How the NY Times killed Steven Vincent

How The NY Times killed Steven Vincent

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/31/opinion/31vincent.html?

July 31, 2005
Switched Off in Basra
By STEVEN VINCENT
Basra, Iraq
……
“Mufeed al-Mushashaee, the leader of a liberal political organization called the Shabanea Rebellion, told me that he felt that "the entire (police) force should be dissolved and replaced with people educated in human rights and democracy."
“Unfortunately, this is precisely what the British aren't doing. Fearing to appear like colonial occupiers, they avoid any hint of ideological indoctrination: in my time with them, not once did I see an instructor explain such basics of democracy as the politically neutral role of the police in a civil society. Nor did I see anyone question the alarming number of religious posters on the walls of Basran police stations. When I asked British troops if the security sector reform strategy included measures to encourage cadets to identify with the national government rather than their neighborhood mosque, I received polite shrugs: not our job, mate.”
……
“Meanwhile, the British stand above the growing turmoil, refusing to challenge the Islamists' claim on the hearts and minds of police officers. This detachment angers many Basrans. "The British know what's happening but they are asleep, pretending they can simply establish security and leave behind democracy," said the police lieutenant who had told me of the assassinations. "Before such a government takes root here, we must experience a transformation of our minds."
In other words, real security reform requires psychological as well as physical training…”

Comment: In other words, sensitivity training.
To take care of *ucking *ssholes like Vincent (after all, other people have religious convictions, too)…. they use a white Toyota Mark II. “An Iraqi police lieutenant, who for obvious reasons asked to remain anonymous, confirmed to me the widespread rumors that a few police officers are perpetrating many of the hundreds of assassinations - mostly of former Baath Party members - that take place in Basra each month. He told me that there is even a sort of "death car": a white Toyota Mark II that glides through the city streets, carrying off-duty police officers in the pay of extremist religious groups to their next assignment.”
That was Sunday. Wednesday we get:
American Journalist Is Shot to Death in Iraq
Plus:
Journalist Killed in Iraq Admired Kerouac
There’s some meaty stuff in this one:
“He was abducted in that city on Tuesday and was found dead off a highway with gunshot wounds to his head.
“Vincent left for Iraq in the fall of 2003 to investigate the terror of daily life there. He paid his own way, traveling without bodyguards and staying for two months at a time.
“Vincent ''liked being on the edge of intense experience,'' said friend Steven Mumford, a New Yorker who had been Vincent's roommate in Baghdad last year. …
“Vincent was raised in California and had just graduated from Berkeley in 1980 with a degree in English ''when, heeding the siren call of the big city -- and my dream to become the next Jack Kerouac,'' he hitchhiked to New York ….
“”Vincent had exposed himself to more danger than most journalists,” said Michael Rubin, an Iraq expert for the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, who separately traveled some of the same Iraqi routes as Vincent and reviewed his book.”
And …
“Vincent had apparently feared for his safety, telling Mumford last month in an e-mail that he ''had a lot of information which, if published in a major venue, he could get killed for it,'' Mumford said.”
Enter the New York Times (back to top)
Meanwhile, not to let him upstage the rest, further up the Tigris and Euphrates that weekend… Bomb Kills 14 U.S. Marines in Iraq
*****

Now, today, comes: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/04/international/middleeast/04journalist.html

U.S. Journalist Who Wrote About Police Corruption Is Abducted and Killed in Basra
“…An officer in the Basra police department said Mr. Vincent had been working on an article about the role of policemen in the recent assassinations of former Baath Party officials. …
“… (he) believed that the American-led invasion of Iraq was justified and part of a much larger campaign against what he called "Islamo-fascism."
“But he also said he was deeply disappointed by the failure of the United States and Britain to enforce their visions of democracy here. It was the duty of journalists, he said, to expose the pitfalls of the rising tide of Shiite Islam in Iraq in order to awaken the Bush administration to the kind of nation it was helping to create.”….
What has happened here is self-evident, justifying the title. But embedded in the story about the man who loved Art, Kerouac, intensity of ‘living on the edge’ and dedicated to the good cause of freeing women from Shiite oppression, are these connections: American Enterprise Institute (et all)’s ongoing initiative to keep Basra’s Shiite’s from aligning with Iran in common cause against the threat from Israel and the United States. (its new president being falsely linked by this most, most insidious propaganda terrorists to the ‘78 hostage crisis)

“Rubin believes Vincent was killed for his opinions: “He angered people by telling it like it is.” Oh, yeah. Just like Jack Kerouac.

Then there was this touch by the one-eyed one’s cable news networks: use of the word “blogger”. It was mentioned over and over by CNN/MSNBC as the reason he was killed, although nothing in the stories related to him blogging. Almost as if to say “this is what bloggers get; you blog this, you die”. In other words, using Stephen Vincent’s death, which they caused, to threaten whoever saw through it with murder if they put it up on-line. Lot ‘o bang for that thar buck.
The over-all pattern here, shifting to the broader course of discussion, is the mentality of those who are behind the screen of this picture – the neocon Jews et. al. inside the NY Times, U.S. government, cultural grammar. It is the same as the abolitionist’s rhetoric in the 1850’s. The Southerner’s were Basra, to Northron Rubin-Vincents. With their own ways, religious heritage, culture. But that demanded reform in the name of morality (blacks here become women over there). Well, maybe so. I don’t ordinarily defend lynching. But there were men, some of them in my family background, who picked up their guns, endured incredible hardship, suffering and sacrifice of all dreams of a future, to let them* (insert flame) know it wasn’t going to happen that way. I assume there are some of that cut of cloth in Basra today, maybe even in the Old South, underneath the Re-pube sell-outs to Likkud. At least I used to think…

****
(excerpt: note use of “evangelical” which Southern Protestants have allowed Northern media dominated by Catholic and Jew religions to impose on them. I warned against this from ’01 on. Give away the name for your heritage, give away control over what you are called … to those who will gladly kill in that name, then you will be to blame:

http://www.us-civilwar.com/abolitionist.htm :
Evangelical Influences

”Although antislavery sentiment had existed during the American Revolution, and abolitionist Benjamin Lundy began his work early in the 19th century, the abolition movement did not reach crusading proportions until the 1830s. One of its mainsprings was the growing influence of evangelical religion, with its religious fervor, its moral urgency to end sinful practices, and its vision of human perfection. The preaching of Lyman Beecher and Nathaniel Taylor in New England and the religious revivals that began in W New York state in 1824 under Charles G. Finney and swept much of the North, created a powerful impulse toward social reform—emancipation of the slaves as well as temperance, foreign missions, and women's rights. Outstanding among Charles Finney's converts were Theodore D. Weld and the brothers Arthur Tappan and Lewis Tappan.”