Letters to the Editor
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Ironic
I find it curiously ironic that the writer and almost all commenters have taken for granted that the author was provided with a lawyer in a timely manner, was given due process (the holiday notwithstanding), and informed of the charges laid against him, despite his ignorance or indifference to these charges, and was able to make an uncoerced response to the charges. Similarly he was able to consult with his Embassy. These are all afforded to him through rights that we have collectively endorsed and maintained since the Thirteenth Century.
How funny it is that the rights that all Americans take for granted have been legislatively denied to any but American citizens, with the approval of the American Congress. Americans find it convenient to strip the rights of “foreigners”, inside or outside their borders, but become indignant at the thought of someone trampling theirs.
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Ask Nicholas Berg about his beheading
>Ask Nicholas Berg about his beheading
Widely held to be a "by way of deception" production.
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um...is this article a hoax...?
Um...guys, has anyone noticed that his diary goes through September 2007...? Um...isn't it only May 2007...? Isn't this article a hoax?
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Passport expired
Kitchengirl writes re passports and expiration dates:
Its a safety net. Entrance to countries like England and Ireland are good for three months. This means I can buy a plane ticket for one week, then change it while I'm there and tack on another two months and three weeks to my vacation.
So why did BA allow him to board in New York knowing he will be refused entry. Why wouldn't they just refund his ticket and send him away?
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Boring
What a boring loser. Anyone who travels knows to check to see if there are any visa/onflight restrictions at the destination country. I'm sick of all this "it's not my fault" shit.
If you're this arrogant and obnoxious sober, I hate to think of how intolerable you are when you're trashed.
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Gordon Wagner
Gordon,
Are you really saying that the widely-distributed Berg beheading video is a Mossad creation? Any source for this, or this is another entry in the long list of conspiracy theories for gullible Middle Easterners?
I have seen the video, and it is gruesome and horrible.
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BFD
Newsflash! Out-of-control self-righteous fool gets thrown in the slammer for outrageous disruptive behavior, with other sociopaths, some of whom probably acquire AIDS for their cruel and bestial rape.
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Pedestrian?
"The Da Vinci Code" was way worse than that.
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Get a grip please
The man was rude to a flight attendant. I don't like rude people, either, but I don't think he deserved to be forcibly sodomized for it.
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You're kidding me, right?
No one "deserves" to be raped by anyone, ever.
If the author of this piece had been a heterosexual, HIV-negative man, would you all be so cavalier about his having endured multiple rapes? I have to wonder.
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art guerrilla
I love you! Let's get married!
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AIDS and butt fucking
While not impossible, it's highly unlikely to get AIDS from being the inserter in anal intercourse during unprotected sex unless of course there is bleeding. The meds that Kurth was on would also have significantly reduced the chances of transmission. Having any kind of sexual contact with someone who is HIV positive does not automatically lead to AIDS transmission. It's just simply not THAT easy to become HIV infected. It's amazing how mind-numblingly ignorant people still are about AIDS. Fear rules.
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The whole thing was precipitated by failing to give this man the basic courtesy of reporting missing property
I have more sympathy for Mr. Kurth than I have for the flight attendants. They refused to make a simple phone call in an effort to recover a laptop whose value may have been upwards of $2000. Then they charged him with public intoxication (which apparently was a mistake) and for endangering the safety of the aircraft- which was flat-out a false charge.
I wonder if that latter charge was partly an attempt to preclude a lawsuit for failure to assist in recovering missing property.
I myself am still attempting to recover $1000 from US Airways on a business-class ticket that was turned into an economy-class seat as a consequence of a connection delay which made me miss my flight to England. And this was AFTER the person who rescheduled my flight for the next day made a mistake which would have had me leaving in TWO days instead of in one. I missed a day at my hotel in England (where I was planning to visit a friend dying of cancer); I was put on hold by US Airways' customer service number for so long that my cellphone battery died, and nearly got arrested by an air marshal for spending too much time visiting the bathroom on the return flight.
I have very little sympathy for the people who took my money and treated me like shit. I have much more sympathy for men like Mr. Kurth, who was raped twice as a consequence of British Airways' inflated charges.
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The real problem
The solution to this grave threat to civility is to simply make the consumption of alcohol illegal again. It's been done before, it can be done again. This would be a welcome addition to the War on Drugs and once the proper laws are drafted we can double our prison population, make our highways safer, provide a boon to rehabilitation hospitals and have something we can look down our noses and shake our fingers at.
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Hang On!
I still think that the cockroach in the picture is an overstatement...
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hi Golden Boy! haven't seen your tag for a while
getting tired of us idiots? you know Gordon Wagner, like his namesake, he's got a thing about jews. this is his attempt at (updated) holocaust denial. still i think it's more his love of arabs than hatred of jews. i remember an arab proverb he told. if it were possible, women would ask for toasted ice. GW, look up Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al-Hussein, the Jordanian ambassador to the UN. like all those husseins, he's classy. and unlike europeans, they actually *like* jews - israelis. (that hussein family once was the ruling family in iraq - given as a bone by the british in lieu of arabia). they are descendents of The Prophet and act accordingly. Too bad they don't still rule iraq and arabia. like him, i too am hopeful about arabs and jews, much more so than europeans. oh well, that's MY thing. just don't take GW that seriously, he's an old nazi who's lost all his teeth.