VFP-111 Monthly Chapter Meeting
WHEN: Friday, August 17, 6:00pm
WHERE: Bellingham Food Co-Op Connections Building
405 E. Holly St, Room 103
WHEN: Friday, August 17, 6:00pm
WHERE: Bellingham Food Co-Op Connections Building
405 E. Holly St, Room 103
Save the Date! WPJC's International Day of Peace 2018
Hundreds in Bellingham gather every year on September 21 in solidarity with people around the world for International Day of Peace and once again, as we have done for 15 years, VFP-111 is a sponsor. The Howard Harris Lifetime Peacemaker Award is given out, along with a speech from a keynote speaker and a musical performance. In 2018, we will gather on Friday, September 21.
Freedom Flotilla Sails Again to Gaza in Support of the Palestinian Great March of Return
Yoav Litvin, Truthout
June 2, 2018
Yoav Litvin, Truthout
June 2, 2018
Palestinians gather as part of the "Great March of Return" demonstration after Friday Prayer in Khan Yunis, Gaza on April 13, 2018.
Mustafa Hassona / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Nakba (the catastrophe), in which approximately 800,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes by Zionist militias. On May 14, 2018, Israel’s independence day and one day before the concurrent occasion of the Nakba anniversary, the world witnessed a dystopian reality of split screens that displayed Israeli officials engaged in celebrations during the opening ceremony of the US embassy in Jerusalem, as Israeli troops massacred dozens of Palestinians near the border fence to Gaza during the Great March of Return.
The international Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) is a grassroots, nonviolent effort aimed at expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people and coordinating local campaigns that challenge Israel’s decade-old siege of the Gaza strip. The FFC made headlines in 2010, when it was raided by Israeli Navy commandos who killed nine activists and injured more than 50, causing international outrage.
The FFC set sail from Norway to Gaza several days ago and will stop at about a dozen ports, among them Cadiz, Spain, on June 23 just before entering the Mediterranean Sea.
Zohar Chamberlain Regev is an Israeli citizen who lives in Spain. Chamberlain Regev is the owner of the Women’s Boat to Gaza Zaytouna-Oliva, seized in 2016, and the object of ongoing court proceedings in Israel. She has participated in the coordination of Rumbo a Gaza, the Spanish component of the Freedom Flotilla, since 2012, and is the FFC’s boat leader on board Al-Awda (The Return) — the flotilla for 2018.
Gerd von der Lippe is a professor at the University of Southeast Norway, specializing in media, sports (with a focus on the Middle East), gender and politics.
In this interview, Regev and von der Lippe discuss their hopes and fears for the Al-Awda Freedom Flotilla.
Yoav Litvin: What are your goals for the Freedom Flotilla in 2018?
Zohar Chamberlain Regev: We aim to send a message of solidarity to the Palestinian people and raise awareness regarding the crimes against humanity committed by Israel in Gaza. I believe the international community should sanction Israel to uphold human rights.
Gerd von der Lippe: To promote the end of the illegal military blockade of Gaza by sea, air and land, and to raise awareness of the terrible situation of Palestinian fishermen. We focus on justice for Palestinian people and on promoting the right of return for all refugees to their homes and properties from which they were expelled in 1948 by Zionist militias. We aim to show all the citizens of Gaza that we support their fight against the aggressive collective punishment of the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF).
Read complete interview on Truthout.
The international Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) is a grassroots, nonviolent effort aimed at expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people and coordinating local campaigns that challenge Israel’s decade-old siege of the Gaza strip. The FFC made headlines in 2010, when it was raided by Israeli Navy commandos who killed nine activists and injured more than 50, causing international outrage.
The FFC set sail from Norway to Gaza several days ago and will stop at about a dozen ports, among them Cadiz, Spain, on June 23 just before entering the Mediterranean Sea.
Zohar Chamberlain Regev is an Israeli citizen who lives in Spain. Chamberlain Regev is the owner of the Women’s Boat to Gaza Zaytouna-Oliva, seized in 2016, and the object of ongoing court proceedings in Israel. She has participated in the coordination of Rumbo a Gaza, the Spanish component of the Freedom Flotilla, since 2012, and is the FFC’s boat leader on board Al-Awda (The Return) — the flotilla for 2018.
Gerd von der Lippe is a professor at the University of Southeast Norway, specializing in media, sports (with a focus on the Middle East), gender and politics.
In this interview, Regev and von der Lippe discuss their hopes and fears for the Al-Awda Freedom Flotilla.
Yoav Litvin: What are your goals for the Freedom Flotilla in 2018?
Zohar Chamberlain Regev: We aim to send a message of solidarity to the Palestinian people and raise awareness regarding the crimes against humanity committed by Israel in Gaza. I believe the international community should sanction Israel to uphold human rights.
Gerd von der Lippe: To promote the end of the illegal military blockade of Gaza by sea, air and land, and to raise awareness of the terrible situation of Palestinian fishermen. We focus on justice for Palestinian people and on promoting the right of return for all refugees to their homes and properties from which they were expelled in 1948 by Zionist militias. We aim to show all the citizens of Gaza that we support their fight against the aggressive collective punishment of the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF).
Read complete interview on Truthout.
Micro Militarism
Michael Schwalbe
My ATM receipts now tell me, beneath my checking account balance, that the North Carolina State Employees’ Credit Union SUPPORTS THE TROOPS! The classical music station I listen to runs a dedication to “the men and women of our armed forces, who work so hard to protect us; without their sacrifices, none of our freedoms would be possible.”
When I browse for information about public universities in North Carolina, an ad pops up showing a young man in camouflage combat fatigues, holding a laptop computer. The text of the ad reads, “Advance Your Military Career with an MBA.” The ad is for an online MBA program at the University of North Carolina.
A few months ago the home page of my university, NC State, greeted viewers with an image of a young man in the cockpit of a U.S. air force fighter jet. The text, as I recall, was to the effect that NC State is training tomorrow’s leaders today. The fall issue of the university’s alumni magazine ran an adoring profile of army general Ray Odierno, a 1986 graduate.
The local weekly independent newspaper, which fashions itself as alternative and leftish, runs a feature called the “social activist calendar.” Events are grouped under headings such as Community, Environment, Politics, Government, and LGBTQ. In a recent issue, four events were listed under Troop Support.
Though the requests have abated lately, for a time earlier this year cashiers in grocery stores and gas stations consistently asked if I wanted to donate a dollar to support the troops.
The above are examples of what can be called micro militarism: pro-military practices squeezed into small cultural spaces. Any one such practice might seem trivial. Yet on the whole micro militarism does much to normalize militarism on a large scale.
Militarism on a large scale is what the U.S. is all about. This is militarism on the scale of foreign invasions and occupations; on the scale of maintaining hundreds of military bases around the world; on the scale of drone fleets used to carry out political assassinations wherever the enemies of empire might roam; on the scale of spending half of our nation’s collective wealth every year to pay for weapons and war; on the scale of an economy in which the profits of nearly every major corporation, and many small ones, derive in part from military contracts.
From the standpoint of political and economic elites, militarism on a large scale is a fine thing. It is how wealth is transferred from the working class to the capitalist class via taxes to pay for “defense systems.” It is also how U.S. corporations maintain access to raw materials, cheap labor, and markets around the world. The problem is that, absent the fever of war, large-scale militarism generates popular resistance.
After a while, people begin to wonder why their sons and daughters are being killed and maimed in countries half a world away, countries that have not attacked us and with which we are not at war. People begin to wonder about the competence and morality of politicians who engage in imperial adventures that seem to have no clear purpose, no clear endpoint, and no clear benefits for anyone who doesn’t stand to make a profit on weapons, military supplies, mercenary services, or someone else’s natural resources.
People begin to wonder why there is not enough money for schools, public transportation, libraries, parks, and health care. They begin to wonder where our collective wealth is going, and why there is always enough money for the tools of war but not enough for the things that give regular people security and prosperity at home.
Read entire article on Counterpunch.
Michael Schwalbe
My ATM receipts now tell me, beneath my checking account balance, that the North Carolina State Employees’ Credit Union SUPPORTS THE TROOPS! The classical music station I listen to runs a dedication to “the men and women of our armed forces, who work so hard to protect us; without their sacrifices, none of our freedoms would be possible.”
When I browse for information about public universities in North Carolina, an ad pops up showing a young man in camouflage combat fatigues, holding a laptop computer. The text of the ad reads, “Advance Your Military Career with an MBA.” The ad is for an online MBA program at the University of North Carolina.
A few months ago the home page of my university, NC State, greeted viewers with an image of a young man in the cockpit of a U.S. air force fighter jet. The text, as I recall, was to the effect that NC State is training tomorrow’s leaders today. The fall issue of the university’s alumni magazine ran an adoring profile of army general Ray Odierno, a 1986 graduate.
The local weekly independent newspaper, which fashions itself as alternative and leftish, runs a feature called the “social activist calendar.” Events are grouped under headings such as Community, Environment, Politics, Government, and LGBTQ. In a recent issue, four events were listed under Troop Support.
Though the requests have abated lately, for a time earlier this year cashiers in grocery stores and gas stations consistently asked if I wanted to donate a dollar to support the troops.
The above are examples of what can be called micro militarism: pro-military practices squeezed into small cultural spaces. Any one such practice might seem trivial. Yet on the whole micro militarism does much to normalize militarism on a large scale.
Militarism on a large scale is what the U.S. is all about. This is militarism on the scale of foreign invasions and occupations; on the scale of maintaining hundreds of military bases around the world; on the scale of drone fleets used to carry out political assassinations wherever the enemies of empire might roam; on the scale of spending half of our nation’s collective wealth every year to pay for weapons and war; on the scale of an economy in which the profits of nearly every major corporation, and many small ones, derive in part from military contracts.
From the standpoint of political and economic elites, militarism on a large scale is a fine thing. It is how wealth is transferred from the working class to the capitalist class via taxes to pay for “defense systems.” It is also how U.S. corporations maintain access to raw materials, cheap labor, and markets around the world. The problem is that, absent the fever of war, large-scale militarism generates popular resistance.
After a while, people begin to wonder why their sons and daughters are being killed and maimed in countries half a world away, countries that have not attacked us and with which we are not at war. People begin to wonder about the competence and morality of politicians who engage in imperial adventures that seem to have no clear purpose, no clear endpoint, and no clear benefits for anyone who doesn’t stand to make a profit on weapons, military supplies, mercenary services, or someone else’s natural resources.
People begin to wonder why there is not enough money for schools, public transportation, libraries, parks, and health care. They begin to wonder where our collective wealth is going, and why there is always enough money for the tools of war but not enough for the things that give regular people security and prosperity at home.
Read entire article on Counterpunch.
Senate Votes to Kill SJ Res 54
The US Senate held the fate of millions of Yemenis in its hands. By voting to table #SJRes54 they’ve not just killed a resolution. Those 55 senators will have the blood of thousands, who will die as a result of US support for the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, on their hands. https://t.co/pyq8wtV9fe
Another Option for the Table: Dialogue with Pyongyang
Gene Marx
February 15, 2018
Gene Marx
February 15, 2018
Olympic.org
By now most of the world has stopped caring about the panic that gripped Hawaii one Sunday last month for all of 38 minutes. The false missile alert after all was just that. No harm done. Americans have even managed to settle back into their comfort zones watching Korean American snowboarder Chloe Kim conquer the halfpipe at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. In spite of a core message of peace and reunification an undercurrent of US and North Korean hostility continues to run below the surface. And while overtures of dialogue from both sides of the 38th parallel may have raised hopes since the Opening ceremony, harsh rhetoric could easily return when the Olympic flame is extinguished and the athletes return home.
OK. So where are we now?
First of all the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a nuclear state. We need to get over it. Outside of the collapsing apartheid government of South Africa in 1989, NO nuclear power has ever unilaterally, much less voluntarily disarmed. And the Hawaiian chaos could have easily been misread by North Korean leaders as a cover for an attack by the US military. With little or no room for error and nothing to lose at that point, officials in Pyongyang might have easily opted for an immediate counterattack based on its limited, ground-based early warning detection assets, setting off a spiraling thermonuclear holocaust in a worst case.
The atomic age is replete with near nuclear catastrophes, and billions of lives still hang in the balance seven decades after the Trinity detonation. In a recent article in The New Yorker, Sidney D. Drell a groundbreaking researcher and physicist who served for nearly half a century as a top adviser to the United States government on military technology and arms control, considered it a miracle – “so far beyond my normal optimism” - that no other city since Nagasaki had been destroyed by a nuclear weapon. Given all the close calls and mistakes since then our species continues to exist on borrowed time.
It would seem that the time for talking, diplomatic dialogue, is long overdue.
The United States has appeared to endorse a closer post-Olympics engagement between South and North Korea with an eye to eventual US-North Korean talks, but has agreed with Seoul that sanctions must be intensified to push Pyongyang to negotiate an end to its nuclear weapons program. U.S. Vice President Pence said Washington would keep up its maximum pressure campaign against Pyongyang, but at the same time would be open to talks without pre-conditions.
Clearly, however, insisting that North Korea disarm is a non-starter. The Kim Jong Un regime, understandably, equates survival with nuclear weaponization.
In fact believing that further sanctions and Security Council pressure will break the DPRK commitment to the bomb is a risky naiveté. With no reasonable threshold anticipated in either case, the Trump administration might well take a lesson from the Richard Nixon template of normalizing relations with a future, legitimate atomic adversary. The nuclear rise of a bellicose outlier like “Red” China in 1972 demanded resolution. A time-line of deliberate negotiations - Track 2, followed by more open discussions - arguably eliminated that nuclear stress.
A Sino-Soviet dispute, coupled with China’s willingness to talk, certainly paved the way for Nixon, but that effort rewrote history. It started and concluded with dialogue, an option that should always be “on the table” but is rarely, if ever, a first consideration since war and military intervention have been the foreign policy solutions of choice for the 21st century.
As a first step toward a diplomatic solution with Pyongyang, please encourage Senators Murray and Cantwell, and Representatives Larsen and DelBene to support S.2047 / S.2016 and HR 4837.
The author of this piece is Veterans For Peace Past VFP Board Secretary and Naval Aviation Veteran Gene Marx. He is also an active member of the CPL Jonathan Santos Memorial Veterans For Peace Chapter 111 and lives in Bellingham, Washington with his wife, Victoria.
OK. So where are we now?
First of all the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a nuclear state. We need to get over it. Outside of the collapsing apartheid government of South Africa in 1989, NO nuclear power has ever unilaterally, much less voluntarily disarmed. And the Hawaiian chaos could have easily been misread by North Korean leaders as a cover for an attack by the US military. With little or no room for error and nothing to lose at that point, officials in Pyongyang might have easily opted for an immediate counterattack based on its limited, ground-based early warning detection assets, setting off a spiraling thermonuclear holocaust in a worst case.
The atomic age is replete with near nuclear catastrophes, and billions of lives still hang in the balance seven decades after the Trinity detonation. In a recent article in The New Yorker, Sidney D. Drell a groundbreaking researcher and physicist who served for nearly half a century as a top adviser to the United States government on military technology and arms control, considered it a miracle – “so far beyond my normal optimism” - that no other city since Nagasaki had been destroyed by a nuclear weapon. Given all the close calls and mistakes since then our species continues to exist on borrowed time.
It would seem that the time for talking, diplomatic dialogue, is long overdue.
The United States has appeared to endorse a closer post-Olympics engagement between South and North Korea with an eye to eventual US-North Korean talks, but has agreed with Seoul that sanctions must be intensified to push Pyongyang to negotiate an end to its nuclear weapons program. U.S. Vice President Pence said Washington would keep up its maximum pressure campaign against Pyongyang, but at the same time would be open to talks without pre-conditions.
Clearly, however, insisting that North Korea disarm is a non-starter. The Kim Jong Un regime, understandably, equates survival with nuclear weaponization.
In fact believing that further sanctions and Security Council pressure will break the DPRK commitment to the bomb is a risky naiveté. With no reasonable threshold anticipated in either case, the Trump administration might well take a lesson from the Richard Nixon template of normalizing relations with a future, legitimate atomic adversary. The nuclear rise of a bellicose outlier like “Red” China in 1972 demanded resolution. A time-line of deliberate negotiations - Track 2, followed by more open discussions - arguably eliminated that nuclear stress.
A Sino-Soviet dispute, coupled with China’s willingness to talk, certainly paved the way for Nixon, but that effort rewrote history. It started and concluded with dialogue, an option that should always be “on the table” but is rarely, if ever, a first consideration since war and military intervention have been the foreign policy solutions of choice for the 21st century.
As a first step toward a diplomatic solution with Pyongyang, please encourage Senators Murray and Cantwell, and Representatives Larsen and DelBene to support S.2047 / S.2016 and HR 4837.
The author of this piece is Veterans For Peace Past VFP Board Secretary and Naval Aviation Veteran Gene Marx. He is also an active member of the CPL Jonathan Santos Memorial Veterans For Peace Chapter 111 and lives in Bellingham, Washington with his wife, Victoria.
Veterans For Peace rally in Washington, less than a month after 9/11. Credit: Elvert Barnes/Flickr
“Imagine there’s no heaven…and no religion too.”
A more useful line when it comes to our current wars may be “Imagine there’s no duopoly.” It’s hard to fault John Lennon for his idealism, of course. In his day, many blamed religion on the wars of history. But a much bigger obstacle right now, at least in the U.S., is partisanship. The two major political parties, in power and out, have been so co-opted by the war machine that any modern anti-war movement has been completely subsumed and marginalized—even as American troops and killer drones continue to operate in or near combat zones all over the world.
Aside from the very early days of the Iraq war, the anti-war movement has been a small, ineffectual pinprick on the post-9/11 landscape. A less generous assessment is that it’s been a bust. After liberals helped elect the “anti-war” Barack Obama, the movement all but disappeared, even though the wars did not. By putting a Nobel Peace Prize-winning Democratic face on his inherited wars, Obama expanded into new conflicts (Libya, Syria, Yemen) with little resistance, ultimately bombing seven different countries during his tenure. By 2013, Code Pink founder Medea Benjamin lamented, “We’ve been protesting Obama’s foreign policy for years now, but we can’t get the same numbers because the people who would’ve been yelling and screaming about this stuff under Bush are quiet under Obama.”
Read the rest of the article in the The American Conservative.
A more useful line when it comes to our current wars may be “Imagine there’s no duopoly.” It’s hard to fault John Lennon for his idealism, of course. In his day, many blamed religion on the wars of history. But a much bigger obstacle right now, at least in the U.S., is partisanship. The two major political parties, in power and out, have been so co-opted by the war machine that any modern anti-war movement has been completely subsumed and marginalized—even as American troops and killer drones continue to operate in or near combat zones all over the world.
Aside from the very early days of the Iraq war, the anti-war movement has been a small, ineffectual pinprick on the post-9/11 landscape. A less generous assessment is that it’s been a bust. After liberals helped elect the “anti-war” Barack Obama, the movement all but disappeared, even though the wars did not. By putting a Nobel Peace Prize-winning Democratic face on his inherited wars, Obama expanded into new conflicts (Libya, Syria, Yemen) with little resistance, ultimately bombing seven different countries during his tenure. By 2013, Code Pink founder Medea Benjamin lamented, “We’ve been protesting Obama’s foreign policy for years now, but we can’t get the same numbers because the people who would’ve been yelling and screaming about this stuff under Bush are quiet under Obama.”
Read the rest of the article in the The American Conservative.
Whatcom Peace & Justice Looking for AMS Volunteers
Interested in joining the Whatcom Peace & Justice Alternatives to Military Service volunteer crew? WPJC could really use veteran perspectives. The time commitment is up to you -- some folks volunteer for 2 hours per semester, and others put in more than 20.
Come and learn how to table with AMS and then sign up for shifts that work for you.
Thursday, January 18, 2018 at 10 - 11:30 AM
Whatcom Peace & Justice Center
1220 Bay St
Interested in joining the Whatcom Peace & Justice Alternatives to Military Service volunteer crew? WPJC could really use veteran perspectives. The time commitment is up to you -- some folks volunteer for 2 hours per semester, and others put in more than 20.
Come and learn how to table with AMS and then sign up for shifts that work for you.
Thursday, January 18, 2018 at 10 - 11:30 AM
Whatcom Peace & Justice Center
1220 Bay St
VFP-111 Co-Sponsors Human Rights Film Festival
The BHRFF is an annual film festival that screens independent films concerning global issues. All films are selected by a volunteer committee. The festival is free to all. Films are followed by discussions facilitated by the film director or a community resource affiliated with the film topic.
Billy D Memorial Lager at Menace
The long wait is over. The Billy D Memorial Lager at Menace is ready! This update from
VFP-111's James Gillies:
"Well, my friends, the beer that I brewed with Menace Brewery and the Bellingham Beer Lab is finally on tap at Menace! It is the Billy D Memorial Lager. It is a tribute to my dear friend, Bill Distler, who passed this year. 10% of what you pay is donated to the local chapter of Veterans For Peace. We will have a release night next Monday at Menace Brewery. I'm not sure of the time yet but will post it after Thanksgiving. On that night we will toast Bill and share fond memories. Save the date attend please show up, if you can! Cheers!"
Where: Menace Brewery, 2529 Meridian, Bellingham
When: 5:00 to 7:00 PM
Join us. Lift a pint to Billy D...and PEACE!
VFP-111 Supports Original Intent of Veterans Day
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Veterans For Peace calls for the observance of November 11 to be in keeping with the holiday’s original intent as Armistice Day, to be “a day dedicated to the cause of world peace," as it was celebrated at the ending of World War I when the world came together to recognize the need for lasting peace. That desire for peace led ten years later to the General Treaty for the Renunciation of War (Kellogg-Briand) which made war illegal. The U.S. ratified the treaty and is bound by its terms pursuant to Art. 6 of the Constitution. After World War II, the U.S. Congress decided to rebrand November 11 as Veterans Day. Honoring the warriors quickly morphed into honoring the military and glorifying war. Armistice Day, as a result, has been flipped from a day for peace into a day for displays of militarism.
This year with a rise of hate and fear around the world it is as urgent as ever to ring the bells of peace. We in the U.S. must press our government to end reckless rhetoric and military interventions that endanger the entire world. Instead of celebrating militarism, we want to celebrate peace and all of humanity. We demand an end to all forms of hate, patriarchy and white supremacy and we call for unity, fair treatment under the law and equality for all. We call for a tearing down of walls between borders and people. We call for an end to all hostilities at home and around the globe. |
Chapter Reaches Out, Again, Fostering Hope in Vietnam
Since 1998, Children of Vietnam has been serving the children in Vietnam whose futures are stifled by poverty: educating minds, mending bodies, sheltering families and nurturing their development. There are thousands of children just like this year's beneficiary of our donation, Vo Van Quang, who deserve access to a better life. Children of Vietnam is working diligently to make this a reality through its innovative program Hope System of Care.
Since 1998, Children of Vietnam has been serving the children in Vietnam whose futures are stifled by poverty: educating minds, mending bodies, sheltering families and nurturing their development. There are thousands of children just like this year's beneficiary of our donation, Vo Van Quang, who deserve access to a better life. Children of Vietnam is working diligently to make this a reality through its innovative program Hope System of Care.
Marines marching in Danang in 1965.
Merely an Empire
David Thomson
Roger Harris is from Roxbury, in Boston. For decades he taught in the school system there. He wears a grey pinstripe suit; his smart bow-tie has a purple streak. He looks patient yet tough, as durable as a former athlete. But he had days in 1967 as a young Marine near the DMZ in Vietnam – the demilitarised zone, aka the ‘dead Marine zone’ – that he can’t talk about:
You go over there with one mindset and then you adapt. You adapt to the atrocities of war. You adapt to killing and dying, whatever … When I first arrived in Vietnam there were some interesting things that happened and I questioned some of the Marines. I was made to realise that this is war – and this is what we do.
Harris gives the camera a funny look, half shy, half guilty, all of him doubtful that we can understand. It reminded me of the opening of Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), where the French woman talks about all she has seen in Hiroshima and the Japanese man responds: ‘You saw nothing in Hiroshima.’
Is it a sign of civilisation that we want to tell the story of our disasters without breaking down? Isn’t it human to remain brave and lucid in the face of catastrophe? Will we find mercy in the particular stories of men and women, soldiers and onlookers? If we insist that these disasters happened to humans, because of humans, can humanism be persevered with? Or is a faith in humanism now wishful thinking? Perhaps our best chance of advancing through the minefield is to be a fool, to kid ourselves, and try to think of courage.
The Vietnam War, a film made by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, comes in ten parts, with beginnings, middles and end credits; and lasts 18 hours altogether, which some may feel is a lot to ask of busy, anxious wrecks who have their own troubles to patrol. Not that 18 hours on your couch, attending to war, is really so much if you need courage and history in your life. The film took ten years to make, at a cost of $30 million. That’s a lot of money by documentary standards, but it was done in the Burns tradition: there was a seeding deal with PBS, but the greater part of the money was raised by Burns himself, a visionary documenter of America’s past and a model businessman too. Even as he was launching the Vietnam series, he was working on another show, about country music.
The Vietnam War starts at the end of the Second World War, with the Japanese finished in Indochina, the uneasy resumption of French control, and their attempts to ignore the pressures of nationalism and the push for independence. And you follow it through to the end of the era called ‘Vietnam’, knowing that that time did not end in 1975, but will last as long as the walking wounded trudge on, and for as long as there is anyone left who understands the remark, made in the film, that ‘Vietnam drove a stake in the heart of this country’ – and knows that the country spoken of here is not Vietnam, despite its three million lost lives. In the course of the film you hear all the reasons there were for being in Vietnam, and how inadequate and confounding they were, because no one had a better explanation than was latent in every bright blade of grass in the paddy-fields, where the greens could be so pretty.
Read the rest of the review on the London Review of Books.
David Thomson
- The Vietnam War directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick
- PBS, ten episodes, from 17 September
Roger Harris is from Roxbury, in Boston. For decades he taught in the school system there. He wears a grey pinstripe suit; his smart bow-tie has a purple streak. He looks patient yet tough, as durable as a former athlete. But he had days in 1967 as a young Marine near the DMZ in Vietnam – the demilitarised zone, aka the ‘dead Marine zone’ – that he can’t talk about:
You go over there with one mindset and then you adapt. You adapt to the atrocities of war. You adapt to killing and dying, whatever … When I first arrived in Vietnam there were some interesting things that happened and I questioned some of the Marines. I was made to realise that this is war – and this is what we do.
Harris gives the camera a funny look, half shy, half guilty, all of him doubtful that we can understand. It reminded me of the opening of Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), where the French woman talks about all she has seen in Hiroshima and the Japanese man responds: ‘You saw nothing in Hiroshima.’
Is it a sign of civilisation that we want to tell the story of our disasters without breaking down? Isn’t it human to remain brave and lucid in the face of catastrophe? Will we find mercy in the particular stories of men and women, soldiers and onlookers? If we insist that these disasters happened to humans, because of humans, can humanism be persevered with? Or is a faith in humanism now wishful thinking? Perhaps our best chance of advancing through the minefield is to be a fool, to kid ourselves, and try to think of courage.
The Vietnam War, a film made by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, comes in ten parts, with beginnings, middles and end credits; and lasts 18 hours altogether, which some may feel is a lot to ask of busy, anxious wrecks who have their own troubles to patrol. Not that 18 hours on your couch, attending to war, is really so much if you need courage and history in your life. The film took ten years to make, at a cost of $30 million. That’s a lot of money by documentary standards, but it was done in the Burns tradition: there was a seeding deal with PBS, but the greater part of the money was raised by Burns himself, a visionary documenter of America’s past and a model businessman too. Even as he was launching the Vietnam series, he was working on another show, about country music.
The Vietnam War starts at the end of the Second World War, with the Japanese finished in Indochina, the uneasy resumption of French control, and their attempts to ignore the pressures of nationalism and the push for independence. And you follow it through to the end of the era called ‘Vietnam’, knowing that that time did not end in 1975, but will last as long as the walking wounded trudge on, and for as long as there is anyone left who understands the remark, made in the film, that ‘Vietnam drove a stake in the heart of this country’ – and knows that the country spoken of here is not Vietnam, despite its three million lost lives. In the course of the film you hear all the reasons there were for being in Vietnam, and how inadequate and confounding they were, because no one had a better explanation than was latent in every bright blade of grass in the paddy-fields, where the greens could be so pretty.
Read the rest of the review on the London Review of Books.
VFP to Launch Vietnam Full Disclosure Campaign Opposing
Probable Ken Burns' Airbrushing of Vietnam War
Probable Ken Burns' Airbrushing of Vietnam War
This is a video clip of Veterans For Peace Co-Founder Doug Rawlings that Maine Public Television plans to air several times before the airing of Ken Burns' The Vietnam War. VFP chapters plan to counter the documentary with our voices.
VFP-111 Founding Member Bill Distler Dead at 70
Glioblastoma, an aggressive, malignant brain tumor kills long-time peace veteran on Monday, June 5
Glioblastoma, an aggressive, malignant brain tumor kills long-time peace veteran on Monday, June 5
Yesterday morning from Bill's wife, Lisa, on The Friends of Bill Distler Facebook page:
My sweet husband, Bill, " walked on" this morning at around 7:00 a.m. I'm so grateful to have had slept by his side for one last night. What a beautiful spirit he has. What a loving, brilliant, difficult, and inspired husband and lover I have had! 26 years of loving Bill Distler and having his baby, I have been richly blessed.
Now to cope, while you're letting that sink in.
Peace now, my friend. Presente!
On Saturday, June 10, graveside services will be conducted at Bayview Cemetery at 12 noon, followed by a celebration of Bill's life at Westford Funeral Home, 1301 Broadway, Bellingham, at 1 pm.
Courtesy of Ash Woolson
The Hidden Tragedy of the Vietnam War with Investigative Journalist Nick Turse
On Contact's Chris Hedges discusses the hidden tragedy of the Vietnam War with author of Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam.
On Contact's Chris Hedges discusses the hidden tragedy of the Vietnam War with author of Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam.
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Waging Peace
Since 2004 |
