According to the Yonhap, Al-Jazeera has reported that the Taliban has agreed to ”unconditionally” release two women hostages, who are in poor health, on “humanitarian” grounds.
AFP, on the other hand, is reporting that the Taliban has already freed the two hostages as a “gesture of goodwill.” However, there is no official confirmation regarding the release from the Korean MOFAT.
UPDATE : The Yonhap is reporting that the hostages were in the process of being transported to the release location, when the Taliban leadership changed their minds, resulting in the hostages being turned back to a “safe” location. However, the Taliban representative is insisting that the decision of the release is still “effective”, just that the decision for the “timing” of the release has not been made.
Okay, they supposedly release the hostages, then supposedly turn them back and the reason is that the so called time of the release has not been decided on? Talk about playing games. And the only thing the Korean government can do is just sit and watch while the Taliban run circles around them. When will they ever learn?
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Saw it on TV about 30 minutes ago. Two hostages freed.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2007/08/116_8151.html
Great, if it’s true…
Taliban are going soft.
naver reports Taliban changed its mind.
Fuckers.
George W. Bush took the initiative to rid the world of these fuckers.
It is clearly not okay to do these things to civilians.
If it takes a war to make this clear universally, let it be. Let it be.
The Taliban are clearly fans of North Korean negotiating tactics. And given their unparalleled success over the years in extracting concessions and resources from SK while giving up absolutely nothing, they’re certainly reading the right playbook.
Yup. Most probably the reason that the release has been held up is that the cash-payment didn’t “go thru” properly…
It would make me happy to know that two hostages – better yet, all of them – were free. That said, I’ll believe it when I see them get off the plane at Incheon International.
Take a look at this interesting commentary in the koreatimes.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2007/08/169_8092.html
Wow — he (link in #7) has an unusually mature and sophisticated perspective (for a Korean writing in a newspaper)…
Good article.
Which makes me realize: There is far more freedom to write critically of Christianity in mainstream media here in Korea than you would get in the USA, where frank criticism of Christianity is restricted to fringe publications like Skeptic.
Oh please. I hope you’re not going to betray the “tough guy” values of your militant secular humanism by intimating even the least little bit of submission to the universal cult of victimhood.
Probably most of the editors of major US newspapers/
magazines will subscribe at least nominally to some sort of Judeo-Christian belief, given our national heritage in the US (as opposed to Korea). But just because you won’t find regular jeremiads against Christianity on the editorial page doesn’t mean that it can’t be found in major media print if you look for it (book reviews, the occasional guest editorial in Time, sophisticated magazines such as Atlantic Monthly, New Yorker, etc).
If you want more than that you’re going to have to get together, get organized, and start sending out missionaries to knock on doors and preach the true faith of atheism.
#9 -
You are kidding, right?
Two words: Christopher Hitchens.
ABC even put him on the air during their live coverage of (now Blessed) Mother Teresa’s funeral. Granted, the vitriolic diatribe he spewed then (which made even Peter Jennings uncomfortable enough to eventually cut him off) probably didn’t do much to advance the anti-God cause, but you can’t deny that the guy is consistently given a forum to air his views.
Peter Singer, E.O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins… they get published too. And not infrequently. So really, I don’t see that you’ve got a legitimate gripe here.
Re #7 : Very good article, indeed.
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