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Guest Post: Border Controls Are Back In Europe
Submitted by Simon Black of Sovereign Man
Border Controls Are Back In Europe
Somewhere in America, Barbara Boxer is weeping.
The California senator’s version of the Highway Bill (S.1813, also known as MAP-21) which passed the senate and seemed destined to become law, has been dropped in favor of a rival bill that President Obama will sign into law today.
If you recall, Boxer’s highway bill contained provisions authorizing the government to deny US citizens a passport in the event of unpaid taxes.
These provisions have been removed from the new version of the law; so the US governments efforts to restrict Americans’ travel have been dropped. For now.
Don’t worry, though there are still plenty of bonehead line items in the law, like authorizing public service campaigns to raise awareness about the risks of ‘leaving a child or unattended passenger in a vehicle after the vehicle motor is disengaged.’
Your tax dollars at work.
Speaking of travel restrictions and border controls, though, European authorities seem to have no qualms about implementing them.
For the last several days, I’ve been weaving between northern Italy and Switzerland checking out great places to bank, new places to store gold, and taking in these gorgeous lake views.
Every single time I’ve crossed the border, I’ve been met by rather snarly police on both sides; they’re stopping cars, turning people’s trunks inside out, and causing major traffic problems.
A friend of mine who came up on the train from Florence to meet me for lunch in Lugano said he was stopped at the border for nearly an hour as thuggish customs agents randomly questioned train passengers and demanded to see their IDs.
So much for Europe’s 26-country ‘borderless area.’
Based on Europe’s 1985 Schengen Treaty and 1997 Amsterdam Treaty, you’re supposed to be able to drive from Tallinn, Estonia to Lisbon, Portgual without so much as slowing down at the border.
This is not dissimilar from driving between states in the US or provinces in Canada.
Yet as Europe descends into greater financial and social chaos, leaders are starting to ignore these agreements which guarantee freedom of movement across the continent.
No big surprise, electing Marxists and Neo-Nazis tends to bring that sort of change. Border controls, currency controls, wage and price controls– these are the usual tactics of desperate, insolvent governments.
As times get tougher, they tighten their grip, foolishly believing that they can decree and legislate their country back to health.
In the early 4th century AD after decades of economic turmoil and social strife within the Roman Empire, Diocletian issued his infamous Edictum De Pretiis Rerum Venalium, or Edict on Prices.
In addition to setting a fixed ceiling on over 1,000 products, services, and wages, Diocletian also commanded the death penalty for currency and commodity speculators who he blamed for inflation (as opposed to the steady debasement of the currency).
Obviously very little has changed.
Capital controls usually follow; these amount to the direct confiscation of wealth by a government from its citizens.
Often capital controls take the form of legal requirements which prevent people from moving money abroad, holding foreign currencies, or buying precious metals.
Just yesterday, in fact, Argentina’s central bank formally banned people from buying US dollars– forcing them to hold rapidly depreciating pesos and watch their savings inflate away.
At some point, people finally reach their breaking points and spill out into the streets to be beaten by the police. This is when we see social controls implemented– turning off mobile and Internet infrastructure, curfews, etc.
These tactics have been all too common over the last 18-months.
And finally, if things get really bad, border controls are implemented as a way to prevent a flood of people from leaving. After all, the government needs as many milk cows as it can get.
This is why I say that the US passport denial provision has been dropped… but only for now. Don’t be surprised to see it creep up in another proposed law in the near future.
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I used to work in Switzerland and live in Germany and I was frequently stopped at the Swiss border.
It's a normal procedure there, and as someone already pointed out, Switzerland is NOT part of the EU customs union nor part of the European Union, although they signed a bilateral agreement with the EU.
Basically it's a pathetic story about nothing by somebody who wants to be cool....
He's not even being creative... Now if you want to be 'cool', this is how you cross a border...
~~~
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QZuOQZ1HC4
"Don’t worry, though there are still plenty of bonehead line items in the law, like authorizing public service campaigns to raise awareness about the risks of ‘leaving a child or unattended passenger in a vehicle after the vehicle motor is disengaged.’"
As if that never happened. It happens more often than not.
EDIT: Simon I can't believe you. OF COURSE THERE ARE BORDER CONTROLS BETWEEN SWITZERLAND AND ITALY! The swiss are not part of the EU. And considering that not long ago they got a guy moving gold bars on the black, what can you expect. If you want border craziness, there's always the US.
EDIT2: "No big surprise, electing Marxists and Neo-Nazis tends to bring that sort of change."
AND ELECTING IVY LEAGUERS DOES WHAT?
You gotta wonder why Simon would bother with those European shitholes when the paradise of Chile is still doing GREAT.
Because he's a "webón"
FAGGOT
FAGGOT
FAGGOT
FAGGOT
FAGGOT
FAGGOT
FAGGOT
Why the obsession with a bundle of sticks?
I think he just wants a cigarette.
meatball. with gravy.
Back in the '90s, while not expecting customs to board a train traveling from Milan to Geneva, I was forced to eat my 5 gram block of hashish when cops arrived and started checking everyone's bags and papers. Rather than waste some good shit and throw it out the window I ate it.
I wondered the streets of Geneva for 2 days...
Point is most European citizens have to carry IDat all times and may be requested to show ID at any time. Always have.
The Hills are alive with the sound of your condescending drivel Mr Black.
after eating 5grams of hash,
it's no wonder you're still having incredulous flashbacks.
I knew it was Simon before I turned to the article! Where in the world is Simon Black, Sovereign Man?
Idiot.
Switzerland is not part of the EU nor of Schengen.
It has always been thus.
"Every single time I’ve crossed the border, I’ve been met by rather snarly police on both sides; they’re stopping cars, turning people’s trunks inside out, and causing major traffic problems."
I don't remember one time during the past decade where this did not happen when crossing either Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Austria or Germany. How come this interminably recurring process is just now becoming newsworthy?
Swiss Eu-zone border control has been there for as long as I live in Europe 47 years.
I just went from Amsterdam to Berlin, no border control there.
This article makes it clear, zero-hedge is fearmongering of City-Wall-street bankers.
As you Zero-Hedge readers missed. City-Banks are imploding.
Just google on Natwest news.
Last time Europe was on the verge of collapse because Helsinki airport was kinda empty. Simon just "forgot" Nordics take their holidays usually either in June or July and midsummer around 22nd of June is a big holiday there. For a guy, who has supposedly travelled a lot, he knows surprisingly little about the countries he has visited...
For the past several years, I've been in the ChoomMobile weaving between hard reality and statist fantasyland, checking out ways to prop up the corpses of failed banks, looking for sneaky ways to confiscate and store all the gold, all the while taking in gorgeous fairway views at the finest, most exclusive countryclubs here in my adopted homeland, the US of fuckin' A... Still can't believe these stupid motherfuckers bought that silly hope/change shit - like candy from a baby, man! Ol' Axelrod may seem like a Nazi, but he's a damn genius....
dang and i thought things were bad here ky if i go work in casy co i get stoped at the border on the way home in lincoln co for meth. at the boyle co border i get stoped because i might be making money working
I wonder who will be the first person to have his car window smashed in because he left his dog in a car that wasn't running even though the a/c was still working. The dog owner will still be arrested.
i go to switzerland a bit. the only time we were asked anything was when we were on the TGV from Gare d'lest paris and the border security guards asked me where we had come from and if we had anything to declare.
Just a quick answer of we're from Australia and only have clothes and a laptop each was enough to make him happy.
They were polite and friendly like everyone else I meet in Switzerland. If only I could finally move there....
Dear Simon Black
(US or British citizen ?)
obviously something completely bypassed your attention:
Switzerland is NOT in the Schengen Treaty and border controls are permanent.
They were never suspended.
If you travel into Switzerland from Germany, , France or Italy there will amost allways be at least a friendly reminder to show your ID or passport.
No big deal.
The fun starts when you return from Switzerland to your respective country (Germany, France or Italy) - then you enter the Schengen Arrea and that is where the fun starts.
But alas you seem to have no clue about these things.
How about better research next time or at least take some time to observe and eventually talk to locals ?
They dont bite...
If you are US citizen your ignorance is excused. Must be quite an adventure crossing borders , eh !?
Passport controls may not be automatic now that Switzerland is a signatory to Schengen Treaty (since 2008) BUT the Swiss border police have not eased up on their scrutiny of people driving from Italy to Switzerland. Many Italian nationals work and live in Switzerland --often doing jobs that the native Swiss consider beneath their dignity (bless 'em...a glance at the history books would reveal that CH was considered the ass-end 0f the universe until the 20th century becasue it was a mainly maginal agricultural country emrging from hundreds of years of religious conflict...technology and vat inflows into its secretive banks changed all that...but I digress!!)
My Swiss cousin tells me a cautionary story: in the 90s, an Italian friend of his was driving back to CH from Italy. He stopped at the border on the Swiss side after crossing. In the bar he made jokes about how he could have he could have paid for his trip by bringing back cigarettes (taxed much less in IT) to re-sell in CH). The bar contained Swiss police pretending to be travellers. His car was completey dis-assembled. They found nothing. Swiss police have NO sense of humour :)
http://webofdebt.wordpress.com/2012/07/01/government-by-the-banks-for-the-banks-the-esm-coup-detat-in-europe/
Banks in charge of everything...
Eat your meat!
http://shutupnsing.wordpress.com/2012/07/07/scaling-the-wall-with-tyler-roger/