] Shakir Hamid, paterfamilias to the Abu Dhabi television team
] in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, who has brought the war on Iraq
] into millions of viewers' living rooms, found that the war had
] hit closer to home than he could have ever imagined.
]
] The fierce, relentless bombing by U.S. forces of the
] southern city of Nassiriya on which he was reporting had
] claimed three precious victims - Shakir's older brother
] Jawad and two of his brother's children, Hamid, 13, and
] 12-year-old Khulood.
. . .
] Jawad and his family, part of a huge convoy of cars
] carrying other civilians from Nassiriya were mowed down
] by the U.S. soldiers as they approached Souk Al Shuyoukh.
]
] "My brother and my nephew and niece died on the spot,"
] said a tearful Imad, Shakir's younger brother and also a
] television journalist who arrived in Dubai from Baghdad a
] day before the war began.

Gulf News Online: Abu Dhabi TV's Hamid bereaved after bombing

] The Post's account is significant because it suggests
] that, in fact, military procedures may not have been
] properly followed at the checkpoint. Several U.S. papers,
] including the New York Daily News, Boston Globe, Chicago
] Tribune, L.A. Times and San Francisco Chronicle, managed
] to include the discrepancy between the official Pentagon
] account and the Post's eyewitness description in their
] reports on the Najaf killings in their April 1 editions.
] The New York Times, however, did not, instead running a
] story that only presented the official version, under a
] headline that stated as a definite fact that adequate
] warning had been given before soldiers opened fire:
] "Failing to Heed Warning, 7 Iraqi Women and Children
] Die."

FAIR MEDIA ADVISORY: Official Story Vs. Eyewitness Account

] Chalabi, an exiled former banker wanted for fraud
] allegations in Jordan, is popular amongst the powerful US
] oil lobby -- whom he predicted would have great
] opportunities in the Iraqi oil industry after the
] invasion. His fortunes did not promise much after the
] abortive coup launched in 1996 from the Kurdish region in
] the north. It soured relations with Kurds who felt it
] exposed them to Saddam's revenge.
. . .
] US deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz has said
] that the US "goal has got to be to transfer
] authority and the operation of the government as quickly
] as possible not to some other external authority, but to
] the Iraqi people themselves."
]
] Chalabi, who left Iraq in 1956 at the age of 11 and has
] lived all his adult life in the US and UK, would appear
] to be a poor candidate.

Al Jazeera doesn't like Chalabi. The CIA doesn't like Chalabi. The State Department doesn't like Chalabi (http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N07129260.htm). "60 Minutes" did a segment on him yesterday, and they didn't seem thrilled with him (http://www.reason.com/links/links040703.shtml). And after having learned more about him, and seen his interview on TV, I can't say as I like him either. My gut says that he and this "Free Iraq Force" smell wrong, and I hope that a better choice becomes available!

Al Jazeera: Anti-Saddam Opposition Troops Fly into Iraq

] And, the United States is preparing to launch an
] Arabic-language television station in the Middle East to
] boost its image.
]
] Not one to be left behind, Al Jazeera hopes to launch an
] English-language channel to compete with the "big
] guys" and give "another perspective".

What I also want is at least one worldwide television network, with different languages being played simultaneously depending on the viewer's preference, no matter where they're located (interactive TV).

Having different "localized" channels would still be fine, but for real communication, I'd like at least one channel that I knew the entire world could watch, and know that they were seeing the same thing, where they could switch in and out of different languages (if they understood those languages), to know that it really was the same reporting going out to everyone. More like a United Nations speech, where no matter what the language is of the current speaker, all the different representatives are hearing translations in their own language, all at the same time. A "World News Network" in a variety of languages, with rotating reporters from dozens (or maybe hundreds) of countries, subject to the review and accuracy checks of all sides at once.

Note: I'm not saying it would be *easy*....

IRAQ: Media Wage Their Own War

] U.S. forces near Baghdad found a weapons cache of around
] 20 medium-range missiles equipped with potent chemical
] weapons, the U.S. news station National Public Radio
] reported on Monday.
]
] NPR, which attributed the report to a top official with
] the 1st Marine Division, said the rockets, BM-21
] missiles, were equipped with sarin and mustard gas and
] were "ready to fire." It quoted the source as saying new
] U.S. intelligence data showed the chemicals were "not
] just trace elements."

The 4-minute NPR audio from today's "Morning Edition" can be listened to here:

 http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1223246

Note: This is not an eyewitness report. It's an interview with an NPR reporter who was told by an official from the Marines who said he'd heard it from the intelligence network. Enough degrees of separation to treat the report with skepticism, but enough detail to definitely be of interest!

(unconfirmed) U.S. Finds Missiles with Chemical Weapons

From BBC reporter Kim Ghattas in Syria:

] And there are still demonstrations in the Arab world in
] support of Iraq. You hear a lot of Syrians saying they
] hope the end result will be victory for Iraq.
]
] This is making a lot of Iraqis inside Syria very angry.
] They've been telling me that most Arabs don't understand
] what life in Iraq has been like over the last 20 to 30
] years.
]
] They don't understand why other Arabs are holding up
] pictures of Saddam Hussein during demonstrations.

BBC Reporters' Log

] Chemical tests for nerve agents in the warehouse came
] back positive for so-called G-Series nerve agents, which
] include sarin and tabun, both of which Iraq has been
] known to possess. More than a dozen infantry soldiers who
] guarded the military compound Saturday night came down
] with symptoms consistent with exposure to very low levels
] of nerve agent, including vomiting, dizziness and skin
] blotches.

Lots of conflicting reports are going on today about chemical weapon discoveries. Check the agonist.org site for details.

Unconfirmed: Sarin exposure in Iraq

] There has been a remarkable performance by the Iraqi
] information minister who came on to the BBC roof to deny
] the coalition forces were here.

This was surreal. On the one hand, I'm watching live coverage of U.S. troops in Baghdad, I'm watching things being blown up, and seeing pictures of an M-1 tank at the entrance to a presidential palace. On the other, there's the Iraqi Information Minister on a rooftop, trying to claim that there are no U.S. troops in Baghdad. The smoke was so bad behind him that you could barely see the buildings, and according to one of the reporters there, there were gunshots and mortar fire less than a half a mile away, but the Information Minister was still smiling and saying that there were no troops in Baghdad, that the Americans were "surrounded and slaughtered" (right at that point I heard the audio of one of the Saddam statues being blown up by coalition forces), that the Iraqi army had "besieged and killed most of the Americans", etc. etc. Then over on english.aljazeera.net, the headline pops up, "U.S. Troops Suffer Heavy Losses in Baghdad Fighting."

Honestly, I don't blame many of the Arab populations for being so angry at the U.S., considering the one-sided "news" that is forced at them.

I don't believe it's a coincidence that the main participants in the "Coalition of the Willing" are english-speaking nations. It's not enough to have internet access around the world. In order to encourage the free flow of information, the language barriers *must* be addressed, and there has to be a higher standard of journalism encouraged for *all* languages. If the Arabic-speaking populations only want "news sources" that tell them what they want to hear, it's going to be just that much harder to find common ground for peaceful solutions.

BBC NEWS | In Depth | Reporters' Log: War in Iraq

] "The Arab media today, with its clear inclination towards
] exaggerations and false promises of victory, is feeding
] the public stories that have nothing to do with the real
] events in the field. Hence, it is replicating the old
] media, despite the fact that it is broadcasting in color
] and using electronic technologies..
. . .
] "Notice the difference in press conferences on both sides.
] In the West, journalists are not satisfied with listening.
] They probe, express opposing opinions and expose lies. In
] our media, anything [the Iraqi Information Minister] Al-Sahhaf
] says is broadcast as if he was a Friday preacher in a mosque..."

Editor of the London Arabic Daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat Criticizes the Arab Media's War Coverage

Jeremy wrote:
The New York Times has changed its policy for online access to news articles older than thirty days. These articles are no longer available via the free registration process.

Do a Memestreams search for "nytimes" and browse down a few pages into the results for an NYT article from 2002. Try to follow the link. No dice.

What do they hope to gain by this? It seems likely to encourage private full-text archival of NYT articles, rather than on-demand online retrieval. Some may be dissuaded from linking to NYT at all, given the short fuse, and migrate to other publications that don't have a similar policy.

Yeah, NYT has been one of those "difficult to link to" sites. Often when I find something there that I want to meme, I first do a news.google.com search on part of the article to see if anyone else is mirroring it, and then I link to the mirror instead.

NYT Archive Disappears from the Net