"Uh, er.... No it's not illegal. It's just that your timing was wrong."
"You mean that if I had taken a photo during the afternoon, I wouldn't have been arrested?"
"Well, no, but...."
"So it IS legal to take photos of the consulate...."
"Ma,am, there's been a misunderstanding. We are sorry to have troubled you. You are free to go."
Whew. Now I won't have to send an e-mail to my kids saying, "Dear Joe and Ashley: Your poor sweet mommy is in jail in China...." and I won't have to go off on the run and be pursued by Interpol or nothing. Whew.
PS: Is there a moral to this story? Yes. But perhaps you are thinking the obvious -- "Don't take photos of American embassies, Jane." No, that's not it. There is a deeper moral than that. It's time for us to reconsider our basic American embassy policies themselves.
American embassies and consulates used to be guarded by the US military. We don't do that no more -- apparently because foreign national rent-a-soldiers are cheaper to hire, are less of a target, can relate to locals in their own language and can free up more American soldiers to try and make an omelet out of Bush and Cheney's broken eggs in Iraq.
Some of the more obvious disadvantages of hiring locally-based rent-a-soldiers are, first, that although our embassies are supposed to represent America abroad, you can hardly tell them apart on the outside from the other embassies guarded by similar locally-based rent-a-soldiers unless you are familiar with our blast-wall architectural style and can pick out the American flag.
Second, America's consistent robber-baron/globalization approach to other countries in the last 150-odd years appears to have created such an "us versus them" mentality abroad that our embassies are definitely not popular hangouts for the locals and/or beacons of freedom and hope. Rather, all too often they are seen by the locals as symbols of globalization's economic boot on their necks.
And, third, whenever us American citizens come to our embassies for aid, we immediately run into a language barrier between us and the foreign-based guards. For instance, I couldn't understand what the rent-a-soldiers were asking me today and so I didn't respond. What if they had seen me allegedly ignoring their commands and then shot me? It would have been a misunderstanding but I still would have been dead. Without language skills, knowledge of cultural cues and adequate training, these rent-a-soldiers, while sincerely trying to perform their job of guarding our consulates and embassies to the best of their ability, still tend to treat even US citizens like terrorists.
But then American citizens are also treated like terrorists at home as well. You think not? Then you obviously haven't read the Patriot Act.
PPS: I'm really tired of hearing Americans whine about what a daunting power China has become. And who made them so powerful? The American consumer and American corporations. Shenyang is one of the industrial capitals of China, with manufacturing hubs in abundance. But do we have even one steel mill located in America? Probably not.
I'm an American patriot -- and what "globalization" has done to my country makes me sick. We need to stop giving corporations the same rights as citizens, teach our children industrial skills, buy locally and stop allowing the globalization mafia to use our fine military men and women as enforcers to go out and break third-world countries' kneecaps for their own fun and profit -- at the expense of ours.
"Gee Jane, no wonder you got arrested."
"You mean that if I had taken a photo during the afternoon, I wouldn't have been arrested?"
"Well, no, but...."
"So it IS legal to take photos of the consulate...."
"Ma,am, there's been a misunderstanding. We are sorry to have troubled you. You are free to go."
Whew. Now I won't have to send an e-mail to my kids saying, "Dear Joe and Ashley: Your poor sweet mommy is in jail in China...." and I won't have to go off on the run and be pursued by Interpol or nothing. Whew.
PS: Is there a moral to this story? Yes. But perhaps you are thinking the obvious -- "Don't take photos of American embassies, Jane." No, that's not it. There is a deeper moral than that. It's time for us to reconsider our basic American embassy policies themselves.
American embassies and consulates used to be guarded by the US military. We don't do that no more -- apparently because foreign national rent-a-soldiers are cheaper to hire, are less of a target, can relate to locals in their own language and can free up more American soldiers to try and make an omelet out of Bush and Cheney's broken eggs in Iraq.
Some of the more obvious disadvantages of hiring locally-based rent-a-soldiers are, first, that although our embassies are supposed to represent America abroad, you can hardly tell them apart on the outside from the other embassies guarded by similar locally-based rent-a-soldiers unless you are familiar with our blast-wall architectural style and can pick out the American flag.
Second, America's consistent robber-baron/globalization approach to other countries in the last 150-odd years appears to have created such an "us versus them" mentality abroad that our embassies are definitely not popular hangouts for the locals and/or beacons of freedom and hope. Rather, all too often they are seen by the locals as symbols of globalization's economic boot on their necks.
And, third, whenever us American citizens come to our embassies for aid, we immediately run into a language barrier between us and the foreign-based guards. For instance, I couldn't understand what the rent-a-soldiers were asking me today and so I didn't respond. What if they had seen me allegedly ignoring their commands and then shot me? It would have been a misunderstanding but I still would have been dead. Without language skills, knowledge of cultural cues and adequate training, these rent-a-soldiers, while sincerely trying to perform their job of guarding our consulates and embassies to the best of their ability, still tend to treat even US citizens like terrorists.
But then American citizens are also treated like terrorists at home as well. You think not? Then you obviously haven't read the Patriot Act.
PPS: I'm really tired of hearing Americans whine about what a daunting power China has become. And who made them so powerful? The American consumer and American corporations. Shenyang is one of the industrial capitals of China, with manufacturing hubs in abundance. But do we have even one steel mill located in America? Probably not.
I'm an American patriot -- and what "globalization" has done to my country makes me sick. We need to stop giving corporations the same rights as citizens, teach our children industrial skills, buy locally and stop allowing the globalization mafia to use our fine military men and women as enforcers to go out and break third-world countries' kneecaps for their own fun and profit -- at the expense of ours.
"Gee Jane, no wonder you got arrested."
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
