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A weekly
look at the media and America in the 21st Century
ABOUT
THE COLUMNS –
These columns will be posted each week as 2-page articles ready for
printing as inserts into an 8.5" by 11" binder. The cover
(above) may be downloaded for printing as a binder insert.
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NEW
- 22 December 2003
Saddam Saddam
For
a second there, it looked like there’d be no Christmas this year,
as televisions across the world broadcast images of US forces picking
lice from a disheveled Santa’s hair. It soon became apparent, however,
that this was not your run-of-the-mill derelict Santa, shanghaied from
his mission to the mall. No, not this guy. He looked more like a Satanic
Santa morphing into a crazed Karl Marx right before our eyes. This wasn’t
jolly ‘ol Saint Nick. This was “the evil one,” or more
specifically, I think, “the other evil one.” I lose track
sometimes. But hell, Michael Jackson move over – our holiday news
hole has been filled. Saddam finally was down for the count – just
in time for Christmas. I feel safe. Or is that fail safe?
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here to download (36kb)
NEW
- 14 December 2003
The Buffalo Six and Rambo III
The
highly choreographed Friday the 13th (9/13/02) bust of Buffalo’s
supposed terrorist cell has finally culminated with a similarly choreographed
string of sentencing hearings – and New York State’s most
notorious citizens are all off to the slammer. Though identified in
the national media, and later in George W. Bush’s now infamous
2003 State of the Union speech, as a “terrorist cell,” the
Justice Department only charged the men with an ambiguous provision
of the 1996 anti-terrorism law, “providing material support or
resources to designated terrorist organizations.”
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here to download (36kb)
Click
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8
December 2003
e-Washing history, one archive at a time
Imagine
a world where nothing you ever said was ever really said – where
you could go back in time and unsay anything stupid, offensive or just
plain untrue. Imagine a world where you would never in the future have
to bear responsibility for anything you say or do today. This is the
world that George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld are trying to create for
themselves.
Click
here to download (36kb)
27
October 2003
The Brave New World of voting
Back
in August I wrote about America’s ongoing “soft coup”
– arguing that military and intelligence community brass were turning
against the Bush posse en masse. My theory was based on the fact that
the strongest exposes written about the Bush administration last summer
all cited former military and CIA officials as their primary sources.
This trend has continued unabated, with current officials in Langley
and the Pentagon joining their retired comrades on the Bush-bashing
bandwagon. New stories come out daily about hawks and spooks defecting
to the tofu brigade and telling all about how the Bush team misled the
American people and plunged the nation into a needless war. And the
formerly compliant media has deviated from the Bush administration script,
bringing the military’s anti-Bush message right into America’s
TV viewing pens.
Click
here to download (36kb)
10
October 2003
California Dreamin’ on the Eve of Termination
It
became painfully clear to me, as I roamed around the San Francisco Bay
area on the eve of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ascension to the governor’s
mansion, that the promise of California – the dream of a new sun-bathed
life in ecotopia that lured generations to this Pacific Mecca –
is dead. Utopia’s gone awry with today’s Golden State having
succumbed to social Darwinism. California now brazenly sports obscene
extremes of wealth and poverty.
Click
here to download (36kb)
2
September 2003
John Ashcroft: Dangerous dinosaur
The
government that seized power in a contested election, crashed our economy,
de-funded our schools and hospitals, gutted our environmental regulations,
sent our soldiers off to kill and die in a quagmire of a war, and looted
the federal treasury with a series of no-bid military contracts to friends
and tax cuts for the rich, now wants to finish off their assault on
the cornerstone of American society – our civil liberties. But
they’re acknowledging it’s a hard sell.
Click
here to download (36kb)
28
August 2003
The new American coup
Suddenly
hard core militarists are joining forces with moderate Democrats and
anti-war activists to attack the Bush administration’s foreign
policy and their use of American troops. And it’s these new voices
that are supplying the hard evidence exposing how George W. Bush lied
to the Congress and the American people in order to garner support for
his invasion of Iraq.
Click
here to download (36kb)
22
August 2003
Why the lights went out
Everything
is political. If most of Ontario and the Northeastern US suddenly goes
dark, given the technological prowess of the two nations involved, we
need to look beyond rumors of lightning and examine the social systems
that are charged with maintaining the power grid. The blame game is
silly. It doesn’t matter if the blackout began with a lightning
strike in Niagara Falls (a quickly debunked rumor given the region’s
clear weather) or with the blaster computer worm debilitating an alarm
system at an Ohio power plant. A power plant can drop into the sea.
Click
here to download (36kb)
15
August 2003
Afghanistan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia
Even
America’s hardened warmongers are beginning to admit that we’ve
got a nimrod in the White House who doesn’t understand the first
thing about war. He can start them, creating death and chaos, but that’s
about as far as he’s gotten. What he hasn’t learned is that
there’s more to ending a war than simply making a unilateral declaration
that it’s over.
Click
here to download (36kb)
31
July 2003
Poison and profit in Gulf War II
The
Bush presidency has certainly created some strange bedfellows. Take
the peace movement – American peaceniks today are just as likely
to gather and listen to right wing warriors as they are to swoon before
the call of hairy pacifists. I remember seeing former US Marine Intelligence
Officer and UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter speak last fall at a Syracuse
University event promoted by various Central New York peace groups.
Speaking to a crowd that included a nationally known draft resister
and a host of other activists, Ritter described himself as a Republican
who voted for George W. Bush for president. “I’m a warrior,”
he went on to tell the crowd, explaining how he was willing to lay down
his life in battle for his country.
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here to download (36kb)
22
July 2003
The uncooling of Corporate America
I
missed the fourth of July this year. I don’t mean to say that I
missed the fireworks. Or that I missed a cacophony of baton twirlers
and an American Legion band. I didn’t miss an event or a celebration.
I missed the day itself.
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here to download (36kb)
29
May 2003
Kodak’s toxic moments
Maureen
Reynolds, a former neighbor of Eastman Kodak’s sprawling Kodak
Park facility in Rochester, New York, suffers from more than her share
of Kodak moments – believing that Kodak poisoned her and her neighbors.
She wasn’t suspicious when her three-year-old son developed asthma.
Rushing him to the hospital for adrenaline shots was traumatic, but
these things happen. She also wasn’t suspicious about the thin
layer of ash on her car’s windshield. She even noticed ash sometimes
on her young son’s glasses. Cities have dirty air, however, and
a little ash isn’t uncommon.
Click
here to download (36kb)
20
May2003
9/11: Ask no questions, you’ll get no lies
In
1996 Bill Clinton had an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
On September 11th, 2001, terrorists hijacked four jetliners and used
them to attack the Pentagon and destroy the World Trade Center.
Click
here to download (36kb)
13
May2003
How low can corporate media sink?
I
tuned into National Public Radio while showering this morning. The shower
is pretty much the only place left where I can stand listening to NPR
– with the cool water calming me down as NPR’s “newscasters”
and pundits boil my blood with their half truths, shallow analysis and
investor-friendly, rest-of-the-world-be-damned attitudes.
Click
here to download (36kb)
01
May2003
The Bush family and Fundamentalist Islam
What
do you call a crowd of more than a million Shiite fundamentalists chanting
anti-American slogans in Iraq? Here’s where the spin reaches its
pinnacle of twisted creativity. National Public Radio refers to this
event as “Iraqis celebrating their newfound freedoms.” And
this in fact is an accurate description – but it’s hardly
the celebration of “liberation” the Bush administration and
their cronies in the media would like us to believe it is. True liberation,
you see, is normally followed by some sort of “thank you.”
This is more of a fuck you – now leave!
Click
here to download (36kb)
22
April 2003
While we were distracted
The
Bush team has been at least as busy on the domestic front as they’ve
been in Iraq, but the horrors of a bunch of frat boys threatening to
hijack the US military on a joyride across the Middle East has been
rather distracting – and rightfully so. It has also all but monopolized
the domestic press corps in a way that is usually reserved for a presidential
blowjob or a celebrity murder trial has.
Click
here to download (36kb)
14
April 2003
Toppling reality – image warfare in Iraq
The
American media is awash in images of cheering Iraqis welcoming their
American “liberators.” Our visual lexicon will forever contain
toppling Saddam statues along with images of a falling Berlin wall,
crumbling Twin Towers, Iwo Jima flag raising and a naked Vietnamese
girl running from a napalm attack.
Network anchors are obsessively telling us we’re witnessing history.
And we are. It’s just not the history they’re telling us we’re
watching. What we are seeing is the ultimate triumph of the image –
with the pivotal battles of war playing out in the theater of informatics.
Welcome to the post-modern media war.
Click
here to download (36kb)
8
April 2003
Please tell me again – what is this war about?
If
we’re to believe the official rhetoric formally put forth by George
W. Bush, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and all, the US
is now mired down in a bloody invasion of Iraq because that country
has weapons of mass destruction – and because we have the right
to take them away. Forget about the fact that there was no indication
of Iraq posing a threat to the United States. And forget about the fact
that such an invasion violates international law. And that such a “preemptive
strike” threatens to destabilize the entire world, with the race
now on in places like Korea to preempt preemptive strikes. Forget reality
and forget common sense.
Click
here to download (36kb)
1
April 2003
Spinning the war – lessons in propaganda
Have
you noticed that the recent pro-war demonstrations seem to have a cookie-cutter
feel to them? The same plastic signs with the same slogans. The same
droning “Ooo Esss Ay” chants repeated ad nausea to the same
frat boy tune of “drink, drink, drink.” During the last month
these loud little gatherings have been popping up around the country
like zits on a boy scout. Their eerie similarity, however, is not by
chance. According to The New York Times, most of these outbursts of
bloodlust have been organized nationally by the same group – not
a political organization per se, but the nation’s largest owner
of radio stations – Clear Channel Communications Corporation.
Click
here to download (36kb)
27
MARCH 2003
Unembed your mind
It’s
not a good day when I feel compelled to start my article by quoting
Adolf Hitler’s deputy – but it’s imperative at times
like this not to let the lessons of history escape us. And there are
many, as history is littered with the fetid carcasses of failed empires
and the demented dreams that fueled them. One thing, however, is certain:
if history has taught us anything, it tells us that any society that
seeks to build a global empire is doomed to painful obscurity.
Click
here to download (36kb)
20
MARCH 2003
Spinning a war and an editor’s myth
Buffalo
News editor Margaret Sullivan is at
it again – with another shameless round of self-adoration and praise
for her paper. Columns in the mainstream press, such as her Sunday,
March 9th piece, entitled, “A healthy debate, and solid information,
as war comes ever closer,” are usually designed to directly counter
some unspoken truth or reality. In this case, the reality that it attacks
head-on is that this has been a bad month for The News, which has been
censured for its professional transgressions in two national publications.
Click
here to download (36kb)
13
MARCH 2003
Creepy “FReepers" target anti-war activists
The
Cayuga Coalition for Peace meeting had just got under way at an Auburn,
New York church earlier this month when a tall, stocky, dour, middle-aged
man quietly entered the building. Refusing to join the meeting at a
large table in the center of the room, he instead settled into a chair
off to the side, took out a pad, and began scribbling notes. Coalition
members would later learn he was labeling them as “commy#1”,
“commy#2” and so on, recording everything they said and did.
They found his notes on the web.
Click
here to download (36kb)
6
MARCH 2003
The duct tape magnate and other stories
Wouldn’t
you know it? There’s a duct tape magnate. His name is Jack Kahl.
He lives in Avon, Ohio, and his company produces 46% of all the duct
tape consumed in the United States. Which means they produce, more or
less, 46% of all that extra duct tape stressed-out Americans dutifully
bought last month after Bush Administration Secretary of Homeland Security
Tom Ridge told us to.
Click
here to download (36kb)
27
FEBRUARY 2003
Democracy and the criminalizing of dissent
Last
week, when I put together my story on the emergence of an unprecedented
global peace movement, I knew there was a dark counterpart to that hopeful
story, festering just below the surface. That’s the embarrassing
story of how the U.S. stood out with just one other nation, Tunisia,
in violently suppressing peaceful anti-war demonstrations.
Click
here to download (36kb)
20
FEBRUARY 2003
Code Orange for Bush and Blair
Make
no mistake about it – history books will cite February 15th, 2003
as a milestone in the global struggle for justice and democracy. The
simultaneous coming together of eight to eleven and a half million anti-war
protesters in 660 communities spanning every continent (including Antarctica)
is historically unprecedented. It marks a powerful opening salvo for
a new globally interconnected political reality – one for whom
international borders are little more than old world geographic demarcations.
Click
here to download (36kb)
12
FEBRUARY 2003
Powell, plagiarism, taxes and war
The
media spin after Colin Powell’s UN speech was about as dynamic
as a Fox News debate. Cheerleading talking heads immediately took to
the airwaves to discern whether or not Powell succeeded in building
a consensus for war. Did he pull it off? Will those arrogant pompous
self-righteous French – up to their asses in their own war TO secure
the world’s chocolate supply in the Ivory Coast – support
the pillage in Iraq? What about the Germans?
Click
here to download (36kb)
06
FEBRUARY 2003
Baghdad on the Hudson – let the blitzkreig begin
With
a U.S. invasion of Iraq growing more probable by the day, many people
are starting to visualize the unimaginable – the most sophisticated
killing machine that history has ever known unleashed upon a crowded
urban area.
Click
here to download (36kb)
16
JANUARY 2003
Why we won’t go to war with North Korea
A
lot of attention is being paid lately to America’s impending war
with Iraq. Other writers refer to it as “Bush’s War,”
since the whole fracas is basically a hillbilly family feud, with George
W. whining on about how Saddam tried to kill his pappy. But while it’s
the Bush family’s feud, it’s not their war. They aren’t
going to fight it. Their kin aren’t going to die in it. They don’t
fight wars. They order other people to fight and die. This means the
children of the poor, for whom military service was the only option
for education or employment.
Click
here to download (36kb)
09
JANUARY 2003
What Bush would rather you didn’t know
When
Iraq presented its weapons declaration to the United Nations last month,
the Bush administration immediately attacked the report as being incomplete,
hinting that producing a partial report might be a justification to
unleash upon that nation the most lethal killing machine history has
known.
Click
here to download (36kb)
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR –
Dr. Michael I. Niman has a Ph.D. in American Studies (Intercultural
Studies). He is an internationally published and syndicated freelance
journalist and editorial columnist. He is an ethnographer and author
of "People of the Rainbow: A Nomadic Utopia" (Univ. of Tennessee
Press). Niman's research interests include the study of nonviolence
and temporary autonomous zones, and the impact of electronic media and
consumer culture in developing countries. He has conducted fieldwork
in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Belize, Nicaragua, Cuba, Canada, England and
across the United States. He is an Assistant Professor of Journalism
and Media Studies in the Communication Department at Buffalo State College
where he teaches courses on Media and Society, Investigative Journalism,
Feature Writing, Diversity in the Media, Visual Communication, and American
Culture and Globalization.”
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