Wednesday, May 29, 2013

For a second, NPR notes the Black genocide in Libya, for just a second

During the Libyan War, you could get the truth from Black Agenda Report and from Mahdi Dairus Naemroaya for Global Research and KPFA's Flashpoints.  They could and did report on the Black genocide taking place.  Here's Glen Ford (Black Agenda Report -- link is text and audio) from October 2011:
Both NATO and their Libyan rebel surrogates express wonder at the fact that loyalist forces continue to fight so fiercely in the contested cities of Sirte and Bani Walid, despite being vastly outnumbered on the ground and unceasingly pummeled from above by the world’s largest air armada. But one look at a picture of Gaddafi loyalist prisoners, captured at a hospital in Sirte, tells the story: they are all Black. The assault on Libya has largely devolved into a race war, and the Black soldiers are fighting for survival against the world’s biggest lynch mob, armed to the teeth by the United States and Europe.

Where are the people of Tawurgha, the mostly Black Libyan city that was wiped from the face of the earth by the rebels? Many of those who were not killed or captured have clearly made their way to Sirte and Bani Walid, to make a last stand against the racist killers that westerners like Amy Goodman, of Democracy Now! call “revolutionaries.” The rebels are brazen – absolutely without shame – in their determination to cleanse Libya of its Black population. They are like Arab Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, backed by a European and American air force, a racist militia whose fighters have vowed to “purge Black skin” and who scrawl the Arabic equivalent of “nigger” on the homes of their vanquished Black countrymen. Their rationalizations for ethnic cleansing and summary executions of Black prisoners are quite familiar to the American ear, identical to our own practitioners of White Terror. The Tawurghans raped women, the rebels claim, even as international observers report that it is the rebels and the riff-raff that surrounds them who have systematically raped captured Black girls and women. The Tawurghans, say the rebels, tried to “slaughter all the Misuratans” – and “this is something they have to answer for.”


Today's report on NPR's Morning Edition by Leila Fadel may shock many news consumers who will be learning for the first time -- in the most cushioned manner possible and most dishonest manner possible -- just what Black Libyans have to endure.



Black.  Make sure you catch Leila's one reference to it.  She quotes a man who states, Leila says, "They are targeted in part because they are Black" and that the militias say, "They will rid Libya of Black people."  A four minute and thirty nine second 'report' that can only mention race once.  Leila's more concerned about tribes -- wasn't that the way she was in Iraq too?


(Yes, it was.)

The report is an insult, it's nothing but propaganda which reminds me of just how awful Leila's reporting was at the end at McClatchy.

It's a really bad report.

All this time later and that's the best NPR can offer.  Less than 12 seconds acknowledging that the persecuted are Black and then the rest of time ignoring it?   Maybe Leila's not the one to be reporting on Black genocides.  Maybe her past work in the region -- and her instinct to turn every issue into a tribal one -- should have been factored in?

For a few seconds in a confusing report, careful NPR listeners will hear about the targeting of Black Libyans for the first time.  They'll probably spend the rest of the segment wondering if they heard that right especially since race isn't acknowledged anywhere else in the report.

Turning to the US government's War on the First Amendment, Press TV reports:

The House Judiciary Committee is investigating whether Attorney General Eric Holder lied under oath during his May 15 testimony on the Justice Department’s (DOJ) surveillance of reporters.
The panel is looking at a statement Holder made during a back-and-forth with Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) about whether the DOJ could prosecute reporters under the Espionage Act of 1917, an aide close to the matter told The Hill.
“In regard to potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material — this is not something I’ve ever been involved in, heard of, or would think would be wise policy,” Holder said during the hearing.
However, NBC News reported the following week that Holder personally approved a search warrant that labeled Fox News chief Washington correspondent James Rosen a co-conspirator in a national security leaks case.

Please grasp that, in Iran, they laugh at the hypocrisy of the United States government attacking the Iranian government for its treatment of reporters.  There is no higher ground for the US government, they dug a deep ditch instead, apparently planning to dump bodies there not realizing it would become their own burial grounds.

If you're late to the story, the Justice Dept secretly seized two months worth of AP's phone records and seized phone records and e-mails of Fox News reporter James Rosen.   Jonathan Turley is now calling for Holder to be dismissed and has written  a column for USA Today explaining why:



Holder's refusal to accept responsibility for the AP investigation was something of a change for the political insider. His value to President Obama has been his absolute loyalty. Holder is what we call a "sin eater" inside the Beltway — high-ranking associates who shield presidents from responsibility for their actions. Richard Nixon had H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. Ronald Reagan had Oliver North and Robert "Bud" McFarlane. George W. Bush had the ultimate sin eater: Dick Cheney, who seemed to have an insatiable appetite for sins to eat.
This role can be traced to 18th century Europe, when families would use a sin eater to clean the moral record of a dying person by eating bread from the person's chest and drinking ale passed over his body. Back then, the ritual's power was confined to removing minor sins.
For Obama, there has been no better sin eater than Holder. When the president promised CIA employees early in his first term that they would not be investigated for torture, it was the attorney general who shielded officials from prosecution. When the Obama administration decided it would expand secret and warrantless surveillance, it was Holder who justified it. When the president wanted the authority to kill any American he deemed a threat without charge or trial, it was Holder who went public to announce the "kill list" policy.



The following community sites -- plus Pacifica Evening News, Antiwar.com, Iraq Inquiry Digest and Cindy Sheehan -- updated last night and this morning:




We'll close with this from ETAN:


MEDIA ADVISORY

Contact: John M. Miller, +1-917-690-4391, john@etan.org


Media Advisory- Protest at Award for Indonesia President


WHEN: Thursday, May 30, 2013, 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.


WHERE: The Pierre, 2 E. 61st St., New York City




WHAT: Protesters will oppose the World Statesman Award to Indonesia's President Susilo Yudhoyono from the Appeal of Conscience Foundation. The demonstration is in support of the intense criticism of the award from groups suffering from religious intolerance in Indonesia and groups advocating for religious freedom, human rights and justice. The protest will condemn the honoring of Indonesia's President by the Foundation, which describes itself as dedicated to promoting religious tolerance and human rights.
"We will be demonstrating to set the record straight." said John M. Miller, National Coordinator of ETAN. "President Yudhoyono must not be allowed to polish his image while incidents of religious intolerance increase, the prospects for justice for past rights violations diminishes, and violations by Indonesia's security forces continue."


Background
The Appeal of Conscience Foundation plans to give a highly controversial World Statesman Award to Indonesia's President Yudhoyono this week. The award has generated heated controversy in Indonesia, inspiring demonstrations and other protests. More than 8000 people - from inside and outside Indonesia - have signed two petitions opposing the award. Several churches, minority religious institutions and human rights groups in Indonesia have written the foundation calling on the Foundation to withdraw the award. They are especially worried that the award will give the wrong impression internationally about the state of human rights and religious tolerance in the country. The Foundation has yet to respond directly to their concerns.
When President Yudhoyono first took office, he promised that his administration would promote human rights and tolerance. Nine years later, the prospects for accountability for past rights violations have receded; religious intolerance has grown. Indonesia's security forces have become increasingly abusive in West Papua. Police and soldiers who violate human rights are rarely held accountable. Serious human rights violations by members of the military are tried in military courts where soldiers, if convicted, receive light sentences.

Recent examples of religious persecution include the March 21 demolition of the HKBP Taman Sari church in Bekasi after an order from the regional government. Four Ahmadiyah places of worship were closed within a month in West Java. Last August, members of the Shia community in Sampang, East Java, were forced from their homes members of the majority Sunni attacked them for so-called blasphemy. They continue to struggle in a makeshift camp in a sports stadium.

In 2006, President Yudhoyono issued a regulation on building houses of worship that makes it extremely difficult for religious minorities to construct their buildings. He signed a law that allows the listing of only six religions on Indonesian ID cards, basically discriminating against more than 350 other small religions. In 2009, Yudhoyono sent his cabinet members to defend the blasphemy law when it was challenged at the Constitutional Court. They mobilized Muslim militias to harass the petitioners and their lawyers. In April 2010, the Constitutional Court upheld the law, which provides criminal penalties for those who express religious beliefs that deviate from the six officially-recognized religions. The court said it is lawful to restrict minority beliefs because it allows for the "maintenance of public order." In 2008, Yudhoyono issued an anti-Ahmadiyah decree, threatening to five years jail term for anyone who "propagates" the group's teachings.

An ad hoc tribunal to investigate and prosecute the 1997-98 the disappearance of human rights activists has yet to be established, though it has been approved by the legislature. Yudhoyono's own coordinating minister for political, legal, and security affairs and Attorney General have rejected the official human rights commission's findings that the government's anti-Communist purges of 1965 and 1966 - which included mass killings of up to one million people, enslavement, torture, rape, and enforced disappearance - constituted a crime against humanity. The truth commission and human rights courts authorized by the 2006 law on Aceh have yet to be established. There has been no accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Indonesian forces in Timor-Leste, where as many as 183,000 were killed, or West Papua, where at least 100,000 have died.

On taking office, President Yudhoyono declared that solving the September 2004 murder of Munir Said Thalib, Indonesia's best known human rights activist, would be a test of "whether Indonesia had changed." The President and Indonesia have failed the test. He has refused to release the report of the fact-finding team he set up early in his Presidency. The murder involved the national intelligence agency and serving and former military officers; none of them have been brought to justice.
Additional background can be found here: http://etan.org/action/action2/sby_award.htm
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John M. Miller, National Coordinator
East Timor & Indonesia Action Network (ETAN)
Mobile phone: +1-917-690-4391
Email: etan@etan.org Skype: john.m.miller
Twitter: @etan009  Website: www.etan.org





The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.








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