-TSS-

I thought that after the masacre by that Korean exchange student there was a lot of talk about starting to examine thoroughly the medical records of all those people applying to own a gun and anyone with a history of mental illnesses would be automatically rejected.

Isn't there PR in use in the provincial elections in British Columbia?

I agree. Deeds like these are a result of a mixture of extreme desperation and extreme narcism and attention-seeking.

I can see Greece still has conscription. Given the economic woes of that country, that institution is the first thing they should throw away. Trust me, the Turks aren't gonna invade you even if you close down your army.

I don't think this talk about "Americans this, Americans that" is going to get us anywhere. I know us Europeans are excused for making such generalisations but I would have thought that Canadians knew better than that.

Oklahoma taught us not to draw conclusions too early about the culprits before we are aware of the details.

The astonishing thing is that so many people in Australia and New Zealand, I don't know about Canada, are so obsessively interested in the British royal family. I know that they share the head of state with Britain but still. I think the British themselves nowadays by and large really don't give a toss about the royals.

Many countries still don't accept dual-citizenship at all in any case and some countries don't accept dual-citizenship with some other countries they don't want to share their citizens with.

It was news to me that Austria still has a conscription. I wonder why. It is surrounded by friendly NATO-countries. Well, perhaps that the reason why they are proposing to end it.

East-Jerusalem is difficult because it has religious value to both the Jewish and the Muslims. gaza on the other hand is a strip of useless and barren land so Israel had no difficulties giving up settlements there and granting Gaza a greater degree of autonomy.

Yesterday's news that Obama has recognized the Syrian opposition as the legitimate government Syria means that by the end of this year Assad will have been overthrown. Then we will have yet another country governed by the muslim-brotherhood and we will be surprised why they hate the west even though the west brought them democracy. A real de ja vu.

In some Central-European countries the national minorities have a quota reserved for them in parliaments.

There was an interesting article about this incident in some paper. I can't find it now but in a nutshell it said that all this is a part of a modern culture of humiliation. I mean, humiliating people in public is considered as entertainment. Hence the huge popualarity of all kind of reality-TV and such things.

The supposition is though that you don't try to test the procedures of institutions such as hospitals, police stations, fire brigades etc and get away with it? The suicide of the nurse is one thing, making a prank call to a hospital is another.

The situation here in Finland is that we have about 8% of the workforce unemployed and every day news about announcements or lay-offs. The crisis is alleviated by the fact the baby-boomers have largely been retired by now. The retirement of the baby-boomers was supposed to create a desperate labour-shortage. What it has done has only been to alleviate unemployment.

Fixed dates for parliamentary-elections don't work in parliamentary systems because if the government loses its majority in parliament then what mandate does it have to govern? The fixed dates work for the US Congress-elections because regardless of the seats in Congress the President and his party are the government. If they have a minority then their hands are tied and they can't push through legislation but they still are the government. There is no mechanism of interpellation in the US-system except impeachment but that is then something very serious.

Do those people make prank-calls to police stations as well and call it humour? Or to the fire brigade?

Perhaps I don't get someone's sense of humour but to me disturbing people who are just trying to do their jobs by making prank calls to those people is not very good humour. It is just tasteless and very bad manners.

Indeed, Ghana has always been considered as some kind of a pioneer in democracy in Africa.

Anyone who supports immigration as a way to help the poor people of the world should take a lok at this:

I can't understand why showing a piece of plastic at a border is considered such a nuisance.

Chretien is from Quebec but in 1995 he vehemently campaigned against secession, which must have caused a lot of people in his home-province to hate him immensely.

Do you people in Canada even realise that you are sitting on something the world will yearn badly? I mean fresh water. That is going to be something there will be wars about in the future. We in Finland have about 10% of our land surface fresh water, that is about 35000 sq km's but you in Canada have the same proportion and that is like 1m sq km. Fresh water will one day be like we consider oil today.

I'm not quite sure whether the idea of "holy" election dates is a good one. Imagine a situation where the government lost its majority in parliament but there could not be early elections. On the other hand, I can't support the idea that the government could call an election whenever it wishes, saying that when the opinion polls look good.

What exactly is the BQ-policy this time around? Do they still want to keep the Canadian dollar and the Queen as the Head of State?