Independant media in a time of war

Here's another documentary to take in, if you are interested. It presents a rather different look at what modern media is capable of, in a time of war.

James Miller's Death in Gaza

If you click on that link above you'll see a rather sad and unsettling look inside the world of the Palesinian children of the Gaza strip.

The filmaker wanted to do a story covering both Israeli and Palestinian children, but was shot to death before he could complete that task.

It's a tough look at how the children of that part of the world are it's first victims.

November 11th, 2006 - A Time To Remember

If you click on the above link, you'll find a short film I did last year to thank those men and women all over the world that served, and fell, in WW2 fighting against the greatest tyranny this century has ever seen.

Through their noble effort, many millions of people live in freedom today.

Common people, doing uncommon things.

A sincere thank you, for the greatest gift of all.

Today, men and women from many countries are engaged in protecting us all over the world. They, like their predecessors, deserve our appreciation - not for just one day a year, but every single day of the year.

If you see a veteran today (or any other day), or some serviceman or servicewoman, remember what they represent, and take a minute to thank them for their service to your country.


A member on a forum site I am a member of brought this video to my attention. I'd like to share it with you, in the spirit of the day.

"On November 11, 1999 Terry Kelly was in a Shoppers Drug Mart store in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. At 10:55 AM an announcement came over the store’s PA asking customers who would still be on the premises at 11:00 AM to give two minutes of silence in respect to the veterans who have sacrificed so much for us.


Terry was impressed with the store’s leadership role in adopting the Legion’s “two minutes of silence” initiative. He felt that the store’s contribution of educating the public to the importance of remembering was commendable.

When eleven o’clock arrived on that day, an announcement was again made asking for the “two minutes of silence” to commence. All customers, with the exception of a man who was accompanied by his young child, showed their respect.


Terry’s anger towards the father for trying to engage the store’s clerk in conversation and for setting a bad example for his child was channeled into a beautiful piece of work called, “A Pittance of Time”. Terry later recorded “A Pittance of Time” and included it on his full-length music CD, “The Power of the Dream”.

In the interest of creating a greater awareness of the sacrifices that have been made and are still being made on our behalf, “A Pittance of Time” has been adapted to the French language and titled “C’est si peu de temps”. Music videos for both audio tracks too were produced in support of the campaign and a musical/theatrical concert production, “Two Minutes of Silence – A Pittance of Time”, was written for the stage."

Bush as Macbeth

The one strange thing about Bush is this almost Shakespearean aspect of all this. Here's a fellow that spends most of his life not working in any direction towards a political future, much less the White House.

It becomes a bit like Bush doing a mangled summer stock version of Macbeth, if one looks at they way it all went.

I bear a charmed life.

Macbeth, 5. 8

He gets picked, and groomed, by the neocons/theocons as their candidate. He takes power under a black cloud, and generally doesn't impress anyone for the first nine months of his presidency.

Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown,
And put a barren sceptre in my gripe,
Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand,
No son of mine succeeding.

Macbeth, 3. 1

The neocon vision is failing, and there is little hope or indication on the horizon that Bush and the others will be anything more than a footnote in the history books.

Then 9/11 happens, and Bush is handed one of those one in a lifetime opportunities to take the helm and lead decisively. The neocons/theocons realize this is the chance of a lifetime, and use this new wind in their sails to launch their agenda. Bush's popularity goes through the roof (as would be expected in such a difficult time), and he decides to go into Afghanistan.

Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn
The power of man, for none of woman born
Shall harm Macbeth.

Macbeth, 4. 1

He rides a wave of strong public support, and seems almost untouchable.

That war goes well, relatively, and up to that moment (except for not getting Bin Laden) he's at least going in a direction most Americans see as a positive thing. The great irony is that, at the exact same time, the neocons plans of attacking Iraq (proposed in 1999,and decided in March 2001) become the entire focus of this "war on terror".

Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.

Macbeth, 3. 2

That's where the wheels start to fly off the wagon. Deception and lies take center stage for it's rationale, and the war is badly run right from it's first moments of planning. Decision after decision (especially in regards to Bremer) pile up the odds against the troops. Although the war is won, the peace is soon lost.

The ghost of Soviet era Afghanistan appears, and walks the ramparts of the castle walls. Those insurgents in Iraq use essentially the same tactics used by the "freedom fighters" trained by the Pakistanis, and funded by the Americans.

Like in Macbeth, violent storms arrive , as if to indicate the heavens themselves are in some strange discord with events.

The Weather

As in other Shakespearean tragedies, Macbeth’s grotesque murder spree is accompanied by a number of unnatural occurrences in the natural realm. From the thunder and lightning that accompany the witches’ appearances to the terrible storms that rage on the night of Duncan’s murder, these violations of the natural order reflect corruption in the moral and political orders.

http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/macbeth/themes.html

Those in power feverishly try to wash the blood from their hands, and decry how Iraq has taken over the agenda, and blown them off their glorious course and onto the rocks and shoals of destiny.

“Out, damned spot; out, I say . . . who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?

As they get deeper and deeper into the quagmire, they refuse to see reality. They've bought their own propoganda, and are blinded to the facts on the ground. They have come to believe their own lies, and it ends their reign.

Screw your courage to the sticking-place,
And we'll not fail.

Macbeth, 1. 7

Even though the majority of Iraqis and Americans both want the US forces out of Iraq - they continue blindly onward towards their fate.

Bloody instructions, which being taught, return
To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice
To our own lips.

Macbeth, 1. 7

Then, just before this election, the neocons come out with their night of the long knives, and savagely attack their former leader.

They lose the election, as the trees march towards the castle walls.

Macbeth shall never vanquished be until
Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill
Shall come against him.

Macbeth, 4. 1

Hours after defeat, Rumsfeld becomes the first casuality of an Informed Electorate going Democratic. Within three days, those two men who shook hands share a fate neither expected. Saddam and Rumsfeld, once a mighty king and prince, both fall from a great height.

Even within the court itself, treachery runs deep.

When President George W. Bush lobbed a barb at Karl Rove, his chief political strategist, at his press conference, "I was obviously working harder on this campaign than he was," there were notable "oohs" from the audience at the public slapdown.

"Nobody thinks that Karl is in charge of the occupation of Iraq," said Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, who has close ties to Mr Rove. "I haven't heard any complaints about him. In a conference call with conservative groups no one faulted the turnout effort."

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/15645686/

But now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in
To saucy doubts and fears.

Macbeth, 3. 4

Now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.

Macbeth, 5. 2

The very seed that destroyed him was planted and nurtured by the man himself, and his court. It was there from the very start, and were it not for 9/11, it would have probably never sprouted forth and captured him in it's thorns.

It's root comes from that 1999 PNAC letter to Clinton, the one signed by all those that are now in the spotlight. Seven years after being written, it's conclusion has finally been reached.

The Neocons, Beware The Ides Of November

Just how bad is the war in Iraq getting ? Just how badly is it being run ?

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A leading conservative proponent of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq now says dysfunction within the Bush administration has turned U.S. policy there into a disaster.

Richard Perle, who chaired a committee of Pentagon policy advisers early in the Bush administration, said had he seen at the start of the war in 2003 where it would go, he probably would not have advocated an invasion to depose Saddam Hussein. Perle was an assistant secretary of defense under President Reagan.

"I probably would have said, 'Let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists,"' he told Vanity Fair magazine in its upcoming January issue.

Asked about the article, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said, "We appreciate the Monday-morning quarterbacking, but the president has a plan to succeed in Iraq and we are going forward with it."

Other prominent conservatives criticized the administration's conduct of the war in the article, including Kenneth Adelman, who also served on the Defense Policy Board that informally advised Bush. Adelman said he was "crushed" by the performance of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Adelman also said that neoconservatism, "the idea of using our power for moral good in the world," has been discredited with the public. After Iraq, he told Vanity Fair, "it's not going to sell."

The critiques come as growing numbers of Republicans have criticized Bush's policies on Iraq. The war, unpopular with many Americans, has become a top-tier issue in next week's congressional elections.

Perle said "you have to hold the president responsible" because he didn't recognize "disloyalty" by some in the administration. He said the White House's National Security Council, then run by now-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, did not serve Bush properly.

A year before the war, Adelman predicted demolishing Saddam's military power and liberating Iraq would be a "cakewalk." But he told the magazine he was mistaken in his high opinion of Bush's national security team.

"They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the postwar era," he said. "Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/11/03/iraq.critics.ap/index.html

Richard Perle and Kenneth Adelman, who were both Pentagon advisers before the war, Michael Rubin, a former senior official in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, and David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, were among the neoconservatives who recanted to Vanity Fair magazine in an article that could influence Tuesday's battle for the control of Congress. The Iraq war has been the dominant issue in the election.

He too takes back his public urging for military action, in light of the administration's performance. "I guess that's what I would have said: that Bush's arguments are absolutely right, but you know what, you just have to put them in the drawer marked 'can't do'. And that's very different from 'let's go'."

Mr Adelman, a senior Reagan adviser at cold war summits with Mikhail Gorbachev, expressed particular disappointment in Mr Rumsfeld, who he described as a particular friend. "I'm crushed by his performance," he said. "Did he change, or were we wrong in the past? Or is it that he was never really challenged before? I don't know. He certainly fooled me."

Mr Adelman said the guiding principle behind neoconservatism, "the idea of using our power for moral good in the world", had been killed off for a generation at least. After Iraq, he told Vanity Fair, "it's not going to sell".

Michael Rubin, who worked on the staff of the Pentagon's office of special plans and the coalition provisional authority in Baghdad, accused Mr Bush of betraying Iraqi reformers.

The president's actions, Mr Rubin said, had been "not much different from what his father did on February 15 1991, when he called the Iraqi people to rise up and then had second thoughts and didn't do anything once they did".

Mr Frum, who as a White House speechwriter helped coin the phrase "axis of evil" in 2002, said failure in Iraq might be inescapable, because "the insurgency has proven it can kill anyone who cooperates, and the United States and its friends have failed to prove that it can protect them". The blame, Mr Frum said, lies with "failure at the centre", beginning with the president.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/midterms2006/s...1939472,00.html

The timing of this act (and the language used), right before a critical election, is even more fascinating. Here are some of the top people in the neo-con movement, and they've now turned into Brutus and his fellow assasins in the Roman Senate.

Tillius with both hands caught hold of his robe and pulled it off from his shoulders, and Casca, that stood behind him, drawing his dagger, gave him the first, but a slight wound, about the shoulder. Caesar snatching hold of the handle of the dagger, and crying out aloud in Latin, "Villain Casca, what do you?" he, calling in Greek to his brother, bade him come and help. And by this time, finding himself struck by a great many hands, and looking round about him to see if he could force his way out, when he saw Brutus with his dagger drawn against him, he let go Casca's hand, that he had hold of, and, covering his head with his robe, gave up his body to their blows. And they so eagerly pressed towards the body, and so many daggers were hacking together, that they cut one another; Brutus, particularly, received a wound in his hand, and all of them were besmeared with the blood.

- Plutarch

"Et Tu, Richard ?"

The Best War Ever !

If you are interested in the war in Iraq, here's an interview you should listen to.



It's with John Stauber, the author of "The Best War Ever" .

“Lies got us into this war. Only the truth will get us out.”

The Best War Ever, by the best-selling authors of Weapons of Mass Deception, is a vital account of why America is losing in Iraq and the Middle East. We have met the enemy—and it's our own PR machine. One of the most tragic consequences of the Bush administration's reliance on spin, the authors argue, is its disdain for realistic planning. Repeatedly, when faced with predictions of problems, policymakers dismissed the warnings of Iraq experts, choosing instead to promulgate their own version of the war through conservative media outlets and PR campaigns. And as the book reveals, they're still doing it—as the people who sold us the war in Iraq are now trying to sell an expansion into Syria and Iran.

Why You Should Read The Best War Ever

* Offers the most compelling and complete study to date of the propaganda campaign that led us to war, and which continues to trap the Bush administration within a “mirrored echo chamber” of its own “message consistency”—with catastrophic consequences for the United States and the world.

* Provides meticulous accounting of the polling and spin-doctoring of GOP and administration officials in laying out language to obscure the reality of this unilaterally-declared war of choice, and occupation.

* Details how the Bush administration has aimed its propaganda not at a tactical deception of enemy combatants, but at the American people themselves. This violates long-standing and important American political traditions dating back to the Smith-Mundt Act, which was first passed by Congress in 1948 after lawmakers saw the harm that propaganda had done during Hitler's reign in Germany.

* Gives necessary context and background on the administration's use of leaked information and ad hominem attacks to discredit their critics. It examines the case of CIA analyst Valerie Plame and her husband Joseph Wilson, showing how the administration's eagerness to discredit a critic came at the cost of sacrificing important policy goals, including preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

* Is the first book to compile and compare various accountings of Iraqi and U.S. casualties as a result of this conflict. Why is there no official U.S. count of Iraqi dead? And why have pro-war pundits engaged in smear campaigns against respected research journals such as the Lancet for conducting their own research into the number of casualties?

* As support for the war dwindles, Rampton and Stauber predict a next round of propaganda that will likely be aimed at rationalizing the failures to bring stability and democracy to Iraq. They also warn that the same officials who misled us into war with Iraq are now gearing up to argue for war with Iran. The authors urge all Americans to understand the lies that were told, and to hold accountable those responsible for creating and disseminating them.

“More than a book—it's a call to action.”



Here's an excerpt from the book.

http://www.prwatch.org/tbwe/docs/tbwe_intro.pdf

In their new book titled "The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq [1]" (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006), which goes on sale Thursday, co-authors John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton assert that television reporters "actually underplayed rather than overplayed the negative" in their reporting from Iraq, while "newspaper coverage during the subsequent occupation has also been sanitised."

Stauber and Rampton cite a study by researchers at George Washington University that analysed 1,820 stories on five U.S. television networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and Fox News, as well as the Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera, and found that "all of the American media largely shied away from showing visuals of coalition, Iraqi military, or civilian casualties. Despite advanced technologies offering reporters the chance to transmit the reality of war in real time, reporters chose instead to present a largely bloodless conflict to viewers even when they did broadcast during firefights."

Print journalists didn't perform much better. A May 2005 review by Los Angeles Times writer James Rainey of the coverage of a six-month period -- when 559 U.S. and Western allies died in Iraq -- by six major U.S. newspapers and two popular newsmagazines found that "readers of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Washington Post did not see a single picture of a dead serviceman."

"Rumsfeld's complaints are an interesting twist of the truth since the reality is that the United States has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on media campaigns that have been spectacularly ineffective," Rampton told IPS in a telephone interview. "That the enemy has been more effective in communicating its message to the world is not so much a reflection of their media savvy as it is on the ineffective message of the United States."

"You can't expect a better messaging strategy to compensate for the fact that the underlining policy is based on falsehoods and deliberate deception," Rampton said.

As the occupation of Iraq proved unmanageable and the total number of dead and wounded U.S. military personnel mounted, stories about the revamping of schoolhouses and the building of soccer fields were given a backseat by the media.

With things continuing to spiral out of control in Iraq, the Bush administration has once again decided that it's a public relations problem; a question of propaganda not policy. Around the same time that Rumsfeld was on the road railing about anti-war appeasers and confused critics that were enabling terrorism, and how much better the terrorists were in handling the media, the Washington Post reported that "U.S. military leaders in Baghdad have put out for bid a two-year, 20-million-dollar public relations contract that calls for extensive monitoring of U.S. and Middle Eastern media in an effort to promote more positive coverage of news from Iraq."

According to the Post's Walter Pincus, the "contract calls for assembling a database of selected news stories and assessing their tone as part of a programme to provide 'public relations products' that would improve coverage of the military command's performance, according to a statement of work attached to the proposal."

Pincus pointed out that the proposal "calls in part for extensive monitoring and analysis of Iraqi, Middle Eastern and American media, [and] is designed to help the coalition forces understand 'the communications environment.' Its goal is to 'develop communication strategies and tactics, identify opportunities, and execute events... to effectively communicate Iraqi government and coalition's goals, and build support among our strategic audiences in achieving these goals,'" according to a statement publicly available through the FBO Daily's Web site.

"From what I've seen, the thing about this proposal that most concerns me is the component calling for the monitoring of the media, especially when journalists will be rated as to how favourable they are toward U.S. policy objectives," Rampton pointed out.

"Monitoring journalists and maintaining a database of their stories raises a number of serious questions: Who knows where that database will wind up in two years or five years from now? What kind of retribution might be exacted against those reporters whose work is seen as unfavourable to U.S. policy?"

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/node/634/print

All book sales benefit the Center for Media and Democracy, a 501(C)3 non-profit whose programs include PRWatch.org, Sourcewatch.org, Congresspedia.org, the No Fake News campaign, the Weekly Spin, and PR Watch quarterly.

Spread the word.

No Matter What You think About The War, Never Disrespect The Warrior

Here's a pretty well written reason why that quote is so true. I created that phrase to honour military men and women, when the Iraq war was starting. Those that are against this war, as I am, should never be against the troops fighting it.

This letter pretty well sums up why...

The Warrior's Code Of Honor (WWII, Korea, Viet Nam)

"I offer these poor, inadequate words – bought not taught – in the hope that they may shed some small light on why combat veterans are like they are. It is my life desire that this tortured work, despite it’s many defects, may yet still provide some tiny sliver of understanding which may blossom into tolerance – nay, acceptance – of a Warrior’s way of being from doing his duty under fire."

By By A Purple Heart Medal recipient who made a promise to remain an unknown soldier.
October 29, 2006

As a combat veteran wounded in one of America’s wars, I offer to speak for those who cannot. Were the mouths of my fallen battle brothers not stopped with dust, they would testify that life revolves around honor. In war, it is understood that you give your word of honor to do your duty -- that is -- stand and fight instead of running away and deserting your friends. When you keep your word despite desperately desiring to flee the screaming hell all around, you earn honor.

Earning honor under fire changes who you are. The blast furnace of battle burns away impurities encrusting your soul. The white-hot forge of combat hammers you into a hardened, purified warrior willing to die rather than break your word to friends -- your honor. Unbeknownst to civilians, some things are worth dying for.

Combat is scary but exciting.

You never feel so alive as when being shot at without result.

You never feel so triumphant as when shooting back -- with result.

You never feel love so pure as that burned into your heart by friends willing to die to keep their word to you. And they do.

The biggest sadness of your life is to see friends falling. The biggest surprise of your life is to survive the war. But although you are still alive on the outside, you are dead inside -- shot thru the heart with nonsensical guilt for living while friends died. The biggest lie of your life torments you that you could have done something more, different, to save them. Their faces are the tombstones in your weeping eyes, their souls shine the true camaraderie you search for the rest of your life but never find.

You come home but a grim ghost of he who so lightheartedly went off to war. But home no longer exists. That world shattered like a mirror the first time you were shot at. You live a different world now. You always will.

Your world is about waking up night after night silently screaming, back in battle.

Your world is about your best friend bleeding to death in your arms, howling in pain for you to kill him.

Your world is about shooting so many enemies the gun turns red and jams, letting the enemy grab you.

Your world is about struggling hand-to-hand for one more breath of life.

You never speak of your world. Those who have seen combat do not talk about it. Those who talk about it have not seen combat.

People you knew before the war try to make contact. It is useless. Words fall like bricks between you.

The hurricane winds of war have hurled you as far away as Mars, and you can never go back home again, not really.

Your terrifying – but thrilling – dance with death has made your old world of babies, backyards and ballgames seem deadly dull. Serving with warriors who died proving their word has made prewar friends seem too untested to be trusted – thus they are now mere acquaintances.

Doing your duty under fire has made you alone, a stranger in a strange land. The only time you are not alone is when with another combat veteran. Only he understands that keeping your word, your honor, whilst standing face to face with death gives meaning and purpose to life. Only he understands that spending a mere 24 hours in the broad, sunlit uplands of battle-proven honor is more satisfying to a man than spending a whole lifetime groveling in the vast wasteland of civilian life.

Although you walk thru life alone, you are not lonely. You have a constant companion from combat -- Death. It stands close behind, a little to the left. Death whispers in your ear: “Nothing matters outside my touch, and I have not touched you...YET!”

Death never leaves you -- it is your best friend, your most trusted advisor, your wisest teacher.

Death teaches you that every day above ground is a fine day.

Death teaches you to feel fortunate on good days, and bad days...well, they do not exist.

Death teaches you that merely seeing one more sunrise is enough to fill your cup of life to the brim -- pressed down and running over!

Down thru the dusty centuries it has always been thus. It always will be, for what is seared into a man’s soul who stands face to face with death never changes.


Author’s Note:

This work attempts to describe the world as seen thru the eyes of a combat veteran. It is a world virtually unknown to the public because few veterans talk about it. This is unfortunate since people who are trying to understand, and make contact with combat veterans, are kept in the dark.

I offer these poor, inadequate words – bought not taught – in the hope that they may shed some small light on why combat veterans are like they are.

It is my life desire that this tortured work, despite it’s many defects, may yet still provide some tiny sliver of understanding which may blossom into tolerance – nay, acceptance – of a Warrior’s way of being from doing his duty under fire.

By A Purple Heart Medal recipient who made a promise to remain an unknown soldier.

Dedicated to absent friends in unmarked graves.

If you ever meet a serviceman or woman, please remember these words, and thank them for what they do every single day.