One of my favorite holiday presents this past year was from South African film producer Anant Singh. It is a framed photo of two prize fighters. The one on the left, in a characteristically loud shirt, has his left fist extended to the nose of the man on the right who has his fists up, but at his side. Both are older now and no longer lords of the ring.

IN THIS CORNER

On the right is Muhammad Ali, who as you will learn if you didn’t already know, in light of his iconic status today, was once persecuted by the United States government for his refusal to serve in Vietnam. There is a scene of him repeating his famous phrase “No Viet Cong ever called me nigger” in Michael Mann’s new movie ALI in which Will Smith tries and sometimes succeeds in capturing the Champ’s charisma. (Personally, I preferred the documentary “When We Were Kings.”)

The other ex-boxer throwing a punch for the camera is Nelson Mandela who says he always wanted to be the heavyweight champion of the world. Mandela, a champ in other arenas, “clarified” his views on the US war on Afghanistan yesterday, after having given the Bush Administration a seal of approval in remarks after visiting the White House last November. “Our view may have been one sided and overstated,” he acknowledges now, after encountering a blizzard of criticism after returning to South Africa. Mandela had actually endorsed a “mission limited to expelling terrorist elements,” and explicitly counseled against attacking Iraq. Now, he says that he fears his statement made him appear “insensitive to and uncaring about the suffering inflicted upon the Afghan people and the country.” He also questioned labeling Osma bin Laden as the man behind the attacks of 9/11 “before he has been tried and convicted.”

CNN HUNTS ON

CNN continues to be obsessed with the hunt for bin Laden and Mullah Omar, to the exclusion of virtually all other aspects of the conflict. Carol Lin was harping on the ‘where is he’ question to correspondents all morning, who, of course, she knew, did not know. According to Dana Calvo in the LA Times coverage on the cable news nets is “wearing thin.” CNN may have dropped “The Hunt for bin Laden” banner from its screen but that is all it is reporting on, over and over, as in its heavily hyped coverage of the marine assault on a suspected Taliban base, “the largest ground operation of the war.” It achieved zippo.(See Today’s Times: “Marines recovered only small amounts of weapons anddocuments belonging to Al Qaeda in a deserted terroristtraining camp in southern Afghanistan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/03/international/03AFGH.html?todaysheadlines

Says Roy Peter Clark of the Pynter Institute: “I’m seeing mostly confusion. I’m seeing a lack of coherence in the overall lack of coverage.” Run that by me again: a lack of coherence in the lack of coverage. Oh, I get it. Also, Roy, I’m seeing CNN’s military analysts, ostensibly retired, continuing to talk about the Pentagon in terms of “we,” revealing themselves to be merely propgandists on another payroll. Two generals, one on Wolf Blitzer’s show, the other on Aaron Brown’s wrap-up did this unchallenged last night. Has anyone else noticed this total confusion and conflict in roles? The only thing new in the news yesterday, besides the snow storm in Atlanta, was a brief glimpse of a doctored photo of bin Laden, as he would appear shaven and in a business suit which was being dropped on suspected Al Qaeda outposts in Afghanistan. It is supposed to suggest to his faithful that he has abandoned them for the good life. It looked awfully crude, even pitiful, to me. Is this the best the psycological ops crowd can come uo with?

HUNTING AL QAEDA

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA spy in the Middle East, discusses Al Qaeda in a a piece he wrote for The Atlantic. A converation with him appears on that magazine’s lively web site. He is asked: “In ‘The Gospel According to Osama bin Laden,’ you wrote that al Qaeda will “outlive bin Laden unless the United States physically eliminates al Qaeda’s entire command structure.” How likely is it that the U.S. could succeed in this? Our pursuit of bin Laden, Mullah Omar, etc., so far does not inspire too much confidence from the outside that we’re going to be able to systematically eliminate al Qaeda’s command structure.”

“Gerecht responds: “I think the U.S. has already inflicted severe damage. It’s too early to tell whether we have been able to knock out the brain-power of al Qaeda, but certainly the odds are at least decent that we will, in the not-so-distant future, have gotten the top three?..But that won’t be sufficient. One of the hallmarks of the institution does appear to be that though the various cells are not autonomous, they do nevertheless have a great deal of flexibility. If you look, for instance, at the cell that wanted to blow up the embassy in Paris and to bomb NATO in Brussels, these individuals were independent, but they were waiting for instructions from bin Laden.

“The members of al Qaeda seem to be spiritually dependent but tactically independent. That’s obviously going to make it much more difficult for us to eliminate them, and certainly these individuals can go underground for a very long time. I think the most worrisome cells are the ones in Europe, and secondarily the ones in the United States. Those tend to be the most lethal, the most accomplished. See TheAtlantic.com for more. In late September, I spoke to someone who had direct involvement with the FBI probe after 9/1. I was told that they knew then that AL Qaeda was much bigger in its presence here than most of the press seemed to recognize. I reported ion the suspicion months ago. Last Sunday, the Washington Post got around to reporting the same info. Why do these mainstream media probes take so long?

CIVILIAN CASUALTIES: STILL DOWNPLAYED

From the email: “Spokesman for the Afghanistan Secretary of Information, Mr. Mohammed al Abdullah, responded to the assertion that US Military forces were killing innocent noncombatant civilians in Afghanistan weeks after the Taliban and al Qadea have been defeated. He said, “here in Afghanistan we have an old saying that ‘it is easier to kill villagers than warriors’.” No comment was available from any US Government or news media source. In case you missed it, journalist Christopher Reilly of YellowTimes.ORG reprises a recent study estimating the escalating number of civilian casualties. The story: “Over 3,767 civilians killed by U.S. in Afghanistan; Pentagon misleads.” The URL: http://yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=67

Writing yesterday in the Irish Times, Vincent Browne indicted the media for downplaying he story. “For the most part, the media in the US, Britain and here have been indifferent to this slaughter,” he writes. “It is not that these atrocities have got no coverage, although precious little, it is that they are rarely highlighted and never drawn together to present the full awful picture of what is going on.”

“For instance, yesterday’s New York Times carried no mention of the killing of the 100 civilians in Qalaye Naizi on Sunday night. The Washington Post carried the story in an inside page, as did the Los Angeles Times. There was no mention in the Boston Globe.

“Sky News and CNN carried the story in its news bulletins on Monday but in secondary slots after reports of the launch of the euro (which was hardly news at all since we all knew about this for years). When stories of these slaughters are carried at all they are prefaced by denials by the US military. And even when the US military acknowledge a slaughter, it is carried as though it was of no consequence. ”

“WE WILL ONLY HANG THE BODIES FOR A SHORT TIME”

AFP reports on how the new regime in Kabul will be “more liberal” than the Taliban. This story ran in The Sydney (AU) Morning Herald, a newspaper in Australia.

“Afghanistan to apply sharia law with discretion: minister”

KABUL, Dec 27 AFP

“Afghanistan’s new government will still impose sharia Islamic law on its people but will act less harshly than the deposed Taliban regime, Justice Minister Abdul Rahim Karimi said today.The fundamentalist Taliban’s five-year rule which ended this month was marked by public amputations for thieves as well as executions and corporal punishment for other crimes.

“Our Islam is different,” Karimi told AFP. “How can you cut off the hand of a man who has nothing to eat? We must first feed the people and give them a livelihood.”

But Karimi said sharia law would remain in force. “People would not understand if we got rid of it.” It was not clear what punishments would be meted out under the new administration.Karimi took up his post Monday after the six-month interim government was sworn in last Saturday. His comments were more moderate than those of a leading judge last week.

Judge Ahamat Ullha Zarif told AFP that public executions and amputations would continue in accordance with sharia law but justice would be applied fairly and with mercy.

“There will be some changes from the time of the Taliban,” he said.”For example, the Taliban used to hang the victim’s body in public for four days. We will only hang the body for a short time, say 15 minutes.”?.Adulterers, both male and female, would still be stoned to death, Zarif said, “but we will use only small stones.”This allowed the condemned person a chance to escape. “If they are able to run away, they are free.” http://www.smh.com.au/breaking/2001/12/28/FFXC1S3WPVC.html

FREEDOM, PAKISTAN STYLE

AP reports; “Hundreds of antiwar demonstrators marched toward the Pakistan-India borderon Monday in a protest that turned ugly when border guards, shoutingobscenities, beat Pakistan’s top human-rights activist and at least a dozenothers.Asma Jehangir, a lawyer and activist who works as a human-rights envoy forthe United Nations, was set upon by border guards led by Maj. FaisalGhauri, a commander, after she said she and her entourage came to theborder near the town of Wagah to demonstrate against war.Jehangir was not seriously injured.”We had planned this rally for peace,” she told a news conference an hourafter the late-afternoon rally. “And it would have shown the internationalcommunity that Pakistan is a peace-loving country.” And what did it show instead? Keep your eyes on the this powder keg: India is now saying that terrorists are planning to blow o the Taj Mahal. If that happens……

BLAME CLINTON

In some media circles, it has become fashionable to blame the Clinton Adminstration for a failure to capture Osama, as if Mr. Bill didn’t try. Joe Conason, who has come Clinton’s defense before, writes about this distaction in this week’s New York Observer. “It was perfectly predictable that in the aftermath of terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the search for political scapegoats would be as intense as the hunt for Osama bin Laden. It was just as obvious that Bill Clinton would quickly become the favorite quarry of this quest?Ĭparticularly among the former President’s old adversaries in the national media and the Republican Party (two entities which often seem to be locked in a mind-meld these days).

“There’s another convenient place where these worthies might look for culprits but never do: the mirror. Whatever the various failures and flaws of Mr. Clinton’s tenure may have been, his efforts against terrorism compare favorably with the frivolous preoccupations of his critics.

“As articulated by America?’s foremost analysts, the general complaint is that the Clinton administration “didn’t do enough” to forestall the atrocities of Sept. 11. This deep insight is a truism: Al Qaeda’s suicide operatives achieved their mission despite any and all measures taken by the government to frustrate and destroy the bin Laden network. Those measures, which were hardly insignificant, were by definition not “enough.”

“That simple notion was at the heart of The New York Times’ Dec. 30 investigative report, a long disquisition whose front-page headline conveyed its slant: “Planning for Terror But Failing to Act.” The facts and quotes accumulated by reporters Judith Miller, Don Van Natta Jr. and Jeff Gerth didn?’t quite justify that damning summary. The Times reporters appeared to be laboring under the assumption that Mr. Clinton could have mustered a full-scale unilateral invasion of Afghanistan to capture the Al Qaeda leadership? at a time when the Congressional majority was seeking to impeach him. But if that fantasy is discounted, it is clear even in The Times’ account that the Clinton administration made many attempts to strike lethally at Mr. bin Laden. And the fact that Mr. Clinton took terrorism very seriously would have been clearer still if The Times had mentioned the enormous increases he approved in counter terrorism spending by the F.B.I. and other federal agencies.” For more see NYObserver.com

NEW YORK TIMES CHALLENGED

Your News Dissector was among those queried by the LA Times’ freelancer Lauren Sadler on the demise of the New York Times “A Nation Challenged” section which has now moved from being a special section of the paper of record to becoming a mere feature inside the news pages. “The section has won accolades from even typically contrarian figures like Rupert Murdoch–owner of the New York Post–who admitted on the Charlie Rose show that the Times’ staffers “have just pulled on all their huge resources and done a fantastically good job.” So who do they get to differ with Rupert? Guess? “But media critic Danny Schechter, executive editor of Mediachannel.org, has found the grouping of related stories in one section problematic. “I think it’s a sort of ghettoizing of the coverage, so if you’re not interested in it, you’re just not going to look at it. You’re not going to happen upon it elsewhere in the paper.” Schechter says his acquaintances at the Times have also been critical of the section, referring to it as the “landfill” section. “They’ve got a point,” he says. “It’s certainly a landfill of information.”Your News Dissector was among those queried by the LA Times Lauren Sadler on the demise of the New York Times A Nation Challenged section which will now move insider the paper: “The section has won accolades from even typically contrarian figures like Rupert Murdoch–owner of the New York Post–who admitted on the Charlie Rose show that the Times’ staffers “have just pulled on all their huge resources and done a fantastically good job.”

So who do they get to differ with Rupert? Guess? “But media critic Danny Schechter, executive editor of Mediachannel.org, has found the grouping of related stories in one section problematic. “I think it’s a sort of ghettoizing of the coverage, so if you’re not interested in it, you’re just not going to look at it. You’re not going to happen upon it elsewhere in the paper.” Schechter says his acquaintances at the Times have also been critical of the section, referring to it as the “landfill” section. “They’ve got a point,” he says. “It’s certainly a landfill of information.”

MEDIA STORY OF THE YEAR

Patrick Phillips of I Want Media.com, an excellent site chock full of media stories writes to say that they have added a new feature on the top media stories of 2001. Patrick’s pick: AOLTimeWarner Rules. “In an interview with I Want Media, Jon Friedman, the media editor of CBS MarketWatch.com, said he thought today’s biggest media story is AOL Time Warner, a behemoth whose activities “impact the entire industry.” I agree that the merger of AOL and Time Warner at the start of the year is one of 2001’s most significant media stories. AOL TW’s clout and business pursuits in “convergence” are pushing other media companies into M&A activities in attempts just to keep up (look at Vivendi Universal’s recent actions), and make the company a true driving force in the evolution of media. Its vast news and entertainment holdings and distribution platforms have the potential to influence how we receive information and communicate with one another — and may even shape global culture. And if AOL TW can’t successfully fuse its new and old media divisions, who can?”

I and EYE AND I: PETER SIMON’S PHOTO JOURNALISM

Peter Simon is a photograher whose status as brother of Carly has been eclisped by an exciting new collection (from Bullfinch press) of his impressive body of work, “I and Eye,” an autobiographical collection that brings together personal documentation of his life in Boston in the ’60’s, on a commune in the 70’s, and as a big time rock and roll shutterbug in the 80’s. The book features some of the wonderful pictures from the book Reggae Bloodlines, still in print, that he co-created with the masterful Stephen Davis at a time when reggae was on the brink of breaking out large. He tells some great stories about his efforts to get Bob Marley to pose. His photoman vibrations are a cool running in themselves, a true kalaidascopic snapshot of his generation and mind.

Peter was there when it was, and hangs out these days on Martha’s Vineyard, where he is known to one and all as an image-maker and record producer and Island fixture with wife Ronni. I was touched by the range of his photos and his candid disclosures of life in the fast lane and on the farm. The Holidays may be over, but his photojournalism belongs in libraries and collections, as it is now in mine. For moreon how to get a copy, check out petersimon.com.

Finally, let’s bid adieu to Hollywierd movie producer and celebrity smashing author Julia Phillips, 57, who died yesterday. She produced many movies, and savaged the industry she worked in with the book “You Will never Eat Lunch In This Town Again,” which turnd out to be a prophetic title in her case. She became a pariah, as she reveals in today’s NY Times obit, “because I lit into them with a harsh fluorescent light and rendered them as contemptible as they truly are.” Read the obit. Read the book, and recognize the value of fluorescent light even if she did ghost Matt Drudge’s book. It took one outsider to make common cause with another.

The time has come for me to say sayonara for now. I am out of words. I welcome yours. Write: dissector@mediachannel.org