There was a riot in Kabul yesterday, as starved cinemafiles packed the one movie theater in town screening a Rambo like film about happier days — when the Mujadeen kicked some Russian butt. Last year, despite the Taiban prudishness, The Titanic finally sailed through the city in underground video screenings of the underwater saga. Afghans watched it in droves, according to Michael Griffin’s must read “Reaping the Whirlwind.”(Pluto Press) Tears were being reaped again for those innocents who perished on the doomed ship on an icy night. It is still not clear how to read the ironies.

Clearly, the graveyard that awaited the Titanic under all that ice can be seen as a metaphor for what Afghanistan is fast becoming, amidst fresh reports of an escalating kill rate around Konduz and Khandahar. The death toll is being cheeron by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld who is insisting on no negotiated nothing, while grunting,’ kill’em or capture them,’ with the emphasis on the former. The Taliban is claiming that they are being targeted by chemical weapons. This has yet to be confirmed.

The other irony — and this one will only be recognized only after the smoke clears, and the bodies are buried, is that the tale of that “unsinkable ship” outfitted with the state of the art technology of its time may offer a warning to Western powers who may be tempted again to try to remake Afghanistan in their own image. Historians know that in contests like these, there are few clear winners or losers. Alliances shift and al will soon be buried in the 25 foot snow drifts to come. Perhaps, it’s time to airlift in copies of “Moby Dick” to drive this point home, oh Ahab. Just call me Ishmael one more time.

MOURNING FOR COLLEAGUES LOST

Death is not something to treat lightly, as the families of the four journalists who were intercepted and then killed on the road in Afghanistan yesterday are discovering. Ironically these killings which may have been committed to steal their possessions, take place ironically on the eve of the Committee to Protect Journalist Dinner tonight, an annual rite that I will be attending in which the media industry turns out in tuxedos and professes fealty to the highest principles that it routinely violates throughout the years.(For my take on dinners past, check out my chapter “Human Rights for A Night” in my first book, “The More You Watch The Less You Know” (Seven Stories Press) That said, the Committee, an affiliate of the Media Channel does great work and deserves support. Consult their cpj.org site for constant updates in the fight for media freedom.

Freedom may be another word for nothing left to lose, but in Afghanistan its meaning can’t be as easily reduced to the verse of a popular song. The political infighting there is now in full tilt boogie, with local commanders, war lords, and trbal chiefs all jockeying for some role in the final settlement whose outlines are hard to see. Bear in mind that the Taliban came to power precisely because the country longed for stability after years of internecine conflict. Folks there were willing to put up with Mullahocracy because it beat the constant warfare that had torn the country apart. In those years, the US, and wanted no part of he place and was happy to have helped oust the Russians (who may be coming back, thanks the decisions reached at the latest Bush–Putin lovefest on the ranch) The CIA backed fundamentalists and ended up with a situation that made the Soviet style regime look good by comparision.

IGNORED WARNINGS REPRISED

In those years, the rather ruthless Mohammad Najibullah was the man in charge, a job he kept by wiping out all opponents. He was finally removed and took refuge in a UN safe area, an interesting factoid in light of those who wait for the UN to come back on the scene in blue helmets or not. Once the UN was pushed out, Najib was taken out, sliced, diced and hung. He issued a warning in a last interview before he was imposed on the UN that bears repeating because it was not heeded, just as warnings today about the limits of military solutions are disregarded by most media wise guys.

“We have a common task — Afghanistan, the USA and the civilized world — to launch a joint struggle against fundamentalism. If fundamentalism comes to Afghanistan, war will continue for many years. Afghanistan will turn into a center of world smuggling for narcotic drugs. Afghanistan will be turned into a center for terrorism. (International Herald Tribune, March l992 from Reaping the Whirlwind.)

And that is just what happened isn’t it.?

WANTED:A WAR AGAINST FUNDAMENTALISM

President Bush’s war against terrorism will never become a war against fundamentalism, because of all the fundamentalists in his own party, including his Attorrney General. So what can be done. What kind of a solution can be rigged? Last night, I took part in a discussion among some senior level international journalists and high level UN officials convened near the UN by Tony Borden, editor of the always excellent Institute for War and Peace Reporting (iwpr.org). I had hoped to find out what the experts think and how the UN was going to come to he rescue either with peacekeepers or peacemakers. On hand were many Afghan hands, including Michael Griffin.

In an unstructured conversation, spiced with clever comments and personal anecdots of experiences in a country which had been once called “The Switzerland of Central Asia” because there are so many different ethnic and language groups that have often been at war with one another. In fact, Switzerland, with its decentralized canton system and federal structure was suggested as the only arrangement that might work. “The UN will not act on its own, ” remarked one veteran British journo present, “because of they are waiting to be told what to do by the US. In your country, they have a term called “DBA” which stands for Doing Business As, and the truth is the US does business as the UN.”

The UN, it seems, is paralyzed and awaiting ores, and going through the motions half expecting that it will be called upon to clean up the mess when “America’s New War” gets Osama and moves on. Suggestions that the UN will appoint a War Crimes Tribunal were scoffed at as was the option of sending in military units. Writing in the New Yorker this week, editor David Remnick holds up the UN as the ultimate problem solver, raising the hope that Bush may have changed his mind towards the UN, perhaps after winning applause for his “let’s go get em” rally cry at the General Assembly. (At the time, I noted that no US media outlets reported on reactions by the delegates from other countries. I cornered a British journalist for a leading financial newspaper who was there, sneered her lips and said “Most hated it. He was just talking down to them.”

WASHINGTON: “MAKING IT UP AS IT GOES ALONG”

So what I asked is Washington proposing by way of a political settlement? They went through the up coming meeting in Berlin which will bring the factions together but everyone thought that the Northern Alliance or United Front is not very united or in a rush to make a deal with others. As for other plans being put forth in Washington, there was a stunning silence from a man close to the top man in the UN structure. No one clearly knows, because as someone remarked, they are making it up as they go along.

What they have also just realized is they may accomplish more with bucks than bombs and are waving a $25 million reward around for the person who turns in Bin-Laden. Money changes most things, and now bin Laden will probably have pay more for his survival in what may turn into a bidding war that cannot be rigged in the way that Sotheby auctions allegedly were, according to court testimony now being heard in New York.

The man for all TV shows, Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek says Afghans have no premium on sleazy opportunism in the latest issue of Newsweek. “The Northern Alliance, once scorned as a ragtag bunch of misfits, is now spoken of with awe and affection. We should not have been so surprised that the Afghans switched to the winning side so quickly. People in Washington do it all the time.”

“A NEST OF VIPERS”

When I pushed the conversation into a discussion on the role of the media, there was a lively go around with complaints about reporters filing from places no one ever heard of and whose significance wasn’t explained. There were compaints of Few pictures of dead bodies and general swipes at the largely uncritical posture taken by the media of US government claims. A New York Times reporter acknowledged an “aberration” when it waited six days to report on a bin Laden threat against the UN in a story that noted it hadn’t been seen on TV. It hadn’t been reported in the Times either. “Why wait for TV,” the journalist was asked who shrug his shoulder?

Others spoke about talented journalists who know the region well being forced to stay on the Brooklyn crime beat to please the paper’s hierarchy who won’t use someone who had not been broken , oops, trained in-house. “It’s a nest of vipers,” remarked one jorunalist present. When I asked former editorial writer wihose by line is well known if that was fair, he said, to my surprise, “absolutely!” Others spoke of important stories being consigned to the “A Nation Challenged” special section which was dismissed as a “landfill” of detail. “When will the nation Stop being challenged?.” was a question that went without a response. It seemed clear from this meeting that journalists with groups like IWPR and INTERNEWS has a lot to contribute to the mainstream media discourse that is being lost.

HATS OFF TO CANADA

There were no TV guys present, so the medium that most Americans rely on for their news got off lightly. I went home to watch “THE NATIONAL,” CBC’s fine newscast which carried a dramatic filmed report from the BBC which provided a peek of life inside Taliban controlled Khandahar. Most interesting were the miles and miles of tents housing internally displaced people, those refugees at risk whose plight has been consistently downplayed. Also shown was a man and his family escaping from a town bombed “in error” by US warplanes with 14 civilian fatalities, ten of whom were members of his own family. He approached the reporter to ask if he had a way of reaching the US Air Force to be more accurate the next time around.

Also on CBC this morning, a report on an upbeat ceremony honoring NELSON MANDELA as an honorary Canadian citizen. He praised Canada’s role in he fight against apartheid. One of its contributions was a survey of media coverage which showed that while human rights abuses in South Africa increased, coverage in the West decreased. “Pretoria has been largely successful in driving images of human rights violations, poverty and uprisings off the TV screens of the western world,” it concluded. A tip of the Dissector’s keyboard to Canada today.

WATCH OUT OSAMA: GERALDO IS COMING

Back on US TV, not much had changed. Most annoying are the viewer polls that outlets like CNN and FOX use to involve viewers who are charged for the calls. The questions are stupid. WILL BIN LADEN BE CAPTURED? And other silly queries designed that have no statistical validity and just give viewers another way to waste time and money. On MSBC this morning, the loathsome Imus was joking with NBC correspondent Jim Maceda about his luggage and asking him if he has run into GERALDO RIVERA who quit CNBC to join Fox to play more games, No, Maceda said, no Geraldo sightings yet, adding that he is sure he will because bump ino him because he will have an entourage. With Rivera on he scene, the network wars will be heat up.

Also Geraldo, please be careful. I can give him such advice because we used to work together at 20.20. Careful about the facts. Alternet.org reports on embarasments ufferdd by Britain’s Geraldo, the BBC’s John Simpson who had claimed and then retracted the claim that he singlehandedly libefrated Kabul. Now Simpson is red faced because it turns out that a SECRET DOCUMENT that he reportedly found proving that he Taliban were making nuclear weapons turns out to be ….Oh, let me let reporter David Cassel tell you about it:

THE “SECRET DOCUMENT”

“An abandoned Taliban building in Kabul contained an alarming document that apparently described how to make an atomic bomb. But alarm turned to laughter when a webmaster who’d viewed news footage of the document recognized it as a 1979 parody.

“Since last week’s column, ‘Let’s Make a Time Machine’, was received so well in the new step-by-step format, this month’s column will follow the same format,” one section begins.

“The article first appeared in the Journal of Irreproducible Results, which has been publishing scientific humor and trivia since the 1950s, and Taliban fighters would find this particular parody no more helpful than any of the magazine’s other mock science. It advised would-be bomb builders to obtain high-grade plutonium “at your local weapons supplier … or perhaps the Junior Achievement in your neighborhood … Wash your hands with soap and warm water after handling the material, and don’t allow your children or pets to play in it or eat it.”

“Any left over Plutonium dust is excellent as an insect repellant. You may wish to keep the substance in a lead box if you can find one in your local junk yard, but an old coffee can will do nicely.”

“Nevertheless, late last week white-haired BBC reporter John Simpson included footage of the document in a report from the building, along with pictures of left-behind weapons, explosives, hand grenades and even box-cutters. Anthony Lloyd, a reporter from the Times of London also appears to have discovered the document, since he refers to its erroneous instructions about using TNT to create a thermo-nuclear device. “The vernacular quickly spun out of my comprehension but there were phrases through the mass of chemical symbols and physics jargon that anyone could understand,” Lloyd wrote. Soon the Times report was being included in articles by the Associated Press.

THE WORLD MAY HAVE CHANGED—TV HASN’T

This may be a joke but much of what is on TV these days isn’t as Norman Solomon points out in his new column on how the world on TV HAS NOT changed in the aftermath of September 11: “Overall, the media disconnect is pretty extreme: Journalists and a range of commentators have told us that our world changed profoundly and irreversibly on Sept. 11. Yet, the vast majority of what’s on television is in the same old groove.

“In our society, the one-track momentum of commercialism has so much velocity that even horrific events don’t slow it down for very long. The corporate-driven locomotives of consumerism keep barreling ahead. Like the cloying MasterCard commercial with its endless variations, the messages are slyly contradictory: There are precious things that money can’t buy. So, to fully avail yourself of those precious things, be sure to buy, buy, buy.

“President Bush has stressed that Americans shouldn’t fail to shop, as if pulling out credit cards is a defiant blow against “the evildoers.” Thousands of TV commercials go on their merry way, oblivious to dire circumstances outside the calculus of huckstering…”

PEACE BREAKS OUT IN THE PACIFICA WARS

A domestic radio war that has gone on much longer than the war in Afghanistan may be on the verge of settlement with both sides exghausted and the bank depleted. Reports the Pacifica Campaign: ” WASHINGTON, DC (Nov. 18) — The Pacifica National Board agreed today to voluntarily dissolve, reconstitute itself as an interim board with new members, and then to implement a democratization process for the five-station network.

“Dissidents and majority factions on Pacifica’s embattled 15-member board agreed to each appoint five of their members to a new interim board. In addition, five entirely new members would be appointed by the chairs of Pacifica’s five Local stations? Will this peace hold? Will the UN have to step in? Stay tuned.

MORE COMMENTS ON THE COLUMN: SHOULD I LABOR ON?

Comments on these columns are still coming in, and they are proving an embarrassment of riches. A new friend-correspondent and sometime typo catcher Janet writes from Washington DC: “OK Danny, you went fishing for some compliments and guess what? You packedin a basket full. Good for you!!! What is this about quitting. Despite the age old adage, “No news is good news.”, the real adage about real news is - No news is No news. Good news is Good news. Bad news is Bad news.

“But, ingenious, outspoken, trend defying, hold the press accountablejournalists like you are a dying breed. Like a small bookstore, you knowthat your news is personalized rather than commercialized. Feelings andpassion went into the perspective and getting the story means understandingwhy the story is being “got”. We need to know that. We need to be madeaware that there is more than one way to read the source.

“Hold on to your 60’s bell bottom thoughts and paisley opinions, keep blazingthe trail for alternative news sources and analysis. Remember what yourMama used to tell you about achievement, you won’t find the toy in thecereal box without some serious cereal eating….”

“Cathy Higgins, who I don’t know, writes from the Republic of Hot Mail: “I just started viewing mediachannel.org right after Sept. 11, and find it an extremely valuable resource. Your daily dispatches provide much good information. I searched for a long time for some mention of the bombing of Al Jazeera’s Kabul offices after hearing one reporter mention it briefly on special coverage on NPR. I searched your dispatches and found you to have written most thoughtfully about it. Thanks for the insights and news not found elsewhere.”

Again, thank you all. I am really not fishing for compliments so much as as encouraging interactivity. We need more of a dialogue than a diatribe, but that is hard to stimulate. Last week, I published a letter in this column that I sent around to news anchors and top US journalists inviting then to comment on complaints, recorded here and elsewhere, that US media coverage is skewed towards government views, sanitized of dissent, and just plain incomplete, when it is not distorted. I have had only ONE response so far, from a senior editor of the New York Times. He very kindly emailed back to say that he “passed.”

I am just passing it all on. Back tomorrow with more. Tonight at the CPK dinner,I will be personally asking members of a well-coiffed media elite for comments. Let’s see what they have to say. In the interim, let us hear from you too. Write Dissector@mediachanel.org.