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Two Men Chucked Off a Plane for Being Asian, Speaking Arabic and wearing Jackets

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  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    migpilot wrote:
    Of course. But then, there are rational fears and then the irrational fears. A thinking process can override an irrational fear, which is what we as human beings, the most complex beings in the known universe, can do. Sadly some people get overriden with the irrational fear and are too weak to resist it.

    If there was anyone sensible on that plane, the whole thing needn't have happened.

    I am sorry, maybe I have too much faith in the human being.
    What's rational to one, isn't to the other.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    VinylVicky wrote:
    What's rational to one, isn't to the other.

    Quote possibly. :)
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    If someone on a plane starts to talk about only having thirty minutes to live, only a few days after a major air scare I personally think its quite rational to be worried.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    NQA wrote:
    If someone on a plane starts to talk about only having thirty minutes to live, only a few days after a major air scare I personally think its quite rational to be worried.

    Agreed.

    What I thought was interesting this morning was that Faris Badawi from the Muslim College was on the radio saying that he thought it was understandable for the passengers to have been worried.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    HIT wrote:
    They weren't wearing summer cloths though. If you was in Malaga, then you wouldn't be wearing heavy clothing like they were, you would be wearing t shirts.


    The two Aisan men said in their intervew they were NOT wearing heavy clothes..

    The last guy the papers said was wearing a heavy padded coat was shot in the head 7 times - and the photos of his dead body show it was a denim jacket.

    And remember where they were about to go to ... a Country not known for it's sunny and realiable weather.

    If anything I'd think people flying to England in shorts and flip flops on an airconditioned plane would be more suspect...




    ....As for some people here saying don't blame people for trying to protect themselves by seperating themselves from people that don't look like they do .. where does it end? It's fine to be scared but when does commonsense come into effect?

    in World War two after the attack on pearl harbour the president of the USA signed a bill that made it perfectly legal to take anyone living in the USA of Japanese origin and lock them up against their will in camps.


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

    http://www.lib.calpoly.edu/spec_coll/internment/letters/poster1.gif

    Approximately 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans, 62 percent of whom were United States citizens, were taken from their homes and put into camps.

    One hundred twenty tousand people of Japanese ancestry were instructed to report in as little as 48 hours, bringing only what they could carry, to one of sixteen “assembly centers,” from which they were to be transported to one of ten internment camps.

    They were kept there for 3 years from 1942 to 1945

    So where does it end?

    And why was there no German Internment Camps? .. Maybe because your average German and American don't really look much different?

    internment-notice.jpg
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    It's quite true why lock up Japanese people for 3 years in world war 2 and not people of German Backgrounds?

    I don't know how you classify the race of the average white American or white German (not a fan of the terms black and white but don't know what other term to use) but they're basically the same to look at, same skins tones, same features, etc It's just the cultures are different, not the race.

    Those two Aisan lads look just like any average 20 something year old students you see on the street in London.

    Im not surprised it said one of their father's hit the roof, a lot of Asian's escaped countries such as Uganda in the 1970's to come to the UK when the then president was overturned in a coup and the new leader threathened their lives if they didn't leave the country.

    http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=29825



    I know several Asian's who came to the UK from Uganda to escape what was happening and to give their kids a better and safer life in a country that was known to be so peaceful and fair to all that even their police did not need to carry guns.

    So I can understand why their parents would be more upset with what happened they they seem to be .. most people (including all races) that were born and grew up in the UK have no idea what life can be like when you're living in an unstable country.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I find it deliciously ironic that a youth-based internet forum where many people regularly complain about the treatment and prejudice towards teenagers, hoodies etc in shops and malls should hear so many voices saying it's 'understandable' that people are suspicious around Arabs/Muslims/Asians on a plane.

    You really couldn't make it up.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Aladdin wrote:
    I find it deliciously ironic that a youth-based internet forum where many people regularly complain about the treatment and prejudice towards teenagers, hoodies etc in shops and malls should hear so many voices saying it's 'understandable' that people are suspicious around Arabs/Muslims/Asians on a plane.

    You really couldn't make it up.
    to be fair, in a situation where a person senses danger, then they sense danger. Simple as. It's human nature.
    Imagine if they had have been bombers?
    No one's saying they are right to be kicked off but at a sensitive time like this, we can understand people being scared of stereotypes in a siutuation like the plane.

    Now I'm buggering off from replying to this thread (famous last words) as it's going round and round. I see both points, I usually can see both sides to the argument (I'm good like that :p ) and I defo do here.
    Enjoy yourselves :)
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Aladdin wrote:
    I find it deliciously ironic that a youth-based internet forum where many people regularly complain about the treatment and prejudice towards teenagers, hoodies etc in shops and malls should hear so many voices saying it's 'understandable' that people are suspicious around Arabs/Muslims/Asians on a plane.

    You really couldn't make it up.
    We're not saying we can't understand why people react so badly to youth, we're saying it's not fair or right to do so. It's completely understandable when the media are currently interested in making all teenagers out to be maniacs. Not fair, not right, understandable.

    It is the same here. Not right, not fair, but understandable, get me?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Mmm... I see what you're saying but personally I don't agree with that. Certain things aren't (or shouldn't be) understandable. Amongst them is ignorance, bigotry and prejudice based on skin colour and language of choice.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    You can't change someone's mind until you understand them. I couldn't teach my neice to read until I understood her limitations, same as I can't teach my nephew to tie his shoes unless I understand his.

    While the difference between child and adult mentality isn't exactly directly applicable here, if you can't understand why someone is nervous when seeing a couple of asian guys allegedly acting dodgy before getting on a plane, following several shocking islamic rooted terrorist attacks and thwarted plots, you can't convince them to be rational and admit there's nothing to be afraid of.

    What is harder to understand, is a reaction, unless you can admit it's probably motivated entirely by greed. Pulling those two men off the plane was probably motivated by the operators desire to keep as many paying customers on board as possible. And while this is placating the masses, it's also entirely unhelpful, as is the government scare-mongering tactics (also motivated by greed). What is needed, is level headed people able to understand the situation, who can then go in and provide the calming yin, to their raging yang.

    A refusal to understand something because it is distastful is more harmful than helpful in my opinion.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Aladdin wrote:
    Mmm... I see what you're saying but personally I don't agree with that. Certain things aren't (or shouldn't be) understandable. Amongst them is ignorance, bigotry and prejudice based on skin colour and language of choice.

    You're clearly obsessed.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Aladdin wrote:
    I find it deliciously ironic that a youth-based internet forum where many people regularly complain about the treatment and prejudice towards teenagers, hoodies etc in shops and malls should hear so many voices saying it's 'understandable' that people are suspicious around Arabs/Muslims/Asians on a plane.

    You really couldn't make it up.

    I'm not really sure what your point is.

    I don't agree with the shopkeeper being prejudiced about young people, but I can understand why he would be distrustful of young people when half his stocks walks out in the pockets of the kids from the local school.

    I don't agree with passengers being prejudiced about Muslim people, but I can understand why people would be nervous and wary about Muslim people in unseasonal clothes acting suspiciously on a plane a matter of days after a supposed major terrorist attack by Muslims.

    I don't believe that these people were basing their prejudicide on the colour of the skin; or, to be more exact, not in the way you mean. They didn't fear the Muslim man as a terrorist because they don't like people with dark skin, they feared the Muslim man as a terrorist because the popular view is of terrorists are Muslim men.

    If all the recent terrorist attacks had been by ginger lesbians with Yorkshire accents, people would be afraid of ginger lesbians with Yorkshire accents. If shoplifters were businessmen in suits, people would be suspicious of businessmen in suits.

    It's prejudiced, but its understandable prejudice, and its not based on racism.

    Be honest, were you not afraid of people with Basque names and accents during the height of ETA activity? Did you not flinch the first time you saw a Pakistani man on public transport with a gigantic rucksack and a big coat?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Perhaps my point is that there wasn't really much reason for bringing up the whole 'understanding' of why those people might have been justified in acting the way they did. I know we all seem to agree it was wrong, but discussing the possibility that such behaviour is understandable appears to suggest otherwise. If most of us appear capable of using common sense and avoid making such rushed and misplaced judgements we should expect the same of others.

    But I fear we're arguing over semantics so I'll concede the point. I guess it is understandable some people are going to react like that, just as some people are quick to brush an entire group on the actions of a few.

    I seldom use public transport so I haven't been in the situation you propose. Perhaps I might have been worried- I don't know. Though at least you could say tube users don't get through the strict security checks air passengers do.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Aladdin wrote:
    Perhaps my point is that there wasn't really much reason for bringing up the whole 'understanding' of why those people might have been justified in acting the way they did. I know we all seem to agree it was wrong, but discussing the possibility that such behaviour is understandable appears to suggest otherwise.


    People are being brainwashed through the media

    There was a TV programme on just 2 days ago called "The Fear of Flying" - they had 40 people from all over the UK scared of flying.

    And the guy in it said managed to help recode their brains to not be afraid of flying and in the end 37 out of 40 people happily got on a plane at the end of the show.

    If you keep showing images in the media of Asian / Arabic men and keep associating them with terrorism then in the back of people's brains it starts to get encoded. Do kids in play school have any such fears? Kids of all different races will happily play with one another it's only as they get older and start seeing TV and newspapers they start to develop such fears.

    Personally I'd feel more scared of a skin head covered in tattoos then two Asian lads as shown in those pics, why? Because the skinhead has chosen to have his head shaved and endure a lot of pain to have those tattoo's put on, so instantly my knowledge tells me that person isn't afraid of a bit of pain and suffering, so I wonder if he's be afraid of also dishing it out.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I have to agree with this bit of Rod Liddle's piece in this weeks Spectator on this incident.
    These multifarious misunderstandings and indignities have been portrayed as the inevitable and forgivable by-product of the ticklish situation in which Britain finds itself; but they are more a case of how the government, and to a lesser extent the police, have put out the wrong message to the general public. The passengers on the flight from Malaga to Manchester acted in the way they did because they felt that the authorities were incapable of dealing with the problem. For example, they may have heard the government minister Hazel Blears insist that the security procedures for boarding an aircraft should be non-discriminatory and that everybody, from the foam-flecked mullah with a six-inch fuse poking out of his Reeboks, to the white Christian granny with her bag of Werthers Originals, should be subjected to exactly the same procedures. Now, it would betoken safety — and also enormous expense and even greater inconvenience — if everybody was thoroughly searched and screened and cross-examined. But of course it doesn’t mean this; in practice it means that everyone gets a bit of a quick ferreting around and maybe has a cigarette lighter or a bottle of Lucozade taken away.

    To everybody else in the living world it seems patently clear that people who look a bit like we would expect Muslim terrorists to look should be subjected to especially close scrutiny. And we do have a clue as to what Muslim suicide terrorists look like, from the police photos of those involved in the 7/7 bombing in London last year. We know this; I suspect the government knows this; and certainly the chavs on that Manchester flight know this. But by its insisting on this ludicrous ‘no discrimination’ clause, the public suspects that the government does not know what it is doing.

    You might expect the police to complain; after all, part of their job is to arrest people or prevent crime being committed. Apprehending people in the street, for example, is a deeply discriminatory business: you go after the people who you consider might have committed, or might be about to commit, an offence. You do not apprehend people who arouse in you no suspicion whatsoever. But sadly the police, under the preposterous Sir Ian Blair, are, if anything, even more committed to a non-discriminatory search procedure than is the government.

    The way to assure the public that its safety is being taken seriously and that its safety supersedes notions of political correctness is to search people who look a bit like terrorists with a degree more attentiveness than those who do not — and to state, publicly, that they will be doing so. It may slightly inconvenience some young Asian men who are standing in line and checking their watches simply because they are worried about the time — but it is preferable, surely, to a) seeing them evicted from the flight because the other passengers, unconvinced by the paradoxical policy of the authorities, have take pre-emptive action or b) seeing them blow up the aircraft five minutes out of Malaga, or Manchester. I wonder if Richard Reid, the almost incalculably stupid would-be shoe bomber, was adequately searched before he boarded the plane upon which passengers — much like those on that flight from Malaga — prevented him murdering hundreds of people? The stark fact remains that not a single terrorist or would-be terrorist has ever been apprehended at an airport security desk. So it is hardly a surprise that the passengers feel they must do the business themselves.

    And yet still, neither the government nor the police wish to admit that any single person is more likely than anyone else to be a terrorist. Both institutions are in a strange state of denial. The would-be bombers are psychopathic anomalies and their collective adherence to Islam is simply a strange coincidence.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    There's anew TV show called Sleepercell just started

    Interesting thing to note inthe first episode was out of the terrorists, they were every race going except Asian.

    There was an Egyptian, a jewish Guy, a black guy and a couple of white guys in the group of terrorists, in fact the jewish guy was incharge.

    fact is you're not going to know who is a terrorist the same way you're not going to know which catholic priest is fiddling with the choir boys.

    If they were suicide bombers they'd have shaved all their body hair off, not gone around with long hair.

    The best way to avoid an incident like this in the future is to give passengers signs that security is tough, more sniffer dogs openly roaming the terminals with the handlers, being seen coming off planes just before the passengers board would be a good start.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Aladdin wrote:
    I seldom use public transport so I haven't been in the situation you propose. Perhaps I might have been worried- I don't know. Though at least you could say tube users don't get through the strict security checks air passengers do.

    I think that would explain quite a bit.

    Blagsta said he flinched the first time, I know I did. It doesn't mean I hate people with dark skin, but it's understandable to be nervous after something like that.

    I think you are missing the difference between understandable and acceptable. It wasn't acceptable what happened, but it is understandable that people would be nervous. Especially as people don't trust security- they missed 9/11, and they missed the shoebomber too.

    Much as I detest Rod Liddle, I think he's hit the nail on the head there.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Looks like the two asian guys are serial fraudsters and the whole thing was a publicity stunt...
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Looks like the two asian guys are serial fraudsters and the whole thing was a publicity stunt...
    Proof?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article1223138.ece


    He's a serial fraudster, they only spent a few hours in Malaga before coming home, they were wearing heavy clothing in the heat, continually checking their watches and speaking in Urdu.

    These guys are a couple of complete arseholes.

    In fact I think this deserves a new thread.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Whoops

    And here is everyone feeling sorry for them. :) lol
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Well, it is only natural that people were feeling sorry for them. Nobody knew at the time they were fraudsters. There have been plenty of incidents of the masses acting like asses so the incident itself wasn't too difficult to believe.

    But, on this occasion the fellow passengers were acting within reason after all.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Kermit wrote:
    Blagsta said he flinched the first time,

    Flinched is putting it a bit strongly tbh.
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