*MEDIA DAMPENS VOTER TURNOUT*

*NEW POLLS SHOW TURN AGAINST WAR*

*IS THERE A RAP WAR?*

Call me a “hair-shirted goo-goo,” to borrow some language from wordsmith William Safire in this morning’s New York Times. He lambastes those of us who go into a hand-wringing fit on the subject of voter turnout. His piece predictably blames the people for the problem. Writing from Florida, he doesn’t seem to care that the election there is still managed ineptly by a Republican state administration that does not want a high voter turnout. He does not mention that much of the state polls have a 7 PM closing time that makes it hard for working class people to vote, and he avoids discussing the voter purge that struck eligible voters off the rolls. First uncovered by Greg Palast and others, the system is still in place.

VOTING RIGHTS FILM AIRS TONIGHT IN NEW YORK

If you live in the New York area, you can see our investigative film “Counting on Democracy” on Channel 13 (PBS) at midnight tonight. Denied national distribution by PBS’s central programmers, the distributors in ITVS, the Independent Television Service have had to go station by station to get it seen. It aired Friday night on Boston’s Channel 2, and will be seen on KCET in Los Angeles tomorrow night at l0 PM. (Watch for a story in the LA Times tomorrow.) Also in New York, there is a screening tonight at the screening room at 35 West 67th Street at 6PM. The Puffin Foundation will show it tomorrow night at 7 PM in Teaneck, New Jersey. I will be speaking after both screenings.Copies are available through globalvision.org.

Incidentally, New Yorkers were being hyped endlessly over the weekend about the possibility that Independent “Party” candidate Tom Golisano, who like Michael Bloomberg before him, is financing his own campaign to the tune of tens of millions, would step down. All the media reported was that he would make an announcement on TV on Sunday night — just before 60 Minutes aired. The media coverage helped build an audience for the announcement which, contrary to falsely planted explanations, had him pitching his continued candidacy. One fact to note: Golisano’s hired gun and strategist is none other than Roger Stone, the man behind Bush’s hard ball-maneuvers in Florida — seen doing his thing in Counting on Democracy. Stone was interviewed for the film.

*WHY DO SO FEW PEOPLE VOTE?*

Politics in America is being downplayed on the air. A CBS news promo after 60 Minutes last night talked first about a segment on parenting problems, and politics was just a mention. The media is a big part of the problem for its lack of political coverage and its quality. It makes politics boring because it focuses on horse races, not issues or things that matter most to most Americans. No surprise that the New York Times front page led with a story Sunday on a poll that showed that both parties lack vision.

Where is the media pushing them, and why aren’t they exposing the corruption? Cynicism on the tube talks about this as “the Seinfeld election,” a reference to a TV show about nothing, or at least not on the surface. In contrast, you have publications like the NATION blasting the Democrats for selling out. Little of that discourse gets on the air.

Instead, we are subjected to endless negative advertising, often with distorted claims that enrich the TV stations, allowing these sleazy ads to inform their viewers, instead of educating them on the news.. Why aren’t people interested? Because it’s just not interesting. “Not true,”says Mr. Safire.

KVETCHING OR VOTING?

“Why is turnout eroding? Negative advertising, we are told — people are turned off by the shiv-slipping TV spots that besmear both sides, or by pabulum positions taken by candidates afraid to take stands that might alienate a noisy segment of the spectrum, or by the seeming sameness immortalized by the slogan ‘not a dime’s worth of difference.’

“Baloney. The hawk-dove divide is real, as is the eternal struggle between tax cutters and entitlement believers. The reason for failing to vote is that we are lazy and do not want to take the trouble to fulfill our civic responsibilities. Too many of us would rather kvetch than vote.”

So sayeth the sage of the Times op-ed page.

As a kvetcher who is also a voter, I urge you to vote but don’t stop at that. Get involved. Inform yourself, and stop the erosion of our democracy. I know that many non- voters are voting in a sense — against this charade. But that is what many in power would like. They want us to get out of the way and let them rule, unchecked. Will we? (On Friday, I ran an item suggesting that younger voters prefer to volunteer rather than vote. An expert manager of volunteer programs wrote to say that in her experience, that’s not true. Young people are not volunteering in large numbers either.

*ANOTHER ELECTION, ANOTHER DISTORTION *

In another election, over in Turkey, the media was reporting a big victory by the Islamists. But that may be overstated says Adam McConnel, reporting for us from Ankara:

“CNN International’s Walter Rodgers has been breathlessly reporting from Ankara this morning about the blow dealt to Turkey’s political establishment in yesterday’s overwhelming victory by Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party.

“Actually, that shouldn’t be a surprise, since Erdogan is mostly known for how well he governed Istanbul while he was the mayor. He will have more trust among financial people, despite suspicions about his Islamist orientation,‚ than the previous parties which were unceremoniously dumped from the government yesterday.

“The second imminent issue is how the election of the AK Party will affect the Turkish government‚s position towards an attack on Iraq. The general opposition of the Turks to an attack on Iraq will most likely remain unchanged; the flexibility of its position will be the indicator to watch.”

DON’T TELL ANYONE: IN FACT, WE ARE ALREADY AT WAR

As for Attack on Iraq, you would think that the disclosure that the Unites States is already at war and fighting in Iraq would make the headlines. Instead it is being buried. Sunday’s Times it carried a page one story on US pilots using Southern Iraq for practice runs. You have to scan down to the seventh paragraph to find the lead. I will put it in caps so it can’t be missed again. “THE ALLIED PATROLS, IN FACT, HAVE GROWN INTO A LOW-GRADE WAR.” A war is a war, low grade or not. So there “IN FACT,” you have it. Sort of.

Developments at the UN may be slowing things down and at least giving Bush more time for campaigning. Ian Wlliams reports for Foreign Policy in Focus from the UN:

“Bismarck’s dictum that people who want to appreciate treaties and sausages should not watch them being made applies to Security Council resolutions as well. The U.S. is set to win Security Council support for a resolution on Iraq and is already calling it victory.

“Although the end result is indeed likely to be a successful American resolution, whose consequences may eventually include the regime change that has been the administration’s public policy, we can draw some considerable comfort from the strong opposition to American unilateralism in the Security Council. The effect of the drawn-out resistance led by France has also worked on public opinion in the U.S. itself. According to polls, the U.S. public is much less eager for unilateral action than for intervention by a coalition–even though a frighteningly high proportion of them (66% according to Pew Research poll in October) have bought the presidential line that Iraq was involved in the September 11 attacks. Presumably they will also be much less eager if Iraq readily cooperates with the UN inspectors.”

But all this remains to be seen.

*NEW POLL SHOWS MOUNTING WORRY*

As for attacking Iraq, there is a new poll out in the US that might surprise you from the Pew People.

“A growing number of Americans oppose military action in Iraq, amid widespread concern over the potential negative consequences of war. For the first time since the Iraq debate intensified this summer, a majority of Democrats oppose the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein from power. And while a 55% majority still favors military action, this is fewer than the more than six-in-ten who have consistently supported that option since late August. A third (34%) now oppose military action, up from 28% earlier this month and 21% in late August.

“The public’s leading concern arising from a possible conflict isthat Iraq will deploy chemical or biological weapons against U.S.forces; six-in-ten (59%) say they worry a great deal about this. A 52% majority expresses concern about the general prospect of heavy military casualties. And compared with the first Persian Gulf War, many more Americans fear a conflict with Iraq will raise the risk of terrorism in the United States. Half (51%) express that concern now, compared with just a third in late January 1991, after the Gulf War began….”

*60 MINUTES AND NYT REVEAL US-SOUTH AFRICA CBW LINK*

Speaking of chemical and biological weapons, hats off to 60 Minutes for leading the broadcast last night on Larry Ford, an American doctor who may have links to racist groups and was found dead in California. In his refrigerator, investigators found many dangerous chemical and biological warfare agents that he made available to the white South Africans during the apartheid era. At the time, the South African government was researching chemical weapons that could be deployed against blacks. (The New York Times was part of this investigation but played its findings on page 28, while CBS devoted two segments to it on their most popular magazine show).

What came out in this sordid tale was scary on many levels–including the revelation that the CIA and FBI knew about this and apparently did nothing. Neither would comment to Mike Wallace. This story is page one in many South African papers and hopefully they will pursue it further.

*US ADMITS NERVE GAS EXPERIMENTS*

Some years back, as you will recall, CNN ran its Operation Tailwind story, and alleged that the US military used Sarin, an outlawed nerve agent in Indochina during the war. CNN was put under incredible pressure by the Pentagon, that denied the story up and down. Mediachannel covered the controversy extensively. CNN later settled with two journalists they fired, paying them an undisclosed amount of money and insisted that they keep the terms secret.

Now more is coming out on other secrets — like the US nerve gas program, as Mike Kelly of AP reported late last week:

“The military secretly tested sarin nerve agent in a Hawaii forest preserve in 1967, the Pentagon acknowledged Thursday in the latest disclosures about Cold War-era testing of biological and chemical weapons.

“Other secret tests in Hawaii in 1966 and the Panama Canal Zone in 1963 released a germ meant as a harmless stand-in for the bacteria that cause anthrax, the Defense Department said. A 1966 experiment in an undisclosed ‘tropical jungle type environment’ involved spraying tear gas on unprotected U.S. military volunteers.

“The Defense Department released summaries of five chemical and biological weapons tests Thursday. The disclosures were part of an effort to research and make public such tests from the 1960s and 1970s to alert veterans who may have been exposed.

*OIL AND IRAQ: A CAUSE FOR WAR?*

Sunday’s NY Times featured a long story that downplayed the significance of oil in any planned attack on Iraq. A front page Week in Review piece explained how complicated it would be to control the oil, though noting that there is a lot of it. (”Five times more proven reserves than the United States, the second biggest supply after Saudia Arabia., and more waiting to be found.”) Oh no, we wouldn’t be interested in that, says Ari Fleischer, the Bush megaphone, “we just care about peace and stability.”

On he same day that the Times poo-pooed the war for oil thesis, that has driven the protests that it has also downplayed, we had London’s Observer reporting:

“Carve-up of oil riches begins:”

“US plans to ditch industry rivals and force end of Opec,” write Peter Beaumont and Faisal Islam “The leader of the London-based Iraqi National Congress, Ahmed Chalabi, has met executives of three US oil multinationals to negotiate the carve-up of Iraq’s massive oil reserves post-Saddam.

“Disclosure of the meetings in October in Washington - confirmed by an INC spokesman - comes as Lord Browne, the head of BP, has warned that British oil companies have been squeezed out of post-war Iraq even before the first shot has been fired in any US-led land invasion.

“Confirming the meetings to US journalists, INC spokesman Zaab Sethna said: ‘The oil people are naturally nervous. We’ve had discussions with them, but they’re not in the habit of going around talking about them.’

*ON THE WAR FRONT: COOKING, RECRUITING AND PROVOKING*

Mr. Blair’s Britain, according to today’s South Africa Mail and Guardian

“has been involved in secret talks with the United States over the development of so-called non-lethal weapons, including lasers that blind the enemy and microwave systems that cook the skin of human targets.”

This item was just sent to me:

“The current issue of Mother Jones Magazine has a piece written by David Goodman entitled, No Child Unrecuited. Here’s the scoop. Tucked way down deep in the Bush ‘No Child Left Behind Act,’ which was passed earlier this year, is a provision requiring public secondary schools to provide military recruiters not only with access to facilities, but also requiring contact information for each and every student-or face a cut off of federal aid.”

Even more insidious potentially, is a disclosure buried in the LA Times about the latest policy being considered by Donald Rumsfeld:

“According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization — the “Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)” — will carry out secret missions designed to “stimulate reactions” among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to ‘counterattack’ by U.S. forces.

“In other words — and let’s say this plainly, clearly and soberly, so that no one can mistake the intention of Rumsfeld’s plan — the United States government is planning to use “cover and deception” and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. Let’s say it again: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other members of the unelected regime in Washington plan to deliberately foment the murder of innocent people — your family, your friends, your lovers, you — in order to further their geopolitical ambitions.

*B92: “BALANCE OF HORROR”*

Writing from Belgrade in the aftermath of the terrorist incident there, Bosko Denic of B92 radio argues that we are living with a new “Balance of Horror:”

“There was a time in the past when it was honorable to be in power while today, all around the world, it is synonymous with corruption. In the same way it was once almost honorable to be a terrorist and fight for ideals – even misguided ones – while today it is a mercenary occupation, a job like any other, an opportunity mostly to earn a quick big buck, although not without risks to the civilian population. September 11 and the assault on the Dubrovka Theatre both signify a new balance of fear between the protagonists on the new world political scene: on one side states and on the other terrorist movements. Both have sworn to fight for the sacred principles they cling to, even at the price of death. Unfortunately they death they talk about is always someone else’s.”

*IS THERE A “RAP WAR” IN NEW YORK*

In New York, it looks like the New York Post is stirring a “rap war ” in the aftermath of the killing of Jam Master Jay of Run DMC and a local rap promoter over the weekend, It is reporting new a federal probe to treat some rappers like members of the mafia. In his Internet circulated column, long time music writer Dave Marsh dismisses the media accounts and criticizes a new repressive climate:

“Cops in New York seized the opportunity provided by Jam Master Jay’s senseless murder to declare the dawn of a new “hip-hop war” that allows them to put rappers under surveillance. There is no possibility of such a war, and if there were, the last people to be involved in it would be Run-D.M.C., consistent apostles of peace.

“The minute it was discovered that one of the snipers came from Jamaica, MSNBC produced a shrink to compare the murder spree and the plot of the reggae film, The Harder They Come. Yet no one at MSNBC has pointed out that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Ridge, Ashcroft and Rice crafting a lame remake of The Magnificent Seven.

“The snipers’ messages contained a common slang phrase (used by Ice-T inNew Jack City, for instance), so U.S.A. Today rushed in a pundit who “revealed” a connection to the 5 Percent Nation, a Nation of Islam offshoot that’s influenced certain rappers. Media coverage portrays the 5%ers as villainous thugs. In fact, the 5%ers are best known for porch-step philosophizing and their felonies probably amount to providing one another with smoke.

As Davey D (www.daveyd.com) points out, “police departments all over the country have been collecting and now have very detailed dossiers of rap artists and who they’re affiliated with. From New York City which actually has a ‘rap task force’ to Oakland to Mountainview, California where the police chief sits down and determines what RAP acts are allowed and not allowed to perforrm.”

Meanwhile while prosecutors go after rappers domestically, US agencies are promoting rap as propaganda overseas. Frank Rich reported Saturday: “even the United States government has joined the Eminem bandwagon: this summer it started broadcasting his songs in the Middle East as part of its propaganda campaign to enhance America’s image

*TAJIKISTAN JAILS JOURNALISTS*

In our media news, Roshan Khadavi writes from Tajikistan: “just to let you know that last week, nine Tajik journalists ( 4 from TRK Asia & 5 from SM1 tv stations in Khujand, north of Tajikistan) were forcefully arrested and three of them were taken into the military service after taking part in Internews’ seminar/training on tv talk show production. We are protesting this illegal action. Our lawyers are in Khujand to meet with local officials. We have asked OSCE to write a letter to the ministry of foreign affairs…and I have alerted the Committee to Protect Journalists & Reporters without borders. Let me know if you need any additional information. This week, We will be meeting with USAID & diplomatic community on this urgent matter.”

What was that song about hating Mondays? That’s how I feel this morning. I was supposed to be on the radio with Amy Goodman on WBAI this AM but went to the wrong studio. They did catch up with me 75 minutes later by phone. A new week and new month is here. Use it in part to help us promote Mediachannel.org and this weblog. Share your comments by writing: dissector@mediachannel.org.