BLASTS IN ISTANBUL

BUSH IN LONDON

MILITARY MELTDOWN FEARED

I went to sleep planning to lead the blog with the protests in Britain and woke up to the carnage in Istanbul. Two major explosions, one at the British consulate and another in front of the Turkish headquarters of the HSBC bank, have captured world attention. According to a CNN report, the British consul is among at least 25 people dead. More than 400 were injured.

The suspicion is that Al-Qaeda or a local group with links to Al Qaeda is behind the attack. We have to remember that Al-Qaeda, a.k.a. “the base,” is a shadowy, decentralized network with many national affiliates and local operatives buried in far-flung sleeper cells. Terrorism experts say this type of attack is likely to discourage nations from sending their soldiers to Iraq for fear that they too will be targeted.

The Turks had planned to send military contingents but held off because of local protests and threats. Apparently there were many warnings to police agencies. The Turkish press is being muzzled as I write. CNN and BBC are recycling the same pictures.

This latest outrage certainly draws attention away from the London protests against George Bush and gives the President and Prime Minister Blair an issue on which to unite and focus attention. It will strengthen the hand of those who make fighting terrorism their focus.

THE VIEW FROM TURKEY

For a perspective not seen or heard in the media, our correspondent in Istanbul Adam McConnel writes exclusively for MediaChannel:

I have been in front of the HSBC bank, which was hit today and numerous times in the past few months; it’s a place where people wait for each other because it is right next to a subway entrance, a major bus stop and one of Istanbul’s prime arterials. I’ve been there so often in the past few months that I think I recognized the security guard (who was either killed or very seriously injured by the blast) who had been on duty at the corner of the building hit hardest. I saw his body in the footage broadcast here.

Outside Turkey you probably won’t see this footage: two bodies — one, lying near the corner of the HSBC building, with half of his legs blown off; the other, still sitting behind the wheel of his destroyed Peugeot, apparently dead, badly burned, but with his business suit on.

WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?

Why is this happening? There is one and only one reason — Iraq.

British Foreign Minister Jack Straw went on TV today and claimed that these attacks were a “continuation” of 11 September. That is a patent falsehood.

These horrible attacks, along with more violence in neighboring countries, are happening because of the disorder in Iraq Regional experts had repeatedly warned that this would be the result of the invasion. With Iraq now drifting into anarchy, it is easier for militants to operate there and carry out attacks in the region.

Thank you, Mr. Straw for being so disingenuous. Now I would like you to look into the faces of the relatives of those who were killed or maimed in Saturday’s and today’s explosions and explain to them why these types of events were not happening before Iraq was invaded.

One thing that these blasts drive home is that the Saturday attacks were not aimed just at Jews — they were aimed at all of Turkey and the Western community in general. Life goes on as normal in Istanbul and will go on as normal. As I walked to my wife’s office to send this email, I saw kids playing football in school yards and people going about their lives. This city has just survived 15 years of undeclared civil war and it will survive this.

The blood of those who die in the meantime is, in my opinion, not just on the hands of those who commit such despicable acts, but also on the hands of those who made it possible: Bush, Cheney, Blair, Straw, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, etc.

WHO IS CLAIMING RESPONSIBILITY?

Giles Foden writes in the Guardian:

The Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, the group which claimed responsibility for Sunday’s synagogue bombing in Turkey, honours a former military commander of al-Qaida. The group’s name is taken from a pseudonym of Mohammed Atef, aka Abu Hafs, who became a relative by marriage to Osama bin Laden before his death in a US missile strike almost exactly two years ago.

This is not the first time the name of Abu Hafs has surfaced in recent months. The same group claimed responsibility for the deadly attack on the UN headquarters in Iraq in August. Yet despite its sudden rise as a self-proclaimed perpetrator of terrorist outrages, the context of the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades is murky at best. The only certainty is that someone wants the world to associate these latest attacks with an individual once at the heart of Osama bin Laden’s operations.

www.guardian.co.uk/turkey/story/0,12700,1087673,00.html

TEA TIME

As I write, the Stop The War Coalition March is still due to leave Malet Street, marching down Whitehall to Trafalgar Square. Some 100,000 people are expected. President Bush and Prime Minister Blair are about to make a press statement. It is 7:14 AM here in New York.

The attack in Turkey came a day after President Bush’s speech calling for Europe to support the War on Terror. The bomb blasts may have been Al Qaeda’s response.

When asked this morning why so many people hate him, Bush said he doesn’t know that they do and then added, “Freedom is a wonderful thing.”

The media coverage in London has focused on the many domestic setbacks for Blair and on the Bush visit and its impact. BBC reported that “The Daily Express described the president’s ‘rictus grin’ as he heard, to the tune of She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain, a protester singing: ‘If you think the War’s for Oil Stop the War…’”

BUSH CALLS FOR CENSORSHIP OF THE ARAB PRESS

One of the most remarkable of Bush’s remarks has gone “unremarked” in the media. In his speech at Whitehall Palace yesterday, Bush held forth on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Of Israel he demanded that they “freeze settlement construction, dismantle unauthorized outposts, end the daily humiliation of the Palestinian people, and not prejudice final negotiations with the placements of walls and fences.”

Then, addressing the Arabs, he said, “Arab states should end incitement in their own media. . . .”

Could he mean the ending of reporting on Israeli settlement construction, unauthorized outposts, the daily humiliation of the Palestinian people and the placement of walls and fences?

So much for a free Arab press!

(See PBS Newhour, tinyurl.com/vuv8.)

PROTESTS UNREPORTED

MediaChannel reader Paul O’Connel reports “The media aren’t giving us the whole story. You may like to make use of this report. I have just got back from Paris where the big demo there was only briefly mentioned on French TV and even then they showed a scuffle which I absolutely did not see and I was there for the whole march.”

He sends along a report from “Pixie Peat,” which says in part,

Did you hear about the Woman who chained herself to Buckingham Palace gates on Monday. ?6.5m on security and she still got through!

Tuesday night Stop Bush rally, central London, over 1000 people couldn’t get into the meeting in the Quakers HQ building in Euston, which was already “250% capacity.” Over 1000 had to go into neighbouring gardens where the speakers, one by one, after speaking to the packed meeting inside addressed the crowd from the garden steps by megaphone. ?At the Tate modern art gallery huge letters “Bush Go Home” were laid out on the floor of one of the big exhibitions.

Weds 11 am big march through central London. The BBC reported only the gathering of the protestors in Jubilee garden, saying that about 600 were there. This was possibly true of the start of the march (may be a bit more), but they failed to mention that the march went through central London, and it grew as it went with late comers and passers by joining the procession which featured an open-top horse-drawn carriage and Queen and Bush “lookalikes.” Plenty of foreign media coverage - well Bush is “invisible” -being kept out of sight, so there’s nothing else for them to report.

This morning (Thurs) there were reported angry confrontations between workers and police as an exclusion zone was set up around Westminster Abbey - no one allowed inside either traffic or on foot including anyone working inside the perimeter. I’m off to the National Demo. Please circulate to let people know what is going on here.

Tomorrow, we will report on the protests in Miami against the so-called Free Trade agreement for the America’s. At least 10,000 marchers are expected. Probably more.

ATTITUDES AND ANTAGONISMS

There are many contradictory attitudes in Britain that were not captured in the phony poll we dissected in yesterday’s blog.

Historian Timothy Garton Ash writes about this in the Guardian today:

Being European in 2003 doesn’t mean being anti-American; it means being torn apart over America. It’s that mixture of fascination and resentment, of loving The West Wing and loathing George Bush. The American side is a bit more intense for us than it is for most continental Europeans because of shared language and history. But the Poles, Italians and Germans all have their own love-hate affairs with America. Britain has a generally pro-American right and a generally pro-European left. So does Italy. So does Spain. We’re the same - only a bit more so.

( www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1088937,00.html )

BUSH IN A BUBBLE

The Guardian’s coverage notes that Bush is in a bubble. Writes Jonathan Freedland:

. . . . The combination of ceremony and security required for this, the first state visit ever granted to an American president, ensured that George Bush spent yesterday sealed off from any potential intrusions of nastiness. He moved in a bubble that enveloped him wherever he went, allowing him and his hosts to think only pleasant thoughts.

( www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1089063,00.html )

ILLUSIONS ALL AROUND

Oddly, the Daily Mirror reports on an earlier meeting of the Labour Party National Executive at which Blair hinted at feelings he doesn’t express publicly:

Tony Blair has attacked President Bush’s Republicans for faking “compassionate” politics like Michael Howard’s hardline Tories.

The Prime Minister branded George Bush’s portrayal of Republicans as caring conservatives as a hollow “illusion.”

The revelation is highly embarrassing as it comes at the start of Mr Bush’s state visit to Britain. It was in a meeting with Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee that the PM launched a savage attack on the Republican’s style of politics.

(tinyurl.com/vu7m)

NY TIMES SHOCK: DOWD AND FRIEDMAN ALMOST AGREE

Columnist Maureen Dowd suggests in today’s New York Times that the Bush visit is really aimed at American voters, not the British public. She writes, “? this was a trip made not so much to thank the British people for their friendship, but to send a message to the voters back home that he was at ease as a world leader?. The White House packaged the visit for the viewers at home.”
( www.nytimes.com/2003/11/20/opinion/20DOWD.html )

Dowd’s New York Times neo-con op-ed mate Thomas Friedman gauges the alienation towards the US that he encountered in London:

So I step off the plane in London and the British customs guy sees on my form that I’m a journalist and asks, “Is it true there are more police to protect your president in London than there are in Baghdad?” Then I pick up The Independent to read in the taxi and I see that London’s left-wing mayor, Ken Livingstone, has denounced President Bush as “the greatest threat to life on this planet that we’ve most probably ever seen.” Then I check out The Guardian, which carried open letters to the president, one of which is from the famous playwright Harold Pinter, who says: “Dear President Bush, I’m sure you’ll be having a nice little tea party with your fellow war criminal, Tony Blair. Please wash the cucumber sandwiches down with a glass of blood.”

No, Dorothy, we’re definitely not in Kansas anymore.

We’re in the U.K., our closest ally in the Iraq war — a country where Mr. Bush still has many supporters, but also a legion of detractors. But if this is how some of our best friends are talking, imagine how difficult it is going to be to win over America’s more ambivalent allies — to widen support for the rebuilding of Iraq. . . .( www.nytimes.com/2003/11/20/opinion/20FRIED.html )

FEARS OF MILITARY BREAKDOWN

In Iraq meanwhile, News Insider reports that US soldiers are being tried for attacking Iraqi prisoners. Andrew Cockburn reports in the Los Angles Times that the US troops in that country are less than stable:

Among the less publicized incentives propelling Iraq overseer Paul Bremer’s urgent dash to Washington last week was the concern in various quarters of the administration that the U.S. expeditionary force in Iraq was in a dangerously unstable state. “We are one stressed-out reservist away from a massacre,” remarked one senior official closely involved in the search for an exit strategy.

He was expressing the fear that a soldier, possibly a reservist, pressed beyond endurance by the rigors and uncertainties of his or her condition in a hostile land far from home, might open up with a machine gun on an Iraqi crowd, with obviously disastrous consequences for the future of the occupation.(tinyurl.com/vubf)

Stan Goff, author and a retired Special Forces soldier with a son serving in Iraq, is a member of the “Bring Them Home Now” coordinating committee. This group of military families and veterans demands an end to the occupation of Iraq and an immediate return of US troops. Goff has issued a plea to the soldiers:

I can tell you, without fear of legal consequence, that you are never under any obligation to hate Iraqis, you are never under any obligation to give yourself over to racism and nihilism and the thirst to kill for the sake of killing, and you are never under any obligation to let them drive out the last vestiges of your capacity to see and tell the truth to yourself and to the world. You do not owe them your souls.

Come home safe, and come home sane. The people who love you and who have loved you all your lives are waiting here, and we want you to come back and be able to look us in the face. Don’t leave your souls in the dust there like another corpse.

Hold on to your humanity.

( www.counterpunch.org/goff11142003.html )

CONRAD BLACK UNDER INVESTIGATION

The SEC is now investigating the publisher of the Daily Telegraph and Jerusalem Post in connection with a series of unauthorized and possibly illegal payments to executives and himself.

CAMPBELL TO BBC: LET’S KISS AND MAKE UP

The Guardian reports that former Blair spinmeister “Alastair Campbell today came close to admitting that his crusade against the BBC during and after the Iraq war was unjustified, confessing he sometimes got ‘agitato’ about the corporation for the wrong reasons.” (tinyurl.com/vuf0)

Norman Solomon writes from Brazil that media activism is alive and well:

On the night of Nov. 10, at the headquarters of the Brazilian Press Association here in Rio, more than 100 activists gathered to help kick off the nationwide Campaign for Media Democratization. In spite of progress for social justice, Brazil’s mass media remain firmly in the hands of nine wealthy families intent on serving the interests of conservative economic elites. The contradictions between an ascendant democratic movement and a timeworn media oligarchy are extreme. (tinyurl.com/vuns)

Background link in Brazil: National Forum for Democratization of Communications

THE GLOVED ONE

The impending arrest of singer Michael Jackson is stealing the headlines in the US. Alessandra Stanley writes, “Scandal, even criminal behavior, has not thwarted entertainers much of late; for Michael Jackson it may just add to his alluring bizarreness.”

Jackson has protested his innocence suggesting that the raids were timed to undercut sales of his new album. In another act of courage, CBS has now cancelled his upcoming network TV concert.

YOUR LETTERS

WHY NOT MORE 911 PROBE COVERAGE?

My name is Colleen Kelly. I live in the Bronx (where I believe I met you in the fall of 2001). I am one of the co-founders of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows.

I have been trying to get a letter to the editor printed in the NY Times for several weeks now concerning the near total lack of serious media attention shown as yet to the 9/11 Commission. I remember as a young girl spending most of one summer glued to the TV watching the Watergate hearings every afternoon. It astounds me that Nixon’s paranoia captured the attention of our country daily, and the Commission investigating an event that killed nearly 3000 people and radically changed foreign policy is rarely mentioned

New York Coordinator
September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows
www.peacefultomorrows.org

ON BUSH IN BRITAIN

Joanne Giza writes from Calgary:

This is the most fun I’ve had in ages - following the follies of the Bush entourage in England is just the best!

I can’t think which part I like the most - the open contempt of Brits for this bone-stupid dictator; all the fabulous protests being conducted with true British panache; the Mayor of London’s declaration that Bush is the biggest threat to the survival of the planet the world has ever seen, and the list goes on.

Maybe it’s listening to the ever-growing list of laughably ludicrous demands being made on their host country by that band of hyper-paranoid loonies calling themselves security people. Or perhaps it’s the mental video I have of Bush and his Poodle squirming uncomfortably in the glare of public opinion, and doubtless wishing for the speedy end of this most uncomfortable visit.

Nope, all of the above are delicious treats, but I think my very favourite part has to be this: Bush and Blair couldn’t have dreamed up a better way to serve the progressive thinkers of the world if they had tried. Seeing the likes of Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber humiliated like this is wonderful, but to think they did it to themselves (!)- well, that is just divine! Hope all continues to go well with your tour, keep the posts and blogs coming!

TJCnoPOPS2 comments on those polls in England:

I’m surprised you didn’t comment on the form of the question.
“Do you welcome his visit or would you prefer he did not come?”
No, I don’t favor his visit. Yes, I would prefer he did not come.
Might explain why 21% did [not] have an answer.

FROM CAJUN COUNTRY

Mitch Pederson writes from Boyce, Louisiana,

I couldn’t help notice the similarity between Kucinich and our recent vanity candidate for governor of Louisiana, Patrick “Livewire” Landry. (www.livewirelandry.com)

Look under “Issues” and “top ten reasons” to find this jewel.

First Lady sweepstakes search

will market nationwide via the Internet and other media my desire for a wife and First Lady. In doing so, any interested ladies, who would travel to Louisiana for interviews in all 64 parishes, would be briefly entertained in public settings, such as hotel lobbies and restaurants. “Live Wire” Landry is a virgin at 37 years of age, and I will assure these ladies that the chosen lady will be entitled to $65,000 a year. Because at marriage, a couple’s possessions become community property, the governor’s $130,000 salary will be shared along with the love. Divorcee’s will also be considered.

Hope you enjoyed this as much as the guys in the newsroom did when he announced this on air.

TURKISH CONFUSION

Luke John Howie writes,

Please correct me if I am wrong on this point but I noticed that now everybody attributes the Turkey bombings to al-Qaeda; even you Danny (blog 19/11). In classic Orwellian fashion I seem to remember a week ago (in Australia) it was reported that the bombing was conducted by Abu Hafs al Masri Brigades (note: these are not the mysterious third party claimers). Later that day it was claimed on 9 news in Australia (Kerry Packer owned) that there were links between the al Masri Brigades and al-Qaeda. The next day it had been abbreviated to al-Qaeda responsibility only. And the rest is history.

IN CLOSING . . .

I had so much more to write about today but will have to stop now. I was at a discussion of media coverage on the war last night at Seton Hall University.

John Moody, the Director of Fox News Coverage was there but walked away when I tried to talk with him (even though we were both Cornell grads). Torrie Clark, ex-Pentagon media chief, now CNN employee, also declined to be dissected. I did speak with Fox embed Greg Kelly, a very competent reporter, who later told the audience “We wanted America to win.” He had some deeper insights to share with me that I will report. You can listen to the discussion online at www.shu.edu.

For another view on the coverage and the embeds, see David Miller’s new book Tell Me Lies, which offers a collection published by Pluto Press. I am planning to say more about David and promise not to mangle his name again in future columns. Thanks also to the Toronto Star’s Antonia Zerbisias for saying some nice things about this blog in a column on work on the web.

Tonight Frontline runs its “Lee Harvey Oswald done it” program. ABC is doing theirs. My take — “Beyond JFK” — is newly out on DVD with the Director’s cut of Oliver Stone’s JFK.

Also happy to report that the film I directed on the Florida election, Counting on Democracy, won best documentary at the Northhampton, MA film festival. I’ve mentioned this, but yesterday we received the plaque! (See Globalvision.org)

Isn’t it great to have so many readers around the world sharing their take on the news and the media situation? Add yours by writing dissector@MediaChannel.org.