Dr. Wang Explains White House Disruption. See Below.

BORAT AT EURASIAN MEDIA FORUM
WHY DID FALUN GONG CHALLENGE BUSH?
DYLAN’S NEW RADIO SHOW

I am baack, but so is he:

“Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden says the crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region and the isolation of Hamas show that the West is waging war against Islam, according to an audiotape attributed to him and aired on Al Jazeera television this weekend.”

BAGHDAD BOONDOGGLE

UPI: $1 billion spent on US embassy in Baghdad, $1.3 billion to go

BRITISH LAWYERS CALL WAR WITH IRAN ILLEGAL

Glasgow’s Sunday Herald reports:

“Foreign Office lawyers have formally advised Jack Straw that it would be illegal under international law for Britain to support any US-led military action against Iran.

The advice given to the Foreign Secretary in the last few weeks is thought to have prompted his open criticism last week of Tony Blair’s backing for President George Bush, who has refused to rule out military action against the regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

BACKGROUND ON NEPAL

http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2006-04/22deshpande.cfm

ON OUR IMMIGRATION CRISIS AS AN ECONOMIC CRISIS
http://makethemaccountable.com/podvin/more/060423_TheRapeOfTheWorkingClass.htm

SPECIAL REPORT: MEDIA MAN IN KAZAKHSTAN

Almaty, Kazakhstan: How many media forums have songs written to them, or close their proceedings in a fancy nightclub cum jazz club with the daughter of the host country’s President leading the dancing to American rock and Roll, Kazakh style?

It was the party of the year in a country once only known for THE PARTY, paid for no less by the International Herald Tribune.

The “Prince of Darkness,” neocon Richard Perle, one of the Eurasian Media Forum’s keynoters (for reasons I still don’t get), accompanied by a British TV crew, natch, making a doc on the great man for the now right-leaning PBS, was on the sidelines along with journalists from around the world ogling high-heeled local beauties dressed to the nines and getting down. (Pearle watched, but did not boogie.)

I left the RK, as the Republic of Kazakhstan is known, puzzling over its many contradictions and yet impressed by the ascendance of this ancient Nomadic society and Stalinist labor camp into the ranks of the world’s eco powers thanks to the abundance of oil, gas, and uranium.

Kazakhstan has gone from sleepy obscurity to a growing international status. American officials have been traveling back and forth. Under pressure Kazakhstan gave up its nukes and joined the “ Coalition of the Willing” as part no doubt as a more significant member of the coalition for the drilling. They use American influence to balance Russian influence and Chinese influence to come. Condi Rice has been there and Dick Cheney is coming this week. Watch the silverware!

A COLD WAR REPLAY

Not everyone there is thrilled with this US tilt. Some of the panels were radioactive with debate harkening back to the days of the Cold War with Russian academics and media people, including some Americans, dismissing US claims of international benevolence and peaceful intentions. Some of the mainstream media types there saw this as “anti-Americanism” but, as Claude Salhani of UPI told me, “that is because they don’t realize that opposing the Bush agenda doesn’t make you anti-American.

Even as this former Soviet Republic, the most successful of the “Stans” makes market reforms and welcomes foreign investors and capitalist “partners” the old days are not far behind as evident in old- style Moscow inspired architecture, police uniforms, and wooden government rhetoric. In many ways Russian culture still rules. (Along with the pervasive smoking that addicts this part of the world.)

Some of the more cynical western journalists sniped at the idea of a media forum in a country whose own media is not “free” by our, in my view, less than stellar standards. A New York Times reporter I spoke to asked me if I felt “used.” I told him I didn’t and I wasn’t. (Unlike reporters for big media outfits with budgets for international travel, independent journalists like myself can only become a globe trotter on someone else’s nickel.)

Conservative PR maven Eleana Benador, who places op-eds for right-wing analysts did a press release mentioning her own presence at the event and mentioned me as part of the unlikely line-up.

”The American contingent was formed by the former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle, former US Ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrooke, scholar from the Heritage Foundation Ariel Cohen, Claude Salhani of UPI, Danny Schechter and, among some others.

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060422/nysa014.html?.v=32

LITTLE DISCUSSION OF KAZAKH MEDIA

It was true that the Kazakh media or was not even discussed, but just as bad in my view, too many sessions were dominated more by Americans than Asians. (I did drop in at an opposition press conference at the National Press Club decrying the lack of real democracy and criminal behavior—linked by some to high ups in that regime– that has claimed the lives of a dissenting politician and a journalist.) In the past, the NY Times has carried reports on the country with leads like this: “Fueled with growing wealth from energy exports, Kazakhstan’ s economy reflects an intermingling of politics and business, and widespread corruption.“

That description of the nexus of modern corruption can as easily be applied today to the USA. Domestic issues there were not explored but at the same time I was exposed to meaty debates and information that rarely works its way across the steppes into our own media.

Http://www.eamedia.org

For a small country (15.1 million), the Eurasian Media Forum, now in it its fifth year, is a big deal and had a well-conceived, professionally run, timely and serious program. Its panels treat politics and media and explore the world media crisis just as conferences I have attended in the U.S. takes on ours. As I’ve learned, the same conflict between commercialism and the public interest is to be found across the globe. There seemed to be a consensus at the forum in Almaty that the proliferation of more TV channels do not mean higher quality of news. (Maybe we need an NPT on look-alike and think-alike commercial news outlets?)

NEWS SATURATION IN INDIA

It was noted that there are now 30 around the clock news channels in India. Are so many needed? Are they better informing the public or just there to make money for wannabe media moguls? I was told that all of them are having a hard time finding trained journalists. One former consultant to STAR, the Murdoch-owned company there, has phased out news for a focus on more profitable entertainment programming.

Some of the panels were overloaded with too many speakers who were sluggish and predictable. I tried to make the one I moderated on new media funnier, faster-paced and more TV-show like—but there was a high level of intellectual content on all of them, and lots of passion debating everything from the Muslim cartoon controversy to the future of broadcasting to what’s next in Iran.

On this latter subject, there actually were two experts who live in Iran who offered a much more textured analysis of why Iran is pursuing a nuclear program—for deterrence and to block US “regime change” intervention, not to nuke Yankee Stadium. One of them, Tehran-based Siamak Namazi, who did a stint at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington and like it, argued that his President’s overheated rhetoric is more posturing than policy, and not widely backed. He said that Iranian policy makers are guided more by by rational calculations than wild threats, and questioned whether the US government was deliberately escalating the crisis based on exaggerated fears and misinformation.

These views of the internal Iranian debate may or may not be accurate but I realized again how American TV viewers only get one-sided anti Iranian news dominated by a handful of hawkish “experts” who know as much about Iran as they claimed to know about Iraq. (A former CIA intelligence chief was on 60 Minutes last night admitting that the intelligence agencies were ignored because the Administration wanted to go to war in Iraq and only selected information to justify its ideological policy of preemptive war. The story was a good one if a report we have heard before—only three years late in my view. The presence of the CIA guy made it new.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/21/60minutes/main1527749.shtmlA “Spy Speaks Out” - CBS, and

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/4/23/195856/723
“Drumheller: ‘One of the Great Policy Mistakes of All Time’ - a KOS summary and some comments.

THE BORAT FACTOR

Iran is rarely “covered” except when US policy is involved. All of Asia gets short shrift. We may hear about China when the Chinese leader visits—and gets yelled at in Washington after being courted by the likes of Bill Gates and Henry Kissinger in Seattle—but there is very little reported regularly on TV out of biggest country in Asia. The same is true of an emerging eco-power like Kazakhstan that more Americans may have heard about because of a supposed Kazakh character—Borat—invented by comedian Ali G that makes the country and its people seem like boorish numbskulls.

In fact, Borat has become an issue in Kazakhstan. The country was shocked that this British Comedian, named Saha Cohen, no less, was caricaturing their nation. The government threatened to sue and Al G’s website was taken down. The President was indignant. But once the matter was raised, cooler heads prevailed with the thought of turning this whole tempest in a tea pot into a plus instead of a minus. The President’s daughter broke with her dad—and some say this is why he was a no-show at the media Forum—and made peace with Borat. We were told that the creator of Borat was invited to the Forum but declined, perhaps fearing he would check in but not check out.

AP Reported:

“Demonizing British comic Sacha Baron Cohen, who portrays Kazakh TV personality Borat on his TV satire ‘Da Ali G Show,’ is more harmful than his skits making fun of Kazakhstan, said the president’s daughter.

“Last November, Kazakhstan’s foreign ministry threatened to sue Cohen after objecting to statements he made while he hosted last year’s MTV Europe Music Awards – which he did in character as Borat. Also, the government later banned a Borat website Cohen produces.

Dariga Nazarbayev, a politician and the daughter of Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev, says that this reaction by Kazakh officials hurts the country’s image much more than Cohen’s satire itself.

An Ali-G clip of “Borat” singing the supposed Kazakh anthem in a US stadium in front of mystified Americans was shown at the Media Forum as part of discussion on humor. While his Kazakh sounded more like Hebrew to me, the audience was not all amused. Some stared at this unexpected and preposterous insult while others said at least his media moment putting Kazakhstan on the map, at last, and that some times bad things can have good effects.

Not so funny is the fact that a major wire service reported on Borat, but not the content at the Forum. This is just a sign that even traditional news organizations like entertainment and pop culture stories more than reportage critical of their own behavior. Distractions make the news more than critical ideas.

For example, “in her opening remarks to the forum Diriga Nazabayeva offered challenged the idea of a “clash of civilization” and raised critical questions about the role of the media.

”It’s a paradox but with an obvious lack of meanings that the media infrastructure and primarily the television infrastructure expand constantly. Multinational new channels are emerging and the natural question is whether we are facing a constantly growing demand for such product or is it an effective means of propaganda? Can a detailed description of an event replace its interpretation?

“Another question that seems to be significant, too, is the question of the public service television. Under current political circumstances can it equally distance itself and be protected from influence exerted by the business community and the authorities? Are “conventional” television and other media organisations still significant given the booming web?.”

These are important ideas—but, oddly , of little interest to some of the delegates who wanted to focus more on political debates of the past than the media developments in the future.

While it may be easier to make fun of a far away land, I came away impressed with the initiative and think the idea of creating an Media Forum to promote a country as quote pioneering and smart. It is a model for a more permanent global forum that is needed.

The young people volunteering there were impressive as were many of the “delegates” I got to meet.

I learned from an Al Jazeera rep, for example, that Rupert Murdoch recently visited their station which started rumors flying that he might want to buy the world’s most controversial broadcaster and tame its outspoken journalism. I also learned that the Emir of Qatar is under increasing pressure to clamp down before the International Channel launches as it is now expected to by September. (“Technical delays,” I was told.” The reason for that is their need for a seamless link between news centers in Washington, London, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Doha in Qatar.)

The last image of the Eurasian Media Forum will stay with me longest—Indian Sikhs and Pakistani editors, Arab journalists and Russian reporters along with one news dissector, one Russian Speaking Nigerian, and many Kazakh cuties of both sexes ( some Asian looking, others of Euro backgrounds and many more mixed and mixed up (twisting and shouting together in under the mountains lining Almaty, all thanks to a media event aimed at promoting tolerance and understanding).

Borat should have been there.