Prime minister John Howard's government has refused to apologise for the Stolen Generation and resisted calls to set up a compensation fund.
This week Mr Trevorrow, 50, won a landmark compensation claim in the South Australian supreme court, the first payment of its kind. A judge awarded him A$525,000 (£220,000), acknowledging that he had been "falsely imprisoned by the state", that the authorities had failed in their duty of care towards him and that such conduct had ruptured the bond between him and his natural family, leading to lifelong depression.
But like their Australian counterparts the Canadian Conservative Government still refuses to formerly apologize.Tens of thousands of First Nations young people were taken from their families for months at a time and deprived of their culture. Many were sexually or physically abused by school staff.
In 1998, Ottawa acknowledged that there was widespread abuse at the schools and offered an apology to the victims.
The former Liberal government announced a $1.9-billion compensation package to residential school survivors in late 2005, along with $60 million for the TRC, $10 million for commemoration and $125 million for healing initiatives and programs. Less than a year later, the Conservative government approved the deal, and increased funding for commemoration to $20 million.
Phillip also cited the Harper government's refusal to apologise for Canada's decades-long programme of forcing First Nations children into the notorious residential school system, where they were denied contact with relatives and stripped of their cultural heritage. According to one government report, conditions were so terrible that between 1894 and 1908, the death rate among students at residential schools in Western Canada ranged from 35 percent to 60 percent.
The last residential school closed in 1997 amid revelations of widespread sexual and physical abuse of students in the system. A compensation package was approved through the courts, but many First Nations viewed the decision as not going far enough.
The honeymoon is over for Stephen Harper's Cabinet, according to Canadian business leaders who believe the current government has done little to differentiate itself from its Liberal predecessor.
"The overall feeling is this is a Liberal government in Conservative clothing," COMPAS founder Conrad Winn said. "That came in pretty loud and clear."
The panelists regard taxation as the most important priority affecting their evaluation of the Conservative government. "Tax policy is a joke and undermines the confidence of business in relying on an understanding government, which it is not," one respondent said. "There seems to be too little thinking about repercussions about tax changes and more bowing down to policy wonks. They are not living in the real world."Looking forward to the cheerleaders at the Blogging Tories response to the voice of capitalism criticizing their party of choice.
Libertarian Anti-War Blog; Unfair Witness has interesting ongoing results of the Ron Paul campaign on the Internet and post debate polls.
Mitt Romney 4516 31.5%
Mike Huckabee 2587 18.1%
Sam Brownback 2192 15.3%
Tom Tancredo 1961 13.7%
Ron Paul 1305 9.1%
Tommy Thompson 1039 7.3%
Fred Thompson 203 1.4%
Rudy Giuliani 183 1.3%
Duncan Hunter 174 1.2%
John McCain 101 1.0%
John Cox 41 0.1%14,302 Total Votes
Ron Paul, Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich are the only candidates who seem to understand this. They are also the only candidates who will quickly, if not immediately, end the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Wait a sec -- I mean end it peacefully. Ultimately, Iraqis and their supporters around the world will bring down the American occupation -- but they will do so limb by limb, heart by heart, and soul by soul. They will kill thousands of us and themselves before it reaches that inevitable point of non-occupation and honest political independence. Only Paul and two underfunded Democratic contenders offer wisdom to Americans across the nation who are hungry for wisdom, at least in foreign policy. However -- it is in domestic policy where Ron Paul completes the package. Unlike the democratic longshots, and the candidacy of GuiliClintoRomnObamThomEdwaCain, Ron Paul is about real freedom. Freedom to choose, freedom to live, freedom to decide for ourselves. He offers freedom from excessive government mandates, excessive rules and regulations, excessive confiscation of our life and property. In this, Paul is the only real conservative in the group, and yes, perhaps the only radical.
August 19
Edmonton, Alberta
Protesting the SPP in Edmonton! Help preserve Canada’s sovereignty, join the protest.
Host: Protest The S.P.P.
Time: 10:00am - 2:00pm GMT
Where: Legislative Assembly of Alberta Street: 10800 - 97 Ave. Edmonton, AB
Calgary, Alberta
Protesting the North American Union
Host: Lindsay Ross and other concerned citizens!.
Time: 12:00 p.m. – 3 p.m. GMT
Where: Calgary City Hall, 800 Macleod Trail SE, Calgary, AB, then marching to the U.S. Consulate at 615 Macleod Trail for more speeches
For cross Canada protests see Verbena-19
See:
So what else is new.
Chinese activists and intellectuals have published an open letter to "Chinese and World Leaders" on numerous dissident websites demanding that China honor its commitment to respect human rights at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.
For this reason they cannot share in any “pride” in China’s glory as the Games’ host country; for them, “these glories are built on the ruins of the lives of ordinary people, on the forced removal of urban migrants, and on the sufferings of victims of brutal land grabbing, forced eviction, exploitation of labour, and arbitrary detention.”
America's boom economy is a debt economy, based on consumer credit thus consumer debt. Americans have financed the boom by mortgaging their homes. Even free market, gold bug, libertarians get it.
And gosh who is carrying America's debt? Why China of course. And if they cash in their chips well......When a society is stable and prosperous, you can cast your lot along with everyone else and prosper along with your neighbours. That was the situation in the United States and Europe after WWII. Almost everyone became richer.
But since the mid-70s…it has been harder. In America, for example, hourly wages of working men have gone nowhere. And since the money in which wages are paid has been cut loose from gold, it is hard to know what anything is really worth…hard to keep track of what you have…and hard to hold onto it. The dollar, for example, lost half its purchasing power during the short time when Alan Greenspan was chairman of the Federal Reserve.
More recently, the bubble economy of the 21st century has been rewarding certain groups of elite traders and financial mavens, while punishing the average person with higher debt - personal, mortgage, and governmental. Soon, average investors will be hit hard too…and average homeowners…and average consumers.
Bill Bonner, The Daily Reckoning Australia
“China has accumulated a large sum of US dollars,” said He Fan, an official at China’s Academy for Social Sciences. He wasn’t exactly speaking for the government. But he was clearly articulating what’s on everyone’s mind. “Such a big sum,” he continued, “of which a considerable portion is in US Treasury bonds, contributes a great deal to maintaining the position of the dollar as a reserve currency.” But…?
“Russia, Switzerland, and several other countries have reduced their dollar holdings. China is unlikely to follow suit…as long as the yuan’s exchange rate is stable against the dollar. The Chinese Central bank will be forced to sell dollars once the yuan appreciated dramatically, which might lead to a mass depreciation of the dollar.”
Well then, there you have it. US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has pushed China to allow the yuan to appreciate, driven by nationalist and protectionist sentiments in the US Senate. China knows the US Congress is keen to act, and blame the foreigner in an election year for American economic woes. Its well-timed reminder of the leverage it has over the dollar is a warning to the Americans to be careful what they ask for.
Yes, it sure looks like China has announced to America what it has known all along. Its investment in US Treasuries, and the support that offers both to the American dollar and the American consumer, were always driven by what was best for China. And what’s best for China now? Well, we don’t know for sure. But buying the US dollar doesn’t seem look a good idea for anyone right now. Selling it, on the other hand, or trading it for tangible assets…that seems like a much better idea.
" On the trail of Laureen Harper, Canada's most charming - and unexpected - first lady."
SEE:Ms. Joe Clark
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Scratch a Ukrainian nationalist and you will find an Anti-Semite disguised as an Anti-Bolshevik.
SEE: Gone to Croatan White MulticulturalismOTTAWA–B'nai Brith Canada is pressing for a judicial review of the federal government's decision not to revoke the citizenship of two accused war criminals, Wasyl Odynsky and Vladimir Katriuk.
Last May, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's cabinet decided not to revoke their citizenship, despite evidence they were complicit in Nazi war crimes, according to the organization.
"It is our position that Odynsky and Katriuk, who were found guilty of lying their way into Canada, must be stripped of their citizenship and deported," David Matas, a counsel to B'nai Brith Canada, said yesterday in a statement.
Matas told the Star "a whole raft of submissions" from B'nai Brith never made it to cabinet, yet "voluminous" submissions from the Ukrainian Canadian Congress supporting the two men did.
"Documents in our possession show the ministers ... were fed selective testimony weighting the decision in one direction, while failing to be presented with or consider submissions from the Jewish victims of Nazi genocide or their representatives," Matas said in the statement.
I hope he is not Anglican.
Liberal MP Scott Brison is set to become the first federal politician to tie the knot in a same-sex ceremony since MPs made gay marriage the law of the land just over two years ago.Brison, 40, will marry partner Maxime St. Pierre next Saturday in his Kings-Hants riding, a bucolic corner of Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley.
Brison, a former Progressive Conservative party and Liberal party leadership hopeful, came out in 2002 and became Canada's first openly gay cabinet minister in 2004. But he's never defined his political persona around the issue and has closely guarded his private life.
