Sunday, May 15, 2005

Imagine al-Jazeera, South American-style - some good latin American media news

And here's some good latin American media news, it's called Telesur

Washington Post - by MONTE REEL*

Brasilia (Brasil) - 15 March 2005 - The comparison may not be perfect, but officials of two new television networks, slated to start broadcasting across South America sometime this year, say they have the same underlying goal as the 24-hour Arabic-language news channel: more local control of the images and words that define their region on the small screen, and less dependence on foreign-based satellite TV giants.

Reporter Luciana Rodrigues, holding microphone, interviews a rap musician in January during TV Brasil’s first test broadcast. In other words: more coverage of elections in Montevideo or bullfighting in Bogota, and less focus on distant happenings such as the Michael Jackson trial.

"We need to see a point of view that comes from South America, not from Europe or the United States," said Aram Aharonian, director of Telesur, a network based in Venezuela that hopes to launch in May. "Why can’t we have our own point of view?"

Both Telesur and TV Brasil, based here in the Brazilian capital, are government-funded projects. They are products of a philosophy that is spreading throughout South America, fueled by governments that seek more economic and cultural independence from Europe and the United States.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who is helping guide the creation of Telesur, has long pressed for alternative sources of information that can compete with such networks as CNN and the BBC. In recent months, the project has received pledges of financial and technical support from Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and other neighbors.

The leaders of those countries might not speak with the fiery flair of Chavez — a populist politician who is Latin America’s most vocal critic of the United States — but each has indicated reluctance to surrender to the ebbs and flows of free market forces generated in wealthy, first-world countries.

The idea of a united bloc of South American nations has long been imagined but never attained. One of the hopes driving both networks, organizers said, is that they might help achieve more unity among the region’s nations, with an eye to developing the same kind of collective clout wielded by members of the European Union.

"We are at the beginning of something very new," said Eugenio Bucci, president of Radiobras, a public media company in Brazil that is helping coordinate the project. "But what is new is not just this television project, but an overall process of integration among the countries of South America."

At TV Brasil, executives hope to form partnerships with existing channels in the region, and they will travel to neighboring countries this spring to work out the details. Both they and Telesur executives say they will not be rivals, but rather partners with a common goal of showing the world through Latin American eyes.

In a boardroom here last week, a group of media executives watched videotape from TV Brasil’s first test broadcast, transmitted via satellite in January from the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. The tape provided what they called a good preview of what the station might be like — a mix of newscasts and public television-style cultural programming and documentaries.

The test broadcast also helped convince the Brazilians that they can overcome one of the project’s biggest challenges: to be accepted abroad as a viable information exchange, not merely a vehicle for Brazilian propaganda. Bucci said the broadcast was well received by viewers in Argentina, Mexico and the United States.

"A project like this cannot be seen in South America as interference from a country that wants to have hegemony over other countries," Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in a speech last month. Instead, he said, TV Brasil should be "an instrument that contributes to the unified integration we want to develop" in Latin America.

As with al-Jazeera — which is funded by the government of Qatar and has been criticized frequently by U.S. officials for what they call inflammatory or biased reporting — some analysts are raising questions about whether the new Latin American networks will be capable of providing independent and evenhanded news coverage. They wonder, for example, if Chavez’s fervent rhetoric will inevitably find its way onto the 24-hour network he is backing.

"Of course I have a fear of bias, because there’s a kind of activism involved" in the creation of Telesur, said Jaime Abello, director of the Foundation for New Ibero-American Journalism, an organization created by novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez in Cartagena, Colombia. "We will have to wait to see if it will be independent and objective and not just pro-Chavez journalism."

But Abello said the fact that well-regarded journalists are already involved in Telesur suggests that it is aiming for international legitimacy. Aharonian, a Uruguayan print journalist who has lived and worked in Venezuela for years, said bureaus and correspondents have been established in six major Latin American nations plus the United States.

To start, the network’s only permanent studio will be in Caracas. Last month, Argentine President Nestor Kirchner met with Chavez and pledged to provide and subsidize 20 percent of the network’s content. Tabare Vazquez, who was inaugurated as Uruguay’s president last week, has already agreed to provide 10 percent of the content, Aharonian said.

Whether these new channels succeed or flounder commercially, they are clearly a sign of the times. Abello and others said that during the trend toward privatization and free-market policies that characterized Latin American administrations in the 1990s, such state-backed TV projects would probably never have been proposed.

"The role of the state has grown, and so has its interest in the media," said Gabriel Mariotto, an Argentine communications official involved in the Telesur negotiations. "I don’t think it would have happened 10 years ago. We have the political network to create it now, and of course the technology has improved."

But when Vazquez took power recently in Uruguay, most viewers in neighboring countries could catch only glimpses of the inauguration on channels that are owned by companies outside South America — and that are far more interested in events outside it, too.

"In South America, we know a lot about places like Chechnya,"
said Aharonian, "but we don’t know our own neighbors."

[enditem] - Original source 'Washington Post'
Relevant link - Url.: http://www.alia2.net/article4209.html


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Stop the Crime of the Century - You were never supposed to see this document

FPF: David Michael Green ( pscdmg@hofstra.edu ) is a professor
of political science at Hofstra University in New York. 


You were never supposed to see this document ( http://tinyurl.com/d9kdp ).
It is headlined in bold with this warning: "This record is extremely sensitive.
No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a
genuine need to know its contents."

by David Michael Green 

05/13/05 "CommonDreams.org" - - In Iraq, there is a crime of breathtaking proportions taking place. Breathtaking, but not necessarily surprising. We know from the historical record that governments will lie and deceive, and we've rarely seen one as immoral and venal as the Bush administration. What has turned this crime into an astonishing demonstration of the depth of American democracy's decay is the complicity of the media establishment in hiding the original crime, and in thus doing so, ripping a gaping hole in the fabric of our political system. 

Did you know that there now exists in the public domain a 'smoking gun' memo, which proves that everything the Bush administration said about the Iraq invasion was a lie? If you live in Britain you probably do, but if you live in the United States, chances are minuscule that you would be aware of this. 

Think about that for a second. Apart from 9/11, has there been a more important story in the last decade than that the president lied to the American people about the reasons for invading Iraq, and then proceeded to plunge the country into an illegal war which has alienated the rest of the world, lit a fire under the war's victims and the Islamic world generally, turning them into enemy combatants, locked up virtually all American land forces in a war without end in sight, cost $300 billion and counting, taken over 1600 American lives on top of more than 15,000 gravely wounded, and killed perhaps 100,000 Iraqis? 

Could there be a bigger story? "How Do Japanese Dump Trash?",
perhaps, which ran on page one of today's (May 12) Times? 

Of course not. But then how is it that this is not being reported in the American mainstream media? How is it that the two organs most responsible for coverage of political developments in this country - the New York Times and the Washington Post - have failed to splash this across their front pages in bold headlines, despite the fact that they clearly know of the story? How, especially, could these two papers sit on a story like this after both recently issued mea culpas for their respective failures to critically cover administration claims of bogus Iraqi threats during the period leading up to the war, thereby contributing to the war themselves? 

From the Bush administration and the current generation of Republicans, I expect nothing but the most debased and vile politics. And, of course, ditto for Fox News and the rest of the overtly right-wing media. But I have been naive enough, until now, to believe that at least some of the American mainstream media has not climbed completely into bed with those destroyers of all that is decent about American democracy. Apparently I've been a fool. 

Here is the story we are not being told. 

Several days before their election last week (May 5), a patriot within the highest circle of British government leaked to the Times of London a memo, which proves the degree of deceit to which both the Americans and British publics have been subjected on the subject of the Iraq war. You were never supposed to see this document ( http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html ). It is headlined in bold with this warning: "This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents." 

The memo provides minutes from a meeting of Tony Blair's most exclusive war cabinet, held in July of 2002. In the meeting, two of Blair's top officials report on discussions they had just held in Washington with officials at the top levels of the Bush administration. 

Before describing the contents of the memo, it is important to note that nobody in the British government has denied to even the slightest degree the authenticity of this document. A highly placed American source has verified, off the record, that it is completely accurate in its recounting of the events described. And Tony Blair's only comment has been that there is 'nothing new' contained in the memo. This could not be more false. The memo proves beyond doubt the following:

* The Bush administration had decided by July 2002, at the latest, to invade Iraq. The memo says that "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action..." Later in the memo it notes that "It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action". This means the claims that the president did not have a war plan on his desk at that time are now proven lies. It means that the whole kabuki dance of going to Congress, going to the UN, sending over weapons inspectors, pulling them out before they could finish their work, requiring Iraq to report to the Security Council on its weapons of mass destruction, then immediately rejecting their report as incomplete and deceitful - all of this - was a completely counterfeit exercise conducted for public relations purposes only. It also means that when former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and former terrorism czar Richard Clarke reported that Bush had planned to attack Iraq from the beginning, they - rather than the administration which was personally savaging them as loonies - were telling the truth. 

* The Bush and Blair administrations knew that the argument for war against Iraq was weak. As Foreign Secretary Jack Straw notes in the meeting, "But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran". This is proof that Iraq was never anything like the serious threat it was portrayed to be before the war, and that both administrations knew that it was no threat, but knowingly and completely oversold the necessity for the war with their massive phalanx of lies and distortions. 

* Because the case was thin, the war would have to be "...justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD". This proves that former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz wasn't kidding when he let slip that the weapons of mass destruction argument was decided on by the administration for "bureaucratic reasons", meaning a rationale that all the leading actors within the administration could agree on as the most effective public relations device for marketing the war. 

* Both the Bush and Blair administrations manipulated intelligence to get what they wanted in order to justify the war, and knew that they were doing precisely that. As the memo states, "...the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy". This is the most remarkable statement of all, as it makes clear that the decision to invade had nothing to do with facts or any sort of real threat. Rather, it was simply a preference of the Bush administration (and probably just a personal one for Bush), which then became its policy, for which they then twisted and fabricated information and disinformation in order to sell the war to a rightly skeptical public. 

* The war was illegal. Kofi Annan and the international community clearly believed that the war was a violation of international law. But we now also know that the British Attorney-General, who has to rule on this point (the question of the legality of launching a war is far less significant, unfortunately, in the American political tradition), "said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defense, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorization [which was never ultimately obtained from the Security Council]. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult. The situation might change of course." Yes, of course. Then, again, if it didn't, one could always just lie about it. 

* Knowing that the war was neither legal nor morally justifiable, the American and British governments therefore sought to find a way to make the war politically acceptable by baiting Saddam. As the memo notes, "We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force". And, "The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors". And, "If the political context were right, people would support regime change". 

* Well before the war was 'justified', even in the bogus sense of Washington's and London's inspections and UN resolutions game, it had already begun. The memo states that the "US had already begun 'spikes of activity' to put pressure on the regime". 

* Finally, it is worth noting that, even putting legal and moral questions aside, the memo also substantiates the sheer strategic incompetence of the administration, a failure which has, of course, produced excessive loss of life. It states that "There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action". 

Let's review the bidding here. 

We now have definitive, verified and undenied evidence documenting a panoply of lies told to the American and world publics about the invasion of Iraq, a bloody war which was neither legally nor morally justified, despite overt attempts to make it so by those who wished to launch it. 

On top of that crime, we can now also add that of America's fourth estate, which has completely abdicated its role and responsibility to present this crucial bombshell of information to the public. 

It gets worse, however. Eighty-nine members of Congress have taken note of the items described above, as well as a separate secret briefing for Blair's meeting, in which it was agreed that "Britain and America had to 'create' conditions to justify a war", and have sent a letter to the president ( http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/letters/bushsecretmemoltr5505.pdf ), demanding a response. 

And, yet, still there is no coverage from our press. It appears that demanding that the government respect the will of the people is no longer enough in American democracy. We must now also carry the burden of demanding that the media do its job and cover developments which are unfavorable to the national kleptocracy of which these giant media corporations have become a part. 

That noise you hear? It's the sound of America's Founders spinning in their graves. And well they should, for this scenario is precisely the massive concentration of power they most feared. All branches of the government are now in the hands of the same party (meaning, effectively, there virtually are no branches any longer).

The so-called opposition party facilitates Republican rule through the flattery of imitation, when it hasn't gone into hiding instead. The public is frightened and ill-informed. And now this. To this hall of shame list must be added a mainstream press which a week ago seemed only biased and intimidated, but now appears entirely complicit. We are now living precisely the nightmare of Washington, Jefferson, Madison and the rest. It must stop. We cannot have a prayer of an informed public curbing the worst excesses of American government if, in fact, that public is not informed. Sad as it is, if we ever hope to reclaim American democracy, it appears we must now fight for outrageous news to be aired, if we ever expect that news to outrage. 

Notwithstanding our worst horrors and fears these last four years, American democracy is in deeper trouble than we knew. Now is the time for patriots to act. 

We must begin by demanding coverage of this explosive evidence by the leading organs of American journalism. If the American people remain too jaded or frightened to demand the heads of those who deceived them so thoroughly, they're entitled to inherit the consequences of their own failures. However, they cannot make that choice until they know the facts. 

Please therefore, for the sake of innocent Iraqis, for the sake of American soldiers, and for the sake of American democracy, do two things 'write now': 

* First, send a message to the New York Times and the Washington Post, demanding that they cover this most significant of stories. Top brass at the New York Times can be emailed at the following addresses: Executive Editor Bill Keller at executive-editor@nytimes.com , and Managing Editor Jill Abramson at managing-editor@nytimes.com . For the Washington Post, try National Editor Michael Abramowitz at abramowitz@washpost.com , and Associate Editor Robert Kaiser at robertgkaiser@yahoo.com. 

* Next, forward this article on to everybody you know, and ask them to write the Times and the Post as well, and then to forward this article in turn to everyone they know. With some luck, perhaps we can achieve a critical mass which can no longer be ignored by these papers, with the electronic media then to follow. 

In any case, we are evidently going have to take this country back ourselves,
without even the benefit of a competent media to report the news. 

Fortunately, we possess the greatest weapon of all, the truth.

[end article] - Url.: http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0513-20.htm  

Fwd. as a PM on the US's and other countries mainstream media's bad role in general:

FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
http://tinyurl.com/4bm9d
Editor : Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/66dmo
The Netherlands
FPF@Chello.nl

FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this blog is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, and even to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information. [http://liimirror.warwick.ac.uk/uscode/17/107.html].