First the Recession didn't exist...

First the recession didn't even exist (No recession for Canada, er.. well maybe a "technical" one), and now the recession is going away.

yep, ok, uh-huh, sure, I believe you Stevie
After all, your finance minister has such a good track record

It isn't surprising...

... that 'Status Indians' face threat of extinction, since the Indian Act was implemented specifically for the purpose of eradicating indigenous peoples and culture. Indian Status was designed to reduce the Indian population, a neat solution to the "Indian Problem".

Within a few generations, it was assumed, the Indian population would nearly disappear. This was ensured through the restrictive nature of Indian Status: an indigenous woman who married a white man lost her status, as did her children, plus if you were enfranchised to vote or got a university education you were no longer considered an Indian.

In the past 40 years there have been many changes to the Indian Act, some positive and some negative, but most aboriginals in Canada are unable to access the benefits of the Act, while dealing with many of the negative consequences of their heritage. Canadians often display an incredible degree of racism, particularly towards aboriginal individuals and groups. Don't believe me? Just read the comments on the Star article, if you can stomach it.

Personally, I can't imagine if the government was able to decide for me who I am (legally speaking). Imagine they all of a sudden decreed that only those with two Christian parents could be Christian, or that those women who vote were no longer legally women, or that men who go to university are no longer legally men, or if you have a slice of pizza you are now Italian.

Also see How the Indian Act made Indians act like Indian Act Indians

ACTION ALERT: Keep Terminator Seed out of Canada

Member of Parliament Alex Atamanenko (NDP) has reintroduced his Private Members Bill (C-343) to ban the release, sale, importation and use of Terminator technology.

What is Terminator? Terminator Technology genetically engineers plants to produce sterile seeds at harvest. It was developed by the multinational seed/agrochemical industry and the US government to prevent farmers from re-planting harvested seed and force farmers to buy seed each season instead. Terminator seeds have not yet been field-tested or commercialized. In 2006, Monsanto bought the company (Delta & Pine Land) that owned Terminator. Terminator is sometimes called Genetic Use Restriction Technology (GURTs) - the broad term that refers to the use of an external chemical inducer to control the expression of a plant's genetic traits.

Member of Parliament Alex Atamanenko (NDP) has reintroduced his Private Members Bill (C-343) to ban the release, sale, importation and use of Terminator technology.

Actions you can take:
1. Send an instant email at http://www.cban.ca/terminatoraction.
2. Organizations can endorse the call for a ban: go to http://www.banterminator.org/endorse
3. Write a personalized letter. Remember: postage is free to your elected officials! You can use your postal code to search for your MP at http://www.parl.gc.ca (Note: The New Democratic Party and the Bloc Québécois already support a Ban on Terminator in Canada.) For more information see http://www.cban.ca/terminator
4. Distribute Ban Terminator postcards in your community! To order postcards email btpostcards@usc-canada.org
5. Donate to support the campaign -- the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network implements the Canadian strategy of the International Ban Terminator Campaign http://www.cban.ca/donate
6. Sign up to Ban Terminator news http://www.banterminator.org/subscribe

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K2P 0R5
Phone: 613 241 2267 ext.5
coordinator@cban.ca, www.cban.ca

Learn more about Terminator Technology here

Via Everdale

Canada's Banks: Accidentally not in Crisis Yet

Hahahaha!
From Rick Mercer

The National Post agrees:

Canadian banks – saved from stomping around as monoliths on a world stage backed by Canadian taxpayers -- are the least ugly in what can only be called a reverse beauty contest among banks.

You know how we used to laugh at the guy who keeps all his cash in a big old sock, or the woman who has all her savings under her mattress? Well, the risk-averse look pretty smart right about now. Phew! Thanks goodness the regulators saved the banks from themselves.

Sharing Work and Food - Imagine That

Here's an article by Wayne Roberts of the Toronto Food Policy Council, quoted in full because I don't know how to link to it on Facebook.

SHARING WORK AND FOOD CREATES AN UPSIDE TO THE ECONOMIC DOWN

BY Wayne Roberts

Unlike most people, Thomas Homer-Dixon doesn't think today's world economic crisis is very complicated. He thinks it's very complex, which makes for a world of difference in understanding which government anti-recession programs will fail (most of them) and deciding which ones can help.

Homer-Dixon, who chairs a centre for global systems analysis at the University of Waterloo, is one of the world’s leading thinkers in the field of “complexity theory,” and the author of several international bestsellers, including The Ingenuity Gap and The Upside of Down. He brings a missing dimension to thinking about remedies to the looming economic collapse that that’s so far been excluded from public and media debate. “If ever there was a case of experts not knowing what’s happening, it’s this economic crisis,” he says.

Hang in for the introductory lecture on Chaos Theory 101, and you’ll be able to follow and lead the economics debate in fresh ways.

Homer-Dixon is the first to admit he has no straight-ahead answers to a downturn that’s much more challenging that the Great Depression of the 1930s, to which it’s often unthinkingly compared. “We’ve never seen a collapse on this scale before in an environment of such enormous complexity and such a huge number of unk-unks,” he says, in a reference to the term used during his days working with Pentagon analysts who referred to unknown unknowns.

The way in which a relatively small proportion of mortgage defaults in one country during the fall of 2008 precipitated the collapse of a global economic house of cards expresses a telltale, if seemingly illogical, sign of complex systems in crisis – a very small cause leading to a very huge result, like the final grain of snow or shift of wind that produce a mountain avalanche.

But in Homer-Dixon’s view, that small cause, and even slightly bigger versions of that small cause – the breakdown of integrity in the global financial system, or the inequality that put home purchases beyond the reach of typical families, for example – is only a small part of an overall mix of “cascading failures.” His list of factors converging into a catastrophic perfect storm include intensified inequality, increased global warming, rising resource prices, and the “sheer productivity of capitalism – in many ways the deepest of all causes,” he says, since it produces chronic gluts in desperate search for markets. Together, they overloaded a rigid and “tightly coupled” global financial system that spread uncontrollable wildfires.
“Multiple stresses that reinforced each other” led to “a collapse of assets greater and faster” than anything witnessed during the simpler days of the Great Depression, he says. That’s why simplistic and one-dimensional rhetoric from politicians and pundits about fixing the problem, putting the pieces back together, and managing the crisis betrays a failure to understand what’s going down, he says. “Complex problems require complex solutions. It’s the law of requisite variety. We need a repertoire of responses as complex as the environment. “We must move from management to complex adaptation.”

Just as bodies under stress require core strength in the lower abdomen, economies and societies under shock require sources of core strength, what hip policy experts increasingly refer to as “robustness” and “resilience.” Government policy makers need to focus their view on the prize of supporting resilience in the population. Failure of governments to be on constant alert for the pitfalls of economic giantism or to be on guard for stresses in social resilience “is like not requiring cities to be earthquake-proof,” he says.

“Resilience means helping people to take care of themselves better in tough times,” rather than relying on specialization and expertise, he says, a guideline that puts a community’s ability to feed itself and care for each other at the top of his to-do list.

Here’s how I simplify Homer-Dixon’s analysis, in ways that he may or may not agree with.

When public money is used to keep enterprises afloat, the public has a right to demand that public benefits be spread among the general public. In my opinion, a longstanding (if best-kept secret) of Canadian employment insurance policy should be extended to all public enterprises and bailed-out private enterprises, including car companies and banks. Canada’s federal government allows workers at a company facing lay-offs to opt for everyone sharing the layoff by working a four day week, and everyone sharing the employment insurance by being covered on their one day a week of unemployment. This measure does not cost the employment insurance system a dime, since five people taking a payout for a day is the same as one person taking a payout for a week. It allows a workforce to stay intact for better times, maintains morale among workers and within a community, and protects younger workers with families, a group unlikely to enjoy high seniority.

This simple measure would abolish unemployment overnight, maintain purchasing power in the community, and buy people the time to become more resilient and self-reliant in their own lives, by gardening, cooking from scratch or insulating their walls, for example. It would even give people some time to sleep, the least acknowledged of the crucial determinants of health and well-being.

Only the epidemics of workaholism and every-man-for-himselfishism have kept this obvious low-pain remedy off the agenda for so long.

Having bolstered purchasing power in the community-at-large, the multiplier effect of that purchasing power needs to be captured for public benefit by requiring all government and publicly-bailed-out institutions to purchase local and local-sustainable food, recognizing that the food industry already produces almost as many jobs as the auto industry and can directly employ local people. Since one job for a local farmer commonly leads to five jobs producing farm inputs or off-farm processing, this doable measure is an employment bonanza that also yields major health and environmental benefits. This also fulfils Homer-Dixon’s call for self-reliant and unplugged systems that remove essentials of life from the vagaries of uncontrollable forces.

This depression does not have to hurt. Get beyond the complications into the complexity, and discover what Homer-Dixon calls “the upside to down.”

(adapted from NOW Magazine, February 26-March 4, 2009. Wayne Roberts is the author of The No-Nonsense Guide to World Food.)

Gender, Jobs, Recession... and bad math

Usually the Toronto Star has pretty decent writing, but this was one of the poorest pieces I've seen in a while. There are some good points made, but the headline ("In shrinking workforce, women may surpass men") is misleading, and the writing jumps around without leading to any reasonable conclusion.

Perhaps this is nitpicky, but there is some sloppy math here. The article claims "there's a possibility women will soon outnumber men in the job force." The numbers quoted in the same article don't really bear that out, unless you define "soon" as "probably never".

According to StatsCan, there were 7,295,900 men with full-time jobs in January 2005 and 6,297,400 women working full-time.

By January 2008, that number had dropped to 7,186,800 for men and to 5,339,200 for women. And as of last month, it fell further, to 7,095,000 full-time jobs for men and slightly for women, to 5,339,000 full-time positions.

So the trend shows in the longer term women losing significantly more full-time jobs than men (from 2005-2009, men lost 200,000 while women lost 958,400 jobs, or put another way men lost 2.7% of their full-time jobs while women lost 15.2%). From 2008-2009, men lost 91,800 jobs and women lost only 200. Now there are 1,756,000 more men than women employed full-time. If this trend were to continue, exactly as is, it would take over 19 years for the number of men and women employed full time to equalize. I don't know about you, but I don't consider 19 years as "soon". In addition, most stimulus money is targeted to male-dominated industries, so if the stimulus package has any effect, traditionally masculine industries will see a boost, slowing or reversing this trend.

If they had included part-time work as well, maybe the conclusion would be justified (women's part-time job participation is about three times that of men). Here's the most recent Statcan numbers.

If it were true that women were surpassing men in the full-time paid workforce, why is this a problem? Aren't we supposed to be living in the land of equality?

One reason this is indeed a problem is that women still make less money than men, partly because pink-collar jobs typically offer lower pay and fewer benefits. Women-headed households are on average much poorer, even when there are two parents.

Economists also point out that men have lost high-paying jobs with health care and pensions but women are supporting families with jobs that are not necessarily as good.

The article also points out:

This trend can also mean a shift in family dynamics. "If more men find themselves home, that has important implications for the way families operate," said Julie McCarthy, assistant professor at Rotman School of Management. "It's not a bad thing – most men are amazing parents but traditionally, it's not their primary role. Perhaps this trend will facilitate that."

Why shouldn't men stay home and watch the kids half the time? Many men I know would love to have more time with their kids. And most kids would love to have their fathers around more.

Wouldn't it be nice if mommy's salary was enough to support the family while daddy took care of the cooking, cleaning and kids. Or perhaps, his EI benefits could help the family pay the bills (except that like Diane Finley said, "We do not want to make it lucrative for them to stay home and get paid for it, not when we have significant skills shortages in many parts of the country." This government wanted to make it easier for women to stay at home, but I guess the same doesn't apply to men.) Or perhaps a decent subsidized daycare system could help out when both mommy and daddy need their crappy minimum wage jobs, or when mommy is single.

Then I don't think we would worry so much about equal job participation rate among men and women.

Canadians far more progressive than politicians think

Stephen Harper says Canadians have become more conservative in the past 20 years but he provides very little evidence of this.

In fact, even facing the weakest and most ineffective Liberal party in a generation, he cannot persuade more than 40 per cent of Canadians to say they will vote Conservative. In fact, all kinds of polls and in-depth studies of Canadian values suggest just the opposite: They are more progressive in their attitudes regarding the role of government.

The problem is, they have been convinced that their values will not or cannot find their way into public policy. It's not Canadians' values that have changed – it is their expectations.

Yearly polling by Ekos suggests that while the Canadian political and economic elite have become more conservative – that is, believing in a very limited role for government – everyone else sticks tenaciously to the view that government can be and should be a force for good. <Toronto Star>

This certainly did not surprise me. Most Canadians share relatively progressive values such as equality, social justice, collective rights, full employment and regulation of business - all things which "were low on the elite's preference list and high on the general public's."

The question is - how have we given up believing that these things are possible when we clearly believe they are moral imperatives?

I know I haven't been blogging much lately. I've been incredibly busy, and probably will continue my irregular posting for the next couple of months.

p.s. also check out A little problem with capitalism in which Thomas Walkom reminds us that "the financial crisis gripping the U.S. isn't an anomaly. We just have short memories." We forget that since capitalism began to be scrutinized and theorized, really smart people have noted its internal contradictions and inherent instability.

Blinky's got competition

No longer can Blinky claim to be the most famous mutant fish. At least not in Alberta.

Mutated fish alarms delegates at northern Alberta water gathering

Days before a conference on water quality began in Fort Chipewyan, Alta., last week, residents say a strange fish with two mouths was found at the nearby lake.

The deformed fish, which residents say children had caught off the dock at Lake Athabasca, has since been turned over to park wardens at Wood Buffalo National Park. Some residents, including officials from the Mikisew Cree First Nation, took photographs of the fish over the weekend.



It was found just days before the Keepers of the Water conference began Friday in Fort Chipewyan. The conference wrapped up on Sunday.

The event brought together western and northern Canadian aboriginal leaders and environmental activists, all of whom expressed concern with the quality of water in the Athabasca River, downstream from oilsands development in Fort McMurray.

"It's already mutating the animals, the pollution that they're causing. We need to do something quickly," Shaylene Wiley, a 16-year-old Mikisew Cree delegate, told CBC News during the weekend gathering.

"It's scary when you think about it," delegate Lionel Lepine added.

"For me, personally, it does piss me off, you know, knowing that it's not under my control right now. It's the Government of Canada that has the control over it; they have monopoly over our land. But industry … somehow they got the licence to pollute."

Said one commenter: 'That's one political fish! One blind eye to ignore the reality of the tar sands and two mouths to talk like politicians from Alberta when they defend the oil industry.' --HuntingTheSnark

Jim Prentice lies about Digital Copyright on national radio, then hangs up

Oh my, this would have been hilarious, if it wasn't real. CBC's Search Engine finally got an interview (10 minutes promised, 10 8 minutes delivered) to ask some questions about the digital copyright. Cory Doctorow from Boing Boing sums it up nicely:

[Prentice] delivered nothing but spin and outright lies about his legislation and ended up hanging up on Jesse Brown, the interviewer.

You have to listen to this -- in it, the Minister lies, dodges, weaves and ducks around plain, simple questions like, "If the guy at my corner shop unlocks my phone, is he breaking the law?" and "If my grandfather breaks the DRM on his jazz CDs to put them on his iPod, does that break the law?" and the biggie, "All the 'freedoms' your law guarantees us can be overriden by DRM, right?" (Prentice's answer to this last one, "The market will take care of it," is absolutely priceless.)

It's crazy - he speaks slowly, hums and haws, ers and ummms, until the 10 less than 8 minutes are up. The big question is whether he doesn't understand his own bill or just doesn't want us to get it.
Jim Prentice unlocked - Listen for yourself (It's the first segment).

Some actual information about the bill. Join the Facebook group or check out the website Fair Copyright for Canadians

The Intrepid Explorer Returns, plus links about The Apology

As you may have noticed I have posted very little in the past few weeks. This is because I have been away exploring touristing the far reaches of the world Europe. Regular blog posting to resume shortly.

The big story today is the federal government's apology for the residential schools, and of course the disgusting remarks of Pierre Poilievre. This has been well covered both in the mainstream press and the blogosphere and I have nothing new to add, so I'll just list some good links.

The Toronto Star's coverage has been really good, with about 15 articles, plus videos. For instance: Why the apology matters to us all, Apology 'is not going to fix what happened', Native apology doesn't address grim reality, Apology alone cannot close a gaping wound.

Also check out Dawg's Blawg on the apology, TGB's It wasn't me! It wasn't me! and Stageleft's Apology Day. And don't miss the biting commentaries from Harper Valley (including her trademark graphics).

And on Pierre Poilievre, here's just a few select comments from Canadian Cynic, Scott Tribe, Liberal Catnip, and Just Another Willy Loman

Thursday Thoughts

From Torontoist:

Tory MP Jason Kenney complained that Romeo Dallaire was overly harsh when Dallaire criticized the federal government's handling of the Omar Khadr case. Kenney is a former general who is credited with using meagre resources to save the lives of over 20,000 people during the Rwandan genocide in the face of massive indifference from the west…no, wait, sorry, that was Dallaire. Jason Kenney is a lifetime party hack who didn't finish his bachelor's degree. See, they're almost like twins!

From Paul Graham: al Naqba at 60 and the reflections of a recovered Zionist:

Looking back I am amazed at how easy it was to adopt completely contradictory political positions, for example, to cheer on American blacks in their struggle for civil rights and to be blissfully unaware of the grinding poverty and racist oppression of aboriginal people in my own community; to see the American invasion of Vietnam as a horrendous crime while cheering on the Israeli army as it triumphed in the "Six Day War" of 1967.

Young people are idealists by nature with an instinctive sympathy for underdogs of all kinds. Messages of freedom and equality resonate with youth, in part because they experience the inequality and lack of freedom that accompany parental control.

The direction their idealism takes and their ability to identify underdogs depends pretty much on what they learn, at home, at school, from the media. As the ‘60s progressed it became possible to understand the injustice and horror of the Vietnam War and the just demands of the American civil rights movement: these were on display on the evening TV news. Aboriginal people didn’t have a media voice; they were invisible. And as for Israel and my youthful Zionism, well, I blame American novelist Leon Uris. (Read the rest here)

Via illvox, Bolivian President Evo Morales' 10 commandments to save the planet:

1. In order to save the planet, the capitalist model must be eradicated and the North pay its ecological debt, rather than the countries of the South and throughout the world continuing to pay their external debts.

2. Denounce and PUT AN END to war, which only brings profits for empires, transnationals, and a few families, but not for peoples. The million and millions of dollars destined to warfare should be invested in the Earth, which has been hurt as a result of misuse and overexploitation.

3. Develop relations of coexistence, rather than domination, among countries in a world without imperialism or colonialism. Bilateral and multilateral relations are important because we belong to a culture of dialogue and social coexistence, but those relationships should not be of submission of one country to another. Read the other 7 here.

Alberta Oils Sands Land

Did you hear about the hottest new vacation destination? It's Alberta Oil Sands Land, with a travel review by Thomas King:

Personally, I was more interested in the Ralph Klein Earth Mover rides, but the lines were always much too long. In the end, I spent most of my time at the Waste Water Park, watching happy families relaxing and enjoying their tax dollars in action.

But the best part of the entire vacation was watching the sun set each evening on what was left of the Athabasca River. Mr. Harper would strum his guitar and tell us how his heart swelled when he looked out over the landscape and saw the sheer beauty that human ingenuity and corporate genius could create.

Even Mr. Dion got a little teary as we all watched the smoke stacks discharge their billows of pollutants. He said that the soft clouds floating over the high prairies reminded him of the old days when Native people sat around their council fires and told stories about living in harmony with the earth.

All the kids want to go to Alberta Oil Sands Land!

What They Said

What she said, and what he said, and her too. And them, of course.

And especially, what she and he said, and him too.

Of course these are just a few of the thoughtful posts from today, the anniversary of the Morgentaler decision, in which the Supreme Court of Canada ruled the abortion provision in the Criminal Code was unconstitutional, as it violated a woman's right to "security of person".

Help stop the war in Iraq... support the troops who have the courage to resist!

January 25-26 U.S.-Canada actions to support war resisters

To my fellow Canadians, do you often feel helpless to do anything about the war in Iraq?

One thing you can do is demonstrate your support for the American troops who refuse to fight in the Iraq war. Help end the war by supporting the growing GI resistance movement today!

• There are events in the U.S. and Canada - January 25 (USA) and Jan 26 (Canada) event locations, times, and contacts.


• Sign the letter "Dear Canada: Let U.S. War Resisters Stay" and encourage others to sign.


• Americans, you can organize a delegation to a Canadian Consulate near you.


• Host an event or house-party in support of war resisters.

Free Ceasefire.ca Gear - Show your support and help get the word out

Ceasefire.ca is an important part of Canada's anti-war movement. You can read about their work here

Ceasefire.ca plays a crucial role in many campaigns, including preventing Canada from joining George W. Bush's "Star Wars" missile defence program. This important work could not be done without the help of our supporters.

Ceasefire.ca needs your help to sign up new activists. We are making available Ceasefire.ca Gear; which include sign-up cards and pins that can be handed out to friends and family. Each completed sign-up card you send back to us is an additional person who will join us in taking action on key issues facing our country.

Please order your free Ceasefire.ca Gear, which includes 25 sign-up cards and 3 pins today!

The pins are pretty snazzy.

Tories say "nanner nanner" to Scary Veiled Women

New bill to ban veiled voters

October 27, 2007

OTTAWA -- The Harper government yesterday introduced legislation requiring all voters - including veiled Muslim women - to show their faces before being allowed to cast ballots in federal elections.

This same manufactured controversy is getting old.

Do I have to bring out the parable of the old lady and the biker again?

Some sectors of the population just love it when the mainstream legitimizes their bigotry. And politicians long ago discovered that they earn popularity points with them whenever they do or say something against marginalized minorities. Scapegoating can be good for the polls. The power differential means the bullies can have their way; how many Muslim women will get to vote on this bill?

The end of civilization as we know it!

This funny video comes to us from Vote for MMP. Only 2:16 long. If you like it, rate it 5 stars and favourite it. We've only got a week left 'til the referendum.

Just in case you need more information, here's Ten Reasons to Vote for Mixed Member Proportional (MMP).

The Politics of Solidarity: Six Nations, Leadership, and the Settler Left

The European settlers who colonized most of North America, were themselves uprooted from the land through capitalist enclosure and the commodification of land and labour – a process later exported to the indigenous peoples of the Americas and the rest of the world. By becoming small farmers and independent commodity producers in the early stages of Canadian development, poor and working class settlers in North America clearly benefited from the theft of indigenous lands. However, over the past 100 years, capitalism has extended and intensified its reach. Non-native people have become increasingly concentrated in large cities (Canada has the most urbanized population per capita in the world) and have been integrated into the capitalist system as workers. Because of the inherently exploitative dynamics of capitalism, workers in North America have faced a decline in living standards since the neo-liberal offensive of the late 1970s.

As William Robinson has argued, the contemporary resurgence of indigenous struggle in the Americas is happening as the few remaining autonomous indigenous communities are being forced into compliance with the demands of capitalist world market. This market seeks to commodify their labour and their land. At the same time, it seeks to drive down living standards and commodify the lives of non-native people as well. These pressures are just as evident on the Haldimand tract as they are in Canada's far north, in the mountains of Chiapas, or in the jungles of the Amazon. Traditional indigenous resistance to enclosure and commodification is increasingly assuming a directly anti-capitalist character. When this resistance takes place in large urban areas where a relatively small proportion of settlers directly occupy the land in question, new opportunities for joint struggles arise. Doing this kind of work will not be easy. Building radical organizations and combating white racism within predominantly white communities, workplaces, and political organization will be particularly hard. But it remains necessary task as a pre-condition to building meaningful solidarity with indigenous struggles.

Read this article by Tom Keefer via Whenua, Fenua, Enua, Vanua (originally published here), discussing how non-native activists can support indigenous struggles, like that of the Six Nations reclamation in Caledonia, breaking away from the "leadership" model, and turning towards work within our own comminities as well as alliances with indigenous communities. It is a long article, but worth the read.

U.S. War resisters in Canada need our help

We Canadians love nothing better than watching and criticizing American politics and foreign policy. It's practically our national pastime.

Nearly all of us oppose the Iraq invasion and occupation, but we feel helpless to do anything. As non-consistuents, we have no representative or senator to call. Inhabiting a different geography, we cannot easily participate in anti-war demonstrations. There is, however, something we can do, and that is to support the war resisters looking for asylum in Canada.

A couple hundred AWOL GI's are currently living in Canada. They are from the U.S. Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force. Many of them served one tour in Iraq and then refused to go back again. Instead, they and their families have moved to Canada. With the support of many Canadians, they are struggling to create a home for themselves and a sanctuary for war resisters.

Nearly fifty of the resisters have asked Canadian authorities to allow them to remain in Canada as political refugees. They strongly believe they are doing the right thing by refusing to fight in an illegal war. They look to UN refugee law, which states that soldiers should be considered as refugees if they face persecution for refusing to fight in wars that are "widely condemned by the international community as contrary to standards of human conduct."

These absentee GI's are upholding the Nuremberg Principles, which were adopted as U.S. law after World War II. By refusing to fight in illegal wars or to commit war crimes, they are exercising their rights and responsibilities as soldiers.

So far, the war resisters' refugee claims have been rejected by the political appointees on Canada's refugee boards, who say that war resisters had legal avenues in the U.S. they could have pursued. They say that prosecution for being AWOL does not amount to "persecution." They are reluctant to call the U.S. war "illegal."

But the war resisters are fighting for their rights and for international law. They are appealing in Canada's federal court system. The first two U.S. war resisters to apply for refugee status, Jeremy Hinzman and Brandon Hughey, have asked the Supreme Court of Canada to hear their appeals. Their lawyer, Jeffry House, is optimistic that the Supreme Court will overturn the negative decisions of the refugee board and the lower courts that have upheld them. In November, the Supreme Court will decide whether or not to hear the war resisters' appeals.
<Read the Whole Article & Watch the Video>

Tell the Canadian government: Let them stay!

Contact both Prime Minister, Stephen Harper and Minister of Citizenship & Immigration, Diane Finley to request that they make a provision to allow U.S. war resisters to stay in Canada.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper
Fax: 613-941-6900
Email pm@pm.gc.ca

Minister of Citizenship & Immigration Diane Finley
Phone: 613-954-1064
(between 8:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m.)
Email: Minister@cic.gc.ca

For more information or to donate to the War Resisters Support Campaign in Canada, visit their website at www.resisters.ca.

Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Canada (along with three other good old-fashioned white colonial settler nations: USA, Australia & New Zealand) voted no. 143 other countries voted yes, so it passed anyways.

Wait... we voted no? To a non-binding declaration?

Yup, that's right: "No rights for you!"

Um. What gives the Canadian state the right to dictate who get rights anyways?

JJ is right, it is embarrassing, but unsurprising.