From Zvi:(DPA) More than 100 people were killed and at least 200 injured in a series of car bombings, suicide bombings and explosions from improvised devices that rocked the Iraqi capital of Baghdad on Tuesday evening, security sources and witnesses said.
The blasts — 21 in all — targeted cafes, restaurants and popular markets. Eleven of them were car bombs and attacks by suicide bombers, witnesses told DPA.
Police rushed to close all roads leading to the sites of the explosions as the sound of ambulances wailed throughout the city.
A curfew was imposed by police on the capital, with patrols going around the city telling people no to leave their homes.
Earlier on Tuesday, five people died and two were injured in unrelated attacks, security sources said.
Three policemen and an al-Qaeda militant were killed by a bomb targeting a police convoy in the area of al-Khaneqeen, 60 km north-east of Baghdad. Two policemen were injured in the blast.
The convoy had been transporting Emad Rawkan, an al-Qaeda leader in the al-Saadiya area, to the village of al-Hafayif to investigate his involvement in a bomb attack that left four policemen dead last week.
In a separate incident, a man was killed by a bomb that had been placed outside his home in the city of Fallujah, 60 km west of Baghdad.
The latest round of attacks comes just two days after militants reportedly affiliated with al-Qaeda took worshippers hostage at a church in Baghdad. More than 50 people were killed and more than 70 injured in the incident.
A day earlier, more than 30 people had been killed and more than 67 injured when a suicide bomb ripped through a crowded coffee shop in the Iraqi city of Baquba, some 57 km north of Baghdad.
The attacks come amid a political stalemate surrounding the formation of a new government that has dragged on for nearly eight months.Iraqi hospital and police officials say blasts ripping through Baghdad's mostly Shiite neighborhoods have killed at least 76 people and wounded some 200.
This is horrible. It is horrible that Baghdadis should live in fear of this kind of purposeful, evil, savage and unlimited violence.
The blasts took place in at least 10 neighborhoods across the capital Tuesday evening.
"Ten cars exploded with bombs inside them. There were also four roadside bombs and two sticky bombs," Baghdad security spokesman Major General Qassim al-Moussawi said. "(They were) all in Shiite neighborhoods."
One of the biggest explosions appeared to target restaurants and cafes in the Shiite slum of Sadr City. Earlier, a police source in the area said 15 people had been killed and another 23 wounded.
The blasts come just two days after gunmen in Baghdad held a Christian congregation hostage in a siege that ended with 58 people dead.
The bodies will be buried, and life will go on, and people - even most Iraqis, unless they lost loved ones or saw it happen in front of them - will forget these terrorist attacks. It is just not convenient to remember them. There won't be a movement to memorialize the civilian victims of 2 November, who were going about their daily shopping or chatting in restaurants when they were all murdered together. There won't be a demonstration in London, or Tehran, or Oslo, and Muslim leaders will not call on their communities to denounce the jihadis who evidently committed these atrocities.
Iraq Body Count identifies 3205 non-combatant deaths in 2010 alone. And in fact, NEARLY EVERY MONTH for the last 7 years, the number of Muslims deliberately slaughtered by Islamist terrorists, Baathists, Iranian-allied militias and related thugs in Iraq vastly exceeds the number of civilians killed in a mostly accidental fashion during Cast Lead.
I'm still waiting for the commentators, who blame global anti-Semitism on Cast Lead, the Hizballah war or "extremist settlers" (who have killed how many Bank Arab in the last 5 years? As far as I know, ZERO) to explain why European and Middle Eastern Muslims are NOT holding riots to denounce al Qaeda for slaughtering SO MANY INNOCENT PEOPLE. So many innocent Muslims. I'm still waiting for Middle Eastern journalists to use the same blood-soaked terms to describe mass-murdering Islamists that they use to describe Israeli settlers who have not killed anyone.
I'm still waiting for an indication that the hysterical rage nurtured and aimed at Israel is anything other than a supreme act of hypocrisy.
Wednesday 3 November 2010
November 2, 2010
November 3, 2010
November 3, 2010
I noticed that wire service coverage of the recent bloody events in Baghdad almost invariably use the word "insurgents" or "assailants" or "gunmen" or "attackers" or "militants" to describe the Al Qaeda terrorists.
Almost never are the terrorists referred to as "extremists," although a few background pieces refer to Al Qaeda as being an extremist group.
When the word "extremist" is used in the Middle East to refer to an actual person, more often than not it refers to Jews who are alleged to have harassed Palestinian Arabs.
The word "extremist" has a far more pejorative connotation that "insurgent" or any of the other terms used to describe terrorists in Iraq. "Insurgent" or "gunmen" or "militants" are value-neutral words. "Extremist" is far more pejorative, as it carries with it a judgment of the character of the person who did the act. Such judgment is absent when AFP or AP or the New York Times or CNN report about attacks that are orders of magnitude worse, by every conceivable measure, that the worst thing that Israeli settlers have ever done or been accused of doing.
So why do they consistently use a word that connotes something far worse when referring to Jews in the West Bank than they do to refer to mass-murdering Muslim terrorists in Iraq?
The cumulative effect of years of such biased reporting is that news readers, subconsciously, start to believe that the actions of Israelis are objectively worse than the actions of real terrorists who kill thousands of people. Years of such subtle bias have a huge effect on a large number of people who rely on the mainstream media to form their opinions.
To the mainstream news media, the word "terrorist" is unsuitable to refer to people who blow themselves up in a church, but the word "extremist" is perfectly acceptable to refer to people who are accused of cutting down trees.
This is one reason why it is difficult to believe that the media is unbiased when it comes to reporting from Israel.
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