This Week: More Strolling Through the News with Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week: "They just want to be left alone"

"Agents Fanning Out Across America"

Balanced Reports (Minus the Facts)

Greetings,

This week in Nygaard Notes I have the final installment (for now) of my Stroll Through the News. (New readers: This title refers to collections of comments on items in the corporate media that are worthy of attention, but not too much attention. These "strolls" are entertaining, at least to me!)

Next week I hope to have something to say about Osama bin Laden and the effect of his death on the phenomenon of terrorism. That requires a little bit more than a stroll, so I'm taking a little bit more time with it. And that's all I'll say for now.

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week

Afghanistan: We Are the Problem

Here's a headline from the NY Times of February 25th: "U.S. Pulling Back in Afghan Valley it Called Crucial." That's the Pech Valley, an area that the U.S. military "once insisted was central to the campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda." The article was mostly propaganda, and not worth reviewing. Except for the 12th and 13th paragraphs, that is, where some usually-unspeakable ideas were spoken. Here's Paragraph 12:

"Ultimately, the decision to withdraw reflected a stark—and controversial—internal assessment by the military that it would have been better served by not having entered the high valley in the first place."

(Still unspeakable: That the world would be better served by not having occupied Afghanistan in the first place. Hopefully that will become thinkable before too long.)

Then, in the next paragraph, the Times quotes "one American military official familiar with the decision" (anonymous), who said:

"What we figured out is that people in the Pech really aren't anti-U.S. or anti-anything; they just want to be left alone. Our presence is what's destabilizing this area."

Subtle propaganda, that. The anonymous propagandist is hoping that someone—anyone!—will believe that the U.S. military just recently "figured out" that a military occupation is destabilizing. Incredible.

"Agents Fanning Out Across America"

In the "Quote" of the Week from NN #475 I mentioned the March 27th report in Rolling Stone Magazine about the U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan who murdered innocent civilians and mutilated their corpses, then took pictures of themselves posing in what looked like "trophy" photos. That Rolling Stone story was a follow-up to a story that was originally broken by the German magazine Der Spiegel on March 21st. Their story was headlined "The 'Kill Team' Images: US Army Apologizes for Horrific Photos from Afghanistan." Here's the lead paragraph:

"The images are repulsive. A group of rogue US Army soldiers in Afghanistan killed innocent civilians and then posed with their bodies. On Monday, SPIEGEL published some of the photos—and the US military responded promptly with an apology. Still, NATO fears that reactions in Afghanistan could be violent."

It was interesting to note how this story was covered—and not covered—in the corporate press. Overseas the story received wide coverage, much of which focused on the criminal nature of the actions by U.S. forces. The Guardian of London headlined their March 22nd story: "Face of a Killer Soldier in Afghan Trophy Photos: Evidence Suggests US Troops Planned Murder; Anger Expected to Grow after Pictures Published." An Australian paper on March 23rd ran the simple headline: "Soldiers Bring Shame."

Even in the U.S., smaller regional papers reported the story as a story of criminality and shame, one in need of accountability. The Anchorage Daily News in Alaska headlined their story, "'Kill Team': The Afghan Civilian Murders and Alleged Army Cover-up." And a TV station in Seattle (KCPQ/KMYQ) reported simply: "New Photos, Videos Surface Showing Atrocities By Ft. Lewis Soldiers."

Coverage in the agenda-setting media was somewhat different. The LA Times ran a piece headlined "Karzai Denounces Alleged 'Kill Team'; Afghan President Says Photos of U.S. Soldiers Posing with Bodies of Civilians Should Stir Global Indignation." It's good to know what the Afghan president says, but it could have been much better if they could have found some U.S. voices responding to the photos. Such voices wouldn't be hard to find.

The PR Angle

The nation's premier agenda-setting newspaper, the NY Times, skipped the criminality and shame altogether, going straight to what appears to be the main concern among U.S. leaders: Public Relations. The Times headline on March 22nd was "Photos Imperil U.S. Relations With Afghans." The Times worried that the photos might "provide fodder for the Taliban's efforts to persuade Afghans that the foreign troops fighting here are a malevolent force," and that they "put Mr. Karzai in the awkward position of having to explain why the country's allies are killing unarmed children and women." Pretty awkward, all right.

The Washington Post had a good, straightforward headline—"Photos Show U.S. Soldiers Posing with Body of Slain Afghan Civilian"—but the only people quoted in the story were U.S. military sources. (Example: "In a statement released Sunday, the Army called the actions depicted in the photos 'repugnant to us as human beings and contrary to the standards and values of the United States Army.'")

The right-wing Washington Times saw the photos as left-wing propaganda, running with the headline "Afghan Atrocities and Jihadist Victories; Left Has a History of Using Aberrations to Besmirch America's Military."

One point that almost no U.S. paper bothered to mention, as far as I can find out, is the effort on the part of the U.S. military to try and cover up the crimes. As Rolling Stone reported,

"Even before the war crimes became public, the Pentagon went to extraordinary measures to suppress the photos—an effort that reached the highest levels of both governments. Gen. Stanley McChrystal and President Hamid Karzai were reportedly briefed on the photos as early as May, and the military launched a massive effort to find every file and pull the pictures out of circulation before they could touch off a scandal on the scale of Abu Ghraib. Investigators in Afghanistan searched the hard drives and confiscated the computers of more than a dozen soldiers, ordering them to delete any provocative images. The Army Criminal Investigation Command also sent agents fanning out across America to the homes of soldiers and their relatives, gathering up every copy of the files they could find. The message was clear: What happens in Afghanistan stays in Afghanistan."

Are military agents "fanning out across America" in order to prevent terrorism? No, they're "fanning out across America" for public relations purposes. This is the kind of thing that "besmirches" the military, and it's not an "aberration."

I reported in these pages about a year ago the words that the U.S. military uses to explain their war propaganda, which they call the "Counterinsurgency [COIN] narrative," in Afghanistan and elsewhere:

"Higher headquarters usually establishes the COIN narrative." And, once it's established, "Company-level leaders apply the narrative gradually" as they try to "find a single narrative that emphasizes the inevitability and rightness of the COIN operation's success."

In line with this single narrative, the corporate press saw the leaked-photo story through the lens of public relations. That is, we don't question the "inevitability and rightness" of the occupation, but instead focus on the political problems presented by the photos. One had to go outside of the United States to find another point of view. The London Guardian published a commentary by Afghan activist and former member of the Afghan Parliament Malalai Joya. Joya wrote:

"I must report that Afghans do not believe this to be a story of a few rogue soldiers. We believe that the brutal actions of these 'kill teams' reveal the aggression and racism which is part and parcel of the entire military occupation. While these photos are new, the murder of innocents is not."

In these three sentences, Joya offers several ideas that are rarely expressed in the U.S. press. For instance, the idea that the U.S. occupation is a story of aggression and racism rather than self-defense or "democracy promotion." Or the idea that the real crime here is not the photos, but the larger pattern of the murder of innocents that the photos are documenting. Or the idea that the photographed crimes are not evidence of "bad apples," but rather are evidence of the ongoing criminality of the occupation itself.

Radical ideas? Not for people in most of the world. Only for readers of the corporate media in the United States, where editors apparently take their cue from "higher headquarters."

Balanced Reports (Minus the Facts)

A lot of reporters believe it is their job to give "both sides" of every story. This is often done by quoting people who disagree with each other. While this may give the appearance of "balance," it's often irresponsible, as it gives the inaccurate impression that the two sides have equal credibility, which they often do not. Take, for example, an April 28th story in the Star Tribune, my local paper.

The subject was an effort by some state legislators to require Minnesota voters to present an official identification document (one with their picture on it) in order to vote. Since the Governor of Minnesota has promised to veto any such "Voter ID" law, state Republicans have promised to try and amend the state constitution to require it.

In this context, the Star Trib reported, "Supporters say requiring identification is needed to head off voter fraud, which critics say is virtually nonexistent in Minnesota." There you have it: "critics say" something is virtually nonexistent. Is this just another "side" to the story? Or are there perhaps some facts here to help readers evaluate the claims? Well, yes, there are facts.

Early last year a non-profit called Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota teamed up with the Minnesota Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Alliance to conduct a survey of Minnesota's County Attorneys. They asked the CA's about ineligible voters and voter fraud to find out from the people who enforce these laws just how big the problem is. Not too big, they found out. They released their report in November of 2010.

Possible forms of voter fraud include felon voting, people voting twice, underage voting, voting in the wrong place, manipulating the vote of a vulnerable person, and voter impersonation. As the report points out on page 1, "the only type of election fraud a photo identification requirement would prevent is voter impersonation." Just think about it: Photos have nothing to do with age or address or frequency of voting, or free will/coercion. And no official ID mentions criminal status. All a photo ID does is tell you if the person voting looks like the person whose name is on the rolls, and is not just impersonating that voter.

So, how many convictions for voter impersonation were there related to the last major election in 2008? None. That is: Zero. Only a tiny number were even investigated. Says the report:

"In fact, less than one half of one percent of all investigations focused on voter impersonation. Another way of evaluating the survey results is to review the total number of investigations of voter impersonation (7) and compare it to the total number of 2008 voters (2,921,498), which allows us to see that the total percent of all voters who were investigated for voter impersonation was two ten-thousandths of one percent (0.0002%). There was not one single conviction of voter impersonation." [Emphasis in original.]

Their findings mirror the findings of people who have studied voter fraud on the national level.

A Minnesota publication called "The Legal Ledger" published a story on the subject on October 29, 2010. They pointed to research done by Lorraine Minnite, a professor at Columbia University and the author of The Myth of Voter Fraud. Minnite found that "there were just 26 federal convictions for voter fraud in the entire United States between 2002 and 2005."

The Ledger also looked at the 2008 election cycle in Minnesota, and found that "the number of successful prosecutions remains minuscule. In Hennepin County, for instance [MN's largest county], indictments were recently handed down on 47 individuals for purportedly voting illegally. But that's out of roughly 450 names that [the conservative group] Minnesota Majority had identified in the state's most populous county as fraudulent voters. And even if all 47 cases ultimately result in convictions (hardly a given), it would mean that 0.00009 percent of ballots were illegally cast in the 2008 election in Hennepin County." That's nine one-hundred-thousandths of one percent, for those who are keeping score.

Professor Minnite, who has been studying the role of fraud in U.S. elections, explained to Salon.com back in 2008 her theory of what is actually going on here. Salon summarized it as follows:

"Rather than protecting the election process from voter fraud—a problem that barely exists—Minnite says the true aim of Republican efforts appears to be voter suppression across the partisan divide. According to Minnite, investigating voter fraud has become a Republican cottage industry over the last 20 years because it justifies questioning the eligibility of thousands of would-be voters—often targeting poor and minority citizens in urban areas that lean Democratic. Playing the role of vigilant watchdog gives GOP bureaucrats a pretext for obstructing the path of marginalized and first-time voters headed for the polls."

If and when you read a report on voter fraud in Minnesota that claims to offer "both sides," take a moment to look up the facts. There are such things, and sometimes they tell us that one side is right and the other side is wrong. Maybe the side that's wrong just made an honest mistake. Or maybe Professor Minnite has a better explanation.