How U.S. Journalists Inflame Middle East Sectarianism - e.g. Liz Sly

Sectarianism in the Middle East is regularly inflamed by the Sunni Salafi/Wahhabi groups and countries in the Middle East. It is directed against all other strains of Islam as well as against all other religions.

But as the "western" governments and media favor the Saudi Arabian side and often denigrate the "resistance" side, be it Shia, Sunni or whatever else, they insist that it is the Shia side that is preaching sectarianism. One can often experience this with reports on speeches of Hizbullah leader Nasrallah who is always very careful to not ever use sectarian language. When Nasrallah condemns Takfiri terrorists like AlQaeda and the Islamic State as non-Muslim and calls them the greatest danger to Sunnis, Shia and Christians alike the "western" media like to report that he warns of Sunnis in general and is thus spreading sectarianism.

Liz Sly in Baghdad (archive)

Many such reports come from "western" reporters who are stationed in Beirut, speak no Arabic and depend on the spokespersons and translators in the offices of the Saudi-Lebanese Sunni leader Hariri. For an ever growing collection of typical examples see the Angry Arab here and here.

The finding of non-existent sectarian language in "resistance" leaders' communications and the emphasizing of it has been internalized by "western" reporters. You can clearly see the process in the exemplary Twitter exchange copied below.

Liz Sly is the Middle East correspondent for the Washington Post in Beirut and does not speak Arabic. Elijah J. Magnier is Chief International Correspondent for the Kuwaiti TV station AL RAI. He speaks Arabic and has covered the war on Iraq and other wars on the ground for decades.

The issue at hand is a defense bill in front of the U.S. Congress which refers to Sunni militia, Kurds and other groups in Iraq as distinguished "countries" which are to be armed separately from the state of Iraq. "Divide and rule" writ large. Many Iraqi politicians including the Prime Minister have spoken out against it. The Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr warned of the consequences should the bill go through which he says would include an unleashing of his troops against U.S. interests.

Notice how Liz Sly insist on a sectarian aspect/intent in Sadr's proclamation even when there clearly is none. She keeps in insisting on it even after she gets pointed to an official denial of any sectarian intent by a Sadr spokesperson. The exchange:

Liz Sly 17h17 hours ago
Moqtada Sadr to the US: if you arm Iraq's Sunnis, we will fight Americans in Iraq. https://twitter.com/jihadicas/status/593512749235249152 …Elijah J. Magnier 8h8 hours ago
@LizSly Moqtada didn't say that https://twitter.com/EjmAlrai/status/593324552437903360 …
Liz Sly ‏ 6h6 hours ago
@EjmAlrai Didn't mean literally fighting US troops, but to fight against US presence in Iraq. Presumably would hit embassy, personnel etc?
Elijah J. Magnier 6h6 hours ago
@LizSly U r right as Moqtada said he will fight USA in Iraq and abroad but didn't say if Sunni are armed.
Elijah J. Magnier ‏ 5h5 hours ago
@LizSly "We shall hit US interest in Iraq & abroad, as possible, ', if US approves supporting each religion independently",
Liz Sly ‏ 5h5 hours ago
@EjmAlrai Right, he means if Sunnis are armed directly by the US under that weird bill
Elijah J. Magnier 5h5 hours ago
@LizSly I spoke to S. Ali Seism who said it is not directed to Sunni but 2 all religions (incl Kurds) as there are more than Sunnis in Iraq.
Elijah J. Magnier ‏ 5h5 hours ago
@LizSly In fact the communique' doesn't say in any line the word "Sunni" but "all religions".
Liz Sly ‏ 5h5 hours ago
@EjmAlrai The bill is aimed at arming Sunnis and my tweet makes it clear Muqtada is against the US arming Sunnis, not against arming them
Elijah J. Magnier 5h5 hours ago
@LizSly Moqtada communique' clearly didn't mention Sunni: "Not arming religions": Fayli, Turkman, Sunni, Shia, Yazidi... Feel free.
Liz Sly ‏ 5h5 hours ago
@EjmAlrai Ok, but it's clear he's against a bill whose goal is to permit the US to directly arm Sunnis, not eg Fayli. As are many Iraqis.

The last paragraph of Sadr's statement says:

American should know that if it wants to exacerbate sectarian sentiment, we would continue to tread on the path of national unity. Let sectarianism fall out of existence! This is the very sectarianism that seeks to create [artificial] borders.

The U.S. Congress introduces a law that would exacerbate sectarianism in Iraq. Muqtada al-Sadr responses with a statement explicitly speaking out against sectarianism. Liz Sly insist that it is Sadr who is playing a sectarian card.
Is this insistence by Liz Sly on sectarian "Shia leader Sadr is against Sunnis" justified by anything but sly, willful exaggeration, and even falsification, of what Sadr wrote? Who is the sectarian here?
Source: Moon of Alabama

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French Cartoonist Zeon Arrested for Anti-Zionist Work

The French cartoonist Zeon was arrested Tuesday morning by four police officers of the Brigade of Repression of Delinquency People (BRDP).

At 7 am, four police officers woke the cartoonist to take him before the judge to the High Court Instance of Paris. A complaint appears to have been filed by the BNVCA (National Bureau of Vigilance against Anti-Semitism).

The complaint seems to refer to the drawing – for which Zeon had yet been released last year by the 17th chamber – representing a balance and unbalanced weight of several historical crimes, but also for another drawing, which was not retained by the prosecutor at the trial, representing a Palestinian child stabbed by a knife-shaped Israel.

The judge has indicted the designer of incitement to racial, religious hatred, by speech, writing, picture or means of electronic communication. Zeon refused to answer his questions. He was set free in late morning.

Quick reminder on the BNVCA

The National Bureau of Vigilance against Racism and Anti-Semitism was founded by the Commissioner of Police Sammy Ghozlan in March 2002 with Union support Jewish bosses of France and the Word and Light Association (offshoot of the Simon Center Wiesenthal).

According BNVCA site itself, this organization has a unique community privilege to make complaints of “anti-Semitic aggression.”

Source: Non-Aligned Media

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Don’t Believe Media Coverage of Venezuela

By Sonali Kolhatkar

Diplomatic relations between Venezuela and the U.S. have just taken a big hit, with the government of Nicolas Maduro demanding that the American Embassy in Caracas reduce its staff by 80% and that U.S. visitors apply for visas.

Most symbolically, Venezuela has now barred a number of U.S. officials from visiting, including George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The backdrop to these political moves is a new crisis within Venezuela that has an old script: right-wing leaders plan a coup, with the U.S. deeply implicated; wealthy protesters take to the streets; and the Western media cover both stories with great sympathy while openly mocking the democratically elected government for attempting to defend itself.

The latest crisis began when authorities acting on Maduro’s orders arrested Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma in mid-February. A well-known right-wing opposition figure, Ledezma will face trial for conspiracy against the government in what is now being called the “blue coup.” Among the pieces of evidence the government says it has collected are phone calls made by the mayor to a U.S. phone number, as well as a cache of weapons, including Molotov cocktails, grenade-like explosives and gas masks, found in the office headquarters of the opposition political party.

Ledezma is being held in the same facility as another right-wing politician, Leopoldo Lopez, who was arrested last year for overseeing a plan called La Salida, or “the exit,” to overturn the government. Lopez has had dealings with U.S. government figures including Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. According to Wikileaks, the two apparently “discussed possible media strategies with Lopez, and methods for getting his positive message to audiences in the U.S.” Just before Ledezma’s arrest, he, Lopez and other right-wing opposition leaders, including Maria Corina Machado, had signed a document calling for a “National Transition”—a move the government says was a precursor to a U.S.-backed coup.

The U.S. has long been involved in attempts to destabilize Venezuela’s socialist government. Its role in the 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez is well-documented. Over the years, many organizations, including ones in which right-wing opposition figures are involved, have received funding from the likes of USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), both U.S.-based agencies notorious for fomenting unrest in countries hostile to U.S. interests. For example, Machado headed an organization named Sumate that has received funding from the NED.

U.S. officials have also made no secret about their hostility to Venezuela. Last year the Obama administration imposed sanctions on a number of Venezuelan officials it claims are implicated in human rights abuses and corruption, although it is keeping the list of names secret. In President Obama’s 2015 National Security Strategy, he announced that the U.S. would “stand by the citizens of countries where the full exercise of democracy is at risk, such as Venezuela.”

Despite this documentation of American animosity toward Venezuela, media outlets continue to harbor an inexplicable blind spot on the U.S. role. The New York Timesopined last week in what we can consider Exhibit A in the case against media coverage of Venezuela:

Listening to embattled President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela ramble for hours about an international right-wing conspiracy to oust him, it’s clear that he would use any fabricated pretext to jail opposition leaders and crack down on dissent. In recent days, the government’s claims have become outlandish and its repression of critics even more vicious.

Professor Miguel Tinker Salas, one of the few U.S.-based experts on Venezuela, has written a book that will be released May 4 titled “Venezuela: What Everyone Needs to Know.” In an interview on “Uprising,” he responded to the editorial, saying, “We know that there was a historical amnesia on the part of the New York Times that celebrated the 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez.”

Salas was referring to the paper’s mea culpa at initially celebrating that coup and then retracting its words days later when it was overturned. In its new editorial, the paper failed to raise the historical context of U.S. backing for the 2002 coup or its own contradictory stances dismissing Maduro’s concerns. 

Exhibit B is The Economist, which went as far as headlining the current crisis in Venezuela “A slow-motion coup.” If by “coup” the magazine means “coup d’état”—which is generally defined as the illegal takeover of a government—then it is unclear what the writers mean, for the article claims the “regime is lurching from authoritarianism to dictatorship.” (Is Maduro’s government organizing a coup against itself?) The magazine also goes on to assert that “Crackpot economic policies have brought food shortages, soaring inflation and rising poverty.”

Salas explained that the writers are irked by the fact that “[s]ixty percent of the government’s budget actually goes to social programs and [the opposition] would rather it go to infrastructure and oil companies so that they can produce more oil and have a larger supply of oil on the world market, and have it be privately owned.”

Thanks to this type of media coverage, the Venezuelan right-wing opposition has been extremely successful at generating sympathy, especially among the U.S. public, and even among American celebrities. Last year’s right-wing protests inspired a shout-outby actor Jared Leto during his Oscar acceptance speech, a supportive blog post by Kevin Spacey and even a social media post by singer Madonna.

What neither the Times nor The Economist nor the supportive celebrities notice are the troubling double standards of criticizing Venezuela when a close U.S. ally such as Mexico suffers from far worse problems of anti-democratic corruption and violence. Salas pointed out the hypocrisy, saying that 43 people were killed in Venezuela last year on both sides of the divide, and still, “The New York Times blames the government for these deaths, and yet they remain silent about the 43 students that were killed in Mexico.” Additionally, Salas pointed out, although Mexico has “100,000 dead and a real humanitarian crisis,” the Times says “almost nothing, while on Venezuela they ... mock the government.”

A November 2014 editorial by the Times on Mexico’s 43 missing students expressed not nearly as much vitriol for that country’s clearly corrupt and discredited government as the paper reserves for Venezuela’s Maduro, whom it called “authoritarian,” “erratic” and “maniacal.” 

Additionally, The Economist’s mocking of Venezuela’s economic crisis is also hypocritical because, according to Salas, in Mexico, “fifty percent of the population lives in poverty” and yet the country “is portrayed as a model for Western development and neo-liberal economics.” And while media outlets make fun of Venezuela’s toilet paper shortage, Salas counters that in Mexico, which is a U.S. ally, huge numbers of “people don’t even have access to basic services and foods.”

Media coverage of Venezuela is so skewed that even the contentious issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems to generate fairer coverage these days. Salas attributed the bias to the savvy organizing of right-wing Venezuelan groups, who he says have “learned the lesson very well from Cuban Americans in Miami and South Florida, so they know how to target the media, they know how to create public opinion and they have done that very well.”

But Salas thinks there is another explanation, and that is “the lack of knowledge that existed about Venezuela in the U.S. before Hugo Chavez came to power.” Most of what Americans knew about the country other than that it had abundant oil reserves was the fact that it once won a Miss Universe contest and was home to a few good baseball players. That ignorance has been a perfect blank slate on which the U.S. government, mainstream media and right-wing opposition parties have been able to carve their warped perspectives about Venezuela’s left-wing government.

Source: Truthdig

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‘Self-Radicalized': Islamophobic Buzzwords never applied to White Terrorists

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) –

Did a self-radicalized lone wolf white terrorist kill three young Muslim students in cold blood in Chapel Hill? It is a kind of a stupid question, but its stupidity is just more apparent when asked of someone with an English last name. What does self-radicalized or lone wolf even mean?

Craig Hicks constantly shared anti-Muslim and anti-Christian links on social media and proclaimed to believers, ““I have every right to insult a religion that goes out of its way to insult, to judge, and to condemn me as an inadequate human being — which your religion does with self-righteous gusto…” I think we may conclude that he didn’t like Muslims, and one of the victims told her father that before her death. While he may have been provoked to his rage by a parking incident and while he clearly is one egg short of an omelette, the “new atheist” discourse of believers as oppressive and coercive per se is part of his problem.

Father of murdered student

“Terrorism” has been racialized in the American press and law enforcement community, marked as having to do with Muslims but almost never used to refer to people of northern European background. A few years ago, when a police spokesman said that “We have concluded that event was not terrorism,” likely what he meant is that no Muslims were involved or that no cell or organization was.

Racializing dissent has an old genealogy in American politics. In the early twentieth century, Jewish-American immigrants were suspected of socialism and Italian-Americans of anarchism. In the Red Scare of 1917-1920, workers who joined labor actions were falsely accused of Communism and were targeted for mob violence, especially if they had “foreign names.” African-Americans who had come north to work in factories during the war, filling a domestic labor shortage, were likewise tagged as subversive. Somehow persons of English ancestry with names like Worthington — even if they were blue collar workers– were not assumed to be Communists or foreign agents or radicals. Russian-Americans were deported. In Illinois after the war, a mob attacked Italian-Americans and razed their homes.

Today it is Muslim-Americans who have been stereotyped as radicals, although the vast majority of them are actually pillars of the establishment and they are better off educationally and financially than the average American. But how to characterize Muslim individuals who committed violence, who were unconnected to any radical network and who were clearly simply mentally ill? Initially Islamophobic diction wasn’t deployed in their regard. But over time, those promoting bigotry managed to make it respectable to sweep even these often mentally fragile individuals up into “terrorism.” The buzzwords used were “lone wolf” and “self-radicalized.”

Terrorism as it was defined in the Federal code in the 1990s made some sense. It was a non-state group that committed violence against civilians for political purposes. The modern democratic state is supposed to have a monopoly on violence (police, army) and people are supposed to seek to influence politics non-violently, by organizing in parties and contesting elections. A group that appointed itself (and was elected by no one) to carry out violence to achieve political goals is a danger to democratic society, usurping the role of the state illegitimately.

But to characterize one unbalanced individual, unconnected to a cell or network, who hits out at a few individuals or a soft target, as a “terrorist”makes little sense. It makes no sense at all except if the word “terrorist” is deprived of its legal meaning, as above, and simply used to denote “Muslim who commits violence for other than purely criminal reasons.” Thus, an official applied the term ‘terrorism’ to jihadi Zale Thompson’s attack on four NY policemen with an axe. Note that the 1990s Federal code would have excluded that attack, horrible as it was, because it was not civilians who were targeted and Thompson was not a group. It also isn’t clear what political goal was furthered. As Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan argued, that was a criminal act. Otherwise, expanding terrorism to cover such one-off acts has the effect of terrorizing society by keeping it on its toes and making it haunted by crackpots.

Moreover, the T-word is almost never applied to ‘lone wolf,’ ‘self-radicalized’ white people who go berserk their neighbors. I wrote last spring,

we had the horrible day-before-Passover attack on two Jewish community facilities outside Kansas City, KS allegedly committed by a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, which left 3 people dead. My heart goes out to the innocent victims of hate. I put “Kansas” and “terrorism” in a search of Google News and did not get a single hit on this incident, which tells me that no US news services are describing it that way. Heck, the LA Times said authorities are cautioning that it is too soon even to call the shootings a “hate crime.” Since the shooter is said to have shouted “Heil Hitler,” I’m going to go out on a limb and say it was a hate crime. And I’m also pretty sure it was a form of terrorism. Likewise, if you search for Wade Michael Page, the white supremacist who shot down Sikhs, “and terrorism,” you only get opinion pages and blogs, not MSM sites. But a where a lone gunman committing a hate crime is a Muslim, there’s a demand to use the T-word. Moreover, there is the peculiar American practice of laying collective guilt on all Muslims for what any one wacko amongst them does. White people get a pass on having violent and destructive wackos among them.

Let’s retire the ‘war on terror’ (terrorism is a tactic) and the diction of the ‘lone wolf’ and ‘self-radicalized.’ Society has a few criminals and deviants. When they break the law they become criminals and they should be brought to justice. Obsessing about “terrorists” out there somewhere, and implicitly racializing the phenomenon, is a good way to lose what liberties we still have left.

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The World, ISIS and The Oppressed Palestinians

Because the world is now ruled by injustice, the story of the Palestinian child Mohammad Abu Khdeir who was burnt alive did not go viral in the main stream media.

The story is not fresh, but the unjustified brutal burning of the Jordanian pilot, and its world wide coverage reminded me with the story of Mohammad Abu Khdeir.

It is documented now that the human brain depends on comparison to distinguish between various scenes, and this is the cornerstone of the visual illusion.

The main stream media focused on the burning of the Jordanian pilot, not because of humanity, or because the pilot is an Arab Muslim, or because the event was shocking. The concealed reason is because the Western alliance against ISIS and its Arab allies need a further solid justification to intervene in the Syrian and Iraqi conflicts.

I will give a clear proof in this regard, which is:

The U.S. government and its European allies can block ISIS's websites and their social media accounts. It is not difficult for Spying agencies to establish ( I'm sure they already have) algorithmic software to classify suspected websites related to ISIS. However, they need two things:

Firstly, to track al-Qaeda related materials.

Secondly, to allow al-Qaeda cyber-propaganda which terrifies people. All that to create a solid justification for interventions.

Here is another example based on comparison too, why do the U.S. government and its European allies able to apply sanctions against Iran and Cuba, but they couldn't prevent oil trafficking by ISIS?

"Mohammed Abu Khdeir was found burned to death  after disappearing on 2 July. Forensic analysis of his remains suggested he was still alive when he was set alight.

Israeli public attention to the 16-year-old’s murder has been diverted by the Israel-Gaza fighting that has so far killed more than 170 Palestinians, but it remains an explosive issue for Palestinians."

"At least 151 Palestinian children are currently being held as "security prisoners" in Israeli jails, Palestinian legal monitor Military Court Watch said in a statement on Tuesday.

The group said that 47 percent of those are being held inside Israel in violation of the Geneva Conventions, which prevents the transfer of detainees outside of occupied territory as it limits their families' and lawyers' abilities to visit.

The numbers highlight the continuing hardships facing Palestinian children in Israeli jails, who comprise the most vulnerable group of the 5,528 Palestinians being held in Israeli jails in total."

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Zionist Attack Against The Sunday Times

Israel demands the British Journal for apology after publishing a cartoon. The cartoon shows hypocrisy. While Netanyahu was walking in the front lines in Paris march, he built a bloody wall in Palestine.

“The newspaper should apologize for this. We’re not going to let this stand as it is,” Israeli Ambassador to London Daniel Taub told The Times of Israel in a telephone interview. “We genuinely think that a red line has been crossed and the obligation on the newspaper is to correct that.”

"Four reasons why U.K. cartoon of Netanyahu isn't anti-Semitic in any way", Anshel Pfeffer of Haartz wrote.

Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch, the well-known billionaire and the owner of many corporate media (including the British Sunday Times) apologized to Israel.

Murdoch  wrote on Twitter that the cartoonist, Gerald Scarfe – a veteran who frequently depicts blood in his work – did not reflect the paper's editorial line. "Nevertheless, we owe major apology for grotesque, offensive cartoon," Murdoch tweeted.

In a statement, the paper's acting editor, Martin Ivens, said that insulting the memory of Holocaust victims or invoking blood libel was "the last thing I or anyone connected with the Sunday Times would countenance".

"The paper has long written strongly in defence of Israel and its security concerns, as have I as a columnist," Ivens said. "We are, however, reminded of the sensitivities in this area by the reaction to the cartoon, and I will of course bear them very carefully in mind in future."

Mikael Rivero of What Really Happened wrote:
"Media sources said the Israeli strikes also targeted government facilities and ministries, media outlets, mosques and even homes of senior political leaders of Hamas, including the deputy head of the Hamas Political Bureau, Ismael Haniyya.

Medical sources said resident Ezzat Dheir, a 23-year-old journalist, working for a local radio, was killed along with four members of his family, after an Israeli missile striking his home.

The slain Palestinians have been identified as:

1. Ezzat Dheir, 23, Rafah.
2. Turkeyya Dheir, 80, Rafah.
3. Yasmeen Dheir, 25, Rafah.
4. Mary Dheir, 12, Rafah.
5. Tasneem Dheir, 8, Rafah.

Where is the outrage and millions in the streets for these slain journalists?"

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Rupert Murdoch, Charlie Hebdo And Muslims

Rupert Murdoch went to Twitter late Friday to post his twisted thoughts following the horrible attacks on Charlie Hebdo. Murdoch summarily held all Muslims responsible for the jihadist attacks:

“Maybe most Moslems peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing jihadist cancer they must be held responsible.”

Shortly before, he had tweeted that political correctness was hypocrisy and that jihadist danger was lurking around the world.

Murdoch’s tweet was retweeted over 4500 times.

While many criticized his comments, J.K. Rowling, the author of the well known Harry Potter series, came out blasting the absurdity of the posts. She mockingly accepted all Christian atrocities including Rupert Murdoch, himself. Her comment has been retweeted more than 6500 times.

“I was born Christian. If that makes Rupert Murdoch my responsibility, I’ll auto-excommunicate.”

She continued to tweet that the Spanish Inquisition was her fault as well as Jim Bakker, the disgraced televangelist.

“The Spanish Inquisition was my fault, as is all Christian fundamentalist violence. Oh, and Jim Bakker.”

She found time to commend Lassana Bathily, a Muslim, for the “courage and compassionate actions” of hiding Jewish customers from the gunmen during the attack.

Source: Addicting Info


Read other stories related to Rupert Murdoch:

• Zionists' dominance over media : Fact or Fiction?
• How Not To Fight The 1%

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