AROUND THE WORLD IN TWENTY HOURS: THE LONG RIDE HOME
May 29th, 2008 - by: danny
EARTHQUAKE IN ICELAND—I MUST HAVE FLOWN OVER IT–KARL ROVE ON SCOTT M: HE SOUNDS LIKE A LEFT- WING BLOGGER (CLEARLY HE IS NOT READING MANY LEFT-WING BLOGGERS ….MORE REACTIONS BELOW
BACK FROM ASIA
FED ACCUSED OF INCREASING INFLATION
MCCAIN BACK IN THE NEWS
Sometimes, I find myself living in the museum of my own mind, flashing back in time between the past, my past, that is, and the present. It happened when I was on the way back from a three day stay in Malaysia, more conference-hopping, crazy really, to go half-way around the world for such a short stay.
And yet -
Last night, I finally escaped from the hotel, in the company of the friend of a friend, a connection arranged via email. I drove around the Kuala Lumpur, with its own twin towers, that for a short period of the time were the highest in the world. Shanghai now has that distinction in the our building is is bigger than yours global competition. (Dubai is coming on fast!) The city seems modern, commercial, stripped of its Asian character with a post industrial modern look. We stop in a bar with ESPN blasting American baseball and basketball. There is no esacape. A travel agent I met on the plane had come prepared to rough it.
I leave through the ultra modern airport, winner of awards for its state of the art design. Starbucks is open for business. The affluence is astounding, certainly better than the Third World poverty still pervasive in some of Malaysia’s neighbors,
On the plane back, there is there is an electronic map tracking our journey on this huge Boeing 777. We are high over Asia, Thailand, to the north of us, 39,000 feet over the beaches washed away by the tsunami. Everything looks calm today. There’s no hint of what happened there or in Rangoon, which we circumvent. Sometimes, I feel as if so many of us are living in these clouds, disconnected from the pain below.
We don’t fly over Vietnam but its on this map. Ho Chi Minh City where Saigon used to be. The memories of that war gush in, and out. and I think of my first trip there in 1974, just before there was light at the end of the tunnel. Back then, as the war raged on, I had been in the North and the South, and you could sense it couldn’t go on although no one expected the speed with which it would be ended by a final offensive. Those images seem vivid even now.
I am still a Vietnam Vet, a veteran of the anti war movement that defined the lives of so many of the people I knew and the movements I supported. In Vietnam today, when you ask about the war, people reply, “which one?” Ours is called the American War, one in a long line, and is remembered mostly for the legacy it left with the ongoing damage caused by Agent Orange. It’s a crime our government won’t cop to even now, all these years later. Probably because we are too busy causing other crimes.
After crossing the vastness of Russia, towns like Smolensk that I can’t picture, we land in Stockholm at the start of the Swedish summer. The countryside is the greenest I have ever seen it it. There will be light here until 10 or ll Pm. This is the one stop on the journey on the way to Newark, whats now called Newark Liberty Airport. Earlier I heard a report on CNN that New Jersey has the cheapest gas in the Nation. Fill her up.
In Sweden, we leave the plane, go through yet another security screening, my third of the day before reboarding. In the transit lounge, there are ten people and six kids carrying large white plastic bags with the initials IOM on them. That stands for the International Organization of Migration. They are refugees, from Burma I later learn.
They had fled to Malaysia and after three years, I am told by the man on my left are “the lucky ones.” They are on their way to becoming Americans. (When we landed in Newark, I said “Welcome To America’ to a Burmese woman cradling her baby. She looked at me with a smile to die for. Remember: we are a nation of immigrants, something our government and Lou Dobbs often forgets.)
The Malaysian man sizes me up as an American right away.(Maybe my size gives it away!)
“You should have invaded Burma, not Iraq,” he tells me. We start talking and suddenly our lives connect in that incident of coincidence that I live with constantly. He is on his way to Boston. I used to live there. His daughter is graduating from Harvard with a Ph.D. in Anthropology. I went to Harvard and even taught in the Anthropology Department in the days when students fought for a course on social change and I was asked to teach a section, with an actual appointment from the academic politbureau known as “THE CORPORATION.”. His daughter had gone to Cornell. So had I. “Ithaca is so beautiful, ” he told me. I nodded, and he laughed when I told him kids there now call it “Mythica.”
And then he told me, proudly, I am a “blogger” and handed me a card with his name and the words “A Malaysian blogger” on it. He couldn’t believe it when I said I blogged too. He boasted that the bloggers in Malaysia had had a big impact on the last election. “It’s a Godsend, really,” he said. “We finally have some freedom of the press. We can be heard.”
I was out of cards but promised to read his blog and get in touch. His name is Idrus Abu Bakar. His blog URL is idrus.blogspot.com. His wife, an elegant and friendly woman, wearing a hijib, seemed proud of what he was doing.
And for those who don’t believe how much guts these people have, check out Amnesty International’s new report on Malaysia which was released on the day I left. It included these statistics:
l. At least ten people died in police custody last year including two suicides;
2. 83 were detained without trial;
3. 24, 770 migrant workers were detained and subjected to abuse and degrading treatment including caning, Amnesty said the government is in denial about these practices and justifies them.
See Amnesty International’s 2008 State of the World’s Human Rights report.
I did find some good news in the New Straits Times. A wiild elephant was captured in Jerantut. He had been terrriorizing plantations in three villages. He was not shot. 20 Wildlife officers brought two 70 year old female elephants to entice him on to the back of a Lorry (truck.)
For the record, their names are: Cek Mek, and Lokimala. Good work ladies.
And as for memories, I noticed upon my not very triumphant return, that an old filing cabinet of mine was put out on the street for collection. It still had an IMPEACH NIXON sticker on it. Those were the daze, my friend.
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The Economy Is Still In The Crapper; Deception Admitted At Last, Scott Skewered
May 29th, 2008 - by: danny
MCCAIN BACK IN THE NEWS
The battle for the Democratic nomination still dominated campaign coverage the week of May 19-25. But after many weeks of John McCain being relegated to the sidelines while the Democrats slugged it out, he re-emerged as a major newsmaker last week, according to a Project for Excellence in Journalism study.
McCain appeared as a dominant or significant factor in 41% of campaign stories – his highest level of coverage since the Super Tuesday contests the week of Feb. 4-10. While only three points behind Hillary Clinton (43%), McCain still finished well behind Barack Obama (62%).
WORLD LIKES OBAMA
People I met in Malaysia kept asking me if I thought Obama had a chance. Many are following the US election as closely as we are . Perhap’s that’s because whoever is President can do so much good, and more commonly, so much bad in the world. If the world could vote, Obama would be a shoo-in. Thats based on my own most unscientific poll.
ON THE ECONOMY: GENERAL MOTORS ADMITS SCREWING UP
The whistle blower Buckman writes:
General Motors Corporation 2007 Annual Report
Once you get post the glossy photos and glowing PR, hold tight as you reach for the bi-focals or magnifying glass. Sit down for the shocker!
“A material weakness is a deficiency, or combination of deficiencies, in internal control over financial reporting such that there is a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement of our annual or interim consolidated financial statements will not be prevented or detected on a timely basis.
“Based on our assessment, and because of the material weaknesses described above, we have concluded that our internal control over financial reporting was not effective as of December 31, 2007″
It’s worse than it seems says Dean Starkman in the Columbia Journalism Review.
FROM THE NAKED CAPITALISM BLOG: US OUT OF TOUCH WITH THE WORLD
This blog features an interview with a former Federal Reserve Official who says that the Fed is actually responsible for the inflation we are experiencing. His name is Richard Alford and his comments appear in a publication called “Institutional Risk Analytics”
Dick, in your latest missive you say that the Fed has misread inflation for deflation, and that former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and now Ben Bernanke are fighting the wrong battles. There is clearly a lot of new inflation in the system due to energy prices, but you rarely hear anyone talking about monetary policy as a secular source of inflation.
Alford: One of the interesting aspects of economic policy in the US is a belief that we exist independent of the rest of the world. In the minds of many policy makers, the US is the focus and the rest of world economy is just a stable background. To open the model up to external factors, market imperfections, and quasi-floating exchange rates would increase the complexity of the model and limit the number of policy prescriptions that could be made, so most US economists pretend that the rest of the world does not exist, is stable, or that the dollar will quickly adjust so as to maintain US external balances. It has only been in the past few years that the trade deficit has moved to a level that is clearly unsustainable. The US economic model is yet to catch up with reality.
MORE IN CONGRESS OPPOSE WAR
From Democrats.com
On May 15, something remarkable happened: your calls and emails persuaded 149 Representatives to vote against Bush’s demand for $163 billion more to occupy Iraq for another year, and we won the vote in the House 149-141!
What’s most amazing is that only 46 Representatives voted against Iraq occupation funds in January. So in just 4 months, we picked up 103 votes!
Clearly Congress is hearing from the overwhelming 68% majority of Americans who want our troops home within 6 months. All 435 Representatives are up for re-election in November, and they know they will lose their jobs if the anti-war majority gets organized.
WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION
The culture of deception in high places, an issue I treated in my film WMD back in 2004 has not been confirmed by President Bush’s former Press Secretary. How much longer will it take for other rats to leave the sinking ship?
OF COURSE YOU ALL KNOW THIS BY NOW–BUT IT IS A RATHER DELICIOUS ADMISSION FOR ME
Former White House Press Aide: Bush Misled US on Iraq
Michael D. Shear reports for The Washington Post: “Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new memoir that the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated ‘political propaganda campaign’ led by President Bush and aimed at ‘manipulating sources of public opinion’ and ‘downplaying the major reason for going to war.’”
MORE ON SCOTTY’S STORY: A RANGE OF REACTIONS
Truth Hurts: The President calls it “sad”–Condi Defends War–Rove Blasts Scott
SCOTTY COME LATELY: Arianna Huffington
Scott McClellan offers withering portraits of George Bush and Karl Rove, confirms we went to war in Iraq under false pretenses, and that we were serially lied to about the outing of Valerie Plame. Interesting stuff, Scott. But about five years too late. How many times are we going to have a key Bush administration official try to wash the blood off his hands — and add a chunk of change to his bank account — by writing a come-clean book years after the fact instead of when it actually could have made a difference? Click here to read more.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE NY TIMES
Larry Houghteling writes:
To the Editor:
Like all right-thinking Americans, I share the disdain
of the New York Times editorial board for the sort of
Washington memoir your editorial (“I Knew it All
Along,” May 29) mocked as “I Knew It Was a Terrible
Mistake, but I Didn’t Mention It Until I Got a Book
Contract.”Perhaps unlike the New York Times editorial board,
however, I also feel disdain for those in the
so-called Media who abetted the truth-avoidance stance
that President Bush and Press Secretary McClellan
worked so hard to perfect.I remember, for example, that in March of 2006 Helen
Thomas asked Mr. Bush at a press conference why we had
gone to war in Iraq, and he concluded a long,
carefully devious response with a direct lie: that
Saddam Hussein had thrown out the UN weapons
inspectors and therefore he, Bush, HAD to act. (Full
disclosure: Hussein did not throw out the inspectors.)I also remember that the New York Times the next day
contained no mention of that obvious self-serving lie
by the president. A careful reader of the Times who
had no other sources of news would have been unaware
of Mr. Bush’s lie – which suited Mr. Bush and Mr.
McClellan just fine, I’m sure.So don’t get too cocky, Timespeople. You’ve still got
a hell of a long way to go before you live up to “All
the News That’s Fit to Print.”
LA TIMES: Johanna Neuman, of The Los Angeles Times, reports: “Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan made clear today that it was President Bush – not the high-profile aides around him – who left him most disillusioned in the run-up to the Iraq War.”
MATT COOPER: MCCLELLAN RIGHT AND WRONG
POLITICO.COM: ABC IN THE BAG
Diane Russell writes: CNN’s Yellin: Network execs killed critical White House stories
On Wednesday night, CNN’s Jessica Yellin talked to Anderson Cooper about Scott McClellan’s tell-all memoir and agreed with the former press secretary that White House reporters “dropped the ball” during the run-up to war.
But Yellin went much further, revealing that news executives–presumably at ABC News, where she’d worked from July 2003 to August 2007–actively pushed her not do hard-hitting pieces on the Bush administration.
“The press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president’s high approval ratings,” Yellin said.
“And my own experience at the White House was that the higher the president’s approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives–and I was not at this network at the time–but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president, I think over time….”
But then a shocked Cooper jumped in, asking, “You had pressure from news executives to put on positive stories about the president?”
“Not in that exact…. They wouldn’t say it in that way, but they would edit my pieces,” Yellin said. “They would push me in different directions. They would turn down stories that were more critical, and try to put on pieces that were more positive. Yes, that was my experience.”
THE PROGRESS REPORT: ON THE REACTION
LOYAL BUSHIES STRIKE BACK: Bush was only one voice in a “chorus” of current and former Bush administration officials pushing back against McClellan’s explosive allegations, often in very personal terms. “This now strikes me as self-serving, disingenuous and unprofessional,” former Homeland Security Adviser Fran Townsend said on CNN. Rove, whom McClellan describes in the book as willing “to push the envelope to the limit of what’s permissible ethically or legally,” responded on Fox News by calling McClellan “irresponsible,” adding that he “sounds like a left-wing blogger.” Former White House Counselor Dan Bartlett called allegations in the book “total crap,” saying that in hearing McClellan’s criticisms, “it’s almost like we’re witnessing an out-of-body experience.” McClellan’s predecessor, Ari Fleischer, told NPR that he was “heartbroken” by the harsh tone of the book. Interviewing Fleischer for the CBS Evening News last night, Katie Couric noted that the former Bush administration officials now criticizing McClellan all sound like they “are operating out of the same playbook” by claiming “this doesn’t sound like the Scott McClellan they knew.”
THE USUAL AUTOMATIC SMEAR RESPONSE: McClellan is experiencing the same automatic smear response the White House deploys against former allies who dare to criticize the administration, including former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and former head of faith-based initiatives John DiIulio. In 2004, when Bush’s first Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill said publicly that “the Bush administration began planning to use U.S. troops to invade Iraq within days” after Bush took office, White House aides pushed back hard with personal attacks. One senior official told CNN that “we didn’t listen to [O'Neill's] wacky ideas when he was in the White House, why should we start listening to him now.” Last year, Bush’s former chief campaign strategist Matthew Dowd publicly broke with the President by claiming that Bush had “become more, in my view, secluded and bubbled in.” Bartlett dismissed Dowd’s criticisms by saying Dowd had been “going through a lot of personal turmoil.” Ironically, before he published his own criticisms, McClellan was often the one responding to critical books as the White House’s top spokesperson. In 2004, when former counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke wrote a book charging that President Bush had “ignored terrorism for months” before 9/11, McClellan led the White House counter-charge, claiming that Clarke was a bitter ex-employee who “wanted to be the deputy secretary of the Homeland Security Department.”
MCCLELLAN’S CREDIBILITY CHALLENGE: As ABC News’s Jake Tapper pointed out yesterday, “some of the same language now being used to trash McClellan he himself used to trash previous administration authors.” For instance, when Clarke published his tell-all book, McClellan claimed he was doing it for money because “he has written a book and he certainly wants to go out there and promote that book.” But McClellan’s credibility challenge goes beyond the fact that he once attacked people in his current position. McClellan charges the White House with not being “open and forthright on Iraq,” which is a drastic shift from his past rhetoric regarding the war. As a White House spokesperson, McClellan repeatedly defended the conduct of the war, justified the case that was made to launch it, and defended Bush’s handling of the war. “There were irresponsible and unfounded accusations being made against the administration, suggesting that we had manipulated or misused that intelligence. That was flat-out false,” said McClellan in a 2006 press briefing. “We’ve been very straightforward about where we are, in terms of the theater in Iraq,” he claimed in another. In 2004, he insisted, “This President is someone I think the American people recognize as a straight shooter.”
ANDY BOROWITZ: BUSH REACTS
Bush Refuses to Read McClellan’s Book, Calling It ‘A Book’
Puts Chances of Reading Book at Zero
On a day when Washington was abuzz with the news that former White House spokesperson Scott McClellan had published a tell-all memoir, President George W. Bush offered his personal reason for not reading it.
“I have no intention of reading Scott McClellan’s book,” Mr. Bush told reporters, “because it’s a book.”
Mr. Bush said he was “surprised” that Mr. McClellan had written a book to criticize him because “if you’re trying to communicate some criticism to me, a book is pretty much the last place you’d put it.”
The president said that he thought the chances of his someday reading Mr. McClellan’s book were “zero,” adding, “If I didn’t read the Iraq Study Group’s report, I really don’t think I’m about to read Scott McClellan’s little book.”
Presidential historian Davis Logsdon of the University of Minnesota observed that if Mr. McClellan honestly expected his memoir to somehow reach Mr. Bush’s nightstand, “that demonstrates just how little he knows George W. Bush.”
“Scott McClellan would have had a much better shot if he had put his memoir in Xbox 360 format and then slipped it into a package labeled ‘Grand Theft Auto 5,’” he said.
For his part, Mr. Bush said that there was in fact a book published this week that had caught his eye: the new James Bond thrilled entitled “Devil May Care.”
“Now, that book looks like it could be good,” he said. “Maybe I’ll have Laura read it to me.”
SLEEPY
Its been an exhausting day…a 20 hour trip, a half-hour wait on the tarrmac for a gate, an hour to get through customs, a bus ride back to Manhattan…..It is time to rest.
Have a great weekend. Comments to Dissector@mediachannel.org
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At The Asia Media Summit: Debating The Problem, Seeking A Solution
May 28th, 2008 - by: danny
“The Age of Communications Can Be The Age of Dialogue.” Dr. Javad Mottaghi, Asia Media Summit
ENCOURAGING THE MEDIA TO SERVE HUMANITY
POST-STRESS TRAUMA NOW EPIDEMIC IN IRAQ
MEDIA COMPANIES SEARCH FOR NEW MODELS
Kuala Lumpur, MALAYSIA: The Asia Media Summit moved into a second day, with a fascinating array of speakers approaching media issues from a variety of angles. What seems so clear is that media plays a vital role in promoting education, relief assistance, support for initiatives to promote reconciliation, ease inter-group tensions, facilitate health and play a crucial developmental role. What a contrast with the largely entertainment function of US TV which promotes consumption, not citizenship, a distance from events, not direct engagement.
So here you see the potential, perhaps even the promise media systems that want to help people, erase the digital divide and empower communications. I feel like I come from another planet. On the way into the room, a reporter for the Bangkol Post stops me to thank me because critical voices in the US, in his view, are essential or “we just give up on America.
There is discussion here of the RIGHT to communicate, as if there are media rights and a right on the part of people to receive and IMPART information—a right that has eroded in our country. In some cases, its clear that the governments are the problem, often quick to censor or stymie debate. A representative of the South African Broadcasting Corporation is saying that there is now a general commitment to erasing the digital divide. His comments made me think of how how poor people in our country are being driven more deeply in debt because of all the phones and other devices they NEED to have but can barely afford to pay for. In South Africa you buy “air time” when you need it while in most of the US you are billed on a monthly basis until the bills mount up and become unaffordable.
There was lots of talk about the groovey new generation of mobile phones that will offer TV to take with you, filled with entertainment “content” – another tool of distraction.
A number of delegates noted that economic development has to come first, programs to erode poverty and promote development. Technology is not everywhere and in every case what people need first. Multi-platforms can be a luxury.
And so the debate moved into competing interests and priorities—should empowement through technology come first or not? Clearly, all of this is needed but it often comes down to what you can pay for, and where social investments are most needed.
I am at a disadvantage of course. I have no network at my command or major resources to tap. I am an observer and aware that these issues are quite distant from what preoccupies most Americans who are waiting for the new era of digital TV to take hold with our 500 channels and thinking that the media we have is the only media there is. So many of the conflicts and needs expressed here are way off our national agenda. And that’s one more reason why the big divide in the world is not just a digital one, but a divide of power and consciousness.
And yet organizations like the UN presented their campaign to promote the millennium Millennium human development goals, so there is a big focus on how media organizations can promote global campaigns for justice. “The poverty situation in the world was compared to 350 jumbo jets crashing every day,” explained Minor Pimple, who called for more accountability by governments. He called on the media to highlight
These issues and mobilize their audiences.
I was surprised and pleased when a Saudi government official called for the media to play more of a bridging role but said there were many obstacles to opening media to playing a more role.
He stressed three obstacles to media change 1) a gap between developed and developing countries, a disparity in technology, channel capacity etc—and so governments have more control over content, leaving little diversity or credibility; 2) commercialization of the media undermines its potential. Making money gets in the way of providing information; and 3) most media laws are not observed, leading to unethical practices and targeting of youth and children. He spoke of an “Onslaught of bad media,” and called for more regulation.
I asked him about what struck me as one contradiction to explore whether there is any debate underway about the issues he raised about the dangers of commercialization and the fact that a prominent Saudi investor Prince Waleed is a major investor in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, a media company that is not always very friendly to the Middle East. He said that investors and the government do not interfere in decisions made by media companies. He called the questions that I have been raising in some of the sessions “controversial.” He made his remarks in Arabic but then began to respond to me in English. Even he was amused.
Among the questions raised were what role media plays and what role it can it play in play in reducing poverty and hardship with an emphasis on the importance of not only messaging but opportunities for interactivity, to give people a chance to be heard.
In the final session, there was a call for more media literacy and an end to violent media overload to and media role models like Paris Hilton We also heard from China’s leading expert on teaching kids and teachers to become more critical and analytical about media including cartoons. China is initiating anout reach to families, schools and the media itself. The idea is to encourage kids to think critically about media, but also to encourage parents to become better informed.
There was also a presentation by a member of Australia’s Classification board to discuss ways of dealing with censorship. At issue now in Australia is a photographer’s exhibition of photos of naked children – an issue that caused a major crisis, and what one of Australia’s censors, ooops, ” classifiers,” called a “moral panic” in the media.
MORE TO COME.
Outside the Summit, I met with the amazing Premesh Chandran who created the fabulous Malaysiakini.com website that has been an amazing source of honest news, blogging and investigations. Premesh is about to launch a global multi-lingual web based news channel…He’s calling it the NEXT GENERATION NEWS. Watch for it at EARTH247.tv…Watch out CNN.
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About Danny Schechter
Danny Schechter is an Emmy award winning journalist, television producer and independent filmmaker who also writes, blogs and speaks about media issues.
His latest film is PLUNDER The Crime Of Our Time.
Mr. Schechter is NOT the Godfather of Soul.
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