*SCAMS*

*WHO WON IN AFGHANISTAN?*

*REJOINDER ON MIDDLE EAST*

Last night, at a meeting with my neighbors, I learned that the taxes assessed on our building had skyrocketed. The city had decided to punish us for upgrading the elevator and making other improvements. What an incentive program for encouraging urban renewal! Then, this morning, the headlines in the local press revealed a one billion dollar city tax scam with some of New York’s biggest landlords exposed as having paid off corrupt building inspectors and avoided paying proper taxes. Now this sort of thing has gone on forever, in this case, allegedly for 35 years. Headline in the Post: “Sleazy industry once again into deed greed.”

With stories like this back, the war on terror and other great tales of our times seem to be receding importance. Last night’s local news was a cavalcade of shootings, killings and perp walks. A former basketball player and NBC sports host Jayson Williams has been charged in the fatal shooting of a chaueffer. And, as only the New York Times would report, six bankers in London ran up a wine bill for $62,700 at one dinner and tried to charge some of it off on clients. Five were sacked.

AL QUAEDA SCAMMED TOO

It gets better. It now appears that fears that Al Quaeda had aquired nuclear bombs for its terror arsenal were excessive. It turns out that they too — -Osama and the whole gang — -were duped by black market racketeers. You can’t even buy a bomb these days without someone passing off bogus substances. In some instances, these clowns bought “crude containers with skulls and crossbones and dipped, perhaps in medical waste to fool a geiger counter,” according to a front page account in the paper of record.

Here’s the summary: “A search in Afghanistan has not uncovered evidence that Osama bin Laden acquired nuclear materials, but does show he may have been duped.”

As for the war on the war they were waging, I spent some last night with General Tommy Franks, in pressed uniform, speaking to reporters in Tampa and Washington in a press briefing. Whenever he was asked a question, he always took the last part first, rattling off statistics like a football coach, which is what he reminded me of. He quaintly spoke of reporting to his boss, and dropped military terms the way priests sprinkle holy water. The headline: No, no mistakes were made in the killing of civilians in a widely publciized recent incident. No, there were no intelligence failures. And yes, the only mistake was the decision by some Afghans to shoot at US military personnel in the course of duty.

He sounded like his predecessor General “STONEWALL” Jackson. He has become quite adept at handling the media, often praising reporters for asking “good questions” before choosing not to answer them fully. Also fascinating about the briefing was Franks continually characterizing the internal situation in Afghanistan as “murky.”

I could the same the same about his press briefing, but I won’t.

WAS AFGHAN WAR A “FAILURE?”

In the region, meanwhile, skepticism about US war aims continues to grow, even as local elites grovel before US demands, and let us never forget, for US funds. Vir Sanghvi writes in the Hindustan Times in India: “So, where is Osama bin Laden? The Daily Telegraph (London) tells us that they’re looking for him in Kashmir. Nonsense, says the Indian government.

And as for the US, its position is unchanged: Osama Who?

“The stubborn refusal of the Americans to even mention bin Laden is curious because the rationale behind the war in Afghanistan was supposed to be thesearch for bin Laden. US intelligence believed that he was hiding in Kandahar and the Taliban were asked to hand him over or face the consequences. It was only when Mullah Omar, the Taliban’s one-eyed leader, refused to yield to the American ultimatum that Afghanistan was attacked.

Well, that attack is over. The Taliban are no longer in charge. A new government, headed by a well-known American stooge, is in place.

“And guess what? There’s still no sign of Osama bin Laden.

“But here’s the funny thing: nobody seems to have noticed!”

Here are some of Shiv’s conclusions, which show that many in the world seem to be feeling sorry for us as in the USA, rather than just hating “us.”

“If you examine all the evidence and give the Americans as much of the benefit of the doubt as possible, there are still some conclusions that seem inevitable.

“One: The Afghanistan operation was a failure. They went in to find bin Laden and they’ve failed to do this successfully.

“Two: To allow themselves to claim victory, they’ve now changed the rules of the game–moved the goalposts, so to speak–and declared that the purpose of the operation was to overthrow the Taliban.

“Three: The moral basis for this operation is now beginning to seem extremely dubious……

Four: The Americans cannot talk publicly about their failure to capture almost all the important Taliban leaders, including Mullah Omar. Or about the fact that not only has bin Laden disappeared but that they haven’t found a single member of his family or his personal protection squad. To drawattention to this would be to admit failure…”

OPIUM WARS

When we think of Afghanistan, we often forget its chief export, the cash crop that has kept governments in power, paid for weapons, and provided what economic infrastructure there is: opium. This just in from CNN.com:

“BUSH EXCUSES AFGHANISTAN, HAITI OVER DRUGS

The Bush administration waived penalties against Afghanistan and Haiti in the annual United States counternarcotics determinations–despite finding that both countries had “failed demonstrably” in combating the drug trade in the past year.”

WHAT IF THERE WAS AN OFFICE OF STRATEGIC INFLUENCE?

We have been reporting on the proposed new Office of Strategic Influence which seems to be going going gone, as a result of its premature disclosure, and its stated intention to disseminate lies. President Bush is signalling that it will not see the light of day, perhaps because of all the scorn with which it was greeted in the press. Alternet.org’s David Turnley, their house satirist claims to have received an anonymous fax listing some of the OSI’s proposed headlines and subhead along with their targeted publications. Like Dark Matter, the headlines exist only in theory and can never be verified.

“Office of Strategic Influence Does Not Exist

“Heart aglow, Rumsfeld promises to be honest forever and ever and ever as Orwell does triple toe/double flip combo in his grave (New York Times)

“New Study Finds Americans Not As Bad As They Seem

“Great Satan” now refers to delicious tofu-like product (Tehran Tattler) ___”President Bush Eager To Learn Intricacies Of Our Culture ___”American leader’s thirst for knowledge leaves everyone impressed, exhausted (all newspapers)

“Loud Explosion Heard Last Night Was Not American Bomb

‘Dead civilians later found to just be real sleepy (Baghdad Times)

“Afghan Body Count Remains Low

“New super-smart bombs kill only bad people (Washington Post)

“THE BEER TEAM REVISITED

“Not as funny, but probably just as true is this report which refers to a story that I also highlighted: the gold medal performance of the Winter Olympics Beer Team. Here’s Alternet’s more serious take:”THE INVISIBLE WHITENESS OF THE OLYMPIC BEER RIOT: When white folks rioted over beer at the Olympics, it waslaughed off in a “gee, don’t they have anything better to do”way. What if blacks or latinos had done the same?”http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12479

“WE GET MAIL: (l) Comment on Middle East Media Bias

“Larry Houghteling discussed media coverage of Israel/Palestine: “Note to your associate JF: you must be living in a different world from the rest of us. In the world in which I live the media to which I have access are overwhelmingly bending over backwards to be nice tothe Israelis. On Friday the NY Times finally had astatistical breakdown on who has been killed in the so-called “Intifada II” since September 2000.As we might expect, many, many more Palestinians have died than have Israelis.

“But, ONE: the Times ran the graphic in such a way that it was very hard to compare the little lines representing Israeli deaths with the slightly larger lines representing Palestinian deaths.

“TWO: there were no totals listed; nowhere did thelittle lines get added up to whatever the totals are:Israel, 350 deaths, Palestinians, 800 deaths (or whatever it is - I just invented those numbers). Andthere was no breakdown into any sort of categories: “terrorists”, settlers, soldiers, women and children–whatever.

“And THREE: nowhere is there a media context. Here’s a grim game I propose to keep a graduate student busy for a weekend: Go through all the Timeses sinceSharon’s visit to the Temple Mount in 9/00; record each number of Israeli and Palestinian deathsmentioned in headlines; give each a weight. (Each first page mention gets 3 points, each 3rd page mention gets 2 points, anywhere else in the papers equals 1 point.) Then multiply the number in the headline times the weight. And then total up the weighted numbers.

” My guess is that you’d be startled by the discrepancy between the actual totals of deaths and these weighted totals. My guess is that it takes verylittle for Israeli deaths to be mentioned on the front page, whereas “Eight Palestinians Killed in Hebron Incident” is likely to be on page 10.

“In all honesty, I don’t see Reuters, and maybe Reuters is very different from the Times, in whichcase I owe JF an apology. But my guess (I seem to be doing a lot of guessing) is that as one of thespeakers in the Chomsky-Luttwak et al. discussion you reported on said, we all have our tribal blinkers on and often see what we choose to see. Thanks once again for doing such a terrific demystifying job.”

(2) FAN LETTER

“Damian Irizarry e’s from the respected alternative radio show. Making Contact: “I admire your work and we here at Making Contact have taken one of your comments to heart. We have recently been changing the production of the show, incorporating more sound, music and rythmic narration. We want our program to be as interesting as it is informational. You should give it a listen. Again I wanted to tell you that I love your work and your site, and consider you a great media role model.”

(3)REQUEST

Esther Sassaman asks for your help:I am a student at Antioch College doing a web-based survey on 9/11 related issues. The survey is here: http://threat.dumbfounded.org

(4)ON THE KIDNAPPING OF PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE BETANCOURT IN COLOMBIA

UN Secretary General Annan as well as the US Green Party has demanded her release. The Greens as was reported suspect that she was kidnapped by the right although Al Giordano, editor of the Narco News Network that covers that country comments that Betancourt is controversial and hardly a Green in the Nader sense. He writes: “Betancourt is a head case. Daughter of a Colombian ambassador and oligarch, megalomaniac, raised in Paris, supporter of Plan Colombia and the drug war, and presidential candidate, she went to the ex-demilitarized zone the other night against the recommendation of the Colombian government as a publicity stunt.

The FARC has not yet taken credit for her kidnapping. But it makes sense, in that the FARC has proposed a “trade” of political prisoners with the government and she would up the bounty. The FARC is also reasonably (though not 100%) good about abiding by the Geneva Convention on treatment of POWs. She should hope, for her sake, that her kidnappers are with the FARC and not the paramilitaries!

“In last Thursday’s El Tiempo (in what was apparently her last or one of her last public statements) Betancourt said of Pastrana’s decision to end peace talks and declare all out war:”Esta decisión fue difícil de tomar y por eso le hago un llamado a la Nación para que crezca, se una y respalde al Presidente.” (”This was a difficult decision to make and that’s why I call upon the Nation to grow, to unite and to back the President.”)

“I’ll bet these Greens in NY have very little understanding of the situation in Colombia. They just see a candidate who titles herself ‘green’ and think she’s one of them.”

Here at the Mediachannel, a staffer with personal knowledge of someone held by FARC says they do not treat prisoners humanely at all. Narconews.com carries the latest FARC communique on the escalating war in Columbia

(5) OUTRAGE OF THE WEEK (so Far)

I was sent this AP story .

“GOP Comes Under Fire For ‘Heroes’ Fundraiser”

“NEW YORK, Feb. 22 - A Republican Party fundraiser honoring “America’s heroes” and featuring former mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has drawn the ire of some who believe the event seeks to capitalize on the tragedy of Sept. 11.

“The Salute to America’s Heroes dinner, scheduled March 5 in Washington, is expected to raise at least $5.5 million for the National Republican Congressional Committee. The money will be used for this year’s elections.

“Giuliani is the only scheduled speaker.

“Lt. Jack Ginty, vice president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, criticized the fundraiser today.

“It’s just in bad taste to run a campaign of ‘Salute the Heroes’ and use the money for political campaigns,” said Ginty, who narrowly escaped the collapse of the World Trade Center towers.

“Ginty said the dinner could have honored just Giuliani for the job he did as mayor.

“Everyone’s being called a hero,” he said. “I was in both collapses, and I’m not a hero. . . . The heroes haven’t come home.”

HAIL THE REAL HEROES

Hail to the real heroes. And to all of you for getting through today’s serving of media dissections. Share your comments with us. Remember, if you live in New York City, join Mediachannel and friends tomorrow night for a panel on civil liberties after 9/11 at the Ethical Culture Society. See the Mediachannel.org front page for more info. Your input is most welcome. Write: dissector@mediachannel.org