Volume 5 Number 2 Spring 2019 Donations Accepted Peace in Our Times A Veterans For Peace publication exposing the root causes and enormous costs of war

The great lie of war in action I was repeatedly asked not to resign and was offered a more senior position within the State Department. Richard Holbrooke, then the President’s appointed representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told me he agreed with 95 Time for Peace in Afghanistan percent of what I had written and asked me to join his staff, while the U.S. ambassador, Karl Eikenberry, told me my analysis was one of the best he had encountered and stated he would write an introduction endorsing my resignation letter if I remained with the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan for the remainder of my tour. In conversation with the U.S. deputy ambassador to Afghanistan, he agreed the war was not just unwinnable, but also corrupt, and stated he would not let his children serve in such a war. Further support for my views was provided by my counterparts serving as political officers in the most violent parts of Afghanistan: Kandahar, Helmand, Kunar, Nuristan and Oruzgan Provinces. These men and women made clear their agreement with my assessment and my resignation. The support from the military was equally effusive and genuine; often such support included apologies along the lines of “I’d like to resign too, but I’ve got kids heading to college in a few years …” (the golden handcuffs are an instrumental and integral aspect of the U.S. empire’s infrastructure). When I asked Karen ­DeYoung, the Washington Post correspondent who wrote By Matthew Hoh positions effecting war policy in Washington, D.C., the front-page, above-the-fold story on my resignation, with the Department of Defense (DOD) and the State why she wrote such a piece about me, she replied she It has been more than nine years since I resigned Department. My resignation in 2009 was not taken lightly could not find anyone at the Pentagon, State Department in protest over the escalation of the Afghanistan War by my superiors, and my reasons for opposing President or White House who disagreed with me. from my position as a political officer with the U.S. Obama’s “surge” in Afghanistan found support among I relate the above not to cheerlead for myself (although State Department in Afghanistan. It had been my third both military officers and civilian officials at senior levels the sadness and despondency from witnessing the time to war, along with several years of working in in Kabul and Washington. continued on page 19 … A Planet in Crisis: The Heat’s on Us By Dahr Jamail

I’m standing atop Rush Hill on Alaska’s remote St. Paul Island. While only 665 feet high, it provides a 360-degree view of this tundra-covered, 13-mile-long, seven-mile- wide part of the Pribilof Islands. While the hood of my rain jacket flaps in the cold wind, I gaze in wonder at the silvery waters of the Bering Sea. The ever-present wind whips the surface into a chaos of whitecaps, scudding mist, and foam. The ancient cinder cone I’m perched on reminds me that St. Paul, was, oh so long ago, one of the last places woolly mammoths could be found in North America. I’m here doing research for my book The End of Ice. And that, in turn, brings me back to the new reality in these far northern waters: as cold as they still are, human-caused climate disruption is warming them enough to threaten a possible collapse of the food web that sustains this island’s Unangan, its Aleut inhabitants, also known as “the people of the seal.” Given how deeply their culture is tied to a subsistence lifestyle coupled with the new reality that the numbers of fur seals, seabirds, and other marine life they hunt or fish are dwindling, how could this crisis not be affecting them? continued on page 8 … A female fur seal on St. Paul Island. 2 V5N2—Spring 2019 Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org

Letters to the Editor A Note from the Editors

do it by mistakenly embracing other forms A Bad Choice of racism and elitism no matter where America’s Collective Amnesia they come from or what they appear to For a couple weeks recently I was in the To the editor of Peace in Our Times, re support. Mencken represents another hospital because, it turns out, a cancerous Mencken Prophecy cartoon decaying pillar of our system. mass had taken up residence in my small I was pleased to see the articles by Chris Edwin Krales, Chapter 34, January, bowel … not good news, especially on Hedges in the Winter 2019 edition of 2019 your birthday. Peace in Our Times. Mr Hedges’s analysis Editor’s note: Thank you for pointing But I’m in a country with a competent of our era is summed up beautifully in this out. We should have been more health care system—if expensive and the first sentence of his article on page careful in our image selection. rationed by insurance companies—at 3. He wrote: “The idiots take over in the a good hospital with excellent care and final days of crumbling civilizations.” skilled staff. The mass is removed, weeks On the other hand, the cartoon entitled of nausea ended, and treatment options are “Prophecy” with the Mencken quote explained. The way to a new life is clear. attacking democracy, misses the point There Oughtta On the ride home, however, one completely. It is not the “perfection thing uppermost in my mind had to be of democracy” that has brought us to Be a Law consciously suppressed: the knowledge this stage of deterioration. It is that our that hundreds of thousands of people, democracy was set up by the 1 percent Ilhan Omar, one of two Muslim women many of them children, are suffering and so that it could be turned into what I call elected to Congress, has gone over the dying right now in Iraq from our use of corporate totalitarianism. Corrupt and line in suggesting that politicians are depleted uranium. And what of their inept leadership in a democracy does not influenced by money they get from journey through illness? Their hospitals, Mike Ferner before being arrested at the represent what Mencken calls “the inner the Israel Lobby. It is OK to say that staff, medicines are of what quality? Is White House fence, Dec. 16, 2010. soul of the people”; it indicates a beaten- our leaders are paid off by Big Oil, Big pain relief adequate? Electricity to cool Photo: Ellen Davidson. down population grasping at straws for Pharma, and Wall Street. But it is anti- the intense summer heat? Water to drink help. Why would we struggle to convince Semitic to imply that the Israel lobby that won’t make them sicker? Family and people to try and change our system in the would do such things. friends healthy enough and with resources America’s collective amnesia is teeth of a climate catastrophe, if the goal There should be a law making it illegal to provide critical support? no accident. Without it, the system of a “perfect democracy” is the kind of to reveal how much Nancy Pelosi and And that is “just” one category of just cannot function. It’s maintained by the corrupt, inept leadership we find around Chuck Schumer get from the Israel Lobby. one country the Empire chews up and corporate media, by fetishization of us with Trump in the lead? It is antisemitic to report that the two of spits out on a regular basis. The list is long. sports and shopping and all the necessary Trump is Mencken’s idea of where them met recently with multibillionaires We target a nation, destroy its economy, distractions so the Empire can continue dem­ocracy takes us. Mencken was an Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson and rape its environment, lay waste its people, its devilish work. anti-Semite, a racist, a misogynist, a promised an extensive list of “pro-Israel and then … forget about it. Rarely is the In the words of the great Czech-born white supremacist and an elitist. In a book lawmakers” be appointed to important nation close enough to our borders that its novelist Milan Kundera, “The struggle entitled Defending the Master Race by committees. people, sick enough of the chaos and pain of man against power is the struggle of Jonathan Peter Spiro, Mencken presented Boycotts, although they have a long we’ve caused, can actually pound on the memory against forgetting.” his elitism in the context of white history of being used against slave door … and no one understands why. —Mike Ferner supremacy. He said: “My impression, owners, Nazis, Jim Crow racists, and though I am blond and Nordic myself, homophobes, are simply antisemitic when is that the genuine member of that great used against apartheid Israel and should race, at least in modern times, is often be illegal. In fact, even mentioning the indistinguishable from a cockroach.” Palestinian People is an attempt to deny Join Veterans For Peace! In his diary, published 25 years after that Israel is a Jewish state. Talking about his death in 1956, Mencken had a very the occupation is antisemitic as well. negative view of women and African- Why not talk about human rights abuses Americans. He wrote: “It is impossible in Darfur? to talk anything resembling discretion or The effort to stop anti-Semitism has to judgment to a colored woman. They are start with the First Amendment. How dare all essentially child-like, and even hard our Founding Fathers promise freedom of experience does not teach them anything.” speech and press without some qualifiers! When the last Jewish member of his club Sure, citizens should be able to criticize died, he wrote: “There is no other Jew politicians and foreign countries, but not in Baltimore who seems suitable.” He a country that claims to be a religion, like also loved Germany, never condemned Israel. No U.S. citizen should ever have Hitler and opposed the U.S. opposition to the right to say that Israel has enormous the Axis during World War II. (See The power over our government. Washington Post, “Mencken’s Dark Side”, Fred Nagel December 5, 1989.) Rhinebeck, NY Oppose Trump we must. But we mustn’t Veterans For Peace is an international organization made up of military veterans, military family Peace in Our Times members, and allies. We accept veteran members Peace in Our Times is published quarterly by Veterans For Peace. ­Bundles from all branches of service. We are dedicated to of 80 are $40 or $25 for 40, and individual subscriptions are $15/year. To ­donate, subscribe, or order bundles, visit peaceinourtimes.org or send a check building a culture of peace, exposing the true causes to ­Veterans For Peace, 1404 North Broadway, St. Louis, MO 63102. Letters, and costs of war, and healing the wounds of war. ­poems, articles, and images­ may be submitted to [email protected].­ Editorial staff: Tarak Kauff, Managing Editor; Ellen Davidson, Mike Ferner, For more information or to join or donate, go to Becky Luening,­ Ken Mayers, Doug Rawlings, Crystal Zevon veteransforpeace.org. Website coordinator: Fred Nagel­ Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org V5N2—Spring 2019 3 Time to Break the Silence, End NATO’s Militarism By Kevin Zeese and excuse for NATO ended. Indeed, it is well NATO member-countries are told they we did not face this reality, U.S. militarism Margaret Flowers known that Gorbachev and other Soviet must abandon hard-won social programs would spread throughout Asia, Africa, leaders received assurances that NATO in order to meet U.S. demands for even and Latin America. Today the United Fifty-two years ago on April 4, 1967, would not expand. These assurances came more military spending.” States has 883 foreign military bases with at Riverside Church, Rev. Martin Luther not only from President George H.W. troops deployed in 149 countries; it sells King, Jr., gave his most important speech Bush but also from West German Foreign Acting on King’s Clarion Call or gives weapons to 98 countries. King ever, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, West In 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr., described how the United States keeps Silence.” King’s conscience drove him to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, former warned, “A nation that continues year troops in foreign lands to “maintain social take the unpopular position of publicly CIA Director Robert Gates, French leader after year to spend more money on stability for our investments accounts.” criticizing the Vietnam War and putting François Mitterrand; Margaret Thatcher; military defense than on programs of He described U.S. imperialism as based it in the context of the “giant triplets of British Foreign Minister Douglas Hurd, social uplift is approaching spiritual on “refusing to give up the privileges and racism, materialism, and militarism.” The and Manfred Woerner, the NATO death.” He described how militarism was the pleasures that come from the immense message of that speech remains relevant secretary-general. destroying the soul of the United States profits of overseas investment. “ today because its wisdom has not been Instead of being ended after it no longer and called for an end to the Vietnam King connected the extreme materialism heeded. served any defensive military purpose, War. He described in excruciating detail of capitalism to militarization and racism, We put this in the context of the NATO expanded to 29 nations, 13 since the U.S. destruction of Vietnam, mass describing a “thing-oriented” society North Atlantic Treaty Organization the end of the Soviet Union, including bombings, napalm, poisoning of water rather than a “person-oriented” society, (NATO) because this year on April 4, countries on the border of Russia. One of and land, and the killing of more than a where “profit motives and property rights the anniversary of that speech and the the reasons for the U.S. coup in Ukraine million Vietnamese. He said a foreign are considered more important than anniversary of the murder of King by the was to antagonize Russia and prevent policy based on violence and domination people.” King talked of the new hopes in government, NATO will be holding its access to its naval fleet through Crimea. abroad leads to violence and domination the nation as the government confronted 70th anniversary meeting in Washington, Ukraine is now partnering with NATO. at home, and he warned that “we as a poverty with new programs to uplift the D.C. Protests and other activities are The current U.S. national military nation must undergo a radical revolution poor, but said he “watched this program being planned. strategy calls for conflict with Russia and of values.” broken and eviscerated” as war funding NATO is a front for Western military China. NATO continuously expanding, Time has shown the truth of his mes- stole from funding the necessities of the aggression, which has resulted in conducting military exercises and putting sage, as militarized police terrorize poor people. destruction around the world, mass bases, missiles, and other military communities and are used to silence dis- Today, U.S. military spending of more deaths, and mass migration as people equipment on the Russian border are sent, creating a war at home. Other as- than a trillion dollars—the Pentagon are forced from their NATO-destroyed communities. It’s time to end it.

Would Dr. King oppose NATO? The Black Alliance for Peace explains why Dr. King would speak out against NATO if he were alive today: “Dr. King would be opposed to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) because it is an instrument of U.S. and European militarism. He would not be confused—and neither are we— about why the liberal establishment, neocons, military-industrial complex, corporations and the corporate media are opposed to ending an anachronistic structure. NATO’s only reason for being today is to serve as the military wing of the dying U.S.-European colonial project.” Black Alliance for Peace is not alone in seeing the reality of NATO as an aggressive arm of the U.S. military. In the Chicago Tribune, Victor Davis Hanson writes, “In an era when the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact are now ancient history, everyone praises NATO as Soldiers welcoming NATO troops at Lithuania’s Rukla base. Photo: European Pressphoto Agency. ‘indispensable’ and ‘essential’ to Western solidarity and European security. But few part of that strategy. NATO has even pects of the war at home are the injus- alone is $717 billion—accounts for more feel any need to explain how and why that expanded to Colombia, which borders tice system, mass incarceration, the lack than 65 percent of discretionary spending, could still be so.” Venezuela, another nation the United of social supports and the exploitation of while poverty and homelessness rise. The truth is that not only is NATO States has threatened with war while workers and the environment. King called for a transformational change not indispensable or essential—it is conducting an economic war and regime King described how war degrades U.S. as an “edifice which produces beggars counterproductive. It creates conflicts and change operations there. soldiers who realize that “we are on the needs re-structuring” and urged us to is being used as an aggressive military A coalition of more than 100 side of the wealthy, and the secure, while “look uneasily on the glaring contrast tool. Among the wars of NATO are organizations that are calling for an end to we create a hell for the poor.” King said of poverty and wealth.” The wealth Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and NATO describes its devastating impact: he could not be silent in the face of such divide today has worsened, with three Yemen as well as Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, “NATO has been the world’s deadliest cruel manipulation of the poor “as poor people having wealth equal to half the and Yugoslavia. military alliance, causing untold suffering, blacks and whites” from the United States population. King criticized “capitalists” David Swanson of World BEYOND and devastation throughout Northern were “burning the huts of a poor village” who sought to take the wealth of nations War describes how NATO works against Africa, the Middle East and beyond. 8,000 miles away. The dehumanization across the globe. the rule of law, writing, “NATO is used Hundreds of thousands have died in U.S./ and contempt of “other” people, he noted, On April 4, NATO will be holding within the U.S. and by other NATO NATO wars in Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and leads to the persecution and death of black meetings in Washington, D.C. This is an members as cover to wage wars under Yugoslavia. Millions of refugees are now people in the United States. insult to the memory of Dr. King and what the pretense that they are somehow more risking their lives trying to escape the King saw war as “a symptom of a far he stood for. The Peace Congress, which legal or acceptable.” carnage that these wars have brought to deeper malady within the American was held in place of Trump’s cancelled When the Soviet Union dissolved, the their homelands, while workers in the 29 spirit.” King accurately psredicted that if continued on page 9 … 4 V5N2—Spring 2019 Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org

policy opens the door to first-use of • Foregoing profits, jobs and alliance nuclear weapons, which is prohibited by hegemony based on maintaining that pre- international law. tense; and The Nuclear Posture Review also • Otherwise dismantling the U.S. nu- violates the Nuclear Non-Proliferation clear arsenal, which Ellsberg calls the Treaty, to which the United States is American Doomsday Machine a party. This treaty requires parties On January 30, Sen. Elizabeth Warren “to pursue negotiations in good faith (D-Mass.), member of the Senate Armed on effective measures relating to the Services Committee, and Rep. Adam cessation of the nuclear arms race at an Smith (D-Wash.), chairman of the House early date and to nuclear disarmament.” Armed Services Committee, took a good first step. They introduced the No First ‘Two Minutes to Midnight’ Use Act, to establish in law that it is the In order to convey the urgency of the policy of the United States not to fire threat to humanity and the planet, the nuclear weapons first so “that the United Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created States should never initiate a nuclear war.” the Doomsday Clock. It uses imagery The U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of the apocalypse (midnight) and a of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) forbids nuclear explosion (countdown to zero). ratifying countries “never under any Trump Moves the World The decision to either move or leave in circumstances to develop, test, produce, place the minute hand of the Doomsday manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or Clock is made each year. The Clock is stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear Closer to ‘Doomsday’ a universally recognized measure of explosive devices.” It also prohibits the vulnerability to catastrophe caused by transfer of, use of, or threat to use nuclear By Marjorie Cohn Beatrice Fihn, executive director of nuclear weapons, climate change or other weapons or nuclear explosive devices. the International Campaign to Abolish emerging technologies that could pose a The treaty, adopted in 2017, will enter into In 1987, the United States and the Soviet Nuclear Weapons, concurs. “Trump has threat. On January 24, the Bulletin once force after 50 nations have ratified it. Thus Union adopted the Intermediate-Range fired the starting pistol on Cold War II. again kept the Doomsday Clock at two far, it has 21 ratifications. But the five Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in an effort to Only this one could be bigger, more minutes to midnight. And that was before original nuclear-armed countries, which eliminate missiles on hair-trigger alert for dangerous, and the world may not be so the U.S. and Russia pulled out of the INF. also happen to be the permanent members nuclear war due to their short flight times. lucky this time around.” “Trump and Putin are both posturing as of the U.N. Security Council—the U.S., It was the first time the two countries gunslingers in a Western movie,” Ellsberg Russia, France, China and the U.K.—did agreed to destroy nuclear weapons. That Undermining Nuclear Disarmament warned. “But the weapons in their quick- not participate in the treaty negotiations treaty outlawed nearly 2,700 ballistic or The adoption of the INF led to the 1991 draw holsters are not pistols; they are and have not agreed to it. land-based cruise missiles with a range of signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction doomsday machines. And this is not high Resistance against nuclear weapons roughly 300 to 3,000 miles. Treaty (START), which considerably noon; it is two minutes to midnight.” also takes the form of civil disobedience, The Trump administration thought reduced the number of long-range strategic such as the recent action by the Kings Bay nothing of pulling out of the INF. On Feb- nuclear weapons. The New START, signed Toward Denuclearization Plowshares 7. ruary 2, the United States suspended its in 2010,requires the U.S. and Russia to In his book, Ellsberg proposes the U.S. obligations under the treaty, starting a reduce the number of deployed nuclear government undertake the following The Kings Bay Plowshares 7 dangerous chain reaction that brings us warheads from a maximum of 2,200 in measures toward the goal of abolishing When I was growing up in the early closer to nuclear war. Russia followed suit 2010 to 1,550 in 2018. Trump’s cavalier nuclear weapons: days of the Cold War, the fear of nuclear and pulled out of the treaty the next day. withdrawal from INF does not portend well • A U.S. no-first-use policy; annihilation was pervasive. Although Then the three countries with the largest for the renewal of New START in 2021. • Probing investigative hearings on U.S. nuclear weapons have been on nuclear arsenals quickly test-launched nu- Moreover, Trump’s Nuclear Posture war plans to avoid nuclear winter; hair trigger alert for 73 years, “nuclear clear-capable missiles. France conducted Review of 2018 would allow the United • Eliminating ICBMs; weapons have become normal,” Patrick a test of its medium-range air-to-surface States to use nuclear weapons in response • Ending the pretense of preemptive O’Neill told Truthout. He and six other missile on February 4. The next day, the to non-nuclear attacks. This new U.S. damage-limiting by first-strike forces; continued on next page … United States fired a Minuteman III inter- continental ballistic missile (ICBM). And an hour and a half later, Russia launched an RS-24 Yars ICBM. Richard Burt participated in the negotiations of the INF during the Reagan administration. Last fall, he predicted that U.S. withdrawal would lead to Russia’s deployment of intermediate- range missiles and the United States’ development of new sea- and air-based weapons systems. Sure enough, on Feb. 4, Russia’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu,announced his country’s plans to build mid-range, nuclear-capable missiles within two years. “New intermediate-range cruise and ballistic missiles and low-yield warheads now being planned both in Russia and United States are nothing other than filed- down triggers to all-out thermonuclear war,” Daniel Ellsberg, author of The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, told Truthout. He warns of “nuclear winter,” which is the end of civilization as we know it. A consultant to the Defense Department and the White House in 1961, Ellsberg drafted Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s plans for nuclear war. Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org V5N2—Spring 2019 5

movement, Plowshares takes its name from the biblical prophecy of Isaiah, who called on nations to “beat their swords into plowshares.” There have been about 100 raids of nuclear sites since the group’s founding in 1980 by the famed Jesuit priest Daniel Berrigan and his brother Philip Berrigan. During a hearing on the case in U.S. District Court in Brunswick, Ga., federal prosecutor Karl Knoche claimed that the movement has created a “cottage industry” for activists seeking to denuclearize the U.S. “I believe that they think they are trying to prevent the end of the world,” countered Bill Quigley. A prominent civil-rights lawyer and professor at Loyola Law School in New Orleans, Quigley is one of a group of pro bono attorneys representing the Plowshares defendants. He views them as part of a long tradition of civil disobedience by people “willing to risk arrest and prison” for their beliefs. On Jan. 16, Quigley filed a brief in Georgia’s Southern District Court for dismissal of the charges against the Plowshares defendants. His argument was based on provisions of a little-known federal law called the Religious Freedom The Kings Bay Plowshares Seven. Carmen in the middle. Revival Act of 1993. As for Trotta, who had no prior felonies from his more than 30 arrests over decades of activism, Quigley believes Carmen Trotta, Prisoner of His Own Conscience that “realistically” he could spend a year By Mary Reinholz Atlantic Fleet, which has at least six subs property and one misdemeanor for behind bars. that contain missiles with nuclear warheads trespassing. Trotta is not that optimistic. It’s not every day that I get a chance capable of delivering far more firepower Trotta said their intent was to stage a “I’m preparing for five years,” he said. to interview a devout man of faith and than the U.S. bomb dropped on Hiroshima. nonviolent and “symbolic disarmament” “A long time.” derring-do whose religiously inspired “Is it a crime to to break into somebody’s of the Trident submarines. This reporter hopes he gets lucky. activism has put him under house arrest house if it’s burning?” he responded. “We wanted to address the single most- Originally published by The Villager... at an East Village soup kitchen and men’s In the wake of his April 5 arrest, for lethal weapons on earth,” he said. “A single Mary Reinholz is an award-winning shelter run by Catholic Worker volunteers. which he pleaded not guilty, Trotta—who Trident submarine, if it’s blasted off, with New York-based journalist who has However, I did just that when I recently was named Carmen after his immigrant all it has inside of itself, could drastically written for numerous publications, sat down with Carmen Trotta, indicted Italian grandfather—spent about 50 days in change life as we know it on this planet.” including The Los Angeles Times, The last spring after an anti-nuke protest in a Georgia county jail. He was then released Trotta’s protest at Kings Bay was his New York Times, and Newsday. She is a the deep South. on $1,000 bond. He told me he now faces the first “non-Gandhian” action under the former columnist for the New York Daily There, inside the Catholic Worker’s possibility of up to 20 years in federal prison. aegis of Plowshares. A controversial News. fifth-floor walk-up building on East First A court date for his jury trial has yet Street, his longtime residence, Trotta, 56, to be scheduled, so he continues to cook wears an ankle monitor and awaits trial meals for hungry people who come to St. constitutes unlawful selective prosecution. out of state. The reason why? Trotta joined Joseph House (“St. Joe’s”) from all over Doomsday Co-defendant Martha Hennessy, six elderly pacifists who, on April 4, broke the city. the granddaughter of Catholic Worker into the Kings Bay Naval Submarine A sturdily built bachelor described as … continued from previous page Movement co-founder Dorothy Day, told Base in Georgia under cover of darkness “angelic” by criminal defense lawyer Ron Catholic activists are facing up to 25 Truthout, “The U.S. withdrawal from the to mark the 50th anniversary of Martin Kuby, who once represented him years years in prison for their symbolic action INF treaty is designed to ensnare Russia Luther King’s assassination. They ago, Trotta also remains politically active. to disarm the nuclear weapons on Kings and the world in a new nuclear arms race.” splattered blood on government property He’s an associate editor for the Catholic Bay Naval Base in Georgia (see story She warns, “This is empire run amok; we to protest the anti-ballistic nuclear Worker newspaper and a member of the above). The base is homeport to six have lost our democracy; let us pray we missiles stored inside the port’s Trident executive board of the War Resisters nuclear ballistic missile submarines each don’t lose our world and each other.” submarines, calling them illegal, immoral League. Since 2009, he has divided his armed with 16 Trident II missiles. They It is incumbent upon all of us to resist and an existential threat to the planet. time between St. Joe’s, where he helps carried with them a copy of Ellsberg’s the inexorable march toward nuclear win- “We went to the scene of the crime,” feed hungry people from all over the city, book and left it on the base. ter. We must join together in coalitions Trotta told me. He was referring to and Long Island, where he looks after his The defendants, who will likely go and protest to Congress, the White House, his Catholic comrades in the radical 91-year-old widowed father. to trial this spring, maintain that any in writing and in the streets. There is no Plowshares movement who carried bolt Trotta’s life changed dramatically when use or threat to use nuclear weapons of time to lose. It is two minutes to midnight cutters, hammers, crime-scene tape, vials he and his co-defendants were hit with an mass destruction is illegal, Kings Bay on the Doomsday Clock. of human blood and their own indictment indictment for alleged criminal conduct at Plowshares 7 spokesperson Bill Ofenloch Copyright Truthout. Reprinted with of nuclear weapons. “These weapons are Kings Bay. Among the others are Martha told Truthout. They are also arguing that permission. illegal,” he insisted. “If they’re not illegal, Hennessy, 63, a granddaughter of the late their prosecution violates the Religious Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita then there is no law.” Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Christian Freedom Restoration Act, because their at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, It took naval officers more than two hours anarchist Catholic Worker movement, actions were motivated by their Catholic former president of the National Lawyers to discover the seven protesters, according which is committed to fostering peace and belief that nuclear weapons are immoral and Guild, deputy secretary general of the to early news reports. A base spokesperson, social justice. Day is being considered for illegal. Finally, the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 International Association of Democratic Scott Bassett, flat-out refused to answer my sainthood by the Catholic Church. are claiming that Trump’s repeated threats Lawyers and a member of the advisory questions on what appeared to be a major The aging protesters are being called the to use nuclear weapons and his illegal board of Veterans for Peace. Her most breach of security at Kings Bay. Kings Bay Plowshares Seven. They were conduct have not been prosecuted, so the recent book is Drones and Targeted I reminded Trotta that he had broken charged with three felonies, including government’s decision to prosecute only Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical laws to get inside a 1,700-acre base of the conspiracy to commit damage on federal those who protest against nuclear weapons Issues. 6 V5N2—Spring 2019 Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org The FBI’s Secret War on Political Freedom By Michael Steven Smith

The Federal Bureau of Investigation tried to destroy left organizations and the black freedom movement during the last major upsurge in radical politics in this country, in the 1960s. It looks like they are trying to do it again. The bureau’s Cointelpro (Counterintelligence Program) was a secret operation the bureau carried out against left-wing groups from 1956 to 1971. It first targeted the Communist Party, and was expanded to the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in 1961 and the “New Left” in 1968. In a secret 1968 memo, longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover directed his Fred Hampton, a leader of Chicago’s Black Panther Party who was killed during an FBI-sponsored police raid: agents to “expose, disrupt and otherwise “You can jail a revolutionary, but you can’t jail the revolution.” neutralize the activities of various new left organizations. We must frustrate every told Boudin, “You are not going to believe such as by handing out flyers at an antiwar been tossed aside. The surveillance state effort of these groups and individuals to what’s in these documents.” demonstration calling the SWP and other has grown ever larger with the creation consolidate their forces or to recruit new The SWP came out of the Debsian wing organizers cowards for not wanting to get of a Department of Homeland Security or faithful adherents.” of the Socialist Party in the late 1930s, and “battle wounds” fighting the “pigs.” that works closely with the FBI and local Hoover directed his venom especially at advocated a democratic form of socialism The 1986 victory was historic. The police departments to monitor lawful the Black movement, writing that “we must unlike what existed in the Soviet Union. At federal court decision held that advocating political dissent. prevent the rise of a new black messiah.” its peak, it had 3,000 members including its for socialism and being in a socialist The FBI has already infiltrated Muslim The FBI and its accomplices in the Chicago youth group. It had a weekly newspaper, a organization were legal, ruling that “these mosques and admitted to a program targeting Police Department admitted to the 1969 monthly magazine, an international news disruption operations were directed at the those whom they call “black identity assassination of Chicago socialist and service, a publishing house, and owned kind of political activities that the SWP extremists,” that is, black people organizing Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton a five-story headquarters in an old ship had a constitutional right to carry out.” to oppose police violence. Under Obama, the in his bed along with his bodyguard Mark FBI and Homeland Security worked closely Clark. The circumstances around the with local police departments in the fall of murders of Martin Luther King—who The 1986 trial took three months. What was 2011 to monitor and later break up Occupy was harassed by the FBI for years—and encampments in various cities. Malcolm X remain suspicious. proved? The FBI had used 300 infiltrators and We need to build solid organizations Although Cointelpro was ended that can withstand government attempts after it was exposed in 1971, and the 1,300 informers over a 15-year period, and at disruption. Here are some key practices FBI investigation of the SWP ended burglarized SWP offices and members’ homes to remember: in 1976, their practices of government Don’t say anything on social media or surveillance, infiltration and disruption more than 200 times. other electronic communications you would of radical groups have never gone away. not want the government to see. They have Most of what we know about Cointelpro access to all of it when they want it. resulted from a lawsuit, Socialist Workers repair building in the West Village. It had “For the first time the FBI’s disruptions, Within our movements, don’t turn Party vs. The Attorney General, which chapters in most major cities and on many surreptitious entries and use of informers political disagreements into personal the SWP filed in 1973 through its attorney college campuses. It helped organize some have been found unconstitutional,” the feuds. Don’t engage in needlessly Leonard Boudin, the finest movement of the largest demonstrations against the Nation magazine wrote. “All in all, it disruptive behavior—and be wary of constitutional litigator of his time. In 1986, Vietnam war. amounted to a domestic contra operation those who do so on a regular basis. The a federal judge in Manhattan awarded the The 1986 trial took three months. against a peaceful political organization, government has a long history of using party $264,000 in damages. The case is What was proved? The FBI had used 300 for no reason other than its ideological infiltrators to sow strife within left extraordinarily important today, when infiltrators and 1,300 informers over a 15- orientation.” organizations. socialist ideas are growing in popularity year period, and burglarized SWP offices The FBI had played its role as Socialism is no longer a dirty word. We and socialists are getting elected to office and members’ homes more than 200 times. the “political police of the national are growing in numbers and strength. It for the first time in almost 100 years. Wiretaps had been employed for 20,000 government,” Noam Chomsky wrote. would be naïve to think that the powers The FBI first investigated the SWP days and listening devices for 12,000. The federal government, represented by that be are not cognizant of the threats in 1940. When the bureau added it to Landlords were contacted in an effort to then-U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani, to their power and privilege and are not Cointelpro in 1961, a secret memorandum get people evicted and workplaces were maintained to the bitter end that it had taking steps to block it. said the party had been “openly espousing visited in order to get people fired. a right to undermine an organization Michael Steven Smith is a past board its line on a local and national basis The agents were also instructed to stir just because of its ideas. No government member of the Center for Constitutional through running candidates for public up mistrust in the movement and create official who participated in the campaign Rights. He co-hosts the nationally office and strongly directing and/or antagonistic factions inside the party, against the SWP was ever prosecuted, and broadcast weekly radio show Law and supporting causes such as Castro’s Cuba such as by sending anonymous letters to a no congressional hearings were ever held. Disorder with Heidi Boghosian and is the and integrations problems … in the South.” prominent black SWP member that he and In the post-9/11 era, even the modest author of the forthcoming book Lawyers The discovery aspect of the SWP lawsuit his fellow “party monkeys” should leave legal restraints that were imposed on law For the Left: In the Courts, In the Streets, took eight years and yielded an astounding and join the Black Panthers. Agents tried to enforcement surveillance and infiltration and On the Air. 10 million pages of documents. The judge get the party to engage in illegal activities, of political activity during the 1970s have Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org V5N2—Spring 2019 7

answers to the war in Vietnam or to racial injustice in this country.” The Washington The King We Would Rather Forget Post claimed that some of his assertions were “sheer inventions of unsupported By John Marciano rec­ord crowd of some 250,000 people in a whole structure of American life must be fantasy”; that King had “dim­inished his marvelous and peaceful show of support changed.” He stated that the injustice of usefulness to his cause, to his country On Nov. 9, 1967, Dr. King gave the for justice (Taylor Branch, “Pillar of Fire: the conflict was inextricably linked to the and to his people.” The corporate media Annual Convocation address of the America in the King Years 1954-63”). African-American struggle for civil rights. Graduate Student Association (GSA) at Four years later, King articulated The war was an enemy of poor people SUNY Buffalo. On behalf of the GSA, I powerful truths about the War in Vietnam because it diverted money that could be was co-organizer of the event and his driver and this nation. He laid his firm opposition used to mitigate the effects of poverty. And The New York Times that evening. This speech was seven months to the war squarely on the shoulders of the the poor, especially the African-American called [King’s] effort after his historic “Beyond Vietnam” oration U.S. government—which had denied the poor, were being killed or maimed in higher at New York’s Riverside Church in which Vietnamese their right to independence, proportions than their representation in to link civil rights and he condemned that war. That evening, we aided brutal French colonialism there, the U.S. population (Southern Christian discussed the harsh attacks he received for created and supported Diem’s dictatorship Leadership Conference Report, 1967). opposition to the war a his opposition. King calmly and patiently in South Vietnam, and violated the 1954 King’s speech elicited vicious attacks ‘disservice to both.’ explained that he opposed the Vietnam Geneva Agreement. by the political and corporate media conflict because conscience demanded it; King denounced the United States as establishment and civil rights leaders. Life he resolutely stayed the course until his “the greatest purveyor of violence in the Magazine stated, “Much of his speech was assassination five months later. world today,” and saw the war was “a a demagogic slander that sounded like a and political condemnation of King “Beyond Vietnam” is perhaps his symptom of a far deeper malady within script for Radio Hanoi.” The New York accurately reflected public sentiment; a greatest speech, although unknown the American spirit.” Later that spring, he Times called his effort to link civil rights Harris poll taken in May 1967 revealed to most Americans compared with asserted that “the evils of racism, economic and opposition to the war a “disservice to that 73 percent of Americans opposed his his “I Have a Dream” oration at the exploitation and militarism are all tied both. The moral issues in Vietnam are less antiwar position, including 50 percent of August 1963 March for Freedom and together”: We could not “get rid of one clear-cut than he suggests.” It concluded African-Americans. Jobs in Washington. Those who have without getting rid of the others [and] the that there were “no simple or easy If we wish to pay tribute to Dr. King, heard or watched King’s magnificent we should read (or reread) his “Beyond oration that day are deeply moved, but Vietnam” speech, and abandon the myths to this day little is known about the about him and the movement for justice pre-march “apprehension [and] dread” and peace to which he dedicated his life. of the corporate media and political We do a grave injustice to his legacy establishment. President Kennedy ordered and that struggle by revising the actual 4,000 troops to be “assembled in the history of the era, and by failing to fully suburbs, backed by 15,000 paratroopers” understand and confront the economic of the 82nd Airborne Division in North exploitation, militarism, and racism that he Carolina; his aide was ready “to cut condemned—which continue to poison this the power to the public-address system nation. if rally speeches proved incendiary”; John Marciano wrote American War Washington banned all alcohol sales in Vietnam: Crime or Commemoration for the first time since Prohibition; and and co-wrote Lessons of the Vietnam hospitals prepared “for riot casualties.” King delivering his speech “Beyond Vietnam” at New York City’s Riverside Church in 1967. War with William Griffen. He is professor The event was a huge success: it drew a Photo: John C. Goodwin, TIME Magazine. emeritus at SUNY Cortland.

It’s the teacher, the social worker, the public defender When the formula for success, or so you’ve been taught who are the heroes here; to believe, I Take a Knee It is they who man the trenches, they who tend the weak is sweat and just a touch of (self-righteous, pale-skinned) By Sam Wright and allay their fears. luck. It is they who toil for a pittance, dedicate themselves to America, I love ya, But the greater good. Wake up America! Don’t you know I love you too? In the face of police brutality, It is they who know the difference between how we act That every star on Old Glory represents a state … of I Take a Knee. and how we should. mind, hopeful and true. And I Take a Knee, They are in the game for the long haul and none better You’ve settled for lip service to the poor, the out-of-work, When you sell arms to the Saudis to starve and kill know the score, the disenfranchised. Yemenis. It’s just that they measure success by giving, not by You’ve become a mouthpiece for the capitalists, And I Take a Knee, and bow my head in shame, taking more. given a green light to their greed, When Israeli soldiers snipe Palestinians, then claim the While millions live in poverty, go hungry, see no way to victims are to blame. American, I love ya, But succeed. I Take a Knee America, I love ya, But When you talk about building a barrier, a fence, some America, I love ya, But Stop calling every soldier and cop a hero! grotesque hateful wall, When I Take a Knee, Guns are not heroic and I never asked anyone to go to as if Justice is measured by the height of obstacles built I doubt your indignation allows you to see me! war for me! to bar the thrall. I suspect you see a terrorist, an ingrate attacking the Nor did I ask those who serve and protect to kill And I take a knee when you declare it’s your duty to tear Red, White, and Blue. someone for stealing a TV. innocent children I was hoping you’d come to realize I’ve never called minorities a blight, nor said that from their parents’ arms, then claim things ain’t quite as it isn’t only for me that I kneel, it’s just as much for you. foreigners threaten my rights. bad as they seem, And I never once condoned a bullet in the back, just after all, those brown folks have no right to claim our Yes, America, I’m a dreamer, because a man is black. American Dream. So I shall continue to Take a Knee! America, what perversions your subtle propaganda is It’s more dignified than begging meant to instill: America, I love ya, But or groveling on the floor, Teaching our children to hate, conquer, and kill in I Take a Knee, I’ve set my sights on Kneeling, whatever theater you will. Because you’ve taken your eye off the ball: I Will Stand For It No More! You vilify the protestor who’s taken to the streets, and America, I love ya, But demonize the “socialist” in your pithy snarky tweets. Sam Wright is a Toledo, Ohio, writer and activist. It’s time to get it right: What right have others, you ask, to redistribute your hard-earned bucks? 8 V5N2—Spring 2019 Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org

Mount Dinali.

walks me out: “The Pribilofs were the last an expert in sea-level rise. marooned within various fragments [of Planet in Crisis place mammoths survived because there I asked him what he would say to people their habitat] under circumstances that weren’t any people out there to hunt them. who think we still have time to mitigate are untenable for the long term has begun … continued from page 1 We’ve never experienced this, where we the impacts of runaway climate change. showing up all over the land surface While on St. Paul, I spoke with many are headed. Maybe the islands will become “We can’t undo this,” he replied. “How of the planet. The familiar questions tribal elders who told me stories about a refuge for a population of humans.” are you going to cool down the ocean? recur: How many mountain gorillas fewer fish and sea birds, harsher storms We’re already there.” inhabit the forested slopes of the Virunga and warming temperatures, but what The Loss Upon Us As if to underscore the point, Wanless volcanoes, along the shared borders of struck me most deeply were their accounts For at least two decades, I’ve found my told me that, in the past, carbon dioxide the Democratic Republic of the Congo, of plummeting fur seal populations. Seal solace in the mountains. I lived in Alaska had varied from roughly 180 to 280 parts Uganda, and Rwanda? How many tigers mothers, they said, had to swim so much from 1996 to 2006 and more than a year per million (ppm) in the atmosphere as the live in the Sariska Tiger Reserve of farther to find food for their pups that the of my life has been spent climbing on the Earth shifted from glacial to interglacial northwestern India? How many are left? babies were starving to death before they glaciers of Denali and other peaks in the periods. Linked to this 100-ppm How long can they survive?” could make it back. Alaska Range. Yet that was a bittersweet fluctuation was about a 100-foot change in As he continued, the anger in his voice

Just before flying to St. Paul, I met time for me as the dramatic impacts of sea level. “Every 100-ppm CO2 increase in became palpable, especially when he began with Bruce Wright in Anchorage, Alaska. climate change were quickly becoming the atmosphere gives us 100 feet of sea- discussing how “island biogeography” He’s a senior scientist with the Aleutian apparent, including quickly receding level rise,” he told me. “This happened had come to the mainland and what Pribilof Islands Association, has worked glaciers and warmer winter temperatures. when we went in and out of the Ice Age.” was happening to animal populations for the National Marine Fisheries Service, After years of war and then climate- As I knew, since the industrial marooned by human development on and was a section chief for the National change reporting, I regularly withdrew revolution began, atmospheric CO2 has fragments of land in places like the Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to the mountains to catch my breath. As already increased from 280 to 410 ppm. Amazon. “How many grizzly bears for 11 years. “We’re not going to stop I filled my lungs with alpine air, my heart “That’s 130 ppm in just the last 200 occupy the North Cascades ecosystem, a this train wreck,” he assures me grimly. would settle down and I could feel myself years,” I pointed out to him. “That’s 130 discrete patch of mountain forest along the feet of sea-level rise that’s already baked continued on page 18 … into Earth’s climate system.” He looked at me and nodded grimly. ‘This [explosion of geologic change] exceeds the I couldn’t help thinking of that as a nod ability for normal adaptation. We’ve shoved it into goodbye to coastal cities from Miami to Shanghai. Water overdrive and taken our hands off the wheel.’ In July 2017, I traveled to Camp 41 in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, Writes part of a project founded four decades We’re taught the Creator made “We are not even trying to slow down root back into the Earth. ago by Thomas Lovejoy, known to many everything the production of CO2 [carbon dioxide], Later, my book research would take as the “godfather of biodiversity.” While And in all we have there is life and there is already enough CO2 in the me back onto Denali’s fast-shrinking visiting him, I also met Vitek Jirinec, an The trees, the rocks, the air we atmosphere.” glaciers and also to Glacier National Park ornithologist from the Czech Republic breathe While describing the warming, ever in Montana. There I met Dr. Dan Fagre, a who had held 11 different wildlife positions Each has their own way to write more acidic waters around Alaska and U.S. Geological Survey research ecologist from Alaska to Jamaica. In the process, the harm being caused to the marine food and director of the Climate Change in he became all too well acquainted with The skies open up with rain web, he recalled a moment approximately Mountain Ecosystems Project. “This is the signs of biological collapse among The Grandfathers provide the heat 250 million years ago when the oceans an explosion,” he assured me, “a nuclear the birds he was studying. He’d watched The winged sing their songs underwent similar changes and the planet explosion of geologic change. This … as some Amazon populations like that of The drums talk in a beat experienced mass extinction events exceeds the ability for normal adaptation. the black-tailed leaftosser declined by 95 “driven by ocean acidity. The Permian We’ve shoved it into overdrive and taken percent; he’d observed how mosquitoes The streams carry the life of us all mass extinction where 90 percent of the our hands off the wheel.” Despite its in Hawaii were killing off native bird The oceans carry a mighty fight It’s not a splash or spray from a falls species were wiped out, that is what we name, the park he studies is essentially populations; he’d explored how saltwater Listen closely, it’s how our waters are looking at now.” guaranteed not to have any active glaciers intrusion into Alaska’s permafrost was write I wrap up the interview with a heavy by 2030, only 11 years from now. changing bird habitats there. heart, place my laptop in my satchel, My research also took me to the His tone turned somber as we discussed Richie Plass put on my jacket, and shake his hand. University of Miami, Coral Gables, his research and a note of anger slowly 09-11-18 Knowing I’m about to fly to St. Paul, where I met the chair of the Department crept into his voice. “The problem Wright has one final thing to tell me as he of Geological Science, Harold Wanless, of animal and plant populations left Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org V5N2—Spring 2019 9 What the Yellow Vests Have in Common with Occupy old retiree, tells the group assembled in should focus on housing speculation and designed to address what it views as the Inside the mass protests Belleville Park. “Whatever we can do to spray graffiti on the offices of real estate country’s deepseated political malaise. that are rocking France keep putting pressure on them.” agencies. Another speaker tells everyone They focus on four key themes: taxes The Yellow Vest movement is how much fun he had demonstrating in and public spending, public services, the remarkably grassroots, organized inde­ the city’s wealthy neighborhoods. fossil-fuel transition and “democracy and By Cole Stangler pendently of political parties and unions, Yann Le Bihan, a 48-year-old school citizenship,” which includes immigration. and varying substantially by location. administrator, takes the floor and mentions Most Yellow Vests view the entire PARIS—In Belleville Park, a small, Protesters’ calls to tax the rich and to a modest decline in public support. While endeavor as a sham, a desperate effort steep public garden with panoramic raise wages have earned support from the a YouGov study from late November 2018 from authorities to redirect popular views of the city, about 40 supporters of French Left. found 70 percent of the country backed the frustrations into an institutionalized dead the gilets jaunes (Yellow Vest) movement But the Yellow Vests have also won Yellow Vests, a more recent version of the end. Ultimately, the movement’s future have gathered on a chilly January night for sympathy from the country’s far right. poll showed 62 percent approval. could hinge on its capacity to set forth a what’s billed as a “neighborhood popular The ever-calculating Marine Le Pen of “The most important thing you can do coherent alternative. assembly.” It’s the third such meet-up to the newly renamed National Rally party is talk to your friends and acquaintances For its part, the group in Belleville has discuss what residents of this historically (formerly the National Front) has paid it lip when you hear misinformation about committed to more immediate plans. working-class quarter can do to support service, and a small share of demonstrators the Yellow Vests,” says Le Bihan. “But By the end of the meeting, they’ve set a the wave of demonstrations. we also need to work ourselves on our gathering point for the weekend’s protest It’s a wide-open question, much like communication, on our talking points.” in Paris. And they’ve vowed to find a the future of the Yellow Vest revolt. ‘I want to keep pissing Not everyone agrees. “This is much better location to keep holding their Online anger over a planned doubling of bigger than talking points or public “popular assemblies” over the winter— the fuel tax, to about 25 cents a gallon, off the politicians … . relations,” Amparo, a 62-year-old preferably indoors. spilled into the streets in November 2018. schoolteacher who declines to give her last Cole Stangler writes about labor and The movement took its symbol from the Whatever we can do to name, says to applause. “We’re in the fight the environment. His reporting has also clothing item required of French motorists keep putting pressure of our lives! … Opinion polls go up and appeared in The Nation, VICE, The since 2008. Rooted in rural areas and down, the stock market goes up and down, New Republic, and International Busi- outer suburbs, the demonstrations quickly on them .’ but so what? We’re fighting for our lives.” ness Times. He lives in Paris. He can be spread, thanks in no small part to social Revolutionary ambitions not­with­standing, reached at [email protected]. Fol- media. They soon came to represent several pressing issues loom over the low him @colestangler. deeper frustrations with the rising cost of appear to share her warped diagnosis of movement today. First, there’s the question of living. Far from anti-environmental, the French society’s ills—calling, for instance, the Citizens’ Referendum Initiative, known movement simply called on the wealthy on France to exit the United Nations’ as the RIC. The most prominent version of to pick up the tab for France’s transition Global Compact for Migration, which they the proposal would allow French citizens NATO away from fossil fuels. see as a Trojan horse for mass immigration to introduce and authorize legislation, to After weeks of traffic blockades, dis- from Africa and the Middle East. nullify laws, to revoke legislators and to … continued from page 3 ruptive marches and occasionally violent All that seems far removed from this amend the constitution—all by referendum. military parade, called for people to unify clashes with the police, in December 2018 meeting, though, whose participants are a Some Yellow Vests consider it the around protests against NATO during the Yellow Vests won a series of conces- snapshot of Belleville itself, long inhabited movement’s single most important demand, their meetings. sions from President Emmanuel Macron: by immigrants and their descendants, though others seem more suspicious. “It’s The No2NATO2019 coalition, which the cancellation of the fuel tax increase, especially from North Africa. Attendees a super-revolutionary proposal,” bellowed is organizing protests against NATO, the scrapping of a separate tax hike on are young and old, white and brown, one enthusiastic activist at the Belleville writes: pensions passed the previous year, and the leading a freewheeling two-hour dis­ meeting—though he was the only one to “… in a grotesque desecration of Rev. expansion of a state subsidy for low-wage cussion reminiscent of the Occupy mention it. King’s lifelong dedication to peace, this is workers that could amount to a monthly movement. It’s both exciting and messy: Then, there is the so-called great the date that the military leaders of NATO pay bump of roughly $115. Nevertheless, Someone suggests blocking a major food national debate. Instead of taking up have chosen to celebrate NATO’s 70th the protests persist. and produce market; another says the the RIC, the French government has anniversary by holding its annual summit “I want to keep pissing off the movement should focus on economic responded to the protests with a series meeting in Washington, D.C. This is a politicians,” Jean Robert, a 71-year- issues; someone else says residents of discussions—online and in person— deliberate insult to Rev. King and a clear message that Black lives and the lives of non-European humanity, and indeed the lives of the vast majority, really do not matter.” World BEYOND War is organizing No to NATO—Yes to Peace Festival, which will include an art build, food, music and teach- ins on April 3 and a march from the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial on April 4. People are planning strategic, nonviolent protests against NATO’s meetings and organizing nonviolent direct action training to prepare for them. We reflect on the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. who urged us to “re- dedicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.” Protest to end NATO will be a step toward ending what King called “the deadly western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long.” It is time for peace to “take precedence over the pursuit of war.” This article was originally published at popularresistance.org. Margaret Flowers is a pediatrician. Kevin Zeese is a public interest attorney. They co-direct Popular Resistance. 10 V5N2—Spring 2019 Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org

because others must be attended. But they left you there not knowing that you were the dawn of the new world and ‘A War I’ve Lived With My Whole Life’ the sun and the earth—the beginning and ending of all By Susan Schnall to be a woman as wonderful as her mother. beautiful things. But there was not time for such thoughts. As for you, my darling, I want you only to be happy That was war and men must die and so you died. World War II was for me a very personal war. It was and not to be bound by memories. You have a long life They say you passed away on July 22, 1944, and you died the war in which my father, a Marine, was killed on the ahead of you and I want you to enjoy it. It is only for that but once, for you were a hero. Only cowards die a thousand island of Guam. It was a war I’ve lived my whole life. reason that I have fought in this war. deaths, and so I die each time I see the writing, and the It was the war in which my father felt he had to do his The only reason I wanted to live was to see you and battlefield is there, and only through sickness in my body share and help give something to this world. He did, and our daughter again. However, the fates have decided oth- can the realization come. It is impossible not to die at once. I never knew him except through pictures and letters erwise, and perhaps they know best. There, we’ve come to it again—the release is only in and others’ memories. It was a war that destroyed my Please darling, above all, enjoy your life. It is a pre- that. It lies in one direction and the path is very clear mother and her hopes and dreams and future. And we cious thing and you should make the most of it. You have to me. I want to walk it now before the sickness comes were just one family of one dead soldier. Every time I Susan and she is something that not many people are again. If I can just begin on the road, I know that the watch the news and hear about the casualties—whether, blessed with. I want her to grow up happy and get every- light lies at the end—illuminated by a bright star, for you American, Iraqi, Afghan, Syrian, Palestinian—I feel this thing out of life, so that she one day may know a love as are there. Then I can reach out to you and touch you— deep sense of loss for that person, for that family, for great as the one we have known. healing your wounds and the pain of having been alone. that child who lost a mother or a father or a sister or a I have not intended to be dramatic, but I wanted you to I cannot go back and I do not know how to go forward. brother. know that I’m always thinking of you and always shall. Anne LeVine

From a Father: May 13, 1944 From a Daughter: 2015 Dearest Susan, It’s Sunday: Cemetery Day Guess you don’t remember your daddy, but he sure It’s Sunday morning in Chicago. Papa and I drive to remembers you. You were just a little tyke the last time I pick up lox, smoked whitefish, sable, cream cheese and saw you, and now Mama says you’re a big girl. bagels, and then we get the three Sunday newspapers and I have your picture and it sure is nice. But, honey, you go home. want to watch what you do with those beautiful eyes of Papa dresses as usual in his suit, tie, and hat; Nana yours or when you get older you’ll cause all kinds of puts on her suit and heels, and we leave for our Sunday problems when you walk down the street. afternoon at Rosehill Cemetery to visit their son, my Mama says you have been taking good care of her for father. Papa has the radio tuned to a mystery-detective me, and I’m glad that you’re such a good little trooper and program. We stop at this small florist to pick up flowers. follow orders. Your mother is a wonderful woman—in When we arrive at the cemetery gates, Papa turns off the fact there is no one like her in the whole world. But then, radio. It’s important to be quiet and respectful among the you know that, and there’s no need for me to tell you. dead. I am six or seven or 13, but I’ve learned to walk Honey, do you miss me? I sure miss you. We used to have cautiously in the cemetery—never on the graves; always lots of fun together. When I get home we’ll have lots more. aware of headstones and markers. Papa drives slowly You and I and mother are going to do a lot of wonder- along through the windy roads, huge bushes and old oak ful things and have fun. trees, old mausoleums. It’s quiet and peaceful here among Well, my little princess, I don’t have much else to write the dead. about. You were a good girl for sending me all those We park and leave the car; Papa carries the flowers. cards and I love you very much. In winter we bring pansies. My papa is meticulous in Keep up the good work, sweetheart and daddy will be everything he does: He goes to the grave, takes the old home one of these days. God be with you and watch over Do not weep too much, darling, because I feel as though wilted flowers from the tin container in the ground, you and your mother. I have done my share and helped to give something to this pours out the old water, and carefully fills the container All my love to the sweetest little girl I know, world. In that respect I have been happy and regretted with fresh water and the bouquet, putting them back at Dad nothing. I would have wanted things otherwise than they the headstone. Nana falls to her knees, crying: “Harold, are, but the decision was not up to me. Harold, look. Here’s Susie—your daughter—see how From the Marines: August 4, 1944 Goodbye my darling, enjoy your life. Give Susan a last she’s growing.” Papa takes my hand and we walk away Deeply regret to inform you that your husband and First hug and kiss for me. to visit other relatives as Nana continues to talk with her Lieutenant Harold N. LeVine was killed in action in the I’ll love you forever, son, sobbing at times. In her beautiful suit, open-toed performance of his duty and service of his country. No H shoes, kneeling in her nylons next to the grave. At times, information available at present regarding disposition I think she leans over to hug him—over the grave—her of remains. Temporary burial in locality where death From a Mother and Wife: 1944–1945 youngest son, her beautiful Harold. occurred probable. You will be promptly furnished any The pain has come again and it flows over me in an And Papa, strong, stubborn Papa, so composed—and additional information received. To prevent possible aid to endless succession of wave after wave. I feel weak and me, visiting my father on Sunday. our enemies do not divulge the name of his ship or station. sick as though after a long illness, but this is not the Years later, when I spoke with my mother about those Please accept my heartfelt sympathy. Letter to follow. convalescent period—not just yet for it won’t release me visits, she wanted to know why I never mentioned them from its grasp. It is brutal and heavy and dominating, to her. I replied: “I don’t know. I thought that’s what kids From a Husband: March 3, 1944 the waves pound on my brain and there is no strength to did on Sundays, visit their fathers.” My beloved wife, combat this terror. This is a feeling that is old and new— Susan Schnall I hope that you shall never read this letter, not because old as the night they brought the telegram, as new as the I don’t want you to know the contents, but because it will horror of each new letter received. From the San Francisco Chronicle, March 12, 1966 mean that I shall never see you again. You will know the The fear of being alone crowds itself into me again and A Girl’s Tribute to Her Father reason why when it is given to you. I cringe in fear from the rooms and the walls of the house. A 22-year-old Stanford senior this week paid a unique It’s hard for me to write everything that is in my heart. The heat is leaving my body and cold sweat pours over tribute to her hero father who died in action as a Marine I’m going into action very soon. I want you to know that the flesh. Keep touching familiar objects in the room—con- in World War II. She is Susan Marina LeVine. Wishing I love you more than anything in the world, and, if there centrate on that and that alone—but the letter was so very to honor the memory of her father, Harold, who paid is another world other than the one on this earth, I will clear. Touch the chair and cling to it; stay by it. It is an object the supreme sacrifice for his country when she was continue to love you from there. that is clear and understandable in this room of terror and nine months old, Susan Marina enrolled in the Navy My life with you has been the happiest years of my life. silence. Go away from the battlefield. Leave it now just for a Nurse Corps and will discard her campus dress for a I’ve never regretted any moment of it. You have been a little while—just long enough to see through the denseness uniform as soon as she is graduated. It will be her way of perfect wife. and the fog, and find a brief respite. Shut your mind to it. demonstrating her desire to continue her father’s fight for I could write much of old memories and my love, but I But I should have been there. Why wasn’t I there? They freedom and justice for America and in the world. know that you know in your heart exactly what I mean. left you and went away and I was here clear across the Susan Schnall is a co-coordinator of the Vietnam I have no desire to make requests and demands on you seas. Perhaps in that moment I was smiling at something Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign. She is because I do not believe I should control your life now. but, oh my darling, I did not know. Yes, I must have been a professor at 0NYU and a member of Vietnam Veterans I would like, if possible, that my folks would be able to doing something quite senseless and useless while on the Against the War. She is president of Veterans For Peace see Susan as often as possible, be able to see her grow up field you lay there helpless and in pain. Yes, they left you Chapter 34, New York City. Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org V5N2—Spring 2019 11

The Elbit towers in the Arizona desert Norwegian pensions funds divested are rooted in a sinister 1994 Clinton- from Elbit in 2009, and over the last era strategy of “Prevention Through decade, activists around the world have Deterrence,” which aimed to prevent pushed universities and banks around illegal immigration by sealing off urban the world to follow suit. On Dec. 21, entry points into the United States such 2018, after a successful campaign by UK as those in San Diego and El Paso. The activists, HSBC bank announced that it intention was to funnel migrants to cross would divest from Elbit systems, citing through dangerous wilderness routes concerns over human rights and Elbit’s where they knew they would risk injury, manufacturing of cluster munitions. dehydration, heat stroke, exhaustion, and Since CODEPINK launched its Stop hypothermia. Elbit campaign less than a year ago, The logic of deterring migration by numerous actions have taken place, making the journey more dangerous has including petitions, meetings asking not only failed to decrease migration, Senator Janeen Shaheen—the largest the policy has increased migrant deaths. Democratic recipient of Elbit campaign According to Border Patrol, over 6,000 contributions—to stop taking Elbit people have died trying to cross the des- money, and creative protests calling for a ert since the 1990s. Volunteers from or- consumer boycott of the high-tech cycling ganizations like No More Deaths hike glasses produced by Elbit subsidiary the trails and leave water, food, socks, Everysight. blankets, and other necessary supplies. CODEPINK is actively campaigning New Hampshire activists protest outside the Elbit facility. Photo: CODEPINK In acts of even further cruelty, Border to get investment banks—such as Bank Patrol agents are known to destroy the of New York Mellon, which claims to Israeli Militarism and U.S. Border Imperialism water containers. Volunteers from No be committed to socially responsible More Deaths were just convicted of fed- investment and U.N. Sustainable eral charges for providing aid to undocu- Development goals—to divest from Elbit Two Crimes, One mented migrants. and other corporations that profit from U.S. and Israeli military contractors death and repression, such as Lockheed are making billions in profits from a Martin and CoreCivic, the largest for- Weapons Company system that activists have come to call profit immigrant detention corporation in “border imperialism.” A term coined the country. By Ariel Gold and Ursula Rozum repression of Palestinians by the Israeli by anthropologist Harsha Walia, border Israel is able to maintain its occupation government is as efficient as possible. imperialism conceptualizes how and repression of Palestinian people In January, 43-year-old Amal al- Along with ammunition, weaponized capitalism and racism manifest in the through technology from companies Taramsi became the third woman, along drones that carry out direct attacks, and form of militarized border enforcement like Elbit and through military aid and with a 14-year-old child and medic Razan surveillance drones that guide fighter jets to control land, maintain inequality diplomatic support from the United States. al-Najjar, to be killed in Gaza by Israeli and snipers in Gaza, in the West Bank, and oppression, and reinforce white We must continue to call for an end to snipers since the Great March of Return Elbit provides surveillance technology for European cultural dominance (a.k.a. unconditional U.S. military aid to Israel, began over nine months ago. Israel’s apartheid wall in the West Bank white supremacy) around the world. even though a military embargo is unlikely Israel has just announced they will and, through a contract with the U.S. This is the case in Israel, where Elbit and in the near future. In the meantime, block Qatari funds from entering Gaza Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. military contractors allow Israel to divestment from Elbit Systems and other despite the 7-mile-long densely populated U.S.-Mexico border. maintain and expand its occupation of war profiteers will play a major role in enclave already having reached a status of For the past 14 years, Elbit has brought Palestinian lands, and in the Americas, eroding the institutional and economic non-livability. Medicine is close to run- its brand of violent border surveillance to where politically imposed borders are support that allows Israel to commit war ning out, 97 percent of the water is con- the U.S.-Mexico border. In 2004, Hermes becoming increasingly militarized and crimes with impunity and the United taminated by sewage and saline and unfit drones manufactured by Israel’s Elbit migration is criminalized. States to increase border repression. for consumption, 54 percent of the labor Systems were the first unmanned aerial Elbit Systems, like the rest of the This article was originally published by force (70 percent of Gaza youth) are un- surveillance vehicles deployed at the U.S. weapons manufacturing industry, Mondoweiss. employed, and 31.5 percent of households southern border. U.S. Customs and Border is making a fortune from death and Ariel Gold is the national co-director for are either severely or moderately food in- protection began contracting with Elbit repression. They sell weapons across CODEPINK and leads their campaigns secure. Since March 30, 2018, over 250 Systems in 2014 for sensors, cameras, the world, and in the United States, they for Palestinian rights. Ursula Rozum people have been killed as the population radars and “integrated fixed towers” in donate money to congressional campaigns is CODEPINK’s Palestine Campaigns desperately risks their lives in the hopes the desert along the Arizona border with every year in order to maintain access to Coordinator. In November 2018, she of achieving freedom. Mexico. The towers are based on the U.S. government contracts. visited the Arizona borderlands to learn At the U.S.-Mexico border the situation technology used by Elbit for surveillance The movement to divest from war about the impact of Elbit surveillance is also desperate: Families trying to en- along Israel’s apartheid wall in the West and repression is growing. Swedish and towers. ter and seek refuge are being tear-gassed Bank, which separates Palestinians from and separated from their children. The their lands and families. The towers dire circumstances that have caused thou- in the Arizona borderlands, like the sands to flee on foot from their homes in border itself, are built on the lands of the Honduras and Guatemala are not dissimi- indigenous people of the area, the Tohono lar from the crises of violence, poverty, O’odam, many of whom have actively and food insecurity in Gaza. organized against the construction of the From the suffering both in Gaza and at border wall and towers on their lands. the U.S.-Mexico border, weapons giant The Elbit surveillance towers in south- Elbit Systems is reaping profits. east Arizona are intentionally positioned Elbit Systems is Israel’s largest weapons in the desert, miles away from the border company and has helped make Israel the wall, to track and harrass migrants once world’s leading exporter of military and they have crossed the border. According surveillance drones. As of 2017, Elbit was to testimony from migrants, when Border the 28th-largest weapons manufacturing Patrol locates groups of people who have company in the world, bringing in $3.38 crossed, they fly their helicopters close to billion in revenue. Elbit subsidiary Israeli the ground to intentionally kick up dust. Military Industries (IMI) produces cruise This tactic scares and scatters migrants missiles, cluster bombs, bullets for Israeli traveling in groups, separating them into snipers, and many more tools of death. the desert and decreasing their chances of Elbit helps ensure that the slaughter and survival. Activists occupy the rooftop of Israeli drone factory in Kent, England. 12 V5N2—Spring 2019 Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org

Hector After serving six years in the military Hector got caught selling marijuana (now legal in Deported Veterans: Finding a New California and other states) and was sent to prison. When he was about to be Meaning for Service at the Border released, he said, “Oh, I’m going home. I told my kids, everybody. Then the day before I was going home, they called me in to say, ‘Oh no, you’re going to immigration hold.’ And they told me, ‘Have you ever been an employee of the federal government? Have you ever been in the military enlisted?’ I told them, ‘Yeah, to both of those. I served my country for six years. I have an honorable discharge.’ It didn’t matter. “When I got deported, I By Tarak Kauff Vivar, Blanca Viramontes, Victor couldn’t find my way around here Juan Hinojosa, Felix Peralta, and in Tijuana. It was like somebody In February, my fellow others. Our experience confirmed dropped me off on the moon. Peace in Our Times editor what Mike had told us. These Because I’m an American. I Ellen Davidson and I traveled are remarkable, caring people, speak English. I did know some to Tijuana, Mexico, from totally immersed in helping other Spanish, but it’s not the Spanish Woodstock, N.Y., to deliver aid deported veterans and serving that people here speak. I wanted money collected for the deported the asylum seekers as much to go back home.” veterans and for asylum seekers as possible. With Hector and Eventually, he made his way I didn’t go to Mexico. I could left, ‘Oh, but one thing is, he’s stranded at the border. We were Victor, we visited and brought back (undocumented) across the have. I didn’t go to Canada like deported.’” inspired by stories from Mike supplies and much needed funds border to his family and his life, a lot of my unit did. And the Eventually, they started Tork’s organizing experiences to the Instituto Madre Asunta, a but after four years, the border Border Police said, ‘Well, that’s talking by phone. at the School of the Americas safe haven for mujeres y niños police came to his house. not our problem.’ I’m a veteran “I was like a teenager. I went Watch in Nogales and in Tijuana migrantes—migrant women and “When the border police came of the United States Armed back to my young years of love. (see story below) children. to my house, I said, ‘You got the Forces. Doesn’t that actually I was like, Oh my god! He called We spent time with the depor ted We did in-depth interviews wrong person. I’m a veteran of mean anything? It didn’t.” me! So that was it. From then on, veterans and got to know the with Hector, Lupita, and Robert the United States Armed Forces, In detention, Hector fought we talked every day for hours. mainstays of the chapter—Hector that we will cover more in I served my country.’ I told them his case for three years. “I sold In July I went to see him for the Lopez, Lupita Cibrian, Robert subsequent issues. when they asked me to go to war my 18-wheeler truck. We sold first time. our house. My wife got half the “I had a lot of reprimands money and my half I spent it all from my family, from my kids, Deported veterans and VFP on my immigration attorney. you know, because of all the The Lesson: Stay Human members from San Diego I spent over $100,000 fighting dangers that I might face out delivered food, water, toilet my immigration case. Sold there, and warnings, but that By Mike Tork minor mistakes they made after paper, blankets, gloves, socks, everything I had, I borrowed love was so strong already and being discharged, mistakes like backpacks, and wool caps $20,000 from my sister, and still the thing that—the thing that What started out as a trip so many fellow veterans made to asylum seekers at the El I was deported.” made it easier—he was helping to learn firsthand what was after being discharged. Many Barretal Shelter. an orphanage. I thought that happening on the border, of us have been forgiven for our We visited the area known as Lupita was wonderful. He’s committed and to help provide a little mistakes—they have not. They Little Haiti, where the Church We asked Lupita, a U.S. to his community. He’s healthy. aid to asylum seekers ended remain deported, separated of Iglesia Embajadores de Jesus citizen, how she got involved I’m going. And then of course it up being much more. I met a from families and friends, is being used as a shelter for with the deported veterans. was also the injustice that he was caring and thoughtful group paying a disproportionately high asylum seekers from Central “I got involved because of deported, even though he is a of men and women in the price for something they did a America and Haiti. We delivered Hector. His mom and my uncle veteran. Helping the community, Unified Deported Veterans/ long time ago. They have not aid to this church because the are first cousins. We had met in so I really got involved with Sgt. Barrios Memorial VFP been given the opportunity to Deported Veterans chapter had Madera, California, when we that. And I would come every Chapter 182, Tijuana, Mexico. make amends or move forward. a relationship with the pastor, were young. I was 12 years old, weekend. So it became not only What I witnessed was a Many grew up in the United and because there was a need. and he was a year older than me. love that motivated me to come strong community of Deported States, went to school in the Things on the border are not It was summer vacation, and it down, but also the commitment Veterans and supporters that United States, played high going to get better soon. As was like my first crush, my first of helping, because I also set their own struggles aside school sports in the United members of the last caravan little love. I thought he was like wanted to serve my country. I to help asylum seekers. I saw States, worked in the United said, “We are not the first and we my boyfriend even though we had the same feeling that they veterans supporting each other States, and paid taxes in the won’t be the last.” The crisis will didn’t say anything.” have … because I’m a first- through difficult times. They United State. They did not remain. Real, comprehensive, Thirty-seven years later, they generation Mexican, born in were so unselfish toward each necessarily join the military to immigration reform is needed, reconnected. Lupita was living the United States. And I know other and asylum seekers that become citizens, as many felt but in the meantime people are in California; they had both been what commitment to the country it made me step back and like they were already citizens. dying and living in unacceptable married but were now single. means—and I thought, it’s recognize how important it is Many joined the military conditions. We need to remain Through her aunt and uncle she wrong these veterans who served that we all remain human no because they felt it was their compassionate. heard about Hector and Lupita’s the country were deported, and matter how bad it gets. Seguire duty. The fact that they were Mike Tork served in the U.S. dad said, “Give him Lupita’s that needs to be corrected. siendo humano—stay human. deported after serving their Navy Mobile Riverine Force phone number.” “I feel that you just can’t do These men ser ved their county country is incomprehensible during the Viet Nam War. He “I was all excited—my heart that to somebody that is willing honorably—some in combat, to me, because these are the recently retired from working was like jumping, butterflies in to risk their lives, put their lives some highly decorated—but exact people I would want as as a marine biologist in Woods my stomach, I could have been on the line—for our lives, for our were deported for relatively neighbors and fellow citizens. Hole, Mass. in love—the only sad thing government, for our country— was that they said, before they for whatever reason.” Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org V5N2—Spring 2019 13

eventually they got him. He was moved to the Santa Ana City jail in California, where “they deported Deported Veterans: Finding a New me again after 18 months that I spent fighting my case.” Robert wound up in Tijuana Meaning for Service at the Border and it was not easy. Back in the states, his wife of 21 years left him, “I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat. I’d go to work and I’d be working, and all of a sudden I’d have to get up and go put water on my face. I was just freaking out.” Robert started going to church because he realized he needed help. One day, coming out of church he, “saw a sign on Upper left: Hector, Victor, Tarak, and Will Van Natta bring supplies the door that said, ‘Deported donated by the Deported Refugees to the asylum seekers. Center: Veterans.’ I had heard about Graffiti at on the border wall: ‘No obstacles can stop us from reaching deported veterans down here our dreams; we are Mexican, we are unstoppable.’ Above: Robert and in Mexico. So I went in and I Blanca distribute communion wine and wafers at a cross-border mass met the guy who was in charge conducted through the slats of the wall. Below: Lupita, Sammy the of the place and I just found dog, Hector, and Robert at the Deported Veterans VFP chapter office. that the more I got involved Bottom left: Names of deported veterans on painted on the wall. with veterans, homeless people, Bottom right: Mural on the border wall. Photos: Ellen Davidson deported children, veterans’ children, the better I felt.” thank me for my service? Well, not serving now to help some This was a familiar story to what did I do? I served so that wealthy person continue to us—having something positive to the greedy military-industrial get richer. You’re helping the focus on taking someone out of his complex can continue to get people you were in the trenches Robert and more to the point that I own personal trauma. We’ve seen richer, so that people like Trump with. Now you can say, when Robert is an essential member started getting in trouble with the this with vets who are coming can continue to get richer, and somebody says, ‘Thank you of the Deported Veterans law. I had drug addiction. I had a back from combat or have PTSD; countries like Saudi Arabia and for your service,’ you can say, chapter. He was deported but he’s problem. I needed help. I wanted they get involved with Veterans Israel can continue to oppress ‘You know what? You’re really not a veteran. His older brother help. So I pled guilty to a charge For Peace and the more positive people? Is that what you’re welcome, I appreciate that.’ “ was a Viet Nam veteran and his that I didn’t commit so I could be work they do, the better they feel. thanking me for? Because I For more information other brother was a Vietnam-era sent to drug rehab. So instead of Robert went further, “There’s helped them to do that? I didn’t and videos about deported veteran, so he had this very close being sent to drug rehab, they put something that I would really serve to protect the people of the veterans, visit facebook.com/ connection with veterans. me in immigration proceedings like to say. Will Griffin [a former United States, the constitution. I VeteransWithoutBorders/. “I had been in the States since to be deported.” U.S. Army paratrooper who served that one percent. So no, Tarak Kauff is a former U.S. the age of 15 … . when we came He was deported to Mexico. served in Iraq and Afghanistan] please don’t thank me.’ Army paratrooper, a former to the States, we moved to the “When I got here I couldn’t put this thought in my mind, “The reason I mention this,” meember of the Veterans For U.S. legally, lived there, you even get a job as a security regarding service in Veterans Robert continues, “and I mention Peace national board of direc­ know, I was raised the re, got guard. So three months later I For Peace. A lot of the veterans, Veterans For Peace, is because tors, president of Woodstock my school, got married, had my decided to go back to the U.S. even deported veterans, still say I tell the guys, being involved VFP, and the managing editor of kids, the whole nine yards. I was undocumented, and I did. I made that if they had to they would with what we’re doing—now Peace in Our Times. productive, worked for the airlines it. I never used drugs and alcohol do it all over again, even though we really are serving. You’re for over 18 years—rose through again, and I dedicated myself what’s happened to them and the ranks from a ticket agent all to working, taking care of my everything. And they talk about the way to a regional manager. family. I bought a new car, we the pride in their service and I ended up experimenting with got a home, we were doing really what they did and everything. recreational drugs, cocaine to be well—until immigration showed Then I heard Will, on a video, more specific.” up at my door one day portraying talking about when people say, He was living in Chicago: to be law enforcement, police ‘Thank you for your service,’ “Things were not going very department, not immigration.” how it would upset him, and he good, and I started using more Robert was at work but would tell them, ‘You want to 14 V5N2—Spring 2019 Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org Venezuela: The U.S.’s 68th Regime Change Disaster The most valuable way the U.S. can help is to stop making the not a foundation for the peaceful settlement of disputes.” While Venezuelans face poverty, preventable disease, Venezuelan economy and people scream (on all sides), by lifting its malnutrition, and open threats of war by U.S. officials, those same U.S. officials and their corporate sponsors are sanctions and abandoning its failed regime change operation. looking at an almost irresistible gold mine if they can bring Venezuela to its knees: a fire sale of its oil industry By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies into an economic crisis stemming from a combination of to foreign oil companies and the privatization of many government mismanagement, corruption, sabotage, and other sectors of its economy, from hydroelectric power In his masterpiece, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and the precipitous fall in the price of oil. The oil industry plants to iron, aluminum, and, yes, actual gold mines. C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II, William Blum, provides 95 percent of Venezuela’s exports, so the first This is not speculation. It is what the U.S.’s new puppet, who died in December 2018, wrote chapter-length thing Venezuela needed when prices crashed in 2014 Juan Guaido, has reportedly promised his American accounts of 55 U.S. regime change operations against was international financing to cover huge shortfalls in backers if they can overthrow Venezuela’s elected countries around the world, from China (1945–1960s) the budgets of both the government and the national oil government and install him in the presidential palace. to Haiti (1986–1994). Noam Chomsky’s blurb on the company. The strategic objective of U.S. sanctions is to back of the latest edition says simply, “Far and away exacerbate the economic crisis by denying Venezuela the best book on the topic.” We agree. If you have not access to the U.S.-dominated international financial “Modern-day economic read it, please do. It will give you a clearer context for system to roll over existing debt and obtain new financing. what is happening in Venezuela today, and a better The blocking of Citgo’s funds in the U.S. also deprives sanctions and blockades are understanding of the world you are living in. Venezuela of a billion dollars per year in revenue that it Since Killing Hope was published in 1995, the previously received from the export, refining and retail sale comparable with medieval sieges U.S. has conducted at least 13 more regime change of gasoline to American drivers. Canadian economist Joe of towns,” [Alfred] De Zayas operations, several of which are still active: Yugoslavia; Emersberger has calculated that the new sanctions Trump Afghanistan; Iraq; the 3rd U.S. invasion of Haiti since unleashed in 2017 cost Venezuela $6 billion in just their wrote. “Twenty-first century WWII; Somalia; Honduras; Libya; Syria; Ukraine; first year. In sum, U.S. sanctions are designed to “make Yemen; Iran; Nicaragua; and now Venezuela. the economy scream” in Venezuela, exactly as President sanctions attempt to bring William Blum noted that the U.S. generally prefers Nixon described the goal of U.S. sanctions against Chile not just a town, but sovereign what its planners call “low intensity conflict” over full- after its people elected Salvador Allende in 1970. scale wars. Only in periods of supreme overconfidence Alfred De Zayas visited Venezuela as a U.N. rapporteur in countries to their knees.” has it launched its most devastating and disastrous wars, 2017 and wrote an in-depth report for the United Nations. He from Korea and Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq. After criticized Venezuela’s dependence on oil, poor governance its war of mass destruction in Iraq, the U.S. reverted and corruption, but he found that “economic warfare” Oil industry sources have reported that Guaido has to “low intensity conflict” under Obama’s doctrine of by the U.S. and its allies were seriously exacerbating the “plans to introduce a new national hydrocarbons law covert and proxy war. crisis. “Modern-day economic sanctions and blockades that establishes flexible fiscal and contractual terms Obama conducted even heavier bombing than Bush are comparable with medieval sieges of towns,” De Zayas for projects adapted to oil prices and the oil investment II, and deployed U.S. special operations forces to 150 wrote. “Twenty-first century sanctions attempt to bring cycle… A new hydrocarbons agency would be created countries all over the world, but he made sure that nearly not just a town, but sovereign countries to their knees.” to offer bidding rounds for projects in natural gas and all the bleeding and dying was done by Afghans, Syrians, He recommended that the International Criminal Court conventional, heavy, and extra-heavy crude.” Iraqis, Somalis, Libyans, Ukrainians, Yemenis and others, should investigate U.S. sanctions against Venezuela as The U.S. government claims to be acting in the best not by Americans. What U.S. planners mean by “low crimes against humanity. In a recent interview with the interests of the Venezuelan people, but over 80 percent of intensity conflict” is that it is less intense for Americans. Independent newspaper in the UK, De Zayas reiterated Venezuelans, including many who don’t support Maduro, President Ghani of Afghanistan recently revealed that that U.S. sanctions are killing Venezuelans. are opposed to the crippling economic sanctions, while 86 a staggering 45,000 Afghan security forces have been Venezuela’s economy has shrunk by about half since percent oppose U.S. or international military intervention. killed since he took office in 2014, compared with only 2014, the greatest contraction of a modern economy in This generation of Americans has already seen how 72 U.S. and NATO troops. “It shows who has been doing peacetime. The World Health Organization (WHO) our government’s endless sanctions, coups, and wars the fighting,” Ghani caustically remarked. This disparity reported that the average Venezuelan lost an incredible have left country after country mired in violence, is common to every current U.S. war. 24 pounds in body weight in 2017. poverty, and chaos. As the results of these campaigns This does not mean that the U.S. is any less committed Mr. De Zayas’ successor as U.N. Rapporteur, Idriss have become predictably catastrophic for the people of to trying to overthrow governments that reject and resist Jazairy, issued a statement on Jan. 31, 2019, in which he each country targeted, the American officials promoting U.S. imperial sovereignty, especially if those countries condemned “coercion” by outside powers as a “violation and carrying them out have a higher and higher bar to contain vast oil reserves. It’s no coincidence that two of of all norms of international law.” “Sanctions which meet as they try to answer the obvious question of an the main targets of current U.S. regime change operations can lead to starvation and medical shortages are not the increasingly skeptical U.S. and international public: are Iran and Venezuela, two of the four countries with answer to the crisis in Venezuela,” Mr. Jazairy said, “… “How is Venezuela (or Iran or North Korea) different the largest liquid oil reserves in the world (the others precipitating an economic and humanitarian crisis…is from Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and at least 63 being Saudi Arabia and Iraq). other countries where U.S. regime change operations In practice, “low intensity conflict” involves four have led only to long-lasting violence and chaos?” tools of regime change: sanctions or economic warfare; Mexico, Uruguay, the Vatican, and many other propaganda or “information warfare”; covert and proxy countries are committed to diplomacy to help the people war; and aerial bombardment. In Venezuela, the U.S. has of Venezuela resolve their political differences and find used the first and second, with the third and fourth now a peaceful way forward. The most valuable way the “on the table,” since the first two have created chaos but United States can help is to stop making the Venezuelan so far not toppled the government. economy and people scream (on all sides), by lifting its The U.S. government has been opposed to Venezuela’s sanctions and abandoning its failed and catastrophic socialist revolution since Hugo Chávez was elected in regime change operation in Venezuela. But the only 1998. Unbeknownst to most Americans, Chávez was things that will force such a radical change in U.S. well loved by poor and working-class Venezuelans for policy are public outrage, education and organizing, and his extraordinary array of social programs that lifted international solidarity with the people of Venezuela. millions out of poverty. Between 1996 and 2010, the This article was produced by Local Peace Economy, a level of extreme poverty plummeted from 40 percent to project of the Independent Media Institute. 7 percent. The government also substantially improved Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK for healthcare and education, cutting infant mortality by Peace, is the author of Inside Iran: The Real History and half, reducing the malnutrition rate from 21 percent to Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Kingdom of 5 percent of the population and eliminating illiteracy. the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection. Nicolas These changes gave Venezuela the lowest level of J. S. Davies is a researcher for CODEPINK and the inequality in the region, based on its Gini coefficient. author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion Since Chávez’ death in 2013, Venezuela has descended and Destruction of Iraq. Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org V5N2—Spring 2019 15 How Trump’s Attacks on Venezuela Triggered a Revolution in Haiti By Kim Ives bridges and set an example for his Latin American neighbors, who were also Chaos reigned in Haiti in February, as under the thumb of the United States. people rose up against President Jovenel Using Venezuela’s vast oil wealth, Chávez Moïse over his corruption, arrogance, began an unprecedented experiment false promises and straight-faced lies. in solidarity and capital seeding, the But the crisis will not be solved PetroCaribe Alliance, which was launched by Moïse’s departure, which appears in 2005 and eventually spread to 17 nations imminent. across the Caribbean and Central America. Today’s revolution shows all the signs of It provided cheap oil products and favorable being as profound and unstoppable as the credit terms to member nations, throwing one that took place 33 years ago against them an economic lifeline when oil was dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier selling for $100 a barrel. and triggered five years of popular tumult. By 2006, Washington had punished Despite fierce repression, massacres, the Haitian people for twice electing his protégé, Jovenel Moïse, come to power sponsored motion that said Maduro is a bogus election and three coups d’état, Aristide (1990, 2000) with two coups on Feb. 7, 2017. Unfortunately for Moïse, “illegitimate,” after he won more than two- the uprising culminated in the remarkable d’état (1991, 2004) and two foreign having come to power just as Donald thirds of the presidential vote last May. December 1990 landslide election of anti- military occupations carried out under Trump did, he was about to become Haitians were already angry about imperialist liberation theologian Jean- the auspices of the United Nations. That collateral damage in Washington’s the unbridled corruption, hungry from Bertrand Aristide. year, the Haitian people managed to win a escalating war against Venezuela. skyrocketing inflation and unemployment, At a time when Nicaragua’s left- sort of stalemate by electing René Préval Surrounded by a gaggle of anti- and frustrated from years of false promises wing Sandinistas and the Soviet Union (an early Aristide ally) as president. communist neo-cons, Trump immediately and foreign military humiliation and had just been vanquished, the Haitian On the day of his May 14, 2018, stepped up hostility against Venezuela, violence. But this spectacularly cynical slapping far-ranging economic sanctions betrayal by Moïse and his cronies, in an on Nicolas Maduro’s government. attempt to win Washington’s help to put Haiti was already in arrears in its out the growing fires beneath them, was payments to Venezuela, but the U.S. the last straw. sanctions now made it impossible to pay Surprised and paralyzed by its lack of its PetroCaribe oil bill (or, at least, gave options (and its own internal squabbles), them a golden excuse not to). The Haiti Washington is now watching with horror

Washington is now watching with horror the not-so-sudden collapse of the rotten political and economic edifice it has built in Haiti over the past 28 years.

PetroCaribe deal effectively ended in the not-so-sudden collapse of the rotten October 2017. political and economic edifice it has built Life in Haiti, which was already in Haiti over the past 28 years since its extremely difficult, now became first coup d’état against Aristide. untenable. The U.S. Embassy is no doubt feverishly With the Venezuelan crude spigot seeking to cobble together a stop-gap people defeated Washington’s election inauguration, Préval signed up for now closed, Washington’s enforcer, the solution, using the United Nations, the engineering for the first time in Latin the PetroCaribe deal, greatly vexing International Monetary Fund, told Moïse OAS, Brazil, Colombia, and the Haitian America since Salvador Allende’s victory Washington, as revealed by WikiLeaks- he had to raise fuel prices, which he tried elite as its helpers. But the results are in Chile two decades earlier. obtained secret U.S. diplomatic cables. After to do on July 6 last year. The result was a likely to be no more durable than they Haiti’s example inspired a young two years of struggle, Préval eventually got three-day popular explosion that was the were in the late 1980s. Venezuelan army officer, Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan oil and credit, but Washington precursor to today’s revolt. Ironically, it was Venezuelan solidarity to adopt the same playbook. Chávez’s made sure to punish him too. At about the same time, a mass movement that may have postponed for a decade the election in 1998 helped kick off the “pink Following the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake, began asking what had happened to the $4 political hurricane now engulfing Haiti. tide” of left and center-left governments the Pentagon, State Department, and billion in Venezuelan oil revenues that Haiti It is fitting that U.S. aggression against across South America. then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton, had received over the previous decade. Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution Just as Washington fomented a coup with some flunkies from the Haitian The PetroCaribe Fund was supposed to has created a cascade of unintended against Aristide on Sept. 30, 1991, it elite, virtually took over the Haitian pay for hospitals, schools, roads, and other consequences and blowback, fed by carried out a similar one against Chávez government. In the lead up to the March social projects, but the people saw virtually the Haitian people’s deep sense of on April 11, 2002. But the latter was 2011 election, they pushed out Préval’s nothing accomplished. Two 2017 Senate gratitude and recognition for Venezuela’s thwarted after two days by the Venezuelan presidential candidate, Jude Célestin, and investigations confirmed that the money contribution to them—just as Chávez and people and the army’s rank and file. put in their own, Michel Martelly. had been mostly diverted into other pockets. Maduro often said, PetroCaribe was given Despite this victory, Chávez understood From 2011 to 2016, the Martelly group So, what was the straw that broke the “to repay the historic debt that Venezuela that Venezuela’s political revolution could went on to embezzle, misspend, and camel’s back? It was Moïse’s treachery owes the Haitian people.” not survive alone and that Washington misplace the lion’s share of the capital against the Venezuelans after their Kim Ives is an editor with Haïti Liberté would use its vast subversion machinery account known as the PetroCaribe Fund, exemplary solidarity. newsweekly, the host of a weekly Haiti and economic might to wear down his which since its creation in 2008 had On Jan. 10, 2019, in a vote at the show on WBAI-FM, and a filmmaker project to build “21st-century socialism.” basically kept Haiti afloat. Organization of American States (OAS), who has helped produce several Chávez knew his revolution had to build Martelly also used the money to help Haiti voted in favor of a Washington- documentaries about Haiti. 16 V5N2—Spring 2019 Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org

while abandoning seriously contaminated Futenma. Governor Tamaki is appealing to the world, “Without solving issues The U.S. Military is related to democracy in Okinawa, the U.S.-Japan security alliance is going to be very, very vulnerable.” Poisoning Okinawa In a referendum Feb. 24, more than 70 percent of voters opposed construction of the new base in relatively unspoiled Henoko. The vast majority of islanders want the U.S. military to leave permanently and immediately—and they want the United States to clean up the mess they’ve made. A widely circulated petition to President Trump demanded cessation of work on Henoko until the referendum was held.

The Numbers on PFAS Contamination According to a Marine Corps document obtained by British journalist Jon Mitchell in February 2016, PFOS at a concentration of 27,000 ppt and PFOA at a concentration of 1,800 ppt were detected when investigating the sewage in the firefighting training area on U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma. U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma sits in a crowded urban area. The Okinawan Prefectural Government has identified 15 rivers and water scientific community that aims to protect Japan’s officials access to the bases hinders treatment facilities with dangerous levels By Pat Elder public health says that 70 ppt is exceedingly Japanese officials from properly addressing of PFOS and PFOA contamination, high. Bowing to chemical industry problems caused by the bases. No wonder exceeding the EPA’s combined Lifetime High concentrations of the deadly pressure, the EPA still does not regulate most Okinawans and many Japanese Health Advisory limit of 70 ppt. compounds per-fluoro-octane sulfonate PFAS. In fact, in early 2018, Scott Pruitt’s oppose new military base construction. In November 2018, Okinawa Prefectural (PFOS) and per-fluoro-octanoic acid EPA and the White House frantically Disregarding domestic and international Government officials reported that 2,000 (PFOA), together known as per- and sought to block publication of a federal laws and the Okinawa Prefectural ppt of the chemicals were detected at the polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), health study on PFAS, after one Trump government’s cancellation of the permit for Chunnagā Spring Water Site (Wakimizu have been found in the drinking water administration aide warned it would cause reclamation works, the compliant Japanese Chunnagā) in Kiyuna, Ginowan City. In in communities adjacent to the U.S. Air a “public relations nightmare.” central government has just started the summer 2016 survey, 1,300 ppt of the Force’s Kadena Air Base and the U.S. New toxicological profiles released construction on a massive U.S. airstrip on compounds were discovered at the same Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in in June 2018 by the Agency for Toxic the beautiful Oura Bay in Henoko. Eighty site. the Japanese Prefecture of Okinawa. The Substances and Disease Registry percent of the Okinawan people oppose The Chatan plant supplies water chemicals are found in the fire-fighting the construction. Accordingly, they to Chatan Town, Okinawa City, foam used in routine fire-training exercises demonstrated their opposition by electing Kitanakagusuku Village, Nakagusuku on base. [T]he White House Gov. Denny Tamaki in September of Village, Urasoe City, and Naha City. The health effects of exposure to these 2018. Like his predecessor Takeshi In 2015, the water at the Chatan Water chemicals include frequent miscarriages frantically sought to Onaga, Governor Tamaki has said “No!” Treatment Plant measured up to 120 ppt and other severe pregnancy complications. block publication of a to Tokyo. Tokyo’s actions against Tamaki for PFAS, exceeding EPA guidelines. They contaminate human breast milk and and his government are “discriminatory, Furthermore, the Dakujakugawa River sicken breast-feeding babies. PFAS con- … study on PFAS, … undemocratic and even illegal,” in the that runs through the base was found to tribute to liver damage, kidney cancer, words of Okinawa affairs expert Gavan contain 1,379 ppt of PFAS. high cholesterol, decreased response to [to avoid a] ‘public McCormack. Groundwater containing PFAS near the vaccines, and an increased risk of thyroid Exactly how much Tamaki is going to base has been detected at these levels: disease, along with testicular cancer, mi- relations nightmare.’ resist Tokyo and Washington remains to Winter survey 2017 ng/L cro-penis, and low sperm count in males. be seen. Although he is opposed to the Hyakāgā 190 ppt Researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan (ATSDR) has set lifetime drinking water Henoko project, Tamaki has declared Mendakarihījāgā 680 ppt School of Public Health say that an ap- levels of 11 ppt for PFOA and 7 ppt for his general support for shared Japanese- Ogumuya River 100 ppt proximate safe dose of PFOS and PFOA PFOS. American military bases. Isaufugā 290 ppt in drinking water is 1 part per trillion Okinawan authorities, who represent For generations, Okinawans have Furuchingā upstream–Ogumuya River (ppt). communities straddling the bases, have demanded the closure of U.S. Marine Cor ps 83 ppt Meanwhile, municipal water systems been recently denied access to the source of Air Station Futenma and for 20 years have The topography is such that polluted in Okinawa have been shown to contain the ongoing contamination. The Japan-U.S. opposed the idea of replacing Futenma Ginowan City is lower on the ocean side, more than 100 times that level, while Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) does with a new base in Henoko. Futenma is (northwest) of the Futenma Airbase, so ground water is contaminated at a level not give Japanese authorities access to U.S. an abomination, disturbingly located in the rain that falls throughout the area 1,000 times higher. The contamination bases, preventing them from investigating the center of densely populated Ginowan. and on the runway contaminates this is not confined to Okinawa. For instance, sources of such contamination. The SOFA Residents have been terrorized by the side much more than the communities on groundwater at China Lake, Calif., was states, “Within the facilities and areas, the U.S. presence. Their eardrums have been higher ground straddling Route 330 on the recently tested at 8 million ppt, according United States may take all the measures split. They have been raped and poisoned southeast side of the base. This scenario to a little-known report by the Department necessary for their establishment, and held captive in their own land. Many is common in vulnerable communities of Defense.Although few in America who operation, safeguarding and control.” Okinawans view the Japanese government adjacent to U.S. airbases around the world. live adjacent to military bases are aware The SOFA differs from those in force and the United States as occupying forces. The relatively porous limestone soil of the contamination, the situation is dif- in European nations like Germany, where Okinawa accounts for less than one found throughout Okinawa allows the ferent in Okinawa, where researchers and local authorities are allowed to enter bases. percent of Japan’s total land area but hosts contamination to spread over large areas. activists have been sounding the alarm. According to Japan’s SOFA, Japanese more than half of the approximately 47,000 When the Okinawa Defense Bureau The Okinawans are speaking to us. officials may not conduct investigations U.S. military personnel stationed in Japan. approached U.S. military officials to The EPA’s combined Lifetime Health without U.S. consent. In Germany they Instead of closing the base, the discuss these findings and other issues, the Advisory (LHA) limit for both chemicals can. American overlords have decided to build U.S. military rejected the meeting, saying is 70 ppt, while a growing chorus in the The refusal of the U.S. military to allow a new base 35 miles north, in Henoko, continued on page 19… Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org V5N2—Spring 2019 17

Hawaii’s economy, creating more than 102,000 jobs. The military’s investments in Hawaii total $8.8 billion. Leaking Jet Fuel Threatens Military procurement contracts amount to about $2.3 billion annually, making it a prime source of contracting opportunities for hundreds of Hawaii’s small businesses, including significant military construction projects. Hawaii, Not North Korean Missiles The influence of the military in the Hawaiian islands and It’s time for the U.S. military Command (responsible for all U.S. military activity in on its politicians at all levels cannot be underestimated, the greater Asia and Pacific region including India) and nor can the protection the military is given by its retirees to retire the leaking Red Hill headquarters of the U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Pacific; and the citizens who benefit from it. The pressure on city Storage tanks—and protect our • Fort Shafter, headquarters for the U.S. Army Pacific; and state officials to accept the status quo is very strong. • Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, a military Finally, the U.S. government has acknowledged the precious water supply educational facility for military and civilian officials medical problems the contamination of the drinking By Ann Wright from Asia and the Pacific; supply caused in another community—the huge U.S. • Tripler Army Medical Center and Veterans Marine Base at Camp Lejeune and Marine Corps Air After the big North Korean missile scare in Hawaii a Administration Medical Center; Station (MCAS) New River in North Carolina. From year ago, one would think that missiles are the greatest • U.S. Coast Guard 14th District for the Pacific (while 1953 through 1987, tens of thousands of Marines and threat to the island of Oahu. Yet, it’s not missiles that are not part of the Department of Defense, during wartime, their families were contaminated by two on-base water the threat, it’s our own U.S. military and its massive jet the Coast Guard can go under command of DOD), which wells that were contaminated with trichloroethylene fuel storage tanks that are leaking into Oahu’s drinking includes three 225-foot buoy tenders, four 110-foot (TCE), perchloroethylene (PCE), benzene, and vinyl water aquifer. patrol boats, two 87-foot coastal patrol boats, four small chloride, among other compounds from leaking storage A complex of mammoth 20-story military jet fuel boat stations, two sector commands, an air station, a Far tanks on the base and and an off-base dry cleaner. storage tanks buried 20 stories down in a bluff called East command, five detachments, and over 400 aids to The Veterans Administration has acknowledged the Red Hill is perched only 100 feet above Honolulu’s water navigation. dangerous situation on the bases in North Carolina that supply. The walls on the 75-year-old jet fuel tanks are Major military installations have been built on other was ignored for decades. The VA has declared that a large now so thin that the edge of a dime is thicker. Each of the 20 tanks holds 12.5 million gallons of jet fuel, although 18 are in operation now. Two-hundred and twenty-five million gallons of jet fuel are a mere 100 feet from causing a catastrophic disaster for the island of Oahu. Disaster struck in 2014, when 27,000 gallons of jet fuel leaked from a tank that had been repaired with a welded patch. The welding gave way and tens of thousands of gallons of fuel leaked into the water supply. Studies have documented leaks dating back to 1947, the continued corrosion of the tank liners, and the risk of a catastrophic fuel release. Concerned citizens on the island have been trying for decades to get the U.S. Navy remove the dangerous tanks. The military states that the underground fuel tanks are of strategic importance to national security and they are being maintained as well as 75-year old tanks can be. Yet those who live on Oahu say: “That’s not good enough! You can’t have national security by jeopardizing the health security of your citizens.” It is not surprising that the Navy has made little effort to remove the tanks and put replacements in a less U.S. Military Base in Oahu, Hawaii. Photo: MilitaryBases.com. dangerous place. The military’s hold on the island of Oahu and its politicians is strong both psychologically and economically. Oahu is filled with military bases and islands of Hawaii. The Puhakaloa Training Area, the number of diseases are caused by the chemicals and that accompanying corporations that supply the military with largest U.S. military training area in the world with military personnel and their family members who have equipment and services. 133,000 acres for artillery, mortar, small arms and crew- contracted these diseases and who are still living will be Hawaii is one of the most militarized states in the served weapons firing, is located on the Big Island of compensated. We can expect the same type of diseases nation and Oahu is one of the most militarized islands Hawaii. Air Force bombers flying from the continental with the continuing leaks at Red Hill. with seven major bases and a total of 36,620 military United States drop ordnance on the area between the two On the other side of the country from North Carolina, personnel. volcanoes of the island of Hawaii. the Navy has already closed down one complex of When the 64,000 military family members and military On the island of Kauai, the Pacific Missile Range underground jet fuel storage tanks at Point Loma, Calif., contractors are added to the active-duty military, the Facility Barking Sands (PMRF) is the world’s largest which had 54 storage tanks. The riveted seams on the military-industrial complex on Oahu numbers about range capable of supporting surface, submarines, aircraft, underground tanks began leaking as they aged. When 100,000, 10 percent of Oahu’s total population of 988,000. and space operations simultaneously. PMRF has over 1.5 million gallons of fuel spilled from the site in 2006, The state of Hawaii has only 1.4 million citizens. 1,100 square miles of instrumented underwater range the U.S. Navy decided to replace the tanks. Construction of the military installations on the island and over 42,000 square miles of controlled airspace. For us on Oahu, the bottom line is that when, not if, of Oahu began soon after the overthrow of the sovereign The Navy is currently using PMRF to test “hit to kill” the massive jet fuel storage tanks leak into the aquifer nation of Hawaii by U.S. businessmen and a small technology in which anti-ballistic missiles destroy their of Honolulu, city, state, and federal officials must be contingent of U.S. Marines: targets by using only the kinetic energy from the force held accountable—the public has given them plenty of • Pearl Harbor Naval Base, headquarters of the U.S. of the collision. The Navy’s Aegis Ballistic Missile warning of their concerns. As with lead in the water Pacific Fleet Navy and homeport for 25 warships, 15 Defense System and the Army’s Terminal High Altitude supply in Flint, Mich., officials knew that the drinking attack submarines, nine guided-missile destroyers, and Area Defense System, or THAAD, are tested on Kauai water was contaminated but didn’t do anything to stop a guided-missile cruiser; at PMRF. the community from using it. Remarkably, no Flint • Hickam Air Force Base, headquarters of the U.S. On the island of Maui, the Maui High Performance officials have gone to jail yet, but the community is Pacific Air Forces, with squadrons of F-15s, F22, C-17 Computing Center, a Department of Defense Super­ demanding accountability for malfeasance in office— and B-2 bombers; computing Resource Center managed by the Air Force which will also happen in Honolulu when the jet fuel • Kaneohe Marine Base, with a Marine Air Station Research Laboratory, provides DoD scientists and storage tank disaster strikes. and three Marine regiments; engineers with one of the world’s largest computers to Why, we citizens ask our elected leaders, do they allow • Schofield Barracks, home to the 25th Infantry solve war-making computational problems. such a disaster to continue to threaten our water supply Division; According to the Hawaii Chamber of Commerce, in Honolulu when we know that 75-year-old tanks with • The Tropic Regions Test Center (TRTC); the direct and indirect economic impacts of military corroding walls are continuing to leak. • Camp Smith, headquarters of the United Indo-Pacific expenditures in Hawaii bring $14.7 billion into continued on page 18 … 18 V5N2—Spring 2019 Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org

had previously been grasped. Planet in Crisis To give you an idea of how much heat the oceans have absorbed: if that heat had instead gone into the atmosphere, … continued from page 8 the global temperature would be 97 degrees Fahrenheit northern border of the state of Washington? Not enough. hotter than it is today. For those who think that there are How many European brown bears are there in Italy’s still 12 years left to change things, the question posed by Abruzzo National Park? Not enough. How many Florida Wanless seems painfully apt: How do we remove all the panthers in Big Cypress Swamp? Not enough. How many heat that’s already been absorbed by the oceans? Asiatic lions in the Forest of Gir? Not enough …. The Two weeks after that Nature article came out, a world is broken in pieces now.” study in Scientific Reports warned that the extinction of animal and plant species thanks to climate change ‘A Terrifying 12 Years’ could lead to a “domino effect” that might, in the end, In October 2018, 15 months after Jirinec’s words brought annihilate life on the planet. It suggested that organisms me to tears in the Amazon, the world’s leading climate will die out at increasingly rapid rates because they scientists authored a report for the U.N. Intergovernmental depend on other species that are also on their way out. Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warning us that we have It’s a process the study calls “co-extinction.” According just a dozen years left to limit the catastrophic impacts to its authors, a five- to six-degree Celsius rise in average of climate change. The gist of it is this: we’ve already global temperatures might be enough to annihilate most warmed the planet one degree Celsius. If we fail to limit of Earth’s living creatures. that warming process to 1.5 degrees, even a half-degree To put this in perspective: just a two-degree rise will more than that will significantly worsen extreme heat, leave dozens of the world’s coastal mega-cities flooded, flooding, widespread droughts, and sea-level increases, thanks primarily to melting ice sheets in Greenland and among other grim phenomena. The report has become a Antarctica, as well as the thermal expansion of the oceans key talking point of political progressives in the United as they warm. There will be 32 times as many heat waves States, who, like journalist and activist Naomi Klein, are in India and nearly half a billion more people will suffer now speaking of “a terrifying 12 years” left in which to water scarcity. At three degrees, southern Europe will cut fossil fuel emissions. be in permanent drought and the area burned annually There is, however, a problem with even this approach. by wildfires in the United States will sextuple. These impacts, it’s worth noting, may already be baked into Ornithologist Vitek Jirinec at Camp 41: Some bird species the system, even if every country that signed the Paris in the Amazon have already declined by 95 percent since climate accord were to fully honor its commitments, the 1980s. Photo: Dahr Jamail. Reports tend to use the lowest which most of them are not currently doing. common denominator in their The International Energy Agency has already shown to them, part of which should involve doing everything that maintaining our current fossil-fueled economic we humanly can to save whatever is left, even knowing projections, which makes their system would virtually guarantee a six-degree rise in the that the odds are stacked against us. Earth’s temperature before 2050. To add insult to injury, I often visit a small natural altar I’ve created amid a science … overly optimistic. a 2017 analysis from oil giants BP and Shell indicated circle of cedar trees growing around a decomposing that they expected the planet to be five degrees warmer mother tree. In this magical spot, I grieve and express my by mid-century. gratitude for the life that is still here. I also go to listen. It assumes that the scientific conclusions in the IPCC In late 2013, I wrote a piece for TomDispatch titled Where do you go to listen? And what are you hearing? report are completely sound. It’s well known, however, “Are We Falling Off the Climate Precipice?” Even then, For me, these days, it all begins and ends with doing that there’s been a political element built into the it was already clear enough that we were indeed heading my best to listen to the Earth, with trying my hardest to IPCC’s scientific process, based on the urge to get as off that cliff. More than five years later, a sober reading understand how best to serve, how to devote myself to many countries as possible on board the Paris climate of the latest climate change science indicates that we are doing everything possible for the planet, no matter the in- agreement and other attempts to rein in climate change. now genuinely in free fall. creasingly bleak prognosis for this time in human history. To do that, such reports tend to use the lowest common The question is no longer whether or not we are going Perhaps if we listen deeply enough and regularly denominator in their projections, which makes their to fail, but how are we going to comport ourselves in the enough, we ourselves will become the song this planet science overly conservative (that is, overly optimistic). era of failure? needs to hear. In addition, new data suggest that the possibility Originally published at TomDispatch.com. of political will coalescing across the planet to shift Listening While Saying Goodbye Dahr Jamail, a Truthout staff reporter, is the author of the global economy completely off fossil fuels in the It’s been estimated that between 150 and 200 plant, The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning reasonably near future is essentially a fantasy. And insect, bird, and mammal species are already going in the Path of Climate Disruption, The Will to Resist: that’s even if we could remove enough of the hundreds extinct every day. In other words, during the two and Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, of billions of tons of CO2 already in our overburdened a half years I worked on my book 136,800 species may and Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an atmosphere to make a difference (not to speak of the heat have gone extinct. Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq.Jamail has similarly already lodged in the oceans). We have a finite amount of time left to coexist with reported from Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Turkey “It’s extraordinarily challenging to get to the 1.5 significant parts of the biosphere, including glaciers, and has won the Izzy Award and the Martha Gellhorn degree Celsius target and we are nowhere near on track coral, and thousands of species of plants, animals, and Award for Investigative Journalism. to doing that,” Drew Shindell, a Duke University climate insects. We’re going to have to learn how to say goodbye scientist and a co-author of the IPCC report, told the Guardian just weeks before it was released. “While it’s technically possible, it’s extremely improbable, absent way in 2014 and 27,000 gallons of jet fuel leaking out of a real sea change in the way we evaluate risk. We are the tanks, jeopardizing the Honolulu aquifer. nowhere near that.” Leaking Fuel Tanks Those of us in our 70s, whether we are fuel tanks or In fact, even best-case scenarios show us heading for at … continued from page 17 humans, know all about leaks—it’s a hazard of age. least a three-degree warming and, realistically speaking, I will make this personal. I am 72 years old and served I retired from the U.S. Army after 29 years of service. we are undoubtedly on track for far worse than that by 29 years in the U.S. military. I retired 20 years ago. The After 75 years of service, it’s time to retire the leaking 2100, if not much sooner. Perhaps that’s why Shindell 20 jet fuel storage tanks are 75 years old and have served Red Hill Storage tanks—and protect our precious water was so pessimistic. each of those 75 years and are still serving. supply. For example, a study published in Nature magazine, At 72, I have had the normal number of aches and Ann Wright is a 29-year U.S. Army/Army Reserves vet- also released in October, showed that over the last pains including a hip replacement that didn’t turn out eran who retired as a colonel and a former U.S. diplo- quarter-century, the oceans have absorbed 60 percent the best and skin cancer surgery that left skin grafts and mat who resigned in March 2003 in opposition to the more heat annually than estimated in the 2014 IPCC patches on my face, head, and leg. war on Iraq. She served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Soma- report. The study underscored that the globe’s oceans At 75, the 20-story jet fuel storage tanks also have had lia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia have already absorbed 93 percent of all the heat humans aches and pains as well as their skin getting thinner and and Mongolia. In December 2001 she was on the small have added to the atmosphere, that the climate system’s thinner due to seven decades of corrosion. Patching the team that reopened the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. She is sensitivity to greenhouse gases is far higher than thought thin skin of the Red Hill jet fuel tanks didn’t turn out so the co-author of the book Dissent: Voices of Conscience. and that planetary warming is far more advanced than well either, with the welding on one of the patches giving Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org V5N2—Spring 2019 19

while hundreds of thousands suffer from Europe. Of course the Afghanistan War demand more blood and more sacrifice. traumatic brain injuries, post-traumatic stress did not begin in 2001, but began more Turn on Fox News or open the Washington Afghanistan disorder (PTSD), moral injury, depression, than 40 years ago and not with the Soviet Post and this will be apparent. What makes … continued from page 1 substance abuse and other “hidden” wounds Union’s invasion, but with an internal civil such an argument even more mean and wars up close and from afar and their of war. These hidden wounds have very war that saw maybe as many 100,000 dead craven is that these deaths are forever tied cruel constant murder, does, at times, real consequences: the U.S. Department before the Soviets invaded; U.S. support to and bound by the lies of the war, making necessitate such crutches for me), but to of Veterans Affairs reports young men and Afghanistan’s mujaheddin, the grandfathers them eternally ignoble and worthless.The relay my own personal observation of the women who have served in Afghanistan of the young men we are fighting today in dead will never be heroes, despite the great lie of war in action; the ability of the and Iraq (a great many of them have served Afghanistan, began six months prior to the exaggerations of eulogies, bordering often machine of war to propel itself forward multiple deployments to both wars) have Soviet invasion. Over 40 years of war have on hagiography, but will only be future- even when those most intimate with the suicide rates six times higher than their completely devastated the people and land less victims of the greed and egos that war, those most responsible for it and civilian peers, while infantry units, those that of Afghanistan. As a consequence of the advance and maintain the war. without whose support the war could not have performed the most killing and dying, violence, Afghan society is devastated by Matt Hoh has nearly 12 years experience continue, carry on the war while knowing have been seen to have suicide rates 14 times PTSD and drug use; the countryside has with U.S. wars with the Marine Corps and and living the lie full well. higher than civilian men of the same age. In been denuded and deforested, resulting in the State and Defense Departments. He is Almost a decade after my resignation, real numbers, that means, since 2001, likely agricultural troubles and water shortages, a Center For International Policy senior there are reports of a possible peace deal more than 9,000 U.S. veterans who have and no industry exists besides the illicit fellow. In 2009, he resigned his post in in the making for Afghanistan. Just as my served in Afghanistan and Iraq have been drug trade that, despite billions of U.S. State Department post in Afghanistan mind, and my soul, can recall the bright lost to suicide after returning home. dollars spent, yields record poppy crops and over the U.S. escalation of the war. His scarlet red of fresh arterial blood that The numbers of Afghans who have been narcotics exports nearly every year (2018 writings have appeared in the Atlanta dulls in contact with dust and cloth, or the killed are truly unknown. The United was an exception due to drought). Journal Constitution, Defense News, clay-like frozen jaw of a dead young man, Nations, which only began counting There is a desperate sunk cost argument the Guardian, the Huffington Post, and whether he is an Afghan, American or civilian casualties in 2009, reports tens of that haunts all wars that are lost and the Washington Post. He is a member of Iraqi, I recognize, clearly and sickeningly, thousands killed, with nearly each year unworthy. As it is, more often than not, the board of directors of the Institute for the same lies used so skillfully and since 2009 showing an increase in civilian it is those who have not experienced the Public Accuracy and of the VFP Advisory effectively by politicians, generals, and dead and wounded, a monstrous and pain and the destruction of the war who Board Member. the media to escalate the war in 2009, now grievous accomplishment of annual record being recirculated to defeat any current upon record. UNAMA itself cautions that attempts for peace. its numbers should be understood to be a minimum or base level due to UNAMA’s Sacrifice Does Not Confer Sanctity methodology. Assessments of the total dead When President Obama entered office in in Afghanistan over the last 17 years put 2009, fewer than 30,000 U.S. troops were in total dead at more than 100,000 civilians, Afghanistan. Within a year and a half that although most who are familiar with number would reach 100,000 U.S. military war, including myself, are quick to say personnel along with 30,000 NATO soldiers that is a low-end estimate. For example, from Europe and over 100,000 private Jonathan Steele has estimated more than contractors. Since 2001, more than 2,400 20,000 Afghans died as a result of the U.S. U.S. service members have been killed in bombings in the first four months of U.S. Afghanistan, nearly 1,800 of them since military action following 9/11. 2009. European armies have had more At least one million Afghans are internally than 1,100 soldiers killed, and more than displaced, while Afghans make up the 1,700 contractors have been killed while second largest portion of the largest refugee performing jobs that in previous wars would population the world has known since World have been done by U.S. soldiers. Tens of War Two, with millions living in camps in thousands have been physically wounded Iran and Pakistan or claiming asylum in The author (center) on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in 2009.

Chatan Water Treatment Plant at a cost “Retrograde shipments from Vietnam,” tagon has yet to release any comment on Okinawa of $1.5 million. Constructing an entirely including insecticides, herbicides, and the contamination. … continued from page 16 new system would have been better for solvents, were stored there. Washington The FOIA-released documents appear to the PFAS used in the aqueous fire-fighting public health. The U.S. military did not has announced plans to return most of corroborate the accounts of the hundreds foam are not regulated substances. The offer to pay the costs of addressing the Camp Kinser by 2024. However, the of U.S. veterans who claim they were sick- U.S. military is correct. The EPA, despite contamination at Chatan. The military return of a 5-acre parcel of land near ened by dioxin-tainted defoliants—includ- worldwide controversy, continues to allow has also dodged financial responsibility the base of Gate 5 missed its scheduled ing Agent Orange—in Okinawa. their use. Reining in these substances and for PFAS contamination in communities 2014 return date. That land appears to If the Henoko base is completed, it admitting their destructive impact might near bases in the United States. The be located within—and adjacent to—the will spoil another beautiful area of Oki- unleash a flood of lawsuits and unrest Pentagon’s policy is to deny responsibility contaminated zone. nawa—the way communities surround- worldwide. and refuse to pay for new water systems. The released FOIA information re- ing Futenma, Kadena, and Kinser have In an attempt to remove PFAS from Of course, PFAS contamination is only ported high concentrations of chlordane, been contaminated. After three quarters drinking water, Okinawa Prefecture has part of the U.S. military legacy of con- DDT, malathion, dioxin, polychlorinated of a century of being occupied by a for- installed a carbon filtration system at the tamination in Okinawa. Following is a biphenyls (PCBs), lead, and admium. eign military, this fresh assault on Oki- brief rundown of the toxic cocktail the According to the FOIA documents, nawa must be halted. United States has bequeathed to Okinawa massive quantities of neutralized cyanide Special thanks to Joseph Essertier, over the years. Many of these chemicals compounds, inorganic acids, alkalis, and Associate Professor, Nagoya Institute of take generations or longer to break down. 12.5 tons of ferric chloride were buried or Technology, and coordinator of Japan for a “flushed” on the base. World BEYOND War. Some of the findings Camp Kinser The United States has also left behind in this article are based on the research of In 2015, after a protracted Freedom arsenic, depleted uranium, nerve agents, Jon Mitchell, a British journalist and author of Information Act (FOIA) process, the and hexavalent chromium. based in Japan, and Masami Kawamura Pentagon released records detailing high The Pentagon evades responsibility for of the Okinawa-based Informed-Public levels of contamination on Camp Kinser the damage its bases cause. Project, a research organization focusing land that was scheduled for return to Massive amounts of pesticides were bur- on environmental issues. civilian use. ied at Camp Hansen in the town of Kin. Pat Elder currently serves on the Camp Kinser includes a 46,000 square- Japanese officials are demanding that Coordinating Committee of World PFAS-laced foam fills Kadena Air Force meter highly contaminated outdoor the United States follow EPA guidelines BEYOND War, worldbeyondwar.org, Base, Okinawa, after a drunk U.S. Marine chemical storage area located on the for remediation before returning the land a rapidly expanding organization with activated a firefighting system in 2013. southern shoreline of the installation. and the beaches to civilian uses. The Pen- membership in 160 countries. 20 V5N2—Spring 2019 Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org Michelle Alexander Is Right About Israel-Palestine By Marjorie Cohn development, and benefits for Jewish settlers while imposing harsh conditions As a progressive Jew, I find that many on Palestinians.” Tutu wrote, “This, in my of my family members and friends are still book, is apartheid. It is untenable.” what we call “PEP”—progressive except On July 19, 2018, the Israeli Knesset Palestine. Amid ever worsening injustices passed a law that illegally enshrines a system created by the Israeli system of apartheid of apartheid. The legislation, which has the and Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian force of a constitutional amendment, says, lands, it is past time for this to change. “The State of Israel is the national home of the I am hopeful that the firestorm sparked Jewish people, in which it fulfills its natural, by Michelle Alexander’s recent New cultural, religious and historical right to self- York Times column, “Time to Break determination.” It continues, “The right to the Silence on Palestine,” will finally exercise national self-determination in the generate the heat necessary to force more State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.” people and groups on the left to overcome There is no guarantee of self-determination the fundamental hypocrisy of the for the 1.8 million Arabs who make up 20 “progressive except Palestine” approach. percent of Israel’s population. I was deeply inspired by Alexander’s Tutu called on “people and organizations column and her decision to speak so honestly of conscience to divest from … Caterpillar, about the difficulty of overcoming the fear of Motorola Solutions and Hewlett Packard,” Michele Alexander. backlash over taking a public stand against which profit “from the occupation and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. against the Tsar during the Russian and Gaza. subjugation of Palestinians.” He advocated Striking a comparison between the risk pogroms. On her way to a Siberian prison, The allegations in the report disturbed me participation in the nonviolent Boycott, taken by prominent critics of Israel and she escaped and, at the age of 18, boarded greatly. They described Israel’s mistreatment Divestment and Sanctions movement the risk Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. took a ship bound for the United States. of the Palestinians, including house dem­ (BDS), which Alexander also mentions. by publicly criticizing the Vietnam War, We revered Israel as the homeland olitions, administrative detention and tor­ Israel continues to attack Gaza— Alexander observes, “Those who speak of the Jews. At the Passover Seder, we ture. The report documented beatings, described as the world’s largest “open-air publicly in support of the liberation of the would raise our glasses and intone, “Next burn­ing with cigarettes, forced standing prison”—while maintaining maintains a Palestinian people still risk condemnation year in Jerusalem!” At Sunday school, we while naked for long periods exposed to tight blockade, restricting all ingress and and backlash.” gathered coins to plant trees in the Holy heat or cold, dousing with hot or cold water, egress. Headlines in the mainstream media Invoking Dr. King’s exhortation that Land. It wasn’t until I left home that I cutting the body with razor blades, biting by falsely portray an equivalence of firepower “a time comes when silence is betrayal,” learned the truth about Israel and became dogs, sensory deprivation, sodomizing with between Israelis and Palestinians in Alexander reflects on “the excuses and an outspoken critic of its policies. bottles or sticks, inserting wires into the Gaza. But Israel’s use of force greatly rationalizations that have kept me largely In 1967, during my freshman year at penis, electric shocks to sensitive parts of exceeds that of the Palestinians, and the silent on one of the great moral challenges Stanford, I came to oppose the war in the body, and suspension from the floor with asymmetric warfare continues to escalate. of our time: the crisis in Israel-Palestine.” Vietnam and joined The Resistance, a hands or feet tied to a pulley device. Reading In 2014, Israel mounted an offensive Alexander’s words resonated with me, group of draft resisters and their allies. The the case studies made me physically ill. called “Operation Protective Edge,” a Jew who uncritically supported Israel following year, I signed up for Students for Alexander, author of The New Jim relentlessly bombing Gaza for nearly two for many years until I saw the parallels a Democratic Society, where I learned the Crow: Mass Incarceration the Age of months, killing 2,251 Palestinians, the between U.S. policy in Vietnam and Israel’s war was not an isolated event, but rather Colorblindness, wrote that some of majority of them civilians. The number occupation of the Palestinian territories. part of a long history of U.S. imperialism. Israel’s practices are “reminiscent of of Palestinians wounded was 11,231, My activism and critical writings have But I was still unaware that the war Israel apartheid in South Africa and Jim Crow including 3,540 women and 3,436 children. followed a trajectory from Vietnam to On the Israeli side, six civilians and 67 South Africa to Israel to Iraq to Afghanistan soldiers were killed and 1,600 were injured. and other countries where the United States My family was not religious but we were Tens of thousands of Palestinians lost their continues its imperial military actions. homes and the infrastructure was severely Although many of my articles are proud of our Jewish heritage. My father fought damaged. Israel targeted numerous controversial as they criticize the actions schools, U.N.-sanctioned places of refuge, of the U.S. government—under both the Nazis in World War II and relatives perished hospitals, ambulances and mosques. Democratic and Republican regimes—I in the Holocaust. I have become sharply critical of Israel. get the most pushback from my writings An active member of the NLG’s Palestine about Israel-Palestine. When I analyze Subcommittee, I write frequent articles Israel’s illegal occupation and crimes launched in 1967 “completed its occupation segregation in the United States.” and do media commentary about Israel’s against the Palestinians, I am often called of Palestine,” in the words of Peled. South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond violations of international law. I am also a a “self-hating” Jew. The anti-Vietnam War movement Tutu, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, member of Jewish Voice for Peace and I I was born in 1948, the year Israel was at Stanford challenged my long-held pointed to similarities between apartheid work in support of BDS. created out of whole Palestinian cloth. assumptions about U.S. foreign policy. in his country and Israel’s oppression of Years after I first read the 1977 NLG When tasked with finding a destination My commitment to ending an unjust war the Palestinians. “My voice will always delegation report, I visited Ellis Island, for Jews displaced by the Holocaust, the against a people fighting for liberation be raised in support of Christian-Jewish where my grandparents arrived in the United Nations chose Palestine. Thus be- eventually opened my eyes to the plight of ties and against the anti-Semitism that all United States. It is now a museum. As I gan a brutal and illegal occupation that the Palestinian people and Israel’s role in sensible people fear and detest. But this walked the route they traveled, I felt very continues to this day. repressing them. cannot be an excuse for doing nothing and emotional about what they endured. But In his book Injustice: The Story of After college, I went to law school for standing aside as successive Israeli my deep feelings about the suffering of the Holy Land Foundation Five, Israeli- and became a peoples’ lawyer. I joined governments colonize the West Bank my ancestors during the Holocaust are not American Miko Peled describes the 1948 the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), a and advance racist laws,” Tutu wrote inconsistent with my criticisms of Israel “ethnic cleansing campaign that was progressive political-legal organization in a Tampa Bay Times article. He noted for subjecting the Palestinians to a different sweeping through Palestine like wildfire, that I later served as president. In 1977, “Israel’s theft of Palestinian land,” and kind of oppression. destroying everything in its path.” the NLG sent a delegation to Israel and “Jewish-only colonies built on Palestinian As stories continue to emerge about Palestinians call it the “Nakba,” Arabic Palestine. The report they issued was the land in violation of international law.” Israel’s killing of unarmed protesters at for “catastrophe.” first comprehensive analysis of Israel’s Tutu cited a 2010 Human Rights Watch the Gaza border during the Great March of My family was not religious but we practices published by a non-governmental report that “describes the two-tier system Return, it is increasingly difficult to ignore were proud of our Jewish heritage. My organization dedicated to protecting of laws, rules, and services that Israel the facts. Yet even those who see the truth father fought the Nazis in World War II human rights. It documented violations of operates for the two populations in areas in about Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians and relatives perished in the Holocaust. the 1949 Geneva Conventions by Israel as the West Bank under its exclusive control, worry about reprisals for speaking out. My paternal grandmother was an activist a belligerent occupant of the West Bank which provide preferential services, continued on next page … Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org V5N2—Spring 2019 21

In 2006, fresh out of college, I landed a job as the first real staffer on a long- Ilhan Omar shot Democratic congressional race in deep-red Ohio. My boss, Victoria Wulsin, was a charming hippie doctor with a Was Right lefty perspective on international affairs. She was skeptical of military force and About AIPAC opposed to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. I’m ashamed to admit About a month after winning the Democratic primary, we were struggling that endorsing AIPAC to gain attention or money. Nobody gave positions was all about us a chance to win. One political-action organization, however, did reach out to us. the Benjamins for me It wasn’t Emily’s List, although Vic was and my candidate. fiercely pro-choice. It wasn’t a labor union or even a doctors’ association. It was AIPAC. By Ady Barkan A local Democratic volunteer leader of the Cincinnati AIPAC chapter sat down in In February, Republican House minority Vic’s living room and said that he would leader Kevin McCarthy said he would seek like to raise $5,000 for our campaign and to formally sanction the first two Muslim would also like to see Vic take a public congresswomen, Ilhan Omar and Rashida stance on two relatively obscure issues Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn). Tlaib, because their criticism of Israel’s relating to Iranian sanctions, arms sales occupation of Palestine was even more to Israel, or some other such topic that have done it otherwise. AIPAC’s power political contributions. Instead, as it reprehensible than Congressman Steve very few voters in the district cared about. is about more than money, certainly. It’s notes proudly on its website, individual King’s defense of white supremacy. Vic and I both thought of ourselves as pro- about great organizing (they built a local members of its “Congressional Club,” like What motivated McCarthy’s false peace, not pro-Israel. We both felt icky about chapter, and sent a local Democratic that Cincinnati resident, do the bundling accusations of anti-Semitism? On doing it; it was too hawkish and too quid pro volunteer emissary who then facilitated and donating directly, both as individuals Twitter, Omar suggested, “It’s all about quo. But we were desperate. So I read the the contributions). It’s about diligence and through Political Action Committees the Benjamins baby,” quoting Puff AIPAC position papers that the volunteer (they paid attention to Vic’s campaign that AIPAC and its members have set up. Daddy’s ’90s paean to cash money. Omar left with us, I wrote up a statement saying long before anyone else, and were happy Omar is right to point all this out. subsequently specified that she was that Vic supported AIPAC’s stance on its to donate to both us and the militaristic, These dynamics are not unique to the talking about spending from the likes Israel-Palestine issue, however, and there of the American Israel Public Affairs is no reason that Americans should be Committee, better known as AIPAC, the surprised or offended by what she or I are powerful pro-Israel lobbying organization. Omar and Tlaib are powerful new saying. The NRA and the broader gun AIPAC mobilized its allies to condemn spokeswomen for the movement to end the lobby operate in the same way. Same with Omar’s comment for playing into ExxonMobil and the fossil-fuel lobby. centuries-old anti-Semitic tropes that Israeli occupation; delegitimizing them is a But since Omar and Tlaib are powerful wealthy Jews control the world. Even the new spokeswomen for the movement to Democratic leadership put out a statement central aim of the Israel lobby. end the Israeli occupation, delegitimizing condemning her. All because she dared to them is a central aim of the Israel lobby. point out that the emperor has no clothes. AIPAC and its partners, which include As a Jew, an Israeli citizen, and a two pet issues of the cycle, she approved it, pro-Likud Republican incumbent). Their Christian Zionists and military contractors, professional lobbyist (ahem, activist), I I posted it online, and the checks promptly lobbyists on the Hill are the best in the are a central pillar of the Israeli occupation. speak from personal experience when I arrived in the mail thereafter. We didn’t win, business, and their legislator junkets to the Without congressional support, the Likud/ say that AIPAC is tremendously effective, but the money helped us get close. Holy Land are masterfully orchestrated. anti-Palestine/pro-occupation project would and the lubricant that makes its operation It was, I am ashamed to say, definitely But money is central to the whole system. be radically undermined. The money that hum is dollar, dollar bills. about the Benjamins. We never would Technically, AIPAC doesn’t make the AIPAC and the rest of the lobby spend is indispensable to that work. That’s why they spend it. Pointing this out is not anti-Semitic. including members of Jewish Voice for Semitism, groups like Jewish Voice for We do, in fact, have a growing anti- Alexander Peace, Jewish Center for Nonviolence, Peace continue to gain traction. Jews are Semitism problem in America. But Omar and If Not Now—oppose the occupation. increasingly willing to examine the facts and Tlaib are not a part of it. They are … continued from previous page The BDS movement is not anti-Israeli, on the ground in Israel and the Occupied allies of mine and of Jews across this Alexander describes the silence of many as it targets the policies, not the people, of Palestinian Territories. country who are fighting for peace, racial civil rights activists and groups, “not Israel. And actions against Israel’s policies, And although Congress, dominated by justice, immigrants’ rights, and the defeat because they lack concern or sympathy including BDS, do not equate to anti- the powerful Israel lobby, continues to of fascism. The anti-Semites are the Nazis for the Palestinian people, but because Semitism. Rafeef Ziadah, a spokesperson give more money to Israel than any other and white supremacists who marched they fear loss of funding from foundations, for the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and country, two new members of Congress— and murdered in Charlottesville, whom and false charges of anti-Semitism.” She Sanctions National Committee, says, “As a Representatives Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) Donald Trump called “very fine people,” mentioned the case of Bahia Amawi, a U.S. matter of principle, the BDS movement has and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)—support and the MAGA supporter who massacred citizen of Palestinian descent, who lost her consistently and categorically opposed all BDS. worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue. Texas elementary school job last year after forms of racism, including anti-semitism Alexander is optimistic: “There seems to The Israel lobby flexed its muscles in refusing to pledge in writing that she would and Islamophobia.” be increased understanding that criticism response to Omar’s tweet. Almost all of not participate in the BDS movement. Palestinian human rights activist Omar of the policies and practices of the Israeli Capitol Hill, sadly including the Democratic Glenn Greenwald pointed out the grave Barghouti wrote in The New York Times government is not, in itself, anti-Semitic.” leadership that I have supported, was up danger anti-BDS laws pose to freedom in 2014, “Arguing that boycotting Israel is Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita in arms. It flexed with equal potency last of speech, tweeting, “The proliferation of intrinsically anti-Semitic is not only false, at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, month in marshaling through the Senate a these laws—where U.S. citizens are barred but it also presumes that Israel and ‘the Jews’ former president of the National Lawyers clearly unconstitutional law to ban speech from work or contracts unless they vow not are one and the same. This is as absurd and Guild, deputy secretary general of the promoting a boycott of Israel. to boycott Israel—is the single greatest free bigoted as claiming that a boycott of a self- International Association of Democratic For 12 years, I have harbored minor private speech threat in the United States.” defined Islamic state like Saudi Arabia, say, Lawyers and a member of the advisory shame for advising Vic to endorse AIPAC’s There is a false equivalency between because of its horrific human rights record, board of Veterans for Peace. Her most position papers and more significant shame criticizing Israel and being anti-Semitic. would of necessity be Islamophobic.” recent book is Drones and Targeted for not doing enough to stop the oppression Any criticism of Israeli policy is labeled Even though many persist in equating Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical of the Palestinian people. anti-Semitism, even though many Jews— condemnation of Israel with anti- Issues. continued on next page … 22 V5N2—Spring 2019 Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org Working-Class Hero humanity of Johnny’s journey and show that his radical politics were not born out of ideology but from seeing poverty and oppression firsthand. How a Johnny had become determined to campaign for equality when he witnessed the huge gap between rich and poor while Scruffy sleeping rough in 1930s London. He was determined to fight fascism after he met Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany and Teenager was horrified at the stories they told him. He was smuggled to Paris and then walked through the Pyrenees to get to Spain, and Fought joined the International Brigade. He was wounded three times (once temporarily blinded) and was incredibly lucky to come Fascism back alive. By Sean Cooney Only a few weeks after he retur ned in the summer of 1939 he went to Westminster It began nearly four years ago in Cle- to meet his local MP. Winston Churchill vedon. We were in the North Somerset happened to be passing and Johnny was coastal town to do a gig. After the show, introduced to him as a young socialist a man approached us. People often do; we soldier just returned from Spain. Churchill love to hear their responses to our songs. looked suspiciously at the 19-year-old and The man introduced himself as Duncan asked, “Would men like you be prepared and handed us two pieces of paper. to fight Hitler?” “I’ve been fighting Hitler One was a photograph from the 1930s all my life,” answered Johnny. of a scruffy teenager selling newspapers On the first day of the Second World on a street corner. “That’s my dad,” he War, Johnny went to enlist, but was said. The second was a list. “That’s what Teenage Johnny Longstaff selling newspapers in 1934. Photo: Duncan Longstaff. turned away—because he had fought in he did.” It read like a checklist of working- Spain. He didn’t give up, and became a class struggle in the 20th century. Hunger entire library of Spanish Civil War menace on the roads well into middle age. sergeant, fought at El Alamein and Monte marches, mass trespasses, the Battle of literature arrived at my door, his name Just before he died, Johnny had Cassino, and was rewarded for gallantry. Cable Street, travelling to Spain to fight and rank written neatly inside every cover recorded his life story for the Imperial Back home, he married Pauline, raised a against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. and the margins filled with his furious War Museum. We listened to the tapes. family and became a rather reluctant civil Because the three of us in the Young’uns “corrections”—typically, “That didn’t We were enthralled. It became clear that servant. He told his children much about shared the same birthplace as his dad— happen—I was there!” one song wasn’t going to be enough. his early life but kept from them the true Stockton-on-Tees—and because we’d Next came his dad’s unpublished We immersed ourselves in Johnny’s extent of the horrors of war. sung about the fight against fascism there, memoirs including stories of childhood 1930s world, reading the books he read By early 2018 the story and 16 songs Duncan hoped we might be inspired to write poverty in Stockton—imagine being and listening to the songs he sang. We were ready. With help from the remarkable a song about his dad, Johnny Longstaff. so hungry that you steal candles from discovered things we certainly hadn’t Cally of Antar.cc, we created a live show It felt like we’d discovered a forgotten a church to eat them. Johnny’s photo known. working-class hero. We wanted to know archive brought the people and events How there were several hunger marches more. we’d been reading about to life. I loved to London throughout the 1920s and Duncan bombarded us with treasures that because he’d learned to drive in the ’30s, not just the Jarrow Crusade of 1936. A 17-year-old … who from his father’s life. Johnny Longstaff’s desert in a tank during the war he was a Scornful students greeted the marchers in ‘couldn’t find Spain on a Cambridge by throwing eggs at them. We lea r ned about lost, overlooked , a nd u n li kely map’ … walked through The occupation is too immoral, illegal, and heroes of the Labour movement who had Ilhan Omar inhumane to survive an open and honest also gone to fight fascism in Spain; figures the Pyrenees to get to conversation in the marketplace of ideas. such as Lewis Clive, an Olympic rowing Spain and joined the … continued from page 21 That is why AIPAC and its associates work champion and the inspiration for Oliver in I am speaking up now because it may to silence criticism of Israel by accusing its Mary Wesley’s book The Camomile Lawn. International Brigade. be my last chance. Although I am only 35, detractors of anti-Semitism and claiming Johnny was with him when he died in I am dying. As I write these words, I am that nobody may ever talk about how the Spain at the Battle of the Ebro. sitting with my wife in the waiting room Israel lobby uses money to build power. Like many musicians, we’ve been that plunges audiences into Johnny’s world. of the Santa Barbara hospital emergency The ugly truth is that the Israel lobby, inspired by Charles Parker, Ewan MacColl Photographs and newspaper cuttings are room, slowly bleeding from my stomach like other powerful lobbies led by Jew and and Peggy Seeger’s groundbreaking BBC projected onto a backdrop of peeling Spanish into a pile of gauze. I had a feeding tube gentile alike, wields its money strategically Radio Ballads of the 1950s, documentaries street posters. A copy of a revolutionary inserted four days ago but it isn’t healing and effectively. Outrage should be directed that wove original songs around oral newspaper is on every seat and Johnny’s properly. I am losing the ability to swallow, not at those who point this out (most often testimonies, and, radically for the time, own voice comes from a 1930s-style radio. because I have ALS, a poorly understood Muslims and people of color) but at the suf- put working-class voices on to the nation’s Our first tour ended in Stockton-on- neurological disease with no treatment, fering of the Palestinian people and the si- airwaves. Why not do the same with Tees, almost 100 years after Johnny had which seized my body 28 months ago multaneous dependence of the Republican Johnny’s story, we thought, using his own been born there. Three generations of and has basically paralyzed me since. My Party on genuine anti-Semites. voice and our own songs to create something Longstaffs lined the front row. At the end hands do not work and almost nobody can I do not expect to live to see the liberation unlike anything we’d done before? of the show we pointed them out to the understand my mumbling, so I am using of the Palestinian people. But I maintain The piece quickly developed a narrative audience, and the people of Teesside rose amazing technology that tracks the location hope that my toddler son will. If he does, it too—of how a 17-year-old boy from the to their feet to applaud them. We all cried. of my eyes and allows me to slowly type will be because young American Jews like north of England who “didn’t even know After that show someone else came up out these words with my pupil-tips. him do the honest self-reflection taught by what sex was” and who “couldn’t find to chat. “There must have been thousands This is my chance to redeem my Jewish our forebears, take pride in our tradition of Spain on a map” became determined to of Johnny Longstaffs out there whose guilt, to speak out against the oppression justice, and join in solidarity and struggle defy the wishes of his own government stories will never be heard,” he said. that is being perpetrated in my name, and with fellow Semites like Omar. and fight for democracy in a foreign land. That’s true, but I hope Johnny can speak I do not intend to let a minor obstacle like Ady Barkan is an organizer with He wasn’t alone. More than 2,500 men for them. I think he’d be glad of that. ALS stop me. the Center for Popular Democracy and women from Britain and Ireland also Sean Cooney, is a songwriter and Young Jews across America increasingly and the founder of the Be A Hero PAC. chose to fight in what many now see as member of the Young’uns. In 2018, their agree with Omar and me, and that is making His memoir, Eyes to the Wind, will be the precursor to the second world war. album Strangers was crowned Best Album the Israel lobby very nervous. As it should: published by Atria Books in the fall. We wanted to portray the simple at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org V5N2—Spring 2019 23 Movie Review is about nothing more than Mosul Oil. they head off for their great adventure is Thus, the city of Mosul in what is now an omen. Iraq has been ravaged by battle after The industrial-scale carnage is no surprise battle justified by the ideology du jour. to us but it was to many of the lads. Amid They Shall Not Grow Old, The Muslim extremists largely funded by the cacophony one can almost hear the ka- the empire are the enemy now, right? ching of the cash register as merchants of Narrated By Those Who Did Or maybe the war on communism is death offscreen supply the machinery of back on again as Russia sits astride her war. Real human beings firing missile after They Shall Not Grow Old marvel, but it isn’t a good film. Cobbled thawing permafrost full of petroleum missile aren’t worth much and are easily Directed by Peter Jackson together from archival footage as a project reserves? Certainly Venezuela is in replaced amid the sophisticated propaganda 139 minutes of the Imperial War Museum in England the empire’s cross hairs now, because campaigns and coward-shaming back home. by New Zealand director Sir Peter Jackson socialism and oil just don’t mix well It’s a deeply sexist film, but such an ugly By Lisa Savage (Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies), the for the former Exxon executives in and amoral picture of human endeavor documentary applies modern technology Washington, D.C. made me proud to be an anti-­military It was my grandfather’s experiences to restore images and insert sound tracks. No mention of any of that in Jackson’s woman. There are no nurses ever at any in WWI that led him to teach his only Lip reading was used to render some of the disingenuous personal introduction to point in the film, which is historically child, my father, who passed it along to dialogue, but most is voiceover narration his film. He didn’t want to impose his ignorant, nor suffragette antiwar activists. us: “Don’t believe them when they say drawn from BBC oral history interviews views, he tells viewers, as if the curating Just a few moms who don’t want their the next war is a good war; there is no with veterans. The title of the film is never and assembling of two hours of footage sons mangled, and lots of prostitutes. As such thing.” Brooks Elliott Savage was explained; we are meant to understand that from the hundreds of hours collected by the credits roll, we’re treated to a lengthy wounded on the 11th day of the 11th it is a reference to a poem glorifying the the museum were a morally neutral act version of a contemporaneous song with month, basically the 11th hour of the war, “Great War” at its inception. devoid of political agency. rude lyrics about women, for example: by shrapnel and then mustard gas. He In “For the Fallen,” published in 1914 , Like Ken Burns’ Vietnam War Oh, Mademoiselle from Armentieres, suffered through a long recovery and it Robert Laurence Binyon wrote: documentary, this film made to mark Parlez-vous? (repeat) took his parents in Skowhegan, Maine, They shall grow not old; as we that are an important anniversary of an imperial She’ll do it for wine, she’ll do it for rum, most of a year to even find him. left grow old: war is the wolf of war porn in the sheep’s And sometimes for chocolate or chewing Brooks, who had marched off as an ideal­ Age shall not weary them, nor the years clothing of archival footage. gum! istic high school graduate, was talking to condemn. Remember how The Wizard of Oz burst It’s unclear to me why Jackson his son about the Korean War, hyped at the I beg to differ, as the years have into technicolor to signal that Dorothy displays his lack of analysis or historical time as crucial to fending off communism condemned the one million imperial troops (Judy Garland) was not in Kansas perspective devoid of ethics as if they emanating from Red China. My dad went who died in the scramble for the colonial anymore? They Shall Not Grow Old were sources of pride. Sexism—and anyway after his dad died, but by then it spoils of the unraveling Ottoman Empire. bursts into colorization to signal that the racism—hiding behind historical drama was post-combat. Still, the suffering of To a student of history like me, WWI scrawny teens of working-class England is a hallmark of what passes for Anglo the Korean people who had lost millions set off a bloody chain of events that led have entered the Great War. With their culture in the 21st century. of family members and couldn’t feed their directly to WWII and thence to the Zionist undernourished limbs whipped into It may be true, but it’s nothing to be kids made an impression on him. project in Palestine and the so-called War shape by regular meals and bullying proud of. “War is hell,” is what he taught us. on Terror (or WWIII if you prefer). As the drill sergeants, they start to resemble an Lisa Savage is a peace activist, “There’s nothing glorious about living the grandmother of a friend remarked after imperial army. As long as they keep their edu,cator, and blogger. She is the rest of your life with a bum leg, bad lungs, returning from an organizing meeting mouths shut; nothing, apparently, would manager of Bring Our War Dollar Home and a guilty conscience.” in New York City as the United States be done about their fantastically bad teeth. and the Maine BDS Coalition. She is the They Shall Not Grow Old is a historical prepared to enter WWI, This whole thing The rot lurking in their goofy smiles as founder of the Maine Natural Guard. Missed Opportunities By Mike Ferner with brief footage of gas attacks and the classic photo of seven tommies carrying one Newspapers on the other side of the wounded comrade through the knee-deep world are calling it “the biggest U.S. mud of ­Paschendaelle. cinema event of all time.” Jackson’s team brilliantly turned herky- Critical acclaim has poured in from all jerky, silent, monochrome youths into corners for the BBC production, They Shall breathing, talking, living color, with Not Grow Old, a technical and emotional compelling stories. But because of his masterpiece on the Great War, the war to cinematic goal, this assured award-winner make the world safe for dem­ocracy. The is minus a depth of feeling and realism it way it brings old footage and therefore could have projected by giving similar the soldiers to life is almost magical and treatment to the agony of the wounded. powerfully moving. But because of how One wonders why such neglected Photo: Archives, Imperial War Museum, London (colorized). Peter Jackson defined his film, a critical images as these failed to benefit from element is virtually invisible: the wounded. Jackson’s alchemy: war that Jackson left out. Ever since nursing breathe life into the determined, youthful Jackson distilled the stories of 120 • Footage of shell-shock victims filmed GIs returning from Vietnam, I’ve firmly images Jackson shows us on screen and veterans who spoke on some 600 hours at Britain’s Netley Hospital in 1917 that believed that no member of Congress in so doing, we gain a much greater of BBC audio tape done in the 1960s and would have retained its halting, jerking should be allowed to vote on war funding appreciation of “being a British soldier on ’70s. His goal was to have “120 men telling properties not from erratic frame until working for a month in the back ward the Western Front.” But it could also have a single story … what it was like being a speeds but because the young men were of a VA hospital, emptying urine bags, given movie-goers a glimpse into the part British soldier on the Western Front.” He tormented with nerve damage turning flaccid, sallow bodies and daubing of war so rarely seen. It might then have artfully presents it, using no narration • Film of amputee veterans exiting Queen the bed sores of formerly healthy youths been named, They Shall Suffer Horribly other than the archive of BBC interviews. Mary’s Workshop, dozen upon dozen upon who will never move on their own again; and Die Before Their Time. Hardly a But since dead men tell no tales, nor do dozen, hobbling in rapid succession or taking a turn offloading wounded from a formula for box office success … which is the severely wounded often live into their • One or two photos from New passenger jetliner serving as a “medevac” why war movies never go there and why 70s and 80s, the film narrows its focus to Zealand doctor Major Harold Gillies’ plane—seats all stripped out, replaced the next generation always signs up when the comradery and purposeful adventures groundbreaking book, Plastic Surgery of with four vertical rows of stretcher hooks their leaders beat the drum. of young men growing up with shared the Face, showing how red-hot shrapnel extending all the way down both sides of Mike Ferner served as a corpsman on experiences of tinned rations, trench life, and can carve bone and muscle into monstrous the aisle, full of wounded, their IV bags the neurosurgery and psychiatric wards rats. The dead flit across the screen in graphic forms and the freakish configurations that replacing the drinks cart. of the Great Lakes Naval Hospital during but limited numbers of colorized photos of accompany attempts at reconstruction They Shall Not Grow Old allows the the Vietnam War. He is a former president corpses. The wounded receive mute witness My own experiences revealed the side of reminiscences of 70 year-old veterans to of Veterans For Peace. 24 V5N2—Spring 2019 Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org Delivering the Facts About VA Healthcare Wounds of War: How the VA Delivers Full disclosure compels me to say I am Health, Healing, and Hope to the Nation’s a military veteran who receives health- Veterans care at a Veterans Health Administration By Suzanne Gordon facility Suzanne Gordon writes about in 2018, Cornell University Press, 400 pp. Wounds of War, and I am satisfied with the care I get, generally pleased. Com- By Denny Riley pared to my friends who are enrolled in private healthcare, I may be the only one Suzanne Gordon’s latest book Wounds pleased with his care. of War is about the Veterans Healthcare Gordon hasn’t written Wounds of War, Administration, the healthcare plan however, as a champion of the VHA. She under attack by conservative politicians is an award-winning journalist whose 18 and commentators, the two fabulously published books are about healthcare, wealthy Koch brothers, and Veterans For patient safety, nursing, and teamwork, America, a sham veterans organization and she goes at this thorough book about financed by the Kochs. They all malign the VHA with the mastery she has applied the VHA (often simply called the VA) on to all of her chosen subjects. the flimsiest of anecdotal facts. Many of Subtitled “How the VA Delivers, Author Suzanne Gordon speaks at the 2018 Veterans For Peace Convention in St. Paul. us have been convinced by this attack that Health, Healing, and Hope to the Photo: Ellen Davidson. the Veterans Health Administration is in Nation’s Veterans,” the book covers all worse shape than are the men and women of those issues and more. Written in 17 sector environment,” Gordon quotes her. billion budget the Koch brothers and their who turn to it for care. Many people, even topical chapters with an introduction, a “If a person is homeless, they can get help allies would like shifted to the private veterans who qualify for VHA care, put conclusion, and an epilogue, Wounds of with a variety of agencies to get housing. sector. And to a lesser degree the VHA is their health in the hands of hope. They War tells it all. The evolution of many If they are having trouble getting a job, in a different light than private healthcare. hope the HMO or private healthcare VHA programs is explained, usually we have supportive employment and It is a public institution with the mission plan they’re signed up with offers them in the words of the physicians and compensated work therapy. We have to fulfill President Lincoln’s promise “To healthcare professionals who are good. clinicians who developed them, with brief residential programs for PTSD and care for him who shall have borne the Whether they are good—whether they’ve biographies of veterans who participated. substance abuse and for chronic, hard- battle, and for his widow, and his orphan” had malpractice suits settled against I won’t share the title of every chapter to-treat psychiatric illnesses like bipolar by serving and honoring the men and them or had their licenses suspended at but some of the more expressive names or schizophrenia.” Summerville goes on, women who are America’s veterans. As a some time—can be difficult to discover. are “Promises Broken and Kept,” “When “Our patients have lifestyle problems, public institution supported by taxpayers, For-profit healthcare companies and Wounded Warriors Are Women,” relationship problems, work problems.” its books are open. We can look behind the medical associations keep their “Mental Health the Way It Should Be,” She says many of the patients cannot the curtain and see how it is run. So those disciplinary procedures as far from the “Suicide Prevention,” “Transcending possibly coordinate their own care or with their eye on the big budget can poke public eye as possible. The assumption Trauma,” “Off the Streets: Reducing take responsibility for self-care. “The and point with ease. is that HMOs and private healthcare Veteran Homelessness,” and “Better Care paramount thing for these people is that Private sector healthcare has no employ good people. They say so in their Where?” There is more detail in these everybody here [the VHA facility] knows equivalent damning light. For instance each other. We are all on the same team the Cleveland Clinic, a highly regarded in the same place.” Dr. Summerville general medical and surgery system with Seventy precent of the United States’ medical continues, “We have the only system of 11 hospitals and 18 health centers, was integrated mental health and primary fined $650,000 for serious lab violations residents and 40 percent of all other healthcare care in the country.” in 2015 and paid $1.6 million to the Justice As Gordon reveals, the VHA functions Department to settle “accusations that it professionals receive some or all of very differently from the way it is depicted implanted cardiac devices in patients too in most mainstream media coverage. The soon after a heart attack or surgery,” in their training at a VHA facility. Veterans Healthcare System has 150 2016, while the CEO received huge salary hospitals, 819 clinics, and 300 mental increases. The Cleveland Clinic averaged advertisements. Certainly better than the chapters than some readers might need health centers, employing 250,000 people more than $730,000 on lobbying between Veterans Healthcare Administration, one but for those with a particular interest in (a third of whom are veterans themselves) 2014 and 2018. No one clamored for the would think. a particular subject, a great deal will be and seeing 230,000 patients a day. Among CEO’s dismissal or the closing of any of Gordon swings our attention to a gained. Let’s take the chapter on mental the many VHA innovations and inventions the Cleveland Clinic facilities. different view of healthcare in America. health, a subject everyone is interested in, are the implantable cardiac pacemaker, Of course money is the issue, it always The RAND Corporation and the MITRE either for yourself or for a friend or your CAT scans, the nicotine patch, the first is. But 70 percent of the United States’ Corporation “confirmed, in great detail, boss. successful liver transplant, the use of medical residents and 40 percent of all other that the quality of the VHA’s frontline Gordon approached the VHA not low-dose aspirin regimen to prevent heart healthcare professionals receive some or care was equal to or superior to that through interviews either in person or in attacks, and prosthetic technology to help all of their training at a VHA facility. The delivered in private sector … wait times emails or on the phone. No, she visited a restore the sense of touch for those who VHA is the spine of American healthcare. for appointments with primary care VHA facility and spent days with care- have lost an upper limb or use an artificial Gordon clearly and extensively makes providers or medical specialists at the givers, in their offices, in staff meetings, hand. All of this was done on the Veteran that point. And the VHA is looking at a VHA were actually shorter than those and with patients. She visited psychia- Healthcare Administration research stream of disabled veterans for at least experienced by patients using private trist Lanier Summerall at a VHA Medi- budget where there is no profit incentive, the next 50 years (an estimate based on doctors or ­hospitals.” cal Center in South Carolina and also at a no patents to file, and all discoveries are disarmament happening some time soon.) Those might be sufficient words to VHA Medical Center in Vermont. Doctor made available to all Americans. Who among us will be the one to tell the convince a person if discussing the matter Summerall has been with the VHA sev- Then why are problems the VHA may returning soldier we do not care? Anyone over dinner or a glass of wine, but the eral decades. From a mental health point have not simply fixed? Why is there a who wants the VHA dismantled does not force amassed in the mission to turn the of view, Dr. Summerall describes the in- movement toward privatization rather know the facts. Suzanne Gordon delivers VHA’s budget ($200 billion annually) tegrated healthcare unique in the United than getting it operating at the level our the facts in Wounds of War. over to the private sector has tremendous States to the VHA. veterans deserve? After all aren’t these Denny Riley is an Air Force veteran of clout. So Gordon did the work, and with “We have a breadth of psychological the people we’ve been told to thank for the Vietnam War, a writer, and a member Wounds of War the facts are known. They services under one roof that is unequaled their service, people often referred to as of the San Francisco chapter of Veterans are here in black and white. even in the most well-resourced private- heroes? Well, first of all there is that $200 For Peace.