Tuesday, February 11, 2014

THIS JUST IN! REFUTING RUMORS!

BULLY BOY PRESS &  CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE

AS RUMORS CONTINUE TO FLY THAT FADED CELEBRITY IN CHIEF BARRY O IS SLEEPING WITH JAY-Z'S BEARD BEYONCE, THESE REPORTERS GREW TIRED OF THE STONE WALLING FROMTEAD WHITE HOUSE PLUS-SIZE SPOKESMODEL JAY CARNEY.

INSTEAD THESE REPORTERS CONTACTED THE FIRST LADY WHO, WHEN INFORMED OF THE RUMORS, COULD NOT STOP LAUGHING.

"YOU MUST FORGIVE ME," SHE SAID WIPING AWAY TEARS OF LAUGHTER, "BUT THAT'S THE MOST HYSTERICAL THING I'VE EVER HEARD.  AND I WAS THERE WHEN MY MOTHER MET BARRY FOR THE FIRST TIME, PULLED ME INTO THE KITCHEN AND SAID, 'NOT ONLY CAN YOU DO BETTER, BUT HONEY, I THINK HE'S GAY'."


FROM THE TCI WIRE:

From the gas bags to the journalists, if you're ever trying  to figure out just how worthless NPR can be, they demonstrated it today as Mark Memmott made clear he wants to be the new Hedda Hopper.

As he makes clear here, he never learned about reporting.  He spent his time instead on the phone gossiping.

At least 21 people died in a bombing today.  We noted it, we noted the death toll.

We didn't note that they were suicide bombers or suicide bombers in training.

But Memmott does.  He 'backs it up' by linking to AP, for example.

AP had no one present at the bombing.

It's hearsay.

It's already been established -- thought not for Memmott or any of the US press because they're so stupid and so they're deceitful -- but it's already been established that the 'terrorists' killed in an assorted aireal bombings carried out by the Iraq military were often not terrorists.

In the Arabic world, they've been more than fine with doing journalism.  Visiting the areas, speaking to the people involved, documenting it with video.

Journalism is not presenting as fact one side's claims.  Those of us old enough to remember Vietnam, are fully aware that the government -- the US government -- repeatedly lied about who got killed and the numbers killed.  It's no different than The Drone War today and all the lies US President Barack Obama and others in the administration tell about 'terrorists' -- who apparently stopped to attend a wedding, for example.

What may be known is that 20 or 21 or 22 people died in a bombing.  Who those people were?

That's the slutty US press which can never stop whoring.  Women in Baghdad die, they're "prostitutes."  That's the sort of the US press does (AFP has picked it up as well).  Dead women who can't defend themselves are labeled prostitutes and the US press treats it as gospel.

There have always been prostitutes in Iraq -- male and female.  And many outlets know it.  Certainly the Go-Go Boys of the Green Zone were frequenting Baghdad prostitutes in 2003 and 2004.

But they couldn't report on the prostitution.  One denied it.

Off Our Backs was the only US publication to treat the prostitution in Baghdad issue seriously.

NPR didn't take it seriously.  But then they rarely take issues that impact women seriously.

The disgusting Mark Memmott finds it 'cute' that people died.  He'd insist he finds it cute that 'terrorists' died.  But he can prove they were terrorists.  The only source for that is the Iraqi government.  The same government that labels peaceful protesters as "terrorists."

Memmott's never felt the need to report that either -- even though Nouri's been labeling protesters as "terrorists" since 2011.

In Iraq, a lot of people get labeled as 'terrorists.'  An Iraqi female journalist, for example, was falsely labeled as one.  And the police knew it was false.  They tortured her anyway.  Because they didn't like her articles, they didn't like her reporting on the government's short comings.

Mark Memmott has a case of the giggles today and amuses himself with Iraq.

I guess he couldn't laugh last week when Human Rights Watch's released their report entitled (PDF format warning) "'NO ONE IS SAFE: Abuses of Women in Iraq's Criminal Justice System"?

That must be the explanation for his failure to write about that.  No one at NPR wrote about it for the website.  None of NPR's national programs covered it.

But let Little Marky have the opportunity to giggle over the-gang-who-couldn't-shoot-straight 'terrorists' and he's ready to run with it.  (Strangely, when Nouri's air forces bombed and killed a group of men at the end of last week -- a group of men who turned out to be Iraqi soldiers --  Mark Memmott had no interest in writing about that.)

Mark Memmott takes the Iraqi government on their word despite the fact that journalists are supposed to question and to present claims they can't verify as claims.

I don't trust Nouri's government because, unlike Mark Memmott, I pay attention.  This is from HRW's report released last week:


The report finds that security forces carry out illegal arrests and other due process violations against women at every stage of the justice system, including threats and beatings. Israa Salah (not her real name), for example, entered her interview with Human Rights Watch in Iraq’s death row facility in Baghdad’s Kadhimiyya neighborhood on crutches. She said nine days of beatings, electric shocks with an instrument known as “the donkey,” and falaqa (when the victim is hung upside down and beaten on their feet) in March 2012 had left her permanently disabled. A split nose, back scars, and burns on her breast were consistent with her alleged abuse. Israa was executed in September 2013, seven months after we met her, despite lower court rulings that dismissed charges against her because a medical report documented she was tortured into confessing to a crime. 



Do you get what happened there?  Mark Memmott can't because he's so stupid.

But most of us can read that paragraph above and note that Israa Salah was not only tortured by Nouri's forces, she was also put to death "despite lower court rulings that dismissed charges against her."


That should outrage most people.

She was executed even after a court had determined she had been tortured to give a false confession.

She was executed even after a court dismissed all charges against her.

Most people can grasp that the woman shouldn't have been executed but instead should have been immediately released.

Mark doesn't want to tell that story because it doesn't let him giggle or suck up to Nouri al-Maliki and others in power.

It's an uncomfortable story, not a chuckle.

And more and more -- especially with their ludicrous on air 'recipe' segments -- NPR can't offer anything but breezy nonsense.

Morning Edition did not report on Human Rights Watch's investigation.  Terry Gross did not invite HRW onto Fresh Air to discuss the findings.  All Things Considered?  Nothing was considered when it came to the Human Rights Watch report because All Things Considered ignored it as well.  Diane Rehm had a whole hour Friday to fill, her so-called 'international hour' -- and yet she served up nonsense and crap and didn't even touch on Iraq.  Why do you have radio programs, public radio, when you refuse to cover investigations and human rights abuses.


Let's go to the report again:

For example, Fatima Hussein (not her real name), a journalist accused of involvement in the murder of a parliamentarian’s brother and of being married to an Al-Qaeda member, described physical and sexual torture in early 2012 at the hands of one particular interrogator in Tikrit, Colonel Ghazi. She described Ghazi tying her blindfolded to a column and electrocuting her with an electric baton, hitting her feet and back with cable, kicking her, pulling her hair, tying her naked to a column and extinguishing cigarettes on her body, and later handcuffing her to a bed, forcing her to give him oral sex, and raping her three times. “There was blood all over me. He would relax, have a cigarette, and put it out on my buttock, and then started again,” she said. 
Women who spoke with Human Rights Watch, who all explicitly denied involvement in alleged crimes, also described being pushed towards confessions by interrogators threatening to hurt loved ones. Fatima described Ghazi passing her the phone, with her daughter at the end of the line, before threatening: "I'll do to your daughter what I did to you." 



Again, the Human Rights Watch's report is entitled (PDF format warning) "'NO ONE IS SAFE: Abuses of Women in Iraq's Criminal Justice System."  Ramzy Baroud (Arab News) notes the report:

“No One is Safe” presented some of the most harrowing evidence of the abuse of women by Iraq’s criminal “justice system.” The phenomenon of kidnapping, torturing, raping and executing women is so widespread that it seems shocking even by the standards of the country’s poor human rights record of the past. If such a reality were to exist in a different political context, the global outrage would have been so profound. Some in the “liberal” western media, supposedly compelled by women’s rights would have called for some measure of humanitarian intervention, war even. But in the case of today’s Iraq, the HRW report is likely to receive bits of coverage where the issue is significantly deluded, and eventually forgotten.
In fact, the discussion of the abuse of thousands of women -- let alone tens of thousands of men -- has already been discussed in a political vacuum. A buzzword that seems to emerge since the publication of the report is that the abuse confirms the “weaknesses” of the Iraqi judicial system. The challenge then becomes the matter of strengthening a weak system, perhaps through channeling more money, constructing larger facilities and providing better monitoring and training, likely carried out by US-led training of staff.
Mostly absent are the voices of women’s groups, intellectuals and feminists who seem to be constantly distressed by the traditional marriage practices in Yemen, for example, or the covering up of women’s faces in Afghanistan. There is little, if any, uproar and outrage, when brown women suffer at the hands of western men and women, or their cronies, as is the situation in Iraq.

Is that fair?  Are feminists ignoring the report?

Feminism is global.  I can't speak for what all of the world is doing.  But for Third, we did "Editorial: War Crimes against women and the outlets that ignore them" and it notes the US coverage - or lack of it -- including:

Ms. magazine's blog never noted the report.
While Women's Media Center has a campaign which insists "Don't Let Women's Voices Be Silenced in 2014," they have thus far let Iraqi women be silenced by refusing to write an article or even a Tweet about the HRW report (and they've 28 Tweets since the report was released).
B-b-but the report just came out!
Last Thursday.  And Women's e-News has managed to cover it. Sarah Sheffer covered it for The NewsHour (PBS).
By contrast, NPR refused to cover it -- on air or at the website.
They did 'tax' themselves by re-running an AP report.
Women are tortured and raped, disappeared into prisons, their children threatened and this isn't news to Women's Media Center?
WMC makes time on their awful Twitter feed to whore for the daughter of celebrities  but they can't do a damn thing for Iraqi women?

So, yeah, in the US, there is a need to call out.

Trina was on the phone earlier and she's addressing this at her site tonight because of something she saw online -- something covered by a feminist outlet that wasn't really news but the feminist outlet still can't cover the Human Rights Watch report.

The silence in the US -- whether from the feminist press or the mainstream press -- is shameful.


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