From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Mon Mar 17 2003 - 12:18:52 MST
matus:
>You support the unconditional removal of Bush for something he
>*might* do but care not about Saddam who *has* done those things!
I suggest to look at all sides of the story, gather information
from as many sources as you can, and not to swallow, hook, line
and sinker what you hear coming from the White House and from
American media. It might help to put Iraq in perspective
with what is occurring elsewhere in the world, too.
Practicing a healthy skepticism especially with regards to what
comes out of the mouths of politicians and especially when the
alternative is some thousands/more precious lives gone might
make it easier to look at oneself in the mirror in the morning.
Amara
---------
http://de.indymedia.org/2003/02/40341.shtml
The legend of Saddam "gassing its own people" ?
von Kaas - 04.02.2003 00:28
" President Bush himself has cited Iraq's "gassing its own people,"
specifically at Halabja A War Crime or an Act of War? "
It was no surprise that President Bush, lacking smoking-gun evidence
of Iraq's weapons programs, used his State of the Union address to
re-emphasize the moral case for an invasion: "The dictator who is
assembling the world's most dangerous weapons has already used them
on whole villages, leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind
or disfigured."
The accusation that Iraq has used chemical weapons against its
citizens is a familiar part of the debate. The piece of hard
evidence most frequently brought up concerns the gassing of Iraqi
Kurds at the town of Halabja in March 1988, near the end of the
eight-year Iran-Iraq war. President Bush himself has cited Iraq's
"gassing its own people," specifically at Halabja, as a reason to
topple Saddam Hussein.
But the truth is, all we know for certain is that Kurds were
bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with
any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds. This is
not the only distortion in the Halabja story. "
---------
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,58056,00.html
Media Watchdogs Caught Napping
By Leander Kahney | Also by this reporter Page 1 of 1
02:00 AM Mar. 17, 2003 PT
In the run up to a conflict in Iraq, foreign news websites are
seeing large volumes of traffic from America, as U.S. citizens
increasingly seek news coverage about the coming war.
"Given how timid most U.S. news organizations have been in
challenging the White House position on Iraq, I'm not surprised if
Americans are turning to foreign news services for a perspective on
the conflict that goes beyond freedom fries," said Deborah Branscom,
a Newsweek contributing editor, who keeps a weblog devoted to media
issues.
[...]
Jon Dennis, Guardian Unlimited deputy news editor, said U.S. readers
are visiting his site for the range of opinions it publishes, and to
engage in vigorous debate. Media outlets in the United States, he
said, are not presenting the issues critically.
"As a journalist, I find it quite strange that there's not more
criticism of the Bush administration in the American media," he
said. "It's as though the whole U.S. is in shock (from Sept. 11).
It's hard for (the media) to be dispassionate about it. It seems as
though they're not thinking as clearly as they should be."
Dennis charged that, unlike much of the American press, the Guardian
site presents both pro- and anti-war positions. In addition, the
Guardian encourages its readers to debate the issues, through the
site's talk boards and interactive features like live interviews
with various experts.
The only debate in the U.S. media is on the Web, Dennis said.
"Weblogs are doing all the work that the U.S. media did in the
past," he said. "That's an interesting development."
In fact, a lot of the Guardian's U.S. traffic is referred by
weblogs, especially Matt Drudge's Drudge Report, said Nielsen's
Goosey.
"The new war in Iraq has made world news sources far more
important," said Stephen Gilliard, who posts a lot of foreign news
stories to the weblog at NetSlaves. "While not all news sources are
reliable, there is such a gap between the way Americans see the
world and the way other people do that it is invaluable to use these
resources."
There is also a growing tide of criticism of the U.S. media from
members of the media, such as veteran CBS broadcaster Dan Rather.
Rather recently complained to the BBC about the media's lack of
access to government officials, and the growth of "Milatainment"
reality shows on U.S. TV, including ABC's Profiles from the Front
Line and VH1's Military Diaries.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote, "(U.S. TV news) seems
to be reporting about a different planet than the one covered by
foreign media."
That's not to say U.S. news outlets are devoid of criticism for
leaders' handling of the conflict in Iraq. Krugman himself is a case
in point, having published a column last week with an opening
sentence stating that "America's leadership has lost touch with
reality."
Barb Palser, online media columnist for the American Journalism
Review, believes that many visitors to foreign news sites are
finding their way through links from U.S.-based publications. She
cites the example of The Spokesman Review, a newspaper in Spokane,
Washington, which provides links to outside news services, many of
them overseas, as part of its Iraq coverage.
Another source that may be pointing U.S. news junkies overseas,
Palser said, is Google. A search on Google News for the terms "Iraq"
and "war" turned up more than 54,000 links, with articles from
Australian, British and Saudi Arabian news outlets topping the list.
-- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara@amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "The real malady is fear of life, not of death." -- Naguib Mahfouz
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