"I am always amazed at how small the world is, the Canada groups are showing links to so many countries."
Exactly.
This relates to the reason I no longer post on TM. It is not moderated (Ian has a full-time job and is doing a huge favor just to keep putting new ones up)and some of the more active posters (not the past few weeks but for a long time before that) go onto illegal immigration rants. No one pulls those posts, and I get tired of looking at them. So I now scan the thread from the bottom up so I can skip certain names because I know what they'll be posting (illegal immigration, not security-related issues).
The most indisputable reason why those posts do not belong on TM is that "security" is the fig leaf that is used to legitimize the issue as being threat-related. If it truly were a border security issue, then I'd expect at least as many posts on the threat coming from the Canadian border - - it is longer, more permeable, and more networked with global commerce, travel, and migration. Canada has far more jihadis than Mexico and has diverse communities of immigrants where jihadis lurk. Canada is a far greater threat than Mexico. Yet I doubt of the hundreds of thousands of posts there are more than a dozen or so on the dangers of the exposed Canadian border. But there are thousands of posts on the Mexican border. It is complete nonsense, and life is too short.
The southern border security issue is indeed a grave concern. But the northern border is a far graver threat than the Mexican border, as are the air and sea ports (for instance, even small nukes are very heavy . . . if you want to get one here you are going to have to slip it in large amounts of unchecked cargo, not backpack it across hundreds of miles of open desert where you'd need to shield an already heavy device with even more heavy lead)
You are right that Canada is incredibly connected to the world. But it also shows why those who devote 90+% of their time to ranting about Mexico might help us all if they spent part of that energy holding Congress' feet to the fire on securing the seaports, air cargo, coastal defenses (stand-off attacks from barges offshore) and the northern border.
All of these are far more dangerous threats than the Mexican border (and should be discussed far more on a threat called "threat matrix"). We are busy rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic because we have lost our collective minds in placing one issue above all others and at their expense when it is not the gravest threat - - not even close.
Border security means 360 degrees and 3 dimensional defense of our periphery (air, land and sea in all directions). Not this unhealthy obsession with only one dimension of the threat that is the predominant opinion of most of those who are inclined to post on FR.
The threats rank:
number 1: SEA
number 2: air
number 3: land
And then even once you get to land, if you have to pick which border you secure first - - it is the northern border hands down. The Mexican border is at the top of the list today. It shows how backward and irrational our political debates have become.
/end rant
Border security means 360 degrees and 3 dimensional defense of our periphery (air, land and sea in all directions). Not this unhealthy obsession with only one dimension of the threat that is the predominant opinion of most of those who are inclined to post on FR.
The threats rank:
number 1: SEA
number 2: air
number 3: land