Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Kicked off a plane

It was only a matter of time -- and frankly, I'm surprised it took this long. Brown-skinned Asians have been evicted from commercial airline flights in Britain after passengers refused to fly with them.

Needless to say, the fact that the men had been checked repeatedly by security was no match for the hysteria, fear and terror spread by the Blair government. ["Terrorist": one who acts in such a way as to spread terror.]

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good!
I am glad they were taken off the plane.

Notice that the *only* people promoting Race are the newspaper reporters. The passengers mention things like heavy jackets and checking watches. The passengers did not mention race. The only people who mentioned race are the authors of this article. I believe CHRISTOPHER LEAKE and ANDREW CHAPMAN are racists. They are the people who immediately knee-jerk to bring up race.

In addition, for those who are guffawing in their mind how people who were \'asians\' might be thought to be bombers and thinking that \'oh, how stupid, we all know they are arabs.\" Then YOU are racists. If you think *only* arabs could be bombers then YOU are prejudging. In addition to that, let\'s review what continent Bali Indonesia is on. Are Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur bombing) and Indonesia (Bali bombing) in the Arab gulf? No. So asians could definitely be bombers, and I applaud the passengers of that plane for noticing suspicious \'behavior\' and inappropriate garments.

And I accuse the reporters CHRISTOPHER LEAKE and ANDREW CHAPMAN of being the racists involved by being so quick to bring up race in the issue when the passengers (who were THERE, you were not) never mentioned anything of the sort. These reporters and this newspaper DID.

In addition, the only action the passengers took was to \'leave\'. That is their prerogative. To contact authorities and report something suspicious, and to exercise the right to exit the plane are fundamental and laudable. People have a perfect right to do so.

Anyone who assumes that asians could Not be bombers, because bombers must be Arab, or anyone who assumes asians cannot speak arabic, which some can, is the one who has pre-supposed racial prejudice inside them.

Dr. John Suzuki

Vlad the Impala said...

Dr. Suzuki,

thank you for your thoughtful comments, however I should point out that I'm very skeptical that reports that they were "wearing heavy jackets despite the heat" and "checking their watches" is meaningful, and not just rationalisation after the event.

"Checking their watches" just means they were impatient for the plane to get away. I've sometimes checked my watch four times in a minute. It doesn't mean I'm planning to blow planes up. And "heavy jackets"? Who decides what amount of clothes are suspicious? I've seen people walking around in jackets and warm clothing in the middle of summer, because they've just arrived in the country from somewhere like Pakistan or Israel and find our "heat" rather chilly compared to what they're used to.

That, of course, assumes that there even were "heavy jackets" in the first place. I remember early news reports from when Jean Charles de Menezes was held down and shot repeatedly by British police. Early reports had it that he had run away from police officers, but in fact he walked slowly down the stairs ; he was said to have been wearing "a heavy jacket with wires poking out" when in fact it was a lightweight summer jacket, and there were no wires at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Charles_de_Menezes

I fully expect that there were no heavy jackets, but even if they were wearing fur overcoats and sweltering, they had already been checked by security and were provably not carrying bombs or weapons. That demonstrates that the other passengers' fears were driven, not by any real risk, but by the scare-mongering of the Blair and Bush government.