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Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Common sense vs. the left
My latest "Face to Face" debate in the Tri-City News centres on the issue of Canada's recent vote in the UN against a declaration on aboriginal rights.
I think it was the right move: a common-sense response to an open-ended and ultimately dangerous initiative. My reliably leftie debating opponent, Mary Woo Sims, believes Canada's vote was shameful.
I think I know how the majority of Shotgunners will come down on the issue, but I'd still be interested in your responses to the reasoning we employed in our respective presentations.
Posted by Terry O'Neill on October 3, 2007 in Current Affairs | Permalink
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Comments
Why don't we just cede Canada to the Indians (who lost it centuries ago) and pay them rent?
Posted by: obc | 2007-10-03 4:28:38 PM
My take is that what we should have done to the Indians is what they would have done to us: we have defeated you and we now adopt you into our tribe. Here's your 200 acres each. Do your thing: each of you is now a subject of the British Tribe with all the rights and obligations that that entails.
But, instead, we decided to treat them as children. And we still are.
Posted by: Patrick Armstrong | 2007-10-03 4:42:38 PM
UNDRIP protects the human, land and resources rights of the world’s 370 million indigenous people. It recognizes the right of indigenous peoples to self-determination and sets global human rights standards for them. It also provides for fair and mutually acceptable procedures to resolve conflicts between indigenous peoples and states, including procedures such as negotiations, mediation, arbitration, national courts and international and regional mechanisms for denouncing and examining human rights violations. What’s wrong with that?
Mary Woo Sims.
Canada is a generally fair place, if you aren't a white conservative English speaking heterosexual male.
We don't need the UN to make us a better place.
There are plenty of real third world toilets that need serious improvement and the UN hasn't done squat to improve them. What the UN needs to do is look to it's own corruption and avarice which is eroding it's unearned reputation as a respectable international body.
The existing Treaties that Canada has with it's Indians extinguish their right to the land and clearly outline there rights to their traditional life on the specified lands.
Wording in the UN Declaration on Aboriginal Rights conflicts with our historical treaties with the Indians.
Indigenous?
I was born here.
Should I have more rights than an immigrant?
Self determination?
Get an education and a job.
Posted by: Speller | 2007-10-03 4:48:10 PM
"Get an education and a job."
. . . and stay off drugs, alcohol, and single women.
Posted by: obc | 2007-10-03 4:50:54 PM
Who are indigenous peoples?
Wiki suggests the term can be applied "any ethnic group who inhabit the geographic region with which they have the earliest historical connection."
By that definition the English are a people indigenous to England.
"Article 3
Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right
they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social
and cultural development."
The English people are being denied self-determination by their government.
"Article 7
1. Indigenous individuals have the rights to life, physical and mental integrity, liberty and security of person.
2. Indigenous peoples have the collective right to live in freedom, peace and security as distinct peoples and shall not be subjected to any act of genocide or any other act of violence, including forcibly removing children of the group to
another group."
The indigenous English people are being denied their distinctness and are being forcibly replaced (if they resist the invasion they are incarcerated) by their government through mass immigration of distant peoples.
The indigenous people of Europe should embrace this doctrine and lobby the UN to ensure their treasoness goverments are forced to abide by it.
Posted by: DJ | 2007-10-03 4:57:49 PM
"Article 8
1. Indigenous peoples and individuals have the right not to be subjected to forced assimilation or destruction of their culture.
2. States shall provide effective mechanisms for prevention of, and redress for:
(a) Any action which has the aim or effect of depriving them of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities;
(b) Any action which has the aim or effect of dispossessing them of their lands, territories or resources;
(c) Any form of forced population transfer which has the aim or effect of violating or undermining any of their rights;
(d) Any form of forced assimilation or integration;
(e) Any form of propaganda designed to promote or incite racial or ethnic discrimination directed against them."
The indigeneous peoples of Europe are subjected to racial hatred and discrimination (white studies is one example). They are forced to assimilated to the new cultures that will replace them. Their governments are dispossessing them of their lands w/o their consent. In short they face a far darker future than indigenous people in Canada. Will the UN stand up for the indigenous peoples of Europe?
Posted by: DJ | 2007-10-03 5:15:51 PM
Voting against this idea was a smart move. There is no need to set a dangerous precedent that would empower aboriginals to seek additional and potentially unnecessary redress. It's the same reason why many Southern US states have resisted apologizing for slavery. Instead, they chose deliberately weak language such as 'expressing regret' rather than apologizing. The situation is bad enough as it is. No need to make things worse, which is, coincidentally, all the left does.
Posted by: Zebulon Pike | 2007-10-03 5:18:42 PM
Human Rights are rights for humans correct? Then there should be no distinction between aboriginals and immigrants. So to have some sort of wishy-washy extra set of rights for aboriginals is redundant to say the least. Back up a second: Didn't the original humans that settled N.A. immigrate from the Eurasian continent via the Bering straight? Wouldn't that make us all immigrants and hence all recipients of the same human rights? Accepting that we might as well defer to Canada's Constitution.
Posted by: Richard | 2007-10-03 6:46:21 PM
"Why don't we just cede Canada to the Indians (who lost it centuries ago) and pay them rent?"
OB wan, that's pretty much what we are doing now.
They have far more privilege and opportunity than any other group in Canada and we are paying them about twelve billion a year for pretty much nothing.
That is not to mention that they don't pay tax, get discounts on all kinds of stuff, can ignore the US border, get free education all the way to PHD. And judging by what I see walking (or should I say waddling) around the west coast where I live, they are using or will be using a hell of a lot of the health care system which they also don't pay for.
etc etc.
Posted by: John | 2007-10-03 7:56:03 PM
And I might add that Mary Woo Sims is just another left wing whack job that hasn't got a clue about unintended consequences. That is because, like all Lefties, they haven't got the brain power to muster the logic required to understand what is what in the real world.
Posted by: John | 2007-10-03 7:58:52 PM
Frankly, I'd love for someone - forgetting all of the other issues (and, of course, there are many) to explain to me why I, the decendent of Japanese-Canadians, ought to pay for various forms of compensation for alleged "crimes" and "wrongs" which were committed not only long before I was born, but also at a time when my own ancestors were either in Japan or here being likewise oppressed.
Posted by: Adam Yoshida | 2007-10-03 10:32:41 PM
Canada's vote was the right one. The fact is that those pushing this at the UN are the worst offenders of human rights period. Enough of selective human rights.
As for Sims what is there to say? With her and her type you only need to look at the most logical and common sense solution to any situation, and then figure that she will state the opposite. Whatever the issue I always can know in advance what kind of rubbish to expect from the Lefties. Do they not all belong to the same religion?
Posted by: Alain | 2007-10-04 3:05:01 PM
...unfortunately Marx or Lenin didn't play that way, they grabbed lands from others who worked it by a barrel of a tank.
Posted by: tomax7 | 2007-10-04 9:55:48 PM
Right you are Tomax7 but FIRST the Bolsheviks promised the land to the serfs who lived on it. Fire all the Bolsheviks who work in the "Indian Business", that is the ticket IMO. Indian people, I know, are dictated to by a chief who takes his/her orders from a Bolshevik lawyer who is lining his/her own pockets.
Like you DJ, I think the European continent should be the 'focus' group'.
Posted by: jema54j | 2007-10-05 12:39:17 AM
...yep, fire the chiefs and the whiteman/woman paper pushers then maybe, just maybe Indian Affairs will actually be that.
Can't believe the white administrative staff I've come across working for that Department I'd bet if anyone took count, there'd be more bureaucracy then Ottawa.
Then again, there'd be a big unemployment line of overweight baby boomers, so which is worse so to speak.
Posted by: tomax7 | 2007-10-05 12:52:26 AM
Indian affairs is wrought with people who are in the business of creating obfuscation. They live to make everything grey.
The Federal Govt spends 12 billion on direct cash transfers to aboriginals. That does not include all the other expenses they(natives) incur in areas not controlled by the Indian Affairs department, such as health-care, education, tax exemption etc. Add the cost of provincial money spent on welfare, special programs, educational incentives and various hiring practises.
Having worked with Indian Affairs and seen the numbers(a few years ago), I would guess we are spending (at all levels)somewhere in the area of 20-25 billion dollars a year for our 1 million natives, that's $250,000.00 per native. And yet they live in a self-imposed, abysmal conditions and so-called poverty. Makes you wonder where all the money goes doesn't it?
Posted by: cdn.infidel | 2007-10-05 9:36:38 AM
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