Borat's Bush whacking
January 14, 2005 - 11:47AM
Borat's done it again ... and nearly got lynched for ripping into George W Bush and the Star Spangled Banner.
Ali G star Sasha Baron Cohen posed as his Kazakhstani journalist character Borat at an American rodeo in Salem, Virginia.
He told patroitic locals their president drank blood, then sang a mangled version of the American national anthem.
"If he had been out there a minute longer, I think someone would have shot him," said local Robynn Jaymes.
According to The Roanoke Times, Cohen - introduced as Boraq Sagdiyev - was draped in an American flag shirt and black cowboy hat.
Editor & Publisher reports that a reader phoned the paper when she saw there was no story about the incident and said she there was a "semi-terrorist' figure who was making all sorts of threatening comments about President Bush," at the rodeo.
Cohen convinced organisers that he was filming a documentary about America.
He told them he supported the war on terrorism and said: "I hope you kill every man, woman and child in Iraq, down to the lizards.
"And may George W Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq."
Then he asked if he could show his appreciation by singing the Star Spangled Banner. His version ended with the words "your home is the grave".
Cohen's rendition of the much-loved anthem was loudly booed by the crowd.
Rodeo organisers, realising they had been hoaxed, had Cohen escorted from the site.
This is not the first time Cohen has managed to stir a crowd.
Last season, "Borat" got a crowd in a Southern bar to sing a country song with the refrain, "throw the Jew down the well."
Cohen and his alter-ego Ali G have found fame in the US in the past year, since Da Ali G Show became a hit on US TV.
RT On Air
Friday, 14 January 2005
End debt obligations for tsunami countries in Southeast Asia
Waving Off Debt
Mark Engler
January 10, 2005
Despite an increase in promised aid to tsunami-affected countries last week, the United States' aid offering still isn't topping the list. Australia, for one, has donated much more. But the United States could make up for its somewhat meager offering by forgiving debt payments for tsunami countries. A temporary moratorium on payments won't be enough. It's time to go farther—much farther—and end debt obligations for tsunami countries in Southeast Asia. Trouble is, we probably won't, says foreign policy analyst Mark Engler.
Mark Engler, a writer based in New York City, is a commentator for Foreign Policy in Focus . He can be reached via the website http://www.DemocracyUprising.com.
As we reach out to those struggling to recover from a natural disaster, our country has an important opportunity to address one of the core issues contributing to the impoverishment of the tsunami-stricken nations: the huge foreign debts that rob their governments of money to provide for human needs.
This is an idea that you might expect the Bush administration, already stung by charges of being stingy and slow to respond with aid for tsunami victims, to wholeheartedly endorse. Think again.
Despite having recognized the economic hardship caused by massive debts, President Bush has shown little eagerness to end payments from poor countries and forgive unpayable debt obligations.
Shortly after the invasion of Iraq, the current administration underwent a dramatic conversion on the issue of debt relief. George W. Bush—like his predecessors in the White House—had previously been reluctant to decisively address the crisis of debt in the developing world. But in late 2003, he came forward with a series of remarkable statements.
The president acknowledged that the type of huge debt obligations all too common among impoverished countries can "unjustly burden a struggling nation" and endanger its "long-term prospects for political health and economic prosperity." He argued that debt forgiveness was vital. Of course, he only had one country in mind—Iraq.
The problem is not that Iraq didn't deserve relief. Certainly, the billions of dollars worth of debt racked up by Saddam Hussein should be considered odious and illegitimate. The problem is that the administration did not go nearly far enough. Many other poor nations throughout the world continue to struggle under unjust burdens. Among them are the countries devastated by last month's tsunami.
World Bank statistics indicate that the total external debts of the 12 countries hit by the tsunami exceed $300 billion. The Jubilee Debt Campaign reports that India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, the Maldives and Indonesia together make over $23 billion in debt payments each year to multilateral banks and wealthy governments. According to Oxfam, Indonesia—the region's greatest debtor—spends 10 times as much on debt service as on health care for its people.
In the wake of the natural disaster, through-going debt relief should be an essential element of the humanitarian and reconstruction assistance to these countries.
Recognizing that money spent on debt payments could be better used to assist disaster victims, to spur economic recovery and to alleviate poverty, European governments have already proposed some debt relief for tsunami-impacted nations. In advance of their upcoming meeting on January 12, officials from the Paris Club—a group of creditor nations—have announced that they will agree to a temporary moratorium on debt payments from affected countries.
There is clear precedent for such a move. Payments from debtor nations were rescheduled after Hurricane Mitch in 1999 and after the floods that struck Mozambique in 2000.
Sadly, the Bush administration's first reaction to these proposals was to hold up forward momentum on debt relief. Treasury spokesperson Tony Fratto's bureaucratic justification for the stance—he cited the need to "gather all the facts"—hardly sounded convincing, and the United States has since been brought into an agreement to be forwarded at the Wednesday meeting. But the real need is to go beyond a simple postponement of payments and to promote debt cancellation for the impoverished countries.
Economic analysts argue that a moratorium could do more harm than good in the long run if it results in higher, bunched-up debt payments in the future. And debt campaigners such as World Development Movement director Mark Curtis point out that a moratorium would not give affected countries much room to breathe if "massive debt repayments could restart at any time that rich countries chose."
Indonesia has echoed this concern in expressing reservations about a moratorium. Moreover, its finance minister, Jusuf Anwar, notes that existing debt relief programs from rich creditors often come with many strings attached. Tying some forms of conditionality to debt cancellation—like safeguards to ensure that money go towards reconstruction, social needs and sustainable development—can be reasonable. After Hurricane Mitch, major donor countries agreed to a set of standards known as the Stockholm principles. These were designed to make emergency aid part of a longer-term effort to address the causes of poverty and vulnerability, and they allowed civil society groups to push for standards of good governance in the use of foreign aid.
However, the type of conditionality typically involved with debt relief has a less humanitarian orientation. Creditor countries demand that countries open their markets to foreign companies or restructure their economies based on International Monetary Fund dictates before lifting debt obligations.
These type of conditions ignore the larger injustice of many of the developing world's debts. Even before the tsunami, a great number of citizens in the affected countries faced desperate poverty. Those of us in wealthy nations believe that our governments donate generously to help these people. Yet many poor countries pay out more in debt service than they receive in aid, the poorest sending a total of $100 million every day back to rich countries, according to Oxfam.
In the case of Iraq, President Bush argued that the future of a people "must not be mortgaged to the enormous burden of debt incurred" by an undemocratic leader like Saddam Hussein. But Indonesia, which built up much of its debt through military spending in the long years of the Suharto dictatorship, provides a no less relevant illustration of why many debts should be eliminated as odious.
Creditor governments should individually consider each of the countries hit by the tsunami and calculate debt cancellation based on the true needs of their people—acknowledging the unpayable burdens of nations throughout the developing world, and extending the generosity of all those who have responded to this natural disaster into a just program for human development.
Mark Engler
January 10, 2005
Despite an increase in promised aid to tsunami-affected countries last week, the United States' aid offering still isn't topping the list. Australia, for one, has donated much more. But the United States could make up for its somewhat meager offering by forgiving debt payments for tsunami countries. A temporary moratorium on payments won't be enough. It's time to go farther—much farther—and end debt obligations for tsunami countries in Southeast Asia. Trouble is, we probably won't, says foreign policy analyst Mark Engler.
Mark Engler, a writer based in New York City, is a commentator for Foreign Policy in Focus . He can be reached via the website http://www.DemocracyUprising.com.
As we reach out to those struggling to recover from a natural disaster, our country has an important opportunity to address one of the core issues contributing to the impoverishment of the tsunami-stricken nations: the huge foreign debts that rob their governments of money to provide for human needs.
This is an idea that you might expect the Bush administration, already stung by charges of being stingy and slow to respond with aid for tsunami victims, to wholeheartedly endorse. Think again.
Despite having recognized the economic hardship caused by massive debts, President Bush has shown little eagerness to end payments from poor countries and forgive unpayable debt obligations.
Shortly after the invasion of Iraq, the current administration underwent a dramatic conversion on the issue of debt relief. George W. Bush—like his predecessors in the White House—had previously been reluctant to decisively address the crisis of debt in the developing world. But in late 2003, he came forward with a series of remarkable statements.
The president acknowledged that the type of huge debt obligations all too common among impoverished countries can "unjustly burden a struggling nation" and endanger its "long-term prospects for political health and economic prosperity." He argued that debt forgiveness was vital. Of course, he only had one country in mind—Iraq.
The problem is not that Iraq didn't deserve relief. Certainly, the billions of dollars worth of debt racked up by Saddam Hussein should be considered odious and illegitimate. The problem is that the administration did not go nearly far enough. Many other poor nations throughout the world continue to struggle under unjust burdens. Among them are the countries devastated by last month's tsunami.
World Bank statistics indicate that the total external debts of the 12 countries hit by the tsunami exceed $300 billion. The Jubilee Debt Campaign reports that India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, the Maldives and Indonesia together make over $23 billion in debt payments each year to multilateral banks and wealthy governments. According to Oxfam, Indonesia—the region's greatest debtor—spends 10 times as much on debt service as on health care for its people.
In the wake of the natural disaster, through-going debt relief should be an essential element of the humanitarian and reconstruction assistance to these countries.
Recognizing that money spent on debt payments could be better used to assist disaster victims, to spur economic recovery and to alleviate poverty, European governments have already proposed some debt relief for tsunami-impacted nations. In advance of their upcoming meeting on January 12, officials from the Paris Club—a group of creditor nations—have announced that they will agree to a temporary moratorium on debt payments from affected countries.
There is clear precedent for such a move. Payments from debtor nations were rescheduled after Hurricane Mitch in 1999 and after the floods that struck Mozambique in 2000.
Sadly, the Bush administration's first reaction to these proposals was to hold up forward momentum on debt relief. Treasury spokesperson Tony Fratto's bureaucratic justification for the stance—he cited the need to "gather all the facts"—hardly sounded convincing, and the United States has since been brought into an agreement to be forwarded at the Wednesday meeting. But the real need is to go beyond a simple postponement of payments and to promote debt cancellation for the impoverished countries.
Economic analysts argue that a moratorium could do more harm than good in the long run if it results in higher, bunched-up debt payments in the future. And debt campaigners such as World Development Movement director Mark Curtis point out that a moratorium would not give affected countries much room to breathe if "massive debt repayments could restart at any time that rich countries chose."
Indonesia has echoed this concern in expressing reservations about a moratorium. Moreover, its finance minister, Jusuf Anwar, notes that existing debt relief programs from rich creditors often come with many strings attached. Tying some forms of conditionality to debt cancellation—like safeguards to ensure that money go towards reconstruction, social needs and sustainable development—can be reasonable. After Hurricane Mitch, major donor countries agreed to a set of standards known as the Stockholm principles. These were designed to make emergency aid part of a longer-term effort to address the causes of poverty and vulnerability, and they allowed civil society groups to push for standards of good governance in the use of foreign aid.
However, the type of conditionality typically involved with debt relief has a less humanitarian orientation. Creditor countries demand that countries open their markets to foreign companies or restructure their economies based on International Monetary Fund dictates before lifting debt obligations.
These type of conditions ignore the larger injustice of many of the developing world's debts. Even before the tsunami, a great number of citizens in the affected countries faced desperate poverty. Those of us in wealthy nations believe that our governments donate generously to help these people. Yet many poor countries pay out more in debt service than they receive in aid, the poorest sending a total of $100 million every day back to rich countries, according to Oxfam.
In the case of Iraq, President Bush argued that the future of a people "must not be mortgaged to the enormous burden of debt incurred" by an undemocratic leader like Saddam Hussein. But Indonesia, which built up much of its debt through military spending in the long years of the Suharto dictatorship, provides a no less relevant illustration of why many debts should be eliminated as odious.
Creditor governments should individually consider each of the countries hit by the tsunami and calculate debt cancellation based on the true needs of their people—acknowledging the unpayable burdens of nations throughout the developing world, and extending the generosity of all those who have responded to this natural disaster into a just program for human development.
Aceh Goes to Heaven
ACEH GOES TO HEAVEN!
By Andre Vltchek
Resting in a comfortable seat of super-express speeding towards northern Japan, I was admiring the snow-covered beauty of the rural countryside. It was getting dark and the wheels of the train were gently drumming against the rails in a monotonous and reassuring rhythm. The world seemed harmonious and safe.
Then suddenly my eyes caught sight of the letters of a news bulletin passing through the digital display above the door. Strong earthquake shook northern Sumatra. There were dozens of casualties. Just that - no further information was provided. I checked the news, one hour later, on the internet in my hotel in Sendai. It seemed that hundreds of people lost their lives in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand. An earthquake off the coast of Aceh, reaching magnitude of 9 on the Richter scale, was followed by a tsunami - a monstrous 10 meters high tidal wave - which crashed mercilessly and with unimaginable force against the shores of several unfortunate countries.
In the next few days the number of victims grew to thousands, then to tens of thousands. Whole villages and entire towns disappeared from the map. Hundreds of thousands of refugees hit what was left of the roads, but the roads were leading nowhere; as bridges were washed away/ Floods were fragmenting the entire North of Sumatra Island. Electricity and water supply collapsed (limited and unreliable everywhere in Indonesia even before the disaster); there was no food, no blood for the injured and no medicine. There was no reliable information either, since the foreign press was banned from traveling to the province, "for its own safety".
The Army - a tremendous contingent of it based in the province in order to suppress insurgency - did close to nothing. It was ordered to clean corpses and it cleaned some, but it otherwise showed no initiative, leaving a desperate population with almost no help.
The government did close to nothing. Instead of ordering special military units to travel immediately to the province, instead of using hundreds of military helicopters and aircraft to supply food and medicine, instead of ordering all seaworthy vessels to the area of disaster, the President of Indonesia urged the citizens to "scale down New Year's celebrations and pray instead."
Huge transport planes were sitting on runways all over Java, waiting for the order to take off - an order which never arrived.
Instead of employing professionals trained to cope with emergency situations, vice president Jusuf Kalla used military planes and commercial aircraft to shuttle Muslim militants (they called themselves "volunteers") from Majelis Mujahedeen Indonesia and Islamic Defenders Front (Front Pembela Muslim - better known as its acronym FPI - militant Muslim group from Jakarta devoted to enforcing Islamic law against drinking, gambling, and prostitution), a fact later reported by The New York Times. Then Laskar Jihad, one of the most militant Muslim groups in Southeast Asia made inroads into the province. Hundreds of Christians, mainly of Chinese origin, were forced to flee Aceh.
The presence of "volunteers" - directly sponsored by the government - had one main purpose: to secure Indonesian and religious order (already the strictest in entire Indonesia) in the province which was fighting for independence for almost thirty years, at enormous cost. Practically speaking, these untrained urbanites were only taking precious space in scarce flights to the province, although the propaganda machine fired the stories how some of them single- handedly managed to restore electric supplies and telecommunications in Banda Aceh.
And the dead kept mounting, diseases were spreading, hunger began to kill those who miraculously survived the brutality of the nature.
At one point the refusal to help Aceh began to look like a vengeance killing by the government and the military. Then Aceh suddenly appeared in the spotlight of interest of the international community and after some hesitation, the government "benevolently" allowed foreign aid and some international press agencies to enter the province.
The results were almost immediate. International organizations and foreign military flew in and began building infrastructure from scratch. Not to rebuild it - there was not much social infrastructure even before the tsunami - but to construct provisory hospitals, food supply centers, shelters for the homeless. It was not enough, but it was at least something; definitely more than the state did in the last three decades when it came to investment in social infrastructure.
While this was happening, the Indonesian government was bragging that the disaster would not jeopardize predicted economic growth for the year 2005 (the lowest in the region even before the tsunami).
The Finance Minister openly declared that it expects foreigners to rebuild the area, while not diverting any substantial funds from state coffers. He was also quick to point out that vital oil production (the main reason for the occupation and the main income of the province - basically controlled by foreign multi-nationals after corrupt deals signed by Suharto's government few decades ago) suffered only a minor setback, although some inside reports suggest the contrary.
The government also suggested that Aceh is an outskirt of Indonesia; therefore its plight will have no major impact on the economy. In fact, it argued with no scruples, Indonesia could benefit, because it may attract thousands of tourists who will be avoiding damaged holiday resorts in Thailand.
To put the situation into perspective, the social system in Indonesia collapsed during the years when Suharto, supported by the West, fully controlled the political and economic life of Indonesia. This was also a period when Indonesians went through rigorous religious indoctrination which was supposed to reinforce the culture of obedience, which in turn served the regime.
Almost all public services were privatized, the quality of education nose-dived and life expectancy stagnated at around 64 years (one of the lowest in the region). Indonesia has, per capita, one of the highest numbers of orphans anywhere in the world and one of the worst records of child prostitution in the region. The poor have no safety net and justice is for sale. Indonesia, according to "Transparency International", is one of the most corrupt nations on earth.
The Indonesian military had been involved in a massacre of Sukarno's supporters after the coup in 1965 (up to 3 million people were butchered in a matter of months), it led genocidal war in East Timor (one of the most horrific barbarities of the 20th Century, happily applauded by the West), and caused gross human rights violations in Papua, Ambon, Aceh and elsewhere. It was and still is much better trained in raping and torturing civilians than in any sort of humanitarian assistance.
This compassionless, paralyzed and morally corrupt society was now facing one of the most terrible natural disasters in human history. Government officials and their business associates smelled a tremendous influx of foreign aid, which could, if unchecked, easily meet the same fate as the money from former foreign loans originally intended for development, infrastructure, and social programs but which disappeared in the deep pockets of elites, never reaching the impoverished majority of Indonesians.
As foreign governments were trying to outdo each other in pledging hundreds of millions of dollars for reconstruction of disaster stricken areas, Indonesian officials and military on the ground in Aceh were openly sabotaging relief efforts.
Food and medicine were piling in Medan and Banda Aceh, while almost no help was reaching desperate communities. A chartered Boeing 737 hit a buffalo after landing, shutting down for hours the only runway in the then only functioning airport in all of Aceh. Apparently it was not worth it to assign the military to guard this vital lifeline. But was it really an accident?
"One of the consequences of the lack of distribution of aid and medical assistance to several refugee camps has been the death of many refugees, especially women and children", says Yulia Evina Bhara from SEGERA (Alliance-Solidarity Movement For the People of Aceh). "This has occurred in Mata Le, Ulee Kareng, and large part of Pidie and Aceh Jeumpa… It is evident that the government has not taken any cooperative steps in terms of allowing easy access to areas in which aid needs to be distributed. If this continues to be the case, it means that the government is effectively disregarding the much needed humanitarian solidarity…"
Shortly after the tsunami hit the coast, GAM (Free Aceh Movement) declared a ceasefire. Few days later there were reports that Indonesian military continued with its operations. Sporadic exchanges of fire erupted in several places of Aceh. With no shame and no hesitation, the President of Indonesia began accusing GAM of breaking the ceasefire.
Foreign mainstream press (traditionally friendly to the post-1965 Indonesian regime), which initially concentrated its coverage strictly on disaster itself and later on the foreign relief operations, began asking some uncomfortable questions. Although still omitting information concerning the horrific human rights record of the Indonesian state, it couldn't fully ignore voices of Acehnese people who were accusing the government of sabotaging relief operations.
Sharp criticism of Indonesian government and military also came from foreign aid workers.
That seemed to be unacceptable for the establishment. On January 9th, the government began tightening restrictions on the movement of foreigners in the province. Reuters reported that on the 11th of January all good will vanished. Indonesia restricted foreign aid workers to two large cities because of "militant threats".
Indonesian army chief - General Endriartono Sutarto - declared that GAM might soon attack foreign aid workers or troops in Aceh. All aid agencies and NGOs operating in the province were urged to provide a full list of their staff.
GAM responded by denying all accusations made by the government, claiming that it never intended to cause harm to those who came to help, be it foreigners or locals. Foreigners operating in Aceh confirmed that they felt no threat from the independence movement.
A crackdown on independent sources of information by the Indonesian state is becoming inevitable. As in East Timor, Papua, and Aceh (before the disaster) it will be done under the cover of "protecting" the lives of the foreigners. The question is what will happen to Acehnese people afterwards. Even now, several members of Indonesian NGOs claim that the government actions (or more precisely - inaction) are responsible for at least 50 thousand out of 100 thousand known victims of disaster.
Is Aceh going to become another East Timor? Is the present situation just a result of impotence and incapability of the government, military, and the whole system, or of something much more sinister? Is it revenge; an extermination campaign design to break and secure this economically vital province?
Acehnese are proud and tough people. When Javanese elites were selling their country to foreigners, when most of the islands of today's Indonesia were accepting the presence of Dutch colonizers; Aceh fought bitterly for independence. "Under the Dutch, Java used to send assassins to break Aceh", said Pramoedya Ananta Toer, the greatest Indonesian writer and intellectual father of Indonesian state. "We have so much to learn from them!"
Recently, exploited by foreign multinational companies and by new Javanese elites, the people of Aceh began to fight again, against all odds. This time they fought against the Indonesian state - against one of the largest military forces on earth. 10 thousand men, women and children died in almost three decades of the conflict; maybe many more.
One of "profound" religious interpretations of this disaster in Indonesia was that God punished the people of Aceh for fighting for their independence. Official media even managed to find some Acehnese who declared it on the record. "If we don't stop fighting, we'll all go to hell."
Those who always suspected that there are no eternal flames, those who respect human life above anything else always knew that Aceh was already going through hell for many years. But "hell is the others" - those who fight innocent civilians, those who torture, those who are blocking help from the suffering people in their moment of tremendous need and catastrophe.
If those who are using disaster and human suffering for their own political, economic and military goals are not stopped soon, the entire country of Indonesia may soon go to hell. Not to some hell depicted by religious books - but to a real hell which is life in a society which has lost all basic moral human values; which allows small minority of people vulgarly lavish lifestyles at the expense of tens of millions who are starving and desperate.
Aceh is bleeding and the worst may still be ahead. Those who are arriving in Aceh should know that they are not only entering a land devastated by horrific natural disaster; they are entering a territory which was brutalized and exploited for decades and which still is. It doesn't only need aid - it needs solidarity, protection, and determined long-term help; and it needs it now! It needs a referendum and if it decides to vote for it - freedom. Anything will be better than the present situation - from here Aceh can only go to heaven!
ANDRE VLTCHEK, writer, political analyst and filmmaker lives and works in Southeast Asia and South Pacific and can be reached at: andre-wcn@usa.net
By Andre Vltchek
Resting in a comfortable seat of super-express speeding towards northern Japan, I was admiring the snow-covered beauty of the rural countryside. It was getting dark and the wheels of the train were gently drumming against the rails in a monotonous and reassuring rhythm. The world seemed harmonious and safe.
Then suddenly my eyes caught sight of the letters of a news bulletin passing through the digital display above the door. Strong earthquake shook northern Sumatra. There were dozens of casualties. Just that - no further information was provided. I checked the news, one hour later, on the internet in my hotel in Sendai. It seemed that hundreds of people lost their lives in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand. An earthquake off the coast of Aceh, reaching magnitude of 9 on the Richter scale, was followed by a tsunami - a monstrous 10 meters high tidal wave - which crashed mercilessly and with unimaginable force against the shores of several unfortunate countries.
In the next few days the number of victims grew to thousands, then to tens of thousands. Whole villages and entire towns disappeared from the map. Hundreds of thousands of refugees hit what was left of the roads, but the roads were leading nowhere; as bridges were washed away/ Floods were fragmenting the entire North of Sumatra Island. Electricity and water supply collapsed (limited and unreliable everywhere in Indonesia even before the disaster); there was no food, no blood for the injured and no medicine. There was no reliable information either, since the foreign press was banned from traveling to the province, "for its own safety".
The Army - a tremendous contingent of it based in the province in order to suppress insurgency - did close to nothing. It was ordered to clean corpses and it cleaned some, but it otherwise showed no initiative, leaving a desperate population with almost no help.
The government did close to nothing. Instead of ordering special military units to travel immediately to the province, instead of using hundreds of military helicopters and aircraft to supply food and medicine, instead of ordering all seaworthy vessels to the area of disaster, the President of Indonesia urged the citizens to "scale down New Year's celebrations and pray instead."
Huge transport planes were sitting on runways all over Java, waiting for the order to take off - an order which never arrived.
Instead of employing professionals trained to cope with emergency situations, vice president Jusuf Kalla used military planes and commercial aircraft to shuttle Muslim militants (they called themselves "volunteers") from Majelis Mujahedeen Indonesia and Islamic Defenders Front (Front Pembela Muslim - better known as its acronym FPI - militant Muslim group from Jakarta devoted to enforcing Islamic law against drinking, gambling, and prostitution), a fact later reported by The New York Times. Then Laskar Jihad, one of the most militant Muslim groups in Southeast Asia made inroads into the province. Hundreds of Christians, mainly of Chinese origin, were forced to flee Aceh.
The presence of "volunteers" - directly sponsored by the government - had one main purpose: to secure Indonesian and religious order (already the strictest in entire Indonesia) in the province which was fighting for independence for almost thirty years, at enormous cost. Practically speaking, these untrained urbanites were only taking precious space in scarce flights to the province, although the propaganda machine fired the stories how some of them single- handedly managed to restore electric supplies and telecommunications in Banda Aceh.
And the dead kept mounting, diseases were spreading, hunger began to kill those who miraculously survived the brutality of the nature.
At one point the refusal to help Aceh began to look like a vengeance killing by the government and the military. Then Aceh suddenly appeared in the spotlight of interest of the international community and after some hesitation, the government "benevolently" allowed foreign aid and some international press agencies to enter the province.
The results were almost immediate. International organizations and foreign military flew in and began building infrastructure from scratch. Not to rebuild it - there was not much social infrastructure even before the tsunami - but to construct provisory hospitals, food supply centers, shelters for the homeless. It was not enough, but it was at least something; definitely more than the state did in the last three decades when it came to investment in social infrastructure.
While this was happening, the Indonesian government was bragging that the disaster would not jeopardize predicted economic growth for the year 2005 (the lowest in the region even before the tsunami).
The Finance Minister openly declared that it expects foreigners to rebuild the area, while not diverting any substantial funds from state coffers. He was also quick to point out that vital oil production (the main reason for the occupation and the main income of the province - basically controlled by foreign multi-nationals after corrupt deals signed by Suharto's government few decades ago) suffered only a minor setback, although some inside reports suggest the contrary.
The government also suggested that Aceh is an outskirt of Indonesia; therefore its plight will have no major impact on the economy. In fact, it argued with no scruples, Indonesia could benefit, because it may attract thousands of tourists who will be avoiding damaged holiday resorts in Thailand.
To put the situation into perspective, the social system in Indonesia collapsed during the years when Suharto, supported by the West, fully controlled the political and economic life of Indonesia. This was also a period when Indonesians went through rigorous religious indoctrination which was supposed to reinforce the culture of obedience, which in turn served the regime.
Almost all public services were privatized, the quality of education nose-dived and life expectancy stagnated at around 64 years (one of the lowest in the region). Indonesia has, per capita, one of the highest numbers of orphans anywhere in the world and one of the worst records of child prostitution in the region. The poor have no safety net and justice is for sale. Indonesia, according to "Transparency International", is one of the most corrupt nations on earth.
The Indonesian military had been involved in a massacre of Sukarno's supporters after the coup in 1965 (up to 3 million people were butchered in a matter of months), it led genocidal war in East Timor (one of the most horrific barbarities of the 20th Century, happily applauded by the West), and caused gross human rights violations in Papua, Ambon, Aceh and elsewhere. It was and still is much better trained in raping and torturing civilians than in any sort of humanitarian assistance.
This compassionless, paralyzed and morally corrupt society was now facing one of the most terrible natural disasters in human history. Government officials and their business associates smelled a tremendous influx of foreign aid, which could, if unchecked, easily meet the same fate as the money from former foreign loans originally intended for development, infrastructure, and social programs but which disappeared in the deep pockets of elites, never reaching the impoverished majority of Indonesians.
As foreign governments were trying to outdo each other in pledging hundreds of millions of dollars for reconstruction of disaster stricken areas, Indonesian officials and military on the ground in Aceh were openly sabotaging relief efforts.
Food and medicine were piling in Medan and Banda Aceh, while almost no help was reaching desperate communities. A chartered Boeing 737 hit a buffalo after landing, shutting down for hours the only runway in the then only functioning airport in all of Aceh. Apparently it was not worth it to assign the military to guard this vital lifeline. But was it really an accident?
"One of the consequences of the lack of distribution of aid and medical assistance to several refugee camps has been the death of many refugees, especially women and children", says Yulia Evina Bhara from SEGERA (Alliance-Solidarity Movement For the People of Aceh). "This has occurred in Mata Le, Ulee Kareng, and large part of Pidie and Aceh Jeumpa… It is evident that the government has not taken any cooperative steps in terms of allowing easy access to areas in which aid needs to be distributed. If this continues to be the case, it means that the government is effectively disregarding the much needed humanitarian solidarity…"
Shortly after the tsunami hit the coast, GAM (Free Aceh Movement) declared a ceasefire. Few days later there were reports that Indonesian military continued with its operations. Sporadic exchanges of fire erupted in several places of Aceh. With no shame and no hesitation, the President of Indonesia began accusing GAM of breaking the ceasefire.
Foreign mainstream press (traditionally friendly to the post-1965 Indonesian regime), which initially concentrated its coverage strictly on disaster itself and later on the foreign relief operations, began asking some uncomfortable questions. Although still omitting information concerning the horrific human rights record of the Indonesian state, it couldn't fully ignore voices of Acehnese people who were accusing the government of sabotaging relief operations.
Sharp criticism of Indonesian government and military also came from foreign aid workers.
That seemed to be unacceptable for the establishment. On January 9th, the government began tightening restrictions on the movement of foreigners in the province. Reuters reported that on the 11th of January all good will vanished. Indonesia restricted foreign aid workers to two large cities because of "militant threats".
Indonesian army chief - General Endriartono Sutarto - declared that GAM might soon attack foreign aid workers or troops in Aceh. All aid agencies and NGOs operating in the province were urged to provide a full list of their staff.
GAM responded by denying all accusations made by the government, claiming that it never intended to cause harm to those who came to help, be it foreigners or locals. Foreigners operating in Aceh confirmed that they felt no threat from the independence movement.
A crackdown on independent sources of information by the Indonesian state is becoming inevitable. As in East Timor, Papua, and Aceh (before the disaster) it will be done under the cover of "protecting" the lives of the foreigners. The question is what will happen to Acehnese people afterwards. Even now, several members of Indonesian NGOs claim that the government actions (or more precisely - inaction) are responsible for at least 50 thousand out of 100 thousand known victims of disaster.
Is Aceh going to become another East Timor? Is the present situation just a result of impotence and incapability of the government, military, and the whole system, or of something much more sinister? Is it revenge; an extermination campaign design to break and secure this economically vital province?
Acehnese are proud and tough people. When Javanese elites were selling their country to foreigners, when most of the islands of today's Indonesia were accepting the presence of Dutch colonizers; Aceh fought bitterly for independence. "Under the Dutch, Java used to send assassins to break Aceh", said Pramoedya Ananta Toer, the greatest Indonesian writer and intellectual father of Indonesian state. "We have so much to learn from them!"
Recently, exploited by foreign multinational companies and by new Javanese elites, the people of Aceh began to fight again, against all odds. This time they fought against the Indonesian state - against one of the largest military forces on earth. 10 thousand men, women and children died in almost three decades of the conflict; maybe many more.
One of "profound" religious interpretations of this disaster in Indonesia was that God punished the people of Aceh for fighting for their independence. Official media even managed to find some Acehnese who declared it on the record. "If we don't stop fighting, we'll all go to hell."
Those who always suspected that there are no eternal flames, those who respect human life above anything else always knew that Aceh was already going through hell for many years. But "hell is the others" - those who fight innocent civilians, those who torture, those who are blocking help from the suffering people in their moment of tremendous need and catastrophe.
If those who are using disaster and human suffering for their own political, economic and military goals are not stopped soon, the entire country of Indonesia may soon go to hell. Not to some hell depicted by religious books - but to a real hell which is life in a society which has lost all basic moral human values; which allows small minority of people vulgarly lavish lifestyles at the expense of tens of millions who are starving and desperate.
Aceh is bleeding and the worst may still be ahead. Those who are arriving in Aceh should know that they are not only entering a land devastated by horrific natural disaster; they are entering a territory which was brutalized and exploited for decades and which still is. It doesn't only need aid - it needs solidarity, protection, and determined long-term help; and it needs it now! It needs a referendum and if it decides to vote for it - freedom. Anything will be better than the present situation - from here Aceh can only go to heaven!
ANDRE VLTCHEK, writer, political analyst and filmmaker lives and works in Southeast Asia and South Pacific and can be reached at: andre-wcn@usa.net
All the President's Newsmen
All the President's Newsmen
FRANK RICH
Published: January 16, 2005
related news story: The Conservative Marketing Machine
One day after the co-host Tucker Carlson made his farewell appearance and two days after the new president of CNN made the admirable announcement that he would soon kill the program altogether, a television news miracle occurred: even as it staggered through its last nine yards to the network guillotine, "Crossfire" came up with the worst show in its fabled 23-year history.
This was a half-hour of television so egregious that it makes Jon Stewart's famous pre-election rant seem, if anything, too kind. This time "Crossfire" wasn't just "hurting America," as Mr. Stewart put it, by turning news into a nonsensical gong show. It was unwittingly, or perhaps wittingly, complicit in the cover-up of a scandal.
I do not mean to minimize the CBS News debacle and other recent journalistic outrages at The New York Times and elsewhere. But the Jan. 7 edition of CNN's signature show can stand as an exceptionally ripe paradigm of what is happening to the free flow of information in a country in which a timid news media, the fierce (and often covert) Bush administration propaganda machine, lax and sometimes corrupt journalistic practices, and a celebrity culture all combine to keep the public at many more than six degrees of separation from anything that might resemble the truth.
On this particular "Crossfire," the featured guest was Armstrong Williams, a conservative commentator, talk-show host and newspaper columnist (for papers like The Washington Times and The Detroit Free Press, among many others, according to his Web site). Thanks to investigative reporting by USA Today, he had just been unmasked as the frontman for a scheme in which $240,000 of taxpayers' money was quietly siphoned to him through the Department of Education and a private p.r. firm so that he would "regularly comment" upon (translation: shill for) the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind policy in various media venues during an election year. Given that "Crossfire" was initially conceived as a program for tough interrogation and debate, you'd think that the co-hosts still on duty after Mr. Carlson's departure might try to get some answers about this scandal, whose full contours, I suspect, we are only just beginning to discern.
But there is nothing if not honor among bloviators. "On the left," as they say at "Crossfire," Paul Begala, a Democratic political consultant, offered condemnations of the Bush administration but had only soft questions and plaudits for Mr. Williams. Three times in scarcely as many minutes Mr. Begala congratulated his guest for being "a stand-up guy" simply for appearing in the show's purportedly hostile but entirely friendly confines. When Mr. Williams apologized for having crossed "some ethical lines," that was enough to earn Mr. Begala's benediction: "God bless you for that."
"On the right" was the columnist Robert Novak, who "in the interests of full disclosure" told the audience he is a "personal friend" of Mr. Williams, whom he "greatly" admires as "one of the foremost voices for conservatism in America." Needless to say, Mr. Novak didn't have any tough questions, either, but we should pause a moment to analyze this "Crossfire" co-host's disingenuous use of the term "full disclosure."
Last year Mr. Novak had failed to fully disclose - until others in the press called him on it - that his son is the director of marketing for Regnery, the company that published "Unfit for Command," the Swift boat veterans' anti-Kerry screed that Mr. Novak flogged relentlessly on CNN and elsewhere throughout the campaign. Nor had he fully disclosed, as Mary Jacoby of Salon reported, that Regnery's owner also publishes his subscription newsletter ($297 a year). Nor has Mr. Novak fully disclosed why he has so far eluded any censure in the federal investigation of his outing of a C.I.A. operative, Valerie Plame, while two other reporters, Judith Miller of The Times and Matt Cooper of Time, are facing possible prison terms in the same case. In this context, Mr. Novak's "full disclosure" of his friendship with Mr. Williams is so anomalous that it raised many more questions than it answers.
That he and Mr. Begala would be allowed to lob softballs at a man who may have been a cog in illegal government wrongdoing, on a show produced by television's self-proclaimed "most trusted" news network, is bad enough. That almost no one would notice, let alone protest, is a snapshot of our cultural moment, in which hidden agendas in the presentation of "news" metastasize daily into a Kafkaesque hall of mirrors that could drive even the most earnest American into abject cynicism. But the ugly bigger picture reaches well beyond "Crossfire" and CNN.
Mr. Williams has repeatedly said in his damage-control press appearances that he was being paid the $240,000 only to promote No Child Left Behind. He also routinely says that he made the mistake of taking the payola because he wasn't part of the "media elite" and therefore didn't know "the rules and guidelines" of journalistic conflict-of-interest. His own public record tells us another story entirely. While on the administration payroll he was not only a cheerleader for No Child Left Behind but also for President Bush's Iraq policy and his performance in the presidential debates. And for a man who purports to have learned of media ethics only this month, Mr. Williams has spent an undue amount of time appearing as a media ethicist on both CNN and the cable news networks of NBC.
He took to CNN last October to give his own critique of the CBS News scandal, pointing out that the producer of the Bush-National Guard story, Mary Mapes, was guilty of a conflict of interest because she introduced her source, the anti-Bush partisan Bill Burkett, to a Kerry campaign operative, Joe Lockhart. In this Mr. Williams's judgment was correct, but grave as Ms. Mapes's infraction was, it isn't quite in the same league as receiving $240,000 from the United States Treasury to propagandize for the Bush campaign on camera. Mr. Williams also appeared with Alan Murray on CNBC to trash Kitty Kelley's book on the Bush family, on CNN to accuse the media of being Michael Moore's "p.r. machine" and on Tina Brown's CNBC talk show to lambaste Mr. Stewart for doing a "puff interview" with John Kerry on "The Daily Show" (which Mr. Williams, unsurprisingly, seems to think is a real, not a fake, news program).
But perhaps the most fascinating Williams TV appearance took place in December 2003, the same month that he was first contracted by the government to receive his payoffs. At a time when no one in television news could get an interview with Dick Cheney, Mr. Williams, of all "journalists," was rewarded with an extended sit-down with the vice president for the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a nationwide owner of local stations affiliated with all the major networks. In that chat, Mr. Cheney criticized the press for its coverage of Halliburton and denounced "cheap shot journalism" in which "the press portray themselves as objective observers of the passing scene, when they obviously are not objective."
This is a scenario out of "The Manchurian Candidate." Here we find Mr. Cheney criticizing the press for a sin his own government was at that same moment signing up Mr. Williams to commit. The interview is broadcast by the same company that would later order its ABC affiliates to ban Ted Koppel's "Nightline" recitation of American casualties in Iraq and then propose showing an anti-Kerry documentary, "Stolen Honor," under the rubric of "news" in prime time just before Election Day. (After fierce criticism, Sinclair retreated from that plan.) Thus the Williams interview with the vice president, implicitly presented as an example of the kind of "objective" news Mr. Cheney endorses, was in reality a completely subjective, bought-and-paid-for fake news event for a broadcast company that barely bothers to fake objectivity and both of whose chief executives were major contributors to the Bush-Cheney campaign. The Soviets couldn't have constructed a more ingenious or insidious plot to bamboozle the citizenry.
Ever since Mr. Williams was exposed by USA Today, he has been stonewalling all questions about what the Bush administration knew of his activities and when it knew it. In his account, he was merely a lowly "subcontractor" of the education department. "Never was the White House ever mentioned anytime during this," he told NBC's Campbell Brown, as if that were enough to deflect Ms. Brown's observation that "the Department of Education works for the White House." For its part, the White House is saying that the whole affair is, in the words of the press secretary, Scott McClellan, "a contracting matter" and "a decision by the Department of Education." In other words, the buck stops (or started) with Rod Paige, the elusive outgoing education secretary who often appeared with Mr. Williams in his pay-for-play propaganda.
But we now know that there have been at least three other cases in which federal agencies have succeeded in placing fake news reports on television during the Bush presidency.
The Department of Health and Human Services, the Census Bureau and the Office of National Drug Control Policy have all sent out news "reports" in which, to take one example, fake newsmen purport to be "reporting" why the administration's Medicare prescription-drug policy is the best thing to come our way since the Salk vaccine. So far two Government Accountability Office investigations have found that these Orwellian stunts violated federal law that prohibits "covert propaganda" purchased with taxpayers' money. But the Williams case is the first one in which a well-known talking head has been recruited as the public face for the fake news instead of bogus correspondents (recruited from p.r. companies) with generic eyewitness-news team names like Karen Ryan and Mike Morris.
Or is Mr. Williams merely the first one of his ilk to be exposed? Every time this administration puts out fiction through the news media - the "Rambo" exploits of Jessica Lynch, the initial cover-up of Pat Tillman's death by friendly fire - it's assumed that a credulous and excessively deferential press was duped. But might there be more paid agents at loose in the media machine? In response to questions at the White House, Mr. McClellan has said that he is "not aware" of any other such case and that he hasn't "heard" whether the administration's senior staff knew of the Williams contract - nondenial denials with miles of wiggle room. Mr. Williams, meanwhile, has told both James Rainey of The Los Angeles Times and David Corn of The Nation that he has "no doubt" that there are "others" like him being paid for purveying administration propaganda and that "this happens all the time." So far he is refusing to name names - a vow of omertà all too reminiscent of that taken by the low-level operatives first apprehended in that "third-rate burglary" during the Nixon administration.
If CNN, just under new management, wants to make amends for the sins of "Crossfire," it might dispatch some real reporters to find out just which "others" Mr. Williams is talking about and to follow his money all the way back to its source
FRANK RICH
Published: January 16, 2005
related news story: The Conservative Marketing Machine
One day after the co-host Tucker Carlson made his farewell appearance and two days after the new president of CNN made the admirable announcement that he would soon kill the program altogether, a television news miracle occurred: even as it staggered through its last nine yards to the network guillotine, "Crossfire" came up with the worst show in its fabled 23-year history.
This was a half-hour of television so egregious that it makes Jon Stewart's famous pre-election rant seem, if anything, too kind. This time "Crossfire" wasn't just "hurting America," as Mr. Stewart put it, by turning news into a nonsensical gong show. It was unwittingly, or perhaps wittingly, complicit in the cover-up of a scandal.
I do not mean to minimize the CBS News debacle and other recent journalistic outrages at The New York Times and elsewhere. But the Jan. 7 edition of CNN's signature show can stand as an exceptionally ripe paradigm of what is happening to the free flow of information in a country in which a timid news media, the fierce (and often covert) Bush administration propaganda machine, lax and sometimes corrupt journalistic practices, and a celebrity culture all combine to keep the public at many more than six degrees of separation from anything that might resemble the truth.
On this particular "Crossfire," the featured guest was Armstrong Williams, a conservative commentator, talk-show host and newspaper columnist (for papers like The Washington Times and The Detroit Free Press, among many others, according to his Web site). Thanks to investigative reporting by USA Today, he had just been unmasked as the frontman for a scheme in which $240,000 of taxpayers' money was quietly siphoned to him through the Department of Education and a private p.r. firm so that he would "regularly comment" upon (translation: shill for) the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind policy in various media venues during an election year. Given that "Crossfire" was initially conceived as a program for tough interrogation and debate, you'd think that the co-hosts still on duty after Mr. Carlson's departure might try to get some answers about this scandal, whose full contours, I suspect, we are only just beginning to discern.
But there is nothing if not honor among bloviators. "On the left," as they say at "Crossfire," Paul Begala, a Democratic political consultant, offered condemnations of the Bush administration but had only soft questions and plaudits for Mr. Williams. Three times in scarcely as many minutes Mr. Begala congratulated his guest for being "a stand-up guy" simply for appearing in the show's purportedly hostile but entirely friendly confines. When Mr. Williams apologized for having crossed "some ethical lines," that was enough to earn Mr. Begala's benediction: "God bless you for that."
"On the right" was the columnist Robert Novak, who "in the interests of full disclosure" told the audience he is a "personal friend" of Mr. Williams, whom he "greatly" admires as "one of the foremost voices for conservatism in America." Needless to say, Mr. Novak didn't have any tough questions, either, but we should pause a moment to analyze this "Crossfire" co-host's disingenuous use of the term "full disclosure."
Last year Mr. Novak had failed to fully disclose - until others in the press called him on it - that his son is the director of marketing for Regnery, the company that published "Unfit for Command," the Swift boat veterans' anti-Kerry screed that Mr. Novak flogged relentlessly on CNN and elsewhere throughout the campaign. Nor had he fully disclosed, as Mary Jacoby of Salon reported, that Regnery's owner also publishes his subscription newsletter ($297 a year). Nor has Mr. Novak fully disclosed why he has so far eluded any censure in the federal investigation of his outing of a C.I.A. operative, Valerie Plame, while two other reporters, Judith Miller of The Times and Matt Cooper of Time, are facing possible prison terms in the same case. In this context, Mr. Novak's "full disclosure" of his friendship with Mr. Williams is so anomalous that it raised many more questions than it answers.
That he and Mr. Begala would be allowed to lob softballs at a man who may have been a cog in illegal government wrongdoing, on a show produced by television's self-proclaimed "most trusted" news network, is bad enough. That almost no one would notice, let alone protest, is a snapshot of our cultural moment, in which hidden agendas in the presentation of "news" metastasize daily into a Kafkaesque hall of mirrors that could drive even the most earnest American into abject cynicism. But the ugly bigger picture reaches well beyond "Crossfire" and CNN.
Mr. Williams has repeatedly said in his damage-control press appearances that he was being paid the $240,000 only to promote No Child Left Behind. He also routinely says that he made the mistake of taking the payola because he wasn't part of the "media elite" and therefore didn't know "the rules and guidelines" of journalistic conflict-of-interest. His own public record tells us another story entirely. While on the administration payroll he was not only a cheerleader for No Child Left Behind but also for President Bush's Iraq policy and his performance in the presidential debates. And for a man who purports to have learned of media ethics only this month, Mr. Williams has spent an undue amount of time appearing as a media ethicist on both CNN and the cable news networks of NBC.
He took to CNN last October to give his own critique of the CBS News scandal, pointing out that the producer of the Bush-National Guard story, Mary Mapes, was guilty of a conflict of interest because she introduced her source, the anti-Bush partisan Bill Burkett, to a Kerry campaign operative, Joe Lockhart. In this Mr. Williams's judgment was correct, but grave as Ms. Mapes's infraction was, it isn't quite in the same league as receiving $240,000 from the United States Treasury to propagandize for the Bush campaign on camera. Mr. Williams also appeared with Alan Murray on CNBC to trash Kitty Kelley's book on the Bush family, on CNN to accuse the media of being Michael Moore's "p.r. machine" and on Tina Brown's CNBC talk show to lambaste Mr. Stewart for doing a "puff interview" with John Kerry on "The Daily Show" (which Mr. Williams, unsurprisingly, seems to think is a real, not a fake, news program).
But perhaps the most fascinating Williams TV appearance took place in December 2003, the same month that he was first contracted by the government to receive his payoffs. At a time when no one in television news could get an interview with Dick Cheney, Mr. Williams, of all "journalists," was rewarded with an extended sit-down with the vice president for the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a nationwide owner of local stations affiliated with all the major networks. In that chat, Mr. Cheney criticized the press for its coverage of Halliburton and denounced "cheap shot journalism" in which "the press portray themselves as objective observers of the passing scene, when they obviously are not objective."
This is a scenario out of "The Manchurian Candidate." Here we find Mr. Cheney criticizing the press for a sin his own government was at that same moment signing up Mr. Williams to commit. The interview is broadcast by the same company that would later order its ABC affiliates to ban Ted Koppel's "Nightline" recitation of American casualties in Iraq and then propose showing an anti-Kerry documentary, "Stolen Honor," under the rubric of "news" in prime time just before Election Day. (After fierce criticism, Sinclair retreated from that plan.) Thus the Williams interview with the vice president, implicitly presented as an example of the kind of "objective" news Mr. Cheney endorses, was in reality a completely subjective, bought-and-paid-for fake news event for a broadcast company that barely bothers to fake objectivity and both of whose chief executives were major contributors to the Bush-Cheney campaign. The Soviets couldn't have constructed a more ingenious or insidious plot to bamboozle the citizenry.
Ever since Mr. Williams was exposed by USA Today, he has been stonewalling all questions about what the Bush administration knew of his activities and when it knew it. In his account, he was merely a lowly "subcontractor" of the education department. "Never was the White House ever mentioned anytime during this," he told NBC's Campbell Brown, as if that were enough to deflect Ms. Brown's observation that "the Department of Education works for the White House." For its part, the White House is saying that the whole affair is, in the words of the press secretary, Scott McClellan, "a contracting matter" and "a decision by the Department of Education." In other words, the buck stops (or started) with Rod Paige, the elusive outgoing education secretary who often appeared with Mr. Williams in his pay-for-play propaganda.
But we now know that there have been at least three other cases in which federal agencies have succeeded in placing fake news reports on television during the Bush presidency.
The Department of Health and Human Services, the Census Bureau and the Office of National Drug Control Policy have all sent out news "reports" in which, to take one example, fake newsmen purport to be "reporting" why the administration's Medicare prescription-drug policy is the best thing to come our way since the Salk vaccine. So far two Government Accountability Office investigations have found that these Orwellian stunts violated federal law that prohibits "covert propaganda" purchased with taxpayers' money. But the Williams case is the first one in which a well-known talking head has been recruited as the public face for the fake news instead of bogus correspondents (recruited from p.r. companies) with generic eyewitness-news team names like Karen Ryan and Mike Morris.
Or is Mr. Williams merely the first one of his ilk to be exposed? Every time this administration puts out fiction through the news media - the "Rambo" exploits of Jessica Lynch, the initial cover-up of Pat Tillman's death by friendly fire - it's assumed that a credulous and excessively deferential press was duped. But might there be more paid agents at loose in the media machine? In response to questions at the White House, Mr. McClellan has said that he is "not aware" of any other such case and that he hasn't "heard" whether the administration's senior staff knew of the Williams contract - nondenial denials with miles of wiggle room. Mr. Williams, meanwhile, has told both James Rainey of The Los Angeles Times and David Corn of The Nation that he has "no doubt" that there are "others" like him being paid for purveying administration propaganda and that "this happens all the time." So far he is refusing to name names - a vow of omertà all too reminiscent of that taken by the low-level operatives first apprehended in that "third-rate burglary" during the Nixon administration.
If CNN, just under new management, wants to make amends for the sins of "Crossfire," it might dispatch some real reporters to find out just which "others" Mr. Williams is talking about and to follow his money all the way back to its source
Wednesday, 12 January 2005
Conservatives shouldn't ask FCC to play nanny
Conservatives shouldn't ask FCC to play nanny
From Tallahassee Democrat, January 4, 2005By Adam Thierer
Get ready for another impassioned censorship crusade by the "let's-censor-television-to-protect-the-children" crowd. The latest Nielsen television ratings are out and they reveal that in addition to being the most popular show among adults, ABC's smash-hit "Desperate Housewives" is also the most popular broadcast-network television show with kids aged 9-12.
No doubt, the relentless censorship advocates at the Parents Television Council are already firing up the engines at their automated complaint factory to bombard Federal Communications Commission regulators with letters. Recent Freedom of Information Act requests to the FCC have revealed that the PTC has been responsible for more than 98 percent of all indecency complaints to the FCC over the last two years. PTC is quickly coming to have a "heckler's veto" over programming in America as many of the shows they complain about receive significant fines or are even driven off the air.
While the PTC claims to be nonpartisan, the watchdog group's public-policy advocacy adopts a distinctly social conservative and moralistic tone. Interestingly, the PTC's motto is: "Because Our Children Are Watching," which raises the question: Why are your children watching?
I've always been particularly troubled by the fact that so many conservatives, who rightly preach the gospel of personal and parental responsibility about most economic issues, seemingly give up on this notion when it comes to cultural issues. Art, music and speech are fair game for the Ministry of Culture down at the FCC, but don't let them regulate our cable rates!
Conservatives and religious groups decry government activism in terms of educating our children, for example, but with their next breath call in Uncle Sam to play the role of surrogate parent when it comes to TV content.
Censorship advocates like the PTC respond that parents just don't have enough time to monitor their children's listening and viewing habits in this hectic age. But this is a weak excuse for government intervention. If parents bring media devices into the home and then give their kids free reign, that's just poor parenting.
While there are more media than ever before, there also exist more technological tools to screen or limit what children see. Parents don't bring other products home - such as cars, weapons, liquor or various chemicals - and then expect the government to assume responsibility from there. But that is essentially the logic many social conservatives rely on to justify broadcast television and radio censorship.
Censorship advocates also claim that any exposure to "indecent" or "violent" material will result in degenerate, dangerous youth. Increased exposure to media - and especially television - they argue, can be directly correlated with promiscuous sexual behavior or aggressive tendencies. The psychological literature is all over the place on this issue, but recent social trends call this thesis into question.
Consider these facts:
• Juvenile murder, rape, robbery and assault are all down significantly over the past decade. Overall, aggregate violent crime by juveniles fell 42 percent from 1995-2002.
• There are fewer murders at school today and fewer students report carrying weapons to school or anywhere else than at any point in the past decade.
• Alcohol and drug abuse has generally been falling and is currently at a 20-year low. Teen birth rates have hit a 20-year low and fewer teens are having sex today than they were 15 years ago.
• High school dropout rates continue to fall steadily, as they have for the past 30 years.
• And while teen-age suicide rates rose steadily until the mid-1990s, they then began a dramatic decline that continues today.
Not surprisingly, you don't hear any of this good news over at the PTC Web site or from other conservative groups. Could it be because it does not fit nicely into their "Let's-blame-media-for-all-our-problems" mentality? Social conservative icon William Bennett used to publish a book titled "The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators" that read like a guidebook to the fall of civilization. A new edition is nowhere to be found, however. Bennett appears to have abandoned the endeavor as soon as all the numbers started to improve.
Alas, none of these facts will stop desperate regulators and even more desperate censorship advocates from condemning "Desperate Housewives" and the fact that many youngster are apparently watching such a racy show. Instead of rushing to fire off complaints to the FCC, maybe parents should start rushing to the remote to turn off the television.
Sunday, 9 January 2005
My o/s trip in 2003
Here are some of the photos from my 4 month jaunt to a few places around the world. Indian cricket tour photos to come soon!!!
Rollercoaster at Tokyo Dome City
i did go on this thing......and i have the photos to prove it. The 2 hours waiting in line was well and truly worth it!
my most favourite of places on this planet!!
it's hard to put into words but this place is spine tingling, it seems to capture the imagination and visibly effect everyone who enters it's presence.
Qutub Minar Mosque Delhi
May is the middle of summer in India.....we were there around lunchtime so it was fcuking HOT!!! nearing 45+ degrees on some days. as you can see they at least give you something to walk on because you have to lose the shoes
Amber Fort, Jaipur
the $2 elephant rides you can take up that hill are great value......it's more ominous that it looks......especially in the condition i was in at the time.
the abandoned city of Fatehpur Sikri
picture this area full of water, it was a pool and recreation area for the king
home of the mighty gunners
Highbury Stadium Arsenal vs Everton. Would have had some better pics if someone's camera hadn't run out of batteries!!
Headingly, Leeds. England vs South Africa
this was the view we had from my hotel window......that's some sweet action!!
Bracknell vs Ascot
that would be me sending down a few pies while playing cricket at Ascot Racecourse
Loch Ness
this photo does it no justice at all, going north you can drive along side it for 20-30 kms and so much of it was beautiful, more so than this pic
Golf in Scotland
try playing in these conditions.......any idea where the green is. oh yeah there is a whole lot of ocean about 50 metres to the left
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