When the story starts with "suspected Russian hackers" you know you're reading bullsh!t

I clicked on a CBC headline that told me Russian hackers had infiltrated the email system at the US Department of Homeland Security.

The first word in the story is "suspected."

Oh. So they don't actually know this to be true. But they're floating this story anyway, because, Putin.

You know, Putin's aggression and all that. Look how he persecutes those punk rock icons, Pussy Riot. Look at how he persecutes freedom and corruption fighters Bill Browder and Alexei Navalny. Look at how he grabbed that Crimean naval base right out from under the noses of the Americans.

Clearly, Putin must be stopped.

Therefore, even if we have absolutely nothing to definitively connect Russia to the SolarWinds hack, here's a bit of official speculation to get you headed in the right direction.

Perhaps by next week Bellingcat will have come up with the proof!

Casual encounters with Homeland Security

Here's a perfect example of mission creep.

Or maybe a perfect example of creeper missions.

Either way, you have to wonder if it's the place for the Department of Homeland Security.

As you recall, Homeland Security was invented round the time of the 9/11 attacks on the Homeland. Coincidentally, that was also around the time when anyone anywhere first began to refer to the USA as the "Homeland."

Before that it was just America.

"Homeland" always had a bit of a Reifenstahlian ring to it, at least to my ear. "Homeland" has a statist odor usually associated with totalitarian dictatorships of one stripe or another.

Let's circle the wagons and defend the Homeland!

The mandate for America's Department of Homeland Security is to keep America safe from internal threats. And God knows, that as the last bastion for freedom on this planet, and an open society to boot, lots of threats may have slipped in while America was busy watching the Super Bowl or something.

So what is Homeland Security doing these days to keep the Homeland safe?

According to this story, they're keeping America safe by posting bogus adverts on Canadian websites hinting that there may be under-age nooky available in the USA!

Sure enough, Kuldip Singh Mahal, a doomed schmuck from BC, sees the ad and takes the bait.

Now, I don't mean to raise the ire of the forces of political correctitude, but just looking at the guy's name, it seems to me he comes from one of those cultures where their concept of "age of consent" bears little or no resemblance to ours.

The dude is looking for a bride! Ya, he's 47, the potential bride is 12, but that's how they roll in some of those foreign cultures. Why is it our job to judge that?

More importantly, why has it become part of Homeland Security's mandate to entrap foreigners into fanciful child exploitation cases?

There is absolutely nothing about this case that contributes in any way to keeping America safe from the scourge of international terror.

Seems Homeland Security has strayed way beyond its original mandate.

Homeland Security keeping America safe from... dead Nazi war criminals?

Here's an interesting story from Reuters about the search for the diaries of Nazi war criminal Alfred Rosenberg.

Rosenberg was one of the most odious Nazi ideologues, who got considerably less than he deserved when he was sentenced to death by hanging at the Nuremberg trials.

What caught my eye was the first sentence in the penultimate paragraph; "...an agent from Homeland Security Investigations tried to find the missing diary pages..."

I thought it was the mandate of Homeland Security to keep America safe from terror?

Talk about mission creep!

If you're not for unlimited police monitoring of the internet you're for pedophilia

That's the word from Canada's Minister for Public Safety, Vic Toews.

Sounds like one of those biblical all-or-nothing declarations that W was so fond of. "If you are not with us in the war on terror, you are against us and for the terrorists."

Toews is one of the law-and-order guys so at home in the Harper cabinet. It was only last week that he attracted a little ink with his declaration that torture is hunky-dory and damn right Canada will act on information derived from torture.

Now he's claiming that anyone against unlimited police powers to track your internet travels is obviously a supporter of child porn.

Otherwise, why would you have anything to hide?

Well Vic, not that you'll find any child porn, or even grown-up porn on my computer, but there's plenty of things you don't need to see.

Like my e-mails to my children.

Like my e-mails to and from lawyers about this and that.

Like my visits to a variety of websites across the political spectrum that might be considered "radical" depending on what kind of imbecile gets the Minister of Public Safety gig next.

Like my frequent letters here and there about trading Kessel and firing the front office.

Like... like a whole lot of stuff.

The Office of Public Safety was one of those post-9/11 creations that sprang from the initial Twin Towers attack, much like the Department of Homeland Security in the US.

Since there's never been another 9/11 these folks find themselves in the awkward position of having to constantly invent imaginary terror threats to justify their continued existance.

So they go home and read 1984 every night and wake up to new terror threats every morning.

Like, oh, you know, people who might want to take their manicure scissors on an airplane.

Box-cutters, manicure scissors,... hey, you can't be too vigilant in these dangerous times.

And why don't we have a look-see through your in-box just to see if you've been aiding and abetting people who want to take their manicure scissors on an airplane.

What? You object?

What do you have to hide? Could you have kiddie-porn on your computer?

Think we better have a look...

Drunken welder waves wang from International Bridge

The St. Croix river separates Saint Stephen New Brunswick from Calais Maine. One Sunday in '91 my buddy Fudge from the shipyard had a bit of a thirst on, and since the beer stores in NB didn't have Sunday hours at the time, he decides to make a run to the border to quench his craving.

The St. Croix isn't much of a river. You can walk across it in hip waders and keep your socks dry. In fact, on any given day you'll see a couple dozen guys fishing in the river, God knows what's in their hip waders. Could be stuffed full of dope for all I know. I've heard you can cram ten pounds of bud into a pair of chest-highs with no problem.

So Fudgie drives down to Saint Stephen, parks his car, walks across the bridge to the duty-free on the US side, picks up a suitcase of Coors, and heads back. Gets to the Canada Customs shack, they ask if he's got anything to declare. Well I got this two-four here but I been over for a couple days so that should be ok.

You watch these guys fishing in the St. Croix. Fishing is one boring pastime. You can only watch them so long. Sooner or later you lose interest. The fishermen can stand in that damn river all day. Eventually they get out.

The customs guy says to Fudge, couple of days my ass, I saw you walk over ten minutes ago. No way pal. Off you go. So Fudgie traipses back to the US side.

A guy stands in the river for six or eight hours. Does he get out the same side he went in? Well, you'd have to be watching for six or eight hours to know for sure, and even then, how sure would you be? A fat middle-age white guy in a lumberjack shirt and hip-waders standing in the middle of a river could be from anywhere. Even the Homeland Security types lose interest after awhile.

Fudge gets back to the US side. You can't bring the beer in. Why not? You owe us the tax. Well, Fudge knew the price of a suitcase but he didn't bring tax money. Fudge is fucked.

Border crossings. Back in the day we had a flood of guys head up here because they didn't want to go and kill the yellow people. Good for them. Unfortunately, almost all of them ended up in the bowels of the Canadian university system, where they totally constipated the tenure tract for the next several generations of aspiring academics. Hell of a price to pay, but I suppose it saved some lives on both sides.

Fudge decides he's done screwing around with the bureaucrats. He takes his suitcase to the middle of the bridge, right where the flags are, and pops open a Coors. He's gonna show 'em they don't mess with the Fudge.

Fudge was an old-timer at the shipyard. He once told me a story about when things were slow in the Saint John drydock, how the US Navy came up and recruited the laid-off lads to go and work in the yards down in Bath. Ya, I was drunk when they hired me, I was drunk for the two months I was there. I was drunk when I quit. Never did a lick of work. All I remember is riding around the yards on a bicycle.

After about six beers Fudge has to take a leak. So he does. From the middle of the bridge. Two guys come running out from the Canadian side. Fudgie steps a couple of feet to the south. You can't touch me. You don't have any authority here. You're infringing on American sovereignty.

Fudge knew his rights. The Canadians are on their radios trying to get the US guys to come and sort this out. Fudge sits down on his suitcase, two feet over the line, and cracks another beer.

In every war you hear the stories about the regular guys who would rather sing Christmas carols or play soccer or drink beer or smoke a joint with the guys on the other side. It happened in the Great War. It happened in the next war. It happened in Viet Nam. There are soldiers in the IDF today smoking hash that came from their enemies in Lebanon.

The Americans never did come to the aid of their Canadian colleagues. Even in those distant pre 9/11 days they had bigger fish to fry. While old Fudgie was spending the day watching the fishermen and taking an occasional whiz off the bridge, they busted a young black guy driving a brand new Jaguar across the border with three white women in it. That pretty much kept them tied up for the rest of the day.

Fudge tired of the game about four in the afternoon. Still had a couple of cans left in the case. The border guys turned him over to the RCMP, who kept him in the Saint Stephen lock-up overnight. By then the New Brunswick beer stores were open.

All's well that ends well.