"Officials with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) seized ... exotic foods at the Moncton Airport as delegates from Gabon and Congo arrived on chartered flights for the three-day [Francophonie] summit in early September. ... Meat products seized at the airport included unskinned gazelle carcasses, [turtle,] dead chickens with heads and feathers intact and beef wrapped in tree leaves. ... During the summit, there were rumours about an alleged fire set by one foreign delegation in a Moncton hotel room as they tried to barbecue their own meat. But a senior RCMP officer providing security at the summit said he was unaware of such an incident. ... The full identities of the African delegates were blacked out in federal [Access to Information] documents by officials who cited sections of the privacy law that forbid release of material that is potentially damaging to Canada's international relations. [Oh brother!] ... Heads of state from at least four delegations -- Rwanda, Burundi, Burkina Faso and Togo -- entered Canada on special diplomatic visas because reports of rights violations made it impossible for them to enter under the Immigration Act." (National Post, November 3, 1999)
Canadian economic nationalists have traditionally fretted about the slippage into foreign -- read American -- hands of key areas of our economy. A little covered story raises the spectre of the loss of key areas of our economy to Asian interests, especially those with unsettling links to the communist tyrants in Peking. As far back as July, 1997 we warned that the giant shipping company COSCO, "an arm of the Communist Chinese government and partially controlled by the military, has been involved in illegal arms shipments to the U.S., as well as the transportation of military and strategic cargoes -- including fuel components for ballistic missiles -- from China and North Korea to countries such as Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and Syria." [C-FAR #313]. COSCO only came to our attention for its utterly relentless efforts to establish a beachhead docking facility in North America -- and the equally determined efforts of a few courageous U.S. politicians to block those ambitions at every turn. It was almost inevitable then, that one day we would regretfully announce that, when COSCO was stymied south of the border, it was being wooed in Canada. The Vancouver Province of September 30, 1999 makes note of "the giant COSCO which recently struck a deal with the Vancouver Port Corp. to make Vancouver its gateway to North America." This is tucked away in a larger article detailing CSIS's 'Project Sidewinder' which was tracking companies linked to Asian tycoons to determine whether they operated as fronts for Chinese espionage activities.
As might be expected, Canada's vigilance does not even register in the subnormal category. "The study also looked at 'hundreds of thousands of dollars' that were being pumped into political parties to see if Canada's lawmakers were being unduly influenced. ... Sources used by CSIS and the RCMP said the study of Chinese tycoons with close links to Beijing showed that together they owned in Canada more land, commercial properties and hotels than any other owner: major banks and brokerage houses; all the Chinese language television and radio stations and major video outlets, plus control of the Chinese print media; [COSCO's docking privileges at Vancouver harbour] at least 16 data-processing and hi-tech companies servicing corporations including those doing classified work for federal and provincial agencies; the operation of the databases used by university libraries; almost half the shares in three of Canada's major telephone and telecommunications companies; about 25 major oil and gas companies; some immigrant investor funds; large retail distribution companies. ... Holly Porteous, an Ottawa-based security analyst and former Pentagon writer, said the companies in Canada that can be linked to Beijing is a national security concern. 'We are not immune from what the Americans and British have been finding out,' said Porteous. American Senate Investigations into the theft of nuclear secrets and political contributions to President Bill Clinton determined that a significant number of front companies to China's intelligence services were operating in the United States. ... Another Senate investigation determined that COSCO, the giant Chinese shipping line with terminals in most Canadian ports, was far from benign. ... COSCO ships have been involved in the smuggling of 2,000 Chinese-made submachine guns for Los Angeles gangs, tracked carrying nuclear components to Pakistan, transported tanks to Burma and used to smuggle heroin into Canada.
[Vancouver land developer] Li Ka-shing is a principal player in COSCO via his investments in China's military business arm, CITIC. He has denied any connection with the People's Liberation Army. Sources said a CSIS attempt to do a background report on Li Ka-shing in 1998 was shut down. ... Intelligence sources noted that Prime Minister Jean Chretien has poured a great deal of energy and political capital into cultivating improved trade links with China, and CSIS managers worried that news of the [Sidewinder] project would draw his ire." (Vancouver Province, September 30, 1999) So it would seem. "Spymasters at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service have destroyed all copies of a top-secret report on alleged links between the Chinese government and Asian criminal gangs operating in Canada. ... Project Sidewinder was halted in 1997 because CSIS anticipated political resistance." (Globe and Mail of October 6, 1999)
Recent testimony before the U.S. Senate revealed that Li Ka-Shing "and his Hong Kong based company and subsidiaries are closely associated with the Beijing regime and have a history of acting as sources of funding or acting as intermediaries in deals for the People's Liberation Army. ... Li is a board member of the China International Trust and Investment Corp., a principal funding arm of the Chinese government and a technology acquiring source for China's military. Among CITC's board members is Wang Jun, the chairman of Poly Technologies, which was indicted by U.S. customs for attempting to ship thousands of arms into California by using street gangs. Li is also a director of COSCO, which in addition to commercial shipping, is the merchant marine for the Chinese military. ... Asian-organized-crime investigators in B.C. have conducted triad-related surveillance at the Surrey Fraser docks, which has close links to Hong Kong shipping entities.
Further evidence of the Chinese mafia infiltrating Canadian ports is contained in an RCMP report on triads in Canada. The report ... details how a senior member of the Sun Yee On triad applied to enter the country as a senior adviser to a company that had concluded an $8-million deal with the B.C. government to take over a port. The man, described as an 'armed robbery specialist' had applied for a visitor's visa ... shortly after finishing a four year jail sentence. ... Scott Newark, former head of the Canadian Police Chiefs, said his group warned Ottawa about the infiltration of ports by Chinese organized crime a few years ago. 'We have to give this matter the same recognition as the Americans, but we are merrily moving along doling out unfettered access to our ports. ... This is astounding,' said Newark who was in the forefront of the unsuccessful battle against Ottawa to retain a ports policing unit. Newark said the Canadian government does not have a clue as to who's who in Canadian ports." (The Province, Vancouver, October 24, 1999)
Gun control is working thanks to a bureaucratic behemoth known as the Canadian Firearms Centre! Canadians hoping to die violently this year will be relieved to know that they will probably be stabbed or bludgeoned, and not shot. Hallelujah! "Of the 555 Canadians who were murdered last year, 33.2% were killed by stabbing and 33.5% were killed by beatings and strangulations. Only 27.2%, or 151 people, were killed by firearms. ... [Of those,] the majority involved guns that are already illegal or restricted. The gun of choice for murderers is the handgun ... restricted in Canada since 1934. ... Of all the murders last year, just 9% involved rifles and shot-guns, the guns [currently] targeted by Ms. McLellan." (National Post, October 18, 1999) The staggeringly underwhelming magnitude of these statistics presumably justifies the massive resources dedicated to one more non-issue. Seven provinces and two territories are suing the feds in an effort to have the costly fiasco put down, but, barring that, 3,000,000 legal gun owners have until 2003 to register all weapons or face criminal charges.
"Indian Affairs noted that if Canada's on-reserve aboriginal population were viewed as a separate country in U.N. rankings that ordinarily trumpet Canada's accomplishments, it would fall somewhere below Mexico and Thailand and be on a par with Brazil. 'It's an embarrassment,' says federal negotiator and Carleton University professor David Hawkes." (Time, February 15, 1999). It is embarrassing to think that Canadian welfare rates (8.2%) climb to 41.5% among aboriginals. But if it seems that some reserves are intractably mired in corrupt and incompetent practices, that knowledge only spurs Ottawa to minimize accountability by expanding a network of "native discounts" and providing very, very, much more money. "Statistics obtained by the [Canadian Taxpayers] Federation under the Freedom of Information Act show that direct funding from the federal department [of Indian Affairs] to native bands jumped 47 per cent to $2.7-billion between 1992-93 and 1997-98. But the number of bands in receivership jumped to 20 from four." (Globe and Mail, November 9, 1999)
When the courts recently overturned illegal eel fishing charges against Indian Donald Marshall Jr., that led to racially charged scuffles and sabotage as chronically under-employed East Coast lobster fishermen watched a natives-only fishery dawn during a critical conservation period. Not a good winner, Mr. Marshall summed up prevailing racist sentiments: "We belong on this land and we're going to stay on this land and if you don't like it, get back in your goddamned boats and get out of here." (Time, November 8, 1999) In a similar shot, the much unloved retiring Chief Justice Antonio Lamer's 1997 Delgamuukw ruling set in motion a reaping avalanche of native land, restitution, entitlement and race-based claims which ultimately threatens to sweep $200-billion away with it. Moreover, as the Supreme Court reads Section 35 of the 1982 Constitution Act, what natives win through land claim agreements (bestowed on unproved and egregiously unconstitutional apartheid-style governments) can never, ever be retrieved by the forfeiting government. Apart from Nunavut and Nisga'a, nation-wide there are "about 80 different negotiations on self-government, ... some 210 negotiations on land claims, ... an additional 280 preliminary land claims that are still being researched by the Department of Indian Affairs." (Time, February 15, 1999)
While Lamer further revised judicial process to give native oral traditions "equal weight" with conventional anthropological evidence, the Delgamuukw decision nevertheless demands proof of exclusive Aboriginal occupation of the land when the Crown asserted sovereignty. Let's discount the possibility of any serious Scandinavian claim to Viking Vinland, and consider this instead: Europeans were very likely here first. "In a radical new view of pre-history, two prominent archaeologists say North America's first inhabitants may have crossed the icy Atlantic Ocean 18,000 years ago from Europe's Iberian Peninsula. The theory, presented at a weekend conference, is at odds with the long-held notion that the continent's first settlers came across a land bridge from Asia about 13,500 years ago. Explorers from the Iberian Peninsula -- the area that is now Spain, Portugal and southwestern France -- are believed to have originally settled the Eastern Seaboard and spread as far as the American deserts and Canadian tundra, and perhaps into South America, according to Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian Institution and Bruce Bradley, a Colorado researcher [and leading expert on Paleo-Indian flaked-stone technology in the U.S.]. Other scientists say the theory is such a radical departure that it might take years to adequately evaluate. Stanford and Bradley's new explanation, they noted, is based primarily on comparisons of projectile points and other artefacts already discovered on both sides of the Atlantic." (Toronto Sun, November 1, 1999)
It may not sound terribly compelling, but flaked stone tools are as unique as faces to the experts. There are numerous decision stages in the production of such tools which different cultures handle in different ways -- and it just so happens that spearpoints of the Iberian Solutrean culture of 20,000 to 16,000 years ago are indistinguishable from those of North America's oldest culture -- the Clovis Mammoth Hunters. These people appeared abruptly, seemingly out of nowhere, all over North and South America about 11,500 years ago. It is the distinctive preparation of the edge of the weapon that produces the signature Clovis point -- a narrow, tapering, bi-facial (worked on both front and back) object of surpassing elegance. The largest and oldest concentrations of Clovis artefacts occur in the Southeastern U.S., although they turn up all over the New World, from the southernmost limit of South America to southwest Manitoba. There is no evidence of that technology evolving in North America and no evidence of local variation -- the points simply appear as if spontaneously generated -- a mature and unified technology 11,000 years old. The inescapable conclusion is that these tools belonged to people who brought an existing technology with them. "'There is no question about it,' Kent State University archaeologist Kenneth Tankersley said. 'There are only two places in the world and two times that this technology appears -- Solutrean and Clovis.'" (Boston Globe, October 31, 1999)
Equally intriguing, on the molecular level, "new data from a genetic marker named Lineage X, suggest definite links between ancient Eurasians and Native Americans. It implies that ancient European peoples who reached North America after first, presumably, migrating through Asia, still retained a distinct genetic makeup which then passed into New World populations. ... If these Lineage X findings hold up, populations from Europe and the Middle East now seem to have been among the North American continent's early settlers." (Athena Review, Vol. I, No. 4, 1998) This evolving picture of early North American settlement has prompted the prestigious Smithsonian Museum to dismantle all displays depicting the standard aboriginal "Bering Walk" as hopelessly outdated and patently inaccurate. Some scientists now call the Bering model "the 'cartoon version' of human migration, with Big Game Hunters breaking through the ice sheets (KAPOW!) and descending in blitzkrieg fashion (BAM!) into this New World." (Seattle Times, December 23, 1997) Note: Add this one to the growing list of what the Supreme Court doesn't know.
The "other artefacts" mentioned, include a ubiquitous Clovis creation: enigmatic crosshatched bone rods, bevelled on both ends, that were again, widely produced by the Solutrean. Red ochre caches are another point of similarity; typical of Clovis culture, red ochre caches and burials feature in pre-historic sites throughout Europe, including Scandinavia.