Is anyone can get through...

COAT PLEASE! TAXI!

Raising people's eyebrows, well you're asking for it, aren't you?

Which goes to show that all the aggro that we hear Americans are subjected to before being allowed to board can easily be bypassed.

Be interesting to know if the crew would have reacted in the same way has the gent in question been caucasian.

From the headline, sounded like he was removed from the plane during the trans-Atlantic portion of the flight. That would suck.

So some person who happens to have been born brown is hauled off the flight because a) he's brown & b) being brown means he is therefore lying about the fact that he is an employee.

I am rather glad that I am caucasian because I work in IT so if I was brown I would be a terror hacker, I drive a car and if I was brown I would be a car bomber and I quite often tell the truth but nobody would believe me if I was brown.

This is the worst form of racism in the name of security and the people who did this should be prosecuted as a clear message that judging someone purely on the colour of their skin is totally retarded in a multicultural and multiracial society (even one run by a white ruling class - and I mean the US rather than the UK in this case).

The only way the US will stop terror is to stop behaving like dicks. Have a look at the ideology behind these atrocities and you will find that the western world could have averted things like 11/9 and 7/7 (and all the other terror threats both real and imagined) by not being such a bunch of tossers. America is the bully of the world and they are going to face the repercussions until they start acting less like the bent cop of the world and start respecting everyone elses rights to choose not to be an american style democracy, to choose not to be a christian fundamentalist society, to choose not to be bullied on trade issues by the americans, to choose not to accept a MacDonalds and $* on every street corner and to choose not to have to stifle their own economy in favour of the US economy.

Firstly, in america brown skin == terrorist, that is nothing but fascism.

Secondly...

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little

Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

-- Benjamin Franklin, 1759

A founding father said that, and yet these people believe that they are assured safety by allowing their freedoms to be encroached and to encroach on the freedoms of others.

American hypocrisy at its best.

but then again, there haven't been that many caucasian suicide bombers either...

Yeah he probably would, but pulling out people who look "middle eastern" is fair enough in my book considering the facts when you look at how many recent terrorist attacks have been carried out by "middle eastern" looking individuals.

Don't try playing the racial stereotyping card when the facts are plain!

If we take this story at face value.... the passenger who "raised some eyebrows" by being seen to avoid airport security and then fail to give an appropriate account of himself, managed to travel 3000 miles from LA to New York before being booted off!

Who got fired?

Ya, they diverted the flight. But to where? Some litte podunk airport where if the plane exploded it would do no damage? Or to JFK where if it went up massive loss of life and property damage would happen. What are these people thinking?

And for those of you who are listening ... how many elderly, white grannys are involved in terrorism? How many of the terrorists have been "brown"? It wasn't the fact that this guy was just "brown" but ALSO was doing other things that seemed strange. Pull your heads out of the sand.

Exactly, if brown people stop blowing themselves up on airplanes / buses / whatever, then other brown people won't have to suffer the resulting behaviour of a fearful world.

Same thing happened in the UK in the height of the Northern Ireland troubles, if you heard an Irish accent you'd look twice.

Simple really. Now get down of your "ooh it's so racist" soapboxes and get your head out of your backsides.

"there haven't been that many caucasian suicide bombers either..."

That is a retarded statement, not many suicide bombers, but I seem to remember a rabble of irish gents who were into the old bang bang.

There was a time when you walked the streets as an irishman in england and they thought you were a terrorist, remember the guilford 4? Remember how the government suppressed the witness statements that were corroborated and proved they weren't in the vicinity of the blast, hadn't been in the vicinity of the blast, not to mention the character references that described them as peace loving hippies, erm, I mean pacifists.

The thing that is happening here isn't the obvious racism, its actually fascism, there's a slight difference, but basically it goes like this, to avoid any accusations of prejudice fascists generally pick on one sub section of society as the root of all evil, then ostracise and oppress those that disagree. That way nobody calls them prejudice against say Jews or Blacks or well whoever they chose to oppress and blame.

#define AMERICA 1

int location;

if (Dissent == Terrorism) {

location = AMERICA;

}

Working while being Mexican...

Driving while being Black...

Flying while being Arab...

"So some person who happens to have been born brown is hauled off the flight because a) he's brown & b) being brown means he is therefore lying about the fact that he is an employee."

I bet he had a beard too!

Can't see any mention of company I.D. being present. In such a large company with so many risks, if this person is willing to take the employee route on to a plane and cannot present I.D. on request then I don't blame them for getting him off the plane.

I work for a very large company and if I was found on alternative company location without I.D. then I too would be shown the door!

"I think the good news here, of course, is an alert crew sees something that's anomalous or seems questionable and they take action."

And the questionable anomaly in this case was what ? That someone with a swarthy complexion was a fellow employee ?

And because of this they divert a flight and disrupt the plans of hundreds of passengers ?

All for nothing ?

Sorry, but whats so fucking good about that ?

Oh yeah, and now you've alienated another few hundred people who, feeling that this is the last straw, will be off to sign themselves up to be bomb fodder.

Wankers.

Lee Turner spoke: Then again, there haven't been that many caucasian suicide bombers either....

Really, are you trying to tell me that the Russian flights blown out of the sky by Black Widows in 2004 were figments of everybody's imagination? For the reference an average Chechen has white skin, blue eyes and black hair. As Caucasian as you can get. After all they are from Caucasus.

And I am not going to even mention Beslan, the Moskow Theatre and so on.

Granted, that is happening mostly in Russia so far, but it is only a matter of time until it happens elsewhere.

Unlikely they'd have questioned him if he was caucasian

By Lee Turner

Posted Thursday 12th July 2007 15:35 GMT

but then again, there haven't been that many caucasian suicide bombers either....

May i just say, that's the best response i've seen all day.

"...incident may have been a "misunderstanding", adding"...

....more like over-hyped, over-caffeined racism if you want my opinion.

The US needs to get away from this "if it moves...shoot it" mindset.

It's 9/11, not 11/9, McDonalds, not MacDonalds, and *$, not $*. At least get your crappy examples right.

Perhaps if we all shout 'racism' loud enough it will drown out the sound of the bombs going off, and we can pretend it isn't happening?

If Germans were committing terrorist acts against America, we would pull Germans off the plain too.

"Exactly, if brown people stop blowing themselves up on airplanes / buses / whatever, then other brown people won't have to suffer the resulting behaviour of a fearful world."

The last part of that is the key. Fearful world.

When did the world, and the US in particular, become so cowardly?

Every night now, you have a new item on the news. "Terrorists may be here! Terrorists on the way! Fear! Fear!"

Would the World War II generation have ducked their heads and begged for liberties to be removed because someone *might* be coming? Or did they fight to preserve those liberties, for everyone?

Indeed, the terrorists have already won. Everyone is looking at everyone else as a potential bomber. Everyone is glued to the latest from the DHS. Liberties from the foundations of various countries are being scaled back, and it only took 6 years to undo it all.

Your Benjamin Franklin quote reminded me of another:

"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence."

- Charles Austin Beard, historian

I'd suggest the less clued-up posters that think that only brown people are capable of one-way bombing missions take a look at RAF Bomber Command casualties during WWII. 55% died. If that ain't suicide then I don't know what is. Tilt. Insert another coin and try again.

there haven't been that many suicide bombers of any race in the states....

I have no idea of the statistics, but from the top of my head I can't remember any any incidents being reported of non-caucasians walking into a school and just opening fire to see how many people they can kill. Individually motivated shooting yes but not indiscriminate mass slaughter. And yet I somehow doubt the colour of my skin would cause me to be treated with more suspicion upon entering an educational establishment....

The problem we us (US Citizens) is that we measure reality as only what happens in the US. Not many white car bombers? Check out Spain or Ireland, they've had (or may continue to have) their problems with crazy . I know there have to be a lot of white members of humanity stupid and crazy enough to blow themselves up for their religion/country/online-game/beer-flavor. Fanatism in any form is bad, even fanatism with fear. We have reached the stage that to be safe we have to leash out. Hatred and violence only creates more hatred and violence. Sheesh, i mean, this is the age of the internet, read people, educate yourselves! There is a big world out there that does not conform to our universe view.

"but then again, there haven't been that many caucasian suicide bombers either"

and the PC brigade have indulged themselves with some righteous indignation because there is a hint of non-whites being portrayed in a negative light, despite the fact that the statement is true. What they fail to see is that Bin Laden et al obviously don't operate an equal-ops policy when recruiting and are clearly not targeting young white kids to offer them training and support not to mention their bias against christians, Jews and atheists. Those impotent, pointless self gratifying protests really should be aimed at the Jihadi's, not the Americans who are happy to recruit people of any race or religion to do their murdering and torturing.

Historian = academic. Not a doer. When did Beard put everything on the line?

>Would the World War II generation have ducked their heads and begged for >liberties to be removed because someone *might* be coming? Or did they ?>fight to preserve those liberties, for everyone?

What Liberties are you referring to ?

WWII was fought against Nazi Germany. Whom are we fighting now?

Can we start killing people on the streets of America if we think that they are terrorists? NO, there are laws against that. That was not the case during WWII.

Interesting to note - here and on other boards - the auto-reaction to any brown-skinned man being detained, questioned, placed under suspicion, etc. - even though his brown skin is usually not the sole reason why he was detained, etc.

There's a constituency to whom such actions are automatically racist (or, occasionally, fascist) - even though western societies currently believe they have more reason to be suspicious of brown-skinned men than any other demographic.

What's also interesting is, "racist cryer" or not, the number of posters (on this and other boards) who are so quick to jump on the "it's America so they must be wrong/suck/have their heads up their........". thereby insulting several tens of millions of United States' citizens by stereotyping.

... what does he expect he was Flying Whilst Middle-Eastern.

Of course, this sort of panic overreaction (as it almost certainly was), provides a great way for the bad guys to cause further disruption and cost. All they have to do is make people slightly suspicious, and we'll mess up our own lives.

The real problem is this - the cost of a panic is widely distributed across many people, but it is isn't accounted for. At a guess, perhaps $100,000 (across multiple people and organisations) was essentially wasted by the false positive. Now, translate this into lives that could be saved if the same money were put into healthcare.

Anyone remember Timothy McVeigh? How about the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski?

How quickly America forgets.

"I have no idea of the statistics, but from the top of my head I can't remember any any incidents being reported of non-caucasians walking into a school and just opening fire to see how many people they can kill. "

I believe the Virginia Tech slayings were perpetrated by a person of South Korean decent. ;)

I have two problems with this story. One, that people assume that if he was an airline employee that abused his authority and happened to be any other race, this wouldn't be an issue. When I first heard this story there was no mention of the man's race, just that he was an employee who was on a personal trip and had skipped a security check. They say he was acting suspicious, and wouldn't you be acting suspicious if you abused your authority as an employee and were being questioned about it and could possibly get arrested and or fired? My f'ed up government will use any excuse they can get at this point to divert a plane and you need not be brown for them to use it. Several planes have been diverted by "loud" passengers, etc. The political shockwave caused by a missed terrorist attack would put the nails in the coffin for the Republican party. Social climate in the US is that of chickens running around without heads. In your major metropolitan areas, the majority just ignore the hype and go about their business, but don't believe that a large portion of the population is not scared shitless of terrorism and flying for no f'n reason.

Secondly, why the fuck can airline employees pass through security unchecked/checked to a lesser extent to begin with? Hey terrorists! This is your terrorist service announcement! Please take the appropriate interviews to become a baggage handler, flight attendant, pilot, airline mechanic, fuel truck operator (hell then you don't even need a bomb) because if you're an employee, NO or MINIMAL SECURITY CHECKS!

If the terrorists were smart, they could just continue the threats of attack and not bother attacking anymore. We willl just destroy our society by ourselves. Under the guise of freedom and security, we are accepting more oppression. Does anyone remember the Soviet Union?

"It's 9/11, not 11/9, McDonalds, not MacDonalds, and *$, not $*. At least get your crappy examples right."

Well to be fair, the last time I checked, September 11th as written in the UK would have been 11/9/[year]. Just because the day of the attacks is referred to in the Americanised form, doesn't make the British written version wrong.

The other two points stand though.

Actually over here it's 11/9. Screw you, America.

In the US, at least on census forms, Arab and middle eastern folks are Caucasians--for all the good it does them.

"Actually over here it's 11/9. "

Actually it's 11/9 in just about every country in the world except America. Any computer programmer can tell you what a pain in the arse the US format is, especially when sorting data, etc. and I speak from experience. It's completely illogical.

Still, if Americans living in America want to call it the Great Gorgonzola Festival, let alone 9/11, that's up to them.

"What's also interesting is, "racist cryer" or not, the number of posters (on this and other boards) who are so quick to jump on the "it's America so they must be wrong/suck/have their heads up their........". thereby insulting several tens of millions of United States' citizens by stereotyping."

1) If those several tens of millions of Americans would do something that suggested that they weren't all "wrong/suck/have their heads up their......", then perhaps that wouldn't be such an issue.

2) Sadly, it's not just you dumb yanks, simmilar things have happened on UK run airlines and many of us Brits are sorely ashamed of it, but don't think for a minute that should stop us from ripping the piss out of the USA when it does something stupid. Widespread outrage was expressed at the incidents here as well. This is all as it should be. I think you guys call it 'freedom of speech' or something.

And try not to forget, being American doesn't automatically mean you *don't* suck, or indeed, have your head up your ass. I mean, come on, half of you voted for Bush.

Sounds to me like we're (the US) one step away from Kristallnacht. I am no longer proud to call myself an American.

QUOTE

#define AMERICA 1

int location;

if (Dissent == Terrorism) {

location = AMERICA;

}

UNQUOTE

having recently graduated with a Computer Science degree I can say with absolute certainty that in most compilers you couldnt assign AMERICA to the variable location as im pretty sure "AMERICA" does not classify as an integer. ok im done.

I've been working at various major/minor airlines over the past 15 years. Until 2001 I was always invited to ride the employee bus over to the terminal to catch a flight. Mind you, these buses do NOT bypass security; rather, they stop at the Departures door of the terminal, just like parking shuttles do. Everyone needs to go through security, just like the pax do.

Post 2001, all my airline customers have revoked the convenience of using the company shuttle to get to the airport if you are not a DIRECT employee. And, in some cases, if you are not an ON-DUTY CREW employee. As required by the TSA.

On the other hand, post-911 I've been shuttled out to flight stopped on the taxi way via an air-stair truck, completely bypassing TSA security, exiting the terminal onto the tarmack and then being driven hell-bent around Dulles to get on a flight. I will not mention the airline - they did me a BIG favor to get me on board - but it demonstrates that all the security in the world can't stop these events from happening.

(BTW, the pax on the flight I "slipped" onto thought I was a rock star...no one showed the slightest suspicion of me getting on the plane in the middle of the runway. Or maybe this happens in Washington DC so often no one cares...)

It's in C/C++. The #define tells the compiler to do a text substitution in the preprocessing stage. Don't they teach you kids anything these days?

>Would the World War II generation have ducked their heads and begged for liberties to be removed because someone *might* be coming? Or did they fight to preserve those liberties, for everyone?

Actually we (Americans & Canadians) rounded up all our Japanese and shipped them off to camps and confiscated all they owned. After he governemnt security investigations reported that they were loyal citizens and not sympathetic to imperial Japan.

On the point of half of Americans voting for Bush, well over half of Brits voted for Bliar, or he would not have had such a huge majority and carte blanche to screw this country well and truly. Also, it was strictly speaking, in both cases, half of all people who voted, which is by no means the same thing. In answer to the gent who insinuated that Britain is ashamed of the 2 Arabs being removed from the flight from Spain, as I recall it, I hope he does not count myself and many more to whom I have spoken about this. This, and similar cases, is what happens when heads are removed from sand/arses, and a bucket of reality is thrown over the Western world. As far as World war 2 generation fighting for rights, my father did in the second(Royal Navy) and my grandfather in the first, (Somerset Light Infantry)as did thousands of others. Happily both survived, and both roundly cursed the idiot politicos who allowed both to happen. With the revalations of the Glasgow fiasco enmerging, now is the time to ship out ALL failed asylum seekers, and ban most coming in now. Almost all are economic migrants, which is my nice way of saying they are scrounging bums. And no, i do |NOT feel guilty about that any more than they would feel guilt about targetting myself and my family for being white and Christian.Still, looking on the bright side, I will soon be an ethnic minority and can appeal to the finer mature of my brown brothers of the East!(Note to self: Stop smoking those funny tasting cigarettes!)

Security at LAX is a complete joke. It mainly consists of the security guards shouting at people for no apparent reason. When checking in my luggage, I was told that the bags had to be scanned first, and was shown to the scanner, which was about 10 feet away from the check-in desk. I walked straight over there, and was met by a scowling guard who demanded that I walk 20 yards down to the end of a divider rope, and 20 yards back up the other side, despite the fact that I was the only person in the whole check-in office. How in God's name does that improve security? The X-ray scanners were worse. Several guards just shouting at people - not actually explaining what you need to do, just telling you off for not doing whatever it was they wanted you to do. The whole thing was ripe for a bit of social engineering - just generate a bit more chaos, and you'd be able to slip something nasty past the scanners. And no, that doesn't make me a terrorist just for pointing out how incredibly crap LAX is at security.

of being struck by lightning than being the victim of a terrorist attack, yet I don't hear people screaming blue murder to eliminate lightning. The difference is greater by many orders of magnitude if you compare the chance of being killed by a car with falling victim to a terrorist attack. Stroke, alcohol, tobacco, heart disease, cancer, diabetes. These will kill you. Terrorism doesn't even make a blip on the chart.

I'm personally more frightened of crossing the u.s. border than I am of some suicide bomber or WMD,s from some 3rd world country.

When you hear your politicians warning you of dire threats to your health and well being take a good look.l I swear you can see their lips moving.

Wankers , who cry wolf how sad, but as this is the same airline that has trouble with Swedish citizens of note and high public profile visibility with non generic foreign names , such atrocities inflicted upon passengers will continue unabated !

Being brown in the UK and catching the Tube is grounds for summary execution. Don't even need to be an ay-rab, brazilian brown will do.

WTF? Dissent and Terrorism are undefined which would make your average C compiler barf, AMERICA isn't a problem (well as long as you are white)- good to see the quality of compsci grads nowadays.

"we would pull Germans off the plain too". Yeah get those bloody krauts out of the midwest.

Brown really is the new black.

"Passenger who bypassed airport security was kicked off plane."

What else should have happened to him? It's irrelevant that he was an AA employee, it would have been silly and inconsistent to not kick the guy off.

Racial profiling is a very contentious issue but really unrelated to the events above.

"By Carlos: Being brown in the UK and catching the Tube is grounds for summary execution. Don't even need to be an ay-rab, brazilian brown will do."

Hmm, okay, an illegal immigrant (his visa had lapsed by at least 6 months if I remember rightly) and he ran from the police. Perhaps, if he'd stopped and obeyed the police commands, he might still be alive now.

History shows that most past wars had their roots in religious differences. I'm sorry, but when was the last time you heard of a Baptist , Methodist or Jehovah Witness suicide bomber.

Look at the fighting in the West Bank recently. It was between opposing miltant muslim factions. These are people of the same religion killing each other, so how can we expect them to place any value on the lives of us "infidels".

If the western world were not so reliant on the oil from these arab states, we'd treat the area with the same "couldn't care less" attitude that is applied to all the african conflicts.

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." - Albert Einstein

The author of this article obviously forgot to mention that this dastardly brown person was wearing a belt packed with high explosive around his waist and kept clicking the heels of his shoes together just like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. I know this for a fact because I read it here, just like you have.

"I'm personally more frightened of crossing the u.s. border than I am of some suicide bomber or WMD,s from some 3rd world country."

Darntootin'. I'm more scared of the misuse of power by those who hold records of my every action than I am of terrorists. Brain-free judgements about what you can say and think curtail my freedom. Knee-jerk tabloid politics criminalises those who are different without making the slightest dent in actual offenses prevented.

Arabs *are* caucasian. As are Indians.

Presumably this guy had some sort of airline ID in order to have got on the plane in the way that he did, which presumably was checked by the stewardesses. Could they not feasibly have radioed in a check on the guy quoting his ID and a description or would that have been in the realms of fantasy? Again, it's down to him looking slightly Middle Eastern, I have quite a few friends that look Middle Eastern and you know what? Not one of them is a suicide bomber (I know it's a shocking fact), and my mum's Irish and she's never supported the IRA, isn't it a terrible state of affairs when people don't fit to their stereotpes?

They obviously failed to check this bloke was 'American' enough before giving him a job. I'm surprised the US havent baned air travel for all non-white Americans yet....

I'm sure it has been sugested hight up somewhere by some monkey

Someone asked "who got fired?" and someone else discussed the cost of this disruption caused by an employee trying to get round some boring checks and delays and selfishly get on the plane quicker. If he had not done this there would be no problem.

In the words of Sir Alan Sugar - "you're fired!"

As to the rest of the crew who saw a non-employee get on the plane via the bus (as far as they were concerned - not in uniform, not on the crew for that flight) they should all be sent back to school for Security 101. How did this plane ever take off? If this guy was actually a terrorist he would have been more than happy to blow the plane on the way down to JFK and let the burning airframe wreak havoc.

It is a shame that so many people did not vote for Bush yet they get tarred with the same brush as the muppets who did. As to the person who has no idea about UK elections, only about 35% of votes cast at the last General Election were for Labour, followed very closely by 32% (or thereabouts, from memory) for the Conservatives. It is our weird first-past-the-post system which led to a huge majority of seats and a government which does not represent the views of the British people.

On our last trip to the US we ended up being 'randomly' selected for an extra check because the security person you have to get past to even get to the check in desk was not satisfied with my wife's explanation that the reason she had a German passport is because she is German (odd really!). This was in the UK!

The actual dialog went something like: "Where are you from? [holding wife's passport in hand]"

"Germany"

"Then why do you have a Dutch passport" [this moron must have thought "Deutschland" meant Dutch-land ie Holland. Twit]

"I don't, that's a German passport. From Germany"

"Hmmm. OK, go through" [nod to companion at other side to 'randomly' choose us for scrutiny, our story is so obviously full of holes]

The really odd thing was that one of our hand-luggage bags had pretty much nothing in it but shoes (awkward to pack but not very heavy, the heavy stuff got checked in). When they hand-searched this we had to try and keep a straight face - they must have thought we were either shoe smugglers or fetishists (or cousins of Imelda Markos). Luckily there had been no shoe-bomber at this point otherwise we may have been in for a long night...

A slight flaw in the plan for pulling Germans, Irishmen or any other white Europeans off the plane if their fellow countrymen had commited recent attacks is that they look quite a lot like you and me. It is far easier to pick people out who appear a little different - be it skin colour, facial shapes or whatever. Maybe we should be visibly tattooed with the flag of our country of origin to help people to oppress us much more accurately.

By Ian Matthews

"Hmm, okay, an illegal immigrant...and he ran from the police. Perhaps, if he'd stopped and obeyed the police commands, he might still be alive now."

Where the fsk have you been? Menezes did not have any clue he was the subject of a police operation, he grabbed a freaking paper and ran to catch the train which was about to depart, as about 6 million people do every day in London. He was surrounded by 3 survellience officers. When CO19 arrived at full tilt screaming "Police", he stood up to face them, was bodily restrained by a survellience officer who, and was promptly shot 8 times in the fcking HEAD, once in the shoulder, and 3 other shots missed. From 12 inches.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/05/london_blasts/tube_shooting/html/shooting.stm

Of all the offensive and banal posts here, this one wins hands down. Well done.

"Hmm, okay, an illegal immigrant (his visa had lapsed by at least 6 months if I remember rightly) and he ran from the police. Perhaps, if he'd stopped and obeyed the police commands, he might still be alive now."

Hahahahahahaha. WTF? Are you a fool man? Soundbites from Fox News have become reality have they? Wearing bulky clothing, was he? Vaulted the barrier, did he? Ran from police? Of course he did. Disobeyed their instructions while he was pinned to the ground and had 8 bullets pumped into him did he?

The only thing you have said which seems to be true is that he didn't have a valid UK visa - now there's grounds for summary execution. And it seems that was said just to blacken the name of an entirely innocent man. Oh yes thats right there is still an IPCC investigation into that and other comments made by the Police Commissioner.

Ignorance really is no excuse. Persecution of innocent people in the name of anti-terrorism is asinine. Execution of innocents is tragic. Justifying the execution of innocents for ex post facto discovery of minor visa breaches is downright unconscionable.

Welcome to the brave new world indeed.

@ Ian Matthews:

"Hmm, okay, an illegal immigrant (his visa had lapsed by at least 6 months if I remember rightly) and he ran from the police. Perhaps, if he'd stopped and obeyed the police commands, he might still be alive now."

So you have a guy with perhaps poor English, aware that he's illegally in the country, suddenly finds cops shouting and pointing guns at him. Running was not a smart move, but certainly understandable. Perhaps if the police hadn't decided to shoot first and ask questions later, he wouldn't have been murdered summarily out of fear.

This isn't the first accidental killing and probably won't be the last. But at least the lesson was learned - the police and their families got a free holiday because of the stress... Yeah that's seems fair...

"and he ran from the police. Perhaps, if he'd stopped and obeyed the police commands, he might still be alive now."

You can actually make that statement without feeling real fear? That the police have the right to pin you and shoot you 7 times in the head and once in the shoulder (nice grouping on a target 1m away, oh well trained marksmen...) for "running away".

Oh, and he wasn't running or carrying anything suspicious according to several eye witness reports - ref. statement by a surveillance officer

"I grabbed the male in the denim jacket by wrapping both my arms around his torso, pinning his arms to his side."

He said he pushed the man back into his seat.

It was only after he had restrained him that he heard a gun shot.

QUOTE

#define AMERICA 1

int location;

if (Dissent == Terrorism) {

location = AMERICA;

}

UNQUOTE

having recently graduated with a Computer Science degree I can say with absolute certainty that in most compilers you couldnt assign AMERICA to the variable location as im pretty sure "AMERICA" does not classify as an integer. ok im done.

-----

Technically, AMERICA has not been defined as a string (no quite marks), it could be a constant (in PHP for instance); I think that's what he was getting at with the "#define AMERICA 1" quote, since (again in PHP) define("AMERICA", 1); would define the constant AMERICA with an integer value of 1.

The case for the defense rests m'lud ;)

The problem with a fear reaction to anyone with dark skin on a plane is really because it encourages racism. If our leaders and security forces are seen to indiscriminately arrest people based on the colour of their skin (maybe not exclusively, but they wouldn't have reacted the same to a white person, no doubt the reason he bypassed security is because he has seen other people do it without trouble) it filters down, and you either get angry youths who feel opressed or you get angry youths taking out their fears on "terrorists" (read foreigners). All of which leads to easy-to-persuade fodder for real terrorism (which appears to have succeeded).

As for white terrorists, Basques, Chechen rebels, still some rogue elements in Ireland, the KKK, Millwall fans.

Why people are so happy to jump on the fear train and go along with this tosh (I love that word) despite the stupidly low odds of being in a terrorist incident I will never understand, but I'd like to think our leaders would have more presence of mind and actually do something about things like this.

Also it's true you can't just lynch people you think are terrorists in the middle of the street any more, you tell the government and they'll ship them off to a secure facility where they'll torture them and lock them away for 4 years without trial. <enter comment about Stalin>

Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead on because a jumpy cop assigned to the watch the house drank to much coffee and couldn't hold it in. That's all there was to it. Well, that and the chain of incompetence that followed.

If they taught bladder control and common sense to police assigned to watch terror suspects then I'm sure the whole incident would have been avoided.

Mr Matthews (Screams of Racism) has chosen not to post again. If you've now updated yourself, Mr Matthews, it would be interesting to hear your reaction to the facts that have emerged, and why you still believed persiflage that was initially peddled, but then withdrawn and apologised for, by the police.

About the murder on the tube carriage , I would suggest you try and get hold of the public version of the IPCC report which had been leaked to the press , to prevent a full on white wash job orchestrated by Sir Ian Blair and his buddies in the MET , for it showed that within less then one hour , they not only knew the victims full name , details of family and where they lived in Brazil , and the fact that at no time was he ever an illegal resident overstaying his work permit/visa!

The crime scene photos clearly showed no less than 13 labelled empty shell casings scattered through out the train carriage. and the interviews of all witnesses of the carriage in question was in conflict with all early police public statements. The Tube Station cctv showed the victim upon entering the station, at no time did he run , and those running waving guns in the air could have been armed criminals due to dark outfits they were wearing , and upon entering the carriage grabbed the intended victim one held him down pinning his arms and the other started shooting , but during the event no fellow passenger heard any identification statement from either officer , till well after the event when the other officers arrived on the scene and started to interview the bewildered confused passengers at the crime scene!

The MET , in the entire time until the victims parents arrived did they ever correct any statement made about the case to the press , including the slanderous misinformed TV reporters who by then were falling over themselves and foaming at the mouth by repeating only rumours and innuendo and declaring them to be fact and not the fiction they were(strangely never did see any verbal apologies or printed retractions from corporate and TV media over this sad case!)

It did show though when the police do wrongful shooting deaths , they go to extreme lengths to hide the real truth from the public gaze at all times! and at one time even tried to cheat the parents out of proper compensation payments when they were informing them officially of their son's sudden death in Brazil!!

A good thing there are whistle blowers , so the general public can see some police officers are not particularly honest about the real truth , and needed to be held accountable for questionable activities , even if their fellow officers do not!

The issue from the beginning was suspicious behavior not the color of his skin!

Caucasians are checked all the time, for many ridiculous reasons, what do you want, another disaster before you get it? American Airlines and their employees have had it with idiots wanting to fly and disrupt flights and threatening their crew members. The flying public, no matter what color, can be like a pack of retarded dogs when they get onboard an airplane. What has happened to civilization? Get on board, sit down, shut up, buckle up and take a nap. You'll be there safely before you know it.

26 year, AA employee

"Baptist , Methodist or Jehovah Witness suicide bomber."to the folks that say when is the last time you've seen a baptist, methodist suicide bomber, its true you dont.

THey just blow up abortion clinics, Shoot Dr's. The WTC attacks the largest act of terrorism was done by white folks . Hmm have you forgotten about the Olympic bomber . THey first two days they were convinced it was Muslim radicals.

THe danger is focusing on one group of people allows another to do harm.

and typify what is wrong with society today.

If I was told to stop by any police officer, would I do it? You bet I would. I was raised to respect the police, but then again respecting any authority doesn't seem to feature that highly in today's society.

Did I say the shooting was justified? No, my only comment was that if he'd obeyed the police he may still be alive.

As for the attempts to cover-up by the Met, they are just plain wrong.

@ Carlos reply about "lapsed visa being grounds for summary execution". You could flip the statement around and say that if he'd left when his visa expired, he wouldn't have been in the UK for police to shoot.

The insulting responses to my post are just peachy, guess you can't handle reading a comment from someone who doesn't share your view of our "wonderful" liberal society.

> having recently graduated with a Computer Science degree I can say with

> absolute certainty that in most compilers you couldnt assign AMERICA to the

> variable location as im pretty sure "AMERICA" does not classify as an integer.

> ok im done.

And we can all rest a little easier that these young graduates aren't going to take our jobs for a while yet ;) ! But seriously, which uni did you go to! That's such a rookie mistake, don't they teach you programming these days?

If you had read all the responses to your post then you may have come across the response from heystoopid.

You say: "If I was told to stop by any police officer, would I do it? You bet I would."

He say: " ...but during the event no fellow passenger heard any identification statement from either officer..."

You say: "@ Carlos reply about "lapsed visa being grounds for summary execution". You could flip the statement around and say that if he'd left when his visa expired,..."

He say: "...the fact that at no time was he ever an illegal resident overstaying his work permit/visa!"

Your source: ?

His source: IPCC report