U.S. suggests drones, underground sensors to beef up surveillance along Canadian border
Here is the interesting bit:
The Canada Border Services Agency said it was in both countries’ interest for the border to remain “open, efficient and secure.”
“From our huge trade relationship to our common security concerns, we will continue to work together to keep the border open to legitimate trade and travel but closed to terrorists, criminals and other threats,” it said in a statement.
I wonder what other threats might be. From the American perspective, it could only mean the threat of expat tax evaders trying to go to and fro on the border without settling with the IRS. My house is a few kilometres from the border. I wonder what the range of the missiles on the drones is and what sort of destructive capacity they have.
Now if only the U.S. could be as determined about keeping its illegal guns from crossing the border into Canada.
@recalcitrant, hadn’t heard much about illegal guns of US origin in Canada. Fast and Furious however is a major scandal, where the US Feds made sure that guns ended up the hands of Mexican drug cartels. It has now resulted in multiple deaths, even of law enforcement officers on the American side of the border.
@Petros- guns coming across the border from Detroit into Ontario are a big problem. Most of the shootings that occur in Ontario are done using guns that originated in the U.S. Even here on the reserve next to us there are lots of U.S. sourced guns.
The last time that I listened to an American news show disucss the gun problem in the States, one of the numbers tossed out was that there are over 280 million guns in circulation in America
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/280-million-guns-means-more-death-on-the-way
Now Detroit with its large inner city population is a prime source of illegal firearms and a major distribution point. You can also lump Chicago and New York into that same situation. All three cities are close to the border.
@Petros: Pot goes south, coke and guns come north. Handguns used for crime in Canada are largely smuggled from the US, where they’re much easier to buy.
This needs to be done, so we can monitor all the Canadians flowing across the border into Bellingham’s Costco clogging up the check out line, buying up all our milk and filling up your jerry jugs at the petro pumps. We need to watch this closely. Hopefully those drones will have Canadian License plate readers! LOL
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/13/bellingham-costco-canadians-cheap-milk_n_1773495.html
@all- these people in Bellingham who are complaining should really get their act together. One of the major things that the American economy is suffering from right now is a lack of consumer DEMAND. Instead of complaining about the Canadians who are coming and shopping in their stores they should be clapping and welcoming them.
All of this Canadian money is pure gravy for the U.S. economy because the U.S. Treasury did not have to issue the dollars that are being spent. This is an injection of capital and if it wasn’t there the economy of the area would be very bleak. The same goes for the housing markets in Arizona where the Canadians have been putting a floor under falling house prices. Or the Brazilians who are buying up homes in Florida.
@Just Me, but is there a way to add up all those crossborder daytrips shopping for milk, (perhaps a new type of frequent shopper card) in order to establish a ‘significant presence’ status – to invent and enforce some US taxable obligation burden on all those Canadians? Why not a cumulative number of HOURS per year instead of days? : )
What will happen when the US is successful in preventing all those crossborder shopping Canadians from using their credit and debit cards from foreign (Canadian) banks and credit unions – if they are FATCA non-compliant? That’s one way to solve Bellingham’s problem. LOL
And why not combine crossborder shopping with IRS extraterritorial compliance: ‘foreign’ asset and account checkpoints for duals and other US-deemed-taxable-persons (green card holders, snowbirds, etc.) who haven’t filed FBARs on the way in? Express lanes for those who are compliant or exempt, and a ‘special’ lane for those who haven’t brought their US returns, FATCA and FBAR forms, and 6 or more years of bank statements with them for inspection.The US can just demand that a downpayment on confiscatory penalties be made on the spot.
Just think, a dual Canadianborn/with inherited US status would need to file FBARs and US taxes in order to get the requisite US passport, in order to cross the border to buy US goods. A pretty expensive jug of bovine growth hormone laden milk!
Cut Just Me some slack, he’s just repeating some of the local complaints about Canadians–not from retailers but from the shoppers who are inconvenienced by the hordes of Canadians. I know a little of the local situation there; my wife had relatives in Bellingham and some of them complained about the Canadians. Just Me’s little LOL indicated quite clearly that he was speaking tongue in cheek.
*snicker… we’ll just do all our shopping in Surrey. I don’t care. Not setting foot over the US Border. Will be really glad when we provide Canadian border guards with automatic rifles and build a 5 meter tall fence around the 49th parallel.
@Petros, Just Me- I hope that I wasn’t misconstrued as attacking Just Me. My criticism was totally directed at the people in Bellingham. I apologize if I was so misinterpreted.
I too used to live in Northwest, Washington in the town of Lynden. I can recall some of the carping that was done back then by Canadians who complained about Americans going into Canada to buy gas.
@recalcitrant, Didn’t really take it that way. You are right about the attitude the local shoppers in Bellingham should have.
I was tongue in check. 🙂 The complainers are just making themselves look small, petty and foolish. This is great for the local area economy, and it isn’t just Costco that benefits. The “Trader Joes” parking lot near my mother’s place is full of Canadian license plates too. They do the largest gross business of all the Pacific Northwest Trader Joes including all the popular ones in Seattle. The Canadians are the reason! Bless them!
@badger Yup, they might need to keep calenders of their many trips, so they don’t cross the “substantial presence” thresholds and trip any FBAR requirements… 🙂
The Chamber of Commerce loves the Canadians, the Retailers on Meridian Street love them, and even my sister, who does shop at Costco, gets the connection between the Sales tax benefit that goes to support the Bellingham community! It is really a win win, and if you don’t like the lines, there are plenty of locations farther south where the Canadian impact isn’t quite as extensive.
BTW, how expensive is milk in Canada? Is it like NZ, about $2.00 a litre? That is the result of a Fonterra monopoly, but what is the issue in Canada? Just curious. I guess I could google it.
@Just Me- here in Alberta milk is about a 1.00/L or 4.65/gal. Which I don’t think is a bad price at all. When people talk about the price difference between milk in Canada and the U.S. what they forget or maybe don’t know about, is that milk in the States is used as a big loss leader to bring people in. So the U.S. sale price is almost always a heavily discounted price.
And, when we continue to buy our milk in Canada (preferably local, and organic), we don’t get Bovine Growth Hormone along with it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_somatotropin or subject the cows to it, or overuse antibiotics needed to treat recurrent mastitis that results. Plus, not paying for the gas to run the car and idle at the border just for a bit of a sale on milk.
Last time we bought gas in Bellingham, we had a lot of trouble going up the Rocky mountains between BC and Alberta. The chevette ran like a dog, going at times about 10 kph up the slopes. I thought there was something wrong with the car–until we stopped at a PetroCan and filled up, and the Chevette suddenly was a real car again. That was the summer of 1991.
I can recall during the early months of Iraq war hearing on the news how Canadian cars were vandalized in WA parking lots thanks to Chretiens cajones keeping us out of that entanglement.
Ug.. I would move away from the border Petros. At least for me, I don’t want to go anywhere near that place. Drones in the US or at the border? Certainly. There are some MSM articles talking about how local police and sheriffs departments are now equipped with military-grade hardware, with photos and all. It’s really weird, as if the police force(s) are morphing into military forces. My only fear is that you get someone that’s too young, or someone who thinks they are God, and they will be able to cause much more damage than with a 40 cal Glock. We’ve already seen many of the military blunders; now take the average of these, and multiply by every law enforcement agency in the country.
For all of your Canadians, we drink UHT milk from a box here. hmm.. it’s about ,70 cents a litre. I first got used to that in Southern Europe.. took a little getting used to, but now it’s been so many years….
@Geeez, I used to think I live pretty far from the border, about an hour and half from Buffalo. But now, I don’t know the range of the missiles.
Obama said that he wanted a civilian force equal in power and funding to the US military. But it has been against custom or law, don’t know which, for the United States Federal Government to move armies into the states (except of course, where they have military bases). Thus, the militarization of the police and of the Federal departments of law enforcement. When you speak of young people being gung ho with certain equipment, it reminded me of the tragedy at Kent State.
** Gore alert… sorry, no other way to make it nice.. don’t read below if you are a sensitive person. **
If you want to know the capabilities, Petros, just look at Youtube: you can see some videos of them blasting people. There’s one, where they targeted a guy, and a jogger ran right in front at the last possible moment. There was nothing left, just shoes. The jogger came out of nowhere and he was too far away (the jogger looked 4-5 meters closer to the missile than the target), so you know he wasn’t a bodyguard. Nevertheless, the US probably says that he was “collateral damage” or possibly even a terrorist so that they can sleep better at night.
There are some high quality videos of the Apache helicopterrs taking people out too. The capabilities are extremely impressive: they can take out a target at 4-5 kilometers. The person doesn’t even know that they are there, or are being watched, unless a few bullets hit the ground and miss.
I saw those videos about a year ago, and I was grossed out. I was also extremely disgusted when I saw that some innocent people were killed and also disgusted by some of the “analysts” or verbal reactions to the engagements and killing of the people. What do they think this is, a video game!!? Terrible terrible terrible. And people ask me why I don’t want to go back to the US. The reasons are many!!
Here is a video by a Fora.TV, speaking with journalist Hamid Mir of Pakistan in April 10, 2009. He claims that the collateral damage far exceeds the actual number of terrorists: He rates it at 14/513 (terrorists/innocent) or 2.7% accuracy rate in 84 drone attacks. I don’t know why we would want such things along the Canadian border.
I also watched this more up to date video, which I urge no one who is upset with serious blog content to watch. This link takes you to the viewer discretion page:
https://www.youtube.com/verify_controversy?next_url=/watch%3Fv%3D_9DE0ON_Uzo
Now what I find interesting is that last few seconds when President Obama threatens potential suitors for his daughters’ affection with predator drones. “Boys don’t get any ideas. I have two words for you, “Predator Drones”. You will never see it coming. You think I’m joking.” That is inappropriate. Nothing that we’ve done at the Isaac Brock Society is inappropriate (that I’m aware of), but when the POTUS threatens people with his power to use predator drones, even as a joke, it is inappropriate. How can the president joke about something that is a serious threat, a weapon so stealthy that it gives the power to whoever wields it to kill defenseless people at a whim.
When I believed that the United States was a good country I might have shrugged. Now that I see the United States as a dangerous predator, this gives me a chill.
Here is an RT report interviews with Michael Maloof, former Pentagon official:
The only good thing about a drone is that it can’t rape.
@all- it occurred to me this morning that the U.S. military establishment’s pursuit of increasingly better and more efficient ways of killing people is nothing more than a new chamber of Fascist horrors. The rationale for smart bombs, drone airplanes etc. is of course self defense but just how true is this? When you devise a new scram jet that can fly at supersonic speed around the world and deliver a bomb in some remote area, don’t you have to ask any questions about your ethics?
http://phys.org/news/2011-11-pentagon-successfully-hypersonic.html
Is the U.S. military stuck thinking the ends justify the means? Is this not mass worldwide psychological terror? Why is it that America isn’t branded as a rouge nation? Doesn’t America’s political and military capabilities put it in the same camp as that of other so called “rogue nations”?
America invaded a small defenseless country by falsely accusing it of possessing weapons of mass destruction only to find that no such weapons were present. But rather than issuing a formal apology and paying “reparations” the only thing that was said was, “mission accomplished”. Exactly what mission was that?
Canada should fear drones on the border. The Canadian government must have an equal say with regards to how those drones are equipped. The border is not the U.S.’s alone.
@recalcitrant, At some point, I’ve changed my view of what the last eleven years since 9-11 has meant. I am less optimistic that it has been handled well, to say the least. So I won’t here challenge the narrative that you present. I will just say this: it is one thing for a country to take such weapons of stealthy destruction and use them on alleged enemies on the other side of the world–it is quite another to turn them on your own people and your allies. The USA and Canada alike should insist that these drones have no place in their airspace. Otherwise, the all-benevolent state now has its weapons pointed at the people, and that cannot happen except in a tyranny–you know the kind where a president threatens his daughters’ suitors with a predator drone, and thinks its funny.