The Daily Grasshopper

So, yesterday I urged people to check out Dan Kennedy's Boston Phoenix Media Log for commentary on the as-yet-uncovered story of the "Shock and Awe" bombing campaign that the U.S. plans to wage in Iraq. I wrote that the story had only been "picked up on by a few people, notably Dan Kennedy, a reporter and media critic for our local alternative weekly, the Boston Phoenix." And while I stand by my characterization of Kennedy as a "reporter," judging from his column today, it looks like I might have spoken too soon on the "media critic" part.

You can read today's Boston Phoenix Media Log here:

http://www.bostonphoenix.com/medialog/index.asp

The leadoff piece today is called "The troubling spectacle of celebrities for peace," in which Kennedy bemoans the fact that people like Sean Penn are the ones seen making the public case against the war. Here's a sample:

"The whole notion of celebrity peace activists is an interesting one. In the case of [Janeane] Garofalo and [Sean] Penn, the flak they've taken from the right has been largely unfair and unjustified. But what good are they doing? Well-intentioned though they may be, they help cement the image of the antiwar movement as an idle indulgence for unserious people.

Following Colin Powell's devastating report last week, it may no longer be possible to avoid war. It doesn't help that the main antiwar voices that the public is hearing from belong to Hollywood celebrities."

You're right, Mr. Kennedy, it doesn't help. But have you thought about addressing the reason WHY "the main voices that the public is hearing from belong to Hollywood celebrities," instead of just pointing out the obvious fact that this is the case? Because the answer seems pretty clear, at least to me. It's because FOX News, and CNN, and NBC, and MSNBC, and CBS, and the New York Times, and the Boston Globe, etc., refuse to invite any real anti-war scholars and activists on to debate the facts with any of the war's cheerleaders. A non-celebrity might ask some very pointed questions, like the ones Norman Solomon wrote about last week in his article entitled "Colin Powell is Flawless - Inside a Media Bubble."

Read Solomon's article here:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=21&ItemID=2993.

A non-celebrity might poke some major holes in what Kennedy insists on calling "Colin Powell's devastating report," as Phyllis Bennis and others already have (see: http://www.netway.com/~pkeaney/020603wwww.html for links). And a non-celebrity might have the temerity (and the acumen) to back up charges like "this war is about controlling the supply of Persian Gulf oil" or "Israel and Turkey are also in violation of numerous U.N. resolutions, with apparent impunity" or "the Depleted Uranium shells that we used in the first Gulf War are also Weapons of Mass Destruction." You know - serious antiwar talking points.

In fact, it's gotten so ridiculous that serious (non-celebrity) people who oppose the war - but somehow don't the call from FOX when they want someone to represent the antiwar side of the argument - have had to resort to taking out large ads in the country's daily papers. There's one in today's New York Times, coincidentally enough, on page A8. Does Kennedy want to hear some "serious" antiwar talk from non-celebrities? Here you go (from the text of the ad, which is online at: http://www.cpdweb.org/):

"We do not believe that the goal of the approaching war against Iraq is to bring democracy to the Iraqis, nor that it will produce this result. Instead, the Bush Administration’s aim is to expand and solidify U.S. predominance in the Middle East, at the cost of tens of thousands of civilian lives if necessary. This war is about U.S. political, military and economic power, about seizing control of oilfields and about strengthening the United States as the enforcer of an inhumane global status quo.

That is why we are opposed to war against Iraq, whether waged unilaterally by Washington or by the UN Security Council, unaccountable to the UN General Assembly and bullied and bribed into endorsing the war.

The U.S. military may have the ability to destroy Saddam Hussein, but the United States cannot promote democracy in the Muslim world and peace in the Middle East, nor can it deal with the threat posed to all of us by terrorist networks such as Al Qaeda, and by weapons of mass destruction, by pursuing its current policies. Indeed, the U.S. could address these problems only by doing the opposite of what it is doing today that is, by:

• Renouncing the use of military intervention to extend and consolidate U.S. imperial power, and withdrawing U.S. troops from the Middle East.
• Ending its support for corrupt and authoritarian regimes, e.g. Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and Egypt.
• Opposing, and ending U.S. complicity in, all forms of terrorism worldwide not just by Al Qaeda, Palestinian suicide bombers and Chechen hostage takers, but also by Colombian paramilitaries, the Israeli military in the Occupied Territories and Russian counterinsurgency forces in Chechnya.
• Ending the cruel sanctions on Iraq, which inflict massive harm on the civilian population.
• Supporting the right of national self-determination for all peoples in the Middle East, including the Kurds, Palestinians and Israeli Jews. Ending one-sided support for Israel in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
• Taking unilateral steps toward renouncing weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, and vigorously promoting international disarmament treaties.
• Abandoning IMF/World Bank economic policies that bring mass misery to people in large parts of the world. Initiating a major foreign aid program directed at popular rather than corporate needs."

A similar ad ran in yesterday's Sunday Times. It was a full-pager, entitled "A Citizen's Response to the National Security Strategy of the United States of America." It was written by Wendell Berry, who's identified as an "essayist, novelist, and farmer, and is the author of more than thirty books." The ads are being run by an organization called The Orion Society, who can be found online at http://www.oriononline.org/index2.html. Here's their take on mainstream media and lack of dissenting voices:

"The corporate-owned media seems less and less interested in covering anything or anyone representing an alternative to the White House press room briefings with regard to war, the environment, or national sustainability.

The only way to make it known that countless millions of Americans -- what we call The Vast Minority -- do not subscribe to the administration's single-minded worldview, is through paid media advertisements like these."

Here's a sample of Berry's critique of the Bush administration's National Security Strategy:

"It is no wonder that the National Security Strategy, growing as it does out of unresolved contradictions in our domestic life, should attempt to compound a foreign policy out of contradictory principles.

There is, first of all, the contradiction of peace and war, or of war as the means of achieving and preserving peace This document affirms peace; it also affirms peace as the justification of war and war as the means of peace and thus perpetuates a hallowed absurdity. But implicit in its assertion of this (and, by implication, any other) nation's right to act alone in its own interest is an acceptance of war as a permanent condition. Either way, it is cynical to invoke the ideas of cooperation, community, peace, freedom, justice, dignity, and the rule of law (as this document repeatedly does), and then proceed to assert one's intention to act alone in makin war. One cannot reduce terror by holding over the world the threat of what it most fears.

This is a contradiction not reconcilable except by a self righteousness almost inconceivably naive. The authors of the strategy seem now and then to be glimmeringly conscious of the difficulty. Their implicit definition of "rogue state," for example, is any nation pursuing national greatness by advanced military capabilities that can threaten its neighbors -- except our nation.

If you think our displeasure with "rogue states" might have any underpinning in international law, then you will be disappointed to learn on page 31 that

The rule of law in the world, then, is to be upheld by a nation that has declared itself to be above the law. A childish hypocrisy here assumes the dignity of a nation's foreign policy."

You can read the whole thing here:
http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/03-2om/Berry.html

Now, granted, Berry's no celebrity, and his name recognition is far below Sean Penn's, but he's got plenty to say about what's going on in the world. It's too bad he's got to pay for a full page ad in the Sunday Times to get his voice heard. Other people, maybe not as articulate, maybe not as well-versed in the facts, maybe a little more recognizable to the average American, get invited onto FOX to debate other celebrities, befitting our culture's fascination with the rich and famous. The real dissenters are left to empty their wallets and hope that some Americans still care enough about what's happening to look beyond mainstream media outlets for some real answers.

One of the signers of the ad in today's New York Times is the internationally-known (maybe he IS a "celebrity," in his own way) historian Howard Zinn, who is appearing right now on NPR's "The Connection" to talk about how patriotism is taught to us at an early age. It will be on again tonight at 9 p.m. Try to tune in for some of the non-celebrity antiwar wisdom that you won't be reading about in the New York Times or hearing on FOX News, or any other corporate-owned media outlet. Unless of course, it's in the form of an expensive advertisement. Because if you want to oppose the Bush administration's call to war, it's going to cost you.