"How can the media report this when they don't even have a correspondent in Falluja? Why are they failing so completely to report the Iraqi side of the story? How much more obvious can it be that they are only parroting the U.S. military lies concerning the situation?" Dahr Jamail, Independent reporter. Remember the old Iraqi Information Minister nicknamed "Comical Ali" who amongst other things proclaimed the defeat of U.S. forces even as they moved into Baghdad? Well now it's the turn of Comical Blair and Bush who denounce any Iraqi resistance to the invasion and occupation of their country as "outside terrorists, an extremist who has created his own militia, and remnants of a brutal dictatorship." While on the other side, they talk of "people of immense courage and humanity..." So while Secretary General Amr Moussa said at a meeting of the Arab League, that a U.S. war on Iraq would "open the gates of hell" in the West we are being drip fed corporate news which Dahr Jamil, one of the only journalists who has been in Falluja since the siege says is merely "parroting the U.S. military lies". In Iraq they are told instead of watching the televised images "of Americans and coalition soldiers killing innocent civilians", to "change the channel" because these "are not legitimate news sources". In fact it was one of those 'illegimate' news sources that helped precipitate this latest wave of resistance, with the closure of the al-Hawza newspaper. Shut down for reporting eyewitness claims that a supposed car bombing that killed numerous volunteers for the New Iraqi defense forces was actually done by an American helicopter. The newspaper also criticized the Coalition Authority leader Bremner - something which is not allowed in the new 'free' Iraq. US officials are fighting more than just the people of Iraq, but a huge propaganda war to cope with the truth of their actions. The war in Iraq is indeed a war of media, where they use images like weapons to manipulate public opinion. The fact that Bush is facing elections in the US increases the importance of this manipulation. On a televised speech, he asserted that the situation in Iraq was "not a civil war, not a popular uprising, and that most of Iraq is relatively stable." Old Comical Bush has obviously been watching too much CNN, because as the American author Rahul Mahajan explains "In general, there is no quicker way to get an Iraqi to laugh, than to talk about how the United States is bringing freedom or democracy to the country." Take Firdos Square where the infamous pulling down of Saddam's statue was stage managed. Independent journalist Dahr Jamail said "A few days ago it was closed and blockaded by the American military. I stood atop my apartment listening to a speaker blaring instructions that anyone who approached the area would be shot on sight. This is freedom." A week earlier Iraqi soldiers, trained and controlled by coalition forces had opened fire on a demonstration there. As the protesters returned to their homes in the poor neighbourhood of Sadr City, the US army followed with tanks, helicopters and planes, firing at random on homes, shops, streets, even ambulances. According to local hospitals, 47 people were killed and many more injured. As Dahr Jamil angrily writes "It's no wonder the corporate media rarely reports on the torturing of many of the over 10,000 detained Iraqis by the US military, the constant home raids, or the infrastructure in nearly complete disrepair as we begin the second year of the occupation. For most of the corporate media tend to stick closer to their hotels, rather than where the stories are occurring and being lived every day - out amongst the Iraqi people. "The majority of the corporate media tend to simply go where the U.S. military tells them it is safe to go, while donning their flak jackets, helmets, and the preferred 'us vs. they' mentality with Iraqis...Instead, the US public is fed bogus polls telling them half of Iraqis feel they are better off now with a year of occupation under their belts. That is an amazing figure, since nearly every one of the hundreds of Iraqis I interviewed throughout Iraq was understandably enraged at the 70% unemployment, less than 8 hours of electricity per day in Baghdad, water so terrible there are cholera outbreaks in southern Iraq, and a security situation that spirals further out of control on a daily basis. About the only time it's easy to find Iraqis who are pro-occupation is if you let the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) show them to you thus it's the journalists with the least initiative that find the rarest selections of public opinion by speaking to those pushing brooms or sitting at a desk at CPA HQ. "Getting the facts in Iraq is not rocket science. I am simply doing my job to report the Iraqi side of the story. An informed citizenry forms the basis of a democracy. Not only are U.S. citizens being deprived of access to information about the true nature of the critical situation in Iraq, they are being outright lied to by most of the corporate media outlets." * Read a moving account of Jo Wilding's time in Falluja: "George Bush says to the troops on Easter Sunday that, "I know what we're doing in Iraq is right." Shooting unarmed men in the back outside their family home is right. Shooting grandmothers with white flags is right? Shooting at women and children who are fleeing their homes is right? Firing at ambulances is right?" www.wildfirejo.org.uk * Read Rahul Mahajan's report from Fallujah "To Americans, "Fallujah" may still mean four mercenaries killed, with their corpses then mutilated and abused; to Iraqis, "Fallujah" means the savage collective punishment for that attack, in which over 600 Iraqis have been killed, with an estimated 200 women and over 100 children. www.empirenotes.org Rahul also recently wrote 'Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond.' * Read Dahr Jamail, Iraq weblog dispatches "Solutions? One thing that remains glaringly apparent today is that Falluja has become another rallying point for the resistance. While most media in the U.S. (and many other Western countries) are failing to report the Iraqi side of the story there, everyone here knows it's turned into a full-on massacre, and people are extremely angry. This and the entire debacle of how the Americans have handled the situation with Muqtada Sadr, have together brought rivers of volunteers into the already growing resistance to the occupation." http://newstandardnews.net/iraqdispatches * This Saturday (17) Ewa Jasiewicz who has been living in Baghdad and Basra will be speaking at Kinning Park Complex, Cornwall St, Glasgow 1pm. For a full list of her Scottish speaking tour www.tramping.org.uk/ewa * There is a major conference being held in London and sponsored by Shell, from 26-28th April on the privatisation of Iraq with many corporate representatives looking for a piece of the pie and representatives from the Governing Council and Occupation Authority (Citizens arrest anyone?) attending. Counter demonstrations and actions are being planned by a variety of different peace, justice and anti-militarisation groups, plus a special focus on workers rights in occupied Iraq as well as a counter-conference website. An organizing meeting was held on the 15th. For more information see: www.warprofiteers.com, www.voices.netuxo.co.uk/library/briefing_oct2003.html, or contact Voices in the Wilderness on 0845 458 2564 / Source: SCHNews