Tuesday, June 16, 2009
UNCENSORED NEWSPAPERS IN THE ANGLOSPHERE #2 OF 2 - ASIA TIMES
Asia Times is a Hong Kong based free market supporting online newspaper. Where the Morning Star (#1 mentioned yesterday) is a communist newspaper newspaper with very limited circulation through normal distributors. I think it is clear they are both, on several but several different levels, beyond the boundaries of the Anglosphere media.
They have published these letters:
Rashid Hassan [letter, Jun 22] says "the British understand and respect only one language - outright defeat or victory in the conflict field. In relation to Afghanistan there is a special problem. The Brits are there with the very specific motivation of avenging the century-old defeats at the hands of Afghans." As a Brit may I say that I think we understand a few other things. The only avenging we went there for was [September 11, 2001]. If we were willing to give up running India 59 years ago it is improbable that we, or anybody else, would seek the very unprofitable task of running Afghanistan for any reason other than to stop the locals attacking other countries. Which [was] also the reason back when we had an empire.
Neil Craig (Jun 25, '07) See I am not against all British wars only the evil ones. This was not a letter copied to them but a direct response to reading Mr Hassan's
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[Re The end of the post-Cold War era, Aug 13] The alleged "uni-polar world", ie, where everybody does what America says, is dead and buried. That is the lesson of the Georgian war. In mid-July the US sent 1,000 troops in a "training exercise" of the Georgian army. Presumably not unrelated to what that army was training for.
In 1995, US and British officers trained and de facto commanded our Croatian ... allies in the extermination of the 250,000-strong Krajina community. Ossetia was clearly meant to be a re-run of this. Instead, the Russians were able to annihilate their army in four days of combat and the Americans, despite encouraging [Georgia], were useless. Georgia may have been weak, but a counterattack in response to a surprise attack is not easy. Big countries can bungle in military matters, as Stalin proved in 1939 in his war against Finland.
Nor can we, with the experience of Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, make any credible complaint about not respecting national sovereignty or "excessive bombing". We live on the same planet as Russia and we have to live together. For that we actively need to embrace international law.
The NATO countries have been at the forefront of saying that international law doesn't exist and it is perfectly OK for big countries and alliances to invade smaller ones. The Russians noted NATO's support of the "cleansing" of the Serb enclaves in Croatia (on which Georgia's actions were clearly patterned) and of our bombing of Yugoslavia to seize Kosovo. We have sown that wind and cannot expect, not merely Russia, but anybody, to allow us to be a referee enforcing rules that we have already torn up. In fact, the Russians have gone to some lengths to merely bend laws that we have previously broken. Law is not a luxury but a necessity for any society and as the world gets smaller adherence to international law becomes ever more vital. We should work with the Russians and everybody else to strengthen such law and establish consistent and relatively impartial rules on ethnic sovereignty (and many other causes of disputes) and then to keep them. The alternative is what happened in August 1914 but with modern weapons.
Neil Craig (Aug 14, '08)
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It is not often that the first anniversary of the publication of a bureaucrat's biography deserves discussion, however this is one. A year ago Carla del Ponte, the chief prosecutor of the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal published her biography. In it she confirmed having, eight years previously, investigated reports from Western journalists that the [Kosovo Liberation Army] KLA, had kidnapped and dissected, while still alive, at least 1,300 Serb teenagers and that the presumably tens of thousands of body parts had been flown out of Tirana airports to Western destinations.
Her team had indeed found a building where 300 of these murders took place together with forensic evidence proving this atrocity. Then she stopped the investigation. Since then there have been further investigations proving that such dissections were more extensive than thought and still going on. The European Union even appointed a lawyer to look into the matter.
Over the last year we have seen lead writers and front page articles denouncing the Chinese government for their "heavy handed" breaking up of riots in Tibet in which less than two dozen died, most of them ethnic Chinese. We have seen headlines and denunciations of Russia's action which prevented a Georgian attempt to "ethnically cleanse" the entire South Ossetian population. We have seen massive reporting of the Israeli war against Hamas in which about 800 people died, overwhelmingly Hamas combatants. How shameful that atrocities worse in numbers, infinitely worse in cruelty and forming only a part of the crimes carried out under a North Atlantic Treaty Organization authority have gone virtually entirely unreported by the British Press and broadcasters.
Neil Craig (Apr 1,'09)
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Why has there been relatively little media coverage of the deaths in Sri Lanka when Gaza got front-page treatment for weeks? Perhaps because it is further away or because it is difficult for the media to portray it in terms of "goodies versus baddies".
Neil Craig (May 6,'09) Note how sending this to A was an afterthought to sending it to the conventional Anglosphere press - Sri lanka is further away from Britain but not from Asia. On the other hand they cut out the bulk of the letter which took the comparison on to Yugoslavia
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[Re A reality check on Iran and the 'bomb' , Feb 28] Dear Editor, One explanation of [UK Minister of Justice] Jack Straw's decision that the public should not know of the British cabinet's discussions preceding the Iraq war is that politicians everywhere are becoming more concerned that they may, in future, be held to account for apparent war crimes ... This concern for future justice may also explain why, though our government made public the US Attorney General's advice on the legality of the Iraq War, they have refused to make public advice on the legality of whether the apparently even more dubious bombing of Yugoslavia was lawful or criminal ...
Many things happened in Kosovo under our [the UK's] occupation, such as the numerous massacres of civilians, the ethnic cleansing of 350,000; the kidnap of tens of thousands of schoolgirls (and boys) and their sale to Western brothels and the kidnap and dissection of at least 1,300 Serbian teens and their sale, in bits, to our hospitals ... It is unfortunate and almost inexplicable that these atrocities, some of them at least matching any act of Adolf Hitler, have gone essentially unreported by our media. Meanwhile, many innocent people, like the popular moderate Bosnian Muslim politician Fikret Abdic, whose only "crimes" were to support the survival of a multicultural state and to oppose the press gangs of al-Qaeda - then our convenient allies - languishes in jail.
Neil Craig (Mar 2,'09) same letter published by the Morning Star but nobody else
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Not as many as the Star but I didn't send them as many.
What we have here is what is called in experimental terms a "control group". The 2 papers outside the NATO's control area have published several letters about acts of genocide where the facts are essentially undisputed.
With the exception of a few of my less detailed letters "our" media, both in Britain & America have 100% refused to publish. On statistical grounds this cannot possibly be coincidence. On statistical grounds any newspaper which was not censoring to cover up genocide would have wished to publish several letters also. Therefore this is deliberate fascist censorship.
It is therefore not only assumed but proven as a cold hard fact that the entire MSM in Britain & the USA are willing to censor absolutely any fact, not just in news columns but in what are meant to be "reader's letters" in support of absolutely any lie no matter how obscene, racist, corrupt or pro-Nazi. hat all of them are deliberately complicit in promoting fascism & genocide.
And today we are being told that the Iranian election was dodgy in exactly the same way these Nazi liars said about the Ukrainian & Georgian ones.
I think everybody should read overseas newspapers online regularly. It puts in perspective what we are told & Kipling's "And what should they know of England who only England know?" applies with even greater force to what we know of what the British & American media tell us.
They have published these letters:
Rashid Hassan [letter, Jun 22] says "the British understand and respect only one language - outright defeat or victory in the conflict field. In relation to Afghanistan there is a special problem. The Brits are there with the very specific motivation of avenging the century-old defeats at the hands of Afghans." As a Brit may I say that I think we understand a few other things. The only avenging we went there for was [September 11, 2001]. If we were willing to give up running India 59 years ago it is improbable that we, or anybody else, would seek the very unprofitable task of running Afghanistan for any reason other than to stop the locals attacking other countries. Which [was] also the reason back when we had an empire.
Neil Craig (Jun 25, '07) See I am not against all British wars only the evil ones. This was not a letter copied to them but a direct response to reading Mr Hassan's
-------------------------
[Re The end of the post-Cold War era, Aug 13] The alleged "uni-polar world", ie, where everybody does what America says, is dead and buried. That is the lesson of the Georgian war. In mid-July the US sent 1,000 troops in a "training exercise" of the Georgian army. Presumably not unrelated to what that army was training for.
In 1995, US and British officers trained and de facto commanded our Croatian ... allies in the extermination of the 250,000-strong Krajina community. Ossetia was clearly meant to be a re-run of this. Instead, the Russians were able to annihilate their army in four days of combat and the Americans, despite encouraging [Georgia], were useless. Georgia may have been weak, but a counterattack in response to a surprise attack is not easy. Big countries can bungle in military matters, as Stalin proved in 1939 in his war against Finland.
Nor can we, with the experience of Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, make any credible complaint about not respecting national sovereignty or "excessive bombing". We live on the same planet as Russia and we have to live together. For that we actively need to embrace international law.
The NATO countries have been at the forefront of saying that international law doesn't exist and it is perfectly OK for big countries and alliances to invade smaller ones. The Russians noted NATO's support of the "cleansing" of the Serb enclaves in Croatia (on which Georgia's actions were clearly patterned) and of our bombing of Yugoslavia to seize Kosovo. We have sown that wind and cannot expect, not merely Russia, but anybody, to allow us to be a referee enforcing rules that we have already torn up. In fact, the Russians have gone to some lengths to merely bend laws that we have previously broken. Law is not a luxury but a necessity for any society and as the world gets smaller adherence to international law becomes ever more vital. We should work with the Russians and everybody else to strengthen such law and establish consistent and relatively impartial rules on ethnic sovereignty (and many other causes of disputes) and then to keep them. The alternative is what happened in August 1914 but with modern weapons.
Neil Craig (Aug 14, '08)
-----------------------
It is not often that the first anniversary of the publication of a bureaucrat's biography deserves discussion, however this is one. A year ago Carla del Ponte, the chief prosecutor of the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal published her biography. In it she confirmed having, eight years previously, investigated reports from Western journalists that the [Kosovo Liberation Army] KLA, had kidnapped and dissected, while still alive, at least 1,300 Serb teenagers and that the presumably tens of thousands of body parts had been flown out of Tirana airports to Western destinations.
Her team had indeed found a building where 300 of these murders took place together with forensic evidence proving this atrocity. Then she stopped the investigation. Since then there have been further investigations proving that such dissections were more extensive than thought and still going on. The European Union even appointed a lawyer to look into the matter.
Over the last year we have seen lead writers and front page articles denouncing the Chinese government for their "heavy handed" breaking up of riots in Tibet in which less than two dozen died, most of them ethnic Chinese. We have seen headlines and denunciations of Russia's action which prevented a Georgian attempt to "ethnically cleanse" the entire South Ossetian population. We have seen massive reporting of the Israeli war against Hamas in which about 800 people died, overwhelmingly Hamas combatants. How shameful that atrocities worse in numbers, infinitely worse in cruelty and forming only a part of the crimes carried out under a North Atlantic Treaty Organization authority have gone virtually entirely unreported by the British Press and broadcasters.
Neil Craig (Apr 1,'09)
-------------------------------
Why has there been relatively little media coverage of the deaths in Sri Lanka when Gaza got front-page treatment for weeks? Perhaps because it is further away or because it is difficult for the media to portray it in terms of "goodies versus baddies".
Neil Craig (May 6,'09) Note how sending this to A was an afterthought to sending it to the conventional Anglosphere press - Sri lanka is further away from Britain but not from Asia. On the other hand they cut out the bulk of the letter which took the comparison on to Yugoslavia
-------------------------------
[Re A reality check on Iran and the 'bomb' , Feb 28] Dear Editor, One explanation of [UK Minister of Justice] Jack Straw's decision that the public should not know of the British cabinet's discussions preceding the Iraq war is that politicians everywhere are becoming more concerned that they may, in future, be held to account for apparent war crimes ... This concern for future justice may also explain why, though our government made public the US Attorney General's advice on the legality of the Iraq War, they have refused to make public advice on the legality of whether the apparently even more dubious bombing of Yugoslavia was lawful or criminal ...
Many things happened in Kosovo under our [the UK's] occupation, such as the numerous massacres of civilians, the ethnic cleansing of 350,000; the kidnap of tens of thousands of schoolgirls (and boys) and their sale to Western brothels and the kidnap and dissection of at least 1,300 Serbian teens and their sale, in bits, to our hospitals ... It is unfortunate and almost inexplicable that these atrocities, some of them at least matching any act of Adolf Hitler, have gone essentially unreported by our media. Meanwhile, many innocent people, like the popular moderate Bosnian Muslim politician Fikret Abdic, whose only "crimes" were to support the survival of a multicultural state and to oppose the press gangs of al-Qaeda - then our convenient allies - languishes in jail.
Neil Craig (Mar 2,'09) same letter published by the Morning Star but nobody else
#############################
Not as many as the Star but I didn't send them as many.
What we have here is what is called in experimental terms a "control group". The 2 papers outside the NATO's control area have published several letters about acts of genocide where the facts are essentially undisputed.
With the exception of a few of my less detailed letters "our" media, both in Britain & America have 100% refused to publish. On statistical grounds this cannot possibly be coincidence. On statistical grounds any newspaper which was not censoring to cover up genocide would have wished to publish several letters also. Therefore this is deliberate fascist censorship.
It is therefore not only assumed but proven as a cold hard fact that the entire MSM in Britain & the USA are willing to censor absolutely any fact, not just in news columns but in what are meant to be "reader's letters" in support of absolutely any lie no matter how obscene, racist, corrupt or pro-Nazi. hat all of them are deliberately complicit in promoting fascism & genocide.
And today we are being told that the Iranian election was dodgy in exactly the same way these Nazi liars said about the Ukrainian & Georgian ones.
I think everybody should read overseas newspapers online regularly. It puts in perspective what we are told & Kipling's "And what should they know of England who only England know?" applies with even greater force to what we know of what the British & American media tell us.
