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Dude, Where’s My Country?
by Michael Moore
(Warner Books, 2003; 249 pages, $24.95)
As a followup to the tremendously popular STUPID WHITE MEN, Michael Moore gives us a challenge. All citizens over 18 must do everything we can immediately to save our country from the re-election of the Bush administration. Period. Exclamation mark!
Michael Moore brings to this book the same acute awareness and ironic critical powers of his films ("Roger and Me" and "Bowling For Columbine") and of his previous writing. He is in earnest, and, as Mr. Bush so often says, pointing his finger at us, "Let there be no mistake about it!" The difference? Mr. Moore’s warnings are far more sagacious, based as they are on sound reasoning and thorough personal research.
Overall, the book is very encouraging even though it offers scathing criticism of Mr. Bush’s wars, his willing sabotage of our civil and political rights, and the secret activities of his corporate and military cohorts. The hope comes from Moore’s ardent belief in the ordinary American’s ability to stop our country’s downfall by the sheer force of the ballot box in 2004.
The crux of the matter is, in spite of many difficult problems, you and I are the prime movers of this government, a government which can betray our best judgment only when we are unwilling to take our responsibility as citizens. We must do everything we can, most of all communicate with each other about the dangers of giving up our participation in politics. We must stop permitting wars conducted primarily for the benefit of profiteers, stop taking the lives of soldiers and civilians and using our money for ever-more-disastrous killing machines, instead of for food, clothing, shelter, education and health care. And above all we must stop allowing a hystercal fear of "terrorism" to silence us and take away our freedoms under hastily passed laws like so-called Patriot Acts I and II.
Talk to family and friends, neighbors and passersby, Moore says. Read. Get informed. Ask questions. Pass information on to others. Have groups over for coffee and discussion. Organize teach-ins. Show films that present reasons to question current policies. Write letters to editors. Tell people not to be afraid. Tell them if we all use common sense and educate ourselves and others, and then vote, there can be a political awakening between now and the next presidential election — but not unless.
His thesis is that the main — perhaps the only — reason our country is behaving as an arrogant aggressor in the world, using its rememdous power and wealth in the destruc-tion of human lives, is that the American people are not only poorly informed by popular media, but they are inhibited by a fear of being "different’ and by the national myth of "Algerism." He blames Pollyanna Americanism that tells us if each one just works hard within the system, and keeps away from controversy, sooner or later we can all become healthy, wealthy and wise. Get over it! he says. Face the truth, and act together.
If in his desire to boost morale he somewhat overpraises or overestimates the social consciences of public figures like Wesley Clark and Oprah Winfrey, he is to be forgiven. After all, we need everybody, high and low, in this urgent need to build a better world for our children.
Jean Gerard, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, retired college teacher, veteran peacenik, writer and general all-round disturber of complacency. And as if that’s not enough, Quaker by 40 years of convincement. Everything started, nothing finished!
Abuse Your Illusions: The Disinformation Guide to Media Mirages and Establishment Lies
Edited by Russ Kirk
(2003, Disinformation Company)
This is part three of an anthology put out by the publishing company called Disin-formation. We reviewed part one, called "Everything you know is Wrong." Part two is called "You Are Being Lied To." As you can tell from these titles there is something terribly wrong with the media in this country; these books set the record straight. And they do not have a secret agenda either liberal or conservative, left or right, Republican or Democrat. They get to the truth of the matter. And who are the writers? If you’ve been involved in independent media you may recognize some of the names: Gary Webb, Daniel Ellsberg, William Blum, Paul Krassner, Thom Hartmann, Wayne Madsen, Jim Hougan, Howard Zinn, Howard Bloom, Greg Palast and numerous others. These are investigative reporters, researchers on conspiracy, scholars, and truth seekers wanting to understand why the mainstream media is so intent on keeping us asleep. As the editor writes in his Introduction, "Keeping up with the deceptions is an ever increasing challenge. It’s like digging a hole while a bulldozer keeps shoving the dirt back in. And it’s getting worse."
But why bother? Aren’t we getting enough information exposing deception on the web for us information junkies who use the Internet for gathering the truth wherever we can find it? As Mr. Kirk writes, "So, why are we contributing to the info-overload, the pile of books stacking up beside your nightstand? (Not to mention that three-foot list of bookmarks in your web browser.) Because we’re hoping to gather some of the best of that far-flung material and put it in one place." And that he does, almost 400 pages of the most riveting material. Even though I may have seen some of this material on the web, it is great to have it all under one cover, on paper, so you can refer to it (especially if it has been surreptitiously removed from the web, which oftentimes happens). Also, it makes for a great gift for someone who thinks polyanishly that we live in a wonderful world and that mainstream press is doing the "best they can to honestly inform us."
We have Howard Zinn unearthing the story of civilians killed during the attacks on Afghanistan. Former federal agent Michael Levine describes first-hand how the drug war is designed to fail. The director of the World Policy Institute reveals the story behind how the UN was formed: US spied on its allies, using this knowledge to shape the UN to its liking. Howard Bloom reports on the power of Islamic Censors, pressuring book publishers to cancel their books, placing fatwas and death threats against writers who publish material that is critical of the Islamic worldview (such authors include Salman Rushdie, Paul Fregosi, Taslima Nasrin, Terence McNally and Howard Bloom himself.)
About Sept 11, more news: even more hijackings were planned for that day; a Taliban emissary warned the US and the UN about the attacks; a Senator has said that at least one foreign country actively aided the 9/11 terrorists and some of our high-est officials have admitted that the attacks could’ve been prevented.
If you think the battle of ideas and information is over because of the Internet, buy this book and awaken!
Another book published recently by www.Disinformation.com is called, not surprisingly, Book of Lies, but this one is much different from the other three books. This one focuses on Magick and the Occult. If the other books of the trilogy won’t blow you away this one certainly will. We have the reality benders’ firsthand accounts (or call them alchemists who are rip-ping holes in the fabric of re-ality). If you were around in the 60s’ psychedelic/occult era, some of these names will be familiar to you: Terrence McKenna, Jack Parsons, Aleister Crowley, Julius Evola, Gary Lachman, Robert Anton Wilson, Anton Levey, Timothy Leary, William Burroughs and more. Some of the essays are reprints so that the reader can learn what the hell this is all about; but it also includes new writers who are reflecting on that period as well as continuing the journey with more mature philosophies, different drugs as well as different real-ity bends. If you want to know what the craziness of the 60s was all about AND you want to see where it is continuing, where the lineage is, who the main resources are, this is the book to own. In a large format and 350 pages with numerous photos, this is more encyclopedic than a simple anthol-ogy. We have gnosis here, early Christians, sex magick, scientology, occult wars, nazis and the occult, sorcery and occult terrorism, HP Lovecraft, DMT, DPT and more. Warning: not for members of the cult of rationality!
Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press
Edited by Kristina Borjesson, Foreword by Gore Vidal
(Prometheus Books, NY; $26; 2002)
The title says it all. If you are even a bit suspicious of the daily news the mainstream press feeds you, you will need this book. Its not written by underground journalists or volunteer investigative reporters or conspiracy hacks. The con-tributors to this anthology are profession-
als working for CNN, 60 minutes, NPR, London Observer, San Jose Mercury News, AP, MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, New York Observer, CBS, and others. This book has given them the opportunity to come out and speak the truth about stories, articles, books that were killed, whitewashed, "privished," censored and scrubbed. As the editor Kristina Borjesson, Emmy and Mur-row Award-winning investigative reporter who has worked for CBS and CNN, has written in her introduction: "It’s been written countless times that the press is our nation’s last line of defense for keeping our leaders honest and our government democratic. If you believe this to be true and are concerned, you should read this book very, very carefully."
A word about privishing. I never heard of that word before. In the first essay called The Price of Liberty, author Gerard Colby relates his personal story with privishing. His book on the Du Ponts ("Du Pont: Behind the Nylon Curtain") was published by Prentice Hall. Without his knowledge, Du Pont was paying Prentice Hall to slowly kill the book by limiting print runs, by cutting back on speaking arrangements. Of course you would think this is the typical paranoia that every writer entertains when confronted with failure in the market place. But this is a true story come to light by one of his editors revealing it. Colby then took the matter to court to find out that the Judge declared Prentice Hall justified in its failure to promote the book. "Investigative journalism suffered a blow that day," writes Gerard Colby.
Years later another publisher, Lyle Stuart, discovered what had happened and wished to expand the book and update it. Colby of course was thrilled. But the Du Pont people were up to dirty tricks again. They sat in on certain meetings and at-tempted to slap Stuart with a subpoena. Stuart was so angered at this obvious obstruction of free press publishing that he went to Publisher’s Weekly to denounce Prentice-Hall and took out a full-page ad in the NY Times mentioning the earlier effort to suppress the first edition. Stuart went ahead with publishing the book with 300 more pages on the Du Pont Dynasty. It doesn’t end there. As Gerard Colby was on TV during an interview for his new book someone asked a question about Du Pont privishing the first edition. On TV he went to the new book that had just been printed, turned to the 30 or so pages that concerned the suppression of the first edition and there were no 30 pages. They had been deleted from the book! The story of the suppression of the first book was itself suppressed. As soon as he was off camera he called up the publisher Lyle Stuart. To the misfortune of the book, the printer made an error of deleting those 30 pages in 30% of the print run, which meant the books were not available to book buyers exactly when they wanted to buy. When Colby investigated the mat-ter, it was learned that the print jobber
allegedly received 80% of its business from Prentice-Hall. The book soon died.
For stories by Greg Palast, Carl Jenson (from Project Censored), Robert McChesney, Gary Webb (about his stories of the CIA’s dealing drugs in the LA streets, which effectively ended his career), Michael Levine writes a piece about dealing with the press while chasing down drug lords in Latin America and Asia (where he received an award from Project Censored). Jane Akre fights with Fox News (in Tampa, FL) about her reporting the truth about Monsanto Corporation’s bovine growth hormone.
With this book telling it like it is and what it ought to be, you would think there would be more written about it, more stories. But who is going to publish them? Who has the courage to publish this type of important material?
On a side note, I watched the Project Censored Awards last month on FSTV (Channel 9415 for those who have DISH). Excellent stories about crimes that ought to be widely reported, not published in some small rag that gets a moment of revelation during the Awards ceremo-nies. In fact, a number of recipients said they felt foolish receiving an award like this when it ought to have been national news in a big way. One recipient said he was a dishwasher mak-ing no money publishing a grassroots publication in his town ... and that two other recipients were working as waitresses trying to get by. Is this horrendous for a nation that prides itself on free press? Granted we don’t shoot truth-seeking journalists like they do in other countries but we get the silent treatment, the killed story treatment, the private self-censoring psychology torture as well as the struggle to meet the rent from month to month. It’s also a call for support-ing Independent Media!!
Strangely Like War: The Global Assault on Forests
by Derrick Jensen and George Draffan Fore-word by Vandana Shiva
(Chelsea Green Publishing; 2003; 172 pages; $15)
Chelsea Green Publishing was sold to some new folks. The new folks fired much of the old staff; canceled some of their book projects, kept their books in print and want to raise a bit of hell. See, Chelsea was in the business of alternative building books as well as other sustainable solution-oriented books. The new owners want to change that a bit, especially in the post 9-11 climate. I totally agree, and the style of HopeDance has a changed a bit as well. Priorities need to be clarified and focused. What is happening politically can no longer be relegated to the small-time book publishers and the wearing-thin magazine publica-tions like The Nation and Mother Jones. We all have to pick up speed to oust the Bush administration, to publish landmark treatises for the masses to read and to pub-lish books and articles that articulate our need for organizing and action.
With this in mind, Chelsea Green has published "Strangely Like War." I am thrilled and delighted. This book is not only a plea to stop deforestation but it also puts the fight in a global sphere. Environ-mentalists meet the global justice movement.
Derrick Jensen is the author of "The Culture of Make Believe" and "A Language Older Than Words," two very powerful works that take environmentalism to a deeper level, to an animist level, to a sacred eco level where we all need to partake if we want to survive as a species.
Today three-quarters of the world’s original forests are gone and the pace of cutting, clearing, processing, and pulping is ever-accelerating. As Mahatma Gandhi so rightly observed: What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a ... reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another." The team of Jensen and Darffan pull together the reason why there is the acceleration, why the solutions are not working: we are being lied to, the major institutions like the World Bank, WTO and the IMF need to be abolished. And with all these treatises that have been signed, if you look at them carefully they are "non-legally binding" and they always have the word "should." "Not will. Not must. Should. As usual, we get words while those in power get the forests." (p134)
The authors go on to say, "Eventually the decision about land and resource use needs to be controlled by local peoples who know, love and depend on the forests." Is this a utopian ideal? Do local people even care? And even if they care how can they own the land when in the US, for example, the top 5% of landowners (not 5% of the total pollution) own 75% of the land … and many of the largest landowners in the US and around the globe are timber corporations.
The first chapter begins with a quote from The Last Wilderness by Murray Morgan: "It was strangely like war. They attacked the forest as if it were an enemy to be pushed back from the beachheads, driven into the hills, broken into patches, and wiped out. Many operators thought they were not only making lumber but liberating the land from the trees."
This book is not just about the struggle of forests in the Pacific Northwest or Northern California. We read about the stories of activists throughout the world: in Cameroon, Cambodia, Germany, Canada, Brazil, Malaysia, New Zealand, Japan, and elsewhere.
From a signed statement by 61 tribal Dayak leaders in Malaysia: "Some people say we are against development if we do not agree to move out of our land and forest. This completely misrepresents our position. Development does not mean stealing our land and forest.... This is not development but theft of our land, our rights and our cultural identity."
And what about a solution? The writ-ers speak again about the local solution: "We don’t need ‘public participation, consensus, and collaboration,’ or ‘commu-nity forestry’ programs run by corporate and government elites; we need local control of land and markets. Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the market only worked when the market was local, face to face, voluntary, transparent, low tech, and based on ethical, mutual relationships. It’s been a long time since that was the case."
The final chapter deals with what people can do, and most of it is personal: eat locally-grown foods, make your own clothing, spend time in the forests, work to undermine the social and political system. The authors note that "We don’t need to stop the forest crisis. Nature will stop it."
They continue: "We do not know how to stop deforestation. We do not know how to get deforesters out of the forests. No one else — forest dwellers or civilized — has figured that out either, or surely the defor-esters would have been removed by now.
But we do know this. Once people see deforestation for the atrocity that it is, they will then stop those who continue to destroy. It is for this we wrote the book. It is this we have dedicated our lives."
Take Back Your Time: Fighting Overwork and Poverty in America
Edited by John de Graaf
(Berrett Kohler; San Francisco; 2003; 270 pages)
John de Graaf is the award-win-ning documentary film maker. Some of his great films which we have shown in SLO County include Affluenza, Escape from Affluenza and Beyond Organic. This book is an anthology that reads like a previous voluntary simplicity manifesto but this time it focuses on Time, that most pre-cious commodity in which we live our lives and make decisions. The anthology includes some of the most articulate people on the planet about this subject. We have David Korten, Anna Lappe, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Cecile Andrews, Carol Olstrom, Juliet Schor, Paul Loeb, Jonathan Rowe and Vicki Robin, to mention a few.
And the book is the official handbook of the national movement of TBYT (Take Back Your Time) Day, which was October 24th. Did you hear much about it? Did you read an article about it? We published an article and no one noticed. I put out a notice to help create an event to 200 local activists and only one responded and then later rescinded because he didn’t have enough time for it. We even published cartoons about it in HopeDance, and nada. Some of the graphics and cartoons are in this book, created by a graphics classroom that took TBYT as a class project. I think this has the ingredients for a mass move-ment because time appears to be a major stressful element in people’s lives. We don’t have enough time for our kids, to do what we want, to be with loved ones, to work at what we want to work at, to make love. It appears to be a growing force of pressure for many of us and many of us are saying no to it and trying to figure out what to do. Some will say that time does not change at all. It stays constant and it’s our relationship to it that can alter. I know that when I’m having fun, time seems to stand still and when I’m bored time seems to stretch endlessly … but it’s the general sociopolitical sense of time and our suffering around it that’s at issue here … and John de Graaf has taken his precious time to start a movement … and already there are solutions. And, even though it’s not in the book, there is even a congressional bill that will alter somehow the time constraints that we as families are encountering. Go to their official website to learn more about it. www.timeday.org. If you wish to organize a local event, go to the website and read the book and learn how to put one on.
Above reviews by Bob Banner.
Stillness: Daily Gifts of Solitude
by Richard Mahler
(Boston: Red Wheel, 2003 166 pages; $21.95; hardcover)
Richard Mahler spent 97 days in solitary confinement in the snow-covered Tusas Mountains of north-ern New Mexico, in order to spend "quiet alone-time" and to live "deliberatively." He was the winter caretaker of a ranch with no electricity, a wood stove for heat, and a short wave radio for emergencies. STILLNESS: DAILY GIFTS OF SOLITUDE is "part memoir, part adventure story, part spiritual re-flection, and part self-help." Mahler offers suggestions on how — "without running off to the wilderness" — individuals can incorporate solitude and silence into their daily lives.
Before his escape to the woods, Mahler was a freelance journalist and teacher, reporting on the mass media and celebrities ("subjects that no longer engaged me"). Each day, he was stuck in "a brain-numbing commute on the Santa Monica Freeway." Yearning for "long, unstructured days to reflect on my life and the changes I might make as I move forward," he fled to a ranch oin the Tucas range, "an extension of the San Juan Mountains of the southern Rock-ies, about thirty miles south of Colorado and fifty miles west of Taos." Mahler was eight miles from the nearest paved road and five miles from the closest neighbor.
Mahler sought refuge from "our consumption-oriented society, driven by a fast-paced economy." He asks if readers are "ready to join me in a softer, less frantic way of life, an existence that’s simpler, yet offers more?"
One way to find stillness is to "stop to listen — really listen" to your immediate environment. Mahler found that although he lived in a small, non-industrial city, his neighborhood was "awash in sounds I neither make nor desire: wailing sirens, buzzing saws, clattering garbage trucks, thumping boom boxes, and ringing school bells."
During his sojourn to the mountains, Maher made occasional trips to the outside world. The first thing he noticed was "how much agitated activity and seductive distraction we encounter in the course of a typical day. On the way back to town, my employer stopped at a gas station mini-market shortly after leaving the ranch, and I felt overwhelmed to the point of paralysis by the products on display, the blaring radio, the exhaust fumes, and the ill-humored purposelessness of the constant stream of customers."
All this noise and overstimulation is not good for the human body, psyche, or soul. Mahler quotes Jochen Schact, a bio-logical chemist at the University of Michi-gan, who states that "our ears are not made for a noisy world." He also quotes psychia-trist Anthony Storr, who states is his book, SOLITUDE: A RETURN TO THE SELF, that "some development of the capacity to be alone is necessary if the brain is to func-tion at its best and if the individual is to fulfill his or her highest potential." Mahler notes that "for thousands of years, the spiri-tual leaders of all great religious traditions have advocated regular internals of slowing down or stopping," and that "Jesus set an example by retreating to wilderness areas to pray and reflect."
Slowing down has numerous sublime benefits. Quiet alone-time can improve general health, slow down the aging pro-cess, improve sleep, generate a greater sense of contentment, increase productivity, strengthen the immune system, and create greater happiness.
Mahler suggests very simple, daily steps to create more quiet time, such as turning off the telephone, putting a "do not disturb" sign on your door, working when your colleagues are not there, leaving a few minutes early for your next appointment, closing your eyes and taking deep breaths, getting away from the computer, and taking regular walks. He also recommends yoga and meditation.
Mahler concludes by quoting from Herman Melville that "silence is the only voice of our God." Mahler asserts that "we must cease making our own noise if we hope to achieve fully the quiet wisdom of nature and the deep truths within our hearts. If we continue to surround ourselves with distracting noise and push ourselves through constant movement, we will inevitably keep craving their opposite. This hunger is for a silent sanctuary that affords us the priceless gift of looking at our lives in the relief of stillness, knowing that simplicity is the real wealth and solitude is good company. It is as accessible as the next moment, as simple as being alone." Ted Rueter is the director of Noise Free America (noisefree.org).
A Declaration of Interdependence: Why America Should Join the World
by Will Hutton
(W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.; May 2003; $27.95)
Within the pages of A Dec-laration of Interdependence: Why America Should Join the World, author Will Hutton examines the importance of a social contract in contemporary American society. This is timely reading material as Hutton contends the best efforts of the New Dealers and President Lyn-don B. Johnson’s Great Society are being dismantled by the Bush administration. He offers cogent arguments, which he backs with facts.
This is a fascinating and lucid examination, a compari-son and contrast if you will, be-tween European and American democracy and their philo-sophical underpinnings. Using concise examples from the founding of the United States through the current adminis-trative social and fiscal policies, Hutton clearly and rationally explains why American society is in its current quandary: ram-pant conservatism.
"To be conservative is to be patriotic and — even more extraordinarily — to be populist and the champion of ordinary people," he writes. "Today ... liberalism is charged with intellectual incoherence and is placed permanently on the political defensive. To be a liberal is no longer just a dirty word; it is associated with the venal crime of being un-American."
Not all blame can be laid at the feet of the current administration. He rightly looks at the ideals, theories, and even institutions that brought the nation where it is today. Among the most abhorrent of these he cites is slavery and the festering mess caused by it that has yet to heal. Spe-cifically examining affirmative action, he contends it "created a tremendous sense of injustice. As it was, liberalism never sorted out its own ambiguities over the question — leaving an opening which conservatism was to exploit murderously to help end the liberal ascendancy."
Hutton also examines globalization, including American consumerism, and how this has spread conservativism throughout world economics and politics, particularly in Great Britain. It has also resulted in the thrusting of the corporate into public life and space, here and abroad. The desire to emulate American institutions has resulted in Europeans blindly transforming public policy, law, markets, and other institu-tions without giving needed pause to think of possible ramifications or to question whether the American model actually fits into other societies, other structures. It is here that the book bogs down a bit. The prose is still lucid, but the subject matter can cause eyes to glaze over. What America should be doing, Hutton concludes, rather than waging war and attempting to strong-arm the world into lockstep, is to become more modest and self-aware. A tall order, indeed.
No one wants to see American de-mocracy slowly dissolved; to that end this book should be widely read and actively discussed by groups throughout the United States. No easy self-help steps are pro-scribed by Hutton, but with his prompting and creative thinking, perhaps activist vot-ers of all stripes can work together to bring about a more equal, more just, democratic American society that is a willing, active participant in world affairs.
— Linda Dailey Paulson ldpaulson@yahoo.com is a Ventura-based writer and reviewer.
Thieves in High Places: They’ve Stolen Our Country—And It’s Time To Take It Back
by Jim Hightower
(Viking Press; 280 pages; $24.95)
The great populist, author, and radio commenta-tor Jim Hightower (If the Gods Had Meant Us to Vote They Would Have Given Us Candi-dates) goes on a real tear with his current book Thieves in High Places. Hightower blasts the current North American power structure and exhorts his readers to fight against it. In the first third of the book he gives us "the bad news." While the news is indeed bad to the point of being almost sickening, Hightower does provide us with pertinent information to browbeat our Lim-baughtimized brothers-in-law in this litany of governmental abuse, corporate malfea-sance, militarization of American society, and "BushCo’s" empire building. Hightower illustrates how the Bush administration and our "Congress critters" work with major corporations (including the major media) to amass even greater wealth to the already obscenely rich at the expense of the majority of the American people, our environ-ment, and our civil liberties. In Hightower’s words, "never have so few done so much for so few" .
Fortunately for me, given that I already have high blood pressure, the book does not end there. In the last two-thirds of his book, Hightower gives us "the good news" and "the best news yet." While he continues to encourage the American people to resist the thievery going on all around us he also extols our basic decency, love of liberty and wholesome willingness to fight the good fight for freedom and justice. Here he catalogues triumphs of average people over mighty corporations. Hightower deeply believes that hope lies in community organization and grass roots movements [see the reprint of some ex-amples from his book in this issue]. Hope-fully his many and often heart-warming examples of everyday people standing up in the face of corporate arrogance and greed will inspire fledgling activists and those of us feeling a bit overwhelmed.
Carlo Christianson is a free lance writer living in SLO.
RADICAL SIMPLICITY: Small footprints on a finite Earth
by Jim Merkel
(New Society Publishers; $17.95; 25pps; 2003)
Jim Merkel fired up SLO activist Pat Veesart and many others (like me). I picture him on all the bikeways we have in SLOCo — but the cycler on the white bike should have a ponytail.
He trained me well. I ride my bike, recycle all I can, have an outside toilet, hang my laundry, have a garden, have photo-voltaics and solar panels on my roof, heat my home with wood and have only two grandchil-dren. I try hard to decrease my "footprint."
My favorite campplace in the dunes we call the "Merkel Campsite" where I have spent so many glorious nights with the sound of coyotes, with owls overhead and a beautiful sky — so much better than any TV screen (join me?)
The intro to Jim’s book mentions his transition in SLO-town. He mentions (but doesn’t name) a "radical attorney" whom I have speculated on but am still not sure who it is . He names a number of locals I know: Will Alexander, Mark Dimaggio, Amy Goodman, Mike Zarate, Pilulaw Khus, Pat Veesart and many more.
His transition: "Here was the plan: I’d quit workin’ for the man and live off savings for four years while working for the mama."
Bill Mckibben had this to say about the book: "I defy you to read this book and not come away thinking about ways your life might change for the better." It will make your life rich on the inside as you’ll reduce your "stuff" and have more free time, and the natural world will get you "grounded," as I call it. I hadn’t realized how much Jim has influenced the basic "me" until reading Radical Simplicity.
He mentions leaving SLO and starting the Global Living Project in British Co-lumbia. He then went to his original home in Maine/Vermont to write this book. Radi-cal Simplicity and HopeDance are showing us the way to SUSTAINABILITY — what WE must do is get off the corporate "road." The "Americanization" of the planet as attempted by the WTO recently in Cancun is the wrong direction. The trail leading to survival will not be designed by corpo-rations but by Bob Banner and Jim Merkel — it is the only trail for a future for our grandchildren. LEAD ON!!!
Bill Denneen is a eco-holligan living in Nipomo.
The Oh Really? Factor
Peter Hart and Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
Seven Sto-ries Press
September 2003
1-58322-601-X
157 $8.95 http://www.sevenstories.com
It really doesn’t take a genius to draw the conclusion that Bill O’Reilly, Fox News’s man in the bully pulpit, is an ax-grinding television commentator trying to wear the mantle of objectivity. If there were any question about this, Peter Hart and the crew of Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, the media watchdog group, have con-structed a quick read to confirm this.
O’Reilly, also well known for his stint on that bastion of fine television journalism Inside Edition, has made a name for himself with promises that he’ll give (read: spoon-feed) folks facts and truths they won’t hear elsewhere on his The O’Reilly Factor. Hart, who has been a guest on the show, punches holes in all this with more than 150 pages of deft examples showing just how distorted a spin O’Reilly puts on national and global events.
To be sure, O’Reilly is clearly on the right. For some reason, he tries to come off as some populist everyman. He thinks Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are peachy-keen examples of fine journalists, while drubbing Bill Moyers, Matt Lauer and other "pinheads."
If you’ve seen even one of his one-on-one interviews, you’d know O’Reilly to be an angry, sad man who won’t even let his interviewee finish a sentence. (They aren’t guests!) Perhaps this was best demonstrated in his reprehensible treatment of Jeremy Glick. As you might recall, he was the man who had the temerity to sign the Not in Our Name petition against war after his father was killed in the World Trade Center collapse. O’Reilly brought Glick on the show and proceeded to attack him verbally. He reportedly threatened Glick with physical violence once the program went to commercial.
This is just one shining example of O’Reilly’s just and fair journalism. And, unlike his program, The Oh Really? Factor appears to have been scrupulously fact-checked. This book comes in the wake of Fox and O’Reilly’s unsuccessful legal battle and public shouting match with Al Fran-ken, the comic satirist. To use some saws, this book is like pouring gasoline on the fire, poking a stick in a hornet’s nest. This book doesn’t present any particularly novel information, but if there are any fence sitters out there, it probably will polarize them. The better solution: turn off the television and learn to think for yourself.
— Linda Dailey Paulson ldpaulson@yahoo.com is a television-less Ventura-based writer and reviewer.
Behind The War On Terror: Western Secret Strategy and the Struggle for Iraq
by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
(New Society; 2003)
Following the US declaration of a "war on terror," Washington hawks were quick to label Iraq part of an "axis of evil." Af-ter a tense build-up, in March 2003 the United States and Britain invaded Iraq, purportedly to protect Western publics from weapons of mass destruction (WMD). But was this the real reason, or simply a convenient pretext to veil a covert agenda?
Using official sources, Ahmed [who also wrote the meticulously researched book "War on Freedom" (about 9-11) reviewed in HopeDance issue #35] investigates US and British claims about Iraq’s WMD programs, and in the process reveals the hidden motives behind the 2003 invasion and the grand strategy of which it is a part. He shows that the true goals of US-British policy in the Middle East are camouflaged by spin, PR decla-rations, and seem-ingly noble words. The reality can only be comprehended through knowledge of the history of Western intervention in the region. Ahmed demonstrates that such intervention has been dictated ruthlessly by economic and political interests, with little regard for human rights. He traces events of the past decades, beginning with the West’s support for the highly-repressive Shah of Iran, his subsequent usurpation by the Ayatollah’s Islamist regime, and the West’s resultant backing of Saddam Hussein. The spon-sorship of Saddam’s tyranny — a self-serving tactic intended to strategically counterbalance Iran — included the supply of technology to build WMD as well as tacit complicity in their use against Iranians and Kurds.
Ahmed’s meticulous research into the secret history of Western maneuverings in the Middle East since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire reveals the actual causes of the first Gulf War, the humanitarian catastrophe created by the twelve-year sanctions policy against Iraq, and the consistent obstructions of the Oil for Food program. He also provides information on the West’s own widespread use of WMD, and the likely culprits of the 2001 anthrax attacks in the US.
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is a hu-man rights activist and political analyst specializing in the study of conflicts. The Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development, he is the author of a variety of reports on human rights practices, as well as the best-selling book, "The War on Freedom: How and Why America was Attacked, September 11, 2001," published in English, German and Italian. Ahmed’s work on the conflict in Afghanistan is a recommended resource in leading universities including Harvard and California State, and he was recently named a Global Expert on War, Peace and International Affairs by the Freedom Network of the Henry Hazlitt Foundation in Chicago. Ahmed appears regularly on radio shows in the US as an expert on US foreign policy.
Hideous Dream, A Soldier's Memoir of the U.S. Invasion of Haiti
by Stanley A. Goff, Master Sergeant (E8), U.S. Army Special Forces
(SoftSkull Press; 2003; $18.95)
The 1994 reinstallment of Haiti President Jean Bertrand Aristide is better described as an occupation, according to Master Sergeant Stanley Goff in his account of the Special Forces A Teams. Aristide had been overthrown in a 1991 coup by the military strongman Raoul Cedras after only
eight months of Haiti’s first democratically-elected government. The 82nd Airborne had already lifted off from Ft. Pope when Cedras & Co. agreed to a leave with gener-ous benefits, the invasion having been averted by the "persuasion" of the negotiating team of former President Jimmy Carter, Gen. Colin Powell, and Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia. As shown by the author, the Operations Ser-geant of Opera-tions Detach-ment 354 Alpha, the real mission of the 10th Mountain Division (Rangers) and the Special Forces A teams was to reinstall the "new improved" Aristide as Haitian president to prevent the collapse of the country and outright revolution under the rule of the Cedras cabal. Anarchy does not serve the ruling class and inspire foreign investment. Neither does a reform-minded Catholic priest supported by the militant political party LAVALAS, which were the opposition during the years of the rule of the father and son dictators, Francois "Papa Doc" and Jean Claude "Baby Doc" Duva-lier, from 1957 to 1989.
Thus was the political reform of LAVALAS, won by honest elections in 1990 with 70% of the popular vote, suc-cessfully driven to the ground by means of a co-opted Aristide. The return to author-ity the FAd’H (the Force Armee d’Haiti) and FRAPH (Allied Front for Progress in Haiti), the murderous rightist paramilitary death squads so valuable to dictators, mili-tary strongmen, and first-world sponsors, made the political climate safe for looting, expropriating, and investment.
Haiti, as we know, was "discovered" by one Cristo Columbo on his first voyage to the "Orient." The Spanish called it Hispaniola, after killing many thousands of Arawaks, both intentionally and other-wise. The French, by encroachment and by treaty (1667), took the west third of the island, but a slave revolt in 1791 eventually drove both world powers off, and Haiti became the first independent country in the West founded by slaves. Nationalist liberators from Santo Domingo, the first European city in the Americas (also the name of the entire island before Haiti was founded) recovered the greater part and established the present boundaries.
Abraham Lincoln attempted to use Haiti as a dumping ground for slaves during the War Between the States but quickly halted such shipments when it was discovered that all were killed on arrival by the Macoutes. Always among the poor-est nations on earth (the 1980 wedding of "Baby Doc" sucked up $5 million of a $41 million World Bank loan, this in a country where, in a good year, the average worker gets $250), Haiti must have done well for someone besides U.S. sporting goods manufacturers (at one time nearly all baseballs were made there, as was sisal rope), because the U.S. Marines called it home for 20 years (1915-1934).
Master Sergeant Goff will walk you through the blatant-ness of military role in denying the Haitian people their attempt at forging their own democracy and throwing off the yoke of outside inter-ests. Goff, now retired, (he took retire-ment in 1996 as the lesser of several evils for taking his duty seriously), has much experience in the use of the U.S. Army in "nation remodeling." He was present in uniform in such job sites as Vietnam. Gua-temala, E1 Salvador, Grenada, Panama, Venezuela, Honduras, Columbia, Peru, Somalia, South Korea, was an instructor at the Jungle Warfare School, and also taught Military Science at the USMA, West Point. This is not a bad resume for an en-listed man. What is most impressive about Goff, however, is that he arrived, while still in uniform, at his conclusion, that the purpose of the military as an institution (frequently referred to as the fourth branch of government) is to enforce the policies of the corporate rulers, whose domain is any-place on earth. And he knows it is difficult if not impossible for anyone in a uniform to change the intent of an action where it meets the ground, especially if one is not privy to meetings taking place in the board-rooms of government (the West Wing, the Pentagon, State Dept., CIA, U.S. Embassies, military field headquarters, etc).
Goff makes easy reading with his great style, telling what is also an adventure story. You can feel the heat and smell the odors and hear the sounds as he takes you from place to place, situation to situation, but always with an eye to the politics of the game. "The flag follows the money and soldiers follow the flag." I recommend this great read to anyone who is disgusted and angry about the way the world is run by the people in the powerful nations who protect the ruling classes. Joseph Heller lives.
Matthew Jochim was a U.S.Army Artillery and Infantryman in 1965, now living in Cambria.
Hope in a Dark Time: An Anthology of World Peace-makers
Edited by David Krieger
(Capra Press, Santa Barbara; 2003, $17.95)
If there’s only one book you have time for, and you want to learn of new, creative actions to take for peace, read Hope In A Dark Time. It’s edited by David Krieger and endorsed enthusiastically by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. This anthology of 33 authors, both adults and children, who are committed to creating peace on earth, presents us with multiple ways to do it. Archbishop Tutu wrote: "This book can help us navigate through the fog of darkness.... It can help us remember our common humanity and our common destiny. It can inspire us to play our own special role in shaping the future, and shining the light of home around us."
I decided to use unusual quotations from the book for this review, feeling they would whet your appetite for reading the book and tasting the promises of peace-making.
Daisaku Ikeda, famous Japanese peacemaker, wrote: "However hard it may be to believe, we have the power individu-ally and collectively to change the world. We, the people, are the new superpower; ... our problems are manmade. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. If our hearts are filled with compassion, we can, without fail, create a peaceful world."
Sir Joseph Rot-blat: "We have to come to terms with the fact that the human species is not an endangered species. We must not allow the miraculous product of billions of years of Revolution to come to an end because we cannot forget our quarrels."
Frank K. Kelly: "I advocate the cre-ation of a Center for Humanity’s future as a statement of confidence in the tremen-dous capacities of human beings ... and a launching pad for ideas from throughout the world."
Gene Knudsen Hoffman: "We cannot make peace if we do not listen to our ‘ene-mies’ with the same compassion, nonjudge-ment, and caring we ask for ourselves."
King Hussein: "Nothing is more useless in developing a nation’s economy than a gun, and nothing blocks the road to social deveiopment more than the financial burden of a war."
Richard Falk and Andrew Strauss: The "Culture of Peace Decade could well be a decade of United Nations Citizenship for young people, to fall in love with a world that so badly needs loving."
Hafsat Abiola: "Take your light and love into the world as the only weapons we need to make this world truly glorious."
David Krieger: The Earth Charter states "As never before in history, common destiny beckons us to seek a new begin-ning."
Let us begin.
Gene K. Hoffman