John Pilger - recommends the world wide web

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Sat, 26 Nov 2005 21:33:52 -0800 (PST)

John Pilger - recommends the world wide web

 

 

 

http://www.newstatesman.com/200511280013

 

 

 

John Pilger - recommends the world wide web

 

 

John Pilger

Monday 28th November 2005

 

John Pilger - recommends the world wide web

 

Monday 28th November 2005

 

If you want to know the truth about Iraq,

join the millions who have given up on the silences

of the mainstream media, writes John Pilger

 

The Indian writer Vandana Shiva has called for an

" insurrection of subjugated knowledge " .

The insurrection is well under way.

In trying to make sense of a dangerous world, millions

of people are turning away from the conventional sources

of news and information and to the world wide web, convinced

that mainstream journalism is the voice of rampant power.

 

The great scandal of Iraq has accelerated this.

In the United States, several senior broadcasters

have confessed that had they challenged and exposed

the lies told about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction,

instead of amplifying and justifying them,

the invasion might not have happened.

 

Such honesty has yet to cross the Atlantic.

Since it was founded in 1922, the BBC has served to protect

every British establishment during war and civil unrest.

" We " never traduce and never commit great crimes.

So the omission of shocking events in Iraq,

- the destruction of cities, the slaughter of innocent people

and the farce of a puppet government - is routinely applied.

 

A study by the Cardiff School of Journalism found

that 90% of the BBC's references to Saddam Hussein's

WMDs suggested he possessed them and that

" Spin from the British and US governments was successful

in framing the coverage " . The same " spin " has ensured,

until now, that the use of banned weapons by the

Americans and British in Iraq has been suppressed as news.

 

An admission by the US State Department on 10 November

that its forces had used white phosphorus

in Fallujah followed " rumours on the internet " ,

according to the BBC's Newsnight.

 

There were no rumours.

There was first-class investigative work

that ought to shame well-paid journalists.

Mark Kraft of (http://www.insomnia.livejournal.com)

found the evidence in the March-April 2005 issue

of Field Artillery magazine and other sources.

 

He was supported by the work of the film-maker

Gabriele Zamparini, founder of the excellent site

(http://www.thecatsdream.com).

 

Last May, David Edwards and David Cromwell of

(http://www.medialens.org) posted a revealing

correspondence with Helen Boaden, the BBC's director of news.

 

They had asked her why the BBC had remained silent

on known atrocities committed by the Americans in Fallujah.

She replied, " Our correspondent in Fallujah at the time

[of the US attack], Paul Wood, did not report any of

these things because he did not see any of these things. "

 

It is a statement to savour.

Wood was " embedded " with the Americans.

He interviewed none of the victims of US atrocities,

nor un-embedded journalists.

He not only missed the Americans' use of white phosphorus,

- which they now admit, he reported nothing of the use,

- in Fallujah, of another banned weapon, napalm.

 

Thus, BBC viewers were unaware of the fine words of

Colonel James Alles, US Marine Air Group XI commander.

" We napalmed both those [bridge] approaches, " he said.

" Unfortunately, there were people there, you could see them

in the cockpit video . . . It's no great way to die.

The generals love napalm. It has a big psychological effect. "

 

Once the unacknowledged work of Kraft and Zamparini

had appeared in the Guardian and Independent and forced

the Americans to come clean about white phosphorus,

Wood was on Newsnight describing their admission as

" a public relations disaster for the US " .

 

This echoed Menzies Campbell of the Liberal Democrats,

perhaps the most quoted politician since Gladstone,who said:

" The use of this weapon may technically have been legal,

but its effects are such that it will hand

a propaganda victory to the insurgency. "

 

The BBC and most of the political and media establishment

invariably cast such a horror as a public relations

problem while minimising the crushing of a city

the size of Leeds,- the killing and maiming of countless

- men, women and children, the expulsion of thousands

- and the denial of medical supplies, food and water

- a major war crime.

 

The evidence is voluminous, provided by refugees,

doctors, human rights groups and a few courageous

foreigners whose work appears only on the internet.

In April last year, Jo Wilding, a young British

law student, filed a series of extraordinary

eyewitness reports from inside the city.

 

So fine are they, I have included one of her pieces

in an anthology of the best investigative journalism*.

Her film, A Letter to the Prime Minister,

made inside Fallujah with Julia Guest,

has not been shown on British television.

In addition, Dahr Jamail, an independent

Lebanese-American journalist who has produced

some of the best front-line reporting I have read,

described all the " things " the BBC failed to " see " .

 

His interviews with doctors, local officials and families

are on the internet, together with the work of those

who have exposed the widespread use of

- uranium-tipped shells, another banned weapon, and cluster

bombs, which Campbell would say are " technically legal " .

 

Try these websites: http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com,

http://www.zmag.org, http://www.antiwar.com,

http://www.truthout.com, http://www.indymedia.org.uk,

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info,

http://www.counterpunch.org, http://www.voicesuk.org.

There are many more.

 

" Each word, " wrote Jean-Paul Sartre,

" has an echo. So does each silence. "

 

* Tell Me No Lies: investigative journalism and its triumphs, edited by

John Pilger, is published by Vintage

 

End