lgf: militarized theocratic sheep police brings to my attention, as he does so many things, that the International News Safety Institute is telling journalists in Iraq NOT to carry firearms to protect themselves.
"The International News Safety Institute has pleaded with journalists to resist suggestions that they should carry guns in Iraq, following the killing of al-Arabiya's Iraq correspondent Bahjat, cameraman Khalid Mahmoud and technician Adnan Khairullah yesterday.
At a news conference after the killings, a reporter asked Iraqi president Jalal Talabani to allow journalists to carry weapons in self-defence. The war in Iraq has now claimed the lives of 104 journalists and support staff in 23 months - the bloodiest conflict for the news media in modern times.
"Send me an official request and I will approve it and inform concerned agencies to give you the right to carry arms," Mr Talabani replied.
But the INSI, which promotes the provision of safety training and assistance to media workers, believes the move would be counter-productive and that journalists' lives would be placed further in danger if they carried weapons.
"Journalists increasingly are being targeted in conflict largely because they have lost, in the eyes of certain elements, their status as neutral observers. If they bear arms they reinforce this misguided belief by placing themselves on one side or another," said the INSI director, Rodney Pinder.
"A journalist with a gun says 'some people in the situation I'm covering are my enemies and I am prepared to kill them if necessary'. That is not the position of a neutral civilian."
Moreover journalists who carry arms may remove themselves from the protection afforded to civilians in war by the Geneva Conventions, even though Mr Pinder points out it is "flimsy" protection."
What to say, what to say... It's easy for me, I don't really go anywhere without a gun, so I'm sure as heck not going to NOT take one with me over there! But, you know, if we're all nice to each other, all the bad will just disappear. Right?
Which brings me to another lgf tidbit: They hate us for what we are. An excellent article by Julie Burchill.
Excerpt:
"For the past five years I have wished not to be vilified as a racist, a bigot and an Islamophobe every time I had the nerve to say that certain Muslims living in Britain hate Westerners, not because of what we do - the war in Iraq, support for Israel - but because of what we are: free. This freedom is so frightening to a certain sort of sexually frustrated Koran-basher that he will kill even his own sister or daughter if he believes her to be enjoying herself with the body God gave her - which is why the police in Britain are currently investigating more than 100 unsolved "honor killings" of young Muslim women.
Anyway, I daresay you've seen footage of the Muslim mentalists and their disgusting banners - "Get ready for the real holocaust" was a particularly choice example - as well as young men dressed as suicide bombers and children wearing hats saying "I love Al-Qaida," protesting against the Danish cartoons in London. And this in a country, shamefully, where the newspapers never even reprinted them! See - for what we are, not what we do."
Yup.
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