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Georgia Apple Store Refuses To Sell iPad To Iranian-American Teen
pdclarry writes "An Iranian-American teenager was told by an Apple store employee that they could not sell her an iPad because it would violate U.S. trade restrictions. She returned to the store with a camera crew from a local TV station and was again turned down. Apparently an Apple employee heard her speaking Farsi. As he was also of Iranian extraction he recognized the language and used this as a basis for refusal."
Sounds like the sales person is a bit confused about the regulations. I'm surprised they didn't call over a manager especially when a film crew showed up, or maybe they did after reading the article. It looks like all involved are a bit confused about the regulations.
There was absolutely nothing preventing them from selling the Ipad to the teen since they were in America and said nothing (according to them) about sending it overseas. Now, it would be illegal for the teen to send the Ipad back to Iran, but that would be the responsibility of the teen and not the Apple store. It sounds like the manager and employees have carried the restrictions on shipping certain products to countries like Iran a bit too far as it isn't meant to prevent them from selling those products to people from Iran living in this country.
1. This is old 2. This has nothing to do with race, ethnicity, or 9/11 3. This has nothing to do with Apple 4. This has to do with the US embargo on Iran, which includes selling goods to anyone in the US that could take them back to Iran. This is law. This is not Apple acting out of nowhere. It's in their legal terms that states they follow US embargo laws. If you don't like them, tell your congressman to change US embargo law or to lift the embargo against Iran. Good luck with that.
Because we've made the Iranians the "Evil Brown People Du Jour" and therefore if you speak or even understand Farsi, own a Persian rug, or say "IRAN the half marathon in under and hour..." everyone and his third cousin is supposed to shun you as a potential terrorist... Booga, booga!!!!
Don't get me wrong, I appreciated the strict limitations of selling technology goods to foreign nationals on the "No Sale" list. This is no excuse for picking people out of a crowd and treating them like criminals, simply because they know a "forbidden" language. I just read a story by a well known journalist who just finished traveling throughout the middle east, and his take on Iran was fascinating. The people there hate their government and the young people are on the verge of major social unrest. They have radios, and satellite TV, and video games. The kids play friggin video games where they get to be American soldiers attacking their own army. Tell me that isn't a sign that Iran isn't going to transform sooner or later. The Ayatollah Khomeini set the age of marriage for girls at 8 years old... you heard me right, four plus friggin four, two less then ten! The logic was that only by marrying a girl off before puberty could you be certain to prevent her from having sex before marriage. Of course this also meant the girl would never get any kind of education, and that she would certainly know her place as a SLAVE to her husband before she reached the age of 10 and for the rest of her life. You think the educated and professional women of Iran who lead self determined lives during the Shah, took that declaration with a grin? They are tired of partying like its 1399. We don't have to worry about Iran, Iran will fix itself, the religious zealotry of the last 30 years has proven to be devastating to the people of Iran, and the only thing that would cause it to persist is if we stuck our big fat noses into their business and caused the general population to line up behind their mullahs. Right now everyone in Iran under 30 wants to be an American. In 10 years, Iran could be our biggest ally in the MiddleEast, seeing as Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey are in the midst of serious religious ugliness and antiAmerican sentiment in those countries is running high.
Give the girl her iPad for the love-o-Jebus, if she orders a top of the line Cray, okay, then by all means surveil her ass. Please believe me when I say, nobody is cobbling atomic bombs (or even IEDs) together out of iPads... and if they want that kind of technology, you think the Chinese and Russians wouldn't sell it to them in half a femtosecond? Its all political posturing and international diplomatic hoohah, and the rest of the world knows it.
If you're going to be a hard-ass about selling the girl an iPad, tell her why and explain to her to "Please have your Father come in with proof of your citizenship." Explain, "Its because we're trying to prevent another 9/11 and even though its a pain in the ass for everyone including the nice clerk who really wants to sell you an iPad, we all make small sacrifice during times of war for National Security." Polite, compassionate and with a solution that let's everyone know where they stand.
Instead we get a tempest in a teapot and journalists who'll blow it up into a civil rights fiasco. Jeez I hate slow news days.
It's irrelevant in any case because the employee did not hear her say it. And that's the only case either. Here's another:
"A second Iranian American interviewed in the report also said he was barred from purchasing something at an Apple store in the Atlanta area when he was helping an Iranian student buy an iPhone. Zack Jafarzadeh said he and the friend were speaking Farsi when the sales rep denied their purchase. "We never talked about him going back to Iran or anything like that," Jafarzadeh said, according to the report."
You must not be familiar with the recent expansion of the drug war to crack down on doctors who deal with prescription pain medication. Here's the start of a very nice series by Radley Balko at the Huffington Post:
"Law enforcement agencies send undercover agents and informants into doctors' offices to lure suspected physicians into writing bad prescriptions. Doctors have then been conditioned to be suspicious of patients, to see them as potential addicts or drug dealers... The high-profile prosecution of Virginia pain specialist William Hurwitz is a good example. Federal investigators found that of Hurwitz's hundreds of patients, 15 had resold the the drugs he prescribed to them. There was no evidence that Hurwitz was complicit in or knew about the sales. At worst, he was duped by a small percentage of his patients. But instead of working with Hurwitz to catch the dealers posing as patients, investigators cut bargains with the dealers to implicate Hurwitz. Hurwitz was eventually convicted on 15 counts of distributing narcotics. In 2007, U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema sentenced Hurwitz to 57 months in prison, far less than what prosecutors were asking. Brinkema acknowledged that Hurwitz was a well-intentioned doctor who had made some mistakes, not the drug pusher prosecutors portrayed him to be."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/radley-balko/prescription-painkillers_b_1240722.html
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes