Clearly

You don't even have to live here to figure it out.  Talking Points Memo's insights on our election:

Starting back in the 1960s, the traditionally centrist Liberals shifted leftward and co-opted many of the NDP's issues, first under Prime Minister Lester Pearson, and then especially so under the long-serving Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (who had previously been an activist with the NDP's radical socialist predecessor, the Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation, and had only been a member of the Liberals for three years when he was elevated to the top job). After a big defeat in 1984, the Liberals shifted back to the middle in the 1990s, with fiscal austerity and pro-business policies under Prime Minister Jean Chretien.
But then in the last few years, when it was again clearly necessary to shift leftward and impress progressive voters, the party instead picked the decidedly centrist Ignatieff as leader, sealing their fate to be squeezed out between the right and left.

There it is in a nutshell.

Run out of town

Christie Blatchford continues her long running series 'Scheming, Violent Dark People and the Pure and Innocent White People they Abuse' today with a remarkably one sided opinion piece presented as a news story on page 8 of the Globe and Mail.

The entire Ontario Provincial Police detachment at the remote Pikangikum First Nation was marched off the reserve five weeks ago by a rock-throwing mob of elected councillors and residents.
The stunning forced departure of 11 OPP members from the isolated community, reached in summer only by air or water, went publicly unacknowledged by the force until now.
It was also almost entirely unreported, with only a couple of small stories, none with any detail, appearing locally about a week after the June 30 incident.

It isn't until more than halfway through the piece, 14 paragraphs in, that she even addresses the reason for the angry mass eviction, the OPP beating of a disabled elder, and then she only presents the OPP version that the deaf/mute elder was trying to grab the officer's gun. This is the classic accusation to justify police over-reaction, one that we've seen most recently as the lame defense of a Vancouver officer caught on video shoving a disabled woman to the ground and then walking away as if nothing had happened.

Context matters, and the context is that Pikangikum First Nation is a community repeatedly described as a third world hellhole, underfunded, disrespected, and abandoned. The context is that they've been calling for a local independent police force staffed by First Nation officers for some time.

But Christie Blatchford never saw a complex situation she couldn't reduce to 'Dark People abuse white people and don't respect the law'.

Settlement

Before the U.S. election one of the popular pieces of race-baiting and scare mongering on the right was the idea that President Obama would support the Reparations movement seeking compensation for all African Americans for the crime of slavery.

Not so far, but a new settlement offered by the Obama Justice Department after decades of stonewalling by the government (including both Bushes and the Clinton administration) does something very close to that for Native Americans. As per this article from The Atlantic which is excellent right up to a rather patronizing last paragraph.

The government's chief nemesis has been Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana, the accountant-turned-banker who in 1987 started Blackfeet National Bank, the first national bank on a reservation. With a very small team of attorneys led by a Washington banking specialist, Dennis Gingold, her suit has inspired 3,600 court filings and 80 published decisions. Not even the antirust action against Microsoft was as heavily litigated by the government.

The historic resistance melded with an unsympathetic appeals court often overruling the dispute's two trial judges. It ordered removal of Lamberth, now the district court's chief judge, due to harsh language toward the government. Last year, it threw out a ruling by District Judge James Robertson, Lamberth's successor, that the Indians were owed $476 million, a pittance compared to the reduced, $48 billion they were seeking by then. Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain both urged settlement during the 2008 campaign.

A resolute Judge Robertson then hauled Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and plaintiffs into his chambers last year. He made clear to one and all that, in light of the latest appeals court ruling, both sides had the choice between spending maybe another 10 years in court or trying to finally settle. The initial atmosphere was not necessarily conducive to harmony. Career government employees in the Interior, Justice and Treasury departments felt burned after years of being belittled by both the plaintiffs and Judge Lamberth. Meanwhile, the plaintiffs had minimal trust in the government. But political appointees in the Obama administration, including Salazar and Attorney General Eric Holder, took their cue from President Obama's own support of a settlement. Dozens of meetings ensued, with the many prickly issues including how far back in time one would go to try to determine who should benefit.

Ultimately, Judge Robertson prodded what, given all the legal setbacks, is an impressive $3.4 billion deal announced in December. Ironically, before the recent congressional recess, the House approved the deal and Robertson announced his retirement, meaning District Judge Thomas Hogan becomes the third, and hopefully final, arbiter in the case. He would oversee a so-called "fairness hearing" in which objections can be raised.

$3.4 billion could make fundamental changes to the lives of First Nation Americans. I've been as frustrated with how slow and incrementalist Obama has been as anyone, but this is a huge thing that will probably get very little notice. And all it took was a President to indicate he wanted a fair solution to stop the Justice Department from waging a war of legal attrition and come to a resolution.

Tired of these tools humiliating Canada in front of the whole world yet?

OTTAWA – Canada took a kicking as it hosted a five-nation Arctic summit that left three other countries and the Inuit that live at the top of the world out in the cold.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a stinging rebuke and left the summit early, chiding Canada for not including all those “who have legitimate interests in the region.”

Presumably that would include Sweden, Finland, Iceland and the Inuit Circumpolar Council, representing the indigenous people of the North.

Those four, plus the five countries gathered in Gatineau – the U.S., Canada, Russia, Norway and Denmark – make up the long-established Arctic Council, which many fear is being undermined by this new group.

“I hope the Arctic will always showcase our ability to work together, not create new divisions,” Clinton said.

The meeting launched a two-day global gathering in the capital, where G8 foreign ministers will gather Tuesday to talk about sanctions against Iran, nuclear weapons, war in Afghanistan and other pressing international matters in advance of the leader’s summit in June.

But Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon appears to have started on the wrong foot while hosting talks where Russia has historically been the bogeyman and presumed Arctic aggressor.

It was a day spent discussing the challenges and duties that Arctic nations face: building northern search-and rescue capabilities; reporting rules for ships hauling people and cargo through the frosty waters; and environmental concerns like overfishing and pollution that weren’t necessary when the Arctic was a frigid no-man’s land.

But when he was standing alone at a microphone at Meech Lake, Cannon found himself fending off criticism from both inside and outside the meeting that key groups had been intentionally, and wrongly, left off the guest list.

Reporters might have followed up on the criticisms if Clinton or any of the other foreign ministers had stuck around for a wrap-up news conference. Instead, Cannon stood alone, a decision apparently agreed to by ministers during the day’s deliberations.

So now were getting publicly spurned and hung out to dry by all the countries of the Arctic including our most important ally. Cannon and Harper are getting a taste of what Netanyahu got last week.

When's the last time do you think the rest of the world heard a positive Canada story? We're the folks who are still led by the Bush cronies who don't give a shit about the environment and are trying to cut Arctic natives out of Arctic decision making.

This is really getting old.

All Refugees are Equal...

...But some are more equal than others.

For Mr. Kenney, it wouldn't be necessary to impose visa restrictions to stem the flow of asylum-seekers if false claimants knew before coming that their cases would be heard swiftly and they would be returned home immediately after a decision was made.

"This does underscore the need to reform our asylum system so that it ensures that real victims of persecution get swift relief and protection in Canada, and that economic migrants seeking to abuse our generosity are shown to the door quickly," he said.

Of course systematic economic discrimination against specific ethnic or religious groups is real persecution. But no Conservative or Liberal MP could ever concede that point. For the same reason that Canada is one of the last countries on Earth that hasn't signed on to the the U.N.'s declaration of indigenous rights.

NAFTA, a trade agreement that Canada is a signatory to, has caused massive economic dislocation in the lives of Mexican farmers with indigenous Mexican suffering some the worst of it. Economic persecution is still persecution.

The Roma of Czechoslovakia, crudely known as Gypsies, may not be facing the torch-wielding mobs that make up far too much of Roma history but they are unambiguously situated at the permanent bottom rung of Czechoslovakia's social and economic totem pole.

Today, six million out of the estimated 10 million European Roma live in Central and Eastern Europe.

Up to two million are to be found in Romania, whose established Roma slave markets horrified Western travellers until as late as the 19th Century.

Decades of communism and the recent admission of Eastern countries into the EU seem to have made little difference to their history of exclusion and poverty.

Most Roma families live in small shacks with no electricity or running water, and international institutions calculate that Roma poverty rates are up to 10 times higher than those of the majority population where they live, while their lifespan is 10 or 15 years lower.

I would argue that taken alone economic discrimination on this scale would have to be considered legitimate grounds to claim refugee status, economic persecution is still persecution, But its not the only kind of persecution Roma are subjected to.

At a shelter just outside Toronto, Zaneta Gananova lifted up her shirt to show why she fled the Czech Republic.

Gananova, a young mother of six, revealed two swastikas, purple scars that she says were carved into her body two months ago by a group of skinheads.

"It was very bad. I didn't want to go out," she said. "I was afraid for my children, and for my life. I thought they would kill me."

Marek Polak, 24, said he no longer worries when he heads outside to take a walk in his new home in Hamilton. When he was 17 and was out for a walk in Prague, he said, his life changed.

"And I turn around and I saw four skinheads, like around me," he said. "They started to say to me, 'Hey Gypsy, today you will die,'" Polak said, using a once-common term for a Rom.

Polak said the men threw him to the ground, then punched him and kicked him, all the while yelling racial slurs. He ended up in hospital for a week. His mother, Anna Polakova, decided to move her family to Canada two months ago.

"It was a very hard decision for us. We had our life in the Czech Republic," she said. "But when they beat my son, and the continued attacks in the years that followed, I knew we had to leave."

These are the people Immigration Minister Jason Kenney says aren't discriminated against in Chekoslovakia. That they are just 'economic migrants seeking to abuse our generosity'.

. . .

This seems to me to be an essential misunderstanding of the meaning of the word 'generosity'.

Justice Down Under

Apr 2nd, 2009 | SYDNEY -- Australia adopted the U.N.'s declaration of indigenous rights on Friday, reversing its earlier opposition in what officials said was an effort to "reset" relations between white Australians and Aborigines.

The support for the nonbinding declaration is a largely symbolic step, but extends a dramatic shift in policy on Aborigines since Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was elected 17 months ago.

"In supporting the declaration Australia takes another important step toward resetting relations between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians," Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin said at a ceremony in the national capital, Canberra, that was broadcast nationally.

Australia was one of just four nations that voted against the U.N. declaration when it was adopted by the General Assembly in 2007. The United States, New Zealand and Canada were the other opponents, while 143 countries voted in favor and 11 abstained.

We're now in a shameful club with only two other members.

Back home

Back from an extended trip to Saskatchewan necessitated by a family emergency. We now return to our regularly scheduled ranting.

I was born in Saskatchewan but have never lived there - the hospital was on the Saskatchewan side of town, our house was on the Alberta side - over the course of a sleep deprived but rewarding visit with my lady's family we spent a lot of time driving through beautiful countryside encountering just really nice people and enjoying some pretty spectacular weather for mid-September.

We had a six hour layover in Regina on the way back and spent it wandering downtown and in the big mall. After Calgary, Regina mostly impresses me with its smaller population; the whole province only has twice the population of my city which brought back memories of the more relaxed and spacious feel of Calgary when I first moved here in the early nineties. There is also very clearly a much higher percentage of Saskatchewan's population that is first nations than Alberta.

The mall was small to middling sized but with a large and zealous security detachment. They were Mall Ninjas, no doubt about it. Over the course of a few hours we watched them perform their duties, which apparently is to zero in on any native, particularly any native teen who enters the building and follow them in packs, scribbling furiously into notepads, self importantly muttering into shoulder mounted radios and generally making their native visitors feel welcome.

After watching them tailgate their fifth or sixth perfectly harmless looking pair of kids out of the mall and right off the grounds, even standing outside surveiling them until they had crossed the streets, I told my girlfriend that if I was a native kid in Regina I think I'd be absolutely furious all the time. I mean overturning cars and setting them on fire furious, and I was impressed that they didn't. I'm sure that natives in Alberta experience the same kind of crap on a daily basis, it's just been quite a while since I've seen it be so blatant.

'Welcome to Saskatchewan.' she said.

Words

Harper's apology to residential school survivors was welcome but ultimately what matters is deeds not words.

This is the same government that scrapped the Kelowna Accord, one of the best opportunities to start undoing some of the damage Harper apologized for yesterday. His government has offered nothing approaching the Accord's scope in its place.

This is the government that has refused to ratify the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. A far more concrete step than mere words and far more likely to mean significant change than a cosmetic apology.

This is a government, members of which frequently bloviate about individual human rights for natives - but primarily as a stalking horse to attack native collective rights and pass the buck for institutional neglect back to its victims. It was only last month that they gave up their ideology based efforts to undermine collective rights and accepted amendments to Bill C-21 that protected them.

Even now some Conservative MPs and members of the right wing press minimize the harm done by the residential school kidnap factories, express scorn for the apology and cavil about compensation. This may express the true views of the governing party more than a calculated PR exercise does.

If this undoubtedly historic apology is to be more than mere words it will require deeds to back it up.

Racial Martial Law in Australia

A horrific report of systemic child abuse in aboriginal communities was released and Prime Minister Howard of Australia has used it to justify launching a massive crackdown on aboriginal communities.

For aboriginals alcohol will be banned, pornography will be banned, personal computers will be examined for no-compliance, welfare will be withheld, aboriginal administration and legal harassment protections on aboriginal land will be annulled. Howard at first said that all children under sixteen would receive compulsory invasive medical check ups. When there was a mass revolt by doctors the government grudgingly backtracked and said the checkups would be consensual but 'encouraged'. Howard spoke dismissively of "constitutional niceties and is also using the buzzwords of child sexual abuse to push a plan of taking away aboriginal communal land titles and leasing plots back to individuals locking them into 99 year leases.

None of this reflects the recommendations of the original report.

Terrified families have begun streaming out of the communities in the area, fleeing into the bush in fear that their children will be stolen from them again. Like Canada with our residential schools, Australia had a stolen generation of natives - arguably treated even worse. The current hard paternalism and vicious stigmatization of the victims of cultural genocide stirs up bad memories.

Troops and new police have begun to move into the area.

I've been following this for a few days, dove into it last night. Australian readers will, I hope, forgive the impertinence of a Canadian commenting on their internal affairs, but have y'all gone completely crazy?

OK, I know that this plan is by no means universally supported in Australia, several voices have spoken up to describe these policies as draconian, and shameless dog whistle racial pandering just months before an election Howard was looking like losing. The Australian Green Party has opposed the plan, the Labour Party, to their shame, have offered guarded support for it.

The authors of the report Howard is using to justify this action have pointed out that none of their recommendations included 'sending in the gunships' and that the recommendations they did make for long term changes and aid are being ignored. They've also pointed out that the rage and terror these measures are causing in the aboriginal community will probably make the job of treating and dealing with family breakdown that much harder as trust in outsiders no longer exists. Alternative proposals for dealing with the problems are being ignored. This mess shows every sign of a calculated act of electioneering and right wing social engineering planned for some time and ready for when the abuse report was released. None of this despair and community collapse is new, and indeed Howard has done more than his fair share of contributing to it.

But some people on both sides are confidently predicting that this will give Howard a huge poll boost, while predictions of a huge backlash have the tang of desperate wishful thinking to them.

He's going to get away with this isn't he? The same people who were delighted by Howard turning away desperate refugees and locking others in barbwire encircled desert prison camps are going to vote him in again aren't they?

What really scares the hell out of me, is that I know that there are members of Canada's current governing party, and the previous one, that are watching this draconian and paternalistic approach to first nations with a mixture of envy and wistfulness.

And political calculation.

Hat tip for bringing this to my attention: Engaged Spectator

Update: Well the first polls are out in Australia since this blew up and Woman at Mile 0 has the results. Australians have not in fact bought into this crap and are deeply suspicious of Howard and his motives. Big drop in support. Thank God.

Welcome Alberta Views readers

This post from April has been reprinted in the June issue of Alberta Views. A nifty magazine that puts the lie to the image of Alberta as a monolithic political mono-culture. Check it out if you haven't already - and not just for my deathless prose.

Welcome new visitors, feel free to spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard. Check out my archives, the various labels will lead you to articles grouped by subject matter and I'd like this to be a dialogue not a monologue so feel free to use the comment function.

Something for everybody but First Nations

The Conservative budget as Eugene points out, is a repudiation of the entire governing philosophy the Conservatives have previously claimed to hold dear. This is the kind of budget Harper and the Conservatives would have thundered against if it was laid down by a Liberal Finance Minister. Funny story...

It is in fact a watered down version of the last Martin budget with the serial numbers filed off. We went through an election and a year of the Conservatives learning the hard lessons of surviving in a minority to get essentially the same government we would have gotten had Martin won.

The exceptions are a mangled insufficient patchwork of incentives that have failed everywhere they've been tried instead of a real childcare plan and nothing even remotely comparable to the Kelowna Accord.

This budget is, you'll forgive the crudity, a big 'fuck you' to Canada's natives.

This is at a time that the living standards of Canada's natives are a matter of international concern and shame. Whole communities are falling victim to decay, non-existent infrastructure, gruesome school drop out rates and an escalating crisis of drugs, gangs, soaring prison population and despair. This the backdrop to inaction, because the Conservative budget doesn't even attempt to address Canada's First Nations.

Can Canada survive as the kind of country we want it to be with a calcified permanent racial underclass?

What little proposals the Conservatives have made on native issues seem to indicate an intense hostility for actual natives. An agenda of dismantling native communities and absorbing them into larger towns and cities has already been established. The bitter Conservative hostility to traditional communal values among natives can be seen in a home ownership program that seems designed to undermine native communities rather than support them, and no funding for desperately needed social housing.

There are serious problems in some communities, but destabalizing all of them based on ideological aversion to traditional communal structures, in the most condescendingly paternalistic manner possible no less, is not a solution.

The almost tears in Phil Fontaine's eyes told the story. Our government has just fatally undermined the current leadership in Canada's First Nations.

We have patiently waited a long time for action. This budget only allows for enough money to continue the management of misery."

When this summer gets hot - and it's going to get very hot on barricades all over Canada - this budget and its breathtaking and irresponsible disdain for any real effort on the First Nations file will be the spark that lit the fuse.