To what extent do alternative texts on the internet supplement, substitute for, or complement mainstream news? That's a large question requiring some research to answer, and I'm not the person to do it. (Too lazy.) But I do want to pay some small fragment of attention to the question as it can be judged in the Bush (this Bush)administration's drive toward war with Iraq.

Mainstream news reporting, with a few conspicuous exceptions, has pretty much taken the administration line. Cf. the Saginaw News' headline Sunday morning (print edition) that "Bush says Congress united on Iraq." (I can't find any national news on their website.) Editorials on the New York Times are running more oppositional, and the dregs of "left" publications like the Nation and Mother Jones are against the war. But if you compare US publications with Europeans or others, (slipping into my Yogi Berra mode, here), there's no comparison.

So what alternative sites might be relevant? One place I find convenient for an oppositional line is The Smirking Chimp, which pulls together 8 -10 stories in its interface, offering three 'grafs or so and then both a link to the original publication and the full version in their interface, along with readers' comments (sometimes interesting, usually predictable). I like the Chimp better than BuzzFlash Report, which is a mirror image of the Drudge Report, except ag'in' Bush. (headline for today: "Ashcroft Continues His Incremental Moves Toward Becoming a KGB Chief .") The problem with both of these is that there's too much, too stridently presented. Drudge clearly drove the news cycles during the Clinton/Lewinsky mudslinging a few years ago, so perhaps the opposition wants to use some aspects of the same to push against the Bushbaby.

Smirking Chimp on Saturday, 9/28, referenced Alternet.org, and specifically a piece by Geov Parrish on using the internet to build opposition to attacking Iraq.

The challenge has been obvious: to insert into the public debate a moral critique of an invasion, the part that says that killing is wrong and killing on the pretext of a manufactured crisis is criminal. The critique needs to be linked to the logistical and political objections, which have been raised mostly by conservatives, and that were, only three weeks ago, the only widely visible opposition to the war. The challenge is also to connect with the large numbers of non-activists who simply had their doubts about the wisdom of Dubya's folly, or who sensed that the ceaseless drum-beating for war simply didn't add up.

It's happening.

The only reason -- the only reason -- that Congressional Democrats this past week started speaking out against invasion, in more than their previously token numbers, is because they have been deluged with phone calls, faxes, and e-mails expressing the public's opposition. Polls show widespread doubt. Congressional office intake valves, a measure of the people passionate enough to contact their public officials, has been running more than 90 percent against the planned invasion. And volume has been high.

One topic that interests me here is how effective or ineffective propaganda / PR is in moving mass opinion. There's a lot of inertia and slow lag time in these matters, as not everyone tunes in to a topic at the same time. We'd rather be entertained. Despite their best efforts, the administration has not done very well at building public support for their intended war, mostly I think because the ground isn't there to work with. There was a lot to work with in 9/11, obviously, and strong public support for striking back at Al Qaeda and their base in Afghanistan. But the connections aren't there to Saddam, and they can't be convincingly manufactured out of thin air. So public support runs pretty consistently against anything unilateral (and apart from Britain and a few bought leaders, we won't be going in with allies). Democrats in Congress have for the most part not grown spines yet, so it appears that those who think war would be unwise in current circs are trying to use the net to give them temporary strap-ons.

Some links mentioned by Parrish: Antiwar.org--set up in 1995, they are a spinoff of the Center for Libertarian Studies, and thus are not inherently anti-Bush or anti-Republican.
War-Times--a web site linked to a new print publication (started after 9/11) meant as part of the "peace and justice movement."
Parrish lists a dozen more--I won't bother with links at this point.

An interesting thread which will be emerging in this discussion is the extent to which the administration is interested not in ousting a tyrant, not in eliminating a terrorist or military threat, not in getting Saddam because he tried to kill Papa Bush, but in gaining control over oil resources so as to guarantee cheap oil and reward this administrator's most consistent (and rich) supporters. That's a theme I want to come back to in another post.