For years, the most common usage for the word “Hero” was in connection with a sandwich. Now, it should be printed on our money because its usage has gone into overdrive and has become part of the currency of all conversation and a tool for commercialization.

Today’s hero, in the US media primarily, is the first American killed in action in Afghanistan: Johnny “Mike” Spann, A CIA agent. He was a casualty of that prison revolt in Mazar e Sharif which is finally becoming a focal point for more serious media interest now that its over. He was, no doubt gutsy to be there, but how he died, and what his role there was, remains murky in a war where covert agencies are on the front lines, and secrecy is the official policy of US government bodies that should be more forthcoming.

PASSION FOR HIS COUNTRY “AND HIS AGENCY”

The flag is at half mast at the CIA building in Virginia, which had itself been a target for one of Emir Osama’s commandos some years ago. According to Islam Online, “CIA Director George J. Tenet addressed agency employees Wednesday morning. He called Spann “an American hero, a man who showed passion for his country and his agency through his selfless courage.” Tenet added and said his fellow officers should “continue the mission that Mike Spann held'’ sacred. “And so we will continue our battle against evil with renewed strength and spirit,'’ Tenet”

This ritual of reverence and remembrance in what is now officially “a battle against evil” is winning the heart of Americans who have seen Mike’s anguished family and dad on TV. But, elsewhere in the world, in a story NOT in the tabloids are the responses of human rights groups who want explanations, not accolades. The BBC reports this morning:

AMNESTY INTTERNATIONAL DEMANDS….

“Amnesty International said there must be an investigation into what triggered the incident, ‘and into the proportionality of the response by United Front [Northern Alliance], US and UK forces’”.

“The enquiry “should make urgent recommendations to ensure that other instances of surrender and holding of prisoners do not lead to similar disorders and loss of life,” it said.

“A Northern Alliance spokesman, Abdul Wahid Yasa, told the BBC that the revolt had been started by radical fighters from Osama Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network.

“Iraq condemned what it called the “massacre” by US forces and the Northern Alliance, while some Pakistani clerics called for a day of mourning against what they called a “barbaric act”.

AMNESTY AND RED CROSS BARRED, SAYS GVNN

The Globalvision News Network’s David Ben-Aryeah, filing from London, reports what most media commentators didn’t, that:”Both Amnesty International and the International Committee of the Red Cross had tried and failed to gain access to the compound or the prisoners.

“Northern Alliance General Dostum is not known for his compassion or tolerance of human rights, he controlled Mazar-e-Sharif with an iron hand for several years after the Russian retreat from Afghanistan. After Mazar-e-Sharif was recaptured 10 days ago, Dostum warned the Northern Alliance leadership against trying to return their control to the city as he considered it his personal fiefdom.

“Serious questions have already been posed as to his ruthlessness, following the confirmation by the Red Cross of the discovery of the massacre of several hundred foreign Taliban fighters — mainly from Pakistan — as the city fell to Dostum’s forces 10 days ago. Religious bodies in Pakistan and Iran have expressed their concern at the massacre and added their voices to the intensifying demands for a full investigation.”

UPDATE: THIS JUST IN…

As of l0:30 this morning, two hours after I posted this column, the Pakistan News Service reports that Amnesty is being invited to investigate:

“KABUL NOV 29 (PNS): The Northern Alliance said on Thursday it would let human rights group Amnesty International investigate the deaths of several hundred captured pro-Taliban foreign fighters who staged a revolt in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

“We have no problem in this regard. There will be no hindrance for them (AI) to do an investigation,” Alliance spokesman Mohammad Habeel said.

Different reports have been published in news papers around the world calling for a thorough probe of this staged revolt. Some experts have shown concerns about this whole revolt by calling it a designed strategy of US Special Forces, who have orders to kill every non afghan fighter or captured prisoners of war who have had come to Afghanistan to fight with Taliban.”

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CARNAGE?

And what of the US responsibility? Writing this week in the New York Press, conservative commentator Chris Caldwell shares some of my suspicions of what happened,but not from a human rights perspective, and exlicitly, he insists, without the outrage I have been expessing about the muddled and amoral coverage: “And was it a prison riot? The official Northern Alliance story–that several hundred of the foreign Taliban were able to smuggle rifles, grenades and Kalashnikovs into the prison under their robes–suggests that the Alliance is either a pack of liars or the most easy-come-easy-go guerrilla army ever assembled. Particularly after their fervently expressed wish that the Arabs be slaughtered once and for all, letting them enter prison with hundreds of military weapons bespeaks a negligence that stretches credulity.

“What, finally, was the U.S. role in this? I ask this purely out of intellectual curiosity, and without the tiniest velleity of outrage. If the foreign Taliban are indistinguishable from Al Qaeda, and if Al Qaeda’s reason for being is to murder American civilians, then this resolution to the Kunduz siege will work better than any alternative pour décourager les autres. Over the long term, our role in the incident is more likely to be revealed (and exaggerated), but at the very least we can say that last week saw an historical first.

“(Unless there’s ever been another “prison riot” put down with the help of B-52 bombers.)”

THE NEXT AFGHAN SUMMIT: WOMEN UNITED

Meanwhile, in Bonn Germany , across the Rhine from the hotel in which hosted the Media Tenor conference on failures of media coverage, the Afghan talks continue with two of the parties already in agreement about the post-Taliban transition they each hope to lead. One complaint about the process that I heard on Public Radio yesterday were concerns from Afghan women that they are being left out of the planning for the future, just as they had been pushed out of their own socity by the Mullahocracy.

Now NGO groups are coming to the rescue, or, at least, hope to make a difference. This just in to the Dissector News Desk: “- In response to a request from women ofAfghanistan for support and solidarity, the European Women’s Lobby, EqualityNow, V-Day, the Center for Strategic Initiatives of Women, and The FeministMajority are hosting an Afghan Women’s Summit for Democracy.

“The Summit will be held at the European Commission in Brussels fromTuesday - Thursday, December 4-6, in collaboration with the Gender Advisorto the Secretary-General of the United Nations and UNIFEM. Fifty Afghanwomen leaders, broadly representative of women in Afghanistan, will takepart in the Summit, which will help bring the voices of Afghan women intothe current international political discourse, ensuring that their messageis heard.”

“Three of the Summit participants: Sima Wali, primary Afghan organizer of theSummit, along with Seddighe Balkhi and Amena Afzali, will come directly fromthe negotiations in Bonn where they are now serving as delegates. TheSummit will be chaired by Judge Navanethem Pillay, South African Presidentof the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.The AfghanWomen1s Summit is designed to implement United Nations SecurityCouncil Resolution 1325 on Women and Peace and Security. Adopted last year,the resolution reaffirmed the importance of the equal participation and fullinvolvement of women in all efforts for the maintenance and promotion ofpeace and security, and the need to increase their role in decision-makingwith regard to conflict prevention and resolution.”

While women from Europe and Afghanistan plan their future, and forge a collaboration, no less a media outlet than the National Enquirer, never known as an outpost for feminist advocacy, is saluting that country’s now unveiled better half as the true heros, or should that be, “SHEROS” of the day: Here’s part of their overheated EXCLUSIVE coverage, perfect for enhancing circulation on this chilly morning.

EXCLISIVE: ENQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW

“Taliban women have played a key role during the war in Afghanistan - working behind the scenes to help crush the protectors of Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist associates.

“As U.S. air strikes decimated the Taliban and our Afghan allies pushed them from major cities, wives of Taliban soldiers became America’s secret ally, convincing their men to flee, switch sides or even give up altogether, The ENQUIRER has learned exclusively….

“Shockingly, some Afghan women even took up arms and killed Taliban soldiers themselves - they got hold of Kalashnikov rifles and engaged in gun battles with the soldiers, say eyewitnesses.

“The women all say it’s better to die than to give in to the Taliban,” said Dr. Atta Mohammed, who works at an Italian-run medical clinic in the city of Bagram and witnessed a gun battle between Afghan women and Taliban soldiers.

Before the U.S. bombing campaign began, ENQUIRER reporter Alan Butterfield traveled to dangerous areas on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where he was granted interviews through a translator with the wives of Taliban soldiers.”

They told The ENQUIRER that Afghan women were already secretly conspiring against the Taliban. Incredibly, some late-stage pregnant women risked their lives by aborting their children rather than bringing females into their cruel world.

“These acts were a silent protest against the Taliban’s way of life,” one of the women, 20-year-old Amna, told The ENQUIRER after her husband left to fight with the Taliban. “As women, we are fighting back in our own way. A good man like my husband is a soldier following orders and he will do what he is told. But I know he doesn’t approve of what the bosses order for women in my country.

“If the Taliban remain in control, I will do what other women are doing if I become pregnant again - I will kill the baby if I know it is a girl.”

ISLAMIC TRUTH: THE TALIBAN Vs HOLLYWOOD

Despite its tone, Enquirer reporting is often accurate. But, just to appease the gods of journalism who once demanded “balance” in all stories –a requirement that many media outlets suspend at a time of war — here is a Taliban tinged view of recent events in Afghanistan from the Islamic Truth website. (Yes, there is one!)

“Northern Alliance open up cinemas, sell porn-magazines and allow women to expose themselves in public.

“Under the guns of the NA troops, cinemas have reopened and western experts disguised as NA troops have installed the latest cinema projector equipment to show bollywood films. Mass executions are happening throughout provinces north of Kabul as the NA/US/British troops purge key areas by paying locals to finger pro-Taliban supporters.

“‘When the cinemas where open”, said one local ,” no one wanted to enter the building but then the TV camera men came and under the watchful eye of NA troops youngsters where forced into the cinema at gunpoint. None of the elders approved of this as the films on show where haram and where against the teaching’s of Islam.” These sentiments where prevalent throughout Kabul as the NA/US/British troops tried desperately to get some momentum behind their propaganda programme.

“The Northern Alliance consists of a rag-tag group consisting of communists, fascists and atheists. The NA cannot be regarded as being Muslim in any way or form. They are Kafir and should be dispensed with as soon as humanly possible. The NA have been installed into Afghanistan by America and Britain since Afghanistan was the only country in the world which implemented Allah(Swt) laws and this was against the plan the Kafir have set for the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent and Middle-east.

“With the NA will come fear, killings, massacres, innocent bloodshed, mass murder, pillage, rape, prostitution, gang rape and more drug trafficking than ever before. The NA will try to dope the masses by supplying free drugs to the young to pollute the next generation of Afghan people. War Lords will control territories with their own personal order. One Kabul local commented as saying, “…The NA are a bunch of cancerous, kuniving, killers that must be shot dead without hesitation.”

Help me out. What does the word :kafir” mean in this context. White South Africans used the term “kaffer” as the Afrikaans substitute for “nigger.” Don’t you think it is better to acknowledge the reality of this hate journalism (on all sides) than ignore it

JOURNALISTS ON THE FRONT LINE WAIT TO DIE

Journalists on the ground in Afghanistan are fighting their own war for survival. Writes the Village Voices Ted Rall” Afghans are different from you and me. We live in a world in which more people are alive than have ever lived and died. Theirs is the diametric opposite. Afghanistan is defined by things that used to be: people, ideas, Buddha statues, cities. Journalistic hyperbole has no place here; even the most abused adjectives fall short in a country where Soviet tank treads serve as speed bumps.”

Rall’s full piece brings you into the war in a way that television has largely proven itself incapable of: “Tanks and trucks and Japanese rental cars with Dubai plates zoom west across the desert, dodging donkeys, potholes, and piles of wheat drying on the asphalt — and every now and then a group of refugees from Kunduz. The drama is purely theoretical; in practice the sight of teenaged girls in brightly colored dresses, toting ridiculously tiny bags containing everything they own, becomes instantaneously mundane. Likewise the front itself, which has become such a local institution that it now has its own parking attendants for visiting journos.”

He closes with a warning from one of those sound-byte ready Northern Alliance commanders:” “If you stay after dark,” he warns, “some of my troops will rob you. And maybe worse.” There’s something tantalizing about this possibility. For one thing, I’d have something to write about. For another, it might jump-start the motions and bowels locked solid by days of fending off stooped old ladies in burkas pulling at my clothes in Central Asia’s ultimate form of aggressive panhandling. Maybe the sight of all of those guns — every other male carries at least one pointed at me — might spark my sympathy for the millions who lie under graves of stones and green flags hanging limply from mangy sticks.

“More likely, some dumb fuck would shoot me just for the hell of it. I don’t care to be number 11, not tonight.”

ABDANDONMENT ISSUES

If that is not bizarre enough for you, try this, a letter that Alexander Cockburn (via Steve Perry) reprints from the letters column of England’s New Statesman about the presumed sanity, or lack thereof, of Mr. Evil, Osama Bin Ladin:

“Re: Crazy Osama.

“I don’t think Osama Bin Laden is psychotic, he just has some abandonment issues and possibly a really poor body image. I think sometimes we are all guilty of terrorism, and by that I mean inner-terrorism. I myself was an inner terrorist, with crumbling towers of self-esteem and the plummeting fusilage of emotional frigidity.”

SORRY, I HAVE TO ABANDON YOU—THE DENTIST CALLS

I am beginning to get a tremor of abandonment issues vis a vis today’s outing on the weblog. I am off to the dentist. (UPDATE: No Cavities!) Here’s a pithy response from a reader to whom email is used the telegrams of days gone by: “Debating Alt. Realities - WELL SAID!!!!!!Keep up the good work! Sincerely, Michael Walker - Radford, Va.” Thanks Mike, and thanks America and the AP for this:

“Poll: News Media Values Improving”

“WASHINGTON (AP) - The public’s opinions of news media standards of values and morality - down sharply during the Monica Lewinsky scandal - have improved significantly since the terrorist attacks, a poll says….

I feel better already. See you tomorrow. Keep those emails coming to dissector@mediachannel.org