Student arrested for reading Arabic flashcards on plane 12, February 2010
Posted by thegulfblog.com in American ME Relations.Tags: Arrested for reading arabic, Terrorism, US homeland security
trackback
US authorities have arrested a student at Philadelphia International Airport for reading his Arabic flashcards on a plane. He was arrested and ‘aggressively’ questioned for two hours without being informed of his rights by FBI and police officers. One can but marvel at the idiocy and bare stupidity of such people. If I were an American I’d be terrified at the caliber and intelligence of the authorities protecting me.
The Gulf blog 
Honestly, I expect such nonsense from the TSA. The caliber of your average TSA employee leaves much to be desired. But ‘federal agents’? I expect better. If only these idiotic Fibbies had the audacity to attempt to learn some Arabi themselves, the country would be much better off. This would allow them to spend their time a little more productively…
That is scary news because I too have used the long flights to/from the US to get some quality Arabic studying time done, once my laptop battery winds down and there are still 5-6 hours to go. I will have to reassess when I go to San Francisco later this month; also my choice of reading material which would have been a book about Saudi Arabia.
Maybe I should get a copy of Sports Illustrated and one of Playboy instead.
That’s clearly the answer: Playboy it is.
I (rather stupidly) tried to cross from Hong Kong into China with a book called ‘The Coming Collapse of China’. The border guards who checked everything were none too pleased. They proceeded to write my details down in some ledger or other which made me worry no end when I returned to China a few years later and went through Chinese passport control 50 miles inside China in Kashgar after crossing overland from Kyrgyzstan…
The student acknowledged that a few of the vocabulary words, including “bomb” and “terrorism,” may have alarmed authorities.
Well, Duh!