i would be mightily pissed.
my family were stopped at the canadian border when i was in about 7th grade as we were coming back into the country from seeing the other side of the falls.
my grandfather was in the front passenger side of the station wagon and the guard heard him speaking in his heavy italian accent.
the guard asked to see my pop pop's "papers" my grandfather got rel still and quit and i had never really seen that look before and he said, in a very flat voice, "i'll show you mine when you show me yours."
the guard waved us on.
i was so freaking angry that i thought i'd either blow up or throw up, but i just sat in the back saying nothing.
i don't know how you stand it.
(green eyes huh? cool)
Odin's beard, is it that bad down there now? I haven't crossed the 49th parallel into the U.S over 8 years, and had no idea such measures were in play...OTOH, it was and is quite commonplace in South America.
What a shame and a waste of resources.
Some border guards are such petty tyrants. Now that they get to play dress up and have an automatic weapon, it's only a matter of time until one of them lights up a car.
You and I had emailed eachother about this sometime earlier this summer, Stevie, and I still find it hard to believe that we actually do this within our own borders.
It's not that I don't believe you because obviously you live down there. But as with SC Justice Felix Frankfurter when hearing the details about the Holocaust, I can't bring myself to believe it.
I get nauseous, literally sickened, when I see those Border Patrol commercials here in MA. They show kids on swings and the inference is that they actually protect children by pulling the shit they do for Homeland Security. Protecting kids from what? Impoverished Mexicans looking for honest work?
it also has a terrible economic price jp. by making it such a hassle to cross the border they have cut our local merchants off from a large and vital market in mexicali, and cut us off from going there to boot. nobody would brave an average 2 hour wait at the border, especially in the summer. somebody, who has followed all the rules, wanting to go to a legitmate above the boards job has seen their work day and their commute increase an average of 2 hours. many days it can approach 3 or 4.
it's insane, and it doesn't accomplish a single thing except to mess with the law abiding, rule following people.
stupid. insane. mean spirited. counter productive.
i side with my hispanic brothers and sisters in this, and not just because i can count better than custer. because they are right on the issue. our policy is founded on bald faced racism, administered by sociopathic thugs, and enforced by jackbooted assholes.
when laws are this stupidly crazed rational people everywhere will disobey them.
i have a serious intuition that the very people who are pushing hard for all of this cracking down, and making our policy stupider and meaner are the exact bastards that profit mightily from having a desperate and easily exploited underclass of illegals.
So good to see your first post here, Minstrel Boy 
Now.....
WTF!?!?!?! They're that far north? I thought it was just AT the border crossing things had tightened up. That is just scary with the block/metal door structure and all those guns. :-O
In March I was invited to meetup with some friends down in San Felipe for a Folk Festival to benefit the local school there. I lived in Yuma when I was 5, and El Centro at 8, but not been down that way since. Took a look at the map and thought I'd cross at Mexicali and head down to the sea side camping. BUT I would be going alone and heard the border had been tightened. So I didn't go. I'm glad now because I would not want to be driving alone, most likely at night, under those conditions. That's just wild. Inside the US....
Just another instance where they turn to guns instead of a political solution. I'm quite sure these people would love to remain in their country and with their families and that's the sadest part really.
And....yes, "homeland" has got to go. Day one, change that. Makes my skin crawl.
I hope you understand why I cannot join in on the "Hussein" self-naming. They're not allowed to have anything to do with pork.
Thank you for this.
I am disgusted by the Fatherland construction, as well.
The petty tyrant with the stop gesture reminds me of many of the teachers I have worked with in the public schools. That nasty, dictatorial "Stop!" just because they could. Us vs. them, us vs. them. . . When does respect and mutually beneficial solutions arise?
The Guantanamera lyrics are heartbreakingly lovely and appropriate.
Right now it is a win-win for Cheney and friends. Like you say, the same enforcers (above the level of the BDU-clad enforcer in 112 degree heat) are probably the exploiters.
the absolute best and most certain way to find out where the roadblocks are and what their threat level is at the moment is to ask a smuggler. anybody needing to avoid their shennanigans and get past them probably has their watch list schedule down before it reaches the rank and file.
it's insane. worse than that, it's unamerican.
We got 'em here in Vermont, about 100 miles from the Canadian border.
Heavily armed border patrol agents doing whiteness checks on I-91, just south of White River Junction.
When Bush came in they replaced our local Customs Agents with out-of-state jack-booted Border Patrol forces.
One town is famous for having been built straddling the border. The town has been bi-national since 1791. The town's library and performance house is right on the line, one entrance is in the US, the other is is Canada. Some homes are also split by the border. The town shares a single set of emergency response between both sides of the border.
But now the Border Patrol is taking a page from their patron saint, Stalin, and they are trying to force the town to build a Berlin Wall right through the middle of town on some imaginary line. They routinely fine citizens for not driving to the official 'border crossing' just to go to the corner store - people they KNOW are not illegal immigrants.
America, this is exactly what fascism looks like. It's not that we are emulating Hitler or Stalin, it's that we are passing the same landmarks on the path to totalitarianism.
The Border Patrol MUST be stopped, these police-state tactics MUST be discredited and ended, America MUST reverse the course toward evil that both the GOP and the Democratic Leadership has set the nation on.
and remember folks, two things about walls that have been true since the great wall of china, jericho, and hadrian's thing up by scotland. . .
they work both ways, they keep stuff out, but they also keep stuff in. . .
and they work, right up until the moment they don't.
Comrade Rutherford - cool to hear from someone in Derby Line VT/Stanstead QC.
Oh - reading again I guess you're not from the town, but shows the true fight of the Green Mountain State.
Apropos of nothing, at the customs office for bus travellers at the Peace Bridge in Buffalo there is no official "Dept. of Homeland Security sign"...just a photocopied/colour printer logo trimmed and taped over the old logo.
It's not meant to keep us "safe" or to effectively deter illegal immigration, but to accustom the proles to the control regime which will be increasingly necessary as the terms of the social contract get revised downward.
And yep, I get the same creepy frisson when I hear the word "homeland", too, MHB, particularly when it's paired with "security". Roadblocks, black uniforms and automatic weapons, demands for identity papers were the stuff of Nazi-occupied Europe, and spy thrillers set behind the Iron Curtain.
cont.
Kind of makes me feel like poor, gut-shot Steve McQueen, at the end of The Sand Pebbles:
"What the hell happened!?!"
'whiteness patrol' indeed. reminds me of that South Park video in Fahrenheit 911...'they were scaaaared'
excellent first post, Mr. Minstrel!
Well said Stevie. Well said indeed. And this shit reminds me very, very much of the shit we had to go through to back in the old cold war days when we wanted to go to Berlin. Only they had some big fucking vicious dogs to add to the fun so if they follow the plan full out as they seem to be doing it won't be long till you have a couple of those in your face every time too.
Funny thing is, I was a "Cold Warrior" at the time and the pentagon kept telling us they were the "Bad Guys"!
'Course things do change. I am so old I can remember when Fidel Castro worked for us and was one of the good guys. Same with Bin Laden. What happened indeed?
We passed the threshold of accepting fascism when Blackwater killed 5 people in New Orleans without a nary of concern. Mercenaries on our own soil killing our own people. Well, they was probably darker than dark and looting with a piece sticking out the back of their pants..or so how we justify these things in our minds.
This is what makes the loss of the white people party this November all the more intriguing. Will Obama play fealty to his white half by brushing it all under the rug, or will he actually demand accountability and get destroyed by the DC village elders?
I've seen them when I was visiting Arizona and it's a disgrace. I told them that it was none of their fucking business what I was doing or where I was going in my rental car while I was clearly 50 miles from the border on a major highway. I think my NY accent got to them and they let me go. What's a further disgrace is why the taxpayers aren't up in arms about this. I think it's pretty clear that the fear card has been played to perfection.
Let’s hope that pressure can be generated to rollback the neocon security regime, and that a Dem Prez and a Dem Congress will respond.
WTF!?!?!?! They're that far north?
South too ...
We got 'em here in Vermont, about 100 miles from the Canadian border.
That startled me when I ran across it 3 or 4 years ago. They weren't as heavily armed then - and the agent I spoke with happened to be from a town in MA where I'd worked in at a Boy Scout camp.
It's about control - the hand gestures AND the checkpoints.
I think Ethan Allen and Geronimo would have agreed on the proper course of action.
EXCELLENT, excellent, what I had thought you would bring to the table. And then some. Love the "splainin".
Three years ago when I rode Amtrak from Austin to Oregon at Christmas, our train (which was already seven hours behind) was held up another two hours in Arizona for a complete check of every passenger by border patrol. It meant hundreds of people missed their connections in LA and probably missed reaching family for Christmas plans. Not a word about in the news.
I don't want to see a return to the hate-all-soldiers shit of the Vietnam era, I'm daily relieved by the recognition and respect paid to folks in uniform, but I am utterly sick of seeing uniforms everywhere I go. This is deliberate, begun during the Reagan era, because if a generation grows up with paramilitary and high-octane weapons in every mall, transportation hub, and school, fear and subordination of the entire populace is much easier to maintain.
Traditionally, the borders of the Southwest have been their own culture, their own way of life, language, ecosystem, economy -- La Frontera, as Gloria Anzaldua described it. The "Homeland" assault on zone and her people this is also deliberate. But white-boy-Texas was unable to crush it, and the Bushies are even less competent. We will resist like coyotes and still be around in another hundred years, I hope and pray.
i hope that 1 of the first things the new administration does is to get rid of the use of the word "homeland."
it doesn't sound like it should be that high on the list, considering all that needs to be reversed and repaired and begun but i think it set a bad tone that helped bring about some bad things.
Let's make a fucking clear distinction between soldiers and the 'pretend soldier-heroes' of the Vatherland Homeland Security Forces.
Soldiers have volunteered to defend the nation, with their own lives, and have sworn an oath to uphold and protect the constitution.
DHS shitheads have sworn to impede and erode personal freedoms. Remember the Librarians telling the DHS brownshirts to leave the Library and stop intimidating the library patrons?
Time to stand up and question every single action these shitheads perform.
I know many people in the DHS joined out of patriotism -- but it's misplaced in the DHS. Time to tear the headquarters down and revoke the congressional charter.
Add me to the list of those who are disturbed by "homeland". Ugh. Words matter, even when they sound perfectly innocent (aw, home, that's a nice place...land is good, everyone likes land). Homeland. Motherland. Us versus them. Obey, and be a good citizen of the homeland.
*shudders*
We have border patrol vehicles skittering around the rural parts of Florida, and I often see them pulled off the road, going through the trunk of some unfortunate family's car or questioning a group of laborers as they sit huddled in the back of some old truck full of gardening tools, their straw hats and baseball caps serving as their only protection from the blistering sun.
I see this, and I get the sick feeling in my stomach, too. It does not seem to be the same America I came to in the seventies; this...this is a different America indeed.
So far, no 'migre road blocks in Florida though.
I think we need a little review of our Fourth Amendment rights, MB. While there is still a Fourth Amendment, I mean!
Excellent, excellent post sir. Bravo.
IF obama dose nothing else but dismantle homland security he will eb a sucessfull preisdent.
its existance is a mockery of democracy, its an afront to every thign thsi nation stood for.
I DO NOT NEEED PAPERS IN MY OWN DAMM COUNTRY. the expantion of the border area has to stop.
MB, let's don't forget the Dept of Labor types that run the inspections of working places for illegal immigrants.I'd think we'd like to have people willing to work- i'd trade some native floridians for real workers.
Recently in Tallahassee all the Mexican restaurants were raided and a few shut down b/c of illegals. but heres the point - not one oriental restaurant was raided and i'll bet they are filled with undocumented workers.talk about racial profiling. ranger jim
We passed the threshold of accepting fascism when Blackwater killed 5 people in New Orleans without a nary of concern.
Are you aure about this? I don't recall hearing a thing about this.
i believe that lindsay beyerstein documented that while she was down doing her photojournalism thing right after the floods.
i'll do some digging. blackwater was hired by some of the casino and other corporate interests. they were there to "protect property" in a time of "chaotic breakdown."
dano'ah selwigoh doo iis dah do'o iindii eedihii nanah daagon'iillka'ad
(all the free men are dead or still fighting)
go lah kah yeh (the yawner)
or, as ya'll called him, geronimo. he was an uncle by marriage. he also died in exile. they never let him go home.
Spent the first 35 years of my life in SoCal, most of them in semi-rural San Diego county, just minutes from Tecate, so the BP presence was a common thing. Never got "the vibe" tho until the DHS took 'em over. Yeah, now its dipshits in BDUs w/automatic weapons glaring down everybody. Safer? Me? Don't think so. Makes me sick to visit there now.
Blackwater showed up uninvited and unannounced. Sent 'em over straight from Iraq, during which time they groused to the press about making "only" $300 a day (about half what they made in Iraq).
Eventually, their party-crashing got them over $70,000,000 in post-Katrina contracts. But I never heard anything about them killing five people in NOLA. Because, knowing Blackwater, I was looking for stories like that.
This is really an outrage. But, sorry to say, I guess I'm used to it. Which, in its way, probably says more about me than it does about them or the job they're doing. Not that I'm condoning it or anything; unfortunately now, I live in fear of the government of my country, and all of those who choose to serve it, and suppose I always will.
I've spent most all of my life here in the Southwest; born here, lived here, and will probably die here, and I've been stopped by these jerkoffs for the past 25 years. They've always been polite and I've never had a problem, unless, of course, I'm with some of my long-haired, male friends. Then we always, always, always are "invited" to pull over into that little parking area. The worst that has ever happened was I had to throw out some damn fine chorizo, as I did not know it was illegal to import swine products without a permit. I very calmly did so, no harm, no foul, and went on my way. But, of course, that was at a border checkpoint (Lukeville, IIRC). Now I get stopped on the way to Vegas (July 2007), right outside the Hoover Dam, 'cuz yeah right, gotta protect that from the terr-ists, don't ya know.
But, those who live out here mostly know where those raodblocks are, who's manning them, and when. We try to just go around them and avoid them as much as possible. Of course, then driving these distances is a lot longer and a lot slower, as you can see any plume I put up by going off-road for miles.
linday beyerstein on her blackwater encounter
there is ample documentation about their presence and their behavior while in NOLA. i have found nothing to verify any blackwater killings.
Hey Stevie. I didn't know about the internal roadblocks either. Creepy.
Didn't think so and I scoured Linday's Majikthise, her website, looking for news of Blackwater killings. In fact, this was the first story I'd read. I think it's just an urban legend.
It always pays to be vigilant and truthful even when blogging, Stevie.
Yeah, I think those roadblocks are a lot more active than they used to be. I have passed through the one at Seirra Blanca a lot of times and never been hassled. Most likely because of my blonde hair. I was with along haired male Mexican friend, years ago, traveling from Marfa to El Paso to transport a client and he got really nervous when we approached the border stop. Luckily it was not open. Coming back it was but they let us pass in the company van after the usual questions. I used to take my daughters and go Christmas shopping in Acun~a and one time we got questioned coming back because my youngest has the coloring of her Choctaw great grandmother and they were really giving her the eye. She is georgeous and it got a little creepy.
I do think that some of the supposed problems arae the drug cartels on the south side of the border. When all the violence was getting started down there a few years ago, our government ignored it, even when some of the local governments aked for help. The police chief from one ont the border towns has come to this country seeking aslym because all of his police force has either been killed or has joined the cartels.It is really nasty. Now we are having kidnappings by gang members here in Austin. They take family members and hold them for ransom. Of course, if so many drugs weren't illegal, there would be no business for the cartels. I wonder how we could go about convincing Monsanto that there could be a profit for them in legalizing pot and poppies.
I love how every story here features at least one soap box moment that's patently fake.
In your italicized rant, you should have just written "and I passively aggressively glared at his back". At least that might have been true.
"I hope you weren't ready to start some shit, Stevie." Oh, noooo, not Stevie.
As to the anony doubter above, he must be the type who would exaggerate claims despite three eyewitnesses, so he expects it in others.
Uhh yeah because everyone makes off the cuff speeches referencing Baghdad, the Shia/Sunni ideological split, and curses wildly.
At best he mumbled something and drove along. I know everyone here likes to think of themself as a rugged iconoclast, but the truth is much less grand.
But don't let that a good sheep like yourself from bleating all the same.
Anony jsut because you are too much of a coward to stand up for your slef dosn't mean every one is. Some of us have spines and do not meekly acept any suposed authority figure.
Great post! And it reminds me of why I have ZERO desire to fly on a commercial airliner or live (or visit) in places with roadblocks of that nature. That's not MY country.
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I'm a Canadian - who normally travels into the USA maybe 4 or five times a year, typically for a long weekend stay. This would be over one of the four major points from Southern Ontario into New York or Michigan. Once in a very rare while I have flown into the USA.
Over the years I have had my share of adventures at USA Customs points:
I must say that I crossed at the Windsor / Detroit Bridge about a week after 9/11. Very nervous for me and the regular army posted there. I did some time in the Canadian Forces, so M16s make me twitchy - especially since I was once one of the same 20 year olds myself. But truthfully it was one of the easiest and fastest crossings I even made. The customs agent and the armed guards were professional, polite and effective.
Having said that, something almost all the comments here forget:
** In the 'Zone' you have no rights **
You have left the protection of the country of your citizenship. You have not been admitted into the destination country yet. Once inside the host country, there is usually some kind of legal and formal arrangement of rights extended as a visitor. In the Zone - that narrow band between the gates, you are neither fish or foul. They can pretty much do what they want with you.
Darrell
(who was stripped searched one time by the USA BEFORE I was asked for any identification.)
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