US, Canada plan to dismantle border

[Guest guest]

<h3>US, Canada plan to dismantle border</h3>

Ajit Jain in Toronto

 

 

Canada and the United States are considering dismantling their 4,800-kilometre border to allow for free movement of people and fewer immigration restrictions for workers.

 

 

 

A front-page report in Saturday's Toronto Star quotes Canadian government sources in the US and Canada as saying that "the 49th Parallel would become a 'Main Street North America' rather than a restrictive checkpoint for the 200 million people who cross it annually and $2 billion (Canadian) in goods that cross daily".

 

 

 

This report comes in the wake of an earlier report that Canada is heading towards adopting the US dollar as its national currency.

 

 

 

Canada will abandon the loonie (Canadian dollar) and become the US Federal Reserve's 13th district "within five years" unless the government changes its policies to prop up the eroding Canadian currency, Jeffrey Rubin, chief economist for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, is quoted as saying in a report in The Financial Times.

 

 

 

While other Canadian economists have begun forecasting a shift to the US dollar in 10 to 20 years or more, Rubin's is considered the most slender time frame in Canada opting for the US currency.

 

 

 

As the Canadian dollar is slowly becoming obsolete, government officials on both sides consider the border between the two countries also "obsolete". If at all, it will remain in symbolic terms.

 

 

 

The Canadian daily says that under a new concept of continental border enforcement, Canada and the US will defend their share of the North American 'perimeter'. Officials at entry points will question new arrivals to weed out illegal immigrants and potential terrorists. Once inside, people will be able to travel freely.

 

 

 

Elinor Caplan, Canadian immigration minister, has reportedly supported this notion: "Modernising the border is something the [immigration] department has been looking at as a longer-term project and the perimeter strategy is something that's being looked at," Caplan's spokesman Alain Laurencelle is quoted as saying.

 

 

 

"In the 21st century, in the case of Canada and the United States, the traditional concept of an international border has lost its relevance," Michael Kergin, Canada's ambassador in Washington, is quoted as observing. "I believe we should think of the border not as a frontier but as a meeting place," said US Ambassador in Ottawa Paul Cellucci, who's a former governor of Massachusetts and a personal friend of President George W Bush.

 

 

 

"A 'main street' is where people meet, traffic moves and business gets done," he reportedly said.

 

 

 

"The more user-friendly it becomes, the more it can facilitate the commerce that enriches our societies. That's where Washington and Ottawa need help from each of your provinces, from interested businesses and stakeholders and from concerned citizens," Cellucci added.

 

 

 

According to official statistics, around $700 billion a year worth of goods move across the Canada-US border, which is considered the world's largest trading relationship.

 

 

 

The free flow of these goods and services could result in 6 per cent saving in prices to consumers. Canada's export to the United States is worth $359 billion while it imports goods worth $230 billion from its southern neighbour.

 

 

 

All these reports about the dismantling of the US-Canada border and a common currency is an omen of two countries becoming more and more integrated as one entity when 32 million Canadians will join 280 million Americans in singing The Star-spangled Banner on July 4.

 

 

 

 

[Jagat 1]

Dream on.

[Guest guest]

Originally posted by Jagat:

Dream on.

This was your fellow Cannuckian's wetdream, dude.

 

Freakin' Cannucks are worthless.

[Guest guest]

 

 

Chances are you've never heard of these guys - and that's just the way they want it

 

The most secret, unpublicized and least known branch of the Canadian military is also its most controversial and, arguably, at the root of many of the problems that have beset our Armed Forces in the past decade.

 

It's something called JTF2 (Joint Task Force II).

 

The Department of National Defence (DND) won't talk about JTF2, other than to admit it exists and is headquartered at Dwyer Hill, outside Ottawa.

 

JTF2 is a hyper-secret, elite counter-terrorist and VIP security force of some 250 hand-picked volunteers who are super-fit and super-trained, whose identities are secret, whose budget is classified and who are our version of Britain's SAS and U.S. Special Forces.

 

But JTF2 doesn't seem to have achieved much since its creation in 1992 except to flirt with disaster - to itself, the military, the country.

 

Originally the brainchild of Robert Fowler when he was deputy defence minister (before his UN ambassadorship) and then-chief of defence staff (CDS) Gen. John de Chastelain, JTF2 quickly evolved into something of a secret army outside the military chain of command, reporting directly to the CDS.

 

Members operate in small units (called "bricks") and act as bodyguards to the PM and Defence minister when they travel to dangerous places. Regular soldiers aren't sufficient protection.

 

JTF2 soldiers accompanied then-army commander Gen. Maurice Baril on his peculiar 1995 reconnaissance mission to Zaire - apparently in search of a crisis to which to commit our troops, although there were no takers.

 

DEEMED UNSUITABLE

 

JTF2 replaced the RCMP's anti-terrorist Special Emergency Response Team (SERT), which was deemed unsuitable for quasi-military operations. In fact, JTF2 has replaced the disbanded Airborne Regiment as our "elite" military unit. To some, it is a disaster waiting to happen.

 

Miraculously, JTF2 (there is no JTF1) has escaped critical assessment. Mostly, it's been Scott Taylor of the military magazine Esprit de Corps (see his book, Tested Mettle) and Dave Pugliese of the Ottawa Citizen, who have documented its deeds.

 

Back in 1993, a JTF2 platoon was sent to Bosnia to "rescue" 55 Canadian peacekeepers held hostage by the Serbs. Fortunately for all concerned, the Serbs let the Canadians go who, it turned out, were being treated lavishly as "guests" by their captors.

 

In 1996, with tacit co-operation of Foreign Affairs and DND, a JTF2 commando team went to Peru, ostensibly to offer safe passage to terrorists who held 500 guests hostage at the Japanese ambassador's residence.

 

The idea was that a Canadian Airbus, with a platoon of JTF2 commandos hidden inside, would ambush the terrorists as they boarded for the free flight to Cuba.

 

Mercifully, the Peruvian military vetoed the plan and raided the embassy, freeing all hostages and killing all the terrorists.

 

So hush-hush is JTF2, that when would-be and wannabe JTF2 members became involved in a bank- robbing ring, the matter was hushed up. (Two soldiers not in the JTF2, although one had tried out for it, got 12 and seven years respectively for a 1998 CIBC heist in Calgary, where 80 shots were fired. Several JTF2 members associated with the ring, according to testimony, were dealt with in secret, with no publicity, despite confessions.)

 

Former Airborne Capt. Michel Rainville, recently convicted in Quebec of torture, after initially being charged with torture, kidnapping, illegal confinement, extortion with a firearm, assault and death threats relating to an incident in 1992, served as a JTF2 officer.

 

Rainville led a JTF2 "exercise" against Van Doos in Quebec City, ostensibly testing security of the Citadel's weapons locker. Wearing ski masks and carrying shotguns and Uzi machine pistols, the pretend terrorists overpowered two soldiers on guard duty, stripped, beat, tortured, bound them with duct tape and threatened to kill them unless they co-operated. One soldier was sodomized with a baton and then a shotgun.

 

One terrified soldier escaped, climbed down the wall and called the police who arrived in full riot gear. The army tried to hush the matter up, and for years ignored the grievances of one of the victims (Frank Savage) until he brought it to the attention of civilian authorities, who laid the charges of which Rainville was eventually found guilty.

 

It also turns out the infamous 1993 "turkey shoot" of two "infiltrators" in Somalia (and the close-range execution-style killing of one of them), was a JTF2 "demonstration," led by the same Rainville, to show visiting Canadian and U.S. Special Forces brass their worth.

 

Trooper Kyle Brown, convicted in the beating death of a Somali prisoner, was always puzzled why American Special Forces were in Canadian uniforms in Somalia. It seems they were secretly training and working with JTF2.

 

Taylor speculates the reason the Somalia inquiry was suddenly aborted was because the question of American Special Forces wearing Canadian uniforms was about to come out, revealing the involvement of JTF2 commandos.

 

When the Airborne Regiment was first sent to Somalia, Brig.-Gen. Ernie Beno, commander of the Special Service Force at Petawawa, urged that Rainville be sent home immediately as unfit, when his photo ran in a Montreal newspaper showing three commando knives strapped to him. Rainville boasted that he and his men were trained in assassination and he could "kill a man in two seconds."

 

Beno's advice was ignored at the military's top levels.

 

JTF2 was involved in various confrontations with Indians - and looked inept when the Mohawk Warrior Society, smuggling cigarettes and firing weapons at Cornwall, somehow tapped into and compromised JTF2's classified phone system.

 

As well as guarding VIPs and attending summit meetings and gatherings like the Pan-Am Games in Winnipeg, JTF2 commandos have gone to Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti and Rwanda, where "black operations" were planned, but rarely materialized, or had much effect.

 

DISASTROUS

 

While there's a need for elite troops in certain situations - which is what our disbanded Airborne Regiment was - secret armies are usually disastrous.

 

I'd argue that JTF2 should be disbanded - or made public and accountable. SAS and U.S. Special Forces operations have MI6 and the CIA as intelligence sources, but JTF2 is without a similar resource, and must depend on allies.

 

Hence, it has a certain vulnerability. Traditionally, Canada doesn't dabble in international clandestine operations.

 

We don't need a secret army unit that has been associated with bank robbers and disgraced individuals like Rainville serving Canada's interests.

 

 

[Jagat 1]

There is definitely a small minority of very right wing Canadians who are having wet dreams about joining the United States. Then there are those of us who know that the U.S. is full of people like you.

 

But as I said once before, the U.S. would probably never let Canada in, especially not your bunch. Al Gore would have beat your man 10-1 north of the border. The Democrats would be ahead in both houses forever after. Bye-bye Jesse Helms.

 

Haribol.

 

Jagat

[Jagat 1]

Since you love Canadians so much, Bhutabhavana, I thought I'd pass this article on to you. I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

 

<hr>

 

<h3>We're just a bunch of losers</h3>

 

 

By MICHAEL VALPY

Monday, July 30, 2001 – Globe and Mail.

 

 

Canada is a nation of losers, a notion attributed most recently to historian Desmond Morton. While the fact is not in doubt -- most of us come from backgrounds of defeat -- no one is sure what it means. This remains a mythological work in progress.

 

The First Nations, Metis and Inuit peoples were the first -- and biggest -- losers. Most have lost lands and culture, dignity, well-being. They lost the Red River and North-West Rebellions. The Beothuks have disappeared. Even when they win, as with the Nisga'a in British Columbia, they can never be sure the government won't try to make them lose again.

 

The French have lost twice -- three times, if you count the expulsion of the Acadians. They lost at Quebec City in 1759 to Wolfe's British army. They lost again four years later, when the colonial government of New France and most of the colony's educated elites abandoned them to return to France.

 

The native peoples and the French lost on home ice, in full view of everyone. Other Canadians and their ancestors first lost some place else.

 

The first big wave of English settlers were losers: the Loyalists from the losing side in the American Revolutionary War.

 

The Scots were losers. There were so many Scottish immigrants that, for a while, Gaelic became the third most common European language in Canada. The Scots fled from the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Highland clearances, from high rents, bad harvests and overpopulation.

 

Thus, as novelist Hugh MacLennan wrote in The Psychology of Canadian Nationalism: "The three original settling groups became Canadian because nations or factions to which they belonged had suffered total defeat in war."

 

The 19th-century Irish immigrants were double losers, escaping from oppression, crop failures and famine at home and meeting class resentment, discrimination and disease when they arrived in Canada.

 

The Chinese, too, were double losers, escaping poverty and political instability at home and encountering ugly discrimination in Canada -- among other things, denied the vote until 1947 along with other Southeast Asians.

 

And the list goes on. Whatever the group -- Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, Somalis, South Africans, Latin Americans, Vietnamese -- they came to Canada to escape bad economic, religious and political conditions. Even the new investor class of immigrants, Prof. Morton points out, are coming here out of fear for their money.

 

Poet Al Purdy wrote:

 

Simple desperation

to belong somewhere

no longer alien

and outlawed from the land

of their birth.

 

So what does it mean? Prof. Morton suggests that people with the experience of having been losers may be more sympathetic to other losers, more tolerant of them. Maybe. The jury is still out on Canadians' tolerance for one another.

 

Maybe it accounts for our reputed self-effacement, our humility, our conviction that we apologize to everyone and everything, including doors we walk into.

 

Then again, maybe -- more darkly -- it explains the lobster joke and the mythology that Canadians loathe each other's success. John Robert Colombo, Canadiana collector extraordinaire, first heard the lobster joke in Manhattan 15 years ago.

 

Two tanks of lobsters are in a restaurant. The first has a cover to stop the lobsters from climbing up the sides and escaping. These are American lobsters. The second -- the Canadian tank -- doesn't need a cover. Every time a lobster tries to climb over the top, the other lobsters pull him down.

 

 

 

[mahak 0]

I think US ought to "adopt" the loony and twoney, except the Sacajaweya US coin has got to be the best coin ever minted (imagine such a beautiful coin in solid gold).

 

Also, if the US and Canada become "one" does that mean that the stupid federalis will stop raidin my medicinal herb plants.

 

I say adopt the good points of both nations and trash the garbage from both nations. Why is it that if one got busted with a joint 20 years ago in the US is denied entry into Canada when he can see and smell the Canadian herb from the border station driftin south. Id like to go to a Reggaefest in Canada and actually see a reggae group that was allowed into Canada. Thank Jah that Canada has home grown reggae talent.

 

I think borders have their place, but are usually made by lakes, oceans, great rivers, mountain chains, cultures, etc. Artificial lines that exist nowhere but on maps are ridiculous and have no value but to make folks despise each other.

 

As far as Canadian Military, if I see a Canadian Navy Admiral, I salute. Official protocol. Aussies, too, except they get brewskis on board. Without alliances, we will be xenophobic mess just like China (dont worry, the pact between China and Russia aint worth the paper its written on, they like each other as much as Phillipinos like Japanese, if ya catch my drift).

 

latah, mahak