Rally: Iraq 5 years on
Saturday, March 15th, 2008How the media sells war and why
With speakers:
Dahr Jamail, independent journalist in Iraq and author of “Beyond the Green Zone“
Nick Davies, award-winning Guardian journalist and author of “Flat Earth News“
Kim Sengupta, defence and diplomatic correspondent, the Independent
Lindsey German, national convenor, Stop the War Coalition
Venue: The Old Lecture Theatre, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street (2 mins from Oxford Circus)
Date and time: Thursday April 10, 7pm
Called by: Media Workers Against the War
Tickets: £5, £3 (concessions)
On April 9, 2003, Baghdad “fell” to US troops. The event was welcomed by a torrent of gushing media coverage. When Saddam’s statue was toppled that day in Firdoz Square, the British media unleashed a string of superlatives. But Robert Fisk called it “the most staged photo-opportunity since Iwo Jima“.
Five years on, we have to say: the media have hardly changed in the way they lap up propaganda from the military and the government. The collusion of senior media editors in the blackout on Prince Harry in Helmand last month gave the military a propaganda coup, boosting the notion that Britain is fighting a glamorous and just war.
This event will ask how this has happened and how we can change the situation.
Buy your ticket for this event now:
For more information, email info@mwaw.net
Background information on Dahr Jamail:
Chemical weapons in Fallujah: How he broke the story
“I have interviewed many refugees over the last week coming out of Fallujah at different times from different locations within the city. The consistent stories that I have been getting have been refugees describing phosphorus weapons, horribly burned bodies, fires that burn on people when they touch these weapons, and they are unable to extinguish the fires even after dumping large amounts of water on the people.”
Dahr Jamail on Democracy Now, Nov 29, 2004
His new book: What the reviewers said
Beyond the Green Zone:
Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq
www.beyondthegreenzone.org
“While so much reporting from Iraq has remained embedded and wrong, Dahr Jamail’s courageous truth-telling from the frontline has been a beacon.”
John Pilger
“Essential for anybody who wants to know what is really happening in Iraq. A book which reports what Iraqis endure and what has happened to them during the occupation.”
Patrick Cockburn, foreign correspondent, The Independent, author, The Occupation
“From the earliest days of the war, Jamail has been a human conduit for the voices of Iraqis living under U.S. occupation. In the face of tremendous personal risk, his commitment to the crucial, principled task of bearing witness has never wavered, and this extraordinary book is the result.”
Naomi Klein, author, The Shock Doctrine and No Logo
“What is chilling about Jamail’s accounts is the routine destructiveness of the US forces; how they demolish nearby homes after a roadside bomb, leave unexploded munitions in the fields of farmers who don’t give information, bulldoze orchards. Livelihoods destroyed, families displaced every day, incubating hatred. One of the worst episodes occurred when Jamail’s friend was caught by chance at prayer time in a mosque when worshippers were shot dead, with children trapped in the mayhem: a holy place desecrated in a US operation. We may know nothing of such routine details of the prosecution of this war, but these are the stories filling the Arabic media.”
Madeleine Bunting in the Guardian
