*US THREATENS KOREA

*KOREA THREATENS WORLD

*ANNOUNCING “THE IZZY”

With a happy Xmas cheer to John and Yoko, may I begin by humming their memorable lines:

“So this is Xmas

“And What Have you done

“Another year over

“And a new one Just begun…”

We are saying goodbye to this year with no less fear than we began it. For years now, critics have spoken in dark terms of the fate of the Earth, and the future of the plan. But not until now has the Earth itself received a direct threat to its future existence. In a world of overblown rhetoric, the latest ultimatum from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is in a class by itself.

NO DOUBT ABOUT IT

This latest blast from Pyonyang came in response to the blarney from the shores of the Potomac: Yesterday, the commissar of conflict, Donald Rumsfeld alluded to Korea and said:. “We are capable of fighting two major regional conflicts. We’re capable of winning decisively in one and swiftly defeating in the case of the other, and let there be no doubt about it.”

Well there were some doubts about it. As the Guardian reports: “The North Korean media, which is never short of a fiery turn of phrase, has given Bush administration hardliners all the material they may want.

“The communist party’s newspaper Workers’ Daily declared that ‘the army and people of the DPRK are fully ready to mercilessly strike the bulwark of US imperialist aggressors’ - implying that they could hit targets in the US. ‘There can be no earth without Korea,’ it said. ‘The army and people of the DPRK will destroy the earth if the enemies dare make a nuclear strike at it. This is their do-or-die spirit.’”

The New York Times reports that “North Korea Begins to Reopen Plant for Processing Plutonium: This is the most provocative and technically important stepNorth Korea has taken to revive a nuclear program that could produce weapons within months.”

“And so this is Xmas

“I hope you have fun

“The near and the dear ones

“The old and the young

“A LUCKY SHOT”

Nothing like a good threat to keep the news machines humming this holiday “season of peace.” Over in the gulf, US forces were taken aback when the Iraqis shot down a predator drone spycraft — “a lucky shot” said the US command. The troops meanwhile think they were lucky because, according to the newspaper of record, “Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens visited American troops recently aboard the U.S.S. Constellation, in the Persian Gulf.”Media critic Norman Solomon traveled with actor Sean Penn to Baghdad, and wrote:

WITH SEAN PENN IN BAGHDAD

“At a time when fame is so routinely seen as an end in itself, or as a way to accumulate more wealth and power, Penn has become conspicuous for his willingness to take some real risks on behalf of peace. Predictably, the vilification began immediately from jingoistic media outlets like Fox News Channel and the New York Post. Distortion is a big business.

“When our country appears to be on the verge of war, stepping out of line is always hazardous. All kinds of specious accusations fly. Whether you travel to Baghdad or hold an anti-war sign on main street back home, some people will accuse you of serving the propaganda interests of the foreign foe. But the only way to prevent your actions from being misconstrued is to do nothing. The only way to avoid the danger of having your words distorted is to keep your mouth shut.

“In the functional category of ‘use it or lose it,’ the First Amendment remains just a partially realized promise. To the extent that it can be fulfilled, democracy becomes actual rather than theoretical. But that requires a multiplicity of voices. And when the drumbeat of war threatens to drown out all those refusing to harmonize with it, the imperative to dissent becomes paramount.”

HUMAN SHIELDS OR ENEMY COMBATANTS?

Fox News could not contain its over the top contempt this morning for activists (as well as many Jordanians) who traveled to Baghdad to act as “human shields. They were branded “the same as enemy combatants.” The implication: They should be killed. Meanwhile, the UN inspectors kept busy revisiting that infamous “baby milk” factory that was bombed in the last war. They say they are going to be interviewing Iraqi scientists as demanded by the UN.

The Institute for Public Accuracy seems to be saying today that the one thing that the US media is not doing is covering the hostility to the underlying US policies in the region, as opposed to daily statements and actions. They interview Denis Halliday, the former head of the UN oil-for-food program in Iraq and former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, Halliday has just returned from Cairo, where he attended a conference on Iraq. He said today: “After my very recent visits to Tunisia and Egypt, it is evident that the Arab community now perceives the American people along with Washington as being responsible for the terrible impact of U.S. foreign policy on the Palestinians and on the people of Iraq. My previous experience when visiting Iraq last year was that the Iraqis distinguish between Washington policies and the people of America. Now, in the light of … the Republican victory last November, Americans as a whole are being held liable. This is understandable and needs to be conveyed to American listeners and viewers….”

You might check out the new issue of Mother Jones magazine for a piece by Todd Gitlin critiquing that policy and an assessment by George Packer of what could be the basis for another policy.

“And so this is Xmas

“And what have you done

“Another year over

“And a new one just begun

AFRICA: ‘FUHGEDABOWDID’

One policy that we will not be talking about this season is Washington’s policy towards Africa. President Bush has cancelled a long planned trip to the Continent, prompting a blast from Africa advocates. Salih Booker, executive director of Africa Action, said today: “The administration thinks they’ve addressed enough Black issues with the replacement of Lott and so they callously dump Africa again. The Bush administration is disinterested in Africa aside from oil imports and the use of African territory in Washington’s ‘war on terrorism.’ The U.S. government continues shamelessly to limit funding for AIDS programs in Africa and supports the pharmaceutical companies’ efforts to enforce draconian patent laws against poor countries seeking affordable medicines.”

The Guardian in Britain reported this weekend that Dick Cheney, at the behest of pharmaceutical giants, blocked a global agreement (against the will of all 140 other countries in the World Trade Organization) to provide cheap drugs to poor countries. Booker said: “For Christmas, the Bush administration is reinforcing global apartheid.”

“And so this is Xmas

“For Weak and For Strong

“For Rich and For Poor ones

“The Road is so long

BENEFITS NO MORE

These are hard times for many — and for many more, they will become much harder. USA Today reported on another crisis, closer to home: “Tens of thousands of unemployed workers are now finding the money’s run out, and the situation is worsening.

“The percentage of unemployed workers exhausting their regular unemployment benefits before finding work has reached a record and is continuing to rise. Three days after Christmas, about 800,000 workers will see their federal benefits cut off. That’s because Congress adjourned in November without passing legislation that would have extended temporary federal unemployment benefits.

“An additional 95,000 jobless workers will run out of state unemployment benefits each week, according to the Washington-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a non-partisan research and policy group.”

“And so Happy Xmas

“For Black and For White

“For yellow and red ones

“Let’s stop all the fighting

WHISTLE WHILE YOU WORK

In the media news this AM, Israel closed Israeli radio Station, Arutz 7 for an hour and fifteen minutes and then relented yesterday…. In New York, we have Paul Krugman of the Times critiquing Time Magazine’s pick of three female whistleblowers as newsmakers of the year. He writes: “They deserve to be celebrated. After all, thanks to Ms. Watkins and Ms. Cooper, Jeff Skilling, Ken Lay and Bernie Ebbers have been indicted, and the politicians who did their bidding have been disgraced. Thanks to Ms. Rowley, incompetent officials at the F.B.I. and C.I.A. have been removed from their posts, and we’ve had a searching inquiry into what went wrong on Sept. 11.

“Oh, I’m sorry. None of that actually happened. The bravery of the whistle-blowers was real enough, but Time seems to be celebrating what should have been, not what was.”

GANNET BUYS ANTI-WAR PAPER IN SCOTLAND

Over in the not always United Kingdom, media Guardian reports that “BBC faces fury over show that portrayed the Virgin Mary as a rape Victim.” But more distressing was word that Gannett, the USA Today plus people, have gobbled up the papers of the Scottish Media Group. What that is upsetting, besides the obvious foreign intervention in that market is that the Sunday Herald in Glasgow has been carrying strong independent pieces on Iraq that are critical of US policy. Will that continue under the new owners? Anyone want to bet? (Their latest big story by James Cusick and Felicity Arbuthnot reported on the extent of Washington’s interception of Iraq’s weapons declaration before other UN members could even see it. They discovered that “the United States edited out more than 8,000 crucial pages of Iraq’s 11,800-page dossier on weapons, before passing on a sanitized version to the 10 non-permanent members of the United Nations security council.”)

ENOUGH ABOUT OSCAR; IT’S TIME FOR “IZZY”

I cite this piece in a piece posted today on the Globalvision News Network (gvnews.net) proposing that we have awards for the best war reporting even as we condemn the worst. It reads in part:

“With Time Magazine honoring three women for blowing the whistle on corporate illegalities and FBI incompetence, perhaps it is time to broaden the frame and single out some journalists and media makers who are sounding the alarm about the rush to war in Iraq. Their work deserves attention too as the stakes may be much higher.

“The Hollywood awards season is now abuzz with speculation. The Golden Globes and Oscars honor excellence in films of the imagination. Maybe it is time for a new award, “The Izzie,” named after the American journalist I.F. Stone (aka Izzy Stone) who, as columnist and reporter for his independent I.F. Stone’s Weekly, was more consistently right about events in Vietnam than most of the mainstream outlets of his time. Everyone in the news business knows that truth is one of the first casualties in any armed conflict. But knowing that does not seem to inform or improve most conflict reporting.

“While so much of the news media tends to carry look-alike and think-alike journalism, potential contenders for my imagined “Izzy” would turn away from accepted and acceptable ways of seeing. They would pursue their craft in the spirit of the Italian thinker Umberto Eco who advises “sometimes you have to follow the opposite course and find in dissent the confirmation of your own intuitions.”

Until the prize exists, I will be taking nominees in the spirit of the “people’s choice” TV awards. What journalists would you nominate? Write dissector@mediachannel.org’

“And so this is Xmas

“And a Happy New Year

“Let’s hope it’s a good one

“Without any fear

PARING DOWN THE BILL OF RIGHTS

The biggest yuk this week came from the always uneven Onion, the satirical weekly that carried this story on page one:

“Bill Of Rights Pared Down To A Manageable Six

” WASHINGTON, DC-Flanked by key members of Congress and his administration,

President Bush approved Monday a streamlined version of the Bill of Rights that pares its 10 original amendments down to a “tight, no-nonsense” six. A Republican initiative that went unopposed by congressional Democrats, the revised Bill of Rights provides citizens with a “more manageable” set of privacy and due-process rights by eliminating four amendments and condensing and/or restructuring five others. The Second Amendment, which protects the right to keep and bear arms, was the only article left unchanged.

“Calling the historic reduction ‘a victory for America,’ Bush promised that the new document would do away with “bureaucratic impediments to the flourishing of democracy at home and abroad.”

“‘It is high time we reaffirmed our commitment to this enduring symbol of American ideals,’ Bush said. ‘By making the Bill of Rights a tool for progress instead of a hindrance to freedom, we honor the true spirit of our nation’s forefathers…’”

BLASTS FROM THE PAST

It sounds about right. I want back to the archives of Dissectorville to see what I was steaming about a year ago. Here are some droppings from my blasts of the past:

Victory

Dec 21 2001: “Yesterday, the President came out of his bunker and reported on the first l00 days of war, ticking off the number of Taliban installations that are no more, and bragging that he has Al Qaeda on the run. The announcement was played as a Christmas victory message. The problem is that even the military experts on MSNBC and Faux News were more pessimistic, aware that Osama and Omar are still at large and that the Al Qaeda Army may yet regroup.”

Dec 23: “The countdown to the New Year has begun. Judging from President Bush’s ranch side declaration, the US is not leaving Afghanistan anytime soon. When the US creaates a base it usally stays there unless and until it is forced out or the lease expires. That is what happened in the Phillipines. That, you will recall, is what did not happen when US troops moved into Saudi Arabia in l990 to defend the Kingdom of oil against what as then being described as a probably inflated Iraqi nvasion threat. The troops are sill there, but now apparently spending more time defending themselves against terrorist threats of local origin. In fact, it was their presence that ignited bin Laden’s war against America in the first place.”

BASES OF FREEDOM

“And now irony, of ironies, the prisoners of the Afghan campaign are on their way to another US base that goes back to another temporary incursion. I am referring of course to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Here’s how Florida’s Sun Sentinenal described its origins in the very last line of a story about why the base is being used. “The oldest U.S. overseas outpost has repelled enemies and welcomed refugees since 1898, when U.S. Marines fighting the Spanish-American War established camp at the natural harbor on Cuba’s southeast coast.”

“Welcomed refugees. I don’t think the Haitians fleeing despotism who ended up being incarcerated there thought the base as very “welcoming.” For that matter, who among us remembers that famous ship of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany who were turned away from Havana and never welcomed into Guantanamo during WW 2.” (2001)

THE WAY IT WAS, THE WAY IT IS

And that’s the way it was. And that’s the way it is, “another year over, and a new one just begun.” I am not sure of my plans yet and so may rejoin you in the days ahead although all my friends and co-workers are urging me to take a break before I break. It is probably good advice.

My warmest greetings to all of you who have labored through this weblog in the year we are leaving. Your support, input, financial help, and promotional assistance has been very important in building the Mediachannel.org into the world’s largest online media issues network with well over one thousand affiliates.

We need you — and, hopefully, you have come to rely on our efforts to bring you news not in the news, and lots of information on how the media is broke — and why we have to fix it. Seasons greetings from all of us at Globalvision. Even when I am away, you can reach me at dssector@mediachanel.org. In the spirit of the TIMEs, whisteblowers welcome.

War is over if you want it

War is over, now

Happy Xmas”

Composed by John Lennon and Yoko Ono

©1972 Lennon Music/Ono Music

Used in the right spirit.