I actually had to walk around BATMAN this morning on my way to the office. A man who looked like the masked marvel was blocking the street here in Times Square along with Snoopy and the Rig Rats for a parade marking the opening of the new Toys R’US superstore, just in time for Christmas. Meanwhile, on the side of the world, War R’ Us continues with a flurry of new developments in Afghanistan on the political and military fronts which in most of our media tends to be treated separately.

I good example of the problem this creates was provided last night with two very different TV assesments, One was offered on a Week in Review segment on CNN featuring the usual pundits including Newsweek editor Mark Whittaker who might as well move from print to TV because he is on so many channels these days, sometimes it seems at the same time. The blather there was all the stuff you had heard before, a regurgitation which continued this morning on PBS’s dry Washington Week in Review where a cast of unexciting pundits recycle what they had read or heard elswhere. A click away, last night, Ahmad Rasheed the London Telegraph correspondent and author of the book, Taliban, was on with Charlie Rose and was so much more insightful, explaining in fascinating and clear detail the political cleavages now erupting in the aftermath of the Taliban’s hasty and possibly strategic withdrawal from the cities.

Reports of the death by bombing of Osama Bin Laden’s General Muhammad Atef was taken as a sign that the Tali-baddies are on the run and may be washed up. A conversation yesterday with Michael Griffin, an other british journalist with extensive on the ground experience in Afghanistan offered more grounds for caution since the policial alliances shift with the winds of fortune and the nearness of foreign troops. The political factions inside the country know each other well and are not above a little wheeling and dealing, ie. making alliances.

CONTRADICTORY NEWS REPORTS

CNN this morning in fact confirms what we don’t know — an unusual story because so many of he experts we see on TV seem so authoritative until events change and they look foolish. Here’s now they reported this on their email news alert:”

“CONTRADICTORY REPORTS SURROUND KANDAHAR WITHDRAWAL

A new wave of airstrikes has been reported in Afghanistan amid contradictorycomments about whether the Taliban is close to withdrawing from its keysouthern base of Kandahar.

WHAT TO CALL IT?

Daniel Schorr joked about how to undertand the back and forth of the war in Afghanistan this morning on Scott Simon’s NPR program, noting that last weekend he proclaimed the war was heading towards “quagmire.” Now he says, tongue in cheek and I an embarrassed turnaround, that the very word quagmire should be banned. What is more striking is how the US coverage focuses on the military advances, and strategies even as US reporters are for the most part denied access to actually reporting on it while other countries quite rightly emphasize politics, perhaps because they remember that famous saing that war is politics by other means. I believe Sun Tsu first coined the expression a few centuries back. Reports in other countries which are ahead of the US pack don’t get timely pickup:

Here’s what I mean: Headline in the New York Times today:

“LEADER DESCRIBED AS READY TO FLEE TALIBAN’s BASTION”

The story is Pentagon sourced, written from Washington. Now, just to show you how far behind the NEW YORK TIMES, and, by extension U.S. media, might be, here is the headline YESTERDAY on the Globalvision News Network from the TIMES OF INDIA:

IRAN: Bin Laden, Omar Reportedly Flee to Pakistan

Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar and Osama Bin Laden, the alleged mastermind behind the September 11 attacks on the United States, fled on Friday to an autonomous border area of Pakistan, an Iranian radio station reported. (November 16, 2001)

POLITICS IS IN COMMAND

Meanwhile the BBC: focuses on the political combat which in the end will shape the outcome:

“…fears are growing that the power vacuum left by the Taleban’s removal will plunge Afghanistan into a chaotic power struggle among warlords and rival ethnic groupings.

“Many mujahideen commanders and tribal leaders do not recognize Northern Alliance authority.

“And ethnic rivalries could easily turn elements of the alliance against each other, rekindling the vicious factional fighting which ripped Kabul apart in the early 1990s.

“There are reports of rising lawlessness in the capital…..”

HOW SHOULD WE UNDERSTAND THIS NEWS? I received that report from a hyperactive e-mail analyst, the Florida based Peter Pflaum whom I have quoted before. He argues today:”The British and some Europeans and the six neighbors are concerned about a war of all against all as tribal leaders fight for control of the bones. The UN is moving at all deliberate speed which will be too little too late. A government of some sort needs to be in place NOW - and peace keepers on their way. The Americans have experience with military government - getting the power and water running, police on the street, but can’t control armed gangs.…..A UN team would manage security and humanitarian aid, with the old king start calling a traditional meeting or loya jirga for spring. The danger of major bloodbath as in the past is all too real as the tribes fight each other and commanders fight among themselves.”

THE KILLING IS INTENSIFYING BUT WHO IS KILLING WHOM?

US forces on the ground are doing some killing too, according to Donald Rumsfeld Defense secretary who predicted that deaths will be high in this internal war. “They’ve gone into places and met resistance and dealt with it,” he gloats on page one of the Times” They are killing Taliban that won’t surrender…” How many? Not reported? What is happening to prisoners? Not reported? No doubt, this is what they are there to do, but we have no idea what the “collateral damage” is, or how to evaluate the effectiveness of these operations. I could say, as many do, that, as good Americans, we just have to trust the military. I would if I wasn’t aware of decades of distorted claims and inaccurate information that oozes out of the Pentagon spin machine which admits that information management is one of its priorities.

” DO AFGHANI LIVES MATTER?”

And what of the Afghan people? Who cares about them, or for them. This is a question raised in a poignant report by Ramzy Baroud caries on Middle East News online. It’s question:”Do Afghani Lives Really Matter to Anyone? You can read it on Globalvision News Network. He blames the inattention of the western media: “In recent years however, the problem of girls not being allowed to go to school and the destruction of a few Buddha statues were hardly the core of Afghani suffering.

“UN and relief agencies’ constant warnings of the human tragedy developing in Afghanistan in recent years failed to get our attention. They were only Afghanis, not many pitched in to help, and very few cared.

“And here most of the world stands again, applauding as the Afghanis are killed by more modern weapons and more sophisticated bombs.

“Once the US war is over, the Afghani suffering will remain, yet the news about Afghanistan will dive back into the back pages of our newspapers, and will be placed at the lower agendas of our political institutions, and the Afghani people will once again become less relevant.

“What is even more depressing about all of this is that since the Soviet invasion of 1979 until the US war, those who have contributed to the destruction of Afghanistan exhort that their motive is to help the poor Afghani people. Yet since then they have managed to do nothing but greaten their misery. ”

OH CANADA

As the internal killing intensifies, more external military forces are on the way. Canada’s CBC last night showed pictures of the Molson brigade training in some elk-infested wood as the reporter explained that they were on their way to the Big A, but where and when has yet to be decided. All very confusing, no doubt, because it is. Meanwhile in the town of Herat, Ismail Khan, war lord in charge (WLIC) after chasing the Talban away, and being proclained Governor by acclamation, delivered this message to “us”. the country’s new liberators, as reported in this A.M,’s New York Times,”Thank you for your help, such as it was, but it is no longer needed.” And this feeling may protend a chilly reception in future. Justa s Afghans are revolting against the Taliban in many cities now, they may redirect their revolt, if history is any guide, against imposed solutions by the West and the UN.

BRIBING ON THE ROAD TO PEACE

In fact, a former UN offiial in Afghanistan, Richard Kidd wrote weeks ago in an article called “HOW TO BEAT THE TALIBAN” that was distributed by the Globalvision News Network and to be my knowledge only picked up in print in NEWSBREAL, a Newsweekly published in the Phillipines. Here are two of his six recommendations, which, if adopted, might have offered one non-violent alternative, saved billions bombed away to make rocks bounce, and possibly foster a fair political settlement:

“First, I would give the Northern Alliance a big wad of cash so they could buy off a chunk of the Taliban army before winter.” (Did this happen? Possibly, but perhaps it was AL Qaeda that utimately coughed up the cash.”

“Second, using covert actions and more cash, I would disrupt the integrity of he Taliban leadership to sow distrust and undermine its legitimacy in the eyes of most Afghans..”

He goes on with more proposals that involve military tact and goodwill, not what we are seeing in the chaos of western policy and on the ground. Taliban expert Michael Griffin told me that he believes that for l00 million in bribes, this whole problem would have gone away, and that Osama might be in some federal penitentionary already. I will be offering my interview with him on the pathetic quality most media coverage of the Taliban and Bin Laden when we get it transcribed in a few days.

WHO WILL INVESTIGATE THE “OIL CONSPIRACY?”

And what is behind all of this, really behind it? I have avoided the temptation of recycling all of the conspiracy theories that sluice through the Internet every day. Most are drivel with footnotes. I am sure you have seen many that you want to believe, if only because the day’s news seems at times totally irrational and surrealistic, as in the story the guy yesterday, in shorts and T shirt, who shut down the airport in Atlanta for hours after he raced through a security checkpoint without stopping. Why did he do it? He said he was afraid he would miss his flight. Duh?

Anyway, here’s one of the many reports on the theory that there is a hidden oil connection to the war in Afhganistan. Isn’t this a subject that FRONTLINE or NIGHTLINE or DATELINE or some other “line” should look into,if only to put it to rest, or blow the whistle? Here is a story from the Inter Press Service (IPS) which has a progressive slant but is not known as a transmission belt for crazies:

U.S. Policy Towards Taliban Influenced by Oil - Say Authors

By Julio Godoy, Inter Press Service

PARIS, Nov 15 (IPS) - Under the influence of U.S. oil companies, the government of George W. Bush initially blocked U.S. secret service investigations on terrorism, while it bargained with the Taliban the delivery of Osama bin Laden in exchange for political recognition and economic aid, two French intelligence analysts claim.

In the book “Bin Laden, la verite interdite” (”Bin Laden, the forbidden truth”), that appeared in Paris on Wednesday, the authors, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s deputy director John O’Neill resigned in July in protest over the obstruction.

Brisard claim O’Neill told them that “the main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it”.

The two claim the U.S. government’s main objective in Afghanistan was to consolidate the position of the Taliban regime to obtain access to the oil and gas reserves in Central Asia

MOCKING MORALITY: NEWS FROM THE ONION

Mocking the morality coming out of HIGH places in Washington, and occassionally lower ones in Crawford Texas, the satirical onion this week carries this item:

US TO ARAB WORLD: “STOP HATING US OR SUFFER THE CONSQUENCES”

WASHINGTON DC: In a strongly worded ultimatum Tuesday, President Bush warned the Arab World to “stop hating us or suffer the consequences. “You have exactly l0 days to put aside your deep-rooted resentment and rage towards America and learn to like us,” said Bush in a message broadcast live to 17 nations via AL Jazeera.”

This is of course just a joke, but Al Jezeera’s existence isn’t, not at least to the US administration which “accidently” bombed its office in Kabul last week. OOPS! Today’s New York Times inadvertently acknowledges that a media war is being fought along side the other war. Plugging an article in tomorrow’s magazine section, this front page promo puts is worded thusly:

“THE TV BATTLEGROUND”

The Bush Administration is trying to figure out how to combat Al-Jezeera, the incendiary Arabic news station. This war may not be winnable.” ATTENTION: Wordsmith Bill Saffire, help me deconstruct the “coded” pejorative language used in your newspaper today: “This War?”… “Winnable”..”incendiary”

Words. Words. Words. They are important because they lend themselves to so many meanings, as Alice understood at the gates of wonderland. “Words mean what I want them to mean,” she said. For example, as I wondered the other day, should we call The Northern Alliance by the name they use, United Front or not? And when, pray tell, should we use the word “terrorist?” I noted the other day that the BBC had decided to stop using it, at least on its world radio service least. Now thanks to the Toronto Stars feisty TV critic , Antonia Zerbisias sent me a report from in the Guardian that I missed about the controversy their decision aroused: “Mark Damazer, the BBC’s deputy director of news, said theservice would lose its reputation for impartiality around the worldif it were seen to use such a subjective term.

While guests and contributors to World Service programmesmay describe the deliberate flying of jet planes into the WorldTrade Centre as acts of terror, news correspondents use moreneutral terms such as “attack”.

Mr Damazer, speaking in a debate about television coverage ofSeptember 11 at the Newsworld conference in Barcelona,insisted the decision was not intended to downgrade the horrorof the event. But if the word terrorism was used there would beimplications for the description of more subjective acts of terrorsuch as those carried out by Hamas in the Middle East or ETAin Spain.

Fascinating, isn’t it that non American news sources tend to treat the same news that appears in the USA. I was blown away by this EDITORIAL CORRECTION that appears in the Economist. I can’t believe it is true, (IF THIS MORE ONION?) but I will be using it as the basis of my weekly column that will discuss the recent media recount’s “findings” on the election of 2000. Read this, and applaud with me:

An election correction

Nov 15th 2001

From The Economist print edition

“In the issues of December 16th 2000 to November 10th 2001, we may have given the impression that George Bush had been legally and duly elected president of the United States. We now understand that this may have been incorrect, and that the election result is still too close to call. The Economist apologizes for any inconvenience.”

VOTE FOR ME, I THINK

The “balloting” on whether or not I should continue this daily dissection is still underway with more readers suggesting that I should. Last night, I ran into John Strausburgh, the smart, sassy and open minded publisher of the New York Press, the often annoying conservative, but eclectic, New York weekly. I told him that I seem to have contracted whatever obsessive disease that driving his editor, Russ Smith, to write columns that go on and on and on, weaving reports on what he ate that morning with his latest vitriolic diatribe against Bill Clinton. I realize that I am now attempting a variant every day on a form that he pioneered and has been spewing out every week for years. I know I will never catch up, and don’t want to, but it is true that when you own the newspaper you can write as much as you want. It’s just cheaper on line.

Anyway, more feedback is coming in that is most encouraging. Laura writes from my old Alma Mater, The London School of Economics: “A friend from India who I am studying with at the London School of Economicsrecently told me about Media Channel.org and I am most impressed. What anincredibly informative and thought provoking resource for someone getting amaster’s in Global media and communications.” Closer to home, Sheba a frequent critic and media activist supports those who want me to keep killing myself: “I must tell you I think your weblog is great, & I’m impressed at the quality, quantity & consistency of your output in the midst of your busy days & nights. I just hope enough people read it that you’ll be motivated to continue forever! Every so often, I send excerpts to friends. I’d do it more often if their emailboxes weren’t overflowing already.”

Happily, there is still room in my email box to hear from you. Should I give it a rest, or keep plugging away on this long march to truth and media freedom? Write Dissector@mediachannel.org