The journalists travelled to the region separately and by different routes. They spoke to different people. But their findings are consistent: Georgia launched an indiscriminate military assault on South Ossetia's main town, Tskhinvali. The hospital was among the buildings attacked; doctors were injured even as they operated. The timing of the Georgian attack, as of the arrival of the first Russian reinforcements two days later, coincides for the most part with the original Russian version. It was only then that the Russians crossed into Georgia proper in the invasion of sovereign territory that has been universally decried. For the record, it should be added that Russia has now withdrawn from uncontested Georgian territory, in accordance with the agreement mediated by President Sarkozy.

embedded in power
I have heard from a few investment bankers what their wet dream is all about – it's the Bush administration's dream, for that matter: the world as a Green Zone guarded by Blackwater types, everything privatized, provided Halliburton-style, and "out there" a Mad Max Red Zone. In this sense Baghdad is a living metaphor of the future.

who should bomb iran first?
You would not know it from this media performance, but in fact there is a second conceivable question: Is the corporate media biased in favour of the state-corporate establishment of which it is a part? But this is one of the great mainstream taboos and is essentially never discussed. Remarkably, then, it turns out that the perennial media focus on the claim that the media is “left-leaning” is itself symptomatic of the reality that the media is anything but!
(...) Last year, John Pilger presented a more sobering picture to an audience at Columbia University: “If we journalists are ever to reclaim the honour of our craft, we need to understand, at least, the historic task that great power assigns us. This is to ‘soften-up‘ the public for rapacious attack on countries that are no threat to us.”
(...) At the top of the emailed version of the June 21 edition of the New York Times, this “advertisement” appeared in large red letters: “Should We Bomb Iran? “Vote in This Urgent Poll”
(...) In the 1,000-word article that followed, the term “al Qaeda” was used eight times. This was a transparent attempt to equate Iraqi insurgents with the terrorists responsible for the September 11 attacks, much as Bush attempted to associate Saddam Hussein with al Qaeda in the minds of the American public.

FOX News and Venezuela:
Perhaps ironically FOX News should be applauded for giving so much coverage to Venezuela - not necessarily a "popular" story. But unfortunately the highest-rated network so thoroughly butchered the truth, that it is not surprising that many Chavez supporters are becoming conspiracy theorists vis-à-vis the US media. In segment after segment, FOX News anchors, along with its main correspondent Adam Housley, told falsehood after falsehood. The issue here has nothing to do with condemning or supporting Hugo Chavez, nor his actions regarding RCTV . This is about how FOX News spread demonstrably false information on several occasions over the course of a week. The manipulation of fact was so extreme, that one has to wonder if it was deliberate.
(...) FOX News viewers, who are not ordinarily connected to Venezuelan news, would likely believe that there is no longer any "opposition" media in that country - or at the most, perhaps one "small cable network" called Globovision. They would think this because FOX's correspondent in Caracas told them this falsehood over and over again. On May 28th, during "Your World" with host David Asman, Adam Housley said that Chavez was "taking over just about every [media outlet] in Venezuela" and added that RCTV was just "the latest." In fact, RCTV is the only media outlet that can arguably said to have been "taken over." The other stations - Televen, Venevision, and Globovision - continue to be privately owned and broadcast opposition voices (though the first two regularly balance them with government spokesmen as well). But this reality didn't stop Housley from saying on the next day's program that RCTV was "the last private and large television station here in the country that was critical of the Chavez administration." If Housely would have just turned on the other stations in the morning (or Globovision at any time of the day) he would have seen opposition members criticizing the Chavez administration. Housley went on to repeat this false characterization of the Venezuelan media landscape on Neil Cavuto's show as well as "Hannity and Colmes."
(...) In a very frustrating exchange on the June 1st broadcast of "Your World" with Neil Cavuto, Charles Barron, a councilman from New York City tried to explain some of these facts, but was rudely told by Housley that he was "full of baloney." After being introduced by Cavuto as "someone who is right there," - thus giving the correspondent undeserved credibility - Housley addressed Barron's contentions: "[Barron] says that there are three private television stations in this country that currently operate. He is absolutely wrong." Well, Barron was absolutely right, and it only takes about thirty seconds of internet research to confirm this (go to www.globovision.com, www.televen.com, and www.venevision.net). Housley then went on to say that Chavez "has shut down the media all across the country." He didn't give any specific examples, probably because to my knowledge, there aren't any.
(...) Perhaps the FOX show with the worst record of "balance" and misinformation in regards to the RCTV issue was "Hannity and Colmes." In four consecutive segments on Venezuela over the course of a week, the guest "experts" were Maria Conchita Alonso, Otto Reich, Roger Noriega, and Alonso again [3]. Alonso is an actress and anti-Chavez activist who admitted on the first segment that she doesn't even follow politics. Otto Reich is a strident anti-Castro and anti-Chavez former member of the Reagan and Bush II administrations. Roger Noriega was recently Bush II's Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs. Only the liberal Colmes offered any sort of counterpoint, but even he said right from the start that he could no longer defend Chavez for what he described as shutting down the media. In segments that were extraordinary in their removal from reality, Reich claimed that Chavez would likely order the military to kill the protestors, as Reich claimed he has done in the past, and Noriega explained to Hannity that the media is so controlled by Hugo Chavez that Venezuelans can't even see images of the protests. Alonso went on a rant about how defeated presidential candidate Manuel Rosales was in cahoots with Chavez. She also claimed that Venezuela is cursed with racial animosity that would confuse anyone who actually lives in the largely mestizo country, and went on to say that Chavez owns 65% of the media to which Hannity falsely added "Now he owns it all" [4]. Only the first of these statements has any remote basis in fact, and that is only if you accept a declaration of martial law as being equal to an order to kill protestors [5].
(...) Perhaps the most frustrating aspect to this story is realizing that FOX is the most highly rated news station, and yet its hosts and reporters seem unable to do the most basic research. Many of the hosts and correspondents of FOX repeated ad nauseum that Chavez is a "dictator" (Hannity prefers the phrase "brutal dictator") even though he was democratically elected in December by 63% of the people in an election certified by international observers, including the European Union and the Organization of American States [6]. Claims by some prominent members of the Opposition that there was indeed fraud should be respected and reported, but until the claim is backed up with demonstrable evidence, Fox News shouldn't be treating this as the accepted truth. The hosts also constantly asserted that there is hardly any media left in Venezuela that is critical of Chavez, when the reality is that one can turn on the television every day to at least three different stations on the public airwaves and find dissent. Furthermore, most of the major dailies take a strong anti-Chavez editorial line.

mainstream media, NYT:
It’s in the leftmost sections of the nation’s conservative, dominant (so-called mainstream) and corporate media that you best discern where concentrated economic and political power set the outer parameters of permissible discourse.
(...) Is this all perhaps part of the answer to the great supposed mystery of “Why They Hate Us?” Dominant U.S. media’s powerful, opinion-shaping unwillingness and/or inability to acknowledge the victimization of people on the wrong side of our imperial guns is part of a broader devaluation of non-North American and non-white lives in U.S. culture. We are obsessed with the tragic murder of 32 innocent students at Virginia Tech but cannot bring ourselves to focus on routinely larger and daily civilian body counts in occupation-mangled Iraq.
(...) We offer hundreds of thousands of dollars for information about three U.S. soldiers ambushed south of Baghdad last May. We value the life of innocent civilians murdered by al-Qaeda terrorists on September 11, 2001 at $1.8 million. Meanwhile we give the comparatively tiny sums amounts of $500-$2500 to the surviving family members of innocent civilians we butcher in the name of freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan (Mitchell 2007; Engelhardt 2007).
(...) “Our” media has spent more energy mourning the death of a fallen U.S. horse (Barbaro) than it has on the death of untold thousands of children in U.S.-occupied Iraq.
(...) We killed 3 million Indochinese people during the 1960s and 1970s and spent the next three decades agonizing over what the Vietnam War did to us – the real victims.
(...) And who can forget the famous nationally televised comment of the “liberal” Bill Clinton administration’s Secretary of State Madeline Albright regarding the murder of half a million Iraqi children by U.S.-led economic sanctions. It’s a hard choice, she said, but added “we think he price is worth it” (Stahl 1996). The Madame Secretary did not comment on whether the parents of the deceased juveniles agreed with her curious imperial cost accounting.
(...) The U.S. GI deaths in Mesopotamia are terrible of course, but they reflect legitimate resistance efforts by an illegally occupied people who have suffered from the U.S. invasion on a scale that makes American “sacrifice” look minor indeed.

paul street on the mainstream media:The coverage and commentary is full of detailed descriptions and discussion of various aspects of different legislative proposals and how politicians, policymakers and advocacy groups line up regarding each clause and proposal. But the relevant overall context for understanding the issue is largely missing. That context is the spatially and socially unequal structure and operation and class basis of the world capitalist system, which creates both the “push” and the “pull” behind mass “illegal” (and legal) immigration to the U.S. and the fear so many working Americans feel about the presence of immigrants in the U.S. There’s no serious discussion of the critical roles that U.S. global trade, investment and foreign policy play in generating and sustaining poverty and repression in the “developing” nations that export so much cheap labor to the U.S. Also beyond the range of serious focus: the U.S. business community’s desire to exploit stateless – politically and institutionally disenfranchised – labor and the pivotal, profit-enhancing contradiction between (a) global capital’s freedom to roam the planet with “race-to-the-bottom” impunity and (b) global labor’s comparatively constricted movement across national borders..
(...) Growing economic inequality in the U.S. is another example. This topic is receiving welcome and increasing media attention after thirty five years in which the share of U.S. “earnings” appropriated by the richest 1 percent of American has tripled while incomes have stagnated and fallen for the nation’s working class majority. The most unequal and wealth-top-heavy nation in the industrialized world by far, the U.S. is now at pre-New Deal levels of economic disparity. The top 1 percent owns more than a third of the nation’s wealth.
(...) Sadly, however, the relevant coverage and commentary generally comes with a key part of the story – the basic nature of the nation’s business-ruled (state-capitalist) political-economy – all but left out. You hear and read about various policy debates relating to whether growing inequality is about “technology” and/or globalization and/or deindustrialization and/or education and skills and/or about the erosion of union power and/or “free trade” and/or immigration and/or tax policy and/or culture and behavior (always meaning the culture and behavior of the poor, not the rich) and so on. Some of this discussion is useful and intelligent but there’s a giant taboo against honest discussion of the fact that the business-ruled state-capitalist system of socioeconomic management tends by its very nature to generate massive inequality combining opulence for the privileged few and relative poverty for the many. As the liberal economist Lester Thurow (no stark raving “Marxist” like yours truly) noted in the mid 1990s, “democracy and capitalism have very different beliefs about the proper distribution of power. One believes in a completely equal distribution of political power, ‘one man [sic] one vote,’ while the other believes that it is the duty of the economically fit to drive the unfit out of business and into extinction. ‘Survival of the fittest’ and inequalities in purchasing power are what capitalist efficiency is all about. Individual profit comes first and firms become efficient to be rich. To put it in its starkest form, capitalism is perfectly compatible with slavery. Democracy is not.”
(...) Never mind that the preponderant majority of Iraqis have wanted U.S. troops to leave their nation from the start. Never mind that just 1 percent of Iraqis think the U.S. invaded to export democracy or that the great majority of Iraqis think Uncle Sam came to (imagine) grab their oil. Or that a recent poll conducted by “our own” State Department reports that almost three-fourths of Baghdad’s residents would “feel safer” if U.S. forces left their country. Or that one of the first actions of the U.S. occupation authorities was to open up much of Iraq ’s economy to multinational corporate ownership – an action that would never have been supported by the Iraqi majority and which violated core principles of national independence.
(...) As James M. Lindsay, a vice president at the Council on Foreign Relations proclaimed last year, “it was always hard to sustain the argument that if the United States withdrew from Vietnam there would be immense geopolitical consequences. As we look at Iraq , it's a very different issue. It's a country in one of the most volatile parts of the world, which has a very precious resource that modern economies rely on, namely oil."
(...) Even if the U.S. overcame its gasoline addiction and became fully energy- self-reliant (it currently receives just 20 percent of its oil from the Middle East), something else would still make U.S. officials positively obsessed with Middle Eastern petroleum: the ongoing and ever-worsening loss of America's onetime supremacy in basic global-capitalist realms of production, trade, international finance, and currency and the related emergence of the rapidly expanding giant China as a new strategic military (as well as economic) competitor. As the noted Left geographer and world-systems analyst David Harvey argues, the United States' long decline, reflecting predictable (and predicted) shifts in the spatial patterns of capitalist investment and social infrastructure gives special urgency for the U.S to deepen its control of Middle Eastern oil and use it as a bargaining chip with even more oil-dependent regions like Western Europe and East Asia, homes to the leading challengers to U.S. economic power. That core objective would hardly be attained helping Iraq act in accord with the principles of democracy and national independence.
(...) Dominant (“mainstream”) U.S. media coverage and commentary on Iraq continues to be hopelessly crippled by doctrinal observance of taboos against discussing five basic and intimately interrelated aspects of so-called “Operation Iraqi Freedom”:
1. The monumentally criminal nature of the invasion, which involved (in the words of the 2005 Istanbul Declaration) “planning, preparing, and waging the supreme crime of a war of aggression in contravention of the United Nations Charter and the Nuremberg Principles.”
2. The brazenly imperialist and colonial nature of the occupation, which is richly continuous with earlier U.S. behavior within the beyond the Middle East and provides critical context for understanding why U.S. soldiers die on a regular basis in Iraq (where Americans are understandably seen as unlawful invaders).
3. The racist nature of the occupation, expressed in the false conflation between al Qaeda and a small group of predominantly Saudi hijackers on one hand and the broad Arab and Muslim worlds on the other hand. This racism has found expression also in U.S. ground forces’ recurrent description of Iraqi civilians and resistance fighters as “hajis” and “towel heads”(among other terrible designations) and in many Americans’ insistence on describing the entire Middle East as a den of primitive, barbarian and enemies of modern “civilization.”
4. The full and overwhelming extent of Iraqi civilian casualties, including more than 700,000 dead by now. The Iraqi body count dwarfs the U.S. death toll in Iraq , but dominant U.S. media remains primarily and narcissistically obsessed with U.S. fatalities in Mesopotamia . The mostly civilian Arab victims of U.S. imperial violence (a lovely expression of America ’s noble commitment to “civilization”) are unworthy victims of the Iraq War as far as dominant U.S. media is concerned.
5. The critical role of the American Empire Project’s longstanding core concern with the control of Middle Eastern oil in shaping the decision to invade Iraq and in ensuring that the U.S. will not completely or truly withdraw from that illegally occupied nation or indeed the region anytime soon, whichever corporate-imperial party happens to hold power in Washington.
(...) At the “left” margin of dominant U.S. media’s narrow parameters of acceptable discourse (defined by the likes of the New York Times and militant centrists Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama), the war is at worst a terrible “mistake” – a “strategic blunder” driven by a sincere but naïve drive to advance noble and democratic ideals and institutions.
(...) The assumption of benevolent intention, the denial of criminal and imperial intent, the inability to grasp the role of petroleum, and the denial of racist and mass-murderous realities makes taking in “mainstream” war/occupation coverage and commentary like hearing a baseball game being called by a blind man.
(...) According to a Washington Post “news” story (not an editorial) in January 2005, “spreading democracy around the world” was “one of [the Bush administration’s] top foreign policy goals for the new term."

supporting venezuela's decision to not renew RCTV's license:
This is why we respect CONATEL's (The National Telecommunication Commission of Venezuela) decision to not renew the broadcast license of the private television channel Radio Caracas (RCTV) which was taken in complete accordance with Venezuelan domestic legislation and international standards. Far from being an argument in favour of renewing its license to broadcast, the biased manner in which RCTV used this frequency for 53 years was an invitation to find an alternative use for it. Besides, RCTV still has the option to continue broadcasting on cable and satellite, if it so wishes.
(...) The Venezuelan government’s fair decision not to renew RCTV’s broadcast licence can be explained by what RCTV did during the April 2002 coup d’état in Venezuela –to wit, giving airtime to the coup backers, distorting the facts and ignoring acts which were an attack on freedom of expression. The events RCTV ignored included the violent take-over of the state TV station, thus silencing and disrespecting its journalists (RCTV also ignored the people’s reaction to the massacre in the streets). What the station did during the coup also permits us to understand why, today as yesterday, right-wing forces all over the world are closing ranks with the Venezuelan right.
(...) Democratising the media is something our democracies have yet to do. The information given out abroad about Venezuela and President Chávez clearly demonstrates the manipulation of information that affects all of our peoples. We unflinchingly defend our peoples’ freedom of expression and their right to be informed but we do not confuse this with the freedom of media companies --and the political and economic conglomerates who are their allies-- to manipulate information to suit their interests and aims.

mainstream media vs. public on iraq:
As ever in mainstream journalism, our side merely makes “mistakes”, while the ‘bad guys’ mete out “ruthless intimidation”. The problem centres on the West’s favourite bogeymen, “al Qaeda”, not Iraqi resistance fighters waging war on a brutal occupation. Local people are being intimidated by these monsters, we are told, although a September 2006 World Public Opinion (WPO) poll found that 61 per cent of Shia and 92 per cent of Sunni approved of attacks on US forces, while 78 per cent of Iraqis (including 82% Shia and 97% Sunni) believed the US presence was “provoking more conflict than it is preventing”. (‘The Iraqi Public on the US Presence and the Future of Iraq,’ September 27, 2006; www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/sep06/ Iraq_Sep06_rpt.pdf)
(...) Curiously, an August-September, 2003 Gallup poll found that forty-three per cent of Iraqis believed US and British forces invaded primarily "to rob Iraq's oil". 5 per cent believed the United States invaded Iraq "to assist the Iraqi people", and 1 per cent believed it was to establish democracy. (Walter Pincus, ‘Skepticism About U.S. Deep, Iraq Poll Shows,’ Washington Post, November 12, 2003)
(...) This fits well with a January 2006 WPO which found that 80 per cent of Iraqis believed that the US government planned to have permanent bases in Iraq. A further 76 per cent said they thought the US would not withdraw if asked to do so by the Iraqi government. (‘What the Iraqi Public Wants,’ January 31, 2006; http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/jan06/Iraq_Jan06_rpt.pdf)
(...) An April 2007 WPO poll of Islamic countries found that an overwhelming majority in Egypt (93%) said that maintaining “control over the oil resources of the Middle East” was a goal of the United States (84% definitely), as well as strong majorities in Morocco (82%), Indonesia (74%) and Pakistan (68%). On average 79 per cent had this perception. (Muslim Public Opinion on US Policy, Attacks on Civilians, and al Qaeda, April 24, 2007; http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/apr07/START_Apr07_rpt.pdf)

explaining iraq:
...most Iraqis agree with the tens of thousands of Shia who marched in Baghdad to mark the anniversary of its fall. They chanted: "Death to America" and "Leave, Occupier! Leave!" They know that the original motivations for the invasion no longer matter. Well over a million Iraqi citizens are dead or wounded. Between half and three quarters of the population is unemployed. More than a hundred thousand have been driven from their homes. The national infrastructure is in ruins; security is non-existent; the dinar has no value; crime is rife; oil production has sunk below pre-war levels; one third of the population lacks decent drinking water; and one quarter of Iraqi children are suffering from malnutrition. No one suggests any longer that the sacrifices were "worth it": Iraq has been labeled among the top five "failed states" and "the most dangerous place on earth" by the United Nations.
(...) Consensual support existed for the invasion of Iraq that derived from consensual assumptions. Unless these assumptions are brought to light, most likely, "pragmatic" liberals will again endorse pulling the trigger once the next set of nitwits come up with their next plan to export democracy and human rights through the barrel of a gun. That is what makes it necessary to consider the mainstream arguments for why the debacle took place. Four positions have been articulated in terms acceptable to the political mainstream –- the same mainstream that brought us the war and greeted it with such acclaim in the first place. Each of them will be discussed in turn.
[argument #1]
(...) The most widely held view for the failure in Iraq concerns the incompetence of those running the military enterprise. That this interpretation should be so popular only makes sense since it simply recapitulates arguments already made familiar toward the close of the preceding debacle: the Vietnam War. The refrains echo: not enough troops were employed, equipment was shoddy, and too much emphasis was placed upon air power.
(...) This kind of argument is content to suggest that the plan was good and that, merely, the execution poor. It assumes that the great bulk of the Iraqi public was just waiting for an introduction to American "values" and ready to embrace the invaders as well as their puppet regime. None of this, of course, was the case. For all the talk of "integrating" former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, and the Sunni chieftains that gave it support, this view of events gives little attention to the long-standing ethnic divisions and religious tensions among the masses of Iraqis. It also essentially ignores what might be termed the "sociocide" -- the complete destruction of the social infrastructure and its norms -- that the invaders perpetrated in Iraq. Or, to put it a different way, this interpretation is content to concentrate upon the United States and its ability (or inability) "to get the job done" while the price paid by the Iraqis fades from view.
[argument #2]
(...) The second mainstream interpretation of the debacle in Iraq is based upon the failure of the American intelligence apparatus or, better, the manipulation of intelligence by the Bush administration. The now famous "Downing Street Memo" of 1 May 2005, minutes of a meeting taken by British national security aide Matthew Rycroft -- whose veracity is now generally acknowledged -- makes clear that Rumsfeld and his friends understood the difficulty in presenting "a good case" for war.
(...) Yet information contrary to that offered by the mainstream media and the bulk of the official intelligence community was all over the web in the months preceding the war. Democrats fearful of bucking the nationalist trend simply did not listen to experts like Scott Ritter, Hans Blix, and Mohamed El Baradei. In reality, whatever the degree to which official and mainstream intelligence was manipulated, critical information was easily available for those willing to seek it.
(...) Opposing the war was not very difficult: it demanded courage and a willingness to see clearly rather than "more information." No one asked what interest a secular regime headed by Saddam Hussein would have in making cause with Islamic fundamentalists. No one wondered how it was that a nation spending $4 billion dollars a year on the military would pose a threat to another nation spending more than $400 billion dollars a year. No one questioned how 30,000 bombs could be dropped on Baghdad in the first week of the war with only a few hundred casualties as a consequence.
[argument #3]
(...) Interpretation number three rests on the claim that the debacle ultimately derived from the refusal of the United States to turn over power to the Iraqis –- or, better, the "right" Iraqis -- quickly enough. But then the idea that "if only we had trusted the right people" -- is also an old refrain in imperialist circles. It highlights the arrogance of those "insiders" who substituted arbitrarily selected personal testimony –- or, better, simple gossip -- for knowledge of real conditions. This argument has been forwarded in various venues by neo-conservatives like Richard Perle. It is also the position now taken by his friend Ahmed Chalabi, a completely corrupt businessman later accused of acting as a double agent for Iran, who was virtually anointed by the Bush Administration to lead the new Iraqi government. Had friendly politicians like Chalabi been given power quickly, so the argument runs, Iraqi and American interests could both have been served.
(...) Unfortunately, however, this seemingly noble interpretation veils the desire by American imperialist policymakers to identify the interests expressed by their Iraqi friends in the political and economic elite with those of the Iraqi people. As it happened, Chalabi turned out to be a fraud: he had no support whatsoever among the Iraqi people and his party received 0.5% of the vote in the December 2005 elections. Left hanging is also a basic fact of political life in Iraq following the fall of Saddam: any set of leaders, friendly or not, would have had to face the lack of an army, a police force, a functioning bureaucracy, and a dilapidated infrastructure.
[argument #4]
(...) The fourth, and final, interpretation of why the war was lost is the exact opposite of the interpretation above. It suggests that the basic mistake lay in giving the Iraqis too much power too soon. This position also becomes a testament to the good intentions of the Bush Administration and its lack of ulterior motives in pursuing its course in Iraq. Of course, again, there is nothing new about this kind of claim when it comes to American foreign policy. Rumblings of this sort were heard as various puppet regimes of the United States fell during the Cold War and, again, especially when it came to the collapse of the South Vietnamese "republic." Ingratitude with respect to the "gift of freedom" that was bestowed upon the Iraqis by the United States, mixed with a kind of patronizing bigotry regarding the incompetence of the subaltern people in question, merge in this particular view of American interaction with the once colonized world. The classic line supporting this interpretation of what took place in Iraq was provided by the columnist Charles Krauthammer who wrote: "We have given the Iraqis a republic and they do not appear able to keep it."
(...) there is something profoundly misleading about claiming that the United States somehow gave too much autonomy to its puppet-regime in Iraq. Every meaningful strategic military decision since the fall of Saddam was made by the United States. Paul Bremer and his team of advisors attempted to introduce a free market by fiat. But this decision would help only the thousands of American contractors and the few huge corporations close to the Bush Administration, like Bechtel and Halliburton, whose "reconstruction" projects were mostly marked by incompetence and staggering levels of corruption. More than three thousand American soldiers have been killed and roughly ten times that many have been wounded, and the defense budget for 2008 will be close to $650 billion dollars. The war is now costing $2 billion per week and total costs will exceed what was wasted on the debacle in Vietnam. It beggars reality to claim that the United States would spend what will ultimately amount to $2 trillion without controlling the allocation of resources and the most important political and military decisions of the war.
(...) It would seem that the mainstream media has a great deal of trouble dealing with the American exercise of power and the world's view of American hegemony. What remains unexplored is the presupposition not only that the United States had the "right" to engage in a "pre-emptive strike," and lie to the entire world about the existence of weapons of mass destruction and supposed threats to the national interest in order to justify its policy, but that the rest of the world was -- or, at least, should have been -- grateful for the decision of the American government to pursue such an action. Or to put it another way, taken singly or together, the reigning explanations of how Iraq was lost leave untouched questions concerning the arrogance of power and the implications of understanding the United States as an "empire."
(...) The supposedly singular tragedy of 9/11 -- as if no other country had ever experienced anything as horrible -- also served to justify a demand for vengeance against "the Arabs" and the exercise of military might to extinguish what remained of the "Vietnam trauma." Such celebratory nationalism and provincial paranoia inspired a belief that the new "enemy" -- a convenient replacement for the communists -- was motivated more by hatred for the "American way of life" and its "freedoms" than by the policies pursued by the United States in the Middle East. This, in turn, helped generate a climate of contempt for all critics of American policy and inhibited a serious assessment of the looming dangers attendant upon the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath.
(...) No less than during the build-up to and the aftermath of the invasion, once again, the American mainstream media is abdicating its responsibilities. Its explanations of what happened in Iraq have raised no meaningful issues and yielded nothing of value for reflecting upon future events. The pity is that such a discussion is all the more necessary given that American diplomacy -- if that word still has any meaning -- is basically attuned toward three options: threats, sanctions, and military force. Bombing along the borders of Syria and Iran has already taken place and "warnings" of possibly "drastic" action have been extended to the Sudan. The propaganda machine is ready to be revved up at a moment's notice and it is only due to the weariness of the American public induced by failure in Iraq, and the over-extension of American troops, that yet another military conflagration has not broken out.
(...) There remains the naïve underestimation of self-serving economic and geo-political interests influencing the formation of American foreign policy. There remains the inability to grapple with the celebratory nationalism and paranoia that have played such a strong role in the history of the United States. All of this, which is so steadfastly ignored by mainstream interpretations of events, provides the backdrop for what took place in Iraq. The failure of American policy is not a function of what transpired following the "occupation." The road to ruin began with the first lie, the first bombing, and the first steps that led to the invasion of Iraq.

the pope and genocide:
Benedict, of course, is the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Throughout the 1980s, he was Pope John Paul II's enforcer in the campaign to expunge the dangerously progressive ideals of Catholic "liberation theology" from Latin American soil. What could not be accomplished by state terrorists, who killed thousands of members of Christian "base communities" in the 1970s and '80s, Ratzinger and John Paul sought to engineer by installing conservative bishops who would stem the progressive tide. Fortunately, they seem to have failed. An account by Larry Rohter in the New York Times (May 7) notes that the movement which Ratzinger "once called 'a fundamental threat to the faith of the church' ... persists as an active, even defiant force in Latin America," with some 80,000 base communities operating in Brazil alone. It is fuelled, as it always has been, by the "social and economic ills" that pervade the region, and that have only "worsened" under the neoliberal prescriptions of the past two decades.
(...) Ratzinger/Benedict's bile was directed not at liberation theology, but squarely at the historical memory of the serial genocides -- probably the most destructive in human history -- inflicted upon the indigenous peoples of the Americas. On the last day of his visit, in the city of Aparecida, the Pope "touch[ed] on a sensitive historical episode," in the blandly understated language of an Associated Press dispatch (May 13). In other words, he ripped the bandages off a still-suppurating wound. According to the official text of Benedict's comments on the Vatican website, the Pope declared that "the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean" were "silently longing" to receive Christ as their savior. He was "the unknown God whom their ancestors were seeking, without realizing it ..." Colonization by Spain and Portugal was not a conquest, but rather an "adoption" of the Indians through baptism, making their cultures "fruitful" and "purifying" them. Accordingly, "the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbian cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture."
(...) The invasion and conquest of the Americas, which caused the deaths of upwards of 90 percent of the indigenous population, was something the Indians had been pining for all along. They weren't just "asking for it," as sexist cranks depict women as complicit in their own rapes. They were actually "longing" for it, since salvation and "purification" came with it.
(...) He defined genocide as "a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups." His framing became the foundation of the United Nations Genocide Convention of 1948, and of the academic field of comparative genocide studies. Lemkin himself was keenly aware of the devastation of the indigenous people of the Americas, and considered it basic to his understanding of genocide, though most of his writings on the theme remain unpublished. (See the text of John Docker's excellent February 2004 talk at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, "Raphael Lemkin's History of Genocide and Colonialism".)
(...) A May 13 Reuters dispatch noted blithely that, contrary to Benedict's claims, "many Indian groups believe the conquest brought them enslavement and genocide." This is rather like writing that "many Jewish groups believe that the Nazi Holocaust brought Jews enslavement and genocide."

excellent article on venezuela:
RCTV, together with three other private media corporations (Globovision, Venevision and Televen), which together control some 90% of the TV market, played a leading role in instigating and supporting the 47-hour coup. These private stations, owned by anti-Chavez billionaires and businessmen, have led an unceasing anti-Chavez campaign since the day he was elected. During the coup, they cooperated in suppressing any news that might portray the putsch in a bad light. So, for example, when hundreds of thousands of Chavez supporters took to the streets on April 13 demanding that Chavez be restored, the corporate media stations chose to ignore them and instead broadcast old movies and cartoons.
(...) Another example of blatant falsification from the corporate media stations occurred during the protests in the run-up to the coup. The media channels showed footage of Chavistas shooting from a bridge at unseen targets off the screen, and repeatedly claimed that they were firing at "unarmed opposition demonstrators" (without showing any actual footage of these "unarmed demonstrators", of course). In fact, those protestors on the bridge were themselves being shot at from nearby buildings and there were no "unarmed demonstrators" nearby for them to shoot at.
(...) Could you even imagine a situation whereby CNN or FOX News openly supported an armed putsch against the U.S. government and over four years later were still permitted to broadcast over the public airways, with basically the same people in charge? The very idea is laughable.
(...) The editors of Media Lens, a British-based media watchdog, have detailed at length the ridicule and scorn poured on Chavez by the mainstream press. They point out that the media finds itself unable to mention Chavez without prefixing his name with either "strongman" , "controversial left-wing president" , "extreme left-winger" , "controversial leader" , "outspoken" , "aggressively populist", "left-wing firebrand" , "international revolutionary firebrand" , "maverick" , "virulently anti-American" , etc. etc.
(...) Can you imagine The Guardian or the BBC introducing Tony Blair as "controversial leader Tony Blair", or George Bush as "virulently anti-Venezuelan George Bush"?
(...) For more on the "cartoonisation", ridicule and smearing of Chavez by the mainstream British press (including what John Pilger called "one of the worst, most distorted pieces of journalism I have ever seen"), see here, here, here and here.
(...) [a labor mp:] That was a novel place for Venezuela, because it had previously attracted little interest in terms of its history or politics, other than as the birthplace of Simon Bolivar, although that is fairly important. According to people to whom I spoke at the Foreign Office, Venezuela was never considered an attractive diplomatic posting. The usual take was that Venezuela was an oil-rich country run by a white, Americanised elite, with nearly 70 per cent. of its 24 million people living on the edge of hunger and poverty...
(...) Given Opposition and US claims about Chavez's democratic legitimacy, it is interesting to note that he had faced the electorate eight times in six years by the end of 2004—a record that has been matched nowhere else in Latin America and which none of us would like to match...
(...) The domestic impact of Chavez's politics is clear. After the dramatic rise in oil prices in 2002 following the failed coup, the Venezuelan Government invested more than $3 billion in social policy reforms in 2005. A series of social investment programmes called missions cover such matters as pre-school education, primary education and literacy, secondary education, vocational worker training, primary health care in the most deprived neighbourhoods and a food distribution programme that covers 60 per cent. of the population. It is estimated that just over 1 million people have acquired literacy skills as a result of those programmes. The poorest in that country have access to medical assistance for the first time ever, thanks partly to the 17,000 medics provided by Cuba."
(...) [article begins again] That the U.S. knew about the April 2002 coup weeks in advance and gave it the go-ahead is also deemed unworthy of mention.
(...) e's referring to Chavez' comparison of Bush to Hitler, of course, and not to any of the many examples of similarly overblown Western rhetoric:

Rumsfeld likens Venezuela’s Chavez to Hitler
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11159503/

Robertson apologizes for assassination call
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/08/24/robertson.chavez/

Germany likens Ahmadinejad to Hitler
http://archive.gulfnews.com/indepth/irancrisis/more_stories/10016391.html

Newt Gingrich: Iran’s President is the New Hitler
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/1/25/100038.shtml

Israel should not shy away from threatening to kill Iran's Ahmadinejad
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3390265,00.html

Sen. Voinovich: Ahmadinejad 'Hitler-like'
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/9/19/135836.shtml

Ahmadinejad – Another Hitler
http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/20345.html

Olmert compares Ahmadinejad to Hitler
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3245121,00.html

(...) To give just one example of the brutality inflicted upon the people of Nicaragua by the U.S.-backed Contra death squads, an American priest living in Nicaragua described 'the Contras going into a town, shooting it up, killing people, taking a fourteen-year-old girl, raping her, slitting her throat, cutting her head off and putting it on a pole to intimidate the rest of the population.'

hezbollah and the media:
Kalb claims the media gave Hezbollah, which he calls "a closed sect" (that doesn't sound too good) "total control of the daily message of journalism and propaganda" and this fact "victimized Israel" because the latter is 'an open society" whereas Hezbollah is " a closed society, that engages in " undemocratic control of the media", is militant, secretive, a religiously fundamentalist sect, a state within a state, subnational(not good)'Party of God", , resisting 'the infidel' and seeking 'divine victory' and supported by Iran and Syria (!) )and, if that is not enough, is similar to the Madhi army. Kalb never mentions that Israel is supported by the US to the tune of 15.1 million dollars a day or 300 times more than the CIA claims Hezbollah gets in foreign aid each year and receives 83% of its weapons from the US.
(...) The same job the UN has been tasked with doing since 1978, as it has documented more than 18,000 Israeli violations of Lebanese territory including its air and sea space.The Harvard study complains that the UN did not report on Hezbollah movements, thereby exhibiting anti-Israel bias. Fact check: Excuse me Marvin but if the IDF with the latest US technology and night vision equipment, scores of cameras mounted on Israeli Heron, Searcher Mk II, or Hermes 450 drones, and close up satellite imaging could not find Hezbollah fighters the UN observers along the blue line dodging Israeli shells were unlikely to. (On July 26 Israel did bomb the UN post near Khaim killing four UN observers-Canadian, Chinese, and Finnish) Moreover, the UN mission is to report crossings of the 'blue line' (only Israel was doing that), not to survey what is going on inside Lebanon.
(...) Kalb's research found that "the media showed too much destruction of Lebanon and in its reporting did not credit Israel's argument that international law allowed Israel to bomb civilian areas if soldiers were hiding within these homes." Israel used this same argument during its 1978, 1982, 1993, 1996, invasions, as it does in Palestine today. In the summer of 2006 it was very easy for the media to find evidence in Lebanon. 950,000 civilians were bombed out of their villages and the 32,000 homes destroyed and were crowded into public parks in Beirut and schools and all over north Lebanon and Syria. The media had lots of eye witness sources regarding the destruction of Lebanon and they properly reported what they learned. Kalb cites Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni's statement to the The New York Times, following the slaughter at Qana, "When you go to sleep with a missile, you might find yourself waking up to another kind of missile" as authority. Israel later admitted there were no missiles fired from Qana, and no Hezbollah in the area, but that it had made a mistake in killing those 28 civilians hiding in the shelter. Kalb might want to inform diplomat Livni that none of the 10 adults or 18 children had gone to sleep with a missile at Qana.
(...) Hezbollah was not hiding from Israeli forces among the civilians. Contrariwise, they were eager to engage Israel every chance they got. Typically Hezbollah fired their missiles from camouflaged areas such as banana groves, orchards, dense foliage, bunkers, holes in the ground, sides of rocky hills and valleys not from houses or towns. They knew very well that Israel would not hesitate to bomb civilian houses which they have been doing since the late 1960's. After a particular mission, Hezbollah fighters would ditch their weapons and try to sleep. Only rarely making their way back to their villages to check on their families or property.
(...) With respect to Israel's admitted mistake of bombing the Qana shelter, according to NGO-Lebanon, Israel made 6,979 'mistakes' in bombing during the 33 day July War. Maybe Kalb finds that statistic acceptable given that Israel launched more that 17,000 attacks at more than 8,000 targets, including 300,000 artillery shells and approximately 4.8 million cluster bombs. The juggernaut international Israeli press operation did. Most of the media did not.
(...) When one side trespasses, captures soldiers or commits a hostile act that does not allow the other side, in retaliation, to slaughter hundreds of civilians and destroy much of the country. The related principle of international law is the obligation to discriminate between civilian and military targets. Israel's responsive killing of more than 1,250 civilians, nearly 1/4 of them children, many fleeing in convoys waving white flags, or following Israeli orders to flee, or hiding in cellars with no fighters in the area, was indeed disproportionate to the capturing of the two soldiers. The international media properly reported these war crimes.
(...) Kalb fails to mention the reams of available material on the subject of Israel's illegal "disproportionate" bombing, which he denies occurred, including many testimonies from the Israeli military to the effect that Israel "lost it" early in the conflict, after being repeating ambushed and not being able to locate Hezbollah fighters and in a vengeful frenzy carpet bombed much of south Lebanon creating a free fire killing zone.
(...) "What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombswe fired 1,800 cluster bombs, containing over 1.2 million cluster bomblets" (IDF head of just one rocket unit quoted in Ha'aretz on 9/12/06)
(...) "In the last 72 hours we fired all the munitions we had, all at the same spot, we didn't even alter the directions of the gun. Friends of mine in the battalion told me they also fired everything in the last three days-ordinary shells, clusters, whatever they had." (Israeli reservist in an artillery battalion, quoted in Ha'aretz on 9/8/06)
(...) The reason is that Hezbollah films most of its battles live because over the years Israel undercounts its causalities and over counts Hezbollah's (Kalb uses Israel's claim of 600 Hezbollah killed in the July war when the actual figure is 264).
(...) Al Manar viewership is often higher in Israel during conflicts than Israeli stations because Israelis have greater confidence in Al Manar for truthful reporting than their own government fed stations. Despite this well known fact, scholar Kalb, perhaps recalling his days as a reporter in the USSR, smears Al-Manar: "for reports and information about the war, Al-Manar was to Hezbollah what Pravda was to the Soviet Union." Israeli TV viewers don't agree.

nyt on israel and palestine:
Moyers’ analysis of the US media failure on Iraq was valuable, yet incomplete. He explained that to launch the attack on Iraq “high officials… needed a compliant press, to pass on their propaganda as news and cheer them on.... our press largely surrendered its independence and skepticism to join with our government in marching to war.” Bob Simon of CBS explained to Moyers that the administration used marketing techniques to sell the war, “Just repeat it and repeat it and repeat it… Keep that drum beat going.” Media critic Norman Solomon told Moyers, “I think these [news] executives were terrified of being called soft on terrorism.” Moyers gave numerous examples of The New York Times passing on bogus intelligence on Iraq to the US public. Michael Massing of the Columbia Journalism Review highlighted the Times central role in marketing the Iraq war, saying: “The New York Times…remainsimmensely influential. People in the TV world read it every morning... People in government-- of course read it, think tanks, and so on.”
(...) Moyers omitted a crucial reason for why the government’s case for war resonated with both the US media and public. It was based in widely held stereotypes about Arabs, Muslims and the Middle East, assumptions which are also essential to understanding US policy in Israel and Palestine. In his classic 1978 book “Orientalism”, Palestinian-American scholar Edward Sa’id asserted that the Western understanding of Arabs, Muslims and the Middle East is a product of colonialism, and that Westerners view the East as inherently inferior and in need of redemption. The US case for war in Iraq rested on orientalist assumptions - that the Middle East was an undifferentiated region of Arabs and Muslims who, lacking any history or valid grievances, are possessed by an irrationally violent nature as well as hatred of the West, Israel, freedom and democracy. The region could be transformed through a combination of US military force and Western enlightenment. Playing on this racist view of Arabs and Muslims which is deeply rooted in the US psyche, the US government managed to convince most Americans, via a complicit media, of fantastic tales about links between Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime and Al Qaeda, stocks of horrific arms, a maniacal desire to use them against the US, and of the beneficial impact of “shock and awe.” This belief that irrational Arab and Muslim violence requires enlightened Western intervention and domination is also used to justify Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, underpins uncritical US support for Israel, and is central to US media coverage of Palestine and Israel.
(...) And in Israel, the other major outpost in “the war on terror,” racist ideology and politically tainted intelligence are also pushed by the government and credulously reported by US media outlets like The New York Times. For example, an April 11, 2007 Times news article by Isabel Kershner headlined unverifiable claims by Israel’s Shin Bet (the equivalent of our FBI) that it had thwarted a massive Hamas suicide bombing planned for Passover.[2] The article largely ignored Palestinian denials reported the same day in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz Daily.[3] The Shin Bet claim seemed to merit skepticism in light of the Palestinian denials, and Hamas’ decision two years ago to halt large-scale attacks.
(...) Indeed, Hamas’ implication in a large-scale bombing plot would have come at a convenient moment for Israel. Following 16 months during which 27 Israelis were killed by Palestinians, the lowest total in more than six years, Israel is struggling to prevent the crumbling of the international boycott of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, and to fend off repeated peace overtures from the Palestinian Authority, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Arab League. The Israeli government has been feeding the media stories saying that the calm is a ruse, that Hamas is using it to arm and plan attacks, and that Israel will therefore be forced to mount a large-scale invasion of Gaza soon. The Times has published at least four other articles echoing these Israeli government assertions since March 2007.[4]
(...) I received an email on April 27, 2007 from The New York Times’ Public Editor Byron Calame acknowledging that: “In the editing of the article late in the evening, the denials Haaretz had obtained from unnamed Palestinian and Hamas officials were deleted. While the vagueness of the sourcing made it less essential that those denials be kept in the story, I think the article would have been better with the denials included.”
(...) Of the 1085 Times news articles since December 1, 2004, 37% mentioned Palestinian “attack(s)”, 36% mentioned “terrorism”, 28% mentioned “terrorist(s)”, 21% mentioned Palestinian “violence”,[6] 18% mentioned “suicide bombing(s)”, 16% mentioned Palestinian “weapon(s)”, and 14% mentioned Palestinian “radicals”. In contrast to this strong Israeli narrative, only two words reflecting a Palestinian narrative appeared in a comparable percentage of Times’ news articles. Israeli “settlement(s)” were noted in 32% of articles,[7] and Israeli “occupation” was mentioned in 16% of articles. This imbalance is even more striking because the emphasis on Palestinian terrorism and violence corresponded with a two year and five month period during which Israelis killed 965 Palestinians, more than half civilians, while Palestinians killed 85 Israelis.[8] Nonetheless, Israeli “attacks(s)” are mentioned in 13% of Times articles, and Israeli “violence” in only 4%.
(...) Only very careful readers of Times news reporting would be able to locate, amidst the barrage on Palestinian terrorism, basic elements of the Palestinian experience - Israeli human rights abuses, Israeli attacks and violations of international law, Palestinian poverty, the Palestinian understanding that they are victims of Israeli discrimination and racism, and Israel’s denial of the right of return to Palestinian refugees. In a startling display of bias, since December, 2004, 70 to 130 times as many Times news article mentioned Palestinian “terrorism” or Palestinian “attack(s)” as mentioned Israeli “discrimination”, “racism” or “apartheid”.[9] Thirty-five times as many articles mentioned Palestinian “terrorism” as mentioned Palestinian “poverty”,[10] though 70% of Palestinians are now living below the poverty line.[11]
(...) The same day, April 22, The Times ran a telling parallel news story by Jennifer Medina, “Settlers' Defiance Reflects Postwar Israeli Changes”, about an Israeli settler takeover of a Palestinian home in the middle of a Palestinian neighborhood in Hebron’s old city. Rather than describing Hebron’s settlers, acknowledged by Israelis as extreme, uzi-toting settlers who frequently attack Palestinians, as “radicals” or “extremists”, the Times politely called them “the most uncompromising of the settlers”. And despite the settler takeover of a home in a Palestinian neighborhood, the Times subtly placed the burden of violence on Palestinians, noting, “there are fears of violence -- there have been some reports of young Palestinians throwing rocks at the settlers. And a white Star of David is spray-painted on the front door of a Palestinian family.” Of 1085 Times articles, 133 mentioned Palestinian “radical(s)”, while only four articles mentioned Israeli “radical(s).” Colonizing settlers are neither radical nor violent, but colonized Palestinians are.
(...) Growing Palestinian radicalization is a dangerous trend, but by minimizing Palestinians’ radicalizing experience of oppression and denial of rights, the Times reader is left to rely on the orientalist assumption that radicalism is a disease that springs naturally from Arab and Muslim minds and spreads.
(...) More broadly, the concepts of Israeli discrimination and racism against Palestinians, which are part of the daily language of many Palestinians including Bishara, were raised in only 0.4% and 0.5% of all Times news articles on Israel and Palestine since December 2004. The concept of Israeli apartheid, also a daily staple of Palestinian discourse, but summarily dismissed by the Times’ Ethan Bronner as “overstatement” and a “false echo of the racist policies of the old South Africa”, was mentioned in only 0.3% of all Times news articles from Israel and Palestine. The Times has essentially refused Palestinians the opportunity to present their view that they are victims of discrimination and racism.
(...) Palestinians’ lived experiences - that they are under attack, being killed, impoverished, having their land taken, denied their rights, and the victims of a discriminatory system - are drowned out by the drumbeat of Palestinian terrorism, even when few Israelis are being killed. As with Iraq, this racist narrative of inherent Arab violence is being exploited to justify domination of one people by another. Lacking this analysis, Bill Moyers’ “Buying the War” represents only a first step towards exposing US media bias in covering the Middle East.

rupert murdochs latest adventure:
Predictably, some critics have decried the current efforts by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. to buy the Dow Jones company, which publishes The Wall Street Journal. But let's imagine the dynamics that might emerge if Murdoch gains control of that newspaper.

media ownership in argentina:
Since Argentina's return to democracy in 1983, only minor reforms have been made to the law, but always to promote private media ownership and concentration. According to the law, only an individual or commercial group established in the country has the right to acquire a license to broadcast a television or radio signal. Non-profit groups, universities, cooperatives, or community associations do not have the right to apply for a broadcast license. For community radio and television stations, this law is a holdover from the days of authoritarian rule that has literally blocked any possibility of gaining legal permission to broadcast.
(...) Ágora TV is an alternative community television project that is currently broadcasting through the web site www.agoratv.org. Video collective Grupo Alavío built the site as an initiative to start up a city-wide television station in Buenos Aires. However, to their surprise, the website has become a powerful media tool, with thousands of viewers from around the world tuning into their computers to watch videos seldom seen on commercial television. The objective of Ágora TV is for the audience to appropriate the media and use it as a tool for social change. Ágora TV comes from the Greek word agora which originally meant an assembly of the whole people, or public plaza where the people meet to practice direct democracy. Grupo Alavío currently administers the site, but Ágora TV is an open space for video collectives and groups to put up their own videos. The idea is for social movements and video producers to use Ágora TV as a space to make their voices heard. The basis for the project is to adapt internet technology and put it to use for the benefit of the community. Grupo Alavío is working to socialize skills training for groups to produce their own audiovisual materials and to transform viewers from passive consumers to critical spectators. Ágora TV is a window for liberation creating a new imagery that reflects the specific interests and needs of the working class and other exploited sectors.

"well, with the intelligence I had at the time...":
Among the few heroes of this devastating film are reporters with the Knight Ridder/McClatchy bureau in D.C. Tragically late, Walter Isaacson, who headed CNN, observes, "The people at Knight Ridder were calling the colonels and the lieutenants and the people in the CIA and finding out, you know, that the intelligence is not very good. We should've all been doing that." At the close, Moyers mentions some of the chief proponents of the war who refused to speak to him for this program, including Thomas Friedman, Bill Kristol, Roger Ailes, Charles Krauthammer, Judith Miller, and William Safire.
(...) Walter Isaacson is pushed hard by Moyers and finally admits, "We didn't question our sources enough." But why? Isaacson notes there was "almost a patriotism police" after 9/11 and when the network showed civilian casualties it would get phone calls from advertisers and the administration and "big people in corporations were calling up and saying, 'You're being anti-American here.'"
(...) Moyers then mentions that Isaacson had sent a memo to staff, leaked to the Washington Post, in which he declared, "It seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan" and ordered them to balance any such images with reminders of 9/11.
(...) The disgraceful press reaction to Colin Powell's presentation at the United Nations seems like something out of Monty Python, with one key British report cited by Powell being nothing more than a student's thesis, downloaded from the Web -- with the student later threatening to charge U.S. officials with "plagiarism."
(...) Moyers also throws some stats around: In the year before the invasion William Safire (who predicted a "quick war" with Iraqis cheering their liberators) wrote "a total of 27 opinion pieces fanning the sparks of war." The Washington Post carried at least 140 front-page stories in that same period making the administration's case for attack. In the six months leading to the invasion the Post would "editorialize in favor of the war at least 27 times." Of the 414 Iraq stories broadcast on NBC, ABC and CBS nightly news in the six months before the war, almost all could be traced back to sources solely in the White House, Pentagon or State Dept., Moyers tells Russert, who offers no coherent reply.
(...) He then runs a pre-war clip of President Bush declaring, "We cannot wait for the final proof: the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." Then he explains: "The man who came up with it was Michael Gerson, President Bush's top speechwriter. "He has left the White House and has been hired by the Washington Post as a columnist."

on a documentary about the record of the mainstream media in the build-up:
Bill Moyers has put together an amazing 90-minute video documenting the lies that the Bush administration told to sell the Iraq War to the American public, with a special focus on how the media led the charge. I’ve watched an advance copy and read a transcript, and the most important thing I can say about it is: Watch PBS from 9 to 10:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 25. Spending that 90 minutes on this will actually save you time, because you’ll never watch television news again – not even on PBS, which comes in for its share of criticism.
(...) [an example] The Washington Post editorialized in favor of the war 27 times, and published in 2002 about 1,000 articles and columns on the war. But the Post gave a huge anti-war march a total of 36 words. “What got even less ink,” Moyers says, “was the release of the National Intelligence Estimate.” Even the misleading partial version that the media received failed to fool a careful eye.

you should say so much more, Boston Globe:
Nation-building is still needed today in East Timor because foreigners did so much to destroy the foundations of that new country, including President Gerald Ford and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, who winked at Indonesia’s 1975 invasion. It is always easier to destroy than to help build a nation.

on 'balance' in the mainstream media, describing 2002 venezuela coup:
Chavez opponents accused government loyalists of firing on the marchers, while the president's backers blamed police and anti-Chavez snipers of firing on both pro- and anti-government demonstrators.