The liberation of the peoples of the world from the shackles of government and corporate mind control has begun.
While the Americans and the British ‘liberate’ Iraq through bombing, killing and occupation, the citizens of the world have been engaged in a liberation struggle that continues to gain momentum.
The main weapon of this liberation struggle has been the internet é more specifically emails, weblogs and alternative news sites. It is assisted by upstart television networks such as Qatar based Al Jazeerah. It has allowed people to read and see what is really happening in this war é yep – the truth. And it has mobilized millions of people throughout the world and brought them out onto the streets to oppose this invasion of Iraq.
While the 1991 Gulf war was a television war, this war is an internet one.
People in the world are no longer enslaved to the big corporate media networks to get information and facts. CNN may wish to captivate people but they can no longer do so. The days of believing the sanitized Pentagon controlled versions of war served up with colorful charts and surreal video images are gone.
Of course, every effort has been made by the U.S. to exert control but it is not working. Embedded reporters and Hollywood choreographed press briefings looked and sounded good in the opening few hours of the war but it is backfiring on the Anglo-American coalition.
As soon as the corporate networks report news from press briefings and embedded journalists cheerleading the invasion troops, alternative news sites and networks are able to verify and debunk the propaganda. They are producing, at lightening speed, first hand reports from inside Baghdad and the war front.
Al Jazeera and other Arab TV networks with extensive access in Iraq are showing the true face of this war. And for the rest of the world – bloggers and thousands of email users – are accessing these reports and others and sending them far and wide.
For instance, the daily reports of the British journalist, Robert Fisk, from Baghdad are widely circulated across the internet. Weblogs, such as ‘Warblogs:cc’ (http://www.warblogs.cc/), ‘Warblogging’ (http://www.warblogging.com/) and literally thousands of other such sites provide reports from a diversity of sources. ‘The truth is out there somewhere’ adage is an underlying motto of such weblogs.
This unimpeded access to war reports is a nightmare for the Pentagon which had hoped to be in charge of the psyops of the war. And it is showing. The exasperation of Donald Rumsfeld and his associates is evident.
Those who think that this unprecedented flow of information across the globe is nothing more than electronic pamphleteering and has little effect would do well to analyze the current anti-war movement. This movement is bringing millions of people onto the streets of world capitals to oppose this war and has been organized and sustained primarily through the internet.
The coalition of the unwilling (i.e. the peoples of the world) have started their liberation struggle and in the postwar scenario their success may be just as problematic for the Anglo-American coalition as a post war Iraq.
Muneeb Nasir is the Editor of IMPRINT, a Toronto-based Muslim newspaper and editor of the Muslim Canadian web site, www.Islam.ca). He contributed above article to Media Monitors Network (MMN).