C-FAR #334 April, 1999
Keep Out of Kosovo
C-FAR has urged, as the yardstick against which
to measure any policy decision, the following rule: Put Canada and Canadians
first. By this measure, we should not be joining in Clinton's War by bombing
Serbia or, as now seems likely, contemplating sending troops for some ill-defined
mission in the Balkans. The Balkans is a snakepit of ethnic, religious,
and historical conflicts and hatred. Conflict in the Balkans was the spark
for World War I. There had already been two previous wars in that region
this century. It has been a quagmire that has ruined many a general and
politician. We meddle at our peril. Most of the reasons advanced for our
zombie-like march to war hold little water. It is suggested that this is
our duty to our NATO allies. However, NATO is a defensive alliance. No
NATO nation has been attacked by Serbia/Yugoslavia. It is argued that bombing
Slobodan Milosevic would ease the lot of the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
In fact, the bombing has enraged Serbia and provoked it to expel several
hundred thousand Kosovars to Macedonia and Albania. Our idiotic government
who has never heard of a refugee (except White Rhodesians) it didn't want
to bring to Canada and put on welfare/medicare/denticare/legal aid, immediately
signed us up for 5,000 Kosovars made homeless by the war of aggression
we'd help unleash. As usual, patsy Canada had done more than its share.
America, nine times our size and the major culprit in the aggressive bombing
of Serbia, vowed to take only 20,000 refugees. Yet, matters in the Balkans
are always complex.
"Canada should not shelter 5,000 ethnic
Albanian refugees from Serbia's brutal deportation campaign in Kosovo,
Albanian President Rexhep Meidani says. 'It's important to keep all these
people in the region,'" he said. (Toronto Star, April 6, 1999) Kosovo
is seen as a Serbian province, with many of the 90 per cent Moslem Albanian
population having arrived in the last 50 years. Kosovo was the cradle of
Serb history, where the cream of their army and nobility was slaughtered
in a heroic battle in the 14th century that helped halt the Moslem Turkish
invasion of Europe. They no more wish to give up Kosovo than Americans
would give up the land around Valley Forge. NATO's new found allies, the
Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) are violent terrorists with close ties to
European crime mobs. They'd launched a guerrilla war and killed many Serbs.
The iron-fisted Serb response is the effort of a sovereign government seeking
to prevent the dismemberment of its country. Were FLQ-style terrorists
killing English residents of Quebec and the Canadian government put the
province under martial law, what would our reaction be to a band of canting
international meddlers threatening to bomb Ottawa unless we withdrew from
Quebec? If democracy and human rights is what the conflict is all about,
why have the most basic rights of Canadians and their elected representatives
been trampled? The arrogant Jean Chretien did not even see the need to
recall Parliament for a full debate and a democratic vote before he committed
our fighter bombers to war along with our money, with still more expenditures
to come, should the 5,000 refugees arrive. Prudence dictates staying out
of this war.
It is a war of aggression. We cannot solve the
near insoluble problems of the Balkans. We should take the advice of a
wise statesman. Count Otto von Bismarck proclaimed in 1876: "The Balkans
is not worth the life of one Pomeranian grenadier." So, then, just
what is the reason for the war in Kosovo. NATO Supreme Commander Gen. Wesley
Clark, an American, has, in several statements made it quite clear that
Clinton's War against Serbia is part of a New World Order attempt to crush
nationalism. In a February 19 statement made on CNN and reported by Reuters,
Clark said: ``There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states.
That's a 19th century idea and we are trying to transition into the 21st
century, and we are going to do it with multi-ethnic states.'' The New
York Times Learning Network (February 23, 1999) reported Clark as saying:
"Our goal is that after this year, it will no longer be possible for
those who support ethnically separate communities to believe that they
can succeed." Multicult hodge-podges are less likely to offer resistance
to the One World policies of some of Clinton's New World Order backers.
That's why Serbia must be smashed. With a Republican
majority in both houses of Congress the discredited Lothario of the Ozarks
can hope for no legacy on the domestic front. He might, however, be able,
this former draft dodger, to win a war and go down in history as a victor.
Perhaps, more pressing in his timing is the fact that a committee of the
U.S. House of Representatives was about to release a damning report on
extensive Red Chinese spying that had done serious damge to the U.S. and,
worse, on the sinister neglect by the Clinton administration of the threat
posed by the Red Chinese, a neglect encouraged by the heavy and surreptitious
campaign funding/bribery his campaign had received from the same Red Chinese
sources. A diversion, following the script of the movie Wag the Dog, a
war against some obscure country would squelch domestic criticism and rally
an easily gulled people around a discredited leader. These are the reasons
for this shameful and danger-fraught war against Serbia, a war that could
yet draw in the Russians and end this century with a tragic replay of the
events that began it and led to WW I. Canada should have no part in it.
Canadian forces out, now!
U.S. Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan warned:
""Three weeks into Bill Clinton's Balkan adventure and America
risks a debacle. The human rights crisis in Kosovo has exploded into a
catastrophe. Slobodan Milosevic is being rallied around like some Serbian
Churchill. Montenegro and Macedonia are destabilized; Russia is being swept
by anti-American jingoism; and U.S. troops may have to go marching into
the Big Muddy. Such are the fruits of Utopian crusades for global democracy.
Yet, this debacle is not their doing alone. It is a product of the hubris
of a foreign policy elite that has for too long imbibed of its own moonshine
about America being the 'world's last superpower'. Even as we slashed our
defences to the smallest fraction of GDP since before Pearl Harbour, the
rhetoric has remained triumphalist, and the commitments have kept on coming.
" (Washington Post, April 13, 1999)
Whom Do You Represent: China or
Canada -- Now Why Didn't We Say That?
"Indonesian President B.J. Habibie nearly
threw a Canadian cabinet minister out of his office in an undiplomatic
row over treatment of ethnic Chinese in Indonesia. Habibie said he clashed
verbally with Raymond Chan, Canada's secretary of state of the Asia-Pacific,
late last year over the fate of ethnic Chinese in Indonesia. ... Habibie
said he rebuked Chan for broaching that issue at their meeting, instead
of discussing bilateral ties between Ottawa and Jakarta. 'Look -- are you
a Chinese minister, or a minister of Canada? I put that question to him.'
... Born in Hong Kong, Chan immigrated to Canada 30 years ago at age 17.
He has been a member of the Liberal cabinet since winning election in 1993.
... 'For me as president, I was embarrassed,' Habibie said. ... 'I received
him because he is a minister from Canada.' Were it not for Chan's cabinet
rank, I would not even spend one second' with him. Habibie's senior foreign
policy adviser Dewi Fortuna Anwar, confirmed the president 'practically
threw (Chan) out of his office.' ... On that day Chan was looking for answers
after touring Jakarta's Chinatown and talking to residents about the reports
of widespread rapes , ... that more than 100 Chinese Indonesian women were
sexually assaulted by gangs for racial reasons. ... Habibie ... told Chan:
'They are not Chinese; they are Indonesian. I am there to take care of
any Indonesian.' ... He dismissed suggestions that the mass exodus of ethnic
Chinese entrepreneurs, who control a disproportionate share of the Indonesian
economy, would stall the country's recovery from the Asian economic crisis.
Nor would he take action to lure them back. 'I am not going to beg and
make phone calls every day, and do anything to get them back. It would
be very embarrassing if the future of 210-million people depends on 10
or 20 people.'" (Toronto Star, April 13, 1999)
The "Native Discount"
in Sentencing
"In British Columbia in September 1995,
Jamie Gladue and her husband Reuben Beaver were partying, drinking heavily.
Beaver left the party with Gladue’s sister, which prompted Gladue to go
door-to-door in their townhouse complex seeking the pair. When she found
them (there was no need to wake the neighbours, the pair were at her sister’s
place), Gladue and Beaver started to argue," wrote Lorne Gunter for
The Edmonton Journal (April 6, 1999) Beaver was no sensitive, new age guy.
According to court testimony, he told Gladue she was fat and ugly (That’s
'sizism' and 'lookism,' right there.), and 'not as good as the others.'
(Comparism?) Gladue then thrust a small paring knife into her husband’s
arm. When he fled, she grabbed a larger chef’s knife and ran after him.
'When she caught up to him, she plunged the knife into his chest,' then
jumped up and down shouting, 'I got you.' Beaver died. Gladue was convicted
of manslaughter, and sentenced to three years in prison, but is appealing
to the Supreme Court. She contends her 'Indianness' qualifies her for lighter-than-white
sentencing, thanks to Section 718.2(e), a 1996 amendment to the Criminal
Code which directs judges to consider 'all available sanctions other than
imprisonment ... with particular attention to the circumstances of aboriginal
offenders.' The section has also surfaced in two recent Alberta cases.
Last year, during an 'alcohol-fuelled fight' on the Stoney reserve west
of Calgary, Mark Poucette, 19, stabbed to death another young man, Larry
Labelle, who had lived with Poucette’s family since he was two.
Poucette was sentenced to one year for manslaughter,
although the judge in the case said he wished he could make it six months.
The judge, the very controversial John Reilly of the Alberta Provincial
Court, who has been accused by his superiors of an 'atrocious' and 'embarrassing'
pro-native bias, thinks Section 718 permits him to sentence native offenders
to less time than the minimum mandated under federal law. One year may
be alright for whites convicted of manslaughter, according to Reilly, but
Indians and Metis should be treated differently. Unfortunately for Reilly
(but fortunately for the concept of equality before the law), at least
until the Supreme Court rules in the Gladue case, he is forbidden from
sentencing natives outside the legal guidelines by an Alberta Court of
Appeal decision that holds the legal minimums apply to all Canadians. James
Warren Wells, an Alberta Indian, is also appealing his 20-month sentence
for raping an aboriginal woman while she was drunk and passed out, because
he claims the judge failed to account fully for the difficulties of his
native upbringing.
The important common thread in these four cases
in not that the defendant in each is native. Section 718 makes that a given.
Nor that knives are more commonly used than guns in violent crimes in Canada;
that would not apply in Wells’ case. Nor is it that courts generally give
women lighter sentences for killing men than they give men for killing
women. When, two years ago, a Yukon judge gave a five-year sentence to
a husband who had strangled his wife out of jealously, feminists (with
some justification) decried the lightness of the punishment. Yet the same
critics have said not a word about Gladue ... who received even less. The
common factor that is missed is that all the victims were native, too.
Yet, that should be the most important element of all. The do-gooders behind
Section 718, especially then-Justice Minister Allan Rock, were motivated
by 'the need to address the over-representation of natives in Canada’s
prisons, meaning the 'need' to put fewer Indians, Metis and Inuit in jail.
But locking up criminals reduces crime, by ensuring a society’s most dangerous
members are not free to commit more crimes and by sending a deterrent message
to potential offenders. Being lenient raises crime. No matter how noble
one’s intentions, when one raises native-committed crime, one also raises
the number of native victims, since native criminals commit most of their
crimes on other natives."
Nunavut: Good Luck - You'll Need
It
If you think of Canada as a butcher's chart of
economical beef cuts (and who doesn't?), Nunavut looks like suspiciously
overpriced butt roast. It may be a technicality, but when Pierre Trudeau
launched that Titanic known as multiculturalism, he did say "the government
has made it very clear that it does not plan on aiding individual groups
to cut themselves off from the rest of society." Thank goodness no
one felt inhibited by technicalities as they romped through the handover
festivities. Presumably the merriment was so infectious that countless
rare Arctic species felt it incumbent on them to donate a charnel-heap
of hides, tusks, antlers, horns, skins, pelts -- indeed, their very lives
-- to authenticate Canada's polar fiefdom. Nunavut's "independence"
(90 per cent federally subsidized) may end by costing much more than money.
When foundations are set in muskeg, the nagging sense of pending disaster
is hard to ignore. "Nunavut will be financed in a way that guarantees
waste and worse. ... The Nunavut legislature will have no political parties.
The leaders of Nunavut explain this with a lot of Dancing With Wolves hooey
about confrontation and criticism being alien to native ways of life, etc.
... But the real purpose of the exclusion of any mechanism for opposition
is to ensure that nobody in the legislature will have the resources and
incentive to scrutinize the doings of the Nunavut territorial government.
... 'No representation without taxation' is every bit as fundamental to
a healthy state as the more famous inverse motto. ... Who in Nunavut cares
if the territorial government wastes millions?
Or steals them? ... The federal government's
cringing unwillingness to confront proven and heinous maladministration
on Indian reserves strongly suggests that Ottawa cannot be counted on to
supervise Nunavut's use of Canadian dollars. ... Without an effective opposition,
it's unlikely the people of Nunavut will ever learn about abuses in the
first place. And since they are not paying for those abuses, it is even
more unlikely they will care ... providing only that the government takes
the precaution of kicking out a reasonable proportion of the funds to its
voters. Nunavut leader Paul Okalik has already announced his plans to take
care of his supporters in just that way. ... Mr. Okalik intends to put
as many voters as possible on the public payroll. He depicts it as an employment-equity
issue. ... By turning their nominal bosses into their employees, Mr. Okalik
and his cabinet are eliminating the last check on governmental abuse."
(David Frum, National Post, April 3, 1999)
Canadians Enfeebled by Fear
Canada has not, within living memory, been occupied
by a foreign army -- subject to a foreign immigration invasion, yes, but
that's another matter. Canada does not have concentration camps. There
is still a Charter of Rights. Yet, Canadians seem gripped with an enervating,
pathological destructive fear. Paula Richardson of Surrey, B.C. is an enterprising
lady who promotes tax reform. A recent poll she conducted confirms the
presence of the destructive fear. "I have completed my own study finally
over the weekend. It was a three-month polling study, done through telemarketing
where I personally called 3500 households.These were the questions I asked:
1. Do you pay taxes? 2. If yes, on average how much did you pay last year?
3. Did this affect your quality of life? 4. Did you know that taxation
is unconstitutional? 5. If yes, why are you still paying taxes? 6. If no,
would you like more information/education about taxation?
- 3006 households polled said yes.
- On the average, each household paid out between
7500 to 11000 in taxes. (Household can be one or 2 adults). Difficult to
break down. The purpose really of the poll was to find out how many people
know that taxes are unconstitutional.
- All 3006 individuals said YES. Some people
even said they had to spend more money to get write offs. 35% owe so much,
they can't afford to pay their tax bill.
- 3097 households said they DID NOT KNOW. 395
said they had heard about it, but dismissed it as propaganda.
- The ones that said YES, 127 are still paying
taxes because they don't know how to stop it.
- Of the 127 that were still paying taxes, 33
wanted more information; The rest said they were afraid to get into trouble.
Imagine that. The key word here is FEAR. We as
a so called democraticsociety/country, FEAR our government. It is the very
FEAR and coercion that our so called government uses to intimidate, bully,
coerce and excercize illegal seizures to steal money from us I had dinner
with my family last night, there were about 19 of us intotal. I was telling
them what I was doing the last several months. My family begged me to stop
doing what I'm doing for FEAR that something might happen to me. Imagine
that, FEAR needs therapy don't you think? I mean everytime we suffer from
emotional problems that greatly affects the quality of our life, we get
therapy and counselling to overcome those fears. ... We Canadians need
to stand up for our rights, to stop the thievery, to stop the MAI from
going ahead, to stop the NAFTA, the Immigration policies that allow thousands
of criminals to stay in Canada during their appeals, to restore our country
the way our founding fathers wanted it to be and most importantly of all,
to allow us free speech."
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