A man without apparent high value, just an ordinary technical professional from a medium-sized former Eastern European country was brutally killed in Pakistan. Polish geologist Piotr Stanczak was shown being beheaded in Pakistan in a video released to the press. The Australian reports:
Pakistani militants are believed to have beheaded a Polish engineer kidnapped four months ago in the first execution of a western hostage since Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was killed in 2002. A graphic seven-minute video, apparently showing the beheading of Piotr Stanczak, was delivered to several news wire agencies at the weekend. The video shows Mr Stanczak sitting on the ground flanked by two masked Talibani before three other men behead him.
Why would they do it? Let’s examine the Jihad from a non-religious perspective. Hostage taking can be big business. Eduardo F. Ugarte, in a scholarly examination of kidnapping activities in Mindanao, notes that a market for hostages exists in which low-level gangs can pick up likely targets and onsell them to a ransom packager for a price, almost like commercial paper. The final hostage holder is often a group with the most fearsome reputation and ultimately negotiates with any likely hostage buyers. The group known to be the most ruthless and cruel is best placed to get the highest price for the hostage. The Abu Sayaf’s major asset, for example, was their reputation for cruelty. Ugarte quotes a source in the full article describing how it works.
‘…it has become public knowledge in Sulu that certain kidnap-for ransom (KFR) syndicates based in the island turn their victims over to the ASG. (This was done particularly during the time of bandit type commanders like the late Ghalib Andang (“Robot”) and Mujib Susukan, in a classic criminal partnership. The ASG could then jack up the ransom demands because of its reputation.’
Maintaining a brand name in cruelty is an important part of the terrorist business. Being kind is bad for Islamic extremist business. This explains why they must, every now and again, commit some act of spectacular barbarism. It’s builds up their name in the business. Just how do the ransom gangs decide whether to make a visitor a target. From anecdotal data I believe they look for indications of wealth or prestige. For example, an acquaintance who was kidnapped last year on Basilan and released only a short time ago was held because the cellular phone in the victim’s possession contained directory entries to prominent persons. It was inferred that the victim had a deal of money, which was not the case. And it took nearly half a year and a lot of luck until the kidnappers decided the victim was a dry hole.
For these reasons, people who fear being kidnapped often hide their American passports or other documents indicating their relative value. Some may try to play dumb as possible into the bargain. It’s natural to think that if you say, “you can’t do this to me, I’m a …” you will deter your captors. It may have the opposite effect. Of course even being a nobody may not let you off the hook entirely. At one point, there were people soliciting money in tin cups for the ransom of street sweepers and road men in Basilan, poor men who were being held by so called “rebels” for ransoming amounting to $50 American.
Brother, can you spare a dime?
“Obama’s gonna change it, obama’s gonna change the world…”
I think the beheading was less an effort to keep thier street cred. than it was simple brutish evil. Evil people do evil for pleasure as well as business.
Hitler may have had a dog, but I bet he kicked the crap out of it alot (behind closed doors of course).
If Piotr Stanczak were a piece of paper from a Koran instead of a person and if someone had cut that piece of paper in two, then the Moslem clergy all over the world would be rising up in angry protest.
Mike, precisely. Which is precisely why every Koran in the world should be burned; along with every building in which its contents are taught, and every single one of the neck-chopping, filthy, cruel, idolatrous, barbaric, ignorant SOBs that have already been taught it. EVERY SINGLE ONE.
Look up “Ground Zero Ocean” on any search engine. It’s supposed to be a joke. If it is, it’s a pretty grim one.
2 Zim
Hitler tested one of the cyanide capsules he was given during his last days in the bunker on Blondi (the dog) to make sure the poison would work for him and Eva Braun. Are you surprised?
FC, GZO would be a welcome change! thats why “0″ will never do it…
Um,… Can anyone get me Warren Buffet’s phone number?
Wretchard:
I’m afraid you are asking the impossible when you bid us “…examine Jihad from a non-religious perspective”. These brutal Islamist scum are wrapped about with Islam. It permeates their lives. By severing an Infidel’s neck they are following Muhammad’s instructions found in the Quran. I have not reached any conclusion as to if they truly believe they are committing these atrocities for supposedly holy purposes or if they merely use their devotion to this barbaric religion as a tool to excuse their criminal actions. No matter; extorting and terrorizing the infidels is also following Muhammad’s teachings as found in the Quran. Even greedy, violent, narco-marxist guerillas in Columbia don’t make a habit of beheading helpless people on camera and distributing the video on the World Wide Web. As businesses practice for kidnappers this is a self defeating strategy. Instead of terrorizing governments, companies and loved ones into producing large ransoms for hostages, it will encourage all non-Muslims to avoid the entire nation and dry up the pool of potential easy and profitable victims. Why then would the Islamists do this? I believe the only answer is to terrorize the infidels, to pursue Jihad across the electronic world the decadent kuffar has made available to them. That they can extort a profit while doing so is gravy for the goose, but is secondary to Jihad for Allah!
What frustrates me is that monsters of comparable evil to the ones who murdered Daniel Pearl and Piotr Stanczak have been released from Gitmo. Those monsters were re-inflicted upon the world to appease the delicate sensitivities of moonbats. Again the symbiotic relationship between moonbats and Islamic fascists needs to be understood.
As I have said before, I am conflicted about the morality of capital punishment. I don’t like the idea of giving the state that much power. However I am not conflicted about the importance of destroying Islamic fascists whenever we find them. It should be the policy of the western democracies to promptly execute Islamic fascists after they have faced a military tribunal and all intelligence information was extracted (prove guilt, interrogate, hang, cremate and then flush the ashes down a sewer). To simply imprison these monsters leaves open the possibility that they will later be released by moonbats.
Eggplant #9:
I concur. Although, I am sure it would meet with great horror within our MSM and other leftists, I would like to consider the addition of burying the jihadist stitched in pigskins. Wretchard can probably provide greater detail to this tactic in the Philippines around the turn of last century. It sounded quite effective. It sort of plays off of the discovery of Col. Kurtz that you must inflict greater terror on them than they can upon us. If they knew that they would be mixed with pigs blood and skin, I think that it would terrorize them more than beheading terrorizes us.
Any one that has read the Koran (Qur’an) has read the Hadith, Sunna and knows an inkling of what Sahari law says knows the Islamic “terrorist” are true followers of their cult leader Mohammad! Islam is a death Cult to those that do not manipulate for their own benefit, If you have read half of Mohamed’s life history then you know he was anything but a follower of Allah in the way of the “people of the books” for which he (Mohammad) so often refers to when it suites his current mood and or needs, ignorant idiots and wishful thinkers believe that the radical fundamentalist are the extremist! GZO is the answer, the problem is since women took over Western Society there aren’t any men of Authority or Strength left to “do the right thing”!
Seems Israel fares poorly in that GZO pogrom, er, program.
With Islam its either the slow boil or the quick one for the frogs — unfortunately, too many people think they’re being treated to a sauna.
There seems no workable accommodation with Islam, eventually, eventually, it will be us versus them.
Polish Special Forces operate against the Taliban. Like with similar soldiers in Iraq, all Polish military operatives are volunteers for this type of duty. Before, Poles were doing this to build good will with America and to help democracy (an old Polish habit, even during the American Revolutionary War).
Now, I’m sure these Poles are going to take a different view on the Taliban they encounter. I suspect that number of Taliban prisoners they’ll take away from the battle field is going to go.. way… down.
@7:\ 402-346-1400
Won’t do you any good though. He never takes calls. Will call you back after deciding whether or not you are worth messing with. He is a nice guy who likes his small town life. But his political views are typical for a billionaire.
On the off chance you are serious.
If not then this is just a smart aleck reply to an indolent question.
Jim
They are trying to intimidate the Poles into leaving Afghanistan, maybe? The kidnapped American has a Polish-sounding name. The article doesn’t say when the beheading took place. It’s hard not to think Obama gave a green light to all our enemies and emboldened them all. Change, indeed. As with so many other things, either he thought about what he was doing when he went on Arab TV or he didn’t and it looks lousy either way.
I don’t like the way the author of the article wrote as if the hostage beheadings in Iraq happened in a different world.
The American hostage is named John Solecki. Safe home, brother.
Further to my last comment; unfortunately, GZO would have some unfortunate side effects. That thing would be maybe a hundred times bigger than the Chixculub (sp?) impact; thus giving rise to such things as major volcanic outbursts essentially everywhere, a global firestorm, class VI nuclear winter (read “A Path Where No Man Thought”) and kilometre-high tsunami hitting every coast on Earth.
Maybe the rest of us should move off-planet, leave the Earth to Islam, and gift them with a trillion tons or so of high-grade nickel steel – at escape velocity, straight down. Let them find out whether their Bronze Age demon god can or will protect them from that.
Armageddon @8,
“These brutal Islamist scum are wrapped about with Islam. It permeates their lives.”
When I go bow-hunting, I wear my mossy-oak camouflage and douse my gear in deer-scent. I look like a thicket and smell like deer piss, but I’m really just a hungry Irish-man with a gun.
Beheadings like this latest, followed, of course, by the ritualistic claims of religious inspiration, only augment the mimicry used by local armed gangs, extra-national merceneries (like Hezbullah), and anti-democratic putsches. These groups intend to terrorize and horrify others into granting them the same concessions – be they the Kyoto Accords, or getting the “US out of Iraq,” that they could not garner through peaceful persuasion at the ballot-box.
The religious cover offers two clever benefits: it allows the secular Left to deny their cooperative relationship with terrorists (the Left rehearsed this ad nauseum in defense of Saddam Hussein’s “lack of ties to terror”), and American Conservatives’ reaction to the religionist cover can be counted on to fossillize into, and then can be attacked as, cultural intolerance of the globe’s largest religious faith.
The donning of this particular camo is intentional, and amazingly well thought-out. The repetition of the religious inspiration and the public replay of the horrific act itself, which are endemic to the Right’s response to the “Islamist” camouflage, both perversely increase the utility of the religionist claims, while complicating our attempts to unify our sister republics – especially Muslim ones – behind a concerted, global reaction.
One day it’ll be plain that we’ve been looking at Leftist terrorism dressed in a thobe. Folks, don’t let the appearances fool ya.