November 2004
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Information Clearing House Archive Part 4 November 23-30 2004
November 2004 — Information Clearing House [I’ve been archiving ICH digests since early 2003. Unfortunately, an unknown number of the links are now dead, so I can’t guarantee that the link will take you where you want to go. WB] Information Clearing House Digest November 23-30 2004 Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 I Am Become Death Continue reading
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Media Lens: Protest the BBC on Thursday, December 2 – This is Why. Part 1
The BBC, of course, is not the Nazi media, but there have been real war crimes in Iraq, a real mass slaughter, and the BBC has helped make it possible. Please read the examples below and protest on December 2 out of compassion for the suffering of the men, women and children of Iraq. Continue reading
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Media Lens: Fallujah – The BBC’s Director of News Responds
On November 8 and 11 we published two Media Alerts: ‘Legitimising Mass Slaughter in Fallujah’‚ in which we commented on the bias and inhumanity of BBC and ITV News reporting on Fallujah. Continue reading
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The Blair Fear Project By William Bowles
23 November 2004 W A R N I N G Continue reading
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Information Clearing House Archive Part 3 17-22 November 2004
November 2004 — Information Clearing House [I’ve been archiving ICH digests since early 2003. Unfortunately, an unknown number of the links are now dead, so I can’t guarantee that the link will take you where you want to go. WB] Information Clearing House Digest November 17-22 2004 Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 Report: US discussing strikes Continue reading
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Iraq=Vietnam: Misinterpreting the Metaphor By William Bowles
Of course Iraq is not Vietnam and it’s not 1965 either and neither is Iraq a nation of tropical rain forests. If one were to make comparisons based purely on geography, then Algeria would be a better one. But geography only determines the form of the struggle, not what drives it. Continue reading
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Weasel words by the dogs of straw By William Bowles
We have yet to discover the true scale of the slaughter that the US wrought on Fallujah but one thing is clear, if we rely on the British government for the numbers we’ll never know the truth. Continue reading
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Media Lens: The Power of Nightmares and the Real Politics of Fear – Part 2
American elites have long sought to manufacture and promote a shared myth of ‘America’ based on “symbols by which Americans defined their dream and pictured social reality.” Adam Curtis alluded to this myth-making in his BBC series The Power of Nightmares, but he portrayed it as a process initiated and pursued by neoconservatives from the… Continue reading
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Media Lens: The Power of Nightmares and the Real Politics of Fear – Part 1
The idea that past dreams “have failed” so that people “have lost faith in ideologies” is Blairite nonsense. In reality, corporate globalisation has sought to crush meaningful politics – dismissed as “ideological politics” – regardless of the wishes of the public. Opinion polls and global mass protest movements show that vast numbers of people are… Continue reading
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No Sleepy Times Down South By Edward Teague
17 October 2004 — The New Dark Age Roger (Rogelio) Pardo-Maurer IV is Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs, and reports to Rumsfeld. Graduate in History from Yale and Economics from Cambridge (England), he contributed to 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States. Pardo-Maurer also served in combat with the 20th Continue reading
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Information Clearing House Archive Part 2 November 10-17 2004
November 2004 — Information Clearing House [I’ve been archiving ICH digests since early 2003. Unfortunately, an unknown number of the links are now dead, so I can’t guarantee that the link will take you where you want to go. WB] Information Clearing House Digest Part 2 November 10-17 2004 Date: 16 Nov 2004 800 Civilians Feared Continue reading
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The more things change the more they stay the same By William Bowles
Coincidence? The surfacing of a videotape that allegedly shows the execution of Margaret Hassan coming as it does fresh on the heels of the video of the execution of a wounded Iraqi resistance fighter by US Marines seems to be part of a pattern of diverting attention away from embarrassing revelations for the occupiers. Continue reading
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Guilt or Guilty? By William Bowles
Without doubt, the Israeli propaganda machine has been a resounding ‘success’ in that it has been able to instil in many of us such feelings of guilt about the Holocaust that few dare even mention the word Jew without surrounding it with a plethora of qualifications lest anyone think that it contains even a hint… Continue reading
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Fallujah: Unpacking the press destroying the myths By William Bowles
Western press coverage of the horror that is Fallujah has with the odd exception been nothing short of outrageous in its distortions and blatant propagandising. Even where it purports to be critical of the US in its destruction of Fallujah and its inhabitants, the sub-text continues to push the Western line of ‘foreign militants’, ‘mistakes’… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Legitimising Mass Slaughter in Fallujah – Part 2
There is, readers will recall, one further difference. Whereas the Sudanese police were shown tear-gassing civilians in Keane’s report, US-UK forces are currently waging full-scale war on Iraqi civilian areas with main battle tanks, airburst firebombs, artillery barrages and helicopter gunships. Which issue, then, should be prioritised in BBC news reporting? And yet the BBC’s… Continue reading
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Weakness Through Strength By William Bowles
As Fallujah burns and scores of civilians die at the hands of the Bush/Blair criminal action, BBC Radio Orwell talks glibly of “mopping up operations”. No one doubts the ability of the US and its handmaiden, the UK to turn Fallujah into a pile of rubble, destroying is the one proven ability of imperialism that… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Siding with Iraq – Part 2
10 November 2004 — Media Lens Johann Hari Responds On October 29, we sent out Part 1 of this Media Alert. We noted how Independent columnist Johann Hari had declared that his support for war in Iraq was qualified by an important caveat: “If you go into a war saying you want to side with Continue reading
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Information Clearing House Archive Part 1 November 1-9 2004
November 2004 — Information Clearing House [I’ve been archiving ICH digests since early 2003. Unfortunately, an unknown number of the links are now dead, so I can’t guarantee that the link will take you where you want to go. WB] Information Clearing House Digest November 1-9 2004 Date: 9 Nov 2004 It’s the people stupid! By Continue reading
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Media Lens: The BBC – Legitimising Mass Slaughter in Fallujah – Part 1
In the case of Iraq, it is of course vital that domestic audiences in the US and UK be persuaded that their governments are killing Iraqis with the support of, even on behalf of, Iraqis themselves. The possibility that Iraqis might be dying in their tens of thousands for Western power and profit must, of… Continue reading
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On the Road to Fallujah By William Bowles
6 November 2004 Ship me somewhere east of Suez, where the best is like the worst, Where there ar’n’t no Ten Commandments an’ a man can raise a thirst. Mandalay. Rudyard Kipling In days of ‘yore’ when the Brits had an empire they used to justify their colonial ‘adventures’ with talk of a ‘civilising mission’ Continue reading
The New Dark Age 