Boosting the signal

[pbray]

And after reading this, all I can think is how often does this happen and we never hear about it?

Canadian science fiction writer Peter Watts was beaten, pepper-sprayed, and arrested at the border for reasons unknown and officially unstated.

Comments

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

WTF is right.

Off to re-post.

[sandrawickham.livejournal.com]

I saw this via Twitter and it's been retweeted a lot. I'm Canadian and this scares me!

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Scares all of us, on both sides of the border.

[vespican.livejournal.com]

Small article in our local paper today about this incident. Said he was stopped for a random search and became belligerent. Despite our collective need to see this as heavy handed "gestapo tactics" perpetrated by border guards, it appears that there may be another side to it. "Yes, sir! No, sir!," and full compliance with instructions goes along way towards uneventful conclusions in these matters.
As a matter of note, a week or so the same paper had a guest editorial written by an American writer going to Canada to speak. She was detained for over an hour and a half, the big sticking point apparently being whether or not she was going to say anything about the upcoming Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
Dave