Left I on the News

Shaping the "truth" on Syria

2012-05-27T09:20:00.002-07:00

The massacre in Houla provides a perfect illustration of how the corporate media shapes the "truth" about Syria. First, let's look at the AP story which reported on the killing of 90 people, including 32 children, in the Syrian town of Houla. After the basic story is established, we jump immediately to outrage from the U.S., and the U.N.'s Ban Ki-moon and Kofi Annan denouncing the Syrian government for its responsibility for the crime.

But Al Jazeera, no friend of the Syrian government, provides one more rather essential detail which the AP omitted, courtesy of the chief U.N. observer on the spot (rather than Ban Ki-moon and Kofi Annan thousands of miles away in New York): [Emphasis added]

Major General Robert Mood, the chief of the UN observer mission deployed to Syria, said monitors touring the area had counted 85 bodies, including 34 children under the age of 10 and seven women.

"Whoever started, whoever responded and whoever supported this deplorable act of violence should be held responsible." Mood said about Friday's assault.

He told Al Jazeera that a residential area had been hit with a range of weapons, including "rifles, machine guns, artillery shells, tank shells," but stressed that the circumstances that "led to the tragic deaths" were still unclear.

"Whatever I learned on the ground in Syria ... is that I should not jump to conclusions."

Mood's rightful caution about "jumping to conclusions" was, of course, ignored by those with an agenda.

A later AP article was fair enough to provide the Syrian government's categorical denial of responsibility, and their explanation of what happened, but still doesn't see fit to quote the U.N. observer on the ground.

Meanwhile, the BBC was caught running a picture, purporting to be of the Houla massacre, which was actually a picture taken of bodies dug up from a mass grave in Iraq in 2003. Naturally, that picture is now making its way around the Internet as an example of the Syrian government's brutality, regardless of the fact that it not only shows something completely unrelated, but that the responsibility for the Houla massacre is far from established.

Syrian forces killed? Blame the government!

2012-05-19T09:14:00.002-07:00

For the Nth consecutive time, a bombing at a Syrian military intelligence facility, this one killing nine and wounding another hundred, is ritually and almost comically blamed by Al Jazeera on the Syrian government:

Al Jazeera's Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from the Turkish city of Antakya, along the border with Syria, said that opposition groups accuse the government of staging the blasts as a ploy to make the country's protest movement appear violent...The Syrian National Council (SNC), the country's main political opposition group, also blamed the government for the blast.

Evidence for these preposterous claims? Nil, of course. And, in the entire article, not even a hint or suggestion that it might have been the Syrian opposition who did it. You know, the ones with an actual motive to kill members of the Syrian military. Not even a pretense of "he said, she said" reporting from Al Jazeera in this case.

Even Reuters knows better than to go that far; they lead with the completely believable Syrian government claim that the opposition was responsible for the bombing, and their inclusion of the opposite claim by the Syrian National Congress seems almost pro forma rather than meant to be taken seriously, although that they include such an absurd claim at all, given the complete lack of evidence and motive, still disqualifies even them from a claim of being serious journalists.

Al Jazeera, by contrast continues its descent into zero credibility.

George Zimmerman's "apology"

2012-04-20T19:51:00.003-07:00

George Zimmerman "apologized" today for killing Trayvon Martin. That's how the media treated the story. None seemed to notice the content of the apology: "I did not know how old he was. I thought he was a little bit younger than I am. I did not know if he was armed or not." What is he saying there? He's sorry he killed a 17-year old, but wouldn't be if Trayvon were 25? It's ok to kill someone in "self-defense" if you don't know if they're armed, and therefore are justified to assume that they are?

Interestingly, the last assumption would put Zimmerman right in line both with U.S. foreign policy and with U.S. military tactics. Because both use the assumption that if there is some finite, albeit minuscule, chance that some "enemy" will do "us" harm, then "we" are justified in killing them.

Merchant(s) of death

2012-04-06T07:34:00.002-07:00

Viktor Bout, who the media calls the "Merchant of Death," just got 25 years for attempting to sell weapons to anti-government rebels in Colombia (actually these particular "rebels" were U.S. agents). Meanwhile, the U.S. and the Arab kings and sheiks who are its allies openly discuss arming anti-government rebels in Syria. Hardly the first such occurrence, of course, since the U.S. armed and funded anti-government rebels in Afghanistan and Nicaragua as well, not to mention Libya, where they not only armed and funded the rebels, they did their bombing for them.

Judicial Activism

2012-04-03T07:32:00.002-07:00

Ruling that the Constitution allows strip searches even for the most minor offenses, Justice Kennedy "wrote that courts are in no position to second-guess the judgments of correctional officials," exposing the right-wing judicial activism of the Supreme Court. Not only are the courts in "no position" to do so, it is not their job. Their job is to decide if actions are Constitutional, not to decide on the usefulness or practicality of laws, or whether they keep us "safe" or not. That is the job of the other two branches of government. That the Court even "went there" illustrates that for these alleged "originalists" and other "defenders of the Constitution," the Constitution is actually the farthest thing from their minds.

Three more victims of the war on Iraq

2012-03-25T08:00:00.002-07:00

Two weeks ago, Abel Gutierrez, suffering from (and showing obvious signs of) PTSD as a result of multiple tours of duty in Iraq, killed his mother, his sister, and then himself. Today's San Jose Mercury News notes the following interesting observations:

Carlos Anaya, who had known Gutierrez since elementary school..."he was not a sociopath. He was a good person."

And

"He didn't join the Army because he wanted to kill people," Ramon Bustamante said. "He wanted to do something with his life and help take care of his mom and sister."

And finallly

"To me," Bustamante said, "they're all victims of Iraq."

Indeed. And, we might add, of the capitalist economy which essentially forces people like Gutierrez into the military as the only viable employment option.

One more victim of the war on Iraq

2012-03-24T17:54:00.002-07:00

An Iraqi woman was beaten to death [death occurred after publication of this news article] in Southern California after receiving hate-based threats. A double victim of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. First, because she was only in the U.S. in the first place because of having fled her country after the invasion. And second, because she moved to a country where there is casual acceptance of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis (and they were all innocent, even the soldiers and resistance fighters who fought back against the invasion), on the bogus justification that "we have to fight them over there to keep them from fighting us here" or the equally bogus "they might get a weapon which might be used against us so we'd better kill them first," a country where the President declared a "Day of Honor" to mark the anniversary of that invasion. Is it little wonder that official disregard of human life infects individuals and ends up with hate crimes like this?

Now Tweeting

2012-03-24T09:06:00.001-07:00

After resisting for the longest time, I've started tweeting, since I don't seem to be able to find the time to write long posts. Check it out: @leftiblog

The Khamenei speech the media ignored

2012-03-18T09:18:00.002-07:00

Feb. 22, 2012:

“The Iranian nation has never pursued and will never pursue nuclear weapons,” said Ayatollah Khamenei.

“There is no doubt that the decision makers in the countries opposing us know well that Iran is not after nuclear weapons because the Islamic Republic, logically, religiously and theoretically, considers the possession of nuclear weapons a grave sin and believes the proliferation of such weapons is senseless, destructive and dangerous.”

“If nations are allowed to independently make progress in the fields of nuclear energy, aerospace, science, technology and industry, there will be no room left for the tyrannical dominance of world powers,” said the Leader.

He's only the "Supreme [religious] Leader" in a country where religion plays an integral part. Why would we pay any attention to what he says? A better question, to which we know the answer, is "why not?" Because if we did, there would go the U.S./Israeli push to (re)install a subservient government in Tehran.

Massacres by the U.S.? Ho-hum.

2012-03-16T07:20:00.002-07:00

Two reactions to the recent massacre of 16 Afghans by an American soldier remind us of the nature of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan (and elsewhere). In the New York Times, we are told regarding the relatively mild reaction to the slaughter in Afghanistan itself:

Americans have had a lot of practice at apologizing for carnage, accidental and otherwise, and have gotten better at doing it quickly and convincingly.

As Glenn Greenwald puts it so perfectly:

I don’t mind admitting that I beamed with nationalistic pride when I learned of our country’s impressive evolution: our nation’s government is so practiced in “apologizing for carnage” that it’s becoming a perfected art.

And two days ago, Secretary of Defense [sic] Leon Panetta let slip this comforting thought (emphasis added):

War is hell. These kinds of events and incidents are going to take place. They've taken place in any war. They’re terrible events. And this is not the first of those events, and it probably won't be the last.

And despite the almost certain knowledge that "it probably won't be the last," Panetta assures us that he has no intention of avoiding that inevitability:

"I do not believe that there is any reason at this point to make any changes with regards to our strategy and for the process of drawing down."

Of course he doesn't. It won't be his wife and children who are slaughtered, and it won't be his son who comes home and murders his family and then kills himself.

Iraq - the killing continues

2012-03-16T07:11:00.001-07:00

Two (or quite likely three) more victims of the illegal invasion of Iraq, this time in in Gilroy, CA. American soldiers may no longer be dying in Iraq, but they (and others) are still dying right here at home. Utterly tragic, and utterly avoidable. And the tragedy continues in Afghanistan, with every new victim - Afghan, soldier, or yet another family member or innocent bystander right here at home. OUT NOW! Not "soon." NOW!

Book Review: Mornings in Jenin

2012-02-28T10:44:00.005-08:00

I've just finished reading an unbelievably powerful novel entitled "Mornings in Jenin" by Susan Abulhawa. You can read all the history books and articles that you want, and completely understand the history and plight of the Palestinian people. You can be in complete intellectual support of such things as the "right of return." But nothing will make you understand that history in your bones, make you feel it in your gut, like reading this fictional, but all too real, account of one Palestinian family's history, as it spans the pages of time from 1941 through 2002.

All of the key events in modern history - the Nakba of 1948, the 1967 war, the 1973 Israeli assault on Lebanon and the massacre at Sabra and Shatila, and so on through the massacre of Jenin in 2002, are here. All of them (perhaps improbably, but this is after all a novel) impacting on the lives of this one family. And really, not so improbably, because just like every Iraqi now has a family member or a close friend who was either killed or in some way affected by the U.S. invasion of Iraq, so too is it likely that every Palestinian has a family member or a close friend who was affected by not just one of the key events in Palestinian history, but several of them.

The reader feels deeply, personally, the pain which is inflicted on the characters in the book; one feels deeply, personally, the different possible responses - rage and revenge on the one hand, impotence and drawing inward on the other. No matter how much history you know, no matter how many facts you know, this book will deepen your understanding of that history. And on top of all that, the book is written beautifully, with a lyrical style that makes reading every page a delight.

To sum up: read this book.

"No military targets" in Homs

2012-02-22T13:11:00.001-08:00

Here's how strange the reporting on Syria gets - this reporter was killed yesterday in Homs, evidently by Syrian government shelling. Here's what she said on Anderson Cooper's show last night: "There are no military targets here. There is the Free Syrian Army. Heavily outnumbered and out-gunned." No military targets? What exactly does she think the out-gunned, but still obviously armed, Free Syrian Army is?

Rebels "hold" areas with picket signs

2012-02-18T10:33:00.000-08:00

Or so we can conclude from the latest AP reports from Syria:

...the regime struggled to extinguish major pockets of dissent with intensive shelling.

Activists said at least 26 civilians were killed Friday, many of them in the rebellious central city of Homs, where shells slammed into rebel-held residential areas.

So Syria is trying to crush "dissent" and is killing only "civilians," or so say "activists," by which we mean "people trying to overthrow the current Syrian regime," not exactly an unbiased source. But as I have before, let's take those statements as true. Quite possibly those killed were "civilians," as in "not members of the armed forces." But were they armed? The "activists" and AP don't bother to tell us. But if they weren't, and if they weren't actively using those arms, how exactly were these areas being "held" by the rebels? With picket signs? A long length of yellow caution tape marked "Syrian forces do not enter"? We know better, and so does AP. They're just hoping that the question won't even occur to most of their readers.

AP Syrian coverage gets even worse

2012-02-11T08:02:00.000-08:00

Almost unbelievable (but all too believable). AP not only reports the absurd claim that it was the Syrian government that employed suicide bombers to kill its own security forces, but reports it above and more prominently than the Syrian government claim that it was the rebels who were responsible. They then continue to report on the assault on Homs, where the only hint that there is an actual two-sided battle going on (and not just a "government assault") is the claim that the population there is "restive." Yes, "restive" and well-armed.

The big lie on Iran, yet again

2012-02-06T08:43:00.000-08:00

President Obama yesterday:

President Barack Obama said the U.S. has a "very good estimate" of when Iran could complete work on a nuclear weapon.

Technically speaking, there is a "c" there - "could" and not "would." But even with that caveat, the rest of the sentence - "complete work on a nuclear weapon" - conveys a very clear (and completely false) message to the American people - Iran is working on a nuclear weapon, the only question is when will they be finished. After all, you wouldn't talk about "completing" something that you not only haven't started, but aren't even planning on doing.

The big lie on Iran continues

2012-02-03T17:44:00.000-08:00

I just listened to Richard Engle on NBC News say that "Iran continues to insist that a decision to make a nuclear bomb has not been taken." But that is a grotesque lie. In actual fact, Iran has repeatedly said that it has made a decision - a decision not to build nuclear weapons. That decision came from both the Supreme Leader, Khamenei, in the form of a fatwa, as well as multiple times from the country's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (here, here, and here). As far as I know, none of these very clear, unambiguous statements have ever been reported by Richard Engle or any other reporter for the Western corporate media.

"200" dead in Syria - but who were they?

2012-02-03T17:03:00.000-08:00

Today's news from Syria "informs" (or misinforms, depending on what the actual facts are) us that 200 "people" were killed in the Syrian city of Homs by a government assault using tanks and machine guns. I've written before about the "source" of this "information," which is basically an organization based in London. But let's assume for the moment that this information is completely true and ask a few more questions:

1) Who were these people? If you've been watching the same news as I have for the past few days, you've seen pictures of the rebels armed with all sorts of weapons including RPGs. Were these 200 people armed rebels, or "unarmed innocent civilians"? The article wants us to believe the latter, since there is no hint whatsoever in the article that an armed rebellion in progress. Every reference in the article is simply to "people" who were killed. Far more likely, however, is that is was mostly, or perhaps exclusively, armed rebels who were killed. Now I am completely in support of the right to armed rebellion. However, people who take up arms can expect to be met with force, and whatever reason there is to condemn the government against which they are taking up arms, the fact that that government responded with force can hardly be a reason for additional condemnation.

2)Were there any government forces killed? If a battle of this magnitude took place, chances are high that they did. However, since AP's only source for this story is the anti-government opposition, and since that opposition has every reason to portray the deaths as a one-sided affair, it's not surprising that no such deaths are reported. The opposition does periodically make claims (backed up by the Syrian government) that government forces were killed, although in almost all cases when that happens, it is a separate event, not connected with the deaths of opposition forces. Again, this is a consequence of the source. On the one hand, the opposition wants to make itself look successful, so as to inspire more support from the Syrian people. Hence the stories about killed government troops. On the other hand, they want to make the government look as barbaric as possible, hence the absence of any mention of the deaths of government troops on the days when they want to emphasize their own losses.

3) Did AP make any effort to obtain any sort of comment whatsoever, even a "no comment," from the Syrian government? We know from vast experience that if it were the U.S. government being accused of killing people, AP (or any other corporate media outlet) wouldn't consider running the story until and unless they could obtain some comment from the U.S. government, no matter how unbelievable ("the incident is being investigated," "all the dead were terrorists," etc.).

As with Iran, the drumbeat for war continues, with politicians and the media working hand and hand to prepare the American public.

Syria is a laughing matter

2012-01-31T17:46:00.000-08:00

OK, it really isn't, it's deadly serious. But these two items in the news today quite literally made me laugh out loud:

Item: Hillary Clinton at the U.N.

"Now, I know that some members here may be concerned that the Security Council could be headed toward another Libya. That is a false analogy. Syria is a unique situation that requires its own approach, tailored to the specific circumstances occurring there."

Right. There are now far more alleged dead in Syria (almost none of them actually documented, but all of them implied in the press to be the result of Syrian government assaults on unarmed civilians) than there were in Libya, where there was the claim of an impending slaughter, yet we're to believe that military intervention is the farthest thing from the mind of the U.S. government, and that "regime change" doesn't enter into it.

Item:

"The United Nations, which has said more than 5,400 people have been killed, said last week it could no longer reliably document the death toll."

No longer? As noted above, the U.N. has never had any reliable documentation of deaths occurring in Syria. Their sole source of "information," by which we mean allegations, comes from an anti-Syrian government organization based in London. But now for some reason they can "no longer reliably document" the deaths. What a joke.

Liberals and libertarians on Iran

2012-01-17T10:54:00.000-08:00

Last night on Bill Maher's TV show, the discussion turned to Iran and the recent assassination of an Iranian scientist. David Frum, Republican conservative and on the board of directors of the Republican Jewish Coalition, waxed eloquent in justifying the murder, quoting the "Psalmist" (from Psalm 7): "Those who prepare violence will discover that violence will fall upon their own head." He asserted that "these people were making bombs, they were engaged in work that is intended to kill millions."

And the response from the liberals and libertarians on the panel? Bill Maher (the libertarian) said "I agree with you" (presumably both on justifying the murder, and on the totally unsupported claims about making bombs and intending to kill millions). Rob Reiner, noted Hollywood liberal, only objected that it might result in retaliation. Congressman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, another noted liberal, chair of the Democratic National Committee, and, like Reiner, also Jewish, said nothing, acquiescing by silence.

Murder of an innocent man? No problem for liberals and libertarians.

The face of terrorism...victims

2012-01-12T07:32:00.000-08:00

This is Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, the latest victim of Israeli/U.S. terrorism. Like all the others, a real person with a real family. Compare the (lack of) outrage over the very real killing of this very real man, vs. the days of hyped outrage against the almost certainly bogus plot by an Iranian-American (with the even more certainly bogus participation of the Iranian government) in the allegedly planned assassination of the Saudi Ambassador.

More demonization of Syria

2012-01-11T15:16:00.001-08:00

A French journalist and 7 other people are killed while on a *government-sponsored tour* of Homs, and once again the U.S. corporate media is happy to spin the absurd claims by the Syrian opposition that the government killed the journalist and its own people just to make the opposition look bad. Huffington Post's story doesn't even bother to mention that the journalist was on a government-sponsored tour at the time, a rather relevant fact.

Demonizing Syria, no matter how laughable

2012-01-06T08:07:00.000-08:00

The absurd lengths that the U.S. corporate media will go to to demonize Syria stagger the imagination. Just before Christmas, and again yesterday, bombings in Syria have killed dozens of people; 44 in December and probably 25 yesterday. And in both cases, corporate media have dutifully reported "opposition claims" that the government itself was responsible for the bombings, in order to make the opposition look like terrorists rather than a "peaceful opposition."

Why is this absurd? Well, to begin with, we know that the opposition is not simply a nonviolent movement (although certainly some of it is). Hundreds or perhaps thousands of members of Syrian security forces are acknowledged, even by the Western media, to have been killed in attacks, and the opposition itself even announced a "cease-fire" in advance of the arrival of the Arab League monitors.

But the real reason this contention is laughable on its face, and why such absurd charges do not deserve to be repeated, much less featured as an equally plausible explanation by the media, is that the target in both cases has been the Syrian security forces themselves - the intelligence services in December, and a police bus yesterday. If, hypothetically, the Syrian government wanted to set off a bomb to "prove" that they were facing terrorists, they could choose all sorts of targets to do so. Choosing themselves, and not just any part of the government, but the very part of the government accused of doing the repressing? The idea is simply laughable. But not so for the Western corporate media, always ready to do its part in demonizing the latest target of imperialism and helping to beat the drums of war.

Update: CNN's coverage seems particularly despicable in the extent of coverage it gives to the ludicrous opposition claims, although I admit I haven't surveyed all the news sources, so they may well be some that are even worse.

Death in Iraq

2012-01-05T19:51:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, Iraq Body Count released a report documenting the deaths of 162,000 people, almost 80% of them civilians, in Iraq from the beginning of the U.S. assault on Iraq until the U.S. "withdrawal," that is, the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops. The problem with this report is that it might give the impression that that is now a static total, the number of Iraqis dead as a result of the invasion.

But death in Iraq has not taken a holiday since U.S. combat troops left. Today, 71 Iraqis were killed in a bombing, adding to the dozens if not hundreds that have been killed since U.S. combat troops left. And here's the thing - these deaths, and the ones which will follow in the days, weeks, months, and years to come, just as much as the 162,000 (or whatever the right number is) that occurred while U.S. combat troops were in the country, are completely the responsibility of the United States government. Not only not one of those 162,000 Iraqis, but not one of today's 71, or those who have been killed in recent days and weeks, were effectively murdered by the U.S. Who set a bomb, who pulled the trigger, is irrelevant. Every one of those people would be alive today were it not for the U.S. invasion.

Of course, this is not the only Iraqi blood on U.S. hands. There are the estimated one million Iraqis, largely women and children, who died as a result of a decade of U.S. sanctions, not to mention the much smaller number who were killed by U.S. bombing in the course of enforcing its self-imposed "no-fly zone." There are another 125,000 Iraqi soldiers killed by the U.S. during its 1991 invasion.

Today on the news, a Syrian defector was talking about the "genocide" taking place in Syria, where an alleged (but hardly proven) 5000 deaths (of both opposition forces and government troops) have taken place. I have yet to hear on the news anyone applying the word "genocide" to the 1.3 million Iraqis who have met their fate at the hands of the U.S. government.

NDAA Hypocrisy

2012-01-04T10:20:00.000-08:00

Paraphrasing Stephen Colbert: "Obama? Big hypocrite, or the biggest hypocrite?"

"I want to clarify that my Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens. Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a Nation."

Unlike killing American citizens without trial, which is a vital part of those "traditions and values."