On Thu September 7 2006 1:47 am, Badri Natarajan wrote: > But that's precisely the point - my problem is that I think the > authorities (both the airline staff and Dutch authorities) massively > overreacted - basically because these guys had brown skin. If the plane > had had 12 English football hooligans doing exactly the same thing, I'm > sure they'd be cautioned, but I very much doubt that they would have > turned the plane around with a fighter escort.
I would tend to agree with this, but I have seen that in emotive issues of this sort mere impressions do not help. 1) I accuse Northwest airlines of having, for the first time in the history of aviation overreacted massively and declared behavior like exchanging seats and cellphones as suspicious of terorism and having called for fighter escort and the implicit threat that the airliner couls have been shot down because a few people "echanged seats and cellphones" 2) I would accuse the Dutch of having flouted their own laws and held these 12 people incommunicado and in solitary confinement without consular access or other assistance. For what? As far as I can tell it was because these people exchanged seats and cellphones. Those were the stated reasons. Everybody swears that this has nothing to do with discrimination. It was sheer coincidence that all 12 were Muslim and Arab looking. shiv
