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"Pay close attention to that man behind the curtain!"

Tuesday, September 07, 2004

Unbe-fucking-lievable

A Taipei Times article via The Guardian bears this nausea-inducing headline:
Liberated Iraq sends in security to silence al-Jazeera
WTF?!

There's more. The body of the article stretches even further the limits of the ability to suspend one's disbelief:
Iraqi security officers stormed al-Jazeera's Baghdad offices and sealed the newsroom with red wax on the weekend after the interim government banned the Arabic television station from broadcasting in the country.

The raid followed a decision by Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi to close the station temporarily last month because of its apparent failure to support the US occupation. Officials said al-Jazeera had now been shut indefinitely because it had ignored the original ban.

Several armed police officers were posted outside and in the lobby of Baghdad's Swan Lake Hotel, where al-Jazeera has its offices.

"We have been told not to let anyone in; we are just following orders," Captain Abu Jibal told journalists. "If you take any photos, we'll arrest you," he said.

Robert Menard of Reporters Without Borders said the ban contradicted "Iraqi officials' statements on democracy."

Other media groups, including the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, criticized the earlier ban.

Al-Jazeera said the decision was "reminiscent of the way certain other regimes have behaved." [Emphasis added]
So let's run through this once more:
* While bombs go off and people die daily, Iraq is now so "liberated" as to earn unquestioning headlines backing the propaganda.

* Even though networks like FOXNews will do it of their own volition, all news organizations are now "required" by dictator-like proclamation to support dictator-replacement puppet regimes.

* If you objectively report this very story from within "liberated" Iraq, you'll be arrested by people using excuses that echo those of WWII Nazis and American sadists.

* If you report objectively in general (i.e., without supporting the occupation), you'll be shut down.
It's 1984 all over again:
In the vast majority of cases there was no trial, no report of the arrest. People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.

- George Orwell, 1984
"Waxed" is what they're calling it now.
Posted at 12:52 PM by: [Permalink]
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