{"id":4530,"date":"2017-04-11T09:28:16","date_gmt":"2017-04-11T07:28:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4530"},"modified":"2017-04-11T09:31:48","modified_gmt":"2017-04-11T07:31:48","slug":"beating-up-passengers-because-we-can","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/4530\/","title":{"rendered":"Beating Up Passengers Because We Can"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oh well done, United Airlines<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Videos showing a man being violently removed from a United Airlines flight have provoked an outcry on social media.<\/p>\n

The footage taken inside the airliner shows a man being violently pulled out of his seat and dragged down the aisle as passengers prepared to take off from Chicago to Louisville on Sunday evening.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Little wonder the US government has to invent<\/a> “security concerns” in order to force passengers to fly their substandard airlines instead of the vastly superior foreign ones.<\/p>\n

As I have commented elsewhere, this is merely a natural extension of the police-state tactics that were introduced to the airline industry following 9\/11: simply cite \u201csecurity\u201d and the door is open for police brutality of the type\u00a0normally seen on the streets of\u00a0Africa or South America. The fact they were prepared to do this in full view of the public shows how blas\u00e9 the authorities have\u00a0become about this sort of thing.<\/p>\n

I am heartened by the response of the public, who were appalled and objected loudly. I am also glad that somebody videoed it and made sure everyone was aware that this is how business and the government combine to treat airline passengers these days. Although it wouldn’t surprise me if legislation is rapidly introduced to ban the taking of videos in aircraft – citing “security concern” of course.<\/p>\n

There are some people on the internet pointing out that the customer was in breach of the law and by refusing to leave the plane was committing a criminal offence and therefore the police had every right to arrest him and remove him by force. This might be strictly true, but I don’t find the argument holds much water. You might as well say that\u00a0Rosa Parks ought to have been arrested because she was actually committing a criminal offence by being black and sitting in that particular spot.<\/p>\n

I hope this incident costs United Airlines dearly, but I suspect their lobbyists and bought-and-paid-for politicians will ensure\u00a0it doesn’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oh well done, United Airlines: Videos showing a man being violently removed from a United Airlines flight have provoked an outcry on social media. The footage taken inside the airliner shows a man being violently pulled out of his seat … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13,44],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4530"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4530"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4532,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4530\/revisions\/4532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}