Friday, November 28, 2008

Giving up Liberties for Freedom pt315


I've just been booking tickets for my dear old Mum to fly to New Zealand next year


You can either fly via Asia or via the US. If you travel through the US you get twice the baggage allowance

Unfortunately, my Mum's passport isn't one of the new chipped jobbies required to travel through the US - which means she has to either get a new passport or apply for a C1 Transit Visa...


C-1 Visa - Transit

In general, travelers in transit through the United States require valid C-1 visas. That is unless they are eligible to transit the United States visa free under the Visa Waiver Program (VWP), or they are a national of a country which has an agreement with the United States allowing their citizens to travel to the United States without visas.

If you are not eligible to transit the United States under the VWP, or are not a national of a country where visa requirements are waived, you will be required to apply for a transit (C-1) visa before traveling.

All C-1 visa applicants, even children and babies listed in parents' passports are required to:

* Complete the visa application form DS-156.

* Pay a visa application fee;

* Present a passport or other travel document valid for at least six months beyond the holder's period of stay in the United States with at least one blank page - the six-month requirement does not apply to United Kingdom passports;

* Provide one photograph which meet State Department regulations;

and present evidence of

* sufficient funds to cover all expenses while in the United States; and

* evidence to show that the applicant has a residence abroad to which he/she intends to return at the end of the stay in the United States. This is generally established by evidence of family, professional, property, employment or other ties and commitments to some country other than the United States sufficient to cause the applicant to return there at the conclusion of his/her stay.


plus, of course, there's the compulsory fingerprinting of all arrivals to the US, even if they're transiting on the way to somewhere else


We've opted to give the Land of the Free a miss and fly through Commie controlled Hong Kong instead

.

9 comments:

Edo said...

don't blame you Stef!
Old ladies don't need that extra luggage allowance anyway, they'd struggle to carry it!

Anonymous said...

Battles rage for Mumbai hostages
Tags:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7752625.stm
* COVER-UP/DECEPTIONS

Locals say the orgy of killings in Mumbai began here. Three men walked into the cafe, drank beer, settled their bills and walked out. Then they fished out guns from their bags and began firing.

Gaffar Abdul Amir, an Iraqi tourist from Baghdad, says he saw at least two men who started the firing outside the Leopold Cafe.

He was returning to his hotel from the seaside with a friend when he saw two men carrying bags and brandishing AK-47s walking in front of them, shooting.

points to note.Take out ya pencils ad jot dowin the followinf.

Gaffar Abdul Amir, an Iraqi tourist from Baghdad, says he saw at least two men who started the firing outside the Leopold Cafe.

He was returning to his hotel from the seaside with a friend when he saw two men carrying bags and brandishing AK-47s walking in front of them, shooting.

"They did not look Indian, they looked foreign. One of them, I thought, had blonde hair. The other had a punkish hairstyle. They were neatly dressed," says Mr Amir.


Not far across town, Judith Rosta, a German teacher from Vienna, had completed a shoot for a music video for two Indian singers and was walking past the market at Colaba, the hip, touristy hub of posh south Mumbai, with her Russian girlfriend, Valentina.

She says she was buying papayas when she noticed three men on a motorcycle stopping on the road and taking out "big guns".

"They wore white jeans and T-shirts. They were shouting, getting agitated and waved their guns around.

Pappu Mishra was tending to his customers at his glass-walled cafe at the gothic Victorian Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station in Mumbai when he spotted two sprightly young men dressed in black.
Smoke pours from Taj Mahal hotel - 27/11/2008

He remembers the two sauntering into the waiting hall, plonking their handbags on the floor, taking out a gun "which looked like an AK-47", and walking toward the platforms where they gunned down late-evening commuters on the city's busy suburban train network.

"Their audaciousness was breath-taking," he says.

"One man loaded the magazine into the gun, the other kept shooting. They appeared calm and composed. They were not in the slightest hurry. They didn't seem to be afraid at all."

The men entered a platform and shot a man near an automated teller machine.

See detailed map of the area

Then they turned around and shot another commuter at the grubby, dark-tiled drinking water station around the corner.

Then, the "foreign looking, fair skinned" men, as Mr Mishra remembers them, simply carried on killing.

Anonymous said...

Id give the US mess a miss.Out of principle I would not go there or through there.
Meanwhile the propoganda shit is hitting the fan.



Zawahiri blames global financial crisis on 9/11 in latest al-Qaeda video
Al-Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has said in a new internet video that the international financial crisis is the result of a US war on Muslims and the Sept 11 attacks.
The video, "Al-Azhar – The Lions' Den", was posted on jihadist websites earlier this week according to the SITE intelligence group, which monitors online Islamist militant propaganda.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/3533079/Zawahiri-blames-global-financial-crisis-on-911-in-latest-al-Qaeda-video.html

how much does that old fucker get pad for making those videos I wonder?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Katz
check out Rita Katz and SITE.

Stef said...

@edo

lol

but I was planning to use her as my mule

@not anon

if I were to avoid the US as a matter of principle I really should skip the UK too

come to think of it...

Stef said...

@anon

I think you'll find that the Mumbai attacks bore all the hallmarks of an Al Qaeda operation

Motherships, speedboats, tightly co-ordinated attacks, total surprise

Yes, Al Qaeda is definitely the only organisation in the world capable of operating in this way.

The genius part is how the only Al Qaeda fighters 'our' security forces ever get hold of are complete losers who have trouble doing up their own bootlaces

My spooky psychic powers are telling me that, due to some totally inexplicable cock up, a good number of the operatives who carried out the attacks will have eluded capture

Edo said...

Codshit have an interesting blog post about the Mumbai attacks...

http://codshit.blogspot.com/2008/11/mumbai-mossad-angle.html

Anonymous said...

One thing is certain.The Mumbai attacks were not perpetrated by the Pakistanis.
It has all the characteristics of a false flag op.Media all singing the same al Quaeda toon.references to 911 etc etc

Stef said...

and today's Interesting Historical Character of the Day is...

David Sassoon

Stef said...

Meanwhile, commandos on Friday ended a similar standoff at the office of the ultra-orthodox Jewish group Chabad Lubavitch by lowering themselves from helicopters and blowing a hole in the office wall.

During the operation, the commandos killed two militants, only to discover the bodies of the six hostages inside, the city's police chief confirmed.

Two of the hostages killed were identified as Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka, the couple who ran the centre, said a spokesman for the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. Their 18-month-old son had been one of three people rescued from the centre on Thursday.

In a telephone interview with CBC News from outside the centre, freelance journalist Arun Asthhana said there are reports that some of the militants had stayed at a guest house there for up to 15 days before the attacks.

"They had a huge mass of ammunition, arms and food there," Asthhana said.


This one will run and run...