[Media-watch] Murdoch's Propaganda Machine Has A Nazi flavour

[Chris Keene]

Murdoch's Propaganda Machine Has A Nazi flavour

From: Janice <janice_g _-at-_ free.net.nz>
To: mai-not _-at-_ flora.org
Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 10:40:39 +1200

/This story was found at: 
*http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/07/1049567619708.html*/

By Margo Kingston
April 7 2003

People who remain to be convinced that cross-media laws are important to 
maintaining the fabric of our democracy need look no further than 
today's page one of /The Daily Telegraph/.

*KILLING ROOM - Coalition forces reveal Saddam's torture terror"* it 
screamed. The first lines: /"The depraved brutality of Saddam's regime 
was revealed to the world yesterday in a series of horrific discoveries. 
As US forces intensified the battle for Baghdad last night, British 
allies uncovered an enormous charnel house containing the remains of 
hundreds of Saddam's torture victims."/ ( See Killing Room 
<http://www.dailytelegraph.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,6247261%5E25440,00.html> 
and Coffin rows expose an unspeakable evil 
<http://www.dailytelegraph.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,6248290%5E25440,00.html>).

I saw the vision of the find on TV last night, and noted the British 
officers remark that it was unclear what the building and its rows of 
simple coffins was all about. However, the remains were old, he said, 
and he showed documents and photographs also found on site, which did 
not scream out torture chamber but rather respect for the dead.

So where did/ The Daily Telegraph/ get its scoop information, and why 
was it so confident of the truth of its story? Who knows, but CNN 
<http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/04/06/sprj.irq.war.remains/index.html> 
reported today:

*U.S. military: Remains from Iran-Iraq war*

*Sunday, April 6, 2003 Posted: 11:41 AM EDT (1541 GMT)*

/SOUTHERN IRAQ (CNN) -- More than 400 sets of human remains discovered 
in a barracks outside of Basra are of soldiers killed during the 1980-88 
Iran-Iraq war, the leader of a U.S. military team that examined them 
said Sunday. /

/Forensics experts sent to southern Iraq to analyze the makeshift 
coffins and plastic bags in which the human body parts were found said 
all the injuries appeared consistent with combat, contrary to initial 
reports from an Iranian news agency some showed signs of torture. /

/CWO Dan Walters with the U.S Army told reporters the bodies were mostly 
those of Iraqi fighters, and appeared to be a staging point for the 
exchange of such remains between Iraq and Iran. British soldiers with 
the Third Regiment of the Royal Artillery made the gruesome discovery in 
an abandoned warehouse. /

/"Some had tatters of uniforms hidden amongst the human remains," said 
U.S. Central Command Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks during a briefing Sunday. 
Some of the soldiers said the makeshift wooden, open-face coffins were 
stacked deep in the warehouse and belonged to the 51st Division 
headquarters of the Iraqi regular army. /

/The bodies were located over the recent months in joint recovery 
operations along the Iran-Iraq border, Iranian Army Gen. Mirfeisal 
Baqerzadeh, head of the search and recovery committee for those missing 
in action, told the Iranian newspaper Jomhouri-E Eslami. /

/The newspaper quoted Baqerzadeh saying Iran and Iraq scrapped the 
search and recovery operations for the missing in action on the Iraqi 
territory 15 days before the war started. /

/The remains were found in plastic bags and makeshift coffins /

/"We eagerly ask the International Committee of the Red Cross to carry 
out its obligations and immediately take delivery of the bodies from the 
U.S.-British troops, and return them to Iran in Shalamcheh border point 
with Iraq," the Iranian newspaper quoted Baqerzadeh. /

/British soldiers at the scene said a neighboring building contained 
photographs of the dead, most of whom had died from gunshot wounds to 
the head. /

Webdiarist *Peter Fulham* sent me this report from the New York Times 
<http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/116217-bodies07.shtml>, which 
begins:

/ZUBAYR, Iraq -- A poignant bit of unfinished history caught up with the 
current campaign against Saddam Hussein yesterday, as U.S. and British 
officials combed through a makeshift morgue for Iraqi and Iranian 
soldiers killed in the 1980s in a war most Iraqis are too young to 
remember./

/The 664 thin wooden coffins at the morgue, containing the remains of 
408 men, were stacked in neat rows, some five coffins high in a 
warehouse in what the officials called a former Iraqi artillery complex. 
Plastic bags in the coffins contained all that remained of each young 
soldier -- an identity tag, a wallet, a piece of uniform, pictures of 
loved ones and occasionally some money./

/Investigators from the U.S. 75th Exploitation Task Force arrived here 
yesterday from northern Kuwait. The task force, charged with documenting 
war crimes, had come to investigate what initial descriptions of the 
site suggested was a center for torture and execution./

/But in just a few hours, Chief Warrant Officer Dan Walters, the leader 
of the task force's Criminal Investigation Division unit, said a 
preliminary examination of the remains and some of the thousands of 
pages of documents that were abandoned in a building next to the 
warehouse suggested that atrocities had probably not occurred here. 
Rather, he said, Iraqis had apparently been processing the remains and 
preparing to exchange them with Iran./

/"Their wounds were consistent with combat deaths, not executions," said 
Walters. "So far," he added, "there are no indications that war crimes 
were committed here." .../

I can hardly wait for the correction tomorrow. It's not as if standard 
journalism wouldn't have discovered a lack of certainty. The /Herald/ 
reported today:

/"MASS GRAVE DISPUTE: Iran said the remains of as many as 200 people 
found near Basra were Iranian soldiers killed during the 1980-88 
Iran-Iraq war and demanded their immediate repatriation, a newspaper 
reported yesterday. But Iraq has said the bodies, discovered on Saturday 
by British soldiers in a military complex, were Iraqis killed in the 
conflict and recently returned by Iran. But the head of Iran's Committee 
for Searching for the Missing in Action, Brigadier-General Mireysal 
Baqerzadeh, was quoted in Jomhuri-ye Eslami saying the corpses were 
unearthed in recent months by joint Iran-Iraq search teams."/

Rupert Murdoch's vast newspaper empire has waged a relentless pro-war 
propaganda war before and since the war began without even the pretence, 
in many cases, that even the facade of journalism - a genuine attempt to 
get the facts in the time available and to present what is known at the 
time of going to press, appropriately attributed - is being preserved. 
It just so happens that Murdoch wants US government approval to take 
over DirecTV and further extend his grip on pay TV.

Just last week Mr Murdoch, who said before the war that it would be good 
for the economy (/Murdoch: Cheap oil the prize 
<http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/13/1044927741662.html> /and 
/Murdoch's war: 175 generals on song 
<http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/19/1045330657523.html>/) urged 
America to get it over with quickly. Note that he aligns himself 
explicitly with American interests, as an American citizen. This could 
explain why editorially the Murdoch papers here have made little or no 
mention of what Australia's distinct interests might be in this war.

*Murdoch: Iraqis Will Welcome U.S. Troops*

*By GARY GENTILE*

*The Associated Press*

Thursday, April 3, 2003; 12:07 AM

/Media mogul Rupert Murdoch said Wednesday Americans have an inferiority 
complex about the world's opinion and that Iraqis eventually will 
welcome U.S. troops as liberators./

/"We worry about what people think about us too much in this country. We 
have an inferiority complex, it seems," Murdoch said at the Milken 
Institute Global Conference. "I think what's important is that the world 
respects us, much more important than they love us."/

/The head of News Corp. said a long war could heavily influence the U.S. 
and global economies while creating political instability in the Middle 
East and elsewhere. And he suggested a decisive U.S. effort for a quick 
end to the war would be better than a protracted battle./

/"There is going to be collateral damage. And if you really want to be 
brutal about it, better we get it done now than spread it over months," 
he said./

/Murdoch also warned that the world should be prepared for more 
terrorist attacks. "It's very possible to see freelance suicide attempts 
both here and in London, and that would psychologically shake this 
country up," he said./

Many Murdoch outlets' commitment to free speech is non-existent. I quote 
from crikey.com.au's sealed section of April 4: /"Speaking of Fox, their 
most feral presenter Bill O'Reilly this morning had two legal experts on 
to discuss whether Peter Arnett should be charged with treason. They all 
agreed he could and should be. There goes Rupert again, profitably 
spewing out some of the most disgraceful journalism the world has seen 
and then trashing free speech when it suits him."/

Now that Australia's identity under John Howard seems to be dissolving 
into a subset of America's identity, it would be nice to maintain some 
semblance of a diverse Australian oriented, Australian owned, media in 
this country.

But don't expect the government to care about silly little issues like 
that. It's already negotiating a 'free trade' agreement with the USA, 
which demands an end to foreign ownership restrictions on media, Qantas, 
Telstra and Woodside, as well as an end to laws trying to preserve our 
cultural identity. Australian nationalism? Not for much longer, if John 
Howard gets his way.

Poor old Australia - the USA doesn't need to invade us to take us over. 
We're inviting them in. Oh, and crossing our fingers that as a defacto 
state of America (minus the right to vote) the Americans will 
sympathetically consider helping us out if our security is threatened.




-- 
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the
merger of state and corporate power." (Benito Mussolini).

Chris Keene
90 The Parkway, Canvey Island, Essex SS8 0AE, England
Tel 01268 682820  Fax 01268 514164  Mobile 07801 250982