HEY, HEY JFK

INSPECTIONS WON’T STOP US

CENSORSING THE ARTS

Today when you ask someone where they you, they think you are talking about September ll. In my generation, the date to remember was November 22, the day JFK was shot down in Dallas. Today marks the 39th anniversary of an event that remains the subject of fierce debate with most of the media believing the case has been solved and that only man, Le Harvey Oswald was the shooter. Roughly 70% of the American people remain unpersuaded.p>You could say, as many in our media elite do, that people will believe anything, and let it go at that. Rarely do they reflect on their own role in keeping all of us in the dark about so many matters. Ten years or so ago, I directed a film called “Beyond JFK” exploring the issues raised in Oliver Stone’s film whose own credibility was assassinated on just about every op-ed page in the nation. (Even as most movie critics and much of the public loved it.) The film opens with a discourse on history and news.

WHAT THEY SAY NOW

I went back to three of top journalists who shaped our understanding of those events: Walter Cronkite, who teeared up in reporting the news; Tom Wicker of the New York Times and Robin MacNeil, then at NBC, who were on the scene at Dealey Plaza. Nearly thirty years later, all three were willing to acknowledge doubts about what we know and the possibility that others were involved. Macneil, then with that most establishment of programs, his own PBS MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour on PBS challenged the idea that conspiracies do not occur. He told me his memorable story of being the only journalist to get off the press bus when he heard gun fire, and run up the grassy knoll. He then rushed over to the Texas Book Depository building to find a phone to call in a report. On the way into the building, he ran into a man who was rushing out and asked where he could make a call. It turns out that man was Lee Harvey Oswald. Talk about missing the big interveiw….

TERROR NEWS FOR BREAKFAST

We awoke this morning to news of the capture of a big cheese Al Qaeda operative, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a supposed confusion from the Bali Bomber, and word that Israeli tanks are back in Bethlehem. Ariel Sharon, the NY Times reports, is being restrained in his response for fear of undermining support for US coalition building at the NATO meeting in Prague. (Only Germany seems to be standing apart from the chorus of syncophantic support.) What is not being reported much from Israel is the way the peace forces there see the tragedy of another bus bombing and now the retaliation. (The best piece I saw was oen by neil MacDonald of the CBC who at reporeted on Palestinian claims that 8 of their people including children had been killed the week before with no news attention.) Says Gush Shalom of the Peace Bloc:

“Today’s busblast took the lives of eleven old andyoung, men, women and of children on the way to school.It was the work of a 23-year old from Bethlehem - thismeans revenge on the town of Bethlehem and is it nowlooks also on the Gaza Strip - as it was claimed byHamas which have there their stronghold. Before, duringand after each Palestinian suicide attack there is theroutine brutality of the occupation: no day withoutsome renewed 24-hour curfew, no day without announcedor implemented house demolitions; actually there passesno day without killings which don’t make headlines andwhose victims are mostly Palestinians.

“The Israeli and the Palestinian people are stuck in amurderous vicious circle: On the one hand, thePalestinians will not be intimidated into submissionand the terrorism will not end without the occupationbe lifted. (Sharon personally this week warned thesoldiers in Nablus that “Palestinians are willing togive their lives in order not to be defeated.”) On theother hand, those in power in Israel use terrorism asan excuse not to end the occupation. Until now they gotthe support of those who ultimately want a two-statesolution but for the time being don’t want to “rewardterrorism.”

INSPECT THIS!

As for the terror war, here’s a report from the UK that I haven’t seen in the US media. Paul Gilfeather reports in the Daily Mirror: “George Bush’s top security adviser last night admitted the US wouldattack Iraq even if UN inspectors fail to find weapons.Richard Perle stunned members of the British Parliament by insisting a”clean bill of health” from UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix wouldnot halt America’s war machine.

“Evidence from ONE witness on Saddam Hussein’s weapons program will beenough to trigger a fresh military onslaught, he told an all-partymeeting on global security.

“Former British defense minister and Labor Party backbencher PeterKilfoyle said: “America is duping the world into believing it supportsthese inspections. President Bush intends to go to war even ifinspectors find nothing.

“This make a mockery of the whole process and exposes America’s realdetermination to bomb Iraq.”

HE WAS SUCH A NICE BOY

As for Indonesia, the capture and “confession” of the bomber is unlikely to ease tensions totally. A young Indonesian who I met in Jakarta wrote to me : “I was surprised with the news but the big thing that made us startled was knowing about the background of the suspect. He’s a clever boy, he had good marks when he was at school, he always be the number one, very active in some organizations, diligent on his religion. He just looked so perfect…”

AID FOR AFGHANISTAN?

There was a another big bomb blast in Kabul today. No casualties. But one more significant casualty seems to be the promises of major humanitarian assistance from the U Andrew Lawler, Boston correspondent for Science magazine, wrote this week in the LA Times”

“…President Bush last month ballyhooed the $588 million in humanitarian assistance and reconstruction showered on Afghanistan during the last year. Now the Pentagon promises to bring in a few hundred more civilians to help. But put that in perspective: The Pentagon spent nearly $15 billion on the war in that same period.

“The truth on the ground is even more alarming. Kabul is full of European and Japanese aid workers, while American GIs are largely confined to a military base north of the city. Beyond Kabul and its environs, there are few signs of foreign assistance. In a recent two-week trip through central and south Afghanistan, outside the relative safety of Kabul and the surrounding area, I saw few signs of foreign aid….We did it for Germany, but Afghanistan is yesterday’s problem. American statesman George Kennan foresaw the problem during World War II, when he was assigned one summer to Baghdad. “Our government is technically incapable of conceiving and promulgating a long-term consistent policy toward areas remote from its own territory,” he wrote. The problem, he added, is that “our actions in the field of foreign affairs are the convulsive reactions of politicians to an internal political life dominated by vocal minorities.”

CENSORING THE ARTS

Michael Lee, of Trafika films and the fine magazine of the same name that publishes out of Prague was up at Columbia University for a journalism arts conference. He kindly agreed to tell us all about what happened: ”

“I am going to challenge the liberal notion pervasive in this room thatthere is something wrong with gatekeepers,” historian David Lowenthal said.”Gatekeepers are necessary, they keep out the hostile, the ugly, thethreat.”

“Well, yes – but the basic point being addressed yesterday at “The NewGatekeepers: A Conference on Free Expression in the Arts” held the past twodays by Columbia’s National Arts Journalism Program is that who is INSIDEthe gates determines who is perceived as hostile.

ART WARS?

“With a vigorous emphasis on homeland security poising us for freedom ofexpression itself to be seen as ugly and dangerous, are we poised for a newround of “Art Wars”?

“A highlight of the first day was historian (And Mediachannel advisor) Jon Wiener’s hilarious recountingof Truman’s efforts to use visa issues to keep out Picasso as a Communist inthe 50s, and Nixon’s to kick John Lennon out of New York in 1972 when heplanned a youth voter registration concert tour to parallel the presidentialcampaign, with John Mitchell using Lennon’s year old cannabis bust inLondon as leverage.

“Art speech won in these cases, Weiner pointed out (”Lennon stayed and Nixonwent”), but today’s signs are more ominous, such as the prevention of Iran’smost celebrated filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami from attending this year’s NewYork Film Festival despite his having been on seven previous harmless visitsto America.

“NYU law professor Amy Adler did a humorous riff around what she called the”impurity” of censorship, pointing out that obscenity law evaluates art byexactly the standards art seeks to defy. “Postmodernism,” she joked, “hasrendered the old Supreme Court standard of ‘serious artistic value’obsolete.”

FEAR OF “DIVISIVENESS”

“Many panelists agreed that the main danger today is a more silent corporatecensorship, based on avoiding controversy and what AT&T Foundation directorTimothy McClimon called “divisiveness”.

“Max Anderson, director of the Whitney Museum, announced a new show nextspring focused on perspectives of America by artists not from America, withthe caveat that he already does not expect much any major corporateunderwriting.

UNBRAVE NEW WORLD

“Playwright Betty Shamieh, one of the very few actual artists on the panels,told the most touching and discouraging story of the day, about hertumultuous (ultimately non-) participation in the “Brave New World” theatermarathon at Town Hall this past September 11th.

“Shamieh, a Palestinian-American (and a Christian), was the only person ofArabic descent involved with the Festival; she usually performs her ownwork, but the first play she prepared was so controversial and unflinchingin its look at the treatment of Arab-Americans that she asked the organizersto replace herself with a more well-known actress - top luminaries of NewYork theater were involved in “Brave New World” already.

“Instead, the organizers pulled the play, claiming that if they let it run,all the sponsors were going to drop out.

“In response, Shamieh lamented, she “Uncle Tom”ed, writing a new 10 minutepablum piece about becoming a hero by speaking to the terrorists rationallyon their own terms, talking them down to the ground, and all the passengerson the plane refusing to disembark until officials listened to theterrorists’ complaints.

:”This play was cast and prepared, starring Rosie Perez.

“But at the last minute, against Shamieh’s initial disagreement and finallywithout telling her, the organizers distributed to the cast sanitizedversions of this already sanitized play, removing all sequences they foundobjectionable. In theater, unlike in film, Shamieh, pointed out, theplaywright’s words are sacrosanct - when she reatliated by handing out theoriginal script, the organizers cancelled this second play, now claimingtime limits, since the play had been “added late”.

“”In a three day festival, for a ten minute play…written by the onlyArab-American in the festival…not enough time,” Shamieh said. Back inSeptember, Shamieh launched a campaign to bring public attention to this actof aggressive omission, but no

“The second day was focused on quieter mechanisms for stiflingself-expression, with panels on copyright, “the free market”, andself-censorship (must arts journalists cover conflicts such as Shamieh’s?).

CONDON, CAMERAMAN OF CORPSES

“On a break I met photographer Thomas Condon, visiting from Cincinnati as aguest of the National Coalition Against Censorship. Condon is fresh out ofmedium security prison where he served five months of a two and a half yearsentence for photographing corpses in the morgue. Condon claims he had fullpermission of and complicity by the coroners, but the families of thedeceased went after him, and not only criminally – they are also seeking 250million dollars in damages for the “ghoulification” of their loved ones,which means either making them into ghouls, or exploiting them as ghouls.

“Condon’s pro bono lawyer, H. Louis Sirkin, was also the defense attorney forHustler publisher Larry Flynt against his obscenity charges, and DennisBarrie and the Contemporary Arts Center for hosting the controversialMapplethorpe retrospective, The Perfect Moment.

“EVIDENCE”

“One morgue photo of Condon’s featured as part of the excellent exhibition”Evidence,” which included slides, websites, and examples of banned musicand other efforts at corporate control of online and physical art andculture. His morgue work is otherwise, for legal reasons, unavailable.

“As with Winona, Condon’s “transgression” has boosted his career, with thestory featuring regularly in Cincinatti’s press, earning a listing at thetop of the “Top Ten News Stories of 2001″, and not diminishing much thisyear. In August, Condon mounted his first solo exhibition – without themorgue photos, of course.

For more information on “Evidence” and the rest of the conference, check outthe National Arts Journalism Program’s website atwww.najp.org/conferences/gatekeepers”

CENSORING CHECHYA REPORT

Speaking of censorship, Adam McConnel forwarded this report. He wasn’t sure of the source. It is by John G. Bernander: “Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) will lodge a formal protest with Russian authorities after security forces erased tapes that Moscow correspondent Hans Wilhelm Steinfeld made from a Chechen refugee camp.

“Norway’s Foreign Ministry is considering a formal reaction, NRK reports.

“Steinfeld said that four of five cassettes with film and interviews were confiscated when he and a photographer were to return to Moscow from Ingushetia, where they had visited a camp of Chechen refugees.

“Two of the four cassettes were destroyed,” Steinfeld said. He believes Russian authorities employ force and censorship to prevent reportage from the Chechen conflict.

“This is a completely unacceptable assault on the practice of free journalism and we will make a complaint to the Russian Foreign Ministry,” said head of broadcasting.”

WHAT IN THE WORLD?

You have probably heard about the burning of an office of a Nigerian newspaper (a member of Globalvision News Network, gvnews.net) which reported on the debate over the Miss World contest. Over a hundred people are dead there in the rioting between Muslims and Christians that followed. 500 were injured. There is no footage because journalists there said it was not safe, according to Fox News. Yet as they fight over Ms. World because of it symbolic sexuality. Young Americans don’t even know where most of the real world is. Did you see this AP report:”One in 10 young Americans could not locate his own country on a blank map of the world, a survey of geographic literacy shows. Only 13 percent could find Iraq.

‘ “Someone once said that war is God’s way of teaching geography, but apparently today neither war nor the threat of war can adequately teach geography,” John Fahey, president of the National Geographic Society, said Wednesday.

” The organization’s survey found that about one in seven of Americans between age 18 and 24, the prime age for military service, could place Iraq. President Bush has said he is prepared to use force to rid Iraq of any weapons of mass destruction….

” When more than 300 young Americans in the survey were shown a blank world map and asked to indicate the location of the United States, only 89 percent could do so. ” See: www.nationalgeographic.com/geosurvey

EUROPEAN HELP WANTED

Findings like this are not new. They have been pretty consistent. They prompted me to write to agencies in Europe seeking foreign aid. If you live on the Continent, and think you can help or refer us to agencies that might, please do. Mediachannel.org needs your support and involvement as we try to diversify our funding sources.

“I am writing to you for help from an underdeveloped country called the United States of America.

“While we are a strong nation, we have a major problem of cultural and global illiteracy.

“We are the world’s leading superpower but we seem to be super-uninformed about our orn planet. We are underdeveloped in understanding at a time that globalization demands that we know more,

“You probably saw this story: “One in 10 young Americans could not locate his own country on a blank map of the world, a survey of geographic literacy shows. Only 13 percent could find Iraq.”

“It is not our fault. Our education system doesn’t educate us about the world — and our hyper commercialzed media is increasingly driven by entertainment values and dumbed down news. It does not offer in depth international coverage. Even Europe is treated as a third world country — when it is treated at all.

TRAGIC

“This is tragic — because when issues are not covered in a balanced and diverse way, Americans don’t get them. And when they don’t “get them,” they don’t press our politicians to do anything about them. In an age when UN Secretary General Kofi Annan calls CNN the “16th member of the Security Council” the world is in trouble too because public opinion can so easily be manipulated and managed.

“We are writing to ask for your support for a professionally run not for profit global media network that is trying to do something in a positive vein about this “hidden” crisis. We need your help. We are the world’s largest online media issue platform — Mediachannel.org. We offer a bridge between mainstream media and independent and alternative outlets. We link civil society to the world of professional media groups. We offer global media news, features, resource, and many tools for journalists, editors, broadcasters, internet colleagues, academics, students and the public at the large. The head of BBC News told the Guardian that Mediachannel is one of his favorite websites….” If you wuld like to help, send me a note and I will send you the whole letter…..”

ONE WORLD-MTV COLLABORATION

Mediachannel is part of the UK based One World network (www.oneworld.net) Here is an announcement from them worth noting: “OneWorld Radio (www.oneworld.net/radio) is to offer radio stations aroundthe world the opportunity to broadcast HIV/AIDS awareness programming fromthe MTV Staying Alive campaign (www.staying-alive.org).On 1 December 2002, World Aids Day, MTV channels will air a special showfeaturing some of the most diverse and exciting acts in the music scene inconcert from Capetown, South Africa and Seattle, USA.”

THERE IS NO PARTY LIKE AN INDYMEDIA PARTY

So that’s it from here for the week. A Happy Thanksgiving to American readers. I look forward to seeing any NY based bloggerites tomorrow night for Indymedia’s party/screening of Counting on Democracy with Greg Palast and myself. It takes place at The Walker Stage, 56 Walker Street, Tribeca at 8 PM. May the force be with you. Your responses welcome at dissector@mediachannel.org