Sunday, March 23, 2014

Hejira

Sameer N. Yacoub (AP) says newspapers in Iraq took Sunday off in terms of print versions in order to protest the shooting of Mohammed Bdaiwi.

That may be true of some Baghdad papers (or may not be) but I've already four Iraqi newspapers in PDF format, four newspapers that published editions today.

It's strange that they pretend they care about this story -- I mean AP  -- when they can't even note that journalist Raji Hamadallah was shot in Babel today and left injured.

I mean if you care about journalists getting hurt, you care about journalists getting hurt.

But if you're really just upset that someone working for the US -- for the US's Voice of America equivalent in Iraq -- someone paid by the US, then I guess you wouldn't care too much that Raji Hamadallah was shot today even as you pretend to care about violence against journalism.

Tarek Ammar (Alsumaria) reports on a statement issued by the office of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani in which it is stated that people are attempting to exploit the murder to increase the crisis.  Absolutely.

Nouri ignored every journalist's murder (though he probably ordered several) but this one he cares about?

It's not about journalism or journalists.  Those who pretend do everyone a disservice.

Kahri Karim (Al Mada) notes how Nouri and others are screaming now for blood.  Karim notes that there was no such outcry when Hadi al-Mahdi was assassinated -- in his own home.  That was probably a hit ordered by Nouri (I'm saying that, not the editor and publisher of Al Mada).

And he didn't care.

It's sad that anyone dies in Iraq.

But that said, it's really sad how people are being encouraged to scream.

Hadi was assassinated.  Killed by someone he was kind enough to give a cup of tea too.

I have no idea why the Peshmerga soldier shot the Radio Free journalist or 'journalist.'  But what we do know is he was supposed to be protecting the compound.

There's a chance that's what he was doing or thought he was doing.

But this death, of someone who was where they shouldn't have been, is going to be used for political football.

A Peshmerga soldier may have followed his training to the last note or he may have innocently been in a panic and made a mistake.

But as Nouri screams for blood -- something he's done for no other journalists -- he takes a situation no one knows any facts about and turns it into a mob storming through a village.

Mob justice?

That's the closest to real justice Nouri can probably get.


Margaret Griffis (Antiwar.com) has already filed on today's violence and she counts 98 dead with thirty-four injured.



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 Cuba, Urkaine, a new contest from the show, Keystone XL Pipeline (with guest Adam Federman) and CIA spying (with Harper's Scott Horton).

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