Radical media, politics and culture.

News

April 17, 2004 - 4:02pm -- nolympics
News
In the Streets

ainfos
writes

I.
Dear Friends,

Below, I continue my inquiry of the preceding days into media representations of the protests against expropriation of Palestinian lands, their destruction, the uprooting of olive trees by the hundreds (probably thousands), the enclosing of Palestinians into ghettos, and the rest. My inquiry has been prompted by what the average Israeli that one meets believes regarding what is happening in the OTs, and why Israelis are so ill informed. While some Israelis do not want to know, this is by no means true of all. Unfortunately, most think that they do know, even though those of us who do take the trouble and the time to learn the history of the conflict, to be part of the protests, to meet Palestinians and talk to them, to share their pain, to live with them through some of their tribulations, and to look around at what is happening to Israel as a result of what is occurring in the OTs, immediately recognize that the Israeli public is being fed a steady diet of misinformation. The media is as complicit in distributing misinformation as is the government in distributing propaganda.

Part 2 of this intro, discusses the quotations from newspapers above. Part 3 scans newspaper depictions about yesterday's protest at Biddu.

April 16, 2004 - 12:14pm -- jim
News
Mainstream Media

"Still Agitating (Never Mind the Arthritis)"

Randal C. Archibold, New York Times


There is Aron Kay, alias Yippie Pieman, who infamously flung pies at
political and public figures during the 70's and 80's — including Abe
Beame, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Andy Warhol — but retired after
smearing Randall Terry, the anti-abortion activist, with a creamy
pineapple cheese in 1992.


There is Jerry Wade, better known as Jerry the Peddler, who said he would
"bring the medical marijuana."


Joanie Freedom, a veteran protester of park and camping rules in the city
and in national forests, would be in charge of infrastructure. Penny
Arcade, the performance artist known for erotically avant-garde shows,
would handle theatrical entertainment.


And providing legal aid is Lynne Stewart, a lawyer known for representing
people accused of terrorism against the United States and who is awaiting
trial in May on charges of providing material support to a man accused of
plotting to blow up New York City landmarks.

April 16, 2004 - 11:20am -- jim
News
Mainstream Media

Book Alleges Secret Iraq War Plan

Calvin Woodward and Siobhan McDonough, Associated Press

WASHINGTON - President Bush secretly ordered a war plan drawn up against Iraq less than two months after U.S. forces attacked Afghanistan and was so worried the decision would cause a furor he did not tell everyone on his national security team, says a new book on his Iraq policy.


Bush feared that if news got out about the Iraq plan as U.S. forces were fighting another conflict, people would think he was too eager for war, journalist Bob Woodward writes in "Plan of Attack," a behind-the-scenes account of the 16 months leading to the Iraq invasion.

April 16, 2004 - 8:36am -- nolympics
News
The State

The Kill Zone: Moving Wounded in Fallujah

The first thing you notice is the silence. An unnerving, horrible quiet without the sound of voices, car engines, children playing, or televisions. Even the birds are wise enough to have gone elsewhere. And yet we are in a small city in the middle of the day.

We passed the last mujaheedin patrol two blocks ago, and they waved us through when our escort told them what we were there for. To evacuate wounded, and to collect the dead.

We drop out of the truck and start walking, our passports held high in our otherwise empty hands. We leave our Iraqi driver and guide and enter the crushing quiet of the Kill Zone, the no man’s land between the rebels and the American forces, somewhere inside the town of Fallujah.

April 15, 2004 - 9:35pm -- hydrarchist
News
Independent Media

nolympics writes: This is first-hand account of the US incursion into and siege of Iraqi Fallujah. It is abominable. We must know these uncovered truths about the progress of the military campaign there,
Sam

anotherworldispossible@yahoo.com

URGENT: MASSACRE IN FALLUJAH

Members of the Seattle-based organization ‘Another World Is Possible’ traveled to Iraq this fall. We received a phone call this morning from an Iraqi friend who carried 16 women and children out of Fallujah, burned and bloody from US bombs that were dropped by American F16 jets and Apache helicopters on their homes early this morning, during what the US has been calling a “ceasefire.” Reports are surfacing all over the world indicating that what is happening in Fallujah and many other cities is in fact a massacre and a forced exodus of thousands of people, who are now along the highway in the desert with no access to food, water or medical attention.Fallujah that has triggered the kidnapping of foreigners in Iraq? Iraqi Resistance want the occupation to end. They want foreign troops to go home. I am almost certain that US soldiers also want to go home safely and hug their family. So must be the Japanese soldiers...... All Iraqi people are asking is,
"Please leave our country with all your weapons".
"Stop killing our children".
"Stop polluting our land forever with radioactive weapons"
Is it too much to ask?
*Check this man out who is running for the US President.http://kucinich.us*
love, Yumi
P.S.. I recommend you see "What I've learned about US Foreign Policy", compilation of 10 documentary films compiled by Frank Dorrel. I am just about to release the Japanese translation of it. www.addictedtowar.com

April 15, 2004 - 9:34pm -- nolympics
News
Independent Media

another war is possible submits:



Urgent: Masssacre in Fallujah

Members of the Seattle-based organization ‘Another World Is Possible’ traveled to Iraq this fall. We received a phone call this morning from an Iraqi friend who carried 16 women and children out of Fallujah, burned and bloody from US bombs that were dropped by American F16 jets and Apache helicopters on their homes early this morning, during what the US has been calling a “ceasefire.” Reports are surfacing all over the world indicating that what is happening in Fallujah and many other cities is in fact a massacre and a forced exodus of thousands of people, who are now along the highway in the desert with no access to food, water or medical attention.

April 15, 2004 - 11:56am -- jim
News
News

"Bush Rips up the Road Map"

Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian

President George Bush swept aside decades of diplomatic tradition in the
Middle East yesterday, saying it was "unrealistic" to expect a full Israeli
withdrawal from lands occupied during the 1967 war or the right of return
for Palestinian refugees.


In a significant policy shift, Mr Bush relaxed Washington's objections to
Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and attempts by Israel to dictate the
terms of a final settlement with the Palestinians.

April 14, 2004 - 5:59pm -- jim
News
The State

Air Force Officer Disciplined for Saying
Bush Allowed September 11 Attacks

Hijacker Attended US Military School

Jerry Isaacs (originally published 21 June 2002)


A US Air Force officer in California recently accused President Bush of
deliberately allowing the September 11 terror attacks to take place. The
officer has been relieved of his command and faces further discipline. The
controversy surrounding Lt. Col. Steve Butler's letter to the editor, in
which he affirmed that Bush did nothing to warn the American people because
he "needed this war on terrorism," received scant coverage in the media.


Universally ignored by the press, however, was that the officer was not
merely expressing a personal opinion. He was in a position to have direct
knowledge of contacts between the US military and some of the hijackers in
the period before the terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade
Center and damaged the Pentagon.


Lieutenant Colonel Butler, who wrote in a letter to the editor of the
Monterey County Herald charging that "Bush knew about the impending
attacks," was vice chancellor for student affairs at the Defense Language
Institute in Monterey, California — a US military facility that one or more
of the hijackers reportedly attended during the 1990s.

April 14, 2004 - 12:22pm -- jim
News
Drug War

Afghan Route to Prosperity: Grow Poppies

Amy Waldman, New York Times

. . . Across Afghanistan, opium cultivation is surging, defying all
efforts of the Afghan government and international officials to stop
it. Officials are predicting that land under poppy cultivation will
rise by 30 percent or more this year, possibly yielding a record
crop. Last year the country produced almost 4,000 tons —
three-fourths of the world's opium - in 28 of its 32 provinces. The
trade generated $1 billion for farmers and $1.3 billion for
traffickers, according to the United Nations, more than half of
Afghanistan's national income. . . .

April 13, 2004 - 1:59pm -- nolympics
News
The State

"Death and Terror in Falluja"

Jo Wildings, April 11th

Trucks, oil tankers, tanks are burning on the highwayeast to Falluja. A stream of boys and men goes to and from a lorry that’s not burnt, stripping it bare. We turn onto the back roads through Abu Ghraib, Nuha and Ahrar singing in Arabic, past the vehicles full of people and a few possessions, heading the other way, past the improvised refreshment posts along the way where boys throw food through the windows into the bus for us and for the people inside still inside Falluja.

The bus is following a car with the nephew of a local sheikh and a guide who has contacts with the Mujahedin and has cleared this with them. The reason I’m on the bus is that a journalist I knew turned up at my door at about 11 at night telling me things were desperate in Falluja, he’d been bringing out children with their limbs blown off, the US soldiers were going around telling people to leave by dusk or be killed, but then when people fled with whatever they could carry, they were being stopped at the US military checkpoint on the edge of town and not let out, trapped, watching the sun go down.

Pages

Subscribe to News