September, 18 2017, 03:30pm EDT
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Veteran Group Reacts To First Episode Of Burns/Novick Vietnam Series
Veterans For Peace (VFP) members in every U.S.
WASHINGTON
Veterans For Peace (VFP) members in every U.S. time zone and beyond tuned in to watch the first episode of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's PBS documentary, "The Vietnam War" to see how well it squares with what they know about what the Vietnamese call "the American War in Vietnam."
The opening scenes and the program as a whole showed that the U.S. has not come very far, in terms of learning from it's mistakes.
Executive Director, Michael McPhearson, a veteran of the Gulf War, states, "Watching the documentary, I was struck by how little has changed from then to now or gotten worse. In Afghanistan, Iraq and around the globe our government continues to attempt to force whole nations into compliance, using the same failed and depraved strategies used in Vietnam. The documentary portrayal of the U.S. troop buildup in Vietnam shows how quick the U.S. government uses fear of "the other" to justify brutal violence. It is the same fear cultivated in Islamophobic, anti-immigrant and general xenophobic rhetoric used today to pit people against each other at home and to justify wars abroad. This formula of fear and racism used in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq is being used in the streets of my city right now to justify the killing of 24-year-old Anthony Lamar Smith and other black and brown people across the country."
Doug Rawlings, who served in an Army artillery unit in Vietnam from 1969-70, watched the first episode at his home in central Maine and had this to say: "It was certainly engaging," but Rawlings noted "When the narrator says early on that "America's involvement in Vietnam...was begun in good faith, by decent people, out of fateful misunderstandings.' The U.S. did everything it could to keep Vietnam a French colony and failing that to make it an American one, no matter the cost. Burns and Novick actually show that pretty clearly, yet they still say it was begun in good faith? That just shows how powerful the myth that America is always on the side of the angels."
Veterans For Peace continues their work on several initiatives in Vietnam and in the U.S. towards accountability for the legacies of the Vietnam War. To see a full list of our projects, visit our Press Kit.
Veterans For Peace members have also re-printed a newspaper, Full Disclosure, that focuses on telling the truth about Vietnam and are distributing it at the many public, community events that surround the documentary.
Veterans Available for Interviews.
Veterans For Peace is a global organization of Military Veterans and allies whose collective efforts are to build a culture of peace by using our experiences and lifting our voices. We inform the public of the true causes of war and the enormous costs of wars, with an obligation to heal the wounds of wars. Our network is comprised of over 140 chapters worldwide whose work includes: educating the public, advocating for a dismantling of the war economy, providing services that assist veterans and victims of war, and most significantly, working to end all wars.
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'Complicit in the Genocide': First Muslim Biden Appointee Resigns Over Gaza
"This administration has chosen to uphold the status quo instead of listening to the diverse voices of staff urgently demanding freedom and justice for Palestinians."
Jul 02, 2024
A political appointee at the U.S. Interior Department on Tuesday became the youngest—and first Muslim American—appointee of President Joe Biden's to resign as his administration continues to "fund and enable Israel's genocide of Palestinians."
"Marginalized communities in our country have long been denied the justice they deserve. I joined the Biden-Harris administration with the belief that my voice and diverse perspective would lend a hand in the pursuit of that justice," Special Assistant and Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management Maryam Hassanein, 24, said in a statement.
"However, over the past nine months of Israel's genocide in Gaza, this administration has chosen to uphold the status quo instead of listening to the diverse voices of staff urgently demanding freedom and justice for Palestinians," she added. "I am resigning today from my position as a Biden administration appointee in the Department of the Interior."
Hassanein toldHuffPost that she decided to resign because "I came to understand that even if the agency I'm working at is not producing foreign policy, serving in the administration in any capacity does essentially make you complicit in the genocide of the Palestinians."
Palestine defenders applauded Hassanein's resignation—which made her at least the 11th American official to step down over U.S. support for Israel's war on Gaza, according to HuffPost.
"We welcome this principled resignation by another Biden administration official who took up their post believing they could help the nation, but instead realized they were becoming complicit in the administration's enabling of the far-right Israeli government's genocide in Gaza," said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
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Breaking with many of his fellow Democrats, Maine Congressman Jared Golden suggested Tuesday that former Republican President Donald Trump's return to the White House wouldn't threaten U.S. democracy—and was sharply ridiculed for that take.
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Veteran journalist Mark Jacob said on social media that "Congressman Jared Golden, an alleged Democrat from Maine, waves the white flag against Trump in an unconscionable surrender to fascism. Maybe he thinks he can cut a deal. The cowards and quislings are making themselves known."
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Some journalists and Republicans suggested that Golden's op-ed may be politically motivated, considering the makeup of his district. His GOP challenger, former NASCAR driver Austin Theriault, said: "This is a very phony attempt to avoid accountability. Simple questions for Jared Golden: Does he support Joe Biden for president or not? Does Golden believe Biden is mentally competent or not? He won't say, because he puts politics ahead of Mainers."
Golden, who co-chairs the Blue Dog Coalition, has a history of voting with Republicans on various climate, military, and student debt relief policies. His new opinion piece provoked calls for members of his own party to identify and rally around a write-in candidate "so Maine Democrats have an actual Democratic option in November."
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If elected this year, Trump is also expected to pursue the policy agenda of the Heritage Foundation-led 2025 Presidential Transition Project—or Project 2025—which the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism has described as a "far-right playbook for American authoritarianism."
Congressman Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) said Tuesday that "Project 2025 is a threat to our nation. The conservative radical plan rolls back rights for everyone and allows blatant discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community. It's sickening, and we must do everything to prevent this destructive plan and Donald Trump at all costs."
Biden's poor performance in the debate with Trump last week has prompted some supporters to reaffirm the importance of his reelection, given the alternative, and others to suggest that he should be replaced ahead of the Democratic convention next month.
On Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas became the first Democrat in Congress to suggest that Biden should step aside.
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The melting of Alaska's Juneau ice field—which contains more than 1,000 glaciers—is accelerating and could reach a tipping point much sooner than predicted, according to research published Tuesday.
The study, which was published in the journal Nature Communications, shows that ice loss from the Juneau ice field began accelerating rapidly after 2005.
The paper's authors found that "rates of area shrinkage were five times faster from 2015-2019 than from 1979-1990," while glacier volume loss—which had remained relatively consistent from 1770-1979—doubled after 2010.
"Forty years from now, what is it going to look like? I do think by then the Juneau ice field will be past the tipping point."
"Thinning has become pervasive across the icefield plateau since 2005, accompanied by glacier recession and fragmentation," the study states. "As glacier thinning on the plateau continues, a mass balance-elevation feedback is likely to inhibit future glacier regrowth, potentially pushing glaciers beyond a dynamic tipping point."
Study lead author Bethan Davies, a glaciologist at Newcastle University in England, said in a statement, "It's incredibly worrying that our research found a rapid acceleration since the early 21st century in the rate of glacier loss across the Juneau ice field."
"Alaskan icefields—which are predominantly flat, plateau icefields—are particularly vulnerable to accelerated melt as the climate warms since ice loss happens across the whole surface, meaning a much greater area is affected," Davies continued. "Additionally, flatter ice caps and icefields cannot retreat to higher elevations and find a new equilibrium."
"As glacier thinning on the Juneau plateau continues and ice retreats to lower levels and warmer air, the feedback processes this sets in motion is likely to prevent future glacier regrowth, potentially pushing glaciers beyond a tipping point into irreversible recession," she added.
Study co-author Mauri Pelto, a professor of environmental science at Nichols College in Massachusetts, toldThe Associated Press that the Juneau ice field is melting at a rate of about 50,000 gallons per second.
"When you go there the changes from year to year are so dramatic that it just hits you over the head," Pelto said. "In 1981, it wasn't too hard to get on and off the glaciers. You just hike up and you could you could ski to the bottom or hike right off the end of these glaciers. But now they've got lakes on the edges from melted snow and crevasses opening up that makes it difficult to ski."
As the AP reported:
Only four Juneau ice field glaciers melted out of existence between 1948 and 2005. But 64 of them disappeared between 2005 and 2019, the study said. Many of the glaciers were too small to name, but one larger one, Antler glacier, "is totally gone," Pelto said.
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Pelto said that "the tipping point is when that snow line goes above your entire ice field, ice sheet, ice glacier, whichever one."
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