The Ongoing Uprisings in Hong Kong, Iraq and Haiti

Feted with daily spacious coverage in the "newspaper of record," Hong Kong's anti-extradition/pro-democracy uprising suffered a blow yesterday when the occupation of Hong Kong Polytechnic University was rolled back by a sustained police assault.

According to Elaine Yu, Steven Lee Myers and Russell Goldman (see "Hong Kong Updates: More Than 1,000 Detained at a University, and a Warning From Beijing"),

About 1,100 people were detained near the PolyU campus between Monday and Tuesday, said Kwok Ka-chuen, a police spokesman. That figure would represent the largest roundup of protesters on a single day, making up almost a fifth of the total number of arrests since the protests began in June.

Having participated in the "Battle in Seattle," this is the question I keep asking myself about the Hong Kong uprising, "Where are the mass arrests?" It's what authorities did to combat the civil disobedience during the Seattle WTO Ministerial. They arrested people and bused them to an old naval base. Why isn't Hong Kong doing the same?

There are far fewer dispatches from Iraq compared to Hong Kong. The chief Times reporter in Baghdad, Alissa J. Rubin, shapes her reporting of the ongoing Iraq uprising to present it as an anti-Iranian rebellion.

I think Bill Van Auken of World Socialist Web Site gets it right in this morning's "The bloodbath in Baghdad." Both the U.S. and Iran are heavily invested in the government of Iraqi prime minister Adil Abdul Mahdi:

Ironically, both Washington and Tehran are opposed to the demand of the demonstrators for the downfall of the regime. Both the US and Iran have pursued their respective interests through Mahdi’s administration, even as US imperialism fights to effect regime change in Iran in order to eliminate an obstacle to US hegemony in the oil-rich Middle East.

The US State Department, concerned for the most part in securing the US bases out of which thousands of US troops continue to operate in Iraq, had initially remained silent on the bloody suppression of protesters. Late last month, however, after it was reported that Iran had brokered an agreement between the major Iraqi political parties to support Mahdi’s remaining in power and to suppress the opposition in the streets, Washington began to make noises about respecting the demands of the protesters.

The State Department issued a vague threat of sanctions, naming no one in particular, but indicating that any official cooperating with Iran could be targeted. At the moment, the US has nothing better with which to replace Mahdi and his fellow thieves. They are the best that Washington could find after it toppled Saddam Hussein.

The New York Times, ever the pliant propaganda tool of US war aims, helped to promote the anti-Iranian narrative by publishing on Monday what it claimed was a “trove” of secret Iranian intelligence cables illustrating Iranian ties with various actors in the Iraqi government. A purportedly unknown source—perhaps within the US intelligence apparatus—provided the alleged cables to the Intercept, which handed them off to the Times.

While the US pursues its regional war aims in Iraq, and the Iranian government strives to suppress social unrest that it fears could—and with the recent protests over fuel price hikes already has—spread across its borders, the upsurge in Iraq points to a new way forward in the Middle East. Masses have taken to the streets to pursue their class interests and fight for social equality against a political elite that has promoted sectarian divisions.

At least there is reporting on Iraq to be found. One struggles to find any mention of the now two-month-old anti-government uprising in Haiti. Captains of the corporate media obviously agree with Trump and consider Haiti a "shithole" best to be ignored.