*FRAUD, FRAUD EVERYWHERE*

*I TRIED, BUT FAILED, SAYS RUSSIAN REPORTER*

*UNIVERSITY FOR A NIGHT*

Tomorrow is Halloween but the Gremlins are already out there. Here’s the headline: “THERE WILL BE MORE ELECTORAL FRAUD IN FLORIDA” in the upcoming election. So predicts a Republican lawyer named Burkman- — sorry my eyes were still hermetically sealed–on CNN this morning. It is going to happen, he said, almost shrugging, on both sides, because voter fraud as always been with us.

CNN anchor Carol Costello nodded as if somehow this is Ok.

The lawyer charged that Democrats will pay people to vote, without citing any evidence, but did not say what the Republicans have up their sleeves. (He predicted a Jeb Bush win in the race for Governor.)

One interesting insight is that more fraud is likely to be discovered and debated because both sides now have armadas of lawyers, who will, he suggested, come up with stuff because “they make their money that way.” So electoral fraud is being excused, rationalized and shrugged off because consultants and lawyers profit from it.

*IS A STRESS ON VOTING RIGHTS “UN-AMERICAN?”*

Ultra-conservatives are arguing that voting rights are not that important anyway. I was sent multiple copies of an op-ed this morning by one Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Institute who sneers at the whole idea as “un-American.” “Every Election Day, politicians, intellectuals, and activistspropagate a seemingly patriotic but utterly un-American idea: the notion that our most important right–and the source of America’s greatness–is the right to vote. According to former President Bill Clinton, the right to vote is “the most fundamental right of “citizenship”; it is “the heartand soul of our democracy,” says Senator John McCain.

“Such statements are regarded as uncontroversial–but considertheir implications. If voting is truly our most fundamental right, then all other rights–including free speech, property, even life–are contingent on and revocable by the whims of the voting public (or their elected officials.”

During the 2000 election, no media even covered problems at the ballot box before the election. Now we are being prepared for more irregularities.

UN SET TO ROLL OVER

I was back over at the UN last night for a University for A Night event organized by the Synergos Institute. It featured a panel and discussion over dinner on how to ease the many economic divides in the world. (More on what was discussed later) Secretary General Annan dropped in but there was no hint of the blockbuster today — that France and the US appear to have worked out their diffrences over the Iraq resolution.

In today’s newspapers, Annan is quoting as predicting there will be a consenuse. This makes war on Iraq more likely. Bush now has to agree to “consult” with the UN while not giving up any military options.

THE RIA: RUMSFIELD INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

Meanwhile at the Pentagon, Fred Kaplan reports in Slate that the Pentagon will concoct the evidence it thinks it needs to sell US intervention:

“Rumsfeld sees what he wants. You’ve got to hand it to Donald Rumsfeld and his E-Ring crew at the Pentagon. They know all the stratagems of bureaucratic politics, and they play the game well. In their latest maneuver, reported on the front page of last Thursday’s New York Times, the secretary of defense has formed his own “four- to five-man intelligence team” to sift through raw data coming out of Iraq in search of evidence linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda terrorists.

“Rumsfeld has publicly continued to push this link as a prime — or at least the most easily sellable — rationale for going to war with Iraq, even after the CIA and the Pentagon’s own Defense Intelligence Agency have dismissed the connection as tenuous at best. But Rumsfeld contends that the spy bureaucracies may have missed something.

As his top team member, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, put it to the Times, there is “a phenomenon in intelligence work that people who are pursuing a certain hypothesis will see certain facts that others won’t, and not see other facts that others will.”

Since Wolfowitz is one of Washington’s most forceful advocates of a second Gulf War, we can safely predict that he will find the facts he needs to make his case.”

*WHO WINS: PRIVATIZATION OF WAR*

PR Watch reports this week that many companies stand to profit when war comes: “A nearly two-year investigation by the Center for Public Integrity’s International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has identified at least 90 private military companies worldwide that intervene on behalf of governments in military conflicts. The ICIJ investigation shows how profits from war commerce have gone to a small group of individuals and companies with connections to governments, multinational corporations and, sometimes, criminal syndicates in the United States, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Their report, an 11-part series that begins today, willinclude a story on Wednesday that shows how mercenaries, with the aid of public relations professionals, rebranded themselves as private military companies.”

*WHO LOSES*

Bob Roberts of London’s Daily Mirror is reporting on probable civilian casualties, a subject that most of the US media avoids: “The civilian death toll in an attack on Iraq would beat least 10,000, a report warned last night. Iraqi forces would retreat to Baghdad rather thanfight in the open, the independent Oxford Research Group think-tank said.

“US and British forces would then have to bomb denselypopulated areas to avoid involving troops in bloody hand-to-hand fighting. The Consequences of War report author, Professor PaulRogers, said: ‘This might be a low estimate given the experience of urban warfare in Beirut and elsewhere.’

“He also warned the military toll would be high as Saddam Hussein would use ‘all available military means, including chemical and biological weapons.’

The report warns that toppling Saddam could fuel terrorism. It comes as Britain and America grow more irritated by their failure to get UN backing for war….”

*WHO LOST*

The media is now reporting that the Russians used an opiate type gas, not a nerve agent, in its “great” victory against Chechen hostage takers in Moscow. If the gasses, which the Russians still refuse to talk about turn out to be nerve gasses, they will be in violation of international law. Right now several opiates have been identified in the US and Germany. One commentator notes:

“The effects of opiates like fentanyl can be reversed with the drug naloxone, known by the brand name Narcan. U.S. officials say some of the hostages responded to doses of Narcan, which bolstered the belief that the Russians used an opiate to knock out the hostage-takers and their captives.”

Ankara-based Adam McConnel continues to watch the coverage closely and tell us about it:

“As of this morning, Moscow still had not said what kind of gas had been used. I saw the report by Matthew Chance from Moscow yesterday; at the same moment that Chance was reporting that the gas, according to the US embassy, was an opiate, a German doctor being interviewed by BBC World was saying that the US embassy’s assertion that the gas was an opiate couldn’t be right, because he knew “of no opiate which can be delivered in a gaseous form.” Accordingly, he said that from what he had seen in the patients, they most likely were sprayed with a ‘general anesthetic.’

“More disturbingly, the Chechen administration’s foreign representative, Ahmed Zakaev, has been arrested by the Danes. BBC World reported that the Danish police were insisting that the arrest was not made as a result of pressure from Moscow, but as the result of a warrant issued by the Russian government.

“Russia claims Zakaev is wanted for helping plan last week’s hostage-taking, and also for past incidents.

“The disturbing aspect of this is that Russia is now doing to the Chechens exactly what the US wants to do with Al-Qaeda. The problem is that the Chechens are fighting a legitimate war for self-determination which has blurred the line between warfare‚ and terrorism.

“The Russians say it’s terrorism; most in the world say that it is war.

“This action would also further isolate the Chechens internationally, as some would now have to be careful of where they went outside of their country since they could become the target of Russian warrants. Will the Chechens be granted the same right to ask for the extradition of Russian officials whom they suspect of planning violent actions in Chechnya?

“Right before our eyes, we are watching the use for thoroughly dubious purposes of the powers granted to the US (and by extension to any state powerful enough to claim them) for the War on Terror‚ a situation which many international legal experts warned of.”

*A REPORTER’S TALE OF ANGUISH AND SORROW*

I reported earlier this week on Russian war reporter Anna Politkovskaya, who was asked to mediate by the hostage takers. She flew back to Moscow from an awards ceremony in LA. and writes about her harrowing experience in the Guardian today:

“‘I am Politkovskaya, I am Politkovskaya,’ I cried out at about 2 pm on October 25, when I was entering the theatre at Dubrovka seized by terrorists. I had no expertise under my belt, absolutely no experience of negotiating with terrorists. If I did have something, it was my desire to help the people who were in trouble through no fault of their own. And also, as the terrorists had chosen me as a person they wanted to talk to, I couldn’t refuse.

“My soles squeaked on the floor of the theatre, and the sharp noise made by my feet on the broken glass will always reverberate painfully in my heart. I kicked spent cartridges as I walked, tossing them up. My legs felt like rubber from fear. ‘Why have I, a woman, got myself into this hellish situation?’ I thought. ‘We have macho men at every crossroads, just whistle for them. Why did I have to come here?’

“‘I am Politkovskaya … Is there anybody here?’ I cried. ‘Hello, I am Politkovskaya … I have come to meet the commander. Reply!’

“It was completely silent and calm around me. To my right, the theatre’s cloakroom was filled with raincoats and jackets. Coats but no people, and no people sounds. It felt like walking into a school while all the children were sitting quietly in their classes.

“I walked up the stairs to the second level, still crying out. I stepped into the half-lit area, without a soul in sight. Finally, a man wearing a black mask and carrying a sub-machine-gun, appeared. ‘I am Politkovskaya. I have come to meet with your commander,’ I said.”

*”WAR BE DAMNED”*

Her mission was not successful:

“We have not agreed on much and I’m not convinced that the talks were in any way effective. But I am no negotiator. We had only agreed that in the coming hours I would carry water and juice into the theatre and I would try to bring them enough for almost 700 people.

“I left the theatre in complete silence. Again, I had the feeling that there was no one around me. Lonely jackets and raincoats watched my steps. It was cold, very cold, in this dreadful theatre - and there has never been a theatre in the entire world so stuffed with explosives. I just said to myself, ‘Go and get the juice, look for it, do now only this and don’t think.’

“Had I done a lot or a little? A little of course. But I could not do more. When the place was stormed, all the terrorists I had spoken to died. And with them died 67 of the hostages who had drunk my juice before death. Let war be damned.”

What a piece!

*BALI SUSPECTS NAMED*

On the Terror war front, police in Bali released photos of three suspects, none of them Arab. A Muslim’s home was raided in Asutralia. Listen to this:

“ABC radio said federal police declined to confirm whether the action was connected to a raid on the home of an Indonesian Muslim identified only as Jaya in Sydney late Sunday.

Community leaders said Jaya’s only links to the Southeast Asian Islamic group was that he had listened to a sermon by its suspected leader, Abu Bakar Bashir, many years ago. The alleged connection to Jemaah Islamiah was ‘absolutely ludicrous,’ Kuranda Seyit, spokesman for the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, said.

“‘He just heard the guy speak about five years ago, that’s as close as he got,’ he told Reuters.

*WHO IS BOMBING SOWETO?*

Bombs went off in South Africa, killing two in Soweto. No groups have claimed credit. Pro-apartheid right wing whites are suspected.

In Israel, Ariel Sharon’s government may dissolve today because of challenges by the Labor Party over his refusal to temporarily stop the settlement policy.

MORE MEDIA CONCENTRATION COMING

In the media news, NBC is on the verge of buying BRAVO,now owned by Rainbow/Cablevision. Viacom has also expressed interest in other channels. Cablevision, which needs cash, is expected to sell American Movie Channel next. …In France, prosecutors are going after Vivendi, owner of Universal studios and other assets. They are looking into the company’s financial disclosure practrces.

Cynthia Cotts reports in the Village Voice this week:

“What New York Times staffer would publicly criticize his bosses? Presumably one who is fighting to keep his job. The employee in question is Times staff photographer Edward Keating. On October 25, the Times published an Editors’ Note stating that a Times photo had been staged — and that the photographer had admitted it. Two days later, when Keating was outed by Newsday, he denied staging it and called the Times note an “outrageous falsehood.”

“The Editors’ Note is our statement on the matter and we stand by that,” a Times spokesperson told the Voice.

AND SPEAKING OF THE TIMES

In the Email: Donald Johnson writes:

“There was an article in the Sunday NYT by John Burns about an anti-sanctions protest in Iraq by Voices in the Wilderness. The tone of the coverage was extremely hostile. As it happens, I agree with a couple of points that Burns made in his editorial, that was disguised as a news story.

First, Voices in the Wilderness apparently used the very largest estimates for the sanctions death toll–1 million children and 1.7 million total deaths. Richard Garfield, a professor of public health at Columbia, estimates a death toll of 350,000 children under the age of 5 that might be the result of sanctions. Joy Gordon in her article in the November issue of Harper’s uses another figure–500,000 children dead under the age of 5. So Voices in the Wilderness probably should use more conservative numbers.

“That said, the article continues the very long tradition at the NYT of whitewashing the American role in deliberately killing Iraqi civilians. We know it was deliberate because Pentagon officials told Barton Gellman of the Washington Post that they bombed water treatment plants and electrical power facilities to ‘accelerate the effects of the sanctions’ and to hurt the civilian population. They knew the plants couldn’t be repaired under sanctions and say so in the article (June 23,1991– I downloaded it from the Washington Post website last year for $1.50).

“The idea was that the suffering of the civilians would put pressure on Saddam to comply with disarmament demands and might even lead to his overthrow…..

“There are a lot of rightwing warbloggers who regularly attack the NYT and I see some moderate leftwing bloggers who come to their defense. That’s fine–people on the right are so far offbase in their criticisms that I sometimes feel like defending the NYT myself. But the deeper problem at the NYT is that, with some honorable exceptions among their reporters, they generally cover up American guilt for atrocities until enough time has passed to make the whole issue irrelevant. The NYT is quite willing to condemn the Reagan Administration now for its support of right wing terror in Central America and Angola, but back in the 80’s they were much less willing to do this. When Raymond Bonner told the truth about El Salvador Abe Rosenthal pulled him out. The NYT has supported the sanctions and the same is true of politicians across the mainstream spectrum. The NYT therefore won’t admit that the sanctions were originally meant to kill civilians. And this during a time when we lecture the Islamic world about their need for openness and their responsibility to fight terrorism….”

ACTIVISTS CALL FOR MEDIA PROTESTS

Activists are still peeved over the coverage of last Saturday’s Peace March. One wrote to a list serv I monitor:

“How did CNN respond? They covered it via ticker tape at the bottom of the television screen (where most of the real news is these days). There was such scant coverage of this major national event (worldwide event actually, as there were similar protests across Europe and Asia) that there can be no doubt that the media is actively suppressing the voices (and there are many) of opposition to this war. It’s time to get serious folks, and demand that the media stop feeding us White House briefings and get out on the streets where people far and wide are voicing opposition to this ill-conceived and treacherous war. We simply can’t afford to sit back and let the world unravel before our eyes….”

As I mentioned, I was at the Synergos Institute’s unique University for The Night event dealing with inequalities in the world. The only person who addressed the issue was a brilliant social activist and defender of children’s rights from Brazil Helio Mattar. He promised to send me some info about his innovative media work.

Over dinner, I heard Herbert Cho Gunther of the Public Media Center explain why most media campaigns fail because they don’t stir controversy. I also heard more about why Columbia University’s new president as taken on the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism for stressing the teaching of craft over ideas. He compared it to a trade school, a retired NY Times reporter and TV producer told me, expressing the hope that if the School does change, journalism education might change with it.

*KEEP WRITING*

We are still getting requests for copies of our film COUNTING ON DEMOCRACY. Keep them coming See Itvs.org for a schedule of where and when it will be shown on public television stations. A see the clock out of one idea which is telling me it is time to run. So I will have to talke a pause from the cause, and urge readers again to make this blog more nteraactive by writing dissector@mediachannel.org. Check out gv.news.net for diverse news and views worldwide.