A "VIRTUAL WALL" to separate U.S. from Canada & Mexico

Welcome to your virtual future.
"I live behind the wall" will become the new way to tell someone your North American.
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Source: CanWest News Service
Thursday, September 21, 2006

U.S. lawmaker calls idea of Canada-U.S border fence 'boneheaded'

WASHINGTON -
A Republican-led campaign to build a security fence along the Canada-U.S. border ranks as one of the most ''boneheaded'' ideas in recent American history, a senior U.S. senator said Wednesday.

But even as Senator Patrick Leahy denounced proposals for a physical barrier along America's northern border, the Department of Homeland Security appeared ready to announce plans for a network of 1,800 high-tech surveillance towers as part of a ''virtual fence'' along the country's 9,700-kilometre borders with Canada and Mexico.

With Congress eager to pass border-security legislation before November's mid-term elections, the Senate moved to fast track legislation that would require Homeland Security to study the feasibility of a ''state-of-the-art barrier system'' along the Canada-U.S. border.

Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, said the proposed wall would alienate one of America's staunchest allies and potentially cripple trade between the two nations.

''Have we gone blind? It is clear that those who want to build this have no clue about the character, the history and the day-to-day commercial importance of the northern border and the needs of the states and the communities being affected,'' said Leahy. ''It would be best to nip this foolishness in the bud before Congress wastes more tax dollars on another boneheaded stunt. America can do better than this.''

Leahy's outburst followed reports Wednesday that Homeland Security is set to award an estimated $80-million US contract to Boeing Corp. for the construction of as many as 1,800 surveillance towers along the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada.

The contract is the first part of an expected $2.5-billion US in funding to be awarded as part of the Bush administration's Secure Border Initiative, which is the centrepiece of White House efforts to slow illegal immigration and detect potential terrorist activity.

The Boeing deal would see the construction of towers loaded with an array of high-tech equipment to watch for movement along the border.

The towers would employ radar systems, heat sensors and motion-sensitive surveillance cameras, while deploying ground sensors and small unmanned aerial vehicles to supplement efforts to detect illegal border traffic.

Neither Boeing nor Homeland Security officials would immediately confirm the contract, but several major U.S. news outlets reported on the deal after the Bush administration briefed members of Congress.

Construction of the surveillance towers would begin along the U.S. border south of Tuscon, Ariz., but Boeing has said the project could be completed along both the Canadian and Mexican borders within three years.

The White House has long favoured high-tech surveillance techniques over physical barriers along the Canada-U.S. border.

Republicans leaders in Congress, however, have refused to abandon the idea of security fencing.

The new Senate legislation, which mirrors a bill passed last week by the House of Representatives, would mandate the construction of 1,800 kilometres of double-layered fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border.

But with growing concerns about terrorism and drug smuggling from Canada, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions said it only makes sense that Homeland Security also consider a barrier along the northern boundary as well.

''We need to look at the northern border,'' said Sessions. ''We are not arresting one million people a year on the northern border. It does not have anything like the impact of the movement of people illegally like we have on the southern border, but we need to watch that, too.''

Leahy, though, said a fence would do more to disrupt trade than protect the U.S. from harm.

''Heaven's to Betsy. Most of us who live up there go back and forth all the time. We are visiting our relatives'' said Leahy, who said his wife's family lives in Canada.
''You know, these are not terrorists I have heard some cockamamie ideas during my time in the Senate, but this rises to the top.''

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/n...=75bff680-2778-4eaa-823a-e4f818cab773&k=81877
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Back to the future....


Checkpoint Charlie
was a crossing point between East and West Berlin during the Cold War.
Others on the Autobahn to the West were Checkpoint Alpha at Helmstedt and Checkpoint Bravo at Dreilinden, southeast of Wannsee, named from the NATO phonetic alphabet.
Many other checkpoints existed, some for German citizens, others for foreigners and members of Allied forces.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall

At the moment, with the wholesale violation of the constitution and civil liberties, I wonder if the fence is to keep the illegal imagrants out or to keep citizens in? There is also a bill, that is now being debated, that will require that all people that vote must have photo I.D.. This sounds to me like a back-door way to implament national I.D. program for everyone. It is a very small step from that to requiring that people carry their I.D. with them at all times. From there to making you show your I.D. "papers" to police upon request is a mere administrative desision away. Things are getting a little scarry now.

Back in WWII when the jews started to flee Germany, at what point did they know it was time to leave?

Pretty soon they are going to be "chipping" people at birth. Kind of like what they do to animals so you can track them when lost. What the hell is the country comming to?

just go over you body with a neodymium magnet every day if youre worried about being implanted with a micro chip

U.S. aircraft on watch along U.S.-Canada border

The opening of the air branch comes as debate swirls over security of the U.S. border.

Click to expand...

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?p=650373#post650373

It all starts by picking a scapegoat group, say, sex offenders, no body likes them, comthem register so u will feel safe. next it will be homosexuals that will need to register as they are an easy target, then we will get the Arabics, oh wait a minute we have seen this before haven't we? But that is ok as long as we feel safe and we are not sex offenders, or gay, or Arabic. What comes next, hmm, well just knowing where these undesireables are does not make me feel so safe as there seem to be so many that live near me. Maybe we should lock them all up, since we know where they are. Gosh, it is a burden feeding these undesireables maybe we could put them to work for their upkeep on different aspects of society that no one else wants. There are some new things out there we sure would like to know how that would affect ppl. Try it out on these ppl here. Freethinkers are becoming a real threat to everybody they must be found and extinguished...I mean ahh reeducated in our camps, yeah thats the ticket we need to reeducate these ppl in our death camps...I mean reeducation camps.....

That is the progression, unfortunately this line of thought goes straight down both party lines. It seems all politicions(SP) dream about is locking ppl up in little steel cages. Doubt me? Watch any political ad, all politicians are tough on crime and propose new legislation to control one group or another. How long until it is your group that they target?

Just my paronoid ramblings


2b2s

its just another way to make money, that shit don't work.


we have a time machine philosophy going on in this country. rich think they are better than the poor. that the poor are just stupid. they are as smart as anyone else. they will come up with ways to beat that shit.

first off radar and motion sensitive cameras are a joke. radars will have one hell of a time picking up single individuals through desert bush, rocky hills etc. and same thing with motion sensitive cameras. I guess they're going to put one on each side of every bush until the entire desert is a reality tv show. they can just cut camera angles or something. Who I'll truly feel sorry for is the asshole who'se going to be watching haveline (sp?) nocturnal desert pigs by the thousands rove around setting off their radar and motion sensors.

What they are so heavily relying on are FLIR motion cameras that come on from those towers when a group of people try to run. and let me tell you... foolproof technology. Its not like weed growers figured out how to beat it or anything right?

ask any soldier how fool proof it is. Their commanding officers don't go out into the field to see what they are up to they just use FLIR at night. So soldiers make fake FLIR dummies with boot polish on canteens which (registers 98 degrees ) and put them where there head would be if they were on duty. Then they sneak off using a poncho tent or just an umbrella inbetween them and the IR and they go do whatever.

Mexicans will do the same. they'll make 3 or 4 person poncho tents like little chinese drangons and just jog on over. All IR sees is heat scuffling 2ft off the ground like the little herds of pigs do.

humans are very adaptable.

Besides don't get too worried. its all just election propaganda. they only funded half of it and it was half for one year. once the election is done they'll drop it until the next election. They've no real plans for securing the border its just gotta look that way.

Wow its kind of scary to think about what the future of all this could be. I just imagine our country with fencing and guard towers along every boarder...and no escape.

How long until it is your group that they target?

Click to expand...

Indeed, instead of asking what we want, they tell us what we want and offer varients of the same crap. Those who step up and demand changes not otherwise on "the list" (so to speak) are often targeted as radicals, deviants, or supportive of criminal acts even though it's far from the truth.
Those of us who want genuine change & reform all around are the ones feared the most.
So, how long until we're branded as thought criminals?





This applies to many things, including this thread--as my hubby said in referance to our dealing with the FL goverment, "I feel like a mushroom---Kept in the dark and fed bullshit."

Hmm, hon, I think I've got another quote to add to the signature there....

" a war on tourism "

" a war on tourism "

Source:
Embassy, Canada's Foreign Policy Newsweekly
EDITORIAL
October 25th, 2006


Border Militarization:
Harper and Calderón Have an Acute Common Problem

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexico's president-elect Felipe Calderón have a pressing common problem.
How they deal with it when they meet in Ottawa this week will say as much about each leader's wisdom and diplomatic skill as it will about the problem they face.

The tip of the issue is the advancing militarization of the border both countries share with the United States.

For Mexico, the problem is especially acute.
The recent passage of U.S. legislation authorizing the construction of a 1,100-km-long Berlin-style wall on the U.S.-Mexican border is seen in Mexico as an insult on its planning and a humiliation in its construction.

For Mr. Calderón's presidency, the border fortification poisons Mexico's diplomatic relations with Washington.
Chafing that the wall is being build on his watch, the president-elect complained that,
"This fence they are leaving me is going to enormously complicate relations with the United States."

Canada is a little different.
Mr. Harper has had to deal with more of a growing virtual wall than one made of concrete and barbed wire.
It's a fence made of increased plane and helicopter patrols, tighter checkpoint security and new levels of documentation: Passports and some kind of smart identity card.
The result has become, in the words of many Canadian business people, " a war on tourism," not a war on terrorism.

In the U.S., critics of the Mexican wall, like Bishop Gerald Barnes, who is chairman of the U.S. Catholic bishops' migration committee, have said the fence "would lead to increased exploitation and deaths of migrants."

For the bishops, the wall is "a short-sighted solution that sidesteps just global economic and trade policies designed to help create living wage jobs in countries of origin, would permit persons to remain home and support themselves and their families."

The bishops are right about the wall's impact on migrant lives.
As the fence building progresses, migrants take increasingly dangerous routes through desert and barren environments.
And they are preyed on by organized crime as they become more desperate to cross for work and, increasingly, for family unification.
The long-term solution the bishops are proposing sounds something like a European Union for North America.
If only the hemisphere's leaders were courageous enough to advance such an idea.

One big stumbling block to open borders and perhaps the real elephant in the room when border militarization is discussed is drugs–cocaine in the south and marijuana in the north.
Americans have an insatiable drug habit that gives rise to a multi-billion-dollar drug smuggling business.
But the solution for that will never be found at the borders.

Terry Nelson, a veteran federal law enforcement official who spent years in U.S. Border Patrol and customs agencies before he retired, recently told a Texas newspaper that none of his work made the slightest bit of difference in the domestic consumption, price or availability of cocaine.
(He was responsible for the confiscation of tens of thousands of pounds of seized drugs.)

"When you arrest a drug dealer you just create a job opportunity," he said.
"They're not going to run out of cocaine."
Today, Mr. Nelson favors drug legalization.

If Mr. Harper and Mr. Calderón can first find the courage to realistically approach the drug problem, they might then be able to address meaningful long-term solutions for migration and trade like those of the bishops.

Without this kind of courage, in all three capitals, we can expect to see the increasing militarization of the borders–to the detriment of the citizens of all three countries.

http://www.embassymag.ca/html/index.php?display=story&full_path=/2006/october/25/edit/