Category — Canada

I guess the Bamster isn’t quite on the same page as the rest of the choir, or even in the same church mosque.

Europe leans right as voters choose EU Parliament

BRUSSELS – Europe was leaning to the right Sunday as tens of millions of people voted in European Parliament elections, with conservative parties favored in many countries against a backdrop of economic crisis.

Opinion polling showed right-leaning governments with edges over their opposition in Germany, Italy, France, Belgium and elsewhere. Conservative opposition parties were tied or ahead in Britain, Spain and some smaller countries. [snip]

Paybacks really ARE a bitch.

Canada passes “Buy Canada” type resolution

Canadian mayors have passed a resolution that would potentially shut out U.S. bidders from local city contracts.

The resolution is in retaliation to “Buy American” provisions in President Barack Obama’s stimulus bill. Mayors voted 189-175 to approve the resolution at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference in Whistler, British Columbia. [snip]

You can bet the beautiful people will have their own plan and CONGRESS will be covered under another SPECIAL plan.

Kennedy bill would make employers provide care

Employers would be required to offer health care to employees or pay a penalty – and all Americans would be guaranteed health insurance – under a draft bill circulated Friday by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s health committee.

The bill would provide subsidies to help poor people pay for care, guarantee patients the right to select any doctor they want and require everyone to purchase insurance, with exceptions for those who can’t afford to.

Insurers would be supposed to offer a basic level of care and would be required to cover all comers, without turning people away because of pre-existing conditions or other reasons. Insurance companies’ profits would be limited, and private companies would have to compete with a new public “affordable access” plan that would for the first time offer government-sponsored health care to Americans not eligible for Medicare, Medicaid or other programs.[snip]

Nowhere is there any mention of how this will be paid for now or in the future EXCEPT ON THE TAXPAYERS BACK.

Small businesses will close up shop. Large ones may find it cheaper to pay the penalty. MA’s foray into this mess has turned into a nightmare of soaring costs. The answer to that is restricting services, letting people die because it’s too expensive to treat them.
LBJ made the same promises about Medicare; it’s bankrupt and bankrupting the country.

If it wasn’t for CLIMATE CHANGE, imagine what it would be like!

Snow falls in western ND, in June

Snow has fallen in Dickinson in June, the first time in nearly 60 years the city has seen snow past May.

National Weather Service meteorologist Janine Vining in Bismarck says there were unofficial reports of a couple of inches of snow in Dickinson on Saturday.

Obama wants to raise the price of oil and heating gas under Cap & Trade.
Just another tax scheme, businesses don’t pay taxes. Taxes are the cost of doing business and are PASSED through to the consumer as higher prices.
You’ve been listening to the Democrats too long.

A look at how national health care works in the UK.

The ONE praised single-payer systems in Europe and Canada while damning America’s health care system during his camapign:

As for his description of Canada and “England” as places where one just walks in and gets treatment, perhaps Obama should talk to more Canadians and “English”.  Most have to wait months for tests and treatments.  The British have a chronic lack of dentists and transplant surgeons, just to name two specialties, because of the lack of compensation for specializations.  Both have a healthy “health tourism” outflow of patients to countries that allow for free-market health care.  Most people in the systems that Obama hails would laugh outright at the notion that they get health care on demand.

Our own Catamount program is bankrupt, MA program is heading for the same result. (See here)
Hawaii started a free childrens’ health care program. Smart taxpaying parents dropped their kids’ insurance and changed to that insurance, bankrupting it. The state shut it down.

More taxpayers should do this every time the OPM devil shows his horns.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission will have to look at the facts to see if the perp is:

Knife-wielding man beheads fellow passenger on bus

A passenger traveling on a bus across Canada’s vast Western plains stabbed, gutted and decapitated a man seated next to him in an unexplained attack, a witness told media Thursday.

The victim had been sleeping before he was repeatedly stabbed in the chest by a man with a large knife, witness Garnet Caton told public broadcaster CBC.

If the victim is not Muslim, the Commission must determine is he dreamed an infidel thought besmirching the Prophet. You know of course, in Canada, mere thought is punishable by fines and public scourging, ask Mark Steyn. Beheading is however a bit stronger than a fine.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said they were investigating a “major incident” that occurred at 9 pm Wednesday (0200 GMT Thursday) on a Greyhound bus traveling eastbound from Edmonton to Winnipeg, but offered no details.

Makes one glad the Canadians have strong gun control laws. Uh Oh, just like England, they’re using BIG knives. How civilized of them.

Glad too this is only a major incident, but what constitutes a horrible incident?

It is not often our electorate has this possibility.

Canadians prefer Obama over own leaders: poll

A new poll suggests Canadians would prefer to vote for Barack Obama rather cast a ballot for their own political leaders, while 45 per cent of Americans envy Canada’s health care system.

The bi-national survey, conducted by the Strategic Counsel for CTV and The Globe and Mail, showed that here in Canada, Obama was more admired than Prime Minister Stephen Harper — or any other national leader.

Lets send Obama AND that 45% of Americans up to Canada. I’ll cheerfully take the conservative Canadians in exchange.

Let’s make a Deal Canada, you can have what’s behind door #1, #2 and the Cookie jar too. Hell, we’ll toss in Jeremiah Wright, Farrakhan, plus your choice of Dirtbin, Pelosi, or Reid.

You can’t beat this with a big stick!

…60 leading international climate change experts recently wrote a letter to urge Canada’s new Prime Minster to carefully review global warming policies, warning that “Climate change is real’ is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists…

British Judge Bruises Al Gore’s Movie

Critics of “An Inconvenient Truth” include Al Gore’s political opponents, global warming skeptics and even rank-and-file scientists. But the former vice president waited until today for a detailed review from a high court in Britain.

Asked to ban the film from secondary schools, Judge Michael Burton refused, as long as “serious scientific inaccuracies, political propaganda and sentimental mush” were explained at screenings, Agence France-Presse reported.

The bill of particulars that he issued, posted to the Web site of the plaintiff’s political party, had 11 points. Here’s the first and possibly most stinging, courtesy of The Times of London:

Al Gore: A sea-level rise of up to 20 feet would be caused by melting of either West Antarctica or Greenland “in the near future”.

The judge’s finding: “This is distinctly alarmist and part of Mr Gore’s ”wake-up call“. It was common ground that if Greenland melted it would release this amount of water - “but only after, and over, millennia.”

In an e-mail obtained by The New York Times in March, Al Gore answered earlier criticisms that were echoed by the judge today. Here’s a few excerpts from William J. Broad’s article:

Mr. Gore, in an e-mail exchange about the critics, said his work made “the most important and salient points” about climate change, if not “some nuances and distinctions” scientists might want. “The degree of scientific consensus on global warming has never been stronger,” he said, adding, “I am trying to communicate the essence of it in the lay language that I understand.”

But is his work fundamentally accurate?

Stewart Dimmock Challenges the World According to Gore

[snip] Gore and his allies pretend all serious-minded scientists agree with them and that only simpletons or charlatans disagree. [snip]

Al Gore and other global warming enthusiasts are fond of reciting that 2,611 scientists have signed a letter stating that global warming poses a serious and real threat. Yet, only about one in ten of the so-called 2611 scientists had scientific expertise. And only 5 out the 2,611 so-called scientists had training in climate, weather or other atmospheric sciences. That is less than 1/2 of one percent. Excuse me, for being underwhelmed.

Perhaps more revealing is that Gore’s list of “scientists” included landscape architects, psychologists, lawyers, a philosopher, a dermatologist, a gynecologist, and a diplomat. On this flimsy basis, as only Al Gore can, he tells us that the “debate is over” and that there is complete agreement.

The truth is that more than 17,000 scientists (not landscape architects, dermatologists or diplomats) have signed a petition stating, in part, that “there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” This petition was circulated by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, an independent research foundation that is not funded by industry. This petition was signed by more than 2,100 physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, and environmental scientists and by more than another 4,400 scientists with expertise on carbon dioxide’s effects on plant and animal life.

An inconvenient truth that Gore has failed to reveal are his low grades in Environmental Science when he was in college. [snip]

That’s not all. Gore lied about living on a farm; in 1984, he didn’t work to defeat “big” tobacco. Of course we can thank him for the internet, right?

IMPACT OF ARCTIC HEAT WAVE STUNS CLIMATE CHANGE RESEARCHERS

This presentation is about the Al Gore doom and gloom gang fighting for stasis. That’s a non-starter forever.

Unprecedented warm temperatures in the High Arctic this past summer were so extreme that researchers with a Queen’s University-led climate change project have begun revising their forecasts.

“Everything has changed dramatically in the watershed we observed,” reports Geography professor Scott Lamoureux, the leader of an International Polar Year project announced yesterday in Nunavut by Indian and Northern Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl. “It’s something we’d envisioned for the future – but to see it happening now is quite remarkable.” [snip]

I believe it changed, go back in 5 years and it will have changed again.

They are studying how the amount of water will vary as climate changes, and how that affects the water quality and ecosystem sustainability of plants and animals that depend on it.

Lets try this; the animals will move to where there is more of what they need! Now that was tough to figure out.

The information will be key to improving models for predicting future climate change in the High Arctic, which is critical to the everyday living conditions of people living there, especially through the lakes and rivers where they obtain their drinking water. [snip]

If the temperature really shifts many degrees, a tropical rain forest will develop providing water and shelter. Then when the ice returns, the pointy-heads can wail about global cooling, the death of the rain forest and loss of habitat. After the flora is buried, with luck along with some environmentalists, it will turn to oil and we can drill for it. I’ll bet you thought we were going to run out of oil.

From their camp on Melville Island last July, where they recorded air temperatures over 20ºC (in an area with July temperatures that average 5ºC), the team watched in amazement as water from melting permafrost a meter below ground lubricated the topsoil, causing it to slide down slopes, clearing everything in its path and thrusting up ridges at the valley bottom “that piled up like a rug,” says Dr. Lamoureux, an expert in hydro-climatic variability and landscape processes. “The landscape was being torn to pieces, literally before our eyes. A major river was dammed by a slide along a 200-metre length of the channel. River flow will be changed for years, if not decades to come.” [snip]

It seems to me this has happened with every river on the planet at one time or another. Where the soil slipped, it piled up providing a place for larger plants (like trees) to grow. Then we can cut them down for wood and paper products. Hey, guess what, it’s renewable, weird how that works, no.

Comparing this summer’s observations against aerial photos dating back to the 1950s, and the team’s monitoring of the area for the past five years, the research leader calls the present conditions “unprecedented” in scope and activity. What’s most interesting, he says, is that their findings represent the impact of just one exceptional summer. [snip]

The operative word is exceptional.

If this were to occur in more inhabited parts of Canada, it would be “catastrophic” in terms of land use and resources, he continues. “It would be like taking an area the size of Kingston and having 15 per cent of it disappear into Lake Ontario.” [snip]

I’ve been to Kingston, if the above occurred, it wouldn’t hurt the city. How this would be catastrophic is difficult to fathom, since most of Canada’s population live within 50 miles of the US-Canada border.

What free really costs

As I posted the other day, the Loonie and a Washington are at par and closed just shy of 1:1. With no real differential, now one perceives what are socialism’s real costs in every day terms.

Gas in Vermont is about $2.75 USD; Quebec around $4.30 CAD and varies quite a bit.

I know the Canadian gallon contains 5 liters, which isn’t all that much more. Convert values here.

You can check other New England states via a search at the linked site for Vermont.

Even at parity, everything costs more north of the border. Why not name MickeyD’s value meal a dollar meal in Canada; (dollar meal-$.99USD, $1.39CAD that’s why) beer, food, housing, movies, oh name it and it costs more.

Why do all these great free social programs, free health care, and free education, free this, and free that, have this price tag? Why do the hordes of pen pushers with the distended pensions cost so greatly? It is FREE, no?

There must be some social engineer (read Marxist) with an explanation; after all, they are the creators of this Xanadu. Anybody want to answer?

Bush says economy is in good shape despite recession fears.

more below from him

Fears of dollar collapse as Saudis take fright

Saudi Arabia has refused to cut interest rates in lockstep with the US Federal Reserve for the first time, signalling that the oil-rich Gulf kingdom is preparing to break the dollar currency peg in a move that risks setting off a stampede out of the dollar across the Middle East.

China threatens ‘nuclear option’ of dollar sales

The Chinese government has begun a concerted campaign of economic threats against the United States, hinting that it may liquidate its vast holding of US treasuries if Washington imposes trade sanctions to force a yuan revaluation.

· Blog - Dollar to collapse?

Two officials at leading Communist Party bodies have given interviews in recent days warning - for the first time - that Beijing may use its $1.33 trillion (£658bn) of foreign reserves as a political weapon to counter pressure from the US Congress.

Canada’s Dollar At Parity on U.S. Weakness, Commodity Surge

Canada’s dollar rose, trading equal to the U.S. dollar for the first time in 31 years, as climbing commodity prices boosted the outlook for the world’s eighth-biggest economy.

Oil prices jump above $82 a barrel

Commodities prices on Wednesday rose with crude oil hitting its sixth consecutive record high above $82 a barrel and spot gold approaching a near 28-year high of $730 an ounce troy. Base metals registered rises of between 2 and 10 per cent.

Agricultural commodities were down on profit-taking and signals that some food importing countries, such as India, had bought enough cereals for their inventories.

Crude oil jumped to a $82.51 after a larger-than-expected fall in US crude oil inventories last week.

China Freezes Some Prices in Move to Contain Inflation

BEIJING (AP) — China’s government has ordered some prices frozen and told officials to closely monitor others in its most drastic step yet to contain a surge in inflation.

The order, issued late Wednesday, came after inflation rose to 6.5 percent in August — its highest monthly rate in 11 years — propelled by a double-digit rise in politically sensitive food prices.

The order stressed the importance of maintaining “market stability” ahead of a key Communist Party meeting next month. It said controlling inflation would affect China’s development, reform and stability.

Oil Up Again As Low Dollar Spurs Buying

Crude Futures Surpass $83 a Barrel, Driven Largely by Weakening Dollar

NEW YORK (AP) — Crude oil prices surged further into record terrain Thursday, breaching $83 a barrel as the weak dollar and some worrisome weather in the Gulf of Mexico spurred buying.

Gasoline futures jumped as well. {snip]

A weak dollar supports oil prices by making futures cheaper for foreign investors, noted Antoine Halff, head of energy research at Fimat USA LLC.

It also prompts buying by domestic investors, who sense that demand for Nymex oil is rising overseas, said Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch and Associates in Galena, Ill.

Bush Optimistic About Economy

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush on Thursday cited “some unsettling times” in the U.S. housing and credit markets as he sought to assure jittery Americans that the economy basically is in good shape despite worries about a recession.

…and the question is, what’s this all about?”

For starters, it’s about our failure to save for the future. With childish glee we buy anything we see in a hedonistic frenzy: plasma screen TV, cars with a 60 month loan package, 5000 sq ft houses with ARMs, lavish vacations, spa treatments, plastic surgery, every electronic gewgaw, and oversized waistlines. If not borrowed through a bank, then on plastic it goes.

Given that we ceased manufacturing most of these items through offshore means and outsourced many more jobs, our capital (dollars) followed the production and jobs. This is one reason.

Here’s another. We will not fix the drain on the tax base by Medicare, Medicaid, Prescription drug plan, and Social Security. Instead, we financed this huge burden by selling Treasury bonds and T-bills. Worse, the government uses abnormal accounting methods to cover the gaps. When they amalgamated the Social Security fund with the general fund, it permitted the Great Society programs to survive until they enrolled too many voters to scrap it. When one robs Peter to pay Paul, Paul never complains.

So what happens?

The entire outflow of capital (dollars) goes somewhere; they convert to treasury notes with a guaranteed rate of return of principal and interest (future taxes). Countries are investors like everyone else; they go where the return rate is best.

The pop of the housing bubble forced banks and mortgage companies, by banking law, to initiate foreclosure proceedings. By law, at 120 days, bad loans are collected or written off against profit, which really electrifies the stockholders. The market saw them bail out of lending institutions, resulting in the drop in stock prices: Countrywide, Citi, Stanley Morgan, and Merrill Lynch to name some.

The Fed jumped in to improve liquidity by reducing interest rate by 50 basis points. The stock market went up, the banks took happy pills, and there was joy in Mudville.

Except

Other countries didn’t like the rate change (they lend money from overnight to 30 year investment bonds) and cashed in dollars for something other than greenbacks. Anything worked fine. The US is required to redeem these notes, which we pay for with Pounds, Euros, Swiss Francs, Ryials, clamshells, or worse gold. The US just became poorer.

To correct this, we will have to reduce the National Debt, (not just the deficit) by either cutting spending, raising taxes plus manufacturing goods here once more. Putting Americans to work in jobs we offshored starts the program. Getting the illegals out and cutting welfare programs forces the non-workers to change or get hungry.

We will find foreign imports more expensive; buying them will be inflationary (Remember Carter’s stagflation). To cut off the outflow of money, interest rates go up on short term borrowing which cuts into corporate growth, further damaging the economy. What say you Yogi. Something about Deja?

We can correct all this. We will have to put the socialist/liberals/Marxists on Thorzine to quiet them down

Now read the above links again to see just how serious this will be.

One more item needs addressing. China is threatening to utilize the “nuclear option” of dumping dollars onto the open market ($1.33 trillion), which would require our redeeming them, or suffer bankruptcy.

In past times, this construed an act of war.

Remember Bush saying,

“We can’t deport all…!” Wrong again.

With city shelters filled and a surge of further refugee claimants expected to flood into Windsor, Mayor Eddie Francis is pleading for financial help from Ottawa.

“When there is a possibility of adding thousands to the local social assistance system as a result of refugee claimants crossing the border into Windsor, we will become overwhelmed and our current resources will not suffice,” Francis wrote in a letter sent Wednesday to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. [snip]

Come on, Canada is veerrrry progressive so they should absolutely love having the companionship. They’ll stay indoors, out of the way, for 10 months of the year.

“I don’t believe that Windsor’s residents and taxpayers should have to foot the bill for U.S. immigration policy,” Francis told The Star. He was referring to the suspected source of the problem — a recently begun crackdown on illegal immigrants in economically struggling regions of the U.S. South. [snip]

But a group operating out of Naples, Fla., vowed to continue sending the so-called economic refugees to Windsor.

“They ask, ‘Is Canada an option?’ and I say, ‘Yes, it is an option,’” Jacques Sinjuste of the Jerusalem Haitian Community Center said in a phone interview Wednesday. For a US$300 “donation” (most of those interviewed in Windsor claim they paid US$400), [snip]

That is far less than they pay to the Coyotes escorting them into the US. Ha! It’s a bargain and they can cross in the daylight.

“This is a problem the U.S. has allowed to create. It’s really unfair for Canada to have to face this,” said MP Joe Comartin (NDP — Windsor-Tecumseh), his Party’s public safety and national security critic.

“This is very much being driven by (the U.S. Department of) Homeland Security,” he said, predicting that, “with few exceptions,” most of these “economic claimants” will eventually be sent back.

When Canada sends them packing, make sure it’s via Air Pancho non-stop direct to Mexico City. That way Calderon can be there to embrace the prodigal peons when they get off the plane. Possibly, he will even give them back their travel expenses.

A charmingly lucid methodology to a significant problem, this should surpass the moonbat EU members before long, dispersing wisdom like pixie dust on the wind, leaving them broached like dead whales.

Switzerland: Europe’s heart of darkness?

Switzerland is known as a haven of peace and neutrality. But today it is home to a new extremism that has alarmed the United Nations. Proposals for draconian new laws that target the country’s immigrants have been condemned as unjust and racist. A poster campaign, the work of its leading political party, is decried as xenophobic. Has Switzerland become Europe’s heart of darkness? By Paul Vallely
At first sight, the poster looks like an innocent children’s cartoon. Three white sheep stand beside a black sheep. The drawing makes it looks as though the animals are smiling. But then you notice that the three white beasts are standing on the Swiss flag. One of the white sheep is kicking the black one off the flag, with a crafty flick of its back legs.
The poster is, according to the United Nations, the sinister symbol of the rise of a new racism and xenophobia in the heart of one of the world’s oldest independent democracies.

A worrying new extremism is on the rise. For the poster – which bears the slogan “For More Security” – is not the work of a fringe neo-Nazi group. It has been conceived – and plastered on to billboards, into newspapers and posted to every home in a direct mailshot – by the Swiss People’s Party (the Schweizerische Volkspartei or SVP) which has the largest number of seats in the Swiss parliament and is a member of the country’s coalition government.

With a general election due next month, it has launched a twofold campaign which has caused the UN’s special rapporteur on racism to ask for an official explanation from the government. The party has launched a campaign to raise the 100,000 signatures necessary to force a referendum to reintroduce into the penal code a measure to allow judges to deport foreigners who commit serious crimes once they have served their jail sentence.

But far more dramatically, it has announced its intention to lay before parliament a law allowing the entire family of a criminal under the age of 18 to be deported as soon as sentence is passed.

It will be the first such law in Europe since the Nazi practice of Sippenhaft – kin liability – whereby relatives of criminals were held responsible for their crimes and punished equally.

The proposal will be a test case not just for Switzerland but for the whole of Europe, where a division between liberal multiculturalism and a conservative isolationism is opening up in political discourse in many countries, the UK included. [snip]

Dr Schlüer is a small affable man. But if he speaks softly he wields a big stick. The statistics are clear, he said, foreigners are four times more likely to commit crimes than Swiss nationals. “In a suburb of Zürich, a group of youths between 14 and 18 recently raped a 13-year-old girl,” he said. “It turned out that all of them were already under investigation for some previous offence. They were all foreigners from the Balkans or Turkey. Their parents said these boys are out of control. We say: ‘That’s not acceptable. It’s your job to control them and if you can’t do that you’ll have to leave’. It’s a punishment everyone understands.” [snip]

What an agreeably cogent approach to parenting and crime control this is.

And it is all so worrying to human rights campaigners that the UN special rapporteur on racism, Doudou Diène, warned earlier this year that a “racist and xenophobic dynamic” which used to be the province of the far right is now becoming a regular part of the democratic system in Switzerland.

Dr Schlüer shrugged. “He’s from Senegal where they have a lot of problems of their own which need to be solved. I don’t know why he comes here instead of getting on with that.”

Such remarks only confirm the opinions of his opponents. Mario Fehr is a Social Democrat MP for the Zürich area. He says: “Deporting people who have committed no crime is not just unjust and inhumane, it’s stupid. Three quarters of the Swiss people think that foreigners who work here are helping the economy. We have a lot of qualified workers – IT specialists, doctors, dentists.” To get rid of foreigners, which opponents suspect is the SVP’s real agenda, “would be an economic disaster”.

Here’s the usual liberal drek, a leap from the logical Particular to the Universal where every foreigner is frogmarched out of the country. Sounds suspiciously like our own brand of loons. With the left, there is only all, no terms used like some, few or most.

Dr Schlüer insists the SVP is not against all foreigners. “Until war broke out in the Balkans, we had some good workers who came from Yugoslavia. [snip]

The abuse of social security is a key problem. It’s estimated to cost £750m a year. More than 50 per cent of it is by foreigners.”

Does this not sound familiar? This is happening in our own social programs.

There is no disguising his suspicion of Islam. He has alarmed many of Switzerland’s Muslims (some 4.3 per cent of the 7.5 million population) with his campaign to ban the minaret. “We’re not against mosques but the minaret is not mentioned in the Koran or other important Islamic texts. It just symbolises a place where Islamic law is established.” And Islamic law, he says, is incompatible with Switzerland’s legal system.

Islamic law (Shari’a) is incompatible with any democratic form of law, no exceptions.

To date there are only two mosques in the country with minarets but planners are turning down applications for more, after opinion polls showed almost half the population favours a ban. What is at stake here in Switzerland…is a clash that goes to the heart of an identity crisis…of a globalised economy, increased immigration flows, the rise of Islam as an international force and the terrorism of 9/11. Switzerland only illustrates it more graphically than elsewhere. [snip]

He is fiercely proud of his nation’s independence, which can be traced back to a defensive alliance of cantons in 1291. He is a staunch defender of its policy of armed neutrality, under which Switzerland has no standing army but all young men are trained and on standby; they call it the porcupine approach – with millions of individuals ready to stiffen like spines if the nation is threatened. [snip] The transfer of power from the commune to Brussels would seriously change things for the ordinary Swiss citizen.”

Switzerland has the toughest naturalisation rules in Europe. To apply, you must live in the country legally for at least 12 years, pay taxes, and have no criminal record. The application can still be turned down by your local commune which meets to ask “Can you speak German? Do you work? Are you integrated with Swiss people?”

It can also ask, as one commune did of 23-year-old Fatma Karademir – who was born in Switzerland but who under Swiss law is Turkish like her parents – if she knew the words of the Swiss national anthem, if she could imagine marrying a Swiss boy and who she would support if the Swiss football team played Turkey. “Those kinds of questions are outside the law,” says Mario Fehr. “But in some more remote villages you have a problem if you’re from ex-Yugoslavia.”

The federal government in Berne wants to take the decision out of the hands of local communities, one of which only gave the vote to women as recently as 1990. But the government’s proposals have twice been defeated in referendums.

The big unspoken fact here is how a citizen is to be defined. “When a Swiss woman who has emigrated to Canada has a baby, that child automatically gets citizenship,” Dr Schlüer says. But in what sense is a boy born in Canada, who may be brought up with an entirely different world view and set of values, more Swiss than someone like Fatma Karademir who has never lived anywhere but Switzerland?

The truth is that at the heart of the Swiss People’s Party’s vision is a visceral notion of kinship, breeding and blood that liberals would like to think sits very much at odds with the received wisdom of most of the Western world. It is what lies behind the SVP’s fear of even moderate Islam. It has warned that because of their higher birth rates Muslims would eventually become a majority in Switzerland if the citizenship rules were eased. It is what lies behind his fierce support for the militia system. [snip]

The drama which is being played out in such direct politically incorrect language in Switzerland is one which has repercussions all across Europe, and wider.

Neutrality and nationality
* Switzerland has four national languages – German, Italian, French and Romansh. Most Swiss residents speak German as their first language.

* Switzerland’s population has grown from 1.7 million in 1815 to 7.5 million in 2006. The population has risen by 750,000 since 1990.

* Swiss nationality law demands that candidates for Swiss naturalisation spend a minimum of years of permanent, legal residence in Switzerland, and gain fluency in one of the national languages.

* More than 20 per cent of the Swiss population, and 25 per cent of its workforce, is non-naturalised.

* At the end of 2006, 5,888 people were interned in Swiss prisons. 31 per cent were Swiss citizens – 69 per cent were foreigners or asylum-seekers.

* The number of unauthorised migrant workers currently employed is estimated at 100,000.

Sippenhaft or Sippenhaftung-Liberals ought to love this concept:

It should be noted that other totalitarian regimes have used similar practices, even if they have not codified them in law. During Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge of the 1930s many thousands of people were arrested and executed or sent to labour camps as “relatives of the enemies of the people.” One well-known example was Anna Larina, wife of Nikolai Bukharin. Similar practices took place in the People’s Republic of China during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. A prominent example is Deng Pufang, son of Deng Xiaoping. They also take place currently in North Korea.

The North American Union Versus One Nation

[snip] The globalists’ primary goal is the North American Union merging Mexico, the USA, and Canada by 2010! …the NAFTA Highway [is] being built by a Spanish company (emphasis mine) so that no information about it gets out.

The NAFTA Highway has it’s first stop in Kansas City. Plans are for it to go through to Canada. No customs checks until KC. All trucking will be Mexican trucking with Mexican vehicle inspections done in Mexico.

“What can we do to defeat this?” [snip]

• Visit NumbersUSA
• Listen to talk radio, get informed, and call in.
• Talk to your local county officials: some Virginia counties are restructuring illegal immigrants’ access to services.
• Support H. CON. RES. 40: ask your congressmen to halt work on the Highway.
• Support H.CON.RES.22: demand that we withdraw from NAFTA
• Demand that the fence between Mexico and the US be built now.
• Demand that current immigration laws be enforced
• Demand an end to “anchor babies.”
• Demand an end to “chain migration” which comprises 2/3 of illegal immigrants.
• Discuss the issue! Spread the news!

The Coalition to Block the North American Union, Vienna, VA, 703-893-2777,

The American Council for Immigration Reform, Washington, DC, 202-659-9499

[snip]

Further Reading: Blog posts related to this topic

Bush is working this through the Executive Office so no treaty needs to be ratified. Neatly cuts out the electorate by circumventing Congress, doesn’t it.

Use NumbersUSA to send free faxes to your Senators and Reps. Everything is prepped for you with space to add your own personal thoughts OR compose and send your own fax.

From Canada’s Financial Post for August 17, 2007, news of a…

REMARKABLY SUCCESSFUL GOVERNMENT PROGRAM!

Steven Harper’s Conservative government exempted pickup trucks when it unveiled its eco-AUTO program in March, because it said many people use them for work. It argued that makes them more of a need than a transportation choice.

The government’s program offers rebates of up to $2000 to buyers of certain fuel-efficient vehicles and slaps an excise tax of up to $4000 on the biggest gas-guzzlers - typically SUVs and sports cars.

The exemption has pushed consumers thinking of buying an SUV to pick a pickup truck instead said Dennis DesRosiers (President, DesRosiers Automotive Consultants) ….a harsh critic of Ottawa’s green car program.

Sales of small pickups were up 25%….while sales of large pickups were up 14% over the same months last year, DesRosier’s research shows….

DesRosier’s research also showed that import brands gained ground in the Canadian light truck market, traditionally the domain of the Detroit auto makers. Honda’s CRV, Toyota’s RAV4 and Hyundai’s Tuscon all made the list of top-10 best-selling trucks in July.

Sneaky conservatives. Maybe something like the eco-AUTO program would work in the US for General Motors.

Milk Prices Rise to Record Highs

PARIS (AP) - Got milk? Well, you’re going to need more cash these days to get it.

Growing appetites for dairy in Asia and limited worldwide supply are among a number of factors driving prices of the dairy drink to record highs. [snip]

Milk prices hit a record last month in the United States, where consumers paid an average $3.80 a gallon, compared to $3.29 in January, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It forecasts prices will remain high throughout the year. [snip]

“Global demand has been extraordinary for American dairy products, but global supplies of dairy products have been exceptionally tight,” said Michael Marsh, head of the Western United Dairyman trade group in California, the top dairy-producing U.S. state.

“From the American dairy farmers’ perspective, you have almost a perfect storm.” [snip]

Governments in the United States, Canada, the European Union and Japan have a range of policies, including tariffs and quotas, that insulate their milk from international prices, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.

These systems are under strain, as high rewards in the globalized market are inspiring milk producers to challenge the old practices. [snip]

In the United States, milk processors and distributors “are being challenged by the most stubbornly inflationary dairy markets in history,” said Gregg Engles, CEO of Dallas-based Dean Foods, the largest U.S. processor and distributor of milk and other dairy products, where profits are down.

Through all this, dairy farmers in New England are calling on the politicians to maintain higher dairy price supports. The Dairy Compact adds a percentage to the price of a hundredweight of milk; this check comes from the government, not the processors.

With the government’s meddling in commerce, we get the skewed results of paying extra in a rising market, while keeping marginal entities in production.

The housing market is down; shall we subsidize the plumbers and electricians who might have trouble getting contracts. By the politicians’ thinking, the answer is yes. It’s only a matter of finding something to tax to pay for the program.

Landmines found in creek

Seems the Canadian liberals focused on guns when they should have focused of mines. Now they will have to register all landmines and store them appropriately with detonator locks. Canadians smuggling mines into the US is our next problem.

STRATHROY — A country creek where children swim, fish and frolic was instead swarmed by police yesterday as Canadian Forces explosives experts detonated two live landmines.

The mines, found in a culvert that runs under Inadale Drive between Strathroy and Mt. Brydges, appeared to have timers and were likely the type used to blow up tanks, Strathroy-Caradoc police say.

One mine was discovered by two girls Friday. They called police, and a second mine was found yesterday morning, only one metre away from the first. [snip]

Seven centimetres thick and 25 centimetres in diameter, the mines appear to be the kind used to disable tanks. [snip]

The first mine was found Friday afternoon by nearby resident Lynn Denning, who walked to the creek with her two teenage daughters so that their yellow lab, Jesse, could enjoy the cold water.

“It’s upsetting,” she said. [snip]

Why is she so upset; it’s not as if they found guns.

The Number of Americans Moving to Canada in 2006 Hit a 30-Year High

Blame Canada!

It may seem like a quiet country where not much happens besides ice hockey, curling and beer drinking. But our neighbor to the north is proving to be quite the draw for thousands of disgruntled Americans. [snip]

“During the mid-70s, Canada admitted between 22,000 and 26,000 Americans a year, most of whom were draft dodgers from the Vietnam War.” The current increase appears to be fueled largely by social and political reasons, says Jedwab, based on anecdotal evidence. [snip]

Thanks to Carter, they’re back here. One can only hope they’ll leave again.

One recent immigrant is Tom Kertes, a 34-year-old labor organizer who moved from Seattle to Toronto in April. [snip]

Not that Kertes doesn’t get homesick every once in a while. “I have no intention of giving up my citizenship. [snip]

Here’s the fly in the ointment. If Canada is Xanadu north, take the Canadian citizenship and vote there.

 Jo Davenport, who wrote “The Canadian Way,” moved from Atlanta to Nova Scotia in December 2001. She also cites political reasons for her move, saying that she disagreed with the Bush administration’s decisions after 9/11.

“Things are totally different here because they care about their people here,” she says, explaining that she’s only been back home once or twice.

Why come back so often?

Blame Canada? Not a chance, how many more will Canada take, and how soon! Sounds like these are the very ones we want out of the country, the oh-so liberal and sensitive, the Kos kidz type.