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[pyesetz]

(danruk sort of asked for posts on this topic.  This is friends-only to keep it away from search engines, because If you're not with us, you're a terrorist.  But feel free to discuss this text with other furs.)

For 2½ years I have been "a refusenik in a free country".  The USA would neither allow me to leave nor explain their refusal.  Well, no longer!  After five mailings, three cashier's cheques, and two complete sets of clawprints, they have acquiesced.  At left is the arrangement of ink molecules they finally sent me.  I am a free dog!  With this stamped clawprint card in paw, I can now apply to Immigration Canada for permanent residence.  So my next action should be... to hire an immigration lawyer.  Aroooo!  But it can't be helped.  I've taken as much of this bullshit as I can stand—the rest will have to be outsourced.  The road to Canada is long but I shall press on.  Nobody will be conscripting *my* pups for a war whose rationale changes with the winds!

If you follow such things, you've probably already heard that the US Gestapo (= "TSA") has admitted lying to Congress in the past and apparently plans to do so again in August, when they implement their new "Safe Flight" domestic spying regime despite Congress' direct order to them not to.  My boycott of US air travel (haven't flown since 9/11) will be continuing for the foreseeable future.  Not flying makes it hard to attend FurCons and such, but I refuse to enter any area where the police believe that article I, section 9, clause 3 of the Constitution does not apply to them.  A TSA screener may declare any item whatsoever to be contraband; there is no appeal; you can then be arrested for illegal possession of an item that wasn't illegal when you arrived at the airport; this has happened.

* * * * * * * * * *

From Robert Paxton via Billmon via porsupah, a definition of Fascism:

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

* * * * *

On a lighter note, I heard some new music on the radio today.  The singer is no kid, but he nails that teenager-angst sound.

I almost got popped for a fight with a thug
Cuz he almost made off with a buncha the drugs
That I almost got hooked on cuz you ran away
And I wished I woulda had the nerve to ask you to stay

And I almost had you
But I guess that doesn't cut it
Almost had you
And I didn't even know it

Here I go thinkin' about all the things I could have done
I'm gonna need a forklift cuz all the baggage weighs a ton
I know we've had our problems. I can't remember one.

Comments

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

Only ink molecules and paper, but never before so tastefully arranged.

And yes, I like how the "leader of the free world" is so authoritarian. Funny how that phrase has dropped out of common usage over the past 3 or 4 years.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

You'd live amongst the Canadians, with their beady eyes and flapping heads?

[pyesetz]

The body-language differences don't bother me much.  Canadians tend to hold their eyebrows and forehead muscles somewhat higher than we do, which can give them something of a naïve/innocent appearance.  But appearances can be deceiving!

[danruk.livejournal.com]

Intriguing explinations on why you'd like to come north of the border. Very sound logic behind it, or .. at the very least the reasons you state are based on decisions that seem pretty rational.

Don't expect much different on doing flights up from Canada. Just because it's not within US border paramaters doesn't mean the security up here can make dumbass judgements on confiscated items.

I tolerate flying as a very convenient mode of travel. there was a time when only other countries had questionable airport security practices, and we sneered at 'those militant countries'. Now, as Pogo the possum said. "We have seen the enemy, and they is US!"

Perhaps see you this side of the border soon?

[pyesetz]

I was in Kingston in July '02.  It might be another year before I have any excuse to visit again.  Will you be coming to AC'05?  I live just across the Delaware River in NJ.

I cannot find any news reports of people being arrested for arriving at a Canadian security checkpoint while carrying a pen-knife, although Canada bans "knives of any length" on airplanes.  Nor are there reports of grandmothers being strip-searched in Canada, nor of Canada ignoring people's passports and deporting them to their countries of origin (from which they had originally emigrated in fear for their lives).  All of these happen in the US with appalling frequency.

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Ye gods and little fishes. I recall you mentioning that your "exit permit had been refused", but I took that to be an allusion to Nazi days, where some "undesirables" were permitted to leave, seemingly if they had enough money to turn over to the party. Have you thought of writing the whole story up, for either one of the better webloggers, or a print publication, be it the NYT or Mother Jones? It could, one would hope, be phrased anonymously, if you preferred - or maybe you're thinking of that once you're in Canada?

Have you contacted the ACLU? Perhaps they'd be able to offer pointers as to where to direct a relevant FOIA request.

And certainly, Canada's perhaps one of the best places to leave for, in my estimation. Spain or Portugal might be able to lay claim to a sunnier climate, though. :) (Would you be able to claim citizenship within the EU on family grounds, maybe? A political asylum seeker coming from the US into the UK might hit a few papers..)

Stories such as that bookmark are horribly depressing. Both that such incidents happen (one of my *cough* favorites was the story of a new mother being forced to drink her own breast milk, which she'd prepared earlier for the flight, in order to prove it didn't contain any dangerous biological agents. I need to check what ultimately came of that. Wonder what Limbaugh said about that, if anything?), and that after some minimal reporting, everyone seemingly just forgets and carries on.

[pyesetz]

An "exit permit" is what a Soviet citizen needed to obtain before being allowed to leave the country.  If the government refused to give you one (usually because you knew too much about how bad things really were), you became a "refusenik".

My story wouldn't read well.  Most of the 2½ years was spent waiting to find the strength to try again.  Only about 6 months total was actually waiting for the FBI to send me another rejection notice.  While some of their excuses were laughable (one rejection said "request not signed", although my signature was in the middle of the page--perhaps they looked only at the bottom), and some were just ornery (one rejection said "check too old", although cashier's checks never expire), I decided I needed to have a "perfect rejection" before talking to the ACLU and/or my local congresscritter.  Apparently the fifth request was perfect!

I like Canada because the culture shock would be minimized, although some people say New Zealand is politically similar but has better weather.  The omnipresent security cameras in England make that destination rather unattractive.  When my sister emigrated to Israel, she attempted to get instant citizenship on the grounds that our father had been in Palestine in 1948 when they were handing out Israeli passports, but the current governent "couldn't find" any record of him, so she ended up doing the regular Jewish-immigrant thing for a year.

2

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

“If you’re not with us, you’re a terrorist” a slight change from Bush’s quote actually appeared on a uniform patch I picked up at Diego Garcia.

Bush's original quote was "If you don't love us, you hate us. If you're not good, you're evil. If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists."

Re: 2

[pyesetz]

When I Google for that quote, I see the author as "Arundhati Roy" who is then repeated all over the net.  These are words Roy put in Bush's mouth, not an actual quote.

Most sources have Bush saying, "If you're not with us, you're against us" which is Bible quote he took completely out of context.