[Peace-discuss] quality web sources for news of Iraq

[Randall Cotton]

As discussed in today's meeting, there is a growing gap between what's
actually happening in Iraq and what's being reported in the media because of
the dwindling number of English-language sources within Iraq (due to
diminishing security) and increasing censorship of non-English sources (due
to restrictions by the U.S. military and the puppet government). There are
still a few decent windows into what's actually  happening on the ground
from day-to-day, but they are increasingly rare:

1. Dahr Jamail - Independent unembedded reporting from Baghdad. Recently,
Jamail has focused on digging into the story of the recent destruction of
Fallujah, interviewing refugees that are in or near Baghdad. It's
essentially impossible for any English-language reporter to get any closer
to the story than this. Jamail survives as it is perhaps only because he is
dark-skinned and persistently claims to be Canadian.
http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com

specifically, check out:
http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog
http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/

You can sign up for his mailing list to get his reports directly (I do):
http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/email_list/

It's also possible to donate funds to support his work (I have):
http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/donate/

2. Juan Cole's weblog ("Informed Comment") - Cole is a Professor of History
at the University of Michigan who is fluent in Arabic and Farsi. His weblog
is a *very* active affair focusing on Iraq and Palestine/Israel that
includes near-daily summaries of events in Iraq summarized not only from
English sources, but various Arabic & Farsi Internet and Satellite-TV
sources, complete with links to whatever key English-language sources he
references. Extremely informative.
www.juancole.com

3. Occupation Watch - This is a project of the California-based "Global
Exchange" activist organization. They've been in Iraq for over a year and
are still sticking it out. One of their efforts is to provide a platform for
independent Iraqi reporters to publish translated articles through their
website. New reports appear every few days on average.
http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=30

4. Baghdad Burning - (weblog of alias "Riverbend) - Exceptionally eloquent,
insightful and passionate accounts from an anonymous woman in Baghdad. Her
posts are intermittent, sometimes separated by a few days, sometimes by a
few weeks. All are equally invaluable.
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

5. Rahul Mahajan's weblog ("Empire Notes") - Rahul is an author, reporter
and activist - he was actually in Fallujah during the April assault,
reporting from the ground. Although he's currently in the U.S. and his blog
postings have temporarily fallen off (he intimates he's been ill), Mahajan
has been a valuable independent source of news and analysis regarding Iraq.
http://www.empirenotes.org/

Daily Internet Media Patrols:

While I'm composing this message, I thought I'd also point out that there
are sites out there that make it their mission to survey news sources and
then furnish links to the most noteworthy stories from a
progressive/activist point of view. The best of these that I've found is
"Media Patrol" from cursor.org:
http://cursor.org/

If I was forced to only check a single website for Internet news, cursor.org
is the one I'd pick. It unfailingly flags virtually all important articles
from both mainstream and unconventional Internet-based media - it's
essentially a compendium of links to these stories, elegantly described and
grouped by topic. My only complaint: they don't update during weekends and
holidays =8-)

Another compendium site, though not as frequently updated or as
comprehensive, is at Michael Moore's website (the "must read" section)
http://www.michaelmoore.com/mustread/index.php

Another site that serves this function (as mentioned at the meeting), though
not nearly as comprehensive, is antiwar.com, which lists links to key
stories around the Internet on their home page:
http://www.antiwar.com

R