RSJS writes:
Apparently being questioned by Customs is a front page news article today. Old Mother Herald discusses some lass who spent up to two hours being questioned. Ooooh, the sniffers detected drugs but there weren’t any pills on her. Aaaaah, they questioned her age. Eeeeeeh, no-one actually makes that noise except grandfathers getting out of their chairs to go hit children with their canes. The point is, for fuck’s sake, there is a chain of events here that make me sad in my tummy.
1) Some bint gets questioned by customs.
2) Bint is so incensed at them thinking she was younger than her age she goes and finds a reporter to bitch at, a valuable use of the five days she is spending in our country to visit family
3) Reporter cares enough to submit this story to Old Mother Herald, who prints it along with some dire headline about this matter putting aforementioned bint off coming to New Zealand.
4) I read this and cry blood.
I don’t hate the whining baggage who started all this palaver. She is not of import to me. Nor is the reporter, making his money the only way he knows how while he dreams of making a mint with his erotic novel about the forbidden love of a farmer and his fistulated cow. Not even Old Mother Herald. Because it’s a supply and demand thing. Besom supplies whinge. Reporter supplies story. Paper supplies column inches. YOU CUNTS DEMAND. Somewhere out there is a target demographic, weighed, measured, recorded from tip to toe and analysed by machines bigger and more valve-filled than your bedroom, who this story is aimed at. You “OK” magazine-reading hand-wringing pisstanks.
…hang on. If these grand machines can analyse everything from the dandruff on your hobbit feet to the pustules on your scalp that pop when you brush your hair, then they must be able to figure out the advantage of pitching bullshit not only to the fans but to the foes as well. Perhaps Big Think COURTS anger and abuse knowing that one person who reads one nice story lets the buck stop there, while one angry middle-aged corporate zombie who reads something that fucks with their ulcer will trumpet it to dozens of unwilling listeners, spreading the attention like Marmite over a vast socio-economic slice of toast bread, free publicity for those advertisers selling you bee-shit supplements to smear on your buttocks or digital wonders that play music and films, read you bedtime stories and steal your dreams for the Dream Emperor on his jagged throne of raccoon penis-bones… Dear Sweet Jesus I am in the system, I am manipulated into posting this by electronic minds vastly superior to my own steam-powered thought-box, I am but a pawn in a game whose rules I’ll never learn, oh the inhumanity… Free will is a myth, god has been replaced by an Apple Mac, the devil is a teenage computer hacker from Norway and we’re all going to die. Thank you and good night.
7 comments:
I thought the article had a point.
We (as a nation) arrest people, search them, insult them - just because they're travelling from one part of the planet to another. Why? Just so as to stop people from choosing what they want to put into their own bodies.
I think that's fucked up - and for those mainstream people who think that "drugs are bad, foreigners are bad, the custom service are our brave protectors", this sort of article might just make them think a bit..
Were the matter, as you put it: "We (as a nation) arrest people, search them, insult them - just because they're travelling from one part of the planet to another"
then peopel might have a good reason to rise up and bitch. But that's not the case here: the woman in question was interviewed to ascertain whether she was a drug-smuggler, an imposter, or any number of nasty things one doesn't want scuffing their sneakers on the land of the long white cloud. Had customs dragged her aside, cuffed her and charged her with "Being a traveller" while dancing around pointing and laughing going "Hahah! you is a traveller lol" and looking in her knickers solely because of her decision to travel, I might have been more sympathetic and your perceived point might have been more correct.
As for making the "mainstream" think, all this article would do is make them think, using your criteria, "drugs are STILL bad, foreigners are STILL bad AND they complain about the customs service, and the custom service are STILL our brave protectors".
I'd criticise the criteria you cite above (especially disliking foreigners, since when was the National Front in the majority?) but need to pee. I might pick this up in a few shakes of a lamb's tail...
One thing is that I'm a radical anti-authoritarian. I think drugs should be legal and I disagree with the idea of immigration controls (although I admit to some need for restrictions in an imperfect world). So my starting point is probably different to yours. So:
It's quite unusual for people to be pulled over as they cross the Bombay Hills and questioned for two hours. Some form of probable cause is needed, for one thing - plus there are little things like access to a lawyer, etc.
My question is why if we don't allow the cops to arrest people at random driving from one part of NZ to another, why let Customs do this to incoming foreigners?
Plus, although I'd agree that most people's racism isn't in the NF league, we do express through borders and immigration controls the concept that we are somehow *better* than the criminal hordes outside.
The point of the article: this sh*t happened to her. It could happen to you. It shouldn't be able to.
BTW, article here
What arrest? I see no arrest. I see interview. Triggered by what can be considered probable cause, or at least possible cause. It's just Not That Big A Deal. I've been interviewed returning to my own country. So has Josh, mostly because he foolishly associates with suspicious lowlifes. The fuckers did their drug/bomb/fruit swabbing and didn't even detect about a hundred Ritalin tablets stashed in my toilet bag.
Just so we're clear what I'm talking about: Woman asked questions by customs. woman answers questions. Woman fucks off out of airport to complain to journalists. I'm thrilled you don't like the authority under whom you are allowed to foment your liberal rage. I am ecstatic you love drugs. My nipples salute you that you don't think people should be arrested for driving over the Bombay hills. My only teensy tiny question is: Why are you choosing to tell us this given it has no connection to the matter at hand? You might as well write of your love of cheese and clog-dancing.
Firstly, I'd consider that holding someone for two hours = arresting them. In any practical sense.
Secondly, if drugs and immigration were unregulated our borders could be like the Dutch/German one - a welcome sign.. (like here)
Thirdly, do you think it would be acceptable if the cops were to set up a checkpoint at Ramarama, stop every hundredth car (roughly the customs quota) and enquire as to quite why sir had been to the Coromandel, search the cars, then hold people for several hours until a supervisor agreed they had good reason to enter Auckland?
Pedal your hippy manifesto somewhere else, treehugger. Your analogies are invalid, your agenda a pipedream, your redefining terms amateurish, dagnabbit the only thing I like about you is your name. If we're playing the inaccurate analogy game I've been held up at supermarket checkouts when buying beer - is that arrest? They doubt my age and want i.d, how is that different from this case? Should I whine to the media? Fuck sake. And your Bombay hills checkpoint idea is so full of pissweak baiting comments that have nowt to do with the original argument, responding to them all would only spur you on to bend this post further away from the initial thrust of it until it is thrusting on a tangent like some misaligned pornstar and I'm going to end up with semen in my ear again.
As for German customs, I've been through 'em. If you thought kiwi customs were intimidating, try a nine-foot-tall East German border guard made of spare tractor parts and topped with a blonde quiff.
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