| Number 396 | January 5, 2008 |
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This Week: The 2007 Nygaard Notes Year in Review
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Greetings, It's time for a quick look back at the year 2007 in the pages of Nygaard Notes. It's an annual tradition, and it is useful for three reasons, I think: 1. Long-time readers may have forgotten, or failed to read, some pieces that they might find interesting. This will jog their memories; 2. New readers will get a sense of what they missed, and what to expect, and: 3. It helps me notice the patterns of coverage, missing things, strong points, etc. from the past year. Oh, and beyond being "useful," I think these things are fun to read. I hope you agree. As always, every word appears on the Nygaard Notes website, so if anything in this week's incomplete but tantalizing summary interests you, you can go and read the original articles there. I suppose, to be consistent, this week's "Quote" of the Week should be my favorite from 2007. But the New Year's Day quotation that runs this week was too amazing to resist. Finally, here is the statistical summary of Nygaard Notes 2007: Approximately 230 pages, appearing in 38 unique issues—which comes to about one issue every 10 days, on average—and a total of almost 100,000 words. This Year in Review marks a little break from my not-yet-finished series about Venezuela, to which I will return next week. Happy 2008! Nygaard |
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The headline in my local paper the Star Tribune of Minneapolis on New Year's Day 2008 read like this: "2007 is Record Year for Afghanistan: Violence, Opium Trade, U.S. Deaths." Here are the opening words from the Associated Press story: "U.S. military deaths, suicide bombings and opium production hit record highs in 2007 while Taliban militants killed more than 925 Afghan police, and large swaths of the country remain outside government control. But U.S. officials here insist things are looking up..." Looking up, indeed. Well into the article we read that U.S. military personnel were not the only ones killed: "Afghanistan in 2007 saw record violence that killed more than 6,500 people, including 110 U.S. troops..." Since these numbers are "based on figures from Western and Afghan officials" and since the occupying force "does not release numbers" of the people it kills, that means that "AP's estimate... could be low.." |
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January 2007 started out with a JANUARY look at a "farewell speech" by outgoing United Nations Security Council President Kofi Annan delivered at the end of 2006. He spoke of "lessons learned" during his time at the UN, and noted "five principles, which I believe are essential for the future conduct of international relations: Collective Responsibility, Global Solidarity, The Rule of Law, Mutual Accountability, and Multilateralism." This call for global order was reported in the U.S. as an "attack" George Bush's "War On Terror." This idea of "you're with us or you're against us" seems to be taking root in this country, to which I will return in these pages in 2008. Also in JANUARY I took a look at "The Top News Stories of 2006 in the Propaganda System." I singled out the annual list put out by the Associated Press, and pondered what they might have meant with their listings of such things as "Iraq" and "Illegal Immigration" and "Mideast Fighting." Then I looked at the amazing list of things that the U.S. media did NOT consider "top stories." Things like "Afghanistan" and "The Ongoing Health Care Crisis" and "The Increasing Isolation of the U.S." and so forth. I spent two weeks taking a look at what I considered—and still consider—to be a "top story" that gets little coverage in this country: Conditions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. I explained why it is a top story, some specific events that went unreported, and then I recommended some sources for further reading on this crucial topic. February In FEBRUARY I wrote a piece about the sale of my local paper to a "private equity" firm from New York. This sort of thing is happening all over the country, so I took a close look at it. The piece had what was probably my favorite title of the year: "A Strip, A Flip, and a Sinking Ship: The Sale of the Star Tribune (Your Newspaper May Be Next!)" The piece also ran in the online newspaper The Twin Cities Daily Planet. Next I gave a little history about the CIA and a former operative in that Agency, E. Howard Hunt. A slightly revised version of that piece, "E. Howard Hunt and the National Memory System," was published in the national magazine Counterpunch. The Nygaard Notes version included lots of great quotations from Hunt's 1973 Congressional testimony about the Watergate burglaries. I also spent some time in February looking at the federal budget. One might think that this would be a big story every year, but it doesn't seem to be. So every year I try to talk about it. March MARCH started out with a piece on explaining how a health care proposal by "President" Bush was actually a stealth attack on Social Security. Speaking of health care, I also talked in February about single-payer health care in the polls. Some surprises lurked there. In March of 2007, as in March of 2006, I did a major piece on what I call the "secret" U.S. air wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I call it "secret" because almost nobody in the country ever talks about it. At least not in the media. Unfortunately, it looks like I will be able to do a third installment in March of 2008, as the relentless attacks from the air are still going on. That piece got national exposure when it was picked up and ran as the cover story in the June issue of Z Magazine. In "Target Said It Was Sorry," a story I ran in late March, I talked about the apology of Target Stores for carrying a CD case with a photo of Ché Guevara. Some lessons were drawn from that little story. April In APRIL I explained "The Problem With Embedded Journalists," and then told the very-strange story of my futile attempts to find out which reporters filing stories from Iraq back to the U.S. are currently "embedded" with U.S. troops. Why is this so secret? Why would National Public Radio tell me (as did other media outlets), "We do not provide the names of reporters who are filing as embeds."? I finished off April by doing a little survey of major stories that were reported on the news wires but did not make it into the actual news that we see and hear. That led me to say that "The first job of a journalist is to ask questions." May I kicked off the month of MAY by saying that a full understanding of the importance of asking questions—and where the questions come from—is "the key to media literacy." I explained why. The rest of May was taken up with my series "Values and the Media," which included my "how-to" story on writing a news article using "The Party Talk Technique." The rest of the series took a look at the demographics of the modern newsroom, the values in that newsroom, and how power influences one's values. Lots of people liked that series, they told me. In "A Jihadi Heart and a Jihadi Mind" I talked about some of the failed prosecutions of people arrested as a part of the so-called "War On Terror." When I say "failed," it means that almost none of these people ever turn out to be guilty. I talked about the Fort Dix Six, the Cuban Five, and the San Francisco Eight. Labels—like "terrorist" for example—are important, and should be used carefully. That's the case in the Endless War. June In JUNE I spoke again about the big changes affecting newspapers in this country. This one was about what has been called "localization" or "localism," where newspapers put their priority on covering the territory within commuting distance of their headquarters. So we begin to get more news about parking issues in the suburbs, and less about national and international news. I called this story "Shrinking Newspapers, Shrinking World." Also in June, I did an update on the still-secret air wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—there'll be another on in these pages before long, methinks—and I reported on the little-known death toll in Afghanistan (the subject of this week's "Quote" of the Week).. I also ran a story called "Bad Reporting on Afghanistan and Iraq: Two Examples." July Nygaard Notes is based on the core values of Solidarity, Justice, Compassion, and Democracy. I decided in JULY to begin discussing each of these values in the pages of the Notes, in part to model the process of thinking through the things that motivate us. The first installment began with the July 14th issue—Number 378—when I ran the first installment of "The Democracy Series." The series ran to seven parts (!) over five issues, and included these pieces: "Democracy in a Cynical Culture"; "The Skills and Arts of Democracy"; "The Values of a Democratic System"; "Getting Better at Doing Democracy"; "How We Understand Democracy, and Why"; Policies that Support Radical Democracy"; and "Resources for Learning More About Democracy." This was another series that people told me they really liked. Lots of new subscribers came on board after this one ran. August In AUGUST the 35W Freeway bridge collapsed just a few hundred yards upstream from my house in Minneapolis. This gave me the opportunity to revisit a piece I wrote back in 2004 where I warned of such things. That piece was called "Grading the U.S. Infrastructure: ‘A Discouraging D+ Overall.'" I also looked at how the event was covered in the nation's media, and how some very important points ended up being washed away in the tsunami of coverage of this all-too-predictable and preventable tragedy. September In early SEPTEMBER I looked behind the headlines that were saying, "U.S. Poverty Rate Declines." That story was wildly mis-reported, and as I took it apart it was easy (I hope) to see why. Also in early September, National Public Radio ran a big story about the U.S. Naval Ship Comfort and how it's traveling around "Central and South America bringing medical facilities and services to the poor." NPR compared this exercise in Public Relations to the 44-year-old Cuban international health solidarity project. There is no comparison, as Nygaard Notes made clear. On September 20th I ran the first of what will no doubt be many articles about Venezuela. This one was about Venezuela's alleged "failure" to help the U.S. in the misguided and tragic "War on Drugs." I also gave some suggestions for further reading about the ongoing silent subversion of Venezuela. More suggestions will be coming soon in these pages. October During the OCTOBER Nygaard Notes Pledge Drive I ran a series called "The Keys to Media Empowerment." In it I expanded on the point I made earlier in the year, about how important it is to ask questions when dealing with the media. I explained how, by focusing on the questions rather than on the answers, we can help ourselves to stay away from an attachment to such abstractions as "truth" and "reality." (That's not as crazy as it sounds.) Such a questioning attitude can help us think more clearly, I said, and can help make us more resistant to the oversimplifications and caricatures that often make up the "news." And this same questioning attitude can help us create effective, and truly alternative, media. I explained how in this series. Later in October I examined how an Iranian general's comment that "Iran Is Prepared to Fight If Attacked"—that is, to defend itself—was transformed in the U.S. media into a "threat" against the United States. It's so bizarre that I had a hard time taking it seriously. (Bizarre was one of my favorite adjectives in 2007.) But it is through the use of such headlines, bizarre though they may be, that popular opinion is shaped, so I took a serious look at the "threat" of Iran in October. November NOVEMBER brought an explanation of what I have called "The Investment Theory of Money in Politics," a theory I first put forth ‘way back in January of the year 2000, in Nygaard Notes Number 56. It's sort of an "anti-conspiracy" theory, and I borrow the idea from a book by Thomas Ferguson called "Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems." The perfect illustration of the theory in action was provided by a front-page article in the New York Times, headlined "In a Reversal, the Health Sector Puts Its Money on Democrats." Not just any Democrats, of course, as I explained in this article, which I headlined "Rock the Boat, Lose the Vote: Investing In the ‘Right' Democrats." This piece was picked up by the Twin Cities Daily Planet. In November's second issue (#391) I offered "Six Examples of Wartime Propaganda," using six small case studies to illustrate how my twin concepts of Overt Propaganda and Deep Propaganda play out in the reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan. As I said, the way that propaganda works is not complicated; it's just sneaky. I continued to illustrate this point in NN #392, offering as a Thinking Aid numerous quotations from the classic 1927 book by social scientist Harold Lasswell, "Propaganda Technique in the World War." It's amazing to see how little has changed in 80 years! December The month of DECEMBER brought Nygaard Notes readers the first two issues of my ongoing series on Venezuela. It started by asking the question "Why Think About Venezuela? (The answer: It seems a likely target for increasing U.S. intervention aimed at subverting democracy.) I went back and looked at some of the history of U.S. covert operations around the world, focusing on the case of Chile in the 1960s and 1970s. The parallels with today's Venezuela are sinister, indeed. This series will continue into 2008, when I will talk a little bit about what is actually going on in Venezuela. This will be stuff you'll most likely never read in the U.S. press. Those are some of the highlights from Nygaard Notes in 2007. Even this lengthy summary left out a lot of things, such as recurring reports on such issues as health care, sex education, Iran, the stock market meltdown, poverty, and the never-ending attacks on Social Security. As always, there were numerous shorter pieces, as well, including reports and analysis on subjects ranging from baseball to crime statistics to "free" trade to the White Man's Burden to who-knows-what. People often ask me "What is Nygaard Notes about?" It's not an easy question to answer, as you can see. |
