MemeMachineGo!

Since sending this story to Boing Boing , about the INS arbitrarily deporting a Canadian citizen making a flight transfer in the U.S., I‘ve been meaning to comment on it here, too. But Danny O’Brien already did the heavy lifting (via Cogito, Ergo Sumana .)

The US detained Maher Arar, a Canadian telecoms engineer who had a connecting flight from New York after a family holiday in Tunis. They deported him to Syria. That was in September of last year. They got around to telling his government in mid-October. Eventually Maher’s family tracked him down to a Syrian jail. He’s still there, being held without charge. It seems that the US was a bit suspicious because the Mounties interviewed him once about the Syrian community in Ottawa. Perfectly understandably, the Americans accused him of being a member of Al-Qaeda — then sent him straight to a country on their own Axis of Evil shortlist.

When I heard about Canada’s travel advisory to the U.S. for citizens of Middle Eastern origin I’d vaguely hoped it was an overreaction to the national climate. I mean, you know how those Canadians are always going off half-cocked. And that’s been shown to be the wishful thinking it was — the advisory came after the Arar incident.