In this edition we review some of the information that has swerved round the official propagandist media and appeared on the net – sometimes for the first time and sometimes digging up the revolting backgrounds of Blair’s new fundamentalist friends in the States. We also expose how in these times of digital imaging the camera can be made to lie.
Coldtype (www.coldtype.net) was launched eight years ago to counter a belief that the best way for newspapers to solve the problem of declining readership is to tinker with the design without too much thought to the quality – or quantity – of content. Things haven’t changed much over the past eight years; in fact the speed of redesigns has heated up while circulations fall at a concurrent rate. Coldtype, revived after a hiatus of five years, it says it will continue with its original mission: to reprint examples of excellent writing from around the world in a format that emphasises how a neat and unobtrusive design can enhance, without subsuming, the power of The Word. They believe that great writing should be available to as many people as possible and preferably free of charge, hence their PDF format and internet distribution. (Hey that sounds like SLR!) If you do (or if you don’t), find this new issue interesting, informative and amusing contact the editor at editor@coldtype.net.
This little gem came through media-watch. How many British papers discovered that whilst Prime Minister Poodle was telling us he had the Presidents ear and could still avoid a war the latter had pushed out the tenders for reconstruction. You couldn’t make it up. El Pais (11 April) reports that on February 2,
“two days before the inspectors requested more time for their work, and 36 days before the US began the war, the US government requested tenders from American firms to reconstruct (Iraq) after the devastation they were planning”.
The paper reprints a copy of the front page of the Solicitation, offer and award document issued by US-AID of the Ronald Reagan building in Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington. Tenders were due in by February 27. On the second of March, US firms began sounding out Spanish firms about possible sub-contracting arrangements. The US firms approached included Halliburton, Louis Berger, Bechtel and Parsons.
“On March 25 Andrew Natsios of US-AID said that the firms chosen to rebuild Iraq would be announced by the end of the month. He omitted to add that he had requested their tenders a month earlier. He also confirmed that such firms had to be American for legal reasons but that subcontracting would be open to everyone.”
“The scope of the work was wide: reconstruction of ports, airports, electricity plants, bridges, railways, drinking water, schools and hospitals: The document would seem a work of altruism were it not from the fact that the agency planned to reconstruct what its government had decided secretly to destroy.”
(Francisco Mercado, El concurso para reconstruir Iraq se hizo un mes antes la guerra, El Pais, 11/4/03.)
Indymedia (nyc.indymedia.org) is a community based independent media centre in New York. New Yorkers are kicking up a stink about Bush’s homeland security nonsense which is just an attack on civil liberties yet amazingly we don’t hear about this. Here Blunkett would make the old Stasi jealous with his actions.
If you haven’t already seen how the ‘iconic’ picture of cheering Iraqis pulling down the statue of Saddam is a con job look at www.manchesterstopthewar.org/facts1.html. First there is a photo from the BBC website showing the Hussein statue toppling which we all saw on TV. Below that is a long-shot, which was not shown, in which you can see the whole of Fardus Square (conveniently located just opposite the Palestine Hotel where the international media are based), and the presence of at most around 200 people – most of them US troops (note the tanks and armoured vehicles) and assembled journalists, not the appearance of thousands as on edited western TV. Other sites have drawn attention to the fact that an armed gorilla-shaped character photographed at the side of Chalabi in southern Iraq was the same creature egging on the few dozen in the square to help the Americans topple the statue.
For the view from the Arab world there’s www.english.alj azeera.net. Try it, but it was hacked offline as soon as the invasion started. It’s what Bush calls freedom of speech. There is a mirror site (www.cursor.org/aljazeera.htm) that lets you see what your missing from the hacked off site. A report said that the Bush administration was so maddened by broadcasts and webcasts delivered by Al-Jazeera, that it is has put aside $30.5 million to finance an alternative aimed at the Middle East. So public ownership is an alternative.
Remember all pictures of George Galloway and Jacques Chirac with Saddam? Well here’s the actual CNN clip of Tony’s pal Donald Rumsfeld embracing the old tyrant (www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82). These are the pictures that for some reason our media were unable to show.
And a few more:
• Just to show that we’re not all propagandists with cameras and typewriters www.mwaw.org is a site run by Media Workers Against the War.
• What’s a redneck? Push a stick in to this hive (www.newamericancentury.org/iraq-022403.htm) and find out.
• For details of the Project for the New American Century and why the Iraq war was planned ‘Long In Advance’ check www.rense.com/general37/adv.htm.
• Again from Rense, an article on whether the Americans did “win” the war – www.rense.com/general37/howamericalost.htm
• An article from New Statesman which has formed the basis of Tam Dalyell’s critique on who’s behind the warmongering – www.rense.com/general37/theweirdmenbehind.htm
• Just as it says on the label, What Really Happened (www.whatreallyhappened.com) is a site full of copious links to newspaper articles. Beware of its editorialising it can be a little but iffy.
• www.irakwar.ru/iraq-read_article.php?articleId= 3267&lang=en – an English language site of Russian news service. It’s good to know how others think.
• Contributions from the 90 per cent of Australians that opposed the invasion can be found at www.smh.com.au.
With deep shame we offer you the following two sites. They carry horrifying and harrowing photographs of the slaughter, maiming and suffering of the Iraqi people at the hands of our parliamentarians whose action through voting to support this war directly lead to their guilt as if they had squeezed the trigger on the machine gun that blew the heads off an Iraqi woman’s two daughters in front of her eyes. They cannot wash the guilt from their hands. www.marchforjustice.com/id243.htm
www.robert-fisk.com
“I have squared my conscience with my intellect, and if everyone had done so this war would not have taken place. I act square and clean for my principles. I have nothing to retract. I have nothing to be ashamed of.”
John Maclean’s speech from the dock spoken 85 years ago in which he condemns capitalist wars and refers to Britain’s obsession with, of all places, Mesopotamia.