terrorist "weakest link"
In the game show The Weakest Link competitors get voted off, usually not on whether they are weak but on whether the other contestents consider them to be a threat. It's mildly amusing as a TV game show but not funny at all when carried out on an airline.
Recently a flight from Malaga to Manchester was delayed because two passengers were considered to be suspicious by other passengers (either 6 or 7 passengers refused to get on the plane because of this). The passengers were thought to be speaking Arabic (as if there was anyone on the plane who would recognise Arabic when they heard it) and because they were wearing coats and looking at their watches. The two men in question had been searched twice and found to be clean, but a bunch of idiots on a plane thought they knew better and demanded that the passengers in question be removed.
Lessons to be learned from this for travelling to/from coalition of the willing countries:
- Avoid the urge to check your watch when your flight is being delayed unless you are white. Non-white people who do what white people do in this situation are considered to be terrorists.
- When travelling to a cold place (such as Manchester) you want to have a coat to wear when getting off the plane. The airline staff won't allow you enough hand-luggage space to store a coat so you will want to wear it when getting on the plane. This is fine if you are white, but if not white just deal with the fact that you will shiver when disembarking.
- Learn to speak English for your travels. If you speak another language you will be considered to be a terrorist.
- Whatever country you visit, stick to major cities as much as possible. Smaller cities have more racists and nationalistically bigoted people, there probably wouldn't have been a problem on a flight to London.
Also just avoid the coalition of the willing countries in your travels as much as possible. There are much less problems in this regard when the government doesn't depend on terrorism hysteria to justify going to war on the basis of lies.
3 comments:
I wish the airplane company would have just treated the people that walked out just lie they never showed up for the flight - unload the baggage and fly away without the walk-outies. Such biggotism should not be tolerated.
I agree that the bigoted passengers should have been unloaded along with their baggage (and possibly added to the list of people not accepted as passengers of that airline).
I wonder what would happen if non-white passengers walked out because of a white person acting suspiciously?
You were doing so well until you got to the bit about "smaller cities"; whilst you may have a point generally, you're way off with this example. Manchester is indeed much smaller than London but is still a vibrant and ethnically diverse place, and home to the famous curry mile.
Having lived in the Manchester area for most of my life and being married to a non-white woman, I can honestly say that the level of bigotry we've encountered here has been pretty insignificant.
As for the racists causing the problem, I agree with the other commenters that they should have been allowed to get off the plane with their baggage and treated as no-shows.
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