Ok, I’m trying not to be too political and ranty, but come on! I read this post from Facebook, and it’s like poking an angry lion with a sharp stick and a steak dangling on it. Here’s the post I read that’s got me a bit riled:
And here’s the AP account: http:
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/sep/11/us-airline-passengers-detained/
Please visit this poor woman’s blog. She was basically a Middle-Eastern looking passenger, an American citizen and housewife coming home to her husband and kids, and she was taken off the plane in handcuffs along with two unrelated unsuspecting Indian passengers, for ‘suspicious activity’, suspicious activity being one of the unrelated men in her row going to the bathroom for too long. Things went as you might expect, in a conspiracy theorist’s worst nightmare, except it actually happened.
The airline in question was Frontier. I know, ‘What, really? Frontier?’ The last bastion of great customer service in airlines as far as I’m concerned, until this happened. So I’ve written the airline to complain. I don’t know that it will do any good, but unless people start saying something, the most bigoted voices are the loudest so far, and airline and airport and government policy will be ruled by the schoolyard bullies who cry ‘terrorist’ at anyone they don’t like. Unless someone calls people on their bullshit, stupid unreasonable claims of ‘suspicious activity’, and the hours or days of violated rights that come with it for the targets of such claims, will be accepted as normal adult behavior. Phobia will rule everyone’s actions.
I commented previously, that I’m sick and tired of fear of terrorism being used as an excuse for acting like, and I was going to say ‘shitheads’, but I used the word Nazis instead. I don’t mean the euphemism for someone who is just racist and acting like a jerk. I mean Nazi literally. This kind of surreptitious reporting of innocent people, and the violation of their rights with the excuse that it is for the good of others, is exactly how it started in Germany. And Herman Goering used the exact same tactics to get people to fall in line with the Nazi party, touting a standard of patriotism that involved suspicion of anyone not falling within a narrow definition of ‘German’. The Nazi party also encouraged policing one’s neighbors to prevent terrorism, though Goering didn’t use exactly the term terrorism because that is a 21st century catchphrase.
I think a lot of people don’t speak up against this garbage because we are all busy and in the back of our minds is the notion that everything will be fine, and ‘this can’t happen to me.’ Well, this woman never anticipated what happened to her either.
If you have been a Frontier customer, and feel moved by her story, I would recommend emailing their customer service, as a sometime passenger with what you expect of them, and what you don’t expect. Me, I’m Semitic, and my husband is Native American, and so collectively, we could look ethnic enough to be targeted, and I want to know if this is going to become a habit with them. If so, road trips are looking better and better, gas prices be damned!
Rachel Coles. Geek Mom. 