Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/05/27/nicky-minaj-learns-what-happens-when-you-smuggle-drugs-through-airports.html
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whoa… diagram that sentence! (nice!)
People say that we’re on the brink of achieving our long-promised cyberpunk dystopia of corporate feudalism, dark enlightenment and transhuman chaos amid the corrupted ruins of democracy, but look at those to whom police actually defer. Entitled celebrity nitwitocracy is where it’s at.
and/or: “Do you know who I am!?”
(“y’mean b’sides someone who says ‘do you know who I am’?”)
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Apparently I overestimate either their pervasiveness or their ability to influence their charges; but I’m baffled by there not being some sort of compliance/fixer minion involved in a tour of this size and budget who would be in charge of knowing things like the difference between the Dutch attitude toward domestic simple possession and drug export(along with scurrying to obtain replacements upon arrival at the next stop; so that reducing legal exposure needn’t involve much actual hardship) in order to keep things on schedule.
I can’t imagine that anyone cares about Minaj’s smoking habits; but letting an almost 25,000 seat venue go without its act seems much less likely to be smiled upon.
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I thought celebrity entourages were required to include a “plug,” or person who carries (and sometimes acquires) drugs for the famous person so that they can go about with some level of plausible deniability.
I guess Ms. Minaj’s crew isn’t pulling their weight. She aught to upgrade.
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I’m guessing that it’s less that, and more that she’s possibly decided to surround herself by “yes people” rather than people who will look out for her best interest. She likely seriously believed that she was famous enough to get through with the drugs herself and would not be told otherwise.
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That sounds quite plausible as well.
People can be pretty strange without all the fame and fortune, add those to a person’s life and who knows what their decision making process might look like.
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It looks like that was attempted; but either failed to convince the cops or didn’t reduce the delay enough for it to matter. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if the relative lack of seriousness(along with the frankly sloppy failure to pack the incriminating material in the fall guy’s luggage rather than the performer’s) didn’t help:
if you are trying to meet the standard of evidence required to make a criminal charge stick someone who would have had access to the luggage swearing up and down that they put it there would really complicate things. If nobody is actually going to take a fall, because there isn’t going to be one, and your itinerary is tight enough that just having customs hassle you and confiscate the contraband will ruin your trip, the fall guy just isn’t that helpful; unless correctly used(eg. left to handle courier duties as a passenger totally unrelated to your entourage, which they apparently didn’t bother with.)
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Apart from everything else, why is she planning to arrive so late in the UK for a show that night? Even without the Dutch delay, it was not exactly ‘arriving in good time’, from what I can see.
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¯_(ツ)_/¯
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, I guess.
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That’s funny. That paragraph is nearly the same one on my resume.
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I don’t think I’ve ever run into anyone in global trade compliance or procurement who got that close to emphasizing that there are recreational as well as vocational applications to that particular set of skills. They’re always on us about encryption algorithms we might be exporting.
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As with all things Minaj, I’ll never consider the full story told until we hear what her cousin’s friend’s balls have to say on the subject.
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They are reportedly very testy.
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I do find it easy, living in California, to forget that other places even within our own country still haven’t changed one bit when it comes to MJ, and I always search my backpack to make sure I haven’t accidentally left something there or if something fell in off the closet shelf, and check twice if it’s international. As it is I worry there might be a trace of something detectable to dogs but not me.
And besides, most can use a tolerance break once in a while so just taking a break out on the road shouldn’t be too big of a deal.
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Keep in mind they took my bags without consent.
If this was someone’s first time travelling internationally, I could understand this level of cluelessness about how customs works.
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It looks like she’s been involved in tours that went to Canada at least as early as 2009; and ones that had substantial chunks of Europe and Latin America(plus the notoriously drug-tolerant UAE) in 2011.
This wouldn’t even be the first time through the Netherlands. Perhaps earlier good luck and/or increasing fame prevented anything useful from being learned; but this isn’t exactly clueless n00b’s first international outing.
I’m not sure if it’s a sincere belief or cynical posturing; but treating customs having a look at packages you send through customs like some sort of audacious and irregular seizure seems consistent with the machinations-of-my-jealous-enemies framing advanced in other tweets.
““Told you, it’s to try to make me late so that they can write negative stories. Jealousy is a disease. You know the rest,” Minaj tweeted.”
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Heck, was she even aware that what she was doing was illegal? She may well have thought that since she could carry the stuff around the US it must be ok everywhere, especially Amsterdam, where the weed is infamous. Kind of like those Americans arrested in Turks and Caicos with ammo in their bags.
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I feel sorry for the poor bastard who was willing to go to prison for her.
You wouldn’t have been “taken care of” in the way you were hoping.
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I thought weed was largely legal in Amsterdam? Or do you have to have specific permits etc? Or is it just de-criminalized
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