Kiko Martinez: Watch Listed for Life

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• Reader Comments (6)

  Page 1 of 1 pages

  There are no comments yet because most fear they will get on THE LIST.

  Posted by davinci on Jan 20, 2007 at 5:39 PM

  If you’re not on a list, shame on you ! You’re not doing enough.

  Posted by blondemike on Jan 23, 2007 at 2:03 AM

  I got pulled over at the airport not long ago and was questioned for over half an hour about past travel into Dubai, based on immigration stamps in my passport. I made my flight, but it was a near thing. The explanation? “Westerners don’t travel to Dubai.”

  Except for all the palefaced caucasoidal tourist-types I saw there, they must have meant…

  You’ll all be on a list pretty soon, whether you “deserve” it or not. Maybe you are right now.

  I’d bet $100 that there’s a database somewhere with all of our nommes de web on it, whether we’re rightish or leftish or ambidextrish. Can’t you just see some Cray mainframe cross-correlating your web handle against all the country’s airport and DMV records?

  I feel safer already…

  Posted by Kuya on Jan 23, 2007 at 12:05 PM

  That’s outrageous !  Western businessmen visit Dubai all the time, in fact Bush was going to turn over all security management at US Ports
  to a Dubai corporation last year until the Dems launched an Arab bashing attack.

  Posted by blondemike on Jan 23, 2007 at 10:00 PM

  Yes, it was confusing and intimidating at the time. I kept wondering to myself, what is it they think I’ve done? I was afraid I’d have to endure an orifice search! (ick!) Then after all the questions about why I was there, what were my activities, etc etc, they let me go and that was that.

  Ordinarily I don’t get bugged about security checks in airports, digging through my bags and the like. I actually do want them to pay attention to detail and not be lackadaisical about what’s going onto the aircraft, so if I were to give them the best benefit of the doubt I suppose that episode was just vigilance in action. But the extensive interrogation really had me wondering what was up, I thought I was about to be charged with something or that, at least, I’d miss the flight and have to hassle around with getting a new one.

  I read somewhere years ago that for any US citizen, the federal authorities can have at their fingertips a bushel of information within moments, and that’s when they don’t even give a damn about you. All residences, credit and debit card purchases, financial and tax records, magazine subscriptions, school and medical records, most memberships or political affiliations, donations other than dropping cash in a bucket somewhere… it was a long list, over and above fingerprint and criminal records, which one would assume (they already have the former of mine, since I’m a schoolteacher, and I don’t have the latter yet). God knows what they could dredge up if they actually took an interest in you, what roadblocks they could put in your path “just in case”.

  I don’t mind the fact that there’s always a tension between freedom and security, a balancing act. That seems like a very obvious and predictable situation in a modern society. It’s just that I don’t have a lot of confidence that the “freedom” end of the spectrum will continue to get its due any more. A lot of Americans seem to be not too bothered by the possibility (or is it the ongoing encroachment?) of overbearing state authority, perhaps because they’re scared..?

  Posted by Kuya on Jan 24, 2007 at 8:37 AM

  Kuya, there is no justification for curtailing any of our individual freedoms at any time. With the Bush-Cheney statist logic you could lock up everyone for crime on the grounds that it would curtail crime.
  Americans are stinking sheeple by and large. Mencken in the 20s labeled them as natural goosesteppers. The 20s ! Once you go down the slippery slope it never stops, like a little bit pregnant.

  Posted by blondemike on Jan 25, 2007 at 7:31 PM

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