LOOKING AT US FROM “OUT THERE”

When you slip outside the empire, and travel as I try to do when others are kind enough to pay my way, I see the world through other eyes.

Yes, gang, there is more to the world than the overheated passions between the Obama and Clinton camps.

First, you experience the decline of American power right away. Our dollars are a joke in terms of purchasing power. The privileges of being an American, if they every existed, are long gone. Some still admire us, but many, too many, pity us.

Next, your notion of the important is next to be challenged. In this larger world, the worst war is not Iraq but the ever escalating conflict between Ethiopia and Somalia, fed by the Pentagon of course. The worse election crisis is in Zimbabwe, not Pennsylvania. Few of the people I spoke to at the Eurasian Media Forum here in Kazakhstan, had any clue that there were reported electoral irregularities in the home of the brave, much less what a super delegate or electoral vote is.

Third, my own critique of the flaws of our media didn’t resonate all that well with folks who are living under state-dominated media and where the President’s travels is always page one.

The Moscow Times features a report on Putin’s trip to Libya on the cover and to Italy on page 2. A culture section story is called “Rocking the Third Reich ‘ s about a first novel by Ogel Nesterov on rock’n’ roll in pre-war Germany,. It reimagines the origins of Rock n’ Roll through the life of legendary German filmmaker Leni Reiftenstahl in the Berlin of the 1930’s.

Back in USA Today, there’s alarm about food prices rising—73% are pissed—but the Wall Street Journal reassures with a report that suburbanites are growing arugla in their back yards. The International Herald Trib focuses on Farm Fortunates –ie those making fortunes on food–while the food crisis is being used by food cartels to press for an easing of rules in many countries against Genetically modified crops.

STARVATION INCREASING

And behind the scenes once again are the profiteers who hope to benefit again on the misery of the many

By Richard C. Cook: Crisis in Food Prices Threatens Worldwide Starvation: Is it Genocide?

Faced with the global financial crisis and the collapse of mortgage-based securities, investors are flocking to resource-based tangibles as a hedge against recession and the decline of the U.S. dollar. Hence gold is at record levels with oil keeping the same pace. How else to explain, for instance, the doubling of the price of rice in Asian markets in less than two months?

BUSH TO FAMILES LOOSING THEIR HOMES: TOUGH

A top housing official said Thursday that the Bush administration “strongly opposes” Democrats’ housing rescue package, calling it a bailout that would expose taxpayers to excessive risk.

Deputy Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Roy A. Bernardi also indicated that President Bush would veto a bill sending $15 billion to states for the purchase and rehabilitation of foreclosed properties.

The comments, in separate letters to lawmakers, were the most forceful rejection yet by the Bush administration of Democrats’ housing aid plans. And they were the clearest indication to date that the White House intends to put up a vigorous fight against a bill to let the Federal Housing Administration take on as much as $300 billion in new mortgages for financially strapped homeowners.

They came as the House Financial Services Committee began work on the bill by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the panel chairman. It would substantially relax the FHA’s standards to reach struggling borrowers who otherwise would be considered ineligible for a government-backed mortgage.

Homeowners would have to show they could make payments on a refinanced mortgage, and lenders would have to agree to take hefty losses on the existing loans.

“We’re not talking here about murderers or muggers or arsonists. We’re talking about people whose misdeeds were to try too hard to find housing for their family,” Frank said. “What we hope to do today is to diminish the cascade of foreclosures.”

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?

George Soros offered this view:

“Well, it depends on when the authorities wake up, because you need to reduce the number of foreclosures. You need to keep as many people as possible in their houses so that they don’t come onto the market. You need to arrest the decline in house prices, but you also need to prevent human suffering and social disruption because it’s going to be very, very severe. Certain communities are already hurting and it’s going to get a lot worse. So action will have to be taken, but I don’t think it’s going to happen during this administration.”

Daniel Pinchbeck writes on the Death of Money:

During a panel on the “Decline of the Dollar,” I was struck by a comment from David Harvey ­ an eminence grise among Leftist academics, the esteemed author of Limits to Capital and other works ­ who noted that Wall Street bonuses in January amounted to an astounding $36 billion, despite the heedless actions of the traders and investment houses that caused the implosion of the financial markets. At the same time, due to the subprime mortgage meltdown, over a million people have already seen their homes foreclosed, with nearly two million more foreclosures coming in the near-future, leading to more than three million US citizens deprived of their largest and most central asset. What Harvey noted is that, if we ignore the “fetishized mystical language” of the financial elite, “the loss of assets of those three million people is where those $36 billion of bonuses came from.”

Apparently, another 8 million plus homes-more than 10 % of the homes owned in the US- ­are now valued at less than the outstanding mortgages owed. What this means is that many of those mortgage-holders may soon find it more sensible to walk away from their property ­ sending their keys back to the mortgage-issuers as “jingle mail” ­ rather than continue to cover their exorbitant debt. As a chain-reaction, this will increase the devaluation of US property. At the same time, the next phase of the current economic crisis will extend to other forms of personal debt, such as credit cards.

In Britain, at least, the food issue is rising on the agenda. (Recall it was not even mentioned in the last Obama-Clinton debate)

Food Crisis Needs Aid on Scale of Tsunami to Avert Famine

By Ben Russell, The Independent/UK: April 23, 2008

Pressure for international action to combat the “silent
tsunami” of the global food crisis intensified amid
warnings that spiraling prices meant more than 100
million people could be plunged into hunger.

A Downing Street food summit called by Gordon Brown
heard calls for the World Bank and International
Monetary Fund to bring forward aid payments to
countries worst hit as the first step towards a
co-ordinated action by the G8 industrialized nations to
tackle the worst food crisis for a generation.

DEBATING OUR POLITICS

SAM SMITH: ASSESSES OBAMA IN UNDERNEWS

Barack Obama has one overwhelming advantage in the race for the Democratic nomination: he’s not Hillary Clinton. Which means that in some ways - most uncertain - things will be different than they have been under two decades of the Bush-Clinton duopoly.

The Pennsylvania results, however, show that Obama still has a long way before he translates his advantage into a win in November. The exuberant adoration of his core support has obscured a problem: Obama is a bit like a good opera singer trying to make it in rock n roll. He’s fine behind a podium or on a pulpit, but give him a Philly cheese steak sandwich and he looks like he’s just been handed a turd.

Fact is, Obama is mostly pictured in the media up on a platform, mostly above his audience, visually and metaphorically. This is not all his fault but it does reflect a certain disinterest by his manipulators in risking encounters of a more personal sort. Obama has on a number of occasions even shown his discomfort just hanging with the press, let alone ordinary voters. The other day, he complained because they were asking too many questions while he was eating a photo op waffle. After all, to do something like that natural like, a guy’s got to concentrate.

A black politician who has done well with white voters recently explained that his secret was talking with them. Nothing changes views on anything quicker than personal experience.

What might have happened in Pennsylvania if there had been fewer crowd scenes and more film clips from conversations with a small group of white voters in ordinary homes?

But that isn’t in the Obama play book. You can’t be a prophet and humble at the same time.

STUDENT AT SUFFOLK UNIVERSITY COVERS STATE OF THE DISSECTOR TALK IN BOSTON

Renowned ‘News Dissector’ challenges modern reporting

By: Tara Lachapelle

While the media watch the world, people like Danny Schechter watch the media.

“What I believe today is that our media represents the greatest risk to our democracy,” said Schechter, a two-time Emmy Award-winning television producer who feels that his own profession is guilty of cheating its audience.

Last Thursday, Schechter, known as the “News Dissector,” hosted a lecture and debate at the Old South Meeting House as part of the Ford Hall Forum at Suffolk University. The Ford Hall Forum is the nation’s oldest free public lecture series and is known for bringing some of the most controversial opinion leaders to its podium dating as far back as the American Revolution and including notable speakers like Janet Reno, Jesse Jackson, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, Winston Churchill, Thurgood Marshall, and Eleanor Roosevelt.

“I’m here as a journalist and as a media maker, a media maven,” said Schechter, standing at the old wooden podium below a hovering chandelier. “I’m here to talk about what I feel are some of the biggest challenges facing our democracy, and mind you, it is not George W. Bush.

“As much as I would like to see George W. Bush treated the way the Tories were treated here in Boston in the aftermath of the Revolution,” he said, his main mission was to discuss the faults of modern media and the decline in quality news.

“What I’m more concerned about tonight is an institution, the institution that I’ve been part of for many years,” said Schechter, citing his work at WBCN Radio where he launched his career, WGBH, WLVI, WCVB, CNN and ABC News where he won his two Emmys.

“We’re seeing a deterioration of an institution that is not only in place to amuse, but it has a constitutional responsibility in terms of a mandate of freedom of the press, a watchdog for our great country-and that watchdog has become a lapdog, unfortunately.”

Schechter feels that the media is harming democracy by taking a step back and neglecting to report information crucial to American citizens.

He said that he has seen a serious tragedy within print media specifically. “Boston Globe used to stand for something,” he said.

Throughout the presentation, Schechter pondered whether major news corporations are doing more harm than good and whether independent media can do any better. “I support independent media,” he said. “Don’t support progressive media.”

According to Schechter, in the recent democratic debate, the most trivial issues got the most attention. “We rarely see the housing crash in the media, yet 3.5 million Americans are facing foreclosures. We have a 50-state Katrina,” he said, noting that the debate failed to address this issue along with many other pertinent topics that were dismissed due to political drama as Obama was pressed to defend the words of Rev. Wright and Hillary, her overstated dangers in her trip to Bosnia.

Schechter feels the debate, that should have focused on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the healthcare, mortgage and food crises, failed the public viewership.

According to Schechter, only six media outlets opposed the war and the media acted as an extension of the Bush Administration by simply reiterating what was preached to them. Schechter explores this and the changing ways in which Americans receive their information in his book The Death of the Media: And the Fight to Save Democracy.

“We need to make media more responsible and active,” he said. “We can’t fix America without fixing the media.”

I am always pleased when a student, or anyone for that matter, seeks to make sense of my views. So thank you.

Hopefully, other communities and colleges will be interested in finding a way to create a forum for me on their campuses. (Admission, I like to speak and need the money–smile).

I think I may have something to say–at least folks here in Central Asia seem to think so. Today, Kazakhstan, maybe tomorrow in Kansas.

Right now, this Forum which just had a very stimulating panel on China has been having an intense debate on the role of glamour in politics.

Most of the discussion was about Sarkosy in France although there’s been discussions also about Putin and Castro. One speaker is saying that glamour in politics is really about deviating from real issues, but judging from the intensity of the discussion it is a real issue.

It’s been a very heady affair with participants from Russia, Central Asia, Afghanistan, China, Europe and from the US of A. It was worth the trek to discover once again that there is a global community of concerned journalists.

Tonight, CNN throws the final party for the delegates.

And then I am out of here.

Sorry if this report is a bit disjointed but the wireless access has been spotty, and my jet lagged brain may be as well.

Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org