Tuesday, July 17, 2012

The Lies Already Started On U.S. Navy Murder Of Indian Fisherman

U.S. and lackey U.K. media are already parroting (without doing any investigating) the U.S. Navy's version of why it shot up an Indian fishing boat off the coast of Dubai.

The USN claims a small boat was charging straight at it, ignored "repeated" warnings, including warning shots, and that the Navy had no choice but to fire a machine gun at the boat, killing one and wounding several more people.

Interestingly, the NY Times and UK Independent published basically identical versions. Both omitted any details about what these alleged "warnings" consisted of, except for the "warning shots." ["Navy Ship Fires on Boat in the Persian Gulf," NY Times, and "US Navy insists it had no option after killing 'fisherman' in Gulf," The Independent  UK. Love the skeptical quotes around fisherman.]

Now you can already smell a rat. Why would a fishing boat keep sailing toward a Navy ship in the teeth of bullets being fired at it? (The "warning shots.")

Go to Aljazeera, and a very different picture emerges. ["India seeks action over UAE boat shooting."]

For one thing, the Aljazeera article is centered around the Indian Government's call for an investigation and contacting the U.S. Government.

There's no mention of this in the "Western" story.

Aljazeera also did something very strange- they actually interviewed the survivors from the fishing boat. The survivors claim that there were no warning shots. Aljazeera also gives details omitted from the Western media version about what the other "warnings" were- broadcasts on radio in loudspeaker (in Indian? probably not!) and flashing lights. So you're supposed to know that "flashing lights" means "run for you life!"

Another significant detail omitted by Western media- the fishing boat was 8 km away when the Navy opened lethal fire. And this is what the U.S. Navy said, so we see a deliberate cover-up already by the swine at the NY Times et al. We're not exactly talking imminent danger here.

One more telling detail, kept secret by the Imperialist press: after shooting up the fishing boat, the U.S. Navy craft just sailed away. The victims were on their own. (Isn't that always the case for victims of the U.S.? That's just standard operating procedure.)

The New York Times, while not bothering to mention any of this, did have plenty of space to rehash the U.S.S. Cole bombing in Aden harbor (which occurred over a decade ago). And to stoke paranoia about Iranian patrol boats and Iranian belligerence [sic] generally. (By the way, Hillary Clinton is in Israel to conspire against Iran right now.) This is a sleazy way to justify in a backhanded way the murder of the Indian fisherman, by referencing the attack on the Cole. With a similar logic, one can justify shooting black men in the U.S. by police since some black men are armed criminals! Hey, there's a little boat. A little boat once blew a hole in a U.S. ship. Better open fire! (Just as U.S. cops make the streets of American dangerous places, so the U.S. Navy makes the world's seas dangerous places.)

While dredging up the Cole incident, the NYT said nothing about the murderous U.S. Navy shootdown of that Iranian civilian airliner during the Reagan regime, however. Some things must never be forgotten, and some things must never be remembered. This is called "objective journalism."

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