More on the American students in Syria: a Syrian scientist sent me this: "I read with amazement at the feelings of the American student who was made to wait eight hours for his visa. Imaging, he even "made friends with the tea boy." I probably cannot be more humiliating.
Well, Syrians, I understand, wait actually days for their visas to the US. In most cases they have to travel to Jordan and the Lebanon to obtain it. But this is nothing compared to what a United States citizen of a Syrian origin have to endure if he ventured outside the United States... His family, happened not to be of the same extraction, watch worried sick as he or she is detained, searched, and asked pointless and silly questions in multiple interviews up the 'ladder of command' of the security apparatus, each obviously frightened to take the obvious step of letting the bugger go. I wonder whether the unhappy American student expected to be treated differently. There is an element of audacity in expecting an American traveler whose country have just invaded Syria and killed in midday eight civilians, to receive anything but the natural and genetically justifiable wrath - yet he states clearly that he was treated well, and he was even assisted in getting his visa - another character trait of Syrians that annoys me when I see how Syrians and others are treated like animals in the US and European airports - even if they were United States citizens. A true sympathy with of the predicaments of the people of the Middle East, Arabs, Kurds, Tukmans, Assyrians, etc., is usually expressed by understanding their motives, as well as their state of development too, and not expect to be paid special treatment in return for gracious sympathy to this or that cause. That makes the said sympathy so superficial, so temporary and so unwanted. During a long stint in the UN, the only nationality amongst my Senior Scientists I was comfortable to send to a developing country were the Dutch and to a lesser extent, the French. The arrogance of the Anglo-Saxons, in particular, and the almost spoken racism of the Germans, caused me and the Director-General much grief and many lost opportunities to do work in the vast region of underdevelopment. As time passed, it became apparent that the insecurity they expressed through their muffled racism and other antics, turned out to be more related to their professional capacities, as External Assessment after another criticized their work, and recommended changes in their programs. They could not be fired, as others were, because of the US and British influence in the UN and its agencies!!!"