statism watch

When did that happen? The Canada Customs Act came into being in 1985, but by all reports ACTA was to have been the international treaty targetting electronic devices, and ACTA hasn’t even been ratified yet. The stepped up enforcement is more likely to be related to the abolition of the Canada Customs Agency and the creation of the ‘Canada Border Services Agency‘ in 2005. You know – the service they just gave guns to. Whatever’s going on, to search your laptop is like looking inside of your mind for thought crimes. Absolutely chilling, and a complete violation of privacy. And the government is attempting to introduce and spin this unconscionable violation of our section 8 Charter rights but making out like it’s for the children, as usual, since we fall for it every time. Hello, police state.

Flashback: US Border Guards to Expand Use of X-Ray Body Scanners | Border guards resorting to force more often | Border agents handcuff, interrogate Winnipeg couple | Mohawk protesters block Ontario bridge over arming of border guards | Akwesasne natives protest armed border guards, border crossing closed in retaliation | New border rules create ‘invisible Berlin Wall’: mayor | New US border technology directed at insidious threat: Canadians | Clinton defends new border restrictions | Ontario’s high-tech driver’s licences pose privacy risk: watchdog | Moratorium sought on RFID driver’s licenses | ‘Say please’ at U. S. border nets pepper spray | Predator drones patrolling border irk Manitoba MLA | Surveillance on the Great Lakes: U.S. tightens security along border | RFID passport security defeated in minutes | U.S. border agents given power to seize travellers’ laptops, cellphones | American Border Officers Want to Fingerprint Canadians at SPP Bridge | U.S. to collect DNA at border | North American ID card in the works through SPP

Jim Bronskill, Canadian Press
October 2, 2009

Border agency has broad authority to examine baggage and electronics, but lacks independent watchdog

The arrest of a Catholic bishop on child-pornography charges highlights the power of border agents to see not just your passport, but the contents of your laptop computer.

Between them, the Canada Border Services Agency and the RCMP enforce dozens of statutes – the border agency at various ports and crossings, the Mounties between ports of entry.

The Customs Act gives Canada’s border officers authority to examine people’s personal baggage and goods upon arrival to, and departure from, Canada, including scrutiny of electronic devices.

“Officers are trained to search electronic media for child pornography, obscene material and hate propaganda,” said Patrizia Giolti of the border services agency.

“They receive training to familiarize themselves with computers and other devices and how to quickly identify potential files.”

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Look, it’s not funny or cute that the military is making its presence felt in civilian areas now. This is how countries die. But why pay any attention to history?

Flashback: G20 protesters blasted by sonic cannon | Maximum Alert: U.S. Troops Now Occupying America | More troops on the streets: U.S. terror alert expands to transit and stadiums | CF-18s join B.C. Olympic security drill | Sonic weapons used in Iraq positioned at congressional townhall meetings in San Diego county | Military helicopters over downtown Montreal for exercise | British Army to Police Medicine Hat During Urban Warfare Drills | Urban warfare drills coming to Medicine Hat | Military readies reservists for threats to ‘domestic front’ | Military may patrol bar zone in Barrie | British Secret Service, Army Alert on Bank Riots | US Urban Warfare Drills Linked To Coming Economic Rage | Military and police practice integration during Olympic security exercises | Canadian military getting 1,300 new heavily armoured trucks for ‘domestic use’ | Army ‘Strategic Shock’ Report Says Troops May Be Needed To Quell U.S. Civil Unrest | Troops in the Streets: Army Brigades Standing By to Assist in Disasters, Help Quell Dissent | Canada, U.S. agree to use each other’s troops in civil emergencies

CBC News
October 2, 2009

A Canadian military helicopter pilot with a sudden hankering for hamburgers set his aircraft down on a Kenora, Ont., baseball diamond, and walked into an A&W restaurant across the street for a takeout order.

“He ordered four papa burgers with cheese combos and two papa burgers on the side,” server Stacey Hawes told CBC News on Thursday.

The pilot was nice and polite, and made it seem as if he was just driving a regular car, she added.

Laura Madison was in her house in Kenora when she heard the whirring noise of the helicopter blades just down the street. When she looked out her window, she couldn’t believe her eyes.

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Speaking of Soviet-style centralization of power… good luck to the Republic on surviving this one. It’s going to need it.

Flashback: Blair to be named EU President ‘within weeks’ if Irish ratify Lisbon Treaty | Advance polls open in Irish vote on Lisbon EU constitution | New Czech move to block ratification of EU constitution | Icelandic parliament rolls over, votes for EU membership | Ireland to hold second referendum on Lisbon Treaty | EU leaders reassure Irish in latest attempt to revive Lisbon treaty | Secret report details Nazi plan to create a European Union | Leaked 1955 Bilderberg Docs Outline Plan For Single European Currency | Bilderberg chairman: ‘Bilderberg helped create the Euro’ | Iceland to be fast-tracked into the EU | Irish to vote on EU treaty again as experts warn Britain could be signed up within a year | You’re not doing it right: New Irish vote on EU integration ‘legal’ | Harper, Sarkozy vow to work toward Canada-EU deal | Irish ‘need new EU treaty vote’ | Lisbon treaty: Pressure on Ireland for second vote | EU tries to isolate Irish after treaty rejection | EU grapples with Irish ‘No’ vote, members consider ratification options | Defiant Ireland set to quash Europe-wide constitutional moves | Ireland Set To Vote On EU Dictatorship | Irish PM Accuses EU Constitution No Vote Coalition of ‘Sheer Inaccuracy and Absurdity’ | Ireland Only Country to Hold Referendum on Contentious EU Constitution | European Parliament Members Revolt Over Treaty of Lisbon

Henry McDonald, Helen Pidd , The Guardian
October 2, 2009

Second vote against would mean huge setback to long-running plans for EU reform

The Irish today began casting votes in a referendum that will decide the future of the EU and its Lisbon reform treaty.

Around 3 million Irish citizens are being asked to vote on the proposed treaty – a blueprint for reforming how the 27-nation bloc takes decisions and presents itself to the wider world – for the second time in less than 18 months.

Another majority vote against would be a huge setback to long-running plans for EU reform.

Ireland’s premier, Brian Cowen, said there would be no third referendum on Lisbon if the Republic voted against it today. A second defeat of the treaty would also throw his own future into doubt.

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Taxing the banks and using the proceeds to fund the IMF’s activites. Now there’s a proposal everyone can get behind, right? Well, no actually. Not when you realize that the IMF and World Bank represent a centralization of banking power outside of national jurisdiction. Not only is the chain of accountability that much further removed from national voters than their own national central banks (which are bad enough), but the IMF and World Bank are known to engage in predatory lending practices which seek to leverage debt in developing nations to enable the wholesale exploitiation of national resources by multinational corporations. And today’s global tax trial balloon is a completely transparent power grab. It’s not the only one, either. The UN’s environmental head wants a global carbon tax. This is an emerging pattern. A de facto world government is being announced and assembled out in the open, and it has to be stopped. It’s the same method that was used in the Soviet Union to render local councils vestigial bodies, stripped of their power as control was centralized in the hands of the Supreme Soviet and the Politburo. If that isn’t enough to convince you this isn’t the road forward, then at least consider the fact the national banks are simply going to pass this additional cost on to you.

Flashback: G20 nations meet as protests flare on issue of international banking regulation | IMF approves $13bn gold sale to boost lending fund | China Set to Buy $50 Billion in IMF Notes | China calls anew for super-sovereign currency | No one talking about dumping dollar: China minister | China explores buying $50bn in IMF bonds | Chinese economists deem huge holding of US bonds “risky” as Geithner visits | A Bigger, Bolder Role Is Imagined For the IMF | UK PM reveals G20 plan to boost IMF by $1 trillion, hails new world order (again) | UN & IMF Back Agenda For Global Financial Dictatorship | IMF poised to print billions of dollars in ‘global quantitative easing’ | Gordon Brown seeks sweeping reforms to give IMF global ’surveillance role’ | IMF may need to “print money”, act as “world’s central bank” as crisis spreads | Globalists Exploit Financial Meltdown In Move Towards One World Currency | World needs new Bretton Woods, says Brown | IMF prescribes state regulation of ‘global financial order’ | Bilderberg Seeks Bank Centralization Agenda | Banks face “new world order,” consolidation: report

Kevin Carmichael, The Globe and Mail
October 2, 2009

The International Monetary Fund appears poised to throw its weight behind the idea of requiring banks to pay for financial crisis insurance.

Speaking to reporters as economic officials from around the world gather for several days of meetings in Turkey’s biggest city, Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said the IMF will spend the next several months reviewing proposals that would see banks set aside a portion of their profits to mitigate the cost of systemic failure.

Leaders from the Group of 20 commissioned the study after their summit in Pittsburgh last week. While still far from making any conclusions, Mr. Strauss-Kahn signalled that he is sympathetic to the idea, saying governments could force financial institutions to contribute to a fund that could act as insurance or help low-income countries that end up sideswiped by another global credit crisis. [Ed. Note: You bet he is.]

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Racists everywhere are going to just love this. And eventually, it will be possible – though still deeply immoral – to find all kinds of personal information out about you in this manner if people keep sending their samples in to IBM’s Genographic Project and governments continue collecting samples for national DNA databases. This journal isn’t quite sure why people can’t see this for the major threat it is, when it’s a matter of public record that it was IBM that designed the tracking and accounting systems for the Nazi’s concentration camps. Tattoos, you see, will no longer be necessary in this brave new world. For the sake of future generations, it must be stopped.

Related: Study finds genetic discrimination by insurance firms | US: Ruling allowing Taser use to get DNA may be nation’s first | UK: Police ‘arrest innocent youths for their DNA’, officer claims | UK: Fury as Commons denied vote on DNA database | Australians refused insurance because of poor genes

Henry Porter, The Guardian
October 2, 2009

A Home Office experiment with the DNA of asylum seekers to establish their likely race and place of origin is causing outrage and alarm among scientists.

Sir Alec Jeffreys, the inventor of DNA fingerprinting, called the human provenance pilot project, run by the UK Border Agency “naive and scientifically flawed”. In an email to Science magazine, he said:

The Borders Agency is clearly making huge and unwarranted assumptions about population structure in Africa; the extensive research needed to determine population structure and the ability or otherwise of DNA to pinpoint ethnic origin in this region simply has not been done. Even if it did work (which I doubt), assigning a person to a population does not establish nationality – people move! The whole proposal is naive and scientifically flawed.

The human provenance pilot began two weeks ago and uses mitochondrial DNA, the DNA passed in the maternal line, and Y chromosomes from the paternal line to determine whether an asylum seeker comes from, say, Somalia or another region of the horn of Africa.

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Flashback: Bishop facing child porn charges gets bail | Pope ‘led cover-up of child abuse by priests’ | Abuse ‘endemic’ in Irish Roman Catholic schools: Report

CBC News
October 2, 2009

Police in Newfoundland and Labrador say they are looking into allegations that Bishop Raymond Lahey possessed child pornography more than 20 years ago.

The investigation comes following comments by some men — who were abused by Christian Brothers in St. John’s Mount Cashel orphanage decades ago — who say they told police they saw child pornography in the home of Lahey in the 1980s.

“I think the [Royal Newfoundland Constabulary] dropped the ball on it big time,” Billy Earle, of St. John’s, told CBC News Thursday. “Senior officers on the job right now dropped the ball on this big time.”

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