Yesterday, another 100 bombs were unloaded on yet another suspected terrorist lair in Afghanistan’s Tora Bora mountains, as the US military frenzy to nail the evil doers steps up. One reason underlying this ‘the war may be over, but we are still bombing’ scenario may be deduced from an analysis earlier this morning by a perky Fox News Channel “financial analyst”. When asked what will be needed to crank up the markets, she said, referring to OBL: “we got to get ‘em and kill ‘em.” A bull market is, she asserts with impressive confidence, only possible once Wall Street gets the heads of bin Laden and Mullah Omar delivered on a platter. This need to stoke market psychology with dead bodies sounded like a throw back to those Romans who insisted that the roaring crowds in the coliseum would only be placated when more Christians wee fed to the lions. Every day the Pentagon seems to find more Taliban headquarters to attack after giving the impression they were all gone. Here’s today’s NY Times: “Taliban Leaders May Be Escaping; Al Qaeda Camp Is Hit by U.S. Airstrikes.” Why is a Bull M dependent on so much Bull S?

“THE FORBIDDEN TRUTH”?

As the cable news machines crank on with journalism free news cycles that are copied from each other, independent journalists are asking deeper questions. Sometimes they come up with loosely argued conspiracy theories that sound plausible until you look at the sourcing and recognized the speculative links. Others like the Village Voice’s yoeman muckraker Jim Ridgeway does some original reporting including an interviw this week with two Frenchmen jean Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasqie who have written “Bin Laden, The Forbidden Truth” that is all the rage in Europe but has yet to penetrate the news world here. I had been folloing reports of their findings on the internet and had tended to dismiss them because they came from the “you see, you see” crowd which reduces all conflicts to US plotting by officials who time and again are far less capable of what they are being accused of doing with perfect syncronicity. But when I read Ridgeway this week, he made sense of their findings.

He writes: “The book also reveals a portrait of U.S. policy toward the Taliban that differs sharply from the one usually held up for the American public but coincides with that of the Taliban’s unofficial emissary in the U.S., Laili Helms, the niece of the former CIA head (see “The Accidental Operative,” Voice, June 19, 2001). Helms described one incident after another in which, she claimed, the Taliban agreed to give up bin Laden to the U.S., only to be rebuffed by the State Department. On one occasion, she said, the Taliban agreed to give the U.S. coordinates for his campsite, leaving enough time so the Yanks could whack Al Qaeda’s leader with a missile before he moved. The proposal, she claims, was nixed. The State Department denied receiving any such offer.” (See village voice.com for more)

PENTAGON BRIEFING

Watching Donald Rumsfeld’s press briefing made me squirm since he seemed like and looks like a reincarnation of Vietnam era “thee is light at the end of the tunnel” Defense chief Robert MacNamara. He was asked about what the intelligence agencies had learned about Al Qaeda. After hemming and hawing, he described it as an international terrorist organization active in “scores and scores and scores of countries.” I didn’t learn anything new so I consulted someone old (and gone), some comments by the late/great I.F. Stone who covered Washington by studying documents rather than wasting time at press conferences and photo ops.

” This whole business of intelligence, ” he said, “is a waste of money, highly overrated, You don’t understand what’s happening in history or in your time by peeking through keyholes…What’s the good of all the money we spend on intelligence? When they get an intelligence report that has something in it, they ignore it. They don’t like to read. They want everything on one piece of paper.” If you don’t think his insights, uttered twenty years ago or more are still relevant, read all the articles on the way the Rudman/Hart report predicting an “imminent” terrorist attack on the US was ignored and downplayed?

Today is the day the Administration is likely to announce that it will turn John Walker, the captured American taliban fighter over to US legal authorities for persecution. Rumseld was asked if the US military was prepared to carry out executions. He said they “never talked about it.”

THE LORD OF THE RINGS PARALLEL

“How is it thi enemy keeps coming back, despite all the reports that they have been finished. Maybe we have to look to mythology for an answer. Ira Chernus, a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder is now comparing Al Quada to the story line of the current blockbuster “Lord of the Rings.” Here is part of his argument.

” As I was mining deep in the recesses of www.whitehouse.gov , I unearthed this gem:

” “Reporter: Does [bin Laden] have political goals? The President: He has got evil goals. And it’s hard to think in conventional terms about a man so dominated by evil.

” “Is Osama bin Laden really the Lord of the Rings?

“That question ran through my head for three hours, as I watched a fellowship of brave warriors battle the forces of evil. Was I watching The Lord of the Rings, or network coverage of the war on terrorism?

“The villains have no political goals, for only human beings can have political goals. These inhuman forces do evil simply for its own sake. They are the cosmic principle of evil: dark, dark, dark. You dare not think of them in conventional terms, lest you be accused of taking their side…..

“If you have seen the movie and followed the war news, you can no doubt extend the list of parallels.

“The president’s job is to hide the fact that bin Laden does have political goals. He wants U.S. troops out of Saudi Arabia, an end to bombing and sanctions in Iraq, and no more U.S. support for Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. More broadly, he wants to curb U.S. influence in the Muslim world…

“So the administration dehumanizes the enemy, casting bin Laden as the dark prince of evil. Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union “the empire of evil.” But at least he admitted that the Soviets had a political vision for which they waged cold war.

” Bush dares not even go that far. He can only call us to a war against Sauron and the evil forces of Mordor, a war with no end in sight. If we believe in his mythic vision, we can not even begin to think about the political issues involved….”

MUSIC IN NEWS, NEWS AS MUSIC

Years ago, no news program would even use music as an underscoring device, because it was thought that it was a clear form of editorializing. That rule is long dead in the US, but in England, it still inspires debate, as an article in yesterday’s Guardian made clear:

“Television regulators have clashed over ITV’s decision to screen a sequence of harrowing pictures accompanied by somber music on the day after the September 11 terrorist atrocities. The independent television commission had already ruled that the item breached the taste and decency rules in its program code.

“But now the broadcasting standards commission has decided not to uphold complaints about the sequence, which ran at the end of a 90-minute news special.

“Fourteen viewers complained to the BSC that the two-minute film was inappropriate and insensitive.

“In its defense ITV said the terrorist attacks were unique events in the history of TV news and that the sequence was intended to provide a useful way for people to try to absorb the unprecedented scale of the tragedy.

“ITV apologized following complaints from viewers and said that with the benefit of hindsight the risk of offence outweighed the honorable intention behind the piece….”

Its ruling said: “The ITC accepted that setting to music the aftermath of the tragedy, including the rescue efforts, was moving and effective. However, the inclusion of shots of impacts on the World Trade Centre towers - in tune with the music and the collapse of the towers - was inappropriate.”

MEDIA CHANNEL IN THE PRESS IN CAIRO

“The Mediachannel and this column has received some attention in Cairo, indicating that even critical ideas travel globally.I was very impressed by this a piece by by Fatemah Farag in Al Ahram Weekly. Before you stereotype Arab media, read this:

“It was the speech that clung to the ears,the link that tingled in the blood; U.S.A.”

“– John Dos Passos, U.S.A.

CAIRO — What do we make of the “U. S. of A.”? What speech is it that clings to our ears and moulds our perceptions? Is it that of the six-pack Joe, Hollywood, apple pie and the “American Dream,” all gift-wrapped in red, white and blue? Or is it something else — something much more fragile and complex; heart-warming, yet heart-rending at the same time, like the men and women drawn up in John Dos Passos’s 1948 novel U.S.A.

“Ironically, the mainstream media in the US has not only succeeded in creating a monolithic image of what Arabs are — to put it in bottom-line terms: crazed mullahs leading American-hating, bloodthirsty mobs; it has also succeeded in projecting a subversive, equally monolithic image of what Americans are — arrogant, racist and brutal imperial masters who hate anything un-American. These images are reinforced by both the actions and policies of the American establishment and our very own media in the Arab world.

“It is the frustrating cycle of misperception. In an outburst in his daily column for Mediachannel.org, a non-profit alternative news source with 840 global partners offering “critical takes” on media performance, Danny Schechter wrote: “Hello Arab World: not all Jews are Zionists or supportive of Ariel Sharon and his gang of ministers. Why don’t you know that? I know why. No one ever tells you. Not your media and not ours. Dissenting views, and peace perspectives are filtered out, marginalized and silenced. That is why the conflict in the world is becoming jihad vs. jihad, Bush vs. bin Laden.”

“And why can’t we hear the voices of dissent coming from within the US? Rory O’Connor, president and CEO of Globalvision, New Media, Inc., which produces Mediachannel.org, told Al-Ahram Weekly, “The United States is a large, disparate country with many people and many viewpoints … [however] finding them and amplifying them can be exceedingly difficult. Thus, the problem with the US media system is not that there isn’t room for many viewpoints, opinions and conflicting content; it lies more in the fact that mainstream distribution is tightly controlled by a few, huge, centralised corporations.”

“And while we constantly focus on how we as Arabs bear the brunt of the current state of media affairs, we never take time to heed the fact that many Americans suffer equally. “What is surprising and maddening about trying to express alternative viewpoints in the United States is that there are so few places to put them,” complained Wallace Shawn, writer, actor and director, in an interview with the Weekly. “In New York City, this huge cosmopolitan meeting-place where I live, I hear an astonishing variety of opinions expressed every day by individuals, but there are only three newspapers, each one of them offering in one style or another the consensus attitude [in this case pro-war/establishment]. So each of the individuals I meet feels isolated, as if he alone has an alternative view, when in fact there are enormous numbers of people who do, but their views are not reflected in the newspapers, much less on television.”

“Last February, and on the occasion of the inauguration of Mediachannel.org, no less than veteran anchor Walter Chronkite noted: “I have been increasingly critical of the direction that journalism has taken of late, and of the impact on democratic discourse and principles … I am deeply concerned about the merger mania that has swept our industry, diluting standards, dumbing down the news and making the bottom line sometimes seem like the only line. It isn’t and shouldn’t be….” There’s more: http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2001/564/12war.htm

THE CABLE NEWS “WARS “ERUPT AGAIN

Why does one of CNN’s top correspondents want to jump to Fox? You might say its for the money. But you would be wrong. Lawyer Greta Van Susteren, is bagging CNN for Murdoch’s Fox News Channel, and will bring down $900,000 annually over three years may have been listening to too much Cyndi Lauper and just wants to have fun. “It’s the year 2002, it’s exciting and I think they’re having fun,” she says. Here are the related stories from Jim Romanesco’s essential MediaNews site. I won’t bore you with the details but the headlines offer their own indictments:

CNN insiders: Bosses didn’t give Van Susteren the Zahn star treatment

FNC’s Ailes on his latest hire: “I don’t view this as us versus CNN”

Fox gains, but CNN was the most-watched news network in ‘01

Earlier: Van Susteren doesn’t want to talk about her Scientology ties

Media Life Magazine explained further: “Van Susteren’s poaching by Fox News is seen as retaliation for the theft of (paula) Zahn, especially as Van Susteren is expected to be named as the host of the 10 p.m. talk show that has been without a regular host since Zahn defected to CNN in September. She will reportedly earn around $900,000 per year on her new three-year contract.

” Fox News got a taste of revenge earlier when, just days prior to the start of the air war in Afghanistan, it hired Steve Harrigan, who had been serving as CNN’s lead reporter in the war-torn Central Asian country.

“At the moment, I’d rather have a man in Afghanistan than a $2 million anchor in New York,” Fox News boss Roger Ailes cackled to Reuters at the time. ” NOTE THE PHRASE:”AT THE MOMENT.”

BILL GATES ASSASSINATED — IN THE MOVIES

Not everyone loves big time media personalities. The New York Post’s P6 reports on a new film targeting none other than Bill Gates. Maybe I will get to see it when I am in Park City Utah next week.

BILL GATES ASSASINATED IN NEW FILM, MICROSERFS “APPALLED”

“MICROSOFT is fuming over an uncomfortably realistic “mockumentary” that depicts the assassination of its billionaire boss, Bill Gates.

” ‘Nothing So Strange,’ which premieres Jan. 13 at Utah’s Slamdance Film Festival, shows Gates lookalike Steve Sires being shot dead as he steps out of a limo in the flick’s chilling opener. The fake documentary, written and directed by Brian Fleming, who penned the quirky off-Broadway hit “Bat Boy: The Musical,” examines a fictional 1999 assassination of Gates and the shadowy cover-up of the killer’s identity by the Los Angeles Police Department. ”

“The movie focuses on a small group of activists determined to uncover the truth behind the murder. “It’s very disappointing that a moviemaker would do something like this,” said an appalled Microsoft spokesperson.”

FINAL ITEM FROM THE MEDIA MORASS

Vivendi chairman Jean-Marie Messier has defended himself againstcriticism that his company is becoming too American and said he haschosen a French successor should anything happen to him. According to today’s Financial Times, he has scribbled the name on a piece of paper and put it in a safe. Maybe he fears that the terrrorists or independent film makers will get him.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Enough murder and mayhem and bull-oney for one morning. Today, like every day, I welcome responses, comments and your items. Write: Dissector@mediachannel.org