THEY SAY IT’S YOUR BIRTHDAY

ON THOMAS FRIEDMAN AND HUMAN RIGHTS

NEW MUST READ PROPAGANDA DOCUMENT

I am sure someone among the perception managers in the information operations division of the ministry of “newsspeak” considered adding an extra 6. Saddam Hussein (spelled interestingly Saddam Husayn Al-Tikriuti on the ace of spades playing card) is 66 today. 666 would have been perfect don’tcha think? He is also very much alive according to Tariq Aziz, not always known as a truth teller, having reportedly survived two decapitation strikes.

Carol Morello of the Washington Post was on MSNBC today talking about the disappointment many Iraqis expressed to her about not being able to celebrate the big B-Day as they have in years past. (Notice how many newspaper reporters are now being milked for stories by the cost-cutting cable nets. Are they getting paid?) She said that most of the folks in the streets of Baghdad she talked with believe he is alive. Many are apparently pissed at him NOT because of all of the dreadful things about his regime that bombard us daily but because he did not, as promised, defend the capital and them.

MORE “REVELATIONS” DEBUNKED

Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, who was not “inclined” to tell reporters at a briefing last week where he was going, has showed up to thank his military forces for a job well done. The President will offer a more subdued victory statement later in the week. Meanwhile four more US soldiers were wounded in another sniping incident as General Jay Garner begins his democracy building-reconstruction exercise. There has been more debunking of false stories in the media. The Mail and Guardian reports: “Western intelligence officials are playing down the significance of documents appearing to show that Saddam Hussein’s regime met an al-Qaeda envoy in Baghdad in 1998 and sought to arrange a meeting with Osama bin Laden.

Also, a bunch of barrels widely reported as having chemical weapons now apparently, on closer inspection, did not. One thousand more “experts” are on the way to join the elusive weapons hunt. (My suggestion: send in the DEA, they always find the illicit substances–one way or another.)

WEAPONS SEARCH A MESS

The Times is reporting that the search for weapons, the nominal purpose of the war, is righteously screwed up. “Disorganization, delays and faulty intelligence have hampered the Pentagon-led search for Saddam Hussein’s suspected weapons of mass destruction, causing growing concern about one of the most sensitive and secretive operations in postwar Iraq, according to U.S. officials and outside experts familiar with the effort.

“The slow start has created so many interagency squabbles that a National Security Council military staffer at the White House has been assigned to mediate among the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the CIA, the Energy Department, and other government agencies involved in the hunt.

“And some weapons experts warn that the lapses have even raised the threat of arms proliferation from Iraq.

“SELECTIVE USE OF INTELLIGENCE, EXAGGERATION.”

The Independent on Sunday yesterday said that intelligence agencies in the US and Britain are now saying (where were they before the war?) that their findings were misrepresented. ” Raymond Whitaker reported “The case for invading Iraq to remove its weapons of mass destruction was based on selective use of intelligence, exaggeration, use of sources known to be discredited and outright fabrication.”

“A high-level UK source said last night that intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic were furious that briefings they gave political leaders were distorted in the rush to war with Iraq. “They ignored intelligence assessments which said Iraq was not a threat,” the source said. Quoting an editorial in a Middle East newspaper which said, “Washington has to prove its case. If it does not, the world will for ever believe that it paved the road to war with lies”, he added: “You can draw your own conclusions.”

ABC News is reporting on another aspect of what was suspected but now confirmed as intentional deception: “To build its case for war with Iraq, the Bush administration argued that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but some officials now privately acknowledge the White House had another reason for war — a global show of American power and democracy.

“NOT LYING”

Officials inside government and advisers outside told ABCNEWS the administration emphasized the danger of Saddam’s weapons to gain the legal justification for war from the United Nations and to stress the danger at home to Americans.

“We were not lying,” said one official. “But it was just a matter of emphasis.”

THE CRIMES OF WAR

In addition to the widely reported human rights crimes, possible war crimes are surfacing. AP reports: “Military officials are investigating a Marine who says he shot an Iraqi soldier twice in the back of the head following a grenade attack on his comrades.

The Marine Forces Reserve announced the preliminary inquiry of Gunnery Sgt. Gus Covarrubias on Friday, the day the Las Vegas Review-Journal published an interview in which he described the killing.

Covarrubias, 38, of Las Vegas, said that during an intense battle in Baghdad on April 8, he pursued a member of the Iraqi Republican Guard who fired a rocket-propelled grenade at his unit.

“I went behind him and shot him in the back of the head. Twice,” Covarrubias told the Review-Journal.

He said he also shot the man’s partner, who tried to escape. He showed what he said were the men’s ID cards

“WHITEWASHING THE FACTS”

Human Rights Watch is disputing Pentagon claims on the use of cluster bombs. The story in the Times: “U.S. Misleading on Cluster Munitions.” The U.S. Army has used ground-based Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) and other artillery-launched cluster munitions in populated areas of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, Human Rights Watch said.

U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Staff Gen. Richard B. Myers told a press conference in Washington that coalition forces dropped “nearly 1,500 cluster bombs of varying types” during the war in Iraq, and that only 26 of those fell within 1,500 feet of civilian neighborhoods, causing only “one recorded case of collateral damage.”

“But Myers did not mention surface-launched cluster munitions, which are believed to have caused many more civilian casualties. “To imply that cluster munitions caused virtually no harm to Iraqi civilians is highly disingenuous,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “Instead of whitewashing the facts, the Pentagon needs to come clean about the Army’s use of cluster munitions, which has been much more fatal to civilians.”

THE MORAL UNIVERSE OF THOMAS FRIEDMAN

“America did the right thing here,” argued Thomas L. Friedman, minister of conventional wisdom, on the NY Times Op-ed page yesterday. “It topped one of the most evil regimes on earth.” And so a new rationale of the war is emerging post-hoc, picturing the Bush Administration as human rights avengers, “globo-cops” out to right wrongs. Friedman uses a skull of one of Saddam’s many victims as a symbol of why the war was worth it. I read that with a certain degree of mirth because as every serious student of US human rights policy knows Washington’s stance on human rights is selective, guided by perceived US interests, not morality.

Isn’t it interesting how Saddam’s crimes are being splashed across our TV screens now, but so many others in so many countries, over so many years were ignored, or criticized without commitment to action. Today, while the Bush Administration points to human rights abuses in Iraq, it will not support an International Criminal Court to try offenders. Talk of human rights abuses in the US is verboten.

Thomas Friedman waffled for weeks about the justification for going to war with Iraq. Now that war has been “won” he is out front supporting it as a humanitarian intervention. Come on. Last week Philip Weiss skewered Friedman’s pretensions in the NY Observer. This week, some letter writers speak about this self-described liberal with a clarity that bears repeating.

Cathryn Carrol of Annapolis writes, “If people wrote about blacks, the way he writes about Arabs, he metaphorically (and justifiably) would be drawn and quartered.” She also lambastes Friedman’s certainty, his sanctimonious insight, and his pseudo-depth.

Jim Furlong of Connecticut takes on his core ideas: “democracy and love of capitalism flow from the barrel of a gun: that seems to be our new idea. It is a variant of the idea that the ends justify means.” Henry Bright of Florida charges that Friedman “has become an intellectual captive of the people he admires: the titans of industry and globalization.”

REMEMBER CAMBODIA

Friedman holds up the skulls of Saddam’s victims as reason enough for the intervention. I wonder if he remembers the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia to topple the genocidal Khmer Rouge who piled up many more skulls that Saddam ever did. That invasion was condemned by all the policy wonks in the US. Washington later supported the killers, not those liberators. But then again, there was no huge supply of oil in Cambodia.

I was talking the other day with a Falun Gong practitioners who reminded me that 50,000 of her fellow non-violent colleagues are in jail, many tortured or dead, thrown out of buildings and trains. Have we heard a peep about that? We do business with China and so can pragmatically overlook their treatment of Tibetans or pro-democracy activists.

YOU NEED A COMMENT FROM SADDAM

I was reminded also of a personal experience. Along with my colleagues here at Globalvision, we produced a special on human rights, which included a segment on Saddam’s gassing of the Kurds. At that time, in the Bush years, the neocons were demanding more “balance” at PBS. Local programmers took a mechanistic approach to the issue. We were shocked when we found our program rejected because we didn’t have a personal response from Saddam to the charges leveled against him. Have you ever seen a documentary on the holocaust rejected because the Nazis didn’t have the right to respond.

Later, our series Rights and Wrongs, was rejected by PBS not because the journalism was bad but because the subject was considered superfluous. “Human rights, “we were told,” is an insufficient organizing principle for a television series.” Unlike gardening or home repair! We finally did get our series on many local PBS stations where it ran for four years. But once our funders experienced “fatigue,” the run ended. No network has since aired regularly scheduled programming about human rights.

60 MINUTES ON IRAQ

Did any of you see 60 Minutes last night. It opened with a strong piece about juicy no-bid contracts to politically connected corporations for the reconstruction of Iraq. It represented compelling investigative journalism showing how Dick Cheney used his connections to build the Halliburton company, which is now being rewarded with a contract paying $50,000 a day for a five-man fire fighting team. The third segment of show featured Mike Wallace in Syria where he interviews the foreign minister. He asks him why he thinks the US invaded Iraq. The guy suggests that it has a lot to do with those post-war contracts, which were given out before the war began. Mike looks askance. Clearly, he had not seen the first segment of his own show. The Syrian may have been conspiratorial but so was 60 Minutes. Where there’s smoke . . . .

WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS CHEER BUSH

As for media coverage of the war, it was distressing to see so many at the White House correspondents dinner cheer President Bush’s defense of the war. His presence there is supposedly a sign of respect for the office, not compliance with his policies. The New York Times described the dinner as a tepid affair. There was nary a word of dissent. The outgoing president of the Correspondents Association said some members had suggested the Dixie Chicks or Harry Belafonte as the entertainers. “Can you believe that?” he asked his colleagues. “You can’t make this stuff up.” After watching the dinner, I couldn’t make that up either. Disgraceful, except for the award to Dana Milbank of the Washington Post for challenging presidential claims on a regular basis while the rest of the crowd sleeps on.

The Observer yesterday reported on how the owners of virulent pro-war media outlets are gloating over the outcome of the war. Yet, their sales are going down. Peter Preston writes: “So, who really won the war? Conrad Black doesn’t seem to have many doubts. ‘We [that’s his Daily Telegraph ] have obviously surpassed our competition — and even bear favorable comparison with the New York Times ,’” he tells his staff.

“But the loudest cock-a-doodle-doos surely belong to Lord Black’s most ferocious competitor, Rupert Murdoch.

“His Fox News won the cable-ratings conflict. His New York Post was top of the pops. His Weekly Standard is now the neo-conservative organ of Bushy choice. He finally took DirectTV as the Marines took Baghdad. A forthcoming Federal Communications Commission review looks certain to let him own more papers and TV stations. He’s on a roll; a big, big winner.

“It seems almost churlish to spoil the fun, to point out that circulation wars have little in common with shooting wars (except self-deception and mendacity). But let’s examine the March ABC wisdom with a leery eye. The Telegraph was down 7.56 per cent, year on year: selling 926,500 a day, including 27,137 sales in foreign parts, 15,775 bulk copies, 307,596 pre-paid subscriptions, and 40,666 one-off cheapies. The Times was down 6.91 per cent, year on year, including 30,167 foreign copies, 32,892 bulks, 101,986 subscriptions and 14,673 cheapies.

“Neither title, in short, has anything much to crow about.”

PILGER: CORRUPTION IN JOURNALISM

Also from London, John Pilger skewers his colleagues for the role they played. “Something deeply corrupt is consuming journalism. A war so one-sided it was hardly a war was reported like a Formula One race, as the teams sped to the checkered flag in Baghdad.” I read in the Observer last Sunday that “Iraq was worth $20m to Reuters.” This was the profit the company would make from the war. Reuters was described on the business pages as “a model company, its illustrious brand and reputation second to none. As a newsgathering organization, it is lauded for its accuracy and objectivity.” The Observer article lamented that the “world’s hotspots” generated only about 7 per cent of the model company’s $3.6 billion revenue last year. The other 93 per cent comes from “more than 400,000 computer terminals in financial institutions around the world,” churning out “financial information” for a voracious, profiteering “market” that has nothing to do with true journalism: indeed, it is the antithesis of true journalism, because it has nothing to do with true humanity.

“There is something deeply corrupt consuming this craft of mine. It is not a recent phenomenon; look back on the “coverage” of the First World War by journalists who were subsequently knighted for their services to the concealment of the truth of that great slaughter.”

See: http://www.johnpilger.com/print/132939

THE ART OF PROPAGANDA

Here is a must read. It speaks to how media strategists shape public perception through a skillful use of “message development.” This particular document was prepared for pro-Israel activists by Frank Luntz’s research companies, an agency that worked for the Bush presidential campaign, and most recently for MSNBC. As you evaluate it for yourself, think about the similar media plans that were used by the Administration to sell the war to the media and the public.

The Arab Anti-Discrimination Commission (ADC) sent me a copy, calling it a “vital: propaganda strategy document for the period following the war in Iraq. The document, entitled “Wexner Analysis: Israeli Communications Priorities 2003,” was prepared for the Wexner Foundation, which operates leadership training programs such as the “Birthright Israel” project, which offers free trips for young Jewish Americans to Israel.

Here is a taste of the “analysis” and recommendations:

“‘Saddam Hussein’ are the two words that tie Israel to America and are most likely to deliver support in Congress. The day we allow Saddam to take his eventual place in the trash heap of history is the day we lose our strongest weapon in the linguistic defense of Israel.”

“Iraq colors all. Saddam is your best defense, even if he is dead. For a year, a SOLID YEAR, you should be invoking the name of Saddam Hussein and how Israel was always behind American efforts to rid the world of this ruthless dictator and liberate their people.” 3) “It DOES NOT HELP when you compliment President Bush. When you want to identify with and align yourself with America, just say it. Don’t use George Bush as a synonym for the United States.” 5) “SECURITY” sells. The settlements are our Achilles heel, and the best response (which is still quite weak) is the need for security that this buffer creates. 9) “A little humility goes a long way. You need to talk continually about your understanding of “the plight of the Palestinians” and a commitment to helping them. 10″ Of course rhetorical questions work, don’t they? Ask a question to which there is only one answer is hard to lose.”

Did you see Now last week? Bill Moyers interviewed media exec Barry Diller, who alone among the moguls is demanding more regulation from the FCC, not less. He said in part. (The rest is on the NOW website)

"Five, ten years ago there were thousands and thousands of cable operators, you know? Serving their local communities. Now, there are three big ones and three mid-size ones. And no one else essentially.

BILL MOYERS: And the consequence is?

BARRY DILLER: . . . It gives them such overwhelming power in the marketplace that, in fact, everyone has to do essentially what they say.

SUGGESTION FROM A READER (more to come)

Edward Teague" has a suggestion that we keep a running glossary of the language of the media deception. Perhaps others will supplement it "maybe along the lines of Ambrose Bierce, Appropriate quotes etc.:
“Regime change = illegal invasion”
“As Soon As Possible (for US to leave Iraq) = whenever
“Collateral = You or someone else dies
“War hero = Our soldiers die

SPEECHES OF NOTE

Congrats to Jeanette Friedman, our editor, now on another assignment, for her speech at New Jersey’s Liberty State Park on the remembering the holocaust. An excerpt:

“Hate and genocide go hand in hand, everywhere we look: Cambodia, Rwanda, East Timor, Yemen, the Sudan, Lebanon, the Former Yugoslavia. We live in a world where the words “ethnic cleansing” hint at “sanitation engineers” cleaning up garbage instead of murdering people.

“There are sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in a hour, how much time must pass before the world changes? This year marks the 60th anniversary of a seminal event, the Jewish uprising against the Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto, one of the fiercest battles the Nazis encountered in the course of the war.”

I will be speaking on a panel at Housing Works on Cosby Street in Soho tonight at 7. Come if you are in town. Please see above for information about our new book MEDIA WARS. We need your help in spreading the word. Your words, by the by, are always welcome. Write dissector@mediachannel.org PLEASE VISIT THE MEDIA CHANNEL AND SIGN UP FOR OUR FREE WEEKLY E-MAIL UPDATE Danny Schechter Executive Editor Mediachannel.org http://www.mediachannel.org Executive Producer, Globalvision.Inc 1600 Broadway, #700; NY, NY 10019 USA 212-246-0202 F: 212 246-2677