Monday, January 04, 2016

Liz Sly and the Saudi regime talking points on the mass executions

Liz Sly never wavers from the political line of the Saudi regime in her coverage of the Middle East but this is not an anomaly in Western media coverage of the Middle East anymore. This is a byproduct of the Zionist-Saudi alliance of recent years.  But in an article dealing with the recent mass executions in Saudi Arabia, she--mimicking exactly and word-for-word the propaganda of Saudi regime on social media--manages to bring up the execution rates in Iran: "Iran carried out 694 executions in the first half of last year, according to an Amnesty International statement in July. Saudi Arabia, whose population is about a third the size of Iran’s, carried out 157 in all of 2015, according to Amnesty and media reports."  Now, of course, Iran is in no position to speak on matters of executions (and Iran and Hizbullah are to be condemned for only speaking out on the execution of Shaykh Nimr when they should have spoken against executions of Sunnis and Shi`ites in Saudi Arabia--although Nasrallah did to his credit bring up this matter in his last speech and said that he is in no position to judge the culpability of recent victims of executions in Saudi Arabia) but what is the relevance of bringing up the Iranian regime record here? Does the Washington Post feel obligated when covering repression and execution in Iran to bring up the issue of repression and executions in Saudi Arabia for example? Of course, not. But by this article, the WP is placing itself squarely in the Saudi regional camp.  Now let us talk about the numbers: far from defending the record of the Iranian regime (the overthrow of which I have stood for ever since Khumayni returned to Iran from Paris), Liz Sly does not mention one peculiar methodology of Amnesty International: Amnesty International for some reason adds to the list of executions in Iran its own numbers of unacknowledged executions when it does NOT do that for Saudi Arabia.  What gives?

PS Also notice that Sly does not interview or cite one critic of the Saudi regime.