Shah Rukh Khan Detained at Newark Airport

The BBC reports that a diplomatic row has erupted after Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan (whom it describes as a global icon and whom I have never heard of) was detained for two hours at Newark Airport:

India has asked the US to explain why a leading Bollywood film star was allegedly detained for two hours at Newark airport, which serves New York.

Shah Rukh Khan, who was released after India's embassy in the US intervened, said he felt angry and humiliated.

The actor, who is promoting a film on racial profiling, said he was stopped because he had a Muslim name.

But US customs officials denied that Mr Khan had been detained, saying he was questioned for 66 minutes.

Allow me to attempt to explain, for this situation is truly mystifying; the United States is a sovereign nation (one of the very few genuinely sovereign nations on earth, in fact), and therefore it is perfectly entitled to control who may enter, and who may not.

If it wishes to stop and question everyone who enters or no one at all, then it is perfectly entitled to do so (of course, it would be nice if, as a democracy, it listened to the majority of its people on the subject). Frankly, it is not the business of a foreign power.

But no, we don't live in a sane world; instead, we must have all this hand wringing, whilst we pretend to know (or care) who Khan is to avoid offending Indian 'sensibilities'.

I have to ask, would Indian sensibilities be offended by the profiling of Muslims at airports? Maybe we should ask the citizens of Bombay what they have to say.

Here's the U.S. reaction, however:

The US ambassador to India, Timothy Roehmer, said the embassy was looking into Mr Khan's case.

Speaking in Delhi, Mr Roehmer said: "Shah Rukh Khan, the actor and global icon, is a very welcome guest in the United States. Many Americans love his films."

He said the embassy was trying to "ascertain the facts of the case - to understand what took place".

Terror Threat Forces England Out of World Badminton Championships

Apparently a very specific threat from a Muslim terrorist group has caused the English badminton team to cancel their trip to India.

I can't imagine they would throw away all their hard work in progressing in the competition on a whim, so there must have been just cause to be afraid.

From The Daily Telegraph:

The eight-strong squad was due to travel to India for the competition, which begins on Monday in Hyderabad, but cancelled the trip after reports of threats from Muslim extremist group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Badminton England chief executive Adrian Christy said: “This was an incredibly tough decision and one we didn’t take lightly.

“After the Olympic Games, this is the most prestigious championships in the world but we were not prepared to risk the safety of our players, coaches and staff in what we felt could have been a very volatile environment.”

Lashkar-e-Taiba is a Pakistani-based military group fighting against the Indian control of Kashmir.

It has been linked to the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, in which 188 people were killed, as well as an October 2005 bomb attack in Delhi which killed 60 people.

Christy said: “We are extremely grateful for the speed in which the BWF (Badminton World Federation) and the organising committee reacted to the concerns following the threat.

“We have carefully considered the comments made by the local police authorities and we know that they have the best interest of all competitors in mind.

“We have also listened to the advice from the Foreign Office and British High Commission. We have been in constant dialogue with them over the past couple of days.

“The conclusion is that safety is of paramount importance and therefore, with great regret, the team will be returning home immediately.”

Performance director Ian Moss said: “It is a disappointing outcome, especially after we had enjoyed a very good preparation at our holding camp in Doha, Qatar, last week.

“Our athletes were extremely well prepared for these championships but, at the end of the day, personal safety must take priority over performance.

“This was a unanimous squad decision and is not reflective of the efforts made by the organising committee to create the safest environment possible for all athletes.”

But Indian officials have sought to downplay threats against the tournament.

Indian home affairs minister P Chidambaram is reported in The Times of India as saying that there was “no specific information” about any planned terrorist attack.

He said: “I am satisfied that the World Badminton Championship will take place in complete security. No one needs to have any apprehensions on this score.”

A Badminton World Federation official said England were the only team that would be leaving.

"No other team has withdrawn or indicated a decision to withdraw," S. Selvam, BWF spokesman said.

£90,000 Benefits for Mother Living Abroad

From The Independent:

A man today admitted a complex benefits scam in which he claimed more than £90,000 in his mother's name.

Mohammed Abdur Rashid, 52, of Uplands, Swansea, South Wales, claimed an array of benefits for his mother despite the fact she was living abroad long-term.

Rashid's mother, Mrs Tasbir Begun Latif, was living with relatives in India for periods of up to 11 months.

Rashid admitted five specimen charges linked to the benefit fraud when he appeared at Swansea Crown Court.

An interpreter translated the details of the complex indictment into Bengali as it was put to him.

Rashid also asked the court to take an unspecified number of other similar offences into account.

Carl Harrison, prosecuting for the Department of Work and Pensions, said the total amount fraudulently claimed was £92,847 over a period of six years from February 2001.

The range of benefits claimed included everything from pension credit payments to housing and council tax benefits to a carer's allowance and a disability living allowance.

Rashid's mother was absent from the UK from February 2001 until the start of December of the same year during one claims period.

The case against him was adjourned today until 14 August to allow the completion of pre-sentence reports.

Rashid, whose UK passport has previously been seized by officers from the Department of Work and Pensions, was released on conditional bail.

Hindu Girl Kidnapped by Muslim 'Chat Friend' in India

From The Telegraph India:

Shillong, July 5: Social networking has landed a college girl in trouble after a man who she got acquainted with abducted her when she went to meet him in Bangalore.

Shenaz Rymbai, the mother of Sahana, 22, today told this correspondent that she had filed an FIR on the night of June 29 after her daughter did not return home from Umshyrpi College in Shillong. The Rymbais are residents of Nongmynsong.

Today, president of the Civil Society Women’s Organisation, Agnes Kharshiing, who has met Sahana’s relatives, said the girl and Sameer Gafoor of Bangalore had been chatting online for many months.

After talking to Sahana’s mother, Kharshiing came to know that Sahana told her that Sameer is affected by polio.

Kharshiing said Sameer had posted his passport-size photo on the social networking site and claimed to have several business establishments in Bangalore. In the last week of June, he invited Sahana to come to Bangalore to meet him.

An unsuspecting Sahana boarded a Guwahati-Bangalore flight with Rs 15,000.

Sameer and his relatives waited for her at Bangalore airport and after reaching there on June 29, she was asked to wear a burqa and speak Hindi instead of Khasi, her mother tongue.

Two days later, Shenaz dialled her daughter’s mobile number but an anonymous voice demanded Rs 5 lakh from the family for her release.

Initially, the kidnapper asked Sahana’s relatives to deposit Rs 5 lakh with account number 23245 of Karnatak Bank (gramin).

Later, he asked Shenaz to come to the Bangalore airport with the ransom amount. Shenaz said her daughter told her that she was staying in a secluded place wearing a burqa.

Kharshiing contacted a Meghalaya police officer who called up senior police officers in Bangalore to track down the girl.

Bangalore police were trying to rescue Sahana, Kharshiing said.

An officer with the Nongmynsong police outpost said the police were trying to trace her.

British Student Raped in India

From the Daily Mail:

A British volunteer teacher in India has allegedly been raped by two taxi drivers.

Police believe the girl, 18, was attacked after she left work at a government school where she was on a ten-week placement.

She had hailed a taxi and was reportedly picked up by the two men near to a shopping district in Palampur, in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh.

The men allegedly attacked her in the vehicle before she was driven to an isolated area of town near a cafe.

Once there, she told police she was dragged from the cab and then raped repeatedly.

The two suspects are believed to be the cabbie and his passenger, who is also a taxi driver. Police named Rakesh Kumar and Sunil Kumar as suspects after their arrest.

Witnesses who saw the girl enter the taxi said they were in their 20s.

I have written previously about the dangers which young people face on their gap years. Even Princess Eugenie, with her specialist Scotland Yard bodyguards, could not be kept completely safe.

One thing does astound me about all of this, however. Indians are one of Britain's most successful non-Western immigrant groups.

Yet several people acknowledge in the comments on the article that this girl was 'stupid' to have got into a taxi alone there.

This is the background that a lot of the people we insist on importing into our country come from, an environment where a woman can't take a cab without a chaperone.

Is this really the sort of society we want to create here?

Illegals Ran Forged Document Ring

Three illegal immigrants from India are on trial for a massive fraud involving entry visas and British passports.

The trio, a man and his two wives, took cash from applicants abroad and then submitted an application for entry or asylum. They had created all the documents necessary themselves, enabling thousands to cheat border controls and making them hundreds of thousands of pounds.

These fake documents included CVs, degree certificates, references, bank statements and identity documents.

Between October 2006 and May 2008 they submitted 980 applications to the Home Office, all for people who are unsuitable for entry either in terms of background or lack of ability to support themselves financially.

The UK Border Agency say that this is the most false applications received from a single source - but that did not stop them rubber stamping every single one.

The scam became so successful that they started offering their services on a 'no win, no fee' basis - so confident were they that the UK Border Agency were either incapable of or unwilling to do their job properly.

More from the Telegraph:

Francis Sheridan, prosecuting, said the "systematic attack" opened the door to hundreds of unsuitable migrants without means to support themselves leaving the taxpayer to foot the bill.

Isleworth Crown Court in west London heard that ringleader Jatinder Sharma, 44, had pleaded guilty to a raft of immigration offences.

His alleged co-conspirators, Neelam Sharma, 39, and Rakhi Shahi, 32 - both of whom are married to Sharma - are facing a similar range of charges at trial. They are also both accused of entering and remaining in Britain illegally.

"Between them they submitted the largest number of fraudulent visa applications ever received by the Home Office from one source, making this the biggest immigration scam ever seen in this country," said Mr Sheridan.

"Applicants with humble backgrounds found themselves in possession of degrees, masters degrees, post-graduate qualifications and diplomas within a matter of months.

"They achieved them by paying for it, thereby avoiding the rather troublesome step of actually having to attend a college and study.

"Shahi was so confident of her ability to cheat the system, she even started offering her services on a no win, no fee basis."

Mr Sheridan said when police raided the home the trio shared in Southall, they discovered some 90,000 pages of documents, including 980 visa application files. Of these 117 were carefully analysed, with only four not raising significant concerns about their legitimacy.

Sharma allegedly told a potential client: "They [the Home Office] don't even bother to look at your documents. They don't care what documents you have sent. They just stamp them blindly."

"They have made a fortune, there are no bones about that, they have made a small fortune at the hands of the Home Office," added Mr Sheridan.

When the Strands of History Come Together

Glancing at Wikipedia's 'on this day' section, I notice four events occurred which at first seem quite separate from each other, but actually have a strong relationship if not to each other, then to the modern world.

On 23rd March 1775 Patrick Henry made his "Give me liberty or give me death," speech to the Virginia House of Burgesses. This speech is credited with convincing said house to commit troops to the American Revolution.

On 23rd March 1933 the German Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, which effectively gave Adolf Hitler dictatorial powers over Germany by ensuring any decisions he made could bypass the Reichstag.

On 23rd March 1940 the Muslim League drafted the Lahore Resolution, calling for greater autonomy in British India.

On 23rd March 2007 Iranian Revolutionary Guards captured 15 Royal Navy personnel and imprisoned them for 12 days.

All of these events still seem relevant when you look at current affairs. In the first we see a patriot lamenting the state of his nation and the treatment of his countrymen by what he sees as a tyrannical force completely out of touch with the populace and its customs - Geert Wilders, anyone?

The analogy is far from perfect and obviously they have some completely different goals, but the similarity is there - both free-born men who wish to decide their own fate, not be at the behest of outside forces or traitors in their own land.

As for the Enabling Act in 1933 - there are many chilling similarities between this law and the Civil Contingencies Act of 2004, a New Labour nonsense foisted on the British people for use in an 'emergency'. We also have the Terrorism Act and the ID Cards Act.

The political Left spend much time discussing the rise of the 'far-Right' and how Europe should have learned its lessons from fascism the first time around, but another thing people should have learned is giving the government, any government, unlimited power is a terrible and potentially tragic error.

Even if one see the current British Government as benign, which I do not, there is no telling what the government of tomorrow will be like. The Civil Contingencies Act basically allows the Prime Minister and the Cabinet to bypass Parliament on a range of issues, temporarily suspending any Act of Parliament but the Human Rights Act 1998 (naturally, the least useful piece of legislation must remain).

This includes suspending the right to trial by jury, and taking on powers nominally reserved for the Sovereign such as suspending Parliament or even suspending elections. It also includes all of our ancient freedoms and liberties, generally found in the Habeas Corpus Act 1679 and the Bill of Rights 1689. Of course, these are the rights which our soldiers are dying to spread to far-off deserts.

As for the other two events - to me they encompass the idea that nearly 70 years apart, Muslims are still trying to blackmail the West to get their way through violence.

Of course, the British and the Hindus and Sikhs were far from blameless during the partition of India, but the demands made by the Muslim League are largely responsible for the ongoing insurgency in Kashmir, and the belief of many Pakistanis that more of India belongs to them than is contained within Pakistan's borders (that and, of course, India's large Muslim population).

Perhaps not explicitly, but like all ideas of Islamic supremacy masquerading as civil rights, it's there in the background.

That leads us neatly on to the incident in 2007. At that point, we were probably almost at war with Iran due to groups they backed, armed and funded being responsible for many British deaths in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

However, they had to add insult to injury - from Wikipedia:

Iranian military personnel seized 15 Royal Navy personnel during 2007 and held them for 12 days. On 23 March 2007, 15 British Royal Navy personnel, from HMS Cornwall, were surrounded by the Navy of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and were subsequently detained off the Iraq-Iran coast. In the course of events, the British forces claimed that the boat was in Iraqi waters, but the Iranian side insisted that they were in Iran's territorial waters. A year later a British investigation report[1] was released which stated that the area in which the incident took place was not covered by any formal agreement between Iran and Iraq.[2][3] The 15 personnel were released on 4 April 2007.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unexpectedly announced the release of the captives halfway through a long press conference on the afternoon of 4 April 2007.[99][100]

"On the occasion of the birthday of the great prophet, and for the occasion of the passing of Christ, I say the Islamic Republic government and the Iranian people — with all powers and legal right to put the soldiers on trial — forgave those 15. This pardon is a gift to the British people."[20] When returned to the UK the group claimed to have been put under "constant psychological pressure" from the Iranian authorities.[21] In addition, British equipment including secure voice communication kit and navigational hardware has not been reported as being returned.

Ahmadinejad reiterated the statement that Iranian waters had been breached, and he praised the border guards who detained the British personnel. Abolqassem Amangah, commander of Iran's southwestern Maritime Border Patrol Guard was awarded the third degree medal of bravery for stopping the sailors. Ahmadinejad also criticized the British government for sending the mother of a child to the battlefield, and asked the government "not to prosecute them for their confessions." The release was announced after the British government supposedly sent a letter of apology to the Iranian government, accepting the breaching of their border, the illegal insertion of military units in Iran and the promise that Iranian territory would never be violated again. However, the British government denies that such a letter exists, and says that the release was performed without any agreement from both sides.[101]

After the conference, the Britons met Ahmadinejad outside the presidential palace, where they reportedly showed their appreciation for their release.[70][102] Later Tony Blair said he was glad and stated that he "bears Iranian people no ill will."[103] They were released on 5 April 2007.[104] Whilst in Iran one of the sailors stated that when interviewed by British media at home, he would say nothing different than comments he has made in Iran about being well treated by the authorities. "I would not say anything different to here and I will be completely truthful. I will definitely promote Iran actually; there is a lot of ignorance in the UK about Iran and the people".[105]

The release was presented to suggest that it was an Easter "gift" to the British people; to this end the captives were not released to British consular officials but placed directly aboard British Airways flight BA6634 (flown by franchisee British Mediterranean Airways using Airbus A321 G-MEDL), a direct flight to the UK, on the morning of 5 April 2007,[106] landing at about 12 noon local time.[107] They were given gifts of CDs, Persian candies, pistachio nuts, books, vases and handicrafts by the Iranians. After a briefing on board at London Heathrow, the press were allowed a short photographic opportunity, before the personnel were flown directly to Royal Marines Base Chivenor in north Devon by two Royal Navy Westland Sea King helicopters for medical checkups, a full debriefing and meeting with their families.[107]'

An extraordinary incident, a classic example of Islamist attempts to blackmail free nations. However, I don't fee our own version of the Enabling Act did anything to prevent this, and it won't the next time it happens, even if it occurs on our own soil.

It will just gradually erode the differences between free countries and those that aren't lucky enough to be free.

On balance, I think this is one of the many, many reasons why I prefer Geert Wilders to George Galloway.