Ahmed Mohamed Gets Slam’med — Doggerel!

This story angered me so much that I couldn't write about it immediately. Here it is, as soon as I calmed down enough not to spew a relentless stream of obscenities and profanities...

Doesn't he look
DANGEROUS?
(Gimme a break!)

Several days after 14-year-old Ahmed  Mohamed, formerly of Irving, TX, was arrested and jailed for bringing a clock he (re)constructed to school, where one teacher (and apparently the mayor of Irving) thought it was a bomb or a hoax bomb, the whole family decided to forsake the not-so-good old USA and accept an offer from the fabulously wealthy nation of Qatar to enroll young Ahmed in the complex of technology-related schools and universities at Doha. They're on their way, and the wretched anti‑Arab, anti-Muslim bastards apparently now running the US have lost us another bright, talented kid who might have invented something important for America someday, if only the hostile muthafuckas had not chased him and his family off...

     Ahmed Mohamed
     Gets Slam’med

A clockmaker, Ahmed Mohamed,
Did swear that no one would be bomb'ed.
And most folks believed him,
But bigots deceived him,
So into the clink the boy's slam'med.

Thus Ahmed Mohamed takes stock
Right after one night in the dock:
"Forget Harry Potter;
I'm headed for Qatar!"
And thus HE is cleaning THEIR clock!

     - Steve Bates

On the positive side, the kid's invention and subsequent jailing got him an invitation from President Obama to an Astronomy Day at the White House (Butthead Sen. Ted said this was purely political). On the negative side (IMHO), he got another invitation from Mark Zuckerberg...

ACLU Files Suit Against DHS Alleging Secret Policy Denying Citizenship To Muslim Immigrants

Kevin Gosztola at FDL explains:

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of five Muslims allegedly denied American citizenship because of a secretive policy a Homeland Security Department’s immigration agency operates. The program grants the government broad discretion to designate those applying for citizenship as “national security concerns.”

According to the ACLU’s filed complaint [PDF], the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) has engaged in the “unlawful delay and denial of plaintiffs’ applications for citizenship and lawful permanent residence [LPR] under a secretive policy” known as the Controlled Application Review and Resolution Program (CAARP) [sic - should be "CARRP" — SB]. The policy has allegedly barred USCIS from upgrading plaintiffs’ immigration status and violated the Immigration and Nationality Act.

USCIS has declined to voluntarily make public information related to its policy of designating people as “national security concerns.” In fact, if a person is designated a “national security concern”—and this can happen because of “innocuous activity and associations, and characteristics such as national origin,” there is no notice provided to applicants that they have been taken off an “adjudication track” and will not be approved.

Between 2008 and 2012, more than 19,000 people, who were from Muslim-majority countries or regions were subjected to CAARP.

...

[Bolds mine. - SB]

I guess the French gal in the harbor is no longer quite so ready to "lift [her] lamp beside the golden door" ...

I advocate for no religion. If I am anything, I am UU. But Americans should be able to choose their faith for themselves without interference from the government. And potential Americans should not be blackballed from immigration or citizenship merely for espousing any particular religion. This is classic guilt by association: "many terrorists are muslim, therefore all muslims are terrorists." This kind of faulty reasoning is an infringement on everyone's liberties, and it needs to stop... now.

'Almost Overkill'

That's how Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) described his alternative to Sen. John Cornyn's (R-TX) border security bill, in an attempt to reassure border hawks. The phrase embodies an irony not lost on Mexican-Americans and their Mexican family members, the latter of whom are dying in record numbers in their attempts to cross the border illegally at increasingly dangerous locations.

As of this morning, Corker and Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND) announced they were closing in on a deal with the "Gang of Eight" senators (four Democrats, four Republicans) on a bill more moderate than Cornyn's. But nothing is ever simple, and the nut-jobs in the GOP (*cough* Cruz *cough*) want to exact their pound of flesh.

Border wall under construction

The problem is that, as many Texas farmers (including those who are conservative politically) are willing to admit, the arrangement between Texans and Mexicans is advantageous to both. Texans (and other Americans) get their crops picked cheaper; Mexicans make more money than they probably could at home, filling jobs Americans are in general not willing to do themselves. The solution to undocumented migrant workers is somehow to document them and systematize their seasonal appearance in the US, not to build higher border fences and otherwise make their crossing more dangerous.


But I would not bet on a successful outcome from this negotiation. After all, it has considerable Democratic support, and we all know that a Democrat in government is (in the opinion of many GOPers) an illegal non‑alien...

In The GOP, It Has Come To This

Wow. Just... wow:

Pablo Pantoja, who previously served as the State Director of Florida Hispanic Outreach for the Republican National Committee, has defected to the Democratic Party.

Citing the GOP's "culture of intolerance," Pantoja confirmed his party change in an email sent Monday to Florida Nation. Pantoja also drew reference to a much-maligned dissertation from the Heritage Foundation's Jason Richwine that sought to discourage non-whites from immigrating to the United States on the basis that those groups have lower IQs. Richwine resigned from his post at Heritage last week.

...

(Bolds mine.)

Here's a party game (Party game?) for you: how many Republicans can you think of whose name contains the fragment "rich"? Anywhere in the name is fine, e.g., "Newt Gingrich" counts.

On History Repeating Itself With Scarcely A Mumble

Japanese Internees

I have been reading the late lamented Studs Terkel's "The Good War", his book about (as he spells it) World War Two. The quote marks, says Terkel, are part of the book's title, because that's what some people called it, but the phrase, of itself and without quote marks, is an oxymoron. Have I mentioned how much I miss the lively, vibrant Terkel in his long and well-lived life? Few people elicited my unreserved admiration as he did.

Horse Stables as Internee Residences

In an early chapter, Terkel interviews Japanese-Americans who in various ways and degrees experienced the internment. Japanese-Americans' businesses were seized; some were surveilled individually by FBI agents (not all willing agents, as it turns out) and many... far too many... American citizens were arrested and interned in camps of various sorts; one described in the book was a stables, complete with all the smells and utter lack of personal privacy. Families were broken up, men and older boys confined in one place and their wives and daughters in another. The resemblance to slavery, another historical practice of our "home of the free and the brave," was all too graphic and obvious. Some 110,000 Japanese-Americans and Japanese legal residents on the American Pacific coast were interned; a much smaller number of those in the Hawaiian Islands, where a large fraction of the total population were of Japanese ancestry, were also interned. Internment took place in other states as well, applied "unequally" as described by the wiki. Military rule was instituted; civil liberties were largely squelched... both with the blessing of the Supreme Court. No American apology was forthcoming until October 1993, when President Bill Clinton at long last issued one.

Fast-forward to September 2001, and refocus on Houston, TX, on an apartment complex housing an odd blogger/musician/etc. and his mate. A family living near me were Muslim, scarcely a surprise in a city boasting one of the best and largest medical centers in the nation... we have all kinds of nationalities and religious affiliations among our residents, many of them students in advanced fields, and most Houstonians like it that way.

Guantánamo Detainees

I will call the couple "Mary and Joseph," mainly to annoy any jeebus-botherers who may be lurking about. They had two lovely, very young children. Both had good jobs in Houston. Within a few weeks of 9/11/2001, it became apparent to them that things were not going to return to normal in America for our Muslim residents. Fortunately for them, unfortunately for us, Joseph was Canadian by birth. When the handwriting was on the wall and John Ashcroft & Co. were at their most strident, even before Guantánamo was known for what it is today, the couple decided that life in America was about to become very difficult for Muslims, be they citizens or (especially) not, even basically apolitical Muslims like themselves. Rumors of possible internment, ultimately never realized in mass quantities, were all too plausible at the time. Nasty remarks were occasionally leveled at the children, who were probably just old enough to understand what was going on. So Joseph contacted his family in Canada, and the whole family packed up and moved home, rather than face what America had in store for Muslims. I don't blame them one bit. The whole incident was America's loss.

How many more times will America alienate... word chosen very deliberately... members of its population who do not suit the current majority's opinion? If, say, Rmoney were to become president, what would he order done to the 47% he spoke so ill of, and how far would his exclusionary policies reach, among Americans and generally desirable noncitizen aliens?

Our nation's ancestors surely turn in their graves every time an American government undertakes to divide, suppress and exclude some of us from the body politic. I believe we owe those ancestors a debt, payment of which means putting a stop to all the exclusion so popular in certain political circles. Either it stops, or America goes to ground, at least the America descended from those founders. Rmoney and crew may be prepared for that. I most emphatically am not.