Bruce Melton : The Climate Change Drought Is Over / 3

Posted on June 14, 2012 by Thorne Dreyer

Wind turbines on the mainland as seen from the backside of Padre Island National Seashore, at mile 25 on the four wheel drive only beach. Photo © Bruce Melton, 2012.

The Climate Change awareness
drought is over
Part Three: It’s only pollution

For decades, the concept of installing privies in every house, business, and public building, and then piping human waste to a central treatment system, was perceived as lunacy that would bankrupt society.

By Bruce Melton | The Rag Blog | June 14, 2012

[This is the third of a three-part series exploring the recent change in public awareness of climate change issues, the causes behind the change, biases, the latest science showing how much our climate has already changed, and academic support for a vigorous change in messaging.]

AUSTIN, Texas — The shift in public opinion about climate change will likely only grow larger. This shift has been caused in a large way by an increase in unprecedented extreme weather caused by climate change, as climate scientists have been warning us about for 20 years.

Americans are beginning to disregard what the “voices” have been telling us about the great climate science conspiracy. Some of the most amazing evidence of how much our climate has already shifted has now been published. A vast majority of Americans have been highly supportive of our government acting on climate change, even before the shift in public awareness began.

Analysis of our leaders’ positions on “green” issues, vs. their success in 2008 and 2010, shows that vocal support for “green“ issues led to success more often than silence on the issue. It is time to change the climate tone to one of aggressive vocal advocacy for the consensus position.

I would like to begin this final part in the series by repeating a little from Part Two. Richard Alley, Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences at Penn State University, one of the lead authors of the 2001 and 2007 IPCC Reports, member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and one of the pivotal international researchers in climate science, tells us in his book, Earth the Operators Manual, that about 100 reports have been published concerning the economic impacts of the solutions to climate change and they are focusing in on one thing.

The solutions to fixing our climate pollution problem will cost about one percent of global gross domestic product every year for 100 years. I’ve already told you that Alley says this astronomically sounding $540 billion a year is no more than we have invested in the cost of installing toilets and the infrastructure to collect, clean, and dispose of toilet water.

Here’s more. In the U.S. we need to spend about 0.75 percent of our average household income every year to maintain our sewer and water infrastructure ($375 per family considering the Census Bureau’s median household income of $50,000 per year in 2006). The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development tells us most of the developed world spends 0.5 to 2.4 percent of household income on this task with the U.S. being the lowest.

Other things that show the simplicity of this challenge include: in 2011 we spent $494 billion on marketing across the globe according to eMarketer Digital Intelligence; the U.S. annual military budget (not including wars) is right at a half billion dollars; the Congressional Budget Office says the Bush tax cuts cost about $115 billion a year or approximately the United States share if we are divvying this thing up according to who emits what; an article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society in June 2011 tells us that routine weather events such as rain and cooler-than-average days can add up to an annual economic impact of as much as $485 billion in the United States alone; and in 2009 we spent $2.5 trillion in the U.S. on health care.

This is five times what Alley tells us the economics scholars think the cost of worldwide climate pollution control will be.

One more very important thing to consider about what professor Alley tells us is that these economic analyses only considered the costs. Not considered were the profits from the construction of the climate change pollution prevention devices, profits from avoidance once a carbon pollution tax is finally implemented, and benefits from the jobs created to build and maintain this new infrastructure. Also not considered would be the benefits to society of a clean energy economy.

So why is the general public not aware of the relative simplicity of the task of simply cleaning up the largest form of pollution caused by a single species in the known universe? It’s “The Voices”… It’s the voices and their campaign of deceit, discreditation, and disinformation that is almost complete. Their money reigns supreme.

The widely popular Wisconsin gubernatorial recall election on Tuesday, expected to be a closely contested contest, was blown to smithereens as Citizens United allowed just a few moneyed interests to outspend the Democrats by eight to one or $30.5 million to $3.9 million, says CBS News.

At the same time in California, the state with the lowest smoking rate in the country, there was a proposition on the ballot for new anti-smoking dollar-a-pack tax on tobacco products to fund cancer research. Bolstered by $12 million in anti-smoking campaign, it reached a 67 percent support level in March. It was slaughtered by tobacco industry advertising of $47 million in the final weeks. They won by less than a percentage point. Big brother is here, and it ain’t the government.

Let’s return from this world of corporate control and look at the real science some more: The money required to clean up climate pollution considers existing off-the-shelf technologies to do the job. Billionaires around the globe are investing in new technologies to do the job at a fraction of the price and earn billions in profits.

Remember, half a trillion a year is at stake. One of the leading examples is Global Thermostat in California that has developed a prototype that they say, if ramped up, could solve our climate pollution problems in 30 years for only $2 trillion or $70 billion a year. This is an eighth what most of the economic evaluations are saying is needed to do the job with existing technologies.

To finish these optimistic thoughts, there is a lot of messaging around focused on geoengineering and the wrong-headedness of such ventures; that this message will give people permission to emit more greenhouse gases and not reduce emissions.

Atmospheric carbon capture and land-based storage cannot be compared to pumping carbon into space through a hose suspended in the sky, putting bazillions of tiny mirror-like particles in the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun or a sun shade umbrella in deep space or any of the other grand-but-dangerous schemes.

Removing CO2 pollution from our atmosphere is little different from picking up trash on the beach or the side of the road and putting it in a landfill. The scale may be larger, but the comparison cannot be made to geoengineering’s risks.

To think that this type of pollution cleanup is wrong-headed, that it will give people permission to emit more greenhouse gases, is no more wrong-headed than thinking that picking up trash on the side of the road will give people permission to litter even more.

As Lord Nicholas Stern tells us (once chief economic advisor to Prime Minister Tony Blair and author of one of the most complete economic evaluations to the solutions to climate pollution — the Stern Report), we have to do everything we can at the same time to solve this problem.

How valid is the trend?

To be certain that a change in tone can be beneficial we need to know that the trends in awareness and climate change are valid and likely to continue. Because a significant portion of the awareness shift has been created by climate changes that have already happened, it is logical to assume that because the weather is predicted to become more extreme with greater warming, the awareness shift will likely continue to grow.

A really amazing piece of research that was recently published shows how much our climate has changed in the last 30 years. It shows that extreme temperature events are now occurring 10 to 100 times more frequently than during the period 1951 to 1981. This major piece of virtually unknown climate science comes from a paper in-press at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) as submitted by scientists from NASA and Columbia’s Earth Institute.

This change in climate that we have already seen can be related to having a 100-year heat wave every one to 10 years. This is like having the drought of the century — the drought of record — every one to 10 years. In another 30 years if the rate stays the same we can expect to see something like the thousand-year heat wave or the 10-thousand year heat wave happening every 10 years.

The authors tell us: “because we can project with a high degree of confidence that the area covered by extremely hot heat waves will continue to increase during the next few decades, even greater extremes will occur.”

This is exactly what we have been warned about by climate scientists for over 20 years. The rate of change is expected to accelerate as we continue to delay emissions reductions. The graphic below from this study by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia shows how markedly, persistently, and increasingly our climate has changed in the last 30 years.

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE.

To start with, this research evaluates Northern Hemisphere temperature. Northern Hemisphere temperatures have warmed more than the rest of the planet because there is more land in the northern half of our planet. The temperature increase over our oceans is smaller than over land because of what is called thermal inertia, or the ability of water to absorb more heat than land. This absorbed heat is transferred to deep cold water via sinking ocean currents and limits warming over oceans.

This means that the changes that you and I are likely to experience will be greater — two times more than the global average. This is something that is very important in climate science that rarely gets acknowledged in the media. Up to 9 to 11 degrees of average warming across the planet by 2100 means up to 18 to 22 degrees of warming across large parts of Earth’s land surfaces.

Our climate has not shifted uniformly. High temperature records outpace low temperature records 2 to 1. Extreme temperature events are happening much more often than if our climate had just shifted by the 1.4 degrees of average warming already seen across the globe. There are a lot of important things to be found in this reporting of our changed climate and the statistics are complicated so I will take some time and go through everything. (Or, just check out the caption under the image above and skip ahead to the subtitle “No Reason to Believe.”)

Starting with the image on the left, three decades of temperature extremes in the Northern Hemisphere are graphed (red, orange, and green lines). The similarity between decades is obvious and represents the stability of our climate during this period. The middle graphic adds data for the three most recent decades (cyan, blue and magenta).

Each one of these is shifted to the right (hotter) and if you look carefully you can see the shift increases with each decade. The graphic on the right (green, black and magenta) shows the difference between 1951-1981 and today. There has been a shift of three standard deviations in the extreme temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere. (I will get to standard deviations momentarily.)

The right hand side of each decade has shifted farther to the right than the left hand side of each decade which means that hot extremes are increasing more than cold extremes, which are staying about the same. (The graphs of the last two or three decades are cut off on the right as they extend much further than shown. This is the way they came in the paper and the quote below from the research describes three standard deviations, not two as shown. The shift is actually more than three standard deviations, but that’s even more complication that I will leave behind. Sorry for the confusion, this stuff is like rocket science.)

In total the research says the shift is three standard deviations. To simplify what this means, consider the quote below from the paper (I have omitted the extra wording about standard deviations):

A new category of hot summertime outliers has emerged… with the occurrence of these outliers having increased 1-2 orders of magnitude [10 to 100 times] in the past three decades. Thus we can state with a high degree of confidence that extreme summers, such as those in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010, are a consequence of global warming, because global warming has dramatically increased their likelihood of occurrence.

A further quote to help:

The perceptive person (old enough to remember the climate of 1951-1980) should recognize the existence of climate change. This is especially true in summer. Summers with [average] temperature in the category defined as “cold” in 1951-1980 . . . which occurred about one-third of the time in 1951-1980, now occur with a frequency about 10%, while those in the “hot” category have increased from about 33% to about 75%.

What we are seeing today is that the coldest summertime temperatures relative to “the normal period represented by 1951 to 1981” happen only one-tenth of the time today compared to one-third of the time back in the day. The “hot” temperatures, instead of happening one-third of the time like in 1951-1981, now happen more than two-thirds of the time (75%). One more quote:

These extreme [hot] temperatures were practically absent in the period of [1951 to 1981], covering only a few tenths of one percent of the land area, but they have occurred over about 10% of land area in recent years.

No reason to believe it will not continue

This work out of NASA is yet another very compelling description of how our climate has already changed and there is no reason, academically or logically, to believe it will not continue to change and that the changes will not continue their trend of acceleration.

Putting two and two together; considering the reason why public perception has changed because of the increase in extreme weather and the likelihood that the extremes will continue to become more extreme faster, there is no reason to believe that awareness will not continue to grow.

This assumption must also consider some decrease in awareness for relatively short periods from hyper press coverage of events/messages that are designed to discredit climate science or possibly support the election of a Republican as president in November. But for the last three years, political cues have changed and these cues have resulted in part of the change in public opinion about climate.

Also related to political cues are these two new movements called Tea Party and Occupy. These two groups are more similar than one might think. Their political and social messages are generally far (way far) apart, but their motivation is a different story. Both groups seem to be motivated by what they feel is a loss of control where government/politics and or big business/big money and their government/political relationships are concerned.

Big business, money and its corresponding political support among conservatives has vastly shaped the world of political “cues” related to American’s beliefs on climate change. As the country’s support of conservative leaders or institutions increases or decreases, awareness of climate change issues also increase or decrease as described by Lieserwitz 2012 (the Yale paper from Part One).

The important concept here is that both the Tea Party and Occupy believe that politics and/or big money have negatively influenced government. These folks do not trust politicians/government and big money. This is a widespread sentiment of the American public that can be seen in polling on banking, insurance, and U.S. lawmakers.

Not surprisingly, these movements are not just American. In Europe they have the Pirate Party, and very similar to both Occupy and the Tea Party, their goals are nebulous and as yet ill-defined. What the Pirate Party can decide on however is they want to see transparency in government and Internet freedom.

The views of conservative vs. liberal politics towards climate change are apparent all around us. Conservatives generally disagree with the climate consensus and liberals generally agree. But the widespread nature of this relationship tells even more of the story.


A Pew Center study of the climate change beliefs of different individuals has looked at eight classifications of conservatives and liberals (in the Graphic “Views of Global Warming,” staunch conservatives are “Tea Partiers”). A more in-depth description of the other types can be seen at the link in the references, but for the most part the rest are somewhat more easily identifiable.

This work shows very graphically that an increase in liberal politics means an increase in the belief of the scientific consensus.

A fall 2011 survey by the Brookings Institute tells us that 78 percent of Democrats believe there is solid evidence supporting the consensus on climate change where only 47 percent of Republicans believe there is solid evidence.

A study out of Yale and the George Mason Center for Climate Change Communication in March 2012 (in the graphic “Climate Change in the American Mind”) looks at the issue differently. It finds that nearly twice as many (38 percent) of Democratic respondents believe the national priority for global warming should be high to very high vs. Republicans (20 percent). Also of note in this study, 56 percent of Republicans in October 2011 believe global warming priorities should be low vs. 48 percent in March 2012.


A study in Sociological Quarterly from April 2011, carried out by McCright and Dunlap of Oklahoma State University and led by Michigan State, analyzed 10 years of data from Gallup’s environmental poll and found that the gap between Republicans and Democrats who believe global warming is happening widened by 30 percent from 2001 to 2010.

The Pew Center’s latest (March 2012) also tells us that 51 percent of Republicans and Independents say it is warmer but it is due to natural causes while 47 percent of Democrats say it is due to manmade global warming. From the March 2012 Gallup survey, 43 percent of Democrats believe warmer than normal temperatures are because of climate change, vs. 19 percent of Republicans.

On the topic of American’s beliefs about government action on climate change: CNN April 2011 tells us that 71 percent of Americans favor funding for the EPA to enforce regulations on greenhouse gases. Gallup says in June 2010 that 42 percent favor the Obama position on climate change vs. 33 percent that favor the Republican position. ABC News/Washington Post in June 2010 finds that 71 percent of Americans think the federal government should regulate the release of greenhouse gases from sources like power plants, cars, and factories in an effort to reduce global warming.

Virginia Commonwealth University 2010 reveals 51 percent of Americans feel that the federal government is doing too little to reduce global warming. Pew Center 2010 adds that 52 percent of Americans favor setting limits on carbon dioxide emissions and making companies pay for their emissions, even if it may mean higher energy prices. USA Today/Gallup 2009 said that 55 percent of Americans favored the U.S. signing a binding global treaty at the Copenhagen Summit that would require the U.S. to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Finishing off these numbers, the MacInnis, Krosnick and Villar study from Stanford and Woods Institute in 2011 analyzed the 2008 presidential election and the 2010 Congressional/Senate election and found something surprising. Democrats who took “green” positions on climate change won much more often than Dems who remained silent and Republicans who took “not-green” positions on climate change won less often than Republicans who remained silent.

MacInnis tells us his research suggests that elected officials should take vigorous public positions on climate change because most Americans view this favorably.

  • Democrats won 69% of the races in which the Democrat took a green position and the Republican was silent/mixed.
  • Democrats won 68% of the races in which the Democrat took a green position and the Republican took a not-green position.
  • Democrats won 18% of the races in which the Democrat took a green position and the Republican also took a green position.
  • Democrats won 17% of the races in which both candidates were silent/mixed.
  • Democrats won 4% of the races in which the Democrat was silent/mixed and the Republican took a not-green position.
  • Democrats won 0% of the races in which the Democrat was silent/mixed and the Republican took a green position.

Summarizing these findings the paper tells us:

It is interesting to note that these findings have simple implications for Democratic campaign strategies but tricky ones for Republicans. It appears that Democrats enhanced their chances of victory by taking a green position, regardless of what their Republican opponents said on the issue. But the optimal strategy for Republicans appears to have hinged on what their opponents said. If a Republican could be confident that his/her Democratic opponent would remain silent on climate change, then the Republican would have gained by expressing a not green position. But once a Democrat expressed a green position, the Republican would have been wisest to remain silent/mixed, because expressing a not-green position appears to have hurt his/her chances of victory.

From the press release for the study Krosnick tells us: “Our studies show no decline in public belief in the existence and threat of climate change, and that politicians might benefit from taking a ‘green’ stance.”

The Yale study Climate Change in the American Mind, tells us that three Americans to one would be more likely to vote for a candidate that supports a “revenue neutral” shift in taxation increasing fossil fuels taxes and reducing federal income tax by the same amount. Breaking it down by party, Republican respondents would support such a shift by two to one, Independents three to one, Dems five to one (74 percent). In the presidential vote this year, 55 percent of Americans say that global warming will be one of several important issues they use to determine how to cast their vote (60 percent Dems, 41 percent Republicans and 59 percent Independents).

Conclusions:

Awareness about climate change issues is increasing because of political cues and unprecedented weather actually caused by our already changed climate. Republicans overwhelmingly disagree with the scientific consensus whereas Democrats agree. Only 60 percent of climate scientists believed that Earth was warming in 1991, compared to 97 precent today. Americans’ views on climate change are about 20 years behind those of the vast majority of climate scientists. Lawmakers voicing an opinion on “green” issues are much more likely to win than if they are silent and Democrats are much more likely to win if they voice a positive “green” opinion.

Climate change impacts happening now are making the case for us. Public opinion is changing directly because, in the backs of our minds, we have been listening all these years. Now we see the predictions coming true and are converting. The extremes are convincing people through messaging work that has already been performed. Not that we don’t need to do more. This article has been all about starting new campaigns with a different tone.

The conversions will continue as the extremes continue to ramp up. The majority to the vast majority of Americans already believe and already want our government to act. What needs to be done now is to convince those already convinced that things are bad enough and that the predictions are valid enough that they need to do something about it themselves, or that they and their children will face the balance of the predictions of dangerous climate change.


We can completely circumvent the dissenter’s campaigns. Disassociation is what is needed. Their message is not credible. This is about convincing our leaders that the time has come to do something. And how do we do that? We simply threaten them with un-election. Tried and proven, this tactic can change their votes in mere minutes. But we have to have enough warm bodies engaged. Enough voters need to own this issue to convince our leaders that it’s our way or the highway.

With even more dangerous climate changes still in the pipeline, the voting stance of our elected leaders will change organically like the change in public awareness that we have seen in the last several years. But this will take time that we may not have. If we help it along it will come faster.

Twenty-first century social media have had great impacts on politics recently in numerous issues and these include: Obama’s election in 2008, the Tea Party and Congressional elections in 2010, Iranian elections in 2010, Occupy Wall Street, Arab Spring, Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), Planned Parenthood and breast cancer screenings, Rush Limbaugh’s feminist comments blowback, KONY 2012. There are about 250 million Internet users, over 100 million smartphone users, 133 million Facebook users and over 24 million Twitter users.

This is no longer the 20th century. “Click” activism is here. What we did back then, and in the early part of this century, before we decided that climate change was a dirty word, is not going to work today. We need to rely on different strategies. The voting statistics tell us that Dems who speak up about green issues win more often than those who remain silent. Why are we not speaking up? Social media has obviously made a difference recently, so why are we not embracing this technology with our message?

The climate change denial tactics of the conservatives have obviously been successful. It is only when Mother Nature’s brute force exerts more influence on individuals that the tide has begun to turn. Why are we not using the tactics of the conservatives to help our citizenry understand what they should do? Why are our Democratic Party leaders not refusing to do one single thing conservative politicians want us to do instead of compromising beyond our principles?

Why are we not using emotional issues in aggressive ways, like the Conservatives’ messaging campaigns, to convince the undecided that they need to pay attention to what the climate scientists are saying about our children’s future? Why are our Democratic Party leaders not standing on top of the conservatives’ misrepresentations of climate change and repeatedly revealing them to the American public for what they are? Why are the vast majority of us “silently” supporting the climate science consensus when an aggressive vocal stance wins more often?

It’s time to come out of the climate closet and take a deliberate stance. The era of politically incorrect climate change messaging is over. Take a stand and urge your leaders to take a stand. We can vote the disbelievers off the climate island and win.


[Bruce Melton is a professional engineer, environmental researcher, filmmaker, and author in Austin, Texas. Information on Melton’s new book, Climate Discovery Chronicles, can be found at this link. More climate change writing, climate science outreach, and critical environmental issue documentary films can be found on his website. Read more articles by Bruce Melton on The Rag Blog. Images and photographs copyright © Bruce Melton 2012 unless otherwise referenced.]

References: 

For decades, the concept of installing privies in every house… was perceived as lunacy that would bankrupt society: Alley, Earth: The Operators’ Manual, W. W. Norton and Company, 2011, pp. 209-219. These 10 pages offer an excellent discussion of the transition from a toiletless society riddled with cholera to one that has successfully installed toilets and their infrastructure across the world and conquered the cholera challenge. Of the extensive references in Alley’s book, the UCLA website dedicated to John Snow may be the most useful: http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow.html
$485 in normal weather damage in the U.S. every year: Lazo et al., U. S. economic sensitivity to weather events, American Meteorological Society, June 2011. http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2011BAMS2928.1
Why the Northern Hemisphere warms more than the Southern Hemisphere: Kang and Seager, Croll Revisited, Why is the Northern Hemisphere Warmer than the Southern Hemisphere? Lamont Dougherty at Columbia University, submitted Journal Climate, 2011. http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/pub/seager/Kang_Seager_subm.pdf World Meteorological Organization’s Status of the global climate. http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/wcp/wcdmp/statement/wmostatement_en.html
By 2050 (or even 2040) land temperature increases in the Northern Hemisphere will increase by 18 to 22 degrees F, more than double global average projections: Ganguly et al., Higher trends but larger uncertainty and geographic variability in 21st century temperature and heat waves, PNAS September 15, 2009. http://www.pnas.org/content/106/37/15555.full.pdf+html
High temperature records outpace low temperature records 2 to 1: Trenberth et al., Current Extreme, Climate Communication, Science and Outreach, September 2011.pdf http://climatecommunication.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Extreme-Weather-and-Climate-Change.pdf
Moscow (2010) and European (2003) and Texas (2011) heat waves caused by climate change: Feudale and Shukla, Influence of sea surface temperature on the European heat wave of 2003 summer, Part I, an observational study, Climate Dynamics, 2010. http://www.iges.org/people/Shukla%27s%20Articles/2010/Part_II.pdf  Rhamstorf and Coumou, Increase of extreme events in a warming world, PNAS, October 24, 2011. http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Nature/rahmstorf_coumou_2011.pdf Hansen et al., Public Perception of Climate Change and the New Climate Dice, PNAS in publication. http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1204/1204.1286
Extremes are happening 10 to 100 times more frequently: Hansen, Sato and Ruedy, Public Perception of Climate Change and the New Climate Dice, (in-press) PNAS, 2012. http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1204/1204.1286.pdf
The Bias of Fox News: Krosnick and MacInnis, Frequent Viewers of Fox News are Less Likely to Accept Scientists’ Views on Global Warming, NSF grant, Stanford, 2010. http://woods.stanford.edu/docs/surveys/Global-Warming-Fox-News.pdf Press Release: http://woods.stanford.edu/research/climate-views-elections.html Feldman et al., Climate on Cable, Nature and Impact of Global Warming Coverage on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC, International Journal of Press/Politics, XX, 2011. http://climateshiftproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/FeldmanStudy.pdf
Pew Center, Political Typology: Pew Center, Beyond Red vs. Blue, Political Typology, May 4, 2011. http://www.people-press.org/files/legacy-pdf/Beyond-Red-vs-Blue-The-Political-Typology.pdf
Winning more votes: MacInnis, Krosnick and Villar, The Impact of Candidates Statements about Climate Change on Electoral Success in 2008 and 2010, Stanford, August 2011. http://woods.stanford.edu/docs/surveys/Krosnick-Global-Warming-Voting-Statements.pdf
Revenue neutral tax shift: Yale, Climate Change in the American Mind, Public Support for Climate and Energy Policies in March 2012. http://environment.yale.edu/climate/files/Policy-Support-March-2012.pdf
American’s views on climate change are about 20 years behind those of the vast majority of climate scientists’: Climate Scientists Agree on Warming, Disagree on Dangers, and Don’t Trust the Media’s Coverage of Climate Change, George Mason University, STATS, 2008. http://stats.org/stories/2008/global_warming_survey_apr23_08.html

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James McEnteer : On the Lean Streets of Quito

Posted on June 14, 2012 by Thorne Dreyer

Lean streets of Quito. Image from Lonely Planet.

Sell on wheels:
Pitching and rolling on 
the lean streets of Quito

A man dressed as a circus clown boards a bus selling packs of magic candy, two for a dollar.

By James McEnteer | The Rag Blog | June 13, 2012

QUITO, Ecuador — In Quito you’re either on the bus or off the bus and many are on it. Ecuador’s long, narrow capital city lies between rows of volcanic Andean peaks. Though the urban area stretches nearly 50 kilometers from north to south, it’s possible to traverse most of that distance for 25 cents (12 cents for children and seniors), transferring from one city bus to another. Of course this cheap, reliable public transportation is very popular.

Quito bus riders are also captive audiences for all sorts of sales pitches. Hawkers may come on peddling medicines, for instance. They will make a brief introduction, apologizing for the intrusion, as they move swiftly down the aisle handing out samples of their wares to anyone who will accept them. They launch directly into the long list of benefits their miracle pill or powder can bestow, the many ailments it can cure or prevent.

Or someone might chant the praises of a cookbook full of many fabulous recipes. The salesperson may run through some or all of those recipes, a litany that sounds something like an auction, to entice customers to buy. This prodigious feat of memory may provoke hunger as the bus passengers listen to the long list of meat and fish dishes, or the many desserts one can learn to cook from the proffered volume.

More entertainingly, sales folk pitching CDs pass out their samples and then play excerpts on a small computer or a portable CD player they wear around their necks to keep their hands free to pass out their products or collect their payments.

Whether the products on offer are medicines, cookbooks or music, most passengers accept the chance to hold them in their hands while they listen to the pitch. Inevitably, no matter how much the salesperson claims their product is worth, they end up asking one dollar for it, just to keep things simple. The U.S. dollar is the largest common coin in circulation here.

A man dressed as a circus clown boards a bus selling packs of magic candy, two for a dollar. He says if you eat one, you’ll be able to speak English. Eat two, and you can speak French. Three, and you’ll be fluent in Quichua (a local indigenous language). But if you eat four you’ll turn mute.

As in any profession, some bus vendors excel at what they do, while others are hopeless, rattling on in a rote, unconvincing singsong. Or mumbling their inaudible spiel beneath the drone of the bus engine and the cacophony of city traffic. Some vendors are too shy for their chosen profession. They should probably stand passively with their wares on a street corner, as many do in this lemonade stand economy.

In some cases, a bus sales pitch has little to do with the product. One man who hawks packets of plastic garbage bags spends most of his time describing the community of orphans that stands to benefit from his sales. Of course, what can you say about a garbage bag? That it can hold all the stuff you could buy on a bus?

Blind and crippled vendors board the busses too, sometimes with children or other helpers, to throw themselves on the mercy of the passengers, urging them to buy candy or simply to give them donations. Handicapped vendors wear official government name tags which certify their afflictions as genuine. Considering the meager gleanings of the disabled bus vendors, it is a wonder that their helpers make enough to get by.

Two or three strapping young men may start rapping along with their recorded music and breaking out dance moves down the center aisle. I tend to donate to these guys, whether or not they’re any good, to encourage their show business aspirations, so they don’t have to fall back on crime, mugging pedestrians on the street if their bus performance gigs don’t pan out.

Performers especially, but all vendors, must time their bus sales to avoid the crush of standing riders during peak commuting hours. That makes for a short, intense work day, hopping on and off one bus after another, every 15 minutes or so after the early morning crowds ease off and before the late afternoon commute begins. Is there a training school for bus vendors? Maybe there should be.

Annoying, amusing, always on the go, Quito bus vendors offer random interactive diversion for passengers shuttling from here to there at bargain rates, whether or not you buy what they’re selling. They make online pop-up ads look slick and remote by comparison, and way two-dimensional.

[James McEnteer is the author of Shooting the Truth: the Rise of American Political Documentaries (Praeger). He lives in Quito, Ecuador. Read more of James McEnteer’s articles on The Rag Blog.]

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Shelley Seale : CultureMap Picks Austin’s Top Political Bloggers

Posted on June 14, 2012 by Thorne Dreyer

CultureMap Austin‘s top political bloggers: Above, The Rag Blog‘s Thorne Dreyer, photo by James Retherford. Inset, below, from the top: Rachel Farris, photo by Wildhouse Photography; Harold Cook, courtesy of Harold Cook; and Katherine Haenschen, courtesy of BOR. All photos appeared at CultureMap Austin.

Election 2012:
Keep up with Austin’s top political bloggers

[The Rag Blog was honored to be featured in a CultureMap Austin article about Austin’s top political bloggers, originally published on June 2, 2012. CultureMap — a “daily digital magazine” designed to keep readers “plugged in, enlightened and entertained about culturally relevant news and information” — has become an increasingly influential Internet community resource for the Austin area. We thought we’d share Shelley Seale’s interesting piece with our readers.]

By Shelley Seale / CultureMap Austin / June 14, 2012

This month’s installment of Austin’s top bloggers highlights some of the best locals who dish on all things politics. After covering style, music, relationships, and food, this month I’m sharing my list of Austin’s top political bloggers.

Thorne Dreyer: The Rag Blog

Thorne Dreyer and The Rag Blog both came of age in the tumultuous sixties. In 1966, Dreyer was the original editor of The Rag — one of the first underground papers in the country.

“At the time, Austin was becoming a center for the fast-growing Sixties counterculture and psychedelic music scenes — and there was a big student power and anti-war movement on and around the UT campus,” says Dreyer, who currently edits the digital-age reincarnation, The Rag Blog. “The Rag pulled those groups together into a major political force.”

Thorne Dreyer and The Rag Blog both came of age in the tumultuous sixties.

The Rag Blog was born in 2005, when dozens of old staffers and local activists came together in a wildly successful reunion and started working together again. “It started as an online discussion group,” Dreyer says, “and many of the old underground press folks now write for us. We have a roster of prestigious contributors from all over the country and have developed an international following, and our writing is republished extensively on the internet.”

The Rag Blog features commentary on contemporary politics and culture and has been an original internet source on subjects like Occupy Wall Street , the environmental and sustainability movements, and other issues of social activism. “Though the times are very different, there are some similarities between the Sixties underground press and today’s progressive blogosphere — and we try to publish The Rag Blog with some of that same Sixties spirit.”

As far as the upcoming Presidential elections, Dreyer feels that people expected too much from Obama, and many are disillusioned with his leadership. “Obama was never really a progressive, and the political climate was such that he kept running into a (Republican) brick wall at every turn. But the Republicans are so scary that we have to support Obama’s reelection. All the pressure on Obama comes from the Right; we need to be more of a counterbalancing force.”

Rachel Farris: Mean Rachel

Blogging helped Rachel Farris deal with her own political grievances. Her first blog post in 2005 was about her frustration with the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina. Even so, she didn’t blog much about politics in those first couple of years — not until 2007, when her then-boyfriend was redeployed to Iraq and Farris began blogging about her dissatisfaction with the Bush administration.

“While the relationship didn’t work out, the blog definitely did. It helped me find my voice.”

Farris’s recent post on What a Rick Perry Presidency Would Look Like for Women got quite a bit of attention. “I think a lot of pundits were talking about what a Rick Perry presidency might look like for foreign policy or business, but no one had really addressed Perry’s record with women,” Farris says. And she is equal opportunity on the parties; she stirred up Democrats as well with The Crisis of Character in the Democratic Party , written right after the 2010 gubernatorial elections.

Farris is concerned about low voter turnout in the Presidential Race, and the way people are tired of the ineffectiveness of politics across party lines.

While many people vehemently disagreed with that post, a group of campaign staffers for Bill White asked her to read it at a backyard party.

“I thought their resilience was impressive and it gave me a lot of hope for the future of the Democratic Party in Texas. If they were willing to listen to some grumpy blogger yell at them, it meant that the next generation of political staffers care and they want to improve our state’s Democratic ticket.”

Farris is concerned about low voter turnout in the Presidential Race, and the way people are tired of the ineffectiveness of politics across party lines. She predicts a win for President Obama, and hopes it will help re-engage the electorate for 2016.

“With a name like Mean Rachel, I’ve found that people are more willing to listen once they’ve gotten to know me,” Farris says. “The most common thing I hear is ‘You’re not so mean!'”

Harold Cook: Letters From Texas

Cook’s blog came about simply because he was bored to tears. It was 2008 and he was on a business conference call. “While the call droned on and on, I just surfed over to blogger.com to see if I could get a blog going,” Cook says. “I didn’t tell anybody for a couple of weeks, because I didn’t think it would last.”

He wanted to do a political analysis blog because that’s where his expertise was — but he also wanted to do political satire and parody. “I think many participants in the political process take themselves way too seriously.” LettersFromTexas.com goes back and forth between serious and humorous pieces, something that Cook says might make the site seem a little schizophrenic to some. “They never know which writing they’ll get when they check in, and I like that.”

Plenty of his blog posts have generated a lot of controversy and commentary. “When Governor Perry first said he was thinking about running for President earlier this year, I wrote a piece highly critical of his candidacy which may well be the most-read piece over on the blog,” Cook says. “It just kept going for months and months. I also wrote Source at Reliant Stadium in Houston which also bent the needle on blog traffic.”

“I think many participants in the political process take themselves way too seriously.”

The most controversial post ever was Rodeo Clowns, in which Cook published the names and contact information of several people who had sent racist emails surrounding a controversy with the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. “The squirming by racists in the comments section was certainly an eye-opener to a lot of my readers, to say the least, and I finally shut down the comments on the piece.”

And what does Cook think about the upcoming Presidential election? “I think the struggles within the Republican Party between Tea Party activists and traditional establishment Republicans have taken Republicans so far to the right that it will be difficult for them to have a very good November election. Odds are at this point that Obama will be re-elected.”

Katherine Haenschen: Burnt Orange Report

It was 2003, and a group of UT students needed an outlet to chronicle the political goings-on at the State Capitol and around Austin. Thus was born the Burnt Orange Report. In nearly 10 years the site has garnered more than six million visitors, broken major statewide and national news stories and played a key role in supporting progressive/Democratic messaging, through the work of dozens of staff writers.

In fact, BOR is one of the most widely-read progressive state blogs and was credentialed at the ’06 and ’08 Democratic National Conventions, as well as the 2009 inauguration of President Obama. The blog has also won six “Best of Austin ” awards from Austin Chronicle readers.

In nearly 10 years the site has garnered more than six million visitors, broken major statewide and national news stories and played a key role in supporting progressive/Democratic messaging, through the work of dozens of staff writers.

“While we’re unabashedly Democratic, our readers come from both sides of the aisle,” says editor Katherine Haenschen. “We’re very open about our partisanship and support for Democratic candidates, but we’re also willing to criticize fellow members of our party too.”

In 2006, BOR broke the story about Kinky Friedman’s racist “comedy” routines, which became a big story in the 2006 Governor’s race. Amusingly, Haenschen says the blog is also still getting a steady stream of visits from people Googling “Can Texas secede?” and landing on this post by Karl-Thomas Musselman.” I guess we can thank Rick Perry for that one.”

It is probably obvious that BOR supports Obama in the upcoming elections. “We’re largely optimistic about our elections this year, since issues like public education funding, women’s health, and economic inequality are key this year,” says Haenschen. “Democrats have a more favorable — and let’s be honest, sane — stance on these issues. Plus, it helps that the Republicans can’t seem to stop arguing about the President’s birth certificate while railing against birth control. They’re doing a great job of showing why they shouldn’t be in charge of a bake sale, let alone government.”

[Shelley Seale is an Austin-based freelance journalist who writes about lifestyle, travel, health, education, business and nonprofit issues. She has written for National Geographic, USA Today, Andrew Harper Traveler Magazine, Yahoo, CNN, the Austin Business Journal, Austin Woman and many others.]

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MUSIC / Gregg Barrios : Patti Smith’s ‘Banga’

Posted on June 14, 2012 by Thorne Dreyer


The wait is over:
Patti Smith’s ‘Banga‘

The title cut is a meditation on Pontius Pilate’s dog Banga in Mikhail Bulgakov’s satirical novel, The Master and Margarita.

By Gregg Barrios | The Rag Blog | June 13, 2012

Patti Smith fans’ eight-year wait is over — Banga is a bold return to the musical style and lyricism that made earlier Smith efforts praiseworthy.

Banga opens with the cinematic voyage of “Amerigo” (Vespucci, from whom America gets its name) to an Edenic new world. On this cut, the richness and delivery of Smith’s incantatory voice shines brightly. The pop charm of “April Fools” will have you humming to Patti’s vocals and tapping to Tom Verlaine’s guitar work. “Come, be my April fool, we’ll break all the rules.” Eat your heart out, Jimmy Iovine.

The title cut is a meditation on Pontius Pilate’s dog Banga in Mikhail Bulgakov’s satirical novel, The Master and Margarita. It speaks of canine loyalty. “Night is a mongrel — believe or explode,” Smith howls, as son Jackson provides the barking. However, “This is the Girl,” written for Amy Winehouse, scores with its girl group doo-wop a la the Shangri-Las. Perfect.

The 10-minute epic “Constantine’s Dream,” perhaps the best art-rock composition by an American artist this year, evokes the narratives of Horses and Easter. In its dream within a dream, Smith, like a howling St. Joan of Arc on a steed, calls out, “All is art — all is future!”

The world doesn’t end with a bang on Banga but with a haunting and unfettered version of Neil Young’s elegiac “After the Gold Rush.” A perfect touch to the most satisfying comeback album of the year.

[Gregg Barrios is a journalist, playwright, and poet living in San Antonio. Gregg, who wrote for The Rag in Sixties Austin, is on the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle. His play I-DJ premieres in July at Overtime’s Gregg Barrios Theater in San Antonio. This review was first published at the San Antonio Current. Contact Gregg at gregg.barrios@gmail.com. Read more articles by Gregg Barrios on The Rag Blog.]

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Kate Braun : Summer Solstice Marks the Midpoint

Posted on June 13, 2012 by Thorne Dreyer

Summer Solstice fire. Image from Desert Green Goddess.

Between Beltane and the First Harvest…
Summer Solstice: Wednesday, June 20, 2012

By Kate Braun | The Rag Blog | June 13, 2012

“In the summertime when all the trees and leaves are green….”

Wednesday, June 20, 2012, is the Summer Solstice, also called Litha and Midsummer. The Summer Solstice marks the mid-point between Beltane and the first harvest festival, hence the term Midsummer. Lady Moon is in her first quarter, in the water sign Cancer. The Goddess is now a matron and ripely pregnant, foreshadowing the coming harvest. Wednesday is Odin’s day, implying that fathering, generative, paternal energies will also abound.

Midsummer lore says that any herbs gathered or harvested on this day are exceptionally potent. The general rule for harvesting herbs is to do so before 10 a.m., while the essential oils in the plants are more abundant.

Choose among the colors white, red, golden yellow, green, blue, and tan for your decorating. Serve your guests any yellow or orange food such as summer squash, carrots, sweet potatoes, bananas, peaches, oranges, lemons. Foods cooked over flames are also welcome: shish-kebab, grilled veggies, grilled salmon or other fish, grilled meats. Ale, mead, and fresh fruit juice are traditional libations, as are lemonade and sangria.

Plan your festivities to celebrate vitality, creativity, health, and abundance. Celebrate all things in your life, work and play equally. Make magick for love, healing, and prosperity. Rejoice in creation and creativity in all forms.

Include your animals in your festivities. Fairies and garden sprites will be pleased if you set out some food for them. You may also leave bits of mirror or crystal about to reflect light, which pleases these beings. Remember that part of this celebration is to not give away fire or food, and to not sleep away from home.

Make a fire if possible. Any fire will do, from a big bonfire to flames in a small cauldron. Any amulets that have lost their usefulness and/or fulfilled their purpose should be destroyed by casting them into the fire. When the ashes cool, strew them across your yard. This is said to bring blessings to the land.

First quarter moons are a good time to begin projects, to declare intentions to be completed by the full moon. It may be helpful to create a self-dedication ceremony to fix your intentions more firmly in your heart and mind. One way to do this is to speak your intention or define your project to the flickering flames, speaking across the flames to each of the equinox and solstice compass points, East, South, West, and North.

The balance shifts from the Waxing Year to the Waning Year. This cycle of abundance leads to “the time that is no time” when fields lie fallow and there is time to reflect and renew before the next movement of the Great Dance begins. The Summer Solstice marks mid-year as well as mid-summer.

On Saturday, July 21, 2012, I will be participating in a Feed Your Spirit event at the Holiday Inn in Round Rock, Texas. On Saturday and Sunday, July 28-29, 2012, I will be participating in a Spiritual Life Productions Metaphysical Fair at the Holiday Inn Midtown, in Austin. All the information about both these events as well as how to schedule an advance reading is posted on my website.

[Kate Braun‘s website is www.tarotbykatebraun.com. She can be reached at kate_braun2000@yahoo.com. Read more of Kate Braun’s writing on The Rag Blog.]

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Posted on June 13, 2012 by Thorne Dreyer

By Kate Braun / The Rag Blog / July 13, 2012

“Happy Holiday, Happy Holiday, while the merry bells are ringing, may your every wish come true…”

Thursday, December 22, 2011 is Yule/Winter Solstice/Midwinter. Lady Moon is in her 4th quarter, waning towards the New Moon on Christmas Eve. Thursday is Thor’s day, but there will be no warring energies allowed on this day if Saturn’s rule is observed.

Saturn was a popular and powerful god. The ancient Romans celebrated him with Saturnalia, a twelve-day sun-worshipping celebration. They honored Saturn by decorating with holly branches and evergreen wreaths, giving and attending parties, and exchanging gifts each day (sweets were popular as were things made of silver). They sang holiday songs as they roamed naked through the streets bearing lighted candles. During Saturnalia, it was an offence to the God to punish a criminal or begin a war.

Saturn is the Roman version of the Greek God Kronos. The Greek word for “time” is “Khronos”; over time, Saturn became the God of Time. Time/Kronos/Saturn creates, destroys, but then recreates all things. The Greater Trump The Hermit was once called Time; Saturn is frequently depicted as carrying a sickle and a lantern or hour-glass and so does The Hermit.

It is said that when Saturn decided it was time to die, he went in secret to an island near Britain, where he lies deep in a magic sleep. Lore says that at some future time he will return to inaugurate another Golden Age. This myth may have influenced some of the stories about King Arthur (who was taken to the Isle of Avalon to be cured of his wounds and from which he will return when the time is right) and Merlyn (who lies asleep deep in a cave from which he will return when Arthur summons him). C. S. Lewis addressed the Arthur legend and the re-awakening of Merlyn in his sci-fi book That Hideous Strength.

Saturnalia was celebrated in December because at that time December was the 10th month on the calendar; the 10th month brings forth all things because a baby is carried in the womb for 9 months and then emerges. Many cultures observed Winter Solstice rituals: Persians deemed it the birthday of Mithras, another solar deity with a large following; for Egyptians it was the birthday of Osiris. Both Saturn and Mithras began to lose favor when, in the 4th century, December 25 was declared Jesus’ birthday. As John Chrysostom, a 4th Century Bishop wrote: “On this day also the Birthday of Christ was lately fixed at Rome in order that while the heathen were busy with their profane ceremonies, the Christians might perform their sacred rites undisturbed. They call this (December 25), the Birthday of the Invincible One (Mithras); but who is so invincible as the Lord?”

From Celtic tradition comes the duel of the Holly and Oak kings, twins whose twice-yearly ceremonial dance reflects the rebalancing of energies as days shorten or lengthen according to the season. “Yule” comes from the Celtic word “hioul”, which means “wheel”.

From Western European Pagan tradition comes the custom of decorating trees (Prince Albert brought this type of Christmas celebration to England when he married Queen Victoria; at the time it was quite a novelty) and burning the Yule log (symbolically the death of the old year and birth of the new)

One tradition of Yule celebrations is that the season begins on “Mother Night”, December 10 this year, and ends at Yule. This is the origin of “The Twelve Days of Christmas”, although many count those days as beginning with December 25 and ending on January 6, Epiphany.

However you choose to celebrate Lord Sun’s rebirth, use the colors red, green, and white in your decorations and serve your guests a hearty repast that includes nuts, apples, roast meat, Wassail, and cakes or cookies soaked in cider or port.

Give thanks at this celebration for the dark-time that provided balance and gave us time for introspection in our busy lives. Meditate on balance, peace, harmony at this time of year.

Reminders: (1) The first Metaphysical Fair of 2012 will be on January 7 & 8 at the Holiday Inn Midtown, 6000 Middle Fiskville Rd., Austin, TX. Saturday hours: 10 AM – 7 PM; Sunday hours: 11 AM – 6 PM. There will also be a Prediction Panel on Friday, 12/5 at 7 PM; several local psychics will share their insights for 2012.

(2) The first North Austin Holistic Living Fair of 2012 will be held on Saturday, 1/21, at the Holiday Inn Round Rock, 2370 Chisolm Trail, Round Rock, TX 78681 from 10 AM – 5 PM.

I will be participating in both these events; more information is available on the Out and About with Kate page of my website.

[Kate Braun’s website is www.tarotbykatebraun.com. She can be reached at kate_braun2000@yahoo.com. Read more of Kate Braun’s writing on The Rag Blog.]


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FILM / Ron Jacobs : Scott Noble’s ‘The Power Principle’

Posted on June 13, 2012 by Thorne Dreyer


Scott Noble’s ‘The Power Principle’
(American Empire: The Feature Film)

A remarkably detailed, clearheaded, and engrossing study of how the United States power elites created the mess we find ourselves in.

By Ron Jacobs | The Rag Blog | June 13, 2012

Discussing the nature of the U.S. Empire and how it got to where it is today with most U.S.  residents is always a challenge. Recommending books explaining it is equally so. This is especially true when one considers that most people who live in the United States have little or no concept of what an empire is and, when it is explained to them, are reluctant to believe that their nation is such a thing.

I have often thought that someone should make a film that might accomplish this educational goal. After all, film is simultaneously informative and entertaining, especially when it is well made. That is the case with radical documentarian Scott Noble’s (Rise Like Lions, Psywar, Lifting the Veil) latest effort, The Power Principle: Corporate Empire and the National Security State.

Made in three parts, with each one totaling about an hour and 15 minutes, The Power Principle is a history of the United States and the building of its empire. The emphasis is on the last 70 years of that history. It includes original footage from film and television news broadcasts, lectures and commentary from champions of the empire and its critics, and a pastiche of other images culled from cultural, technical, and propaganda efforts representative of the time and subject covered.

The result is a remarkably detailed, clearheaded, and engrossing study of how the United States power elites created the mess we find ourselves in. Furthermore, this film makes it clear that in the eyes of the elites, everyday citizens are little more than pawns to be manipulated in the elites’ drive to control the world.

There is a lot of history to be covered when discussing a topic as broad as the growth of the U.S. Empire. Even a film almost four hours long can only begin to explore that history. To his credit, Noble does a great job picking important moments of U.S. history to describe and analyze.

As a result, those historical moments bring forth more than the moments themselves; they exhume their motivations and effects, thereby creating a historical timeline that provides the viewer with a clear sense of how history is shaped by humans and how humans shape history. Noble’s highlighting of particular documents and individuals furthers that understanding.

Key to the hypothesis presented in The Power Principle is the relationship between the U.S. war industry, Wall Street, the U.S. military, and the government in Washington. The interlocking relationships between corporations like Lockheed and presidential appointees like Warren Christopher point to the connections between war and Wall Street in a very personal way. So do more personal relationships such as the marriage of Dwight Eisenhower’s personal secretary to an executive of the United Fruit Company.

Other graphic reminders of how few families and corporations run the United States are also discussed: Kermit Roosevelt’s role in overthrowing the popular Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran; the friendly relations between U.S. bankers like Prescott Bush and the German Nazi regime; the hiring of certain Nazis after World War II by the United States; the reinstallation of fascists into government in Italy after the war to prevent the rise of the communists; and so on.

The middle segment of the film is titled Propaganda. It is an interesting and unnerving look at how everyday people are manipulated by the powers that be. One of the key statements in this section is from Senator Arthur Vandenberg, a Republican from Michigan whose career prior to politics was in journalism. It was his resolution of June 1948 that is considered the foundation of NATO.

Vandenberg always understood that NATO’s purpose was to maintain and expand the growing U.S. empire. He also understood that the people of the United States were reluctant to become the world’s policeman, especially so soon after the carnage of World War II. With this in mind, he told colleagues that the only way to convince U.S. citizens to expand their military and become an imperial nation was “to scare the hell” out of them. That has been the essence of Washington’s line to its own citizens ever since.

The third segment provides a discussion of the U.S. Empire in the post-Soviet age. Key to this discussion are two things: nothing changed as far as the military-industrial complex was concerned and the agreement between the two political parties over empire is stronger than ever before. In other words, there is no difference in the way U.S. foreign policy is conducted no matter which major party’s candidate wins the White House.

Additionally, the presence of the U.S. military in civilian life has never been greater. A brief interview with Left editor and thinker Michael Albert concludes the film. He presents the possibility of a different world where the Empire is dissolved and the military-industrial complex is transformed into building things that benefit mankind. Unfortunately, the overriding conclusion of The Power Principle is that such a scenario is both necessary if we are to survive as a species and unlikely unless the current system is removed.

If I were a high school or postsecondary teacher hoping to get my students to consider U.S. history in a different light, I would show this film. Not only does it rearrange the common understanding of Washington’s role in the world, it also forces the viewers to reconsider how their understanding of that role is manipulated and misused.

Certain to provoke reactions both positive and negative, Scott Noble’s most recent film is meant to disturb the general complacency of the body politic. Help spread the word.

[Rag Blog contributor Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. He recently released a collection of essays and musings titled Tripping Through the American Night. His latest novel, The Co-Conspirator’s Tale, is published by Fomite. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. Ron Jacobs can be reached at ronj1955@gmail.com. Find more articles by Ron Jacobs on The Rag Blog.]

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Thomas McKelvey Cleaver : Remembering Ray Bradbury

Posted on June 13, 2012 by Thorne Dreyer

Ray Bradbury in 1982. Photo by Lennox McLendon / AP / Washington Post.

Ray Bradbury remembered:
The librarian told my dad
he was asking for trouble

“Ray Bradbury, a boundlessly imaginative novelist who wrote some of the most popular science-fiction books of all time, including Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, and who transformed the genre of flying saucers and little green men into literature exploring childhood terrors, colonialism and the erosion of individual thought, died June 5 in Los Angeles. He was 91.” — Becky Krystal, The Washington Post

“Bradbury was the perfect author for dreamy kids, kids who can spend hours finding the figures in clouds, or who get lost in reveries about desert islands or space colonies on parched planets… It was as though Bradbury was our secret ally, the first grown-up we ever ran into who broke with the party line and sided with us.” — Malcolm Jones, The Daily Beast

By Thomas McKelvey Cleaver | The Rag Blog | June 13, 2012

I remember well my dad picking out The Martian Chronicles from the paperback section of the Eugene Field Library in Denver’s Washington Park in response to my badgering him.

I had recently discovered that the world of science fiction lay just around the corner (literally!) from the boring “juvenile books,” and had already discovered Isaac Asimov. But only adults could check out the paperback books, so I convinced Dad to get it.

The librarian told him he was “asking for trouble” if he let me read such books at such an age (how right she was!). What fantastic stuff! And then a year later Dad brought home the new paperback — Fahrenheit 451. Reading that at age 10, in the midst of what was going on in America at that time, had a lasting effect. I don’t think there’s anything Ray Bradbury ever wrote that I didn’t read and like.

In 1967, while working on draft resistance here in Los Angeles, I was going through the file cards we had of people who had given us money, with the objective of calling them up and asking for more. I found one for an “R. Bradbury” who lived not that far away, over toward the 20th Century Fox lot in Rancho Park.

 I called him up and he said sure, he’d be happy to help some more. But he didn’t drive and could I come over and pick up the check? So I did. And when he answered the door I knew it was Him, and when he invited me in it was all I could do not to act like an idiot.

But after talking to him — and answering his questions about how and why someone who had already served would be working on draft resistance, telling him what I had learned in my service in Vietnam — I finally couldn’t stop myself, and I told him how I knew him, and that reading his books had a lot to do with why I was doing that work. He liked hearing that.

I also remember getting a nice note from him through the Science Fiction Writers of America upon my gaining membership in 1989 for having written The Terror Within, saying he had quite enjoyed the movie and that he remembered from where he knew my name.

Bradbury talked often about being a “graduate of libraries.” I am sure I am too (even though I did go to college).

He was one of the best of my teachers there in those libraries. A Professor of Humanity.

[Thomas McKelvey Cleaver is an accidental native Texan, a journalist, and a produced screenwriter. He has written successful horror movies and articles about Second World War aviation, was a major fundraiser for Obama in 2008, and has been an activist on anti-war,  political reform, and environmental issues for almost 50 years. Read more articles by Thomas Cleaver on The Rag Blog.]

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Paul Beckett : Letter from Wisconsin

Posted on June 11, 2012 by Thorne Dreyer

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett concedes defeat in Milwaukee, June 5, 2012. Photo by John Gress / Reuters.

After the apocalypse:
Letter from Wisconsin

Frankly, putting it all together, I am very worried about our future, in Wisconsin and in the nation.

By Paul Beckett / The Rag Blog / June 11, 2012

Dear Friends,

Well, we got your attention, didn’t we? Colbert put it best: the Tuesday, June 5, recall election was the most significant event for Wisconsin since discovery of elastic jeans. (Oh, thank you very much, Stephen!)

The race was called by 9 p.m. (some polling stations were not yet even closed). Governor Scott Walker had won the recall election over Democrat Tom Barrett by 7 percent. Worse, county by county, Wisconsin was a sea of GOP red. Sixty of Wisconsin’s 72 counties were carried by Walker! Only small islands of blue mainly clustered around Madison and Milwaukee, and along the Lake Superior shore (traditionally progressive) showed blue above the red tide.

For the many tens of thousands who had been participants in Madison’s version of the Arab Spring, in February and March (2011), and who had, as unpaid volunteers, collected more than one million signatures for the recall petition, it was a like a hard kick to the gut.

You can’t understand, friends, without knowing what those February and March events were like. Never, in my now pretty-long life, have I experienced the exhilarating sense of the people — the real people, the whole people — rising and making democracy real, and direct.

Up to 70,000 at a time packed the Capitol Rotunda, and circled the square. Turnout was largely spontaneous: hierarchy and formal organization largely absent. Anger with the multiple violations of democratic tradition was underlain by a kind of joy which reveled in the sense of commonness, and in the incredible wit of common folks which was displayed on hand-made signs and in slogans.

Inside the rotunda was the beauty of “functioning anarchy” as areas were set aside for families with small children, for eating, for resting. In the enormous and densely packed crowds, neither crime nor violence raised its head.

There was, over all, a sense of irresistibility to this truly popular uprising. Stopping the people so mobilized would be like stopping the flow of the Mississippi on our western border. We thought.

How, on June 5, a little more than a year later, could this defeat have happened?

Friends, if Stephen is right and you all have been watching us, you know a lot of the answer. You know that funding for the Walker side was almost ten times (yes, 10X!) that for the Barrett side. And Walker’s money had come pouring in, mainly from out of state, for months. Totals are almost too obscene for a decent blog to publish (the tracking organization Wisconsin Democracy Campaign estimates that the final total will push $80 million!).

The infamous Koch Brothers, along with the whole shadowy neo-con/corporate national leadership, knew that a successful recall would hurt rather seriously their movement to consolidate control over U.S. society, culture and, of course, politics. Money poured in to support the Walker campaign, sometimes in half-million dollar amounts. A sophisticated campaign of TV advertising was launched long before the Democrats even had a candidate.

Meanwhile, there was no real “owner” of the recall effort. If the uprising was largely spontaneous and unfunded, so was the subsequent recall petition drive. Once the million signatures were gathered, we stood and looked at each other. What’s next?

The Democratic Party (state and national) was unenthusiastic at the beginning, and gave tepid support after. There was no obvious candidate besides the one who ran against Walker and lost (by a respectable margin) in 2010. And he –– Tom Barrett — could not declare for the race until he had weathered the Milwaukee mayoral election (April 3).

Meanwhile, former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk aggressively threw her hat in the ring. She had negotiated her endorsement from the trade union leadership by pledging that if elected she would veto any budget bill that did not restore collective bargaining rights. The unions not only heavily funded her campaign to get the nomination, but actually aired attack ads against Tom Barrett, her most important opponent.

Falk’s “deal” with union leadership was a gift to the Walker side, which had constantly characterized the uprising as only about union rights and as “run by union bosses.”

In the primary, on May 8, Barrett easily defeated Falk. But he then had less than a month to counter what was already a steamroller of cash that for months had saturation bombed the brain of every TV watcher in Wisconsin.

Now let me assure you, friends: Barrett is a good man — tall, good-looking, intelligent, well-spoken, polite, and gracious. His qualifications for the Governorship are excellent. He would surely have been a great candidate some time in the past. (In 2009 Barrett had even displayed old-fashioned personal heroism: he had intervened at the state fair to defend a woman who had called for help and received a lead pipe across the face and a broken hand. In the past, would that have won you a subsequent election or not?)

But Barrett was not the man for 2012. Barrett has a now-unfortunate habit of not talking down to the voters, compounded by a tendency to tell the truth, a political defect made even worse by a predilection toward real discussion of real issues.

Meanwhile, Walker was the perfect neo-con candidate, saying little, generating perfect video image material in the “aw-shucks” mode, while looking like a bashful choir boy (does he have a portrait of himself hidden away in an attic?). Never did Walker stray from the familiar jingles authored by his advertising companies.

Meanwhile national support from the Democratic Party remained minimal, and President Obama made it a point not even to come into the state.

All these facts notwithstanding, the surprise, Tuesday evening, made most of us sick to our stomachs.

There are, of course, different ways to view the events, and they tend to replace each other as time goes on. There is the way you feel the day after (that the sky has fallen). There is the day after the day after. Then, again, there is the day after that. Let’s take them in order.

1. First day after: ‘The Apocalypse Is Here’

The election lent itself to apocalyptic thinking on the liberal-progressive side, and triumphalist thinking on the right. Perhaps, we thought, Wisconsin has now completed a gradual transition from marginally blue state to solidly red state. An open Senate seat will be contested in November. It now seems even more likely than before to go to a right-wing Republican (is there anything else these days?) , who will join the right-wing Republican (Ron Johnson) who defeated Senator Feingold in 2010. Barack Obama, who carried Wisconsin in 2008 by an amazing 14%, is now expected to have a hard fight (at best) in the state this fall.

Worse, and more fraught with consequences, the deluge of money from billionaires which funded incessant and ultimately unavoidable “30-second drive-by attack ads” (as candidate Barrett called them) seemed to work. Those of us who hoped there might be some eventual tipping point of excess, some point of overkill, after which the public would react against the perpetrators, came away disappointed. Is the lesson of the Wisconsin recall that you cannot, ever, have too much money, and that NO level of saturation bombing with the ads the money buys is too much? It may be.

If so, in light of the number of right-wing billionaires now at large in America, and the Citizens United decision, American democracy is less imperiled than already destroyed. Political advertising, devised by subtle and well-informed minds, is aimed at dumbing down political culture within a wider American culture already dumbed down remarkably by television.

The problem with where we are now is less with Citizens United and the nearly unbelievable accumulation of wealth available to contribute painlessly to political campaigns. It is more with what the money buys: TV advertising. It punishes depth, it punishes honesty, it punishes creativity and imagination on the part of politicians. It is un-speech which drives out and suppresses real speech.

Political cartoon by Mike Keefe / inToon.com

2. Second day after: ‘Hey,Things Could be a Whole Lot Worse’

This, the central philosophy of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, comes forward on the day after the day after. Maybe the defeat was not so crushing, and maybe it doesn’t mean as much as we at first thought.

First of all, we look again at the numbers. It remains true that Walker took 60 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties. But guess what? His margin in the vast majority of those counties was thin; in many, razor thin. The counties where his majorities were large to huge were those counties (led by the infamous Waukesha County) which are safe Republican counties in all elections. Walker “flipped” four counties that had gone for Barrett in their first contest (the gubernatorial election in 2010) — but the “flips” were by modest margins.

Meanwhile Barrett, while losing by about 7 percent overall, managed to “flip” three counties that were taken by Walker in 2010. Turnout was massive on both sides, and Walker received 205,900 more votes overall than he did in 2010. But: Barrett received 158,482 votes more than he had in 2010. Not bad for the victim of a drubbing!

There is another important factor. A significant portion of the pro-Walker vote was motivated by distaste for the recall procedure itself.

It should be acknowledged that this position is not an unreasonable one. All of the elected figures who were subjected to recall elections will be up for regular election in 2014. None of them are (as yet) charged with personal corruption or other illegal activity (although Walker is part of a very slow-moving investigation of illegal activity in his office before his accession to the governorship, and this could result in an indictment later).

Thus, many voters voted against the recall procedure more than for the Walker policy package (or the Walker persona).

It is impossible to say how many voters were so motivated. But it is safe to say that it could represent a substantial portion of Walker’s seven-percent margin.

And as far as the November election goes, exit polls reported by the Washington Post and others showed surprising support for Obama over Romney, even among those who voted for Walker!

So, maybe not so much has changed. As my friend Harry Targ, a frequent contributor to The Rag Blog, has put it:

Wisconsin has [long] been a deeply divided political state. In fact, two important political figures in the state’s history personify the political divisions that shaped competition in the state and the United States at large for at least one hundred years. Senator Joseph McCarthy represented the outlook shared by many that government is the enemy of humankind. . . . And . . . to the contrary, Senators Robert La Follette Senior and Junior represented that strand of political discourse that sees the possibility of creating governmental institutions that can protect the innocent from the criminal, provide for the less fortunate, and use public resources to advance human possibility. Descendants of both political traditions have fought it out over the years . . . (– Personal communication of unpublished paper, June 7, 2012)

Wisconsin remains divided. This time, it was 1,334,450 for the right, and 1,162,785 for the left. The next time around it could be the other way. The division is probably sharper than any time before. But, hey, things could be a lot worse!

This second-day view leaves us with the idea that given all his advantages, Walker should have won much bigger. Along with that comes the idea that maybe overwhelming monetary advantage is not so decisive, after all.

Students form peace symbol on the floor of rotunda at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison in March 2011. Photo by John Hart / AP / Missourian.

3. Third Day After: ‘Actually, Things Could NOT Be a Whole Lot Worse’

Friends, let’s face it. The situation in Wisconsin and the nation is very bad. Electoral analysis (as above) may make us feel a little bit better. But it largely misses the point. The right has been enormously — and, to my mind — tragically, successful.

The right has nearly absolute mass media dominance, a financial blank check with no evident limit, unity around central doctrines combined with complete party discipline, control of the Supreme Court, and a noisy and highly active popular movement (the Tea Party) to provide media excitement, and to act as enforcers of party discipline.

The Democratic Party, with none of these, has become a timid shadow of the party of Franklin Roosevelt. All discussion has been skewed far to the right. Legislative party discipline is non-existent. We are engaged only in rear-guard battles, and only in trying to reduce (usually slightly) our losses. Our maximal promises are, well, minimalist.

Some aspects of this have been touched on already. But there is another, deeply disturbing, aspect of the situation. Let me quote a former Madison neighbor, the author Dean Bakopoulos:

As Wisconsin’s new political landscape so clearly indicates, conservatives have now managed to vilify plain old working people as elitist fat cats. Librarians, teachers, public employees, and union laborers: Basically, people who earn health insurance and decent wages have suddenly become the things that stagnate an economy and raise taxes, when in truth they, and those wages they enjoy, have been the lifeblood of a struggling post-industrial economy.

But by declaring war on teachers, union laborers, and public sector employees, the well-heeled spinners behind the rise of Scott Walker have managed to make struggling Americans vote against their own best interests out of a sense of fear and envy. Struggling workers — and most comfortable middle-class workers — often to need an identifiable villain, someone who is holding them back from success, in order to vote Republican. If Republicans can present themselves as an enemy of that villain, they win. That’s what happened last night in Wisconsin. (Salon, June 8, 2012)

Frankly, putting it all together, I am very worried about our future, in Wisconsin and in the nation. And the Democratic Party is certainly not going to get us out of this, whatever happens in November.

In fact, dear friends, I can only say we’re in a bad patch, and I think we must look beyond it, beyond November, beyond the Democratic Party, way, way beyond the present. We need to remember that things really don’t need to be this way, that, as the World Social Forum series insists, “Another [and much better!] world is possible.”

Howard Zinn has told us how to think about it:

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

― Howard Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train, 1994

OK, dear friends, that’s the news from Lake Wobegon, I mean, Lake Wingra. Stay well, and come visit. The brats and brews are on Kathie and me! And elastic jeans can be found if you need them.

Your friend always,

Paul

[Dr. Paul Beckett lives in Madison, Wisconsin. He can be reached at beckettpa@gmail.com. Read more articles by Paul Beckett on The Rag Blog.]

Go here for Paul Beckett’s earlier coverage of the movement in Wisconsin on The Rag Blog.

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Lamar W. Hankins : The Gospel Truth

Posted on June 11, 2012 by Thorne Dreyer

West Virginia Pentecostal preacher Mark Randall “Mack” Wolford died from a snake bite he received handling snakes in church. Image from Eternal Life Blog.

The Gospel truth:
Fatal misunderstanding of the Bible

‘And these signs will follow those who believe: in My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents…’

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / June 10, 2012

Among the Abrahamic religions — Judaism, Islam, and Christianity — the tiny group of Christians known as Pentecostal serpent handlers are among the most unusual of Christian sub-groups. They have focused their religious belief and practice on a few verses at the end of the book of Mark — verses that do not appear in the two oldest versions of writings that became the Gospel of Mark.

Few ministers or pastors tell their congregations this truth about Mark and about much of the Bible. What they mainly do is read it and interpret it, and many teach that every word in the Bible was created by a supernatural God and given to some human being to write down.

Such teachings were my experience growing up. No minister ever told me that over 5,000 (now, nearly 6,000) known manuscripts make up the text of what we call the Bible. Maybe if congregants knew such facts, they would not take so seriously everything found in the Bible. I suspect, though I do not know, that many ministers may not themselves know about these textual variations.

Even when I took New Testament Greek in college, I was not told that the Greek version of the New Testament that we studied lacked clear authenticity.

The case in point this week is the death of the West Virginia Pentecostal preacher, Mark Randall “Mack” Wolford, age 44, who died from a snake bite he received handling snakes in church. Wolford was a devout believer in the passage in Mark 16:17-18:

And these signs will follow those who believe: in My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.

Mack Wolford’s father had died from a snake bite in a similar fashion when Mack was 15. His family’s faith in this passage of Mark prevented them from seeking medical attention. Such believers often attribute deaths from snake bites to two causes: either the victims lacked sufficient faith or it was God’s will that they die.

None of them consider that they may have been reading and believing in an inauthentic version of the Gospel of Mark. As Bible scholar and textual critic Bart Ehrman explains,

As we learned at Moody [Bible Institute] in one of the first courses in the curriculum, we don’t actually have the original writings of the New Testament. What we have are copies of these writings, made years later — in most cases, many years later. Moreover, none of these copies is completely accurate, since the scribes who produced them inadvertently and/or intentionally changed them in places.

The main reason for the changes, or variants, is that these scriptures were written by hand in days before the printing press was invented. Transcription errors, as a particular scripture is copied from an older one, are inevitable. Words are misread, letters are transposed (often changing the meaning of words), spelling and grammar errors abound, words are incorrectly separated or joined together, sentences are left out or repeated, and new material may be added for purposes known only to the transcriber.

Most of these variants don’t make much difference. But sometimes variants make a great difference.

Such is the case of Mark, chapter 16. Scholars know about four transcripts of the Gospel of Mark. Generally, they consider the earliest versions of scripture the most authentic. According to Ehrman in his book “Misquoting Jesus,” the last 12 verses of Mark were added to the later manuscripts nearly 300 years after it was first copied and are not found in the two oldest and best manuscripts. Mark is also the earliest of the Gospel texts, so it is not surprising that Luke has a similar passage concerning serpents at Luke 10:19 — Mark was its source.

Even Ehrman’s critics, such as Daniel B. Wallace of the Dallas Theological Seminary, acknowledge him as “one of North America’s leading textual critics.” Textual critics study the work of the people who tediously copied religious manuscripts, study the process by which certain manuscripts were accepted as a part of what we know as the Bible (its canonization), study these texts of the Greek New Testament, and determine through evidence and reasoning which parts of the text have authentic origins and which parts were added by a different author at some later time, and why, to the extent that can be determined.

In the case of the last 12 verses of Mark, chapter 16, Ehrman explains that not only are they not found in the two oldest manuscripts attributed to Mark, but the writing style of these 12 verses differs from the rest of the text; the transition between these verses and the earlier text makes little sense in the context of the story (Mary Magdalene is referred to as though she had not been mentioned earlier, but she had been); and many of the words and phrases in the 12 verses are not found elsewhere in Mark.

Ehrman states that “nearly all textual scholars” believe these verses were added to Mark by a later scribe, possibly to smooth out what would have been an abrupt ending to the writing with no mention to the disciples of Jesus’s resurrection or his appearance to the women who went to the tomb.

For Ehrman, “the task of the textual critic is to try to recover the oldest forms of these texts.” This task is important because Christianity “is a textually oriented religion whose texts have been changed.” The meaning of the New Testament can’t be grasped if the words that were intended are not known. This is true whether one believes the words are divinely inspired or one believes merely that the New Testament is a significant book.

 For Ehrman, the New Testament “is an enormous cultural artifact, a book that is revered by millions and that lies at the foundation of the largest religion in the world today.”

I find that many Christians don’t know that it wasn’t until around the year 250 of the Common Era that a generous benefactor of the Roman church, Marcion, put together the first collection of scriptures that he considered the sacred texts of the faith, often referred to as the canon.

But Marcion chose what scriptures should be included in the canon based on his belief that the God of the Old Testament was not the same God of Jesus and Paul. He believed they were two different Gods — the God of the Jews, who created the world and had very harsh laws that had to be followed, and “the God of Jesus, who sent Christ into the world to save people from the wrathful vengeance of the Jewish creator God,” as Ehrman explains.

Marcion’s canon included a Gospel (a version of Luke) and 10 epistles, with no Old Testament. Because he also believed that others who disagreed with him had altered some of the texts, Marcion amended the texts to leave out references to the Old Testament God.

About 30 years later, another Christian writer, Irenaeus (known as the bishop of Lyons in Gaul — what is now modern France) criticized Marcion’s version of the canon and produced one of his own, which included the more familiar four Gospels.

Debates raged about the canon for several centuries. In the latter part of the fourth century, the bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, approved 27 books that make up what we know generally as the New Testament today. It took many decades, perhaps centuries, for this version of the New Testament to be widely accepted among Christians, and there are differences among some of the versions in use today.

Further, the manuscripts from which the New Testament was taken do not have punctuation, verses, and chapters. These were added later to create some order within the texts.

If only the Pentecostal serpent handlers understood what Ehrman and other scholars of the Bible teach about the origins and development of the text of the New Testament, their lives might be quite different. Perhaps the two verses in Mark on which they base some of their religious practices and beliefs would not have seemed so important, and both Mack Wolford and his father before him would not have died from handling snakes as part of their religious worship.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

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Posted on June 8, 2012 by Thorne Dreyer

In an attempt to reinvent the Vietnam War, President Obama and the Pentagon have launched a “multi-year national public relations campaign to justify, glorify, and honor Washington’s catastrophic, aggressive, and losing war against Vietnam.” Jack Smith lays bare this cynical attempt at revisionist history, including the fabricated and long-debunked claims of widespread mistreatment of Vietnam vets by antiwar forces.

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Jack A. Smith : Reversing the Vietnam War Verdict

Posted on June 7, 2012 by Thorne Dreyer

Demonstrators at the October 21, 1967 march on the Pentagon carry a banner that says, “Support our GIs, Bring Them Home Now.”

Reversing the Vietnam War verdict

Most of the allegations about insults directed at soldiers or vets from war opponents have been fabrications to discredit the antiwar forces.

By Jack A. Smith | The Rag Blog | June 7, 2012

The Pentagon has just launched a multi-year national public relations campaign to justify, glorify, and honor Washington’s catastrophic, aggressive, and losing war against Vietnam — America’s most controversial and unpopular military conflict.

President Barack Obama opened the militarist event, which was overwhelmingly approved by Congress four years ago, during a speech at the Vietnam Wall on Memorial Day, May 28. The entire campaign, which will consist of tens of thousands of events over the next 13 years, is ostensibly intended to “finally honor” the U.S. troops who fought in Vietnam. The last troops were evacuated nearly 40 years ago.

In reality, the unprecedented project — titled the Vietnam War Commemoration — will utilize the “pro-veteran” extravaganza to accomplish two additional and more long lasting goals:

  • The first is to legitimize and intensify a renewed warrior spirit within America as the Pentagon emerges from two counterproductive, ruinously expensive, and stalemated unjust wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and prepares for further military adventures in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Within days of Obama’s speech, for instance, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta announced a big increase of U.S. Navy forces in the Pacific, a move obviously targeting China. At the same time the Obama Administration’s drone wars are accelerating as the Oval Office’s kill list expands, and the president engages in cyber sabotage against Iran.

  • The second is to dilute the memory of historic public opposition to the Vietnam war by putting forward the Pentagon’s censored account of the conflict in public meetings, parades, and educational sessions set to take place across the nation through 2025. These flag-waving, hyper-patriotic occasions will feature veterans, active duty military members, government officials, local politicians, teachers, and business leaders who will combine forces to praise those who fought in Vietnam and those on the home front who supported the war. There won’t be much — if any — attention focused on the majority of Americans who opposed this imperialist adventure, except as a footnote describing how tolerant U.S. democracy is toward dissent.

The principal theme of the president’s address was that American troops have not received sufficient laurels for their efforts to violently prevent the reunification of North and South Vietnam. He did not point out that there would have been no war had the United States permitted nationwide free elections to take place in Vietnam in 1956 as specified by the 1954 Geneva Agreement ending the French colonialism in Indochina. Washington recently decided that the war “officially” began in 1962 (although U.S. involvement dates back to the 1950s), allowing the commemoration to begin during the “50th anniversary” year.

President Obama lays a commemorative wreath during Memorial Day ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery, May 28, 2012 in Arlington, Virginia. Photo by Mark Wilson / Getty Images.

President Obama told the large, cheering crowd of veterans and their families at the Vietnam Wall exactly what they — and all those who still resented the era’s large antiwar movement — wanted to hear:

One of the most painful chapters in our history was Vietnam — most particularly, how we treated our troops who served there….

You were often blamed for a war you didn’t start, when you should have been commended for serving your country with valor. (Applause.) You were sometimes blamed for misdeeds of a few, when the honorable service of the many should have been praised. You came home and sometimes were denigrated, when you should have been celebrated. It was a national shame, a disgrace that should have never happened. And that’s why here today we resolve that it will not happen again. (Applause.)….

[Y]ou wrote one of the most extraordinary stories of bravery and integrity in the annals of military history. (Applause.)…. [E]ven though some Americans turned their back on you — you never turned your back on America… And let’s remember all those Vietnam veterans who came back and served again — in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. You did not stop serving. (Applause.)

So here today, it must be said — you have earned your place among the greatest generations. At this time, I would ask all our Vietnam veterans, those of you who can stand, to please stand, all those already standing, raise your hands — as we say those simple words which always greet our troops when they come home from here on out: Welcome home. (Applause.) Welcome home. Welcome home. Welcome home. Thank you. We appreciate you. Welcome home. (Applause.)….

May God bless you. May God bless your families. May God bless our men and women in uniform. And may God bless these United States of America.

There was virtually no criticism in the corporate mass media about the president’s gross exaggerations concerning the “mistreatment” of Vietnam era veterans. True, there were no victory parades, but that was because the U.S. Armed Forces were defeated by a much smaller and enormously outgunned adversary — the guerrilla forces of the South Vietnamese National Liberation Front (NLF) and regular forces from North Vietnam.

Members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) hold a peaceful demonstration outside the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami. Photo by JP Laffont / Sygma / Corbis.

By the time many vets returned home the American people had turned against the war and wanted it over, as did a significant portion of active duty troops, including the many who identified with the peace movement or who mutinied or deserted. Undoubtedly some veterans were disrespected — but to a far lesser extent than Obama and pro-war forces have suggested over the years.

Whenever the U.S. conducts unpopular invasions, as in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, Washington and the mass media invariably insist that it is the duty of patriotic citizens to “support the troops” even if they oppose the war. But to manifest the kind of support the government seeks inevitably implies support for the war. This is why the peace groups came up with the slogan “Support the Troops — Bring ’em home NOW!”

According to the Pentagon, which is in charge of staging the Vietnam War Commemoration, the main purpose is

To thank and honor veterans of the Vietnam War… for their service and sacrifice on behalf of the United States and to thank and honor the families of these veterans. To highlight the service of the Armed Forces during the Vietnam War and the contributions of Federal agencies and governmental and non-governmental organizations that served with, or in support of, the Armed Forces. To pay tribute to the contributions made on the home front by the people of the United States during the Vietnam War…”

Thousands of community, veteran, and various nongovernmental organizations throughout the U.S. are expected to join the Commemorative Partner Program

to assist federal, state and local authorities to assist a grateful nation in thanking and honoring our Vietnam Veterans and their families. Commemorative Partners are encouraged to participate… by planning and conducting events and activities that will recognize the Vietnam Veterans and their families’ service, valor, and sacrifice.

In addition the government and its “partners” will be distributing educational materials about the war, according to the Pentagon, but it is unlikely that the Vietnamese side of the story or that of the multitude of war resisters in the U.S., civilian and military, will receive favorable attention. Many facts, including the origins of the war will undoubtedly be changed to conform to the commemoration’s main goal of minimizing Washington’s defeat and maximizing the heroism and loyalty of the troops.

Officially, the Vietnam war lasted 11 years (1962-1973), but U.S. involvement actually continued for 21 years (1954-1975). The U.S. financially supported the restoration of French colonial control of Vietnam and all of Indochina after the defeat of Japanese imperialism in 1945 (Japan earlier displaced French rule). By 1954, Washington not only supplied money and advisers but sent 352 Americans to Vietnam in a “Military Assistance Advisory group” supporting the French against liberation forces led by the Vietnamese Communist Party. The liberators defeated the French army at the historic battle of Dien Bien Phu that same year.

The Geneva Conference of 1954, facilitating impending French withdrawal, established that Vietnam would be divided temporarily into two halves until free elections were held in 1956 to determine whether the liberation forces, led by Ho Chi Minh, or Emperor Bao Dai, who had collaborated with both French and Japanese occupation forces and was a puppet of the U.S., would rule the unified state.

American soldiers carry a wounded comrade through a Vietnam Swamp. Photo by Paul Halverson, 1969. Image from The Veterans Hour.

It is doubtful that the commemoration is going to emphasize the fact that the U.S., led by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, used its power to prevent nationwide elections from taking place when it became clear that Ho Chi Minh would win 80% of the vote. Eisenhower acknowledged this in his memoirs. Instead, Washington allied itself to right wing forces in the southern sector to declare “South Vietnam” to be a separate state for the first time in history and set about financing, training and controlling a large southern military force to prevent reunification. The U.S. dominated the Saigon government throughout the following war.

When Paris withdrew remaining French troops in April 1956, according to John Prados in Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War, 1945-1975 (2009), “their departure made America South Vietnam’s big brother,” i.e., overlord and military protector against popular liberation forces in the southern half of the country.

By June 1962, 9,700 U.S. “military advisers” plus a large number of CIA agents were training and fighting to support the corrupt U.S.-backed regime in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), at which time President Kennedy’s Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara, announced that “every quantitative measure shows that we’re wining the war.”

By 1968, when the number of U.S. troops attained their apogee of 535,040, Washington was obviously losing to its tenacious opponent. This is when Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson decided not to seek reelection rather than face the humiliation of defeat. Republican President Richard M. Nixon succeeded to the presidency and vastly increased the bombings while also calling for negotiations to end the war.

Facing an impending defeat and political catastrophe, American troops pulled out in 1973. The CIA and some U.S. military personnel and political advisers remained in diminished South Vietnam assisting the right wing government in Saigon until April 1975 when the entire country was liberated.

The U.S. lost 58,151 troops in the war. Between four and five million Vietnamese civilians and soldiers were killed on both sides in a catastrophe that could have been entirely avoided had Washington allowed the free elections to take place. Over a million civilians in neighboring Laos and Cambodia also were killed or wounded by U.S. firepower.

Vietnam, north and south, was pulverized by U.S. bombs and shells. The Pentagon detonated 15,500,000 tons of ground and air munitions on the three countries of Indochina, 12,000,000 tons on South Vietnam alone in a failed effort to smash the National Liberation Front backed by the North Vietnamese army. By comparison, the U.S. detonated only 6,000,000 tons of ground and air munitions throughout World War II in Europe and the Far East. All told, by the end of the war, 26,000,000 bomb craters pockmarked Indochina, overwhelmingly from U.S. weapons and bombers.

The Pentagon also dumped 18,000,000 gallons of herbicides to defoliate several million acres of farmland and forests. Millions of Vietnamese suffered illness, birth defects, and deaths from these poisonous chemicals. The AP recently reported from Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital, that “More than 100,000 Vietnamese have been killed or injured by land mines or other abandoned explosives since the Vietnam War ended nearly 40 years ago, and clearing all of the country will take decades more.”

It should also be mentioned — since it will be suppressed during the commemoration — that U.S. forces, including the CIA and the Pentagon-controlled South Vietnamese military, tortured many thousands of “suspected” supporters of the liberation struggle, frequently with portable electrical current. An estimated 40,000 “Vietcong” (suspected members or supporters of the NLF) were murdered during the long-running “Operation Phoenix” assassination campaign conducted by the CIA, Special Forces, and killer units of the Saigon forces.

Iconic photo of crying Vietnamese children after an aerial napalm attack near near Trang Bang, Vietnam, June 8, 1972, Photo by Nick Ut / AP.

There were three main fronts in the Vietnam war, in this order: First, the battlefields of Indochina. Second, the massive antiwar movement within the United States and international support for Vietnam. Third, the Paris Peace Talks. Well over 60% of the American people opposed the war by the late 1960s-early ’70s. The first peace protest took place in 1962; the first very large protest took place in Washington in 1965. Subsequently there were thousands of antiwar demonstrations large and small in cities, towns, and campuses all over America.

[Disclosure; This writer was a war opponent and a conscientious objector during this period. His information about the war derives from when he functioned as the news editor, managing editor and then chief editor of the largest independent leftist paper in the U.S. at the time, the weekly Guardian. This publication thoroughly covered the war, peace movement, antiwar veterans (Vietnam Veterans Against the War [VVAW] was founded in 1967 and is still active today), the extraordinary resistance of active duty troops in Vietnam and at U.S. bases and COs in prison or in Canada and Europe throughout the period of conflict.]

Most of the allegations about insults directed at soldiers or vets from war opponents have been fabrications to discredit the antiwar forces — falsehoods Obama chose to repeat as part of the Pentagon’s campaign to reverse history’s negative verdict on the war in Vietnam. The peace movement’s targets were the warmakers in Washington and their allies abroad, not members of a largely conscript army. Perhaps the most notorious of the false accusations were frequent reports about antiwar individuals “spitting” at GIs and vets. The rumors were so wild that sociologist Jerry Lembcke wrote a book exposing the lies — The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam, New York University Press, 1998.

It’s extremely doubtful that the war commemoration will dare touch honestly upon the movement of active duty troops against the war and the hundreds of cases killing their own officers.

Historian Howard Zinn included this paragraph on the opposition to the Vietnam War by American soldiers in his People’s History of the United States:

The capacity for independent judgment among ordinary Americans is probably best shown by the swift development of antiwar feeling among American GIs — volunteers and draftees who came mostly from lower-income groups. There had been, earlier in American history, instances of soldiers’ disaffection from the war: isolated mutinies in the Revolutionary War, refusal of reenlistment in the midst of hostilities in the Mexican war, desertion and conscientious objection in World War I and World War II. But Vietnam produced opposition by soldiers and veterans on a scale, and with a fervor, never seen before.

According to the Washington Peace Center:

During the Vietnam War, the military ranks carried out mass resistance on bases and ships in Southeast Asia, the Pacific, U.S., and Europe. Military resistance was instrumental in ending the war by making the ranks politically unreliable. This history is well documented in Soldiers in Revolt by David Cortright and the recent film Sir! No Sir!

One of the key reports on GI resistance was written by Col. Robert D. Heinl Jr. and published in the Armed Forces Journal of June 7, 1971. He began:

The morale, discipline and battle worthiness of the U.S. Armed Forces are, with a few salient exceptions, lower and worse than at anytime in this century and possibly in the history of the United States.

By every conceivable indicator, our army that now remains in Vietnam is in a state approaching collapse, with individual units avoiding or having refused combat, murdering their officers and non-commissioned officers, drug-ridden, and dispirited where not near mutinous. Elsewhere than Vietnam, the situation is nearly as serious.

Intolerably clobbered and buffeted from without and within by social turbulence, pandemic drug addiction, race war, sedition, civilian scapegoatise, draftee recalcitrance and malevolence, barracks theft and common crime, unsupported in their travail by the general government, in Congress as well as the executive branch, distrusted, disliked, and often reviled by the public, the uniformed services today are places of agony for the loyal, silent professions who doggedly hang on and try to keep the ship afloat.

According to the 2003 book by Christian Appy, Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides, Gen. Creighton Abrams — the U.S. military commander in Vietnam — made this comment in 1971 after an investigation: “Is this a god-damned army or a mental hospital? Officers are afraid to lead their men into battle, and the men won’t follow. Jesus Christ! What happened?”

Another former Army colonel in Vietnam, Andrew J. Bacevich Sr. (now a professor of international relations at Boston University and a strong opponent of U.S. foreign/military policy) wrote a book about how the U.S. military labored for a dozen years after the defeat to revamp its war strategy and tactics. (The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War, Oxford University Press, 2005.)

One major conclusion was that a conscript army may become unreliable if the war is considered unjust in nature and unpopular at home. This is why conscription was ended for good and the Pentagon now relies on better paid professional standing military supplemented by a large number of contractors and mercenaries, who perform many duties that were once handled by regular soldiers.

Vietnam Veterans Against the War at 2009 Atlanta Veterans Dav Parade. Photo by David Howell.

Veterans’ movements from the professional military of contemporary wars, such as Iraq Veterans Against the War and March Forward, as well as from the Vietnam era, are still out in the streets opposing imperialist wars, and public opinion polls reveal that over 60% of the American people oppose the Afghan adventure.

Despite the colossal damage the U.S. inflicted on Vietnam and its people during the war years, the country has emerged from the ashes and is taking steps toward becoming a relatively prosperous society led by the Communist Party. The Hanoi government has received no help from Washington. During the Paris Peace Talks of 1973, Nixon promised Prime Minister Pham Van Dong in writing that the U.S. would pay Vietnam $3.5 billion in reparations. This promise turned out to be worthless.

What strikes visitors to Vietnam in recent years, including this writer, is that the country appears to have come to terms with what it calls the American War far better than America has come to terms with the Vietnam War. Despite the hardships inflicted upon Vietnam, the government and people appear to hold no grudges against the United States.

Hanoi has several times extended the welcome mat to former antagonists, urging Americans and residents of southern Vietnam who now live abroad to “close the past and look to the future.” Wherever touring U.S. citizens — including former GIs — travel in Vietnam, they are met with the same respect as visitors from other countries.

In the U.S., the Vietnam war still evokes fighting words in some quarters. Some Americans still argue that the U.S. “could have won if it didn’t have one hand tied behind its back” (i.e., used nuclear weapons), and some continue to hate the antiwar protesters of yesteryear, just as they do demonstrators against today’s wars. And some others — in Congress, the White House and the Pentagon — still seem to continue fighting the war by organizing a massive propaganda effort to distort the history of Washington’s aggression and unspeakable brutality in Vietnam.

[Jack A. Smith was editor of the Guardian — for decades the nation’s preeminent leftist newsweekly — that closed shop in 1992. Smith now edits the Hudson Valley Activist Newsletter. Read more articles by Jack A. Smith on The Rag Blog.

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