Fallujah
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Militarising space: The Fallujah fallacy Eric Walberg
In April, Air Force Space Command activated a new unit – the 24th Air Force at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas — to keep pace with “the rapid changes in information technology and allow space and cyberspace capabilities to be more accessible to military ground commanders”, according to the Space Command’s top military officer… Continue reading
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Combat Operations in Fallujah By Dahr Jamail
Clearly, resistance against the occupation is once again nationwide, spanning from Iraq’s northernmost and southernmost cities. Now that the British are pulling out of their area of control in Southern Iraq, US troops are filling the void – hence, the attack in Basra. Continue reading
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BBC Newsspeak – ‘Credible sources’ By William Bowles
By now it must surely be obvious to pretty well everyone that the BBC’s messing with reality is rife, the twists and turns are tortuous and on-going as anyone following the British State’s Broadcasting Company’s coverage of the White Phosphorus will know. The Cat’s Dream Website pretty well blew it apart, so much so that… Continue reading
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Media Lens: The Tragic Blindness of the Embedded BBC – White Phosphorus, Fallujah And Unreported Atrocities
Readers may recall from previous media alerts that we did not know then whether unusual or banned weapons – including cluster bombs, depleted uranium, napalm, white phosphorus and poisonous gas – had been used in Fallujah, or whether atrocities had been committed by ‘coalition’ forces against civilians. We did know, however, that the BBC had… Continue reading
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The BBC’s Big White (Phosphorus) Lie By William Bowles
Finally, the ‘white phosphorus’ obscenity made it into the BBC’s main news, at least for a couple of days before being relegated into the Beeb’s dustbin of ‘allegations’ which of course, at least according the BBC, is where the story belongs. Of course, ‘making it into the news’ is a bit of a misnomer as… Continue reading
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Fallujah – Where is the outrage? The story the mainstream media won’t tell you By William Bowles
Although reported by a handful media outlets at the time, the mainstream media took the official US denials at face value — that there had been no use of the illegal white phosphorus weapons on the inhabitants of Fallujah in December 2004. However the newly released movie (35 mb) from Italy’s RAI News 24 television… Continue reading
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Media Lens: BBC still Ignoring Evidence of War Crimes in Iraq
An earlier media alert, ‘Doubt Cast on BBC Claims Regarding Fallujah’ (April 18, 2005; www.medialens.org/alerts/05/050418_doubt_cast_on_bbc.php) noted that Boaden’s Newswatch article failed to address the many specific and detailed allegations of atrocities committed by US forces in their assault on Fallujah last November. Moreover, statements made to us by Human Rights Watch had cast doubt on… Continue reading
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Media Lens: BBC Still Silent on Fallujah
The BBC relentlessly proclaims its commitment to “providing trusted and impartial news and information that helps citizens make sense of the world” (Letter from BBC chairman Michael Grade to David Cromwell, 21 March, 2005). Such grandiose statements are delivered as if on tablets of stone, to be received with gratitude by the multitudes. Thus, Grade… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Doubt Cast on BBC Claims Regarding Fallujah
The BBC has again failed to address the many specific allegations we forwarded to them of atrocities committed by US forces in their assault on Fallujah last November. We return to this point below. Continue reading
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Media Lens: “No Great Way to Die” – But the Generals Love Napalm
Traditionally, Western journalists give massive emphasis to acts of violence committed by official enemies of the West, while lightly passing over Western responsibility for often far more extreme violence. Continue reading
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Media Lens: Email Reveals BBC Contempt For Public Complaints
What does it say when a senior BBC journalist can dismiss testimony relating to our government’s involvement in war crimes as merely “these sorts of things”? And what does it say that a journalist can suggest that it might be an option to simply ignore a public complaint of such seriousness? Continue reading
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Media Lens: Protest the BBC on Thursday, December 2 – This is Why. Part 2
Like the rest of the mainstream media, the BBC did next to nothing to expose the devastating effects of US-UK war and sanctions on the civilian population of Iraq from 1990 onwards. Ahead of last year’s war, the BBC endlessly echoed and channelled UK government propaganda claims, almost never subjecting those claims to serious challenge. 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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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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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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“Fixing Fallujah”: BBC Radio Orwell Reporting for Duty By William Bowles
Thus “fixing the problem” is the tried and tested method of colonial occupation, destroying everything that stands in the way of installing ‘democracy’ in Iraq. Bombs are now merely “flashes in the night sky” (well it was Guy Fawkes night this past Saturday), the reality has been utterly expunged by the BBC story. The article… Continue reading
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Propaganda and Reality: The media’s onslaught on our senses and sensibilities By William Bowles
The BBC this morning on Radio 4 (28/04/04) carried two reports on the (ongoing) US attack on Fallujah. One by an ’embedded’ reporter with all that that means and the other, an interview with US commanding officer Brigadier-General Kimmitt, who informed us that attacks on the city were performed using “incredibly precise weapons system” that… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 