[Media-watch] Latest from ColdType

[Tony Sutton]

Latest from  COLDTYPE.NET


Dateline Baghdad 

Robert Fisk reports from a besieged city
Britain's top foreign correspondent Robert Fisk, of London's Independent newspaper, reports from Baghdad, target of thousands of missiles and bombs launched by US and British warplanes and ships in the war being waged on Iraq by the United States, Britain and a rag-tag 'coalition of the willing'. 

Read Fisk's reports at http://www.coldtype.net/baghdad.html

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London Calling 

George Monbiot on the Geneva Convention
Suddenly, the government of the United States has discovered the virtues of international law. It may be waging an illegal war against a sovereign state; it may be seeking to destroy every treaty which impedes its attempts to run the world, but when five of its captured soldiers were paraded in front of the Iraqi television cameras on Sunday, Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, immediately complained that ³it is against the Geneva convention to show photographs of prisoners of war in a manner that is humiliating for them². 

Read Monbiot's columns from The Guardian newspaper at http://www.coldtype.net/London.html

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Getting A Grip

Michael I. Niman on the immorality of Bush's war
It¹s not a good day when I feel compelled to start my article by quoting Adolf Hitler¹s deputy ­ but it¹s imperative at times like this not to let the lessons of history escape us. And there are many, as history is littered with the fetid carcasses of failed empires and the demented dreams that fueled them. One thing, however, is certain: if history has taught us anything, it tells us that any society that seeks to build a global empire is doomed to painful obscurity.

Check it out at http://www.coldtype.net/Grip.html

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MediaBeat

Norman Solomon on the media's obsession with tactics and technology
Two months ago, when I wandered through a large market near the center of Baghdad, the day seemed like any other and no other. A vibrant pulse of humanity throbbed in the shops and on the streets. Meanwhile, a fuse was burning; lit in Washington, it would explode here. Now, with American troops near Baghdad, the media fixations are largely tactical. ³A week of airstrikes, including the most concentrated precision hits in U.S. military history, has left tons of rubble and deep craters at hundreds of government buildings and military facilities around Iraq but has yielded little sign of a weakening in the regime¹s will to resist,² the Washington Post reported on March 26..

Check it out at http://www.coldtype.net/mediabeat.html