| Number 150 | March 22, 2002 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, Some weeks I try to produce Nygaard Notes with a theme on a single subject—like last week—and other weeks come out like this one, which is a veritable potpourri, a hodgepodge, a medley, a smorgasbord! Variety is the spice of life, don't you think? And next week's will be, er, uh, well, I don't know what next week's will be yet. And that's the beauty of it, they tell me. But it's not just variety for variety's sake. The paradox of critical thinking is that one must simultaneously study the details AND keep the big picture in mind. The details, because our little brains are too limited to take in the big picture all the time. And the big picture, because without that the details won't make any sense. That's why my focus last week on the death of a single individual is of a piece with my essay this week on the CIA director's testimony. And, before that, an overarching look at American ideology. Threaded throughout is an emphasis on the means by which we receive our information and our ideas about "how the world is." It all fits together, y'see. It all fits together. Welcome to the new readers this week. I hope you will stick with me in the ongoing attempt to connect the dots. Nygaard |
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This week's "Quote" appears in the form of a quiz. Which prominent politician uttered the following two quotations, and to which "winner" were they referring?
If you guessed Al Gore, referring to George W. Bush in November of 2000, that would be a reasonable guess. However, we are living in the world of Orwell now. The above words, as recorded in the New York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print") of March 14th, were in fact uttered by Mr. Bush himself (the second quote comes from Colin Powell, actually), referring to Robert Mugabe's re-election as president of Zimbabwe earlier this month. This is not a comment on whether the Zimbabwe election was valid or not. But, really. George W. Bush and his Secretary of State? Criticizing another president's campaign tactics? And questioning another leader's democratic legitimacy? |
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On July 1, 2002, many families will run up against the idiotic and immoral "5-Year-Lifetime Limit" on receiving welfare benefits that were imposed as part of the federal government's welfare "reform" law of the mid-1990s. States, however, do have some options to do the right thing, which in Minnesota could take the form of placing a moratorium on the 5-year-limit. This would prevent any families from being cut off public assistance, particularly important at a time when the economy is doing poorly and jobs are pretty hard to find. Last week the Welfare Rights Committee put out a plea for donations to help pay for a commercial to speak about the time limits on welfare and to get a moratorium passed in our state this year. The commercial will also give telephone numbers for people to call their politicians to support the moratorium. As the WRC points out, "The politicians want to be done by spring, so this is an immediate request." I'll say more about welfare in a future Nygaard Notes. In the meantime, to learn more or to get information about this issue, call 612-822-8020. Or just go ahead and send your contribution directly to the Welfare Rights Committee, 310 East 38th Street #207, Minneapolis, MN 55409 (Payable to the Welfare Rights Committee) |
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As I said last week, my fellow able-bodied citizens of European descent sometimes get upset when I use terms like "racism," "white supremacy," and "ablism." Whether readers are upset or merely intrigued by my seemingly-casual use of such language, I offer here a list of brief definitions of some of the more challenging words and phrases I used last week. This list is not intended to be comprehensive, but rather could perhaps be a starting point for those who want to explore these important concepts a little bit. I could list approximately 4,366,587 more sites, but I won't, for obvious reasons. Before you dive in, here is a caution: When beginning your journey of undoing oppression, be careful about who you turn to. There are many organizers and activists who are doing what I would call "genuine" anti-oppression work And there are many "false prophets" who claim to be doing "diversity" work, or something else that sounds good, but can really lead you off on the wrong track. I won't go into here what I mean by "genuine," but it has to do with a radical and systemic approach versus a reformist and individualized approach. With that in mind, here's the list:
Words like "racism," "white supremacy," and "ablism" were difficult terms for me when I first encountered them. What do you expect from a guy who grew up in small-town Minnesota in the 20th century? It was particularly difficult when I learned that I personally was participating in maintaining these systems of oppression! Over the years I've managed to dig myself partway out of the "Ignorance of Privilege" hole. It's been a lot of hard work, it's ongoing, and my life is much better for it. |
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Jeff Nygaard paid $49.04 for federal efforts to protect the environment in 2001. Jeff also paid $539.44 to support the federal military budget in 2001. Does this spending reflect Jeff's priorities? No, but those are the facts, courtesy of the "Interactive Federal Income Tax Chart," found on the website of the National Priorities Project (http://www.nationalpriorities.org/index.htm). Go to the site and you, too, can enter your income for 2001 and the detailed pie chart will tell you how your tax money is being spent. I recommended the NPP last year around this time as a good source for some nuts-and-bolts information on how public (tax) money is spent in this country. Once again the good folks at NPP have published their invaluable "State of the States" report. If you want to find out how many uninsured kids live in your state, or the size of the gap in your state between the minimum wage and the living wage, the "State of the States" report is the place to look. There's lots more in each report, and it's current, having just been released six weeks ago. On this site you can check out the latest data for all 50 states on topics such as Nuclear Missile Defense, Species & Wetlands, Child Poverty Rates (correlated with welfare spending), Head Start, OSHA funding, and on and on. Very simple; very clear. I happen to enjoy looking at statistical charts, but if you're a more normal person you may prefer to learn some of this stuff by taking NPP's "interactive quizzes" on any number of subjects. (I took the Housing one and scored 50%, which they said is "Better than the Average Bear.") The site includes not only extensive information on the proposed Bush administration budget, but also some detail on "alternative budgets," such as the proposal supported by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. You see on this site, for example, that Bush proposes a three percent decrease in funding for higher education, while the Progressive Caucus proposes a 74% increase. That's not insignificant. NPP's site is not only about information. They also give some concrete help for those who wish to affect the budget process in their "Tax Action Media Package," which includes sample letters to the editor and other helpful tools. NPP's slogan is "Data For Democracy Since 1983." In my dreams, the United States would have an independent mass media that would pass on such data to its citizens as a matter of course. As it is, I doubt that many people even know, for example, that there is such a thing as a Progressive Caucus in the federal Congress, much less that they have proposed a budget that is a clear alternative to the President's "Terror Trumps All" budget. For the time being, we'll have to rely on sources like Nygaard Notes and the other good efforts to which I try to call attention in these pages. |
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On February 5th, CIA Director George Tenet testified before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, talking about terrorism and so forth. He said many terrifying things. Some of those things were intentionally terrifying, being part of the official intent to convince the population that there are terrorists hiding under our beds ready to strike unless we agree to let the Marines set up camp in our basements. These are the remarks that were faithfully trumpeted in the corporate press, with such headlines as "Qaeda Still Able to Strike the U.S., Head of CIA Says; Senators Hear Warning," and "Al-Qaeda Still Hunting U.S. Targets, CIA Director Tells Panel." If you actually read the testimony, however, you will find at least a couple of very important comments that were either unreported or underreported in the daily papers. One came in the Director's prepared remarks, when he was warning of the ongoing threat of Al-Qaeda and said "Operations against U.S. targets could be launched by al Qaeda cells already in place in major cities in Europe and the Middle East." No one pursued this comment although, if true, the logic of The War Against Terror (The WAT?!) would indicate that we will soon be launching military attacks on major cities in Europe. Perhaps the most interesting exchange occurred about halfway through the session. I will reproduce it here verbatim (recall that John Walker Lindh is the U.S. citizen that allegedly was fighting with al-Qaeda against the United States): SEN. PAT ROBERTS (R-KAN): Let me ask you one more question on what the coffee klatch or the coffee club in Dodge City, Kansas, would ask. And that is, there have been a number of reports, either right or not, that the CIA had downgraded its human intelligence effort in the Afghan region. I know that you have stated very clear that it's not the case, that there were serious shortages of officers within the necessary language qualifications. That probably is the case. And there was a disinclination to get too close to the terrorist networks. Now I'm not trying to put that as a fact; I'm just saying that's background. But what fellows at the Dodge City coffee klatch ask me is, if John Walker Lindh could get to talk to Osama bin Laden, why in the heck couldn't the CIA get an agent closer to him? MR. TENET: Well, I'm not going to do this in open session, but you better tell everybody at the cafe it's not true. SEN. ROBERTS: I got you. Is the Director saying that Lindh was not close to bin Laden? If not, it certainly sounds like the Director of Central Intelligence is saying that they had agents "close" to bin Laden in the period leading up to the attacks. Although we won't ever hear what goes on in these closed sessions, Mr. Tenet certainly gives the impression that the United States had infiltrated bin Laden's inner circle. Why would this be a secret? If such infiltration explains how the United States supposedly identified bin Laden as the culprit within days of the attacks, then it also indicates that the CIA likely had prior knowledge and did not act to prevent the attacks. Another possibility is that they were "close" enough to bin Laden to know that he actually had no direct role in the attacks, which would make the purported rationale for our attack on Afghanistan completely fraudulent. The Associated Press story on the testimony actually included part of the exchange mentioned above, with a crucial difference: After quoting Tenet saying "... you better tell everybody at the cafe it's not true," the AP stated that "He would not elaborate." As the transcript shows, no one asked him to elaborate; "I got you" translates as a wink and a nod. (The NY Times didn't even report this crucial exchange.) To be fair to the hard-working reporters who filed the stories I saw, I should point out that Tenet's testimony took up some 30 pages, and totaled almost 20,000 words. Any reporter will have to pick and choose which exchanges or remarks are newsworthy. And this exactly illustrates why diversity and accountability is so important in our media system. Imagine if Nygaard Notes were present at the hearing. The headline would be a little different. Perhaps "CIA Chief Reports European Capitals Harboring Terrorist Cells." Or, maybe "CIA Chief Hints at Pre-Attack Contacts with Bin Laden; Senators Fail to Press For Details." |