*A HANS BLIX MONDAY

*THAT SUPERBOWL SUNDAY

*A WEEK OF WONDER ON THE WAY

I tell you, brothers and sisters, the time is running out.
From now on, let those having wives act as not having them,
those weeping as not weeping,
those rejoicing as not rejoicing,
those buying as not owning,
those using the world as not using it fully.
For the world in its present form is passing away
1 Cor 7:29-31

Bob Geldorf’s erstwhile band The Boomtown Rats used to sing about hating Mondays. The song was inspired by a rationale offered up by young man who shot up a MacDonald’s, in, if memory serves me right, the San Diego area, the scene of this year’s less than super bowl. Today is a Han Blix Monday as the world waits for this colorless Swedish lawyer to tell the Security Council about his inspection team’s findings in Iraq. He is expected to ask for more time to complete his mission, and it looks as if the US is willing to grant it–as if it has a choice.

The first signs I had of that change in the weather was from babble rising off of Faux News on Saturday–when it seemed clear that their coaches had phoned in a new play, and gave the dogs of media war some new scenarios to chew on.

Fox changed its tune after the New York Times reported: “U.S. May Not Press U.N. for a Decision on Iraq Next Week. Instead, administration officials said they were willing to wait possibly several weeks beyond Monday for the inspections to continue.”

IS TIME RUNNING OUT?

The Administration has been out in force, echoing the line that time is running out, that Saddam is responsible, is lying, is hiding weapons. Where’s the proof? Bush aide d’camp, Andrew Card, who was recruited from the back rooms of the Massachusetts State Legislature for reasons still unknown, was trotted out to make the case that the Iraqis have an obligation to provide the proof, not the warriors in Washington.

“Bring the weapons to a parking lot so they can be destroyed” he said. Not once but on every network, over and over again. There he was on CBS’s Face The Nation, Sunday morning, but when I flipped over to NBC’s Meet the Press, he was there. too. At the same time! It looked like North Korean TV where all the channels show the same programs at the same time. Card also popped up on Fox, and in every venture, the message was droningly the same. “Time is running out.” It would be funny if the stakes were not so serious.

While this Card was dispatched to pacify Americans, Colin Powell was hauled into the Alps to speak to the rest of the world, because for years he was promoted as Mr. Reasonable. His line: Iraq was an evil doer that is also linked to terrorists. Proof? None Offered. As Tony Karon, sr. editor of Time, noted in his weblog last week, the talking points were well memorized with and no Bushie was allowed to go off message.

“You have to wonder about the wisdom of rolling out certifiable nut-job John Bolton to make the case. Bolton, a rather eerie physical echo of the hijackers in the 70s classic The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3, was deployed at the State Department by Dick Cheney to make Powell’s life difficult after Bolton’s stalwart service in leading charges into electoral offices in Miami to physically stop ballot recounts in 2000 said in Tokyo Friday that the U.S. has ‘very convincing evidence’ that Iraq maintains a number of weapons programs. (Indeed, and they’ll share it with us, no doubt, when the war is over). This from the same Bolton who insisted that Cuba is manufacturing chemical weapons…”

Karon is also amused that the Administration’s fall back is all about trust. He just loves Paul Wolfowitz’s remark: “I find it startling when you ask if you can trust the United States government.” (Oh, the ironies — the conservatives spent the entire Clinton era rallying their base precisely around the idea that the government should not be trusted)”

CNN HAS “LEARNED”

Meanwhile, CNN has “learned the U.S. State Department has begun drafting the text of a possible second U.N. resolution that would authorize military action to force Baghdad to disarm.”

I find it amazing that CNN can learn anything. South Africa’s Mail and Guardian is reporting that Britain is doing most of the behind the scenes work of persuasion at the UN, reporting “Britain has passed sensitive intelligence information to UN security council members in an attempt to persuade them that the Iraqis are systematically failing to cooperate with the weapons inspectors, bolstering Anglo-American claims that Baghdad is in breach of UN resolutions”

The Blix show is happening behind closed doors, of course, so spin, not substance, will define the story. Hans B is expected to ask for more time and more time will be allowed, even as Mr. Powell says clearly that the US need not be bound by any UN imposed restraints. The Iraqis are now blasting the US as evil as if the dictionary has only one word these days. It sounds like kids cursing each other with the same words applying to all.

THE WEEK AHEAD

This will be a newsy week. On Tuesday, Bush delivers his State of the Union address, and hopes to restore his slide in the public opinion polls. That tends to happen after every major Presidential address, no matter the president. Also tomorrow Mr. Greenspan’s interest rate committee reassembles.

ISRAEL GOES TO THE POLLS, KIND OF

Voters go to the polls in Israel tomorrow with many complaining they have no real choice. Likud, the Party of Fear, is expected to be returned to power as a lackluster Labor fizzles. Even less representative small parties, some led by religious nuts, will have even more leverage. Meanwhile violence continues to erupt in the West Bank and Gaza as occupation and war grinds on. The Palestinians launched tens of missles into Israel in the last week from northern Gaza, and Israel responded with a major raid in the area, which is the main factory area for rockets and mortars. There are more shootings. More bombings. More killings. I didn’t really “feel” how painful and hopeless all of this appears until I went to see two films by Israelis at New York’s Film Forum.

The first, Ruth Walk’s “The Settlers” showed the impact of the Orthodox fundamentalists who live in towns like Hebron surrounded on all sides by soldiers as they await the Messiah and show contempt for their Arab neighbors. The second, “Close, Closed, Closure” by Ram Loevy was about the prison camp that is the Gaza Strip–where a majority of the people survive on less than $2 a day, dependent on Israel and the PA; and at the same time, hostile to its oppressive rules. If you get a chance, go see them, if only to see what you rarely do on TV. Most TV reports are tied to incidents and rarely convey how oppressive it all feels. (Incidentally, what is the-know-it-all US professor and soundbyte pundit-for-all-seasons Bill Schneider (who usually discusses polling data in the US), doing reporting for CNN in Israel? I guess he is the big election expert. He should be looking at the non-voters in what is expected to be another low-voter turnout occasion.

On Wednesday, Security Council meets again And if a new deal does not go down, France, Germany, Russia, China and others may resist Washington’s calls for a U.N. mandate for war. On Friday, British PM Tony Blair comes to Camp David, a place once known as a mecca for peacemaking.

WHAT”S THE RUSH?

What’s the rush? There is disagreement on this point. Karon believes “The rush by the Bush administration to conclude the inspection process and move on to war is the sharpest reminder that the strategic rationale for this adventure is not weapons of mass destruction; nor is it about oil. If oil were the primary objective, the US would more likely have pursued a rapprochement with Saddam, who has been trying to restore the cooperative relationship of the 1980s. Indeed, Iraq’s oil fields are, to put it mildly, a mess. Industry estimates are that it would take three to five years and billions of dollars of investment simply to restore Iraq’s pre-1990 output of just over 3 million barrels a day. And although the more rabid hawks in Washington suggest the US simply claim the oil as its own in order to pay for the war, the reality is that 30 percent of Iraq’s oil revenues go to paying huge reparations to Kuwait, and the remainder will be essential to finance the basic humanitarian needs of a post-Saddam Iraq. The investment required to significantly expand Iraq’s output requires political stability, and that may be a long time in coming. For a great analysis of the oil equation, check out:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EA22Ak01.html

“It’s about colonizing the Arab world in order to show who’s boss. Anyone laboring under illusions about spreading democracy might want to consider why it is that the most liberal, “globalized” segments of Arab society are as ferociously opposed to a war as the “street.” Democracy can’t be rolled in on tank tracks in the Middle East any more than socialism could be in Eastern Europe in 1945. ..”

IS IT WAR FOR OIL?

According to Dawn in Pakistan, the US is at this very moment buying more oil from Iraq than ever. “Facing its most chronic shortage in oil stocks for 27 years, the United States has this month turned to an unlikely source of help - Iraq. Weeks before a prospective invasion of Iraq , the oil-rich state has doubled its exports of oil to America, helping US refineries cope with a debilitating strike in Venezuela.

“After the loss of 1.5 million barrels per day of Venezuelan production in December the oil price rocketed, and the scarcity of reserves threatened to do permanent damage to the US oil refinery and transport infrastructure. To keep the pipelines flowing, President Bush stopped adding to the 700m barrel strategic reserve. But ultimately oil giants such as Chevron, Exxon, BP and Shell saved the day by doubling imports from Iraq from 0.5m barrels in November to over 1m barrels per day to solve the problem. Essentially, US importers diverted 0.5m barrels of Iraqi oil per day heading for Europe and Asia to save the American oil infrastructure. ”

This bizarre twist has not influenced those who believe the war is for oil. One of them is former UN official Denis Halliday. He was in Baghdad Sunday, warning that the United States and Britain were ready to “annihilate” Iraqi society in order to control the country’s oil wealth. Halliday told a press conference that “the United States and Britain are proceeding with plans to annihilate Iraqi society, a catastrophe that would be heightened by the threatened use of tactical nuclear weaponry.”

This story comes from a report by William Arkin in the LA Times which revealed:

“…That the Pentagon has changed the bureaucratic oversight of nuclear weapons so that they are no longer treated as a special category of arms, but grouped with conventional military options. A White House spokesman declined comment Friday on Arkin’s report, except to say that “the United States reserves the right to defend itself and its allies by whatever means necessary.”

INSPECT THIS!

As for the inspectors, Haliday and the group he was with, passed on some information about the inspection process which might offer a clue as to why, in some instances, the Iraqis were a bit testy. TV images that’ show motorcades of UN vehicles racing around don’t convey a sense of the process. You might say, ‘so what?’ but read this:

“Everywhere we went there was a remarkable willingness to co-operate with the inspections, but patience is being tested. During our visit there was a routine inspection near the University of Baghdad where there are six science centers. The inspectors wanted to investigate one of these, but froze the entire complex–meaning that nearly 3,000 people could not move for six hours, even though their place of work was not under inspection. This meant that toddlers were left uncollected at nursery schools. Not even the Iraqi ambassador to the UN, there for a visit, was allowed to leave.

“A professor of microbiology at the University of Baghdad told us that during1991-98 inspectors re-examined the university every three weeks, searching minutely. “They enter exam halls where students are doing their finals and search under their chairs.” Iraqi people thought the inspections would last 2-3 years, and then they could go back to normal life. It is now 12 years since the inspections started, they are more intense than ever, and there is no end in sight. We visited the al-Dawrah Foot and Mouth Vaccine Institute which was high on the list in the UK Government dossier of biological weapons sites (published September2002).Since 1994 the site has been inspected 60 times, it has been closed since 1995, when all the equipment was destroyed or removed and there were cameras everywhere connected to the former UNSCOM Monitoring Center in Baghdad. The place was wrecked.”

PROTESTS MARCH ON

Protests have been continuing as well. Today, the Not In Our Name Statement of Conscience is published for a second time in the NY Times, as a two-page spread, while at 4 PM portions of it will be read at the UN. Organizers say:

“Some of the signers who will read the statement include hip hop artist Mos Def; film/theater artists Tony Kushner, Andre Gregory, Peter Gerety, Ellen McLaughlin, and Kathleen Chalfant; writers Rose Styron, Vivian Gornick, Malachi McCourt, Nora Eisenberg; photographers Max Kozloff and Henry Chalfant, filmmaker/producer Michelle Esrick, curator Nina Felshin…” And get this also on hand is the writer and ex-cop Serpico. Serpcio, he who blew the whisle on NY police corruption only to be demonized and later lionized.

Cops who protest? Yup! It happened over the weekend in Greece where AFP reported that “around 300 Greek policemen joined thousands of anti-globalization activists marching through the southern Greek town of Nauplion on Friday… They joined nearly 10,000 people who were taking part in protest marches here against the prospect of war in Iraq, exploitation of the poor and globalization.

Pittsburgh had its largest protest ever on Sunday: “It shows that in middle America, cities like Pittsburgh can turn out thousands against war. We have shown that this war is not popular,” said Tim Vining, executive director of the Thomas Merton Center, a sponsor of the event. AP reports: “Nuns, students, activists and Vietnam War veterans marched together as several inches of snow fell and temperatures dipped into the teens.”

MEANWHILE, IN BRAZIL

While the US media reports from the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, it continues to ignore the World Social Forum. NATION correspondent Marc Cooper reported from Porto Alegre, “The highpoint of this year’s World Social Forum was reached earlier this evening when newly elected Brazilian president “Lula” showed up to address an outdoor crowd of as many as 75,000 cheering supporters….Lula arrived before the sea of waving flags and cheering voices on his way to Davos, Switzerland, where he was invited to deliver an address to the World Economic Forum, the yearly gathering of the globe’s corporate and political elite.”

(The Social Forum held here in Brazil was founded three years ago as a “people’s” alternative to the Davos meetings.) See TheNation.com for more

SUPERBOWL SUNDAY

The gladiators were on the field. The TV cameras panned their faces as the game of games gets ready to jump off. Hours of commentary, strategy, coaching stories, player bios builds up to it. It is endless hype and hyperbole. Their teams’ very names define the American zeitgeist at this time, Buccaneers vs. Raiders, words that belong as much to the real game behind this one — the money game.

But before the Superbowl can begin, there was an over-the-top ode to America, just in case you wondered what country this show is coming from. It began with not one, but two anthems. Celine Dion was brought in to add an appeal to the divine with her stylized God Bless America. She is Canadian, of course, but no matter. She placed her hand on her heart in a patriotic pose as a gospel choir backed her up. Many of the players looked bored and perplexed as this ordeal dragged on. All of this build-up later built down the energy of the Oakland team.

This endless pre-game was followed by a pre-kick game, followed a pre-anthem and then the real anthem, which was performed for us by the Dixie Chicks, while the camera lovingly cut to platoons of uniformed solders, some in desert gear, saluting what was soon a fly over by four Navy Jets that was mercilessly up-cut by a commercial. ….O say can you see….Clearly, this whole spectacle is but the pre game to the war to come. Later, after two halves of undistinguished sloppy football, the most interesting show on air is the one between the real competitors — the companies sponsoring this spectacle with their show case of over-priced ($2 mill a pop) and often over-done commercials. (Did you see that guy barf on the window of the new Dodge Truck? Ugh.)

Commercials are us: we now have the Reebok half-time report preceding the AT & T Wireless half game show…. I was hoping that Sting would work in an anti-war message but the best he could do was to send out an “SOS to the world” with a message in a bottle. Did you get that? An SOS!

WHAT ELSE WAS ON

Over on CNN, meanwhile, People magazine promoted an hour of power power with fawning profiles of Hans Blix, and General Tommy Franks, who, we learn, went to high school with Laura Bush and UK ally-Bush booster Tony Blair….On Fox, America is battling the aliens with the film Indpendence Day. America wins that one, as you know… I was amazed to find out that Fox’s movie channel FX will soon be running a movie on Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers — How did that sneak through?

Earlier in the day, I watched a rerun of the movie, Quiz Show on HBO. That’s the story of the l950’s TV quiz show scandal in which the contestants were given the questions and the answers berore they went on the air. At the movie’s end, the character playing Congressional investigator Richard Goodwin watches Congress capitulating to the networks and their sponsors and pulling their punches. ‘This was to be about exposing television,’ he says, ‘but television is exposing us.’ It still is.

IN THE EMAIL

Dan Sheridan writes from Boston: “Keep up the good work.

“I last talked with you when I was at Playboy taking authors and Playmates on tour and you were playing in Atlanta at CNN. But now I’m in Boston, of all places, writing and hustling and despairing of the soggy, disorganized local Left. Case in point: The ACLU was an energized, active and useful force in Chicago. The tired Boston version does little….

“PS: There’s a story, by the way, in right-wing talk radio, but not another story about Rush Limbaugh or Dr. Laura. WRKO in Boston, which I remember as a place of bores and snores, is now a tower of ignorance. There’s syndicated Rush, of course, but Howie Carr [remember Howie?] is the popular gasbag and boor who rails against foreigners, ragheads, queers, Jesse Jackson and all the usual. His show works because he says what I would hear in a bar in South Boston or white areas of Dorchester. He says it just as a loudmouth at the bar would say it. And the boob callers cheer him on. But Howie is — and this is praise for him — just a jerk. The mean-spirited, vindictive Michael Savage, out of California, comes on at night. Seems that every town bigger than Hackensack has a Howie Carr on the radio. They’re mid-level types, all right-wing spouters taking state and local politicians to task. And they count.”

ALTERNATIVE MEDIA: WEAK AND WHINING

Jay Janson, is upset about the lack of momentum on media issues: “How can conglomerate media reform go anywhere when the most obvious opportunities go unused? Where is the movement? A movement? Any movement?

“People like (NATION editor) Katrina van Heuvel appear to enjoy being part of the establishment. Is there someone to come forward with a tactic to force commericial coverage of Ramsey Clark, who has the name and credentials. Ramsey Clark is a movement, but no media reformers seem to be interested. Everything is so academic and weak whining in the alternate media.”

Alan Rosen writes: ” I still want you to know that I continue to read your column every day, and also wonder in amazement how you have the STOMACH to read and write about all the stuff that’s going on, day after day. You’re exceptional. Keep it up–we need you.”

I need all of you too. I will try not to whine. I hope you stay with me in the week ahead and help me dissect the news that we all will have to cope with. Share your insights and items with me by writing dissector@mediachannel.org