Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills): PBS' INDEPENDENT LENS

Wednesday, June 22, 2022

PBS' INDEPENDENT LENS

Stan asked if I had anything to write on TV? New TV? Not really. I've heard in e-mails that some PBS stations are in pledge drives and some people are getting some good concerts. If they have a Michael Buble concert on your local station, I highly recommend it.

Unless I'm watching reruns from the 60s or 70s, PBS is probably my go-to. I think INDEPENDENT LENS has had a really strong season this year. I like documentaries and the program covers a wide variety of topics. This year, the best, for me, was from Snoop Dogg. He produced it. It was entitled WHEN CLAUDE GOT SHOT.

So Claude Motley is a law student and he goes back home and this teenager, 15-year-old Nathan King, tries to car jack him. Instead, he shoots Claude in the fact.

That event impacts Claude and Nathan, of course, but impacts a lot of people in the area. It was a powerful documentary. I didn't pay attention to the opening credits. So when I saw Snoop's name at the end, I was pleasantly surprised.

There was also a really good one about women in India who work for the country's only women-only network. The program has a wide scope. It might be another country, it might be a domestic issue. I enjoy it. I watch live. I don't watch recorded. I'll get one of my big cups -- as the show's about to start -- fill it with ice and then pour some Pepsi in. As I'm doing this, the popcorn bag is popping in the microwave. I grab a bowl to put it in and put some jalapeno salt on it. Then rush to the TV where the program's usually just about to start.

A really good one leaves me with all these questions and explorations -- the same feeling I get when I read one of Barbara Kingsolver's novels.

Closing with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Wednesday, June 22, 2022. The persecution of Julian Assange is a war on the press and a war on the truth, Moqtada al-Sadr remains out of power, and much more.

Around the world, everyone watches as US President Joe Biden continues to persecute Julian Assange. The Geneva Press Club Tweets:

#Journalists associations, medias, editors in chief, mobilize on June 22, 11 AM CEST in Geneva to #FreeAssange @wikileaks
 after UK ordered today his extradition. In violation of #HumanRights and #pressfreedom. Sign up here

pressclub.ch

Club suisse de la presse - Geneva Press Club

7:43 AM · Jun 17, 2022

This persecution of Julian is about silencing the press. Monday April 5, 2010, WIKILEAKS released US military video of a July 12, 2007 assault in Iraq. 12 people were killed in the assault including two Reuters journalists Namie Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh. That is when the persecution begins. It was an intimidation carried out by multiple presidents starting with Barack Obama, continuing with Donald Trump and now the baton for killing the press has been handed off to Joe Biden. This has had the effect of scaring off many traditional news outlets. They once partnered with Julian to report and now they act as though they've never heard of him. Saving their own asses? They may think that. If they do, they're dead wrong. An attack on Julian is an attack on all. And if the attack on Julian is not loudly and publicly rebuked, you can be sure that next up will be THE WASHINGTON POST or THE MIAMI HERALD or some other institution -- despite the US Constitution -- the same one that's being ignored in this attack on Julian.

Jonathan Cook (DISSIDENT VOICE) details how certain press assets of the CIA in the UK delivered lies to the public as truth:

We now know, courtesy of a Yahoo News investigation, that through 2017 the CIA hatched various schemes either to assassinate Assange or to kidnap him in one of its illegal “extraordinary rendition” operations, so he could be permanently locked up in the US, out of public view.

We can surmise that the CIA also believed it needed to prepare the ground for such a rogue operation by bringing the public on board. According to Yahoo’s investigation, the CIA believed Assange’s seizure might require a gun battle on the streets of London.

It was at this point, it seems, that Cadwalladr and the Guardian were encouraged to add their own weight to the cause of further turning public opinion against Assange.

According to her witness statement, “a confidential source in [the] US” suggested – at the very time the CIA was mulling over these various plots – that she write about a supposed visit by Farage to Assange in the embassy. The story ran in the Guardian under the headline “When Nigel Farage met Julian Assange.”

In the article, Cadwalladr offers a strong hint as to who had been treating her as a confidant: the one source mentioned in the piece is “a highly placed contact with links to US intelligence”. In other words, the CIA almost certainly fed her the agency’s angle on the story.

In the piece, Cadwalladr threads together her and the CIA’s claims of “a political alignment between WikiLeaks’ ideology, UKIP’s ideology and Trump’s ideology”. Behind the scenes, she suggests, was the hidden hand of the Kremlin, guiding them all in a malign plot to fatally undermine British democracy.

She quotes her “highly placed contact” claiming that Farage and Assange’s alleged face-to-face meeting was necessary to pass information of their nefarious plot “in ways and places that cannot be monitored”.

Except of course, as her “highly placed contact” knew – and as we now know, thanks to exposes by the Grayzone website – that was a lie. In tandem with its plot to kill or kidnap Assange, the CIA illegally installed cameras inside, as well as outside, the embassy. His every move in the embassy was monitored – even in the toilet block.

The reality was that the CIA was bugging and videoing Assange’s every conversation in the embassy, even the face-to-face ones. If the CIA actually had a recording of Assange and Farage meeting and discussing a Kremlin-inspired plot, it would have found a way to make it public by now.

Far more plausible is what Farage and WikiLeaks say: that such a meeting never happened. Farage visited the embassy to try to interview Assange for his LBC radio show but was denied access. That can be easily confirmed because by then the Ecuadorian embassy was allying with the US and refusing Assange any contact with visitors apart from his lawyers.

The war on Julian is a war on the press and a war on the truth.

Kevin Gosztola discussed the issues in the video below.

US House Rep Ilhan Omar Tweets:

The prosecution of Assange is still indefensible!

Quote Tweet

Ilhan Omar

@IlhanMN

 · Dec 15, 2021

On his show @mehdirhasan makes the case for why the prosecution of Assange is indefensible. Give it a listen

4:44 PM · Jun 18, 2022

At TRUTHOUT, Marjorie Cohn notes, "This the first time the United States has prosecuted a journalist or media outlet for publishing classified information. The extradition, trial and conviction of Julian Assange would have frightening ramifications for investigative journalism. On June 17, the editorial board of The Guardian wrote, 'This action potentially opens the door for journalists anywhere in the world to be extradited to the US for exposing information deemed classified by Washington'."

Turning to Iraq, the government remains without a prime minister, without a president, all this time after the October 10th elections. Some in the western media are apparently butt hurt over getting it so wrong last fall when they praised Moqtada al-Sadr as a "kingmaker" and ran all these puff pieces on the man who leads a cult, on the man responsible for the deaths of US troops, on the man who has terrorized minority groups in Iraq, etc. If you missed it, after months of being unable to form a government, Moqtada announced he was taking his toys and going home. The 73 MPs in his bloc have resigned from Parliament.

Now the western press whores are trying to sell that as a victory.

Moqtada has a master plan! He's playing three dimensional chess! This will force everyone to bend to his will!

Dubious claims at best.

Moqtada couldn't hack and he left. Arabic social media has been addressing it for the last two weeks. The government in Iran put pressure on the KDP leadership (the Barzani family) and Moqtada was about to experience a very public break in coalition. The KDP got a huge number of votes. Without them, Moqtada was nowhere near getting enough members in his coalition to form a government.

It would have been an even bigger failure so Moqtada elected to take his toys and go home -- hoping there was a least one shred of dignity left that he could cover himself in. (There wasn't.)

So what happens now? At THE WASHINGTON POST, Renad Mansour and Benedict Robin-D’Cruz look at the prospects:

After winning last year’s election, Sadr appeared to be in the driver’s seat of Iraqi politics — and claimed to be on a path to form a majority government and sideline his main rivals, former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki and parts of the Iran-aligned Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF).

Eight months later, Sadr seems to be walking away from the government-formation process, throwing Iraqi politics into uncertain terrain.

What’s his end game? Our interviews with senior figures within Sadr’s group suggest he may now focus on leading protests against political opponents. The protest space is where Sadr has been uniquely powerful as the leader of one of the largest Islamist movements in the region, organized around his personal authority as a charismatic, religious figurehead.

For Iraq, the result now may be further political instability — and potentially another early election. But more critically, the approaching summer will put added pressures on Iraq’s government amid scorching heat and growing public anger over the lack of jobs and basic services. This summer may see a repeat of last year’s blackouts, for instance — and protests. And supply disruptions could exacerbate ongoing protests over unemployment, wages and working conditions in the public sector.

A replay of the delicate balancing act that served Sadr well in the past seems likely. He reportedly will now try to retain his influence across the government’s most powerful institutions while rallying anti-establishment protests in the streets. But will it work this time?

It's a strong piece. At last, a report at THE POST treats Nouri al-Maliki as the instrument of power he remains. I think he's a thug. My thoughts don't do a damn thing to alter the power he does and the power that he's used in 2021 and still today. It was a huge mistake for the US media to impose a blackout on Nouri in order to sell Moqtada as some form of leader. They also note -- as we've for years now -- Moqtada is not the protest leader. He controls his cult, yes. The October Revolution that emerged in 2019 was not led by him. He attempted to co-opt it and, when he failed, he began attacking them. These were young Shi'ites. Too many e-mails come into the public account that still don't grasp that point. Sunnis were not part of The October Revolution. Moqtada's hold on the average Shiite was never that strong to begin with. It's grown weaker. (As has his hold on his cult which is why he got so many fewer votes this go round. Despite ordering his cult to vote in these elections.)

So let's add to the analysis with some other basics.

Nearly 20 years after he emerged as the angry young man opposed to US forces, he's no longer young. He does not speak for the youth. Nor do they want him to. He wants to be the face of protests. He wanted that in 2019 so he tried to co-opt the movement. He realized in early 2020 that he couldn't, so he attacked the movement. By the time he was ordering them, April 2020, to not allow males and females to protest together, they were openly laughing at him and carrying protest signs that ridiculed him.

His aging out as the 'voice of youth' is not uncommon in any country. It is especially not uncommon in a country where so many have died due to the war that the median age is now is now 21-years-old.

Here's another reality he's going to have to come up against.

If he starts the protests up again, his cult will turn out, yes. Other Shi'ites? He's going to be protesting against a new government. How is that going to work this summer?

Let's say everything breaks the way they need it for Nouri's group. So in 30 days or so, they're in power. And there's Moqtada, in early August, calling them out for what they haven't done?

They will only have been in power a few weeks and the entire country is aware that it was Moqtada who, for over eight months, was unable to deliver. That it was Moqtada who finally stepped aside and quit. That had he done this earlier, a government could have been formed before the obscene summer heat hit Iraq.

Anything can hapen. But Moqtada's got a lot of negatives and they make his ability to recapture the days of 2005 much, much more difficult.

We'll wind down with this from Ms.

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