Rohinton Mistry had the right idea years ago; after being body-searched one too many times, he simply refused ever to fly into or through the United States again.
But it’s not just the US. Let’s go to BoingBoing for the report of panic-striken Brits fingering each other at airports. Although we could go anywhere in the blogosphere, really. This is major, major news.
Two brown men were forced off a plane by a bunch of non-brown British passengers who became convinced that they were behaving suspiciously and were therefore terrorists. Shocking — who’d have thought that putting signs everywhere telling you that you were in danger of terrorists and that terrorists were everywhere and that you should look out for suspicious terrorism behavior would turn normal people into witch-hunting racist mobs?
The extraordinary scenes happened after some of the 150 passengers on a Malaga-Manchester flight overheard two men of Asian appearance apparently talking Arabic. Passengers told cabin crew they feared for their safety and demanded police action. Some stormed off the Monarch Airlines Airbus A320 minutes before it was due to leave the Costa del Sol at 3am. Others waiting for Flight ZB 613 in the departure lounge refused to board it…
Websites used by pilots and cabin crew were yesterday reporting further incidents. In one, two British women with young children on another flight from Spain complained about flying with a bearded Muslim even though he had been security-checked twice before boarding.
Now let’s look a little closer to home. Winnipeg, in fact, where we meet hottie doctor Ahmed Farooq, who was kicked off a flight for praying.
Naturally, the hotel room he where he had to spend the night, plus the flight home the next day, were out-of-pocket expenses that for which the airline takes no responsibility.
A Winnipeg doctor is demanding an official apology and compensation from United Airlines after being kicked off a flight in the U.S. this week, an incident he has characterized as “institutionalized discrimination.” Dr. Ahmed Farooq, a Muslim, was escorted off an airplane in Denver on Tuesday.
According to Farooq, reciting his evening prayers was interpreted by one passenger as an activity that was suspicious…
Farooq said the allegation came from a passenger who appeared drunk and had previously threatened him during the trip.
When flight personnel were alerted, the 27-year-old radiology resident and two colleagues — a man and a woman — were taken off their flight. They had been returning from a conference in San Francisco.
Farooq said that even officials from the Transportation Security Administration soon realized the flight crew had overreacted, but by the time that conclusion had been reached the trio were forced to stay in Denver for the night and catch a flight the next day — at their own expense.
“There’s no recourse,” Farooq said. “There’s no way to really be able to talk to anybody to really be able to reason it out. The police officers who talked to me afterwards and subsequent officials within the first three to five minutes, they were like, ‘You know what? The crew made a mistake. We apologize that they took you off. They overreacted.‘”
Thank god I’m not tanned! But if I may be permitted this remark, I’d just like to say that, having checked out the picture, I wouldn’t mind detaining him…in my apartment!
raincoaster 
Recently, a friend travelled to NZ via the US and was forced to go through customs in the US. We both found this strange a she was in transit and had no need to officially enter the US. Do you know if this is now official policy in the US? I find something slightly sinister about it: why are people being forced out of international jurisdiction and into the States’ ?
ScotsToryB
I didn’t know it was official policy: what a huge nuisance and complete crap. It would explain why Boris Johnson had to go through US customs in Texas.
The Americans really do believe that everyone in the world is subject to American law. I’m surprised that their software and digital copyright policies haven’t resulted in a huge outgo of techies and tech companies to Canada, Ireland and other tech-savvy nations. It will happen, once people wake up to how few rights they have, compared to other countries. And if everyone is forced to go through customs and security screening, it makes much more sense to route your flight through Canada, Mexico, or any Caribbean or Central American country, all of whom respect international travel norms.
I agree.
I did some homework cf: http://travel.state.gov/visa/visa_1248.html
this has been going on since Aug.2003
If you combine this with biometric passports it allows the US to build a huge database of the world’s population.
Re copyright: I”ll read up on the tecchie aspect but I am still annoyed at their repeated extensions (even though it affects me) to justify the likes of Disney etc reaping millions more than when the, perfectly sensible, previous laws were in place. From memory these were changed circa 1999 extending the time limit from, I think 50 years to 70 (or90?). From the country that purports to support free markets etc they are becoming very insular and short sighted. maybe we should write an antidote to the |West Wing – I feel a reason for a blog coming on – must go….
ScotsToryB
Good luck fighting Disney. Although now they’ve ousted Eisner they’ll be that much easier to defeat!
Good!
I am glad they were taken off the plane.
Notice that the *only* people promoting Race are the newspaper reporters. The passengers mention things like heavy jackets and checking watches. The passengers did not mention race. The only people who mentioned race are the authors of this article. I believe CHRISTOPHER LEAKE and ANDREW CHAPMAN are racists. They are the people who immediately knee-jerk to bring up race.
In addition, for those who are guffawing in their mind how people who were \’asians\’ might be thought to be bombers and thinking that \’oh, how stupid, we all know they are arabs.\” Then YOU are racists. If you think *only* arabs could be bombers then YOU are prejudging. In addition to that, let\’s review what continent Bali Indonesia is on. Are Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur bombing) and Indonesia (Bali bombing) in the Arab gulf? No. So asians could definitely be bombers, and I applaud the passengers of that plane for noticing suspicious \’behavior\’ and inappropriate garments.
And I accuse the reporters CHRISTOPHER LEAKE and ANDREW CHAPMAN of being the racists involved by being so quick to bring up race in the issue when the passengers (who were THERE, you were not) never mentioned anything of the sort. These reporters and this newspaper DID.
In addition, the only action the passengers took was to \’leave\’. That is their prerogative. To contact authorities and report something suspicious, and to exercise the right to exit the plane are fundamental and laudable. People have a perfect right to do so.
Anyone who assumes that asians could Not be bombers, because bombers must be Arab, or anyone who assumes asians cannot speak arabic, which some can, is the one who has pre-supposed racial prejudice inside them.
Dr. John Suzuki
On the one hand, you make some good points regarding the specifics of the two men taken off the British flight, but on the other it’s extremely disingenuous of you to pretend that race wasn’t a factor in this instance. The passengers did, in fact, complain that the men were speaking Arabic. This was one of their key complaints. And the other Spanish incident related to nothing other than the man’s stereotypically Muslim appearance, which is not technically racism, but is bigotry nonetheless.
I am, equally, not aware of any terrorists originating from Winnipeg since the time of Louis Riel. Please update me if I am incorrect, but it appears quite clearly that it was the active Muslim practice of the doctor which triggered the vastly inappropriate reaction of the cabin crew. When even Homeland Security says they overreacted, it’s quite clear they overreacted.
How many Swedish terrorists have you heard of? What do the majority of terrorist over the last twenty years have in common? What will you say the next time an Islamic terrorist manages to slip through and commit his act of surpreme stupidity in the USA? Then it will be, “Why didn’t the Government do More!!?”
And THIS man is a Canadian. You lose sleep over the Canadian terrorist threat? It’s time to sack up, boyo.
I used the “random post” feature and ended up here. I’m black (or African-American) and I used to work for the U.S. Customs Service and of course, now I don’t think I ended up on this post AT RANDOM! I think there’s a ghost in my computer that deliberately led me here!! Fear and paranoia can make you do and believe strange things.
When in doubt, blame Julian Assange. Everyone else seems to.
(but you’re also not the first to note the randomizer isn’t really very random. There was a technical explanation for it somewhere on the forums years ago)