Sunday, February 23, 2014

Hejira

At this late date, is it news to note Nouri lied or that the press that enables him are whores?

Probably not.

Today, WG Dunlop (AFP) Tweeted:



  1. 16h
    Visit of China FM Wang Yi to Iraq comes 3 days after another by Russia's Sergei Lavrov
    View summary
  2. 16h
    China foreign minister makes rare visit to Iraq for talks on issues including trade & arming Baghdad's forces
    View summary     


And I guess if I'd sold nonsense yesterday, I'd ignore everything else in Iraq that I could as well.

Dropping back to yesterday:


[. . .] and "Army forces stationed around Falluja pounded with heavy artillery and tanks" leaving 5 people dead ("including two children") and five more injured.
5 dead from the military shelling Falluja.  As WG Dunlop reports that "Iraq announces 72 hour truce in Falluja."  (Link is an AFP story, Al Jazeera's just gotten really bad about crediting outlets.  They offer "Agencies."  Here you'll see the same exact story credited to AFP.  Dunlop is the author of the story.)
How does AFP do that?  Report a 72 hour truce and 'forget' or 'not notice' that the military is still shelling Falluja -- that five pepole were killed, two of which were children?
Press TV offers video of the false claim.
Why do any of them get out of bed.  If they're just going to type up government claims and present them as fact, why even get dressed?


There has been no truce and a functioning press would be able to tell you that.

NINA explains:

 5 civilians have been killed and ten others injured on Sunday 23, Feb as a result of the bombing of military forces to Fallujah despite the decision to suspend military operations for three days .
A security source told the reporter of the National Iraqi News Agency / NINA / "The army forces stationed outside the city of Fallujah pounded, with heavy artillery and tanks, Fallujah despite the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces' decision yesterday to stop military operations in Fallujah for / 3 / days ."
He added, "The bombing killed five civilians and wounded / 10 / others , including 3 children ."


So on Saturday, WG Dunlop runs with claims by Nouri's government, presents them as facts and, the very next day, when it's obvious there was no truce on Nouri's part, WG doesn't have it in him to write about it or even offer a Tweet.

This passes for reporting?

In what world.


Sundays are always interesting as I wrap up with Third and rush to find out what's going on in Iraq and pull an entry together.

This is different in that we're not done with Third yet but I want to get done here so I'm using the break we're on to dash out something here.

So that's the difference.

The same is that the media hasn't changed.

I believe it was Danny Schechter who noted first 'a tale of two medias' about how Iraq was reported -- early in the war -- by US outlets one way and other outlets another.  (See his documentary, Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception.)

So when I see Ghawean Hassan and Kareem Raheem's "Seventeen dead in bombings and shootings in Iraq," I immediately think that Iraq's had a less violent day than many recent ones.  But, as I'm reading it and pulling up Iraqi media, I realize that Reuters is wrong.  Their count is way off.

And it's that way, over and over, every time.

National Iraqi News Agency reports an armed battle in Ghezail Village left 26 police members "from the protection of oil" dead and ten more injured, a Haditha sticky bombing left a "district council" member wounded, Brigadier General Saad Maan states his forces killed 6 Daash in Anbar, a Mosul roadside bombing left three Iraqi soldiers injured, 2 Baghdad bombings left five people injured, a Mada'ain sticky bombing left 1 police member dead, a Baghdad roadside bombing left two police members injured, 1 police member was shot dead near his Mosul home, 1 police member was shot dead at a Wadi Hajar checkpoint, the brother of Nineveh Provincial Council's Luqman Sattar was shot dead in Mosul, security forces say they killed 12 suspects today "northwest of Hilla," a Falluja mortar attack left 1 civilians dead and fifteen more injured,  and Joint Operation Command says (in the last 48 hours) they killed 25 suspects in Anbar.


Leaving out the 25 dead suspects due to the fact that it's from the last 48 hours and not a number on Sunday alone, that's 54 dead (add in the five from shellings that we noted earlier) and twenty-six injured.

54's a lot bigger number than 17, isn't it?

Part of that's due to press refusing to count all deaths.

I don't care if they're a terrorist, a 'terrorist' or a civilian smeared as terrorist.  They died.

That's the news value and you include in the count.  Even if they're a suicide bomber.  Which actually brings us to 55 because I didn't include this item due to the fact that it doesn't specify how many were killed and wounded.

How many people died today in Iraq?

Someone break it to the western media that the number dead is the number of people killed.

It may include pilgrims from Iran on some days, it may include foreign nationals, it may include any variety of people but the common denominator is that they all died on a single day.

55 died -- at least 55 died -- and Reuters tells the world it was 17.  AFP also runs with 17.


Well, it's a number.

It's not an accurate number, but it is a number.

At one point, striving for accuracy was actually a core principle of journalism.

At one time.

Those days are clearly gone.

I'm not in the mood to talk to much about this tonight.  But I'm often surprised by what creates a stir from drive-bys.  15 e-mails (there are probably more, I'm the only one that works the public e-mail or the private one on the weekends) insist that Nouri al-Maliki would never, ever use the budget to try to punish or coerce the Kurds.

What world do these e-mailers live in?

I thought that was the least controversial statement in Friday's snapshot.  But use the link (here it is again) to go to Press TV and you'll see I wasn't pulling things out of thin air.




I'm traveling in some vehicle
I'm sitting in some cafe
A defector from the petty wars
That shell shock love away
-- "Hejira," written by Joni Mitchell, first appears on her album of the same name

 The number of US service members the Dept of Defense states died in the Iraq War is [PDF format warning] 4489.



On this week's Law and Disorder Radio,  an hour long program that airs Monday mornings at 9:00 a.m. EST on WBAI and around the country throughout the week, hosted by attorneys Heidi Boghosian, Michael S. Smith and Michael Ratner (Center for Constitutional Rights) topics  addressed include illegal spying,  Ed Snowden, WikiLeaks, the NSA spying on attorneys, guests David Vivar and Laura Raymond on the drug war and Kazembe Balagune talks about his essay "We Be Reading Marx Where We From: Socialism and the Black Freedom Struggle" which appears in the book Imagine: Living In A Socialist USA -- edited by Frances Goldin and Debby and Michael Smith.  And remember Michael Smith's "Imagine: If Mayor De Blasio Really Was a Socialist" went up at the end of last week.


Again, Third's still being worked on.  Ava and I have two TV pieces already done.  I'm tired and hoping we'll be done shortly.  Isaiah?

Before we went on break, he had an idea for this week's comic here.  I would be surprised if he's using the 20 minute break to do a comic.  Maybe he is.  I'd guess it's more likely that there will be a Monday cartoon.  But I'm guessing and I could very easily be wrong.






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