Spent the day in town

and then decided to see if there was anything new on the Gordon Brown negotiate/not negotiate story. All of the links to MSM reports of the negotiate story are now dead although present in Google's listings. Must have been some fast and furious emails and telephone calls from Brown's office. Found this at the BBC:

Afghan battle being won - Brown
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has told MPs that forces are "winning the battle against the insurgency" in Afghanistan.

He said Britain and its coalition partners were "isolating and eliminating the leadership of the Taleban, not negotiating with them".

But he backed Afghan leaders' moves towards "political reconciliation" with ex-insurgents who renounce violence.

There is a long-standing tradition among Islamists to renounce violence. It's called Hudna From Omdurman:

Truces, Arab Style
"What is being touted as a 'cease-fire' is something called a 'hudna.' A hudna [also known as a hudibiyya or khudaibiya] is a tactical cease-fire that allows the Arabs to rebuild their terrorist infrastructure in order to be more effective when the "cease-fire" is called off."

And from Jihad Watch:

Dar al-Islam and dar al-harb: the House of Islam and the House of War
The violent injunctions of the Quran and the violent precedents set by Muhammad set the tone for the Islamic view of politics and of world history. Islamic scholarship divides the world into two spheres of influence, the House of Islam (dar al-Islam) and the House of War (dar al-harb). Islam means submission, and so the House of Islam includes those nations that have submitted to Islamic rule, which is to say those nations ruled by Sharia law. The rest of the world, which has not accepted Sharia law and so is not in a state of submission, exists in a state of rebellion or war with the will of Allah. It is incumbent on dar al-Islam to make war upon dar al-harb until such time that all nations submit to the will of Allah and accept Sharia law. Islam's message to the non-Muslim world is the same now as it was in the time of Muhammad and throughout history: submit or be conquered. The only times since Muhammad when dar al-Islam was not actively at war with dar al-harb were when the Muslim world was too weak or divided to make war effectively.

But the lulls in the ongoing war that the House of Islam has declared against the House of War do not indicate a forsaking of jihad as a principle but reflect a change in strategic factors. It is acceptable for Muslim nations to declare hudna, or truce, at times when the infidel nations are too powerful for open warfare to make sense. Jihad is not a collective suicide pact even while "killing and being killed" (Sura 9:111) is encouraged on an individual level. For the past few hundred years, the Muslim world has been too politically fragmented and technologically inferior to pose a major threat to the West. But that is changing.

The above is part of an excellent paper titled: Islam 101 It goes into a lot of things that you simply do not hear about on the media or from people promoting Islam as the religion of pigs peace... I'll leave you with a photo of Gordon Brown's most-notorious predecessor - the guy on the left. The guy on the right needs no introduction.