Max Blumenthal has a great piece up on Huffington pointing out that even as the cable networks and MSM endlessly reprise the video killing of Neda Agha-Soltan in Tehran, they have ignored similar cold-blooded killings during protests in the West Bank. Those videos are also available. It is, Blumenthal says, hypocrisy; and more important, it stymies the global idea of nonviolent protest.
These videos are no less outrageous than the video of Neda's death. However, to my knowledge, no outlet from the mainstream American media has ever broadcast them. And as far as I know, no cable news program, including liberal-leaning shows like Olbermann and Maddow, have never even mentioned the non-violent protests in Bi'lin and Ni'ilin, or Israel's brutal response. The videos remain unseen by America eyes. The struggles of Bi'lin and Ni'lin do not even play in Peoria.
Direct action protest tactics only work if the brutal responses they provoke are recorded by influential media sources and projected to sympathetic audiences across the world. MLK's tactics in Selma would not have succeeded had he not been accompanied by camera crews ready to broadcast images of racist savagery to outraged Northern white liberals. The outpouring of American public sympathy for Iranian demonstrators might never have occurred had cable news outlets not made the courageous decision to broadcast Neda's killing vividly and repeatedly.
Yet when Palestinians employ direct action tactics to protest Israeli oppression, and when Israeli forces respond with wanton brutality, they are ignored by the US media, even when footage is already available through online sources.
The difference is Iranians are a legitimate movement and the Arabs calling themselves Palestinians are not. Even if you manage to convince enough politicians that American interests lie in appeasing Islamic totalitarianism American people will not buy into it. All this flawed speculation on how the narrative is changing is wishful thinking. Americans are good people that will not buy into the fact that you support what is arguably the ugliest society ever created. All the grasping at straws and militant activism is doing nothing but making you look shallow and ignorant.
The American Zionist Council (AIPAC's predecessor, funded by the Israeli government) prohibited showing videos like that in the United States. Advertiser boycotts and investor relations nightmares would ensue immediately. The plan is nearly a half century old but its impact may be seen everywhere in the US establishment media: from reporters like Andrea Mitchell Greenspan shouting out demands about when Dennis Ross would be appointed the Iran point person, to video absences on Olberman: http://www.irmep.org/ila/AZC2/default.asp
During the civil rights period, the conventional press "ignored" thousands of marches, favoring the ones led by celebrities.
spot on, which is why it makes me so glad that we're no longer have to rely on the MSM for news
I can't find blumenthal's blog on huffington. Has it been taken down.? How long was it up for?
Good to see something like that on Huffington, yes so true. It really annoys me to read the likes of Michael Moore say that the Palestinians should try non violent protests and get away with it without people pointing out how wrong that statement is (I suspect he is another PEP) The crazy thing is that of course they have for years and not only has it done nothing to change their position, it hasn't even been reported in the US MSM
Many books have been written about the tremendous role of the MSM, including the major TV network news channels, in advancing the cause of the civil rights movement. Many are easily available on Amazon. I lived in Chicago at the time and coverage was loud and extensive and did not depend on celebrities. How does your point offset Phil's comparison, one between orchestrated publicity on a national level on one hand, and orchestrated silence on the other? Why do you try to diminish this big picture comparison, Witty? Does the current conventional press "ignore" the imprisoned Palestinian protests (where you really can't march around much), favoring the ones led by (Hollywood cowed )celebrities in favor of their just cause? You are a real joke.
You have to follow the link above. Somehow true, it doesn't show up on the main site.
Yet he did dedicate a book to Rachel Corrie. That's more publicity than our entire MSM and Congress gave us on that affair, swept under the rug like the USS Liberty, when Israel learned it could do what it wanted with US citizens.
This is a small point: Blumenthal's blog is not on Huffington. You can get to it through mondoweiss, but not if you log onto huffington. Is there something going on here?
I did find the Blumenthal post on Huffington. It is under the World tab under Recent posts, at the very end. It has one comment. I suspect it was up for maybe 3 seconds.
For two weeks national news has been dominated by the Iranian disputed election and the protests it ignited. The coup in Honduras, performed by US trained generals, received less than thirty seconds of coverage.
I don't think the Selma comparison makes sense, because Selma was a domestic issue, whereas protests in Palestine and Iran aren't. Also, who really expects objectivity from Olbermann and Maddow on issues relating to Israel, when the best we could expect is spin?
I don't see "orchestrated silence" relative to Palestine. I read a great deal of press on Israel/Palestine issues and mostly from critical perspectives and in the New York Times, Washington Post. The same was said very widely about the mass media in the late 50's and early 60's, that it intentionally ignored stories that were inconvenient for them politically. It wasn't as romantic a time as Phil refers. (He should ask his mother about press coverage of the civil rights movement. Maybe I'm wrong.) The effective civil rights efforts had SPECIFIC and articulated goals, same as the satyagraha movements in India. The Palestine solidarity movement is not that defined. Its angry (taking the lead from many Palestinians and many dissenters), more than it is politically focused and effective.
If Zucker were boss at the time and believed that coverage of Selma would result in a massive defection of advertisers from NBC, Olbermann and Maddow would have avoided the Selma story, as they ignore the atrocities committed by Israel against Palestinians, today.
There were multiple "marches in Selma". Most notably they had a specific agenda, voting rights. And, because the agenda was unequivocally just, and the means adopted were unequivocally just, and the language that leaders used to describe their goals was kind, the movement attracted a great deal of sympathy. They didn't throw rocks for example. They simply and willingly put their bodies and reputations at risk. And, it took a long time to achieve even the specific objectives.
Ever since I criticized her fancy man, Mort Zuckerman, Arianna refuses to post my comments on issues related to the Middle East. That doesn't prevent me from trying to score a post, from time to time. At this moment, my comment on Max's piece is still in her pending box.
MSNBC (Maddow and Olbermann’s network) is majority owned by NBC Universal, which is 80% owned by GE, which makes a lot of jet engines for US military aircraft. But according to Wikipedia, “over half of GE's revenue is derived from financial services, [so] it is arguably a financial company with a manufacturing arm.” http://www.newsweek.com/id/190363 The recent Democratic presidential campaign, and Obama, were heavily financed by the financial services industry. ( http://www.newsweek.com/id/190363 ) TARP funds were recently recycled through banks back to politicians and the two-party regime. http://www.newsweek.com/id/190363
I actually agree with Witty that the mainstream press largely avoided covering the civil rights movement except for a few watershed moments–Birmingham 1963 and Selma 1965, primarily. I disagree with this: "The effective civil rights efforts had SPECIFIC and articulated goals, same as the satyagraha movements in India. The Palestine solidarity movement is not that defined. Its angry (taking the lead from many Palestinians and many dissenters), more than it is politically focused and effective." Actually, the civil rights movement was full of quarrels over strategy, tactics, who to take the lead from, etc. You had the conservative, anti-demonstration NAACP, the SCLC, SNCC (who worked with King but often accused SCLC of being celebrity-focused and not forceful enough), the MFDP, CORE, etc., etc. There was a lot of debate over what exactly the political goals were, a lot of debate over whether, for example, to support President Johnson b/c of the 1964 Voting Rights Act or to push for more, whether to try to get the MFDP seated or whether such political action was a waste of time, whether classroom integration, symbolic gestures like freedom rides and sit-ins, or voting registration should be the focus of the movement, etc. Movement building is messy, and when your facing great injustice, it involves dealing with anger. The fact that Witty sees anger when he looks at Palestinians and not when he looks at the Civil Rights movement is, in part, the effect of white America's watering down of the Civil Rights movement into, effectively, King's "I Have a Dream Speech" and then the bills pushed by a white president. I'd recommend Taylor Branch's three part history if you'd like to get a more in-depth look at this, he does a great job of covering media response to the movement.
Again, Witty, you are reporting a watered-down, ahistorical vision of the civil rights movement. I'd really recommend Taylor Branch's three part history to give you a more in-depth understanding of the movement.
The only point I made is that disturbances on American streets are not comparable to trouble in a foreign land, at least from an American perspective. I'm familiar with Selma, and I also understand that much of the civil rights movement in the South was heavily orchestrated, whether it was just or not. Rosa Parks wasn't a random washer-woman, and the media coverage of the movement fed off violent images to the point that it is a falacy to even call the movement a truly non-violent movement from any standpoint.
I have watched Maddow only a few times, but every time I see her she advocates for the killing of villagers in Afghanistan and Pakistan by US drones. The drones probably have many GE components in them.
Witty, I have to second David's comment here (and above — which you don't seem to have processed). Your version of the American civil rights movement is the version we all learn in 5th grade. The reality is different. The activists were inspired by a basic injustice, but their notions of what the proper remedy would be — and how to achieve it — were all over the map. The same is true in Palestine. Let me re-print David's line from above, because I really feel you ought ot read it and consider it before offering a knee-jerk response: "The fact that Witty sees anger when he looks at Palestinians and not when he looks at the Civil Rights movement is, in part, the effect of white America's watering down of the Civil Rights movement into, effectively, King's "I Have a Dream Speech" and then the bills pushed by a white president."
Zucker is on the list of U.S. billionaires, 48% of whom are Jewish, according to this: http://www.topix.com/forum/afam/TCEL6H6L79C279EVA
To this day, there are people who view their local, and largely unknown, organizers as more important than MLK. It makes sense, because many on the local level pre-dated King, and like you said, they had different goals and tactics–largely because they experienced different conditions locally.
New Neda Docu Eyewitnesses deny Basij involvement. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9ctZ5nn5CE&eu...
Would you have opposed suits against members of the Klan during the Civil Rights era as too "negative"? How about suits against local officials who aided and abetted murders of integrationists and civil rights workers? Would you have opposed the Montgomery bus boycott as negative and not articulating a clear enough grand vision? How about the lunch counter sit-ins? Would you have derided these, as you did the Free Gaza movement, as a "clever tactic," and then wondered out loud what the response of local law enforcement should be if the response was more "rioting" (what all of the Southern politicians referred to demonstrations and marches as, btw)?
A demonstration is a communication. There were some that were angry clearly in the civil rights movements, particularly later, when everyone under the sun that had actually accomplished anything was branded an "uncle Tom". The work of labor organizers, lawyers, non-violent civil disobedients focused on a specific issue and the general confidence that that engendered, was the difference between the federal government having the scope to enforce existing legislation and construct new legislation in conformance with the Supreme Court decisions. To the extent that civil disobedience diverted from limited specific undeniable goals, applying non-violent means, they DELAYED their liberation. Thankfully, the riots of 66 – 69 occurred AFTER the civil rights legislation had passed.
I'd respond to this, but King already did, in his letter from the Birmingham jail. Nothing makes you into a hypocrite quicker then wagging your finger at an oppressed group from afar and telling them that their tactics are hurting their goals.
You are just so spot-on on this topic, David. I think you've gotten to the heart of Why Witty drives so many crazy on this site: the standard that he holds every post/comment on this site to ("You're not showing respect for the Israeli side!") would have been ludicrous if applied to the civil rights movement — and it is ludicrous now. Sure, there's a need for mutual respect and all of that. But the heart of this issue is a flagrant injustice that needs attention — the same way the plight of blacks in the South once needed attention.
Mah man Witty is right. We never jabbed at da Man in anyway! Never did nutin' no riots, no harm to a single tow hair.
It's Jake in Jerusalem incognito!
Wow, Iranian state TV found people that deny that Basij killed Neda! You're such a sad, brainwashed little person, Marion. You spit on the scores killed and thousands arrested in Iran with every post you make here, and you have the gall to claim to care about Palestinian human rights. As a Palestine activist and an Iranian human rights activist, I would rather stand alone at every rally/march/protest/civil disobedience than have an ignorant, arrogant, illiterate piece of American trash like you standing next to me. You prove to me that we brown people have to stand alone in our struggles for human rights, and that we can't expect any help from idiot anglos who use our causes as an outlet for their conspiracy theories and free-floating angst.
Swept under the rug? Corrie commited acccidental suicide. The driver was declared innocent. The Liberty? Every official investigation cleared Israel. You can lie all you'd like about it. Real americans know.
wake up, your comment tells me that you do not believe in the concept of innocent until proven guilty unless it involves those who you feel a with camaraderie with… Not that I am in support of the Basij, but I would like to know what facts or evidence do you have that Neda was killed by a Basij? The two interviewed by Press TV were the driver that took Neda to the hospital and the Music teacher that was accompanying her…And they did not look to me like they had been coerced into lying by Press TV…. I am interested in truth and justice wake up, as well as human rights ..For me they go hand in hand… .
to quote or misquote jimi hendrix "when the power of love is stronger than the love of power then there will be peace"
Evidence? The same evidence that we have that Palestinians who were murdered in Jenin were killed by Israeli soldiers or that refugees killed in Sabra and Shatila were murdered by Israeli-backed Christian militamen. L-O-G-I-C. The only people that were seen, photographed ad nauseum, documented in every possible way carrying firearms and using live rounds during the events of the past couple weeks in Iran were members of the State security apparatus: police, pasdaran, or Basij. If I am walking outside in a thunderstorm and I get wet, Marion would probably say that I should assume it is equally likely that I got wet because someone threw a bucket of water on my head, and that I should wait until the jury of clouds provides a definite verdict. Neda was not the only person killed. What kind of evidence more solid that what has emerged are you expecting from a battlefield? Have you ever been to a war zone or a site of State brutality against unarmed civilians or do you just stay in your cave all day? You don't care about truth and justice at all, and you are a charlatan like the leftists who supported the USSR and and destroyed the freedom seeking forces in Spain by attacking the anarchists instead of uniting against the fascists. Please leave my country alone, you and the rest of your ilk. Americans have brought nothing but harm for Iran. You destroyed Mosaddeq in 1953, supported decades of dictatorship, gave arms to Iraq to use against Iranian civilians, and punished the population of Iran for decades through sanctions. Now, when Iranians are fighting against government brutality, Americans on the right who 5 minutes ago were chanting "Bomb Iran" are giving backhanded support to the brave protesters. And Americans on the left are apologizing for a dictator in the same manner they did for the Shah. You're all the same: stupid, uncultured, and unworthy of your worldwide empire. You should all shut up and leave the rest of the world, about which you monolingual apes know absolutely nothing, alone. I'm so goddamn sick of Americans.
The point is relative effectiveness. If you cling to an approach that alienates and/or wars, you will HINDER Palestinian upliftment while thinking that you are in noble solidarity.
Do you feel better now that you got your little temper tantrum out of the way? Are you helping your cause by alienating 300 million Americans, calling them all "stupid, uncultured" and "monolingual apes?" I don't know who shot Neda; it could have been the Basij, or a foreign infiltrator, or her ex-boyfriend for that matter. And the fact is that you don't know either: if you really cared about "truth and justice," as you sanctimoniously state, you'd defer judgement until you knew for sure.
Damn straight I feel better. Someone needs to tell you how little the rest of the world cares what you Americans think and the ten cent theories you spin in your heads about parts of the world you have never been to and don't understand. It is hella cathartic, believe me, for people who have been brutalized and patronized by Americans to give all your 300 million sanctimonious asses the virtual finger.
One day, Ana, the democratic forces that are just beginning to truly feel their power in Iran today, will be victorious, and Iran will be free again. The same democratic forces that brought Mohammad Ali Shah to his knees in 1909, that forced Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to flee his country in 1953 before being reinstated by the US and Britain, the same forces that brought the accursed regime down for good in 1979 and fought to establish a republic, before reactionary elements seized control of the revolution and used a manufactured hostage crisis and a war to justify robbing the people of the rights they had died to earn. That day will come sooner or later, and it will coincide with the waning of the power of the American empire. And one day in the not too distant future, when another one of your vigilante ex-servants like Osama Bin Laden blows up another one of your cities, we'll mourn the loss of life but we won't hold any more candlelight vigils for you. Because we'll remember that every single time we fought and died to establish the human rights that you pay so much lip service to, you were on the wrong side.
I'm American. Wake up is probably 99% correct if not 100% correct. American anti-culture, stupidity and addiction to violence has been a disgusting, global scourge. Al qaida had a perfect right to attack the US and it would be absolutely no loss to the world were America obliterated. This country was always a gigantic mistake.
LOL! Yes, yes, and the council of foxes declared the fox innocent of last night's raid on the chicken house, despite the feathers between his teeth, the blood on his fur, and the chicken bones they found in his den.
The main difference I see is in the size of the population. Civil rights required in the US took mobilization of a nation many sizes larger than I-P, and the population that united in consensus to demand equal rights was large enough to make such a demand. Relative numbers do make a difference. Maybe it will take huge numbers of people going to Palestine to achieve such equality in the I-P. Or maybe there are other ways of reaching that goal. Support the movement to boycott Israel, divest from Israel and sanction Israel.
Yeah, we know.
Me too; I don't necessarily disagree with you and Wake Up, however, just so we have a clearer picture of the standard being used–what country and/or its people furnishes an example worthy to follow from past or present history?
Little boy, you've got to tell Daddy to stop letting you play video games all day. It makes you sound crazy. And get out of the trailer you've been stuck in all through high school. Interaction with human beings unlike yourself might help you develop a neuron or two.
wake up, the fact that you are automatically assuming I am an Anglo American Leftist charlatan tells me a lot about how nonobjective and therefore very wrong you are….
Eric Walberg's take on Iran: June was a busy month for two of Washington’s real ‘Axis of Evil’. Venezuela’s Chavez completed his nationalisation of oil and Iran’s Ahmedinejad stemmed a Western-backed colour revolution, leaving both bad boys in place, muses Eric Walberg http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/search/label/er...
I'm not sure that numbers do make a difference. Why should a massive number of Americans have to change the situation, when a tiny number created and sustained it? Change at home would solve the problem. Besides, the civil rights comparison doesn't work. Blacks in the U.S. were second-class citizens who were denied equal treatment under the law. Israel, along with heavy support from largely American Jews, is making WAR on Palestinians with the intent on driving them off their land, or killing them.
I'd be curious to know what the results would be if someone honestly compared and contrasted Israel's treatment of Palestinians with America's civil rights era/ Jim Crow treatment of blacks. I guess we could start by admitting that Americans exploited blacks, where Israelis just want to get rid of and dispossess Palestinians. The South is also much larger and was less centralized than Israel, and conditions varied much more on the local level. Northern treatment of blacks wasn't much to brag about, either. I would also bet that percentage-wise, if not in actual number, far more Palestinians have been killed or physically harmed for being Palestinians in Israel than blacks were killed or harmed in the South due to race over any 60 year period. Blacks who didn't rock the boat were also largely left alone as second-class citizens, where Palestinians are largely military targets for extermination or expulsion, no matter what they do.
Maybe you're a Taiwanese/Russian fascist? Doesn't make a difference to me. My point is, the only people I have met in the past two weeks that have been willing to say to my face that my brothers and sisters who braved death in streets all over Iran were part of a U.S. engineered color revolution are either 1) Pakistani or Lebanese Shiite seminary students who have pictures of Khamenei in their living rooms and 2) "anglo-american leftist charlatans." (who are of course not leftist at all) Not a scientific survey, I admit, and I never claimed objectivity when it came to the subject of my innocent countrymen being beaten, jailed, and murdered. Maybe if you had a country you loved as much as I love mine you could understand this feeling.
Jewish distortions of news reporting and scholarship are nothing new, and Americans need an honest discussion of Jewish obfuscation that goes beyond Israel-Palestine issues or the Holocaust. Jewish, Christian, and Palestinian Holidays provides an example of the refusal by the eminent 19th century Jewish scholar Jacob Bernays simply to face the facts. Such behavior may be the defining characteristic of Jewish culture since the 19th century.
Of course, the anti-Mossadegh protests certainly WERE engineered by the US, so it's not like the concept is far-fetched or without precedent.