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Tag Archives: press security

A Comment on Shooting Unarmed Journalists While Shouting “Allahu Akbar”

06 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by commart in Afghanistan, Asia, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Journalism, Regions

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Afghanistan, journalism, mentality, press security

Fly any banner, service to others forms the bedrock of civil societies, and journalists, perhaps war journalists especially, serve others every hour afield.  Across the jagged puzzle pieces of the Islamic Small Wars, journalists have been doing more than “taking it on the chin” — they have been taking bullets and leaving behind children and spouses, colleagues and readers.

The end of last week saw the brutally cold blooded, cold hearted, and senseless murder of AP photojournalist Anja Neidringhaus and the attempted murder of AP veteran Kathy Gannon by a so-called “defender” of civil order, of the innocent, and of Islam, Afghan police platoon commander Naqibullah, a man one report cites as enraged by NATO air strikes on his village elsewhere in the country.

If that’s the way he felt, what was he doing heading up a state police unit in the first place?

Two women sitting in a car and along comes this nut with an AK-47 . . . .

Life’s not much better across the border in Pakistan — see, for example,  the Committee to Protect Journalist’s recent article, “What should happen following the Raza Rumi attack”.

While reading over the latest from the attack on Kathy Gannon and Anja Neidringhaus, I found news of still recent other murders of journalists in Afghanistan: Nils Horner, a Swedish broadcast journalist assassinated on the street; Sardar Ahmad, whose entire family was gunned down by teenage numbnuts shooting up the dinner hour at Kabul’s Serena Hotel restaurant — call the method “gangdum style”: after three hours of fighting, security managed to kill the baby killers (“Three Afghan children between 2 and 5 years old were shot point-blank in the head, the Reuters news agency reported”) after three hours of fighting, but not before nine people had died.

In the BackChannels way (until I get out of this place, if ever), excerpts follow.

______

She covered every major conflict, every massive world-changing event of the past 25 years. She was unflinchingly brave. Not in a cavalier way, but more like “This is very dangerous. But it’s important. It has to be done. It has to be covered. Who else is going to do it? I’m going.”

Chen, Pamela.  “Colleague and Friend Remembers Slain Photographer Anja Niedringhaus.”  National Geographic, April 5, 2014.

* * *

Two unidentified men approached Nils Horner, 51, in Kabul’s diplomatic district this morning, according to a New York Times report citing Col. Najibullah Samsour, a senior police official. One of the assailants shot Horner in the head at close range, and then both men fled the scene, the report said.

CPJ.  “British-Swedish journalist shot dead in Afghan capital.”  March 11, 2014.

Related: Graham-Harrison, Emma.  “Taliban splinter group says it killed British-Swedish reporter Nils Horner.”  The Guardian, March 12, 2014.

* * *

A gregarious 40-year-old star of Afghanistan’s booming media scene, Ahmad had an eye for both a story and a joke that helped him juggle two jobs as senior correspondent for Agence France-Press and head of media firm Pressistan, which he founded to support visiting foreign correspondents.

Graham-Harrison, Emma.  “Sardar Ahmad: a courageous journalist who delivered exceptional coverage: Colleagues pay tribute to a dedicated Afghan journalist killed along with his wife and two daughters by Taliban gunmen in Kabul.”  The Guardian, March 21, 2014.

Related: Kuruvilla, Carol.  “Afghan reporter’s toddler son miraculously survives Taliban attack that killed family.”  New York Daily News, April 4, 2014.

______

An enraged Afghan police commander on a “secure base”; Taliban assassins; four teenagers with guns — and gone: a courageous and talented AP photographer; an award-winning Swedish radio reporter; a brave Afghan journalists, husband, and father.

Whatever the motives of the killers, however they felt, whatever they were paid, they have been offing the best of the best, the most just, most merciful, and most free among mankind.

Additional Reference

Afghan Journalists Safety Committee

Geller, Pamela.  “AP Photographer Shot to Death, Journalist Wounded by Afghan Commander Who Walked Up to Their Car, yelled, “Allahu Akbar” and Opened Fire.”  Atlas Shrugs, April 4, 2014.

News.Com.AU “Afghan officer Naqibullah shot journalists Anja Niedringhaus and Kathy Gannon ‘in revenge’.  April 6, 2014.

Rosenberg, Matthew and Farooq Jan Mangal.  “Covering Afghan Vote, Until Shot by an Ally.”  The New York Times, April 4, 2014.

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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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