Dear True,
Yesterday I picked up a sandwich at the Subway. While waiting in line I noticed a couple families of Indian or Pakistani tourists emerging from their vans. They also bought lunch.
I decided to drive to the Coast Guard building parking lot for a picnic. Soon the two tourist vans also arrived, parking near me. The Indian or Pakistani families settled down to eat their lunches, after looking around the harbor and enjoying the sights.
Within a matter of minutes, I noticed a very large white van proceeding slowly past the tourists, driven by a man in a black uniform. Above the van was one of those rotating spotlights. There was also a radio antenna, I noticed, as it drove past, the driver scrutinizing the dark-skinned visitors.
I took another bite of my sandwich, and here came a smallish, also unmarked, SUV, likewise slowing down to gape at the tourist families. Driven by a woman wearing generic law-enforcement garb, this vehicle also sported the rear radio antenna. Neither of the vehicles stopped to detain or interrogate the objects of their scrutiny.
Another lunch bite, and this time a large unmarked SUV with two rear antennas came along. Creeping past the foreign visitors and staring, exactly like the previous two, it finally circled and exited the parking lot.
What was that about? A rhetorical question for I feel sure that some local yokel with links to Homeland Security called about the possible terrorists having a picnic.
After the surveillance team had gone, I sort of wished I had opened my window and hollered, "Who the hell are you and what the *bleep* are you doing?"
Toivo Kuvamias
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4 comments:
After reading all the politically correct rhetoric & supposed sensitivity to "our community" on this blog, I find Toivo's comment quite offensive:
"What was that about? A rhetorical question for I feel sure that some local yokel with links to Homeland Security called about the possible terrorists having a picnic."
Hmmm...who are these local yokels? (American Heritage Dictionary definition of yokels - country bumpkin). Is it the sales clerks, the hotel maids, the servers, the secretaries, the EMS folks, the cops, the delivery drivers? Are we all country bumpkins?
I think I'd rather have the watchful eye of Homeland Security on me than the arrogant & patronizing eye of this writer.
Oh, checking Roget's Thesaurus, it gets even better...
yokel = clodhopper, rube, boor
Yo, tired, lighten up, get some sleep. Most locals are not yokels; they are the salt of the earth. Some, on the other hand, torture and murder cats and like to make trouble for people who don't fit in to the white flagwaving population. SOMEBODY alerted the homeland heavies.
Toivo
Dear camper,
I don't know about big assumptions. Words like spying and surveillance no longer depend on secrecy; just look at how peoples' phone calls and e-mails and Internet searches are publicly admitted to be subject to government scrutiny.
I guess to ME the real question is who ratted on the tourist families. The response units were locals or else homelanders hanging around looking for a new detention facility site. These were not CIA agents sent from the Company facility in Virginia. Somebody called them, somebody knew they were here, somebody doesn't like dark-skinned foreigners.
No, camper, I don't think this was a training exercise. I am afraid it is the prevailing government policy: increase spying everywhere, distrust all who look different, and create an extreme climate of fear to justify draconian scrutiny of citizens and visitors alike. Camper, I don't like this any more than you do. But if you want to challenge my assumptions maybe you should read the reams of reports I study on-line every day, with serious documentation of the militarization and culture of fear strategy promulgated by the Republican/Bush one party state. It is not a pretty picture. This little story of the parking lot in our harbor is just one little piece of iceberg jutting out.
True, writing for her friend Toivo
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