141–150 of 375 posts
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Judaism has traditionally defined Jewishness as being matrilineal; i.e. you're Jewish if your mother is Jewish. Reform Judaism accepts bilineal ancestry, but on the condition that one has been raised as a Jew. So, yes, he was completely right to deny being Jewish.
If his dad was of Jewish ethnicity he should just have said he was part Jewish but did not identify with the religion.
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Thanks for the overview, but... I am a hard line atheist anti-idealist that don't make that much difference between islamists, socialists and astrology readers. Idealists lie to themselves and others, because they mix up their self image with their opinions -- or they are just propagandists (since they know they are correct, the target is "winning" as in convincing, not learning.) Politically, I think the US left is…
> From what I've read, the Israelis make border checks less problematic. It is hard to scale their solutions to US? The Israelis are clear that what they do is racial profiling. Kind of hard to pay lip service to equality and all that bull shit and still just harass only brown people, isn't it?
What is immigration control doing these days when very few people actually get stamps in passports? And if I have stamps from Somalia and Libya in my passport, why would I go to the US wihtout first getting a new blank passport? Are stamps in passport really that useful?
It is in US that you will realize your name is your biggest enemy.
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Your Australia-related articles were posted in July. Tony Abbott didn't become Prime Minister until September.
Yep. Although, if you're an Australian like I am, you must know that this is all going to get worse. I'm sick of our Government (no matter who seems to be in power at the time) taking every single page out of the American playbook. I like our country, why do we have to try and be them? :(
The playbook Australia is taking a page out of is a very old one indeed.
Interestingly, in the developed world it seems to be the Anglophone countries that have the shittiest attitude towards border control these days. The US is notoriously user-hostile at the borders. The UK is doing its best to catch up in a Mini-Me way with the USA's Dr Evil, and is actually on course to become even more hostile than the USA -- the only mitigating factor is that the third degree is reserved for non-cit…
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I think you're wrong, and I'm sorry that people like you are the ones working on the border. He was obviously travelling all around the world sight-seeing. He had tons of proof of that. The border patrol were paranoid and idiotic. Keeping random people out who "seem" like they might be dangerous is not going to prevent any problems. It's just going to make the rest of the world hate us more.
"He was obviously travelling all around the world sight-seeing" This is not so obvious. This is one of the possible points of view, of course. "He had tons of proof of that" For example? I'm not sure other countries stamp a reason for entry like the US, it's usually an entry stamp for anything and that's it. I'm also sympathetic to the author, but he was extremely naive. The border control doesn't want to hear about…
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> From what I've read, the Israelis make border checks less problematic. It is hard to scale their solutions to US? The Israelis are clear that what they do is racial profiling. Kind of hard to pay lip service to equality and all that bull shit and still just harass only brown people, isn't it?
Many Israelies are brown too. They do profile, but not quite this way.
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So the logic goes something like this: something bad happened to me once in country X. Therefore, I will not go back to country X. So, if something bad happens to you in Sweden, say a policeman is rude to you, or something like that, will you leave Sweden because of it ?
Where did I say this is the only reason? I had a great time in the US, and there are plenty of great things about it, but I've had enough bad experiences with various parts of society and government that the upsides of living in the US as opposed to my country is nil. Since I have no family in the US, the decision to move back, while not easy, was the right thing to do. Edit: as for not returning to visit, I'm not ex…
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> I learned not to say I was there to take a class. Just visiting. Hope to spend lots of money. Ok, have a nice day! Isn't lying to those people a really bad idea?
No, they can't spot lies, they can only spot things they are not expecting. Tell them a short boring story if the truth is unusual.
People are always reporting odd conversations with border agents. When those conversations result in further scrutiny or being denied admittance, they can appear sinister or arbitrary in retrospect. But it's a basic behavioral profiling technique: Take a random walk down a conversation tree and look for the inconsistencies and delays that occur when the subject has to start making things up.