Skip to main content

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: Welcome to America ... You're Under Arrest

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: Welcome to America ... You're Under Arrest: "Tales of a Pakistani immigrant dealing with racial profiling, the Patriot Act and the INS as he tries to make a life in New York City."
Mr. Sampson, I Presume?

It was about five years ago. I was returning from Pakistan and standing in the immigration line at JFK, completely exhausted after a 20-hour flight. When my turn came up at the counter, the INS agent looked at my papers, typed a few things into his computer, and then asked me to follow him to a large room at the side of the immigration hall. I was informed that I was being detained. Two agents handcuffed me and led me to another smaller room. When I asked what I had done. They said things like, "Oh, you know what you've done. We know who you are."

"Who am I? What have I done?"

"You should know that better than we do, now shouldn't you?"

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Israeli school segregated Ethiopian students » Ethiopian Review

Israeli school segregated Ethiopian students » Ethiopian Review : "The placement of four Ethiopian girls in a separate class from their peers at a Petah Tikva grade school has sparked accusations of segregation on Tuesday morning following a report in Yediot Aharonot. According to ‘Hamerhav’ principal, Rabbi Yeshiyahu Granvich, complete integration of the girls was impossible. The reason being, said municipal workers, was that the students were not observant enough, nor did their families belong to the national-religious movement that the school was founded upon. Among the differences in the daily school life of the girls, a single teacher was responsible to teach them all of their subjects. Worse yet, the four were allotted separate recess hours and were driven to and from school separately. Such action has been labeled by observers as “apartheid.”"

Iraqi weapons 'expert' unmasked as a fraud - Independent Online Edition > Americas

Iraqi weapons 'expert' unmasked as a fraud - Independent Online Edition > Americas : "The Iraqi defector whose claims regarding Saddam Hussein's biological warfare capabilities were central to the US government's case for the 2003 invasion, despite repeated warnings that they were dubious, has been unmasked by a television documentary. The informer, codenamed Curveball was Rafid Ahmed Alwan who, in 1999, turned up at a refugee centre in Germany seeking political asylum. He went on to convince the Pentagon he was a brilliant chemist who had helped develop mobile biological warfare laboratories."

FT.com / UK - Al-Jazeera journalists become faces of the frontline

FT.com / UK - Al-Jazeera journalists become faces of the frontline : "Ayman Mohyeldin was in a coffee shop joking with colleagues in Gaza City when the first Israeli bomb struck, smashing into a police station just a short distance from where they were sitting. The tremors from the explosion shook the café, but it took a few minutes for the reality to sink in - Gaza was under attack. Since that moment 18 days ago, Mr Mohyeldin and his colleagues at al-Jazeera English, the satellite channel, have worked day and night, providing 24-hour coverage of the Israeli offensive in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis it has triggered. Donning a helmet and a flak jacket, Mr Mohyeldin has become one of the faces of the war, delivering calm and balanced analysis of the chaos and destruction going on around him in a soft American accent."