THIS IS NOT YR COUNTRY, PART 78 MILLION

ITEM [via BoingBoing]: A US human-rights worker tells the one about how she was detained by the DHS at JFK when she returned from her holiday.  The reason: she’d just come back from a vacation in Syria.

What follows is an amazing first-person account of how “suspicious” people trying to enter the country legally are treated – even if they’re Americans. Key takeaways:

I watched as [Paul, a British citizen], over the course of four hours, went from feeling exuberant about his trip to New York to despising the entire country. "I speak the Queen's English," he said to me. "I'm third-generation British. I came to America because I've always wanted to come here, and now they've got me so scared that all I want to do is go home."

I don't know if it's worse for national security – and more embarrassing for Americans – that this is the first experience tourists have of our country, or that some US citizens get treated this way upon entering their own country.

Well, gee, at least she got out of there alive.

And Americans wonder why the people who still don’t hate America try to enter illegally.

To be fair, lots of foreigners (i.e. the ones who aren’t Arabs or Arab-looking) get into the US without being given the third degree. But Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing makes a very good point: “I once got pulled out for secondary screening at the Australian border. They brought my pregnant wife a chair and a glass of water, were friendly and professional and prompt, and never made me feel anything other than welcome. They thoroughly investigated me without ever making me feel like a crook. It took all of 10 minutes. It doesn't have to be this way.”

I agree. I’ve already related my experience with Chinese immigration at Doumen (which, for the record, is the only trouble I’ve ever had getting in and out of China), and I’ve been to countries I thought would be much harder to get into by virtue of being American alone (Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos come to mind) and at worst they’ve been indifferent. Israel has the tightest security I’ve ever seen – no foreigner gets in or out without a full bag search and grilling, and they’ve always been cool to me (though admittedly a US passport might warrant better treatment).

Maybe it’s different for those countries if you hold certain types of passports (in Hong Kong, if yr a single woman with a Thai passport they assume yr a prostitute). That doesn’t make it right. If America really cares about its image problem overseas (and as Leader Of The Free World, it bloody well should) and wants to improve it, this is probably NOT the way to go about it.

Johnny foreigner,

This is dF

YR RACIST AND YR MOTHER DRESSES YOU FUNNY

Let’s see, how else shall I bum you out today?

Ah, this will do.



For more info, see the accompanying photo essay on the official wardrobe maker for the KKK:

Coming from five generations of Ku Klux Klan members, 58-year-old "Ms. Ruth" sews hoods and robes for Klan members seven days a week, blessing each one when it's done. A red satin outfit for an Exalted Cyclops, the head of a local chapter, costs about $140. She uses the earnings to help care for her 40-year-old quadriplegic daughter, "Lilbit," who was injured in a car accident 10 years ago.

BACKGROUND: I find myself morbidly fascinated by the Klan at times. I loathe everything they stand for, but I grew up near Nashville, TN, and every year, the KKK – which originated in my home state, which to this day has more KKK chapters than any other state in the US –  would hold an annual march in nearby Franklin. I’d see this on the evening TV news, and even in the early/mid-70s, they could still get a few hundred people to show up, though the number of hecklers was encouragingly bigger (or so it seemed at the time). Encouragingly, the number of KKK dingbats got smaller every year until finally, around the end of the 80s or thereabouts, they gave up. Or at least the media stopped covering it.

Anyway, I always kind of understood what they stood for, and that it was Wrong, but I got the Full Experience one Halloween during my impressionable teenage years.

Two friends and I were hanging around outside the Sir Pizza in Madison after pulling a shift working in a haunted house fundraiser. We were still in costume, and a couple of guys who turned out to be Klansmen (out of uniform) saw my friend’s black executioner’s hood and thought it was some anti-KKK statement.

(That’s how clever these people can be.)

We went through the whole “What’re yew, buncha gawdamn nigger-lovin’ faggots?” routine before they finally decided we weren’t the effort to beat up. Too many witnesses, dig? I walked away from that experience knowing that I’d just interacted with the most pathetic, saddest form of Evil I’ve ever encountered.

“Most distasteful thing I ever stand still for...”

To this day, the sight of grown men in pointy hoods touches a nerve in my psyche. And it’s depressing and alarming to see these people still exist – and are indoctrinating their kids with the same ignorant hatred. I suppose that’s why I feel compelled to report it. It’s been said better over at popfiend’s, but pretending racism is not a problem to the point of refusing to talk about it is no way to run a country.

Still, I don’t mean to get you down. So, to ensure this post isn’t a total drag, here’s a relevant Ramones video.

The KKK took my baby away,

This is dF

WALT DISNEY’S SIN CITY

ITEM [via io9]: Artist Curt Rapala recasts Frank Miller’s Sin City with Disney princesses.



Wrong in so many ways, and yet wonderful.

Enjoy them now before the lawyers sue them out of existence.

It’s a sin,

This is dF

HEAVY WEATHER 2008: NURI!

Well, there goes the company boating trip on Friday.



Probably as well. I’ve got me a touch of the flu – this morning I went to work and had a massive headache, blurry vision and a head full of otters.

And I hadn’t even been drinking last night.

Went to the doctor, got some good quality meds, went home and slept. I dreamed that I was teaching Ray Charles how to ride a bicycle.

DAMN good medication, this is.

Right. To bed with me. Been watching the US and Japan play Olympic baseball and not scoring any runs. Extra innings now.

License to ill,

This is dF