Kamangir (Archer)

Reader's Comments

1. Roman Kalik | June 17th, 2007 at 6:18 pm

   From the recentmost news I’ve read, Hamas was unable to reach an agreement with Johnston’s kidnappers, and said kidnappers are threatening to kill him.

   In any case, I always found it fishy that it was Hamas that always passed along the demands.

2. Roman Kalik | June 18th, 2007 at 11:58 am

   Here’s an article I found on Reuters, which speaks of this matter.

   These are fanatics. They don’t give a damn about anyone, be it Hamas, the Palestinians in general. Mark my words, this is likely to end badly.

3. serendip | June 18th, 2007 at 8:19 pm

   These religious fascists are gangsters hiding behind a religious facade. They have no respect for life or humanity.

   These fanatics are fully enjoying their deeds and are carried along by transcendant, ecstatic religious faith.
   That’s the real horror of militant Islam: it is a vast, organized belief system which perverts the basic human emotions to a purpose which can only be called evil. Love between man and woman is perverted into cruelty, paranoia, and slavery. Faith in God, which in other cultures sustains people and gives them hope, is perverted into nihilistic violence. Creativity and reason are perverted into mindless ritualism and endless study of one dead man’s rantings. Progress and hope for the future are perverted into an obsession with the past — in Islam it is always A.D. 632.

   We must not delude ourselves by thinking the terrorists are stupid or crazy. They are not. They have shown themselves to be extremely sane, extremely clever, and extremely patient. We cannot depend on them making mistakes, and we cannot allow them the luxury of developing their plans against us. We must destroy them and the vast system of evil which produces and sustains them.

   Our traditions of religious freedom and tolerance make this hard — how can a nation devoted to freedom of religion wage a crusade? And yet it is becoming a matter of survival. For a century the world has been waiting for Islam to adjust to modernity, and in that time Islam has only grown more violently xenophobic, more mired in its own pathologies, and more dangerous to the rest of humanity.

   We can fight Islam now, while we are very strong and they are weak, or we can wait for them to gain new weapons, wear down our allies, and sabotage the global economy. But the fight will come, whether or not we want it, and we will someday be faced with the choice of fighting or submitting. Once I would have confidently predicted we would fight and win, but now I am not so sure.

4. ella | June 18th, 2007 at 8:36 pm

   Interesting article.
   Hamas needs a good publicity and if they manage to free BBC journalist they will get it.
   Of course neither Hamas nor the kidnapers give damn about well being of other people, certainly not about westerner’s well-being. However if they get free the journalist they would score a major point with some people, if they can’t manage to do that, they would also get a point with BBC for trying.

5. Roman Kalik | June 18th, 2007 at 10:42 pm

   Yes, it’s all about appearances in the end. Hamas, the “great stabilizer”, who knew all along where Johnston was being held and did nothing in the hope that the ransom would be paid. Bastards the lot of them.

6. Matthew | June 21st, 2007 at 5:42 pm

   The LA Times has more today

   http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-journalists21jun21,0,829385.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials

7. ella | June 22nd, 2007 at 10:12 pm

   It seems that he has not been freed yet. I guess Hamas has other, more immediate, “problems” to solve.
   BTW
   anybody knows what is going on with proposed gasoline rationing in Iran, it was, I think, supposed to start today.

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