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[Frumple]

Yeah, along those lines. Most of the takeaway should just be that I'm pretty damn doubtful, if you're going to try to justify this stuff with international law, that the US was actually in the clear. It's probably approaching sketchy even by constitutional powers, given the nature of our previous relation with syria and the nature of the respective transgression(s).

I'd lay very good odds it would have been relatively trivial to get plainly in the free and clear -- obama came close, and that was with a congress that was significantly more hostile to him in particular doing it -- mind you (and you probably wouldn't have found me arguing against, in that case), but, well. That's not what happened.

[Neonivek]

There were other reasons for this than just excuses written into law.

For example soldiers not only cannot usually leave but they often have less capacity to seek medical attention. Thus any use of tear gas in war is typically just needless cruelty.

While a riot will disperse and can be immediately treated.

[Max™]

Except when they don't disperse or disperse and don't seek treatment or don't disperse and get arrested and wind up choking to death en route to a police station or just wind up choking to death on the street, but theoretically, you're right, assuming I didn't forget a part you left out.

[Shazbot]

I think presuming tear gas exists because your dad is a racist is a bit of a stretch. Unless your dad was a Frenchman in WWI and he was racist against Germans, or your dad was black and wanted to gas all the whities in the 1932 Bonus Army.

[Strife26]

I think presuming tear gas exists because your dad is a racist is a bit of a stretch. Unless your dad was a Frenchman in WWI and he was racist against Germans, or your dad was black and wanted to gas all the whities in the 1932 Bonus Army.

Proof that riot control agents are used only as a tool of oppression by the patriarchal authorities, right there.

[Shazbot]

I think presuming tear gas exists because your dad is a racist is a bit of a stretch. Unless your dad was a Frenchman in WWI and he was racist against Germans, or your dad was black and wanted to gas all the whities in the 1932 Bonus Army.

Proof that riot control agents are used only as a tool of oppression by the patriarchal authorities, right there.

Those damn patriarchal French.

Seriously, tear gas is used internationally in place of far, far worse ideas like shooting birdshot into the pavement so the pellets bounce up into rioters with reduced force.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud3Csq6568k

"... a time when corporations were buying submachine guns and even heavy machine guns for labor relations ..."

Yeah, teargas is great.

[TempAcc]

Certainly better than taking rubber pelets, beanbags, flashbangs, microwaves or water jets to the derriere.

Also cheaper, too, since it does basically the same things that pepper spray does while dispersing far easier and arguably lasting longer.

[Lord Shonus]

Except when they don't disperse or disperse and don't seek treatment or don't disperse and get arrested and wind up choking to death en route to a police station or just wind up choking to death on the street, but theoretically, you're right, assuming I didn't forget a part you left out.

Such a thing only happens in one of two situations. In one case, somebody is using excessive force to begin with, and would be using fire hoses, rubber bullets, actual bullets, or some other means of dispersing the crowd with extreme brutality. The other case when such a thing is likely to happen is when the mob is so large, so dense, and so violent that only a tear gas bombardment can disperse it before it bursts like a pustule and burns down half the city without inflicting massive casualties. In neither case is the tear gas the problem.

[sluissa]

While both technically "chemical" weapons. It's very unfair to say someone using tear gas is at ALL on the same scale as someone using sarin.

[martinuzz]

Been fighting this one all morning.

Company needed to move 4 employees. (Because they needed those employees for flights elsewhere, without which a flight with 100+ people wouldn't have taken off and been an even bigger loss than 4 seats compensated for) They asked for volunteers to give up their seats with significant compensation. $800 was a number thrown around as offered but they probably would have climbed higher than that. Nobody volunteered. They decided to pick 4 "random" people. How random this was is debatable, but they needed those seats, so they picked 4 people. One of them claimed to be a doctor and refused because he has patients waiting. There is an argument here if there ARE actually patients waiting on him in a life threatening condition that only he can take care of. Security was rightly called to escort an uncooperative passenger off of their plane. Security got a bit rough with the passenger.

In the end, this flight was delayed by 2 hours causing problems for 100+ people. Another flight was likely delayed by 2+ hours causing issues for those 100+ people. Each of those has a chance of needing a connecting ticket rebooked which might end up bumping people off further down the line. All because one man threw a temper tantrum on the plane.

Security did go too far. And there is the possibility of the man being a doctor needed at his destination is a valid claim to keep him on the plane, but otherwise this really was one man ruining the days of hundreds of other people.

Reading further into that BBC article though it seems as if the doctor didn't need to be at the hospital till the next day. Definitely not a life threatening emergency. The employees didn't need to be at work until the next day either, but because of limits on airline employees and how long they can fly in a given work day and how much rest time they need between work days, it could have been an issue if they weren't on that flight.

United got themselves some bad PR, for sure. But I don't blame them one bit.  Security could have handled it better, but dude shouldn't have refused to leave the plane when asked either.

Heh, it even made Dutch newspapers now. Airline accused of racism now as well, because it was a Chinese doctor.
http://www.volkskrant.nl/economie/passagier-hardhandig-verwijderd-uit-vliegtuig-united-dit-is-discriminatie~a4485728/

[TempAcc]

Ye, the flight thing was pretty damn terrible, and there's literally nothing that can justify what was done the passengers, specially the medical doctor guy, but calling it racism is a bit of a stretch, specially since apparently they were picked using a random number generator.

Regardless, the company and the people directly involved need to be punished. There's literally nothing I can think of that would justify that sort of thing.

[sluissa]

Racist against people who choose to buy the cheapest possible ticket at the last possible moment. Definitely going to target certain groups with that one. Might actually be a case as dumb as that is.

Guy refused a legal order by 3 police officers. Guy gets beat down. Nothing surprising. I hope he spends a night in jail for public disturbance.

[TempAcc]

Didn't the company overbook the flight though? The sources I've seen on the thing says it was overbooked, which would imply that the company lacked foresight and forgot it had to send 4 of its employees to other places and then decided to solve the issue by taking it out on the passengers.

But ye, they could've still solved it in a shitton of other better ways. I can understand someone not taking 800 bucks, knowing what kind of a hassle getting you and your baggage into a plane can be.

[sluissa]

The funniest part about it all is that they got into it by being so damn cheap. If the figure they'd tossed around that Sluissa was talking about had been $8000 instead of $800, they'd have had volunteers biting their hand off, and it'd have cost them much, much less than all this shitshow.

$800 is likely the legal minimum they had to pay to remove someone involuntarily. A passenger involuntarily bumped off a flight under some circumstances is entitled to CASH in the amount of 4x the amount of the cheapest ticket price on the plane. or ~$1300 whichever is less. I assume an avg ticket price of around $200 for that sort of flight so if he'd cooperated he could have gotten a check for $800 at LEAST. I'm not sure I know ANYONE who wouldn't take a check for $800 to sit in a hotel room for a night. Or at worst drive themselves home 5 hours.

$8000 is a ridiculous amount and more than ANY airline would ever pay to a bumped passenger, voluntary or not.

[Lord Shonus]

Didn't the company overbook the flight though? The sources I've seen on the thing says it was overbooked, which would imply that the company lacked foresight and forgot it had to send 4 of its employees to other places and then decided to solve the issue by taking it out on the passengers.

But ye, they could've still solved it in a shitton of other better ways. I can understand someone not taking 800 bucks, knowing what kind of a hassle getting you and your baggage into a plane can be.

The company was probably banking on a certain number of passengers not showing up to solve the problem. Airlines have been doing shit like that for years.