Will the Red Cross become a casualty of “America’s New War?” The best known disaster relief organization is threatening to become a disaster in its own right, what with another one of its food warehouses in Kabul obliterated by a massive US bomb. The Pentagon apologized, calling it a “human error.” What a wonderful word that is, “human error.” Isn’t this whole conflict based to some degree on human errors on every level? And what would you say when you get that call that says, “sorry, human error,” if your loved ones are dead, or even if your humanitarian aid effort is targeted. The Red Cross has had “human errors” inflicted on them twice now in the last two weeks. In this case, according to the New York Times, the “error” followed a “detailed review by Pentagon and Red Cross officials of the places where the relief agency has installations.” Oops.

Not funny, I know, but human errors are the stuff of human comedies that quickly turn into human tragedies.

The media that was providing all the free the air time and milking their own association with such a well branded charity was not paying too much attention to where the nearly half a billion dollars the Red Cross was raising would go. I am not suggesting any hanky panky here, even though as an investigative reporter at ABC's 20/20 years ago, I produced two charity investigations that showed me that often much of the money that big groups raise can easily be diverted to overhead and more fundraising.

False and exaggerated appeals are common. One of my stories deal with the refurbishing of the Statue of Liberty, virtually next door to the World Trade Center, Back then, the charity led by auto mogul Lee Iacocca, sent out letters warning that the statue was about to collapse into the sea. (Eerie, in light of recent events.) The experts all told us that that was completely untrue. That charity then set out to raise $230 million, and did. Where did the figure come from? The actual amount needed? No way. Iacocca made it up, by wondering aloud that he wanted every American to give a dollar. At the time, that added up to 230 million dollars. We exposed the scam, but found that our own network had made a deal with Iacocca for exclusive private TV rights to the re-opening of the statue -- a public monument. Our piece aired, but, by then, it had been cut in half and never mentioned in the hours of coverage of that patriotric event at which Presient Reagan spoke, and the news anchors preseded in tuxedos. (I tell the story in my book The More You Watch, The Less You Know.)

According to CNN, there were patriotic songs being sung at what the New York Times called a "pageant" staged for Dr. Healey's dethroning. It was announced before 200 Red Cross employees. At issue -- and none of this is fully detailed yet -- was her management style, her fight with the International Red Cross to support a chapter in Israel, and her handling of the funds raised for relief of the victims of the World Trade Center attack. I am sympathetic to Dr. Healey but she was trapped in a box of unrealizable expectations fanned, in part by, the media hysteria.

To many media simpletons, disaster relief just means divying up what ever is raised to " the victims." And the truth is, that to date, according to a New York Post story, "just $35 million has been given to 2,326 families." But that word "just" can be misleading. Sure it LOOKS bad. But charitable distribution is not so simple because definitions of who real victims are, and what constitutes real needs cannot be reduced to one size fits all solution. A deeper problem was with the protective and arrogant procedures at the Red Cross itself which initially refused to allow infromation about its benificaries to become part of a data base being set up by NY State to keep track of who gets what. The Red Cross was pressured to change its policy on policy, but by that time, intra agency feuding was escalating along with bad feeling. Healey wanted to set some money aside for expected future terrorst actions and to budget funds for community outreach to "encourage tolerance." What's wrong with that? Nothing, really, it just wasn't explained so donors though they were just handing over money to the dazed familes of the dead.

Most importantly, no one was really covering what was really going on, save the Non-profit Times and the Chronicle of Philanthropy. The editor of the Chronicle was on Nightline last night explaining the complexities and contradictions within the confusing world of charities. That Nightline show also reported that Jula Robert's ‘spokesperson" -- her Ari Fleisher -- said she hopes the money will go to where it was intended. Yes, Julia, but where was that?

THE WE ARE FAMILY EXPERIENCE

All of this is ironic to me as well, because I have been involved with some great musicians led by Nile Rodgers who came together to remake the song "WE ARE FAMILY" to reinforce a united sense of our common humanity. On the day of the recording session, big mouth entertainer Joan Rivers trashed the event because, she charged it was not giving all the money to, guess where, The Red Cross. She managed to get air time and sympathetic but one sided stories for her hysterical and inaccurate claims. Many others seemed to think that only the Red Cross was to be trusted. As it turned out, some funds from the project were always going to be earmarked to work by that agency. But this project wants to do more and will. See their webside: http://www.wearefamilyfoundation.com for more. This whole incident, which I am privvy to, just showed how much most people do not know about how charities work, and how easily they are swayed by deceptive brand name marketing and advertising.

If you are interested in finding more, here's an investigative tip to pursue. There is an apparent political morass in this story as well. One of my own sources tells me that the Twin Towers Fund, which is also sucking up millions to benefit selected victims, is controlled by -- hold your breath -- Mayor Rudy Giuliani. I I am told it "is run by the wife of his # 1 deputy mayor of operations , Joe LhotaTamra. Newsday reported the story but I missed it at the time:LINK

WITH THE RED CROSS IN THE COMMUNITY

Money may make the world go around, but, alas, some of the people who need it most are not apparently seeing it, and the debate over who is being victimized has yet to become a media focus. Last week, my friend Paul, an actor and director send me this report on a performance his Playback Theater.

"Yesterday we performed for Red Cross workers. We found them "scared, angry,overwhelmed and doubly burdened". These are staff members that work on adaily basis with homeless families...the "slow motion 9/11" as one put it.Now the loss and the fear of the various attacks has just added to theirburden.

"They told us that they are faced with a special reality as a result of 9/11.Money and support that was going to them for "ordinary relief work" is nowbeing diverted to the victims and the rebuilding downtown. In fact, you canhear this "on the street" all over the city, although not so much in themedia. The competition of needs is getting intense. Schools, youth, welfare,AIDS, prison reform--any program not directly related to 9/11, will and arealready feeling the cuts."

"We heard rage building with these Red Cross workers...yes, we are alltogether now BUT... "as a Black Woman I see what's really going on..that weare suffering more". And a Asian man says, "there's calm on the out side anda demon on the inside".

MEANWHILE, BACK IN AFHANISTAN

All of these problems pale when you stack them against what seems to be happening in Afghanistan in a part of the war that remains invisible. First there is the direct victims, s Howard Kurtz notes in the Washington Post:

"… the American strikes against Afghanistan are developing problems, U.S. Navy fighter jets accidentally dropped a 1,000-pound bomb near a senior citizens home in the northern Afghan city of Herat and two 500-pound bombs in a residential area northwest of Kabul over the weekend in strikes that could have resulted in civilian casualties, Pentagon officials said yesterday.

"Victoria Clarke, the Pentagon's chief spokeswoman, said the senior citizens home in Herat could be the same facility that a United Nations official identified yesterday as a military hospital. Clarke attributed both accidents to guidance-system malfunctions."

AND WHAT THE PEOPLE: THEY ARE EATING GRASS

Ok. Horiffic, I can hear Pentagon officials saying, ‘but at least we admit OUR mistakes. That's war. And War kills people.' But there is worse to come, and this larger threat to MILLIONS is hardly news in the news.

"Alan Ryan," very welcome self-appointed Mediachannel media monitor in Spain reports that the media there is carrying reports about Afghans eating grass even though more food has been dropped on that country than bombs. This is a blatant example of what is being sold as humanitarianism "malfunctioning." And Can you believe that I have to go to Spain to get news in America from Afghanistan?

" An Antena 3 once again, the guest speakerwas Mr. Ignacio Carreras, Spain's President of OXFAM. Therefugee picture he painted was unbelievably harsh. Tobegin with, 400,000 people are right now subsisting ongrass and leaves inside Afghanistan. He explained thedifficulties that the NGOs are having in getting foodin and the problems with distribution, and WHY; heanswered a lot of well-formulated and directquestions, at the same time criticizing the U.S. fooddrops and greatly regretting that the plea made by theUN's Mary Robinson to halt the bombing, to allow foodand other supplies to be brought into Afghanistan, hasnot been "heard…

I do not know how Americans will react when in amatter of weeks, Afghani people "en masse" begin todie of starvation while so many others barely survivein refugee camps. Quite frankly, I fear most wouldn'tgive a damn. Will people in the U.S. even HEAR aboutit like we do here in Europe? After reading yourcolumn today, I could not help commenting on this veryissue. One last thing--I would love to BE ABLE tocontribute ($$) to your cause, (Mediachannel.org) but right at the moment I am literally barely surviving here teaching Englishclasses, and although I am doing a bit better than alot of Afghans right now, my situation is extremelyprecarious. " Oye. No problema. Your "contribution" is just great.

The military and the political front in Afghanistan does not seem much better. I know that because the most hawksh and most strident columnist in the most hawkish and strident "newspaper" in the world, Rupert Murdoch's New York Post, a Bush loyalist and government booster if there ever was one, has shifted her big rhetorical guns from the Taliban to the White House. "Cut the lies guys and give us leadership," writes the fast talking, Osama hating Andrea Peyser. "Will some one, please have the guts to stand up and say, "We don't know what the hell we are dealing with. Tell us the truth. Tell us our military objectives, if we have any clear military objectives." To hear a rabid media voice like hers turning her own sarcasm away from anti-war activists to Pentagon flacks is a sign of these troubling times.

Washington is on the defensive, with Pakistan pressuring for an end to the air war, and the death yesterday at the hands of the Taliban of Abdel Haq a former Mujadeen leader who tried a Rambo-like run at Mullah Omar and Co, and was caught and killed. This followed the taliban's assassination by exploding TV camera of Ahmad Shah Massoud of the Northern Alliance, another leader with the potential of challenging Kabul. I was amused that Haq's last cell phone call went directly to his old friend Robert C. McFarlane, Ronald Reagan's national security advisor. McFarlane immediately called the CIA at the "George Bush National Intelligence Center" (The NY Times today has a picture of the CIA building which is named after the former President and the current President's dad, an ex-CIA director) The air strike they ordered came too late. That would not have happened in a RAMBO movie. You may remember McFarlane from the Iran-Contra scandal.

Unclear about the politics of a conflict that is being buried in all the military reporting, I turned to the an excellent source, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting out of London for a far more measured assessment than I have found in the mainstream press. It is by Mohammed Qabool:

"For Afghans, only the formation of a stable and democratic government,capable of putting an end to the misery of the people there, can justifythe US air strikes. Otherwise, these efforts will be no more than a newphase in the vicious cycle of war and violence, and Afghans will remainas now caught in the trap of fundamentalism and terrorism.

"Yet while all parties concerned talk about the need for a broad-basedgovernment, no one has been able to put forward a concrete definition ofwhat that would mean. In fact, various foreign powers only add to theconfusion by promoting their own interpretations. The only commonfeature is the intention of outsiders to impose their own favoredpersonalities and groups as the representatives of the Afghanpopulation." See http://www.iwpr.net for more

Just yesterday, Pentagon was insisting it will continue and even escalate its military campaign. British press, not the American, is reporting that the first covert operation which was projected in US media as a big success was anything but here's part of a report from The Independent in London to just underscore how different the reporting is in Europe.

WAR "FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE MEDIA"

"The much-hyped first American ground attack on Afghanistan ran into unexpectedly fierce resistance and almost ended in disaster, senior defense sources have disclosed.

"The public admissions by Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of State for Defense, and US Navy Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem that they were surprised by the toughness of the Taliban gives a glimpse of how badly things could have gone wrong.

The attack was meant to be a purely cosmetic exercise for the benefit of the media and the public against a relatively safe and poorly defended target…"

Needless to say the exclusion of most media coverage makes it harder than ever to know what's going on. Perhaps that's why more and more people are tuning to sources like Al Jezzeera. That network reports incidentally that Osama Bin Ladin has yet to respond to the questions he solicited from that station and CNN.

WANNA WATCH AL-JAZEERA?

Attention news junkies: you can now watch Al-Jazeera in your own living room. You can order from your own cable company. Knowing Arabic will help Link here for more info:

Also, check out CURSOR.org forthe Internet’s Most Complete Al-JAZEERA Resourcehttp://www.cursor.org/aljazeera.htm. Another recent article about the station worth reading is by Tamara Straus of Alternet. Al Jezeera has been called highly objective and, at the same time, extremely biased. Which is it? AlterNet spoke to veteran Middle East journalist Lamis Andoni to find out.http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11811.

They keep calling Al Jazeera “The CNN of the Arab World.” If media restrictions continue as they are, we may soon be calling CNN, “the Al-Jezzera of America.”

I AM OUT OF HERE

It’s getting late, and I am going on too long. I will be speaking at the New School University today (Saturday) at 5 PM on a panel about progress organized by England’s unstoppable Claire Fox for the Institute of Ideas. Call 646-303 3629 for more info. We had a small earthquake in New York City earlier today. She has the energy to have caused it. I am going to have to leave it here, with half of the items I intended to share left for tomorrow as a I continue this 7 day a week obsessive daily diatribe which readers tell me they enjoy reading almost as much I enjoy writing. Let me know what you think — and send me your own media related reports. Eee me: Dissector@mediachannel.org ,