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Don't Fly During Ramadan

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Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#131

Post by amirmc »

angersock wrote: post #104
jwr wrote: post #73

The land of the free. As I read more and more of those stories I can't help but wonder at how things changed. I am from a formerly-eastern-europe-soviet-bloc country (Poland) and these kinds of oppressive techniques sound very familiar. The haziness of procedures, lack of basic rights, intimidation, no accountability of state officials -- we've seen all that until 1989. At the time, while the communist regime was imp…

I've a friend who spent a good deal of time recently in Khazakhstan, and she was very amused by my attempts to express my fears of the United States becoming an authoritarian police state. She laughed and said that no, I did not understand what it was to have secret police following you about and all these other sorts of issues. The distressing thing is that we've been putting so much machinery into place, and gotten…

> "She laughed and said that no, I did not understand what it was to have secret police following you about... "

The thing is, they don't need to follow you around the same way as in the 'old days' because, like many things, modern technology makes it easier and more efficient.

The tyranny of the future isn't going to be like that of the past. That makes it difficult to explain the dangers to people.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#132

Post by jonheller »

foobarbazqux wrote: post #17
jonheller wrote: post #8

Extremely disturbing. This was well written and very interesting to read, but I do wonder how one could recall the details so specifically?

Traumatic events can leave much stronger memories, almost like they're burned in.

That makes sense. Most of my traumatic memories have been of events that have literally lasted a few seconds, but I can see how the same effect could happen for a longer one.

Guess I should count myself lucky I don't have those!

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#133

Post by ck2 »

JackFr wrote: post #105
lukeqsee wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment I had never heard of this.

Are you an American? I'm curious, because in my experience the American interment of Japanese is fairly well known among Americans and Japanese, and not well known by everyone else.

Internment is a revisionist word to make it sound less harsh. They were concentration camps.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#134

Post by gutsy »

That's awful. I'm half-Mexican and look like a really tan Jewish man and the treatment I received in the wake of 9/11 (having also been the first time I decided to grow a beard) was awful. I had to show two forms of ID to deposit money and the bank for some reason was rude and ended up refusing to let me deposit my paycheck, several people threatened to beat me up and chased me out of stores, and I wasn't able to make it through security at the airport without a "random" patdown until last year. I'm not even Middle-Eastern, I just KIND OF look it. I can only imagine what others go through.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#135

Post by kghose »

If they denied you water for 18 hours, you have a lawsuit. Get hold of a lawyer.

What I can't understand is why they were so motivated that they had people doing leg work - they had field agents check you out, go to your apartment. That's a lot of effort in contrast to an electronic trawl of your records.

You must have really scared them. I really wonder what chemical it was that showed up on the sensor...

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#136

Post by alphakappa »

I couldn't even finish reading it - The fact that someone is being questioned about what their religion is, is not something I would expect in the land of the free. I'm not religious at all, but if someone in authority asked me my religion just to make sure that I'm not one of 'those people', it would piss me off to no end.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#137

Post by steven777400 »

corresation wrote: post #72

It is a terrible ordeal, but for all of the other factors brought up the critical factor is that he set off an explosion detector (and clearly it doesn't get false positives often given the response they showed). Everything else (about Ramadan, being Hindi, the color of one's skin, etc) may be nothing more than decorations, and no one here knows what would happen if John Smith Anglosaxon set off the same detector in…

My bags have set off the explosives detector before, twice. (In both cases, due a heart medication that apparently triggers false positives). I was not taken into a back room or interrogated for hours. They searched me and my bags in more detail, asked some questions, and concluded it must have been a false positive. The experience took about 15 minutes each time.

This was a few years back, but I don't recall if it was post-9/11 or not. It seems like even setting off a detector doesn't, alone, justify the extreme reaction the authorities took in the author's case.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#140

Post by jrockway »

angersock wrote: post #104
jwr wrote: post #73

The land of the free. As I read more and more of those stories I can't help but wonder at how things changed. I am from a formerly-eastern-europe-soviet-bloc country (Poland) and these kinds of oppressive techniques sound very familiar. The haziness of procedures, lack of basic rights, intimidation, no accountability of state officials -- we've seen all that until 1989. At the time, while the communist regime was imp…

I've a friend who spent a good deal of time recently in Khazakhstan, and she was very amused by my attempts to express my fears of the United States becoming an authoritarian police state. She laughed and said that no, I did not understand what it was to have secret police following you about and all these other sorts of issues. The distressing thing is that we've been putting so much machinery into place, and gotten…

The distressing thing is that we've been putting so much machinery into place, and gotten the noose so well fitted, that when the bottom drops out we'll only have the briefest of short, sharp shocks before we find ourselves in a terrifyingly efficient machine of oppression.

Or you can take the train.

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