Showing posts with label freedom of the press. Show all posts
Showing posts with label freedom of the press. Show all posts

Saturday, March 21, 2009

John Pilger on Venezuela




New World Notes News
Volume 2, Number 12 -- March 24, 2009


This week in New World Notes, #55 -- March 24 & 27:

John Pilger on Venezuela

Last week's newsletter/blog extravaganza took 'way too much time, so this week (God willing) we shall be brief. If you haven't yet seen last week's opus--a quirky though still scary collection of five dozen photos exploring some parallels between the Warsaw Ghetto of 1940-43 and Gaza and the West Bank today--you can page downwards a couple of entries or else take this link: http://newworldnotes.blogspot.com/2009/03/peace-propaganda-promised-land-part-3_10.html .

This week's installment of New World Notes is taken from lefty Aussie filmmaker John Pilger's super documentary, The War on Democracy. It's the film's 20-minute segment on Venezuela, nicely adapted to radio by the Unwelcome Guests Collective.

Filmmaker John Pilger


It's a fascinating narrative of an idealistic reformer taking on Established Power, becoming beloved by the common people, hated by the rich oligarchs, overthrown in a (it goes without saying) CIA-sponsored coup, and restored to power soon afterwards by popular demand. This is quite a story! and the climactic scene of Chavez's return is stunning. It recalls the climax of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Al Gore won the popular vote in Florida in the year 2000--hence the electoral vote in the United States. The establishment press and TV networks acknowledged same (very quietly) weeks later. They had joined together and hired the respected Roper Organization to examine all the Florida ballots cast in the election. Roper concluded that--no matter what sane principles of counting one employed--Gore received more votes than Bush.

The U.S. Supreme Court had ordered the recount of the Florida ballots stopped when it became clear that Gore would win if the recount continued. According to the court's unsigned decision, the civil rights of one G.W. Bush would be irreparably harmed if the recount proceeded according to Florida law.

Overdosed on lies and BS by the mass media, Americans sat on their sofas, refused to see a coup d'etat when it was unfolding in front of them, and on cue cried out, "Why won't Gore accept defeat?!"

In a similar situation, the people of Venezuela, unarmed, took to the streets, stormed the President's mansion, persuaded the enlisted soldiers guarding it to fight against the coup, and restored the deposed Chavez to office in short order.

Democracy, anyone?


Hugo Chavez


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Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land -- Part 3

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New World Notes News

Volume 2, Number 11 -- March 17, 2009


This week in New World Notes, #56* -- March 17 & 20:

The third and final part of the documentary on the news media's bias in reporting on Palestine airs this week. The blog entry--actually pair of entries--is a photoessay about certain similarities between Germany's policies concerning Poland (1940-1943) and Israel's policies concerning Palestine (1967-present). You are reading the first of the photoessay's two halves. In this half, the click-to-enlarge function does not work; in the second half (= next blog entry), click-to-enlarge does work. To reach the second half of the photoessay, scroll upwards.

Introduction

"According to [UN Special Rapporteur Richard] Falk, 'A recent study reports that 46 percent of all Gazan children suffer from acute anemia. There are reports that the sonic booms associated with Israeli overflights have caused widespread deafness, especially among children. Gazan children need thousands of hearing aids. Malnutrition is extremely high in a number of different dimensions and affects 75 percent of Gazans. About 18 percent of Gaza's children have stunted growth. There are widespread mental disorders, especially among young people. Over 50 percent of Gazan children under the age of 12 have been found to have no will to live. . . .

"'It is macabre,' Falk said of the blockade. 'People have been referring to the Warsaw ghetto as the nearest analog in modern times.'"

-- Chris Hedges, from "Party to Murder," condensed by KD. http://newworldnotes.blogspot.com/2009/01/on-gaza-and-israel.html



The walls of the Warsaw ghetto--erected by the Nazi authorities beginning
1940--enclosed not only the olive-colored areas but also the orange area
and the Jewish Cemetary. Mila Street (in the orange section) was made
famous in the U.S. by Leon Uris' popular 1961 novel, Mila 18 ("18 Pleasant
Street," in English). Not to be confused with Milah 18, which would be "18
Circumcision Street." Mila 18 is was the address at which SS troops killed
the last of the resistance fighters, ending the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
The forces of Law and Order were led by SS Major-General Juergen Stroop
(likely pronounced "Schtrope"). The insurgency began in mid-January 1943;
the period of most intense fighting was April 19-May 16.

A pedestrian bridge over Chlodna St. connects the "Little Ghetto" in the south
with the "Large Ghetto." That part of Chlodna was not crossed by a wall, as
authorities did not wish to disrupt the (Gentile) streetcar line running along
the street.

Trivia (or not): 1961 also saw the appearance of Joseph Heller's first
novel, Catch-18. Mila 18 soon became so well-known that Heller's editor
at Simon & Schuster decided that a post-publication change of title--by the
newbie Heller, not by the established Uris--was called for. What to call
the damned thing? Catch-11 was too close to Ocean's 11 . . . . Could I
make this stuff up? Now everyone agrees that Catch-22 is the best title
imaginable for the book. See http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/the-stories-behind-some-of-literatures-bestknown-novels-760449.html


The German occupiers of Poland were not the only force to see the
advantages of a nice wall. The Israeli occupiers of Palestine concur.
Here is a map of Israeli enclosures, encroachments, ethnic cleansing,
and future Anschluess of just one region: the Bethlehem District of
the West Bank.

Key to Map
Colored areas: medium violet = Israeli colonies; light violet = land
between the segregation wall and the West Bank border; dark red =
Israeli military bases; yellow = Palestinian built-up areas.
Thick lines: red = existing wall; yellow = wall under construction;
magenta = planned wall; green = predicted wall; dashed green/
black = bypass road. Thin blue-green line: boundary of Bethlehem
District.


Walls

If the wanton destruction of Gaza recalls the Warsaw Ghetto of 1943, the building of confinement walls by the occupying forces recalls the Ghetto of 1940-41. Credit where due: the walls the Nazis ordered built in Warsaw were easier on the eye than those that others put up in Baghdad and throughout Palestine--being built of brick and to a more human scale.






Only remaining German-built section of the Warsaw Ghetto wall.

"O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie." Well, actually,
from the north we can't see much of thee at all. Except by Apache
helicopter and perhaps from the hilltop that is now part of an Israeli
colony--which CNN insists on calling a "Jewish neighborhood." Note
how the wall cuts the olive orchards off from the town. The hopes
(Israeli) and fears (Palestinian) of all the years are met in thee tonight!

Bethlehem

Belfast, Northern Ireland, U.K. U.K.-ians say "Happy Christmas,"
not "Merry. . . ." Who would have imagined that the Protestants and
the Catholics of Northern Ireland could ever live together in peace?

Fire & Smoke

Warsaw, 1943 -- Gaza, December 2008-January 2009


SS Major-General Juergen Stroop was placed in charge of
eradicating the Jewish insurgency in Warsaw and razing the
Ghetto. After the war he was sentenced to death by the
Nuremberg Tribunal, extradited to Poland, then tried, convicted,
and executed by Polish authorities.


Marched off to the Umschlagsplatz (railroad freight loading area)
just north of the Ghetto; thence to Treblinka.

Propaganda Minister J. Goebbels was one of the greats of the P.R. industry, but he wasn't perfect. It didn't occur to him to explain, "We had to destroy the Ghetto in order to save it!" --paraphrasing an obscure U.S. Army major's remarks on the village of Ben Tre, a generation later. Righteous outrage at the Warsaw inferno should be expressed cautiously by citizens of the country that intentionally torched Dresden and Tokyo at roughly the same time Stroop was burning a good deal of Warsaw.

Wait. . . . My photos are all mixed up! Is this a shot of Warsaw (just above), or is this one of my photos of Tokyo? Dresden? Beirut? Fallujah? The electrical hardware looks too old for this to be Gaza City, and I don't think Ben Tre had electricity.


Policeman signals.

City of Rafah, Gaza Strip.

UN facility in Gaza housing relief supplies for Gazans--food, fuel,
clothing--destroyed by Israeli missiles. The Israel Defense Forces
has frequently attacked UN humanitarian sites including aid
depots, temporary shelters, schools, and refugee camps.

* NWN installment #55 will be broadcast next week (if God permits).

Photoessay continued in next entry . . .

Please scroll upwards or click here:
http://newworldnotes.blogspot.com/2009/03/peace-propaganda-promised-land-part-3.html

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Thursday, January 29, 2009

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land (Part 1)

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New World Notes News
Volume 2, Number 5 -- February 3, 2009

This week in New World Notes, #50 -- February 3 & 6:

We all can name at least one democracy that has remained committed to freedom of the press since its founding.

A country that does have its faults but has the great virtue of respecting--or at least tolerating--the media's expression of a wide range of opinions about government policies. Even in time of war.

The democracy I'm thinking of is Israel.

The United States? Puh-leeze!


So when we want to get a rounded view of the Israel-Palestine conflict . . . when we want better to understand the claims and grievances of both sides . . . when we want to appreciate a multitude of perspectives on the causes of and solutions to the conflict . . .

. . . we drop the New York Times into the recycle bin, toss the TV set out the window, turn on the computer, and read the online English edition of the Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz (http://www.haaretz.com/).

On the other hand, if we want 175 media sources all repeating the same Government-approved Party Line--all making the same Official Talking Points in pretty much the same language . . . with the same omissions and distortions--well, just look around.


How did we get to this pretty pass?

The Media Education Foundation analyzed American media coverage of the Palestine conflict. In 2003 it presented its findings in a video documentary: Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land. Alas, the film is just as true and relevant today as it was six years ago. I've turned the film into a three-part series for radio.

To give you and me a break from Mideast strife, we'll broadcast the three installments over an eight-week period. (The piece survives such rough treatment nicely.) Dates of initial broadcast (on WWUH) are Feb. 3, Feb. 27, and March 20--three days later on WHUS.

Response to the film has been very positive. Chalmers Johnson, author of the Blowback trilogy, called it "The best, least biased presentation we have of all the issues involved. A must-see documentary."

Donna Baillie, herself a filmmaker, said this: "Painstakingly stripping away the myths and inaccuracies regularly passed off as truth by the U.S. media, this film not only reveals the motivations and methods of those responsible for skewing the picture, but also manages to present the most concise and accurate account of the history and implications of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and the role that the U.S. has played in the continuation of that conflict that I have seen."

Baillie concludes, "This is a very important piece of work that challenges the viewer to think twice before accepting a version of the world that owes more to the special interests of a powerful elite than to any notion of freedom of the press."

This week's installment provides (1) a brief history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, (2) an explanation of why the media spin has taken the form it has--no, it's not all the fault of AIPAC--and (3) an exploration of the first of the seven means by which the media distort the truth.

The documentary uses many striking clips from network TV news. It adds excellent commentary by American, Israeli, and Palestinian "talking heads"--or maybe, for radio, "disembodied voices"--including Noam Chomsky, Robert Fisk, Neve Gordon, Alisa Solomon, and Rabbi Michael Lerner.

Catch New World Notes . . .



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