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Why I Will Never Go Back to the United States

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Re: Why I Will Never Go Back to the United States

#331

Post by ronaldx »

joshuaheard wrote: post #275
ronaldx wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that your worst story? I read it like this: Border officer didn't want you to take a car with a wrong/likely-illegal registration across the border - instead took some time and effort to clarify the details and then allowed you to continue. In my mind that officer was doing their job well, and acted rather generously in your favour.

The registration and title were in my name because title had cleared the German DMV. He basically didn't believe his own DMV and started calling previous owners in the middle of the night.

It's also difficult to claim that this reflects the current situation in Germany.

As best I can tell, Germany hasn't had any road border controls since 2007 (when Czech Rep & Poland implemented Schengen).

Re: Why I Will Never Go Back to the United States

#332

Post by cema »

eshvk wrote: post #148
cema wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many Israelies are brown too. They do profile, but not quite this way.

You are being pedantic here. Yes, I am aware of the fact that Jewish people vary and have a wide spectrum of physical appearances. Going by their definition that they are a race, the fact that people who either by virtue of having the wrong name, or wrong religion or potential links to the Arab world are flagged off and scrutinized more carefully is profiling.

You have seemingly replaced "Israelis" with "Jewish people" whereas about 20% of Israelis are not Jewish. I think if we discuss profiling it is important to see what kind of profiling, specifically, is applied, its reasons and consequences.

Re: Why I Will Never Go Back to the United States

#333

Post by rbehrends »

icedchai wrote: post #297
rbehrends wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His father wasn't Jewish, either.

His grandfather was, so he has Jewish ancestry, which is enough for people in some parts of the world to consider him Jewish. (Even though he may not be Jewish in the eyes of the actual religion, it's not relevant.)

Do you really understand how preposterous the whole construction is? He is a Dutch citizen, with a Dutch passport, and a Dutch name. So, because he has a grandfather who is a Jew, that's supposedly a reason to deny him entry (according to the comment above, anyway) because it's presumably suspicious that he was in an area of the world that's unfriendly to Jews, even though nobody there has reason to believe that he's one. So, from that they construe some sort of reasoning that he could be a crypto-fundamentalist Muslim, apparently.

In reality, he doesn't think of himself as a Jew nor does anybody else, except the jokers that the US federal government apparently hires for these kinds of jobs (and that only after him volunteering that information), so there's no reason for him to have any fears that he might be exposed to antisemitic reactions. How would a hypothetical al Qaeda agent even learn that he has a Jewish grandfather?

Somebody's trying really hard to find a justification for stupid behavior by US agents that doesn't meet any evidentiary standards other than cover-your-ass paranoia.

Re: Why I Will Never Go Back to the United States

#334

Post by shirro »

cstross wrote: post #24

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…

I admit I don't like Abbott but using terms like concentration camps isn't fair to Australia. We have a very multicultural country with large migrant intake and we take in a reasonable number of asylum seekers.

We are a very desirable destination because of our standard of living and political and economic freedom. We can't just open our doors or we would be flooded and we barely have enough water for our current population in many of our southern cities.

Australian's as a whole do not want to reward people smugglers or see kids drowning when their parents try and queue jump their way into the country on overcrowded leaky boats. Detention centres aren't a very humane way to deal with the problem and criticism is warranted but perhaps we should direct a bit more attention to the countries these people are escaping and the countries they transit.

Re: Why I Will Never Go Back to the United States

#335

Post by wisty »

jacalata wrote: post #325
wisty wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Australia under Tony Abbot runs concentration camps for victims of famine, civil war on Nauru They are called "refugee camps". And Australia has a reasonably high refugee intake. Unlike most countries, though, Australia resettles most of their refugees, so they aren't classified as "refugees" anymore. It's a pain finding the numbers, since everyone wants to talk about "refugees per head of population". There's hund…

That doesn't make any sense. Refugee applications/admittals are normally counted per year. A refugee who was awarded citizenship/residency would be counted in that year. But there are very few of them (certainly not hundreds of thousands) since Howard introduced the TPV in '99, and anyway who cares? Do you also need to know how many Australians are descended from 1 pound Poms to see how many refugees we should allow…

> Refugee applications/admittals are normally counted per year.

Yes, but whenever someone says "Australia has less refugees than Germany", they are talking about total displaced persons. Germany rarely grants PR or citizenship to refugees, because they are mostly on TPVs (thus still refugees).

> You should know that 'resettlement' actually means 'sending to a third country', and yes we do resettle more refugees than anyone but the USA and Canada. That doesn't get counted in our refugee population because we sent them to another country.

Bullshit. Australia is the third country which they are resettled to. Australia (and the US, and Canada, and a couple of EU countries) accept the vast bulk of resettlements.

Re: Why I Will Never Go Back to the United States

#336

Post by gress »

aet wrote: post #321
gress wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't address the point - many mainstream 'news' outlets work by rewriting stories syndicated from Reuters and AP - not by having their own reporters. The comment I was responding to was attacking the wsws for not being 'news' because it doesn't have it's own reporters. It's perfectly reasonable to criticize it for having a political stance that you don't credit, but I don't see a case for somehow categorizing…

I actually have no problem with people citing the World Socialist Website. That being said, the WSWS offers "Marxist analysis" of the news whereas Reuters and AP, although they may offer analysis, focus on objective reporting of the facts as opposed to analysis. Take a look at Reuters "trust principles" on their website. One principle is: "That Thomson Reuters shall supply unbiased and reliable news services to newsp…

You're still missing the point. I'm not comparing wsws to Reuters or the AP. I'm comparing it to the news outlets that take reuters and AP reports as sources which they then use to write their own articles.

Re: Why I Will Never Go Back to the United States

#337

Post by [deleted] »

lewaldman wrote: post #269
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is misinformation in the extreme. 60% of Israeli Jews are from Arab countries, or their parents and grandparents were, and they are very similar in appearance to Arabs. There are also thousands of Ethiopian Jews with even darker skin. The European Jews with fair skin constitute only a part of the population, maybe half or less than half (there is a lot of intermarriage). Israeli border agents can't do racial pro…

> 60% of Israeli Jews are from Arab countries, or their parents and grandparents were, and they are very similar in appearance to Arabs Sorry, but you are wrong regarding the impossibility of do a "race" profiling. I'm a Jew and lived for 6 year in Israel. You can spot in a fraction of a second an arab jew from an arab muslin, from an arab christian. They can look alike phisicaly, but the behavior, cloths, accents, b…

[deleted]

Re: Why I Will Never Go Back to the United States

#338

Post by icedchai »

rbehrends wrote: post #333
icedchai wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His grandfather was, so he has Jewish ancestry, which is enough for people in some parts of the world to consider him Jewish. (Even though he may not be Jewish in the eyes of the actual religion, it's not relevant.)

Do you really understand how preposterous the whole construction is? He is a Dutch citizen, with a Dutch passport, and a Dutch name. So, because he has a grandfather who is a Jew, that's supposedly a reason to deny him entry (according to the comment above, anyway) because it's presumably suspicious that he was in an area of the world that's unfriendly to Jews, even though nobody there has reason to believe that he's…

I never said I personally thought it it was a valid reason to deny him entry, thus my reference to "people in some parts of the world"...

I actually think it's ridiculous, and sad...

Re: Why I Will Never Go Back to the United States

#339

Post by VexXtreme »

Nrsolis wrote: post #304
VexXtreme wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Europe is shitty because your mom almost got killed by her government? How about tens of millions of native Americans who were systematically exterminated by their government? While America was founded on some really great and unique ideas and concepts (your declaration of independence comes to mind), the execution is less than stellar. That in and of itself wouldn't be a problem if you wouldn't claim that you're…

Just an FYI if you can stand to look past your own prejudice and ill-informed speculation: 1. I've lived (and worked) overseas in both Europe and the Middle East. 2. I've visited and spent great deals of time in South America, Central America. I haven't been to Asia but that's been mainly a function of time than opportunity. That'll probably change next year with a trip to Singapore. 3. I've run out of pages in my pa…

Now that you've got this out of your system and let everybody know how awesome your life experiences are, would you like to address the individual points in my reply or would you like to brag a bit more and hurl some more insults? While it was unfair of me to bring up the passport thing, you completely missed the point of my post.
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