They had bin Laden living nearby for all that time in Rawalpindi, but dancers with cameras clearly face a zero-tolerance policy. An update on this story. "US hip-hop diplomacy hits speed bump in Pakistan," by Sebastian Abbot for the Associated Press, November 16:
ISLAMABAD (AP) — A U.S. attempt to smooth relations with Pakistan using a bit of hip-hop diplomacy hit a speed bump Wednesday when the Pakistani military briefly detained an American music group accused of taking photographs of sensitive installations.
The F.E.W. Collective, a hip-hop group from Chicago on a U.S.-sponsored tour of Pakistan, was traveling in embassy vehicles on a public road in Rawalpindi, a garrison town just outside the capital Islamabad, when the incident occurred, the U.S. Embassy said.
Rawalpindi hosts the headquarters of the Pakistani army, but the U.S. Embassy said no sensitive installations were visible from the vehicle when the group was pulled over. One of the band members may have been taking pictures, but the group was eventually released, it said.
"The performer was not aware of restrictions placed on photography in or near the cantonment, and had no intention of taking photographs of sensitive Pakistani government or military installations," the embassy said.
Local TV footage showed three large SUVs surrounded by Pakistani police and military personnel before they were allowed to pull away.
The F.E.W. Collective is one of several American music groups that the U.S. Embassy has brought to Pakistan this year as part of its cultural diplomacy efforts. Others have included a jazz quartet and a country rock band.
Did they bring a... Jew's harp?
The U.S. has given Pakistan billions of dollars in military and civilian aid over the last decade, but the country is still highly unpopular among average Pakistanis.
Diplomacy with music and musical instruments, which a considerable segment of the population may find sinful to varying degrees, can only do so much.
Our US administration reminds me of that old 1960's tv program "amateur hour" with all their ridiculous diplomatic antics like the above, all trying to garner Islam's 'appoval. I wonder when our POTUS will get the hook and get pulled off stage.
Why are they putting these ill-equipped young men's lives in danger? (It has to be men, right?)
I'll bet Obama took lots of Kodak moments on his trip to Pahkistan.
They are the lowest of the low Muslims. Refugees in their own country. More like a prison than a nation, which is why they hate India so much.
BREAKING NEWS FROM PAKISTAN - Blast kills three militants, two police officials in Karachi
KARACHI: A bomb blast blew up a white colour Suzuki Bolan near Salt n Pepper Village restaurant at Sea View and killed three militants and two police officials on Wednesday, DawnNews reported.
Another police official got injured in the blast.
http://www.dawn.com/2011/11/16/bomb-blast-at-sea-view-kills-one-in-karachi-dawnnews.html
"...sensitive Pakistani government or military installations..."
aka Pakistani public housing for the likes of Ayman al-Zawahiri and others....
What is truly horrible about Pakistan is that its Muslim population is overwhelmingly descended from Hindus, Buddhists and animists who were for the most part forcibly 'converted' to Islam. Many may descend from non-Muslim girls who were seized and raped and force-bred to produce babies that were then brainwashed into Islam by the rapist fathers.
And those pre-Islamic, non-Islamic people - whose genetic descendants are miserable Muslims in today's Pakistan - were gifted and creative practitioners of music, visual and plastic arts, and dance; the same rich traditions one can see still being carried on in India, next-door.
The sharia-maddened Muslims in Pakistan doubtless still carry, a good few of them, the genes that make a person a great dancer, or a singer or a composer, or the genes for hand-eye coordination and visual imagination that enable a person to produce lifelike and lively sculpture, or marvellous portraiture.
And yet they are imprisoned within a ghastly, totalitarian, anti-life antihuman system that has contempt for, and indeed **criminalises** and **punishes** any attempt to exercise those universal human gifts.
"The sharia-maddened Muslims in Pakistan doubtless still carry, a good few of them, the genes that make a person a great dancer, or a singer or a composer, or the genes for hand-eye coordination and visual imagination that enable a person to produce lifelike and lively sculpture, or marvellous portraiture.
And yet they are imprisoned within a ghastly, totalitarian, anti-life antihuman system that has contempt for, and indeed **criminalises** and **punishes** any attempt to exercise those universal human gifts.
_____________
This, above, has to be some of the most elegant and pleasant sentences that I have read, and I have read hundreds of yours over the years...
_____________
In particular, tthis:
""The sharia-maddened Muslims in Pakistan doubtless still carry, a good few of them, the genes that make a person a great dancer, or a singer or a composer...""
Maybe, DDA. But as I understand it, it only takes one or two generations of an already corrupted gene-pool within a particular "ethnicity" to wreak havoc on the next human that happens to be born. Put simply, one bad apple can spoil the whole barrel pretty quickly and quite effectively, if left "unattended".
______________
and you wrote:
"...they are imprisoned within a ghastly, totalitarian, anti-life antihuman system that has contempt for, and indeed **criminalises** and **punishes**..."
Indeed, and the proof is in the need to control us, their women, and in the case of the article - even those dhimmified nitwits sent by Oboobie to engaage in "inter-cultural outreach" - hence, the unbearable urge to pull the Kuffar Rap Troupe SUVs over on the side of the road near where Binnie met his demise.
Misadventures of a group of ignoramuses in an Islamic paradise.
Pakistan: "Hip-hop diplomacy" hits a snag as military briefly detains American dance troupe
..................................
I just hope nothing worse happens to these well-meaning idjits during their fool's errand...