More American Horse Pucky

[Note: My distaste with America is with a small segment of the government, not with the majority of the population, and especially not with my friends who read my rantings on this blog. Please don't take this - or the earlier 9/11 comments - personally.]

So I went to my favourite coffee haunt this morning and lo and behold there was a current Toronto Sun sitting on one of the tables - a rarity for that restaurant - so I picked it up and read it while I drank my French Caramel.

Buried back about 10 or 15 pages was a story that I found rather troubling and amusing at the same time. The State Department - or some other branch of the Republican crotch-scratchers - are coming to Toronto in October to meet with our government. The purpose of this visit (no pun intended) is to bring almost a century of paperless border crossing for Canadians to an end.

Bush's administration wants to press Canadians who want to venture into the States to have a passport. Yeah, like I'm going to pay $75 (or whatever passports are up to now) in addition to the screwed up currency exchange we have to suffer through.

But wait... there's more!! Not only will all of us dumb-as-dirt Canadians have to go through the nonsense of getting passports, we're also going to have to improve our passports so that they include encoded biometric information like encoded retina scans so they can scan us to see if we're really who we say we are.

My earliest memories of living near the international border were going to places like Ogdensburg and Massena, New York every Sunday. I have friends all along the border, but I'm not going to put up with this horse manure in addition to the added crap we already go through since 9/11.

Of course no mention was made of what requirements Canada Customs will impose on American visitors. It will irritate me to the nth degree if this miserable excuse for a federal government of ours bends over and takes it from the American State Department, just like it always does.

Let me put it in small words that even Dubya can understand: If you want the neighbour kids to stop knocking over your sand castles, quit being the bully. The answer is not to erect razor wire around the sandbox and alienate the Canadian families who have saved your butt more than once. I honestly thought you learned your lesson in Iran 50 years ago. Apparently not. Don't get me wrong. I support the war on terrorism, but everything has a limit. And installing retina scanners at the largest unprotected border crossing on the planet IS THAT LIMIT.

This is almost motivating me to do my three years in Law & Security so I can sit in a customs booth and deny entrance to all the Americans who come over here and rape our economy every weekend with their almighty dollar.

If there is a protest at the meeting, I will be there. I sincerely hope there is.

[Added Later: The Toronto Star's spin on the story is here. They raise some interesting points including the $1.5 billion in business that crosses the border every day.]

Posted by netnomad at September 15, 2003 05:29 PM