More on media complaints, on an article about the United Way of Florida cancelling Sarandon's speaking engagement for them because of her anti-war views.

Meanwhile, anti-war groups in the US say their advertisements are being blocked by the country's broadcasters.

CNN, Fox, MTV, and Comedy Central, turned down spots featuring celebrities like Susan Sarandon talking with "experts" about war issues, said one group, TrueMajority.org, while other groups also complained about being refused airtime.

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In BBC correspondent Paul Wood's latest missive, "Resigned Baghdad struggles on", a sad tone:

The Americans may hope they will be welcomed as liberators, and that the Iraqi regime is not popular.

But it is the Americans who are not popular here.

It's a culmination of 12 years of crushing sanctions, two years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting in which the United States has been seen as supporting the Israeli side, and because it's widely believed that the US has come to Iraq to steal its oil....

The bombing in the Baghdad city market was another propaganda coup for the Iraqi regime.

I went to the scene and it was really quite terrible.

There were two huge holes in the ground, cars and trees were still on fire, and body parts thrown everywhere.

These images were shown on Iraqi television, and printed in Iraqi newspapers.

On the back page of one of the main Iraqi newspapers, there was a whole page of photographs showing a severed torso and a head cut in half.

These images have an enormous impact.

Whether or not the market was hit by an American missile, it is believed to be an American missile by the Iraqi population.

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I wish I could have attended the vigil and funeral procession led by Interfaith Witness for Peace in the Middle East this morning in front of the Federal Building. "80 dissidents (including several priests and rabbis) were arrested for engaging in civil disobedience. All were reportedly released without charges after signing release of liability forms from the Department of Homeland Security."

Let me set a theme for today's posting: media manipulation of the news that the American people receive is a major problem.

Krugman's article, 'Channels of Influence' reveals that "Most of the pro-war demonstrations around the country have, however, been organized by stations owned by Clear Channel Communications, a behemoth based in San Antonio that controls more than 1,200 stations and increasingly dominates the airwaves."

Experienced Bushologists let out a collective "Aha!" when Clear Channel was revealed to be behind the pro-war rallies, because the company's top management has a history with George W. Bush. The vice chairman of Clear Channel is Tom Hicks, whose name may be familiar to readers of this column. When Mr. Bush was governor of Texas, Mr. Hicks was chairman of the University of Texas Investment Management Company, called Utimco, and Clear Channel's chairman, Lowry Mays, was on its board. Under Mr. Hicks, Utimco placed much of the university's endowment under the management of companies with strong Republican Party or Bush family ties. In 1998 Mr. Hicks purchased the Texas Rangers in a deal that made Mr. Bush a multimillionaire.

There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear, but a good guess is that we're now seeing the next stage in the evolution of a new American oligarchy. As Jonathan Chait has written in The New Republic, in the Bush administration "government and business have melded into one big `us.' " On almost every aspect of domestic policy, business interests rule: "Scores of midlevel appointees . . now oversee industries for which they once worked." We should have realized that this is a two-way street: if politicians are busy doing favors for businesses that support them, why shouldn't we expect businesses to reciprocate by doing favors for those politicians - by, for example, organizing "grass roots" rallies on their behalf?

We used to mock government-run radio in other countries. But now that corporations are running the government AND the airwaves, no one is mocking. I'm certainly not laughing.

This harkens back to my post about the Biotic Baking Brigade member's recent comments on the pro-war slant of the media. To paraphrase again, he said that many progressive groups think that Big Media is being 'unfair' by omitting progressive views, but don't realize that Big Media is not concerned with fairness: it is concerned with consistently representing its own corporate/defense contractor/nuclear power generator/pop music owning/political interests.

That is not democratic. Capitalistic, yes, but not part of a "free" culture with "free" access to information.

*

I attended a lunch time protest at CNN's San Francisco Bureau at 50 California Street yesterday, to protest their gung-ho, blood-free coverage of the war.

At the protest, some non-corporate media resources were shared, including Electronic Iraq (a site with reports from those staying in Iraq, and peace groups) and IraqBodyCounty.net ("The B-2 bomber carries sixteen 2'000 lb. JDAM bombs. If all goes 100% as planned (the bomb does not fall outside of its specified margin of error of 13 meters, and the GPS guidance system is not foiled by a $50 radio jammer kit, easily purchased), then here is what one such bomb does: everyone within a 120 meter radius is killed; to be safe from serious shrapnel damage, a person must be at least 365 meters away; to be really safe from all effects of fragmentation, a person must be 1000 meters away, according to Admiral Stufflebeem. The B-2s will be used upon targets within Baghdad.")

The Chronicle's report on the protest preserves the cheer I'd forgotten to write down: "Independent journalism is dead and gone when the media is in bed with the Pentagon." And also provides the understatement of the day: "Media really has played an uncritical role that has not helped America make the most democratic decisions," said Global Exchange spokesman Ted Lewis.

It was great that Global Exchange, Media Alliance and Code Pink Women for Peace organized this gathering, brought bullhorns, and coordinated people to present a consistent and clearly articulated viewpoint.

*

Another good international news link: BBC Monitoring, " based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages." They're the source of good world view summaries on BBC news.

Another good local, independent resource: Waterman's March 2003 photographs of anti-war signs. This page represents a good collection of images.

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The civilian deaths in the marketplace that was hit by two missiles are 'unresolved.' The U.S., which admitted it was firing missiles into Baghdad at the time, is denying it's likely culpability. The Us has alleged that it must have been Iraq's anti-aircraft guns that shelled the area, but the BBC reports that explanation is "unlikely because we simply haven't heard any anti-aircraft fire in the city for the past four days".

*

Today: protests continue in New York against media and corporate profiteering from the war. Complaining about inadequate access to the media, one protester remarked:

"Nothing else gets attention," said protester Johannah Westmacott. "It's not news when people voice their opinions."

(This means I've succeeded in choosing items that fit the media theme!)

More photos of Anti-war rallies around the world.

*

More commentary on CNN and the inadequate media, this from an editorial posted to Indymedia Mumbai:

They're still talking about the impact on Airlines! God!!!!! FUCK!!!!!!!! STOP!!!!!!!!!! I cant take this any more!!!!!! This is the pinnacle of western civilization!!!!! 3 hours before the biggest war we're going to see in a long time, and they're talking about how its effecting the airline industry and wallowing in sadness!!! Do they even know what war is? Do they know what death is? What are they smoking? How do they numb themselves like this?....

I thought it'll be at least interesting 3 hours before armageddon, but apparently we're going to go down in a splattering of market forces. shit. ok, when do we come to the impact of war on people? shit - we've got the impact on the airline industry, on london markets, on asian markets, on vivendi, shit!!!! haha - he just said that in asia, public has been against war, but then proudly saying how all governments are supporting iraq - how indicative of the democracies in which we live, and he doesn't even get the irony...

More stuff you won't see on CNN: photos of the police using water cannons at a protest in Hamburg, Germany on Tuesday. Yes, the protests continue around the world, while mainstream media coverage ignores it.

This site, Indymedia Germany, also has great photos from Saturday's protest in Berlin, Frankfurt, and many other cities.

*

Here's a new link for Al Jazeera(h). The link I posted and articles I reviewed at english.aljazeera.net have all gone away, for reasons unknown.

*


Two explosions killed more than a dozen in Baghdad this morning.

The BBC's Rageh Omaar said: "On either side of the road in the main bit of al-Shaab district I saw several destroyed houses and apartment blocks.

"I saw human remains, bits of severed hands, bits of skull.

"Al-Shaab is a residential district. I saw people in apartment blocks throwing out their belongings attempting to leave.

"It was a scene of confusion as emergency services tried to rush to the scene."

Our correspondents were unable to find an obvious military target in the area....

"What seemed to be two missiles have landed in a busy shopping parade in the suburb of al-Shaab - we could see the craters."...

"Residents insisted there was no military target nearby and indeed, we couldn't see any."

The video associated with this on the BBC's website said they'd counted 15 corpses.

It will be interesting to see how this is handled. On the radio, it sounded like the US government had admitted to bombing the city, but not THAT part of the city.

In print, first: "US Central Command said it could not confirm the report that a civilian area was bombed." Then later, "1838: US Central Command in Qatar admits coalition forces used precision guided weapons to attack Iraqi missile installations near a residential area of Baghdad, where Iraqi authorities say 14 civilians were killed. The US says the missiles were positioned less than 90 metres (300 feet) from homes." But in my local paper, the government is hotly denying any association with this incident.

It's bad PR. Is even the debate over it too bad to appear on American television at all?

*

[For the first time, I saw this announcement at the bottom of a BBC item: "The movements of those reporting from Baghdad are restricted and their reports are monitored by the Iraqi authorities." It would be amusing to see a similar disclaimer from the 'embedded' journalists, whose reports and movements are limited by the U.S. military.]

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The Chronicle's Jeanne Carstensen runs a "war blog" with links that others recommend to her about the war. Good links she provides that I especially like: Newseum's 'Today's Front Pages' -- 227 scanned images of the front page of newspapers from 27 countries (it's great - you can open the image, and if you want a closer look to read all the text, an Adobe PDF window opens. The resolution is great!! Plus, links to the newspapers' official websites are provided); and the Guardian World News Guide, which provides links, organized regionally, to news sources around the world. It's great stuff!

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The Guardian reports on March 26th's anti-war protests, and has an additional ongoing Special report on the anti-war movement, with articles about demonstrations for peace around the world, plus evaluations of the groups and events.

Act surprised: contractors who made big campaign donations are getting contracts to rebuild Iraq. I am especially charmed by the employees who mock the protesters, noting that their own company isn't destroying the things they plan to rebuild. They don't as clearly note that they bought their rights to the work, nor that the sorts of facilities they plan to rebuild should not have been destroyed in the first place.

Reporter Robert Fisk visits Baghdad hospitals and is mortified by civilians with shrapnel wounds. It's a rather sad article. Sad and angry that history is repeating itself once again, in a place that has been invaded and conquered entirely too many times, always at the expense of innocents.

Noteworthy are his comments about how invaders always attempt to blame civilian casualties on the locals, especially local defense forces. The President, you may have noticed, has been trying to warm the country up for this in his speeches, implying that Hussein might use terrible weapons against his own people. We're dropping bombs in civilian areas and have acknowledged that civilian "casualties" (people being casual?) are likely, but are suggesting that anything REALLY bad must be caused by the locals.

*

Also very sad: reports from the Peace team of observers living in Baghdad. They, too, visit hospitals. They also see rooms full maimed children. They post photographs of the injured (which we should not be afraid to see) and comments like this:

"One father held up the x-ray of his son's body, which we could see was filled with pieces of metal. And holding his son's hand, he told us: "I want the world to see my son. I want America to see his face. Maybe then they will stop this madness. What crime has he done? We did not attack the US, why do they attack our children?"

(They are much less bitter than I would likely be, bearing witness to such violence to people. I would be tempted to post something terrible and sarcastic, like the roadwork signs you see near construction sites: "Your tax dollars at work!" This is too horrific.)

Their goals are:

* We will live among the Iraqi people during any aggression directed at them, including continued economic sanctions.
* We will use our presence and non-violent actions to witness, understand and expose the situation of both the civilian population of Iraq and highlight the importance of facilities such as water purification plants that are critical to daily life.
* We will report on our experiences in Iraq through this website, our support teams, and all who will listen.

Their reporting seems very necessary, as the world's media spends its time celebrating the 'nearly indestructible' tanks, and couching the targets of the glorious American guns in euphemisms (mechanized units and enemy tanks, rather than PEOPLE who we know must be there). People really are there. People really are living under terrible conditions. People are getting hurt and killed. No matter how sanitized reporting in the US is, people must KNOW that.

"Embeds" or "In Bed"? That's the sensible question asked about the attitudes of the reporters traveling with soldiers in Iraq. Of course they bond with the soliders, upon whom they rely for safety. Of course they begin to share an interest in mutual well being. Of course this slants the sort of news they report, especially in isolation, when the officers feed them information that they cannot verify.

It's a brilliant plan on the part of the Pentagon.

*

Here in San Francisc, focused protests continued Monday. About 2,300 people have been arrested so far.

Anti-war demonstrators are turning away from the widespread protests that disrupted San Francisco last week and are instead using smaller actions focusing on the government and businesses that contribute to the U.S. war effort, activists said Monday....

On Monday, a few hundred protesters organized by Direct Action to Stop the War chose two sites in San Francisco to test the new strategy -- the Federal Building and the Carlyle Group, a politically connected investment firm with offices in the Transamerica Pyramid.

In a separate action at San Francisco State University, several hundred students held a peace rally that ended with a sit-in at the school's administration building....

...Downtown, the action started around 7 a.m. at Justin Herman Plaza, where a couple of hundred people gathered before walking up Market Street in a mock funeral procession to mourn people killed in the first days of the war -- U.S. soldiers and Iraqis alike.

I can't help but find this witty:

Compared to some of the other arrestees over the past week, this was kind of nice," said Police Department spokesman Bob Mammone.

"They're not yelling epithets at us," he said. "It's a real peaceful, serene scene here, especially with the chanting. And the yoga was nice to watch, but unfortunately, they're still getting arrested."

And this:

"There were no fights, no struggles, and nobody resisted arrest," [Deputy Chief] Bruce said. "Yoga for Peace has been out here every day. They are very nice, and they are extremely limber."

*hysteria*

*

At about 3:43 my time, a BBC newscaster misspoke on BBC World Services. He talked about a new opinion poll saying that up to half of people polled support the military action by the "Coalition of the United States and America." That's about how I've been thinking of the so-called "coalition," overwhelmingly made up of U.S. forces. The U.S. government emphasizes that more than 30 nations support the attack, but omit the 130 or so that oppose it.

One of my colleagues of British ancestry notes that American casualties have just caught up with British casualties, despite the fact that the British wildly outnumber the Americans in the attack on Iraq.

He also noted that, in the last Gulf War, the Americans killed more British soldiers than the Iraqis did. This included incidents of anti-tank weapons being used against lightly armored British vehicles, the survivors of which were killed by American gun fire.

"Friendly fire" may be the world's strangest euphemism.

*

Meanwhile, US forces have come to Basra, yet there is no cheering in the streets.

Consider what happened in Basra last Saturday when there were air raids. The Qatari television channel al-Jazeera had a team in the city and it sent back graphic pictures of dead and wounded civilians which were widely shown in the Arab world.

But these images have been all but ignored in the West, which seems more interested in pictures of the American prisoners of war.

People do not take kindly to being bombed, even by "friendly forces"....

[A foreign correspondent]quoted another man, a farmer named Said Yahir, as saying that the marines had come to his house and had taken his son, his rifle and 3m dinars (£500; $800).

"This is your freedom that you're talking about? This is my life savings," he said.

A BBC article notes that the people of Basra have gone for four days without drinking water.

*

Another valuable media link: Al Jazeera's English-language web pages.

*

Here's a report from Monday evening's small march through town.

This movement may well not be enough to stop this war: I'm not sure that it can. But we do not march simply to stop the war: we march because we cannot sit idly by while our country engages in such a flawed policy. We cannot go about our normal business-as-usual, while Iraqi men, women and children are murdered, with our tax dollars.

In short, we march to be true to ourselves.

Won't you join us? There's room, for everyone.

*
Emil Guillermo praises the protesters.

When you don't have 30 seconds on a worldwide Oscar telecast, like documentary filmmaker Michael Moore does, to denounce the president's "fictitious war," the next best thing is to take to the streets with a few thousand like-minded folks.

Nothing un-American about that.

You've got to get attention and be heard.

Besides, who else is there to remind us, whether we acknowledge it or not, that the real embedding that's taken place these last few days has been the war into our lives?

And yet, how many try to move on with their day, pretending that the war is being waged at our convenience? That it's somewhere over there, and that we really are as disconnected from, and blameless about, the violence and killing as we'd like to think?

You can always turn CNN off by remote control and watch the Cartoon Network, where the bad guys fall with a single punch. And then you can go about your business.

But the protesters keep us from forgetting the truth.

We need them now more than ever. The debate over the morality and legality of war isn't over.

*

It is interesting that, even though the US sold a variety of WMDs to Iraq of the years, it's really mad at Russia for alleged sales to Iraq for such goods as night vision goggles. It's more interesting that the allegations surface as disputes break out between Russia and the US over such things as whether the Iraq war is legal.

What a coincidence. Russia does something that angers the US, and suddenly the US has information that Russia has done something illegal. Golly. (Russia has its own allegations of US misdeeds.)

*

Today's World View's column in the Chron is worthwhile, as always.

More mildly, a Chinese expert in foreign affairs told the China Daily, "It is distressing and regretful to see military actions when the people around the world are longing for peace." A political scientist at a Beijing think tank more forthrightly stated that the U.S. attacks "on a sovereign nation, without U.N. approval, reflect its contempt [for] the international order, the international security system and the United Nations.... The United States may win the war, but it will lose the support of the world."

Mr. Gomez's World Views homepage has a fabulous collection of links to news periodicals all over the world.

It's not just me: Russia wants the security council to decide whether the US attack on Iraq is legal. I think this is great, but also worrisome. The UN has been a force to move the world toward order and justice throughout its existence. It hasn't quite gotten there, but it's been moving world governments in the right direction. Now, as implications that the US is engaging in a variety of activities in violation of international conventions, including those against torture and the public display of POWs (that's the image that a network news personality said shows "incredible American compassion")... Well, I fear the consequences.

On the one hand, the unilateral attack violates international law, and the UN should say so. But I fear that the US will react very badly to such a decision, and become even more self-serving and isolated. That wouldn't be the UN's fault, but it would be good to avoid.

*

"Footage of captured US soldiers broadcast on Iraqi television violates the Geneva Convention, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which says neither side in the conflict should show pictures of prisoners of war....The ICRC says the same rules apply to the pictures of Iraqis surrendering to American and British forces shown all over the world over the last few days.

Those rules should have also been applied to images of PoWs at the US base of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.


"At that time, we approached the US authorities to ask them not to use these pictures," she says.


For more than a year now, the American Government has been criticised for the way it has treated hundreds of prisoners from the fighting in Afghanistan, says the BBC's diplomatic correspondent Barnaby Mason.

It has denied that those held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba have the rights of PoWs - instead Donald Rumsfeld came up with the description "unlawful combatants".

Pictures of some of them hooded and kneeling have been shown on television.

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So SF: protesters practicing yoga while waiting to be arrested at today's protest.

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19 more Afghans have been freed from US 'enemy combatant' camps, according to the BBC. "Last October three Afghans held in Guantanamo Bay were returned home. Two were believed to be in their seventies. They told the BBC they had been locked in tiny cells in sweltering heat for long periods, but had not been beaten."

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Here's a nice report from the streets about how the protests go, generally. Friendly, non-violent, and requiring comfortable shoes.

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Photos of damage to Iraq's civilian facilities are out there, which is good. It means that all of our news isn't being censored! Even though I found this on a British site, it's a good sign that the flow of information is relatively free. Unlike during Gulf War I.