Pakistani Flag Flown over Rochdale Town Hall

As far as I am aware, such pandering is very common in the towns and cities of Northern England, which regularly display Bangladeshi and Pakistani symbols (you will note, despite the mention of Indians in the article, I have never heard of the Indian flag being demanded or flown in this country outside of a private gathering or residence).

From The Asian News:

THE Pakistani flag was raised over Rochdale Town Hall as the local community celebrated 62-years of Pakistan Independence.

Community leaders including Chair of Action for Pakistan, Ghulam Shahzad, Rochdale Mayor Keith Swift and vice chair of the Rochdale Rotary club, John Cannell were all present at the ceremony this morning.

Further celebrations are being held tonight at a ticket-only fund-raising dinner at Castlemere Community Centre to raise money for those affected by the fighting in Swat Valley, Pakistan.

Greater Manchester's Indian community will also be celebrating their Independence Day tomorrow.

Chief Executive of Manchester Council for Community Relations (MCCR) Khan Moghal said: "The Indian and Pakistani communities will be celebrating their respective independence days this week.

"We send heart felt felicitations to all members of the Pakistani and Indian communities in Manchester on the celebrations which form a central part of their lives.

"MCCR recognises the significant part played by the Indian and Pakistani communities in building Manchester. These celebrations have now become a regular annual event and they enrich the social fabric of Manchester."

How does undisguised loyalty to a foreign and often hostile country enrich the social fabric of Manchester?

Suspected Honour Killing in Bradford

Four people are under investigation tonight after a young Pakistani woman died of poisoning.

From the Mail:

Murder detectives have arrested four relatives of a young mother who died in a suspected poisoning.

Two are being questioned and two have already been bailed after Sana Abbasi, 22, died in hospital on Friday.

Mrs Abbasi, who was from Pakistan and came to Britain because of an arranged marriage with a Bradford man, had been in the city's Royal Infirmary with an unexplained illness for months.

The previously healthy woman was admitted with severe stomach cramps and unable to use her limbs 19 days after giving birth - without complications - to a daughter in April.

She spent most of the remaining 10 weeks of her life in intensive care apart from a brief recovery when, according to neighbours, she went home but was rushed back to hospital within days.

A 23-year-old man and a 56-year-old woman - believed to be her husband and his mother - were arrested on suspicion of murder after her death and have been bailed pending further enquiries.

A 28-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman from Bradford, both arrested yesterday, are still in police custody. They are thought to be the husband's brother and sister-in-law.

A post-mortem gave grounds for suspicion, a West Yorkshire Police spokeswoman said. Police are awaiting the results of toxicology tests later this week.

Though she spoke fluent English, Mrs Abbasi is thought to have led an isolated life within her husband and his mother in the Pollard Park area of Bradford.

Police believe someone in the local community will know how Mrs Abbasi died and urged anybody with information to contact them.

Her three-month-old daughter is understood no longer to be in the care of the husband's family.

How Christians Are Treated in Pakistan

Recently two very disturbing cases have emerged from Pakistan which give some insight into the risks which non-Muslims face in Muslim countries, particularly if they fail to pay the jizya.

The first concerns a Christian man who was sexually abused, raped and murdered for refusing to convert to Islam:

A young Christian man was raped and brutally murdered in Pakistan for refusing to convert to Islam, and police are doing nothing about it, the victim's brother and minister told FOXNews.com.

Pakistani police reportedly found the body of Tariq "Litto" Mashi Ghauri — a 28-year-old university student in Sargodha, Pakistan — lying dead in a canal outside a rural village in Punjab Province on May 15. He had been raped and stabbed at least five times.

"They have sexually abuse him, torture him with a knife on his testicle and genitals," Ghauri's brother, 24-year-old Salman Nabil Ghauri, said. "They have tortured him very badly, and after that they have stabbed five times with a knife and killed him."

The family believes Litto Ghauri was murdered by the brothers of his Muslim girlfriend, Shazi Cheema, after they found him in a compromising sexual position with their sister.

The Rev. Haroon Bhatti, a Christian clergyman in the village and a friend of the Ghauri family, said Cheema's three brothers came to Litto Ghauri's house on May 11 and gave him an ultimatum: Marry their sister and convert to Islam.

Ghauri agreed to the marriage but refused to accept Islam, and the brothers kidnapped him at gunpoint and drove him to a remote farmhouse, where they tortured and murdered him, the minister said.

After police discovered the body, Ghauri's death was declared a homicide and the family filed paperwork with the Atta Shaheed police station in their small village, Adda 44SB. But Ghauri's brother said police still have not arrested the alleged killers and have refused to meet with his family.

"They don't want to meet us, and the three of them who are murderers are outside," Salman Nabil Ghauri told FOXNews.com. "They are free. Nothing is happening to them. No investigation is running."

We then get a stunning glimpse into the gaping chasm between Islamic truth and actual truth:

One Pakistani embassy official questioned the truth of the report.

"On the face of it, this appears to be exaggerated," said the Pakistani official who asked not to be named. "This does not happen over there."

The official said that minorities are very well represented in the Pakistani Parliament, and if someone in fact were murdered for not converting to Islam, "it would have been reported hugely."

The embassy official added, "if an incident of that nature happened over there, there would have to be an investigation."

Yet human rights watchdog groups say that what happened to Litto Ghauri is not uncommon because Christians in Pakistan are looked upon as the dregs of society. Pakistan's population is 97 percent Muslim, and Christians are only a very small part of the remaining 3 percent.

"What the Muslim society has done in Pakistan is just associate low caste with being Christian," said Jeremy Sewall, Advocacy Director of the International Christian Concern, which first reported the killing. "Many of these people, they clean human waste and that's their job, and that's what Christians are known for in Pakistan."

The Rev. Bhatti says that radical Muslims frequently try to trap Christian men into converting to Islam by using a woman as bait — and Ghauri suspects the involvement of his dead brother's girlfriend in trying to entrap him.

"It's common to offer things — money, women — to Christians to convert," Bhatti said.

Pakistan is one of the most hostile countries in the world for minority religions. The country still has blasphemy laws on the books that forbid saying or writing anything against Islam or the Koran. Punishment can include death.

The second case involves the police torturing a Christian man and then denying him medical treatment:

A 37-year-old Christian is languishing in a Sialkot jail after police broke his backbone because his father was preaching Christ, according to a local advocacy group.

Arshad Masih had been in a hospital – chained to his bed on false robbery charges – after police torture that began Dec. 28, 2008 left him incapacitated. He was discharged from General Hospital in Lahore on Saturday (June 20) and returned to jail despite efforts by the Community Development Initiative (CDI), a support group that is providing Masih legal assistance.

CDI Research Officer Napoleon Qayyum said that hospital personnel treated Masih callously, but that conditions there were better than in the jail in Sialkot. At least in the hospital, Qayyum said, Masih’s gray-haired father was able to carry him on his shoulders when he needed to go to the bathroom.

Hospital staff members released Masih even though they knew he would not receive the medical care he needs in jail and could face further abuse, the CDI researcher said.

“We told the hospital administration and doctors that Masih would be released from jail within a few days, so he should not be discharged from the hospital as he would not be taken care of in jail, but they paid no heed to our request,” Qayyum said.

He said Sialkot police gave assurances that Masih would be released from jail if he arrived there from the hospital by 10 p.m. A police van left early Saturday morning from Sialkot to bring Masih from the hospital in Lahore to Sialkot jail, but it did not reach the hospital until 6 p.m. even though it is only 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Sialkot to Lahore.

Qayyum said officers also invented delays on the return trip.

“Despite our requests to the police van staff, they reached the jail at 10:30 p.m.,” Qayyum said. “The Sialkot police used the delays to demoralize us by creating problems so that we do not file a petition for torturing.”

The CDI official said the group’s first priority is to “take him out of Sialkot so that police may not further create problems for him.”

Hajipura police detained Masih on Dec. 28 on orders from the Sadar police station in Gujranwala, where Masih’s father, Iqbal Masih, had been preaching Christ.

The elder Masih, an itinerant preacher who has traveled to remote areas to proclaim Christ for three decades, told Compass that objections to his ministry led to false accusations of robbery against his son. Area Muslims resented his preaching and his visits to a Christian family in Gujranwala, he said, and told him to stop visiting the family.

“They told me that I was preaching a false religion and should stop doing it, and that I should succumb to their pressure,” the elder Masih told Compass.

Area Muslims had complained to Gujranwala police of the elder Masih’s efforts, and officers there first sought to arrest him in a case filed against “unidentified people,” he said. Later, he said, Gujranwala police told Hajipura police to charge his son in some robbery cases, as Arshad Masih lived in the Hajipura precincts.

When police arrested Arshad Masih on Dec. 28, they tortured him for several days, the younger Masih said.

“They hung me upside down all night, beat me and used all inhumane torture methods, leaving me permanently paralyzed,” he said.

Police falsely named him in a robbery case, according to CDI. All others named in the case were released after paying bribes, advocacy group officials said. Police officers also asked Masih’s father for a bribe of 50,000 rupees [US$620], the elder Masih said.

“They asked me as well for 50,000 rupees, but I refused to pay on the grounds that it was illegal and additionally I hadn’t that much money,” Iqbal Masih said.

The complainant in the robbery case eventually testified that Arshad Masih hadn’t been among the robbers, and he was granted bail. Before court orders reached the jail, however, Sialkot police informed Sadar police officers in Gujranwala, who arrived at the jail and had Masih remanded to them for a robbery case filed against “unidentified people.”

“Because of that, Masih could not be freed for one moment,” CDI’s Qayyum said.

Gujranwala police also threatened to kill Masih in a staged police encounter if he told the court that he had been tortured, according to CDI. They also warned him that he should not act as if he were in any pain in court.

Plan for Attack on Norwegian & Swedish Embassies Foiled in Pakistan

A man carrying two tonnes of explosives has been arrested in the Pakistani capital Islamabad.

Police report that he intended to attack the Norwegian and Swedish embassies because both countries have a presence in Afghanistan.

Initial reports suggest that he may have planned to attack various other European and Western embassies.

I suppose this report is telling, because the Pakistani government has finally recognised that terrorism is a greater existential threat to them than neighbouring India.

Many ordinary Pakistanis are beginning to turn against the terrorists too; The Times reported yesterday that a Taliban commander was shot dead and several of his men burned to death when terrorists killed a number of people in a mosque bombing - then demanded the widows they had just made for 'marriage'.

It was the Taleban’s demand to take the women they had widowed that was the last straw for the residents of Upper Dir.

When the militants arrived in their mountainous corner of northwestern Pakistan in February the locals cautiously welcomed them, thinking they were waging jihad against foreign troops in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Some even joined them, attracted by the five or six pounds a day they paid. Over the next three months, however, Upper Dir’s residents were increasingly angered by the Taleban’s criminal activities and disrespect for local customs, according to residents and Pakistani officials.

In early June elders asked them to leave the five villages they had occupied. The Taleban responded on June 5 with a suicide attack on a local mosque that killed 39 people. The next day they told the elders to give them the women who had been widowed in the attack.

Instead, the elders summoned men from 30 surrounding villages, told them to fetch their weapons (many men in the region own a gun), and launched a “lashkar” — or tribal militia — of more than 1,000 people to drive out the Taleban.

They shot dead the local Taleban leader — who went by the name of Champo — burnt several more to death in the houses that they had occupied, and surrounded the remaining 150 in a mountainside village, where they were still under siege yesterday.

“Don’t call them Taleban because they are gangsters, looters and plunderers,” Omar Rehman, 35, a farmer and member of the lashkar, told The Times.

“The Taleban should be those who are getting religious education peacefully.” Upper Dir’s lashkar is the most dramatic illustration of the public backlash against the Taleban that has accompanied the army’s attack on the militants in the northwestern region of Swat since late April.

Pakistan: U.K. Must Do More to Combat Militant Islam

There is so much wrong with this story that it is hard to know where to begin:

Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari said on Tuesday Britain has to tackle its own issues of deprivation to stop the radicalisation of British Muslims.

In an interview with ITV's "News at Ten", he rejected the suggestion it was Pakistan's role to win the hearts and minds of radicalised British Muslims, although he said his country would arrest any radical Briton visiting Pakistan and send them back to the UK.

"The appeal has to be on the other side," he was due to say in the programme to be aired on Tuesday evening.

"I think Britain has to take the responsibility and make sure that they do not feel the deprivation they have been. Because we all know this is a state of mind that comes up from some kind of this.

"And one has to fight it in Britain and not in Pakistan."

British security services say there have been Pakistani links to almost all of the dozen major terrorism plots foiled since 2001, including the London bombings in 2005.

Sky News, citing unnamed sources, earlier this year said Pakistan's intelligence service had identified more than 20 Britons who had been trained by militants in Pakistan and had returned to Britain, where they posed a security threat.

In the interview, Zardari denied any knowledge of militant training camps in Pakistan and said it was an "old thought" among British intelligence that thousands of radicals were arriving in Britain.

"I don't think there are any known camps that you know of or we know of or British intelligence know of that exist," he said.

"Of course they exist underground -- the mafia exists underground in Britain -- and wherever we find it we crush it ... but I don't think there is a particular place which we know of that still exists."

The president also rejected British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's description of the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan as the "crucible for global terrorism".

"I think sometimes people say things they don't understand or mean but I think his concern is genuine and I appreciate the concern," Zardari said.

The question must be asked - if Britain is as bad as Zardari says, then why do so many Pakistanis come and wish to come?

Why would they object if we curtailed their travel to this country?

The idea that we owe even more to what has grown into a large, bellicose group of colonists than we have already given them simply beggars belief.

As an immigrant group, I personally feel that the Pakistani minority in this country hasn't really worked out. There are huge and pressing issues everywhere one finds a large Pakistani community.

Yet, according to Zardari, that is because we don't give them enough, we're not understanding enough - all the usual reasons.

Wll, if that's the case, why have student visa applications from Saudi Arabia jumped by 40%?

Saudi students reportedly prefer studying in the UK because Muslims believe they will be treated without bias.

Seeing as student visas area major loophole in our border controls someone should be looking into these figures, but it does demolish many of Zardari's preconceptions.

I'll leave you with the following story - and you can decide if Britain is a bastian of Victorian intolerance or a nation bent on its own destruction and submission in the name of diversity and social engineering:

A MULTI-MILLION pound Islamic garden for High Wycombe could be a “Europe wide phenomenon” one of its backers has said.

Clare Martens said the planned garden would be a “tourist attraction” and hopefully bring Muslim and non-Muslim communities together.

Addressing community leaders today she said: “It will be an enormous boost to quality of life in the town.”

Yet she said it was unlikely public money would be available to finance the garden, for which no location has been earmarked.

Volunteers want to raise £1m to buy land and employ an architect and designer through donations.

The former Labour councillor said: “It is going to cost a lot of money.”

Adding the “time is right” for the development she said: “The likelehood of it being donated by a public body is unlikely but obviously it is a possibility.”

Fellow backer Mohammed Rafiq, a Labour member of Wycombe District Council, said the garden would be for everyone.

He said: “People think it is really for the Muslim community. I think that is far from it.

“It is something to be enjoyed by everyone.”

The garden would “break down barriers in an enjoyable and soothing way”.

Wycombe MP Paul Goodman, a shadow minister responsible for community cohesion, said the garden could resemble the garden of Andalucia in Spain, where Jews, Muslims and Christians mix.

Any scheme would need planning permission from the district council.

They were speaking at a seminar organised by the Council for Christian and Muslim Relations for High Wycombe at Bucks New University today.

The Revenge of the Taliban

The current goings on in Pakistan hold a valuable lesson for all of us. They tell us in no uncertain terms that many interpretations of Islam cannot be appeased or accommodated; there is no victory and no peace until the infidels feel themselves defeated.

I suppose the Pakistani army learned this the hard way, although it was always fairly obvious that the Taliban were not going to just back down and go away after being given free reign in one province; as every good zealot knows, if the enemy is weak enough to have one chink in his armour he has two, and then a third - it is just a question of finding them.

The Pakistani authorities now seem to be fighting as successful a campaign as possible against the Taliban. Removing civilians from the Swat valley was tactically a very wise move, depriving the insurgents of their recruits and their human shields in one fell swoop. But every wise move has its down side - the human suffering, obviously, but also the fact that many of the nearly three million refugees are now seething with anger at the government.

The Taliban are especially dangerous because they are not just at war with infidels but with other interpretations of Islam.

Earlier this month suicide bombers found and killed Dr. Sarfaraz Naeemi - a Pakistani scholar who had called suicide bombings illegitimate in Islam.

The problem is that the Taliban is just one manifestation of the tribal rivalries which marr Afghanistan and Pakistan, particularly the frontier; many have equally extreme and old fashioned Islamic practices written into their culture. The mainstream politicians of both countries are forced to make concessions in order to exist.

This has some rather interesting parallels. Winston Churchill experienced this region as a young war journalist in 1897. First, here is what tribal elders who remember their relatives talking about the war against the British said:

Back in Islamabad, another retired general, Talat Masood, says that while the army can beat the Taliban, 'it cannot beat the Pashtun tribes'.

Success depends on the Taliban being seen as extremists and outsiders, who subvert, rather than express, the frontier's Pashtun identity. Here the example of Churchill's campaign in 1897 is not encouraging.

Among the people of the frontier, I discover a rich oral tradition, which remembers Swat's 'Mad Mullah' and his comrades as 'mujahideen' - the term for holy warriors once used about the Pashtuns who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan.

'He was a little mad, but he was pious,' says Hazrat Ahmed, 70, in the camp at Katlang. 'So when he said that if they fought the British they would defeat them, the people believed him. There are a lot of graves of martyrs who died fighting the British in 1897.

'Now some people admire the Taliban. Others say they are foreigners, and not good Muslims. Insh'allah [God willing] whoever is right about the Taliban there will be a victory for Muslims, because when Islam is finished, the world will end.'

Nizar Mohammed, 76, explains: 'The jihad against the British was a special type of war, what we call a ghazar. That means a war in which the Prophet has a personal stake. That's how our people saw it.'

Pashtun children still learn songs that commemorate the battles of 1897 and the years that followed.

One of the most haunting celebrates a warrior called Beram Khan. It imagines the words of his wife: 'O Beram Khan, if your body comes back with countless bullets in your chest, I will never mind. But I don't want to hear that you left the battlefield fearing death. O Beram Khan, if you are martyred defending your country, I will weave your shroud with the hair from my head.'

From his very different perspective, Churchill paid an equivalent tribute. Although the fighters of Mohmand and Dir had 'struck a blow at civilisation, civilisation will ungrudgingly admit they are a brave and warlike race. The valley and its people have become historic.'

The journalists reporting from this region acknowledge they are not the first to cover such a conflict:

But we weren't the first to cover a conflict against jihadists trying to overthrow a government in this region. Among our predecessors was an Army captain turned reporter who came this way in 1897: the future Prime Minister Winston Spencer Churchill, then aged 23.

That summer the frontier tribes were inspired by radical mullahs to drive out the British. When the revolt started, Churchill was on leave in England from his regiment, which was based 2,000 miles from the front in Bangalore, south India.

But thanks to his acquaintance with the British commander, the curiously-named General Sir Bindon Blood, he secured what would now be termed a media 'embed'. Churchill's first book, The Story Of The Malakand Field Force, was the result.

Reading it now, the parallels between that distant campaign and Pakistan's present crisis seem close, a point clearly recognised by Pakistan's army.

Its chief spokesman, Major General Athar Abbas, says: 'Going through the old Imperial gazetteers, you see ambushes are taking place in exactly the same locations now as they were in the 1890s.

The causes for the uprising and the phenomenon of tribes uniting is also described:

Kumbar Bazaar was the home of Sufi Mohammed, the fundamentalist ideologue who led 10,000 frontier Pakistanis to fight the jihad against US forces in Afghanistan after 9/11.

His simple, unprepossessing house has now been trashed by the army, which reduced some of his extensive jihadist library to a pulp by running the books through his washing machine. He is now among the country's most wanted men.

It was Mohammed who earlier this year negotiated a peace deal under which Pakistan's homegrown Taliban were allowed to run the district of Swat, the next valley across from Dir to the east, and it was this deal's speedy breakdown that triggered the army offensive launched on April 26.

Mohammed does not like to compromise. 'We hate democracy,' he told a crowd in Swat's capital, Mingora, earlier this year. 'We want the occupation of Islam in the entire world. From the very beginning, I have viewed democracy as a system imposed on us by infidels.'

Mohammed's damaged home, where the sitting room bears the slogan 'Jihad Is Great' engraved in the plaster in letters a foot high, commands a magnificent view of the mountains around the valley.

Although almost everyone in the area speaks Pashto, the area is far from homogenous. The history of Dir and Swat, which during the Empire were ruled by princes who swore allegiance to the Crown, is different from the wilder tribal areas to the southwest. There the writ of Pakistani law has never run, and one of them, South Waziristan, has long been thought to harbour Osama bin Laden.

Similarly, the radical movement in Dir and Swat is different from the bigger, highly organised Taliban in Waziristan, which has been closely linked with Al Qaeda since 2001 and was responsible for the murder of Benazir Bhutto last winter.

Between 2004 and 2007, while Sufi Mohammed was in prison, the main leader in Dir and Swat was his son-in-law, a former ski-lift operator named Maulana Fazlullah. He built Taliban support through Mullah Radio, an illegal FM station that broadcast his sermons and those of his junior commanders, along with lists of those the movement was targeting for assassination - usually by decapitation.

Now, however, the insurgents from different tribal areas are starting to unite. 'Integration and networking are taking place,' says Lieutenant-General Durrani. 'You now have what amounts to a bigger, Pakistan-wide Taliban group, and it's in their interest to help each other. They're not goofs or fools.'

Brigadier Amal Zada adds: 'Communication intercepts show the militants in Dir have been asking for reinforcements from Swat, Bajaur [another tribal area], North and South Waziristan and from across the Afghan border.'

General David Petraeus, the American commander who led the 'surge' in Iraq and is now responsible for the whole of Asia from Pakistan to the Middle East, has said repeatedly that this alliance, which is also responsible for the spate of terrorist bombings in Pakistan's big cities, poses a threat so great that the country's very existence is at stake.

He might be right. But this is not the first time militants from disparate frontier tribes have been spurred on by radical mullahs to fight as one. It also happened in 1897, as described by Churchill.

Just as in 2009, the 1897-8 campaign began in Swat, when thousands of tribesmen attacked British forts at Malakand and Chakdara less than 20 miles from Kumbar Bazaar.

And just as the 2009 conflict shows every sign of doing, it went on to involve operations the length and breadth of the frontier, from Buner, 40 miles to the north of what is now Islamabad, through the Dir, Bajaur, Mohmand and Khyber areas all the way to Waziristan. The Empire had to mobilise 75,000 troops.

It is easy to see why Churchill felt he could not stay away. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, had died at 45, and Winston was convinced he must make his mark while young.

'The rising of 1897 is the most successful attempt to date to combine the frontier tribes,' wrote Churchill. 'It will not be the last. The simultaneous revolt of distant tribes is an evidence of secret workings. These features will be more pronounced in the future.'

Like his distant successors, Churchill believed these frontier battles had an 'existential' significance: 'Civilisation is face to face with militant Mohammedanism. When we reflect on the moral and material forces arrayed, there need be no fear of the ultimate issue, but the longer the policy of half measures is adhered to, the more distant the end of the struggle will be.'

His description of the enemy sounds familiar. Churchill singled out a 'Mad Mullah': 'A wild enthusiast convinced of his divine mission preached a crusade, here called Jihad, against the infidel. Even after the fighting - when the tribesmen reeled back from the terrible army they had assailed, leaving a quarter of their number on the field - the faith of the survivors was unshaken.'

In fact, the evidence suggests the 1897 uprising was even more organised than Churchill thought. Behind the 'Mad Mullah', whose fiery sermons could be said to equate to Fazlullah's FM talk shows, stood a group of radical frontier clerics.

As in 2009, the fate of the eastern side of the frontier was bound up with events in Afghanistan. In 1897, the mullahs attended secret meetings in Kabul with Abdur Rehman, the Afghan 'Iron Amir', still smarting from being forced to cede chunks of his country to the British in 1893.

Costly as it was, the 1897-8 campaign ended in victory for the British. But as Churchill realised, it was not the end of the story: 'I do not see any sign of permanency in the settlements that have been made with the tribesmen in Dir, Swat and Bajaur. They have been punished, not subdued; rendered hostile, but not harmless.

Some of the parallels are too big to ignore; the fact is that whilst the army can defeat the Taliban, the chances of defeating their interpretation of Islam seem slim indeed.

As our own young men are dying in Afghanistan, the Taliban are still able to commit atrocities against female school pupils, and the tribal elders are still able to influence the policy of the government paid for with Western blood and Western money in their favour.

Pakistani Terror Suspect Punishes Britain - By Leaving

From the BBC:

A Pakistani man who was among 12 people arrested in counter-terrorism raids in the north west of England has returned voluntarily to his home country.

Tariq-ur-Rehman said his decision to leave was a protest against his treatment by UK authorities, which included being strip searched.

Mr Rehman and 11 others were freed by police, but taken back into UK Border Agency custody pending deportation.

The remaining men are all contesting their removal.

Of the 12 men arrested in April in raids in Liverpool, Manchester and Clitheroe in Lancashire, 11 were Pakistani nationals, with 10 holding student visas. One was from Britain.

Mr Rehman arrived back in the Pakistani capital Islamabad on Thursday morning, escorted by four British police officers.

I have been arrested just because I am a Muslim Tariq-ur-Rehman

The BBC's Mike Wooldridge spoke to him during the flight and Mr Rehman said he had been left mentally very disturbed by his treatment.

He was held in a high security facility, strip searched and had his cell searched with dogs, he said.

He also told our correspondent he was never given any explanation of why he was considered a threat to national security and had never been involved in any such activity.

Mr Rehman added that he had come to Britain for a better life, but with suspicions of Islamic extremism hanging over him, his future had been "destroyed".

"I have been arrested just because I am a Muslim and I belong to Pakistan," he said.

That sort of protest can only be good for Britain. Rehman forgot to mention several things, however:

1) He shouldn't have been here in the first place.

2) We don't specifically owe anyone an education or a better life and have the right to control our borders.

3) He would have been treated far worse in Pakistan, and ought to be grateful he wasn't arrested there.

4) He was arrested and let go because there was insufficient evidence, not because he was necessarily innocent.

Gordon Brown is Disingenuous on Terror

I know 'Gordon Brown caught lying again' is hardly a major or surprising headline, but this one was pretty blatant even for a member of New Labour.

On Monday Brown was in Afghanistan to meet British troops and play the big I am. Whilst there, he warned of a 'crucible of terror' emanating from Afghanistan and the Pakistan border regions which needed to be smashed to keep Britain's streets safe. He also acknowledged that the stability of Pakistan had a direct impact on the safety of Britons in the streets of London.

There is a reason why this is so - and is has little to do with a 'crucible of terror' and everything to do with Britain's lax immigration laws and its lack of will even to enforce the ones it has.

This is the bottom line, and it is utterly astounding that anyone could think otherwise. Brown, like all mainstream politicians, is playing a game when it comes to mass immigration. He and his ilk, including the Tories, have indicated time and time again that they are unable or unwilling to listen to the majority of the British people on this most pressing of issues.

Now, after it emerged that eleven Pakistani nationals in this country were being investigated for terrorism charges, Immigration Minister Phil Woolas admitted that student and tourist visas were the Achilles' heel of Britain's immigration policy.

The Pakistani government seem to feel that these raids and the subsequent investigation were a 'slur' on them (God forbid, after they recently handed over an entire province to the tender mercies of the Taliban):

In an interview with the Guardian, Asif Durrani, Pakistan's deputy high commissioner to London, said Britain appeared vindictive against Pakistani nationals and said claims that Islamabad was soft on terror were slurs.

Durrani, a diplomat for 23 years with previous postings in Kabul and the United Nations, said: "Pointing a finger towards Pakistan was shocking for us ... it was uncalled for and shocking."

Well, that's as maybe. But whatever the outcome of the terrorism investigation, those eleven men should not have been in this country - and there are thousands more that should not either. Only one of them was studying at a reputable institution. The Pakistani government are angry and claim 'thousands' of teenagers will now not be able to get into Britain, although I'm sure the stricter controls will only be very brief - the public have a short memory.

My question is, why are 'thousands' of Pakistani students coming here, particularly when the government has admitted that its checks are not up to scratch?

On Sunday, former Apprentice star and British Pakistani Saira Khan told the story of how she had reported her cousin to MI5. He came to Britain on a six month tourist visa to visit her and her husband and see the sights - then he promptly vanished, after meeting a mysterious 'uncle' that Khan claims she was unaware of and had never seen before.

Khan says that there is no system in place to monitor or find those who abscond and then are absorbed into the community after overstaying their visas and vehemently insists she wants to see him found and deported:

It has not only caused a huge family rift, but has also opened my eyes to some of the darker practices among some people in my community.

I am referring, in particular, to the widespread belief that it is entirely acceptable to use travel and study visas to circumvent normal immigration rules.

Fifteen days after he had landed, Kamran packed his bags, with all the nice new clothes I had bought him, and disappeared. In doing so he broke the conditions of his visa, which tied him to staying with Steve and me as his sponsors.

Like many before him – it is impossible to say how many because no official records are kept of those who abscond – he has been absorbed and is being protected by a community that is as colossal as it is impenetrable.

The Government has estimated that there are up to 570,000 illegal immigrants in Britain, but with so many visas being applied for with malicious intent, that figure could run to millions. Not that there is any attempt by the Government to chase it down.

Although there are no official figures for the number of overstayers from Pakistan, or from anywhere else for that matter, there is enough anecdotal evidence to show that it is a growing problem. In 2007, at Portsmouth University alone, 379 students from Pakistan were unaccounted for when their visas expired.

Considering that the number of Pakistani students in Britain has more than doubled since 2001, from fewer than 5,000 then to 10,600 today, the national figure of absconders could run into several thousand.

So that is 379 missing Pakistanis, most of them young men (the demographic most likely to become terrorists or radicalised) missing from ONE university.

Is this not absolutely astounding? How can Gordon Brown send young men to die in far off deserts whilst talking about 'national security' when our borders are this porous, our controls this ineffective?

It absolutely beggars belief. But, as always, there's more; yesterday, Justice Secretary Jack Straw announced that the government had not necessarily ruled out taking Guantanamo Bay detainees once the camp finally closes.

He insisted that Britain must do its bit to aid Obama's decision to free the terror suspects, and confirmed that the UK was open to 'considering any request'.

There are around 240 men who have not yet been placed:

The US is working out what to do with around 240 inmates at the camp so it can be closed by the January deadline set by the new president.

Some may be put on trial in the US, released there or sent overseas.
Several European countries, including Portugal and Lithuania, are reported to have offered to take in ex-prisoners.

So, they haven't even decided which are innocent yet, but some might be sent here (or, indeed to countries which we have no real border controls with, which amounts to the same thing).

So much for being tough on terrorism - it's all just guff, like everything from this dying government. Let's just hope that this monumental incompetence, blindness and stupidity does not lead to a major terrorist attack.

If it doesn't, it will surely be through accident rather than design.

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.