Hey, this guy made the smoke bigger, ban his pictures! see news.bbc.co.uk
Hey, these photographers were taking pictures of people faking emotion with (real) dead children in their arms in (real) bombing ruins. see qana-directors-cut.html
Now this is very serious, isn't it?
If we can't believe what we see in the media any more, then what?
The same media that informed us so well in the decade leading up to the invasion of Iraq.... in 2004 too many Americans still believed Iraq had or was developing arms of mass destruction. www.pipa.org
But we Europeans, are very, very different from our emigrants in the US.
Meaning our media are so much more independent.
So when the mass grave body count cited by British prime minister Tony Blair demonizing Sadam Hussein, proved to be nonsense, our media largely reported on that, or did they?
Blair claimed more than once that 400.000 bodies were found in mass graves in Iraq, a number still surviving in a official US governement document www.usaid.gov/iraq/legacyofterror.html
The number was sized down on july 18th 2004 to 5.000 observer.guardian.co.uk
But even if British government blew up by 80x the number of -at the time recovered- victims, in our memories Sadam remains a mass murdering monster and Blair an intelligent politician.
And we remain convinced that the photojournalist making the smoke plumes look bigger, should go.
Also because, mass murderer Sadam and his government not only killed Kurds,
they
didn't even care about their citizens, did they?
"That's absolute garbage, the fact is that before Saddam Hussein got himself into trouble in Iran, and then of course in Kuwait, they had invested massively in civilian infrastructure. Health care clinics, rural clinics, education, 10,000 schools scattered throughout the country, an educational and healthcare system which was the envy of all its Arab neighbours. Iraq had a very widespread food distribution system of its own before we got involved." Dennis Halliday, former UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq who resigned in 1998, as did his two succesors.
Why did Halliday resign?
"Malnutrition is running at about 30 percent for children under 5 years old. In terms of mortality, probably 5 or 6 thousand children are dying per month. This is directly attributable to the impact of sanctions, which have caused the breakdown of the clean water system, health facilities and all the things that young children require. All of this is just not acceptable. I don't want to administer a program that results in these kind of figures. Sanctions are being sustained by member states, knowing of this calamity. I wanted to be in a position to speak out on sanctions and the dreadful impact that they are having on the people - particularly the children - and the future of Iraq." see www.casi.org.uk
Following the invasion of Kuwait, these sanctions were unanimously voted by the United Nations Security Council on August 1990, by members Canada, China, Colombia, Cote d'Ivoire, Cuba, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Malaysia, Romania, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United States of America, Yemen and Zaire.
They lasted till May 2003, weakened to some degree by the Oil for Food Programme in 1996.
Results were indeed heavily felt by the civilian population, numbers remaining disputed. If Iraqi child mortality rate had reached its depth in 1990 (two years after the end of the 8 year Iran-Iraq war!), by '98 it had doubled. see www.unicef.org
Most conservative estimates rate the excess mortality under 5 years old between 100.000 and 250.000. see www.casi.org.uk
Is this collateral damage of a civil boycott or United Nations starving a civil population to death?
In the search of a solution for the Middle East, media help us to focus on Iran and Syria, supporters of Hezbollah and therefore responsable for the current conflict.
And were does Israel get its support? see www.worldpolicy.org
From the one country spending 48%
of the military budget of this entire planet? see www.sipri.org
So in the end it simply comes down to who has the biggest military budget?
France is now going for the role of leading European pressurizer or 'diplomat',
France is accidentally the 2nd highest military spender after the UK.
Media help us to live with the idea of permanently ignoring international law, ignoring UN-resolutions, ignoring human rights, constantly perverting 'democracy' and 'human rights' in a discourse that favours interventions and manipulations.
Media help us to believe WE have to find a solution.
Because it seems in the end we remain better than 'them'
and therefore we have (to tell them how) to solve their problems.
Because they can be dangerous if we don't.
How about downtuning the interventions and manipulations that so often help to create or worsen imbalance?
How about peaceful cooperation and intellectual exchange as budgetary priorities?
How about rebalancing the abusive call for freedom of speech with the forgotten human rights to for example education, medical care and necessary social services, to security in the event of unemployment and sickness. see www.un.org
How about taking in account our own recent and ongoing 'development' history, a sad repetitive song of brutal rights violations, from industrial development to colonialism. And when there were too many of us and when we were starving, we always had the opportunity to flee as 'pioneers' and go confiscate some 'available third world' territory. Now we call those people 'economical refugees', and we force them to go back.
How about demanding a more democratical attitude in international politics from countries like the US?
But let's focus on those untrue pictures,
at least that keeps things simple.
09/08/2006
© photo Peter Mertens