This Week: Stock Market, Iran, Global Hunger

"Quote" of the Week

The Stock Market Meltdown: Where to Start?

Iran: Propagandized Information Leads to Righteous Indignation

UN Hunger Agency a "U.S. Fiefdom"

Greetings,

After the long series on Democracy just concluded, there is the customary collection of ideas, thoughts, images, and stories that I have clipped and set aside for comment at a later date. This week, and probably next, I'll get back to a few of them. There is no theme, or particular set of reasons, for choosing the ones you are about to see.

This week, for example, there is nothing special about the U.S. extorting the United Nations, or about a misinformed letter-writer, or about the current crisis in the stock markets. And that's the point: The workings of empire, and the intellectual culture that "explains" it to the rest of us, are so common and familiar that most people don't even notice that there ARE such workings. Nygaard Notes is here, in part, to help readers to begin to notice the bizarre, frightening, and ever-so-subtle ways that power operates every day to shape our thoughts, our dreams, and our imaginations. And to help us all to, first, defend ourselves and, secondly, to reclaim our dreams and imaginations.

Small newsletter; big dreams. Thanks for coming along for the ride!

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week:

It was in New Hampshire on June 3rd, during a Democratic presidential candidate debate, that the various candidates were asked to talk about their "plan" for health care in the United States. Here's part of what Hillary Rodham Clinton said:

"The most important thing is not the plan. Because there are only a few ways to do this. And we're all talking pretty much about the same things."

They're not, of course, as was obvious a few minutes later when Dennis Kucinich, once again, reminded people that there is a bill, H.R. 676, that would give us a universal, single-payer, health care system. That is most assuredly not "pretty much the same thing" as the other candidates.

The Stock Market Meltdown: Where to Start?

One cannot help hearing, reading, and seeing much news in recent weeks about the current crisis in the stock markets. "Fiasco!" "Crash!" "Crisis!" "Debacle!" scream the headlines. Given the difficulty of explaining economics to the layperson, and given the built-in limitations of the daily media, the current moment illustrates the importance of Step #1 in Nygaard's Four-Step Process for Reading a Newspaper. (See Nygaard Notes #36: "Reading the Newspaper: A Four-Step Process.") That first step is: "Learn the context elsewhere."

Since the stock market news is so important, and the newspapers are doing such a poor job of explaining why, here are a couple of places beyond the daily news stream to which I recommend you go if you want to be able to read the papers and make any sense out of them:

1. I have often recommended the work of the economic think tank called the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). Specifically, they put out a report just this month by Dean Baker called "Midsummer Meltdown: Prospects for the Stock and Housing Markets." This 23-page report, says the author, "examines the factors that have led to the recent instability in financial markets, specifically the housing bubble and the recent run-up in stock prices. Prices in both the housing market and the stock market are often moved by psychological factors that have little to do with fundamentals."

The paper was written before the current "volatility" in the stock markets, but Baker points out why it hasn't been too hard to see it coming, and explains why, in plain language.

2. For a more radical, but less systematic, look at the current stock market news, I recommend scanning the relevant parts of the World Socialist Web Site. Go here and click on the "World Economy" link.

Maybe it's better to more-or-less ignore all the sensational headlines altogether, and just spend a little time getting familiar with some useful economic principles and concepts.

For an introduction to "heterodox economics" (as opposed to the "orthodox" economics that most of us have been force-fed in various ways for most of our lives), have a look at the work of Arjo Klamer, Deirdre McCloskey, and Stephen Ziliak, who are about to publish a book called "The Economic Conversation" (due in 2008). Their website is loaded with brief, easy-to-navigate links to help you understand lots of economics principles.

I subscribe to a newsletter called the "Post-Autistic Economics Review," and have found it to be quite enlightening. You can read "A Brief History of the Post-Autistic Economics Movement"—and subscribe to the Review as well, if you like—at their website.

The Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst focuses on "Pro-Poor Economic Policies." Go have a look at some of their research on "the issues that matter" in economic policy at their website.

Iran: Propagandized Information Leads to Righteous Indignation

I don't typically comment on letters to the editor of any newspaper, but here's an exception, as I think the example presented by the letter below illustrates both a problem with letters to the editor and with the media in general.

The letter in question appeared on August 17th in the Star Tribune, my local daily newspaper. This letter to the editor had to do with "The Bush administration's move to blacklist Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as a ‘terrorist' organization," as the Associated Press puts it. Here is the letter, in its entirety:

"Taking on Iran; It's long overdue

"It's about time that the United States branded Iran's Revolutionary Guard as terrorists. This unit, which promotes and enforces Iran's warped ideology abroad, has consistently proven itself an enemy of democracy.

"While one must understand that dealing with a government such as Iran is a tricky proposition, the article omits the fact that Iran is a signatory of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, which calls upon the nations that signed it to not pursue nuclear capabilities for either peaceful or military use.

"The European and Arab countries share deep concern over a nuclear and hostile Iran but, sadly, do absolutely nothing about it.

"Richard O'Brien, Albertville"

The key "fact" which apparently stimulated the righteous indignation of Mr. O'Brien (and many others, no doubt) is the idea that the Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT, "calls upon the nations that signed it"—including, as he says, Iran—"to not pursue nuclear capabilities for either peaceful or military use." This "fact" is incorrect.

Actually, Article Four of the NPT specifically affirms "the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes."

However, Mr. O'Brien is no doubt correct when he says that the article to which he refers "omits the fact that Iran is a signatory of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty," since most articles on the subject do omit this fact. This fact, and the right to peaceful development of nuclear energy that goes with it, is highly relevant and will become more so if and when the U.S. initiates a military strike against Iran on the basis of their being an international nuclear outlaw.

On numerous occasions I have asked newspaper editors if they have any rules or standards about letters or other opinion pieces and their citing of facts. Mr. O'Brien's letter indicates that my daily paper considers it acceptable to publish a letter making an argument that is based on a false premise, and one that is easily checked, to boot. I can't imagine how this could be considered to be advancing the public discourse, yet I have found it to be fairly common practice in the newspapers I look at regularly.

That's the problem with letters to the editor that I mentioned in the first paragraph. The problem with the media in general has to do with how Mr. O'Brien came to believe so vehemently in something that is not true.

A search of the U.S. media for the past month, using the Lexis/Nexis news database, shows an interesting pattern. A search for the key words "Iran and nuclear weapons and non-proliferation/non-proliferation treaty" yields 62 articles or stories. A search for "Iran and nuclear and peaceful use" yields 48 stories. A search for "Iran and nuclear weapons," in contrast, yields 1,943 stories. That is, it is almost 40 times more likely that a news media "consumer" will see or hear an article about Iran and nukes that fails to mention the Non-Proliferation Treaty—or the right to peaceful use of nuclear technology reserved therein—than one that fails to mention either of those two points.

Assuming that Mr. O'Brien gets his news largely from the Mainstream Corporate For-Profit Agenda-Setting Bound Media, it is no surprise that he is confused on the main point of his letter. But the editor of the letters section at the Star Tribune should not be confused, and should reject such misinformed pieces. After all, the facts are easy to find and to verify, and the fateful decision to go to war yet again may depend in part on the unjustified outrage that is being caused by the confusion that such letters reinforce.

UN Hunger Agency a "U.S. Fiefdom"

This is a story about how the U.S. uses its power to get its way in the world (besides war), how difficult it is for the media to speak frankly about this, and how news is tailored—or "framed"—differently for different audiences.

On August 11th the New York Times published a lengthy article on the recently-appointed Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), Josette Sheeran. The article, by Elisabeth Rosenthal, ran in both the New York Times and its overseas version, the International Herald Tribune.

The World Food Program is the UN's "frontline agency in the fight against global hunger" and is responsible for improving nutrition for millions of people around the world, as well as literally feeding tens of millions of people who are facing imminent hunger, such as during humanitarian disasters. The WFP also works to address the root causes of hunger, mainly poverty, and is an excellent source of information for the global community on hunger and food issues.

The same article by Ms. Rosenthal ran in both the Times, which is aimed at an affluent and influential U.S. audience, and the IHT, which is aimed at an international audience. Some insight into the framing of issues for the U.S. audience can be gotten from looking at the difference in presentation of the two articles.

The headline in the Herald Tribune read like this: "World Food Chief Settles in Despite Outcry." For U.S. readers of the Times, there is no "outcry." In the Times the headline read: "A Desire to Feed the World and Inspire Self-Sufficiency."

There actually was a bit of an outcry last November, when Ms. Sheeran's appointment was announced. Part of it had to do with Ms. Sheeran's 20-year-long association with the Unification Church. Not only was the "former leading ‘Moonie'" (as the London Guardian referred to her) a long-time member of the Church, but she also worked for the conservative, Moon-owned Washington Times for 15 years, rising to the post of managing editor by the time she left in 1997.

Perhaps a more substantial objection to Ms. Sheeran's appointment is the fact that, as the Washington Post reports, Sheeran "doesn't have experience running a food aid program." There were at least two other top candidates for the post who did have such experience—and sterling reputations, apparently—but they were not favored by the Bush administration. What Sheeran has that the other two don't have, however, is experience as the CEO of "Empower America," which the NY Times describes as "a Reagan-era conservative research institute that is dedicated to fighting poverty through free market forces and individual responsibility."

To summarize: A little-qualified ultra-conservative favored by the Bush administration gets appointed last November to the world's premier hunger agency over other, more-qualified experts in the field.

Influence? Or Extortion?

That's why the headline in the London Financial Times (FT) at the time of the appointment read, "UN Job Choice Raises Reform Fears." The FT noted that many people around the world had hopes that the new UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, would use his position to begin to challenge the inordinate power of the U.S. to run the show at the UN (as it does elsewhere). As the FT politely put it, "some diplomats" had hopes that the Secretary General might begin to "make appointments on ... merit," as opposed to continuing to bow to U.S. power. That would have marked a large change, since the post to which Ms. Sheeran was appointed has been "a post traditionally viewed as a US fiefdom," reported the London paper.

The U.S. press noted some of this, choosing the word "influence" to refer to what it is that the U.S. has (and uses) to get its way. Here's the NY Times:

"The United States, as the largest donor [to the WFP], has traditionally exercised enormous influence in the selection of the group's director. But this time around, the European nations were dismayed enough by Sheeran's credentials that they tried to block the appointment. The EU strongly favored a Swiss candidate, Walter Fust, a European diplomat said, speaking on the customary condition of anonymity." And here's the LA Times' headline on the appointment: "U.S. Pick Gets U.N. Agency Position; the Choice Reflects Washington's Influence in Such Matters."

I wouldn't use the word "influence," myself.

The LA Times went on to say that "Diplomatic sources said they had heard that [the more-qualified experts] were at the top of the list. But Sheeran, not [the others], was the official State Department candidate, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to remind him of that, said a U.S. diplomat who asked not to be identified. Rice's message was that the U.S. government should have a say in the selection of the WFP director proportionate to its contribution to the program." The United States, as the richest member of the UN, supplies by far the largest proportion of the funding for the WFP, fully 40 percent of the agency's total budget.

The real story was mentioned almost nowhere in the media I saw, except for a report in an obscure Swiss news service called "Swissinfo.org." That news outlet reported that two Swiss newspapers—Zurich's "Tages-Anzeiger" and Geneva's "Le Temps" both said that "US President George Bush had called Jacques Diouf, head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization [in charge of the WFP], to push for Sheeran." But here's the story on his "push:" The two papers, according to Swissinfo.org, "said Bush had made it clear that U.S. funding for both the FAO and the WFP could be less generous if the US candidate were not accepted."

Let me remind readers of the definition of "extortion," as taken from the Oxford English Dictionary: "The act of obtaining something from a reluctant person by threat, force, importunity, etc."

Empires, after all, are about more than armies and planes.