UK Home Secretary Bans US Martial Arts Expert 440
Big Hairy Ian writes "An American expert in violent self-defense has been excluded from entering the UK by the Home Office. From the article: 'Tim Larkin tried to board a plane from his home in Las Vegas on Tuesday, but was given a UK Border Agency letter saying "his presence here was not conducive to the public good." Mr Larkin, who was due to host seminars, told the BBC the move was a "gross over-reaction." The Home Office said he was subject to an exclusion order. A spokeswoman said: "The home secretary will seek to exclude an individual if she considers that his or her presence in the UK is not conducive to the public good." Mr Larkin — who trained as a US Navy Seal — runs a company teaching combat to military and law enforcement clients in the United States.'"
UK (Score:2, Interesting)
Remember, this is the country where being "anti-social" is a crime. Yes, for real.
Different kind of anti-social (Score:5, Interesting)
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He could have flown to France and board the train through the Chunnel, nobody would have known.
You can still buy those tickets with cash.
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Yes, the UK definition is even worse than you'd think. Anti-social to me means anti-society. In the UK, it means "acting in a manner that has "caused or was likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to one or more persons not of the same household".
If that were the case in the US, I'd bring the entire US congress to court for antisocial behavior.
Re:Different kind of anti-social (Score:5, Insightful)
The UK just so happens to have codified what common practices it considers to be anti-social and to have laws in place to give police and the courts specific powers to deal with them.
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Driving for Fun : I think that means Joy Riding. Which is a very different thing to "driving for fun".
Re:Different kind of anti-social (Score:5)
Driving for fun means not pootling along at 30mph, paranoidly watching your speedo more than the road due to the vast network of cameras that will flash you at 33mph, worrying about the cost of your over-priced fuel the car is running on, avoiding the areas of London that will trigger a congestion charge fine, then being able to stop off for a quick pint somewhere hoping you didn't miss them reducing the alcohol limits to zero and you go to jail, before worriedly returning to your car hoping it hasn't been clamped or towed away because it was on a single yellow line.
Phillip.
Re:Different kind of anti-social (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Different kind of anti-social (Score:4, Informative)
Well, you do have a significantly smaller population, and a larger country than the UK, so population density is much reduced, I think when this happens a per capita death rate for the roads is expected to be less, as every day on the roads there are less opportunities for a crash per capita.
Furthermore in 2010 Norway's per capita road deaths were higher than the UK
"In 2010 there were 210 road deaths in Norway (source: DfT). This equates to 4.3 road deaths per 100,000 of population and compares to the UK average of 3.1 road deaths per 100,000 of population in 2010."
http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/travel-and-living-abroad/travel-advice-by-country/europe/norway [fco.gov.uk]
I only chose this measure because the statistics are easy to pull up, and due to a driver re-education course I recently had to go on I found out that the UK actually has pretty good road safety statistics.
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At BAC 0.02%, your driving is not impaired in any meaningful way. Being mildly tired from a long day at work would have more of an impact. It's nice to see that the prohibitionist ladies that ruined the USA's liquor industry and emboldened organized crime in the 1920s are right at home in Norway.
Post hoc.
Re:Different kind of anti-social (Score:5, Informative)
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UK is very different to France also. I am the only person I know here that doesn't drink and drive, having been brainwashed by the stigma whilst in the UK. The police did a check down the end of my road here in Nice and over 80% of drivers were found to be well over the limit. On a Monday. Just yesterday some drunk driver drove his Ferrari right into the sea [rivierareview.com], and this is just a normal occurrence. The girls are worse than the guys, as they will quite happily finish most of a bottle of vodka and not be able t
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I wonder why there isn't more public transport going on here as the "Driving Under the Influence" laws get worse and worse.
there is plenty [www.good.is] of public transport [wikipedia.org] here (if by here you mean the US) it is just that here is a MUCH larger land mass (than the UK) and we're spread out all over the place. The US has a nationwide railway system [wikipedia.org] similar to Europes [wikipedia.org] for transcontinental travel but it isn't used much for passenger transport anymore which might be partially explained by this article [yale.edu]
Re:Different kind of anti-social (Score:5, Informative)
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The net effect of this is a web of at times contradictory laws. For example - if an emergency services vehicle is behind you with its sirens on you have a duty to move ot the way if at all possible. Last year a man was taken to court because his only safe option to do so involved driving through a red light.
There is nothing contradictory in UK law here, as far as I know.
You should try to allow emergency vehicles to get through, within the rules of the law. However, you are not allowed to proceed over the line at a red light, unless directed to do so by a uniformed police officer (or IIRC a uniformed PCSO these days, if they have been given the relevant authorisation in their area). If you do, you could be prosecuted.
Deliberately obstructing an emergency worker would be an offence, but failing to allow an emerg
Re:Different kind of anti-social (Score:4, Insightful)
red lights are there for a reason
And sirens and lights are on emergency vehicles for a reason: to make everyone stop at green traffic lights so the the vehicle can pass quickly through the intersection and reach the emergency. Moving out of the way of the emergency vehicle is the primary responsibility and the law should be updated so that driving through a red light to prevent forcing an emergency vehicle to wait (when the traffic has stopped) is not just legal, but required.
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I'd imagine that under the zero-tolerance policing strategy in many US cities, people engaged in almost all of these activities would simply get arrested for petty criminal offences and cleared off the streets.
The point of anti-social behaviour orders is that they are executed under civil - rather than criminal - law. The idea being that a lower burden of proof is required in court to obtain the order in the first place. In practice, the evidence usually consists of a long record of low-level criminality -
Re:Different kind of anti-social (Score:5, Informative)
the problem with that is you know have an activity that's legal for everybody except the person to who the asbo applies, for him/her it is punishable by I think it was 5 years of jail.
in other words the UK has explicitly abandonded the principle that everyone is equal before the law.
That's the same in the US; they just don't call it an ASBO, and it isn't restricted to anti-social behavior.
But there are plenty of people here who have special restrictions forced upon them that the general population doesn't have.
Whether it be to not use a computer, not ever be within X feet of Y, not speak about something, having to report any travel they do, or not be allowed to vote.
It's all up to the discretion of the judges. Or, in the case of not speaking about something, not even subject to going through a court - the federal police serves around 60,000 gag orders a year.
Re:Different kind of anti-social (Score:5, Insightful)
the UK has explicitly abandonded the principle that everyone is equal before the law.
Everyone is equal before the law. After the law, everyone not wealthy and connected is fucked..
Here in the USA we have the biggest and most offensive example of not everyone being equal before the law — Disenfranchisement of Felons. If the state declares you to be a criminal, you lose your right to vote. Therefore, all the state has to do to prevent you from voting is pass a law criminalizing your behavior. It will probably take longer to get your voting rights back than it will to repeal the fucking law. The same is true of every other right we hold dear; it can be trivially denied you and it is most likely to be denied you if you oppose the corrupt status quo.
Re:Different kind of anti-social (Score:5, Funny)
The UK seems to be some kind of heaven for a lower middleclass mindset, restricting everyone to only the most bland activities. They really must hate creativity there, which tends to go with a certain amount of chaos.
"We sent our criminals to Australia, our religious nuts to America and our adventurers to our colonies - only the square people remained in Britain." - an anonymous Englishman I once met during my travels.
Re:Different kind of anti-social (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed, very specific, come to think of it, what other country, maybe except of China, could you think of intervening in case of loud discussions in the streets with your neighbour. Begging, drinking alcohol in the streets, making noise, driving for fun, lighting fireworks might sometimes be an annoyance, but making them punishable?
The UK seems to be some kind of heaven for a lower middleclass mindset, restricting everyone to only the most bland activities. They really must hate creativity there, which tends to go with a certain amount of chaos.
well try having to put up with a pair of noisy bastards that play UBER loud music at all hours of the day and night when you want to get your baby daughter to sleep.
that is anti-social behaviour here in Edinburgh and all i had to do after trying to reason with the morons was phone the Sound Enforcement Officers here at Edinburgh Council... they came out , checked the sound levels and then gave them a warning... of course the morons didn't heed the warning and kept going anyway.
then the sound enforcement officers issued them with a fine.... and even that didn't work to then they went in and used the full force of the legislation against them and confiscated all "amplified sound equipment" in the apartment they were in (directly above mine) and thus no more computers,hi-fi, tv.. etc anything with a speaker.. BOOM gone..... after that my little girl could actually get some sleep. she was barely even 6 months old at the time.....
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Begging, drinking alcohol in the streets, making noise, driving for fun, lighting fireworks might sometimes be an annoyance, but making them punishable?
China??? We have laws against every one of the things on your list where I live, and I happen to live in South Carolina, the only state in the US that still does not require motorcycle helmets! The list you picked is not really helping your case.
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Re:UK (Score:5, Interesting)
US banned Cat Stevens, so you don't even need to be anti-social to be banned.
He was suspected of having ties to terrorists, this was the right decision. Do you propose that because he's famous they should have ignored this and just rolled the dice?
Turn about is fair play. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not the first time someone has been prevented from entering a country. While the US refuses people all the time, we're supposed to get indignant that this person is refused entry to GB?
I'm sure the mental train wreck in some peoples' minds regarding this is epic.
However, this is not news.
--
BMO
Re:Turn about is fair play. (Score:5, Informative)
This is not the first time someone has been prevented from entering a country.
I think the story here isn't that someone got knocked back from entering the UK, but rather the reasons behind it. TFA doesn't mention that he has a criminal record, it doesn't mention anything about hate speech or promoting violence. The guy teaches martial arts and speaks his mind on it. He doesn't come across as someone who will run down the street attacking everyone in sight, he isn't radical and (apart from knowing a lot of martial arts) doesn't seem to be anyone out of the ordinary.
Having said that, I do sort of agree that this isn't all that newsworthy for /. even though I generally do froth at the mouth at personal freedom abuses - which I do think that this falls into.
Re:Turn about is fair play. (Score:5, Insightful)
The only interesting part of this will be how much money he makes when he starts advertising with, "My kung-fu is so lethal they wont even let me into certain countries."
The nationalistic, "We just dont like violent people" line is, of course, nonsense. The UK is known for being very liberal about letting hateful, violent Imams and such into the country.
Re:Turn about is fair play. (Score:5, Informative)
He teaches not self defence but how to attack and injure people deliberately... he was going to talk to areas hit by riots last year to promote his methods
Re:Turn about is fair play. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Except that self-defense is frowned upon in general in the UK and you are likely to be prosecuted for it.
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There's nothing illegal about self defence in the UK. But it has to be reasonable. Proportional to the threat. Not vigilante justice.
Larkin goes way beyond reasonable. He advocates ignoring what the actual threat is, and just "splintering" joints or destroying (killing) people. Just in case. And that's not reasonable in UK law.
This isn't about self-defence (Score:3)
Self-defence courses are entirely legal in the UK. What this man is advocating is a form of self-defence that involves disproportionate, extreme violence. Under British law, defence has to be proportionate to the threat - you can kill a person who is attempting to kill you, but you don't have the right to kill a person who only slaps you. The British police have warned that these "self-defence" courses are teaching non-legal self-defence, and that the people who use these methods will be prosecuted and like
Re:Turn about is fair play. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Self defence" covers a wide spectrum, from running away shrieking like a little girl, through to crippling your attacker using potentially lethal techniques. Larkin is at the throat-punch-for-great-justice end of the spectrum. That doesn't sit well with a Nanny State which (despite occasional noises to the contrary) de facto wants victims to blubber for help rather than take responsibility for their own safety.
As to preaching this message in riot hit areas, those very riots demonstrated how inadequate the Nanny Will Protect You plan is when it kicks off big style, and it comes down to decent householders and business owners versus a pack of ferals. In case you're unclear on it, Larkin wasn't planning to teach the ferals, who simply pick up a knife or brick anyway.
Re:Turn about is fair play. (Score:4, Insightful)
Inciting violence (Score:5, Informative)
He advocated using force against the British police and he asks people to use lethal force despite it being illegal in the UK.
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Re:Inciting violence (Score:4, Insightful)
Reasonable force must be proportionate. The position (to kill in self-defence) that this man was advocating was untenable and can be classified as incitement. There is no reason why the UK should let him in, esp. when the US routinely turns away British citizen for infractions such as sending the president an email while drunk.
Re:Inciting violence (Score:5, Interesting)
The irony is that good martial arts training makes you less likely to cause somebody serious injury, the level of force you need to defend yourself actually drops. I could (and have) defend myself against somebody bigger than myself, if I hadn't had training then I might be tempted to punch them in the face, which can kill much more easily than people think.
Re:Inciting violence (Score:4, Interesting)
Obviously I'm not going to recommend this technique for somebody who isn't trained, and a person who doesn't feel confident trying that is much more likely to strike them with a fist/hand/chair, and that's more likely to cause injury.
Any good martial arts training will emphasise the "RLF Technique", or "running like fuck". This is the primary form of self defence, I only took the guy on because he was swinging a large shard of glass around in a crowded street and putting other people in danger. If you want a legal defence for taking physical actio the first thing you'll have to explain is your reason for not running away.
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Is it illegal to talk about [using lethal force], learn about it or have a political opinion about this law ?
No, but it's illegal to incite other people to kill. Yes, there's a complex boundary here, but there's no reason that any country has to let a foreign citizen come in and incite law-breaking. (Was that what he was planning to do? I dunno...)
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He doesn't come across as someone who will run down the street attacking everyone in sight, he isn't radical and (apart from knowing a lot of martial arts) doesn't seem to be anyone out of the ordinary.
No, but the sort of people who attend his conferences might be.
(or so they think)
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"I think the story here isn't that someone got knocked back from entering the UK, but rather the reasons behind it. "...
"Having said that, I do sort of agree that this isn't all that newsworthy for /. even though I generally do froth at the mouth at personal freedom abuses - which I do think that this falls into."
Yes but this happens all the time when its the other way around [nytimes.com]. I agree that its just a non-story of a fairly common practice; Only instead of being denied over misunderstood slang that's real meaning is pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain on comments made on social networking, it was instead a guy teaching how to maximise injury on someone as a form of self defence. I don't think either denial was entirely justified, but then its not my career to make these decisions.
Re:Turn about is fair play. (Score:5, Insightful)
We had a 17 year old kid banned for life from the US for sending a drunken e-mail to Obama. We've had people turned away from the US for making jokes that weren't to the taste of TSA agents.
As reasons go, this guy teaching people specifically to kill using hand to hand combat isn't any worse an excuse than those of people being turned away from the US.
People get turned away all the time, even when I went to Canada once I was threatened with being turned away seemingly for no reason other than the customers officers in question were just complete cocks - I'd done absolutely nothing wrong, no criminal history, not there for work, just there for nothing more than a holiday and they felt like interrogating someone for 3 hours. They eventually just let me through but the fact is customs officers seem to be able to just weild this power randomly and at will whenever they want and for seemingly no valid reason at all.
This needs to be seen in context, the UK's border agency is under attack right now, it's being used as a political pawn in the run up to the olympics in a battle over whether the government's management of it is competent enough to support the influx we'll see at the Olympics. Had this happened at any other time I doubt very much it would have even made the news. People get this sort of treatment all the time in all countries, it really isn't newsworthy full stop - not even the reason they used.
Re:Turn about is fair play. (Score:5, Interesting)
In the late '80s, I was threatened with being turned away from Canada, and having the RCMP and FBI take turns performing full body cavity searches because, while applying for my 4th work visa in a span of 6 months (at that time, I was required to apply each time I traveled up there for the type of work I did), I was asked if there was anyone who would like me to not enter Canada and I responded "just a frat brother back in the USA who knows I am going to take his ex-GF to dinner when I hop over to the GTA."
Lessons learned:
A) don't crack jokes with Canadian immigration officials.
B) Clear customs and immigration in Toronto (which I mostly did for the next 15 years) and then drive to Ottawa, because Ottawa officials have much bigger sticks up their butts (and the Korean food not far from the Toronto airport is really good).
C) After calming the situation down, when asked by said immigration official if, because I work at Motorola, I could get her 1950's vintage Motorola console TV repaired at a discount, do not respond with "Are you asking me for a bribe?" nor the 3 or 4 other responses that went across my mind.
Looking back, I am still kind of surprised I made it to work the next day.
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Funnily enough it was Ottawa where I had the problems too and I agree, the officers are Toronto are much friendlier and much more welcoming so I like you do exactly the same now - fly into Toronto, and just drive to Ottawa.
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I think the story here isn't that someone got knocked back from entering the UK, but rather the reasons behind it. TFA doesn't mention that he has a criminal record, it doesn't mention anything about hate speech or promoting violence. The guy teaches martial arts and speaks his mind on it
There is nothing that says he was denied because of being a martial arts "expert" either, like the title indicates.
If I were to guess, he was blocked because he trains and recruits mercenaries, or has a past of being one, and the nature of what he trained has nothing to do with it. But we'll never know for sure, unless the home office changes policy and talks.
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Could you translate this from Gobbledygook to English, please?
Re:Turn about is fair play. (Score:5, Funny)
'terorist thread'
Cop: You are under arrest!
Man: What for?
Cop, pointing at the man's collar: Do you see this stitching right here?
Man: Yes?
Cop: This is a terrorist thread!
Re:Turn about is fair play. (Score:5, Interesting)
No kidding. This is a guy who was going to go to the UK to teach people how to KILL PEOPLE. (Really, read the article.)
The US, on the other hand, blocks people from entering the US for planning on having a good time as tourists in the US [slashdot.org].
Bit of a difference between the two, yes?
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No kidding. This is a guy who was going to go to the UK to teach people how to KILL PEOPLE. (Really, read the article.)
Are you sure you're not Kent Brockman?
"Just miles from your doorstep, hundreds of men are given weapons and trained to kill. The government calls it the Army, but a more alarmist name would be... The Killbot Factory ."
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Re:Turn about is fair play. (Score:4, Informative)
This is a guy who was going to go to the UK to teach people how to kill people IN SELF-DEFENSE. (Really, read the article.)
Unlike the USA the UK has a concept of minimum force. If you see a black guy in your neighbourhood and think he may be causing trouble you are not just allowed to kill him.
Re:Turn about is fair play. (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, the concept in UK law is "reasonable" force, which isn't the same thing at all.
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This is a guy who was going to go to the UK to teach people how to kill people IN SELF-DEFENSE. (Really, read the article.)
... [T]he UK has a concept of minimum force. If you see a black guy in your neighbourhood and think he may be causing trouble you are not just allowed to kill him.
Absolutely. If you do, there are consequences that happen as a result of your choice.
As distinct from what seems to be happening here: if you think he may be causing trouble, you are not allowed to know how to stop him with fatal force should it become necessary. And to make sure you will be unable to, a government will pre-emptively stop a man from entering the country for attempting to provide you with that knowledge.
As similar approach would be terminating a life in the second trimester, on the grounds
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I think the concept behind these kinds of laws (and i'm only familiar with Canada's system, not the UK's, but I suspect they're very similar) is that lethal force is almost never ever necessary. The capability of lethal force almost always implies the capability of non-lethal (but still disabling) force, which should always be the preference if it comes to that. Furthermore, the capability of lethal force (eg: gun) can almost always be used as a non-lethal threat to buy time or maneuver into a position to f
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If somebody is trying to kill you, or somebody else's safety is mortal jeopardy, then lethal force is actually justified. It's when it is clear that nobody's life is actually in any danger (which, although I know that people on slashdot just love to point out the rare exceptions to a general rule, is actually the case a *VAST* majority of the time) that there is no justification for lethal force.
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Hmmm. Only Zimmerman himself can assert to that version, so I'd call it dubious at best.
The facts that can be verified by other parties are the following: Zimmerman called the cops saying "there's a suspicious looking dude". The cops specifically told him not to follow or get involved in any way. He did it anyways. Now the "suspicious dude" is dead. He shot him.
That's pretty much all we know. I won't take a word of Zimmerman at face value if it cannot be verified by a trusted third party, such as the police
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This is no worse (but also no better) than everyone who thinks they KNOW that he shot him because he was black. Which was probably the point of GPs post.
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"The idea is to stop you from hanging out with the wrong sort of people."
No the idea is to:
1) Prevent people acting as lookouts assisting a criminal
2) To punish people who had the power to report or prevent a crime from not doing so and hence implicitly supporting the crime
Despite this we still jail less people than America does.
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A terrorist plot is not more than a "plan to kill", and it might not get you to prison but easily to Guantanamo (which is probably worse than prison).
Re:Turn about is fair play. (Score:5, Informative)
any western european country I know of has the concept of 'reasonable force' for self defence,
basically you can use the same amount of force to defend yourself, as the person attacking you is using.
No... that is not what it means at all. That's proportionate force, which is not the same at all.
Reasonable force is the least force available to you that can reasonably expect to stop the assailant. The point being the least amount of damage to both you and the assailant afterwards is what's reasonable.
What "reasonable force" is depends on a lot of circumstances. An old or infirm person might be justified on calling his dogs to attack unarmed assailants, or grab a kitchen knife, despite either being disproportionate force.
A weapons expert might be justified in firing a warning shot, but if stronger than the assailant might be expected to follow up a continued attack with wresting the person to the ground, not shooting him.
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Turn about is fair play
I'll see you one aphorism and raise you another.
"Two wrongs don't make a right."
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How many wrongs does it take to make a right then, huh?
Re:Turn about is fair play. (Score:5, Funny)
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Zero would be the correct amount.
Re:Turn about is fair play. (Score:4, Interesting)
Turnabout isn't only fair play, in this particular case the UK was much nicer than the US needs to be:
The US rules for foreigners, like me, means that in order to legally enter the country I have to accept that the border control can force me to return, without having to site any reason whatsoever. I get to accept all the costs, and there is no appeal process.
This ex-SEAL actually got the courtesy of a denial well before entering his plane, and he even got a reason for it and enough time to appeal the process if he wanted.
T. /.) anonymously, because I'm afraid that even writing this could cause problems for me on future trips to the US.
PS. It is a sad fact that I am posting (for the first time on
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The problem with this eye for an eye approach is that it will be the little guy on both sides to suffer.
Political prudence (Score:2)
According to non-mainstream news sources including Benjamin Fulford (a former correspondent for Forbes Magazine) and a U.S. military official known as The Drake, both the U.S. and the U.K. are encountering a co-ordinated effort to remove, forcibly if necessary, corrupt political officials from power in compliance with the law. This effort has a lot of backing from significant numbers of U.S. military personnel, Interpol, the Pentagon, the Agencies, U.S. Marshals... and underground Asian societies.
Interesti
They let racist terror-lovers in (Score:3, Informative)
This monster came and gave his hate-fest speech to a happy audience.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2126914/Sheikh-Raed-Salah-wins-appeal-UK-Governments-attempts-deport-him.html [dailymail.co.uk]
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2012/04/party-in-london-to-celebrate-anti.html [blogspot.com]
The UK is going to hell.
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Well, the Jews are certainly looking at leaving.
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Hahaha.. You keep thinking that...
I tell you what it is - selection bias..
Coming from a Canadian that eventually moved to the UK.. At least over here the salaries and rates are commensurate with the property prices.. try living in Vancouver nowadays..
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Hate to break it to you, but the UK is also in the grip of a real estate bubble. It slipped a bit during the GFC, but housing there hasn't really been affordable (median multiplier under 3) since the late '90s.
Vancouver, like Australia, is insanely overpriced. But that doesn't make the UK affordable.
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Gross. However, I'm not sure I trust a politician's take.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9253267/Rochdale-grooming-trial-how-the-case-unfolded.html [telegraph.co.uk] There lots of stories online that was just the first result. It comes down to the Police feared being called racist and basically ignored it since 2002...
Theresa May is an idiot (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the same woman who, upon learning that border control was overloaded and relaxing passport checks for low risk cases at peak time, decided to solve the problem by firing the guy in charge and forcing checks to never be relaxed. Result: planes stacking up in the sky because the queues at border control were too long. Prime Minister summons her and gives her a right ass-kicking and now risk-based enforcement is back on the table.
It will be tempting for Slashdot posters to over-generalize from this case to try and make sweeping statements about the entire UK or British people (just as it's tempting to do the same about Americans when the US Govt does something retarded). But the core problem in this case really boils down to one woman and her arbitrary and inconsistent management of the borders.
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But the core problem in this case really boils down to one woman and her arbitrary and inconsistent management of the borders.
Aided and abetted (and forced) by the insistence by the Treasury that every single part of the government, every last agency, save as much money as humanly possible and then some...
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Unless it's the damn Olympics. They recently increased the budget for the opening ceremony and security. More than the amount they took from all the arts funding across the country. Bunch of wankers.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16030785 [bbc.co.uk] and http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11582070 [bbc.co.uk]
This isn't the first time (Score:4)
They've been excluding a lot of people recently for very silly reasons. Apparently someone have been given more power then they have wit to manage and they're basically going power mad. It's one thing if you're excluding people that present a public risk. It's another if the reasons are totally arbitrary.
They did him a favor. (Score:2)
To be honest.
Gotta love our militarized police force. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Martial arts expert? (Score:5, Funny)
Kickback (Score:2)
This guy owes the Home Office bureaucrat who made this decision a percentage of his future revenues, because his career is *made*. "LEARN SELF DEFENSE FROM THE MAN JUDGED TOO LETHAL TO ENTER THE UK!"
Re: (Score:2)
LOL, I like it. Nice spin. Do you work for a Government? :)
I think the real definition would be "the man too boneheaded to recognise inflammatory language doesn't exactly help when the target nation already has a riot and hooligan problem".
I guess he needs this language to sell (marketing is everything), but I can see the point of the authorities as they simply go by what happened the last time he was over. I'd call this an own goal, but as you pointed out, he could turn this one around - clever idea :)
Tim Larkin was never an US Navy SEAL (Score:5, Informative)
First, the word SEAL is an abbreviation and is therefore capitalized. Also, Tim Larkin was never a Navy SEAL according to real US Navy SEAL authenticators. He dropped out of BUD/S and therefore never qualified as a SEAL. He's been lying about his service for years.
Proof: http://www.socnet.com/showthread.php?t=47063
US bans people for tweets (Score:3)
And the USA bans people from entering because they send tweets about partying. So what ?
Sovereign nations decide who gets to come in. Nothing new here.
Re:In the UK self defense = racism, extremism (Score:5, Informative)
I think the reason may have more to do with this (from TFA):
A visit in 2009 to Slough, in Berkshire, where Mr Larkin held a class intended to teach how to "maim and kill in self-defence", provoked widespread condemnation from the community.
Re:In the UK self defense = racism, extremism (Score:5, Insightful)
Ultimately, however, this is not the point. This man will teach a civilian how to cause serious injuries to a person, but we let these same people point 2 tonnes of motorised steel around our roads on a daily basis, operate plant machinery which can destroy whole buildings, run our healthcare infrastructure. Learning how to do something dangerous doesn't mean they will employ that knowledge improperly. These people are still culpable for their actions.
Ultimately all the government is done is prevent the spread of knowledge.
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What you can do to prevent this is to make yourself look less of a target; Walk with your head up and your shoulders back, don't walk too fast, don't play with your iPhone walking down a dark alley. Hell, roll up your jumper sleeves under your jacket to make it look like you have jock's biceps. With any luck it'l
Re:In the UK self defense = racism, extremism (Score:5, Informative)
He is speaking in two areas that were affected by riots in 2011. In these riots, almost half of the rioters were Black (see wikipedia). Therefore in the twisted minds of the UK authorities, teaching people in areas affected by riots to defend themselves is equivalent to racism and extremism.
from TFA:
The section of TFA that you quoted shows not the slightest hint of a mention of racism or extremism.
Did you copy the wrong sentence, or are you just making shit up?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
"making shit up" is not very smart.
Since thats exactly what you did...
Re: (Score:3)
Does your understanding include the fact that Labour got booted out over a year ago?
Re:In the UK self defense = racism, extremism (Score:5, Insightful)
Only an American would call the current UK Government "left-wing".
The last time the UK had an actual left-wing Government was sometime back in the '70s. Like most of the Anglosphere, it's been moving further and further to the right for decades.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Amen. This is why cases of intentional homicide per capita are four times higher in the UK than the US.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate [wikipedia.org]
Oh no, wait a second. It's the US where more people are intentionally murdered. Guess all that self-defence didn't really pay off...