Liberty and justice for all United States persons abroad

The Isaac Brock Society

Posted on by Posted in reductio ad absurdum 36 Comments

If Canadians bearing the stigma of US taint had any uncertainty about their true place in Canadian society, an announcement today by Stephen Harper should erase any lingering doubts: we are now less deserving of federal government protection than dead meat.

As the Canadian Press reported today:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is reiterating that Canada is prepared to retaliate in an ongoing trade war with the United States over country-of-origin meat-labelling rules.

Speaking with rural leaders in Saskatoon Thursday, Harper said that retaliation will become essential at some point in the dispute.

American country-of-origin rules require all packaged meat to identify where the animal was born, raised and slaughtered.

Supporters of the law say it better informs U.S. consumers, but opponents argue that segregating animals and tracking them adds costs.

It would appear that the Prime Minister is less concerned about the US-imposed costs of segregating, tracking and labelling US Persons in Canada for their country-of-origin than he is about the same thing for pigs and cattle. Something else to remember come election day.

36 thoughts on “Harper government accepts national origin discrimination for US Persons, but not for meat”

  2. @DMichael

    Ok, here we go again…

    Reductio ad absurdum is the technique of reducing an argument or hypothesis to absurdity, by pushing the argument’s premises or conclusions to their logical limits and showing how ridiculous the consequences would be, thus disproving or discrediting the argument.

    Satire is a genre of literature, and sometimes graphic and performing arts, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, corporations, government or society itself, into improvement.

  5. I believe our Canadian government is corrupt. I believe many major canadian national banks are corrupt. i believe that american big banks are corrupt. And I believe the American government is corrupt. Finally, I believe most major billion dollar corporations (like banks) are corrupt. All for the want of more and more money. All one has to do is google Bill Abram, THECRIME OF THE CANADIAN BANKING SYSTEM, and you’ll soon see why the Canadian Governemt and US government got together with banks to send some of our GNP south in the form of double taxation, with INTEREST!

    It’s not right, period! “Oh ohhhh say can you see – from sea to sea to shining sea.”

    .

  6. I’m neither a Canadian resident nor especially sympathetic toward the beef and pork industries, but I actually think this is an important point, beyond irony and satire. It just shows that the Canadian government is indeed willing to stand up to US hegemony and legal overreach, but only when it affects (I presume) a powerful lobby such as the cattle industry.

    I also wonder: if an Alberta rancher buys bull semen from Montana, are the resulting American-by-ancestry calves subject to IRS 30 percent withholding in the form of hamburgers?

  8. If a heifer from Wisconsin was brought to BC and bred with a local bull, how would the offspring be labelled??!!

  9. @BC_Doc – it all depends on what age the heifer was when she became a Canadian cow and how long she’d been over the fence before she had the calf as well as whether she married the bull or lived common law with him in the field 😉 kekeke!!

  12. Barbara and BC_Doc – what about the calves in the same Alberta and BC herds as the dual-citizen calves? Do 30% of the hamburgers from their meat have to be given to the IRS?

  14. It used to be insulting to be treated like a piece of meat but now being treated like a piece of meat is better than being a second class Canadian.

  15. @Don

    The UK’s momentous decision to join the AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank) is also well-covered in this dispatch by Sovereign Man (Simon Black):

    Britain pulls a George Costanza on the United States
     
    March 13, 2015 
Willemstad, Curacao

    In another awkward blow to the rapidly waning US-dollar hegemony, America and Britain just had their “It’s not you, it’s me” moment.

    Late yesterday, the government of the United Kingdom announced that they would be applying to join the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank… as a founding member.

    This is huge.

    Right now, the United States dominates the global financial system.

    But after years of endless wars, spying, debt, money printing, bailouts, and insane regulations, the rest of the world has had enough. And they’re looking for an alternative.

    China is coming up with an answer.

    The soon-to-be-live Chinese International Payment System (CIPS) will provide a way for banks to transfer funds to one another without having to use the US banking system… or the US dollar.

    China is also the ringleader behind both the BRICS development bank (called the New Development Bank, or NDB) as well as the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

    Both of these are multilateral development banks that aim to end the dominance of the western-controlled World Bank and IMF.

    NDB includes all the BRICS nations– Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

    Founding members of the AIIB include China, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, etc. They’re typically all rapidly growing and/or resource-rich developing nations.

    New Zealand was the first western nation to join AIIB back in October. And yesterday afternoon, Britain announced its intention to become the second.

    (Of course in the UK’s eyes they’re the first since New Zealand still belongs to the Queen!)
    This is a massive, embarrassing blow to the United States, and to the future of the US dollar.

    It’s pretty obvious when you look at the dozens of signatories to the NDB and AIIB charter documents: the rest of the world is sick and tired of the United States dominating the global financial system.

    And by putting these new development banks and alternative payment systems together, they’re actually doing something about it.

    Even America’s own allies have supported this anti-dollar movement.

    Last summer the French Finance Minister explained to reporters how completely unnecessary it was for a European aircraft manufacturer to sell jets to European airlines in US dollars (instead of euros).

    He also slammed the US government for arrogantly fining French bank BNP a whopping $9 billion for doing business with countries that the US doesn’t like.

    (Side note: one of the ‘evil’ countries BNP did business with was Cuba, and they were heavily punished for this, even though BNP broke no law in France. But now all of a sudden the US and Cuba are buddy-buddy again. Is BNP going to get a refund?)

    His conclusion? It’s time for a ‘rebalancing’ of the global financial system away from the US dollar. Other political allies of the United States have echoed similar sentiment.

    But now we can see words are turning into action.

    Britain might be too polite to tell the US straight up– “Look, you have $18.1 trillion in official debt, you have $42 trillion in unfunded liabilities, and you’re kind of a dick. I’m dumping you.”

    So instead they’re going with the “it’s not you, it’s me” approach.

    But to anyone paying attention, it’s pretty obvious where this trend is going.

    It won’t be long before other western nations jump on the anti-dollar bandwagon with action and not just words.

    Bottom line: this isn’t theory or conjecture anymore. Every shred of objective evidence suggests that the dollar’s dominance is coming to an end.

    It’s happening. Time to plan for it.
     
    Enjoy your weekend,

    Simon Black
    Founder, SovereignMan.com

  18. The Harper government is in the thrall of special interest groups.

    They betrayed hundreds of thousands of US-born Canadian citizens and other so-called “US-persons in Canada” because the powerful banking lobby demanded it.

    Yet now they stand on guard for Canadian-born cattle, because the powerful livestock lobby demands it.

    The Duke of Exeter in “Henry V” expresses well the response Harper’s Cons deserve:
    “Scorn and defiance; slight regard, contempt…”

  20. @Don

    It wouldn’t surprise me if Mythster Stack denied this has anything to do with FATCA. It also wouldn’t surprise me if his next posting is with the AIIB.

    Quite the legacy Obama’s leaving.

  23. @Bubblebustin

    “Even poodles have been known to bite their masters.”

    Yes, but there’s a cautionary tale in here for the UK as well. We all know what happens when countries try to bypass the almighty US Petro Dollar. Let’s not forget how Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi’s refusal to cooperate with American financial hegemony turned out.

    The United States is setting itself up for a financial world war that it will be fought on over 200 different fronts. It’s just absurd.

  25. The US seems to forget they screwed the British over the Suez Canal in the 50s by using the.might of the US dollar. Perhaps British historians haven’t forgotten. Perhaps as the UK economy is much more internationalised than the US, the British are hedging their economic bets on a raising China.. Whatever way you look at it the British are not trusting their future solely on the USD. Nit good news for the US.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published.

%d bloggers like this: