totalitarian regimes (posted 4 April 2003)
I think one of the most surprising facts of this for me, especially, is the level of propaganda. Call me good-natured, maybe too optimistic, but in this day and age when the word is used somewhat exponentially, can governments really afford to be caught using strategical disinformation techniques. In fact, you could argue that war as a method in itself is a throwback to neanderthal age, but when it comes to propaganda, how stupid do they really think we are? Especially in Europe. The Americans may have bought their regime's and media's lies, but when Tony Blair starts undermining the very values he is supposed to be 'defending' in Iraq, doesn't the whole thing seem fraught and completely doomed? As the second of these two links states, it is a very sad state of affairs when journalists are deemed enemies of the state [although, as I pointed out two days ago, that's the way it should be!] just because they reveal the vacuity behind the desire to 'minimise civilian casualties'. Instead, the government prefers to minimise 'the reporting of them'. Let's just hope some of the media still manages to piss officials off:

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=393745
http://argument.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/story.jsp?story=393737
http://argument.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/story.jsp?story=393713

Die Wüstenschiffe des US-Marine-Corps (posted 3 April 2003)
One of the greatest problems of war journalism is that it only gets to the scene once things have happened, and that it cannot reverse the process of death. The other catch-22 is that in the true sense of the phrase it takes one to know one it also takes a military man to criticize the military, but will he? It seems the sense of camaraderie and heightened emotion is one of the strongest forces at work in wartime - just in the same way, the Iraqi seems to be fused together. Embedded journalists are an excellent case-study for what psychologists refer to as the Stockholm syndrome. But is it journalism? I would beg to differ: it's public service media announcements.

tiny victories (posted 2 April 2003)
you could say this is what it's all about: staying objective even if it means letting down your own "side". sticking to the truth even it turns out to be ugly. and playing fair even if it means your team might sustain some harm in the process. robert fisk definitely deserves respect. who knows whether his working conditions might be the same once the US-protectorate is installed? which obviously always brings us back to the fundamentalist argument: do two wrongs (bush & saddam) make a right? probably not, and that's where the media come in, to do some of the separating between right and wrong, black & white, yin & yang that so much of today's political rhetoric is littered with. let's just call it one goal for the media - they are after all supposed to be opposing side, aren't they?

Posted 1 April 2003:
Title: the good, the bad, the ugly...
Those of you tracking the news will know already that Arnett has been kicked from MSNBC for his interview with Iraqi TV where he claimed - oh my God - that the US war plans are not quite having the effect they should. Well, there's a surprise for any sane CNN-watching person, as Saddam and his cronies must be! Obviously, the Pentagon had put so much heat on their fogies at NBC that they decided to ditch the truthful troublemaker. But, was he being objective? Is playing out one form of propaganda against the other really a form of objectivity? Is adding or subtracting reports by rivals going to lead to the truth? Methinks not, but there is hope that if people like FOX News' Rivera's get kicked from newscasting a war which they probably construct hust as much in their heads as they do in front of the camera [according to eye-witness reports which will probably never make it into the real news, Rivera was renowned for fabricating news items during the Kosovo crisis], the overall tone might be a more balanced one. Rivera, I might remind you, was the reporter who in pompous Hemingway style stood on a mountain in the middle of Afghanistan shouting something along the lines of give me a gun, I will go and get bin Laden personally. FOX News will probably never be able to drop the reputation as media arm of the Pentagon. "Bread and circus for the masses" as one NBC employee kept on saying this weekend. Feed the public what they want and they'll love it. Which posits the question of whose fault the media culture is? Is it the consumers who cause reporters to take this nationalistic/patriotic stance or is it the media culture that dictates it to the masses? And why is it impossible to read Al-Jazeera's English version at this time? Somehow I think we haven't even started yet on what might become a real-life rendition of 1984.
Watch this space and let us know what you think, people!

Here's a few links to keep track of what's happening:
http://www.iraqometer.com
http://www.minimumeffort.com/nutshell.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/31/international/worldspecial/31PRES.html?pagewan\ted=print&position=top

This was posted 25 March 2003, in case anyone should be confused: If the first (or is it second?) Gulf War was the MTV War, then this one is the DVD War, complete with all sorts of multi-angle action and other extra features (behind the scenes, & propaganda included). The only thing we should ask ourselves is how many of the deleted scenes we are seeing, and how many will have to be deleted after the fog of war has blown over.

Another older post, which somehow got lost in the, ahem, post...
Kriegsmaschine: "The shocking, but somehow logical conclusion of the war we're dealing with in Iraq? It's here to stay. As one German commentator said yesterday: 'Vietnam und Somalia lassen grüssen'. Cynical as it may seem, these are excellent times to analyse the effect of the media on the wartime psyche of a nation, i.e. the U.S.A. and Great Britain. Other nations can obviously be against the war, but will in the end swallow their words, since those that have made up their mind to fight are going to have to start listening to their people. If and when the Arab states start listening to their people remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure. Embedded journalism could easily turn out to be a black eye for military public relations. Nevertheless, isn't it strange how every Iraqi piece of news recieves the addendum that it cannot be confirmed, whereas news from US sources is never or only silently questioned?

Some older posts I wanted to put up to be reread:
Who are the victims?
A strong argument put forward in the Zeit by Francine Prose which states that it isn't only the Iraqi population which is the victim of this war (for those who can't speak German, try google's translator tool. The American people have been duped by US media culture and the country's education system which withholds the necessary instruments for a proper analysis of world events such as the war against Iraq. It's just the Iraqi population have to pay with their lives. And, the US population do have a choice they can make. It is the land of the free after all...

For all of you who actually kept coming back to this site to see what has been happening - not a great deal, I know - I might just like to add that I have started another blog, this time featuring my pictures from Asia at Buzznet under my monicker tranzmitta. Feel free to look it up and leave your comments on my comments on the many secrets and wonders of the South-Asian subcontinent...
Thanks

What a strange revelation! A Jew teaching Germans to poke fun at their own past! As the BBC NEWS report "Producers await Germans' reaction" explains, Mel Brooks has put on a Broadway stage show with 25 goosestepping Nazis as one of the central scenes. Before he goes to Germany with the show - in itself a bold move to even consider doing that - he is using German audience goers as a litmus test for the German national sensibility towards a scene of this content. It makes a great change from the usual hullaballoo surrounding the topic of Germans and Jews. Normally, Germans are accused of breaking taboos by the German Jewish community. Now, we have a Jew breaking a taboo for the German community. We shall wait and see who expresses chagrin at this. For this observer, however, the outcome may prove a positive step towards defining where to draw lines und to understanding one'sopposite when it comes to each others' taboos. Germans don't want to be labelled as Nazis anymore, simply because the majority are anything but, just as Jews most probably don't want to be labelled victims, because they are just normal members of the community they live in.