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One year ago today:
Wednesday November 23, 2005
Terrorist suspect exonerated
[Contributed by Steve Klotz]
Basuyouy Mamdouh Ebaid is back from prison. Arrested for allegedly selling liquor to minors, and already bearing a police record for possession of less than 20 grams of smoke, the real problem for the Hollywood restaurateur was the effrontery of committing CBWS (Conducting Business While Swarthy): Mr. Ebaid is Egyptian. This poor choice of ethnic selection prompted officials to compare his name to a terrorist watch list, where lo and behold, they found a match. Nine months and two prisons later, later his record has been cleaned out, just like his business, which of course went to hell in his absence. Is this a great country or what?
‘’What the American justice system has done for me is making me love the country more,’’ Ebaid told the Associated Press. The man is no fool: he’s applying for citizenship based in part on his marriage to an American and his reluctance to be deported to Egypt where authorities noted he might be subject to detention and torture.
Authorities vehemently denied rumors that Mr. Ebaid’s release had anything to do with a plan to link the arrival of the King Tut exhibition in south Florida with high-profile actions to generate good will in the huge Egyptian-American community.
Choice writing and excellent points. As I have commented upon in my blog, the US is bringing its foreign policy, based on greed, a lack of moral restriction, racism and special interests, into its domestic policy which is based on… No, really, it is to a significant degree guided by positive, enlightened principles. Yep. I gotta believe that and I do.
At any rate, someone has to confront these dark elements in American society who are making politically and socially acceptable to victimize and demonize Arab Americans and for that matter Mexican and Central American immigrants (who are after all largely Native Americans).
What I find especially disturbing about some the focus on Arab Americans and American Muslims is that the government is targeting people for their beliefs, including their support of their foreign policy perspectives. The government has criminalized alternative foreign policy views by lumping it in with terrorism. Be afraid.