{"id":4170,"date":"2011-12-09T09:08:42","date_gmt":"2011-12-09T16:08:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=4170"},"modified":"2011-12-09T09:13:30","modified_gmt":"2011-12-09T16:13:30","slug":"how-bahrain-works-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=4170","title":{"rendered":"How Bahrain works Washington"},"content":{"rendered":"

How Bahrain works Washington<\/strong>
\nIn the latest twist on lobbying, Mideast autocracies repackage propaganda as “media awareness”
\nBy Ken Silverstein – Salon.com – December 8, 2011<\/p>\n

Ever since last February, when security forces in Bahrain brutally cracked down on demonstrators at the Pearl Monument, human rights groups have documented extensive violence by the government against pro-democracy protesters. In late November, an independent commission hired by the country\u2019s king released a report that said 35 people had been killed during the protests, including five detainees who were tortured to death, and that hundreds more had been injured and nearly 3,000 arrested.<\/p>\n

But to judge from Tom Squitieri \u2014 the self-described \u201cstargazer, Award winning reporter, communications crafter\u201d who has tweeted and blogged about events in Bahrain for Huffington Post and the Foreign Policy Association \u2014 demonstrators are largely to blame for the violence. In one item he wrote about a girl named Zahra who \u201cwas attacked with an iron bar wielded by protestors\u201d and a demonstrator named Ali who was killed \u201cafter being hit by a police car.\u201d While Ali\u2019s family claimed \u201che was deliberately run down\u201d by the cops, Squitieri suggested it was more likely that \u201cthe police car swerved out of control after skidding on oil poured on the road by protestors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Squitieri states in his blog posts that he \u201cworks with the Bahrain government on media awareness and press freedom,\u201d which is an odd way of describing work that amounts to propaganda. But unless you count his work at NewsMax, the right-wing media organization, Squitieri hasn\u2019t been a journalist since 2005, when he resigned from USA Today for plagiarism. Nor does he mention anywhere that he is an employee of Qorvis Communications, a Washington firm that is registered to lobby for the government of Bahrain. …more<\/a><\/p>\n

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How Bahrain works Washington In the latest twist on lobbying, Mideast autocracies repackage propaganda as “media awareness” By Ken Silverstein – Salon.com – December 8, 2011 Ever since last February, when security forces in Bahrain brutally cracked down on demonstrators at the Pearl Monument, human rights groups have documented extensive violence by the government against more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[2129],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4170"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}