With the moon high in the sky of the llth month, Ramadan has begun in some parts of the world. And while the faithful fast, there is no suspension of the conflict, as expected. The New York Post proudly offers the first photos of “our boys in Afghanistan” this morning, in an edition marking this self-styled newspaper’s 200th anniversary. The cover picture of a smiling soldier may become a collectible, that is, until hear about the new Afghan War trading cards that have been released by the Topps bubblegum company, best known for its cards of baseball players.

ENDURING FREEDOM TO CHEW ON

The new 90 card collection is, according to an item in The Week, titled “Enduring Freedom” and features no less than ELEVEN poses of President Bush and three of New York Mayor Sir Rudy Giuliani. For “balance,” one depicts the “Suspected Ringleader,” Osama bin Laden. They printed that one in stark black and white. The company’s chairman Arthur Storin is hoping kids will destory it. “The kids may want to tear it up, stomp on it, throw it in the garbage.”

SHIFTS IN MILITARY STRATEGY

The US military reports a shift in strategy from air to ground to reflect the new situation. More troops are flying in. Airports are being secured to deliver more humanitarian aid. French troops are landing to join their British counterparts, while The Germans debate their contribution today. It is a family affair. Fighting is intense in what are being described as “pockets of Taliban resistance.” Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader somehow had time yesterday to speak from a satellite phone to the BBC calling the retreat of his troops from Kabul and other cities a calculated strategy, and adding a chilly prophecy.” ‘’The current situation in Afghanistan is related to a bigger cause - that is the destruction of America. I tell you, keep this in mind,'’ he warned. ‘’This is my prediction. You believe it or not - it’s up to you.But we will have to wait and see.'’ Thanks Mull, but I would rather not. His comments were characterized by an increasingly confident US government as just demented ravings.

Last night, I pulled myself away from an annoying “interview,” if you could call it that, on ABC’s Prime Time Live with Mick Jagger who had nothing to say about much of anything including world affairs. He was clearly there to promote business affairs, his own. It seems he has sold a documentary about himself made by himself to ABC that runs it on Thanksgiving. So the network squeezed out some more face time — hard to watch — with the former Street Fighting man, and my fellow LSE alum, as a promotional exercise in the guise of a news segment. Click, and I found myself in the far more rarefied world of CSPAN 2 for a talk by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers to a foreign policy conference.

THE GENERAL PRAISES THE MEDIA COVERAGE

Myers praised the US media “for keeping America well informed about the war,” but feels it didn’t fully capture the brilliance of US strategy. Even the military want better coverage. “The images we have seen are only a “snapshot,” he said. “The real story is the way General Franks and his CENTCOM (Central Command) has orchestrated all aspects of national power.” Suddenly I was given a peek at what a war college must be like, listening in to military commanders see their task. In his case, it was to “keep the public and the population focused” on what, he promises, will be a ” a very long war, some of it visible, much of it invisible.” Most of his discussion went over my head, with terms like C-4 and ISR, that deals with command and control questions, and technical/organizational coordination. The biggest problem they seem to face involves how to to coordinate joint operations among the many military services. As he droned on, I realized that I had dropped into the mind of a military CEO and operations manager who is clearly enaged in refining procedures for campaigns to come. It was chilling, because the talk was so sanitized and riddled with techno babble or tems like “terminate” which make war very abstract.

The on the ground reports coming in from non US sources like The Times of India are anything but detached. Bear in mind that India, not Pakistan supports the Northern Alliance, as you read this snatch of an interview — whose veracity I cannot, of course swear by , and others reports that I have read have yet to confirm:

“THEY WERE SLAUGHTERING PEOPLE”

“Ebad-ur-Rehman, a middle-aged Afghan who reached Kandahar from Kabul aday after the Northern Alliance entered the capital, said, “They (NorthernAlliance troops) were slaughtering people.”

“They were killing people, especially Arabs and Pakistanis,” Ebad said. “Icould have been among the deceased, but I saved myself by getting my longbeard shaved,” he said.

He said Northern Alliance troops were looking for Taliban supporters.Wherever they found men with long beards, they either killed or detainedthem.

“Whoever could not speak Pushtu or Persian was killed on the spot. Whoeverthey found to be Arab or Pakistani they sprayed with bullets,” Ebad added.

“There was a hue and cry in the streets. The jubilant alliance troopsentered any house they wanted. They raped and dishonoured Afghan women andeven minor girls,” he contended.

“I don’t know much about other areas, but there was no law in Kabul. Thealliance troops were looting even personal belongings like jackets andboots,” he said.

ACCURACY ALWAYS IN QUESTION

A note on accuracy. Yesterday I relied on media reports to challenge the claim that the foreign aid workers who had been in held by the Taliban for allegedly preaching Christianity had been “rescued.” The stories all said that the Taliban released them. After listenting to interviews with them, its is clear they were released and probably escaped in all the confusion and then rescued. Here I was relying on the media only to find — surprise, surprise — that the story was far more nuanced than reported.

A CALL TO CLEAN UP BOMBS ON THE GROUND

One figure I have searched in vein to find in media accounts, and to which General Myers made no reference to last night was this one: 70,700. That’s SEVENTY THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED which is the number of deadly bomblets dropped on Afghanistan from 350 cluster bombs. This figure appears in a press release from Human Rights Watch reporting that “nearly 5000 unexploded and highly volatile cluster bomlets may be littered across areas of Afghanistan targeted by US warplanes.” The human rights group calls on he US to clean them up before more innocent civilians, usally children find them and start playing with them. That 5000 figure is actually 4, 494, a number based on what is admitted to be the 7 percent initial failure rate common in this weapons systems.

OH. YE MASTERS OF WAR,

I was pleased to find Bob Dylan’s Masters of War on the new CD efaturing songs on the TV telethon in the aftermath of September ll. The Album begins with Celine Dion’s haunting version of God Bless America but does not pander to patriots. Springsteen is on it. So is Pete Seegers with “This Land is Your Land,” and Mahalia Jackson with a gospelized “We Shall Overcome” But, Bob Dylan’s anti-war ballad :masters of War” is on it too, and needs to be heard again in America’s newsrooms.

Many American media analysts sound like arm chair generals, calling for more killing from the safety of their computer terminals. According to columnists By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, the op pages are alive with the sounds of bombs awat. These two corporate watch columnists assembled their own list of the ten top worst offenders in an article titled” “Kill, Kill, Kill.” Here it is:

THE “WORST TOP TEN”

Michael Kelly (Washington Post): “American pacifists are on the sideof future mass murders of Americans,” they are “objectivelypro-terrorist,” “evil” and “liars.”

Jonathan Alter (Newsweek): Wondered whether torture would “jump-startthe stalled investigation into the greatest crime in American history.”Urges pacifists to shut up because “it’s kill or be killed.”

Bill O’Reilly (Fox TV): “The US should bomb the Afghan infrastructure torubble — the airport, the power plants, their water facilities, theroads. The Afghans are responsible for the Taliban. We should nottarget civilians, but if they don’t rise up against this criminalgovernment, they starve, period.”

A.M. Rosenthal (Washington Times): In addition to Afghanistan, wants tobomb Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Iran, and Syria.

Ann Coulter (ex-National Review): Her response to terrorism is to”invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.”

Steve Dunleavy (New York Post) ” “The response to this unimaginable21st-century Pearl Harbor should be as simple as it is swift — kill thebastards. A gunshot between the eyes, blow them to smithereens,poison them if you have. As for cities or countries that host theseworms, bomb them into basketball courts.”

Rich Lowry (National Review): “If we flatten part of Damascus or Tehranor whatever it takes, that is part of the solution.”

Charles Krauthammer (Washington Post): “We are fighting because thebastards killed 5,000 of our people, and if we do not kill them, theyare going to kill us again.”

Thomas Friedman (New York Times): “We have to fight the terrorists as ifthere were no rules.” And the perverted “give war a chance.”

George Will (Washington Post): “The Bush administration is telling thecountry that there is some dying to be done. … The goal is not to’bring terrorists to justice,’ which suggests bringing them into sedatejudicial settings — lawyers, courtrooms, due process, all preceded bypunctilious readings of Miranda rights. Rather, the goal is destructionof enemies.”

“WAR WAR OVER JAW JAW”

They close by noting, “Of course, the peace voices have been shunned by the big media corporations.” True, but there is a deeper consequence to all of this media driven boosterism, namely that war itself is being put above diplomacy as the best way to achieve policy goals. The Guardian’s George Mombiot spoke to this point too in a column I quoted yesterday He speaks of “…the triumph of war-war over jaw-jaw. The partial victory in Afghanistan appears to have convinced both governments and commentators that we can blast our way to world peace. No serious attempt was made, before the bombing began, to differentiate between just and unjust war….Now justice appears to have been redefined as success, and war as the only route to peace.”

FINALLY, THE WOMEN’S RIGHTS ISSSEUE IS RAISED (SORT OF)

Yesterday, I noted that there had been few voices of Afghan women on the air. And last night on CNN, the violations of women’s rights were cited, but the guest on Aaron Brown’s show was an American, who appears on the News Hour on PBS, not an Afghan. Barbara Ehrenreich who is smart about every issue in my book talks about this in a piece in the LA Times. She notes “Women’s rights may play no part in U.S. foreign policy, but we should perhaps be grateful that they have at least been important enough to deploy in the media mobilization for war. On the analytical front, though, the neglect of Taliban misogyny–and beyond that, Islamic fundamentalist misogyny, in general–remains almost total. If the extreme segregation and oppression of women do not stem from the Koran, as non-fundamentalist Muslims insist, if it is in fact something new, then why did it emerge when it did at the end of the 20th century? Liberal and left-wing commentators have done a thorough job of explaining why the fundamentalists hate America, but no one has bothered to figure out why they hate women.”

Ehrenreich does not exempt other religions in her commentary even as most media accounts do.” it could be a mistake to take Islamic fundamentalism out of the context of other fundamentalisms — Christian and Orthodox Jewish. All three aspire to restore women to the status they occupied — or are believed to have occupied — in certain ancient nomadic Middle Eastern tribes. Religious fundamentalism in general has been explained as a backlash against the modern, capitalist world, and fundamentalism everywhere is no friend to the female sex. To comprehend the full nature of the threats we face since Sept. 11, we need to figure out why. Assuming women matter, that is.”

There has been a dethroning, of the “king of all media” and the most blatant sexist on the airwaves. Good news. The network version of the Howard Stern Show will insult the intelligence of the American people for the last time this staurday. Stern got his network outing on CBS with a show produced by King World after his patron Mel Karamzin, who made him a national radio celebrity, took over CBS. The reason for the cancellation: the ratings sucked. If Stern was not a Jew and/or American, this news might become a subject for mourning within Taliban circles, although unlike the Mullahs who keep women encased in long gowns and veils, Stern insisted on their undressing. Put that down to cultural diferences.

For years, the “Howards” of the media world have been triumphant as TV execs, including News Division heads dumbed down content and cut back coverage of the world, always insisting that they were merely giving da people what da people want. These practices drove American TV into the toilet. (See this week’s New Yorker for a hysterical story about network standards and practices and the fight over whether the word “bullshit” can be uttered on prime time.) Alas, as American TV goes, so goes the rest of the world which apes and clones many of our programs and media practices. A prominent British politician seems to be echoing complains we have heard before int he good old USA. This story, via my main man Bruce in London, is from the Guardian.

BRITISH MEDIA BLASTED FOR MISCOVERING THE WORLD

“TV conference hears of coverage ‘limited to floods and famine’

Matt Wells, media correspondent, Friday November 16, 200

“The international development secretary, Clare Short, yesterday attacked the British media for failing to cover important international issues. News organisations were too concerned with beating each other to stories and had abandoned their duty to inform viewers about the world, she said, and unless an international story involved flood or famine, broadcasters were not interested. British news organisations rejected her principal claims, but some admitted that coverage of foreign stories could be improved. Speaking in an interview recorded for Newsworld, a conference of TV executives and journalists in Barcelona, Ms Short attacked broadcasters for downgrading the importance of international news.

“If there’s a famine or a crisis they turn up, show some pictures and then go away. There is no explanation or analysis. There is no intelligent engagement.”

LOOK WHO IS DENOUNCING DICTATORS

President Bush a dictator? Who dare utters this blasphemy? Hint. It is not Noam Chomsky or Christopher Hitchens: ” WASHINGTON — Misadvised by a frustrated and panic-stricken attorney general, a president of the United States has just assumed what amounts to dictatorial power to jail or execute aliens. Intimidated by terrorists and inflamed by a passion for rough justice, we are letting George W. Bush get away with the replacement of the American rule of law with military kangaroo courts.” This denunciation of DICTATORSHIP in America comes from conservative columnist William Saffire, a long time Republican booster.”

SHOULD THESE DAILY DISSECTIONS CONTINUE?

More responses are coming in from Media Channel readers to my request for your comments on whether or not I should continue this herculean effort (for me) of grinding out this weblog column every day. Its future is still uncertain, because, unlike the military, I can’t rotate in fresh troops. But here’s the latest votes as received in my email:

Sheri Goodell writes from Ogden Utah: “I am one of those Americans that finds myself going more and more toforeign press sites. It is disconcerting to know things here in the US,that many other US citizens don’t know. Thank you for being the voice ofmany Americans, like me.” Juliette Yancey from the land of Yahoo adds: “I just wanted to commend you on a truly excellent service,mediachannel.org, the Globalvision News Network and your daily NewsDissector log, as well. I became aware of your site a couple of monthsago as a link from alternet.org. The log, in particular, is a must readfor me each day and I think it is terrific. So often, an issue, aquestion, or increasingly, a criticism will arise in my mind that I donot see addressed elsewhere until I read your daily musings and findmany of my thoughts mirrored there. Yet, more often, and thank goodnessfor this, after reading your column, I will learn something new, gain adifferent perspective or be alerted to another worthwhile news source”

Thanks so much Sheri and Jilette. But special thanks for this missive which came in from INDIA which is even further from New York that Ogden Utah. “Hello Danny,This is Ahkilesh from India. My classmates and I who study mass communications and journalism in a college in Bangalore read your daily log and would very much like you to keep at it. I feel it a very vivid and valid commentary on the incidents which are taking place in your country. Please don’t stop writing it, because even if we can’t comment on it, we look forward to reading it every day.

Thanks all for writing. Please add your thoughts as well. Our hope in creating Mediachannel.org was to build a global community of students, teachers journalists and just plain citizens concerned about the impact the media has on all of our lives. Your participation makes that goal seem feasible and achievable. Imagine, to borrow a Lennonism, if we could only mobilize the millions of people worldwide who want truth in their media! Just yesterday we were pleased when the Associated Press called to ask my opinion about the plans of the nominally competitive ABC News and CBS news to effectively merge news operations. Haven’t they already?” was my response. And they printed it. I take back anything nasty I have ever said about the Associated Press, about whom the American writer once compared to the sun for its power to shine light on the world’s wrongs. He went a bit far in that comparison, but he was writing for them at the time.

Let me hear from you too, and have a great, safe and peaceful weekend. I will be back tomorrow when the sun rises and if my eyes creak open again. Write: dissector@mediachannel.org