Oh Canada, oh no! Is Harper selling out to China?
Prime Minister Harper toasts the selling out to China. All part of the race to beat Americans to the big China pie. (photo: forestethics.com)
Sign this petition BEFORE November 1, 2012 – hurry! Stop Canada’s Prime Minister Harper from creating his version of state capitalism!
Here’s another conservative who says one thing and does another when it comes to China. (photo: sodahead.com)
Canada’s Prime Minister Harper is about to sign a trade treaty with China that places foreign corporate profits above our own democratic laws and policies. It’s the very state capitalism and xenophobia we despise in China (he must have been talking to his American conservative comrade, Mitt Romney). Harper plans to sign the treaty into law on November 1st with NO public or parliamentary debate. If you give a damn about the limited amount of democracy that we still have left in our governmental system, then sign this petition to try and protect our natural resources and environment so that they will not be held hostage to Chinese corporate profits. This treaty must not be enacted without proper public debate and discourse.
There’s more:
Harper, stop selling off our country bit by beautiful bit.
- This undermines democracy and the protection of natural resources and environment.
- It allows Chinese corporate interests (both private and state-owned) to sue us if we limit their right to profit from investments they have made in our country.
- There has been no parliamentary debate, no public scrutiny not even a press release.
- It’s bad for Canadian employment: The new Murray River coal mine in rural northern British Columbia (a majority Chinese owned mine by Kailuan Group) just imported 200 foreign-temporary Chinese workers with 1,800 more on the way.
- It’s bad for the environment: Between the last Omnibus budget Bill C-38 and the current one, C-45, Harper is gutting 50 years of environmental legislation in Canada. If anyone wants to re-instate those provisions that protected our air, water, health and fish that will be almost impossible for 31 years without being sued by a Chinese corporation that has benefitted from the lax laws (learn more in an
Do something. Anything!
At the very least sign the petition and send the link to others. And if you’d like to know more, start with these links:
- An article by The Tyee
- The website forstethics.org:
“People are the worst”
Coming 2027
My personal history is the stuff they write books about. And that's what I am doing. The working title, "Chains of My Father: Marry White."
"The ghostly image of the tragic mulatto trapped between two worlds." - Barack Obama
This perspicacious line from the Prologue of Barack Obama's "Dream from My Father" wrenched my aspiration into action. I started writing, furiously. Unlike Obama's perspective, my pain had been for the opposite reason: I was not seen by whites as a "tragic mulatto," rather I lived every day of my childhood hoping whites were not "searching my eyes for some telltale sign" that I WAS mulatto. This is my story.
It's historical fiction because I cannot find enough records to substantiate all facets of the story. I've combed the genealogy, traveled to my father and grandparents' birthplace, walked the graveyards, searched the churches and ... well, all the facts aren't there. I've written three books based on the genealogy of other families but my ancestors emerged from a journey of too much slavery and too few records.
In Grenada, West Indies, my paternal, 3x great grandmother was a "freed slave" and my grandmother, Amelia, was born to a mixed race slave named Mary (we do not know her last name) and a white, French plantation owner, Fredric de Poullain. Amelia was raised in the "Big House" and in adulthood attempted to escape her black heritage by disowning her mother, telling her, "Get out and never come back." Amelia, the mother of twelve children, enshrined the family in her ancestors' commandment, "Marry white." Many did, including my father marrying mother a lovely, white, Anglo-Saxon protestant born in England. They met in Canada where my dad studied and became a doctor.
It has taken seven generations to be free of the stigma of black heritage but today my children embrace it. Unfortunately, the past 250 years have been a wasteland of bigotry and racism, but, on closer look, we see not only the brutality, fear and violence but the self-respect, dignity, love, perseverance and indomitable spirit.
The depth of historic perspective and the human inspiration has created a trilogy and as of this writing I have only arrived at the beginning of the 20th century. 1900 is the year my father was born and the beginning of Book III, and he's pushing me to make sure our story is published by the summer of 2027.
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