| Number 136 | December 14, 2001 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, This issue of the Notes is going out actually after the deadline, so I apologize if there are any of those too-late-at-night-not-enough-time-to-proofread type of errors. All the facts are in place, but all the punctuation may not be. No one to blame but myself. The ongoing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan—going on for years but made much worse since the U.S. bombs started falling—is perhaps the most under-reported aspect of the so-called War on Terrorism. Professor Marc Herold has documented the thousands of civilians killed directly by the U.S. military attacks (see ZNet at http://www.zmag.org/ZNETTOPnoanimation.html for details). That's bad enough. But the numbers of innocent Afghans who stand to die needlessly from starvation or freezing in coming months—many of whom could be saved if the U.S. warlords were willing to say the word—are staggering. I give some details this week. I just have to point out that, after I inserted it into one of this week's headlines, I went to my Webster's Unabridged and looked up the word "cajolery." The dictionary defines it simply as "a wheedling to delude." I just love that. Non-wheedlingly yours, Nygaard |
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If you are looking for something positive to do in the midst of the War on Terror (TM U.S. Govt) you could do worse than to contact your representative and urge them to become a co-sponsor of the bill introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives on July 11th of this year, entitled "To establish a Department of Peace." H.R.2459, introduced by Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, is a simple idea, and long overdue. Ever since the National Security Act of 1947 re-named the United States Department of War the Department of Defense, the United States has been sorely in need of a Department of Peace. Come to think of it, we could have used one from the very beginning of this too-often-warlike United States. Despite the obvious relevance of this idea as the United States goes off again to war, the corporate press somehow failed to report on the introduction of this bill. What a surprise. The official summary by the Congressional Research Service H.R. states that H.R. 2459 would:
The range and scope of this bill would surprise and delight many readers, I am guessing, since it goes beyond the obvious promotion of alternatives to war and specifies efforts to deal with more mundane and personal forms of violence, such as drug and alcohol abuse, hate crimes, gangs, domestic abuse, and even violence against animals. The Secretary of Peace (the department would function at the Cabinet level) would specifically be authorized and directed to "draw on local, regional, and national expertise to develop plans and programs for addressing the root sources of conflict in troubled areas." This is pretty exciting stuff for those of us who would like to see our nation place moral force on a level equal to—or higher than—that of military force. If readers want to go read the entire text of this important bill, you can go online and visit the Thomas website at http://thomas.loc.gov/. (This is, by the way, THE place to go if you want to find out about legislative goings-on in the nation's capital.) The names of the bill's 43 co-sponsors are also listed on the Thomas site, and the list is, for me, a sort of Honor Roll of progressive Representatives. If your representative is not on the list, perhaps you could call or write them and tell them what you think. A Cabinet-level Department of Peace. Imagine that. |
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A November 2nd story in the New York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print") entitled "Bush Plans Speeches With Coherent, Unified Message," stated that "a sort of post-attack honeymoon period between the domestic news media and the White House has seemed to have run its course." The article is a sort of classic of the inadvertently-revealing type for which the Times is somewhat famous among media critics, although the phenomenon is hardly unique to the nation's Newspaper of Record. The Times reports that "some White House officials have made no secret of their displeasure as newspapers and evening television shows have highlighted how some officials have contradicted each other..." It's about as close to human nature as you can get to be "displeased" when somebody points out that you are lying, I would say, so why is this news? The inadvertently-revealing part is that this non-news is seen by the Times as "fit to print," while an easily-available quotation by any number of people to the effect that it may be the JOB of an independent press to hold public officials accountable in some way is not "fit to print." The nearly-unintelligible article seems to be hinting that some in the Free Press were beginning to get upset about the Bush Administration's almost complete refusal to tell the media anything beyond the official "Line of the Day" (a.k.a. the "coherent, unified message" of the headline). A "scholar of the presidency" from the Brookings Institution was trotted out to say that "Journalists, like nature, abhor a vacuum." (The vacuum being, in this case, the lack of any information about what the government is doing in its prosecution of the war in Afghanistan.) Such a refusal to allow the press access to anything important provides "little grist for television news programs," the Times reports, and quotes the "scholar" saying that the day's news "consequently becomes about whether the coalition will hold together, or civilian casualties." Imagine a press corps so starved for important information that it is forced to report on something as boring as civilian casualties. What kind of ratings is that going to get? Midway through this fascinating report, the Times states that, since the end of the "honeymoon," the "press corps that was at first so seemingly supportive that the three major cable news networks put American flags on their screens immediately after the attacks has for days been asking tough questions about the administration's handling of the anthrax attacks and the efficacy of its military strategy." Assumptions as Propaganda Three important propaganda points are present here, made all the more powerful by appearing as silent assumptions, or undebatable truths, rather than as explicitly-stated arguments. The first is that the display of American flags is not to be seen as a show of loyalty to or love of one's country, but rather is a show of support for the policies of the President. The administration would love it if people believed that, since we will then believe that these complex symbols sprouting in shop windows and on automobile bumpers around the country are actually a code for "Re-Elect Bush in 2004!" The second assumption is that it is "tough" for the media to question an administration about its policies. This would be laughable in many countries where there is something called an "opposition" that occasionally is inclined to challenge the current leadership. Here it is considered "tough." So we have a "tough" press corps. Perhaps the most important assumption is that it would occur to no one to ask some really tough questions of the President, having to do with possible war crimes committed by the United States, for example, or the legality of conducting an undeclared war against a nation whose guilt has never been established before the world. My favorite part from this particular article—as I think it is the most transparently revealing of them all—is a note that the end of the "honeymoon" between the press and the Prez "has led to an increased level of cajoling of reporters and television correspondents by White House representatives." As an example of this "cajoling," the Times reports that NBC News reporter Campbell Brown, after asking Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge some "tough questions" during a press briefing, received a phone call from "a senior administration official" in the White House. The Times didn't see fit to report what the questions were, nor who this anonymous-as-always official was, but Ms. Brown reported that, whoever it was, they "gently chided" her for stepping out of line, however slight the offense. Ms. Brown reportedly said, "To get an unsolicited phone call from a senior official at the White House is very unusual." Unusual, indeed. And, we can imagine, very chilling for those who wish to have continued access to White House press briefings. |
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"The recent military collapse of the Taliban has created a misperception in the Western media and public that the humanitarian crisis has eased. In fact, it has reached a critical stage." So says a coalition of human rights and social justice groups in an open letter to Jean Ziegler, Special United Nations Rapporteur on the Right to Food. The letter to Mr. Ziegler was released on December 10th, which was International Human Rights Day, and received exactly zero coverage in the American corporate media (the "left" media was no better, as far as I know). The conscientious group of eight U.S.-based human rights, religious, and social justice groups did a far-ranging study of the consequences of the ongoing war and "militarization of food aid" on the fate of the long-suffering Afghan refugees and Internally Displaced Persons, or IDPs. While the report acknowledges the complex web of causes for the crisis, it rightly focuses on the parts for which our own government bears responsibility. For example, the report states that "Unless all parties to the armed conflict prioritize an urgent humanitarian response, thousands of Afghans will die of hunger and exposure during the winter months," but makes it clear that "the US bears legal responsibility for violations resulting from both its direct control over Afghan airspace and parts of the country, and its decisive military and political support for the Northern Alliance." The report clearly explains how a variety of rights embodied in international law—such as the human right to food, the right of humanitarian access, and the right of humanitarian independence—are being grossly violated by the U.S. and its allies, with details drawn from a variety of sources, carefully footnoted. The report points out, for example, that "the well-established legal basis for humanitarian operations is complete independence from all parties to a conflict," and goes on to show how destructive has been "the U.S. [subsuming] of relief operations within its military campaign." Details are given as to exactly how the Taliban, the Northern Alliance, and the United States have all made the existing food crisis worse than it was before October 7th, when the U.S. bombing began. The report gives extensive documentation for its charge that "the US has continued to subordinate humanitarian objectives to its military priorities," reminding all who care to know that "the policy of sidelining relief agencies until all war objectives are completed, despite the urgent need to respond to a grave humanitarian crisis, only heightens the impression [of many people in Afghanistan and elsewhere] that military priorities have totally superceded humanitarian concerns." The open letter ends with a plea to Mr. Ziegler to call upon all parties to the conflict—and, indeed, all people of good will—to do two things:
Find the entire letter, including its impressive list of footnotes, on the web at http://www.cesr.org/Emergency%20Response/afghanistan.htm. |