How does the U.S. and British propaganda system work? Today’s news provides a textbook example. Yesterday the Arab League voted unanimously to oppose the war in Iraq. The 22 member Arab League includes Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt and other Middle Eastern and African countries. These countries are Saddam Hussein’s neighbors, yet they are against the war.

That is big news, especially combined with the vote in the Turkish Parliament which denied the U.S. the use of Turkey as a staging ground for war. And it follows the Non-aligned meeting of 116 countries in Malaysia last weekend which came out strongly against the war. And of course that followed the huge world-wide Feb. 15 protests which were largest in the three European countries, Great Britain, Spain and Italy, whose leaders support this war. What the Arab League vote shows is that NOBODY in the world supports this war.

Yet, how did the U.S. and British media report the Arab League’s vote? They focused on a suggestion made by the U.A.E.. that Saddam Hussein should go into exile. This issue did not even make it on the agenda of the meeting!

So, for the media to focus on the U.A.E.. suggestion, and to ignore, or bury in the bottom paragraphs of the article, the actual statement made at the end of the meeting of the Arab League, shows clearly that the U.S. and British mass media are part of a propaganda system which is an accessory to planned mass murder, an accessory to the unprovoked attack of another country, which will result in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians.

The Observer, a newspaper in England made no mention of the vote!

Headline: Arab Emirates leader calls for Saddam to quit

http://www.observer.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,906036,00.html



MSNBC ran this headline: UAE calls on Iraq leaders to quit

http://www.msnbc.com/news/879265.asp?0dm=C24HN

This is the Washington Post Headline: UAE Urges Hussein To Go Into Exile

Fox news headline: Arab Summit: Feuding Over Call for Hussein to Step Down

Buried in the Fox news story is this sentence: “The summit ended with a vague anti-war declaration that was short on specifics, the diplomats said.”

In fact the anti-war statement was not vague in the least, and it was passed unanimously, but you have to go to another news source to discover that. This is from associated press, which all U.S. newspapers and television stations subscribe to

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030301/ap_wo_en_ge/me_gen_arabs_iraq_communique_1 : the headline is:

Main points of Arab summit final communique

Arab leaders registered "complete rejection to any aggression on Iraq or threatening the security of any Arab country and considering it a threat to Arab national security and (reiterate) the necessity of resolving the Iraqi issue through peaceful ways."

_ Called for giving weapons inspectors enough time carry out their mission and called on inspectors to use objectivity in their work.

_ Called on Arab countries to refrain from "participating in any military action that targets the security, safety and unity of Iraq or any other Arab country."

So, the mass media makes a bare mention of the most important news, the complete rejection of the war against Iraq, and they bury it under misleading headlines, and focus on something relatively trivial, which expresses the opinion only of the leadership of one tiny country.

This is the membership of the Arab League:

Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Quatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen.