jennie

(Sorry ... I was still editing out my anger at your ethnic slurs. Please see final post above.) The question you raised was about the responsibility Indigenous people carry to protect the earth. I think I have addressed that. A recent report: August 30, 2007 Press Release For Immediate Release: Aboriginal Traditional Knowledge and Source Water Protection Final Report http://www.chiefs-of-ontario.org/

I am happy to do so, though I would ask in future that you avoid making generalized derogatory statements about First Nations people. Here is an overview article: Native Spiritualities and the Great Law Of Peace By Barry Martin Native spiritualities are based on a recognition that all natural things are interconnected. The land, Mother Earth, is given primacy. Indians value the community, in contrast to the culture of individualism or private property. ................cont'd............http://archive.peacemagazine.org/v04n6p06.htm I heard a Mohawk medicine person speak recently about their understanding of the earth as a living thing. All of the elements under the ground, in their belief, are part of the life systems of the earth and should not be tampered with. For example, coal is the earth's liver that strains toxins just as ours does. The earth's systems are being mightily interfered with by corporate greed, and we will be left with the environmental aftermath. One has to wonder where it will stop. Do corporations want the earth cleared of people? Or are we just considered unfortunate but necessary "collateral damage"?

I have difficulty understanding this when I hear from nurses that our hospitals are in dire need of morphine supplies, and they anticipate huge increases in the future as the baby boomers age. To me it seems a reasonable solution. It is a commercial as well as an illegal product. Make it legal, enforce it, control it same as many other potentially dangerous products. I read something a while ago that said that Canada was in the process of considering legal contracts with some farmers, when the US unilaterally decided to drop by Afghanistan and drop a few bombs on those poppy fields. It left our soldiers there is a very dicey situation with the locals, who then went to the Taliban for help to keep people from starving since their whole year's income was destroyed. I really think the Canadian strategy was better.

Can you verify your statement ? ... because the historians who wrote the statement say 600,000 oops! 600,000 is the entire strategic bombing initiative against Germany, not just Dresden.

That is pretty disrespectful of the spiritual beliefs of others. I think Christianity is "balderdash" too, but I don't say so when people express their beliefs. And regardless of how I feel about it, people are entitled to those beliefs ... freedom of religion and all that ... without harassment I believe. Your opinion does not change the truth of what they believe, of course. The other issue that should not be ignored by Canadians is the extreme sensitivity of the headwaters area where this uranium drilling is proposed. Contamination will flow through the entire Ottawa watershed and the St Lawrence. There are absolutely no environmental restrictions on the drilling at all. They drill right at the headwaters of a creek if they want to, releasing uranium into the water system where it will be ingested by millions of people. A miner will tell you uranium is not dangerous unless you eat it ... they fail to mention ingesting it in your drinking water.

The Crown 'assumed' ownership of the land by encroachment, but has no proof of ownership as the land was never surrendered as required by British/Canadian law. The Algonquins are still sovereign, never having surrendered. They respect Canada's laws on Canadian territory, but not on their own territory.

The blockade is on Algonquin land, but it is all Algonquin land anyway. The land'owners' know that. That is why they went to them for help when they found trees cut down and mining stakes on their 'own' property. They know that the Algonquins have aboriginal rights on their land, despite property deeds. Goodness!! Even the government has acknowledge illegally assuming ownership of aboriginal land, every time they settle a land claim in fact, and that's about 400 times, to date, that they have acknowledged that. In the case of the Algonquins, it is crystal clear: They never surrendered land to the Crown. The Crown has no 'papers' whatsoever for that particular land.

Op ed Can Canada not control the corporations? Isn't that called fascism? by *********, Canadians for Aboriginal Rights ................................................................................ ................. "We feel that this [injunction] places us at war," (Chief) Ms. Davis said. "To come in here and force us out of here when we're standing on our Algonquin land puts us in a position of being at war." ................................................................................ .................... The Ardoch and Shabot Algonquins in eastern Ontario were approached by local landowners who found mining stakes on their land. The landowners and the Algonquins blockaded to keep the miners out. They are now all under injunction and facing imminent 'removal' by the OPP. The Ardoch and Shabot Algonquins never surrendered anything to the Crown nor to Canada, land or sovereignty. Yet their sovereignty and their land have been repeatedly invaded by our society. Since Canada illegally 'assumed' ownership of their land, they are now illegally forced into Canada's great boondoggle called 'land claims'. As in all other land claims across the land, Canada is stalling that process to first extract every illegal penny they can from Algonquin land. The final disgraceful act of Canada's 'justice' apparently will be a hostile invasion of the Algonquin people to remove them from their own land and let the uranium miners in. This act of war against a sovereign people on their own land is currently being planned, possibly implemented at this moment, by the OPP. It is clear that Canada's Mining Act has outlived its usefulness and is now an extremely destructive force to life in Canada. It is also clear that our governments make absolutely no effort to change the draconian elements of the act that allow the mining industry to 'seek and destroy' any piece of land they wish, regardless of whether it is the land you saved all your life to buy for your retirement or unceded Indigenous land. Our governments clearly kowtow only to the whims of the mining industry ... and it is all about the money, no doubt. Funny, I thought Canada was about the people! The Algonquins and their neighbours are standing up against this imminent invasion of their land by Canadian forces. WHERE ARE OUR GOVERNMENTS IN PROTECTING THE RIGHTS OF CITIZENS AND ALLIES? 1) Gone fishin' ?. 2) Too busy with election issues ? Wakeup call ... The fish are contaminated by corporations anyway and this IS your sole election issue, unless you do something about it quickly ... like suspend the mining rights until the land claim is resolved. Canadians are getting the message loud and clear: When your land and health and safety and the environment are threatened by corporate greed, your government will not help you, but the Indigenous Nations will. We are seeing a return to the early days of arrival of European settler ancestors when our survival depended on the help of the Indigenous people who shared their land, food, warmth and knowledge with us. Like the colonial era, the government operates to support the corporate interests, not the people, who must therefore seek support and protection against our own governments, because they are complicit with the corporations in the destruction of the earth and its people. It is apparent now that democracy in Canada died a long time ago, if it ever was anything more than window dressing. Left in its place is rule by the corporate interests that give marching orders to our governments ... hey! ... Isn't that called ... FASCISM ?? "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini It is unconscionable that our governments * Do not honour the law of Crown treaties, * Continually fail to carry out the Crown's lawful duty to consult with First Nations about activity on their land, * Place citizens and their property at risk and in need of defense that is not provided by our governments * Fail to resolve simple land claims quickly: If there was no surrender, there is no question whose land it is! How difficult is that? * Remain silent, incommunicado, ignoring all of these issues and threats to the people they supposedly represent. * Allow corporate interests to run roughshod over the citizens who elected the governments ... allow corporate interests to run the country, against the will of the people. Hey! That IS Fascism! Welcome to Canada, the Fascist state with a lot of pretty-sounding democratic laws and policies that mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! This has not happened overnight with regime change. It has happened throughout our history. It has happened because we, the people, let it happen. We bent to the corporate will espoused by our elected leaders. It is now up to the people and our allies to depose the fascist regime: It is apparent that our governments are absolutely powerless to stop the juggernaut corporations that reap billion$ per day in resources from Canada ... correction ... from Indigenous land within Canada's borders. 'Elections' are a farce: One corporate puppet, another corporate puppet ... green puppets, red puppets, blue puppets, orange puppets ...a corporate puppet is a corporate puppet regardless of the colour of their lawn sign. Instead, join an aboriginal blockade near you, folks. The anti-fascist revolution to save Canada is here, and our support is needed because our governments appear to be held for ransom by the corporations. This is not a joke. The entire Ottawa valley and watershed, and into the St Lawrence are threatened by the uranium mining operation currently blockaded by the Algonquins north of Kingston. If you don't want your great grandchildren's two heads to glow in the dark, show your appreciation for Algonquins protecting of our well-being. (Contact Algonquin Co-Chief [email protected]) Our Indigenous allies are there for us ... again ... where our governments continue to fail us miserably, instead sending forces to attack those who struggle to save the land ... and us. The final insult, of course, is that we are paying the salaries of the attack forces and the governments that operate against our best interests. Not only that, but our federal government gave $3b in tax breaks to corporations for the current year ... and increased our personal income taxes by that amount to cover it. Canadians are being hoodwinked into paying for their own loss of democratic freedoms, their own loss of property, and loss of environmental health and safety for us and all of our future generations. Now that's an 'admirable' government scam ... if you admire that kind of thing.

I agree. In honouring the bravery of the forces, we cannot forget or try to hide from history the fact that sometimes they were given bad orders from above.

Thank you. Food for thought. Not fuming but ... It is still true that ... "corporate inc tx down by the same amount pers inc tx is up. In other words, WE are paying every penny of the corporate tax reduction, dollar for dollar pretty much ... right?" If I am already paying taxes twice, then why am I now paying yours as well? jk

It is extremely disturbing for Canadians who don't know to suddenly be faced with this, but it is necessary to go through this to understand how we can progress from here. The name is a standard international protocol. It can't be left up to a country to investigate itself, obviously. The domestic police and courts are often implicated too, so there has to be external recourse for justice. There is sufficient evidence to proceed with full investigation. That is a common misperception, but homicide is the murder of a person while genocide refers to the destruction of a people ... a cultural or racial group ... not necessarily murder of individuals, though that is often part of the picture. However, attempts to destroy peoples ... often Indigenous Peoples ... are attempts to destroy and disperse all of them. It includes such strategies as separating children from their family and their culture, physical and sexual and psychological torture, sterilizing women, disease exposure, medical experimentation, imposed poverty and environmental toxicity, destruction of the environment that sustains them with food and water, etc. ... i.e., imposing 'slow death' as well as outright 'murdering'. http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/p_genoci.htm Article 2 In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; ( Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; © Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. In Canada, there is considerable evidence that the deaths from disease were not accidental. In the TB epidemics of the 20th century, the rate of death in Indigenous communities was somewhat higher than in non-Indigenous communities. However, in the residential schools it was I think it was 7-8 times as high as in the villages. In fact, it was the highest rate of TB deaths in any population in the world ... anywhere ... ever. It considered too high to be accidental in that paper ... wherever it was I read it. I remember that statement clearly, though ... by far the highest rate of death in any population anywhere ... ever, too high to be caused by normal contact and transmission, too many cases at once due to the incubation period - i.e., it was clear that children were intentionally being infected en masse. There are Indigenous people alive who remember being injected in the 'Indian' schools and 'Indian' hospitals... along with whole rooms full of children, all being injected with disease, all getting sick, most dying, "disappearing" a few surviving. It might be a good idea to withhold judgment until they finally have these opportunities to tell their stories ... to tell us the truth ... for that is the purpose of Canada's Truth Commission ... for us to listen, and have the opportunity to judge the truth for ourselves. I must mention too, that the witnesses will often be employees of the churches, not only students and families themselves. In fact, the first information that came pouring in to the Commission was from (some) church records, logs, staff diaries, letters, recollections of incidents, etc. Currently, though, at Jim Prentice's request, the Commission is immediately investigating records of deaths of children in the schools. The Commission starts this fall and takes five years of investigation, and then probably five more before a report is done, and five more before anything is negotiated .... The Tribunal is immediate video coverage ... I THINK ... not sure ... international media coverage ... and it is a matter of a few months investigating and then reporting to the UN, but it is public reporting throughout where consent is obtained, I assume. It will be a very educational period for Canada. There are many people who simply do not know. I feel like I should be going around warning people ... What are all those sayings ... like ... 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger' ... 'sometimes to go forward you must go back' ... I think we're going to need lots of those to get through this and when its all over we will all still be here. (that is just a friendly wink, though it looks kind of like a leering wink to me ...

OK ... I am still fuming ... look at that ... look at what they have done ... corporate inc tx down by the same amount pers inc tx is up. In other words, WE are paying every penny of the corporate tax reduction, dollar for dollar pretty much ... right? So ... it is still money out of our pockets and directly into the pockets of the corporations ... ... right?

oops! Finance Canada told me which graph ... but of course I should have checked the title. Numbers seemed weird too. Thanks. Now I just have to find total corporate income somewhere to see what their rate of income taxation is compared to personal inc tx.

Double taxation how?

I was looking through some budget tables, and I found this information. It made me do a double take, and I am still fuming about it. http://www.fin.gc.ca/ec2006/ec/ecc2e.html From table 2.1 Budgetary revenues 2006-07 (projected) Personal income tax $ 2.9b Corporate income tax $ -2.6b Am I reading this wrong? In other words, virtually ALL of the federal income tax from every one of us is given out in tax refunds to the corporations. May as well just make your check out to the corps and save the manpower for processing. Do you like handing your hard earned money over to the megacorps that are currently, e.g., raping and plundering the north for resources and leaving environmental disasters in their wake? I sure don't !! I think this is an absolute disgrace!!

Wow! Hot topic! Hot feelings. Understandable ... after reading this thread ... there are some really disturbing posts here. Genocide I think when the truth starts to be told at the Truth Commission this fall, and the (independent) International Tribunal into Genocide in Canada, Canadians will perhaps become more aware of the whole story. Please pay attention, especially those of you who still want to deny it. Inform yourselves and you may change your perspective. Watch this documentary as a start, and then come back here and tell us if you still think it is not genocide ... if you have the balls: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6637396204037343133 Assimilation FORCING people to assimilate by making that decision for them is genocide. What you are trying to do is destroy them as "peoples". Their culture and their laws do not allow traditional people to become part of another system, so you are forcing them to give up their culture and become only one individual in another culture. Yup ... genocide. I am not sure why people are still advocating assimilation. Obviously, those who want to assimilate already have. Those who do not want to cannot be forced to. Simple. Assimilation is not a solution. Independence from government 'handouts' This just shows people's lack of knowledge. These are treaty rights, education, health care, housing, etc. ... binding contracts ... and what did Canada get in return for the treaty rights? UM ... let's see a COUNTRY perhaps? And has Canada kept its part of the bargain? NO ... Canada 'assumed' ownership of lands that was never surrendered, forced surrendered, or surrendered illegally. Now Canada wants them to fight to get back the land stolen. Go figure! The money and land taken illegally and now owing will keep Canada in their debt for a very long time. We have NO RIGHT to complain about the legitimate treaty payments. And hell, if you are concerned about that economic issue, just WAIT til I tell you where you federal tax money is going !! ( See thread ... Where your federal tax money goes ... )

Ya it was pretty pathetic that both the spokesperson for the SQ and STOCKWELL DAY told this lie. Day even looked like he knew he was lying. (Sick smile) Outed for NOT throwing stones, my ***!! Stockwell Day and the SQ need to get with the youtube generation and at least watch the video so they can make up lies to fit the facts!! It was obvious that they were outed because they were a) being aggressive and refusing to back away from the line when asked by the protestors at that line, and being aggressive and refusing to drop the rocks they were carrying. When outed, they ran to safety behind the police line. Agents provocateurs are much more common than we would like to think. Heck, even the Hamilton police planted one among protestors at the Red Hill Expressway protest. He started yelling and throwing things and taunting others to do the same WHILE THE MEDIA WAS THERE, in order to discredit the protest. The media reported it as if he was one violent protestor among many. Later, they outed him and discredited the police. Way more common than we want to think. Canada is not the kindly and democratic place it pretends to be, unfortunately.