Friday, September 30, 2005

What Inspired Hitler

"It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habitating so closely in these schools, and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this alone does not justify a change in the policy of this Department, which is geared towards the FINAL SOLUTION OF OUR INDIAN PROBLEM." (Department of Indian Affairs Superintendent D.C. Scott to B.C. Indian Agent-General Major D. McKay, DIA Archives, RG 10 series). April 12, 1910 (emphasis added))

According to James Pool in his "Hitler and His Secret Partners":

Hitler drew another example of mass murder from American history. Since his youth he had been obsessed with the Wild West stories of Karl May. He viewed the fighting between cowboys and Indians in racial terms. In many of his speeches he referred with admiration to the victory of the white race in settling the American continent and driving out the inferior peoples, the Indians. With great fascination he listened to stories, which some of his associates who had been in America told him about the massacres of the Indians by the U.S. Calvary.

He was very interested in the way the Indian population had rapidly declined due to epidemics and starvation when the United States government forced them to live on the reservations. He thought the American government's forced migrations of the Indians over great distances to barren reservation land was a deliberate policy of extermination. Just how much Hitler took from the American example of the destruction of the Indian nations his hard to say; however, frightening parallels can be drawn. For some time Hitler considered deporting the Jews to a large 'reservation' in the Lubin area where their numbers would be reduced through starvation and disease. (p. 273-274).

And:

The next morning Hitler's 'plan' was put in writing and sent out to the German occupation authorities as 'The Fuehrer's Guidelines for the Government of the Eastern Territories: ' the Slavs are to work for us. Insofar as we don't need them, they may die. Therefore compulsory vaccination and German health services are superfluous. The fertility of the Slavs is undesirable. They may use contraceptives And practice abortion, the more the better. Education is dangerous. It is sufficient... if they can count up to a hundred. At best an education is admissible which produces useful servants for us. Every educated person is a future enemy. Religion we leave to them as a means of diversion. As to food, they are not to get more than necessary. We are the masters, we come first.'

Always contemptuous of the Russians, Hitler said: 'For them the word 'liberty' means the right to wash only on feast-days. If we arrive bringing soft soap, we'll obtain no sympathy...There's only one duty: to Germanize this country by the immigration of Germans, and to look upon the natives as Redskins.' Having been a devoted reader of Karl May's books on the American West as a youth, Hitler frequently referred to the Russians as 'Redskins'. He saw a parallel between his effort to conquer and colonize land in Russia with the conquest of the American West by the white man and the subjugation of the Indians or 'Redskins'. 'I don't see why', he said, 'a German who eats a piece of bread should torment himself with the idea that the soil that produces this bread has been won by the sword. When we eat from Canada, we don't think about the despoiled Indians." (James Pool, Ibid, pp. 254-255)

And from a speech by Heinrich Himmler (date not given):

I consider that in dealing with members of a foreign country, especially some Slav nationality...in such a mixture of peoples there will always be some racially good types. Therefore I think that it is our duty to take their children with us, to remove them from their environment, if necessary, by robbing or stealing them... (Telford Taylor "Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials", Alfred A Knopf, N.Y. 1992, p. 203)

And from John Toland, preeminent biographer of Adolf Hitler:

Hitler's concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa And for the Indians in the Wild West; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America's extermination-by starvation and uneven combat-of the 'Red Savages' who could not be tamed by captivity. (John Toland, "Adolf Hitler" Vol II, p 802, Doubleday & Co, 1976)
"Set the blood-quantum at one-quarter, hold to it as a rigid definition of Indians, let intermarriage proceed...and eventually Indians will be defined out of existence. When that happens,the federal government will finally be freed from its persistent Indian problem." (Patricia Nelson Limerick, "The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West" p338)

Government paper warns of risks of apologizing for residential schools WENDY COX July 27, 1998 from Ottawa Citizen

OTTAWA (CP) - Government officials were urged two years ago to provide a compensation package to aboriginal people who suffered in residential schools as an attempt to control the potentially explosive costs of lawsuits, an internal document shows. The report, stamped Secret and obtained by The Canadian Press, compares the pros and cons of forcing claimants to go to court with offering financial redress to victims. It concludes that in the long run, compensation would be cheaper.

"The number of individual claims as well as any negative implications for the federal government in defending such actions (lawsuits) would likely be minimized if a government policy, including some form of redress package, were adapted," says the 20-page report. The document also warns against using the word "apology," preferring instead "an acknowledgment or expression of regret." "It could be worded in such a fashion so as to not lay blame on anyone."

Government officials confirmed the report, which is titled simply Residential Schools Discussion Paper, was written in late 1995 or early 1996 for Ron Irwin, then the minister of Indian Affairs. It may also have been prepared for the Justice Department. The report never reached current Indian Affairs Minister Jane Stewart and the advice in it never formed the basis for actions she later took, officials say. Earlier this year, Stewart issued a Statement of Reconciliation, saying the government was "deeply sorry" for those who suffered the "tragedy" of physical and sexual abuse at the schools.

The statement also included a $350-million healing fund. "It was critical that the apology meant something to us," said Shawn Tupper, spokesman for the minister on the residential schools file. "We can point to (the $350-million healing fund) and say we're actually doing something substantive to back it up." The statement has been accepted by national Chief Phil Fontaine, however other native leaders said at the time that it wasn't good enough. But critics who have read the 1996 document say the federal government has followed the advice to the letter. They say it's evidence the statement is not an apology at all but merely an attempt to control costs. Ovide Mercredi, a former national chief, said the document shows "the minister didn't follow her heart or her sense of justice." "She followed legal advice and the advice was to reduce legal liability at all costs and the government measure is designed to do that." Fontaine was unavailable for comment.

The document advises that forcing former students to take the government to court would ensure they would have to prove their claims. As an added advantage, it would also limit lawsuits, the report states.

"There is a general disinclination by persons who have suffered abuse to testify on such a personal and painful matter in a public and adversarial forum," the report says.

"A litigation approach may well keep the number of claimants down to a minimum."

However, going to court would cost the government dearly in money and in bad press, the report concludes. The author, who is unnamed, recommends a compensation package instead. Since the report was written, thousands of former students have joined class action suits or have filed individual lawsuits against the federal government. A landmark B.C. court ruling last month declared for the first time that both the federal government and the United Church are legally liable for widespread sexual and physical abuse at a Port Alberni, B.C., school and ordered them to compensate about 30 former students. A figure for the compensation has not yet been decided. The mounting lawsuits are anticipated in the 1996 report, but the document also cautions that apologizing is dangerous territory.

"Whatever it is called, the department will want to ensure that the statement cannot subsequently be used to establish a cause of action against the Crown in any particular individual cause," it states. "It would appear that this government is committed to looking ahead and in these tough economic times, it would not want to be involved in anything that is too expensive or linked to the past." Tupper said the department's thinking has evolved since the report. When asked at a news conference last January if the statement of reconciliation was an apology, Stewart responded yes. "In our view, the statement of reconciliation is not an acknowledgment of guilt in a court of law," Tupper said. It is an acknowledgment of a historic policy and the negative impacts of that policy and it is a commitment to do something about it."
However, John McKiggan, a lawyer for about 800 former students at the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School in Nova Scotia, said the internal document reveals the federal government's strategy. "There is an amazing similarity between the present and suggestions made in the paper," he said. "The statement of reconciliation does not apologize for government actions. It recognizes the pain. It doesn't admit responsibility for that pain."
© The Canadian Press, 1998

Alberta sterilization victims also used as guinea pigs Revelation comes as 40 victims win $4M settlement Marina Jimenez National Post 10/28/98

As many as 100 of the children at the centre of the Alberta sterilization scandal of the late 1960s and early 1970s were also used as guinea pigs in drug trials, the National Post has learned. The children lived at the Provincial Training School in Red Deer. Some were wards of the province and others were placed in the school by their parents, who did not consent to the sterilization or medical experimentation, which included the administration of powerful steroids and anti-psychotic drugs. Experts say one of the drugs used, the anabolic steroid norbolethone, is illegal today. The anti-psychotic tranquilizer haloperidol was also used. Its effect on children is said to be akin to hitting them over the head with a sledge hammer.

Yesterday, 40 people who were sterilized against their will reached a settlement totalling $4-million with the government of Alberta. This brings to 540 the number of people who have settled with the province for being sterilized under the now-defunct Alberta Sterilization Act, which was in effect from 1928 to 1972. The operations were ordered by Alberta's eugenics board to prevent the mentally disabled from passing on their defects to offspring. Lawyers say they want more money from the government for victims who had to endure being tested with powerful drugs in addition to being sterilized. "Invading people's rights in the form of unauthorized research and taking advantage of people who couldn't look after themselves is the kind of thing that courts award punitive damages for," said Jon Faulds, an Edmonton lawyer representing 109 sterilization victims still negotiating settlements.

Allan Garber, another Edmonton lawyer acting for the former training school residents, said they were treated like cattle. "The experimental drug treatment only compounds the evil that was done to our clients." Dr. Leonard J. LeVann, medical superintendent from 1949 to 1974 at the Red Deer school, published the results of his drug experiments in scholarly journals, which were recently turned over to lawyers for the victims. The articles show that Dr. LeVann, who is dead, gave 100 undersized children the anabolic steroid norbolethone over a 12-month period in 1971. The drug -- now illegal in Canada -- made the children gain weight. But it also produced some side effects: the genitals of two boys increased in size and one girl's voice deepened."The treatment of retarded growth in children with anabolic agents is controversial," he wrote in the September 1971 edition of the International Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, Therapy and Toxicology. Nonetheless, he called the drug study "entirely satisfactory."

Norbolethone is illegal today because of its powerful side effects - damage to the liver and negative psychological symptoms. Anabolic steroids can also increase aggressive sexual behaviour in men and cause secondary sexual characteristics, for example, facial hair in girls. Dr. LeVann also gave 100 children haloperidol, an anti-psychotic tranquilizer, over a period of 40 days in the late 1960s to counter hyperactivity and excitability. Dr. Louis Pagliaro, a professor of educational psychology and the associate director of the substance abusology research unit at the University of Alberta, says haloperidol "would essentially knock (children) out. (It) generally decreases people's ability to learn and adversely affects memory and behaviour." Dr. LeVann's studies are "full of half-truths, assumptions and by today's standards, lack proper research methodology," says Dr. Pagliaro.

About 2,800 people were sterilized in Alberta before the Sexual Sterilization Act was finally repealed. Documents now show that many of the people sterilized were not mentally disabled. In 1996, the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench ordered the provincial government to pay Leilani Muirer $740,000 for being wrongfully confined in the Red Deer school and sterilized. Her landmark victory opened a floodgate of litigation. In June, 1998, the government agreed to pay 500 more sterilization claimants up to $100,000. Many continue to live in the Red Deer facility, known today as the Michener Centre. The province has spent $54 million on settlements to date. The compensation deal for the sterilizaiton victims announced yesterday, much the same as those announced last June, gives claimants $75,000 now and another $25,000 after three years, if they are then living outside institutions.

Freedom From Fear by Aung San Suu Kyi

The following was written and delivered by Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of the 1991 Nobel Price for Peace and the 1990 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought and an imprisoned leader of the Human Rights Movement in Burma (Myanmar). Food for Thought!

Freedom from Fear
by Aung San Suu Kyi
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It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it. Most Burmese are familiar with the four 'a-gati', the four kinds of corruption. 'Chanda-gati', corruption induced by desire, is deviation from the right path in pursuit of bribes or for the sake of those one loves. 'Dosa-gati' is taking the wrong path to spite those against whom one bears ill will, and 'moga- gati' is aberration due to ignorance.
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But perhaps the worst of the four is 'bhaya-gati', for not only does 'bhaya', fear, stifle and slowly destroy all sense of right and wrong, it so often lies at the root of the other three kinds of corruption.
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Just as 'chanda-gati', when not the result of sheer avarice, can be caused by fear of want or fear of losing the goodwill of those one loves, so fear of being surpassed, humiliated or injured in some way can provide the impetus for ill will. And it would be difficult to dispel ignorance unless there is freedom to pursue the truth unfettered by fear. With so close a relationship between fear and corruption it is little wonder that in any society where fear is rife corruption in all forms becomes deeply entrenched.
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Public dissatisfaction with economic hardships has been seen as the chief cause of the movement for democracy in Burma, sparked off by the student demonstrations 1988. It is true that years of incoherent policies, inept official measures, burgeoning inflation and falling real income had turned the country into an economic shambles. But it was more than the difficulties of eking out a barely acceptable standard of living that had eroded the patience of a traditionally good-natured, quiescent people--it was also the humiliation of a way of life disfigured by corruption and fear.
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The students were protesting not just against the death of their comrades but against the denial of their right to life by a totalitarian regime which deprived the present of meaningfulness and held out no hope for the future. And because the students' protests articulated the frustrations of the people at large, the demonstrations quickly grew into a nationwide movement. Some of its keenist supporters were businessmen who had developed the skills and the contacts necessary not only to survive but to prosper within the system. But their affluence offered them no genuine sense of security or fulfilment, and they could not but see that if they and their fellow citizens, regardless of economic status, were to achieve a worthwhile existence, an accountable administration was at least a necessary if not a sufficient condition. The people of Burma had wearied of a precarious state of passive apprehension where they were 'as water in the cupped hands' of the powers that be.
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Emerald cool we may be
As water in cupped hands
But oh that we might be
As splinters of glass
In cupped hands
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Glass splinters, the smallest with its sharp, glinting power to defend itself against hands that try to crush, could be seen as a vivid symbol of the spark of courage that is an essential attribute of those who would free themselves from the grip of oppression. Bogyoke Aung San regarded himself as a revolutionary and searched tirelessly for answers to the problems that beset Burma during her times of trial. He exhorted the people to develop courage: 'Don't just depend on the courage and intrepidity of others. Each and every one of you must make sacrifices to become a hero possessed of courage and intrepidity. Then only shall we all be able to enjoy true freedom.'
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The effort necessary to remain uncorrupted in an environment where fear is an integral part of everyday existence is not immediately apparent to those fortunate enough to live in states governed by the rule of law. Just laws do not merely prevent corruption by meting out impartial punishment to offenders. They also help to create a society in which people can fulfil the basic requirements necessary for the preservation of human dignity without recourse to corrupt practices. Where there are no such laws, the burden of upholding the principles of justice and common decency falls on the ordinary people. It is the cumulative effect on their sustained effort and steady endurance which will change a nation where reason and conscience are warped by fear into one where legal rules exist to promote man's desire for harmony and justice while restraining the less desirable destructive traits in his nature.
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In an age when immense technological advances have created lethal weapons which could be, and are, used by the powerful and the unprincipled to domninate the weak and helpless, there is a compelling need for a closer relationship between politics and ethics at both the national and international levels. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations proclaims that 'every individual and every organ of society' should strive to promote the basic rights and freedoms to which all human beings regardless of race, nationality or religion are entitled. But as long as there are governments whose authority is founded on coercion rather than on the mandate of the people, and interest groups which place short-term profits above long-term peace and prosperity, concerted international action to protect and promote human rights will remain at best a partially realized struggle. There will continue to be arenas of struggle where victims of oppression have to draw on their own inner resources to defend their inalienable rights as members of the human family.
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The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit, born of an intellectual conviction of the need for change in those mental attitudes and values which shape the course of a nation's development. A revolution which aims merely at changing official policies and institutions with a view to an improvement in material conditions has little chance of genuine success. Without a revolution of the spirit, the forces which produced the iniquities of the old order would continue to be operative, posing a constant threat to the process of reform and regeneration. It is not enough merely to call for freedom, democracy and human rights. There has to be a united determination to persevere in the struggle, to make sacrifices in the name of enduring truths, to resist the corrupting influences of desire, ill will, ignorance and fear.
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Saints, it has been said, are the sinners who go on trying. So free men are the oppressed who go on trying and who in the process make themselves fit to bear the responsibilities and to uphold the disciplines which will maintain a free society. Among the basic freedoms to which men aspire that their lives might be full and uncramped, freedom from fear stands out as both a means and an end. A people who would build a nation in which strong, democratic institutions are firmly established as a guarantee against state- induced power must first learn to liberate their own minds from apathy and fear.
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Always one to practise what he preached, Aung San himself constantly demonstrated courage--not just the physical sort but the kind that enabled him to speak the truth, to stand by his word, to accept criticism, to admit his faults, to correct his mistakes, to respect the opposition, to parley with the enemy and to let the people be the judge of his worthiness as a leader. It is for such moral courage that he will always be loved and respected in Burma--not merely as a warrior hero but as the inspiration and conscience of the nation. The words used by Jawaharlal Nehru to describe Mahatma Gandhi could well be applied to Aung San: 'The essence of his teaching was fearless and truth, and action allied to these, always keeping the welfare of the masses in view.'
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Gandhi, that great apostle of non-violence, and Aung San, the founder of a national army, were very different personalities, but as there is an inevitable sameness about the challenges of authoritarian rule anywhere at any time, so there is a similarity in the intrinsic qualities of those who rise up to meet the challenge. Nehru, wh considered the instillation of courage in the people of India one of Gandhi's greatest achievements, was a political modernist, but as he assessed the needs for a twentieth-century movement for independence, he found himself looking back to the philosophy of ancient India: 'The greatest gift for an individual or a nation...was 'abhaya', fearlessness, not merely bodily courage but absence of fear from the mind.
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Fearlessness may be a gift but perhaps more precious is the courage acquired through endeavor, courage that comes from cultivating the habit of refusing to let fear dictate one's actions, courage that could be described as 'grace under pressure'--grace which is renewed repeatedly in the face of harsh, unremititng pressure.
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Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear of death, fear of losing friends, family, property or means of livlihood, fear of poverty, fear of isolation, fear of failure. A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckelss, insignificant or futile the small daily acts of courage which help to preserve man's self-respect and inherent human dignity. It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilised man.
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The wellspring of courage and endurance in the face of unbridled power is generally a firm belief in the sanctity of ethical principles combined with a historical sense that despite all setbacks the condition of man is set on an ultimate course for both spiritual and material advancement. It is his capacity for self-improvement and self-redemption which most distinguishes man from the mere brute. At the root of human responsibility is the conept of perfection, the urge to achieve it, the intelligence to find a path towards it, and the will to follow that path if not to the end at least the distance needed to rise above individual limitations and environmental impediments. It is man's vision of a world fit for rational, civilized humanity which leads him to dare and to suffer to build societies free from want and fear. Concepts such as truth, justice and compassion cannot be dismissed as trite when these are often the only bulwarks which stand against ruthless power.
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