Abdulelah Haider Shaye (Index on Censorship)
Jeremy Scahill’s piece at the Nation website (“Why Is President Obama Keeping a Journalist in Prison in Yemen?,” 3/13/12) about imprisoned Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye is riveting and deeply reported. But to Mother Jones blogger Kevin Drum, the story doesn’t quite add up…because Barack Obama seems like a decent guy.
As Scahill reports, Shaye has “risked his life to travel to areas controlled by Al-Qaeda and to interview its leaders.” He argues that this reporting has not exactly won him friends in the U.S. or Yemeni governments:
His collision course with the U.S. government appears to have been set in December 2009. On December 17, the Yemeni government announced that it had conducted a series of strikes against an Al-Qaeda training camp in the village of al Majala in Yemen’s southern Abyan province, killing a number of Al-Qaeda militants. As the story spread across the world, Shaye traveled to al Majala. What he discovered were the remnants of Tomahawk cruise missiles and cluster bombs, neither of which are in the Yemeni military’s arsenal. He photographed the missile parts, some of them bearing the label “Made in the USA,” and distributed the photos to international media outlets. He revealed that among the victims of the strike were women, children and the elderly. To be exact, 14 women and 21 children were killed.
Shaye was subsequently arrested and likely tortured by Yemeni authorities, who charged and convicted him on terrorism charges. The case has drawn international attention, with media and human rights groups denouncing the trial. Pressure inside Yemen seemed to be working, and a pardon was ready for then-president Ali Abdullah Saleh to sign.
Enter Barack Obama, who “expressed concern” over Shaye’s release. The pardon was shelved; as Scahill reports:
Yemeni journalists, human rights activists and lawyers have said he remains in jail at the request of the White House.
Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald weighed in (3/14/12), reminding readers that the initial media accounts of the attacks in Majala were wildly misleading–the strikes were carried out by Yemen, those killed were “militants,” and so on. As Greenwald puts it, the world knows the truth about this attack–which was a U.S. strike using cruise missiles and cluster bombs–because of Shaye’s reporting.
Seems pretty straightforward. But not to everyone. Mother Jones blogger Kevin Drum wrote a response headlined, “Is Barack Obama a Murderous Sociopath?” The crux of Drum’s argument is that Shaye’s reporting isn’t all that important. “I wonder what’s really going on,” writes Drum. “Because here’s the thing: the attack on al Majala was no secret.”
Drum points out that “within a few hours of the strike it was common knowledge that U.S. cruise missiles had done most of the damage and that there were local reports of many civilian casualties.” He adds that
everything that Shaye reported in 2010 had long since been common knowledge. Obama has suffered, as near as I can tell, literally zero embarrassment from this episode. The al Majala attack got a small bit of media attention when it happened and has been completely forgotten since.
This is almost entirely unconvincing–not to mention offensive. As Greenwald pointed out, the initial reporting on the attack was terrible (and as we argued here, the later reporting, while certainly an improvement, was not all that spectacular either). The idea that it was “common knowledge” that the U.S. had attacked Yemen with cluster bombs and killed that many civilians is difficult to substantiate–Drum cites an ABC report that only refers to “opposition” claims about civilian casualties.
Drum is correct, though, when he says that the incident got little media attention and “has been completely forgotten.” I’m not sure how something can “common knowledge,” little reported and mostly forgotten, but there you have it.
Drum’s argument rests on the idea that this was a minor incident, because that is how he must explain away Obama’s role:
So what kind of person would pressure the Yemeni president to keep an innocent journalist in prison over a slight so tiny as to be nearly nonexistent? Almost literally, this would be the act of a sociopath.
He adds:
But which do I find more likely? That Shaye is indeed affiliated with Al-Qaeda based on evidence that hasn’t been made public? Or that Barack Obama is a sociopath who pressures foreign leaders to keep innocent journalists in prison based on the fact that they very slightly annoy him? Call me what you will, but I have to go with Door A.
So those are your choices, as Drum sees it: Obama is a sociopath or Shaye is a terrorist.
Sami Al-Hajj
But there’s a third option: Perhaps Obama is not a sociopath, but the president of a government that believes that journalists who report the views of its military enemies, and uncover facts about its wars it would prefer to keep secret, are a threat to its military objectives and should themselves be treated as enemies. Sami al-Hajj was a camera operator for Al Jazeera; he spent more than six years in Guantanamo as a result, based–as a WikiLeaks release would later document–on the fact that as a journalist he had contact with Al-Qaeda as a news subject he was covering.
A believer in White House benevolence might say: “A cameraman? That can’t be true! He didn’t do important work!” But that wouldn’t change the fact that it happened.
Or that U.S. forces attacked a hotel in Baghdad where journalists were staying in 2003. Or that the United States attacked Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV in 2003, and Al Jazeera in 2001 (all of those incidents, and more, are recounted here). Or that TV studios in Serbia were bombed by the U.S. in 1999.
You can believe that Obama is much different than his predecessors, or you can believe that his actions are fundamentally similar.
ABC correspondent Jake Tapper pressed the White House recently (2/22/12) on the administration’s use of the Espionage Act to go after reporters. As Tapper put it: “There just seems to be disconnect here. You want aggressive journalism abroad; you just don’t want it in the United States.” It was a good question. But the answer might be, if the Shaye case is any guide, that the United States government doesn’t much care for aggressive journalism abroad either.
One definition of a sociopathic personality states that “Individuals with this disorder have little regard for the feeling and welfare of others.”
I’d think that would pretty accurately describe every occupant of the Oval Office, given the misery their actions have caused untold numbers of their (allegedly) fellow human beings.
For someone writing for a supposed “progressive” publication, you’d imagine that bit of empiricism would be …
Well, would be “common knowledge”.
The same thing seems tobe happening in India now with the Israeli embassy attack: and India journalist, Syed Kazmi, who speaks Farsi and Arabic and has contacts in Iran is being railroaded as a conspirator. the Indian judicial system is notorious for this kind of trumped up case.
http://kafila.org/2012/03/11/on-the-arrest-of-mohammad-ahmad-kazmi/
Obama’s The Audacity of Hope: Portrait of a modern American political operative
Is there a single honest or original thought in Barack Obama’s new book? If so, it does not immediately come to mind.
The Illinois junior senator and Democratic Party presidential hopeful’s The Audacity of Hope is a calculated effort, from its title to its final page, designed to demonstrate his readiness to take the reins of political power in the US. That is to say, while Obama directs portions of his book toward sections of the more well-heeled and complacent Democratic Party faithful, those most inclined to wishful thinking, the audience that primarily concerns him consists of the powerful corporate, financial and media figures who organize and ultimately shape the campaigns of the two major parties’ candidates…
Obama uses his ethnicity as a kind of unspoken metaphor for his political approach. Here is a man, the message is intended to convey, who is white and black, liberal and conservative, foreign and American, a man above party ideology and the petty bickering of partisan politics.
In his book, he pursues this theme consistently. â┚¬Ã…“I am a Democrat,â┚¬Ã‚ he tells his readers on page 10, â┚¬Ã…“my views on most topics correspond more closely to the editorial pages of the New York Times than those of the Wall Street Journal,â┚¬Ã‚ and he goes on to enumerate some of the issues that make him a Democrat. â┚¬Ã…“But,â┚¬Ã‚ he quickly adds, â┚¬Ã…“that is not all that I am…. I believe in the free market, competition, and entrepreneurship, and think no small number of government programs don’t work as advertised…. I think America has more often been a force for good than for ill in the world; I carry few illusions about our enemies, and revere the courage and competence of our military.â┚¬Ã‚Â
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/obam-f14.shtml
You people are disgusting! How can you question the President, judging his actions and not his real thoughts and intentions? Where I’m from we knew how to deal with people like you.
There’s another name worth mentioning in this context. Tayseer Allouni, another Al Jazeera journalist, was held in Spain for 6 years and accused of being a terrorist. His “crime”? Just hours after 9/11, he went and asked Osama Bin Laden whether he was responsible. (At this point, Bin Laden was not the world’s most wanted man).
It’s something every journalist on the planet would have done, had they had the opportunity.
Allouni’s life was destroyed on DC’s say-so.
The President and all Americans are all nice, and are all above average.
Even the now famous, but as yet unnamed, soldier who made news this week for fighting the women and children of Afghanistan for Obama is described as â┚¬Ã…“mild-mannered,â┚¬Ã‚ and â┚¬Ã…“has never said anything antagonistic about Muslims.â┚¬Ã‚Â
From President Obama all the way down to every foot soldier, everybody from America is now nice and mild-mannered. Not nasty, like Bush was when he was President.
It is a well known fact that you can’t send nice Americans to jail for war crimes if they are mild-mannered. And the people of foreign countries must all be evil or why else would we be there killing them? Only a cynic could doubt the benevolence of American intentions. Cynics should have a drone hit them.
Looks like an open and shut case, just like in the Kandahar incident.
I must admit this seems a case of kill the messenger. I suppose some fantasy of international affairs is the goal. Unfortunately, ignoring truth leaves everyone unprepared for coming events.
Obama is over his head, an incompetent president hypnotized by the sound of his own voice who lacks the courage to lead the country. And yet, he’s a far better choice than what his opponents have to offer.
Even if accept any version of this story, the mere fact that the President of the US intervened is beyond understanding. Furthermore, what is this saying about Mother Jones? Have the long fingers of the military-Wall Street oligarchy reached into that fortress of progressivism?
But Obama is a murderous sociopath. It’s part of the job description. And Drum is a power-worshipping sycophant.
Dorsey: Obama is a Democrat and MJ is of what we laughingly call the American left, so they must follow him. Wouldn’t want to hurt his election chances, y’know.
HI: “…because Barack Obama seems like a decent guy….”
You got to be kidding. What is going on now has nothing to do with whether it is a “red” or “blue” political figure. The money interests are pushing for total control. Truth and truthful information must be twisted, suppressed or outright eliminated. Obama is just a figure head. The real power and control is in the shadows, out of view of the masses, as always. If you stand back and look at the “BIG PICTURE” regarding information flow, resources, military involvement and freedom and the true rule of law, a VERY, VERY scary and reminiscent picture is painted…
Interesting, maybe, to see a New York Times pooh-pooh tactic – ain’t nothing here! – used under the auspices of a magazine that is supposed to be a decent muckraking outfit.
Actually, it doesn’t seem to involve Obama’s choices at all. More and more these days, when I see “The White House (intervened)” concerning military matters, it appears to be more of a case of “The Pentagon/American War Profiteers (intervened), using the White House as a puppet.”
There are really only 2 problems that I see with Obama (assuming that unlike me, you don’t see him being a conservative masquerading as a liberal as a problem); 1) he’s a politician (that explains a multitude of sins) and 2) he’s spineless. Sure, at times, he tries to do the right thing, like being conciliatory about America’s aggressive, imperialistic, interventionist past and present, but he quickly suffers a case of Ethical Collapse as soon as the Republicans start rattling their sabres.
In the end, he’s like 90% of the Democratic Party; either not inclined to be be, or afraid to be liberals, most likely do to the fact that the conservative minority in America is *DAMN SCARY!!!* and more than a little insane. I could easily see American conservatives, denied their fascist desires, turn to domestic terrorism, and I think most Americans realize that as well, perhaps fuelling an attitude of “I’d rather be part of a fascist nation than be dead from a conservative terrorist bombing/shootout”. The only real difference between Islamic radicals and American Christian radicals is that the “Christians” wouldn’t use suicide bombs; they’d use suitcase bombs.
Explanation A, B or C? I have to go with the idea that there is no journalist nor almost anyone who has all the information that the president has. I am giving president Obama the benefit of the doubt.
Interesting update.This needs to be aired out to the one man who could answer these questions.It would have to be asked in a large way upon a national stage where he could be nailed down.Maybe Barbara Walters could ask these questions right after the Snooky interview(Do you think she’ll be good mom pant pant?)Two things” agin it”.No journalist would ask these kind of questions now.Could hurt Obama in his next run.And two……..obama would slip out the door.After all he has a job to win back.Sounds like…I say it SOUNDS like the release of our weapons was authorized high up ,to take out a terrorist suspect, and all went to hell in a hand basket.
Obama should let the new Yemen President pardon the journalist and then explain his pentagon problem to the American people.
To me, this posting and the comments above are encouraging. At long last it has become obvious to Americans all along the political spectrum that there is no longer any connection between what our politicians say and what they do. The President, the Congress and the Courts are now completely controlled by fat cats motivated exclusively by all-consuming greed. That’s where America stands now, and that’s how we are seen throughout the world. If you think otherwise, you just haven’t been doing your homework.
Three cheers for our war president…errrr…I mean our Nobel Peace Prize laureate president that is.
What about Bradley Manning? Not a journalist, but a top-notch whistle blower. Obama hasn’t needed the help of any medieval sultanate to keep that truth-teller in a torturer’s dungeon – he’s managed that all on his own.
All that about Hope and Change and Transparency was horses**t. I am embarrassed to have fallen for it.
//“Dorsey: Obama is a Democrat and MJ is of what we laughingly call the American left, so they must follow him.”//
Democrats and Progressives are not like Republicans, Save the Oocytes. We don’t fall into line with leaders of the party or movement no matter what, the way Republicans do. We think for ourselves.
//“All that about Hope and Change and Transparency was horses**t. I am embarrassed to have fallen for it.”
I didn’t fall for any of it. I would rather have been proven wrong than be able to say “I told you so,” though. But Obama is still WAY better than any Republican.
Well, Jamie H, there are plenty of Democrats and Progressives who have “fallen into line” with the current president. they’re not thinking for themselves (although they like to think they are), and won’t truck with any criticism of Mr. Obama–we’ve got an election to win, they say, or whose side are you on? (my favorite). Saying Obama is better than any Republicon is some cold comfort. Perhaps, if Mr. Obama loses, and the sun still rises, and I still have to go to work, “Progressives” and Democrats will finally wake from their stupor. Maybe it will happen when President Romney jails (no lawyers!), indefinitely (forever!), without charges or trial (now legal), some Occupiers. Or maybe when President Romney has some American citizens blown to bits with a drone (no charges filed, no reason given), and says “none of your goddamned business” when asked by newly interested and sensitive Progressives why he did it. “These awesome powers I have are courtesy of your hero, Mr. Obama, so why the concern? Why the outrage? You didn’t care when he did it.”
Thanks fo that, Mc Bob. Here’s a riddle for you: Who hates the left more than the Right-wingers? Give up? The Beltway Democrats, that’s who.
For trust you have to earn it an Pres. Obama has not earned it. He has, however earned our mistrust. One doesn’t have to be a sociopath or psychopath to order people to be killed out of your sight an far away from you. It is much easier than being right there seeing an smelling everything that happens when a child or a woman or a man are blasted to bloody ruin.
Just another example of how being a Democrat doesn’t automatically make you a “liberal” in fact the only liberal part may be in culture an even then Obama nearly fully fails. It isn’t what he or anyone else says, it is what he an the others do that should count. An nothing else. We need to make this story national. Something that will make it harder for the the other corporate conservative new networks mention it. But until someone who will ask that important question is allowed to be there an then allowed to ask a question it will stay in the background among those of us who spend the time to find it in the first place. Not many people do that.
Remember what was done to Mumia abu Jamal…for his reporting? 30 years on death row after a police beating that left his all but dead. Just this past month moved to general population but still in prison for a crime he did not commit.
Oh, that is in the USA. A citizen of the USA, a black citizen, a father, a husband who for the first time could hug his wife and hold his now grown children. His crime, for being black and reporting on the MOVE bombing of families in Philadelphia. A bombing done against John Africa who was to me the first US black environmentalist, who had the energy to refute consumerism and go back to basics. The ultimate crime of disconnecting from the Empire’s system of human and environmental destruction.
Where is the limit on the viability the lesser of two evils voting?
Does anyone find a meaningful difference between the fecal sandwich and the fecal smoothy offered by Corporate Power for our consideration as being the lesser of two evils?
At what point will both Parties of Evils be rejected and ejected.
The Power Elite override the constitution and say the Constitution is not a suicide pact when their interests are threatened. At what point do the 99% take that same position when their interests are threatened?
When the State defends itself against foreign predationsâ┚¬”Âlargely in response to its own classified secret predationsâ┚¬”Âit finds our rights and lives as informed citizens to be too trivial to be worthy of concern and therefore easily sacrificed. At what point do we find these predations of the State against the interests of the Nation to be intolerable? We cannot look to the Parties of Evil for relief from the evils they and Corporate Power are selling.
When some rouge Marine goes on a murderous rampage, the President apologizes to the world for the incident. However, with predator drones and tomahawk missiles at his disposal, the President has as much innocent blood on has hands as any wayward soldier. As Rumsfeld said, “War is messy.” It’s not the murder of civilians that bothers the American people and media, it’s the manner in which they are dispensed with that’s at issue. This is because our principle concern is not justice but rather saving face and salving our conscience.
Just to let you all know, I have decided to oppose Obama in some of the southern primaries, namely Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas, where I am on the ballot. All self-doubt and every reservation I had about my decision to oppose this pantomining progressive vanished when I read that he ordered his Yemeni puppet to jail the journalist who gave the lie to the Drone Attack that killed 40 women and childen. By both puppeteer and puppet, the world was led to believe that the Yemeni government had conducted the attack on its own, that all the causalties were terrorists; this journalist has the courage to go to the scene and find the bloody debris, strewn all over the grounds by a US Hellfire Missile, its remnants marked “USA”. If we stand surprised, we should remember that Obama, not long ago, made sociopathic jokes about Predator Drones, using his daughters and the Jonas Brothers as props. Our President is a man preoccupied with his own success. He will do literally anything to get elected, including bowing to both Cheney’s, letting the military have their way in the Afghan escalation, torturing Manning, suspending habeas corpus, and now assuring the imprisonment of a journalist whose only crime was outing his lying self. If you have any friends in Arkansas, Louisiana, or Texas, tell them they can let their protestations to this Bush Darker foreign policy be known at the presidential primary ballot box. Louisiana’s primary is next Saturday, March 24.
@ Jean-Claude Morin
“I have to go with the idea that there is no journalist nor almost anyone who has all the information that the president has. I am giving president Obama the benefit of the doubt.”
But why would you do that in the face of the evidence Scahill presents? (You have looked into this, right?) If you had, you’d know that it’s not Obama vs. Shaye here–it’s the judgment of many independent media and human rights groups who have concluded the trial was a sham. Have you seen better evidence than the rest?
Have you never heard of the very powerful doing what ever we let them get away with? The Shaye case isn’t just Scahill’s speculation–Obama directly intervened to keep Shaye imprisoned. Shaye was accredited and consulted by many major news organizations–you have an obligation to look at the facts instead of just giving O the benefit of the doubt.
If he calls you a terrorist, I say he must provide the evidence and give you due process. Why don’t you say the same for Shaye? Why does this president get a pass on proving his claims?
Put another way: what would Obama have to do for you *not* to give him the benefit of the doubt?
Mary Ellen…….Read Michael Smirconnishes book on Mumia.He put a gun to the cop and shot him.This is irrefutable.Before the Policeman died he returned fire, hitting Mumia.There is no denying he is a cop killer.The funniest thing about it is he says he is innocent.But wont answer the question did he shoot the Policeman.Eight witnesses saw the whole thing.He was arrested at the scene.With the gun.His hands showed he had fired a weapon.Only a complete moron …the type who still think OJ was innocent could take up this cause.He should of been put to death long ago(as that was his sentence)An speaking of the Hollywood crowd who supports him because he is articulate and just couldnt of done it.Yeah and that bullet in him from the cops gun just materialized.How stupid do you have to be?
Move?John Africa?I was in Philly when that went down.They had an armed camp up there in queens village..They used to sit on the roof armed with rifles taunting/threatening police, and anyone within ear shot with bull horns.Day and night ,night and day.Round the clock you could hear their filthTheir were horrific reports of rat and feces infested homes with children who never went to school(all true).Social services were driven away.It escalated when police tried to serve warrants and were fired on.They used force ,and then …….FAR too much force to “force” them out.I still can remember the hundreds and hundreds of rats running out of that house as it burned.Environmentalists?If living in rat shit armed to the teeth in a run down area on the hard streets of Philly is your idea of that ,Im passing.For the love of God if you want to point to Black men who pushed back the barriers to accomplish much for themselves,their race,and all of us ,their are tons to choose from.Why must you reach down into the sewers to pull up the worst of the scum?
Come on, people! Have you been asleep the last few years? This isn’t hard! Of course Obama’s a sociopath–he’s shown that again and again. Just because he’s more articulate and a much better actor than W doesn’t mean he hasn’t got the same motives for carrying out the same policies. Way better than the Republicans? In what area? Forget what he SAYS, particularly in election years–look at policy. Obama’s has been virtually indistinguishable from Bushie’s. If one of the repub’s gets in, their actions won’t match their rhetoric either–some of the more horrific stuff they propose won’t be allowed. They take orders from the same people, so we get the same policy regardless of which party controls the White House and/or Congress. If it’s a Democrat in the White House, we get this big show of frothy-mouthed hatred from the rich, to perpetuate the illusion of two parties with differences. But they’re all on the same Team–except Ron Paul, who is successfully marginalized, and Kucinich who has been marginalized right out of Congress.
“Have the long fingers of the military-Wall Street oligarchy reached into that fortress of progressivism?”
progressivism = interventionism = militarism
Ever hear of Randolph Bourne?
ALL “progressives” should read this sad but true chapter of one man’s struggle with this nation’s early “progressive” icons and the destruction they wrought in the world….
http://www.randolphbourne.org/rb-bio.html
Show us some actual proof that PRESIDENT Obama has ordered this journalist detained and I will believe you. Until then you are just guessing. And last time I checked, in this country people were still presumed innocent until proven guilty. So, prove guilt. If you can.
God here comes the troll(me)…the conservative in these parts to say(unbelievably) i have to agree with what Mick26 says.I think you are piling on the president with little to go on.
What both Peter Hart, and Kevin Drum, fail to acknowledge is that the evidence of Shaye’s association with Al Qaeda is secret highly likely to be information from one or more “sources”, meaning human beings, within the organization – and such information is usually specific to the people who have access to it, in which case revealing the information would also reveal the identity of the provider, resulting in his (or her, or their) torture and death.
I know what ti’s like to hold such information, and it’s quite a burden to have someone’s life literally in your hands, depending upon your silence. Ah, but I suppose it’s not “fair” to confuse the issue with *that* sort of fact, eh?, and it also is ever so much easier, takes ever so much less effort, to not bother to get all the possible facts, and instead just fall back on slandering the President.
reply to Doug Latimer:
Thats not a definition, it’s a symptom.
Gran chaqueta de color caqui temperamento, diseño del collar grande con elegante color puede hacerte lucir muy suave, oh, una versión simple de la combinación de modelos y partido es muy elegante, con un vestido retro de cuello alto, perfecto para destacar la pequeña mujer sentimiento romántico y el temperamento para.