Rev. Omar Hamid Al-Rikabi writes:
A couple of days before Christmas 1993, I was sitting in my parent's living room watching a football game when I got a call from my uncle in Baghdad. After a very quick hello, he jumped right into asking if my father was home. I told him no, so he quickly gave me a flight number for a plane that was coming into Dallas the next day. After twice telling me that it was very important to be at the airport tomorrow, he told me to give his love to my mom and hung up. The next day we went to the airport and met my cousin and his wife, who had just spent the last several weeks sneaking out of a war-decimated Iraq. When Saddam Hussein ruled Baghdad, his government kept very close tabs on the people. In order to make an overseas phone call, one had to go to what used to be a post office and wait in line. Why? Because the government had agents who listened to all outgoing phone calls.
Whenever my family would call, all hell could be going on around them, but they said nothing: "Oh, everything is just fine! Nothing to report here. How are you?" So intimidated by this reality, my father would never say a thing about Iraq or family during phone calls that took place entirely in the United States.
When I created my blog I attached a site meter, which basically tells me how many people visit the site. One of the features of the site meter is that it will tell you from which city, state, and country a visit originated. It does not tell you the IP address of the computer, just the location and company of the server the visit was routed from.
For example, whenever my mom checks out the site, it registers: Verizon.com: Dallas, Texas.
Since we moved, whenever my wife or I log in, the site meter registers: Cox.net: Fayetteville, Arkansas.
This past fall, at the start of the Muslim fast of Ramadan, I sent a very small e-mail to my father's side of the family all over the world. In three sentences I told them that the move had gone well, gave them our new address, and signed the message with "Happy Ramadan."
The next day I noticed a change in the site meter. Whenever I logged into the blog, it no longer came up as being routed through Fayetteville, Arkansas. Instead, our Internet traffic was being routed through: Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana.
Huh?
So I ran a little experiment. I took my laptop up to the chapel office where I work and logged in using the router there. It registered Fayetteville, Arkansas. I went back home and logged in using our neighbor's router. Again, it registered Fayetteville, Arkansas. But sure enough, when I logged back in using our router, it let us know that we were being routed through Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana. I tried the same experiment with my wife's laptop. Same result.
I called our provider. The first guy I talked to laughed uncomfortably and said, "I don't know why it is routing through an Air Force base, but I have a pretty good idea." He sent me up the chain of command, but they could not tell me why everyone in my apartment complex was being routed through their local server, but I was being routed through an Air Force base.
A week later my wife and I got tickets to the Kentucky-Arkansas football game. The singing of the National Anthem was punctuated with a flyover by an Air Force B-2 Stealth Bomber. As the black sliver approached from the north, the crowd began to whip itself into a frenzy. But over the cheers I heard the public address announcer state that this very bomber was part of the initial invasion of Baghdad during Operation "Iraqi Freedom."
The flyover was impressive. I have never seen a stealth bomber in person. Those suckers are big, loud, and very intimidating. And as the plane passed right above us, with its roaring engines completely drowning out the roaring crowd, I couldn't help but think of the irony:
This very Air Force plane dropped bombs over Baghdad to "liberate" the Iraqis from an oppressive government that monitored their own citizens' communications. And now that very same Air Force seems to be monitoring mine.
Rev. Omar Hamid Al-Rikabi is a campus minister at the University of Arkansas Wesley Foundation. He is the son of a Muslim father from Iraq and a Christian mother from Texas. He shares his stories on his blog at www.firstbornstories.com
Article:
Amazing! We have indeed lost our freedom.
ReplyDeleteIt is scarey, it's the same kind of abuse of power that is part of human nature everywhere, I think. Lord Acton said, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."
ReplyDeleteIt is scary isn't it?It reminds me of the case of Dr Haneef an Indian-born Muslim here who happened to be a cousin of one of the people who drove the vehicle into Glasgow airport last year trying to blow it up. The police found a phone SIM card that had belonged to Dr Haneef that he had given innocently to his cousin in London. You can imagine the scenario.. he's been visiting and no longer needs the phone so he says "There's $20 left on this card, you might as well use it." Dr Haneef is then thrown into prison and charged with "aiding a terrorist organisation", the police lied about where they found the SIM card (they claimed it was in the vehicle and it never was), and when the case is finally laughed out of court after the poor man has been detained for several weeks the Minister for Immigration revokes his visa "on character grounds" so they can keep him locked up as an illegal immigrant. Initially he told the police all that he knew, but they released false translations of his conversations with family members to make him look like he was covering up. When they were exposed on that they would release more false statements.A few months later we have changed government and the new Minister has offered a visa to Dr Haneef but it's been revealed that the Federal Police still have people investigating him. It's not because they seriously think he is a terrorist but because he and his lawyer made the former government, the police and the prosecutors look very silly.It is a terrible abuse of power by the authorities, under the guise of security.
ReplyDeleteI think that the only defence is the long term one of democracy. At least we do have the right to participate in debate and in elections. So every 3 or 4 years we can send a message to the people who run the country. The message isn't always received, but at least we do have that right- not like in Zimbabwe where they seem to have the right to vote only for one person!
ReplyDeleteI used to work for a politician in Canada, Walter McLean. He was just an amazing man, he was a conservative, and had tremendous compassion for his constituents. He had us volunteers helping people all over the place, whether it was an old lady that couldn't figure out her income tax or a mentally challenged kid that needed a ride to the grocery store. It was my first close contact with a politician and it gave me the idea that politicians were pretty cool guys. He certainly was a wonderful example for others to see.Then I met some of the city council here in the US and I was shocked. They were corrupt, dishonest and selfish. That kind of politican is unfortunately way too common.The difference??? Walter was a Christian, actually a minister of the Presbyterian church.Maybe you should run for office!!
ReplyDeleteOh Lois! We have local council election in September, and I've been wondering for several months if I should stand. I think you might be the confirmation I need :)
ReplyDeleteWell, I believe our Mr. McLean made a huge difference. I don't know what he did in Ottawa, I wasn't that interested in politics at the time, but his constituents were extremely well served in ways that really fell outside of what government usually did. He used a lot of volunteers, so it didn't cost money to provide these services. I had a lady call one day who was blind and needed someone to look up a phone number for her.
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