Monday, October 27, 2014

When a petty bureaucrat with an axe to grind can make a citizen acting within his rights undergo months of monumental inconvenience

Remember my post from the other day in which I mused on the Most Equal Comrade's very odd brand of totalitarianism?  I observed that most tyrants like to strut their stuff on the world stage, engage in some aggression, and that, while the MEC certainly fits the qualification for a totalitarian socialist at home, he's strangely unicorns-and-rainbows / defer-to-pointy-heads-in-international-bureacracies in his attitude toward post-Amrica's role in the world at large.

A story out of the UK shows that this new brand of Leftism is alive and well there, too.  Check out this incident for an example of the weird combination of thought-and-speech control and voluntary dhimmitude that is doing in Western civilization:

A pensioner who said ‘I’m not Muslim’ when he was asked to remove his shoes at airport security has spent more than six months facing charges for racism.
Paul Griffith, 75, pictured, set off the security scanner’s alarm at Stansted airport when travelling to Malaga for a week’s holiday.
He removed his shoes as requested, but said: ‘I am not Muslim am I?’ 

A security guard accused him of racism and called the police, saying he was upset by the remark.
'One minute I am queuing up to get on a plane and the next I am confronted by two armed policemen. 
'They said I had used racist language and took me to an office in the terminal,' Mr Griffith said yesterday. 
Mr Griffith was allowed to go on his trip but was arrested when he returned. He was charged with causing ‘racially or religiously aggravated harassment, alarm or distress’.

'When I got back I had to wait six hours before they interviewed me again, arrested me and said that was being charged with causing racially aggravated harassment.
'I was photographed, had my finger prints taken and they also took a DNA swab from my mouth. 'Then they said I would have to go to my local police station. 
When I went to Colchester police station I was told I had been charged with an offence under the Crime and Disorder Act but that I could accept a caution instead.
'I refused to do that - I had done nothing wrong and I wasn’t going to admit to a criminal charge if I wasn’t guilty of any crime.'
Chelmsford Magistrates' Court finally dropped the charges, but the fact that this man was inconvenienced at all bodes ill for the state of our civilization.  As does the official misuse of the term "racism."  Islam is a stinking religion.

14 comments:

  1. So Obama gets the blame for what happens in the UK too? Are you ascribing power to this current sitting president that you wish for your next choice as the one to lead Post-post-America?

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  2. I'm blaming the mindset that both the MEC and the British airport guy embrace: Puke all over ourselves to make sure we don't show any possible signs of prejudice toward Muslims, while squelching free speech.

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  3. I'm thinking of the millions who have have their lives not only inconvenienced, but wrecked after getting caught with a doobie in their luggage since Tricky Dick's time. Ronnie really ramped up that brand of
    "freedom"

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  4. A pensioner? You mean Brits still have pensioners?

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  5. Pointing to marijuana polices from the 20th century and trying to make some point about the balance of freedom and government control demonstrates an utterly trivial set of priorities and an complete lack of understanding of American cultural and political history.

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  6. Ouch, a spanking from the freedom lover! Sticks and stones and airport arrests may break my bones, but never my independent freedom loving spirit for whatever reason. You put limits on freedom and you allow it for yours (corporations, governments run by your ilk, etc.). Man, they've really ramped up the scrutiny at the Denver airport. Just google it. Can't let terrorists or marijuana leave the relatively free state of Colorado. 90 per cent of what you squawk about has as many roots in Republican administrations as Democratic.

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  7. Trying to minimize the effect of marijuana prohibition on the overall freedom of Americans demonstrates an ignorance of history going back as little as 50 years, i.e., your lifetime, Mr. Braniak.

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  8. Thought and speech control? What do you think makes most pot smokers paranoid? It's been that way since my initial ingestion back in 1969 which was probably after your first ingestion, though you are younger than I. What a phony, as a writer from our father's generation observed, which resonated with many of us back then.

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  9. So you are saying what this foreigner endured in a foreign airport is a reflection of Obama policies? I know what still reflects Tricky Dicks
    and Ronnie Ramp Up's law and order crap. Right here in your alleged post America.

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  10. How often have major opinion journals, either of the right (National Review, Weekly Standard, Commentary, etc.) or the left( The Nation, Mother Jones, New Republic, etc,) had cover stories or lengthy in-depth articles on weed policy in comparison to actually important issues over the last 30 years (tax policy, environmental regulation, Communism, radical Islam, gender, race, federal budget, persecution of Jews and Christians, Middle East, North Korea)? I daresay it is a lopsided ration in favor of the important stuff.

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  11. Not much coverage of the so called Drug War and drugs, both large and pharmaceutical and small and insignificant little herbs like marijuana. I seem to recall a Time cover story or 2 about it. One in particular back in 1969 made me want to smoke it rather than eschew it. Then Tricky Dicky went incl


    uding it in his law and order crusade. Oh its been in the news plenty all along. Just say no was a hit. The cops tried DARE. Any punk post American knows all about that Drug War.

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  12. Preoccupation with some kind of "right" to obtain a particular state with a particular drug indicates that a person has no serious interest in the actual realm of public policy, culture and the fate of humankind.

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  13. People are definitely talking about marijuana in Florida. I hear more talk of it than any other topic. It's on the ballot here. And you r contention above is blanket bull shit.

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