Which war are you watching?

Today with Amy Goodman

Democracy Now's "War On Peace" broadcast has become essential morning viewing UK time. The daily news programme loops for around 24 hours and the latest can be found at the link above.

This particular programme has some excellent analysis of the censorship now in play on the Lebanon War and how, in Israel and Amerika in particular, subscription reporting has all but obliterated any true journalism. CNN's international edition bears little resemblence to that broadcast inside the USA. Israel's media has been under censorship since the war began and Israeli's receive no coverage showing what's happening on the Lebanese side of the border. The Amerikan media, including most of the Murdock Empire worldwide, are effectively being given Israeli propaganda.

It's mostly done by anchoring on a fixed timeline where the first event is seen as Hezbollah agression, but the greater distortion is probably in the editorial slants which are fearful of doing anything which might be at variance with the political agenda of government and media owners.

In Britain, we are at least fortunate in still having alternatives to the state-subserviant BBC and the Murdock-controlled Sky Network, but even the independent organisations are cautious of doing anything that might risk getting them into trouble for "impartiality". Hence, even worthy opinion has to be "balanced" with anecdotes from the opposite side of any argument. Thus, pursuit of any real conviction in broadcast journalism is quickly compromised by prostitution to a concept of "fairness" rarely practised by those actually preaching on the "official" side.

A lot of issues are not being pursued at all. Ireland may have refused to allow Amerika permission to ship arms to Israel, but Britain continues to permit the traffic of what the US classes as "hazardous" materials. These appear to include white phosphorous, cluster-bombs and depleted uranium - which are both supposedly illegal under international law. The "Untouchable" Israel doesn't care - it even admits using them.

Iraq may be descending into civil war, but huge swathes of its population are suffering (probably dying) from radiation poisoning left to linger by these weapons. When the after-effects of such use come home to roost, the wars that created them are often forgotten. Whilst Hezbollah are fighting with conventional weapons, a greater disparity reigns. Lebanese citizens face chemical poisoning, environmental poisoning and an absense of infrastructure which will take decades to rebuild. If the agony gets too great, they might count themselves lucky to step onto a something akin to a "mine" - the legacy of Israel's Amerikan-made cluster bombs.

Later.