Norman Solomon
The
Los Alamos Story Spinning Like Crazy
It’s media
spin in overdrive: Major security breaches have jeopardized the vital work
going on at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where scientists toil to
protect America.
But after many
years of monitoring key weapons policies, Jacqueline Cabasso dismisses the
uproar as “a sideshow.” Cabasso, executive director of the Western States
Legal Foundation, is a perceptive expert on nuclear arms issues. Her views
don’t come near the conventional media wisdom.
“The real
scandal,” she told me, “is that while the media focuses attention on a
couple of lost and found hard drives, the U.S. weapons labs—Los Alamos,
Lawrence Livermore and Sandia—are spending billions of taxpayer dollars
busily developing new and improved nuclear weapons, almost completely shielded
from public scrutiny or even awareness. Moreover, the U.S. is continuing to
brandish these weapons on a daily basis.”
Meanwhile, as
far as most journalists are concerned, the purposes of America’s weapons
laboratories are sacrosanct. The professional thing to do is to echo the
assumptions of politicians like Florida Republican Porter Goss, chair of the
House Intelligence Committee, who likes to describe Los Alamos as a bastion of
“creativity.” In a recent interview on CNN, Goss extolled the lab’s
mission of “creating the innovation, the creativity, the breakthrough that
you need to develop these kinds of weapons and have this kind of progress.”
For several
decades, a macabre form of creativity has flourished at the Los Alamos and
Sandia labs in New Mexico and at Lawrence Livermore in California. The default
position of media coverage is that these are fine institutions; the alarm is
about dysfunction, not function.
So, from coast
to coast, news outlets marked the summer solstice with an outpouring of fiery
complaints about Los Alamos—without the slightest questioning of its
mission. “Management there remains shockingly lackadaisical,” fumed a New
York Times editorial. “Tighter oversight cannot come soon enough.”
With such fixations on secrecy, there is virtually no light shed on the fact
that America’s massive nuclear weapons program is devoted to being able to
incinerate the planet.
Behind the
countless news reports about Los Alamos is a prolonged infatuation with
notions of protective secrecy. Long ago, Albert Einstein saw the folly. On
April 30, 1947, he wrote of atomic weapons: “For there is no secret and
there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the
aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world.”
But the usual
news accounts and commentaries, amplifying the voices of policymakers in
Washington, refuse to ask why the United States continues to design, test, and
deploy nuclear weapons. In the universe of mainstream media, Einstein’s
observations are upside down: We keep hearing that there is a secret and there
is a defense. This posture allows the U.S. government to go unquestioned by
citizens, while nuclear design labs stay busy. Their creation —if used as
intended—will destroy millions or billions of human lives. That’s an odd
concept of creativity.
To Cabasso, the
media preoccupations are ludicrous. “While the absurd question of who took
the hard drives, and why, dominates the national news,” she says,
“Armageddon is still just the push of a button away. Today, U.S. Trident
submarines are quietly patrolling the world’s oceans at the same rate as the
height of the Cold War, armed with thousands of the deadliest weapons ever
conceived, on hair-trigger alert.”
As an opponent
of nuclear proliferation and an advocate of nuclear disarmament, Cabasso sees
enormous danger in the status quo: “While the U.S. relentlessly relies on
nuclear weapons as the ‘cornerstone’ of its national security—and the
currency of global domination —it goes to extraordinary lengths to demand
that other nations forego this option. This unsustainable ‘do as we say, not
as we do’ nuclear policy is the real threat to our national security.”
Considering
what’s at stake, the narrow range of media discourse about nuclear weapons
is outrageous. Forget the hard drives. The most serious problem at the Los
Alamos laboratory is its function. “In the interests of our human
security,” Jacqueline Cabasso points out, “a comprehensive, open, publicly
accessible national debate on nuclear weapons and national security is
desperately needed and long overdue.”
Can
“E-Government” Bring Us Point-And -Click Democracy?
There’s a
slick new term surfing its way into the mass media: “E-gov- ernment.” Al
Gore has given it a big shove forward with a major campaign speech. “The
power of government,” he proclaimed, “should not be locked away in
Washington, but put at your service—no further than your keyboard.”
Gore promised
online access to almost every government service by 2003: “Together, we will
transform America’s collection of ramshackle bureaucracies into an
e-government that works for every American.”
Many citizens
would be glad to see the Internet streamline their dealings with federal
agencies. But we’re now hearing claims that go way beyond matters of
efficiency— to conflate convenience and democracy. “You should not have to
wait in line to communicate with your self-government,” Gore said in his
June 5 speech, evoking visions of “a new system of e-government.”
The vice
president correctly figured on a spate of respectful news stories when he
declared that his plans for booting up an “Information Age government”
amount to “a second American revolution.” But let’s get a grip. These
days, even accounting for customary political hyperbole, the rhetoric about
e-government is somewhere between exaggerated and absurd. No matter how much
officeholders vow to level the digital playing field, the barriers will loom
much higher for some than for others. Ability to take part in government
should not be determined by economic resources. Imbalances in access to
state-of-the -art computers and the latest software just exacerbate the kind
of chronic inequities that the Internet supposedly alleviates.
The digital
divide is far from the only problem with the e-government boom. While Gore
asserts that it will bring remedies to “an electorate that is too often
alienated and often feels voiceless in a system corroded by special interests
and powerless to make change,” the whole idea of online government is a
cyber-placebo. The notion that e-government gives power to the powerless is
nice—but delusional. No matter how dazzling, technology doesn’t empower
people.
People can
empower themselves. And they remain supplicants to centralized economic and
political power if they rely on sitting in front of screens, downloading
government documents and filling out forms on official websites. As a matter
of fact, the prevailing concepts of e-government are fully compatible with a
wide variety of regimes that have little or no use for democratic
decision-making.
Four days
before Gore’s big e-government speech, he announced that Jordan will become
the 13th nation to participate in the Clinton administration’s Internet for
Economic Development initiative—which aims to “foster the development of
e-government.” Jordan’s rulers, led by King Abdullah, are moving to
integrate the trappings of e-government into their authoritarian monarchy.
One of the
charter members of the American initiative for e-govern- ment is Egypt, which
continues to commit serious human rights abuses. According to the U.S.-based
Committee to Protect Journalists, the press laws in Egypt are “draconian.”
Or consider Singapore, where the government is so arbitrary and repressive
that it has maintained a ban on chewing gum since 1992.
As the
country’s Straits Times newspaper noted recently, “anyone caught
importing, manufacturing or selling chewing gum can be fined” —up to
$5,800. The defense minister of Singapore, Tony Tan, cheerily boasted on June
6: “We have begun the process of transforming ourselves into an
e-government.”
He did not
mention any plans to lift the national ban on gum, which Premier Goh Chok Tong
describes as necessary for the smooth functioning of Singapore’s transit
system: “There were urchins who put the chewing gum where doors open,
holding back the schedules.” For autocrats who don’t want to gum up the
works with messy liberties, “e-government” can provide a sheen of
ultra-modernity without disrupting basic power relations. Singapore officials
plan to spend $872 million for e-government during the next three years. Who
knows, the program may even help to keep the subway trains running on time.
In a country
such as Singapore or Egypt, the e-government pretensions are likely to be
transparent. In the United States, the pronouncements of politicians and media
commentators are apt to encounter credulous enthusiasm when we confuse
convenience with democracy—and technical advances with civic ones.
Point-and-click
ersatz democracy may be perfect for a governance system tacitly predicated on
illusions of choice. If it all seems “interactive,” so much the better.
U.S.
Media: A Security Zone For Israel
One
phrase—“security zone”—sums up an entire era of media spin about
Israel’s 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon. When Israel completed its
pullout in late May, most U.S. news outlets remained in sync with the kind of
coverage that they’ve provided for more than two decades.
In March 1978,
the UN Security Council demanded unconditional Israeli withdrawal from
Lebanon. Ever since, the flagrantly illegal—and brutal—military occupation
has been shrouded by a thick media haze in the United States.
All through
history, of course, occupiers have come up with benign-sounding buzzwords to
put a lofty gloss on their iron boots. But journalists aren’t supposed to
adopt the lexicon of propaganda as their own.
Unfortunately,
dozens of major American newspapers and networks have continued to
matter-of-factly use the preferred Israeli fog words —“security zone,”
“buffer zone” and “buffer strip”—to identify the area in Lebanon
long occupied by Israel. “The center of Israel’s buffer zone in southern
Lebanon has abruptly collapsed,” a front-page story in the New York Times
began on May 23.
Meanwhile, USA
Today utilized a murky passive voice while referring to Israel’s
imminent “pullout from its 10-mile wide ‘security zone’ that had been
set up as a buffer between Lebanon and northern Israeli towns.”
The next day,
the Chicago Tribune was reporting on events in “Israel’s former
Lebanon ‘security zone.’” The first sentence of the Boston Globe’s
page-one article put it this way: “Blowing up five military outposts before
dawn today, including a Crusades-era castle that served as a command center,
Israeli troops completed their pullout from Israel’s crumbling southern
Lebanon ‘security zone,’ leaving the land to their Shiite Muslim guerrilla
enemies.”
So it went—as
it has gone for decades—with journalistic language routinely draped over the
Israeli line.
Consider these
front-page headlines. The San Francisco Chronicle: “Israel Losing
Control Over South Lebanon Security Zone.” The Chicago Tribune:
“Israel Reels As Buffer Collapses.” The New York Times:
“Israel’s Buffer Strip in South Lebanon Collapsing.”
Major TV
networks were in step. On “NBC Nightly News,” Tom Brokaw started his
report this way: “The Middle East peace process is in chaos again tonight as
Israel withdraws from the security zones it’s occupied in southern Lebanon
for 22 years.” On ABC’s “World News This Morning,” the anchor
explained that Israel “hopes to end two decades of bloody confrontations
over territory it has occupied as a security zone.”
CBS reported:
“Troops are headed back to their homeland, leaving what was Israel’s
security zone to Lebanese guerrillas. The zone was established in 1985.”
There’s that handy passive voice again, dodging the matter of who
“established” the zone on Lebanese territory.
You might
expect something better from National Public Radio. If so, you’re sadly
mistaken. NPR’s newscasts repeatedly used the “security zone” mantra as
though it were a journalistic term. On the night of May 23, for instance, the
top-of-the- hour news announcer referred to the area “that Israel has
occupied as a security zone.” The next morning, the “NPR News” verbiage
was in the same groove, again flatly reporting on Israel’s “security
zone.”
I asked NPR
officials for an explanation. The network’s ombudsman, Jeffrey Dvorkin,
responded promptly. And defensively. “The aim of NPR’s reporting is
clarity, and the use of the term ‘security zone’ is understood broadly,”
he replied. In contrast, NPR foreign news editor Loren Jenkins said: “I
basically don’t think that we should be talking about a ‘security
zone.’” But he added that his foreign-desk post does not have oversight of
newscasts.
Perhaps the
most light on the “security zone” tic came from Greg Peppers, the
supervising senior producer of NPR’s newscast unit. “We were rewriting the
wire copy from Associated Press and Reuters,” he told me. “That’s
probably where it came from.” In other words: Other news outlets do it. So,
we do it, too.
The dismal
American news coverage of the Israeli occupation of Lebanon is an apt metaphor
for the overall reporting on conflicts that involve Israel. Harmonizing with
the tenor of Washington’s official policies toward the Middle East, the U.S.
press corps winks and nods as Israel—annually receiving a few billion
dollars in aid from Uncle Sam—continues to suppress the human rights of
Palestinians.
On some issues,
it is possible to argue for wider debate in America’s mainstream news media.
But on the subject of Israel, how does one widen a debate that doesn’t
really even exist?
The
Case For Corporate-Given Names
A
public-interest group is urging sportswriters to resist a free enterprise wave
of the future. “Corporations are seizing the names of our beloved parks and
stadiums, and replacing these with their own,”
Commercial
Alert complains in a letter that arrived in early summer at newspaper offices
across North America. The organization adds: “There is no law that says that
you have to call a sports venue what a big corporation wants you to call
it.”
In recent
years, several dozen companies have bought major-league naming rights.
Baseball teams now play in Tropicana Field (Tampa Bay), Bank One Ballpark
(Phoenix), Coors Field (Denver), Network Associates Coliseum (Oakland),
Pacific Bell Park (San Francisco) and Safeco Field (Seattle).
Pro basketball
games are happening at branded sites from Continental Airlines Arena in
northern New Jersey to American Airlines Arena in Miami to Arco Arena in
Sacramento. Football and hockey are in the same groove.
A decade ago,
we might have been very surprised to see the Washington Redskins playing host
to gridiron foes at a place called FedEx Field. Today—”to help us stop the
commercial degradation of sports”—Commercial Alert wants sportswriters and
fans to call stadiums “by their nicknames, not corporate names.” But such
advice runs counter to the current momentum.
The logic of
auctioning off the rights to name public places is often remarkable. For
instance, your local library system might be called the Starbucks Public
Library or the Random House of Books. This would guard against tax levies and
prevent the need to increase library fines or charge admission.
Likewise,
museums that drain the U.S. Treasury could pay their own way. One day, we
might matter-of- factly refer to the Smithsonian Burger King Museum. And
private cultural institutions could also balance their books while
participating in the entrepreneurial renaissance.
New York’s
famed Guggenheim Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art could become Nike
Museum and the Exxon Mobil Museum of Art. Children who go to public school now
routinely wear shirts without paying attention to the values of the dollar.
Instead of
freeloading their way through childhood with some kind of anachronistic nod to
a welfare state, students could meet taxpayers partway by submitting to the
discipline of wearing T-shirts with specified commercial logos, as per
contracts negotiated between school districts and corporations.
Given the
importance of wiping out vestiges of New Deal sentimentalism, Social Security
could be named something like the Citibank of America System. Other
public-sector naming rights could be opened to competitive bids. Because the
goal of reducing taxes runs parallel to a multitude of privatization options,
it would be shortsighted to bypass a potentially great source of federal
revenues—the renaming of monuments. The magnificent marble shrines dedicated
to our third and sixteenth presidents could draw capitalization from
aesthetically minded firms that wish to combine reverence for heritage with
promotion of their cutting-edge technologies.
How about the
Jefferson/Cisco Memorial and the Lincoln/Micro -soft Memorial? The Pfizer drug
conglomerate would pay a pretty penny for a multi-year lease on the Washington
Monument’s naming rights. “The Viagra Monument” might sound strange at
first but soon could roll off millions of tongues as easily as “FedEx
Field.”
Then there’s
the Capitol Building. A tasteful sign across the front facade might identify
the national legislature as the U.S./AOL Time Warner Congress. To defray some
of the governmental operating costs that burden every working American, both
chambers could bear additional names such as the Disney Senate and the Viacom
House of Representatives.
Nearby, the
General Electric Supreme Court might serve us well. Meanwhile, rather than
allowing the mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to continually deplete the
public coffers, any president with a bipartisan spirit would be pleased to
live in the AT&T White House, honoring a firm that has given millions to
both the Democratic and Republican parties. And there are plenty of other
opportunities to gain top dollar from the corporate community.
So, let’s
start getting used to the kind of news broadcasts that we can learn to accept
as perfectly normal: “Speaking in the Dow Chemical Rose Garden today, the
president called on the AOL Time Warner Congress to boost appropriations for
the Merrill Lynch Kodak Defense Department.
The Secretary
of McDonald’s State urged full appropriations for the Fox Dreamworks Space
Weapons Station and added that further deployment of Philip Morris nuclear
missiles will be necessary in order to safeguard the security of the United
States of Archer Daniels Midland America…”
Z
Norman
Solomon is a syndicated columnist. His books include The Trouble
With Dilbert: How Corporate Culture Gets the Last Laugh.