I've only included what I wrote, myself, but the whole contents is listed at the beginning --
Montana Green Bulletin
February 18, 2008 Volume VII, Number 8
A PROJECT OF THE CASCOGREENS
THIS BULLETIN IS NOT AN OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF ANY GREEN PARTY (see disclaimers and selected resources at end)
Table of Contents:
UPCOMING AND ONGOING EVENTS
Winona LaDuke to speak in President's Lecture Series at UM Missoula at 8pm on Monday, Feb 25
FROM ROLLING STONE "Chicken Doves" by Matt Taibbi http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/18349197/the_chicken_doves Democrat led anti-war movement was never more than a front to elect Democrats
Bring home the National Guard! ~ LT News 4.4
http://www.LibertyTreeFDR.org/guard.php
THE 545 PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE FOR AMERICA'S WOES
by Charley Reese http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18568.htm
GREEN SOLUTIONS by Paul Stephens, CasCoGreens
David Stockman and "The Triumph of Politics"
The Trouble with Politics
The Politics of "Legalized Gambling"
Forget Capitalism
Social Libertarianism
Nazi Chic
The Boys from Brazil
FROM THE ARCHIVES
On becoming an Elder (not a patriarch)
It'll take a Truman to abolish nuclear war
The Lewis and Clark Bi-Centennial: a scorched earth policy
[Some of these links, below, might not work, so I haven't enabled but a couple of them. You can try copying and pasting in your browser.... Remember, this is from February, 2008, but I happened to pick up an old notebook from then which had a printed copy of this stuff, and it fit very well with what is happening, today. Call it recycling....]
FROM MAZIN QUMSIYEH
Palestinian issues
ZNET COMMENTARY
Bringing Down The New Berlin Walls
By John Pilger http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2008-02/13pilger.cfm
FROM GLOBAL RESEARCH.CA
Israel's Nuclear Missile Threat against Iran By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7838
FROM RABBLE.CA
COAL AND ENERGY ISSUES
Coal Supply and a License to Print Money By Ian Cooper http://www.energyandcapital.net/newsletter.php?date=2008-02-08
Improving Our Green Job Prospects
By Kelpie Wilson http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/021508J.shtml
Shipping boom fuels rising tide of global CO2 emissions
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/feb/13/climatechange.pollution
by John Vidal, The Guardian environment editor
FROM SAM SMITH
OBAMA: WHY CHEERING IS BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH http://www.prorev.com/2008/02/obama-why-cheering-is-bad-for-your.html
HISTORY'S HINTS FOR THIRD PARTIES
By Sam Smith, The Progressive Review
http://prorev.com/greenhints.htm
FROM TOMDISPATCH.COM
Going Bankrupt: Why the Debt Crisis Is Now the Greatest Threat to the American Republic by Chalmers Johnson http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174884/chalmers_johnson_how_to_sink_america
GREEN SOLUTIONS by Paul Stephens, CasCoGreens
David Stockman and the Triumph of Politics
I was cleaning out a storage room the other day, and came across an old discarded library copy of David Stockman's, "The Triumph of Politics" (Harper & Row, 1986). Although this is ancient history now, the Republican primary debates reminded us that even though Stockman explained in this book "Why the Reagan Revolution Failed," most Republican candidates and voters seem to have forgotten that it failed. They were falling over each other in their attempts to grasp the mantle of Reagan virtue and invincibility through tax cuts and vast military spending increases.
Historians, of course, will remember Reagan as the worst president of the 20th century, and the second worst in our nation's history - second only to GW Bush. More importantly, he established a number of precedents which both Republicans and Democrats are following as "settled law" to this day.
Stockman doesn't think that Reagan was a bad President, of course. He thinks he was working for a wise and benevolent leader who was "betrayed by politics." Stockman's job was the Director of Office of Management and the Budget - the CFO of the Reagan Administration.
According to the first paragraph on the dust jacket, "In the Triumph of Politics, David Stockman brings us a front-line report of the miscalculations, head-on collisions, secret manipulations, and alliances that led to the failure of the Reagan Revolution, a failure that has produced a staggering deficit of one trillion dollars instead of the balanced budget the President had promised the electorate by 1984."
Stockman writes: "Reagan had one real option: to retreat and give back part of the huge tax cut we couldn't afford. But he wouldn't. Ronald Reagan chose not to be a leader but a politician, and in so doing showed why passion and imperfection, not reason and doctrine, rule the world. His obstinacy was destined to keep America's economy hostage to the errors of his advisers for a long, long time."
In the 1980 primary campaign, GHW Bush understood that Reagan was advocating "voodoo economics." His son, GW Bush, has followed a program which can only be described as "Reaganomics on steroids." We are not likely to survive this violent addiction without a major economic calamity, leading to a violent revolution or military coup, and the end of American politics as we have long known it. Get ready! -- PHS
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The Trouble with Politics
When again we can hold a fair election on real issues, let's vote, and not until then.
~ W.E.B. DuBois
The last time I swore off electoral politics entirely was 1998. I had run for City Commissioner (non-partisan) in 1995, and that experience convinced me that the best candidates never win, or get any support from the people who should want to support them. People simply don't understand why we have elections, or even why we should want to have a democratic form of government. They see everything as a zero-sum or negative-sum game, in which electing people from one's own faction will enable them to prey on and exploit people from other parties or factions. They see politics as a kind of "team sport", in which we must elect "winners" so that they can "defeat" people from other "teams," classes, or factions. The vast majority of voters are simply unaware of (or in denial about) the very idea of government as an institution which serves everyone's interests, and makes us all better-off. Government is largely based on scape-goating. Who can we blame and punish for whatever problems or shortcomings exist in our lives?
When I was in 8th grade, nearly 50 years ago, we had to memorize the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States. I wonder how many voters know what it says?
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
I remembered everything but the "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility" part - and those are the functions least observable in today's society. We still hear about the other listed functions of government often enough, although most people now probably see the federal government, at least, as being more of a threat to liberty, the general welfare (economic prosperity), and public safety than providing these things. The Green movement certainly saw it that way, along with other "state's rights" and local grass-roots democracy and peace advocates. It is always the federal government which initiates wars of aggression. All the major (and minor) wars in which Americans have fought and died (excepting perhaps the War of 1812, which was a continuation of our original War of Independence) have been unnecessary and deceitfully initiated.
Before the 1995 campaign, I had long distanced myself from both "major parties" - since the 1960's. Most of my friends were Democrats, who would periodically distance themselves from me, when I refused to march in lock-step with them and the local Democrat Machine. I decided there was only one real issue that could benefit from my attention, and that was nuclear disarmament. My research and experience had convinced me that this was by far the most pressing cause. If we failed to end the nuclear arms race and abolish nuclear weapons world-wide, all of our other goals and purposes as workers, artists, parents, educators, farmers, business people, or even accumulators of capital were for nought. It was like building our lives (or our empires) on quicksand. Everything would be lost if we did not remove this Sword of Damocles hanging over our heads.
Meanwhile, the Green Party seemed to be growing and developing as a viable alternative. Its first national convention was actually held at UCLA in 1996, my alma mater. Amazingly enough, I heard nothing about this (my mother died that summer, and I was in the process of moving to Bozeman to take the teaching job at Headwaters Academy.) But I still wrote in Nader for President in the Fall election. There seemed to be little or no visible Green Party organizing in Montana at that time.
In 2000, it was different, and early on, I was recruited to collect signatures and otherwise advance the campaign. It was easy for me to do so, since I was then working as a cab driver, talking to a few dozen different people every day. I could carry the petitions in the cab and get a few signatures each day. I also purchased ads for Nader and LaDuke in the local free advertiser-sponsored papers, got a computer and an e-mail address, and proceeded to begin working as a Green Party activist.
I wonder, now, if I haven't totally wasted the better part of 10 years trying to build a party which seems to be going absolutely nowhere. As a member of the National Committee of the GPUS, I am expected to wade through hundreds of e-mails, virtually all of which are devoted to personal attacks and attempts to get someone fired or replaced by a member of a different faction. It surpasses all belief and understanding. Why are these people there? What do they think they are doing?
In 2000, I had two books nearing completion, and hoped to be a regular published writer in a variety of periodicals. It's true, I wasn't having much luck getting published, and I really couldn't figure out why not. I had some training and experience in journalism, both academically and from writing for local papers and working as a volunteer in several different public radio stations. I could write editorials and commentaries with the best of them. But it seems that I had "enemies" - some of them masquerading as friends or advocates. I even wrote to one of them during the past year, demanding that she explain why she felt it necessary to patronize and belittle me, even while she was pretending to "help" me. Needless to say, she had no such recollections. But she had been the first to join the Nader campaign, here, and soon got me into it (not that I needed any persuading). However, she proved to be much more susceptible to attacks by the Democrats she had long worked with than I was, and when I started publishing the Bulletin in 2002 and ran for County Commissioner, she was anything but supportive.
I continued working as a cab driver for four more years. By driving only 3 (long) days per week, I was able to make a comfortable living as a single person, with enough free time to do my political work. But when I ran for the Legislature (against John Parker) in 2004, the cab company fired me in the middle of the campaign. They were (and presumably still are) heavily connected with the local Democrat Machine. As such, they saw their economic interests being threatened by my advocacy for a much-expanded public transportation system, better regulation of the monopoly cab business (although I never publicized those issues while I worked for them, but tried to encourage them to expand their business and improve customer service ), and my opposition to the local "casino industry" and video poker-keno machines, which provide perhaps 1500 of the better-paying jobs in Great Falls (as well as countless personal tragedies from gambling addictions and the alcoholism, drug addiction, and family abuse associated with it).
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The politics of "legalized gambling."
Here, again, the perception of what government is, and who should be voted into office (only those who are "safe" and already controlled by whatever "powers that be") worked very much to my disadvantage. I estimated that probably 20% or more of the cab business was associated with bars and casinos. Once machine casino gambling gets a foothold in a community, it is very difficult to root it out. And this reinforces people's perceptions that whoever controls gambling controls the government. Gambling in Montana (or what passes for it - I consider the machines to be purely exploitative, without any "fun", "recreation," or competitive skills, or even "luck" involved) is now more than a $1 billion "industry," with vast corporate profits for the three main video machine manufacturers and distributors (who typically own the machines and maintain them, in exchange for a 50-50 split with the tavern owners). Most bar owner will freely admit that a single video Keno/Poker machine provides more profits than all their alcohol sales, and each bar is allowed to have up to 20 of them per liquor license. Now that established interests own all the gambling licenses, new "cabaret" licenses are being issued for restaurants to serve wine and beer (or 20% or pre-mixed drinks) without being allowed to have gambling on the premises. This reflects the fact that the social and entertainment services traditionally supplied by nightclubs and taverns were almost completely eliminated by our 30-year "experiment" with "legalized gambling." Polls show that more than 2/3 of the voters would approve an outright ban on machine gambling, but no such votes or legislation is forthcoming.
In Montana, most machine gambling is controlled by the Kellman and Kenneally families, the latter owning the largest chain of convenience stores/gas stations, hotels, etc. as well as all the Lucky Lil's and Magic Diamond casinos. Zolly Kellman came to Montana from Minnesota in the 1950's, selling punchboards and bar supplies across the state. Later, he got into the juke-box business (which is why his company is called "American Music," although it is almost entirely devoted to video gambling machines) and distributed an illegal game, the "Red Ball" machines in the 1970's, as well as early video games like Pac-Man which were also for "entertainment only." Some of these machines were equipped with a concealed switch so that the number of accumulated "free games" or points could be "cashed out" to the player.
Machine gambling was legalized in the 1980's, starting with a judge's decision that machines labeled "keno" or "poker" were legal, since live games in those categories were legalized in the 1972 Montana Constitution. However, the intent was always to eliminate "casino gambling," and especially slot machines, where players play against the House rather than against each other. Somehow, that distinction has been totally lost, and nearly every "gambling" establishment in Montana calls itself a "casino" these days, and consists exclusively of video "gaming" machines.
The Montana system is actually much more exploitative than, say, Nevada's or California's. The payouts are limited to a maximum of $800, which I have compared to having "maximum wage laws" rather than minimums. This means that the players losses aren't limited, but the possibility of winning is. Also, the machines pay out a much lower percentage of total "bets" than is the case in Nevada, and there is a state lottery, originally promoted as being for "education," which in fact supports little more than a large statewide gambling bureaucracy and a massive advertising budget farmed out to the corporate media. What a good deal for us!
Another perennial sore spot with me is that poker players and other serious gamblers have never been represented in the legislature or on the Montana Gaming Commission. The players (customers) are considered immoral low-lifes or victims, not "sovereign consumers" or a constituency which should be represented in these decisions.
In this respect, it's much like the drug cartels (legal and illegal). Laws aren't written or enforced for the benefit of addicts or medical consumers of pharmaceuticals; they're written by and for the benefit of the prison industry, Big Pharma, and even the illegal cocaine and heroin cartels (as well as local "treatment centers" which are lavishly funded out of public money, with almost no measurable positive results). In the last Legislature, "anti-gambling" legislators wanted to appropriate $200 million to "treat" the estimated 10,000 or more serious victims of machine gambling addiction in Montana. I went to one of the teleconferenced hearings, and suggested that it would be much cheaper simply to enforce the laws against slot machines and casino gambling. Sue Dickenson, Joe Tropila, and other Great Falls Democrats who are heavily financed by local gaming interests suggested that we "circulate a petition" to that effect! And these are considered "the good guys" in the Legislature!
The gambling industry in Montana still likes to maintain that that their machines are for "entertainment only," and that professional or other serious gamblers aren't welcome in their establishments. After all, they might win and take some of the money elsewhere. Our "casinos" only exist to mine the weakness, sickness, and stupidity of people who don't know any better, and can't afford to be there, or have access to pension funds or other resources they didn't earn, themselves. The owner of the cab company I worked for was from Las Vegas, where he had gone to prison for embezzlement to feed his gambling habit. I suspected that he was skimming the cab company's revenues - and underpaying the drivers - in order to pay off some of these old debts, although I couldn't prove it.
There are plenty of other reasons why the Public Service Commission should remove Diamond Cab's monopoly status, enforce safety and service standards, and encourage a variety of alternatives (profit and non-profit) to provide an integrated public transportation system so that no one in Great Falls needs to own an automobile. Of course, the car dealerships are another major foundation of the local Democrat (and Republican) political machines, and they have successfully lobbied to make public transportation systems unworkable and under-utilized in nearly every case. They've even managed to stop local businesses and city planners from putting up bike racks and otherwise encouraging non-motorized transportation.
In conclusion, my experience has been that it isn't possible to run for office and win if you oppose corrupt local economic interests. Of course, I have never been a popular candidate with a lot of friends and supporters, nor have I been able to recruit other candidates who have those qualities. Apparently, popularity and success are mutually exclusive to integrity and courage. People may admire integrity, intelligence, and courage, but they won't support it financially, or vote for people who display those qualities. Nor will they hire independent thinkers as employees - especially in the media, education, or other fields where such qualities are most important.
Capitalism rules, and it is a most stupid and self-defeating system, along with being bent on destroying the global ecosystem, promoting civil wars and revolutions, and otherwise marching headlong towards oblivion. If Ambrose Bierce (who got his start as an army cartographer in Montana) were to define today's "capitalism," he might say that it is "collective mass suicide". -- PHS
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Forget Capitalism
All too much of our political discussion these days involves whether or not we support "Capitalism", or more specifically, "the Free Market," "Private Property", or even "a free society" (as opposed, apparently, to socialism, "the Welfare State", the social safety net, or any other form of responsible government - responsible, that is, to the People, rather than corporations or some sort of oligarchy or military dictatorship).
As someone who was trained in free market economics, and has always been a libertarian, an advocate of constitutional government, the rule of law (an independent judiciary), and a devolved, responsive, locally controlled administration of governmental functions, I have never been "an advocate of capitalism," although for a time I was tricked by the Ayn Rand movement into thinking that "capitalism" was these things I believed in and supported. That basically ended before I graduated from university in 1969. After that, I began calling myself an anarchist, a left-libertarian, or "some sort of democratic socialist."
Unlike most of my friends who were econ or business majors, I never interviewed with any sort of corporate employer. My department and others strongly urged me to apply for a civil service job, and with my low honors degree, I would have started a grade or two higher than most people with a bachelor's degree in economics.
However, I was even more opposed to the federal government and its regulatory agencies (where most econ majors would have worked) than I was distrustful of (not to say disgusted by) the corporate world. I did work for a year as a California state employee for the University of California, and have often regretted that I didn't stay there. I would have now had a PhD and probably been retired by now, with a million dollar home (which then cost maybe $40,000.) Instead, I returned to Montana to "help" my dysfunctional family who were messing up so badly that the family ranch (of some 1200 acres, owned free and clear when I was a boy) was in danger of being lost, and everyone was fighting among themselves for no discernable reasons or purposes. Their response was essentially to disown me and conspire against me for being "a hippy", as well as having me committed to a mental hospital (several of them were alcoholics or other addicts and under psychiatric care, which of course they "projected" on to me). And, of course, they were heavily involved in either Republican or Democrat politics, and my disdain for those parties and what they were doing to our country at the end of the Vietnam Era was actively expressed. They pretended that they simply "couldn't understand me", and thus fit me into some hated category that was "other" than what they knew and believed in, themselves.
A familiar enough story, I'm sure. As part of the "youth culture" (largely based on smoking marijuana and other "mind-altering drugs" - the opposite of the speeded up corporate meth, anti-depressants, and cocaine culture we associate with drug use, today), we supported basically all of the Green values - back to the land, peace, justice, communalism (rather than "the nuclear family"), etc. All the same issues were present then that still exist, today, and my understanding probably peaked around the mid-1970's, when I was arrested for marijuana possession (after having already been declared insane by my father, uncle, and one of their psychiatrist drinking buddies). I fled from Montana at my first opportunity, working with a migrant farm labor crew from Kansas for two summers, and taking up residence in Boulder, Colorado, thereafter. I worked as a dishwasher and painter there, and began to function as an environmental activist and public radio supporter (I attended some of the first meetings to organize KGNU, which is the home of Alternative Radio). I was also one of the founding members of the Denver Open Network, started by my old friend Leif Smith from UCLA, where we attended the Hayek seminars on Law, Legislation, and Liberty.
Apparently, I am a dangerous person to know if you're concerned about your career and "reputation." Stalinism rules. Even if you're not concerned about your own "interests", your friends or family may be punished for whatever you do or say, or whom you associate with. Or so I have come to understand the situation here in Great Falls.
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Social Libertarianism
The end of the evolutionary story outlined above occurred in the late 1980's and early 1990's, when I began teaching and participating in wider intellectual movements. There didn't seem to be a category which fit my views, although I recognized that "the Greens" (as opposed to various "Green Parties") were very close to my own views and values. The Green Party was very slow in starting in Montana. There were many radical Leftist elements dating back to the IWW and various Marxist, Stalinist, and Trotskyist groups centered around the copper industry, railroads, and other large-scale industrial enterprises (call it "the Age of Coal", which some local people still see nostalgically as "our future.") This caused the hippy and nascent Green movements to take on a rather strange character. For example, a standard item of "furniture" in nearly every tie-dyed, incense-burning, vegetarian household was a "spool table" - basically, a huge wooden spool about 6-8 feet across and 2-3 feet high - sometimes lovingly re-finished, painted, or otherwise decorated. These all came from the Anaconda Company, which manufactured copper wire and cable for power transmission.
The hippy "back to nature" movement in Montana was heavily unionized and "working class." Children of the capitalist or professional classes were regarded with some suspicion, and unlike Los Angeles, where the psychedelic culture started with the elites (academics, artists, musicians, etc.) and "trickled down," to be a hippy in Montana was regarded as being a final resignation from everything but the lowest criminal and "welfare" classes. Many of them subsisted from drug dealing (often tied in with prescription drugs, here - those on Medicaid were often on de facto "maintenance programs" where doctors would prescribe amphetamines, morphine, or other drugs). Marijuana was grown and distributed locally, eliminating nearly all the negative economic consequences of supporting the international mafias and drug cartels. And there was a lot of interest in traditional shamanistic practices, with the ceremonial use of peyote and mushrooms. In some places (and Montana was one of them), "speed" or amphetamine use and addiction was probably as much of a problem in the 1970's as it is, today, but since pharmaceutical grade drugs were readily accessible, most of the crime problem was eliminated, consistent with the long-standing "drug policy reform" proposals (decriminalization - treat drug use and addiction as a medical problem rather than prosecuting and incarcerating the victims).
Many of us were rural, small-town people who continued working on farms and ranches, as I did. And a good number simply continued on as construction workers, auto mechanics, gunsmith-survivalists, or whatever. And of course we were heavily represented in the bar culture, playing music, working in nursing homes, and that sort of thing. Factory work was never popular with this group since we did understand and oppose the exploitative nature of major industrial corporate enterprises.
By the early 1990's, I'd "gotten it all together" and proclaimed a new social philosophy or ideology - "Social Libertarianism." Of course, there was very little new in it - "libertarian socialism" is as old as socialism, itself. But I designed it to be meaningful and accessible to people of many different backgrounds, socio-economic status, class affiliations, etc. Much of that work has been published in revised form in this Bulletin.
As my readers should know, I am very suspicious and negative about electoral politics and even "the democratic process" as such. My experiences in the Green Party have only reinforced such views. Basically, democracy is unworkable - or workable only among people with good manners, enlightened ethical beliefs, and a sincere desire to work together for the good of all. Such people rarely, if ever, join political parties or engage in electoral politics, and when they do, they are generally eaten alive like Jimmy Carter or any number of other "good people" have been. They are simply no match for the Stalinists, Trotskyists, Fascists, Nazis, and other manipulative "true believers" who are attracted to such activities.
Politics as we know it is a mental illness of vast proportions, and it is the sickest, most in-denial people who prevail. Witness the Clinton's, Bush, Cheney, or John McCain. These people should be in prison, not running for President of the United States! They're all war criminals and bent on destroying our country. Yet, that is "popular" and "reputable" in all respects, while we "dissidents" are targeted for assassination and/or "liquidation as a class." And some 90+% of Congress is voting regularly to do exactly that. QED.
Do you see, now, why W.E.B. DuBois said, a century or so ago,
"When again we can hold a fair election on real issues, let's vote, and not until then.
~ W.E.B. DuBois
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Nazi Chic
I went to the local public library Wednesday night to see one of their "Film Movement" presentations. It was a spectacular Finnish film, "Mother of Mine," set during World War II about a re-located Finnish orphan boy taken in by Swedes. http://www.motherofmine.com/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0343221/
Half the audience was in tears by the end of it. Since I know a little Norwegian, I found myself understanding most of the Swedish dialogue by the end. These people were so much like my own Scandinavian ancestors (including many Finnish and Swedish neighbors - I still live half a block from the original Swedish Lutheran Church, here) that it seemed, like so many films do, to be about my own family during that time.
One of the peculiarities of World War II history is that the Germans were the "good guys" to the Finns, defending them from the Soviet Russkies. And the Swedes, although nominally neutral, were the major suppliers of iron ore and other vital resources to the Nazi war machine. (They also took in many Jewish refugees - something the Norwegians hadn't been willing to do, but were invaded anyway - mainly because they were more closely allied with the British, and seen as "betraying" their "Aryan" brothers).
Before I left the library, I checked out some videos. One of them was called "Fatherland," starring Rutger Hauer, based on the novel by Robert Harris. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109779
It had a strange sort of premise, much like the more recent novel, "The Plot Against America" by Philip Roth in which the Nazis won World War II, after Lindbergh won the presidency and convinced America to stay out or side with the Nazis in WWII. http://www.amazon.com/Plot-Against-America-Novel/dp/0618509283
In the Harris version, the D-Day invasion fails, Britain surrenders (after the Nazis threaten to destroy London with their own atom bomb), and Churchill flees in disgrace to Canada. Eisenhower retires, and Eddie and Wallace Simpson become the new Royal Family. (Rather eerie, considering this book and film date from 1994). America goes ahead and nukes the Japanese, but then supports the Nazis in their continuing war against Bolshevism, which is still being fought, on the Orwellian model, in 1964 Berlin - the setting for this novel and film.
Joe Kennedy Sr. (Jack and Bobby's father) has directly realized his dream of becoming America's president. The plot involves a summit meeting between Kennedy and Hitler (who is still alive - he was born in 1888). The "Final Solution" has already taken place, but no one outside of the SS and Gestapo even knows that it happened. An American journalist covering the summit is given documentation about the Holocaust, and the attempt to stop her and recover the incriminating photographs is the plot of the story. Rutger Hauer plays an SS officer who is trying to defect. Even he is shocked by the photos which another SS officer has provided to the journalist.
I was wondering why a public library would have a film of this kind - it was originally made for HBO. I was even more surprised when I looked it up on IMdB - there were dozens of reviews and comments, virtually all of them positive, and many of them from France or Britain. Apparently, their understanding of what World War II was about is very different from what we were taught in America.
Seeing this film followed on some further research I was doing on Berchtesgaden, the home of the Pope's great-uncle, Georg Ratzinger, which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. There is, indeed, a large international movement which CLAIMS not to be pro-Nazi or "holocaust deniers" or whatever, but which in fact sees the Nazis as real contributors to the "modern world" - and even a necessary part of it.
Geoff Walden's "Third Reich Ruins" website is one of the most impressive of the lot. The Berchtesgaden section (where his father was part of the American "liberating" army at the end of WWII) provides a comprehensive description of this final stronghold of the Nazis, with many original and unique photographs, and extensive documentation about what has happened to the area since WWII. -- PHS
Berchtesgaden and the Obersalzberg
http://www.thirdreichruins.com/bgaden.htm
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The Boys from Brazil
"The continuation of Nazi history by other means" is a perennial feature in novels, films, and TV shows. There were several "Star Trek" episodes which featured Nazi or Nazi-like civilizations visited by the Enterprise crew. And there is still an active "Neo-Nazi" movement in many parts of the world, much of which seems to be based on traditional anti-Semitism, but a good deal more of it is reinforced or promoted (reflexively, one might say) by AIPAC, the NeoCons, and other elements of the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Prison Complex (otherwise known as "the Zionist Occupation Government," or ZOG).
To these people, Hitler was a saint, or, indeed, the "second coming of Christ." The truth or falsity of his political views is irrelevant. He clearly loved the people, he suffered for the Fatherland, was persecuted by Jews and other "finance capitalists," and finally gained the power to carry out his "vision" of a united Germany, free of foreign control and domination. Nazism, in this view, was a "national liberation movement," and amazing as it might seem to Americans, was widely recognized as such in those nations and territories conquered by the Nazis.
It's a psychological truism that victims of oppression take on the views and behavior of their oppressors. They have "learned" this behavior from them. (cf. "Stockholm Syndrome") This is why nearly all "pedophiles" were themselves victims of childhood sexual abuse, and why nearly every person who relies on force and violence to achieve their purposes were beaten or otherwise coerced and tyrannized as children. And no amount of ideological "education" and "re-conditioning" can make such people think and behave otherwise.
Perhaps our prison system is justified after all. Americans are the most violent, tyrannized, and exploited people in the world. Small wonder, then, that they should impose this treatment on others. But that begs the question of what we should be doing to change or correct this sorry state of affairs - obviously, something very different from the policies and programs our governments are following, today.
Yes, the Nazis were bad. But they were bad in exactly the same way (or even to a much lesser extent) than the Bush Administration or contemporary American Republican or Democrat parties are bad. They were war mongers, bent on revenge. But the Nazis had real enemies and real oppressors from past history. They didn't need to "manufacture" them as recent American governments have done.
Both were obsessed with power and control. They locked up, tortured, and executed millions of innocent civilians who had no connection with "enemies" or being hostile to "the Fatherland," just as the Bush and Clinton administrations have locked up, killed, or tortured millions of innocent people who only wanted to be friends and allies of "the United States of America."
I don't make these comparisons lightly. They are crystal clear to anyone who has been on the receiving end of the American "criminal justice system" or "Operation Iraq Freedom." Ask them. Feel their pain. They, too, are children of "the Boys from Brazil." -- Paul Stephens
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FROM THE ARCHIVES
I'm not sure when I first published the following essay in this Bulletin, but it was before I started calling my columns "Green Solutions." In any case, I was trying to explain to a Native American acquaintance what this Bulletin is and is about. I had the following commentary filed separately under Native American issues, and sent it to him. I think it's one of the best things I ever wrote for this Bulletin. -- PHS
On becoming an elder (not a patriarch)
When I turned 50, I told my family I now considered myself an elder. I was old enough to be a grandfather, even if I wasn't one. Apparently, they didn't understand my meaning, because they continued to treat me like a retarded juvenile, as they always had in the past.
Lately, I've begun to think not only like an elder, but like a patriarch, as well. It hasn't been comfortable for me. I don't want to be thought of as the "alpha male," even in a spiritual or intellectual sense (which is hardly going to happen, in any case). I guess I've earned the respect of a lot of people from whom I didn't have any, before, and that has been very gratifying. And to make new friends and suddenly find myself a Peer of the international radical brother/sisterhoods has proven to be an honor I was not prepared to recognize or accept. Nevertheless, I have done so, and will continue in this direction.
We really can turn things around. We're going to see it, now, with increasing frequency. People are hungry for truth, and we have all kinds of it. We're not a threat to anyone; we really want everyone to be better-off. We're not into punishment and blame. "Go, and sin no more" is one of the few Christian sentiments we wholeheartedly embrace (maybe I should "I" instead of "we." I'd hate to try to get that approved by either of the Green Party governing boards!)
In any case, we're here to fix things, not start or perpetuate some new or ancient conflicts. If we focus our energies in positive directions, and always speak the truth, and be subject to corrections and revisions at any point, there's no limit to what we, the readers of this Bulletin, and the millions of others who think like us, can do. We can save the world and humanity. Or we can destroy it. It won't be "us," of course, who destroys it. It will be our imagined "enemies" launching missiles just to spite us, by accident, or to settle some other ancient score. As long as these things exist -- nuclear-armed missiles, each capable of destroying a city -- it is likely that they will somehow fall into the hands of bad people. And even a few of them in such hands can mean the end of civilization.
It'll take a Truman to abolish nuclear war
Are there really people in our state legislature who want to maintain and preserve our local nuclear arsenal? God help them if they do. Every major political party should immediately condemn the nuclear arms race, and come out in favor of the global abolition of nuclear weapons. The Montana legislature should be offered a Resolution to that effect. (Even Ronald Reagan pressed for "the zero option.") Montana will immediately be recognized as the leading nuclear-armed, anti-nuclear state. We can take a leading role in global nuclear disarmament.
I think we have the people together, now, to do this. I could certainly make up a starting list. And with our Governor's name on it, it would have a rare authority in today's political cosmos. Albert Schweitzer was an original signatory of Bertrand Russell's movement for the abolition of nuclear weapons in the 1950's, and won the Nobel Peace Prize for his many humanitarian endeavors. There are other prizes to be won, as well.
We're in the spotlight, folks. It's like the Truman Show. Most people don't know it (or have been denying it for decades), but what Montana does is seen and discussed all over the world. We're already a global leader, and it's not because we have a Minuteman missile base, here. We're not proposing unilateral nuclear disarmament (although one minister of the Gospel convinced me that it would be a much better alternative than a nuclear holocaust), but a process by which all nuclear weapons and the means to reconstruct them will be forever banned from Planet Earth and human civilization. Call it impossible if you like. Tell us about the Nuclear Genii that can't be put back inside the bottle. We don't want him in the bottle. We want to eliminate nuclear weapons technology entirely.
We're talking NECESSITY, here. Either we eliminate nuclear weapons, or they will eliminate us. Nuclear weapons are inherently evil. They're anti-life. They're anti-freedom. They're genocidal. Some argue that they aren't even "weapons," because they have no proper use in warfare. They are, rather, "instruments of mass destruction" -- something totally outside of prior human experience, and our ability to morally deal with them. They are, indeed, the "aliens" in our midst. The Holocaust embraced and defended.
If you believe in God and the Devil, then the simplest way to say it is that nuclear weapons are entirely against God's will. They are the work of the Devil. (And if some scientist like Edward Teller tells you otherwise, you know whose side he's on.) That doesn't mean that the scientists or engineers should be punished. They're traditionally opposed to the nuclear arms race. Had we listened to the scientists, we never would have used nuclear weapons against Japan, nor would we have the global arsenals which now exist. Just cut off their funding. Give them something else to do.
If you don't have mystical or supernatural tendencies, it should be even clearer why we have to rid the world of nuclear weapons. There is an overwhelming consensus on the part of moral leaders, scientists, humanitarians-- even generals and politicians -- that we must stop using war as a means to resolve disputes. We must demilitarize the planet, as well as make it nuclear-free. We've got to start taking our stewardship seriously, and manage our population and our resources for perpetuity. We will probably have to create new political and social institutions to do it. We believe in the breakup of large nation-states, to be replaced by local governments and grass-roots democracy. We can have global systems of law and many other kinds of policy (especially regarding the environment), but we don't need large armies, navies, and certainly not nuclear weapons in order to do that. We believe in self-government for all, not American (or European or Chinese) hegemony or corporate globalization/imperialism.
Are there really people who oppose these policies? Are there people who think we should have Stalins and Hitlers, and then have to fight to overcome them, or somehow outlast them? I'm sure there are, but it shouldn't be hard to bring them around, and show them the better future(s) which are possible.
The Lewis and Clark Bi-Centennial: a scorched earth policy?
Those of us who hang out much with Native Americans have already gotten the message: the Lewis and Clark "Expedition" was not entirely a good thing. Yet, the Jeffersonian tradition which it represents is far more consistent with an "enlightened" view of things than most of the alternatives. The choice, at that time, for Indians native to Montana was between British domination and U.S. domination. "The lesser of two evils," indeed.
I'm not enough of a student of the history of law pertaining to indigenous peoples to be able to say much about this, but it appears that the sovereignty of Native American nations has always been recognized in law. Rather than being victimized by "the white man's law" over the past 200 years, many aspects of Native life and culture (and even some territory) has been preserved by the law, and much worse predations and genocide has been prevented. It is safe to say that the worst crimes against Native Americans by the U.S. government have been contrary to the law, and in violation of it. So, why isn't restitution forthcoming? Mainly because the Rule of Law and an independent judiciary has already been subverted in other fundamental respects. The judiciary is largely controlled by special interests and majoritarian political pressure to act against the interests of the poorer and less powerful.
So, what should we do? Celebrate Lewis and Clark, or demonstrate against the tourist "events" which are now gearing up? My recommendation would be to abandon the policy of "scorched earth" (which seems to be gearing up, now, as well). We're looking at the worst fire season in a decade or more, and complete crop failures over most of the state this year if the drought doesn't break soon. Surely this will "put a damper" on the Lewis and Clark celebrations! But it will also be crippling to most segments of the economy, an exception being the highest-paid Indian jobs around -- fighting fires.
So let's figure out a way to get the full participation of Native Americans into this Bi-Centennial. We're here, we're not going to leave, but we recognize that this was somebody else's home before white men "discovered" it. Many white people (myself included) are very happy to be living in "Indian Country." In fact, that's the main reason why we're here. We want a greater emphasis on traditional Native American values and lifestyles. We want to return expropriated government land to Indian tribes, to be owned in common and according to traditional Native American values. We believe that such policies will restore a natural balance to our ecosystem so that we no longer suffer from drought and other climate changes. We need to reduce carbon emissions drastically and quickly, which we can do through taxation and other policy decisions in harmony with the Native American view that the earth is our Mother, and we shouldn't be selling our Mother to the highest bidders.
We recognize the impending bankruptcy of capitalistic economies -- especially ones which won't recognize either science or morality in their policies. Ideas matter, the truth matters, preserving the environment matters. Freedom matters along with human welfare. We must stop the killing. The Indian Wars are over. It is time for the Indian Peace and Reconciliation. -- Paul Stephens
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