Rice to mark 9/11 anniversary in Nova Scotia

[tuvor]

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will visit Nova Scotia next week to mark the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said he invited Rice to his home province after their first meeting in April.

Nova Scotians played host to thousands of stranded American travellers on Sept. 11, 2001, when their planes were forced to land in Halifax after all flights were grounded.

U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Friday that Rice wanted to express gratitude on behalf of Americans.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/nova-scotia/story/2006/09/08/rice-mackay.html

[Spazito]

1. I am really counting on my fellow maritimers to protest her and MacKay!

If I lived closer, I sure would join any protest against the bush bootlickers, MacKay and Rice.

[Posteritatis]

2. Jesus, Mary and Joseph on pogo sticks, the security

I was held up while busing through Halifax for something else by her motorcade today. I completely understand them holding traffic back while a VIP goes through part of it; that's reasonable, especially with Halifax's street plan. But the paranoia was tangible from the convoy that I saw today.

Back in the nineties, the G-7 summit was held at Halifax. All the heads of state/government for the countries were present - not just cabinet officials, the actual national leaders. Obviously that'd be a security nightmare, but they were reasonable about it. Clinton had, if I remember correctly, one car and four police cycles as escorts; the Secret Service were presumably there en masse, but they were subtle as hell about it, which is also meet and proper. The other leaders had similar security. Also the other big-event stuff, like rooftop sharpshooters, etc., which given who was present, was still reasonable enough.

Now, what did this one cabinet secretary have in her motorcade? In addition to her own car, there were two limos, a large number of police bikes - more than twelve, less than twenty - an ambulance(!), 3-4 municipal PD SUVs, and somewhere in the vicinity of twenty SUVs full of Secret Service. That's the obvious stuff, and doesn't include cops on foot, anybody parked on rooftops, more subtly-deployed Secret Service, etc.

This one woman had more visible security about her person than the collective heads of state for the G-7 summit. And she was here to talk about how folks are safer now.

Yeeeeeeeeah.

[tuvor]

3. Thank you, Posteritatis. You should post this in GD.

This is the first account I've read anywhere that mentions something other than what her speechwriter scribbled out.

What was the crowd size/reaction like?

[Posteritatis]

4. I couldn't see either

I was ill over the weekend and not terribly sapient; I forgot Rice was in town until I was busing over to Halifax. The bridge I crossed on - the motorcade went by the road linking up to it - was some distance away from the museum where she was speaking at, so I couldn't see what that actual place was like.

When I got into the downtown area proper, the cops were cleaning up the security stuff (signs, barriers, etc), and there were a lot of protestor types milling around, mostly heading back home or to wherever else since the show was over. I wasn't paying much attention to them at the time, as I was still mulling over the amount of security about her.

[tuvor]

5. You might be interested to read this.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2824006