Media Censorship? US Army 'jammed' Swiss and French sat.

[Mandy]

http://www.spiderednews.com/ is leading with a story which appears to be ignored by the mainstream media. It seems to be from a reputable source .. and no sign of a retraction. What is going on ? Is this just too embarrassing for the US military ?


Report says US military disturbed European communication satellites.
HEISE - Mon, 26 Mar 2007 12:47

At the end of January, the US military apparently accidentally took down the satellite transmission of news agencies, including that of Agence France Presse (AFP) and the Swiss Depeche Agency (SDA), in an attempt to disturb the broadcasting of Iraqi television channel Al-Zawraa. According to a report in Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger, Eutelsat was not able to operate its HotBird 8 satellite properly for at least 24 hours at the end of January.

The Washington Post is reporting that the disturbance may have been the result of an attempt by the US military to block the broadcasting of Al-Zawraa, which had announced two days earlier that its programming would be made available via Eutelsat within the next 48 hours. Al-Zawraa is a Sunnite broadcaster that is considered extremist because it allegedly shows rebel attacks on the US military regularly.

However, the channel was never broadcast on HotBird 8; rather, an Iraqi television channel with a similar name, Al-Zahra, was. This channel is run by Shiites and is considered moderate. The US military may have confused Al-Zahra with their actual target. The extremist channel Al-Zawraa only broadcast for a brief period on EuroBird 2 via Eutelsat after these attacks and is now
broadcasting on Arabsat.

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US Army 'jammed' Swiss and French satellites
GULFNEWS - Mon, 26 Mar 2007 12:47

The US Army mistakenly jammed the satellite signal of a number of news organisations earlier this year - including the French and Swiss national news agencies - in an attempt to shut down an Iraqi TV station, according to a Swiss newspaper.

Daily Tages-Anzeiger reported in yesterday's edition that the incident occurred on January 23 and lasted about 24 hours, affecting a large number of radio, television and internet services, including those of Agence France Presse (AFP) and its Swiss counterpart Schweizerische Depeschagentur (SDA).

An internal SDA memo states that "the loss of all transmission signals via the Eutelsat satellite was caused by a mistaken attack by the US Army". Tages-Anzeiger says the reason for the mistake may have been a report in The Washington Post two days before the incident, in which the owner of Iraqi satellite channel Al Zawraa is cited saying his station would start broadcasting via Eutelsat "in 48 hours".

In fact, Al Zawraa, a Sunni station which broadcasts pictures of insurgent attacks on US and Iraqi forces, never broadcast on the Hot Bird 8 satellite, although another station with a similar name did.

[faceless]

that's some spelling mistake. With "intelligence" like that anything could happen.

[Mandy]