Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?

"Who will watch the watchmen?" This famous line from second century satirist Juvenal has been plaguing me for a few days now, but in some twisted, prophetic way, it has come to mean something to me.

If you were hoping for a punch line at this point, sorry - because this ain't funny.

You see, while reading a recent article by Robert Fisk in the online edition of 'The Independent" of London (the complete article can be found by clicking on the link following this Mercerish rant), I have discovered that the US Department of Homeland Security is operating on Canadian soil - that's right folks; the same bunch of fun-loving government goons who get paid to throw innocent people out of the U.S. on a daily basis in the name of 'state security' have set up shop here in Canada. They may be limited to operating in Montreal's Trudeau airport, but this is something that I really think should be looked at a lot more closely.

Who knows? This could just be par for the course in major metropolitan airports, and I could just be pushing more of my alarmist buttons subconsciously again (I do that a lot, but if I didn't I'd have nothing to write about). The thing that really worries me is that this - at least as far as I can tell - is not a widely known fact. Not once have I had it even hinted at that American law enforcement agents were able to operate in Canada, without a hell of a lot of oversight from the likes of the RCMP, that is. As for the RCMP, where the hell are they in all of this, damn it! In their shoes just now with that whole Maher Arar incident having just blown up in their collective face, you would think that they would treat anything that comes out of the mouth of U.S. law enforcement's mouth as highly suspect indeed.

Right now, Canada has what must be an enviable reputation in most of the world. We take human rights very seriously extending them to all people within our borders, not because that is the law - which it is - but because that is the way we would hope others would treat us. The worrying thing for me is that if we allow ourselves to become complacent about how we treat people who come here - whatever the reason - we will begin to emulate the behaviour of agencies like Homeland Security; and by so doing lose some essential part of what makes us, if not great, then at least less dislikable.

Like it or not, if we don't watch future events regarding this issue with due care, we could very well find ourselves with watchers we don't want.

Link to 'The Independent' website - http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2469270.ece

Heeeere's Johnny!

Life is strange, and my job is like the mafia, just when you think that you're out, they pull you back in. I have been working for about a month now and I have actually been a lot happier since. I have had several meetings with my boss and have - I think - impressed upon him the absolute necessity of having more staff in my old department (that being the condition whereby I would consider going back). I am anticipating a fresh round of negotiations to begin sometime in the next couple of weeks.

I realize that I have let my blog slide for a while; I have been doing some heavy reading. I picked up Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon and The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, both by Robert Fisk (combined total of about 2000 pages of fine print). I also picked up a book titled The Deserter's Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq, Joshua Key as told to Lawrence Hill. The latter is a very good, if occasionally brutal story, but I highly recommend it.

These books are a part of my on-going quest, I suppose, to learn about the increasingly chaotic world that I seem to be living in. I try to get as complete a picture of the world as I can and then modify my worldview to fit the facts that I have been able to acquire - needless to say, my worldview changes with every passing day. I don't doubt that this desire to see the world through the eyes of others has left me with a slightly skewed view of it, but to study the world is to study its history not its present, so I try to get the best histories that I can, and go from there.

Anyways, it's late, I'm tired, and I have at least another 1300 pages to get through.