Deep Blade Journal

Rice’s “all-night negotiations” back in November proving meaningless

Israel mercilessly is punishing Gaza farmers but the headline is “Qaeda Is In Gaza” (no mention of the farmers in the CBS News story except in the caption)

Hundreds of stories on “indications about a presence of al-Qaeda in Gaza”, but only 26 about, “Agriculture in the Gaza Strip is on the verge of collapse as Israel’s economic stranglehold starts to bite”

The punishment of the Palestinian people for their democratic choice of Hamas as parliamentary majority is in high gear, with the complicity of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who is spreading what amounts to a rumor that “al-Qaida has infiltrated the occupied territories”.

Now Israel is flexing its domination in order to ensure that Palestinian economic benefits from the settler pull-out during 2005 cannot be realized, especially under the new Hamas government. At a critical time for export of produce to Europe, Israel is keeping the Karni cargo crossing closed, citing terrorism concerns. The BBC reports,

Israel has kept the crossing closed for nine straight days due to security concerns, officials say.

Palestinians describe the closure as collective punishment, while the UN says it has caused severe shortages.

“This is getting to precarious levels,” said David Shearer, head of the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, in an interview with Reuters news agency.

Stocks of wheat, sugar and cooking oil could begin to run out within days, the UN said on Wednesday.

“We had already informed the merchants that Karni would open,” said the Palestinian official in charge of the border, Salim Abu Safiyeh.

“The continued closure is causing humanitarian and economic harm,” he said.

Palestinian farmers had been planning to dump hundreds of tonnes of spoiled produce that they would normally have exported through Karni crossing.

Our liberal media here in America has just about zero interest in looking at the Gaza story as about anything other than terrorism.

Our liberal media

This struck me today, as it did Media Matters, in reporting about the newly released video of the dire briefing President Bush received prior to Hurricane Katrina:

MEDIA MATTERS: On March 2, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today reported on newly released video footage and transcripts documenting how, on the day before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, President Bush was warned — and expressed concern — about the possibility that the levees in New Orleans would be breached by the storm. But none of these reports mentioned that these new tapes further contradict the claim Bush made on ABC’s Good Morning America several days after the storm hit that “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.”

Heavens, the statement the president made about no anticipation of breach was always obviously untrue. But no attempt to hold him responsible for that is in evidence here, despite the new video evidence proving what was written here and in many other blogs at the time.

It is almost as if the professional journalists are trying to get us to forget what President Bush and other administration officials say immediately after they say it. Tuesday this week, the day before the video came out, Bush was telling Elizabeth Vargas of ABC News:

Listen, here’s the problem that happened in Katrina. There was no situational awareness, and that means that we weren’t getting good, solid information from people who were on the ground, and we need to do a better job.

Must’ve been the talking point of the day, “the media [had] better situational awareness than the government”. But if you look at all the media reaction to the video proving the president should have had great “situational awareness” on Katrina, you can’t find mention of the contradictory statement Mr. Bush was giving just one day earlier. I think the story should be that Bush was fully briefed about the disaster but just didn’t care, as he continued his vacation that week. But the liberal media does not shine its light on that.