sexual orientation, will recognize my voice as female, feminine, and therefore will feel and acknowledge the resemblance, the sorority. I am calling on to you my sisters because some of us are suffering today and I believe that we, as loving sisters, must show them we will not turn our backs on them. Muslim women are indeed women like us, mothers, daughters, and sisters. The most common thought when a Muslim woman is seen wearing a Hijab (headscarf) is to assume that it is a sign of oppression and that this woman is not free of her own choices. Yet in the “Western” world (of what I know myself from France and Canada) wearing a Hijab is certainly a very difficult and courageous act because it is the visible and unmistakable sign of a religion that has become synonymous with terrorism since the 9/11 attacks. But “terrorism” has no race or religion. The Muslim community, Islam, have nothing to be forgiven for. The actions of some people cannot justify the generalization of a whole group. I think History has proven this point many, many times. People from my father’s family have perished in concentration camps during World War II along with Jewish people, communists, homosexuals, and many other oppressed groups rejected solely because of their existence. This situation is not different. As human beings we cannot accept this injustice: we cannot condemn and reject Muslims on account of their nature. I was raised a Christian and as such I will address the Christian community, in particular the Catholics. Oh my sisters and brothers I am asking you, for the love of Jesus (peace be upon his head) himself: who is the good Christian? who is the good Catholic? I will tell you. The good Catholic is the one who hid his Protestant neighbours on the night of August 24, 1572 at Saint Barthélémy, France. An estimated 70,000 Protestants were killed in France, 3,000 in Paris. Yet a lot survived because good Catholics extended their hands to their Protestant brothers and sisters. The same good Catholics, good Christians, saved their Jewish neighbours from deportation during World War II. The good Christians today, I have no doubts, will reach out their hands onto their Muslim brothers and sisters.
All I am asking of you is to follow my lead in a peaceful and symbolical gesture: let us wear a Hijab for a day. Let us show our solidarity and love for our Muslim sisters who choose to wear it every day, not as a sign of oppression, but as a sign of courage and honesty.

Nuns should wear the habit

After reviewing A Nuns Habit, which lists poorly devised reasons for not wearing the habit, I feel encouraged to write on the subject. In short, my opinion remains that all religious sisters and nuns should wear the habit of their respective orders. No longer should these women, who have given their lives to the service of God and the Church, be dressing like laypeople. It is time to return to the ancient practice of wearing a distinct habit - this is not fulfilled by wearing laypeople's clothing!

The habit inspires women to leave their lives and gives themselves to God. The same is true for men who are inspired by the garments worn by priests and monks. To enter a religious order, one does not just experience a change of heart and soul, rather, there is also a change in the physical realm. For example, many religious orders require the women to adopt a new name when they become a nun in addition to wearing the habit.

See:

Spot The Contradiction

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