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Originally Posted by Slava
Well here is one article saying that they are trying to distance themselves and frankly there are many more. The "leaders" of INM seem to have a similar feeling about the chiefs and corruption though; there are also other articles where Spence has tried to get INM to unite with the chiefs, so clearly there is a division there. Unfortunately guys like Ezra Levant prefer to lump them all together and ramble on about the movement and the hunger strike as if they are one and the same.
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Honestly I'm not using Levant to back up my arguments here, its easy enough to find my own information on line, and while at time he does a decent job of compiling information, his presentation of those ideas and interpretations make me uncomfortable. He's on the same idiotic level as Warren Kinsella.
I didn't see the link to the article that you provided, sorry, but going through the news stories and a lot of interviews "Idle No More" seems to be taking inspiration from Spences "hunger strike"
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Originally Posted by Slava
I agree about the property rights and we've seen this in action in China in the fairly recent past. Thing is, you can't blame the rank and file natives for this behaviour; no one washes a rental car. Only a fool would be renting a house and do a major reno or landscaping. How many small business owners outside the reserve were able to get rolling because of the equity in their property? Its a major factor, without question.
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On top of that if you decide to move, you can sell your property and have a nice nest egg to start a new life elsewhere. Right now you really don't get anything.
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Originally Posted by Slava
I also agree that there are major systematic changes that need to take place, and that its not a situation that is all about money. I think that the whole system should be torn apart and re-negotiated. The problem is that there are so many factions and bands that this is a long and arduous task.
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Unless they get less militant and more moderate the system will never be opened, plus for the select few in power the system works well for them, but more money pumping into the shredder would be more beneficial. The agents of change or the people who should be the agents of change simply have no voice.
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Originally Posted by Slava
Well neither does a town like say, Claresholm. Point is that its not as simple as saying they have 300 homes so the budget should be this extrapolated from Calgary at 1.1M people. They provide a lot more services (at least theoretically) than we do in some cases.
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It would look far worse if you compared a equivalent sized town like a Clareholm to Spence's reservation, where the spending would probably be something like 10x per person higher. And as much as you can argue that the city isn't providing housing, Spence really hasn't benn providing housing out of her budget either, if she had been the government wouldn't have had to emergency ship 20 heated trailers up there.
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Originally Posted by Slava
As usual, discussing money out in the open is impossible. Again, commentators like Levant throw out the $9M figure and run that up the flagpole as a symbol of how corrupt the reserve is. I agree that the $9M stock portfolio is terrible...but its terrible because their entire savings account is only $9M dollars.
EDIT: Here is the link: http://www.canada.com/Idle+More+foun...260/story.html |
I'm pretty much ignoring Levant, if I do see figures such as the $850 per day tax free to the band manager who lives with Spence I'm trying to verify it through other sources, but its kind of irrelevant if you look at the raw numbers coming into the band versus the value of services being provided by the band.