But, it’ll do.

Where the foxes caper unmolested , the government packs your school lunch, and nobody ever dies…

More are questioning British immigration policy, defying the predictable reactions;

Given the scale of new arrivals here and the extent to which they are changing our society, the quality of debate over the desirability of this upheaval is miserable. And we all know why.
Those who favour open borders have in effect gagged opponents by accusing them of “racism”. You don’t have to be against welcoming newcomers to be smeared as a Nazi sympathiser. You just have to argue that it’s an important matter, with some serious downsides, that deserves proper analysis.
On that basis, I’m sure that this column will be met with abuse from the pro-immigration lobby. I’ll be branded as a closet racist for reflecting the concerns of millions of decent Britons who are worried about what’s happening to their country.
Cowed by human-rights campaigners, refugee groups and duplicitous politicians (mainly Labour and Lib Dem), seeking electoral advantage by demonising rivals who propose controlled immigration, we have created a monstrous democratic deficit.
In December 2004, just as the wave of arrivals from eastern Europe was becoming too big to ignore, a survey for the Economist revealed that nearly three quarters of British people believed that too many immigrants were coming here. The Government refused to listen; it didn’t want to know.
Labour encouraged, in some cases by stealth, one of the most impactful challenges to British life without asking anyone for permission or approval. Unrestricted immigration did not feature in any of Tony Blair’s election manifestos.
We simply got it – whether we liked it or not. Since Labour came to power 10 years ago, British citizenship has been granted to one million foreign nationals. More than 150,000 were given a passport in 2006, four times the number who were awarded the privilege in 1997. The rate of overseas settlement in Britain is running at its highest ever.

“Little Mohammed Horner sat in a corner…”
“Mohammed Sprat could eat no fat, his wives could eat no lean…”
(From from the New Collection of 21st Century British Nursery Rhymes.)

As Kevin Jaeger has previouslynoted, Tony Blair’s Britain is getting creepier every day, taking on traits generally reserved for post-apocalyptic fiction writing;

Secret plans to encourage the nation to give up eating meat are being examined by the Government.
A leaked e-mail expresses sympathy for the environmental benefits of a mass switch to a vegan diet – a strict form of vegetarianism which bans milk, dairy products and fish.
[…]
The e-mail, sent to a vegetarian campaign group, comes from an official at the Environment Agency, a Government advisory body. It states: “The potential benefit of a vegan diet in terms of climate impact could be very significant.”
However, it does recognise that it would be very difficult to win public support for such a move. Consequently, it says the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is looking to encourage a gradual change that would be more palatable to the general public.
The e-mail states: “It will be a case of introducing this gently as there is a risk of alienating the public majority.”

In almost any other context, one could regard a leak of this type as an idiotic toss-off by some irrelevant government employee. But given the Blair government’s pathological obsession to videotape, monitor, track, regulate and manipulate every facet of British society, it’s hard to imagine there remains an idea so outrageous it may be safely consigned to the implausible.
DNA kits to trace spitting bus passengers.

The “spit kits” are already supplied at all 275 Tube stations and are expected to be rolled out this summer across London’s 7,000-strong bus fleet.
It is the latest initiative against anti-social behaviour on buses and has coincided with the Mayor’s introduction of free bus travel for under-16s.

It’s a fortunate thing for Cleese and Co. that they made their Monty Python fortunes when they did. In today’s Britain, the market on absurdity has been so tightly cornered, it’s hard to imagine how they could have carved out a niche for their own brand.
The real mystery remaining is why the British public continues to tolerate the smothering encroachment of this uber-nannystate into every aspect of their lives.
Have they added something to their water?

Stanley Kurtz links to an article on chain migration;

Pablo Baltazar was the first in his family to cross the Rio Grande, seeking a place where his children would never have to fight over morsels of meat in a watery stew, as he and his siblings had done on hungry nights.
In the three decades since his crossing, all nine of his siblings followed, bringing spouses and children. The Baltazar clan, now too numerous to count, stretches from Eastern North Carolina, where its members started out working the fields, to Florida, Texas and Colorado.
Their family ties to Pablo, who was granted legal residency in a 1986 amnesty, have helped nearly all of them become legal residents.’

Kurtz writes;

[I]n a clear echoing of the European pattern–the article notes, “Chain migration has cleared out entire village in Mexico. And it has turned areas of rural North Carolina into places where Spanish is the dominant language.”
That is the heart of the problem. Not only does chain migration make nonsense of numerical limits, it transfers entire extended clans–even whole villages–from one country to another. By setting up a little world that’s culturally and linguistically just like the originating country, chain migration effectively blocks assimilation.

Brett Lamb;

Anyhow, speaking of glass houses, some right-wing blog written by an artist who airbrushes cheeseball, kitsch paintings on motorcycle helmets, linked to the walk post and sent a couple of — expected — odd and offensive people to the comments (now deleted). Sociopaths and right wing blogs! They go together like … dragons and boobies!

Now, that was a really interesting comment – in effect, a smear directed not at me as much as it is those honest working guys (and girls) who come to me with their wish list and a bike helmet, goal mask, or racecar.
We call automotive airbrushing “candy art” for a reason. It reflects the customer’s whims, not the artist’s. It’s supposed to be fun and decorative, but rendered with the seriousness reserved for the potentially temporary. That’s because this style of art is sometimes painted on objects known to hurtle down racetracks at speeds approaching 200 mph.

Indeed, these particular customers trust that your prep and paint technique won’t result in the failure of structural integrity when they crash. Because eventually, they all crash.
Brett Lamb knows all this. Or he should – he’s a graphic artist. And he’s probably worn a silk-screened t-shirt at some point in his life. He may have even seen “boobies” and “dragons” cover art on a ’70’s rock album. And I’ll bet he knows that when he screws up the cover of a program guide, the customer doesn’t die.
Which brings me to the real point.
As it turns out, when he’s not documenting the stalking of rich people by Toronto Star columnists, he’s art director for the “Hot Docs” film festival;

For me, work on this year’s Hot Docs festival began almost a year ago — the first ad for RealScreen announcing the 2006 festival was due the day after the staff wrap party. It’s a very satisfying project: it’s quiet for several months, then things build slowly in the fall with Doc Soup, then the pace picks up in the new year and for the final two months it’s madness as we juggle deadline after deadline …
Finally, it all comes together! Tonight is Opening Night and from here on it’s parties and screenings (and more work, but that’s the life, eh?).

I wonder – from where does “Hot Docs” get a portion of their funding?

“The Ontario government has announced it is spending around $600,000 this year on programs to help artists improve business skills, reported The Globe and Mail April 30. Among the programs: film-industry training labs at the Hot Docs festival…”

Isn’t that thoughtful. Channeliing tax dollars towards filmmakers who find themselves unhappily excluded from that merit-based community known as “people who create stuff people will pay for voluntarily”.
You see, for reasons that have never been clearly explained, select members of the “arts community” are actually sheltered from their own lack of market appeal through programs and funding provided by various arms of government!

Hot Docs is one of 34 film festivals across the country supported by the media arts program at the Council. Support for media arts festivals is aimed at raising the profile of Canadian independent film and video artists and their works, and helping them connect with distributors, exhibitors and broadcasters.

In other industries, these people are called “corporate welfare bums”.
It’s not new for elitists to direct ridicule towards the whims and tastes of working class Canadians. You’d just think that subsidized elitists would exercise a little self-restraint.
While Brett may offer precautionary advice that the road to artistic misery is to allow money to “dictate what you do” – that’s the path that I and the oilfield workers, electricians, lawyers, doctors, and engineers who ask for “kitsch” on their helmets, cars, shop vehicles walk every day. Beyond the shiny, huggy, distainful realm of the publicly funded arts, there exist people who do that miserable, cheesy, commercially viable work to earn the bucks to pay the taxes to prop up the budgets of films and festivals that keep the kind of creative genius required to generate posters and brochures from having to sully itself with a second job behind a Burger King counter.
You know, if someone actually scraped these artistic parasites off the public tit, it might inspire a few of them to create something worth paying for.
Or, increase the number of available workers for the food service industry.
Win, win.

That when Castro’s death is finally acknowledged, the Trudeau boys will have a new father figure superhero waiting to fill his shoes;

Meanwhile, multiple sources around Caracas report that at a recent cabinet meeting, Chávez excoriated his ministers for disobeying his “orders” to stop inflation. Inflation has been spiraling as a result of Chávez’s reckless economic “policies” (if that is not too charitable a term). As a result, Chávez was moved to impose price controls in many categories of basic foodstuffs, which has predictably led to food shortages (despite huge oil windfalls) which has led to decrees obligating farmers and supermarkets to keep producing and selling, even if they incur losses.

Do you smell diesel?

In a proposal with all the economic rationality of developed world agricultural subsidies that pay farmers not to farm, Ecuador has seriously proposed that it be paid $350 million per year not to develop one of its oil fields as a contribution to alleviate global warming. According to the article “countries like Italy and Norway, as well as international foundations, the Inter-American Development Bank, the United Nations and universities in the United States have voiced interest in the Ecuadorian proposal.”

Hola, bulldozers.

Breaching America – Part 1;

Because all but a tiny fraction of those arrested crossing the southern border are Mexican or Central American, issues of border security get framed accordingly and cast in the image of America’s neighbors to the south. Right or wrong, in this country the public face of illegal immigration has Latino features.
But there are others coming across the Rio Grande, and many are in Boles’ image.
People from 43 so-called “countries of interest” in the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa are sneaking into the United States, many by way of Texas, forming a human pipeline that exists largely outside the public consciousness but that has worried counterterrorism authorities since 9-11.
These immigrants are known as “special-interest aliens.” When caught, they can be subjected to FBI interrogation, detention holds that can last for months and, in rare instances, federal prison terms.
The perceived danger is that they can evade being screened through terror-watch lists.

It isn’t just the southern border…

Mahmoud Kourani, convicted in Detroit as a leader of the terrorist group Hezbollah. Using a visa obtained by bribing a Mexican official in Beirut, the Lebanese national sneaked over the Mexican border in 2001 in the trunk of a car.
Nabel Al-Marahb, a reputed al-Qaida operative who was No. 27 on the FBI’s most wanted terrorist list in the months after 9-11, crossed the Canadian border in the sleeper cab of a long-haul truck.
Farida Goolam Mahammed, a South African woman captured in 2004 as she carried into the McAllen airport cash and clothes still wet from the Rio Grande. Though the government characterized her merely as a border jumper, U.S. sources now say she was a smuggler who ferried people with terrorist connections. One report credits her arrest with spurring a major international terror investigation that stopped an al-Qaida attack on New York.
The government has accused other border jumpers of connections to outlawed terrorist organizations, some that help al-Qaida, including reputed members of the deadly Tamil Tigers caught in California after crossing the Mexican border in 2005 on their way to Canada.

Part 2, 3, 4.
Via Hugh Hewitt.

Code-speak from McGuintyland this morning – “Negotiators were also placed on standby.”
CWC has resident reports;

9:20 am from resident – “I just came from Hagersville after standing and watching as more and more natives fill the site, and the OPP have not set foot across the entrance to remove anyone. As usual, when you speak to the OPP, they say very little. When native vehicles attempt to enter the main entrance at hwy#6, they are denied access by the OPP, but then simply drive around the back of the construction site and enter from there. They look like they are settling in for a long haul, as the flags get put up and the fires begin to burn. Welcome to Hagerdoniawash!”
9:52 am from resident – “I was on my way to work this morning, driving down Main St. in Hagersville (Highway 6). I noticed a number of Ontario Peacekeeper cars parked on the side of the road. Then I saw that a handful of natives had stopped construction on a housing development next to the Norcliffe Retirement home. Almas construction is currently putting in sewers there. There was a small bonfire and the Unity flag. There were about a dozen OPP standing in a line on the sidewalk observing.”

A retirement home construction site. That’s about right. There’s a reason these thugs steer clear of Hells Angels’ clubhouses.

Globe & Mail;

The public school board of Windsor, Ont., has decided to venture deeper into the multicultural forest by offering what it calls Arabic immersion instruction at an elementary school where 50 per cent of the pupils speak Arabic as a first language.

And they think the story here is the immersion class?

Both Ms. Gallagher of the Windsor board and Mr. Wachowicz of the Edmonton board cited a number of private Arabic-language schools that have been started in their areas. They argued that children had a greater opportunity to integrate into mainstream Canadian society by staying in the public school system.

Egads.

… we had a neighbor who, in addition to a large and successful farming operation, provided heavy equipment services to local land owners and oil company leases.
One afternoon he happened upon an RCMP cruiser parked near the highway on his property. They were hidden in a small stand of trees, radar trap set.
He drove up and asked them to leave.
Which they did – just long enough to obtain a warrant authorizing their use of the spot.
So he fired up a Cat.

It has anorexia mugabe;

Many African nations have grown increasingly frustrated by the development policies of Western donors that they see as intrusive and harsh. When Australia cancels a cricket tour to Zimbabwe, as it did this week, or when the European Union refuses to hold an EU-Africa summit, as it has for the past six years, because of Mr. Mugabe, many Africans see the pressure as neocolonial habits that must be broken. For many across the continent, Mugabe’s muscular land confiscation from white farmers and talk of social justice still have appeal.
“This is African brinkmanship with the West,” says Peter Kagwanja, a senior researcher for the Human Sciences Research Council in Tshwane (formerly Pretoria). “Many African nations are still struggling to get over the economic and political legacy of past colonial and racist regimes, and so they are more or less sympathetic with the bold moves taken by Zimbabwe,” moves that “they are not capable of doing themselves.”
While most African leaders recognize that following Zimbabwe’s anti-Western stance would be an act of economic suicide, Mr. Kagwanja says that Africa is throwing its support behind Zimbabwe to show its disinclination to be pushed around by the powerful West. In practice, this means that the nomination of Zimbabwe for the UN agency this year is just the beginning. “All these things that come up, Zimbabwe will be promoted as Africa’s choice,” he says.

Cool. Now we can stop sending them our money.

Where “hope” is just another word for something new to steal.

“Clash of hope and fear as Venezuela seizes land”
The squatters arrive before dawn with machetes and rifles, surround the well-ordered rows of sugar cane and threaten to kill anyone who interferes. Then they light a match to the crops and declare the land their own.
For centuries, much of Venezuela’s rich farmland has been in the hands of a small elite. After coming to power in 1998, and especially after his re-election in December, President Hugo Chávez vowed to end that inequality, and has been keeping his promise in a process that is both brutal and legal.
Chávez is carrying out what may become the largest forced land redistribution in Venezuela’s history, building utopian farming villages for squatters, lavishing money on new cooperatives and sending army commando units to supervise seized estates in six states.
The violence has gone both ways in the struggle, with more than 160 peasants killed by hired gunmen in Venezuela, including several here in northwestern Yaracuy State, an epicenter of the land reform project, in recent years. Eight landowners have also been killed here.
“The oligarchy is always on the attack and trying to say you are no good,” Chávez said to squatters in a televised visit here. “They think they’re the owners of the world.”

Related: His mother’s looks, his father’s admiration for fascist dictatorships.

A letter from a parent, recieved privately;

Sometimes it is stunning what passes off in our schools as “education”. I recently became aware that Timothy Findley’s, “The Wars”, was being read in a grade 12 class in Saskatoon.
I was appalled that “The Wars” was being offered to children in grade school because it contains scenes and imagery that are homo-erotic and pornographic.
Let’s keep in mind that the average grade 12 student is below the age of 18, or has just recently turned 18. She comes from a variety of socio/religious backgrounds. She is Baptist, atheist, agnostic, Catholic, Hindu, Muslim, Mormon, Mennonite, secular progressive, socialist, conservative, and many shades of other belief systems. Sexuality, and above all, explicit sexual description (pornography), could be an affront to her, not to mention that she is likely not even an adult.
In this case, the novel was offered without any thematic input on the part of the teacher … no discussion, no balance, no exchange of ideas … nothing. No letter was sent home requesting parental permission in the reading of the novel. I don’t even think that the novel is approved by Saskatchewan Learning.
As far as the “teacher” goes, he is a Che Guevara wearing, Bush-bashing, Conservative-bashing, “progressive”. His walls are festooned with leftist posters and his choices, whether from approved materials or not, are always leftwing. He’s one of those slick leftist “academics” who can turn a grammar lesson into a subtle hit on Stephen Harper.
Here then, is what this self-proclaimed evangelist for the “progressive” cause gave children under the age of 18 to read:
The Wars
By Timothy Findley
Pearson Penguin Canada Incorporated 2005
Page 36 to 41 (Robert and the Prostitute)
“Isn’t there nothing special you’d like?” she (the prostitute) said, “I mean – here we are and everything.” She turned around and leaned against the washstand, playing with her sash, threatening to reveal herself.
(…)
“Don’t ya wanta touch me?” said Ella.
(…)
“You’re a nice hot lookin’ boy,” she said; “an’ we shouldn’t just be sittin’ here. Why don’t you let me …?” And she put her hands inside his pants. Right inside – past his drawers. No one else had ever touched him there before.
(…)
“Oh,” said Ella. But she was kind about it. She went on smiling – and kissed him at the corner of his lips. When she withdrew her hand, she kept it in a fist and crossed to the washstand. Then she picked up the towel and told him to stand.
“You take them off,” she said, nodding at his trousers; “an’ I’ll clean you up.”
Robert had ejaculated (in his pants while) coming up the stairs.
Robert and the Prostitute Look Through a Peep Hole
There were certainly two naked people (in the next room) – but all he could see at first was backs and arms and legs. Whoever it was who was there was standing in the middle of the floor hitting whoever else was there – striking out with all their force.
(…)
The pummeling had stopped and, at first, he could not locate the people in the room. Then he heard them. Breathing. They were Breathing in tandem – just like two people running side by side.
(…)
One was lying on his back with his back arched off the mattress while the other sat astride his groin exactly like a rider. The one who played the horse was bucking – lifting his torso high off the bed, lifting the weight of the rider with his shoulders and his knees – and bucking … the rider was using a long silk scarf as reins and the horse was biting into the other end with his teeth. The only sound was the sound of breathing and of bedsprings. The rider held the reins in one hand and, using a soldier’s stiff-peaked cap, beat the horse on the thighs – one side and then the other. And the two – both horse and rider – were staring into one another’s eyes with an intensity unlike any other Robert had ever seen in a human face.
Page 174 ~ Robert is Raped by other soldiers:
He struggled with such impressive violence that all his assailants fell upon him at once – still without a sound – and holding his legs and arms out wide, they jerked him off his feet.
(…)
then he was lowered onto his back and held there by someone who was lying beneath him. His legs were forced apart so far he thought they were going to be broken. Mouths began to suck at his privates. Hand and fingers probed and poked at every part of his body. Someone struck him in the face.
Robert began to pass out. He could feel himself being lifted into the air again and turned around and made to lie on his face with one man still underneath him and now with another on top. All he could feel was the shape of the man who entered him and the terrible strength of the force with which it was done.
What you have just read is pornography; it may be considered “soft” by some, but in any context it is simply porn. What it adds to the story is at best dubious. It’s accuracy in depicting the experiences of soldiers is beyond dubious. And, what it could possibly add to the education of children is simply nothing.
What is relevant though, is that a teacher in a Saskatoon school saw fit to feed this garbage to children; a teacher who uses a public school classroom as his personal “progressive” soapbox to indoctrinate and propagandize children in “progressive” truth.

He should be “progressive” fired.

Vancouver Sun;

Canada’s park wardens were stripped of all law enforcement duties and equipment Thursday, the day after a federal ruling called for them to be issued handguns.
Parks Canada has taken away enforcement tools such as batons, handcuffs, body armour and pepper spray from wardens. They have also been asked to turn in badges that identify them as peace officers.
And if they encounter any anything criminal on the job — from wildlife poachers to noisy campers — they are now under orders to call the RCMP and stay back until police arrive.
“It’s a big invitation to criminals to come out to our National Parks just before the long weekend,” said Patty Ducharme, national executive vice-president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, the union representing the wardens.
“It’s ludicrous.”

No kidding.