THOSE 9/11 TRANSCRIPTS

COSTS OF WAR

LETTERS ON THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON

As summer draws to a close, none of the issues/problems/crises/ challenges etc. that were with us when it began are anywhere near resolution. Perhaps it is unrealistic to expect breakthroughs and “progress” with the mindset in Washington and the media drift that permits such a lack of accountability and transparency.

The BIG story in New York was an old story–the release of some 9/11 files featuring transcripts of communications as World Trade Center workers and visitors struggled to escape from that real life Towering Inferno. We only have them because the New York Times sued the Port Authority which ran the WTC. It took them one year and five months to pry these low-level, not-very-revealing transcripts covering 260 hours of back and forth between rescue workers and people desperately trying to escape. It is human drama and was milked as such with lots of sound bites from the families of victims who were divided about its release.

WHERE ARE THE OTHER 9/11 TRANSCRIPTS?

What went unmentioned, uncommented upon, unexplored and uninvestigated is where the other transcripts are, the ones that document government meetings in high places, of intelligence data that went unheeded, of warnings by foreign leaders that were not heard, etc etc. Nearly two years after this calamity there has yet to be hearings by an independent commission of inquiry. One scientist dies, reportedly by his own hand in Britain, and the government is dragged into an investigation, which forced the Prime Minister himself to testify. Nearly 3,000 people perish in lower Manhattan, and no one wants to talk about it in any convincing detail. This is far more shocking than a woman at the top of the tower who asks if she can break a window to get some air.

Instead of full disclosure and anything approaching truth, we have a TV docudrama which seems to have been executive produced by Karl Rove and slated for cablecast on SHOWTIME purporting to show Cabinet meetings and how the inner sanctum responded. It is of course a total FICTION if not a narrative whitewash or should I say BUSH WASH of the whole affair. As it happens, through the powers invested in me by the Great Oz, I have obtained an advance, if purloined copy, of this soon to be Viacom blockbuster, about which I will have more to say. As I mentioned, earlier in the week Village Voice Film critic J. Hoberman described it thusly:

FICTIONALIZATION

“The upcoming Showtime feature “DC 9/11: Time of Crisis” is a signal advance in the instant, ongoing fictionalization of American history, complete with the president fulminating most presidentially against “tinhorn terrorists,” decisively employing the word problematic in a complete sentence, selling a rationale for preemptive war, and presciently laying out American foreign policy for the next 18 months. “We start with bin Laden,” Bush (played by Timothy Bottoms) tells his cabinet. “That’s what the American people expect . . . So let’s build a coalition for that job. Later, we can shape different coalitions for different tasks.”

Hoberman compares this film to the commie propaganda films that Republicans used to love to denounce, films that were used to glamorize the late Mr. Stalin of the late Soviet Union, writing “It was one of the unique characteristics of Stalin-era Soviet movies that their infallible leader was regularly portrayed, by professional impersonators, as an all-wise demiurge in suitably grandiose historical dramas. So it is with DC 9/11, where documentary footage of the collapsing WTC is punctuated by the pronouncements of Bottoms’s Bush.”

WHO IS IN IT, WHO MADE IT?

Timothy Bottoms plays the president playing president in this farce that was evidently made with the blessings of the White House and the participation of at least one Fox News “newsman.” All I can say is ya gotta see it to disbelieve it, but unfortunately in this climate, with no effective presentation of a “counter-narrative” or critique of this officially sanitized history, people will believe it. It is well done, emotional, and does more to humanize Bush than anything we have seen to date. Which may be its point.

And who done it? Conservative producer Leonard Chetwynd directed this Hooray for the USA project in, where else, Canada. Writing about him in the Washington Post, Paul Farhi notes: “Chetwynd acknowledges that he began the project as a “great admirer” of the president. Chetwynd is among the few outspokenly conservative producers in Hollywood, and one of the few with close ties to the White House. His 2000 Showtime film “Varian’s War” (about an American who rescued French Jews from the Nazis) was screened at the executive mansion for the president and Mrs. Bush. In late 2001, President Bush appointed him to the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. In researching “D.C. 9/11,” Chetwynd had access to top White House officials, including Bush. What’s more, Chetwynd ran the script past a group of conservative Washington pundits, including Fred Barnes, Charles Krauthammer and Morton Kondracke. (ALL ASSOCIATED WITH FOX, DS) But he insists that only he and Showtime had control over the film’s content and tone. “This isn’t propaganda,” he says. “It’s a straightforward docudrama.”

POWER FAILURES

In the news today, we have reports that North Korea is threatening to test nuclear weapons. Most of these reports seem to be attributed to US officials. No North Koreans were given any airtime that I saw to explain their views. Others talk about them. They never get to talk for themselves. We also had BBC upping the death count (by excessive heat) in France to over 13,000, and a report on a power failure in South London blacking out millions, caused by a power grid failure involving the same British privatized firm implicated in the US power failure.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/3189755.stm

The other power failure in Britain involves Tony Blair. The latest opinion polls have less than 50% of the public believing him. He now says that if the charges against his government by the BBC–namely that a dossier selling the war were “sexed up” he would have resigned. But because, he claims, they weren’t, he didn’t. (How’s that for a mouthful?) BBC Newsnight dryly dissected the ongoing drama of charge and counter charge with too much focus on the picayune details, while avoiding the truth or falsity of the charge that demands more reporting.

TIMES TURNS ON TONY

What may be more significant is that Mr. Blair is not only losing support in most of Britain but he has now turned off the New York Times which editorializes today:

“His defense of almost all aspects of his government’s use of intelligence material during the months leading up to the Iraq War was spirited but unconvincing. Despite all the protestations of innocence by Mr. Blair and his aides, it is clear that his government embellished the truth in its stark warnings of an imminent Iraqi threat.” Note the declarative sentence: “IT IS CLEAR.” If this is so clear, why won’t the Times do what the Economist did on its front page which brandished the word: “LIAR.” (Pants on fire?)

THE COSTS OF PERMANENT WAR

Another attack in Iraq. One dead with a new incident coming in from Falujah just as I tuned out in despair after CNN anchor Carol Collins revealed that ALL she is thinking about these days is the coming of pro-football. Sounded about right.

Writing in the Times, Paul Krugman goes after the costs of the war, which will continue to skyrocket. Anyone remember the old guns v butter debate or how the Vietnam War ended up leading to major economic problems on the home front (now the homeland front)? According to one of the smartest economists writing today:

“It’s all coming true. Before the war, hawks insisted that Iraq was a breeding ground for terrorism. It wasn’t then, but it is now. Meanwhile, administration apologists blamed terrorists, not tax cuts, for record budget deficits. In fact, before the war terrorism-related spending was relatively small - less than $40 billion in fiscal 2002. But the costs of a “bring ‘em on” foreign policy are now looming large indeed.

“The direct military cost of the occupation is $4 billion a month, and there’s no end in sight. But that’s only part of the bill.

“This week Paul Bremer suddenly admitted that Iraq would need ’several tens of billions; in aid next year. That remark was probably aimed not at the public but at his masters in Washington; he apparently needed to get their attention. It’s no mystery why. The Coalition Provisional Authority, which has been operating partly on seized Iraqi assets, is about to run out of money. Initial optimism about replenishing the authority’s funds with oil revenue has vanished: even if sabotage and looting subside, the dilapidated state of the industry means that for several years much of its earnings will have to be reinvested in repair work.”

HAPPY LABOR DAY

Money, money everywhere but not a drop to drink for American workers who get a day off for Labor Day as gas prices rise and the economy continues to decline. The Information Clearing House distributes a report contending that “Soaring defense spending is driving the U.S. economy, but not doing too much for the unemployment picture as Americans still struggled to find jobs and corporations saw their profits fall, government reports on Thursday showed.”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4565.htm

IPA reports that Economic Policy Institute senior economist Jared Bernstein and president Lawrence Mishel, co-authors of the just-released report “Labor Market Left Behind,” said as Labor Day gets underway: “Since the start of this recovery, unemployment has continued to trend upward, from 5.6 percent in November 2001 to 6.2 percent in July 2003 …. [There are] three unemployed people for every job opening. During this recovery, unemployment has risen 0.6 percentage points overall and 1.3 points among African Americans…. Employment opportunities have declined more for college graduates than for high school dropouts. Underemployed workers — those working fewer hours than they want to or in a job for which they are overqualified — reached double digits (10.2 percent) in July 2003…. Current unemployment rates are actually lower than they would be, except for the fact that some 2 million workers have stopped looking for work in this poor market.”

http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/briefingpapers_bp142

Weren’t we told that the Taliban was all obliterated? Apparently not. The War on Terror continues as South Africa’s Mail and Guardian reports: “Afghan soldiers were waging a fierce ground battle with entrenched Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan on Friday after a night of heavy bombing by United States warplanes that left many Taliban fighters dead.” This sort of news no longer even makes the news in the US. Afghanistan was yesterday’s story.

http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?a=13&o=27840

And now Naomi Klein, author of No Logo, is comparing the War on Terror to a “brand” in widely syndicated column:

“The War on Terror was never a war in the traditional sense. It is, instead, a kind of brand, an idea that can be easily franchised by any government in the market for an all-purpose opposition cleanser. We already know that the WoT works on domestic groups that use terrorist tactics such as Hamas or the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (Farc). But that’s only its most basic application. WoT can be used on any liberation or opposition movement. It can also be applied liberally on unwanted immigrants, pesky human-rights activists, and even on hard-to-get-at investigative journalists.”

MARCHING ON WASHINGTON

I had a great response to my piece on the March on Washington yesterday with other websites picking it up. If you missed it, check out the handsome package with other features put together by Steve China of the Maynard Institute site which promotes more diversity and minority involvement in journalism:

http://www.maynardije.org/news/features/030827_march/

It also led to an hour-long interview with Peter B of All American Radio (Icicle satellite network) and promoted lots of response from readers. Here’s a sampling:

Larry Hougteling: “What a beautiful, thoughtful, thought-provoking, heartfelt, altogether excellent column on the March on Washington and MLK Jr. Thank you very much.”

Dom X Muhammad: “Your MLK story gave me chills! Some story! Some history!!”

Lee Ferell: “In homage to your memories of the March on DC +40, and MLK’s dream: “The letter from a most eloquent American-African woman yesterday (Thurs, 28) ended the main body of her text with the word: “demonstrations.” But where are they? Most who would show up are now hypnotized by the “lobotomy box” and computer-addiction so prevalent and isolating, I’d bet. “Taking it to the streets” is still the only way, but, again, we’ve an immense task ahead of us organizing _new_ logistics and tactics. We need another 200,000 appearing, on Wall St. and all corporate centers this time (a DC appearance would turn into a tiny news “bit,” quickly forgotten as the ‘chart’ requires), in quiet synchrony and harmony, day after day, it seems to me; night after night, too, with candles, unyielding, resolute, unforgiving of the greed of the Brave New World’s corporate overlords who are behind most of the suffering and anguish world-wide.

“The Power Elite does not live in DC any longer. They live in NY, in Brussels, in Bern, in London, etc. Indeed. Why can’t we organize worldwide demonstrations synchronized by hour and day? Seems to me we owe it to Martin Luther King, and all others of extraordinary integrity who would not accept the lie: Cesar Chavez, Bayard Rustin, Stokely, Rosa Parks, all those bus conductors, every single person who “showed up” on that extraordinary day; all those hung from trees near town at night; all those brutalized by “vigilantes” when it seemed most quiet. We owe it to all our sisters and brothers everywhere struggling to survive, and those struggling for truth and justice out in the open, like Michael Moore, who can’t do much more for all of us.”

“Keep the faith, Danny. Let the flame burn again….”

DON’T SAY REDNECK

Michael L. Westmoreland-White, Outreach Coordinator, Every Church a Peace Church of Louisville, Kentucky writes: “Since I was born in ‘62, I was not involved in the Civil Rights movement, although my parents did participate in Freedom Summer in Mississippi (’64). Still, my life was shaped by the Movement and its aftermath. My own activism for peace and justice, beginning in ‘83 when I went with Witness for Peace to Nicaragua, was largely inspired by the likes of MLK, Jr., Dorothy Cotton, Diane Nash, John Lewis (whom I met 2 years ago in Atlanta) and so many others. I am always glad to hear more testimony to those days by participants and observers. Thank-you for your article. “I have only one complaint: Your use of the term “redneck” to describe white racists. As a Southerner whose people come from small farms and blue-collar workers (I was the first to go to university and overcompensated by earning a Ph.D. in philosophy!), I object. As such Southern white liberals/progressives as Will D. Campbell, Wendell Berry, Anne Braden, and others have often pointed out, the pejorative use of “redneck” to mean “white racist” is not only inaccurate, but the equivalent of “nigger” or other racial slurs.

Doubtless many rednecks are also racially prejudiced–it serves the capitalists and power mongers to work at keeping them so. But it is also true that many are not and, indeed, some of the South’s most progressive white voices have come from redneck stock. The use of the term redneck to mean “ignorant poor racist” (as opposed to rich sophisticated racists like Trent Lott) shows that poor Southern whites, and especially Appalachians and those displaced from Appalachia, can be the objects of open derision and defamation with no social consequence. It is still “politically correct” to be prejudiced against poor white Southerners in a way that almost no other group in the U.S. is subjected to.

“My family of origin is redneck–but they are not racist. My grandfather was beaten by the KKK in a small town in Texas in 1948 (a town that has ceased to exist since that time) for repeatedly removing a sign at the edge of town that said, “Nigger don’t let the sun go down with you in town,” and for championing the right of a black WWII vet and his wife to open a business in town. My parents, as I said, were bit players in Freedom Summer–it is a myth that all the whites were students from the North..

Please, desist from using the term redneck as a synonym for “poor white racist,” and teach other liberal whites to do likewise. Someone who was part of the Movement and now does the vital work of mediachannel.org needs to lead the way in rejecting prejudice against poor Southern whites and displaced Appalachians as a class. ”

COMMENT: Point well made. I know many Southern Whites were involved in the struggle. That was my point in part: “Redneck” had a specific connotation back then. Sorry for any offense.”

The News Hour without Jim Lehrer last night had good discussion after being the only TV outlet to rebroadcast the whole King speech, which is far more critical and radical than its oratorical ending and I have a dream flourishes suggest. Many of the points I made that morning were made by many of the guests. John Lewis described how his speech had been sanitized after the Archbishop of Washington threatened to withdraw from the March is his call to march non-violently. “Like Sherman throughout the South” was not cleansed from the text. He went along in the interests of unity. Journalist Haynes Johnson confirmed my report that most of the reporting was like a police story, more worried about order than the political content of the day’s events. Apparently the NY Times-which I hadn’t seen-did cite the King Speech. That piece sent to me by Jo Murphy begins: “Washington, Aug. 28 — More than 200,000 Americans, most of them black but many of them white, demonstrated here today for a full and speedy program of civil rights and equal job opportunities.

“It was the greatest assembly for a redress of grievances that this capital has ever seen.

One hundred years and 240 days after Abraham Lincoln enjoined the emancipated slaves to “abstain from all violence” and “labor faithfully for reasonable wages,” this vast throng proclaimed in march and song and through the speeches of their leaders that they were still waiting for the freedom and the jobs. A “related headline” cited King: “‘I Have a Dream…’: Peroration by Dr. King Sums Up a Day the Capital Will Remember. ”

And remember it we did-but what did we remember remains the question.–DS

THE THREAT TO CIVIL RIGHTS TODAY

The King Family seems to be remembering that the rights MLK fought for are not secure as Greg Palast writes: “At the dais, Martin Luther King spoke with the marchers: “We ask a simple question. Do African Americans have the right to vote in the United States of America?”

“We have to blink. Speaking is Martin Luther King THE THIRD, son of the late Nobel Laureate — and the year is 2003. Meeting in Birmingham in May, in the run-up to the 40th anniversary celebration of his daddy’s “I Have a Dream” speech, King was warning that the man in the White House was hacking the computers - and the result is a legalized attack on the Black voter that could steal away 40 years of blood, sweat, tears and civil rights victories. In 2002, with little public notice, Congress passed and the president signed the “Help America Vote Act.” When the Bush family wants to “help” us vote, look out. Hidden behind the apple-pie-and-motherhood name lies a nasty civil rights time-bomb.

Palast concludes: “The ethnic cleansing of black voters from the Florida registries, and the new plan to infect the nation with the Bush Administration’s Jim Crow computer scheme, is the wake-up call for a new activism that must be fought in the Birminghams and Selmas of cyberspace. Now it’s your turn. Click in, sign on � to ML King’s voting rights petition at

http://www.workingforchange.com/activism/petition.cfm?itemid=14993

NOT SUCH A WIDE ANGLE

Watched Wide Angles’s take on South Africa last night on PBS. The angle wasn’t wide enough. Referred to but left out in a look at black empowerment is the government’s macro economic policies and welcoming relationship to Globalization. There was no real analysis of the role of the WHITE and INTERNATIONAL economic interests that steer the economy in a direction that big business applauds and labor unions detest. The pictures and people were great. The analysis was stunted. And, so sorry, I missed the MTV awards show. Sorry, my priorities are totally askew. I am sure Chris Rock had some stinging one-liners on weapons of mass destruction.

AN ARNOLDO-HAIDER LINK?

I welcome any more information from readers about the once close relationship between wannabe California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who keeps being referred to as a liberal Republican with his countrymate, the far right Hitler apologist, Austria’s Georg Haider. A German newspaper has published some details on their earlier relationship. We have heard rumors from at least one source that Arnold helped fund Haider’s rise to visibility. If true, Arnold’s politics may be more on the dark side than has been reported. Saul Landau refers to this on a commentary on his support for anti-immigrant legislation, writing: ” If he is unsuccessful in his attempt to become California Governor, he could use this experience to run for high office in Austria, his birthplace where his father supported the Nazis and he himself had a chummy relationship with Nazi-sympathizing former Prime Minister Jorge Haider.” The inference is there. But where’s the evidence?

Clearly one doesn’t need a goose stepping association to be critical of this charade. Mr. S has inspired some inspired journalism as in this description by Molly Ivins: “One problem I have with Arnold Schwarzenegger is that he looks like a condom stuffed with walnuts. I realize that is superficialshallow and unbecoming to a semi-serious-minded liberal like myself,but there it is. The other is that he doesn’t know what he is talkingabout when it comes to public policy. And therein lies our thesis for the day: Politics as showbiz versus what actually happens to real people’s lives as a result of stupid public policies.”

WELCOME TIM KARR

I have been flooded with many other great letters which I hope to sample next week. It is a good sign that during a time of the year when media viewing is down, letter writing to the Mediachannel is up. Media Channel proudly announces that Tim Karr, who helped run the Globalvision News Network is moving into the role of Executive Director of Mediachannel next week as we reorganize in hopes of implementing a sustainability strategy. The irony is that as our impact mounts, our funding shrinks. We are continuing to appeal for reader support, for new interns with skills to contribute and more promotion by affiliates and the journalists who consult the site and find it useful. Please make our survival one of your causes. Have a great break if you are taking one this weekend. I will be back next TUESDAY, tanner and better rested that ever I hope. Please share comments with me by writing dissector@mediachannel.org