The Daily Grasshopper

The headline in today's Boston Globe screamed "Iraq war begins," in some of the largest type I've seen since the New England Patriots won last year's Super Bowl. Since the bombing started, I've been wondering how to proceed with the "Daily Grasshopper." I'm tempted to write about my feelings now that the invasion has started, but anyone who has been reading these essays for the past few months already knows the answer to that. I could try to compete with the thousands of other voices shouting at you about the latest developments, but I'm dealing with print journalism, and as a result I'm hopelessly behind the TV's up-to-the-second reports out of Baghdad, Washington, Kuwait City, Tel Aviv, etc.

I'm just going to continue to focus on offering "a critical look at the quality of our daily news," as I've been trying to do all along. I have spent the last several hours catching up on the papers (sorry - I was tuned into the TV and taking to the streets for most of Thursday), and have a few interesting things to report. So, on to the news...

Over a week ago, I wrote in my essay "Doing The Numbers" that 10 days had elapsed since the London Observer broke a story about U.S. intelligence bugging the phones of U.N. Security Council members. Here's what I wrote then:

"10:

The number of days that have passed since a British newspaper broke the story that the U.S. government had bugged the phones at the U.N. in order to get as much useful information as possible out of their fellow Security Council members. You know, just in case they needed to be persuaded to cast a favorable vote on a U.S. proposal at some point in the future. Believe me, the story is all over the press in the rest of the world, but for some reason, we just don't read or hear about it here. The intrepid "Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting" released a statement yesterday about the Times' (and other major news organizations') failure to investigate the story.

You can read the FAIR alert here:
http://www.fair.org/activism/un-observer-spying.html

The original article from the Observer is here:
http://www.observer.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,905936,00.html"

Well, today the New York Times finally reported on the incident. It appeared on page A7, buried deep in a story about similar spying within the European Union. Here's the full extent of the Times' reporting on the U.S./U.N. scandal:

"Early this month, the British newspaper The Observer reported that the United States was conducting a spy operation against United Nations Security Council delegations as part of a campaign to win votes for a resolution backing the use of force in Iraq. The reports could not be confirmed."

You can read the whole article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/20/international/europe/20EURO.html

The story received similar treatment in today's Globe, which ran an Associated Press story entitled "Listening devices found in EU offices" (BG, 3/20/03, p. A8):

"Earlier this month, London's Observer newspaper reported the United States was spying on other UN Security Council delegations. The Observer said a US National Security Agency memo showed the United States was monitoring the phones and e-mail of UN delegates in New York."

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/079/nation/Listening_devices_found_in_EU_offices+.shtml

When the original story broke, Daniel Ellsberg called it "more timely and potentially more important than the Pentagon Papers." The thing to keep in mind about Ellsberg, for those of you who don't recognize the name, is that he's the one who actually leaked the Pentagon Papers back in 1971. That ought to give you a little perspective on his statement. The Times, "All the News That's Fit to Print," thought enough of the revelation to bury it deep in a story about something else, well after the war had begun, amidst "unprecedented" discord between the trans-Atlantic alliance members. The story about the U.N. bugging was widely reported around the world as a possible contributing factor to the poisonous atmosphere between longtime allies, and an example of the lengths the Bush administration was willing to go to in order to gain the necessary votes to back its invasion. The New York Times (and their subsidiary, the Boston Globe) yawned. That's the "liberal" press for you.

Ellsberg's quote comes from an interview he did with media watchdog Norman Solomon, published on the Commondreams.org website:

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0306-12.htm

The more conservative Wall Street Journal continues to offer, in many instances, refreshingly candid reporting on what is really going on with this war, and how it figures into the larger framework of the global economy.

(Their opinion pages are similarly frank - today their lead editorial, "The Hopes of Mankind," was devoted to a speech made by Major-General J.N. Mattis of the 1st Marine Division. The Journal ran his entire "Message to All Hands" in the editorial, including this line: "Fight with a happy heart and strong spirit.")

The naked jingoism of the editorial bank notwithstanding, here's how the nation's business paper addressed the question of the legality of the U.S./U.K. invasion currently underway:

"International law has always been an accommodation between countries rather than a binding code; it essentially has meant whatever powerful countries say it does. Nonetheless, the move by the U.S. and its 'coalition of the willing' is seen by a fair number of the unwilling as a case of Mr. Bush's taking the law into his own hands." ("War May Conform With Law, But U.S. Prestige May Suffer," WSJ, 3/20/03, p. A13)

Opinions will differ on the propriety of subjugating the rule of international law to the rule of the jungle (i.e., "only the strong survive" - I happen to think it's not a good idea at all), but you have to admire the clear-eyed, intellectual honesty of the Journal's assessment: "international law... has meant whatever powerful countries say it does." Of course, the Journal is the voice of the wealthiest and most powerful segment of the U.S. population, and this is the world's (and history's) most wealthy and powerful nation, so maybe we shouldn't be surprised by what could well be simple chest-beating. In fact, it's a familiar sentiment among members of the super-elite. To quote the first President Bush, referring to what he described as the "new world order" on the eve of the first Gulf War: "What we say goes."

It should go without saying that this time-honored concept - "might makes right" - applies generally, whether one is talking about military or economic power. In other words, those people out there who cling to the belief that "free trade" between nations is a neutral framework for leveling the playing field between poor and rich nations should stop to think about how realistic that is. Particularly when you consider that the ones who are leading the cheers for so-called "free trade" are the world's most wealthy and powerful corporations, and that they didn't exactly get to the top by insisting on a level playing field. Instead, they seek to gain "competitive advantage" when and wherever possible, and they frequently bend the rules (moving offshore to avoid paying taxes, violating environmental and labor regulations here and abroad, buying favors from lawmakers with "campaign contributions," cooking their books a la Enron, etc.) if it will help improve profits.

To summarize, there are exactly two rules in the corporate world today:

1) Make as large a profit as possible in the current quarter
2) There are no other rules

I've been making the case that by undermining international cooperation, particularly between the EU and the U.S., President Bush is jeopardizing the infrastructure for multilateral trade agreements like the World Trade Organization (WTO). This theory, not original to me, was advanced in today's Wall Street Journal ("War Poses Risks for Globalization Trend," WSJ, 3/20/03, p. A2) by columnist David Wessel:

"A few observers, more to be provocative than predictive, have wondered aloud if the world is turning away from globalization today, as it did with such distressing consequences in 1914. The question no longer seems hypothetical.

First, there was the rise of protest against the continued lowering of barriers to trade made memorable by rock throwers in Seattle. Then came the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S., re-creating a sense of vulnerability to foreigners that Americans hadn't felt since Pearl Harbor. And last week's murder of Serbia's prime minister offered an eerie echo of the June 1914 assassination of Austria's archduke that triggered World War I."

Because Wessel writes for the Journal, he is duly concerned about the possibility of the wheels coming off of the corporate globalization train - you won't hear many people crying about it in most corners of the world. He also is obliged to misrepresent the "rock throwers in Seattle" as opposing "the continued lowering of barriers to trade." In reality, what the protesters in Seattle (and in many anti-globalization demonstrations before and since then) understand quite well is that the lowering of barriers to trade is done quite selectively, and that the same rules that govern the use of force in world affairs ("might makes right") also apply in the market.

To believe that so-called "free trade" benefits poor countries is to be willfully ignorant of reality. To be blunt, anyone who thinks that a trading system that was drawn up and implemented in secret by the world's largest corporations is going to redistribute wealth probably also takes Bush at his word when he claims the invasion of Iraq is about "liberating the Iraqi people." It's time to take the blinders off, folks.