[Mb-civic] Baghdad Burning -- latest report from Iraqi woman blogger

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Baghdad Burning   http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

"I have a suggestion of my own for a reality show. Take 15 Bush supporters
and throw them in a house in the suburbs of, say, Falloojeh for at least
14 days. We could watch them cope with the water problems, the lack of
electricity, the check points, the raids, the Iraqi National Guard, the
bombings, and- oh yeah- the ‘insurgents’. We could watch their house
bombed to the ground and their few belongings crushed under the weight of
cement and brick or simply burned or riddled with bullets. We could see
them try to rebuild their life with their bare hands (and the $150)
"

"I’d not only watch *that* reality show, I’d tape every episode."


... I'll meet you 'round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and
souls can mend... Sunday, April 03, 2005

American Media...
You wake up in the morning. Brush your teeth. Splash the sleep out of your
eyes and head for the kitchen for a cup of coffee or tea and whatever is
available for breakfast.

You wander to the living room and search for the remote control. It is in
its usual place- stuck inexplicably between the sofa cushions. You turn on
the television and stand there flipping from one channel to the other,
looking for a news brief or something that will sum up what happened
during those six hours you slept. You finally settle on the pleasant face
on the screen- the big hair, bright power suit, capped teeth and colorful
talons- blandly reading the news. The anchoress is Julie Chan. The program
is CBS’s The Early Show (Live from Fifth Avenue!).

Guess the nationality of the viewer above. Three guesses. American? No.
Canadian? No. British? Japanese? Australian? No, no and no. The viewer is
Iraqi.. or Jordanian.. or Lebanese.. or Syrian.. or Saudi
 or Kuwaiti
 or

but you get the picture.

Two years ago, the major part of the war in Iraq was all about bombarding
us with smart bombs and high-tech missiles. Now there’s a different sort
of war- or perhaps it’s just another phase of the same war. Now we’re
being assailed with American media. It’s everywhere all at once.

It began with radio stations like Voice of America which we could access
even before the war. After the war, there were other radio stations- ones
with mechanical voices that told us to put down our weapons and remain
inside our homes, ones that fed us American news in an Iraqi dialect and
ones that just played music. With satellite access we are constantly
listening to American music and watching American sitcoms and movies. To
be fair- it’s not just Iraq that is being targeted- it’s the whole region
and it’s all being done very cleverly.

Al-Hurra, the purported channel of freedom, is the American gift to the
Arab world. What they do is show us translated documentaries about certain
historical events (American documentaries) or about movie stars (American
stars) or vacation spots. Throughout this, there are Arab anchors giving
us the news (which is like watching Fox in Arabic). It’s news about the
Arab world with the American twist.

Our new “national” channels are a joke. One of the most amusing, in a
gruesome sort of way, is Al-Iraqiya. It’s said to be American sponsored
but the attitude is decidedly pro-Iran, anti-Sunni. There’s a program
where they parade ‘terrorists’ on screen for us to see in an attempt to
show us that our National Guard are not only good at raiding homes and
harassing people in the streets. The funny thing about the terrorists is
that the majority of them have “Sunni” names like Omar and Othman, etc.
They admit to doing things such as having sexual intercourse in mosques
and raping women and the whole show is disgusting. Iraqis don’t believe it
because it’s so obviously produced to support the American definition of
the Iraqi, Sunni, Islamic fanatic that it is embarrassing. Couldn’t the
PSYOPS people come up with anything more subtle?

Then you have the whole MBC collection. MBC is actually financed by Saudi
Arabia, but based in Dubai, as far as I know. They have several different
channels. It started out with the original MBC which was a mainly Arabic
channel that was harmless enough. It showed some talk shows, debates and
Egyptian movies with an occasional program on music or style.

Then we were introduced to MBC’s Al-Arabia- a news channel which was
meant to be the Saudi antidote to Al-Jazeera. Simultaneously, we were
accessing MBC’s Channel 2, which is a channel that shows only English
movies and programs. The programs varied from talk shows like Oprah, to
sitcoms like Friends, Third Rock from the Sun and Seinfeld.  Earlier this
year, the MBC did a mystifying thing. They announced that Channel 2 was
going to be made a 24-hour movie channel which would show all sorts of
movies- old Clint Eastwood cowboy movies, and newer movies like “A
Beautiful Mind”, etc. The programs and sitcoms would be transferred to the
new MBC Channel 4.

Personally, I was pleased with the change at first. I’m not big on movies
and it was nice to know our favorite sitcoms and programs would all be
accessible on one channel without the annoyance of two-hour movies. I
could turn on Channel 4 at any time and expect to find something
interesting or humorous that would end within 30-60 minutes.

The first time I saw 60 Minutes on MBC 4, it didn’t occur to me that
something was wrong. I can’t remember what the discussion was, but I
remember being vaguely interested and somewhat mystified at why we
were getting 60 Minutes. I soon found out that it wasn’t just 60 Minutes
at night: It was Good Morning, America in the morning, 20/20 in the
evening, 60 Minutes, 48-Hours, Inside Edition, The Early Show
 it was a
constant barrage of American media. The chipper voice in Arabic tells us,
“So you can watch what *they* watch!” *They* apparently being millions of
Americans.

The schedule on MBC’s Channel 4 goes something like this:

9 am – CBS Evening News
9:30 am – CBS The Early Show
10:45 am – The Days of Our Lives
11:20 am – Wheel of Fortune
11:45 am – Jeopardy
12:05 pm – A re-run of whatever was on the night before – 20/20, Inside
Edition, etc.

And the programming continues


I’ve been enchanted with the shows these last few weeks. The thing that
strikes me most is the fact that the news is so
 clean. It’s like hospital
food. It’s all organized and disinfected. Everything is partitioned and
you can feel how it has been doled out carefully with extreme attention to
the portions- 2 minutes on women’s rights in Afghanistan, 1 minute on
training troops in Iraq and 20 minutes on Terri Schiavo! All the
reportages are upbeat and somewhat cheerful, and the anchor person manages
to look properly concerned and completely uncaring all at once.

About a month ago, we were treated to an interview on 20/20 with Sabrina
Harman- the witch in some of the Abu Ghraib pictures. You know- the one
smiling over faceless, naked Iraqis piled up to make a human pyramid.
Elizabeth Vargus was doing the interview and the whole show was revolting.
They were trying to portray Sabrina as an innocent who was caught up in
military orders and fear of higher ranking officers. The show went on and
on about how American troops never really got seminars on Geneva
Conventions (like one needs to be taught humanity) and how poor Sabrina
was being made a scapegoat. They showed the restaurant where she worked
before the war and how everyone thought she was “such a nice person” who
couldn’t hurt a fly!

We sat there watching like we were a part of another world, in another
galaxy. I’ve always sensed from the various websites that American
mainstream news is far-removed from reality- I just didn’t know how far.
Everything is so tame and simplified. Everyone is so sincere.

Furthermore, I don’t understand the worlds fascination with reality shows.
Survivor, The Bachelor, Murder in Small Town X, Faking It, The 
Contender

it’s endless. Is life so boring that people need to watch the conjured up
lives of others?

I have a suggestion of my own for a reality show. Take 15 Bush supporters
and throw them in a house in the suburbs of, say, Falloojeh for at least
14 days. We could watch them cope with the water problems, the lack of
electricity, the check points, the raids, the Iraqi National Guard, the
bombings, and- oh yeah- the ‘insurgents’. We could watch their house
bombed to the ground and their few belongings crushed under the weight of
cement and brick or simply burned or riddled with bullets. We could see
them try to rebuild their life with their bare hands (and the equivalent
of $150)


I’d not only watch *that* reality show, I’d tape every episode.

- posted by river @ 1:08 AM

***

-- 
You are currently on Mha Atma's Earth Action Network email list, 
option D (up to 3 emails/day).  To be removed, or to switch options 
(option A - 1x/week, option B - 3/wk, option C - up to 1x/day, option D - 
up to 3x/day) please reply and let us know!  If someone forwarded you 
this email and you want to be on our list, send an email to 
ean at sbcglobal.net and tell us which option you'd like.


"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
   ---   George Orwell


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20050406/88a7e221/attachment.htm