*NO MORE LIES*

*MYTHS OF A DIVIDED AMERICA*

*IS THE NEXT WAR UNDERWAY?

The Pentagon has taken tail and run. Not from the Taliban or other evil doers. But from the rising chorus of derision from within the media to its leaked plans to set up an Office of Strategic Influence with the brief to lie when necessary to serve the country’s policies. Critics have long argued that lying was routine in matters of State. But apparently, once you say you will be doing what you are already doing, the practice turns into an issue. And an issue easily can be blown up into a controversy. And a controversy can be embarassing, and hence today’s report in the New York Times, which put the orginal story on p. l, but this equivocating statement of surrender on p. 13.

The newspapers daily email dowplays the story with a one liner: “Rumsfeld Says He May Drop New Office of Influence”

BASHING THEM WHEN THEY ARE UP

This apparent disavowal of the plan followed a festival of fun by correspondents and journalists whose sense of sanctimoniousness was sparked. (Sadly, many were not as outraged by Pentagon policies that excluded most of them from actually covering the war.) It all made for a great read.

There was Maureen Dowd at her best scoring a direct hit: “WASHINGTON - The secretary of defense fires off lots of memos, known as ’snowflakes’ or ‘Rummygrams.’

“I want Rummy to send a Rummygram telling the Pentagon tokick its addiction to fiction.

“A day after we learned that the military’s Office of Strategic Influence wanted to plant fake stories in the overseas press, we read in Variety that the Pentagon is teaming with Jerry Bruckheimer, producer of Top Gun, Black Hawk Down, Pearl Harbor and Coyote Ugly, and Bertram van Munster, of Cops, to make a TV docudrama about the war on terrorism.

“The 13-episode “reality” series on ABC will profile our troops abroad. …. “I’m outraged about the Hollywoodization of the military,” Dan Rather told me. “Somebody’s got to question whether it’s a good idea to limit independent reporting on the battlefield and access of journalists to U.S. military personnel and then conspire with Hollywood.”

“He said the Bush administration had gotten overly fawning Hans Christian Andersen press coverage and was now doing ‘the equivalent of moonwalking in the end zone.’”

INVENTING DIALOGUE

And there was NATION columnist David Corn going fictional himself in imagining an exchange that may get us closer to the reality of this surreality than many media reports have to date:

“‘Johnson get in here.’”

“‘Yes, Secretary Rumsfeld.’”

“‘Can you please explain how there came to be a leak on the front-page of The New York Times saying that we’re going to plant false stories in the foreign media to influence public opinion overseas?’”

“‘No, sir. I’m in strategic deception, not strategic leaks. That’s a different office.’”

“‘I know, but you’re with our new Office of Strategic Influence. And it’s a P.R. nightmare. What’s the point of telling the whole world we’re going to lie to them? After all, if we do want to spread lies, wouldn’t revealing that make lying ineffective?’”

“‘Not necessarily, sir.’”

“‘What do you mean?’”

“‘Simple, sir. If no one at a given moment knows whether you are telling the truth or not, they also don’t know whether you are lying or not.’”

“‘But I just held a briefing and said that the U.S. Special Forces who killed more than a dozen innocent Afghans in the raid at Hazar Qadam only fired after they were fired upon. Won’t people think I’m tossing out false information to cover up a horrendously botched operation?’”

“‘They would have no way of knowing, sir–one way or the other.’”

“‘But in this instance, we want our version accepted. There was this know-it-all journalist at the briefing who kept correcting me, claiming locals had said they heard Afghans shouting, ‘Don‚t shoot, we’re friends,’ when our story is that those Afghan troops shot at our guys first. Why should people assume I’m being honest, when we’ve got stories out there saying the Pentagon is spending millions of dollars on an office that plans to generate disinformation?’”

“‘Sir, in the field of strategic deception, you have to take the long view. Any one statement is not what counts.’”

“‘But don’t we want people to believe we’re telling the truth?’”

“‘Not always, sir. Let’s say we don’t have any idea where Osama bin Laden is, it might not serve our purposes to say so and be believed.’”

“‘I see.’”

TOM FRIEDMAN’S NEW GIG ON PBS

At a time when more critical reporting of the military is needed, PBS, true to form, has dipped into the journalistic pool and added one more hawkish commentator to its stable. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times will not be opining on the air as if one outlet is never enough.

Norman Solomon’s story on Friedman going from a pulpit in print to a pundit’s place on the air can be read on TomPaine.com.

The world according to Friedman: insanity is the hallmark of good foreign policy; civilian casualties the mark of a well waged war” is how he characterizes his often pro-war commentaries.

Meanwhile families of victims of the World Trade center disaster are coming together to push for peaceful alternatives, and most of the press is looking the other way. Reports Jordan Moss on the Nation website:

PEACEFUL TOMORROWS UNCOVERED

“Family members of victims, about seventeen so far, have joined under the banner “Sept. 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows” to encourage discussion of alternatives to war and to bring aid to families affected by the US bombing campaign in Afghanistan.

“A smooth Valentine’s Day press conference in New York announcing the organization’s formation illustrated the group’s strengths and the challenges ahead. The packed room, at the Church Center for the United Nations, across from the UN, included several reporters. The event saw no ink in the next day’s papers–except in El Diario, a Spanish-language daily–but this group should have an edge over other antiwar activists in getting mainstream media attention. After all, they speak the same simple language of grief as the thousands of others who have lost loved ones in the attacks, and who have garnered ample coverage in both print and electronic media. See TheNation.com for more.

THE MYTH OF THE RED AND THE BLUE AMERICA

Remember those maps of America divided into two blocs — the Red and the Blues. It was a graphic used to explain the outcome of the 2000 election. It implied that it was basically conservative, and many conservatives used it to show how their side had won the culture and political wars.

Now someone named Sinclair has debunked this myth on a website worth checking out: I can’t show you the map he has created but here, thanks to Dimitri Devyatkin is his argument:

“In a now-infamous opinion piece titled “America at War,” Andrew Sullivan wrote on 09/16/01:

“The terrorists have done the rest. The middle part of the country–the great red zone that voted for Bush–is clearly ready for war. The decadent left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead–and may well mount a fifth column.

“The “great red zone”? “Enclaves on the coasts”? Such homeopathic dilutions of facts in a solvent of virtually pure bullshit could safely be ignored as not even worthy of refutation. That is, if the myth of the “great red heartland” had not become a fact among the dittoheads of the loony right, a “fact” that is being used to legitimize the illegitimate presidency of George W. Bush.

“It is therefore necessary to replace that artificial red-blue map that was obtained by rounding 49% down to zero and 50% to one hundred by a more accurate map that reflects how the voters actually voted. I have created such a map by simply mixing red, blue and green for each state, with the ratios equal to the percentage that Bush, Gore and Nader received in the 2000 election.

“To fully live up to the ‘actual vote’ standard, one would have to take into account that poor (and therefore democratic-leaning) counties usually use more error-prone voting methods that lead to a higher rate of invalidated ballots. But since the difference of one or two percent is nearly invisible to the eye when represented by color, I worked with the official results taken from CNN.

“The results speak for themselves. Sullivan’s “great red zone” is nowhere to be seen and turns out to be a figment of an absurd rounding procedure. Most of the blue and the red are actually shades of purple, with the exception of only a handful of states that went decisively one way or another. http://www.webpan.com/dsinclair/myths.html

MONICA IS BAAACK

As we flash back to the past, note that Monica Lewinsky is now on a media tour hyping her HBO special airing next Sunday. Meanwhile, one of the journalists who was among the number one Clinton bashers in that era of not so long ago, finds himself in the news as his own love tryst turns sour. I usually stay away from stories of a personal nature, but this rates high on the hypocrisy index.

It was The New York Post which, to its credit, will not pass up any scandal, even if it involves one the paper’s own soul mates:

PHILIP MESSING and BRIDGET HARRISON report:

“Troubled Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund was arrested yesterday and charged with assaulting his ex-girlfriend, police said. Fund, 46, had a stormy relationship with Morgan Pillsbury, the 27-year-old daughter of a former girlfriend, for more than two years before the couple broke up last month, police sources said. Tuesday, Fund, famous for his attacks on President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal, allegedly went to Pillsbury’s East Village home and bruised her leg during an argument, the sources said. The arrest caps a bizarre unraveling of the couple’s on-again, off-again relationship.”

This item was sent to me by one Clinton’s former top aides. He must be clucking.

TERROR ON THE AIRWAVES

A rare exchange on TV as recorded in a transcript from the Hannity-Colmes left/right daily shout show on Fox News. An actual leftist of my acquaintance enters the arena like a Christian confronting the lions. This enlightened dialogue follows:

“COLMES: Welcome back to HANNITY & COLMES. I’m Alan Colmes.

“We continue with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, who teaches a course: “Sexuality and Terrorism.”

Would we be better off globally if women were in charge of every country?

DUNBAR-ORTIZ: We would be better off if the feminist values, that not all women–women are also a part of the patriarchal system. But as women have become liberated and developed ideas for global peace, no, men can learn these as well.

But it would be a whole different structure of society. For instance, right now–not to make a pun–but we really have the fox guarding the chicken house in the administration. In this administration are some of the most documented terrorists on the face of the Earth.

COLMES: There are terrorists in the Bush administration?

DUNBAR-ORTIZ: Absolutely.

COLMES: Who are they? And why are they terrorists?

DUNBAR-ORTIZ: Mr. John Negroponte, who is the ambassador to the U.N., was the ambassador to Honduras who directed the Contra terrorist war. There’s Otto Reich, who’s in charge of Latin America for the State Department. Elliott Abrams…

HANNITY: Hey, Professor, before we go through this massive list of yours, you know, it would almost be comical if it wasn’t so serious.

You know, there are a lot of brave men who fought and died for this country, not because they were getting some sexual thrill fighting a war, which, sadly, is what you’re teaching your students, or indoctrinating your students out there in your left-wing university. You’re trivializing what brave men do every day to fight and defend freedom, even the right for silly professors to come up with cockamamie ideas.

DUNBAR-ORTIZ: Well, I think this freedom has not come automatically. And it has come not through soldiers fighting nearly as much as…

HANNITY: Yes it has. Yes, it has.

DUNBAR-ORTIZ: … as workers…”

IS THE NEXT PHASE OF THE “WAR ON TERROR” UNDERWAY?

The privately run Israeli intelligence site debka.com reports: “America’s promised full-scale offensive against Iraq has been launched with small, discreet military steps. On January 4, our intelligence newsletter DEBKA-Net-Weekly (Issue 43) predicted the campaign would begin in February. On Friday, February 15, the first American Special Forces moved into northern Iraq from Turkey, a development first picked up by the Japanese paper Sankei Shimbun on February 20 and confirmed by our sources. Six days later, on Thursday, February 21, a second US Special Forces contingent landed in Tbilsi, capital of Georgia, the day President George W. Bush arrived in Beijing. This surprise step may partly account for the stiff welcome extended him by Chinese leaders and their refusal to back up his policies on missile proliferation and Iraq.”

CIGARETTE SMUGGLING

Here is an angle on the role of some corporations in violating sanctions to Iraq as reported by Maud S. Beelman, director of Center for Public Integrity’s International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. See publicintegrity.org

“WASHINGTON - American tobacco companies have violated sanctions against Iraq for years by sending billions of cigarettes into the country, often with the aid of a terrorist organization, the European Union has alleged.The allegations, made in recent filings in U.S. District Court in New York, were the latest salvos in a civil racketeering lawsuit against R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris by the European Community and 10 member nations. The suit accused tobacco companies of running a global and decades-long cigarette smuggling operation that robbed national treasuries of billions of dollars in tax revenue and became a money-laundering vehicle for criminal organizations….”

READERS WRITE

I had lots of response to a small item I ran on Saturday (yes I write, maniac that I am, 7 days a week) suggesting that a Reuters story on the death of a Palestinian who was about to bomb a bus was misleading. I have had several responses from people who have pointed out how many more Palestinians have died than Israelis. True enough. Today, my in box has been mostly empty, save for a few comments worth sharing:

ON BUSH IN CHINA

Janet writes from Washington on my coverage of Bush’s trip to China:

“I wrote you about the Bush pulpit after his state of the union message and have not wavered on my impressions. I heard his c-span q & a at the Beijing university and was APPALLED. I have trouble digesting the President of the United States delivering a speech to an audience of Chinese students toting a self righteous message of the American belief in God as accounting for our goodness. Not an ounce of understanding that beyond the walls of the churches in this world and the U.S., there are many who believe and idolize in many ways, including Buddhists, Taoist, Hindus, Islamic etc. etc.and those believers can also claim being good!!!! Freedom of religion should have been the message, not an ethnocentric message on his God being the best God for people. In our nation that separates church and state, the line is getting dimmer and dimmer and we should be worried.

“Where is the public debate on this supposed war he is fighting whose successes are hardly what the ‘Pentagon propaganda machine’ seems to be boasting.”

ON NUCLEAR WASTE IN SIBERIA

From Siberia, I have been hearing about an activists campaign against nuclear dumping via email from Vladimir Slivyak. The latest:

“Environmental group exposes confidential document proving Russian government agreed to dump foreign radioactive waste in country while it’s banned in national legislation Russian environmental group Ecodefense obtained confidential governmentalprotocol allowing Russian nuclear industry to dump Hungarian radioactive waste in Russia. It was long time suspected by environmental activists” I wrote to him to ask how the Russian media is covering the story. His response:

“Russian national media aren’t very interested about it–just several reports on news-wires, it’s considered as regional story of not a big importance. Local media in Krasnoyarsk has been very active covering the issue and most of them support environmental groups.”

Yahya R. Kamalipour Professor and Head Department of Communication & Creative Arts at Purdue writes” I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate you on your work, particularly the MediaChannel.” We would like to hear from other teachers as well. Many are assigning mediachannel.org to their classes in media.

Finally, Lous Proyect offered this item on another list-serv: “4,000 civilians have been killed in Afghanistan by U.S. military actions. if we think in terms of population size this means that this would be like killing 40,000 civilians the U.S.” He then adds this quote:

“the vested interests, banded together in a formidable confederation, corruption at home, aggression to cover it up abroad…sentiment by the bucketful, patriotism by the imperial pint, the open hand at the public exchequer, the open door at the public-house, dear food for the millions, cheap labour for the millionaire.

“Winston Churchill describing 1904 England; cited by Lewis Lapham in the March 2002 Harper’s:

‘We will fight them on the beaches,’ and on the worldwide web.

Let us hear from you on the media issues and other concerns discussed daily in this space. Your input is welcome: write dissector@mediachannel.org

Also let us all follow the case of Ingrid Betancourt of the Green Party in Columbia who has been kidnapped. Ingrid, member of the Senate, was running for President. At a local Green Party meeting last night, I learned that Betancourt, the author of a best seller published in Paris, is believed by them to be held by right-wing death squads, not left- wing guerillas, although she has criticized the rebels of the Farc.