Banning Mandela

[donsu]

http://www.counterpunch.com/tilley12112006.html


Homeland Security Stalks the New South Africa


On Friday evening, October 20, a traveling academic confronted a regular ugly occurrence at JFK airport. He was stopped at immigration by Homeland Security, shuttled off without explanation into a stark waiting room, left there for six hours with no food or water with other similarly trapped travellers (including a little child who cried inconsolably), was asked a few template questions - "have you ever been a member of a terrorist organization?" - and finally was marched away by two armed officers and put on a plane back to South Africa, his 10-year visa summarily revoked. No explanation. By the time he realized what was afoot and called the South African embassy, at about 3 a.m., it was too late for them to do anything. He arrived back in South Africa tired, tousled, and very pissed off.

But, unusually, this visitor was in a position to make a serious stink about it. Within hours, the South African government's Department of Foreign Affairs was mobilized and the American Embassy was offering embarrassed apologies. Within days, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) was also mobilized. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called to ask if they could make his experience a test case.

Denying US visas to visiting academics is, of course, not uncommon these days. All over the United States, in the Homeland Security era, university departments and organizers of scientific and academic conferences have been regularly startled, angered, frustrated and baffled as some new colleague or visiting scholar is denied entry to the country. Some of these unwanted souls have been luminaries, like Dr. Tariq Ramadan, an international scholar of Islam and its interaction with western cultures, who was named by Time one of the 100 most important innovators of the 21st century. Targeted as objectionable by pro-Israeli networks, Dr. Ramadan was abruptly denied a visa just two weeks before he was scheduled to assume a senior appointment at the University of Notre Dame. (Amidst the ensuing hullabaloo, he was promptly snapped up by Oxford). Other rejectees are talented rising scholars, like Dr. Waskar Ari from Bolivia, whose visa was denied just a month before he was to take up his new position at the University of Nebraska. Apparently, all work visas from Bolivia were cancelled some time after the leftist President Morales was elected.

-snip-

Still, what is behind this bizarre targeting of South Africans? What is the rationale? Merging a list of "security risks" composed by South Africa's apartheid government is hard to attribute to mere ignorance (for which Americans are, of course, infamous). It is not even easily blamed on the galloping incompetence that Homeland Security increasingly displays. For apartheid South Africa was not just a repressive regime universally detested and denounced for killing or torturing those "security risks" struggling for democracy. It evaporated entirely in 1994 and many of those former "security risks" have entered South Africa's government leadership. Even the US now extends them all diplomatic courtesies. So after the embarrassing Mandela incident, why didn't Homeland Security strike its forehead in self-recrimination and delete those entries?

-snip-

So maybe South Africans like Dr. Habib are indeed a "security risk" for the Bush administration and its schreibtischtater. It's not just that he's an intellectual of formidable standing who happens to be Muslim. What indeed might devolve, if South Africa's example of democracy spreads? What if other beleaguered peoples around the world start talking to these veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle and inviting them to come visit?

Especially, what would happen ­ the horror ­ if South African democracy theorists with serious activist track records and names like "Habib" started showing up in Israel-Palestine? Can't have people thinking too much about the new South Africa in a place like that.
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and the neo cons have made america stand alone in ignorance and fear - standing alone behind the neo con american military.

(the neo con american military is vastly different from the american military)

[donsu]

1. kicking back to first pg.

nt

[zreosumgame]

2. watch out this season, those lists are going EVERYWHERE

I ran into a smal, small but very iritating example of this kind of security 'list' nightmare this weekend. I was trying to buy a new laptop , very high-end and expensive. from a company called Alienware. I customized the rig I wanted, filled out the crdit info and hit submit...

Within 10 seconds a TWO PAGE list of questions came up. They were full of addresses I supposedly had been 'associated' with. Well, wierd and a bit scarey but OK I checked the ones I had lived at, and then I was asked the age range for my brother (well, his first name and our last name anyway) so I checked that as well. Turns out i am not who I am it seems. i failed this little test. But what got me was how they got all that info so fast. I was told by Alienware sales-drones that 'the FLA BB of Miami REQUIRES everyone take this test, with the false info supplied by some lame-assed company they ID as "The information is from a third party highly confidential secured database known as Verid, formerly known as Ishopsecure." in others words some commercial shadowy firm is collecting all they can, making sure NOT to verify it and them getting a BB chapter to REQUIRE it. Naturally it is FLA. In any case they lost a customer, and as many others as i can convince not to buy from them.

SO it looks like we will all have to deal with kind of bullshit from all sides now, not just airports anymore...

[donsu]

3. good grief! how obscene to snoop on you like that

america is dead

[applegrove]

4. I cannot believe that the State Department has not yet vetted all

the ANC members from their rolls. Actually I cannot believe they ever put them on the lists..but they did. And so did Canada and other places. But how long does it take to update your list for South Africa?