Let's start with useless ANTIWAR.COM. When Justin Raimondo died, the website began its long descent into uselessness -- planned uselessness in fact. They've long acted as the mouthpiece for the Turkish government. Time and again, the Turkish government kills civilians in northern Iraq -- the Kurdistan. They don't admit it, they don't cop to it. They lie and say the people they killed were PKK -- a Kurdish fighting group that some (including the US government) consider a terrorist group but a force that resulted from decades of violence carried out against the Kurds by the Turkish government. Flouting international law, the Turkish government has used the PKK as a pretext to ignore Iraq's national sovereignty and send troops into Iraq and to establish military bases there. That is known as an "act of war." But we're all supposed to keep our heads turned and to do so for year after year. The Turkish government still won't admit -- let alone apologize for -- their attack on resort in the Kurdistan that resulted in the deaths of children. They never admit to anything.
And ANTIWAR reports on these deaths how? By repeating what the Turkish government says -- and including in their monthly violence 'report' -- so that all the dead are PKK fighters. This takes place even when the corporate press reports that, oops, it wasn't a PKK fighter!
Friday, the Turkish government killed three people in Iraq. No surprise, they claimed they were PKK. No surprise, they weren't PKK. Dana Taib Menmy (THE NEW ARAB) reports:
Three Arab citizens from Mosul, including an employee of the Asiacell telecommunications company were killed by a Turkish drone airstrike in the Iraqi Kurdistan region on Friday, the company and local media outlets said.
This contradicted earlier media reports, which said that the victims had been fighters from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
The three people were in their vehicle driving on the main road from Penjwen to Sulaymaniyah, which is heavily used by civilians, and about 30 km (18 miles) away from a popular tourist destination, when the drone struck them.
“Hasan Ahmad Kashmoola who died in the airstrike was from Mosul,” Asiacell said in a statement on Saturday. "Kashmoola had been working in our company for years and he was a loyal employee at Asiacell."
The two other victims were identified as Ziyad Mustafa and her 17 year old daughter who were also from Mosul.
I see REUTERS original report -- labeling the dead PKK. Don't see any correction added to it. Don't see any follow up reporting.
Went to ANTIWAR to see if they'd corrected their Friday reporting. They haven't. Because they didn't do any.
I have condemned, rightly, the US press for withdrawing from Iraq and farming out their coverage to others. Their excuse is that it's costly and they can cheerlead a war and put all the resources into advancing a war and selling it to the people, but they can't be expected to also pay for covering the war after it starts.
What's ANTIWAR.COM's excuse?
How do they justify ignoring Iraq?
Since 2006 or so Margaret Griffis has done, for ANTIWAR.COM, "Iraq Daily Roundup."
What's that? She compiles coverage of violence from English language sources to give you a count. Now we've had problems with that count many time. At one point, we were doing daily violence and I didn't get why we never matched for the longest -- Griffis picks and chooses and sometimes, four days after a violent event, she would work that count in for the day she was writing and not note 'hey, this was four days ago.' We stopped the daily count long ago for various reasons.
Did you know ANTIWAR.COM stopped it? That was the only original Iraq coverage that they had. They didn't actually write anything else anymore. They linked to other outlets and reprinted other outlets but that was all they actually did.
Did in the past tense.
Turns out, over a year ago they stopped doing a daily report. They continued to call it "Iraq Daily Roundup" through July 23rd of this year. Even though the "daily" on the 23rd was the follow up to the "daily" on17th of July which followed up the "daily" on July 10th which . . .
Get the point?
We're not noting their useless ass again.
Without the Iraq War, they were nothing. It brought them prominence and views. They used the Iraq War to sell their creepy -- and frequently offensive -- Libertarian b.s.
But they've demonstrated that they're lying garbage. They call themselves "ANTIWAR.COM" but have walked away from the Iraq War.
If Griffis were tired of the daily report, I'd certainly understand. 17 years, that's a long time. But there's no reason that ANTIWAR.COM couldn't get someone else to clip numbers from English language reports.
At the top of their website, they're begging for money constantly and the latest dip into your pockets includes this:
Antiwar.com serves as a hub for those voices from all parts of the political spectrum. We need your support to keep this project going.
I'm sorry, we're pretending that they have overhead? We're pretending that they have reporters who are stationed around the globe? Because they don't.
Oh, well then it's the reporters that they have in DC attending all these briefings and -- Oh, they don't have that either.
Do you know how many House and Senate hearings we've reported on here? It's in the thousands. Do you know how many times I've ever seen an ANTIWAR.COM writer at one? Once. And she's no longer with ANTIWAR.COM. But once I did see -- in all the years -- once I did see someone who wrote for ANTIWAR.COM at a Congressional hearing.
Well, the money goes to those original columnists who write those columns that you can only find at ANTIWAR.COM! Nope. Since Justin died, there's really been no original columns. They rerun Ron Paul and they rerun other Libertarians (that Jacob guy whose last name starts with an "H").
Here are their five most recent columns:
Ted Galen Carpenter
8/13/2023
Niger May be the Next US Proxy War
Ted Snider
8/11/2023
The Global South Stands Up
Sheldon Richman
8/07/2023
Shame on Government for Censoring Us
Ramzy Baroud
7/28/2023
PA President Mahmoud Abbas: A Puppet in the Hands of Israel and the US?
David Stockman
7/17/2023
Villainy In Vilnius
Excuse me, was that for the web? For the information highway? For that fast moving internet in the fast age we all live in? I think RAT published more in two weeks back in the days of the alternative weeklies. Or, as it was called in the sixties, "the underground press."
Where the hell is your money going because it's nowhere to be seen at your website.
ANTIWAR.COM continues to beg for your money -- as they continue to bury and ignore the Iraq War.
The following sites updated:
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Mexican Shrimp Cocktail in the Kitchen23 hours ago
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Idiot of the Week goes to . . .2 days ago
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Meg Medina: Let Kids Read Freely2 days ago
