SOME MATTER MORE - WHEN 47 VICTIMS ARE WORTH 43 WORDS

sent in by: kddove

JULY 22, 2008
SOME MATTER MORE - WHEN 47 VICTIMS ARE WORTH 43 WORDS

Bad Form
In his classic work, Obedience to Authority, psychologist Stanley Milgram observed:

"There is always some element of bad form in objecting to the destructive course of events, or indeed, in making it a topic of conversation. Thus, in Nazi Germany, even among those most closely identified with the 'final solution', it was considered an act of discourtesy to talk about the killings." (Milgram, Obedience to Authority, Pinter & Martin, 1974, p.204)

The same "bad form" is very much discouraged in our own society. One would hardly guess from media reporting that Britain and America are responsible for killing anyone in Iraq and Afghanistan, where violence is typically blamed on "insurgents" and "sectarian conflict". International "coalition" forces are depicted as peacekeepers using minimum violence as a last resort.

In reporting the November 2005 Haditha massacre, in which 24 Iraqi civilians were murdered by US troops, Newsweek suggested that the scale of the tragedy "should not be exaggerated". Why?

"America still fields what is arguably the most disciplined, humane military force in history, a model of restraint compared with ancient armies that wallowed in the spoils of war or even more-modern armies that heedlessly killed civilians and prisoners." (Evan Thomas and Scott Johnson, 'Probing Bloodbath,' Newsweek, June 12, 2006; http://www.newsweek.com/id/52312/page/1)

The truth was revealed in a single moment of unthinking honesty by a senior US Army commander involved in planning the November 2004 Falluja offensive and convinced of its necessity. He visited the city afterward and declared:

"My God, what are the folks who live here going to say when they see this?" (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/04/ weekinreview/04burns.html?fta=y&pagewanted=all)

The answer was provided by physician Mahammad J. Haded, director of an Iraqi refugee centre, who was in Falluja during the US onslaught:

"The city is today totally ruined. Falluja is our Dresden in Iraq... The population is full of rage." (http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-awad100305.htm)

In July 2005, the Independent commented on US actions in Iraq:

"The American army's use of its massive fire-power is so unrestrained that all US military operations are in reality the collective punishment of whole districts, towns and cities." (Patrick Cockburn, 'We must avoid the terrorist trap,' The Independent, July 11, 2005)

In April 2004, the Daily Telegraph reported the disgust of senior British army commanders in Iraq with the "heavy-handed and disproportionate" military tactics used by US forces, who view Iraqis "as untermenschen. They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life... their attitude toward the Iraqis is tragic, it is awful." (Sean Rayment, 'US tactics condemned by British officers', Defence Correspondent, Daily Telegraph, April 11, 2004)

Burying The Bride
The anonymous commanders' comments generalise to both British and American media reporting.

In July, Afghan investigators in Nangarhar, Afghanistan, told the AFP news agency that they had been shown the "bloodied clothes of women and children" killed in a July 6 US air strike. The attack was reported to have killed 47 civilian members of a wedding party, including 39 women and children, with nine wounded. The head of the team, Burhanullah Shinwari, deputy speaker of Afghanistan's senate, said: "They were all civilians and had no links with Taliban or Al-Qaeda." (http://afp.google.com/article/ ALeqM5joXBRRzFwxSG_I-Ucf34VMr379hQ)

Around ten people were reported still missing, believed buried under rubble. It is now estimated that 52 people were killed - the same number that died in the London suicide attacks of July 7, 2005. Another member of the team, Mohammad Asif Shinwari, said there were only three men among the dead and the rest were women and children. Marc Herold of the University of New Hampshire reports that eight of the victims were between 14 and 18 years of age. (http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwherold/ Anotherweddingpartymassacre_July62008.html). The US military initially claimed only "militants" involved in mortar attacks had been killed.

A separate investigation into a July 4 strike in the northeastern province of Nuristan found that 17 civilians had been killed there. The coalition claimed they had killed several militants who were fleeing after attacking a base. But an Afghan official again confirmed that the victims were "all civilians." (http://afp.google.com/article/ ALeqM5joXBRRzFwxSG_I-Ucf34VMr379hQ) Afghan authorities said the dead included two doctors and two midwives who had been attempting to leave the area to escape military operations.

Air Force Times reports that allied warplanes are currently dropping a record number of bombs on Afghanistan. For the first half of 2008, aircraft dropped 1,853 bombs - more than they released during all of 2006 and more than half of 2007's total. But this only hints at the true extent of the slaughter. The figures do not include cannon rounds shot by fighters or AC-130 gunships, Hellfire and other small rockets launched by warplanes and drones, and assaults by helicopters. Air Force Times comments:

"In close-quarter firefights where friendly soldiers could be wounded if bombs are used, cannon fire and missiles are often the preferred alternative." (Bruce Rolfsen, 'Afghanistan hit by record number of bombs,' Air Force Times, July 18, 2008;
http://www.airforcetimes.com/news /2008/07/airforce_bomb_oef_071708/)

The response of the UK press to these latest atrocities is a case study in censorship by omission.

On July 12, the Guardian devoted 307 words to the attack on the wedding party. The killing of 39 women and children was not considered front page news - the story was buried on page 30. (Mohammad Rafiq Jalalabad, 'US air strike killed 47 civilians, says Afghan government,' The Guardian, July 12, 2008)

On the same day, a 490-word article in the Times focused on the fate of nine British troops injured when a US helicopter accidentally targeted them in a "friendly fire" incident. Six of the nine soldiers have since returned to duty, with three still receiving medical treatment. While 447 words were devoted to this story, the article concluded with two sentences totalling 43 words on the killing of the Afghan civilians:

"However, 47 civilians, most of them women and children, were killed when a US aircraft bombed a wedding party in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, an Afghan government investigation has concluded. The nine-man investigation team found that only civilians were hit during the airstrike." (Dominic Kennedy and Michael Evans, 'Friendly fire inquiry to investigate messages from troops,' The Times, July 12, 2008)

At time of writing there have been five mentions of the 47 deaths in UK national quality newspapers.

Media reports on Western victims of terrorist or insurgent attacks typically provide detailed information on the names, backgrounds and personal histories of the victims. When the first female British soldier, Sarah Bryant, was killed in Afghanistan on June 17, the media poured forth details about her life. The BBC website showed pictures of Bryant's wedding and devoted an article to moving tributes from her husband, father, mother, commanding officer, unit commander, friends and colleagues. A friend of the family described Bryant: "A hundred per cent feminine, very pretty, very unassuming, a natural person, very happy - the sort of person that when she was in a room, it lit up." (http://news.bbc.co.uk/ 2/hi/uk_news/7463470.stm)

Bryant, recall, was a combatant. The depth of focus changes for Iraqi and Afghan non-combatant victims of US-UK violence. In a BBC online article, Martin Patience reported the July 6 attack:

"Regional officials said the casualties were attending a wedding party and that the bride had been killed." (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7502137.stm)

We wrote to Patience (July 14), noting that he had reported that the bride had been among the victims. We asked him why he had not mentioned that fully 39 of the victims were women and children. He responded:

"I accept your point about not mentioning women and children, although, in my defence, the story was linked to the new story and I didn't necessarily want to repeat the details." (Email to Media Lens, July 14)

We wrote back:

"Thanks for your response, I appreciate it. But something doesn't add up. How often did the media provide us with the personal details - name, gender, photo, education, work lives, loved ones, aspirations - of the victims of the July 7 bomb attacks in London? [See here: (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/ uk/05/london_blasts/victims/default.stm] The July 6 atrocity in Afghanistan has been reported a tiny handful of times in the press. Why would you be concerned about repeating the fact that almost all of the victims were women and children?" (Email, July 14)

We received no further reply but, to its credit, the BBC did subsequently publish an excellent piece on the July 6 attack: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7504574.stm

Patience had earlier reported: "the latest claim of civilian casualties puts yet more pressure on the Afghan authorities and international forces to get it right when carrying out operations." (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7492195.stm)

The reference to the need for "international forces" to "get it right" might sound like neutral language. But imagine if a journalist had commented in August 1990 that claims of civilian casualties had put "yet more pressure on Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi forces to get it right when carrying out operations in Kuwait." The bias suddenly becomes very clear.

Militants And Mistakes
On July 12, Leonard Doyle of the Independent reported:

"The UN said last month that nearly 700 Afghan civilians had lost their lives in Afghanistan this year, about two-thirds in attacks by militants and about 255 in military operations." (Doyle, 'US to investigate air strike that killed 47 Afghan civilians,' The Independent, July 12, 2008)

From this, we were presumably to understand that the "militants" are not conducting "military operations", and Afghan government/"coalition" forces conducting "military operations" are not "militants".

The point being that "militant" is a pejorative term used by journalists to suggest illegitimacy. In June 1999, the BBC reported that "Kosovo Albanians have been welcoming the return of armed KLA soldiers." (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/369239.stm) KLA insurgents fighting Serbian forces were supported by the West and were regularly described as "soldiers" rather than "militants" or "insurgents". The British media have similarly referred to the "Chechen resistance" fighting the Russian army. Ironically, British and American journalists also commonly referred to Afghan forces fighting the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan as "resistance fighters" and "freedom fighters" (See our media alert: http://www.medialens.org/alerts/ 07/071120_invasion_a_comparison.php). The use of such terms is of course inconceivable in US-UK reporting of the current occupation.

On the rare occasions when US-UK atrocities are discussed, they are invariably described as blunders rather than crimes. On July 13, Alastair Leithead commented on the BBC's evening news:

"It's these mistakes that cost the US the support of the [Afghan] people."

In September 2004, the BBC's Nicholas Witchell reported on BBC TV news from Baghdad:

"As is so often the case in this conflict it's the Iraqi civilian population which suffers the greatest loss of life - either as a result of mistakes by the Americans, or, far more frequently, of course, as a result of the bombs and the bullets of the insurgents." (Witchell, BBC1, 18:00 News, September 30, 2004)

The bias could hardly be more transparent - we kill civilians only by "mistake", our enemies do not. Noam Chomsky comments:

"The more vulgar apologists for U.S. and Israeli crimes solemnly explain that, while Arabs purposely kill people, the U.S. and Israel, being democratic societies, do not intend to do so. Their killings are just accidental ones, hence not at the level of moral depravity of their adversaries." (Noam Chomsky, 'Terrorists wanted the world over.' February 26, 2008; http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174899)

As Chomsky notes we can distinguish three categories of crimes: murder with intent, accidental killing, and murder with foreknowledge but without specific intent. When Israel's High Court authorised intense collective punishment of the people of Gaza by depriving them of electricity, when Bill Clinton bombed the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in 1998 in Sudan supplying half the country's drugs, and when Bush and Blair invaded Iraq, the devastating consequences for civilians were predictable, but ignored.

Certainly it is reprehensible to kill with intent. But is it any better to kill without intent when the likely consequences for our victims are so irrelevant that they do not even enter our minds? The point being, as Chomsky writes, that Western elites really do appear to regard Third World peoples "much as we do the ants we crush while walking down a street. We are aware that it is likely to happen (if we bother to think about it), but we do not intend to kill them because they are not worthy of such consideration." (Ibid)

When we assemble the different pieces of the media jigsaw puzzle, clear patterns emerge. Western victims are presented as real, important people with names, families, hopes and dreams. Iraqi and Afghan victims of British and American violence are anonymous, nameless. They are depicted as distant shadowy figures without personalities, feelings or families.

The result is that Westerners are consistently humanised, while non-Westerners are portrayed as lesser versions of humanity.

SUGGESTED ACTION
The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you do write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

Open Letter To Congress: Impeach Bush/Cheney

Dear Congress:

I am writing to remind you that you swore an oath when you took office. You swore that you would defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. In order to fulfil your sworn duty and your obligation to the citizens of these United States, you must support the movement to impeach the President and the Vice President.

It is clear that there is sufficient cause to impeach.

1. They lied about the Iraqi threat to start an aggressive war against a sovereign nation that was not a treat to us. They knowingly distorted intelligence reports and ignored contrary information in constructing their case for the war. The Downing Street memo and the Bush-Blair memo substantiate that they "fixed" intelligence around a pre-determined policy of preemptive war.

Results: 1,000,000 Iraqi civilian deaths; over 4000 U.S. soldiers dead in two wars, 100s of thousands wounded.

2. Article VI of the Constitution, Senate-ratified treaties such as the U.N. Charter is "the supreme Law of the Land." This war has been shown to be a war of aggression contrary to the U.N. Charter (a crime against peace) and therefore a war crime. A war of aggression not initiated out of self-defense or sanctioned by the UN, is a violation of international law and constitutes an impeachable offense.

3. A report on May 19, 2006, by the United Nations Convention Against Torture concluded that the US should not send suspects to countries where they face a risk of torture, since that would violate international law. This administration has approved of (and Attorney General Gonzales re-defined) torture at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and elsewhere, while simultaneously opposing the International Criminal Court established to check such abuses. According to Amnesty International, the United States has established a Soviet-style "gulag" of torture around the world. Over the years numerous incidents have been made public and a UN report denounced the abuse of prisoners as tantamount to torture. The "torture memos," is evidence of their involvement in the mistreatment of prisoners violating US and international law. The act of ignoring the Geneva Conventions this administration, is culpable for war crimes, and as such that constitutes an impeachable offense.

4. This administration actively spied with warrantless electronic surveillance on American citizens. By authorizing warrantless domestic wiretapping, President Bush violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act without legal basis, constituting a felony and as such an impeachable offense.

5. It has been shown that the President and the Vice President participated in the leaking of the identity of a covert CIA operative, jeopardizing her life and her operative’s lives. Their work involved tracking yellow cake uranium used in making dirty bombs that could be used to attack us on our own soil. By exposing the agent’s identity and thereby destroying our ability to circumvent such an attack is clearly aiding and abetting our enemies. This is Treason. Impeachment is insufficient punishment for this crime.

6. By commutting Libby's sentence in the case involving outting a CIA agent; a case in which the president himself may be involved, impeachment was warranted.

7. The Libby investigation revealed the prosecution and subsequent conviction, during an election season, of Georgia Thompson for corruption, which the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit immediately reversed because the prosecution's evidence was "beyond thin." Another federal prosecutor in connection with the Jack Abramoff Guam investigation was unexpectedly demoted and removed from office. These and other firings were intended to influence investigations and election outcomes and is comparable to the “Saturday Night Massacre”, in which the Nixon administration fired Archibald Cox while he was investigating the alleged misconduct by the White House in the Watergate scandal. Blocking an investigation ordered by Congress was an impeachable offense then, and it still is.


You have given your oath to defend us against all enemies. This administration, this president and vice president have repeatedly committed acts that are impeachable. Do not stand aside and allow these actions to go unchecked.

This is not about your party affiliation.

This is about insuring that no future president may cite the Bush administrations actions as a precedent for future abuses to our rights, liberties, and safety. You must act to remove this president and vice president from office, even if it takes until the last day of their term.

PeaceMonger

Letter to Rush Limbaugh from Ralph Nader

Sent in by kddove:

WASHINGTON, July 10----Independent Presidential Candidate Ralph Nader today released the following letter to radio talk show host, Rush Limbaugh.

Rush Limbaugh
The Rush Limbaugh Show
2 Penn Plaza
New York, NY 10121

Dear Mr. Limbaugh,

The Associated Press reports your new contract with Premiere Radio Networks will enrich you with at least $38 million a year over the next eight years. You are making this money on the public property of the American people for which you pay no rent.

You, Rush Limbaugh, are on welfare.

As you know, the public airwaves belong to the American people. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is supposed to be our trustee in managing this property. The people are the landlords and the radio and TV stations and affiliated companies are the tenants.

The problem is that since the Radio Act of 1927 these corporate tenants have been massively more powerful in Washington, DC than the tens of millions of listeners and viewers. The result has been no payment of rent by the stations for the value of their license to broadcast. You and your company are using the public's valuable property for free. This freeloading on the backs of the American people is called corporate welfare.

It is way past due for the super-rich capitalist--Rush Limbaugh from Cape Girardeau, Missouri--to get himself off big time welfare. It is way past due for Rush Limbaugh as the Kingboy of corporatist radio to set a capitalist example for his peers and pay rent to the American people for the very lucrative use of their property.

You need not wait for the broadcast industry-indentured FCC and Congress to do the right thing. You can lead by paying a voluntary rent--determined by a reputable appraisal organization--for the time you use on the hundreds of stations that carry your words each weekday.

Payment of rent for the use of public airwaves owned by the American people is the conservative position. Real conservatives oppose corporate welfare. Real corporatists feed voraciously from hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare gushing out of Washington, DC yearly.

Whose side are you on? Freeloading? Or paying rent for the public property you have been using free for many years?

I look forward to your response.

Sincerely yours,

Ralph Nader