| Number 175 | October 11, 2002 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, As promised, I had "Beyond Good and Evil, Part 2" almost entirely written a couple of days ago. However, as I reflected on it yesterday, I realized that I had taken an approach that did not really capture what I want to say. So, as we say in the journalism bizness, I spiked it. I didn't have time to totally rework it before deadline this week so I will have it for you next week. Don't worry, it will come with a little summary of Part 1, so we can pick up where we left off. Instead of BGE2, I offer a meditation on the nature of wartime propaganda, intended to help people defend themselves against the already-underway flood of mis- and dis-information that accompanies not only war, but the build-up for war. For you new subscribers, Welcome aboard! I am sorry you have to start out by reading a Pledge Drive issue. I don't do it very often, but it must be done now and then. Next week will be back to "Normal," for the most part. Thanks for your support, Nygaard |
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The New York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print") of October 10th reported on the CIA's report that Saddam Hussein does not pose much of a threat to the U.S. The Pentagon and the "President," of course, have been telling us that Iraq is the greatest threat in the history of the world. Here's the Times' comment on the rift among the elites:
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October is Nygaard Notes Pledge Month. I try to do a Nygaard Notes Pledge Drive a couple of times each year. The last one was in February, so I figure it must be about time again. Here's what a Nygaard Notes Pledge Drive is, in a nutshell: During pledge week I ask readers to make an annual donation, kind of like a subscription; I'm calling it a pledge. Most people make annual pledges. Some people make monthly pledges, which is great! NOTE TO CURRENT PLEDGERS: I try to send out "official" reminders to renew your pledge after 44 issues, but I am not always prompt about it, due to time constraints. (This is, by the way, another example of how more donations would make the Notes better—more time to do the clerical work.) So, if you have already sent in your renewal, no point in you reading any further than this crucial point: THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! Those of you who have not yet pledged, please read on... I always say that Nygaard Notes subscriptions are free, and they are. Pledges are voluntary, so no one will stop getting Nygaard Notes if they choose not to make a donation. But I hope many of you do find it in your hearts to make a contribution. This first issue of the (typically) 3-week Pledge Drive is mostly devoted to explaining why and how you can contribute money to Nygaard Notes, and why you might want to. The second and third weeks will have reminders and further encouragement of some sort; I don't know what sort yet. In addition to the straightforward plea for support, Nygaard Notes Pledge Drives usually include some of my thinking about why you might want to support independent media in general. It is a simple fact that I couldn't do Nygaard Notes if people didn't pledge their support. Why? I would have to spend too much time at my "day job" to be able to write on a regular basis. I tried that in the past, and it didn't work. |
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It's been about four years since I started publishing Nygaard Notes. There are currently about 650 subscribers, and I am aiming for 20,000. That's an arbitrary target but not a random one—I.F. Stone's Weekly, after which Nygaard Notes is loosely modeled, had a peak circulation of about 20,000 subscribers. Not too many readers, but quite inspiring and useful to those who did read it, and influential beyond its size. Sounds good to me! It's not just a personal ambition to increase the reach of the Notes; here is my mission statement:
Since Nygaard Notes is a political project, and not a business, I will never require that people send me money in order to receive a subscription. But, while it is not necessary for each individual to donate to Nygaard Notes, it IS important that many of you do. |
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To make a pledge, all you do is make out a check, payable to "Jeff Nygaard" and send it to the address found both at the beginning and at the end of this issue of the Notes. I'll say it again: Pledges are voluntary, so NO ONE WILL BE TAKEN OFF OF THE NYGAARD NOTES LIST FOR NOT DONATING. I think of Nygaard Notes as a community resource, and I call this process a "pledge drive" because it operates on the same principle as community radio or public radio. Everyone knows that they can listen without pledging, but everyone also knows that SOMEBODY has to pledge, or the whole thing falls apart. Unlike public radio, Nygaard Notes does not have any big grants or corporate support, and probably never will, for reasons that I hope are obvious. And Nygaard Notes will never have any advertising, although I get approached by potential advertisers now and then. As a point of reference, I can state that if every one of the current subscribers pledged just TEN dollars per year, that would make up well more than half of my income. Now, I don't expect every subscriber to pledge, but I do expect some readers to pledge more than $10. Maybe some will pledge $50, or $100, or....who knows? The last time I did this, the pledges ranged from $5 to several hundred dollars, and each and every one was much appreciated. To help you calculate what is fair for you, I give some ideas of how to think about it in the following essay "How Much To Donate?" Donations are not tax-deductible, I'm sorry to say. I have not gone the route of becoming an official "non-profit" organization. This is not to imply that I do make a "profit," however; I would quit my day job if I did. |
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There are at least three different ways to think about this. Method #1: The traditional way is "How much is each copy worth to me?" I don't care for this method, since it implies that the project is some sort of commodity for sale like a box of corn flakes, but it is one way to think about it. If this is your choice, here are some numbers: A pledge "year" I consider to be 44 issues. That seems to be how many I put out in a calendar year, although it's quite fluid, as regular readers well know. If each issue is worth a dollar to you, then you could send me $44. Fifty cents each? Then it's $22. If you would be willing to shell out eight-and-a-half cents for each issue, then send a check for $2.86. You get the idea. Method #2: A second way to think about this is to relate your contribution to your own income or wealth. Are you willing to devote one or two hour's worth of your wages each year to supporting Nygaard Notes? Then send me that amount. If you make minimum wage, I am more than happy to accept $5.15 or $10.30 for your annual subscription donation. If you make closer to the average household income, then you would make an annual contribution of something like $18 to $36. Using this yardstick, the average American physician would send me $90 to $180 per year. You get this idea, too, I'm sure. In a related way, you could send one-tenth of 1% of your net worth. For the average household, this would be $37. (For help in figuring out your own wealth, the average household income, etc., see Nygaard Notes #138.) Method #3: Some of you may want to set your own arbitrary annual amount and send that along. Fine. Not everybody likes to formalize things like I do. The point is that I will record whatever you send and then I will contact you 44 issues later (hopefully) and ask you to renew your pledge. I even send pre-addressed and stamped envelopes! There are other ways, besides donating money, that people can support Nygaard Notes. I'll give some ideas in the next week or two. Thanks to all of you who renewed your pledge without my even asking. Again, this is totally voluntary. No one will stop getting Nygaard Notes for lack of a donation. Also, this is not Enron, so your pledges don't get you any special treatment. (Oops, I forgot: the President told us that Enron got nothing in return for its contributions. Sorry, Mr. President!) In any case, all Nygaard Notes readers get the same wonderful treatment, all letters get replies, questions get answered, and so forth, money or no money. That's the end of the pledge drive stuff for this week. Let's take a look at wartime propaganda. |
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As the War Against Terrorism (the WAT?!) continues, the efforts of peace activists and anti-imperialists may or may not succeed in preventing the ongoing attack on Iraq to escalate into an full-blown war. In case our efforts don't succeed, many United Statesians will learn about the war from the nation's newspapers and other mass media. As a sort of "inoculation" against the predictable deluge of wartime propaganda that will attend such an disaster, I offer the following thoughts, drawn from media accounts of one of the other military fronts in the WAT?! The New York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print") of March 14th carried a story headlined "Mystery of Afghan War: Taliban and Qaeda Death Toll." This story reviewed the U.S. military's claims of enormous enemy "body counts" (Remember those from Vietnam?), and how hard it was to reconcile these claims with reporters' inability to find significant numbers of corpses anywhere in the country. Towards the end of the story, it was reported that "Pentagon officials estimate that about 100 [enemy fighters] remain in ever smaller pockets of resistance." Another Pentagon spokesman acknowledged that "small numbers of fighters may have slipped out" of the area, but that his troops had "largely sealed off the area." That was in March. Then, on June 26th, the Washington Post reported that "U.S. officials estimate that up to 1,000 al-Qaeda fighters still operate in small groups on both sides of the mountainous border area" between Afghanistan and Pakistan. So, were there 100 survivors, or ten times that many? Did they "slip out" or were they "sealed off?" Same anonymous "official" sources, two different answers. In the same March 14th Times, on the same page in fact, we saw the headline "Details of Victory Are Unclear But It Is Celebrated Nonetheless." [Ed. note: I'm not making this up.] Reporting on the 11-day allied offensive in the Shah-I-Kot Valley in Afghanistan, the article noted that Afghan troops in the valley were "celebrating with their tutors from American Special Forces," and then the reporter tried to explain the cause of the celebration. This attempt was "perplexing, leaving a raft of contradictions" about the battle. After noting that "American officials continued to speak about a vast number of well-appointed caves that served as enemy fortresses" and in which numerous enemy fighters had been killed, a General Haider, "one of the two main Afghan commanders,...called this notion ‘propaganda' and said he knew of only five or six caverns, none very big." Is it important how many caves there were, how large they were, how many people were in them, and how many "enemies" were killed? If these details are not important, then why report them? And all of this begs the larger question: Who is "celebrating" what is going on in Afghanistan, and why? The Lessons Long-time readers may recall Step #2 in my "Four-Step Process" of reading the newspaper (Nygaard Notes #36), which says that, in order to make sense of a news report one sees in the paper, a reader must "Remember what you have previously read." I said at the time, "This seems simple enough, but it never ceases to amaze me how often readers (and writers!) seem to forget information to which they have recently been exposed. Memory is necessary in order to be able to evaluate not only the truth of what is being read, but also the credibility of the writer." With this in mind, we can draw two lessons from the above two stories. The first is that the reporting on the War Against Terrorism (the WAT?!) in the mainstream media is to be taken with a large grain of salt. I would say it is good to ignore it completely, except for the fact that there is a second lesson. The second lesson is that such propaganda forms the basis for the beliefs of many (most?) United Statesians as we collectively consent to the ongoing war, either actively or by remaining silent. If we want to change that consent to organized resistance, it's not enough to simply know "the facts." In a democracy, we have to understand, as clearly as possible, the nature of the foundation upon which the consent to war is constructed. Only then can we hope to effectively replace it with a foundation that will support peace. |