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UK Home Secretary Bans US Martial Arts Expert
Big Hairy Ian writes "An American expert in violent self-defense has been excluded from entering the UK by the Home Office. From the article: 'Tim Larkin tried to board a plane from his home in Las Vegas on Tuesday, but was given a UK Border Agency letter saying "his presence here was not conducive to the public good." Mr Larkin, who was due to host seminars, told the BBC the move was a "gross over-reaction." The Home Office said he was subject to an exclusion order. A spokeswoman said: "The home secretary will seek to exclude an individual if she considers that his or her presence in the UK is not conducive to the public good." Mr Larkin — who trained as a US Navy Seal — runs a company teaching combat to military and law enforcement clients in the United States.'"
This is not the first time someone has been prevented from entering a country. While the US refuses people all the time, we're supposed to get indignant that this person is refused entry to GB?
I'm sure the mental train wreck in some peoples' minds regarding this is epic.
However, this is not news.
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BMO
The UK has a different connotation for anti-social than does the US, and in UK law, the term has very specific meanings.
This is the same woman who, upon learning that border control was overloaded and relaxing passport checks for low risk cases at peak time, decided to solve the problem by firing the guy in charge and forcing checks to never be relaxed. Result: planes stacking up in the sky because the queues at border control were too long. Prime Minister summons her and gives her a right ass-kicking and now risk-based enforcement is back on the table.
It will be tempting for Slashdot posters to over-generalize from this case to try and make sweeping statements about the entire UK or British people (just as it's tempting to do the same about Americans when the US Govt does something retarded). But the core problem in this case really boils down to one woman and her arbitrary and inconsistent management of the borders.
They've been excluding a lot of people recently for very silly reasons. Apparently someone have been given more power then they have wit to manage and they're basically going power mad. It's one thing if you're excluding people that present a public risk. It's another if the reasons are totally arbitrary.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Special Ops training for cops?
I think the reason may have more to do with this (from TFA):
A visit in 2009 to Slough, in Berkshire, where Mr Larkin held a class intended to teach how to "maim and kill in self-defence", provoked widespread condemnation from the community.
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He is speaking in two areas that were affected by riots in 2011. In these riots, almost half of the rioters were Black (see wikipedia). Therefore in the twisted minds of the UK authorities, teaching people in areas affected by riots to defend themselves is equivalent to racism and extremism.
from TFA:
The section of TFA that you quoted shows not the slightest hint of a mention of racism or extremism.
Did you copy the wrong sentence, or are you just making shit up?
Who's he kidding? The UK Border Agency would be irrelevant to Chuck Norris.
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He advocated using force against the British police and he asks people to use lethal force despite it being illegal in the UK.
Maiming and killing in self defence is sometimes necessary. Unprovoked violent attacks to happen. On the rare chance that such a situation were to occur, I would like to be able to defend myself or my friends and family. Yes, you can study many martial arts and sports in the UK already, but they are of limited use in an actual street fight. There are no tap outs, there's no "soft" canvas mat, no ref to tell the guy he can't use that broken bottle to gut you.
Ultimately, however, this is not the point. This man will teach a civilian how to cause serious injuries to a person, but we let these same people point 2 tonnes of motorised steel around our roads on a daily basis, operate plant machinery which can destroy whole buildings, run our healthcare infrastructure. Learning how to do something dangerous doesn't mean they will employ that knowledge improperly. These people are still culpable for their actions.
Ultimately all the government is done is prevent the spread of knowledge.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
First, the word SEAL is an abbreviation and is therefore capitalized. Also, Tim Larkin was never a Navy SEAL according to real US Navy SEAL authenticators. He dropped out of BUD/S and therefore never qualified as a SEAL. He's been lying about his service for years.
Proof: http://www.socnet.com/showthread.php?t=47063
Only an American would call the current UK Government "left-wing".
The last time the UK had an actual left-wing Government was sometime back in the '70s. Like most of the Anglosphere, it's been moving further and further to the right for decades.
US banned Cat Stevens, so you don't even need to be anti-social to be banned.
He was suspected of having ties to terrorists, this was the right decision. Do you propose that because he's famous they should have ignored this and just rolled the dice?