Sunday, January 21, 2007

Double entendre

The Pajamas Media consortium, fresh from its recent success in reporting that Supreme Ayatollah Khamenei was dead (he popped up on TV a few days later), is now claiming that the murder of Turkish journalist Hrant Dink was an act of jihad --

[Michael Ledeen, approvingly quoting Charles Johnson] The assassination of Turkish-Armenian writer Hrant Dink is being universally portrayed as ethnic strife, a political act by Turkish nationalists against an Armenian critic. Call me Mr. Suspicious, but when I see the entire media monolith pushing an idea like that with so much enthusiasm, I start looking for the real explanation.

And the real explanation, as with so many of these media smokescreens, is jihad. Turkish-Armenian editor shot dead in Istanbul. NTV television said Dink had been shot three times in the head and neck.

Muharrem Gozutok, a restaurant owner near the newspaper, said the assailant looked about 20, wore jeans and a cap and shouted “I shot the non-Muslim” as he left the scene.

This little piece of essential information is now being excised from all wire service and media reports.


Ledeen lists several news stories that don't report this alleged outburst. As it happens, the Times (UK) has a relevant snippet --

His murderer fled, shouting, “I have killed an Armenian”, and levelled his pistol at passers-by who tried to stop him.

If one only went by the principle that the simple explanation is usually the right one, it surely makes sense that the murderer of a journalist who had made his name through the Armenian cause might mention that after committing his act. The Ledeen-Johnson conspiracy theory is also silent on the language of the statement, but "non-Muslim" is a strange usage for a case when Infidel or Crusader would surely have been preferred, and could well be a simply mis-hearing, then wilfully misconstrued, of "Armenian."

UPDATE: Ledeen adds another post, never mentioning the quote that was central to the first post's claim, and then confuses Armenian with Kurdish.

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