Author: Mick Hartley

a grim parable of the degraded state to which Britain has now descended and an alarming portent for the free world in its fight to survive. Relief at the safe return of the 15 sailors, and the fact that we must always bear in mind that none of us knows how we would ourselves behave in such circumstances, cannot nevertheless mitigate the sickening realisation that the hostage fiasco is another terrible milestone in the west’s current suicidal trajectory of decadence and moral collapse….

Britain’s shame has been Iran’s gain. At a time of rising tension over the mortal threat posed by Iran to the free world, Britain handed it a victory which has strengthened it and made it even more of a threat. Britain’s strategic incompetence was matched by Iran’s flawless manipulation.

Iran and Zimbabwe – the odd couple:

Zimbabwe is setting up a new radio station to counter what it calls Western propaganda against President Robert Mugabe.

“We are under siege and being bombarded by the Western media broadcasting to our people,” Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu said.

The short wave station will become the fifth state-run radio station in the state and will cost Z$8.9bn ($39.6m).

The station is being partly funded by the Iranian government.

“There will be a revolutionary development in the media. We should be able to tell our own story,” Mr Ndlovu was quoted by news agency AFP after a meeting with Iranian diplomats in the capital Harare…

According to AFP, the Iranian ambassador to Harare, Rasoul Momeni, agreed to help refurbish the state broadcaster’s studios in the second-largest city of Bulawayo.

The Iranians have already reported to have donated money for upgrading studios in Harare.

“We are going to strengthen our relationship, especially in technically upgrading radio and television stations,” Mr Momeni was quoted as saying by Zimbabwe’s The Herald newspaper. The ambassador said there should be an exchange programme of media experts between the two countries.

“I hope and I am sure I will do my best for these nice people under the friendship that exists now. I see a bright future for Zimbabwe,” he said.

from across the Atlantic? Is it an anti-British thing? Or is there a raw nerve? – you know….hostages….Iran….that type of thing. Remember Operation Eagle Claw, to rescue the US hostages in Tehran in 1980?

An unforeseen low-level sandstorm caused two of eight helicopters to lose their way en route to Desert One, but only after men and equipment had been assembled there. A third helicopter suffered a mechanical failure and was incapable of continuing with the mission. Without enough helicopters to transport men and equipment to Desert Two, the mission was aborted. After the decision to abort the mission was made, one of the helicopters lost control while taking off and crashed into a C-130. In the ensuing explosion and fire, eight US servicemen were killed: five USAF aircrew in the C-130, and three USMC aircrew in the RH-53. During the evacuation, six RH-53 helicopters were left behind intact (5 of their serial numbers are 158686, 158744, 158750, 158753, and 158758). These six helicopters now serve with the Iranian Navy. In their haste to quickly evacuate the RH-53s, the aircrews inadvertently left behind classified plans that identified CIA agents within Iran.

And if you want real toe-curling abasement before Iranian power, it’s difficult to beat those American Christian leaders in their recent audience with Ahmadinejad.

Am I being petty here, scoring cheap points? Well yes, I am, but I find this all strangely annoying. It brings out the nationalist in me. Maybe it’s a minority view in the US – I certainly hope it’s a minority view – but really, if this is how Americans react to the difficulties of their closest ally, then – how would Oscar Wilde have put it? – fuck ’em.

It’d be sad if this Iranian stunt had the unforeseen consequence of driving a wedge between Britain and the US.

No doubt it’s progress of a kind to have this officially confirmed, but still…

Rape is being used as a weapon of war in Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region, a United Nations report says.

Anyone who’s followed the news from Darfur has known this for a couple of years at least. We’ve had countless reports and eye-witness accounts.

And their recommendations?

[T]he High Commissioner is calling on Government authorities to conduct an impartial, timely, and transparent investigation into the attacks , with particular focus on the allegations of rape and other gross violations of international human rights law. ” The investigation should aim to collect evidence to identify and prosecute those who planned, orchestrated, and/or conducted the attacks”, the High Commissioner said following the release of the reports. ” The results of the investigation should be made public, legal action should be taken against those found to be responsible and the victims of the attacks should be compensated”

Yeah, that’ll do it. No doubt Sudanese President Bashir is already pulling together a team of crack investigators. “Remember the key words here”, he’ll be telling them (maybe he’ll have put together a PowerPoint presentation), “impartial: timely: transparent. And you in the back – stop sniggering.”

pital. The seminary’s students have also been seen carrying Kalashnikovs and other weapons around their compound.

Mr Aziz denied having violent intentions but said his 10,000 men and women students, most from tribal areas near the Afghan border, were ready to die for their cause.

“If the police and Army come here we will sacrifice our bodies and will not allow anyone to be arrested,” he said.

He admitted openly that some of his students may have joined the Taleban in Pakistan or Afghanistan because he taught jihadi principles. He admitted too that his students had been to the local market, where Mr Ahmed’s shop is, to tell video and music stores not to sell “unIslamic” products.

They have also been seen at traffic lights around the capital telling women to stop driving cars and asking people playing “unIslamic” music to turn it off.

It’s not only with captured British sailors that Ahmadinejad likes to boost his image and parade his statesmanship. Here he is on Iranian TV last week, in a bizarre meeting with a group of American Christian leaders who can only be described as fawning, and don’t have the excuse of being prisoners. How, they ask the great man, can we work together to fix the problems that we (the US) have created in Iraq? What’s your advice? It’s a fairly sickening display.

As Ahmadinejad smugly announces that “the best president is a divine prophet”, the thought occurs that he may be suggesting that he himself is such a one. The thought also occurs, not for the first time, that he is, in fact, deranged.

Transcript here.

Remember those giant rabbits from Germany that were going to feed the North Koreans? It looks like they only fed one North Korean:

The offspring of the 12 giant rabbits were supposed to help to feed starving North Koreans. Now doubts about their fate have brought an abrupt halt to one of the more unlikely hunger-alleviating projects.

Karl Szmolinsky sold the rabbits to Pyongyang so that they could be used to set up a breeding programme to boost meat production in the Hermit Kingdom.

However, amid concerns that they have been eaten by the country’s leaders, Mr Szmolinsky will not be sending any more.

The 68-year-old breeder had been due to travel to North Korea after Easter to provide advice on setting up a rabbit farm. A North Korean official rang him last week to say that the trip had been cancelled. Mr Szmolinsky said he suspected that his rabbits, which grow to the size of dogs and can weigh over 10kg (22lb), were eaten at a birthday banquet for Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader, although he emphasised that he had no evidence of this.

“It’s an assumption, not an assertion,” Mr Szmolinsky said. “But I don’t think the animals are alive anymore, I think they’ve been eaten.”

Further to this:

Home Office plans to send Darfuri asylum seekers back to Sudan have been blocked by senior judges.

The Court of Appeal in London said the three asylum seekers could not be sent to Sudan’s capital Khartoum.

The three appeal judges said oppressive conditions in refugee camps would be “unduly harsh” on the individuals.

Darfur has seen conflict between black and Arab Sudanese people. The Home Office said the men would be safe in Khartoum and will challenge the ruling…

The UK immigration service had planned to put the three men, who are black [well who’d’ve guessed?], on a plane to Sudan.

It had planned to place them in a refugee camp near to the capital Khartoum – on the other side of the country from Darfur. The removal was approved at an earlier hearing before asylum adjudicators.

In their challenge, the three men, identified only as AH, IG and NM, said they risked torture at the hands of the Sudanese government.

They also said they would be deported to extremely poor conditions in squatter or refugee camps on the edge of the capital.

The three had been subsistence farmers before fleeing, saying they had faced persecution from the Arab Janjaweed militia.

What would Freud have made of this?

Keith Richards has acknowledged consuming a raft of illegal substances in his time, but this may top them all. In comments published Tuesday, the 63-year-old Rolling Stones guitarist said he had snorted his father’s ashes mixed with cocaine.

“The strangest thing I’ve tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father,” Richards was quoted as saying by British music magazine NME.

“He was cremated and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn’t have cared,” he said. “… It went down pretty well, and I’m still alive.”

Dead dads seem to be quite the thing nowadays. Keith, though, is the only one not claiming that what he did was art. And he was the only one having fun. Are these two facts related, I wonder?

know firsthand that the inhumane teaching in Islamist ideology can transform a young, benevolent mind into that of a terrorist. Without confronting the ideological roots of radical Islam it will be impossible to combat it. While there are many ideological “rootlets” of Islamism, the main tap root has a name–Salafism, or Salafi Islam, a violent, ultra-conservative version of the religion.

It is vital to grasp that traditional and even mainstream Islamic teaching accepts and promotes violence. Shariah, for example, allows apostates to be killed, permits beating women to discipline them, seeks to subjugate non-Muslims to Islam as dhimmis and justifies declaring war to do so. It exhorts good Muslims to exterminate the Jews before the “end of days.” The near deafening silence of the Muslim majority against these barbaric practices is evidence enough that there is something fundamentally wrong. […]

Politicians and scholars in the West have taken up the chant that Islamic extremism is caused by the Arab-Israeli conflict. This analysis cannot convince any rational person that the Islamist murder of over 150,000 innocent people in Algeria–which happened in the last few decades–or their slaying of hundreds of Buddhists in Thailand, or the brutal violence between Sunni and Shia in Iraq could have anything to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Western feminists duly fight in their home countries for equal pay and opportunity, but seemingly ignore, under a façade of cultural relativism, that large numbers of women in the Islamic world live under threat of beating, execution and genital mutilation, or cannot vote, drive cars and dress as they please.

The tendency of many Westerners to restrict themselves to self-criticism further obstructs reformation in Islam. Americans demonstrate against the war in Iraq, yet decline to demonstrate against the terrorists who kidnap innocent people and behead them. Similarly, after the Madrid train bombings, millions of Spanish citizens demonstrated against their separatist organization, ETA. But once the demonstrators realized that Muslims were behind the terror attacks they suspended the demonstrations. This example sent a message to radical Islamists to continue their violent methods…

Worst of all, perhaps, is the anti-Americanism among many Westerners. It is a resentment so strong, so deep-seated, so rooted in personal identity, that it has led many, consciously or unconsciously, to morally support America’s enemies.