Meddling in an armed border patrol guard's business...isn't advised

Ok so it's taken for granted that racism and ignorance is rife in the southern US states. However, it appears this might be the case a little closer to the coasts - supposedly the home of the less-fanatical.

The 'dirty south/middle America' rule didn't appear to be the case today when my train from Montreal was held at the border by police for two and a half hours. The only reason for the delay was the fact one passenger happened to be born in Kosovo. I'm not sure if the officer was aware of the troubles President Clinton went through to help liberate that tiny Balkan enclave. But all that hard work and diplomacy, not to mention the blood shed, will now be forgotten by this man who was treated with as much contempt you would expect be saved for an Al-Quaida operative - presumably because his home town was once featured daily on Fox News. This of course makes somewhere part of the axis of evil, according to the thinking of these KKK lowlives.

I've never seen a team of armed men, and one woman, sweat so much over a feeble 70-year-old man. There was no chance he was going anywhere but they still kept a pistol and a dog on him at all times in case he sneezed anthrax of something.

I made the huge error (debatable) of wading into the situation by asking - politely, may I add - what their worries were and why they felt so intimidated by the pensioner to give him the Guantanamo treatment. He was clearly under a lot of stress, while the rest of the passengers glared at him. Some even tutting under their breath.

I was told, in no uncertain terms, to sit down and shut up or I'd join him. Nice intelligent answer there guys.

Anyway, after hours of making frantic calls to their colleagues at the Federal Bureau and Interpol, it was confirmed he wasn't the second coming of Slobodan Milojevic, nor some other war criminal, and we were off.

The old guy joined me to say thanks for the solidarity. I kind of wished he hadn't as I then had no space to put my legs. But he did have some interesting tales to tell me about massacreing Serbs during the troubles.