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Sci-Fi Author Peter Watts Beaten, Charged During Border Crossing
JoeGee writes "On December 8th, Canadian sci-fi author Peter Watts, author of the Rifters trilogy and Blindsight, was crossing the US/Canadian border at Port Huron, Michigan when he was involved in an altercation with US Border Patrol agents. According to Watts, he was beaten, left half-naked in a cold cell, and finally dumped on the Canadian side of the border with no coat. A legal consultant from the Electronic Frontier Foundation was successful in helping a civil rights lawyer in Michigan free Watts. Watts faces US charges of assaulting a federal officer. Based on the accounts, one can assume Watts did so by hitting the officer's hand with his face. If convicted, Watts faces two years in a US Federal prison."
So, did they just forget about the other mandatory bullshit charge, resisting arrest?
We visited Canada this summer and our experience with the US border patrol when we were returning home leads me to entirely believe the story as told by Watts. I've honestly had better and more pleasant experiences with the East German border patrol in the mid-80s.
You know, I would totally agree with you, but time and again bad guys have been caught trying to sneak through the security gates. Why they go that way instead of following your advice, I will never know. However, as long as they are going that way, we might as well try to catch them.
Qxe4
The only real threat at the CAN/US boarder is people bringing handguns into Canada (where they are illegal) and selling them to Toronto street gangs.
Hand guns aren't illegal in Canada. I have my restricted FAS and own a handgun. It just means that there are more hoops for me to jump through to own it up here. I goto the local range about 40mins from my hometown to go shooting. Toronto is a half liberal pissing hole that things that handguns are the doom and gloom of everyone. It was to the point where the Toronto Police Service was going to march on City Hall because of the gun ban until the mayor and city council saw common sense. Where do the police go for firearms practice in the city when they want to ban their indoor range?
You know what the big problem is? Is that 5 years ago there was half the problem with travelling into the US as there is now. I really don't want to go. I live within 1.5hr give or take a few of 4 major border checkpoints. Why do I want to put myself through that hassle, when I can travel to other countries in the world that have easier travel and access. Well if you want to erect the fortress and piss off your northern neighbour, that's a good way of doing it.
It's funny however, the biggest problem that Canada deals with from Americans is teenagers. Little bastards who come over here to drink, cause havoc, smash shit up, or cause criminal offences then run back across the border. Goto any border city and they'll tell you what kind of pissing match it is to even try to get US border guards to stop them.
Om, nomnomnom...
I am a Canadian citizen living in Canada.
I have been entering and leaving the USA for pretty much my whole life.
I am 53.
A few years ago I stopped going to the USA, except when absolutely necessary.
One of the most dangerous places I can think of is a US border crossing.
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
Exactly. Or more accurately, assaulting an officer means trying to defend yourself from aggressive police.
I read a story about a homeless mean getting beat by cops for resisting arrest. The only charge? Resisting arrest of course. They had no reason to harass him in the first place, other than to give him a hard time for being homeless on public property.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
The day that we do pull out of there - which will be with our tails between our legs - will subject the peoples of Afghanistan and nearby states with the same dangers and indignities they'd face if that day were today. The only difference between now and then will be the body count.
I say this in the following capacity:
1. I deployed to a remote Sunni area of Iraq in 2007-08 with lots of rocket, mortar and small-arms fire.
2. I know dozens of people who have deployed to Afghanistan, including close friends.
3. I am at risk of deploying there myself shortly.
That said, I was against this intervention from the start. I am against it now. We should pull out yesterday. We cannot win. Afghanistan has proven intractable to central governance even with 105,000 Soviets there and the will to use armaments that we blanch at. There is no reason to expect that a lesser number of US troops will have any more luck. Only more death lies along that route.
Obama is playing LBJ's game of placating the public to the hilt, but he will understand failure soon enough.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
To visit the family cabin on the US side of the border, I can say that about 50 percent of the US Customs agents are assholes on a power trip, pure and simple. Some at our border crossing have had sexual harassment charges leveled against them.
I've run into a few jerk-off Canadian Customs agents as well.
I hate putting myself in the power of these individuals - it seems the sky is the limit with regards to outcomes.
You do realize that America has over 2 million of its people in jail, with a good proportion in there for political reasons.
Like all successful police states these people aren't busted for expressing anti-Government views. Instead laws are passed taking away fundamental rights (remember your bill of rights is not an exhaustive list and IIRC amendment #9 basically states this) then the undesirables are targeted.
The favourite rights to be removed are things like the right to grow plants and have the products in your possession.
While this is bad enough, it's your country and if the citizens like having a police state so they can feel safe that is your right.
What really pisses me off about America is the way you treat foreign political activists. If they're lucky they get extradited and spend years in the inhuman American jails perhaps being raped. If they're not lucky they get tortured and/or killed.
Also you push other countries around to remove the same rights from their citizens. See drug laws and the most recent thing being IP laws with ACTA being pushed by Americans to take away my right to play the DVD I purchased on my computer and my right to make personal copies of stuff and lend stuff to you to make personal copies.
Shit, when the leader of a political party that I voted for is being threatened with the death penalty on a trumped up charge of money laundrying (making him a king pin) and a charge of selling seeds, a law that has only been enforced against political activists, there is something wrong. One article, http://peacesecurity.suite101.com/article.cfm/marc_emery_and_the_bc3 google Marc Emery for many more.
Of course like all police states if you are a respectable citizen you don't have much to worry about. Just keep your nose clean and you won't have your life ruined by being accused of diddling children.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I crossed the border several times to go to track driving schools. First border crossing, I was nervous. The Canadian officer was curt, and mostly concerned about the fact that I was unemployed at the time. Probably picked up on my being nervous. I just didn't want the hassle of being searched or giving the "wrong" answer.
Second border crossing, the Canadian officer was friendly and while they are trained to engage you in banter to judge how shady you are (which clearly Mr. Watts failed, want to guess why?), he seemed genuinely amused that I was taking MY car to drive on a racetrack. Have fun, he said, and handed me my paperwork.
Both times back, the US crossing was completely unmemorable. Drove up, handed over my license, answered some quick questions about when I came into Canada, what I'd done, and whether I had anything to declare. 2-3 minutes, tops- long enough to run my plates and license in the computer and see how fidgety I was. Nobody at any of the events I went to (all of them American) had anything bad to say, and some of them had been coming to the track for years.
I lost my license right before a trip to Canada, and called around trying to figure out if a temporary replacement license was sufficient. I eventually got put through to one of the actual border officers, who was audibly in the middle of his lunch break, munching on his sandwich. For a cop on his lunchbreak being pestered by some dumb shmuck, he was not only helpful but...chipper. He wouldn't make any solid promises, but he did ask me when I was coming, my name, and a few other things, and said if he was on shift when I came back into the US, he'd help if he could and take the fact that I called ahead etc under consideration, but he said I definitely needed to make sure I'd be OK getting IN to Canada. So he gave me the number for his Canadian counterparts, and cheerfully wished me a good afternoon and best of luck trying to get a 'real' license or some other government ID out of my state government (didn't.)
HOLY FUCKING SHIT. A very curt, annoyed, angry Canadian customs agent answered the phone, and read me the fucking riot act and demanded to know how I got the number for their office, why was I calling them, who was I, what the hell did I want. When I explained what I wanted (mainly to know if I'd be permitted into Canada with my temporary license, and was there anything I could do to smooth the wheels, like bringing extra documentation of some sort, anything to help), point-black refused to answer or discuss anything with me, and hung up after angrily saying "NEUO!" to several questions.
Please help metamoderate.
Except when your crappy government starts tramping all over trade tariffs despite being ruled in non-compliance by international courts and holds their wealth over our heads as a way of influencing policy ...
America does indeed buy influence in the form of highly unfair trade arrangements, or ignoring the stipulations of less unfair ones.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
and the last 8 years of the War on Terror have not helped.
The silly thing about the War on Terror is that I'm currently more terrified about what my own government is doing than what the terrorists are doing. And I feel equally helpless to stop it.
http://blog.nexusuk.org