Brutalizing a Canadian science fiction writer heading across the border into Canada is all in a day's work for Homeland Security thugs.Full story here. PayPal donations for what promises to be an expensive defence against a bogus charge of assault here.
[H/t CC.]
UPDATE: Peter Watts, in his own words:
If you buy into the Many Worlds Intepretation of quantum physics, there must be a parallel universe in which I crossed the US/Canada border without incident last Tuesday. In some other dimension, I was not waved over by a cluster of border guards who swarmed my car like army ants for no apparent reason; or perhaps they did, and I simply kept my eyes downcast and refrained from asking questions.
Along some other timeline, I did not get out of the car to ask what was going on. I did not repeat that question when refused an answer and told to get back into the vehicle. In that other timeline I was not punched in the face, pepper-sprayed, shit-kicked, handcuffed, thrown wet and half-naked into a holding cell for three fucking hours, thrown into an even colder jail cell overnight, arraigned, and charged with assaulting a federal officer, all without access to legal representation (although they did try to get me to waive my Miranda rights. Twice.). Nor was I finally dumped across the border in shirtsleeves: computer seized, flash drive confiscated, even my fucking paper notepad withheld until they could find someone among their number literate enough to distinguish between handwritten notes on story ideas and, I suppose, nefarious terrorist plots. I was not left without my jacket in the face of Ontario’s first winter storm, after all buses and intercity shuttles had shut down for the night.
In some other universe I am warm and content and not looking at spending two years in jail for the crime of having been punched in the face.
But that is not this universe.
Stay tuned.
And brute stupidity, unfortunately, doesn't stop at the Canadian border:
Watts sounds like a typical liberal who expects elite treatment. He behaved in a way to set off alarm bells at customs and fully deserved the treatment he received. Beat the hell out of him if only to deter other liberal elitist snobs.
Stephen Harper's red meat base, I presume.
