This is worrying

Hobbes

http://www.livejournal.com/users/angiej/60881.html?itemid=60881

What's worrying is that there is no real way to check to see if the family skipped town or is being detained.

It seems the page has been hacked...What was so worrying about it?...Hmmmm...Please explain

Hobbes

Not hacked. I would guess that a lot of people are reading it. I could read it fine. Try Google Cache if you want to get to the page.

You can also read about it here -> http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/24587

For those who don't want to read the whole thing. Basically a teacher is reporting that a student has gone missing. When she went to check with the family she found out that the whole family has gone missing. No one knows where they are. The father of the family was detained some weeks ago under the new US anti-terrorist laws. So the school doesn't know if the whole family is detained or just done a run for the canadian border but other people are noticing other muslims disappearing.

Ebony (angiej) wrote,
@ 2003-03-24 16:46:00

Current mood: crying

Where Have All The Muslims Gone?

Remember Ali, the Iraqi student I wrote about a few weeks before leaving for Italy when telling about going to the antiwar rally?

He's gone. Disappeared.

His parents' phone number is disconnected.

His mother cannot be reached at work.

His father disappeared first... and now, one of our babies is gone!



His counselor said to me this afternoon: "Either the parents have been called in by the government for questioning, or else they've all fled."

Oh, my God.

Just three weeks ago...

Miss Thomas, can I please have more time on this essay test? My father's gone and I had to get a job to help at home.

Sure, you can come here during your lunch hour and work on it.

Thanks. I really appreciate it.

He didn't let me down. He came. He did good work. But the last week that I saw him, it seemed as if he couldn't concentrate. His usually interested face seemed to slump; his bright brown eyes were dull. (Teachers, at least good ones, notice these things.) I kept asking him if everything was okay. He assured me that it was, and that he appreciated me asking after him.

But now he is gone.

I spent most of the next hour crying. I was absolutely hysterical. Thank God my students were in an assembly. Some of the other teachers tried to console me, saying they likely fled to Canada when our local news reported that all Iraqi nationals and Iraqi Americans in the Detroit area were being questioned by the FBI. Saying that I *couldn't* think they'd been detained or deported... that I couldn't think the worst.

Even if we are starting to notice that a few of our Middle Eastern students and parents and neighbors are disappearing. Another teacher said that my story made her realize she hasn't seen a certain Palestinian student for three weeks.

The Detroit area has the largest concentration of Middle Easterners outside the Middle East, and one of the oldest Arabic-language and Muslim communities in the country. The Nation of Islam began here, too...

And now, people are scared.

I'm scared.

There were other countries in history where people of certain ethnic groups disappeared without a trace, without protest from those who were once their neighbors.

Speaking of history, I was informed by my assistant principal that it likely wouldn't be a good idea to get certified in history... as there is now a statewide initiative to take all social studies out of the core curriculum save for American History and to replace it with foreign language. While I applaud global language learning, I was shocked at this news. World History has already been removed from our state curriculum on the K-12 level... you have no idea how hard it is for me to teach these kids Shakespeare or comparative mythology when they don't understand *anything* about other countries.

And as of Friday all faculty and staff have been ordered by the district (which gets its directions from the state, which gets its directives from the US Department of Education) not to speak against the war or the government in the presence of our students. Not asked, ordered.

Something is being done to our nation deliberately, something sinister... something horrible.

When more than 50% of Americans say that the First Amendment goes too far...

When more than 60% of Americans feel that not only is this war just, but that to speak against it is a treasonous crime...

When more than 70% of Americans feel that only people of certain races, ethnicities, and socioeconomic backgrounds ought to be allowed access to higher education...

And when a child named Ali who met Saddam Hussein and then fled his regime in the dark of night, who saw his uncles murdered before his eyes, when all that child ever wanted was to learn how to read and write good English, and to be accepted in a country called America...



Too bad no one ever told Ali that America wasn't for people like him.

And so, he is gone. A red line has replaced his name in my gradebook; an empty seat marks his place in my classroom.

A classroom where the American flag has a place of honor.

A classroom where I looked at the American flag today and raged at it, and at the republic for which it stands.

Once, I thought that the republic was governed for the people and by the people.

Today, I realized that people are the very last thing that this republic cares about.

one nation
under God
indivisible
with liberty and justice
for...

The question remains unanswered.

And wherever my young student is, I hope he's safe. I hope he's got enough to eat. I hope he can find a good school and continue to learn. I hope that he remembers what I strive to teach all of my students, that there is love in the world, that every man and boy is your brother, and every woman and girl is your sister, and that in the eyes of eternity good always, always prevails over evil.

I hope he finds a nation more worthy of him and his people than America is.

Here is another post on the same site asking for more information.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/leadensky/79640.html

Washout

Gosh it really is shallow times we live in...

I for one sometimes think and have more recently being questioning what is my role in this life when there are powers out there that can instantly change everything and anything about a person. And who exactly gave people this kind of power.

I dont know about you guys but after reading that journal entry and my own thoughts have just given me the belief that we are so bloody helpless. nothing we can do cause the powers that be are not willing to listen in the slightest


J

How do?...Nah that page is gone...Not even 'maybe experiencing technical difficulties'...'name changed or removed'...this is extremely worrying though....although by the looks of things its the way things are going in the land of the free...Big Brother is watching you...and if you're an arab, he's keeping tabs on your ass...

Nevyn

All conquering nations rewrite history,

The bristish empire and all it did in soooo many countries
is very very edited when taught in schools in the U.K.

It is not surpizing america has started this . Sure china has done it for years.

Talliesin

Originally posted by Thaed
All conquering nations rewrite history

There's a quote I can't quite remember correctly by Andrea Dworkin that brilliantly sums that up by describing Feminists as "traitors to forgetting".

Nevyn

sure that is what is happening to the koran at the momnet there are female scholars suddenly discovering all sort of stuuf that was apparently over looked .

aine

this particular issue aside, I find it worrying that international history has been removed from the sylabus!

hello?! as a nation they hardly need to be dumbing down their education standards! personally i think the set they have is probably by far better than ours, in theory! but seriously, this is quite disturbing!

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

Dun

This kinda reminds me of what happened to Japanese immigrants and Americans of Japanese origin during World War Two:

http://www.lib.utah.edu/spc/photo/9066/9066.htm

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the United States was gripped by war hysteria. This was especially strong along the Pacific coast of the U.S., where residents feared more Japanese attacks on their cities, homes, and businesses. Leaders in California, Oregon, and Washington, demanded that the residents of Japanese ancestry be removed from their homes along the coast and relocated in isolated inland areas. As a result of this pressure, on February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which resulted in the forcible internment of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry. More than two-thirds of those interned under the Executive Order were citizens of the United States, and none had ever shown any disloyalty. The War Relocation Authority was created to administer the assembly centers, relocation centers, and internment camps, and relocation of Japanese-Americans began in April 1942. Internment camps were scattered all over the interior West, in isolated desert areas of Arizona, California, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, and Wyoming, where Japanese-Americans were forced to carry on their lives under harsh conditions. Executive Order 9066 was rescinded by President Roosevelt in 1944, and the last of the camps was closed in March, 1946.

aine

Didn't do it for Leaving so don't have a clue what's on it there.

half of the leaving cert course is Irish history and the other half is European, that covers Russia too though so you learn about the rise of communism etc......plus the wars are covered and diferent ideologies!

but it is kinda worrying that Americans go through school learning only about their own history! nothing about the ancient civilisations or anything! no wonder there is so little tolerance there between ethnic groups!