When Italy pressured the Afghani government to release members of the Taliban to secure the release of an Italian journalist, left to rot was the Afghan translator. Protests were mounted in Afghanistan and Afghans felt the Afghani government valued the lives of others more than Afghanis, which again is precisely what the Taliban has argued since it was deposed.

I wrote at the time that the protestors had a point, and further that the Taliban has a point in this argument. It sent a horrible signal to the Afghani populace and that signal will be amplified if the government of Afghanistan does not succumb to hostage bribery again to secure the release of the translator.

Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah threatened to kill an Afghan interpreter held hostage unless the Kabul government freed two Taliban prisoners, according to an interview broadcast on Italian television on Thursday.

Dadullah said President Hamid Karzai must negotiate with the Taliban for the release of interpreter Adjmal Nasqhbandi, just as the Italian government had negotiated the release of reporter Daniele Mastrogiacomo, whom Adjmal worked for.

“We ask the Karzai government to release two of our prisoners,” Dadullah reportedly said in the interview with Sky Italia, which was broadcast in his native tongue with Italian subtitles.

“The Kabul government has got no option, it must negotiate with us for Adjmal. If this doesn’t happen … then we will kill him.”

This is what happens when you negotiate and capitulate to terrorists, and the government of Afghanistan now lies in the bed it made.

Also of interest, NATO is pulling out the success flag after one of the largest offensives against the Taliban in Afghanistan to date.

A proud day for us all. This site has been banned in China.

It must have been all of that talk encouraging the Chinese people to pick up a fork and chew the fat over talk of a mass revolution to overthrow Communist China, except, well, I’ve very rarely even write anything about China. The very few times I’ve mentioned China has been in their support of Iran’s nuclear program.

But we’re banned, so in retaliation, I pledge to not eat fried rice and sweet and sour chicken for one week. Pray for me.

England chose to appeal to the United Nations Security Council to get a unanimous censure over the taking of 15 British soldiers hostage by Iran. Seemingly it would have been a pretty easy thing to do because it’s just words.

But then comes in Russia and Indonesia who opposed the measure because they “did not want to give the impression that the council was taking sides.” Yeah, but that’s what the UNSC does. It takes sides in international disputes.

After four hours of negotiations yesterday, the Security Council could only agree a watered-down version of the statement, voicing “grave concern”, which fell far short of Britain’s demands.

It read: “Members of the Security Council expressed grave concern at the capture by the Revolutionary Guard and the continuing detention by the government of Iran of 15 United Kingdom naval personnel and appealed to the government of Iran to allow consular access in terms of the relevant international laws.

“Members of the Security Council support calls, including by the secretary general in his March 29 meeting with the Iranian foreign minister, for an early resolution of this problem including the release of the 15 UK personnel.” (source)

Long live the ghost of Kofi Anan, who apparently still resides at the UN even though his tenure is officially over. It wouldn’t have mattered to Iran if the UNSC had delivered the exact speech England wanted because Iran is already in defiance of the UNSC, the IAEA and the entire UN.  Iran claims it is upset about sanctions and the like, but it’s not as if Iran has done anything to alter certain behavior.  In fact they’ve ramped it up.

Now in the United States, the House of Representatives moves to censure the hostage taking and give a voice of support to a friend and ally in England. Again, it seemed like a certainty the measure would pass. But alas, just as the UN has Russia and Indonesia, the House has Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to block a vote on the measure for, well, some reason I suppose. Maybe there’s some more pork to throw into a national security bill that Pelosi will find laying around, or, better yet, maybe Pelosi can throw in some pork into a censure measure to at least bring it to the floor?  I hear blue jays in Washington are struggling to compete against the Sasquatch.

After what has been described as a “handful of bearded militants” gathered outside the foreign ministry office in Tehran and demanded the 15 British hostages be hung, an action that must have been approved by the Iranian regime due to all other protests in Iran being violently ended, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator and general spokesman Ali Larijani claimed England has escalated the incident by asking the UN Security Council to step in.

And it’s interesting about who escalated the incident. The Telegraph notes the hostage taking was relegated to the back pages until video of the hostages aired on state-run television. Now the entire incident is being played out like anyone would expect; an act of aggression by England.

Despite the media escalation within Iran, Larijani claims it is England who has amped it up.

“Instead of sending a technical team to examine the problem, they kicked up a media storm, announced a freeze in relations and spoke about the security council. That will not resolve the problem. They have miscalculated,” he said.

But the talk about the UNSC only happend yesterday, long after Iran paraded the 15 hostages on television and before the protesters appeared. England did announce a freeze a few days ago, but what would Iran expect would happen when they take 15 British soldiers hostage? Did Iran think England would send the Queen (remember, she’s ‘the enemy of Islam’) to Tehran to marry Prince Ahmadinejad?

In fact the self-made media blitz in Tehran will make it more difficult for this entire incident to end without the complete subversion of England because Ahmadinejad has already taken many hits locally, he has to wonder if he can take another blow. It seems clear the original taking of the British soldiers was the escalation, followed by televised coverage of the hostages, the puppeteering of Faye Turney and the reneging of a promise to release Miss Turney are all escalations, and they are all on the Iranian side. England, for its part, has been playing catchup and I have often wondered if Jimmy Carter is giving Tony Blair advice on how to proceed.

Oh, but wait. Here’s another escalation, also on the Iranian side. Late last night Iran warned the British soldiers will be put on trial, the second time the identical threat has been made and a clear violation of the Geneva Convention. Of course forcing Turney to wear a headscarf is too, but no one seems to care when Iran does anything wrong.

In an interview with ITV News, Mr Blair was asked about the treatment of 26-year-old Ldg Seaman Turney who was paraded on TV in Iran.

“I just think it’s completely wrong, a disgrace actually, when people are used in that way,” Mr Blair said.

“That’s contrary to all international laws and conventions, and is not going to make any difference to us. We need all 15 released because they were doing their job under a UN mandate. There is no justification whatsoever for taking them in that way.”

But that’s how Iran operates, Mr. Blair. They always have since the Islamic Revolution and likely will always act in similar fashion. We’ve seen almost the exact thing occur several times yet each time the entire world acts shocked, shocked at what I am not entirely sure, but shocked nonetheless.

And of that Iranian ‘evidence:’

The “evidence” produced amounted to a senior officer pointing to crosses on a map in Iranian territory and a vague picture of a GPS device with coordinates.

The Iranian’s claim that the Britons were in its waters have been undermined by the country giving two different sets of co-ordinates, one that placed the troops in Iraq and then a later version that put them well inside Iran.

I presume the same Iranian officer will soon face charges of proselytizing for drawing crosses.

UPDATE: Who is escalating the incident?  Iran claims England is, but Iran has now trotted out another British soldier for a television appearence and released a third letter allegedly from Faye Turney.  They are using the British soldiers as props in their own propaganda war, and thus far England is letting them.

And perfect.  A BBC correspondent writes an opinion and files it under news, but his opinion is that all of this is the fault of, you probably guessed it, the United States.  Damn!  We Americans are in everything, including the conspiracy behing Blu-Ray or HD DVD.

A politically correct world will be the ruin to us all. The EU has now decided to be more sensitive to radical Islamic terrorism and take out certain keywords.

Brussels officials have confirmed the existence of a classified handbook which offers “non-offensive” phrases to use when announcing anti-terrorist operations or dealing with terrorist attacks.

Banned terms are said to include “jihad”, “Islamic” or “fundamentalist”.

The word “jihad” is to be avoided altogether, according to some sources, because for Muslims the word can mean a personal struggle to live a moral life [ed. it can also mean a ‘defensive’ war that is purely offensive, which is actually the definition that thrives in the very part of the world where the ideology emanates from].

One alternative, suggested publicly last year, is for the term “Islamic terrorism” to be replaced by “terrorists who abusively invoke Islam”.

The same EU official claims this is not about political correctness but instead “stems from astute awareness of the EU’s interests in the fight against terrorism” because terrorists use these phrases for their own purposes. Yes they do, but they also use other terms and completely made up ideas and actions for their purposes too. If the EU were just simply precise in describing Islamist terrorism there wouldn’t be a problem, that is unless their words are incorrectly translated whether deliberate or incidental.

It just seems strange to be to state they will try to erase Islam from terrorism but not the other way around. When a jihadi invokes Allah right before he drives a car into a crowded market in Baghdad to kill his fellow Muslims, is he simply abusively invoking Islam? This is a debate that should happen within the Islamic world, while the rest of us Infidelian folk simply call it for what it is. It is radical Islamic terrorism because the bombs that go off daily across the globe have their basis within the Islamic texts, or at least according to those who set them off.

In case you didn’t think to click the link shared over what jihad means, do so because it’s a transcript of a television show debating the meaning of jihad.  The EU would be ashamed if they cared.

Sadanand Dhume writes on the trial of Playboy in Indonesia:

THE latest round of the global culture war between Islamists and the West is being played out in a small courtroom in Jakarta. Erwin Arnada, the beleaguered editor of Playboy Indonesia, faces a two-year jail term for breaching the country’s indecency laws.

This month, about 100 belligerent Islamists, bearded and skull-capped, packed the courtroom shouting “hang him, hang him!” as prosecutors read out the charges against Arnada. Adding to the atmosphere of intimidation: the gaunt presence of Abu Bakar Bashir, alleged spiritual head of Jemaah Islamiah, the group associated with al-Qa’ida that was behind the 2002 Bali bombings and subsequent attacks on Jakarta’s J. W. Marriott hotel and the Australian embassy.

The Playboy affair captures the world’s most populous Muslim country’s steady slide towards intolerance. But you’ll be hard-pressed to find an NGO head or professional pundit eager to stand up for Playboy, or for that matter for Baywatch or Desperate Housewives. For the most part, such fare is seen as a provocation. Why give the permanently angry Muslim street another excuse to seethe?

In reality, the problem is not Playboy’s predilection for the scantily clad, but Islamists’ tendency to fly into a rage over a flash of thigh or a bare midriff. (There’s no nudity in the Indonesian edition.) American popular culture ought to be celebrated rather than derided. In its crass commercialism and blithe disregard for Islamist sensibilities lie the greatest hopes of bringing Muslim societies to terms with modernity.

 

Persuading young men to blow themselves up in order to claim 72 dark-eyed virgins in paradise is that much harder when the dark-eyed virgin next door can be found spread across a centrefold. It’s no coincidence that 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, a country where Starbucks isn’t allowed to use its mermaid logo lest it cause offence. If we’re lucky, the Indonesian court deciding on Arnada’s fate will see the larger issues at stake - the choice between an open society and a repressive one - and vote to acquit. If we’re luckier still, Indonesian Playboy will be joined one day by Baywatch Pakistan and Desperate Saudi Housewives.

If the watered down version of Playboy has caused Islamist groups to go crazy, wait till they get a load of Hustler.

When the tsunami wrecked Indonesia, Indonesian Islamists charged it was a divine act to punish Indonesia for allowing Western culture onto their lands.  Of course this argument is bunk considering if Allah was upset about the culture it would have been the United States, England, France, Italy, etc. that would have been ravaged, but the idea that what ticks off Islamists the most about the collective West is the openess of our culture is correct at least on face value.

Watching the events unfold over the British hostages in Iran is like watching a play.  Everything thus far has been scripted and proceeds just as everyone would expect. Iran parades the 15 hostages on Iranian television, deciding to put the spotlight on the sole female hostage, Faye Turney, and is now using her for more propaganda purposes.

In a second letter that was allegedly written by Turney released by Iran, Turney calls for the Coalition to withdraw all soldiers from Iraq.

“Isn’t it time for us to start withdrawing our forces from Iraq and let them determine their own future?” said the letter, addressed to the British parliament and released to media organizations by the Iranian embassy in London.

Iran also released an astonishing five seconds of video supposedly of the hostage taking.  Five seconds demonstrates, I suppose, there’s nothing to hide nor there was anything premeditated.  Is it normal procedure to video tape such an action?

Iran is clearly sticking to its guns, and frankly why wouldn’t they?  England’s big stick at this point has been a possible referral to the United Nations as if the enormous beaurocratic mess could do anything to persuade Iran to release hostages when it cannot even get Iran to comply with official IAEA guidelines.

The Daily Mail presents the following map and timeline that represents what happened at the onset of the hostage taking.

This is the first I have heard of Iran changing the position of the boarded vessel following England pointing out the location is within Iraqi waters.  I am weary of this, however this change would be right in line with what we’ve seen unfold thus far.  It has become increasingly clear this was a premeditated attack by Iran due to the regime’s actions.

Yesterday Iran said they would release Turney, yet today they have decided it’s best to keep Turney in Tehran.  Sure, she’s a valuable propaganda piece to this entire situation.  Iran’s rationale for keeping Turney is due to if England makes a “fuss” over the hostages, as if England should just sit back and watch British civilians undergo a trial in Tehran with little more than a rough exhale.  England has an “incorrect attitude” according to Iran.

To cut to the chase, this is what would need to happen for Iran to voluntarily release the hostages.  England will have to make a public statement the British soldiers were in Iranian waters spying on Iran.  England would also have to find out the location of IRGC commanders taken hostage in Iraq and secure their release.

To secure the release of the British hostages from Iran forcefully, England might have to drop a bomb or two on one of Iran’s few oil refineries.  Iran imports gasoline, yet it exports oil in large quantities.  A strike against oil refineries in Iran would be catostrophic for the regime, yet it might also strengthen Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s case to the Iranian people that the collective West is the true aggressor.

Since neither will happen anytime soon, this hostage crisis will not end but instead we will be treated with any number of show trials in Iran.  This is what the Iranian regime does, and they do it well.

Yemen shot down an Iranian drone in Yemeni airspace as it was patrolling the Yemeni coast.  Why on Earth would Iran want to have air reconnaissance over Yemen?  Well, Yemen still is a primary refuel point for American and British ships in the region.  Those ships are there for rather obvious reasons, but also to help stop a still active slave trade.

More importantly is a Yemen update written by Jane Novak of Armies of Liberation.  All is not well in Yemen.

It seems rather unbelievable, but within Islamist circles it is stated Islam is against music.  This despite songs praising both Muhammad and Islam created many centuries ago.

In Waziristan where the Taliban and Al Qaida have taken a foothold, local tribes have a long history of holding festivals where music is played and there is dancing.  The tribes in the region were later ‘introduced’ to Islam after the musical culture had been sewn.

Just how much the Taliban and Al Qaida have influenced the Waziristan region is not entirely known, however with Pashtun folk music, it might be possible to find out the day the music died.

One such example is that of Kamal Mehsud, a leading Pashto folk singer, who left South Waziristan for two years ago because of growing intolerance.

He sold his ancestral property in Tank district and kept on moving from place to place in the hope of finding a niche. “Constant suppression of artistes suffocated me, and I felt like leaving the place. Besides, lawlessness has brought with it fear and frustration,” said Mehsud, who is known for singing folk songs on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

The singer was warned by his well-wishers to leave the region after the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), a mouthpiece of the Pakistani armed forces, distributed his music albums free of cost among the tribal people. The albums contained songs against extremism and militancy, which were produced under a contract with the ISPR.

The people of the area have not only stopped going to public music shows, they have also forsaken their traditional dance, Attan, which was equally popular among Pashtun men and women.

The dance is performed in a large circle with drummers standing in the centre. Attan was a traditional means of fun for the people in the most conservative Pashtun tribal society.

“The people have forgotten folk music or traditional dances in Waziristan since the emergence of Taliban,” said a tribal artiste, who observed that holding music functions on weddings has become a thing of the past even in the adjacent Tank district.

Many music shops have been closed down in Wana, Jandola and Tank district for fear of the militant groups after some outlets were blown up in the area.

The remaining music shops now sell audio-cassettes and CDs of jihadi songs, movies of suicide attacks and footage of militant training. Even, the official radio station in Wana cannot broadcast music and songs.

Mohammad Nawaz, a music shop owner, closed his business in Tank and shifted to the provincial headquarters.

“My family is associated with this business for the past 30 years, but now the situation has forced me to leave the place,” Nawaz said.

The Taliban drove the suicide donkey to the mud-walled compounds, but the compound doors were closed.  And them good old Pashtun were drinking tea and water, singing this’ll be the day that I died.  This’ll be the day that I die.

The Taliban has allowed songs to continue that praise jihad, the Taliban, Al Qaida or Islamism.  There is music in every single one of Al Qaida’s propoganda videos, yet it’s their kind of music.  Yet we cannot consider these groups or this movement a form of tyranny, becuase they are just misunderstood under the pressure of the crusading West.

A troubling yet hopeful report by Alexis Debat of The Blotter concerning four ISI agents being ambushed in Waziristan en route to talking to local tribal heads to find the location of Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Pakistani military officials tell ABC News they believe “elements close to al Qaeda” carried out the hit on the four officers, all members of the country’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), in an apparent attempt to foil cooperation between Pakistani intelligence and tribal leaders thought to have knowledge helpful to learning the al Qaeda leaders’ whereabouts.

Two of the ISI officials killed belonged to an anti-terrorism unit fighting al Qaeda in Pakistan.

Pakistani officials conceded the attackers knew closely-held details of the men’s journey, including the timing of the men’s trip, their route and their purpose. That is sure to raise fresh questions about al Qaeda’s penetration of the Pakistani intelligence service.

The key is in the last excerpted paragraph.  It’s long been known, though for whatever reason it has also been debated, that Al Qaida has influence within the Pakistani intelligence network ISI.  That rather silly debate can now end.  There is at least one mole within ISI, and he’s presumably high ranking since this is the type of operation that would be surrounded with a great deal of secrecy.

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has repeatedly said both Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden are not in Pakistan, instead continuing to insist both men are in Afghanistan.  Why then would ISI, who presumably knows more than Musharraf as to the location of either, decide to talk to Waziristan tribal leaders to track down Zawahiri?

There has been a push in Waziristan to eject foreigners from Pakistani soil by the tribal leaders, which has been accompanied by gunfights between the two sides, however it is perfectly reasonable to assume that based on the history of the region there are tribal leaders who side with Al Qaida over the Pakistani government.  It represents a tough battle for Musharraf to fight, yet one that this operation shows he’s at least trying to wage.