SEASON CHANGE: TURN, TURN, TURN

BODY COUNTS MOUNT

OLIVER STONE WARNS BRITAIN

It was as if someone threw a switch. Summer exited stage right and a rainy fall followed within minutes as temperatures dropped. My sinuses alerted me to the change before I could even look out of the window. At least I had one comforting thought to keep me warm this morning. It is the New York Times quote of the day. Clip it and slap it up on your refrigerator:

“Things are getting better”–PRESIDENT BUSH

Now that I feel better, we can go on one of those global excursions to see just how better they are. In Iraq, we have tens of thousands of Shia on the march, mourning the assassination of their Ayatollah Hakim. If you saw 60 Minutes reprise of Bob Simon’s interview with the late cleric whose body was so damaged in that bomb attack that only his black cap survived, you would have heard him recommend the same remedy that his followers are demanding today–namely that Iraqis be given authority to police themselves since the American military is really not up to the task. There was another American killed in an accident there, another bombing, and that beat goes on. But Iraqis, heed the leader of your occupation: “Things are getting better.”

TEARS AND ANGER

BBC went live this morning to the outpouring of anger. Saddam Hussein issued a statement saying his followers didn’t do it, but it is not clear if it was believed. If you have missed the dramatic images, , here’s a snatch of an AP report from Sunday: The faithful followed a flatbed truck carrying a symbolic coffin for Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, a moderate cleric and Saddam Hussein opponent. Authorities said they could only find al-Hakim’s hand, watch, wedding band and pen in the wreckage. “Our revenge will be severe on the killers,” read one of the many banners carried by mourners. Red and white roses were laid on the coffin and a large portrait of al-Hakim was placed in front of it.”

There were also emotional services in Brazil for Sergio Vieira de Mello, the assassinated UN chief. According to the Independent, “Brazil’s media republished lengthy interviews in which Vieira de Mello evocatively described the resentment welling up in the Iraqi population. He openly pushed for full Iraqi control of the country by 2004, a quicker training of an all-Iraqi police force, and referred to the occupation as “humiliating” for Iraqis.

He also was frank in describing his fear of being a target. Mentioning the tongue-in-cheek Brazilian saying that claims “God is Brazilian,” Vieira de Mello told the Jornal do Brasil that he hoped the saying meant God would offer him special protection.

The conservative Estado newspaper noted that the U.S. military was responsible for providing security at the U.N. headquarters. Only days before the attack, the paper noted, Vieira de Mello personally complained to United Nations authorities that the security at the building seemed inadequate.”

PROPAGANDA ALERT

And what is the full body count anyway? UK-based propaganda expert Paul Du Rooj has been reporting on this. His latest shows how combat deaths are being converted into accidents:

“A good barometer of the propaganda in action is the way US military deaths are reported. Here is a curious example where a fatality has been reclassified. On August 20th CentCom issued the following communiqué (abridged, emphasis added):

August 20, 2003 Release Number: 03-08-40″ONE KILLED, ONE INJURED AFTER CONVOY FIRED UPON

BAGHDAD, Iraq - One 3rd Corps Support Command soldier was killed and another injured in a two-vehicle accident while driving south on the main supply route southeast of the town of Ad Diwaniyah.

“The soldiers were driving in a supply convoy of Palletized Loading System vehicles when they received small arms fire and struck another vehicle. [_]

“Security, medical and recovery assets were dispatched to the scene. One soldier died as a result of the accident.

A day later DefenseLink issued the following confirmation notification (abridged, emphasis added).

Aug 21, 2003 DefenseLink No. 613-03DoD Identifies Army Casualty. The Department of Defense announced today that Spc. Kenneth W. Harris, Jr., 23, was killed on Aug. 20 in Scania, Iraq. Harris was fatally injured in a two-vehicle accident while driving south on the main supply route. Another soldier was also injured in the incident.

Presto! A combat death magically becomes an accidental death so the American and British media will not need to include this victim in their body count tallies. One only wonders what the family of the victim will think of this reclassification.”

CIVILIAN DEATH COUNT ALSO GROWS

Meanwhile, the Village Voice’s Jim Ridgeway writes: “Amid increasing suspicions that the U.S. media have been underestimating Iraqi casualties, here are the latest more or less reliable figures culled from several sources, including the government:

“Iraq Body Count (iraqbodycount.net) reported that the number of civilian deaths in Iraq ranges from 6,113 to 7,830. Military.com reports that as of August 28 a total of 281 U.S. soldiers have been killed since the start of the invasion-that includes 143 since major fighting was declared “over” on May 1. The Iraq Coalition Casualty Count (lunaville.org/warcasualties/summary.aspx), based on tallies from Centcom, the Defense Department, and the British Ministry of Defence, shows that, as of August 27, 281 U.S. soldiers, 50 British soldiers, and two “other” coalition soldiers have been reported killed. The estimated wounded? 1,212.

“But by far the most interesting and quite possibly most realistic report comes by way of Jude Wanniski, the supply-side economist and ex-Wall Street Journal reporter who has struck up a correspondence with Mohammad al-Obaidi, an Iraqi doctor living in Britain. Al-Obaidi told Wanniski that “hundreds of our party’s cadre” spent fiveweeks interviewing undertakers, hospital officials, and ordinary citizens in all of Iraq (except for what’s controlled by the Kurds) and came up with a total figure of 37,137 civilians killed since the beginning of the invasion, 6,103 of them in Baghdad. Those figures, according to al-Obaidi, do not include members of unofficial militias, paramilitary groups, or Saddam’s Fedayeen units.” And so as we see the actual death toll is likely much higher than the reported one. For its part the US military says “We don’t do death counts.”

FIRST DRAFT

As for the military in Iraq, Tom Friedman of the NY Times is warning that draft age Americans have something to worry about. He wrote on Labor Day: “If you think we don’t have enough troops in Iraq now - which we don’t - wait and see if the factions there start going at each other. America would have to bring back the draft to deploy enough troops to separate the parties. In short, we are at a dangerous moment in Iraq. We cannot let sectarian violence explode. We cannot go on trying to do this on the cheap. “Hey Tom, Things are getting better. Don’t you read your own newspaper.

Moving on to Indonesia, and in a setback to the war on terror the notorious Ba’ashir has been AQUITTED of treason this morning by a court in Indonesia He was pictured as an Al Qaeda mastermind for the region. Several judges rejected the government case.

QUESTIONS ABOUT DR. KELLY

In England the family of Dr. David Kelly, the UK weapons expert who died of a suicide, testified to the Hutton Inquiry into his death. They said he was very distressed by the treatment he was receiving at the hands of the government. According to the Guardian, his widow told the Hutton inquiry her husband was betrayed. “They broke his heart. They put him in a nightmare.” Family members also said he showed no signs of wanting to end his own life.

Today the BBC is reporting that “The last person known to have seen Dr David Kelly alive has told the Hutton inquiry that the government scientist seemed his normal self on his way to his apparent suicide.

Neighbor Ruth Absalom met and briefly chatted to Dr Kelly at the top of Harris’ Lane in Longworth, about a mile from her home, as she walked her dog at about 1500 BST on 17 July.” Reports like these are raising suspicions that may still be more to this story than we know. BBC reminds us: “Dr. Kelly of course was found dead just over a week after being named as the suspected source for the BBC report suggesting the government exaggerated the intelligence case against Iraq in last September’s dossier.”

KRUGMAN: NEWS IS IGNORED

On the media front, you now have to read Paul Krugman in the New York Times to tell us what his newspaper and others are not. He writes today about an electricity issue that is also a media problem: “When the E.P.A. makes our air dirtier, or the Interior Department opens a wilderness to mining companies, or the Labor Department strips workers of some more rights, the announcement always comes late on Friday - when the news is most likely to be ignored on TV and nearly ignored by major newspapers.

“Last Friday the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, known as FERC, announced settlements with energy companies accused of manipulating markets during the California energy crisis. Why on Friday? Because the settlements were a joke: the companies got away with only token payments. It was yet another demonstration of how electricity deregulation has gone wrong.” It was also another demonstration of how our media system goes wrong, again and again.

FCC PROTESTS PLANNED

On the media activist front, the Media Alliance is demonstrating in San Francisco later this week issuing a call for a ‘Rally to Oppose the FCC’s Media Ownership Rules, the Day they Go into Effect! Despite the opposition of more than half a million peopleand thousands of organizations, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted on June 2nd to allow the media behemoths that already dominate our airwaves to gobble up even more TV stations and local newspapers.”

The protest takes place: THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4 at 5 PM in San Francisco KPIX, 855 Battery Street (at Broadway), Downtown (We’ll start at KPIX-TV, then to KGO-TV and Fox News).

Media Action in LA is protesting Rupert Murdoch’s take over of Direct TV: “This week we are allying with Democratic Media, a Washington DC-based media reform lobbying organization. We urge you to take a minute and go to their website and send a fast message to your Senators and Representatives re Direct TV. You can use the same message to remind them to reverse the June FCC decision on media conglomeration. The link is

http://www.democraticmedia.org/getinvolved/directvAction_Congress.html

YOUR LETTERS

Carke Iakovakis writes from Texas: “First I would like to tell you that I love your website; it is increasingly hard for me to read orlisten to mainstream press, and to have access to an unfiltered analysis of the filtered news is refreshing. I am a senior in college majoring in international relations. Before September 11, I was part of the unenlightened herd, proudly, patriotically and uncritically believing I wasn’t being misinformed and I was getting all sides of the story. The past two years I have been “awakened” and have since been reading the standard literature for the modern day radical like Chomsky and Blum, and now get my newsfrom Mediachannel & Zmag rather than People Magazine.”

Sam Weinreb sent us this rather poetic stream of consciousness not: “i am relatively new with using a computer for communicating—i was a luddite and attended the book publishing celebration on lower broadway where the author kirkpatric sale playing ned ludd demolished a computor with a sledge hammer and i was one of the people cheering mightily. i thought i would live my life without it, but the events since the 2000 elections and my need to find other means of gaining information about what was going on has made the computer a part of my life. i attended the conference at cuny graduate center on civilization and empire at which ralph nader spoke and i was in the audience for the seminar on media among whom were you and amy goodman. i just got a communication from wbai on that 3 day workshop and i am coming and there were you and your website media channel.org and i have just registered. and tried to respond to someone from toronto who was indignant about the lack of reportage of that huge gathering to celebrate toronto’s dealing with the saar’s epidemic but i was not successful in getting thru–but i will learn–meanwhile i am happy to join the loop or ascending spiral that you are instrumental in sponsoring—THANK YOU”

Henry Fernandez writes from Houston: “HELLO AGAIN, DANNY, BASED ON MY OWN EXPOSURE TO THE TERM, REDNECK, I FEEL THAT YOUR READER WHO IS OBJECTING IS OUT-OF-TOUCH ( OR THE MEANING HAS BECOME PERVERTED AND AMBIGUOUS THROUGH USAGE ). BEGINNING IN THE EARLY 70′S I BEGAN TO HEAR THE WORD USED BY ELEMENTS OF THE “COUNTER-CULTURE”. IT WAS USED THEN AND UNTIL NOW, AS FAR AS I KNOW, TO DESCRIBE AN ATTRIBUTE OF ATTITUDE AND NOT A DEMOGRAPHIC OR RACIAL ATTRIBUTE. THE FACT THAT IT SOMETIMES IS PREDOMINANT IN CLUSTERS OF PEOPLE IS INCIDENTAL BECAUSE WITHIN THESE SAME CLUSTERS THERE ARE MANY GOOD SOULS THAT DO NOT SHARE THIS SAME ATTITUDE. GOOD GOSH ! I KNOW MORE URBAN REDNECKS PERSONALLY THAN I DO IN MY RURAL CONTACTS.”

Betsy Kreuger writes from the Murrow School at Washington State Universitry: “It’s Betsy Krueger, from your trip out here for the Murrow Symposium back in April. I still get comments from faculty (many in other depts.) who were impressed by your remarks…

“I have a question for you. One of my classes is looking both at the BBC and the CBC. While we’ve looked at the web sites, and have looked at mediachannel, do you have any suggestions for sites we can explore that will give us a more critical look at each group’s operation and politics? If you have time, I’d really appreciate some suggestions.” Any suggestions for her?

Robert McChesney, the media historian writes: “This September at the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Cancun,Mexico, the US Trade Representative will attempt to expand the WTO’s power over Communications and Audiovisual Services. This includes film, radio, television, video, and music production, as well as media distribution services such as satellite, cable and broadcast. The result could spell disaster for vibrant media systems worldwide. If this occurs, US regulations that favor media diversity, localism and the public interest could be attacked as “barriers to trade.” Media ownership limits, as well as Federal and state programs that encourage diverse media, could be considered outright trade violations.Please go to www.mediareform.net/global

Speaking of the WTO, BBC carried a report his morning on a new book published by 6 major humanitarian agencies documenting the way the WTO bullies, blackmails and intimidates developing countries. Nary a word about it on any US network.

RESOURCES FOR READERS

Some online resources for you. Al Jazeera writes to say that they now have an English language site that is up and running:

http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage

Greg Thornwall writes to tell us about a new blog published by a young Iraqi woman in Baghdad. It is brilliantly written and very insightful about the differences in the way Americans and Iraqis perceive the country’s problems. Book mark this:

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

Tony Sutton of Coldtype.net is back from South Afrrica and has a whole spew of new postings on his beautifully designed site: They include postings - from George Monbiot (three new columns), John Pilger (three new columns), Norman Solomon (two new columns), Antonia Zerbisias (two new columns), and Michael I. Niman (two new columns). Check them out at http://www.coldtype.net

PREPARING FOR VIACOM’S DC9ll

Beginning tomorrow, I will be posting a longish analysis of the propaganda film, DC 9ll: Time of Crisis, that offers a pro-Bush view of the Administrations response to 9/11. Made with full cooperation of the White House, it airs this Saturday on Showtime. It is a docudrama that tries to ape Oliver Stone’s JFK by blending real footage and invented scenarios but whereas Stone was critiquing official history, this film celebrates it. It is scary and instructive.

And finally, speaking of Oliver Stone. He has been in Britain where he is reacting, as I did after returning from a visit earlier in the summer, to news that a new communication bill there setting up an FCC type commission will open the door to more US broadcasters. The Guardian reported: “The film director Oliver Stone has warned that the independence of British news media would be destroyed if US conglomerates were allowed to buy into them.

“The maker of such films as Platoon and JFK … said British politicians were naively courting disaster.

“The communications bill enables foreign companies to buy terrestrial channels such as ITV and Channel Five for the first time. Stone, who screened Commandante at the Edinburgh Film Festival, said he feared the change would undermine standards. “I was shocked at how superficial and sentimental the American coverage of the Iraq war was - all Private Jessica Ryan, and no coverage of civilian casualties. In Britain, you have a wider view, and people are more independent.

“We are living in an age of spin. Now there is a law before parliament which would allow the US media to buy into your media. That’ll be the end of the independent British media.”

Say Amen, and Sayonara. Back tomorrow.

The reorganization of Mediachannel begins today as Tim Karr comes on board to help us engineer a new sustainability strategy. We will keep you informed of our prospects. If you live in New York, and have some skills to offer as an intern, get in touch. You can reach me at: dissector@mediachannel.org