*ACTIONABILITY*

*TED ON TERROR pt 2*

*EVENT TONIGHT*

“Not Actionbable” is the latest term that we all are wrestling with, rolling around on our tongues, and puzzling over in that part of the brain that has not been turned to mush by the confusing signals emanating from high places. Yesterday, we learn that, yes indeed, there were signs and signals buzzing from places unknown on September 10 indicating that US intelligence–an oxymoron if there ever was one–intercepted two messages indicating something was about to happen. One message intercepted by U.S. intelligence declared:

“The match begins tomorrow,” and another declared “Tomorrow is zero day” — but the messages were not translated until one day after the devastating terrorist attacks. “Not actionable” is how that info has now been characterized.

WHAT IS “ACTIONABLE?”

What is “actionable,” my friends? And who do we expect to act? Is what is happening in our world “actionble” by the citizenry? That may be a deeper but unasked question, as we puzzle over not only the incompetence of our “betters” but the passivity in our own ranks. If you are waiting for a larger outcry from the media, you will probably be waiting for a while.

(PS: I hate to say it, but “the match” does begin tomorrow, and end tomorrow, the match, that is, between the US and Germany in the World Cup. It is zero day. Don’t report me or deport me for reminding you.)

BLOOD AT THE BUS STOP

Click the dial. Another horrific suicide attack. Another invasion of the West Bank. Arafat has condemned it, and many moderate Palestinians have signed a letter in a local newspaper in Arabic demanding that the militias cease and desist. The Israelis who have been demanding such a stance do not seem to have heard it, or tried to reinforce it. Instead, there was more violence, which will insure — what class? — more counter violence. By the way, let me say for the hard of reading, I do not now nor ever have I ever supported suicide bombings, homicide bombings, or terrorism of the kind we are witnessing daily. Violence does not justify violence. At the same time, those who counsel me against suspicions of showing “moral equivalence” — which I also reject — have some burden themselves to speak up and speak out against the outrages of the occupation and the violence it inflicts on innocents.

HIS LIPS ARE MOVING

Now President Bush is about to speak. The world waits with baited breath. What will he say? Will he get the words out? Will he call for restraint from both sides? Will he seek to restrain Sharon just as he beats up on Arafat one more time. Unlikely. Palestinian scholar Edward Said who has called for Arafat to step aside, is besides himself with the to and fro-ing of the Bush Administration, Alexander Cockburn quotes him in his column in the New York Press that takes after the contradictions of the War on Terror:

“Edward Said puts it well in a recent column:

“To say that he and his disheveled administration ‘want’ anything is to dignify a series of spurts, fits, starts, retractions, denunciations, totally contradictory statements, sterile missions by various officials of his administration, and about-faces, with the status of an over-all desire, which of course doesn’t exist. Incoherent, except when it comes to the pressures and agendas of the Israeli lobby and the Christian Right whose spiritual head he now is, Bush’s policy consists in reality of calls for Arafat to end terrorism, and (when he wants to placate the Arabs) for someone somewhere somehow to produce a Palestinian state and a big conference, and finally, for Israel to go on getting full and unconditional US support including most probably ending Arafat’s career. Beyond that, US policy waits to be formulated, by someone, somewhere, somehow.”

COCKBURN ON SADDAM

Moving on to the Gulf, Alex is in good form when writes about US policy towards the new Mr. Evil (The old one, OBL, has disappeared from view.)”Iraq? It was the acme of the axis of evil. Then it wasn’t, because the Joint Chiefs said it would be tough to invade the place. Now we’ve got something billed as a new preemptive policy. What’s new about it? Throughout the Cold War America’s strategic policy never set aside the possibility of a preemptive first strike against the foe. We’re now told that the CIA (yes, the same agency that has just made the worst screwup in its history) can try to kill Saddam, on the grounds that if he makes any move to avoid being killed by the CIA, that can be construed as aggression, meriting assassination.

“Never mind that the U.S. has been trying to kill Saddam since 1991, tried to mount coups against him through the first half of the 1990s, concluded that it was impossible and that the best thing to do was throw some money around to groups like the Iraqi National Accord. Never mind all that. Here we are in the wake of a terrorist attack outside the Sheraton hotel in Karachi that killed 11 (another major intelligence failure, right?) and the Bush regime (until it decided to hang Ashcroft out to dry) tries to change the subject with mighty boasts about the capture a Puerto Rican gangbanger who took an H-bomb blueprint off the Internet, and a “new” finding for the CIA to finish off Saddam.” NYP.com for more.

Speaking of Saddam, Globalvision News Network is carrying an Iraq press report that he is considering stepping down and handing power over to his #1 son. What effect that will have on the war now waiting in the wings is hard to know.

TED’S TANTRUM ON TERROR

Yesterday, I reported on CNN founder and AOL-TimeWarner exec Ted Turner’s comments on the crisis in the Middle East. I haven’t seen the original, but have now seen a Reuters report quoting it: ” “Right now, aren’t the Israelis and the Palestinians both terrorizing each other?” the 63-year-old billionaire founder of 24-hour news network CNN said in an interview with the Guardian newspaper.

“The rich and the powerful, they don’t need to resort to terrorism… The Palestinians are fighting with human suicide bombers - that’s all they have.

“The Israelis… they’ve got one of the most powerful military machines in the world. The Palestinians have nothing. So who are the terrorists? I would make the case that both sides are involved in terrorism.”

STOOPID

Israeli government spokesman Daniel Seaman lashed out at Turner’s comments as “stupid.”

“My only advice to Ted Turner is if people assume you are stupid, it is just best to keep your mouth shut rather than open your mouth and confirm everyone in that view,” Seaman was quoted as saying by the Guardian.

Turner, now vice chairman of AOL Time Warner Inc, which owns CNN, also acknowledged in the Guardian interview he had used an “unfortunate choice of words” when he said in a speech earlier this year that the hijackers who flew planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11 were “brave.”

Turner said he tended to overuse the word as owner of the Atlanta Braves baseball team. “I chose accidentally to say that they [the hijackers] were brave… I use that word so often, it just pops out,” he said.

EXPLAINING HIS COMMENTS AWAY

Ted Haters rarely take his ideas seriously, perhaps because they see them as “not actionable” but at least they are distinctive. His critics continue to suggest that his comments can be attributed to his drug-addled mind, (He has been known to suffer from manic depression.) The odious Don Imus of MSNBC says “he’s even popping more pills than I am.” The New York Posts righteous Neil Travis says that deep down Ted is an antisemite. Why? Because his dad has an affair with the wife of a Jewish doctor, who later died, leading to a divorce of Ted’s mom, leading to his eventually shooting himself, leading to Ted hating Jews ever more, leading to his recent comments about Israel. Can you believe this drivel? He quotes Imus approvingly — a man frequently condemned for his blatant racism on the air — and than brands Turner a “hate monger” even though he accuses BOTH sides. Pass the Orwell before I puke.

THE MEDIA “SIMULATORS”

There is more media buzz out of Venezuela suggesting that Presidente Hugo Chavez is being targeted with another coup threat. Usually when there is smoke, there’s fire, but my old friend turned critic Al Giordano of the Narco News network accuses media outlets who report such rumors as actually being part of the destabilization process. He intends to counter all nattering nabobs of negativity, writing: “After a very brief flurry of post-coup corrections and meas culpas, the simulators of the mass media (from the Four Horsemen of Simulation - AP, Reuters, New York Times and CNN - on down to yesterday’s Christian Science Monitor) have reverted to their same unsubstantiated rumor-mongering fictional coverage of the immediate history underway in Venezuela.

“What is, in fact, occurring in Venezuela these days is far more interesting than any of them want to inform you, because it involves the development of popular methods to weaken the illusory power of them, the caste members of the mass media, too. He is out the scene and I look forward to his disinformation bunking. Beware he warns the wannabe coup makers and backers, “We bring you the unspun authentic news, uncensored, from the voices that the simulators are trying to block from your ears and eyes: those of the Venezuelan people, its media workers in revolt, and its democratically elected leaders.”

DISSECTOR DEMOCRACY WATCH

Back in Babylon, the NY Times reports that Federal election regulators rejected an effort to dilute a provision of the new campaign-finance law aimed at eliminating “issue ads.”Variety reports “Capitol Hill pols renewed their call Wednesday for broadcasters to pony up and do their democratic duty by providing millions of dollars in free ad time to federal election candidates.”

CRIME IN THE SUITES?The woman Variety calls the “Queen of Hearths”–Martha Stewart–told a Wall Street analysts meeting yesterday that she did nothing wrong in dumping a stock. The NY Post reports that her statement led to a $63 million dollar upwards bump in her stock price. The newspaper runs a photo of her and her bodyguard. (Is Martha at risk?) Speaking of all the stock scams of late, Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman note in a commentary on Znet:

“Corporate and white collar crime have landed on the front pages of the nation’s agenda-setting newspapers. Yesterday, the New York Times ran a front-page article reporting that the last decade has seen “a marked increase in accounting and corporate infractions, fraud in health care, government procurement and bankruptcy.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.

“We don’t know.

“One reason we don’t know is that while the federal government tracks street crime through the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s yearly “Crime in the United States” report, it refuses to compile a similar report for corporate and white collar crime.”

MEDIA NEWSWIREIn the Media news today, topping by list is this one from Blimey: The BBC has apologized to her royal majesty, Elizabeth, the Queen of the Jubilee, for having one of its techncians poorly dressed at the Ascot. She had him ejected. Could you imagine a dress code for TV crews in America. That would lead to an insurrection… Variety reports that German publishing groups Axel Springer and Bauer will bid for Kirch Media, the bankrupt broadcasting and rights division of toppled Teutonic giant Kirch Group (Daily Variety, June 17).”

NEWS ON THE WEB

Editor and Publisher is reporting on top news sites on the web “Eight of the top 20 news Web sites in the US are affiliated with newspapers, according to the latest statistics from Nielsen/NetRatings. For the month of April this year, the top news sites in terms of audience were CNN.com, MSNBC.com and Yahoo! News. NYTimes.com was fourthwhile Gannett Newspapers’ combined Web sites came in sixth, followed by washingtonpost.com in seventh place. The rankings of current events and news sites was based on a panel of 60,000-plus Americans accessing the Web at work and at home.” This just underscores the difficultly alternative sites have in building readership. They don’t have other outlets marketing their URLs.

FILM ON RWANDA

The other day in my report on the Human Rights Watch Film festival which is still playing at Lincoln Center, I reported on a complaint about hard it is to raise funds for a documentary on the genocide on Rwanda. I have since been advised that there is one such film playing the Festivals. The Calgary Film Festival is presenting 100 DAYS, one of only 4 films today as a counterpoint to the G8 meeting taking place in nearby Banff. I will be speaking at a media seminar in Calgary this coming Monday.

TONIGHT, TONIGHT, TONIGHT

Also fans and critics of this blog alike are welcome tonight for a panel discussion on media issues on which yr news dissector will appear. It happens at the French Institute, 55 East 59th Street. AT 7 PM. Chris Cramer of CNN and Mark Crispin Miller will be joining us as well as some other surprises. It is sponsored by the Nour Foundation and produced by the unstoppable Mariam Azarm. BE THERE OR BE SQUARE. There is an admission. Their earlier panels were first rate!

Until then, I am here, available for your comments and suggestions at dissector@Mediachannel.org.