res ipsa loquitur
Ah, yet another story about the vaunted Arab friendliness and welcoming of strangers. It seems that a group of spoiled Arab sweeties, fresh from spending their unearned oil revenues in Milan, refused to have their pure selves seated next to men to whom they were not related.
Now, how people arrange their lives, and with whom they wish to associate, is, or should be, entirely up to them. Until they start to make demands in public, and of people who don’t happen to share their beliefs. And inconveniencing people who have the same rights to their choices on a public conveyance.
The story’s basics, at the Daily Mail:
Three Arab princesses were thrown off a packed British Airways flight after refusing to sit next to male passengers they didn’t know.The dispute – in which the three princesses from the ultra-conservative Qatar royal family demanded segregated seating – left the London-bound plane delayed on a baking Italian runway for nearly three hours.
Furious passengers whistled and clapped as the row intensified before the captain eventually ordered the women to be escorted off the plane.
The princesses, wearing traditional Arab dress, were returning from a day’s shopping in Milan.
There is, apparently, no way to embarrass some folks. It’s useful to keep incidents such as this in mind when we discuss providing armaments to these folks, or daydreaming that, somehow, Middle Eastern Arabs are capable of sustaining a liberal democracy under which all men (and women) are created equal.
