frandroid

Automated scans of licence plates, RFID cards and radioactive material, predator drones, daytime and nighttime infrared camera, radar surveillance towers and remote motion sensors are among the devices and tactics used along our increasingly militarized borders by paranoid Americans. As someone mentioned in the comments, Janet Napolitano still expressed recently that she thoughts some 9/11 terrorists came from Canada.

THE EX WILL BE PLAYING IN MONTREAL AND TORONTO WHEN I WILL BE IN FUCKING EUROPE!!!!!

FUCK YOU, THE EX. FUCK YOUR DUTCH ASSES.

EU threatens Canada with visa war.

Amusingly, it's the completely opposite story of what's going on with the U.S.: whereas we're complaining that the U.S. is going to require us to have passport to walk in, in this case it's the E.U. that's complaining that we're still requiring people from 8 of the newest E.U. members to apply for visa to come to Canada. The E.U. wants us to drop the requirement, just like those countries had to drop requiring Canadians (and many other people, presumably) from applying for visas as part of their entry package in the E.U. If we don't drop the requirement, we might have to apply for visas to visit places like France and the U.K. I'm putting $20 on the E.U. winning this round.

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Le Monde Diplomatique March 2007

Secrets and lies
By Ignacio Ramonet
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Two recent events bear witness to the prevailing schizophrenia. On 7
February representatives of most European governments assembled in Paris and solemnly signed a United Nations convention against enforced disappearances that prohibits secret detention (1). On 14 February the European parliament in Strasbourg adopted a report accusing the same governments of colluding with the United States Central Intelligence Agency in secret abduction operations.

( Read more... )

Passports needed to fly to U.S. starting Jan. 23

Damn.

I have always made a point to travel to the U.S. on my birth certificate, just because I could. Travelling on a passport means that you need to be a reputable Canadian, i.e. you need to have the approval of your two (or one?) approved professionals; the fact that you are born in this country is not sufficient anymore.

When I moved to Toronto from Vancouver and needed my passport (to go to France), this was a major pain in the ass for me as I did not know any bloody professionals for two years; I had arrived just a year prior. I finally managed to convince some people to sign for me, but still. I was born here, and I was not going to travel to Québec City to get my documents signed. But what if I just wasn't a sick person? What if I hadn't needed the services of a lawyer? What if I brushed my teeth every day and didn't need a dentist? What if I didn't go to university (which I hadn't, at the time) and didn't know any professors?

I.e., if you happen to be a healthy, working class person, it's harder for you to get a passport than if you are a higher-educated or higher-earning crook that just happens not to have been caught yet. I mean, there's something like a quarter or a third of Canadians that don't have a family doctor.

* * *

In an ironic way, this is going to make "terrorist" detection more difficult: If we follow the logic of racial/immigrant profiling, immigrants and second-generation Canadians are more likely to be terrorists. But being immigrants/2nd-gen, they are much more likely to carry a passport, since they are much more frequent overseas travellers than the average public. By making the passport mandatory, they are diluting the pool of people they have to profile from.