blogging war

Sure, this isn’t quite Anne Frank, but it is rather interesting:

Screen cap from Georgia Ministry of Foreign Affairs blog, taken 12 August 2008 12:37pm (GMT +8). Click through for the post.

http://georgiamfa.blogspot.com/ just contains press-releases from the government spokesministry, but it’s still cool that online public platforms like Blogger and gmail are being used by a government involved in an armed conflict.

Quick warning, though, there are pics too; those are rather confronting.

War in the cyberage could, on one hand, result in increased proliferation of propaganda, but blogging also provides another (quicker, direct) way of analysing and commenting on said propaganda.

We looked at the influence of bloggers and “new media” on political developments when I did a unit on Politics & the Media back in 2004 (that study was actually the impetus for me to start blogging).  The US election was the main case study back then, and four years later we can repeat that analysis, but the Georgia/South Ossetia conflict adds a whole new dimension to it.

I should probably dig around in my own Motherland‘s cyber backyard before I say this is groundbreaking (I know there’s a lot of pro Tamil Tigers stuff on the interwebs already), but, hey, it’s more the case of this being so fresh (and they’re white? Oh SNAP!) that it’s hot.

Fallujah War Crimes Caught on Camera

From Reuters/ABC.net.au:

The US military has begun an investigation into possible war crimes after a television pool report by US network NBC showed a Marine shooting dead a wounded and unarmed Iraqi in a Fallujah mosque.

If I may offer a suggestion for Dubya’s banner makers: Misson Fucked.*

The Power of the Media

I did a unit this semester called Setting the Agenda: Politics and the Media.** Taking it was half of the inspiration for starting up this blog (the other half came from Rob Corr, who, after the last couple of weeks, is officially my blogging idol). The unit really made me question that grand old idea of the Fourth Estate as ‘an independent and impartial watch dog of government and other powerful interests.’ When looking at the mainstream media’s response to 9/11 and hearing about the antics of the Murdochs and Alan Joneses of the world, most of the time the mass media just comes across as a lap dog (excellent, from now on I will only refer to Murdoch as Tinkerbell**).

When things like this show up, though, it gives you just a little bit of hope. Hope that maybe the megamedia has realised they spent immediate post 9/11 period and the lead up to Iraq 03-?? acting as the US Government Stenography Service and now understand the crucial role they have to play in protecting us from the tyranny of the majority. Another entry on hope/faith later (not).

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* As pointed out by GT, my most appropriate typo ever! 🙂

** Therefore this entry counts as exam study, woo.

*** Paris Hilton’s chihuahua.