A story of shocking disregard for Aboriginals yet again by the evil Harper Neo-conservative, C.N.P. controlled government.
BY SUE BAILEY The Canadian Press
Tue. Nov 25 – 8:35 AM

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Racism blamed in cold cases
UN calls on Ottawa to probe deaths, disappearances of aboriginal women

OTTAWA — The United Nations is calling on the Harper government to investigate why hundreds of deaths and disappearances of aboriginal women remain unsolved.
It’s asking Ottawa to report back in a year on the status of more than 500 cases that “have neither been fully investigated nor attracted priority attention, with the perpetrators remaining unpunished.”
The UN committee on the elimination of discrimination against women wants Canada to “urgently carry out thorough investigations” to trace how and why the justice system failed.
“It also urges the state party to carry out an analysis of those cases in order to determine whether there is a racialized pattern to the disappearances and take measures to address the problem if that is the case,” says one of more than 40 recommendations.
Sharon McIvor doesn’t need another study. The aboriginal activist who has worked for years with families of missing native women says racism is the all-too-common thread.
“Absolutely,” she said. “I’m an aboriginal woman that’s grown up in this country. I know it’s racism.”
McIvor, 60, recalled walking home from the movies after dark as a teenager in her hometown of Merritt, B.C., near the Lower Nicola reserve.
“If a car came by, I would hit the bushes because I was free game — I was a young, aboriginal girl. And we had young aboriginal girls picked up, raped and murdered. And they didn’t follow up on it then, either.”
A federally funded $5-million study by the Native Women’s Association of Canada concludes that 510 aboriginal girls and women have vanished or been murdered since 1980. It calls for an emergency strategy.
Federal and provincial justice ministers said last September that they’re improving how missing-person cases are handled, especially those involving native women.
Special task forces have been formed in Vancouver and Edmonton since dozens of women working the sex trade in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside disappeared over several years with little police or media response. Many were aboriginal.
Investigators finally banded together under pressure from distraught families and a series by the Vancouver Sun to zero in on now-convicted serial killer Robert Pickton.
McIvor says aboriginal girls and women from all walks of life are still being targeted, their disappearances treated with uneven and too-often muted reaction.
She cited the unsolved case of Daleen Kay Bosse, who vanished after a night out with friends in Saskatoon on May 18, 2004. There was no hint that the aspiring teacher and photographer, just 26 years old, would simply abandon her life.
Her heart-broken mother, Pauline Muskego, spoke publicly a year later about the comparative lack of media interest.
“My daughter’s face has never been shown nationally,” she said.
McIvor says the general public mistakenly thinks such victims are living high-risk lifestyles.
“And that’s not true. Her risk is she’s an aboriginal woman.”
No comment from federal officials was immediately available.
Leilani Farha, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action, says government efforts to date are “minimal.”
“There needs to be a proper inquiry into what’s happened to these women and what the deficiencies in the law enforcement system were and continue to be.
“I think it’s plain that the government of Canada is failing aboriginal women in this country.”
The UN committee also wants Ottawa to set minimum standards for welfare to better protect the most vulnerable citizens across Canada. And it raises alarms about lack of shelters for battered women, and Conservative government cuts that wiped out the Court Challenges Program — funding that helped advance minority rights.
’If a car came by, I would hit the bushes because I was free game — I was a young, aboriginal girl.’
SHARON McIVOR Aboriginal activist.

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 Just another example of the flagrant disregard for the rights and welfare of minorities under the evil, oppressive, segregationist, sectarian Harper Regime.

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 A great article by David Suzuki is a prime example of why we must end this “Free Market”. Labour Value means that one hour of labour is the value of set labour credits, globally. Consumer goods must likewise be based on this Global Labour Value. An article by David Suzuki aids us through explaining how this “Free Market” is just a new Demi-God that must be slain as all past Gods have been slain through the Light of Reason.

Read this article HERE
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A behemoth that won’t stop growing

Have you noticed that we describe the market and economy as if they were living entities? The market is showing signs of stress. The economy is healthy. The economy is on life support.

Sometimes, we act as if the economy is larger than life. In the past, people trembled in fear of dragons, demons, gods, and monsters, sacrificing anything — virgins, money, newborn babies — to appease them. We know now that those fears were superstitious imaginings, but we have replaced them with a new behemoth: The economy.

Even stranger, economists believe this behemoth can grow forever. Indeed, the measure of how well a government or corporation is doing is its record of economic growth. But our home — the biosphere, or zone of air, water, and land where all life exists — is finite and fixed. It can’t grow. And nothing within such a world can grow indefinitely. In focusing on constant growth, we fail to ask the important questions. What is an economy for? Am I happier with all this stuff? How much is enough?

A timely new book by York University environmental economist Peter Victor, Managing Without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster, addresses the absurdity of an economic system based on endless growth. Victor also shows that the concept of growth as an indispensable feature of economics is a recent phenomenon.

The economy is not a force of nature, some kind of immutable, infallible entity. We created it, and when cracks appear, it makes no sense to simply shovel on more money to keep it going. Because it’s a human invention, an economy is something we should be able to fix — but if we can’t, we should toss it out and replace it with something better.

This current economic crisis provides an opportunity to re-examine our priorities. For decades, scientists and environmentalists have been alarmed at global environmental degradation.

For the first time in four billion years of life on Earth, one species has become so powerful and plentiful that it is altering the physical, chemical, and biological features of the planet on a geological scale. And so we have to ask, “What is the collective impact of everyone in the world?” We’ve never had to do that before, and it’s difficult. Even when we do contemplate our global effects, we have no mechanism to respond as one species to the crises.

So all the things an intact ecosystem does to keep the planet vibrant and healthy for animals like us are simply ignored in our economy. No wonder futurist Hazel Henderson describes conventional economics as “a form of brain damage.”

Nature’s services keep the planet habitable for animals like us and must become an integral component of a new economic structure. We must get off this suicidal focus on endless, mindless growth.

Take David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge and learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

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It is time to rid the world of all currencies. These are inventions and they are best replaced with a new Labour Value concept. Banks are no longer required. All Labour on the Planet will be equal in terms of one hour of labour being equivalent to labour credits. All goods will have a labour value based on this. There will no longer be fake currencies whereby individuals are able to exploit labour through such invented currency value. This will be the next level of Human Civilization.

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 The Federal Conservative Party had a policy convention recently and according to the Globe and Mail, they are shifting further right – as their Masters within the Council for National Policy desire -.
 Read the article by Bill Curry – Globe and Mail – here

or below

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OTTAWA — Grassroots Conservatives are urging Prime Minister Stephen Harper to act on long-standing demands of the Canadian right, such as less government and more health-care privatization, as they head into the party’s second-ever policy convention next weekend in Winnipeg.

Resolutions from Conservatives across the country have been whittled down to a few dozen that will be up for debate on the convention floor.

The final list includes demands that, if adopted, could challenge Mr. Harper’s efforts to soften the party’s image among those who aren’t traditional Conservatives.

“I think people are becoming impatient and they want to see some action. They want to see this government deliver a real, small c, conservative agenda,” said Gerry Nicholls, a conservative commentator with the Democracy Institute.

Mr. Nicholls said he expects traditional conservatives will be more vocal in their demands now that the party has two consecutive victories under its belt. He predicted resistance to Mr. Harper’s view that conservative policies must be adopted slowly so as not to alienate Canadian voters.

That tension may surface at the convention over several issues, including extra legal penalties for individuals who commit violence against a pregnant woman. The item is up for debate in spite of the fact that Mr. Harper distanced himself from the idea just days before the last election. His move blunted criticism that the measure, advocated at the time through a Conservative private member’s bill, could criminalize abortion indirectly.

The last time Conservatives gathered to vote on policy in 2005, Mr. Harper was spotted backstage kicking a chair in frustration as his young party threatened to unravel. In the end, Tories emerged united with a platform that sidelined thorny issues such as abortion and capital punishment.

Don Plett, the president of the party’s national council, said he expects lots of lively debate but pointed out the majority of the resolutions simply update policy to reflect the government’s decisions.

“Much of what we have there [in resolutions are] things that we have campaigned on in the past and the Conservative government has in fact implemented,” said Mr. Plett, who helped merge the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance in 2003.

Conservative Party spokesman Ryan Sparrow played down the potential impact of the convention resolutions on government decisions.

“They’re just like any other consultation you would have with any stakeholder group,” he said, confirming the government will not be bound by the Winnipeg decisions.

Neither Mr. Plett nor Mr. Sparrow would comment on specific resolutions.

Delegates from Calgary are proposing 10-year, renewable term limits for Supreme Court judges and a reaffirmation of Parliament’s power to ignore the court’s rulings through the notwithstanding clause of the Constitution.

The two resolutions relating to the Supreme Court fit with long-standing concerns expressed within the party over the power of the courts to change Canadian law.

The proposal to limit Supreme Court justices to renewable 10-year terms is among the few major new ideas to be discussed at next weekend’s convention.

But the debate over the Supreme Court will be largely symbolic, given that term limits can’t be imposed without changing the Constitution, said University of Alberta law Professor Joanna Harrington.

Liberal MP Marlene Jennings said the proposal would also politicize the judiciary, as they would be dependent on government for renewals.

“It would cast a pall over their independence,” she said.

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Resolutions up for debate

Supreme Court judges Supreme Court of Canada judges should serve 10-year renewable terms.

Health care Provinces should be encouraged “to further experiment with different means of delivering universal health care utilizing both the public and private health sectors.”

Auto emissions Canada should match California’s more stringent standards.

Military parents If they die while serving Canada, their children should be given free tuition to post secondary institutions.

Human Rights Commission The Canadian commission’s authority to investigate complaints related to hate messages should be removed.

Streamlining The government should “streamline government services and eliminate waste, unnecessary overlap and duplication between the levels of government.”

Free votes Replace current party policy that all votes, other than the budget and main estimates, are free votes, with the policy that a Conservative government will make “most votes free.”

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- Open the door to softening the Canadian Public towards making abortions illegal in Canada

- Privatization of Health Care

- Change the Constitution so that Supreme Court will not be able to overrule the Conservative Government (they intend to rid our Constitution of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms)

- Rid all powers from the Human Rights Commission so that they exist purely for show

  Wake-up Canada.

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