This week, a New Feature: "Off The Front Page"

Quote of the Week

Introducing a New Feature: "Off The Front Page"

Off The Front Page: Human Rights, White House Lawbreaking, and U.S. Killings

Threats and Promises

Greetings,

Starting with this issue of Nygaard Notes, I am introducing a new feature called "Off the Front Page."  It might be a regular feature.  It might be irregular.  Whatever.  There are so many examples of news that is misplaced in the media that the issue is clearly going to be selecting from  among the many possibilities.  I wish I could put out Nygaard Notes more often.  I have to skip so much stuff that it's frustrating sometimes!

Speaking of putting out Nygaard Notes more often, the next issue will be the 2006 version of the Nygaard Notes Pledge Drive, in which I ask readers to pledge their support for the Notes by sending money.  You'll read all about it next week.  The point is, the more pledges I get, the more time I can spend working on the Notes.  That means more goodies for you!  In this Pledge Drive, I plan to talk about how I put together this newsletter, and how I use my values to decide on my own "front page."  I think it'll be illuminating.  Stay tuned.

I'm sorry there has been no "Quote" of the Week for the past few weeks.  I'll try to make up for it by having some extra "Quotes" over the next few weeks.  Heaven knows there's no shortage of quotable quotations!

Happy spring, for those of you in the Northern hemisphere,

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week:

The lead headline from the March 20th USA Today: "Deaths Fall For U.S., Rise For Iraqis."

That's exactly (USA Today did not bother to say) according to plan.  The plan is to continue and accelerate this trend, at least until the midterm elections in the United States, coming up later this year.

Bonus "Quote" of the Week

This is from a recent report (February 8) from the Government Accountability Office, entitled "Rebuilding Iraq: Stabilization, Reconstruction, and Financing Challenges" (GAO-06-428T):

"The United States' goal is to help the Iraqi government develop a democratic, stable, and prosperous country, at peace with itself and its neighbors, a partner in the war against terrorism, enjoying the benefits of a free society and a market economy."

The goal?  The GAO did not discuss what would happen if a "democratic" Iraq decided to NOT be a "partner in the war against terrorism," or if it chose to build something other than a "market economy" for itself.

Introducing a New Feature: "Off The Front Page"

I love to quote legendary journalist and muckraker I.F. Stone, who is alleged to have said, "The great thing about The New York Times and The Washington Post is that you never know where you'll find a front page story."  Besides being a rather amusing thing to say, this comment has a lot of meaning, so much so that it has inspired a brand-new Nygaard Notes feature, which I plan to call "Off The Front Page."  In every issue--or, whenever I feel like it--I will point out a story or two that I think should have been on the front page, but that I actually found in a lesser location in the Mainstream Corporate For-Profit Agenda-Setting Bound Media.

I tell my media classes that the fundamental job of a journalist is to ask questions.  That is, a journalist goes to places where you and I cannot or do not go, and when they get there, their job is to ask the questions that we (the readers/viewers) would ask if we were there.  The news articles or newscasts that we later see are made up of the answers to those questions. And the questions and answers that appear in the mass media have a lot of power to shape the public understanding of the issues of the day.

One of the things that is shaped by the mass media is the accepted idea of what is "most important," what is "less important," and what is "not important."  You can tell what "news professionals" consider "most important" because those are the things that are on the front page (or, in the electronic media, at the "top of the hour," or the beginning of the newscast).  The less important things go on the inside pages, get less space, or both.  The "not important" things, of course, we never see in the newspaper or on the TV.

Step Number 1 in learning how to use the media well is to come up with your own questions before you look at the news.  That way, you can go looking for the answers wherever they are, and not just take what is given to you.  Often, I have found, the articles that are important to me are not on the front page.  In Off The Front Page I will call to your attention some of these stories, where I found them, and why I think they should have been featured more prominently.  My hope is that this feature will, over time, help to make it a little easier for readers of Nygaard Notes to remember to think of your own questions when taking in "the news."  In the process, maybe it will be a little less likely that you will internalize the values and priorities of the large corporations that we call "the media," and instead get more clear on your own values.

OK, on to the first installment of "Off The Front Page."

Off The Front Page: Human Rights, White House Lawbreaking, and U.S. Killings

This inaugural edition of OFP includes not one, not two, but THREE separate news items, all from the same day.  Remarkable.

OFP #1: The newspapers of Thursday, March 16th reported on the formation by the United Nations of a new Human Rights Council.  The vote was overwhelming, with 170 nations in favor, four opposed, and three abstaining.  The opposition was led by the United States, which has opposed it from the beginning.  The other three countries in opposition were Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau.  The headline in the local paper (page 17) read "U.S. Dissents as U.N. Approves Rights Council."  In the foreign media, one could read headlines like "Human Rights Defeat for U.S." and "UN Human Rights Vote Leaves U.S. Isolated."  This important story didn't appear on a single front page that I could find.  Given the recent allegations of human rights abuses on the part of the United States, I think the news that the U.S. stands essentially alone in opposing the most significant international initiative on human rights today deserves front-page treatment.

OFP #2: On the same day as the above underplayed story, a major story on the so-called National Security Strategy, a "long-overdue document" from the White House, is "an articulation of U.S. strategic priorities that is required by law."  In it, the White House once again reserves the right to attack a country whenever it wants, "even if uncertainty remains" as to whether that country is a threat or not. (See: Iraq)  This is "the principle and logic of preemption," says the report, which is required by law to be released every year, but which this White House hasn't bothered to do since 2002.  So, I think it's worth putting on the front page both the mind-boggling claim of a right to attack any  country without proof that it is a threat, as well as the relatively minor illegality of ignoring the statutory reporting requirement.  The Washington Post did put it on the front page, while both the NY Times and the local paper put it on page 6.  With no hint of irony, the Post reported that the release of the document would start with a speech "to the U.S. Institute of Peace."  A speech by George Orwell, perhaps?

OFP #3: This item didn't appear on any front page.  On March 15th, near the town of Ishaqi, Iraq, yet another "American raid on a suspected militant hide-out" killed an innocent family, "utilizing both air and ground assets," as the U.S. military put it.  As usual, the U.S. military had one version of events, while every eyewitness in the vicinity had a different one.  The U.S. says three people were killed.  Everyone else says it was 11 or more, including a 7-month-old and three other kids.  Witnesses who entered the house after the U.S. forces left "saw the family members were hand-tied and shot in the head."  An Iraqi police official said: "According to our information those people have nothing to do with fighters or terrorists..."  The LA Times reports that "U.S. military spokesman Army Lt. Col. Barry Johnson acknowledged that there was a 'discrepancy' between the military account and that of the witnesses. 'I don't have an answer yet' to explain it, he said."  But, as usual, "the military is investigating the incident."  (Don't hold your breath waiting for the results of that "investigation" to be reported.)  While Iraqi-on-Iraqi "sectarian mayhem" is increasingly found on the front pages, stories detailing the actions of the occupying forces that have created and continue to drive that "mayhem" are relegated to the inside pages.

Threats and Promises

In the Business Section of the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) of February 27th ran a column by Ronald M. Bosrock.  Mr. Bosrock's column is a regular monthly feature in my local paper, and runs with the title "Global Executive."  On this day, his subject was "hemispheric instability," and it was unusually revealing as to the thinking of the business classes, so let's have a look at it.

The headline of the column was "Hemispheric Instability May Be Ahead," and Mr. Bosrock was speaking of the Western hemisphere, which he calls "our traditional sphere of influence" and "our own back yard."  When he says "our," I'm sure he wants readers to think of "the United States," but the actual meaning of the word is "belonging to the multinational business classes and the investors who manage the economies of the United States and much of the rest of the world."  This special definition of "our" is well understood by those who regularly read the business pages.  For the rest of us, his meaning is made clear by some of his (unconscious?) comments, as follows.

Bosrock claims that "U.S. policymakers are not paying much attention to the political shift going on in our back yard."  Apparently Mr. B. is not aware that U.S. military aid to Latin America (a.k.a. "our back yard"), which totaled $3.4 million in 2000, has increased over the past six years to over 34 times that level, and now stands at $122 million, according to the World Policy Institute.  / Somebody's / paying attention!  Neither, I guess, has he heard about the increasing military presence in the South American country of Paraguay, which is (not coincidentally) immediately adjacent to the nation of Bolivia, an object of a certain kind of concern for people like Mr. Bosrock.  "Global executives," that is.

When I say "a certain kind of concern," I am distinguishing Mr. Bosrock's concern from my own.  I, too, am concerned about Bolivia, but my concern has to do with the threat posed by people like Mr. Bosrock, the "global executives" in whose interests democracy in the hemisphere has been repeatedly thwarted over the past, oh, 200 years or so, with increasing intensity in the post-World War II era.

Mr. Bosrock tells us that "Bolivia has elected Evo Morales, who takes control of an unstable country even though he won an absolute majority."  Mr. Bosrock does not tell us that the "absolute majority" was unprecedented in modern Bolivian history, with some calling it a "landslide."  Knowing that, why would such a country be "unstable?"  One reason is that the tiny minority of plutocrats and foreign corporations who are accustomed to calling the shots in that country are not likely to accept this particular democratic outcome.  Hence, the country is pronounced--and, likely, actually is--"unstable."  That's how it works when powerful people don't get their way in what we call the "democratic" process.

As one example of the near-immediate response to such democracy, the Bush administration has proposed a 96-percent cut in U.S. military aid to Bolivia.  That's money that would have been used for civil defense supplies, as well as training.

The Heart of the Matter

In his column there is one key sentence in which, without saying so directly, Mr. Bosrock illustrates exactly what I'm talking about.  Here it is:  "Morales has caused great concern among those in the wealthy business community who fear that his threat to nationalize the gas industry, triple the minimum wage and carry out land redistribution might be more than political rhetoric..."

And there you have it.  The policies listed--which are aimed at aiding the poor at the expense of the rich--no doubt are seen as "promises" by many of the two-thirds of the Bolivian population who are officially living in poverty.  But to Mr. Bosrock--and to his fellows who live in the house of which Latin America is understood to be the "back yard"--the same policies appear to be a  "threat."

Indeed, Bosrock is concerned that, should the people of various South American countries vote in the wrong way (or, as he puts it, "If this year's elections result in a shift to the left"), then "that might open a wider door for those who would use the opportunity to infiltrate our traditional sphere of influence."  A Monroe Doctrine for the 21st century!  (The mysterious "those" are later identified as "would-be world powers like China.")

In the end, Bosrock calls for "a long-term program of cooperation and mutual respect" in order to "offset the appeal of the socialist governments."  That may sound good, but "respect" is not a commodity that can be packaged into a "program" to manipulate the political affairs of sovereign nations.  Business and political leaders in the U.S. show actually show their lack of respect for the poor majority of voters in "our own back yard" by using language like Bosrock's.  This disrespect results in them being unwilling or unable to understand that, in the democratic processes of different cultures, "democracy" might actually mean "socialism."  And this disrespect on the part of very powerful people--and the military-industrial complex of which they are a part--is the real threat to global "stability" as the World's Only Superpower careens from one crisis to the next.