...and just when I was starting to not be terrified by the things going on in this country...
I shouldn't read the New York Times. I really shouldn't. I should stay away from the news altogether.
Goddammit, now I really want to expatriate.
So, it seems like we're keeping hundreds of foreigners in jail without due cause.
Yup, that's right boys and girls. If you're Muslim and you make the mistake of coming to this country, you could wind up in jail for weeks or even months.
Most of these are folks who have been held in jail since September for things like staying past their visa. But there's also quite a few that are being kept purely by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. For example, a Pakistani gas station attendant renewed his driving license within a few minutes of when one of the terrorists did. Yes, he was denied bail for that! Because he happened to be one of probably a couple hundred people who were in the dmv at the same time as a terrorist.
Most of these people have been co operating with the authorities from the start. They obey and respect our laws and want nothing more than to clear this whole thing up. They've been promised to be released but the FBI is still keeping them there with no word on when they'll be released.
Although there are literally hundreds in jail, even the authorities only believe that ten to fifteen of the people in jail are actually suspects. The rest are purely in there because they happen to be middle eastern.
So if you had any doubt about our government setting up internment camps, that doubt has been squashed.
Oh but wait, there's more.
Apparently all over the United States, Arab Americans are getting fired from jobs by mere virtue of being Arab American. There have been countless accounts of getting singled out and harrassed and eventually fired. There are a lot of discrimination law suits in the works over this. Of course, in each incident, the employer insists it had to do with long standing problems in their work performance. It just so happens that in each case they all came to this conclusion within a few weeks of the attack. I guess it's just a coincidence that they don't have any prior documentation of things like written warnings and whatnot--things that have become company policy in businesses across the country so that they can prove they had just cause for letting someone go.
God.
This is scary shit. Across the board, Arab Americans are having their most basic civil liberties violated for no other reason than they're Arab American. It's a terrifying climate in this country, and people are afraid to stand up against it for fear that they'll be, at best put on a list, and at worst thrown in jail themselves.
Police across the country have been given lists by the justice department of literally thousands of Arab immigrants that they're supposed to question, for no other reason than the fact that they're Muslim. Some police departments are co operating. Others, like in Detroit and Portland, are flat out refusing. But the racial profiling is really frightening. I'm afraid that we're descending into an era not unlike Germany in the 1940s.
And then there's the law that would affect the court proceedings...
See, there's a law that's been proposed that would make all trials of terrorists actually be at a military installation where all the information would be kept secret. The only available information would be the names and the verdicts.
Now this is scary. I want to see these people brought to trial as much as the next guy. However, I also want it to be a fair trial. And keeping the proceedings so secretive makes it hard to safeguard this. If the attackers had actually been some American fringe group, the proceedings would be all over the news. There would be no doubt that they had got their day in court. We have enough evidence to reasonably convict, I see no reason to make it so secretive.
I'm not alone in this sentiment. In Spain, officials said that they would only extradite suspects if they were guaranteed a civilian trial.
Within the government, there is some dissent on this proposed law. There would certainly be some violations of the usual rights that the accused have, and the implications of this, and the potential for precedent, are pretty staggering.
This country is scary.
I had a bunch of things that I wanted to write about today but reading all of this has made me forget it entirely.
The world is seriously starting to freak me out.