Premier Notley's s lost opportunity for reconciliation, Whitehorse Star July 18, 2017

Premier Notley's s lost opportunity for reconciliation

Not always is the difference between lip service and meaningful action as visible as with the continued exclusion of First Nations from the Council of the Federation meetings, this time under Premier Notley's auspices in Edmonton.

A profound lack of generosity in Premier Notley's stance against a very feasible evolution of the council, well within its mandate, is striking. 

The word profound is meant to indicate she might have an above premiers' average capacity to comprehend what is right.

This can't be about charity. Profound generosity is the kind with gumption that finds the courage to do better than what one is used to. 

Think of doing away with the old Indian Act in 1951, which was partly driven by the desire not to once again humiliate returning indigenous war veterans by removing their freedoms with extreme racial segregation.

This step in the right direction happened in an era not without problems, but of vibrant democratic trends, and before arrival of the kind of neoliberal/neocolonial foulness we witness in Edmonton.

Or in lose human rights analogy consider perhaps allowing LGBT marriage rights that partly materialized in balance to a history of barbaric state brutality against all who insisted on expressing sexual liberties.

Human freedoms that perhaps are indirectly triggered by indigenous wisdom traditions that citizens recently aspired to, even if on a personal level some have family ideals leaning towards a more Victorian model.

On the other hand consider as another negative example former Quebec premier Pauline Marois's disaster at introducing an islamophobic religious charter, which she deceptively had called a secular charter. 

Naturally Quebecers threw Marois out of office, right along with her christian theocratic proposals.

Rachel Notley already had delivered a twisted neoliberal sense of political compromise, aiming to satisfy elites, instead of ordinary people.

On that track, left of a neoconservative right wing, political status quo technocrats like her stand at attention for every shift of goal posts by reactionaries, so they can head towards them, aim for them or even overshoot them.

Notley's climate plan put forward carbon price stimulated subsidies and expansion plans of tar and frack extraction beyond anything Alberta PC or Wildrose parties thought they could get away with.

And all to prove Goody Two-Shoes Social democrats like her are holier-than-thou fossilized. Leadership in unfolding crises times means compromise with the community of peoples, not derailed elites unknown to display gratitude for useful idiots.

Leadership would have meant to lead collaboratively, to get out in front of overdue and mounting reconciliation challenges. 

Marilyn Poitras, technocratically sabotaged (by feds) and resigning Commissioner for the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, only indicating one more of recent examples.

As Canadians everywhere, Albertans face the kind of Brexiteer/Trumpismo voter demobilization the Alberta remake of Unite-The-Wrong is dreaming about. 

And Rachel Notley is obligingly inserting the coffin nails into her reelection campaign.

Seemingly in a broader decolonization context Author Lee Maracle has a question Ms. Notley obviously has not heard: "Where do you begin telling someone their world is not the only one?"

The Liberals and NDP failed on the Khadr file (Whitehorse Star July 10, 2017)

The Liberals and NDP failed on the Khadr file (Whitehorse Star July 10, 2017)

The Liberals' and NDP's withholding of exonerating, conclusive and sworn legal testimony (US Military Commissions Report OC-1 CITF) from the public feeds ammunition to the Conservatives.

The treatment of Khadr was a war crime under the Geneva and Child Soldier Conventions, and under Canadian law which adheres to international law, rendering Guantanamo rulings invalid. 

However, acts of resistance are first rate relevant in the story, such as by the courageous American military lawyer Bill C. Kuebler who had forced into the process the sworn legal eyewitness statement by US military personnel: Khadr did not kill Christopher Speer.

A crucial failure to get out in front of reintegrating the innocent Omar Khadr is bound to cost Liberals and NDP dearly in the 2019 federal election. 

These spineless Neo-liberals want to have it both ways with a belated settlement and weasel absolution from their collectively acquired legal responsibilities.

All the while they are still trying to get in on the islamophobic smearing of Khadr and Canada through assigning consistent and fact defying blame regarding US army medic Christopher Speer's death.

Author Thomas King with his observed "first rule of racism" perhaps best echoes the political correctness of united dog whistlers on the Hill: "Think it, but do not speak it out loud."

Quote from my coloumn in the Whitehorse Star Dec. 2, 2015:

-- Unfortunately, there is no indication yet from the Trudeau government that Canada will return to the world community of nations that follows the UN Child Soldier Conventions signed by Canada in 1949, 1977 and 2000.

Under the law, prosecution and punishment of child soldiers or combatants under 18, including the cover-up, facilitation or aiding thereof, is a war crime (no ifs and buts).

Justice and compensation for Omar Khadr, who was also psychologically tortured with attention to sadistic detail by Canada’s CSIS in Guantanamo (CBC video: https://goo.gl/8cTgn4 ), is overdue, and has to be the measure of that.

Aggravating injustice occurred on Feb. 4, 2008, when the U.S. Military Commissions, in Guantanamo, accidentally released and later suppressed eyewitness report OC-1 CITF of March 17, 2004.

It contains sworn, legal testimony by the U.S. army personnel who captured Khadr in Afghanistan on July 27, 2002, that Khadr, then 15, did not kill U.S. army medic Christopher Speer.

Some decent women and men stood up for the law and Khadr’s rights.

Among them were UN officials, RCMP Chief Supt. Mike Cabana, who resigned in protest from the RCMP anti-terrorism unit Project O Canada, the former senator and general Romeo Dallaire, Michelle Shepard from the Toronto Star, American military lawyer Bill C. Kuebler and Dennis Edney from Edmonton.

It is widely agreed that the Guantanamo concentration camp continues to be a first-rate recruiting tool transforming young Muslim women and men toward the extreme.

One way to put a little more distance between Canada and Guantanamo would be to avoid the usual decades-long foot-dragging for victim rehabilitation in the justice system and clear the air quickly for all Canadians and now upstanding, loyal citizen Khadr. -- End of quote.