De Media

Cecile Landman van http://streamtime.org/ wees me net op het volgende: 'Is the media telling the truth about Iraq? Do you have an opinion on this issue? How does the nature, quality, and content of media coverage of the Iraq war ultimately impact the lives of people in Iraq, the Middle East and around the planet? In your country, how does the media’s Iraq coverage rate? Fair and balanced? Biased? Which way? How about bloggers’ reporting and discussion of the issue? Have blogs helped clarify things or added to the confusion? We want to bring the opinions of the world’s bloggers on this issue directly into the debate. Please join us for a live discussion on Wednesday at 22:00–24:00 GMT (6–8pm EDT). Here’s the plan: Reuters will be hosting a panel discussion which will be videocast and audio cast via this link: http://reuters.com/IraqNewsmakers. Several members of the Global Voices community will be live-blogging the event: Middle East/North Africa Editor Haitham Sabbah, Iraq contributor Salam Adil, Iraqi-Australian blogger who now lives in the U.S., Fayrouz Hancock, Omar of Iraq the Model blogging from Baghdad, and Iraqi blogger Raed Jarrar (who will be present in the room in New York). Panelists in the room will include CBS’s Lara Logan, independent Iraqi photo journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Reuters’ Iraq Bureau Chief Alastair MacDonald, Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, Chief of Strategic Communication, Combined Arms Center, U.S. Army, and others. We will have a live IRC chat which you can join (via the link above or on Freenode at #globalvoices. Read here for more instructions for getting on IRC, or you can use the client on the Reuters event site.). I will be present in the room as “IRC ambassador,” representing your questions and comments in the room and making sure that the panelists address as many as possible. If you have views in advance, you can start sharing them now in several ways:
- Write a comment on this post.
- Write your views on your own blog and trackback to this post.
- When you find blog posts and articles related to this issue that you want to share please tag them “gv-iraq” in Technorati or del.icio.us. Feel free to tag your own posts that way too so we can find them easily and re-blog them for the world to see.' Lees verder:
http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2006/04/04/asking-the-blogosphere-is-media-coverage-of-iraq-biased-in-what-direction/

Martelen 33

Ik ontving zojuist deze email van Amnesty International: 'Verenigde Staten. Onder de radar: Geheime vluchten naar marteling en ‘verdwijning.’ In het vandaag gepubliceerde rapport, USA Below the radar: Secret flights to torture and “disappearance”, geeft Amnesty International uitgebreide informatie over de buitenwettelijke overdracht van mensen (“rendition”) van het ene naar het ander land en worden de omstandigheden beschreven waaronder slachtoffers gevangengehouden werden.De mensenrechtenorganisatie heeft de vliegbewegingen van direct aan de CIA gelieerde vliegtuigen tussen 2001 en 2005 geanalyseerd, speciaal de vliegtuigen die bekende “rendition” slachtoffers als Khaled el Masri, Mahar Arar en Abu Omar vervoerd hebben. Deze analyse toont aan dat deze vliegtuigen vaak het Europese luchtruim gebruikt hebben, alhoewel er geen bewijs is dat er zich altijd gevangenen aan boord van de vliegtuigen bevonden.Amnesty International heeft diverse slachtoffers van “rendition” geïnterviewd. Hun getuigenissen zijn geloofwaardig en komen overeen met controleerbare feiten zoals vluchtdata. Ze zijn ook consistent met de beschrijvingen, door ieder van hen, van marteling en mishandeling.‘Verdwijningen’Alleen drie Jemenitische burgers, Muhammad al-Assad, Muhammad Basmillah en Salah Qaru hebben er in toegestemd hun getuigenis openbaar te maken. Deze mannen zijn 18 maanden ‘verdwenen’ geweest, waarbij ze vastgehouden zijn in vier onbekende detentiecentra. Omdat ze geblinddoekt waren tijdens het transport, weten de drie mannen niet waar ze precies gevangengezeten hebben, maar de duur van hun vluchten en de bidschema’s die ze kregen, wijzen er op dat ze waarschijnlijk in Djibouti, Afghanistan en ergens in Oost-Europa zijn gedetineerd.Als gevolg van de “renditions” is op dit moment nog een aantal mensen ‘verdwenen’, hoewel het moeilijk is om precieze aantallen te achterhalen. Families zijn vaak terughoudend om de vermissing van verwanten te melden uit angst voor represailles. Waarschijnlijk gaat het om enkele honderden gevallen van “rendition”.' Lees verder: http://www.amnesty.nl/persberichten/ME-PB0219.shtml

De Oceaan

De Seattle Post-Intelligencer bericht: 'Research in Pacific Shows Ocean Trouble Acidity rises, oxygen drops, scientists find. Research fresh off a boat that docked Thursday in Alaska reveals some frightening changes taking place in the Pacific Ocean. As humans are pumping out more carbon dioxide that is helping to warm the planet, the ocean has been doing yeoman's work to lessen the effects - but it's taking a toll. Over time, the changes could have an impact that ripples through the food chain, from microscopic plants that can't grow right to salmon and whales unable to find enough to eat. The Pacific is getting warmer and more acidic, while the amount of oxygen and the building blocks for coral and some kinds of plankton are decreasing, according to initial results from scientists with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, the University of Washington and elsewhere. "There are big changes," said Christopher Sabine, chief scientist for one leg of the research trip, which ultimately traveled from Antarctica to Alaska. Many of the most interesting results are tied to the ocean becoming increasingly acidic because of its absorption of carbon dioxide. "You don't have to believe in climate change to believe that this is happening," said Joanie Kleypas, an oceanographer with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, a non-profit organization based in Boulder, Colo. "It's pretty much simple thermodynamics." And it's alarming.' Lees verder: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/265052_acid31.html Of:
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/040406EA.shtml

De Oorlogsstaat 36

Het onafhankelijke Inter Press Service bericht: 'Bush's War Hawks Edged Out of the Nest. WASHINGTON - Although still united in pushing for confrontation with Iran, the coalition of hawks that propelled U.S. troops toward Baghdad three years ago appears to have finally run out of steam. Demoralized by the quagmire in Iraq, as well as Pres. George W. Bush's still falling approval and credibility ratings, the coalition of aggressive nationalists, neo-conservatives, and the Christian Right that promoted the belligerent, neo-imperial trajectory in U.S. foreign policy has lost both its coherence and its power to dominate the political agenda here. As a result -- and almost by default -- realists under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and in the uniformed military have steadily gained control over the administration's policy. Within the increasingly fractious Republican Party, more xenophobic forces appear to be on the rise, as evidenced by recent and ongoing controversies surrounding immigration and foreign control of U.S. ports.
Evidence of a decisive shift is not hard to find, beginning with the latest edition of the "The National Security Strategy of the United States of America", released earlier this month.
A kinder, gentler version of its fire-breathing 2002 predecessor that laid out the doctrinal justification for the March 2003 invasion, the new version puts a greater emphasis on diplomacy and development, tending alliances, and other realist themes, even as it continued the administration's defense of pre-emptive military action with Iran squarely in mind.
Rice's constant travel -- as well as that of her two underlings, Deputy Secretary Robert Zoellick and Undersecretary for Policy Nicholas Burns -- not only demonstrates the priority the administration has placed on cultivating allies and even states more skeptical of U.S. benevolence. It also suggests that the State Department -- the bastion of foreign policy realism -- is considerably more confident of its own power within the administration.' Lees verder:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0404-04.htm

Land of the Free. Home of the Brave! 2

De Guardian bericht: 'Silence in class University professors denounced for anti-Americanism; schoolteachers suspended for their politics; students encouraged to report on their tutors. Are US campuses in the grip of a witch-hunt of progressives, or is academic life just too liberal? After the screenwriter Walter Bernstein was placed on the blacklist during the McCarthyite era he said his life "seemed to move in ever-decreasing circles". "Few of my friends dropped away but the list of acquaintances diminished," he wrote in Inside Out, a memoir of the blacklist. "I appeared contaminated and they did not want to risk infection. They avoided me, not calling as they had in the past, not responding to my calls, being nervously distant if we met in public places." As chair of African American studies in Yale, Paul Gilroy had a similar experience recently after he spoke at a university-sponsored teach-in on the Iraq war. "I think the morality of cluster bombs, of uranium-tipped bombs, [of] daisy cutters are shaped by an imperial double standard that values American lives more," he said. "[The war seems motivated by] a desire to enact revenge for the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon ... [It's important] to speculate about the relation between this war and the geopolitical interests of Israel."
"I thought I was being extremely mealy-mouthed, but I was accused of advocating conspiracy theories," says Gilroy, who is now the Anthony Giddens professor of Social Theory at the London School of Economics. Scot Silverstein, who was once on the faculty at Yale, saw a piece in the student paper about Gilroy's contribution. He wrote to the Wall Street Journal comparing Gilroy to Hitler and claiming his words illustrated the "moral psychosis and perhaps psychological sadism that appears to have infected leftist academia". The Journal published the letter. Gilroy found himself posted on Discoverthenetworks.org, a website dedicated to exposing radical professors. The principle accusation was that he "believes the US fabricated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein".' Lees verder: http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1746227,00.html

De Oorlogsstaat 35

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Noam Chomsky 6

Tom Engelhardt schrijft: 'Noam Chomsky on War Crimes in Iraq. In the Vietnam era, the subject of war crimes was the last to arrive and the first to depart. When, in 1971 in Detroit, Vietnam Veterans Against the War convened its Winter Soldier Investigation into U.S. war crimes in Southeast Asia, it was roundly ignored by the media. Over 100 veterans gave firsthand testimony to war crimes they either committed or witnessed. Beyond the unbearable nature of their testimony, the hearings were startling for the fact that here were men who yearned to take some responsibility for what they had done. But while it was, by then, possible for Americans to accept the GI as a victim in Vietnam, it proved impossible for most Americans to accept him as a human being taking responsibility for a crime against humanity. There was no place for this in the American imagination, it seemed, no less for the thought that the planning and prosecution of the war were potential crimes committed by our leaders. Evidently there still is none, which is why it's important to follow Noam Chomsky back into the Iraq of recent years to consider the American occupation of that country in the context of war crimes. The piece that follows is an excerpt from Chomsky's new book, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy, which is officially published on this very day. It is Chomsky at his best, a superb tour (de force) of a world in which the Bush administration has regularly asserted its right to launch "preventive" military interventions against "failed" and "rogue" states, while increasingly taking on the characteristics of those failed and rogue states itself. It will be an indispensable volume for any library. (You can check out a Chomsky discussion of it at Democracy Now!). Lees verder: http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=73753