Five Ringed Circus Rising: Free Press v. Police State

DemocracyNow

Gone?Ville

The very fine independent American journalist Amy Goodman came north last week to speak in Vancouver and Victoria.

When she crossed the border she was, as Alison notes, detained:

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now was stopped at the Canada-US border on Wednesday and questioned for 90 minutes by Canadian Border Services Agency. She was on her way to the Vancouver Public Library to launch her new book Breaking The Sound Barrier as a benefit for community radio stations.....

So.

What was the problem?

Well, apparently our uber-interested border guards wanted to know what Ms. Goodman was going to talk about.

So she mentioned that she planned to mention Tommy Douglas, the US Healthcare debate and the upcoming Copenhagen Climate Conference, the Wars in the Middle East and the Global Economy.

Which is quite a list.

But nothing on it, apparently, was of any great interest the interrogators who followed all that up with the following line of questioning while Ms. Goodman's car and laptop were being thoroughly searched:

Interrogator: "Are you speaking about the Olympics?"

Goodman: "What about the Olympics? Oh, you mean when President Obama went to

Copenhagen to push for the Olympics in Chicago?"

Interrogator: "No. I am talking about the Olympics here in 2010."

Goodman: No answer (according to a talk Ms. Goodman later gave at the Vancouver Library, not being a sports fan and not wanting to hurt Canadian National pride she elected not to admit she wasn't even aware Vancouver is hosting the 2010 Olympics).

Interrogator: "You're saying you're not talking about the Olympics?"

Goodman: No answer.

Now.

Here's the really creepy anti-free speech/anti-free press thing.

Before they let her go, the Interrogators asked Ms. Goodman for a copy of her speech.

Of course, there was nothing in there about the Five-Ringed Circus.

But.

As anybody who knows Ms. Goodman knows, she will always respond to attempts of press intimidation by reporting on those attempts directly.

As a result, if you listen to her VPL speech you will not be surprised that she did, indeed, speak of the Circus after all.

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This story is interesting, because it has been wurlitzered almost entirely in the Bloggodome. And now that bridgeman Harvey O. has stated his outrage it will be interesting to see if it makes its way into the proMedia domain.

The following is a tangential comment I left at Alison's about another border crossing incident I heard about last week:..... Went to see the Swell Season this week. The principals are Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova from the movie 'Once'.....And during the onstage banter they talked at some length about the difficulties Ms. Irglova, who is Czech, had at the border coming North in their tour bus from Seattle.....Apparently, they were told later, it is because of all those terrible, no good, musical gypsies trying to sneak into our (still?) fair country.....To their credit, a number of folks in the crowd shouted that we need more gypsies. .....To which I concur, especially gypsies that can make music like this.

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