Where do they find them

[pecunium]

I got a tip today. It was a pointer to a story my dad told me about, one which I chalked up to the usual sorts of unbelievable movie-plot paranoia. Nonsense about Iranians (ooh... bad: they want The Bomb, and they are scary muslims and there's the whole embassy thing) going to Venezuela (land of Hugo Chavez; a guy who refused to stay kicked out of office when we backed a coup, who, moreover, had the guts to speak his mind about Bush fils), and learning Spanish so they can sneak into the US and do bad things.

Big whoop. I mean really, the things I hear people saying... this is bizarro-land.

But, as I said, I got a tip that I might want to comment on it, so I read the article.

All of a sudden I was scared. My father, you see, hadn't told me whom the pearl-clutching, scared of her own shadow person was (heck, he didn't even tell me it was a woman; just a person who was less than completely rational).

Representative Sue Myrick (R-NC). That would be the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. The presumptive head of that committee should the Republicans regain control of the House in November.

Who thinks it would take a border agent who can tell the difference between Venezuelan spanish, and "Mexian" spanish, to spot the Iranian infiltrator. Forget that this shows a really massive failure to understand just how different the two sound (I don't speak spanish, but understands some. I have french and russian, on top of my english; Argentine spanish sounds much more french to me than Mexican spanish does, I can't imagine Venezuelan isn't also fairly different).

Never mind that in six months, I don't see most people being able to learn enough of any foreign language to take in anyone else who has a passing familiarity with the language.

What has she to support this theory... tattoos.

It seems there are inmates with farsi tattoos, in the California prison system. I don't know how she knows this, I presume someone who is fluent has told her; because it's tricky for me to spot the difference between arabic and farsi; I am pretty good at spotting farsi (call it 75 percent) if I have a large block of text (call it 300 words). I can't tell you how I figure it out, but when I was working to ID the language of web pages, I could spot farsi pretty well; with that length of text, but from a tattoo... it need an expert.

From that she adduces they are, hell I don't know what she adduces, the comments she made in the clip are in something which looks like english, but doesn't seem to make sense the way english ought.

It can't be that in a state with 30 million people, and a very large Iranian community, that some of them might be criminals, and some of those criminals might have tattoos; in farsi, nope. It has to be the big bad terrorists, getting help from the big bad Venezuelans, so they can exploit the porosity of the border with Mexico and blow us up.

Really, I can't even begin to make this sort of thing up; who would believe it?

Comments

[charisstoma.livejournal.com]

You are either up really really late like me or very very early like a robin?
I think there are different dialects between Argentina and Venezuela.
I'm tired so I apologize if I'm not too coherent. Did this article say that Venezuela was training Iranis to speak Spanish but they are speaking it with an Argentine accent? Is that what I understand Representative Myrick as saying?
If so then we should be hiring Mexican nationals to listen at the check points because our students from Mexico can tell the difference between the dialects of the other Spanish speakers' countries.
I need to read this again after I've slept.

[niamh-sage.livejournal.com]

If an associate of mine started spouting this sort of nonsense and apparently taking it seriously, I'd be rather concerned for their wellbeing. That is an extremely bizarre extrapolation she's making.

[antiquated-tory.livejournal.com]

A guy I went to elementary school with found me on Facebook. Democrat, Christian, bit of a hippie, nice guy. But he's completely in favor of the Arizona law, and most of his FB friends are, too. And he sees no contradiction between this and the mistrust of the government he expresses in most of his other political posts. It's very depressing.

[ruthless1.livejournal.com]

I am reposting to facebook. This is so incredibly stupid - I can hardly stand it!

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I fixed that, so it says what I meant it to day... up really late.

[sylphslider.livejournal.com]

It seems there are inmates with farsi tattoos, in the California prison system.

This made me laugh, because it shows (again) just how out of touch the GOP is with youth culture in general.

I know lots of people who tattoo lots of things on their bodies in all sorts of scripts. Japanese is passé now, but I hear Sanskrit is hot.

Just because someone has a tattoo on their body in Farsi doesn't make them Iranian.

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

“Liberals have always loved conspiracy theories because raising the specter of foul play and dirty tricks is an easy and convenient justification for ignoring their own political and policy failures.”
-- Oliver North
This is the guy who was running a global narco-terrorism ring out of the basement of the White House.

It's really hard to know how paranoid to be.

[luna-torquill.livejournal.com]

"No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up." --Lily Tomlin

I just figured I should match a quote with a quote. ;)

[julia-here.livejournal.com]

I got side tracked by your icon and upon checking your info came to the conclusion that it must be a terrible oversight that you are not already on my flist, so hey ho, I'm friending you.

Julia, we already share a good chunk of our flists

[julia-here.livejournal.com]

Everything else aside, the idea that Americans who speak Farsi are likely to be supporters of the current Iranian regime exposes an ignorance of real politik that has to be willful: nobody could be that wrong by accident.

Julia, not to mention that people who understand Venezualan Spanish mostly work as AL pitching coaches.

[chaotic-nipple.livejournal.com]

What I wonder is, how many prison guards can tell the difference between a tattoo in Farsi, and one in Arabic? Seeing as they're written in the same script and all.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

but but but... I mean... BROWN--- FOREIGN----- MUSLIM.

And they went to a SOCIALIST COUNTRY...

Q E D

At least to some people.

[julia-here.livejournal.com]

Thinking in labels makes everything so very crystal clear; utterly wrong, you know, but so clear, so simple...

[ruthless1.livejournal.com]

Julia - we kind of go way back - even maybe to Buffy days? But friend away - although I do not really post.

[songblaze.livejournal.com]

...I really need to learn to read my middle name in Sanskrit, because it's something I actually expect people might get tattooed on their bodies. 'Beloved of Kali'

All the funnier because A) it seems to be entirely too apt, if you look at the level of chaos that happens with my health and thus my life and B) my parents had no idea what it meant, they just liked the sound.

[eagle]

Yes, this. One of the Spanish-speaking staff at the place where I normally eat lunch is obviously Chinese, since he's got Chinese script tattooed behind his ear.

Sigh.

When I was a college student maintaining the local TeX installation, I fell in love with Devanagari script. Tattoos are all about designs that look awesome, and for those of us who grew up with Latin script and therefore are overly familiar with it, it takes a lot of work to make it look anywhere near as awesome as Devanagari or Farsi or Arabic or Chinese. They're also all about being personal, and using non-local languages has been a simple way to do secret writing since, oh, the beginning of language.

[qp4.livejournal.com]

I don't rule out a Persian terrorist entering through Mexico, though it seems like it would be a lot easier to just use an airport. But catching one at the border in the way you're talking about it roughly as likely as me just catching Osama bin Laden on the patrol I'm going on this afternoon. Actually, I have a better probability, I think, at least I'm in the general area.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I don't rule out the idea of a terrorist coming in from anyplace, but the sneaking across the border hiding as a Mexican... straight out the movies, like ejection seats in C-130s, and automatic weapons that shoot blanks and live rounds, interchangeably.

They will speak English and fly in from Europe, maybe through Canada.

[billstewart.livejournal.com]

Even if you fix it, it's still not going to make sense, because you'll just be more accurately reporting stuff said by somebody who's not particularly rational, speaking to an audience who are more interested in scariness than rationality... Sigh.

It's even worse than it appears...

[billstewart.livejournal.com]

The Congresscritter she's talking to is in Los Angeles. A huge number of Iranians moved their after the Ayatollah's revolution against the Shah back in 1979, and some of them and some of their kids are presumably criminals, so Persians in Californian prisons with tattoos reminding them of the Old Country are no surprise at all. And even if they didn't learn Spanish simply from being in Los Angeles, or going to school there, a lot of them started restaurants like every other immigrant group does, and typically that means learning some Spanish because you'll have Mexican waiters and kitchen staff even if the cooks are your family members or other immigrants from your country.

And it's not like La Migra speak enough Spanish to be able to tell a Mexican from a Puerto Rican (like that guy in Chicago the other week who ICE kept in jail for a couple of days because they didn't believe his papers weren't forged), much less expecting the average passport-stamper at the airport to be able to tell where some traveler learned Spanish.

[billstewart.livejournal.com]

Back in the 80s I had an Indian coworker who used to go to Canada a lot to go skiing, and he was always hassled at the border. I forget if he was a US citizen or only had a green card, but he had medium brown skin and a handlebar mustache, and they kept treating him like he was a Mexican trying to sneak in the hard way.