Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Oh, look what the American press missed . . . again!

dar addustour

kitabat 2

al mada
alsumaria

 all iraq news

The above are important screen snaps.  Dar Addustour's home page, Kitabat's report, Al Mada's report,  Alsumaria's report and All Iraq News' report.  They're photos of protests from yesterday.  All are photos of the Baghdad protest.  That's a lot of people turning out.

So where's the coverage?

It was a question to ask in last night's snapshot:
In Basra and Baghdad today, protests took place against Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.  Al Mada reports photos of Nouri were burned and he was denounced loudly.  As noted in yesterday's snapshot, Nouri used a Monday speech allegedly about human rights to attack Moqtada al-Sadr -- cleric and movement leader.  Dar Addustour adds "thousands" poured into the streets in Baghdad at two o'clock in the afternoon.  As they marched to a central location, Muzaffar Square, they chanted slogans.  Nouri can take comfort in that his wasn't the only photo burned -- there were also a few photos of former leader Saddam Hussein that were set on fire.   All Iraq News notes that as the protests took place, Moqtada al-Sadr issued a statement noting that the Iraqi army must be armed but not via corrupt deals (like the Russian deal Nouri signed and then called off) and that all arms must be to defend Iraq and not used to attack Iraqis.  Please note that all three previous links have a photo of the turnout in Baghdad, it was huge.  Just how large it was may be best captured in the photo Kitabat runs.  At the Basra protest, Sheikh Khalid al-Issawi tells Al Mada that the protest is to convey the outrage over Nouri's verbal attack on Moqtada while, in Baghdad, Sheikh Taha Altablawbawi explains that the people of Sadr City, elders, intellectuals, children, all, are serving notice that attacks on Moqtada al-Sadr will not go unnoticed and will result in a response. Protester Sam Abdul-Mahdi tells Alsumaria that this is the start of protests in Basra and that Nouri should retract his attack on Moqtada.  The Iraq Times reports that Nouri ordered helicopters to fly overhead during the Baghdad protest and that some Sadrists saw that as an attempt at intimidation.
Al Mada reports that Iraqiya is warning that if changes do not take place in Iraq quickly, popular uprisings will take to the streets.  Protests were taking place around Iraq in January.  Demonstrators were calling out the disappearance of their loved ones into the 'justice system,' they were calling out the lack of jobs and the lack of basic services.  This swelled into the massive protests that took place across Iraq February 25th.  Iraqis took to the streets and, in Baghdad, Nouri sent his forces to attack.  Iraqi reporters were kidnapped by the police after covering the protests, they were then tortured and forced to sign statements saying they had not been tortured.  Haidi al-Mahdi was one of those reporters.  It was after the protests, he and some other reporters were ordering lunch and seated a table when Nouri's forces barged over, used the butt of their guns to strike people and rounded up Haidi and the other reporters.


 We were kind and gave them until this morning in case they were filing late.  I was on the phone at one point with an AP friend who was just sure that they had filed on it.  But, no, they hadn't.  Well they would.  This morning, there would be a report.

Where is it?

The protest in Baghdad started at 2:00 pm Tuesday.  Where's the coverage?  For those who don't know, when it's 2:00 in the afternoon in Baghdad, it's six in the morning in New York City.  So where was the coverage?

Last week, we saw that AP would make up a lie while covering a press conference.  (It's a lie, I'm not in the mood to be nice.  Every other outlet present heard that there were two proposals being tossed around.  AP 'heard' that Nouri had found an agreement and the crisis was over.  It was a lie.)

But they can't report what happens?

Were they too busy 'creating' news for later in the week to cover what was actually taking place?

It's really telling because Moqtada is news to the wire services -- that does include Reuters -- when he's backing Nouri.  When his supporters mobilize against Nouri, the wires go dead.

If you think the media is bringing you the news you need, you're kidding yourself.  The split between Nouri and Moqtada has gone on for months and it is only getting deeper.  You don't know that from English outlets.  From English outlets, Nouri is the 'great American friend' that the US might lose to Iran so the US must curry Nouri's favor.  That's not reality.

They failed to cover  the Memorandum of Understanding For Defense Cooperation Between the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Iraq and the Department of Defense of the United States of America. Somehow, someway.  A pretty important document.  One that allows Barack to send more US troops into Iraq.  The US media has failed to cover what other countries are reporting, that last week saw 3,000 US troops go back into Iraq via Kuwait. 

The media's doing something.  But whatever that is, it's not reporting. 


The following community sites -- plus Cindy Sheehan, the Independent, On the Wilder Side, Susan's On the Edge, Tavis Smiley, Adam Kokesh, the Guardian, Antiwar.com and Pacifica Evening News --  updated last night and this morning:




We'll close with this from Sherwood Ross' "More Than 30 Top U.S. Officials Guilty of War Crimes" (Scoop):

More than 30 top U.S. officials, including presidents G.W. Bush and Obama, are guilty of war crimes or crimes against peace and humanity “legally akin to those perpetrated by the former Nazi regime in Germany,” the distinguished American international law authority Francis Boyle charges.
U.S. officials involved in an “ongoing criminal conspiracy” in the Middle East and Africa who either participated in the commission of the crimes under their jurisdiction or failed to take action against them included both presidents since 2001 and their vice-presidents, the secretaries of State and Defense, the directors of the CIA and National Intelligence and the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff and heads of the Central Command, among others, Boyle said.
“In international legal terms, the U.S. government itself should now be viewed as constituting an ongoing criminal conspiracy under international law,” Boyle said in an address Dec. 9th to the Puerto Rican Summit Conference on Human Rights at the University of the Sacred Heart in San Juan. Boyle is a Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois, Champaign, and the author of numerous books on the subject.



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