This Week:

Quote of the Week

Global Human Welfare: Not Worth Reporting?

"A Dramatic, but Largely Unknown, Decline in the Number of Wars"

A Few More Unreported Reports
Seeing is Not Believing in the Twilight Zone

Greetings,

Happy Ground Hog's Day.

A lot of important things never get reported by the corporate media.  Have you noticed?  This week I mention just a few important studies and reports that have come out over the past six months but never made it into the news.

The final piece this week is yet another installment from the surreal and amazing pages of the Business pages.  Specifically the Advertising press.  This stuff is always weird, yet it's not only weird.  It also tells us a lot about the nature of our culture, methinks.  See what you think.

Reporting on the reports,

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week:

From the Human Development Report 2005, released to the world on September 7th, 2005:

"What is not in doubt is the simple truth that, as a global community, we have the means to eradicate poverty and to overcome the deep inequalities that divide countries and people.  The fundamental question that remains to be answered five years after the Millennium Declaration was signed is whether the world's governments have the resolve to break with past practice and act on their promise to the world's poor.  If ever there was a moment for decisive political leadership to advance the shared interests of humanity, that moment is now."

Global Human Welfare: Not Worth Reporting?

In September of the year 2000, at a global summit at the United Nations, the world community endorsed a document called the "Millennium Declaration."  This declaration included eight goals for human societies on the planet, which are referred to as the Millennium Development Goals.  The aim, as agreed in the Declaration, was to meet these goals within 15 years, which would be by the year 2015.  Very few people have even heard of these goals.  So I'll list them here, with very brief explanations of each one and, where I know it, the current status of the goal.

The Millennium Development Goals

Goal 1: To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.  Specifically, to reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day, and also reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger in this world.  Status as of 2005:  In 2015, on current trends, there would be 827 million people living in extreme poverty--380 million more than if the internationally agreed target were reached.  Another 1.7 billion people would be living on $2 a day.

Goal 2: To achieve universal primary education.  Specifically, to ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling.  Status as of 2005, based on current trends:  In 2015, 47 million children would still be out of school, 19 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa.

Goal 3: To promote gender equality and empower women. Specifically, to eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015.

Goal 4: To reduce child mortality.  Specifically, to reduce by two thirds the mortality rate among children under five.  Status as of 2005:  On current trends, the goal to reduce the deaths of children under five years of age would be met in 2045, not 2015-- 30 years late.  Over the next decade, the cumulative human cost of missing the target would translate into 41 million more child deaths.

Goal 5: To improve maternal health.  Specifically, to reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio.

Goal 6: To combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.  Specifically, to halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, and to halt and begin to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.

Goal 7: To ensure environmental sustainability.  Specifically, to integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes; to reverse loss of environmental resources; to reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water; and to achieve significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020.  Status as of 2005, based on current trends:  Instead of halving the ranks of the one billion people who lack access to fresh drinking water, on current trends the world in 2015 would still be 210 million people short of this goal.  More than two billion would still lack proper sanitation in 2015, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.

Goal 8: To develop a global partnership for development.  This one has a longer explanation, but some of the things it calls for are: "Addressing the least developed countries' special needs," and "Dealing comprehensively with developing countries' debt problems," and "developing decent and productive work for youth," and "providing access to affordable essential [pharmaceutical] drugs in developing countries."

How Are We Doing?

"Almost all of the goals will be missed by most countries, some of them by epic margins."  That's what the UN Development Programme said in its annual Human Development Report (HDR), the 2005 version of which was released on September 7th, in the lead-up to a mid-September 5-year assessment of progress on the goals.  Only two U.S. newspapers, the New York Times and the LA Times, bothered to note the release of this report, and both of them relegated it to short articles on the inside pages.  (I reported this in Nygaard Notes #307.)  I wish I could say that this was due to the fact that U.S. media was obsessed at that moment (understandably) with Hurricane Katrina.  But this major annual report never gets reported much in this country, at least not in recent years.

A lot of this year's HDR was about inequality, and a lot of it talked about the Millennium Development Goals, so here are just a very few points from that report, which I'm sorry I didn't find more room for when it came out (what was I thinking?):

In order to meet the Millennium Development Goals, members of the United Nations have pledged to increase their Official Development Assistance to 0.7 percent of their Gross National Income, or GNI.  That is, 70 cents out of every 100 dollars.  As of 2004 (the most recent figures available) only five countries have met this goal, and they are Norway, Denmark, Luxembourg, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

The United States, on the other hand, gives a mere 0.17 percent of its GNI, (about one-fourth of the needed level) which is the second-lowest of any country in the world.  Only Italy is lower.  The NY Times reports that "Richard Grenell, a spokesman for the United States at the United Nations, disputes the idea that the United States is stingy. 'Let me remind the authors [of the HDR] that President Bush has increased overall development assistance from the United States by 90 percent since he took office,' he said."  That's true, but let Nygaard Notes remind Mr. Grenell that this increase is from the baseline of the level of giving in 2001.  At that time U.S. aid levels stood at 0.11 percent of our GNI, and we were the absolute lowest in the world.  So it's still pathetic.  Yet the NY Times reported on September 14th that U.S. officials went out of their way to "make it plain that the administration, while agreeing on the need for increased aid, has not and will not promise to give 70 cents of every $100 of national income" for foreign aid.  Sounds kinda stingy to me.

The urgent need is made abundantly clear in the 388 pages of the Report.  Here are a few startling facts:

*  In 2003, 18 countries with a combined population of 460 million people registered lower scores on the human development index than in 1990--an unprecedented reversal.
*  In the midst of an increasingly prosperous global economy, 10.7 million children every year do not live to see their fifth birthday, and more than 1 billion people survive in abject poverty on less than $1 a day.
*  The HIV/AIDS pandemic has inflicted the single greatest reversal in human development.  In 2003 the pandemic claimed 3 million lives and left another 5 million people infected.  Millions of children have been orphaned.

The Report also commented on "the sheer scale of inequality" in the world, saying: "The world's richest 500 individuals have a combined income greater than that of the poorest 416 million.  Beyond these extremes, the 2.5 billion people living on less than $2 a day--40% of the world's population--account for 5% of global income.  The richest 10%, almost all of whom live in high-income countries, account for 54%."

Take a moment and really try to understand those numbers.  It's very difficult, I think.

Once you think you understand those numbers, consider these numbers, from page 4 of the Report: "Even modest shifts in distribution from top to bottom could have dramatic effects on poverty.  Using a global income distribution database, we estimate a cost of $300 billion for lifting 1 billion people living on less than $1 a day above the extreme poverty line threshold.  That amount represents 1.6% of the income of the richest 10% of the world's population."

The Report isn't all bad news.  On average, people in developing countries are healthier, better educated and less impoverished--and they are more likely to live in a multiparty democracy.  Since 1990 life expectancy in developing countries has increased by 2 years.  There are 3 million fewer child deaths annually and 30 million fewer children out of school.  More than 130 million people have escaped extreme poverty.

"These human development gains should not be underestimated," the authors remind us.  They're right; we (the human race, that is) are making progress.  But this report makes it crystal clear that the gap between the progress we are making and the progress that we are CAPABLE of making--were we not so stingy--is immense.  Looking at that gap, the Report concludes that: "There is little cause for celebration."

Read this amazing report for yourself online at http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2005/ (OK, the whole report is a little lengthy, at 388 pages, but I recommend the 14-page Overview, which is also amazing.)

"A Dramatic, But Largely Unknown, Decline in the Number of Wars"

The "President" of the United States said in his State of the Union speech that America needs to be an empire (which he calls "American leadership") because "The only alternative...is a dramatically more dangerous and anxious world."  And he says that international terrorism is perhaps the greatest threat to the free peoples of the world since, if it succeeds, then "the violent" will "inherit the earth."  But has the world really gotten more dangerous and anxious as U.S. power has been increasingly challenged in the past 20 years by the European Union, Japan, and now China?  And is terrorism really our greatest danger?  A recently-released and largely-unreported study attempts to answer these questions, and at times seems to be speaking almost directly to Mr. Bush.

The first ever Human Security Report, released on October 17th,  "documents a dramatic, but largely unknown, decline in the number of wars, genocides and human rights abuse over the past decade."  The report was put out by a group called the Human Security Centre, which is funded by five nations--Canada, Britain, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland.  It won't be their last report.

"Human security," says the Centre, "is a relatively new concept... used to describe the complex of interrelated threats associated with civil war, genocide and the displacement of populations.  The distinction between human security and national security is an important one.  While national security focuses on the defence of the state from external attack, human security is about protecting individuals and communities from any form of political violence."

The Centre adds that "secure states do not automatically mean secure peoples.  Protecting citizens from foreign attack may be a necessary condition for the security of individuals, but it is not a sufficient one.  Indeed, during the last 100 years far more people have been killed by their own governments than by foreign armies."  Think here of the Nazi Holocaust.  Or Indonesia under Suharto.  Or Chile under Pinochet.  Etc.

In the Overview of the report, the Centre states that "The wars that dominated the headlines of the 1990s were real--and brutal--enough.  But the global media have largely ignored the 100-odd conflicts that have quietly ended since 1988.  During this period, more wars stopped than started."

And the global media, dominated by the U.S. media, ignored this report, too.  The release of this Report--three years in the making--was noted by only two major newspapers in this country. (Nygaard Notes reported on it, in the October 31st issue, I should remind people.)

The Report lists a number of "myths and misunderstandings" about global security, including this myth: "The gravest threat to human security is international terrorism."  This and other myths--"some of [which] originated in the media"--"are widely believed because they reinforce popular assumptions."  And, the Report adds, "they often drive political agendas."

The Report notes an "80% decline in the most deadly civil conflicts ... that has taken place since the early 1990s."  This decline, they say, is primarily driven by "the extraordinary upsurge of activism by the international community that has been directed toward conflict prevention, peacemaking and peacebuilding."

There are many reasons why such a study is important, but perhaps one of the best reasons was offered by South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who wrote the introduction to the report.  After noting the importance of the "UN-led post-Cold War upsurge in peacekeeping, peacebuilding and conflict prevention," the Archbishop says, "It turns out that cooperative multilateral security strategies are far more effective than the UN's critics allow."  And, although he doesn't say it, far more effective than declaring "war" on an idea.

There's a LOT more I could say about this, but go look for yourself.  The "2005 Human Security Report: War and Peace in the 21st Century" is available online at http://www.humansecurityreport.info/

A Few More Unreported Reports

Think tanks and other groups are always studying things, and releasing reports that help us understand the world a little better (sometimes a LOT better).  When a new report or study from a credible organization on a timely and important subject is released, that release is considered "news."  Of course, as we have just seen, some important reports are released with little or no notice paid by the Mainstream Corporate For-Profit Agenda-Setting Bound Media.  Here are three more examples of reports that I thought were worth noting, but weren't noted.

1.  Just last week the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute released an update of their state-by-state analysis of income trends.  Entitled "Pulling Apart," the study includes "state-specific fact sheets containing information on income inequality over the past two decades, including the changes in average incomes and income ratios."  The report documents "a national pattern of widening inequality over the past two decades."  It caused barely a ripple in the media, unfortunately.  Want to find out about your own state?  Go to http://www.cbpp.org/pubs/sfp06.htm

2.  The National Center for Children in Poverty produces a data book that provides national and state-by-state trend data on the characteristics of low-income children over the most recent  decade.  Included are statistics on parental education, parental employment, marital status, family structure, race and ethnicity, age distribution, parental nativity, home ownership, residential mobility, type of residential area, and region of residence.  It's updated annually, with the most recent update coming out just a couple of weeks ago.  This one showed that "After nearly a decade of decline, the number of children living in low-income families has been steadily increasing, a pattern that began in 2000."  In my own state of Minnesota, they report that an astonishing and shameful "71% of black children live in low-income families" !  If this isn't  newsworthy, I don't know what is.  But this important report was ignored by the nation's press, as usual.  Find out about the kids living in poverty in your own state, or in the nation as a whole, at http://www.nccp.org/pub_nst06.html

3.  On August 30th the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy released their 12th Annual CEO Compensation Survey.  This one had the intriguing title, "Executive Excess 2005: Defense Contractors Get More Bucks for the Bang."  Here are just a few comments from the 40-page report:

* "The ratio of CEO pay to average worker pay increased from 301-to-1 in 2003 to 431-to-1 in 2004.  By contrast, in 1990, the average large company CEO made just 107 times the pay of the average production worker."
* "Military contractor CEOs received a 200 percent raise since 9/11."
* "It would take an Air Force airman 3,634 years to make the $88 million that United Technologies CEO George David made in 2004." 

There's page after page of this stuff.  Worth reporting, don't you think?  The nation's media outlets didn't think so, as it merited only a single, very brief mention in a single paper, the September 1st Tampa Tribune.  (What, you didn't see it?!)  The report itself can be found at http://www.faireconomy.org/press/2005/EE2005_pr.html

So many more "unreported reports."  But no space for more right now.

Seeing is Not Believing in the Twilight Zone

I've often said that reading the Business Section of the newspapers is crucial to understanding not only what is "happening" in the U.S. of A., but also in getting a glimpse of what is going to happen.  A great example appeared in the Advertising column of the Business Section of the New York Times (All The News That's Fit To Print!) of January 2nd.  In this case we were informed about one of the many, many ways that advertisers are planning to force their products in front of our eyeballs.  "Advertisers," we are told, are "eager to reach consumers who now have the ability to skip traditional commercials using digital recorders like TiVo."

The Next Big Thing, it seems, is something called "virtual product placement."  In case you haven't heard of it, virtual product placement is "a process that uses computer graphics and digital editing to put products like potato chips, soda and shopping bags into television programs after the shows are filmed or taped."  That is, it is a process of making you see things that are not there.

The headline for this fascinating piece was "Advertising's Twilight Zone: That Signpost Up Ahead May Be a Virtual Product."  Now, for those who remember The Twilight Zone, the whole point of it was that it was creepy, and it was creepy because things were very often not as they appeared.  That's why this article's headline was so perfect, as the following quotations from the article will illustrate:

One of the "major players" in virtual product placement is Marathon Ventures, based in Wakarusa, Indiana.  "In the last couple of years," the Times tells us, "the company ... has used its technology ... on several CBS shows, and it is developing versions for NBC Universal and Warner Brothers for both network and syndicated shows."

"'Anything you can package, we can do,' said David Brenner, the president of Marathon. 'We could do pharmaceuticals, shampoos, takeout foods, bags from Target.'"

Perhaps you are old-fashioned enough to think that a production should be faithful to the intentions of people like directors.  Or authors.  Well, let go of that idea because, in the words of Elizabeth Herbst-Brady, one of the people who places these "virtual products" on your screen, decisions about things like what is in the scenes you see are nothing but "production nonsense" and are easy to "bypass."  And, furthermore, "producers appreciate" that a "virtual product "does not need to be accounted for on the set or written into the script.  In addition, shots of a product, unlike real brand insertion, cannot be cut out by late editing changes."

(For the record, some actual writers of actual TV shows, members of the Writers Guild of America, West, "don't think advertising and network executives' desire to cash in on the emotional connections viewers have with their favorite show should go unchecked."  They've started a project to allow viewers to be heard on this.  Go to http://productinvasion.com/ .)

Meanwhile, the Times tells us that the virtual images "look quite real, although they sometimes seem artificially bright if one looks at them closely.  The results are much more effective if one is not aware in advance that an item has been inserted."  That is, when something fake seems real, that is "much more effective."  Got it?

There are all sorts of other things that make these illusions effective, as well.  A product placement "has to be contextually logical," Mr. Brenner says, adding that "We wouldn't put a Coke can on the bathroom sink."  No, of course not.  Just like you wouldn't put an oil well in a national wildlife refuge.  Like any lie, if it is too fantastic, no one will believe it!

Mr. Brenner's son, Jake, who just happens to be director of integrated marketing at Marathon, says that "We like to say [our virtual product] becomes part of the landscape of life."

Ah, yes.  The landscape of life!  The life that appears on our TV screens, that is.  And, as Ms. Herbst-Brady puts it, "It's no different than if the cereal box was there.  It's all television." And television is the thing that used to bring us a show called The Twilight Zone.  But now, increasingly, television IS The Twilight Zone.