Things that get my goat

Things that get my goat this week

It could be that my period is due this week but some things have really pissed me off. I have decided, like any decent human, that the best place to air this annoyance is on the internet. Everyone else seems to do it so I am going to give it a go as well. Here we go then...

Trump and Syria

This week Donald Trump, reality TV star and somehow President of the United States of America (!) has bombed a (not especially strategic) Syrian airbase in retaliation for a chemical attack the Syrian army did on Syrian civilians. The attack itself is disgusting and wrong. It used a combination of chemicals believed to include mustard gas and sarin gas (sarin was the gas used on the Japanese underground by Aum Shinrikyo in the mid-90's which killed around a dozen people and left hundreds more with life-long injuries and health problems). 

It was right that Trump spoke out against the attacks and we have to give him the benefit of the doubt that his sympathies to the Syrian people were genuine. There may even be an argument for the attack on the airbase as the rest of the world has sat back and let Assad commit these atrocities on his own people for far too long and intervention should probably have happened sooner. There are some things that aren't quite right about it though.

1. Apparently Trump (or one of his companies) owns shares in the company which manufactures the missiles he fired at the airbase. At $100m a strike that is some profit on those shares.
2. By doing this he is going against Russia who are allies of Syria but are believed to have been involved in election rigging in the USA in 2016...the very election that saw Trump get in to power. What is really going on there?

Syria isn't the only one

Trump has also decided he doesn't like N. Korea testing weapons in the Sea of Japan (or anywhere for that matter) and sent a convoy of aircraft carriers near to N.Korea to try and scare Kim Jung-Un. Kim is a man who blows up his own relatives with anti-aircraft missiles when he wants to execute them for apparently no reason. I don't think this will terrify him. 

Trump also said that he will do it without the help of China if need be because...USA!

Actual tweet from Trump's personal twitter account - Chrome extension improves it so much

EDL

Over the weekend the (pointless) English Defense League (EDL) decided to 'invade' Birmingham to stand up to what it perceives as a Muslim take over of a British city and so called 'Trojan Schools' (where schools apparently recruit young people in to committing extreme acts, often of terror, in the name of Islam).

The response to this was fantastic. ICYMI:

1. Birmingham had a flipping massive tea party. People of multi-faiths and no faith got together to have a tea party because that is what the British do best in any time of crisis, stick the kettle on. 300 people turned up to have tea and cake together at a mosque and to be honest I wish I could have been there because it looked epic! By comparison the EDL rally got about 100 people to turn up. Amazing.
2. A brilliant young woman called Saffiyah Khan had her image go viral after standing up to an EDL bully moron. He was threatening another young woman who was going about her business in her home town because she happened to be wearing a hijab. The image was of Saffiyah Khan smiling serenely in his face and standing over him while a police officer restrains him. The EDL have since tried to besmirch her by saying she broke a silence in memory of the victims of the Westminster attack a couple of weeks ago and they say they should have broken her teeth. Sounds great doesn't it? Bunch of butt-hurt, white bigots with no love in their lives threaten a bright young woman on the street. Genius EDL. Luckily the two women have met each other and have a message of solidarity (see the link above)

The thing that gets my goat about this is that the EDL thought this would be a good idea, that they believe they are actually relevant (they never have been), that they weren't even from Birmingham themselves and that they think threatening women is a good idea. What a bunch of fucking pricks.

This will go down as one of the most iconic images of the 21st Century.

United Airlines think this is acceptable behaviour towards paying customers

Video footage has surfaced of a passenger on a United Airlines flight being dragged off of a plane and in the process being injured. The company thought this was acceptable because he had refused to give up his seat on an apparently over booked flight. The story is a little deeper than that though and the truth has started to come out now.

1. The man said he was a doctor who needed to get home. Apparently, when flights are overbooked people with certain professions are not kicked off of the flight and other volunteers are sought. Why did they persist with removing him?
2. It wasn't just a case that the flight was overbooked. United wanted people to give up their seats for staff from a sister airline! They actually expected paying customers to remove themselves from the flight to do that! Overbooking flights is not uncommon as airlines expect a certain number of passengers to not show up for flights and although this is not illegal it smacks of greed. Therefore it is common to offer travel vouchers and seats of alternative flights. The thing that gets me here though is that there was an expectation that customers should give up seats for staff. This shows that United have no respect for customers at all.
3. The man in question is Asian in appearance. That just looks like it was incredibly racist. Bunch of white police officers dragging a defenseless Asian man out of his seat, injuring him and removing him from the plane...wow!

There has been an excellent backlash online and I hope people threatening their boycott of the airline do carry this out.

This comes a week after the same company did this to some little girls:

Family of United Airlines crew can travel for free or at reduced rates, these passengers are called 'Pass Riders'. There seems to be a catch though, you can't just wear whatever you want. This was made clear to two girls, who were only teenagers, were forced to change what they were wearing.

What could they possibly have done to be so offensive? Were they wearing practically nothing at all? Nope. They were trying to be comfortable like every other passenger and were wearing leggings...yup...leggings. I wear those to work because they are smart and practical. I work in an office. These girls were using their passes to ride on a plane. 

The rules listed by United Airlines about what 'Pass Riders' can and cannot wear also disproportionately affect female travelers and seem to sexualise them and at the same time are sexist.

Chechnya are rounding up gay men and putting them in concentration style camps!

No, seriously! The guy who basically rules Chechnya even said that this could not be happening because there are no gay men in Chechnya! Seriously!

Not only that but he could be the only man that Vladimir Putin is afraid of because he is a nut job with an army backing.

Over 100 gay men have 'gone missing' and are believed to be held in concentration style camps with others believed to have already been 'executed'. They were caught in a kind of honey trap where adverts for hookups were placed on social media. When the men arrived at the location they were arrested and 'disappeared'.

The USA and UK have come out to say that this is totally wrong and needs to stop. I just fear for these men that have been taken away from their families and friends.