From
CNN.com comes scary news about our southern border [
Report: Security on U.S.-Canada border fails terror test].
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A terrorist wanting to smuggle radioactive material from Canada into the United States probably would find it easy to do, a new report from congressional investigators said.
Government investigators were able to cross from Canada into the United States carrying a duffle bag with contents that looked like radioactive material and never encountered a law enforcement official, according to a report released Thursday by investigators from the Government Accountability Office.
"Our work clearly shows substantial vulnerabilities in the northern border to terrorist or criminals entering the United States undetected," the GAO's Greg Kutz testified Thursday at a Senate Finance Committee hearing on the topic.
"Although the southern border appears to be substantially more secure, we did identify several vulnerabilities on federally managed lands where there was no CBP [Customs and Border Protection] control."
It's our
Southern border we Canadians should be worried about. There are far more terrorists in American than in Canada. Wake up Canadians! Don't you realize that terrorists from the USA could be infiltrating our country as we speak!? They're out to attack us because we're free ... well maybe not "free" but at least we're cheap now that the Canadian dollar has reached parity.
[Photo Credit: A border marker shows you where Canada ("left", or maybe right) meets the USA (right, I think) near Blumenort, Manitoba]
From CNN.com comes scary news about our southern border [ Report: Security on U.S.-Canada border fails terror test].
I'm damn glad I accepted all those Canadian quarters, nickels and pennies that unscrupulous cashiers kept giving me in change for all those years.
ReplyDeleteFinally, they're worth something...
Are CNN short of news? I guess (although I’ve never tried myself) that if anyone wanted to come by radioactive material they would be forced to ‘network’ themselves into to the communications network via phone calls, web surfing, accounts, contacts etc and this might put them on the security radar and alert the security services. Unless CNN did this as well the ‘test’ doesn’t seem prove a great deal apart from exposing lax boarder controls.
ReplyDeleteBTW: I wonder if visits to Sandwalk have an effect on one’s security weighting? Hhhmmm…. Satellite maps showing time and place of site visits. Who do you really work for Larry?
ReplyDeleteThis is all part of our most vigorous government program- the one devoted to keeping the population in a constant state of fear so they'll continue to support their own enslavement.
ReplyDeleteAnd Larry- it's already too late. You have a Bush-loving right-wing Prime Minister- what more evidence do you need of massive infiltration from the south?
Larry, you suffering Canadians aren't cheap any more. You have become expensive thanks to neo-con economics.
ReplyDeleteVery soon, the dollar's value will be so low that will you will be able to cross into Supernation and "rip us off."
Steve Labonne, thank you again for your gloves off support with the three framing geniuses.
ReplyDeleteI still can't post at ANY science blogs, and Seed media group won't even respond. Moonbaby must be pulling their pubes.
gerald spezio says,
ReplyDeleteI still can't post at ANY science blogs, ...
Excuse me? Sandwalk isn't a science blog? Then what, pray tell, is it?
Larry, seed media is the parent to several so-called science blogs - one of which is Pharyngula. Indeed, even Nisbet's framing science (sic) blog is part of seed media. There are several others in the group. I have been totally silenced on those blogs by Nisbet & Moonbaby's dicktat for acceptable criticism. No real ass kicking allowed in the yuppie wordsmithing game.
ReplyDeleteI started whacking at Nisbet's scam two years ago when nobody even knew the yuppie propagandist's name.
Poet Kenneth Rexroth called it forty plus years ago; "I got the fat poet in the corner, and told him that he was selling shit, and I wasn't going to let him get away with it."
Mooney & Nisbet appear to have considerable pull with the seed media outfit. There may be much more to this framing orchestration than meets the eye.
gerald spezio reveals,
ReplyDeleteLarry, seed media is the parent to several so-called science blogs ...
No kidding? Have you read Sandwalk Resists?
My point was that there are dozens of good science blogs that haven't (yet) banned you. Did it go over your head? :-)
...carrying a duffle bag with contents that looked like radioactive material...
ReplyDeleteOK, I get what they were probably doing, and I'm not trying to seriously denigrate this simulation of smuggling. But...
The last time I crossed our southern border (a couple of years ago) there were large, grey, squarish objects that looked distinctly like they were facing cars waiting in line. I had read around that time about radioactivity detectors set up at US customs border posts. Could these grey boxes be such? My point is: if the government investigators in question had carried actually radioactive material, would they have been stopped and searched? There are plenty of radioisotopes out there that are reasonably easy to get ahold of (the medically-useful ones, for example) in modest quantities that will (in my experience) easily set off any nearby Geiger counters.
Also, I have heard several rather depressing stories about people who recently recieved doses of medical radioactives - liver and thyroid issues seem to often involve things like radioisotopes of Iodine - and were detained by US border agents.
Mea culpa. I missed that particular post.
ReplyDeleteI was probably wasting my precious brain cells looking for the mystical essences behind the framing, framing.
What an education this has been.
If you think that Nisbet is bad. Try the master, Georgie Lakoff, for a grand dose of pretentious foolishness masquerading as deep wisdom and world changing linguistic wordsmithing.
The man is completely serious, and it amazes me how many people are listening to him.
He be the brain damage Man and the veritable Dean of framing.
Lakoff always masquerades as a cognitive scientist - a scientist who thinks big frames?
Sounds to me like CNN just picked it up from the GAO report to the CFC. A real investigative reporter might have been an embarrassment for those involved.
ReplyDeleteLet me guess. The GAO already knew where the gaps were before they did the 'test'. They didn't do a couple of thousand tests, randomly selected so as to sample all the possible variations of surveillance, I'm sure.
I'm also sure the CBP people they spoke to first were quite happy to help out with the selection, if it wasn't instigated by them in the first place. This way they have a chance to get more hires and opportunities for promotion, etc. It's all part of public servant standard protocol for empire building.
The GAO gets to garner publicity that makes it look like they are doing a wonderful job of helping to protect the public from (mostly imaginary) boogey men and everyone is happy. Especially the terrorists who couldn't have hoped for more help in disrupting the economies of The Great Satan and its trusty Northern Sidekick.
And what's with the "contents that looked like radioactive material"? A piece of metal of any shape, possibly powdered would do, as would anything that matched the appearance of any oxide or whatever other compounds might be in common use.
Thousands of tonnes of material visually indistinguishable from radioactive materials cross the border every day. Without expensive detectors, we'd never know how many people aren't smuggling dirty bomb material. So far, all of them.
Maybe the clue was that they wrapped their stuff in lead foil, or stuck a few hazmat labels on it.
BTW, based on the shadow, I conclude that the photograph was taken with North on the right and the Pacific somewhere straight ahead in the distance.
The southern border has been breached! Tim Horton's coffee shops have been pouring across the border; one was sighted several hours from the nearest land border crossing, in Geneva, NY, USA.
ReplyDeleteTegumai Bopsulai, FCD says,
ReplyDelete[censored]
Shhhhh ....