MediaBite Launch

MediaBite.org is now online.

The first MediaShot concerns RTE's failure to cover the findings of the latest Iraqi mortality study published in the Lancet medical journal in October of last year...

www.mediabite.org

Despot to Martyr ... instantly

Saddam begins journey from despot to martyr

Executing leaders is simply bad politics - history shows that they backfire. Saddam's reputation will be salvaged , writes Jim Duffy

Name the last monarchs of Italy, Russia, and France; US presidents from the 1860s and the 1960s; a 1920s Irish minister. The odds are that most people will not remember the last Italian king (Umberto II) and will get the last French king wrong (they'll say Louis XVI; it was Louis Phillippe), but will remember Tsar Nicholas II of Russia while naming Lincoln and John F Kennedy as US presidents and Kevin O'Higgins as an Irish minister.

continued... The Irish Times


Dear Madam,

In Thursday's Irish Times Jim Duffy relays the dangers of executing an invaded country's former leader: "The danger is that, should Iraq descend into civil war and chaos, those millions who never experienced the extremes of Saddam, will come to compare today's chaos with the stability and law and order of Saddam's day."

It seems that Mr. Duffy has misunderstood the current situation in Iraq. A poll conducted by the Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies and the Gulf Research Center in November last year found that 90% of adults felt the situation in Iraq was better before the US led invasion. [1]

In October of last year former United Nations chief weapons inspector Hans Blix described the US-led invasion of Iraq as a "pure failure" and said that they had left the country worse off than under Saddam Hussein. [2]

It appears that Mr. Duffy is correct, "Saddam's reputation will be salvaged," but not by the chaos of civil war but by the "failure" of an illegal invasion.

Yours etc...

1. http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/
2. http://www.int.iol.co.za/

Exxon finance climate change sceptics

WASHINGTON - ExxonMobil Corp. gave $16 million to 43 ideological groups between 1998 and 2005 in a coordinated effort to mislead the public by discrediting the science behind global warming, the Union of Concerned Scientists asserted Wednesday.

The report by the science-based nonprofit advocacy group mirrors similar claims by Britain's leading scientific academy. Last September, The Royal Society wrote the oil company asking it to halt support for groups that "misrepresented the science of climate change."
ExxonMobil did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the scientific advocacy group's report.

Many scientists say accumulating carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases from tailpipes and smokestacks are warming the atmosphere like a greenhouse, melting Arctic sea ice, alpine glaciers and disturbing the lives of animals and plants.

continued... Yahoo

HRW correction...

"We regret that our press release below ("OPT: Civilians Must Not Be Used to Shield Homes Against Military Attacks") gave many readers the impression that we were criticizing civilians for engaging in nonviolent resistance. This was not our intention. It is not the policy of the organization to criticize non-violent resistance or any other form of peaceful protest, including civilians defending their homes. Rather, our focus is on the behavior of public officials and military commanders because they have responsibilities under international law to protect civilians."

http://hrw.org

The Best Workforce Money Can Buy

1 in every 32 U.S. adults behind bars, on probation or on parole in 2005

The Associated Press
Published: November 29, 2006

WASHINGTON: A record 7 million people — or one in every 32 American adults — were behind bars, on probation or on parole by the end of last year, according to the Justice Department.

Of those, 2.2 million were in prison or jail, an increase of 2.7 percent over the previous year, according to a report released Wednesday.

More than 4.1 million people were on probation and 784,208 were on parole at the end of 2005. Prison releases are increasing, but admissions are increasing more.

Men still far outnumber women in prisons and jails, but the female population is growing faster. Over the past year, the female population in state or federal prison increased 2.6 percent while the number of male inmates rose 1.9 percent. By year's end, 7 percent of all inmates were women. The gender figures do not include inmates in local jails.

continued... IHT

A conflict of interest

The RTE piece confirms that the documentary was funded by the mining company proposing the project. A fact left out in earlier reports.

It seems this fairly extensive coverage of a fairly ordinary documentary has also become useful in criticising the Shell to Sea campaign.

No mention here again of the real benefits to the Irish people that the Corrib gas venture will bring. For those that aren't aware, there are none.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2006/1102/primetime.html

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/ireland/2006/

http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1936510,00.html

And still no response to my questions:

http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=35395872

Out of interest, how much does Gabriel Resources stand to gain from this venture?

I understand there is something like 500,000 ounces of Gold to be harvested. What percentage of these profits are likely to filter down to the state and the local people?

Is the project aimed at allowing the poor of the region to exploit their natural resources or allowing foreign investors to eploit their resources? Essentially repeating the same process the director refers to; "Hundreds of years after we have become rich and comfortable by removing our forests and exploiting our natural resources."

Who funded this documentary? It appears from the Rocky Mountain News article that the mining company may have funded it. Is there any conflict of interest?

Environmentalism

An Irish ex-foreign correspondent for the Financial Times uncovers a campaign by Western environmentalists against a mine proposed by a Canadian mining company at Rosia Montana in the Transylvania region of Romania.

http://www.mineyourownbusiness.org/index.htm

He writes:

"Hundreds of years after we have become rich and comfortable by removing our forests and exploiting our natural resources such as coal, oil, and gold we are now going to the poorest countries on the planet to prevent them from doing what we did and having what we have."

"Mine Your Own Business demolishes the cosy consensus that environmentalists are well meaning, agenda free, activists and shows them to be anti-development ideologues who think the poor are happy being poor and don't want the development that we, in the west, take for granted."

"Environmenalists are against growth."

"The documentary hacks away at the cosy image of environmentalists' as well meaning, harmless activists."

It appears that Phelim McAleer, with funding from Canadian mining company, Gabriel Resources, has exposed the true face of environmentalism.

"When a representative of Gabriel Resources asked me to write a brochure about the project I declined, but I did suggest that if they did not interfere editorially I would make a documentary."

http://insidedenver.com/drmn/speak_out/article

And the Blog:

http://mineyourownbusiness.blogspot.com/

A news report on today's RTE 6 O'Clock news 'discussed' the new film. The story resonates quite loudly, with the same criticisms being leveled at protesters here. With the Shell to Sea campaign, the media have attempted, at times, to portray the environmental aspect of the protest as one that is opposed to development, opposed to progress, opposed to profit etc etc. i.e. against the interests of the country.

This report again, 4 substantial minutes, was uncritical and acted merely as a movie preview. There was no reference to the fact the documentary was apparently funded by the mining company attempting to secure the venture.

"Stop development at the expense of the poor."

I left these questions on their blog:

Out of interest, how much does Gabriel Resources stand to gain from this venture?

I understand there is something like 500,000 ounces of Gold to be harvested. What percentage of these profits are likely to filter down to the state and the local people?

Is the project aimed at allowing the poor of the region to exploit their natural resources or allowing foreign investors to eploit their resources? Essentially repeating the same process the director refers to; "Hundreds of years after we have become rich and comfortable by removing our forests and exploiting our natural resources."

Who funded this documentary? It appears from the Rocky Mountain News article that the mining company may have funded it. Is there any conflict of interest?

http://www.rte.ie/news/2006/1101/6news.html

IRC in Congo vs. Johns Hopkins in Iraq

Dear Ms. Treacy and Mr. Good,

In response to your explanations for RTE's non-reporting of the latest study into Iraqi mortality:

"There is contention about the number of civilian casualties in Iraq"

"This story was covered extensively [on] "Morning Ireland""

I have one question I hope you could find a moment to answer. Last month RTE reported on yesterday's elections in Congo:

"Congo's elections, the first free elections in the former Belgian colony for more than 40 years, will hopefully put an end to Africa's bloodiest conflict, a civil war that has killed 4 million people since 1998."

http://www.rte.ie/news/2006/0930/print/congo.html

As did the Irish Times, The Guardian and the BBC.

The figures for mortality in the Congo were compiled using essentially the same methods and conducted by the same lead author, yet their reception in the media could not be more different. Could you explain this extraordinary disparity?

Yours sincerely,

1.http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6097990.stm
2.http://www.guardian.co.uk/congo/story/0,,
3. http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/
4. http://www.zmag.org/Sustainers/Content/

Trouble counting the dead

And a concerted effort to make it even more difficult.

"Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's office has instructed the country's health ministry to stop providing mortality figures to the United Nations, jeopardizing a key source of information on the number of civilian war dead in Iraq, according to a U.N. document." [The Post]

Via Media Lens

Jon Snow reports on the difficulties of reporting the reality of the occupation of Iraq, from inside the Green Zone.

"This remains one of the least well covered conflicts of the modern television age."

Channel 4

Via Pete Charles

"Iraq's Health Ministry has ordered a halt to a count of civilians killed during the war and told its statistics department not to release figures compiled so far, the official who oversaw the count told The Associated Press on Wednesday." [USA Today 2003]

"Faik Bakir, the director of the Baghdad morgue, has fled Iraq in fear of his life after reporting that more than 7,000 people have been killed by death squads in recent months, the outgoing head of the UN human rights office in Iraq has disclosed." [Guardian]

"Days after the bombing of a Shiite shrine unleashed a wave of retaliatory killings of Sunnis, the leading Shiite party in Iraq's governing coalition directed the Health Ministry to stop tabulating execution-style shootings, according to a ministry official familiar with the recording of deaths." [Washington Post]

Via Ron F

"Iraqi hospitals are dangerous places. Policemen and soldiers carry their wounded comrades into operating theatres and demand immediate treatment, forcing doctors at gunpoint to abandon operations on civilians before they are completed. The hospital system is not a haven from the war. The Health Ministry is controlled by the supporters of the nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr who did well in the elections in December." [Patrick Cockburn in the Independent]