Gotta love it that the corporate media is so unified in their outrage over the Iran situation.
Where was their outrage when Israel massacred 1400 civilians in Gaza?
This piece by Margaret Kimberley sums it up in a sad and devastating way:
In December 2008 Israel began what can only be described as a massacre in Gaza. More than 1,400 Gazans were killed so that Israel might inflict collective punishment on a civilian population, a direct violation of the Geneva Conventions. They were not even allowed to flee and save their lives, instead even hospitals and ambulances were targets in Israel’s efforts to kill as many Gazans as possible.“The corporate media are quite selective when they decide who deserves our sympathy.”
Just as they prevented civilians from fleeing, the Israeli government did not permit the world’s news organizations to enter Gaza. The American media conducted incomplete coverage of the crisis without even pointing out that the Israeli government prevented them from doing their jobs. They didn’t exhort their readers and viewers to remind Israel that “the world is watching” them. There was no campaign to use Twitter as a tool to protest the killings and defend the Gazans right to live.
The United States Congress did not pass resolutions condemning the Israeli government. Neither Democrats nor Republicans exhorted then president elect Obama to speak out on behalf of the Gazans. Editorial pages did not criticize his silence and tacit approval of a truly horrific human rights violation.
In contrast, congress rushed to condemn the Iranian government, allegedly on behalf of the Iranian people. Their hypocrisy is breath taking. During the presidential campaign, Senator John McCain composed his only little ditty, “Bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran” in a horrendous disregard for human life. Now he attacks Obama for not speaking out against the government of Iran.
“The U.S. Congress’s hypocrisy is breath taking.”
Throughout 2006 and 2007 both houses of Congress passed resolutions which condemned Iran as a terrorist state and were meant to begin the process of authorizing war. Many of these same house members now claim to care, by a 405 to 1 vote margin, about the people they previously had been willing to kill.
It’s no accident why. It’s not random. The U.S. government has been funding covert operations within Iran to help destabilize Iran’s government.
Congressional leaders agreed to a request from President Bush last year to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran aimed at destabilizing Iran’s leadership. This according to a new article by veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker magazine.The operations were set out in a highly classified Presidential Finding signed by Bush which, by law, must be made known to Democratic and Republican House and Senate leaders and ranking members of the intelligence committees. The plan allowed up to $400 million in covert spending for activities ranging from supporting dissident groups to spying on Iran’s nuclear program.
According to Hersh, US Special Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq since last year. These have included seizing members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of so-called “high-value targets” who may be captured or killed.
So this major media orgasm over the protests in Iran are the culmination of what the Covert Ops people hope is a successful overthrow of the Iranian government.
That is why it’s getting so much coverage, and getting things like a 405 – 1 vote of approval by the United States Congress.
Anybody remember the way we tend to treat other protestors?
Anger Mounts After U.S. Troops Kill 13 Iraqi Protesters
Yeah, how dare they protest an illegal invasion of their country? Fuckers.
And do you think anyone in America read about this sort of thing?
“That’s the beauty of Gaza. You see a man walking, he doesn’t have to have a weapon, and you can shoot him,” one soldier told Danny Zamir, the head of the Rabin pre-military academy …
Where was all the grand twittering then?
And even though in Gaza entire villages were literally wiped off the map, our American “leaders” didn’t say a word. Their support for the war criminals of Israel was unwavering, the reality of the crimes by the Mouthpiece Media kept hidden.
As Margaret Kimberley says:
The corporate media behave in a fashion that requires us to question everything they present to us as fact.
Ain’t that the truth.
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Otherwise, we simply do not.
that the US will ever get any better. It’s the ‘liberals’ on DK that really depress me more than anything –they’re on and on about Iran, which they can’t do a damn thing about, while saying nothing about Iraq, Afghanistan, rising military, their tax $ going to Goldman Sachs, and doing very little even on their own health care –whatever— they don’t care because their ‘team’ won, right?
On Iran though–I do feel for these people, and it’s important to remember that the US caused this mess 50 years ago, just as it’s causing a 50 year or more mess in Iraq, Afghanistan etc. right F’Ing now.
I see no hope and no change, and I may turn my own attention to politics in the country I now live in instead.