Al Jazeera Shows the Way

By Danny Schechter, Consortium News, March 17, 2011

Ediitor’s Note: The U.S. political/media Establishment has long treated Al Jazeera as an American enemy in the global “information war.” During George W. Bush’s presidency, U.S. forces shot and jailed Al Jazeera correspondents as part of Bush’s brutal campaign to force “free-market democracy” on the Middle East.
But it appears Al Jazeera is emerging victorious from this conflict, with far greater credibility among well-informed people than U.S. propaganda outlets, including much of the timid U.S. news media. And, Al Jazeera is now on the front lines of spreading real democracy in the Middle East.

In this guest essay, Danny Schechter describes an Al Jazeera forum on these topics that he attended at the network’s base in Doha, Qatar:

When I arrived in the capital of Qatar, as one of the guest participants in the 6th annual Al Jazeera Forum focused on the Arab world in transition, it was clear the mood had changed.

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In years past, the humiliation and oppression of the region was driving the discourse, but this year, events had taken a positive turn with popular youth revolutions catapulting the Al Jazeera TV networks into the global spotlight with governments falling and a new future emerging.

A revolt in Libya was topping the news, being described as civil war — whether it is or isn’t — with Western intervention in the form of a no-fly zone on the horizon to either protect that country’s people from a mad dictator, or in Col. Gaddafi’s view, use humanitarianism as a cover for an armed effort by foreign interests to seize the country’s oil wealth.

Just as the Forum began, we learned that an Al Jazeera Cameraman, Hassan Al Jaber, who I  met at an earlier Forum was killed in Libya, likely a targeted killing because the Al Jazeera people I met believe Gaddafi put money on their heads.

Soon, the story we came to discuss also lost its standing at the top of the media agenda. The disaster in the East had displaced the crisis in the Middle East.

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U.N. Reported Only a Fraction of Civilian Deaths from U.S. Raids

by Gareth Porter and Shah Noori, CommonDreams.org, March 17, 2011

WASHINGTON/KABUL – The number of civilians killed in U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) raids last year was probably several times higher than the figure of 80 people cited in the U.N. report on civilian casualties in Afghanistan published last week, an IPS investigation has revealed.

The number of civilians killed in U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) raids last year was probably several times higher than the figure of 80 people cited in the U.N. report on civilian casualties in Afghanistan published last week, an IPS investigation has revealed. (AFP/Shah Marai)

The report also failed to apply the same humanitarian law standard for defining a civilian to its reporting on SOF raids that it applied to its accounting for Taliban assassinations.

The Mar. 9 report, produced by the Human Rights unit of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) jointly with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), said a total of 80 civilians were killed in “search and seizure operations” by “Pro-Government Forces” in 2010.

But AIHRC Commissioner Nader Nadery told IPS the figure represented only the number of civilian deaths in night raids in the 13 incidents involving SOF units that the Commission had been able to investigate thoroughly.

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CIA spy escapes murder case in Pakistan after US pays ‘blood money’

 Raymond Davis flown to US airbase after payments made to relatives of men shot dead by intelligence agent in Lahore

Declan Walsh in Islamabad and Ewen MacAskill in Washington

The Guardian, March 16, 2011


Jamaat-e-Islami party supporters hold a protest against the release of Raymond Davis, in Karachi. Photograph: Fareed Khan/AP

Raymond Davis, the CIA spy charged with murder in Pakistan, has flown out of the country after the relatives of two men he killed dropped charges in exchange for “blood money” of at least $2.3m (£1.4m) and help in resettling abroad.

Davis slipped out of Lahore on a special flight from the old city airport after being released from the sprawling jail where he had been held for almost 10 weeks amid a diplomatic storm that rocked relations between the two allies and sucked in President Barack Obama.
A Pakistani official said the 36-year-old US spy was bound for an airbase in Afghanistan, then on to the US.

Davis was freed under Islamic laws that allow a murderer to walk free on payment of compensation to the family of his victims. The acquittal took place during a closed hearing at Kot Lakhpat jail where no reporters were present.

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Richard Falk: Learning from Disaster? After Sendai

By Richard Falk, Information Clearing House, March 16, 2011 


After atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki there was in the West, especially the United States, a short triumphal moment, crediting American science and military prowess with bringing victory over Japan and the avoidance of what was anticipated at the time to be a long and bloody conquest of the Japanese homeland. This official narrative of the devastating attacks on these Japanese cities has been contested by numerous reputable historians who argued that Japan had conveyed its readiness to surrender well before the bombs had been dropped, that the U.S. Government needed to launch the attacks to demonstrate to the Soviet Union that it had this super-weapon at its disposal, and that the attacks would help establish American supremacy in the Pacific without any need to share power with Moscow. But whatever historical interpretation is believed, the horror and indecency of the attacks is beyond controversy. This use of atomic bombs against defenseless densely populated cities remains the greatest single act of state terror in human history, and had it been committed by the losers in World War II surely the perpetrators would have been held criminally accountable and the weaponry forever prohibited. But history gives the winners in big wars considerable latitude to shape the future according to their own wishes, sometimes for the better, often for the worse.

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Jewish Voice for Peace: A New Beginning

by Jack Ross, Antiwar.com,  March 17, 2011

 

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On March 11-13, a small conference of around 200 gathered on the University of Pennsylvania campus in Philadelphia with potential significance extending far beyond its modest attendance.  This was the national membership meeting of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a group founded in San Francisco in 1996 that, in the wake of the siege of Gaza in late 2008, has aggressively grown into a national organization with 27 local chapters and seven full time staff.

The meeting and its discussions were closed to the press (though this writer was in attendance), but this only highlights the newsworthiness of the meeting in itself.  Late last year, the Anti-Defamation League named JVP on a list it released of the “Top Ten Anti-Israel Groups in America,” and since then well-known members of the group have in some cases been met with violence or threats of violence, particularly on the west coast, and lesser forms of intimidation from various Jewish community leaders.

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Bahrain police clear Pearl Square

Two police killed in hit-and-run attacks by opposition motorists during raid on Manama’s Pearl Square, three protesters killed.

Middle East Online, March 16, 2011

By Ali Khalil – MANAMA

Protesters fled the square Bahraini police firing shotguns and tear gas crushed the camp in Manama of a month-old pro-democracy protest on Wednesday in an operation that left five dead and sparked Shiite outrage across the region. The violence prompted US President Barack Obama, whose country is a close ally of Bahrain, to express “deep concern,” as his secretary of state said the deployment of Gulf troops to quell political unrest was the wrong response. Early on Wednesday morning, hundreds of riot police backed by tanks and helicopters assaulted demonstrators in Manama’s Pearl Square, clearing the symbolic heart of the uprising in the strategic Gulf kingdom. Continues >>

Bahraini protesters tell of bloodshed as crackdown escalates

Amnesty International, 16 March 2011

Bahraini protesters today told Amnesty International of bloody scenes on the streets as government security forces stepped up their violent crackdown on demonstrations and blocked access to hospitals.

At least six people were reportedly killed in the capital Manama amid continuing protests as the army used tanks to flatten the peaceful protest camps set up in recent weeks to demand reform in the Gulf state.

Government forces also surrounded hospitals and attacked doctors trying to help the wounded.

“The distressing reports and images coming out of Bahrain today provide further evidence that the authorities are using lethal and other excessive force to crush protests, with reckless disregard for human life,” said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Director.

“Wounded protesters have also been prevented from accessing medical attention by government forces.. The Bahraini authorities must immediately put a stop to this bloodshed.”

Security forces attacked the mainly Shi’a protest camp at Manama’s Pearl Roundabout camp early on Wednesday.

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