Iraqis watch Jihad TV in Baghdad (AFP)
Italy's Prime Minister Berlusconi, say the mujahedin, must "apologize for his wrongs against Islam." They may refer not just to Italy's support for the U.S., but of the Italian Prime Minister's notorious post-9/11 remarks. At that time he said: "We must be aware of the superiority of our civilisation, a system that has guaranteed well-being, respect for human rights and — in contrast with Islamic countries — respect for religious and political rights, a system that has as its value understanding of diversity and tolerance."
The kidnappers sure aren't giving him any reason to reconsider those words. From AP:
CAIRO, Egypt - An Italian hostage in Iraq was killed and his death recorded on a videotape received by Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based network said Wednesday.The network aired a short segment of the video showing the four Italian hostages sitting on the ground, holding up their passports and surrounded by armed men. Al-Jazeera said the death of one of the Italians is captured on the tape as well but that it declined to broadcast the footage.
The network refused to say how it received the tape.
The four Italian security guards were abducted Monday. Three were working for a U.S.-based company while a fourth was employed by a Seychelles-based firm, Italian officials said.
An Iranian delegation had been headed to Baghdad to try to win their release.
The tape was accompanied by a statement from a previously unknown group calling itself the Green Battalion, which threatened to "kill the three remaining Italian hostages one after the other, if their demands are not met," Al-Jazeera said.
The statement, read by an Al-Jazeera anchor, accused Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi of caring more about his "masters in the White House than his own people."
The group demanded the withdrawal U.S. forces from Iraq "according to a timetable" and that Berlusconi "apologize for his wrongs against Islam." It also called for the release of all religious clerics being held in Iraq.
In Rome, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said late Wednesday that the government had no confirmation of the killing.
"Obviously, we hope this news turns out to be false," he said on Italian television. "The kidnappers are, as you said, a group of bandits, not tied organically to any group."
Al-Jazeera spokesman Jihad Ballout would not say how the station received the tape. "Al-Jazeera does not comment on these details."
The station has said previous tapes sent by militant groups have been dropped off at their office in Baghdad.
Berlusconi was right then and is right now: the withdrawl of the Italian troops from Iraq is out of question!
One hopes there are CCTV cameras constantly point at Al-Jazeera offices world wide to record all who enter and exit. Esp. those who enter or exit with more or less articles.
al- jazeera is a sick and twisted network.
i think that should have been our first target.
i wonder if they would air a tape of me torching
an islamic bastard. i bet the greasy beards they
wear will burn up in a flash
Take a page from their book: Berlusconi should say he was misquoted, that his intentions are peaceful, and as a last resort, say they don't really speak Italian so they can't begin to understand anyway as it is not their native language, then walk off in a huff calling them racist and Latinophobic.
Condor has a good point. All those who work for Al-Jazeera, which is a blend of Der Stuermer and TASS, and is directly responsible for whipping up the Iraqis, with a non-stop campaign of lies, should be kept from ever being allowed entry into the United States and other Western countries. That is the one thing that will get the attention, and possibly modify the behavior, of this host of baby Goebbels. In particular, a recent article (April 2) by A. O. Scott in the New York Times, about a soi-disant documentary devoted to Al-Jazeera, writes sympathetically of a "balding, rumpled" Saleem Khader. And Mr. Khader, who is presented as a man of some complexity -- the evidence adduced for this implausible idea, given that he works not for a news organization, even a bad one, but for a propaganda network that is not a bit better than anything the Nazis produced, and is responsible for the deaths of many American soldiers, and civilians -- is that he berates another Al-Jazeera employee for carrying an interview with an American anti-war activist, berates him becasue the interviewee is, as Sameer Khader has it, unrepresentative. Great.
But the important part of the tale is this: Khadeer lets Ms. Noujaim (yes, the "Harvard-educated" Egyptian-born Ms. Noujaim -- the Ivy League touch is de rigueur here; shows she's one of us, inhabits the same intellectual climate, and so on) know that he, Sameer Khader, a collaborator of al-Jazeera, and hence a collaborator in an instrument of Jihad that has been directly responsible for American deaths (ask General Kimmitt, or Sanchez, or Abizaid, or any of the soldiers now in Iraq) complacently tells her that he is going to send his own children to university in the United States, so that they can taste the "American dream" and avoid the "Arab nightmare" (the very nightmare which he is helping to prolong).
Not so fast, buster. It would be absolutely outrageous to allow this man, who has participated in such an organization, to assume that when it comes time for him to arrange his childrens' future, the little matter of his participation in a sinister organization like Al-Jazeera will not weigh heavily against him. If he, and all the other Muslim Arabs who think they can act and write as they do, whipping up hatred, and trafficking in lies (even if some of them are slightly less enthusiastic about it, or do it only 90% of the time, not 100%), and then go off to the West as a combination funhouse-and-brothel, and get medical care in Boston or the Mayo Clinic, and send their children to American or other Western universities -- well, it's time to put paid to that assumption. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that would get their attention more, and modify future behavior more, than condemning their own children to the prison of their own awful countries and societies. Yes, of course one can argue that, in the first place, the "sins of the fathers..." But there is no right to be allowed in to the United States, much less to be given a student visa. It is a way, an effective way that does not require the risking of American lives, and that will help save American lives, if those involved in such enterprises realize that they cannot visit the United States, cannot have their children take full advantage of what they, in their schizophrenia, secretly recognize to be superior to the dar al-Islam which they are doing their utmost, willy-nilly, to expand. And to the argument that one way to get people to change is "to let them experience the United States for themselves." Nonsense. Plenty of Arabs have experienced the United States, and are living here as immigrants right now -- and their experience has not changed one whit their attitude of hostility and menace.
By starting to deny the great privilege of living, even for a short period, in the United States, or the other countries of the advanced West, to the relatives of those implicated in the propaganda war, this will eventually have an enormous effect on the behavior and on the career choices, of those who in the future may be considering working for Al-Jazeera and similar organs of hate, hysteria, and lies. They will have to think twice, before putting their talents to work for the Jihad, spouting antisemitic and anti-American propaganda. There will be consequences--their children are going to have to remain, and live, in the world that they are helping to create. They will not be allowed, themselves, the escape-hatch of the West. That itself should cause them to behave a bit more responsibly, when their own children's future is at stake.
If they have talent, so much the worse for them that they lent that talent to evil. Goebbels was extremely talented; was Leni Reifenstahl; so were a host of others who worked for the Nazis, or for Stalin.
Write your Congressmen. Make sure no close relative of anyone working for Al-Jazeera ever gets an entry visa. That will be one more useful anti-Jihad measure that costs nothing, and risks no American lives.
or better yet after observing them for a few weeks grab a few jihadi's let them overhear how the zionists at al jazeera set em up and maybe even let one escape to go tell his friends oh and hugh if that was your article at frontpage nice job
What's next, Jihad MTV?
Al Jazerra is a ally of terrorists and should be shut down with extreme prejudice. Kidnapping, mutilation and murder are scripted and staged for dissemination on the Cult of Death's uncivilized TV network.
Why does Western Civilization allow these barbarians to use our own technology, laws and decency to undermine us?
Why is al-ja-ZERO still broadcasting? Why haven't the station managers been rounded up and jailed until they name names? Are we at WAR or not? al-ja-ZERO management are accomplices to the murder of innocent Westerners. This is preposterous !!!
Aside from the suggestion offered above, that no one working for al-Jazeera, and no relative of someone working for al-Jazeera, should be permitted entry into the U.S. or other Western lands, here are two more:
1) an "Arab satellite channel" -- hmmm. Can't satellites be shot down, or come to some mysterious untimely end influenced by those countries who possess the most advanced anti-satellite technology? I would have thought that where the Resistance forces in Europe were capable of destroying Nazi communications and broadcasting systems, they would do so. It should be no different now, provided that the Jihad, and all of its instruments, not merely "terrorism," is understood to be the threat.
2) in Italy, Oriana Fallaci's La Forza del Ragione has already sold, in a week, a quarter of a million copies. The murder so carefully taped, and the threatened murder of the remaiing Italian hostages, has created quite a fury in Italy, a country which, for reasons including its smaller Muslim population, is less inclined than France to be passive, or complicit, in Muslim outrages, should take the opportunity now to close, permanently, the mosque in Rome. There will be a real outcry of indignation from Muslims (just think of the Saudis expressing their "outrage" at this infringement on the free exercise of religion), a further outcry of feigned indignation on the part of Infidels (but secret relief, and even pleasure). It will do much to help push back the sense that Islam is in Europe to stay, to spread, to win through conversion and subversion the lands that it could not otherwise conquer. It would be a very great event. And it could be pegged to the murderous khutbas that earned the last imam a hasty departure, with the limp explanation that he was not "used to Western ways." (that is, did not know how to practice taqiyya with sufficient craft). Many in Italy have learned much since they first so negligently permitted the opening of that mosque; it is a symbolic beachhead for Islam in the center of Western Christendom, and should be shut down at the next plausible opportunity. And there are many other mosques/madrasas doubling as centers of subversive intrigue and hate that long ago cried out for closure.
Had Indro Montanelli only survived (he died two years ago, at 91) to see the mess, he would certainly, in the page he had in the Corriere (la stanza di Montanelli), argued for such a result. Even in the appeasement-minded Vatican, there are more and more who have read, and understood the implications of, the scholarship of Bat Ye'or. Italy may be salvageable. France is another matter.
hugh..!! tu regarde trop "PERRY MASON"...LOL...!!
Bunch of illiterate ham tossed.....!!
in his pentagon press conference today, rumsfeld described al jazeera as "vicious" and "outrageous." at some point, al jazeera may cross a line and become a legitimate enemy target for a military strike -- just like the saddam t.v. during the iraq invasion.
Au contraire, let all the Al-Jazeera tapes that are produced be aired everywhere in the West. What better way to illustrate to those whose thinking is less than principled, just what Islam is all about?
It's just possible that the pictures will do the job for some people, even a few in Canada, France, Germany, and Russia.
For much the same reason, I wish we could all see the "jumpers" from the Trade Towers. Again, it is a lesson about Islam.
If it horrifies some--well, Islam is horrifying.
You ever here the saying, "I may not agree with what you have to say but I'd fight to the death you right to say it." Come on losers, you do realize they say the same stuff about CNN don't you? Try to open your minds a little. Can you imagine what the western media would be saying if we were being occupied by a force whom invaded on false pretenses. Time to leave and let the UN take over, that is if our corporate sponsors will let us.