The U.S. Government Does Not Want Americans To Travel Abroad

Digby Jones
Activist Post

No other government on the face of this Earth wants to make its citizens more ill-at-ease, deathly afraid, or made to feel so guilty for stepping outside of it’s national boundaries as the United States of America. Rather than encouraging Americans to embrace overseas travel as one of the most educational, enjoyable, and emotionally and spiritually satisfying endeavors that people can undertake in the course of our painfully short lives, U.S. government departments and institutions are notorious for wanting to make even just the IDEA of pursuing international travel as unpleasant and unsettling as they can possibly muster.

You must look no further than the U.S. State Department’s “Global Travel Alert” issued this past Friday (August 2nd 2013) to grasp the sheer ridiculousness and paranoia of the U.S. governments stance on it’s citizens travelling abroad. The alert, which is based upon the “most specific, credible threat information in years” (but of course lacking any actual date or timing), warned of the potential for terrorist attacks, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, to be carried out by operatives of Al Qaeda and their associates.

It came less than a day after the department announced that it was closing U.S. diplomatic missions in the Middle East, North Africa and elsewhere through the weekend because of a (of course) ‘unspecified’ terrorism threat. The global travel alert if effective through the end of August.

So going by the State Department’s advice and logic on this “global” travel alert, we’re all supposed to reconsider our travel plans to ANYWHERE outside the United States? Or at least for the remainder of August? Even if I just want to camp out at Uluru in the middle of Australia, the Islamic bad guys are going to be out for my blood? Yep, the whole concept of a United States issued “global travel alert” is just….that….LAME.

Let’s just flip the coin here for a moment. Have you noticed there is no such thing as a “domestic travel alert” issued by the United States Department of State? I mean if you really think about it there SHOULD be. The United States literally has all of the most dangerous cities in the world under the umbrella of the term “First World”. Comparing U.S. cities like Camden, New Orleans, Detroit, Memphis, or South Side Chicago with the likes of European cities such as Vienna, Zurich, Helsinki, Munich, or Copenhagen is somewhat akin to contrasting Hell with Heaven, at least certainly from a safety standpoint.

Yet the host countries of those cities don’t issue “global travel alerts” specifically pointing out the United States as an area of greater safety concern (which it plainly is). They realize that the world is not perfect, and some safety risks which can theoretically happen anywhere are not going to be allowed to ruin their holiday plans.

You wanna talk about forces at work which are trying to ruin your holiday plans? Just take a look at the U.S. State Department’s website, particularly if you direct yourself to the “threats to safety and security” section under ‘country specific information’. A lot of the stuff you will read in this area of the website is absolutely horrifying. Seriously, just what sort of coffin-sized box do they want Americans to live in? Here are some direct quotations from a number of countries we would otherwise consider among the safest places in the world to visit.


full story here:
LINK HERE: http://www.activistpost.com/2013/08/the-united-states-government-does-not.html