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eftychia: Me in kilt and poofy shirt, facing away, playing acoustic guitar behind head (Default)
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QotD

posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 05:25am on 2004-07-11

"The head of IT at our law firm is a Muslim. He is a gentleman in every sense of the word. His fanaticism, if he has any, is restricted to cricket. Last Sunday he went on a business trip to California. On arrival at Los Angeles he was detained and interrogated on suspicion of being a terrorist....

"For the first 12 hours he was refused access to a telephone. After 16 hours, not having been given any food, he asked if he could have some. He was given ham sandwiches and, when he explained that he could not eat pork, was told: 'You eat what you are given.' He did not eat. He was eventually escorted back to the airport in handcuffs and deported."

-- Tony Willoughby of Willoughby & Partners, a firm of solicitors, from a letter published in The Times of London in May 2003.

(From the Quotation of the Day mailing list, 2003-11-28. Submitted to the list by Mike Krawchuk.)

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There are 6 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
 

Allah bless America

posted by [identity profile] anniemal.livejournal.com at 05:17am on 2004-07-11
I hide my head in shame that my own country could stoop so low, be so obtuse and narrow-minded as to do this to a gentleman just because he's Muslim. I won't go on.
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As a vegan ...

posted by [identity profile] kara-h.livejournal.com at 06:08am on 2004-07-11
I can sympathize all too well with being hungry and the only 'food' I am given I have to refuse. They were torturing him by doing that, not just making a mistake. I hope he was allowed to get something to eat in the terminal before his flight.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] merde.livejournal.com at 09:30am on 2004-07-11
if i could be any more ashamed of my country than i already am, i would.

disgusting. absolutely disgusting.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] doubleplus.livejournal.com at 12:07pm on 2004-07-11
And for those who aren't immigrants and can't be deported, more here on how, on the basis of a security guard's say-so and no evidence, you can be put on a terrorist watch list that there is no procedure for challenging.
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Happening everywhere...

posted by [identity profile] realinterrobang.livejournal.com at 12:28pm on 2004-07-11
We had a case here where a Syrian-born Canadian citizen named Maher Arar was passing through the US on his way home to Ottawa (where he programs computers for a living, incidentally -- is there a correlation between US "security overreactions" [cough] and Muslim IT geeks?), was hauled off into custody, held for a while incommunicado, then slapped on a plane and deported to Syria, where he sat in a Syrian prison (shudder) and was tortured for six months. Thanks to his wife (Monia Mazigh), who made the Canadian government actually care about this, he got out and is back home.

His wife, incidentally, was the NDP candidate for the riding of Ottawa South. I hope she stays in politics, because she's tremendously effective (her almost single-handed efforts got a Royal Commission started on the Arar Affair) and she's a hijab-wearing social liberal with a web page in four languages -- exactly the kind of person I'd like to see more of in Canadian politics!

There was another case of a Muslim IT geek working for Intel (IIRC) who got the terrorist rap falsely put on him, too...uh, Mike Hawash. Please tell me I'm not onto something here.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] coginthenose.livejournal.com at 09:46pm on 2004-07-14
:(
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