Michael Wolff: BBC You Later
Posted Tuesday, September 9, 2003 by vgdesign

Never mind the battle between the BBC and the Blair government. The real nemesis of the all-powerful British broadcasting institution is Murdoch.

... I just got back from BBC-land. It’s statism of a high order—vast, pervasive, in every pore of everyone’s being. I went to the Edinburgh International Television Festival, which is like going to a great party congress. It is not just that everyone in UK television is there, but that everyone in UK television is of the BBC, or in orbit around the BBC, or, in some psychologically hard-to-parse way, inhabited by the BBC. It is greater than AOL Time Warner (greater than AOL Time Warner, Viacom, Disney, and News Corp. combined). Even greater in its dominance than the monopoly on political and media power held by Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister, who personally controls the overwhelming share of his nation’s media. And even this does not, I think, adequately describe the relationship of British media people—or, indeed, all Britons—to the BBC. The Beeb. Auntie.

It may just be more accurate to say that the BBC is Britain. Certainly, the legions of BBC defenders and partisans all but argue that there may not be a Britain without the BBC.

The fight, therefore, to protect the BBC or to dismantle the BBC is a fight for something like the soul of Englishmen everywhere. >>More
...
WNYC's On The Media  talks to Michael Wolff about the strange relationship between Blair and Murdoch >>Listen

PAUL KRUGMAN: Other People's Sacrifice
Posted Tuesday, September 9, 2003 by vgdesign

So will Congress give Mr. Bush the money he wants, no questions asked?

In his Sunday speech President Bush made a call for unity: "We cannot let past differences interfere with present duties." He also spoke, in a way he hasn't before, about "sacrifice." Yet, as always, what he means by unity is that he should receive a blank check, and it turns out that what he means by sacrifice is sacrifice by other people.

It's now clear that the Iraq war was the mother of all bait-and-switch operations. Mr. Bush and his officials portrayed the invasion of Iraq as an urgent response to an imminent threat, and used war fever to win the midterm election. Then they insisted that the costs of occupation and reconstruction would be minimal, and used the initial glow of battlefield victory to push through yet another round of irresponsible tax cuts.

Now almost half the Army's combat strength is bogged down in a country that wasn't linked to Al Qaeda and apparently didn't have weapons of mass destruction, and Mr. Bush tells us that he needs another $87 billion, right away. It gives me no pleasure to say this, but I (like many others) told you so. >>More

Arnie's spin doctors spun for Yeltsin too
Posted Monday, September 8, 2003 by vgdesign

By Kevin O'Flynn in Moscow, The Observer

Spin doctors behind Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign to be Governor of California have come under fire in Russia over a film that shows them as the architects who propelled Boris Yeltsin to victory in the 1996 Russian presidential election.

Spinning Boris, starring Jeff Goldblum, will be shown in the US next year but has just been released on video in Russia. It claims to tell the 'true' story of how three American political consultants - including Schwarzenegger's current campaign manager George Gorton - were secretly hired by Yeltsin and turned him from an election no-hoper with 6 per cent support to the victor within six months. >>More

Antonia Zerbisias: Get the facts straight, Fox friends
Posted Monday, September 8, 2003 by vgdesign

Some months ago, I received a call from a producer for the Fox News Network, the Rupert Murdoch-owned, right-wing favourite, all-news service that is now ahead of CNN in the ratings.

"We want to know why we're banned in Canada,'' she said, inviting me to come on and defend our policy of keeping U.S. domination of our airwaves to a bare maximum of 80 per cent or so.

"Sure," I said, visions of beating up on star anchor Bill O'Reilly getting busy in my head. >>More

Another Tribe Without a State
Posted Monday, September 8, 2003 by vgdesign

By ORVILLE SCHELL, New York Times Magazine

When a soldier on a U.S. tank shot a Reuters cameraman, Mazen Dana, last month while he was filming the aftermath of a terrorist attack at the American-run Abu Ghraib Prison in Baghdad, he became the 17th journalist to die in Iraq. Given that there have been fewer than 300 U.S. military casualties since the war began last March, this is a startlingly high statistic.

Even more startling is the fact that five of the dead journalists have been victims of ''friendly fire.'' And unlike past wars where such casualties were most often caused by land mines, firefights, snipers or artillery, these five died after they or their offices were made direct targets.

What is evolving is a form of conflict not characterized by armies of ''good guys'' and ''bad guys'' or ''liberators'' and ''oppressors,'' one covered by journalists who come from or identify with one side or another. We have instead a new, almost gravityless, world of conflict in which the American military can kill journalists without causing great alarm and ''the enemy'' can blow up U.N. aid missions and other ''soft'' civilian targets without remorse.

All that journalists have to steady them in this bad dream is grit and a stubborn refusal to serve any of the contending masters. What gives their work meaning is a defiant commitment to independence, accurate reporting and an almost existential belief that no matter how debased the world and politics become, the ''real story'' somehow still matters. >>More

Protests at arrest of al-Jazeera reporter
Posted Monday, September 8, 2003 by vgdesign

By Giles Tremlett in Madrid, Media Guardian

Arab human rights groups expressed concern yesterday about Spain's detention of a former al-Jazeera correspondent in Kabul as a suspected al-Qaida member.

Tayssir Alouni, who is a Spanish citizen, was arrested by anti-terrorist police at his home in Alfacar, near Granada, on Friday, the day before he was due to fly to Qatar, where the TV station is located.
...
Alouni's wife, Fatima, said that the arrest warrant had referred to an exclusive videotape he received from Osama bin Laden threatening major terrorist attacks, which was broadcast on al-Jazeera a few weeks after September 11.

The warrant accused him of using his journalistic credentials to cover up his activities as a messenger for al-Qaida.

"The communication was purely one way," she told El Mundo  yesterday. "They gave the tape to him." >>More

I Love My Country. I Hate My President. - BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY
Posted Sunday, September 7, 2003 by symbolman

By James C. Moore, Co-author of "Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W.Bush Presidential"

"Mr. Bush has done things in my name, and yours, which repulse me. I have no doubt that Saddam Hussein’s two sons needed to be brought to justice. But I was disgusted that my country gave sponsor to the notion of showing their dead faces on television, as though that might reassure the Iraqis. This was the modern international equivalent of brutal tribes placing their conquered foes heads on a spike in the town square. I despise the way Mr. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and all of the neo-cons, had developed a military plan that sent our brave soldiers to secure oil fields, rather than protecting the people of Iraq, the institutions of their culture and commerce, which Saddam Hussein had been misusing for decades.

The president, and his cynic-in-chief, Karl Rove, are using a manufactured war to keep Americans scared. And it is working. But I am ashamed that the president of my country would go back to the United Nations, the very organization he ignored when he launched the war, to ask for help in securing Iraq.

Mr. Bush grew up in West Texas, where billboards dot the Permian Basin landscape with the message: "U.S. out of U.N." And because Rove wants to keep the fundamentalist right happy, Mr. Bush made clear that he would act without the imprimatur of the U.N. And now he has the audacity to seek its help.

I am repulsed by my president. He allowed the drums of war to get hammered over aluminum tubes, which were never meant for anything more deadly than the making of rockets. The whole notion of the tubes being part of the construction of a centrifuge had been refuted by several international organizations, including America's own Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, fourteen months before the story was leaked to a compliant, lazy U.S. media. The tubes were for the construction of Medusa 81 rockets, an Italian-designed weapon. Everybody in the intelligence community knew it, and Rove and the White House Iraq Group sent down orders that government intelligence experts were to keep their mouths shut about dissenting information.">> More

BUZZFLASH - a treasure trove of REAL information, Commentary and Opinion from and for thinking people everywhere.

Bush seeks an exit strategy as war threatens his career
Posted Sunday, September 7, 2003 by vgdesign

The President will make a dramatic U-turn on Iraq in a TV broadcast tonight to try to salvage his hopes of re-election amid Americans' growing hostility to the casualties and chaos.
Report by Paul Harris in New York, Jason Burke and Gaby Hinsliff - The Observer

George Bush will attempt tonight to convince the American people that he has a workable 'exit strategy' to free his forces from the rapidly souring conflict in Iraq, as Britain prepares to send in thousands more troops to reinforce the faltering coalition effort.

Frantic negotiations continued this weekend in New York to secure a United Nations resolution that would open the way for other countries to deploy peacekeeping troops to help after Bush - with one eye on next year's presidential election - signalled a change of heart on America's refusal to allow any but coalition forces into Iraq.

The President has been left with little practical choice. Concern among the American public has reached such a pitch that, with his approval ratings plummeting, he will deliver a televised address to the nation tonight to reassure them that they do not face another Vietnam. With their sons and daughters dying daily in guerrilla attacks, Americans may now be becoming more frightened of being bogged down in a hostile country than of the terrorist threat against which Bush has pledged to defend them. >>More

That’s Our Bush!
Posted Sunday, September 7, 2003 by vgdesign

The president’s re-election campaign kicks off with a shameless 9-11 docudrama
By J. Hoberman, OC Weekly

In the end 9-11 turned out to be a made-for-TV movie, or rather, the basis for one—a shameless propaganda vehicle for our superstar president George W. Bush.

The 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.
...
Premiering Sunday on Showtime, DC 9/11  inaugurates Bush’s re-election campaign 50 weeks before the 9-11 Memorial Republican National Convention opens in Madison Square Garden. DC 9/11  also marks a new stage in the American cult of personality: the actual president as fictional protagonist.

There are, of course, precedents. "One of the original aspects of Soviet cinema is its daring in depicting contemporary historical personages, even living figures," André Bazin dryly observed in his 1950 essay, "The Myth of Stalin in the Soviet Cinema."

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. >>More
...
WNYC's On The Media  talks to the film's writer and producer, Lionel Chetwynd >>Listen

Mark Morford: The Big Lie Of Jessica Lynch
Posted Sunday, September 7, 2003 by vgdesign

A $1 mil book deal, zero memory of any "rescue" and the worst book you'll read this year

Hey, remember that dramatic CNN footage of that big statue of Saddam Hussein being toppled by U.S. forces in that Baghdad square a few months back, during the "war"? Remember how powerfully symbolic it was supposed to be?

Remember, later, seeing the wide-angle shot on the Internet, the one of all the U.S. tanks surrounding the square and the whole bogus setup of how they staged the event, complete with a big crane and some strong cable and strategically positioned "citizens" cheering their "liberation" as the statue fell, as just off camera, a handful of genuine Iraqis loitered nearby, looking confused and bored?

Remember how you felt then? Like this little black worm had bored into your skin and was crawling around in your small intestine and you had the perpetual urge to go off into the corner and eat pie and slam double scotches and scream at the state of BushCo's nation?

The Jessica Lynch story is just like that, only much, much worse. >>More

Bush to tell series of barely articulate lies on National TV
Posted Saturday, September 6, 2003 by symbolman

Since then, the president has not spelled out how much rebuilding Iraq will cost, how long U.S. troops will have to be stationed there or what happened to the alleged weapons of mass destruction that the administration said Saddam Hussein had.

Bush will speak from the White House at 8:30 p.m. EDT for about 15 minutes, officials said.

The president, in a speech in Indianapolis on Friday, acknowledged that continuing military operations in Iraq and in the broader war on terrorism were aggravating the federal budget deficit, which is approaching a record $500 billion.

But he said, "This nation will spend what it takes to win the war on terror and to protect the American people." [Until Halliburton and Bechtel are rich beyond their wildest Dreams]

"My attitude is, anytime we put our troops in harm's way, they deserve the best pay, the best training and the best possible equipment," he said. [Except that BUSH is NOW cutting Combat pay WHILE the very troops he lied into war are dying at a daily rate. Also destroying Veteran's benefits by 18 BILLION]

"We must never forget the lessons of Sept. 11, 2001, a sobering reminder that oceans no longer can protect us from forces of evil who can't stand what America stands for," Bush said. [As a Roman Empire commanded by insane installed corporRATe creeps disguised as Govt Leaders who attack Sovereign nations freely and fill their coffers at the expense of the deaths of their own troops, while starving the same troops with corpoRATe privatization of military supply. If you could even call it America anymore now that Bush has ruined everything we could all be proud of at one time]>> More

Take Back the Media invites any military fighter pilot who was told to "stand down" during the morning of 9/11 from any "scramble" on the east coast - or anyone who knows who gave the order or kept any pilots from "scrambling" their planes, to contact us - we believe that something is definately fishy as far as no launching of fighters. Symbolman spent a tour in the Air Force and doesn't buy the story of no fighters available that morning. Email us, let's talk. There is a crime against our country in here somewhere.

Senior House Democrat Urges Top Defense Hands to Resign
Posted Friday, September 5, 2003 by vgdesign

By DAVID FIRESTONE, New York Times

A senior House Democrat called today for the resignation of the top two officials at the Defense Department, saying that miscalculations by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the deputy secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz, had cost American lives in Iraq and damaged the nation's fiscal health.

In a letter to President Bush, Representative David R. Obey, the ranking minority member of the House Appropriations Committee, said the Pentagon should be relieved of its role in determining foreign policy in Iraq, in part because of errors made by Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Wolfowitz before and after the war. >>More

Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq
Posted Friday, September 5, 2003 by vgdesign

Bad, Bad, Bad Day...
Bad #1: Mosque shooting.
Bad #2: No water.
Bad #3: Rumsfeld.

... To make matters worse, Rumsfeld is in Iraq. It’s awful to see him strutting all over the place. I hate the hard, smug look that seems plastered on his face… some people just have cruel features. The reaction to seeing him on tv differs from the reaction to seeing Bremer or one of the puppets. The latter are greeted with jeers and scorn. Seeing Rumsfeld is something else- there’s resentment and disgust. It feels like he’s here to add insult to injury… you know, just in case anyone forgets we’re an occupied country.

And now he’s going to go back to America and give a speech about how he doesn’t know what anyone is talking about when they say ‘chaos’ (*he* was safe in the middle of all his bodyguards)… how electricity and water are functioning (after all, his air-conditioner was working *fine*)… how the people are gloriously happy and traffic is frequently at a stand-still because the Iraqis are dancing in the streets… how the ‘armed forces’ are cheerful and *grateful* to be on this heroic, historical mission… how kids wave at him, troops cheer him, dogs wag their tails in welcome and doves hover above his head…

To hell with him.

And no. I'm not whining- I'm ranting. You can't see me right now, but I'm shaking my fist at the computer screen, shaking my fist at the television, and heaping colorful, bilingual insults on Rumsfeld's head (hope the doves crap on him)... I'm angry. >>More

Meacher sparks fury over claims on September 11 and Iraq war
Posted Friday, September 5, 2003 by vgdesign

By Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor, The Guardian

Michael Meacher, who served as a minister for six years until three months ago, today goes further than any other mainstream British politician in blaming the Iraq war on a US desire for domination of the Gulf and the world.

Mr Meacher, a leftwinger who is close to the green lobby, also claims in an article in today's Guardian  that the war on terrorism is a smokescreen and that the US knew in advance about the September 11 attack on New York but, for strategic reasons, chose not to act on the warnings. >>More

This war on terrorism is bogus
Posted Friday, September 5, 2003 by vgdesign

The 9/11 attacks gave the US an ideal pretext to use force to secure its global domination
By Michael Meacher, The Guardian

Massive attention has now been given - and rightly so - to the reasons why Britain went to war against Iraq. But far too little attention has focused on why the US went to war, and that throws light on British motives too. The conventional explanation is that after the Twin Towers were hit, retaliation against al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan was a natural first step in launching a global war against terrorism. Then, because Saddam Hussein was alleged by the US and UK governments to retain weapons of mass destruction, the war could be extended to Iraq as well. However this theory does not fit all the facts. The truth may be a great deal murkier.
...
First, it is clear the US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. Two senior Mossad experts were sent to Washington in August 2001 to alert the CIA and FBI to a cell of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation (Daily Telegraph, September 16 2001). The list they provided included the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested.

It had been known as early as 1996 that there were plans to hit Washington targets with aeroplanes. Then in 1999 a US national intelligence council report noted that "al-Qaida suicide bombers could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House".
...
All of this makes it all the more astonishing - on the war on terrorism perspective - that there was such slow reaction on September 11 itself. The first hijacking was suspected at not later than 8.20am, and the last hijacked aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania at 10.06am. Not a single fighter plane was scrambled to investigate from the US Andrews airforce base, just 10 miles from Washington DC, until after the third plane had hit the Pentagon at 9.38 am. Why not? >>More

White House Lies, Ground Zero, and the Public Trust, - A BuzzFlash Editorial
Posted Friday, September 5, 2003 by symbolman

The lies about "protecting Americans" began from the moment of impact on September 11 and haven't ever stopped.

Take for instance, one of the most recent in a long and unrelenting series of Bush administration betrayals of the American people through premeditated deception. This one was revealed toward the end of the dog days of August, just before Labor Day, when fewer Americans were following the news. (It's part of Bush Cartel standard operating procedure to release news that discredits them on Fridays, holidays, and other times when most Americans are tuned out from the media. If you want to find out about negative stories about the Bush administration -– ones that they can't keep secret –- the most important day to read your newspaper is Saturday..)

You see, the inspector general for the Environmental Protection Agency wrote a devastating report about how the Bush Administration told the EPA to lie to residents of New York about the air quality around Ground Zero in the days and weeks after 9/11. Faced with concerns by residents of the Big Apple that the layers of dust and particles in South Manhattan –- inches thiick in some areas -- might be full of toxins (including asbestos), the Bush administration ordered the EPA to assure New Yorkers that the air was safe even though the EPA knew that this was likely not the case.

As a result, the health of millions of New Yorkers and all those rescue workers Bush used as photo-ops were put at risk.>> More

Anyone wondering why Bush won't be attending any 911 Ceremonies in NYC this year? Maybe he doesn't want to breathe the pollution they didn't warn anyone else about - like all those firefighters they use for PR but don't fund either. A MUST READ BUZZFLASH.

U.S. Troops Want Rumsfeld to Send Them Home
Posted Friday, September 5, 2003 by symbolman

TIKRIT, Iraq (Reuters) - If they had the chance, U.S. soldiers at a base in Iraq would have had one question for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: When are we going home?

But Rumsfeld canceled a speech he was due to give on Friday to the troops at their base at the palace of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) in his hometown of Tikrit.

"I don't give a damn about Rumsfeld. All I give a damn about is going home," Specialist Rue Gretton said, humping packs of water bottles on his shoulders from a truck.

"The only thing his visit meant for us was we had to clean up a lot of mess to make the place look pretty. And he didn't even look at it anyway," Gretton said after soldiers swept the dusty streets around the complex of lakes and mansions.

"It was good for morale," said Major Josslyn Alberle, a spokeswoman for the Fourth Infantry Division headquartered at the palace.

When the Armed Forces Network showed earlier footage of Rumsfeld saying that fresh U.S. troops were unnecessary in Iraq, soldiers at the base threw their hands in the air and shouted "No way" at the television.

Other soldiers said they could not complain openly about their long deployment for fear of being disciplined. Earlier this year, military leaders warned their troops they should not show disrespect for Rumsfeld after a rash of criticism from soldiers in Iraq appeared in the media.>> More

Who knows better how to run a war but an appointed guy who knows nothing about running a war? Just like all the other corporate appointees by this misadminstration, it's all nepotism and big bucks (Rummy's BECHTEL CO is there) - this IDIOT has created this situation and how does he fix it? By running around doing photo ops and LYING (just like his boss) about everything's just ducky over there. Does he listen to a single General? Nope - he fires them all, not to mention he created his own set of advisors that created the FALSE WMD scenario in the first place. Fake Leaders, Faked War, just like Michael Moore said. SUPPORT THE TROOPS - BRING THEM HOME!

As far as the Cancelling by Rumsfeld goes, this is how Monty Python would have covered it:

Brave Sir Donald ran away,
Bravely ran away, away.
When danger reared its ugly head, he bravely turned his tail and fled.
Yes, brave Sir Donald turned about
And gallantly, he chickened out. Bravely taking to his feet,
He beat a very brave retreat,
Bravest of the brave, Sir Donald.

BBC: Spain arrests top Arab reporter
Posted Friday, September 5, 2003 by vgdesign

Police in the southern Spanish city of Granada have arrested a leading Arabic TV journalist on suspicion of links to Islamic militants.

Tayseer Alouni, Syrian by birth but now holding a Spanish passport, was arrested at his home by police with a warrant, his wife said.

Investigating judge Baltasar Garzon ordered his detention on suspicion of links with al-Qaeda following arrests of other suspects in Barcelona earlier this year.

Mr Alouni, a correspondent for the Qatar-based television channel al-Jazeera, became well-known for his work in Afghanistan during the US-led war there. >>More

Phyllis Bennis: The UN should just say 'no'
Posted Friday, September 5, 2003 by vgdesign

... Any new UN resolution aimed at providing more legitimacy for the US-UK occupation of Iraq should be opposed. Countries should not send troops or funds to maintain or strengthen or "internationalize" Washington's occupation.

Oppose Richard Perle's claim that "our main mistake is that we haven't succeeded in working closely with Iraqis before the war so that an Iraqi opposition could have been able to immediately take the matter in hand". Instead, the over-reliance of the Bush administration on the claims of the exiled Iraqi opposition, driven by self-interest and ideological fervor rather than grounded information, is one of the main reasons for the US failure to anticipate the postwar crisis in Iraq.

Only after the US-UK occupation has ended should the UN and a multilateral peacekeeping force return to Iraq. Their mandate should be for a very short and defined period, with the goal of assisting Iraq in reconstruction and overseeing election of a governing authority.
...
Washington should turn over funds to UN authority, beginning with a direct grant of at least $75 billion (the initial amount spent on waging the war) for reconstruction work. These funds should be raised from an excess-profits tax on corporations benefiting from the war and postwar privatization in Iraq, as well as from Pentagon budget lines initially aimed at carrying out war in Iraq. >>More