This Week:

Quote of the Week

Crisis? I’ll Show You a Crisis!

Legal or Illegal? Who Says?

Greetings,

In this issue I offer a couple of meditations on the performance of the media. Next I hope to get out a series of issues – in a brief “Talking Points” format – on the issue of Social Security “reform.”

Just off the top of my head, I hope to talk about the Trust Fund, the Three-Legged Stool, dependency ratios, “bankruptcy,” rates of return, “unfunded liabilities,” and who-knows-what else. Each piece I hope will be brief and concise, and ready to clip and copy. That way, I figure, you can take them to the next “Town Hall Meeting” about Social Security, or have them handy when you call your elected officials, or pull them out when you are talking to your uncle, who would LOVE to have the power to invest “his money” where he damn well pleases.

As you can see, I have lots of ideas about which misconceptions and areas of confusion in the realm of Social Security need attention. Heaven knows there are plenty! But if you have a specific thing that you would like me to cover, please write and let me know. As long-time readers know, I am something of an “expert” on the subject, having researched it extensively over the past 8 years or so. And I think I can answer your questions in language you can understand. So, let me know what you want, or else just wait for the flurry to hit your mailbox. Either way, you’ll end up knowing more than you know now, I’ll bet. Or, maybe you can fill me in on some stuff that I don’t know. Either way, it’s a good thing.

I want to state, for the record, that I have been working so much I am behind in many areas, including my Nygaard Notes bookkeeping. So, some of you have not gotten your pledge renewal forms in the mail. Some have not yet received their personal “thank-yous” for pledges you have sent in already. And we haven’t yet had the Spring 2005 Nygaard Notes Pledge Drive. I’m sure you’ve all been looking forward to it! So, not to worry. I’ll get to all of that pretty soon here. Just not sure when. I’m still trying to figure out this new “non-weekly” schedule. After six-and-a-half years of weekliness, I guess I was stuck deeper in the rut than I thought.

OK, thanks for bearing with me. Now, on with the Notes!

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week:

Upon the release last month of a report by the United Nations Environmental Programme called the Millennium Ecosystems Assessment, its governing board made a statement.  This is a major assessment of the Earth's capacity to support human life (upon which I report in this issue of the Notes), and the closing words of the board's statement about it are poetic and stark.  Here they are:

“The overriding conclusion of this assessment is that it lies within the power of human societies to ease the strains we are putting on the natural services of the planet, while continuing to use them to bring better living standards to all.  Achieving this, however, will require radical changes in the way nature is treated at every level of decision-making. Resilience and abundance can no longer be confused with indestructibility and infinite supply.  The warning signs are there for all of us to see. The future lies in our hands.”

Crisis?  I'll Show You a Crisis!

When it comes to the media, what is a “crisis” and what is NOT a “crisis?”  It's a subjective assessment, after all, so the use of the word is dependent on somebody's assessment of any given issue.  Let's look at two issues that may – or may not – be considered “crises.”

“Crisis” Number 1: Social Security

A search of English-language newspapers in the Lexis/Nexis database for the week of March 28th reveals almost 400 articles about the U.S. Social Security program.  This is in line with the campaign by the U.S. President and his allies to convince the population that there is a “crisis” facing the program.  Thus aided by the media, they have had some success.  Most polls now say that about 15-20 percent of the public believes the Social Security system is in a crisis. (Except for the Fox News poll, which says it's three times as many, 57 percent.)

Yet the federal Government Accountability Office, in a March 9th report to Congress, stated in their first sentence that “the Social Security system is not in crisis.”   And the GAO has a lot of evidence to support their statement.  For example, projections of the Social Security Trustees show that, if policy-makers do absolutely nothing to change the program over the next 36 years, the Social Security system will be able to pay benefits in the year 2041 that are 18 percent higher in real terms than they are now.  Yes, you read that right: with no changes at all, Social Security benefits will actually be higher in four decades than they are now.  This is due to the fact that benefit levels are set relative to average wage growth, which is always higher than inflation.

Still, that 18 percent increase would be only 75 percent of what benefits are supposed to be under current law, so it would in fact be a reduction from what is promised in current law.  But the question is: Is this a “crisis?”

Crisis #2: The “Intense Vulnerability of 2 Billion People”

A Lexis/Nexis search for the word “ecosystem” for the same week of March 28th revealed a mere three articles in the U.S. press.  I focus on that particular week because that was the week that saw the release by the United Nations Environmental Programme of what the New York Times called “the biggest review of the planet's life support systems ever.”  Yet you may not have heard about it.

The review, called the Millennium Ecosystems Assessment, was not reported at all in my local newspapers.  Yet it is a major report by any standard, drawing as it does on the work of 1,360 researchers in 95 nations.  This is the first of six so-called “Synthesis Reports” due to be released by the UNDP over the next three months.  This first one focuses on the relationship between the state of the natural world and human welfare, and it contains, as the authors say, a “stark warning.”

Stark, indeed.  Consider:  “The provision of food, fresh water, energy, and materials to a growing population has come at considerable cost to the complex systems of plants, animals, and biological processes that make the planet habitable.  As human demands increase in coming decades, [there is a] risk of further weakening the natural infrastructure on which all societies depend.”  And if the “natural infrastructure” is weakened too much, the review found, we can expect rampant disease, famine, drought, increasingly severe natural disasters, and depletion of all sorts of natural resources over the next 50 years.

A statement by the governing board of the Millennium Assessment process says, “Among the outstanding problems identified by this assessment are: the dire state of many of the world's fish stocks; the intense vulnerability of the 2 billion people living in dry regions to the loss of ecosystem services, including water supply; and the growing threat to ecosystems from climate change and nutrient pollution.”  The Board adds that “Human activities have taken the planet to the edge of a massive wave of species extinctions, further threatening our own well-being.”  This is so because “people may have increased the rate of global extinctions by as much as 1,000 times the ‘natural' rate typical of Earth's long-term history.”  And so forth.

You get the idea.

So, which is more worthy of news coverage: A possible fiscal shortfall in the U.S. Social Security system over the next 50 years that could be fully addressed with a one-percentage-point tax increase (or in any of a number of other ways)?  OR... a looming collapse of the global environment over the same period, the averting of which will require “radical changes in the way nature is treated at every level of decision-making”?  Well, my database search of the Mainstream Corporate For-Profit Agenda-Setting Bound Media revealed that their vote was 400 to 3 in favor of Social Security.

Postscript: The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is an amazing document, with much, much more in it.  If you want to see the whole thing, it is available online in PDF format.  Go to http://www.millenniumassessment.org//en/Products.aspx and click on “Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Synthesis Report – Download Now.”   At 219 pages, the Report itself is kind of lengthy, but pages 16-40 contain a pretty succinct, and mind-boggling, “Summary for Decision-Makers.”  Or, on the same web page, you could download the 24-page “Board Statement” that I quoted above.  Well worth it.

Legal or Illegal? Who Says?

Sometimes the media can convey very controversial and important points without explicitly stating them.  A good example could be seen during the week of March 14, in a series of media reports on a decision by the Israeli government to dismantle 24 of its so-called “settlement outposts” that have appeared in the West Bank territory occupied by Israel since 1967.

Most news reports on this decision that appeared in the U.S. press echoed the Los Angeles Times report that was published in my local paper the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!), which started out by saying, “Israel pledged Sunday to uproot 24 illegal Jewish settlement outposts in the West Bank.”  The New York Times, likewise, began: “The Israeli cabinet pledged Sunday to dismantle two dozen illegal settlement outposts established in the West Bank since Ariel Sharon became prime minister in 2001.”

A report on the same event in the Washington Post gave a different spin, saying “The Israeli cabinet Sunday decided to delay action against illegal settlement outposts...”

So, whether the Israeli cabinet “pledged to dismantle” the settlements, or “decided to delay action,” all of the reports on this event in the U.S. media insisted that the decision (whatever it was) had to do with something called “illegal settlement outposts.”  By referring to “illegal settlements,” all of these reports imply that there are some settlements that are not illegal.  This idea is, at best, highly controversial.  Most of the world thinks it is incorrect.

It's easy to find Israeli and non-Israeli sources that believe that some settlements are legal.  Israel's right-wing Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, for instance, maintains that “The majority of settlements in Judea and Samaria are legal ...” (“Judea and Samaria” is the term used by people like this to refer to the occupied West Bank.)  But these people are decidedly in the minority.

The New York Times, to its credit, stated in its report (in paragraph 15) that “The United Nations considers all Israeli settlements illegal.”  But it's not just the U.N. that “considers” these settlements – that is, communities of Israeli citizens that have been built on West Bank lands occupied by Israel since 1967 – illegal.  Who else does?  Well, certainly a lot of Palestinians consider them illegal.  And an Arab member of the Israeli legislative body, the Knesset, stated that “all forms of occupation are illegal, thus the settlements in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights are all illegal according to the international law...”

And Talia Sasson, a former Israeli state prosecutor, was the author of a report on settlement activity released five days before the Israeli government's March 13th decision, which found that “105 outposts that were established in past decade and received government assistance [are] in ‘blatant violation of the law.'” She's talking about Israeli law, never mind international law.

Even the very “establishment” Council on Foreign Relations in the United States, in a “backgrounder” on the Israeli settlements, says that “Most nations, citing international law, consider all of the settlements illegal...”

What Is International Law?

Like I said, most of the world agrees that all of the settlements are illegal according to international law.  So, what is this “international law” that people are talking about? 

The 49th Article of the Fourth Geneva Convention states unequivocally that “The Occupying Power [in this case, Israel] shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”  UN Security Council Resolutions 446 and 465 both reiterate that the Israeli settlements “have no legal validity” and “constitute a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”

There are now approximately 230,000 people living in 145 settlements throughout the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, according to the Israeli group Peace Now.  Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has stated on numerous occasions in the past month his intention to continue to promote new settlements and the expansion of existing settlements in the West Bank.  He has specific plans to expand the large Ma'aleh Adumim settlement near Jerusalem, which the Jewish Virtual Library says has a population of “approximately 28,000 with plans to expand eventually to 50,000.”  The JVL added that “In April 2005 [i.e., just this month], the Israeli government announced plans to move forward with a long-planned project to build additional homes” in the settlement.

It was nonetheless possible to hear Mr. Sharon, in an April 11th interview with National Public Radio, state that “Israel is a society governed by the rule of law.”

When judging the legality of the behavior of a nation acting outside of its borders, is it appropriate to rely only on the laws that are in effect inside of its borders?  Of course not.  In any case, judging the legality or illegality of the Israeli settlements is not necessary to report what happened in Israel on March 13.  Agence France Presse, for example, opened their story with this, more objective, lead sentence:  “The Israeli government decided on Sunday to dismantle 24 settlement outposts that have sprung up in the West Bank since Prime Minister Ariel Sharon came to power in March 2001...”

When the overwhelming majority of the mass media parrot the phrase “illegal settlements,” it serves to reinforce a certain ideological framework, one that happens to be preferred by the occupying power and its sponsor.  A similar ideological uniformity can be seen in mainstream reporting of another occupation going on at the moment, that of the U.S. in Iraq.  This is the sort of behavior that might be expected from state-owned, state-run media.  We should expect, and demand, better from our supposedly “free” press.