Media Watch
The blondes of Fox. Heh.

al-Jazeera senior editor Faisal Bodi speaks about the war and what al-Jazeera has been through of late. Some quotes: "I do not mean to brag - people are turning to us simply because the western media coverage has been so poor. For although Doha is just a 15-minute drive from central command, the view of events from here could not be more different," and, "As I write, the al-Jazeera website has been down for three days and few here doubt that the provenance of the attack is the Pentagon." A short, quick must read. (Their website, BTW, is back up. The english version is not yet online, though.)

A report on how the government in Zimbabwe, led by dictator Robert Mugabe, mentioned in this a few days ago, has been taking away farms from their white owners and giving those farms to political cronies.

That suicide bombing happened to troops in Iraq today, too. Big story, so I'm not posting a link. Everybody reading this blog knows that i disagree with this war, but I support my troops. I think the best way to support them is by sending them home. Now the suicide bombings are starting, and it really must be hell for these people right now. I will have more war news later today. Right now, I gotta get my moptop cut before band practice, and Guitar Center is having a sale on drum sticks and I can get 9 pairs free. Ooh..

Media Watch
Expect television to suck even more than it sucks now (if that's even possible): FCC to rule on media consolidation in June. Big business wants the laws against owning too many television stations knocked out for good.

A missile, thought to be Iraqi, struck a mall in Kuwait City. Now the good news: the strike was at 1:45am, and it doesn't look like there are any causalities. Shooting a missile into an empty mall in the middle of the morning is beyond useless, but the mall is a mile away from the palace of the Kuwaiti emir. Appearently, Iraq's aim still blows.

There are reports that a missile hit a market in Baghdad, killing 50 people, mostly children. I have heard whehther or not this was a US or Iraqi missile. But since Iraq has poor aim and we are firing off numerous amounts of missiles, I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that it was a US missile.

Some may remember my tirade a couple of weeks back blasting all the Democratic presidential hopefuls who had a chance to win the nomination for being spineless wimps by deciding not to speak out against the war in Iraq once Bush started it. Well, I have been following the candidacy of Howard Dean since then, and he's starting to grow on me. Especially when he starts blasting the other candidates about their positions on the war. He's displaying the known symptoms of having a vertebra, and that's a good thing..

Salam Pax is a blogger from Baghdad. He hasn't made a post since 3/25, so hopefully he's OK. I highly suggest reading his reports of the first bombing raids on his blog. Here's an excerpt: "Today before noon I went out with my cousin to take a look at the city. Two things. 1) the attacks are precise. 2) they are attacking targets which are just too close to civilian areas in Baghdad. Looked at the Salam palace and the houses around it. Quite scary near it and you can see widows with broken glass till very far off," and, "The images we saw on TV last night (not Iraqi, jazeera-BBC-Arabiya) were terrible. The whole city looked as if it were on fire. The only thing I could think of was 'why does this have to happen to Baghdad'. As one of the buildings I really love went up in a huge explosion I was close to tears."

The architect of one of Saddam's best bunkers/personal bomb shelters says that anything short of a direct hit with a nuclear bomb will not be able to penerate it. I guess this means that we'll have to stash away all those 4700lbs bunker buster bombs that we are starting to use.

The previously linked artcle also reports that relief supplies are coming into Umm Qasr, the Iraqi port we now control. Hopefully this will get to Barsa quickly, I'm not sure if power has been restored to Iraq's second largest city yet.

Indymedia reports that over 5 million people worldwide have protested the war in Iraq since it started.

The Hot Spots
The Guardian/UK printed an article of global hot spots that are getting hotter, and they have received little media attention since the war in Iraq started. Most of what I posted to the blog about North Korea is mentioned, they point out how the Israeli army might be in hot water for killing Palestinian children again, US/Russian relations going down the tubes to the point that the arms reduction negotiations between both countries are in trouble, and, most troubling, the India/Pakistan conflict over Kashmir.

This escaped my news radar (and I am still kicking myself for it), last sunday men suspected of being Islamist terrorists dressed up in Indian army uniforms, removed 24 Kashmiri Pandits from their homes and shot them to death. No one has claimed responsiblity for the attack, but India and Pakistan, Hindus v. Muslims, have been fighting over Kashmir for years, so if Hindus are targetted in Kashmir you naturally assume that an Islamic terrorist group from Pakistan is responsible. India claims that Pakistan has harbored terrorist groups that commit acts of horror like this in Kashmir.

Also on sunday, a Pakistani activist for peace in Kashmir was gunned down. I haven't been able to look at too many articles about this murder and the massacre, but them seem awfully related to me.

These acts of terrrorism have served to heighten tensions between the two nuclear armed nations, as they both tested missiles earlier this week India fired off a test first, to which Pakistan said that they were never informed of in advance as they should be, and replying with a missile test of their own a few hours later.

All this makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

Media Watch
Shameless message forum plug: what do you think of a French anti-boycott?

Some morons hacked al-Jazeera and threw up an image of the American flag that stated, "Let Freedom Ring..." These idiots probably believe that the US is fighting for the freedoms of Iraqis, ALL WHILE TAKING AWAY THE FREEDOMS OF ARABS TO HAVE THEIR OWN MEDIA BY TAKING DOWN AL-JAZEERA! Argh! God fucking damnit! WHY ARE PEOPLE IS THIS COUNTRY SO GODDAMN STUPID?! WHY?!

What a bunch of HYPOCRITICAL FUCKING IDIOTS! Let whoever did this know how you feel, they left their email address on the page: freedom2003@networld.com

North Korea keeps on begging for attention: they have threatened Japan with "self-destruction" if they launch spy satellites into space next week, said that the US has been engaging in espionage almost daily and that breaks the armistice agreement which ended the Korean War (plus they are still peeved at the annual war games the US is staging with South Korea, and the stashing of US bombers on Guam, placing them within striking distance of North Korea), they have broken off border talks with the UN, and they said that they will raise their sell bonds and raise their military budget. Kim Jong Il needs a hug.

The US and Russia have been firing accusations against each other. It's nice to know that nobody in the world likes our shrub president. When this guy is booted out of office in 2004, we're going to need to give his successor 4 terms to clean up the mess Bush has created.

The WTO (World Trade Organization, remember them?) has ruled against US steel tariffs that the Bush administration placed on steel imports. That means that we have to remove the tariffs and adhere to their doctrine of free trade, or face sanctions. For full disclosure, I protested against the WTO in Seattle, 1999.. the shrub has trashed every other global agreement that stood in the way of his agenda, maybe if he trashes the WTO it would be a good thing. Heh.

Where's that missile?
The US acknowledges that it could have hit a residential part of Baghdad with cruise missiles, blames Iraq if it did happen for placing military weapons in these neighorhoods.

OK, mind if I play Devil's Advocate for a second? Let's reverse the situation and, say, Iraq had fighter planes (or massive, balsa wood drones nicknamed "weedwhacker") attaking New York City. Would NYC put its' anti-aircraft defenses out in a big, empty field with a nice little sign next to it that said, "hit me hit me hit me!" Or, would these weapons be hidden wherever the fuck they could be, residential neighborhood or not?

Placing military weapons, and targets, in neighborhoods is reprehensible. But their military is also trying to defend Baghdad. Can anybody tell me where else these weapons are going to be placed? Baghdad houses 6 million people, so I imagine it's pretty densely populated.

Media Watch
News report says that al-Jazeera has been hacked down. It is currently not operations. In good news, this report lists a neat URL to visit when they bring the site back up: english.aljazeera.net.

Democrats have achieved a victory in the Senate by chopping the prices of Bush's tax cut bill in half. I'd much rather not see a bill proposing a tax cut for the rich at all, but that wouldn't pass in today's Senate. The article link also goes into other items on the Senate floor.

In Zimbabwe, their dictator of 23 years, President Robert Mugabe, is making the most of the war on Iraq. While the attention of the world is focused on the Middle East, this African despot has had his political opposition arrested, detained, and beaten. A couple of years back, Mugabe was "reelected" into office after he said that his opponent was part of a plot to kill him and threw the man in jail while the Presidential campaign was still going. To describe the actions he would take to crush his political opponents, Mugabe said that he would act like a "black Hitler", and I'm not making that quote up. The US is working with the UN Human Rights Commission to try and get Mugabe censured, and they have frozen his assets.

Our smart-bombs destroyed a market in a residential area of Baghdad, killing 14 and injuring 30. Iraq says that two cruise missiles hit the market, but the US and UK have enither confirmed or denied this, and they are investigating the matter. Seeing that Iraqi missiles have yet to strike ANY targets, I tend to think the US is at fault here.

Around the world, protests against the war have continued. At a protest in Pakistan, a protester asks a very damning question: "Where was the Geneva Convention when the U.S. forces dropped massive daisy cutter bombs on Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan and killed innocent people ... while its allies suffocated Taliban supporters in air tight containers?" Indymedia points out that despite the ignorance from the mainstream media, who are practically in lock step with the Bush administration, protests continue here in America. Clear Channel, which owns over 1200 radio stations, has been creating the news by lending heavy sponsorship to pro-war rallies of their creation.

Good news: Turkey will not send troops into northern Iraq without US permission. This will save a few lives.

In shameless news, the Bush administration hands a no-bid oil firefighting contact to Halliburton, the corporation that Dick Cheney used to run.

Don Bush has paid off Turkey with a cool one billion dollars, a little thank you [cough]bribe[ahem] to Turkey for them granting the US fly over rights during the war in Iraq.

Gulf News reports that the first suicide bomb attack against US/UK forces took place yesterday, damaging a US tank. This report has been neither confirmed or denied by the US or UK.

A memo sent by a manager at MTV to MTV Europe recommends that videos depicting "war, soldiers, war planes, bombs, missiles, riots and social unrest, [and] executions" should not be aired right now. The very first example they cited as a video to not be played was "Boom!", by System of a Down. This video, directed by Oscar winner Michael Moore, cannot be played because: "..anti-war video containing facts and figures about, amongst other things, the projected casualties in the war in Iraq." Guess we wouldn't want people learning about that kind of stuff, now would we?! And when the fuck did MTV start playing videos again?

This isn't news, but I was amused.. Check out this case mod thread on Fark if systems housed in cardboard boxes and held together by duct tape amuses you, too.

Since when did the US obey the Geneva convention?
I have been itching for the time to write something about this, because I am sure that I'm not the only person who has smelled a rat everytime the US brings up the topic of Iraq breaking international law, namely the rules laid out for how to treat prisoners of war in the Geneva convention.

Everytime I heard Donald Rumsfeld or Gen. Tommy Franks talk about Iraq's geneva convention violations, I could help but think about the prison camp our government has set up at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, and seeing the pictures in the news, released by the US government, showing the prisons being flown into Guantanamo with bags covering their faces. Is this any different then what Iraq is doing to our POWs?

By showing American POWs in Iraqi state television, Iraq did violate article 13 of the Geneva convention. But the Bush administration should know all about breaking the rules, though, since they have violated no less than 15 articles of the Geneva convention with our treatment of the prisons at camp in Guantanamo, all 641 of them. But since the Bush administration calls these prisoners "unlawful combatants", and says that they are not POWs and they are not protected by the Geneva convention.

Further into the article, it discusses how our government may have rounded up 8000 Taliban and al-Qa'ida soliders, killed them, and buried them in a mass grave in Afghanistan. That, ladies and gentlemen, is called mass murder.

I hope that our soldiers who are under Iraqi custody are being treated humanely. But the hypocrisy of the Bush adminitration has to be pointed out in this case: if you are going to complain that Iraq is not following the articles of the Geneva convention in their treatment of American POWs, then the Bush administration has to set the example for the rest of the world to follow by treating our POWs, or "unlawful combatants," or whatever the hell the government wishes to call them; humanely. Otherwise, will not earn the trust or sympathy of the world. I don't know about you, but I don't feel like having my tax dollars support torture and murder.

censorship
Yellowtimes.org has been taken down by their ISP because the news service provided screen shots of the photos seen on al-Jazeera of US POWs. This news comes on the heels of Cox banning their cable modem subscribers from viewing al-Jazeera's website by completely taking down a customer's connection to the internet when they dared to goto the URL. Salon has a great article on censorship and the PATRIOT ACT II. It is informative and scary, and while the situations with yellowtimes.org and Cox are not pointed out in this article, they could have easily made it in there. They point out how a producer for a country music video channel was fired for being against the Bush administration, Hollywood actors who are anti-war are being blacklisted, and Clear Channel telling musicians that their shows which they sponser will be shutdown if they dare to speak out against the war.

Salon relates these actions to the governments attitude against dissent, a dictate of the war on terror: "You're with with us or with the terrorists."

Indeed, these are scary times that we live in. Now the government has the powers to legally put down those that oppose the Bush administration, but it seems like the private sector is more than willing to usurp our Constitutionally guaranteed rights and save John Ashcroft the legwork.

rall.com

media watch
Abdul Majeed Dar, supporter of the press process between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, was gunned down by forces whose identities are still unknown. the article linked gives some good background information into the sitution.

An article from Gulf News in Dubai has arab people commenting on photos of dead Iraqi citizens and children on Al Jazeera, the only thing that aired on Al Jazeera yesterday that the US media didn't mention a thing about. (Loadedmouth.com linked to these photos yesterday.) If you don't want to see the photos (and I could understand why), here's an accurate description of them from the article: "Some of the pictures showed children with their brains blown out, bodies of adults without the upper parts, and scores of bodies in a pool of blood." The reactions from Arab people in this article are varied, but most everyone quoted is rather ticked at America, and our bombing has polarized some to fully support Saddam.

Michael Moore won an Oscar for his documentary, Bowling for Columbine! This was expected, and everyone expected him to deliever an anti-war speech, which he did. I didn't watch the ceremony, but I heard part of the speech and the crowds reaction to it. It sounded pretty ugly. Reports vary on the crowd reaction, some saying that for the most part, he received cheers and a standing ovation by most of the audience, and some saying that he was booed by half the audience.

media watch - weekend edition
Kurdmedia reports that Turkish troops have invaded south Kurdistan (Kurdistan being the region of northern Iraq where the Iraqi Kurds live). The Kurds are none too happy about this, and claims that the US and UK have betrayed them.

al-Jazeera is showing photos of Iraqi causalities of US bombing. For fair warning, they are very, very graphic.