David Zeiger : This is Where We Take Our Stand

Episode One : For Those Who Would Judge Me



This is Where We Take Our Stand
A web series about Winter Soldier

By David Zeiger / The Rag Blog / July 18, 2009

I am more than pleased to announce to Rag Blog readers that the web series produced by Bestor Cram and me about last year's Winter Soldier Iraq and Afghanistan Investigation is finally starting. Throughout the summer we will be posting six episodes of This is Where We Take Our Stand, one every two weeks, at www.thisiswherewetakeourstand.com. Episode one is available now, along with the trailer for the series, and I want to urge all of you to not only watch but post, promote, and help spread the series throughout the internet.

Why this series, and why now? you may ask. Good question. Last year we spent three months following and filming the complicated, intense and emotional process of bringing two hundred and fifty veterans and active duty soldiers to Washington, DC, to expose the realities of America's occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan from their own experience. With strong support from the antiwar and progressive funding community, we hoped and expected to have a film available in six months. But surprise! Along came Barack Obama and suddenly that support was dust in the wind. I won't go into details -- I think you know the reasons.

In my view, there is no better time than now to present this series. In the name of "not looking backward," the very policies and strategic goals put in place by the Bush administration in the Gulf region stand fundamentally unchallenged and unchanged by the Obama administration. Am I overstating the case here? Yes, the rhetoric is different, and Obama has even called the invasion of Iraq a mistake. A mistake?! If it's a "mistake," that means the goals are valid and righteous, they're just being pursued with the wrong tactics-as Obama has repeatedly said in the name of "supporting the troops."

Well, I beg to differ. At the risk of stating the obvious, if these wars were illegal and immoral under Bush, by what logic are they not illegal and immoral under Obama?

Below is the statement about the series written by Bestor and me. I hope that our series will do a little to rattle the sleep out of many people's eyes, as these occupations continue and, in the case of Afghanistan, expand. Please help us make that happen.

[David Zeiger is an award-winning film producer and director whose highly–acclaimed film Sir! No Sir! documented the little-known GI resistance to the Vietnam War. His production company is Displaced Films.]

This is Where We Take Our Stand:

The series that tells the riveting and timely story of the hundreds of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who testified at last year's Winter Soldier investigation, has now begun. We hope to reach thousands, even millions worldwide as the six episodes are released throughout the summer:

• Episode One: For Those Who Would Judge Me available now. See above or click here.
• Episode Two: Rules of Engagement will launch July 27, 2009.
• Episode Three: Why We Fight will launch August 10, 2009.
• Episode Four: Broken Soldier will launch August 24, 2009.
• Episode Five: This is Not Human Nature will launch September 7, 2009.
• Episode Six: No Longer a Monster will launch September 20, 2009.

Where's the debate?

Are we watching passively while Barack Obama carries out the same policies as George W. Bush?

When an American bombing raid this May killed over two hundred civilians in a village in Afghanistan, it was met with a deafening silence. When Obama's promised "withdrawal" from Iraq leaves 130,000 troops there for at least two more years and 50,000 permanently, it's hailed as an end to the occupation. And who is demanding to know just what the mission really is when 30,000 more troops are sent to Afghanistan?

Where's the debate?

In March of 2008, two hundred and fifty veterans and active duty soldiers marked the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by gathering in Washington, DC, to testify from their own experience about the nature of the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. It was chilling, horrifying, and challenging for all who witnessed it. Against tremendous odds, they brought the voices of the veterans themselves into the debate. That was then.

This is now. Today, we present to you This is Where We Take Our Stand, the inside story of those three days and the courageous men and women who testified. And we present this story today, told in six episodes, because we believe it is as relevant now as it was one year ago. Maybe more.

Here is our challenge to you: Watch the series; spread it far and wide; and ask yourself, Is this about the past, or the present and future? Then add your voice.

If you are a veteran or active duty, present your own testimony. If you are not, but you are still a living, breathing member of the human race, then do whatever you can to join and fan the flames of debate.

- Displaced Films and Northern Light Productions

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

David Zeiger : Did the GI Movement End the Vietnam War?

Updated July 26, 2008

G.I. dissenters in David Zeiger's documentary "Sir! No Sir!". Photo courtesy of Displaced Fillms.
And What is the real legacy of the GI Coffeehouses?
By David Zeiger / The Rag Blog / July 25, 2008

David Zeiger is an award-winning film producer and director whose highly–acclaimed film Sir! No Sir! documented the little-known GI resistance to the Vietnam War. He was a staff member at the Oleo Strut, a GI coffee house in Killeen, Texas near Ft. Hood that was a major center of anti-war activities from 1968 to 1972.

Zeiger, also a writer and an activist, produces and directs documentary films through his company, Displaced Films.

This article joins a Rag Blog discussion of the history of the GI anti-war movement with articles by Tom Cleaver on the history of the Oleo Strut coffee house and on the founding of a new GI coffee house in Killeen called Under the Hood. Please see Under The Hood : An Anti-War GI Coffeehouse in Texas.

Over the past three years, there has been a significant and heartening growth of opposition to the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations among active duty soldiers, and several organizations have been doing tremendous work with soldiers and veterans. From the groups and individuals supporting soldiers who have refused deployment and been court-martialed, to the work of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace, the Military Project and Different Drummer Café, serious and determined work is being done to turn the deepening disaffection and anger with the occupations inside the military into a real political movement and force (and I apologize now to everyone who I left out).

It is a source of great joy for me, in that context, to see the story of the GI Movement against the Vietnam War playing a significant role in inspiring and helping shape that burgeoning movement. The reissuing of David Cortright’s Soldiers in Revolt, along with important books published in the 90s (please see the list at the end of this article), brought to life what had been deeply buried for two decades and made it possible for a film like Sir! No Sir! to be made, and for this new movement to be born.

The GI Movement of the 60s is loaded with lessons for today. But those lessons have to be seen realistically to really be truly learned, and that puts a tremendous responsibility in the hands of those of us who were part of that movement. Memory can be a tricky thing, and it is no more helpful to exaggerate the events of that time than it is to deny them. Mythologizing or inaccurately portraying the GI Movement can, in my mind, do far more harm than good as people struggle to find ways to build a new movement in the military today. But a real understanding of its ups and downs, victories and defeats, and most importantly the tremendous struggle it involved on every level can be a powerful resource.

So I was very interested to read about the effort to open a new GI Coffeehouse in Killeen, Texas, outside of Fort Hood. The coffeehouse movement has, since the invasion of Iraq, been one of the few “forms” of organization from the 60s that seem to me to make a lot of sense today. But as I read Tom Cleaver’s depiction of the Oleo Strut Coffeehouse and its relevance for today, I found myself growing increasingly concerned that real understanding may be being replaced by nostalgia (and I speak from experience, as I am always fighting my own nostalgia while looking at the past). And beyond that, Tom’s interpretation of the GI Movement in the 60s raised many issues that I want to discuss here, in the spirit of making history serve the present.

Let me emphatically state first that I am not an organizer, but a filmmaker, and I do not pretend to know what the “right thing to do” is today. Nor do I intend to criticize or direct anyone. I don’t even consider myself an “expert” on the GI Movement. But I do hope that my two years working at the Oleo Strut, and the work that I and others have done to tell the GI Movement story today can be helpful. For the record, I am not a veteran. I went to Killeen in June of 1970 as a 20-year-old drop-out– and scared to death, I might add.

Now to the issues. The biggest for me is Tom’s statement that “GIs stopped the war in Vietnam and they can stop the war in Iraq.” This has become a pretty popular view nowadays among many people, and while it may sound ironic coming from me, I find it to be misleading and potentially very harmful. It takes what is true, the fact that the GI Movement cut at the heart of the war, and uses it as a kind of club over everyone else. But most significantly, it rips the GI Movement out of the political and social context that gave birth to it and nurtured its growth.

Put simply, GIs did not stop the war in Vietnam. The Vietnam War was ended by a combination of forces–first and foremost the Vietnamese people, whose struggle for self-determination became an inspiration for millions around the world. And beyond that the antiwar, counterculture Black liberation and revolutionary movements were all key to creating the context for soldiers in their thousands to revolt and certainly play a major role in bringing the war to a grinding halt. It can even be described as the straw that broke the camel’s back–but that wouldn’t have happened without all those other straws!

Look at Tom’s main example from the summer of ‘68–the urban rebellions and demonstrations at the Chicago Democratic Convention, and the GI’s response to being ordered into riot control duty (“First we fought the Vietnamese, now they want us to fight Americans,” as Dave Cline said). There’s clearly a cause and effect here. If Black people were not rebelling in the cities, and if students and radicals weren’t planning to demonstrate at the Democratic convention, there would have been no riot control in the military, and it wouldn’t have been such a powerful impetus for rebellion that it was.

(In that light I want to correct a significant inaccuracy in Tom’s description of the Fort Hood 43, the Black GIs who resisted deployment to the Chicago convention. Tom describes them as a highly organized group, who had chosen which soldiers would refuse to go based on their service in Vietnam. That isn’t what happened. As vividly described in Sir! No Sir! by Elder Halim Gullabehmi, one of the participants, several hundred soldiers met all night in an open field to protest their deployment and discuss their grievances and make plans. No decision had been made. In the morning, when 43 were still in the field waiting for a response from the base Commanding General, they were ambushed by MPs, beaten, and thrown in the stockade. Many, including Elder Halim, were later sent to Vietnam as further punishment).

What gave the GI Movement so much power was its deep connection to the broader movement it was part of. That movement wasn’t just students resisting the draft to keep from going to Vietnam themselves (another popular myth, in my view). It was the Black Panther Party; it was Vietnam Veterans Against the War; it was national organizations that were constantly expanding the scope of protest against the war; it was students who were shutting their campuses down to force companies like Dow Chemical off campus and end university complicity with the war; it was all those things and more. In 1971, the same time Colonel Heinl wrote his famous article that Tom quotes, Washington was wracked with a myriad of demonstrations, including the May Day attempt by over 10,000 people to shut the city down (which Nixon specifically cited as a reason to “get the troops out as quickly as possible.”).

I’m not saying this to nit-pic, or to in any way lessen or denigrate the impact of the GI Movement. Yes, the GI Movement had become a force in the military that seriously challenged its authority and ability to fight; and yes, thousands of GIs were actively organizing and demonstrating, but that can’t be ripped out of the context it grew in and declared to be the sole force that ended the war. Doing so, it seems to me, could lead to a distorted view of the situation today and very unrealistic expectations. It certainly doesn’t help point the road forward.

Part of the importance of understanding the context for the GI Movement is recognizing that it faced tremendous repression. The whole nature of the military is based on isolation from the world outside, and the more that world intruded, the more they fought back. The coffeehouses were an essential link between soldiers who faced tremendous repercussions for their actions and the broader movement in society. That link was political, and just as importantly cultural, and without it much of what flourished would have been quickly crushed.

And that raises my questions about the differences between then and now. In 1968, the Oleo Strut was for the most part the only way that GIs could be in contact with that movement (although even the local porn shop carried The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Soul on Ice). Most GIs didn’t have cars then, and at night and on weekends the only place you could go was the downtown strip since bus service ended there. Life was very constricted. The Strut was literally a haven, one you couldn’t find anywhere else, and a place to listen to music and read literature that was only available there. Especially in the early years, that made up a lot of what sustained it.

It’s a different situation today, is it not? Mobility and communication are worlds apart from 1968. While we were filming IVAW in their efforts to bring Winter Soldier to the soldiers at Fort Hood this year, much of their outreach was done at bars in Austin–60 miles away! There isn’t the kind of central place today that GIs are locked into, making something like the Strut unique. That seems to me to be a significant change.

One reason this is important is that the coffeehouses themselves faced huge obstacles to staying open. Tom mentioned the KKK and “goat-ropers,” but it went way beyond that. They were physically attacked, hit with bizarre legal charges, and often burned down. But those weren’t the most difficult challenges.

Even the most successful coffeehouses were never self-sustaining financially. We barely survived, even with the Herculean efforts of the United States Serviceman’s Fund, a group whose sole purpose was raising money for the GI Movement. But even with that and the day jobs many of us had, we came close to shutting down many times. In addition the constant legal battles and harassment arrests (I spent nights in jail for such things as hitch-hiking, driving with a dirty license plate, and swearing in front of a police officer), were a huge financial drain.

It was also a constant struggle to keep staff. Burn-out was a big problem in places like Killeen (and I don’t imagine that’s much different today). Keeping a place like the Strut alive wasn’t a weekend or summer gig. The reality is that there were many long periods when it was successfully isolated from the soldiers, and it took tremendous endurance to survive those times. Life in the GI Movement, like life in the military, was characterized by many months of intense tedium punctuated by moments of intense action.

In short, the GI Coffeehouses of the 60’s were a major force that filled a very specific need, one that grew out of the times we were living in. They were also a major commitment of time and resources–extremely difficult to sustain but well worth it for the role they were playing at that time.

Again, I am not raising these things to pour cold water on the current effort. But I believe that to be kept alive, history has to be seen in all its parameters. And I do think it’s important to not view the coffeehouses of the 60s through rose-colored glasses, especially when you’re contemplating diving into the fire. I’m not drawing conclusions, just raising questions.

So as I said in the beginning, I offer these observations and thoughts in the spirit of welcoming all of the work being done today in the military, and wanting to use our history to enrich it. I hope this helps.

The books that I referred to are:

* Soldiers in Revolt by David Cortright (aka The Bible)

* The New Winter Soldiers by Richard Moser

* The Spitting Image by Jerry Lembcke (A wonderful expose of the myth of the spitting hippie)

* A Matter of Conscience: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War by William Short and Willa Seidenberg (This is an incredible book, very hard toget but well worth it. Bill and Willa traveled around the country in the early 90s photographing and recording extensive oral histories of dozens of veterans of the GI Movement. Their work formed much of the basis for Sir! No Sir!).

There are also several great books on the veterans’ movement, and particularly Vietnam Veterans against the War.

PS–Again to keep the record straight, Fred Gardner, one of the founders of the GI Coffeehouses, was not an officer, but a PFC attached to an Army Reserve unit at Ft. Jackson when he and others started the UFO Coffeehouse in 1967. The “Summer of Support” referred to in Cleaver’s article was not organized by him, but by Rennie Davis and Tom Hayden, original founders of Students for a Democratic Society. SOS was one of, but not the only organization supporting the GI Coffeehouses.

Thorne,

I heard an interesting story about the Olio Strut and the general attitude of the soldiers to authority. The guy who told me the story was a combat vet send to Ft Hood to decompress along with a lot of other guys who had seen heavy combat. He is the only source but I have no reason not to believe him. He told me that there was a small lake somewhere around the base with a small island in it and that it was common for the soldiers to use rowboats and go to the island where they would have numerous small fires around which they would talk and decompress. Of course there was a considerable amount of the magical herb being smoked out there too. The cops knew what was going on and a squadcar load of them got into a couple of the small rowboats and decided to liberate the island. They landed and went to the first campsite and announced "Y'all are all under arrest" My friend told me that the entire island became silent and then across the island could be heard the sound of the hammers being pulled back on the government issue .45 callibar handguns that the GI's still carried. Needless to say the cops were tripping over one another trying to get back into their boats.

Robert Pardun / July 26, 2008

Under The Hood : An Anti-War GI Coffeehouse in Texas. / by Tom Cleaver / The Rag Blog / July 23, 2008

And Austin, 1969 : Bob Bower, Anti-War GI by Henry Mecredy / The Rag Blog / July 24, 2008

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

GI Coffehouse : Checking 'Under the Hood' in Killeen, Texas

Grand opening of the Under the Hood Cafe in Killeen, Texas. Photos by Carlos Lowry / The Rag Blog.

Under The Hood is an experiment. It’s a labor of love. It’s an antidote to the “divide and conquer” mentality that undergirds war.

By Susan Van Haitsma / The Rag Blog / March 4, 2009

March came in like a lion lying down with a lamb. Or maybe the day was about recognizing that the lion and lamb exist together in each of us. In any case, collaboration was the theme on Sunday, March 1, as soldiers and civilians, men and women, children and adults, locals and out-of-towners, seasoned and new organizers gathered to celebrate the opening of a meeting place in Killeen, Texas, on the edge of the world’s largest US Army base. “Under The Hood” is the catchy name of the new coffee house that is up and running near Ft. Hood as a long-wished-for resource for soldiers and military family members who find the culture of silence around military bases detrimental to their health and well-being.

As stated on the café’s website, the purpose of the coffee house is to provide a welcoming setting for the free exchange of ideas and information, as well as offering a family-oriented entertainment space for soldiers and civilians. The house rules encourage talking, flirting, learning and debating, and from what I observed at the opening Sunday, the café is functioning just as it was intended.

The engine propelling Under The Hood is its warm and able manager, Cindy Thomas, a native Texan, military spouse, mother of two young daughters and step-mother of a military-aged son. While her husband was serving a tour in Iraq last year after having been injured there on a previous tour, Cindy looked for support for her own family as well as the military families she saw around her who were dealing with issues involving physical and mental health, housing, education and GI rights.

I first met Cindy in the Fall of 2007 when she walked up to the Café Caffeine in Austin along with her two girls, all of them sporting something pink, to attend a CodePink meeting after having heard about the national group on the Rosie O’Donnell show. By coincidence, as Cindy and her daughters joined us, we were finishing up an interview with a reporter from the Austin American-Statesman just before the official start of our meeting. I was impressed with Cindy’s candid and cogent answers to the reporter’s questions, even though she hardly expected to be interviewed by the press the moment she arrived to meet a new group of women a hundred miles from home.

It was a fortuitous meeting. Our Austin CodePink group already had been actively engaged in outreach to GIs and military families, forming alliances between civilians, soldiers, activists and veterans through several projects in support of GI resisters. Cindy’s outgoing nature and capable organizing skills blended well with the abilities of kindred souls in our group. Together with the fledgling Central Texas Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace and the reinvigorated Movement for a Democratic Society, a committee formed to fundraise and look for a location for a coffee house in Killeen.

In some respects, Under The Hood is a reincarnation of the Oleo Strut, one of the most vibrant of the GI coffee houses that sprang up in the 1960’s as active duty soldiers organized in resistance to the US war in Indochina and in opposition to the use of soldiers to thwart civil rights and antiwar demonstrations in the US.

As described in the history of the Oleo Strut documented by Thomas Cleaver and posted on the Under The Hood website, one of the most awesome acts of resistance by GIs during the Vietnam war was launched from Ft. Hood when 43 decorated African-American GIs refused to board planes destined for the Great Lakes Naval Training Center where they were to be used as backup for Chicago police against demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

The Oleo Strut had opened just a month prior, taking its name and purpose from a mechanical part on a helicopter that functions as a shock absorber. The Oleo Strut distributed its own GI newspaper, “The Fatigue Press,” and became a beehive of activity where soldiers could hang out, organize and mingle in a supportive atmosphere with civilians. The coffee house also hosted poets and musicians, including the renowned Pete Seeger and the as-yet-unknown 16-year old Stevie Ray Vaughn and his blues band.

Under The Hood doesn’t resemble the Oleo Strut much in terms of looks, judging by photographs and accounts of those who were there both Sunday and back in the day. But, there is a strong spirit of life, love, resistance and support in the café that bridges the years while also evolving with the times. I saw it in the tears that photojournalist and Veteran for Peace, Alan Pogue, brushed from his eyes as he took pictures during Sunday’s opening while remembering The Oleo Strut he photographed in its heyday. I saw it in the tears that Cindy brushed from her eyes as she was being presented a medal by members of the Ft. Hood chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War. On one side of the medal was an engraved portrait of Thomas Paine, who coined the term “Winter Soldier” that Vietnam Veterans Against the War and IVAW adopted. On the other side of the medal was an inscription from the IVAW chapter: “Love and Thanks from Man and Woman.”

Others from CodePink Austin were honored by IVAW, as well, for assistance with the café project in everything from fundraising to painting, carpentry, cleaning, cooking and counseling. CodePink seamstress extraordinaire, Heidi Turpin, made the handsome curtains and banner that adorn the café’s windows and walls. She and her husband, Jim, made the sign that hangs in front of the house and installed the ammunition box that had been transformed into a donations box (bills, not bullets!). Jim, a vegetarian, amiably helped grill chicken and sausages all afternoon for the hungry flock that arrived for the opening. Fran Hanlon, active with CodePink and the GI Rights Hotline, and Alice Embree, active with CodePink and MDS, have served with Cindy in the Ft. Hood Support Network that has powered the project from the beginning.

These folks and other volunteers combined their time and talents to create a welcoming space that is beautiful in both form and function. There are games to play, books to read, films to see, and comfortable places to sit and talk, think and peruse the materials that are made available. There is good light, good coffee and good company. (Check out the slide show of photos taken during the opening by Alice’s husband, Carlos Lowry and posted to the site.)

Under The Hood is an experiment. It’s a labor of love. It’s an antidote to the “divide and conquer” mentality that undergirds war. Soldiers are taught to distrust and separate themselves from civilians, but the coffee house brings soldiers and civilians together. The military is a male-dominated institution, but this coffee house project has been led by women. Children are welcome. Music is welcome. You are welcome, all you lions and lambs, so come on in.

Also see the following:

• Under The Hood : An Anti-War GI Coffeehouse in Texas by Tom Cleaver / The Rag Blog / July 22, 2008
• Winter Soldier : GI's Against the War Tell Their Stories by Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / Feb. 25, 2009
• David Zeiger : Did the GI Movement End the Vietnam War? by David Zeiger / The Rag Blog / July 25, 2008
• 'Ain't Gonna Study War No More...' by Doug Zachary / The Rag Blog / June 9, 2008

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

David Zeiger : Open Letter to Michael Moore from a Madoff Victim

Bernie Madoff and his investors: of an ilk? Photo by Don Emmert / AFP / Getty Images.
An Open Letter to Michael Moore

I was stunned to see you take a broad, uninformed swipe at everyone who invested money with [Bernie] Madoff. You say he 'stole $65 billion from some already quite wealthy people,' referring to his victims as his 'own kind.'

By David Zeiger / The Rag Blog / May 11, 2009

See 'Bernie Madoff, Scapegoat,' by Michael Moore, Below.

Dear Mike,

I read with much interest your piece "Bernie Madoff, Scapegoat" for Time Magazine. While I welcomed your main premise -- that Madoff is a scapegoat and not more than a scab on the open, puss-filled, legal wound called the "American Financial System" -- I was stunned to see you take a broad, uninformed swipe at everyone who invested money with Madoff. You say he "stole $65 billion from some already quite wealthy people," referring to his victims as his "own kind." Then you go on to make the incredible claim that most of these supposedly very rich people knew full well (or at least suspected) that they were part of a fraud and, essentially, hoped it would just go on forever. So they should stop their whining and just give all their stolen luchre back.

That's quite an argument. Let me say first of all, for full disclosure, that most of my family was among those supposedly "already quite wealthy people" who lost everything to Madoff. In our case, it was Stan Chais, one of his top "feeders," who gave over all of our life savings to him. But somehow I don't quite see us fitting your definition of people on his "side of the tracks," as you so casually claim. Yes, like the vast majority of the thousands of Madoff's investors, we weren't poor. Far from it. My father was a businessman who manufactured parts for airplanes and did quite well with his small company that he started in the fifties (as I always joked, he was the white man for the white time). He was a lifelong progressive liberal, who took great pride in hiring blacklisted writer friends in the fifties, fighting against the Vietnam War in the sixties, and leading the campaign for Pete Seeger to receive the Kennedy Center Honor in the nineties.

And yes, back in the late eighties he quite willingly joined Stan Chais's "investment" group-seeking stability and good, not massive profits. And that's what he got for over twenty years, in the hands of a man who he, a smart businessman, trusted completely. And he brought all of his family and many of his friends into the fold because it was just too good to pass up. That included school teachers, artists, writers, doctors, lawyers, and one struggling documentary filmmaker (you remember what that was like). Maybe not the salt of the earth, but a far cry from the "one percenters" you have thrown us in with.

And if you go to the New York Times web site, you will find the letters from several hundred of Madoff's victims to the judge hearing the case -- all with very similar stories, often with quite progressive backgrounds, mostly elderly people who had invested all of their retirement savings with him, many now penniless.

But, you claim, it should have been obvious to all of these supposedly intelligent people that the interest they were receiving was impossibly high and they were part of a fraud. Why, according to you, "Some have admitted they did have an inkling 'something was up.'" But you fail to mention that the people who didn't have an inkling "something was up" were the very ones most "intelligent" people look to for guidance-the SEC, who as recently as 2006 were telling the world that Madoff was right as raindespite the compelling evidence that they alone were privy to. Blaming Madoff's victims for not seeing what was being denied by every available source is absurd.

But whether they knew or not, if they took any money out they should give it back, right? "If I buy a stolen car from the guy down the street, the police will take that car from me regardless of whether I knew it was stolen." That's logical, but what if that guy was in my garage stealing my other car at the same time? That's how Ponzi schemes work, and the relatively few who made huge profits from it don't negate that reality.

Let's be honest and take your argument a step further. Hundreds of thousands of people over the last 20 years were conned into buying homes with sub-prime mortgages, all of which were pumped up and turned into massive boondoggles by the schemes called derivatives and credit default swaps (which make Madoff look like a rank amateur). They were, in essence, built on stolen "profits." So now should the people who bought those houses be made to give them back? You know full well that there are those making that argument, and in fact thousands are today being forced out of their houses by foreclosure. Are they getting their just deserts?

Of course you would never say that, but what's the difference here? Yes, there is an economic gap between people who invested with Madoff and people who bought houses with sub-prime mortgages, but the con is essentially the same, is it not?

Here's a thought: Given the quite liberal bent of many of Madoff's investors, I'd be willing to bet the little money I have left that somewhere, somehow, funds that had gone through Bernie's hands and came out bigger helped finance one of your films. I'm not being facetious here. I'm a big fan. But as you so cogently point out, in the Alice in Wonderland world of American finance the veil between "legal" and illegal is infinitely porous. And after all, if you buy a stolen car!

In hindsight, every argument my father made in defense of this fund was glaringly and horrendously wrong. But that's easy to say now. I think I'm a pretty smart guy, and I wasn't even the one who got us into this thing, but even after Madoff was exposed I was still claiming it was impossible for Stan Chais to be part of such a scheme. Stan, and the man he was serving, turned out to be con men of the highest order, and my dad had huge blinders on that led him to the slaughter. Yes, we all "benefited" -- for a while and to varying degrees -- from this scheme (that is, before we lost everything). But putting us up there with the head of Goldman Sachs and Bank of America? Please!

Yours in the spirit of healthy debate,
David Zeiger

P.S. I am producing a film about my family's situation, titled Ponzi & Me (catchy title, don't you think?). If you would like to invest in it, I can guarantee a return of 15-20%.

Filmaker Michael Moore says Bernie Madoff's victims were, in essence, in on the con.
Michael Moore's Article:

Bernie Madoff, Scapegoat

Elie Wiesel called him a "God." His investors called him a "genius." But, proving correct that old adage from the country and western song, you never really know what goes on behind closed doors.

Bernie Madoff, for at least 20 years, ran a Ponzi scheme on thousands of clients, among them the people you and I would consider the best and brightest. Business leaders, celebrities, charities, even some of his own relatives and his defense attorney were taken for a ride (this has to be the first time a lawyer was hosed by the client).

We're clearly in one of those historic, game changing years: up is down, red is blue and black is president. Aside from Obama himself, no person will provide a more iconic face of this end-of-capitalism-as-we-know-it year than Bernard Lawrence Madoff.

Which is too bad. Yes, he stole $65 billion from some already quite-wealthy people. I know that's upsetting to them because rich guys like Bernie are not supposed to be stealing from their own kind. Crime, thievery, looting - that's what happens on the other side of town. The rules of the money game on Park Avenue and Wall Street are comprised of things like charging the public 29% credit card interest, tricking people into taking out a second mortgage they can't afford, and concocting a student loan system that has graduates in hock for the next 20 years. Now that's smart business! And it's legal. That's where Bernie went wrong - his scheming, his trickery was an outrage both because it was illegal and because he preyed on his side of the tracks.

Had Mr. Madoff just followed the example of his fellow top one-percenters, there were many ways he could have legally multiplied his wealth many times over. Here's how it's done. First, threaten your workers that you'll move their jobs offshore if they don't agree to reduce their pay and benefits. Then move those jobs offshore. Then place that income on the shores of the Cayman Islands and pay no taxes. Don't put the money back into your company. Put it into your pocket and the pockets of your shareholders. There! Done! Legal!

But Bernie wanted to play X-games Capitalism, run by the mantra that's at the core of all capitalistic endeavors: Enough Is Never Enough. You have the right to make as much as you can, and if people are too stupid to read the fine print of their health insurance policy or their GM "100,000-mile warranty," well, tough luck, losers. Buyers beware!

It would be too easy - and the wrong lesson learned - to put Bernie on TIME's list all by himself. If Ponzi schemes are such a bad thing, then why have we allowed all of our top banks to deal in credit default swaps and other make-believe rackets? Why did we allow those same banks to create the scam of a sub-prime mortgage? And instead of putting the people responsible in the cell block in Lower Manhattan, where Bernie now resides, why did we give them huge sums of our hard-earned tax dollars to bail them out of their self-inflicted troubles? Bernard Madoff is nothing more than the scab on the wound. He's also a most-needed and convenient distraction. Where's the photo on this list of the ex-chairmen of AIG, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup? Where's the mug shot of Phil Gramm, the senator who wrote the bill to strip the system of its regulations, or of the President who signed that bill? And how 'bout those who ran the fake numbers at the ratings agencies, the lobbyists who succeeded in making sleazy accounting a lawful practice, or the stock market itself - an institution that's treated like the Holy Sepulchre instead of the casino that it is (and, like all other casinos, the house eventually wins).

And what of Madoff's clients themselves? What did they think was going on to guarantee them incredible returns on their investments every single year - when no one else on planet Earth was getting anything like that? Some have admitted they did have an inkling "something was up," but no one really wanted to ask what it was that was making their money grow on trees. They were afraid they might find out it had nothing to do with gardening. Many of Madoff's victims have told investigators that, over the years, they have made much more than the original investment they gave Bernie. If I buy a stolen car from the guy down the street, the police will take that car from me regardless of whether I knew it was stolen. If I knew it was stolen, then I go to jail for receiving stolen property. Will these "victims" give back their gains that were fraudulently obtained? Will the head of Goldman Sachs reveal what he was doing at the meetings with the Fed chairman and the Treasury secretary before the bailout? Will Bank of America please tell us what they've spent $45 billion of our TARP money on?

That's probably going too far. Better that we just put Bernie on this list.

[David Zeiger, a contributor to The Rag Blog, is an award-winning film producer and director whose highly–acclaimed film Sir! No Sir! documented the little-known GI resistance to the Vietnam War. His production company is Displaced Films.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Remembering Tom Bernard : The GI Movement Against the War in Vietnam

David Zeiger with active duty GI's at Armed Farces Day, 1971, Killeen, Texas, home of Ft. Hood. Photo from Displaced Films.

Tom Bernard, 60, died Dec. 27. 2008. As an active duty GI in Vietnam, Tom was part of WORMS -- We Openly Resist Military Stupidity.

'One of the most thrilling aspects of the GI Movement during the Vietnam War was its ubiquitous nature. In every corner of the military, everywhere on the planet, GIs found creative, stunning ways to rebel.'
By David Zeiger / The Rag Blog / January 5, 2009

[David Zeiger produced and directed the award winning and critically praised documentary film Sir! No Sir! about the GI movement to end the War in Vietnam.]

It is with deep, deep sadness that I am writing to tell you of the death of Tom Bernard. Tom suffered a massive heart attack on Sunday, December 27. He was 60 years old.

I met Tom while filming Sir! No Sir! in what I later learned was a typical “Tom” way. I’ll never forget the email I got out of the blue from this guy I had never heard of, telling me simply that he had been part of an extremely significant group that had to be part of this film. They had never told their story publicly, and in fact had been threatened with prosecution for treason if they ever did. I was certainly intrigued, and soon Tom and I were friends.

Several months and a couple of failed attempts later, I found myself in a house with Tom and three other courageous, exemplary members of the WORMS -- We Openly Resist Military Stupidity.

One of the most thrilling aspects of the GI Movement during the Vietnam War was its ubiquitous nature. In every corner of the military, everywhere on the planet, GIs found creative, stunning ways to rebel. Even if no one outside their individual unit knew they existed, they became part of an elegant tapestry of chaos and resistance.

And none were more elegant than the WORMS. Trained in Vietnamese, they were part of an ultra-secret unit that flew over North Vietnam intercepting communications from the “enemy,” and translating them for the Pentagon to use in planning military strategy. As Tom described it to me, they began developing an almost personal relationship with the voices they were hearing, and soon knew that the real “enemy” was not the people they were listening to, but their own bosses. Knowing firsthand how civilian centers were targeted and hospitals were being bombed, they decided to dedicate their lives toward ending that criminal war.

As they told me their story, the depth of their humanity and courage shown through -- and I knew Tom had not exaggerated their significance. Finding themselves in a critical position for the war effort, they developed creative, challenging, fun (that was a requirement!), and profoundly effective ways of resisting. Their impact was far greater than they or anyone else knew.

I don’t know much about Tom’s life after Vietnam, but I do know that -- as is true for thousands -- those years as a GI resister informed all of it. I know that he never gave up his determination to change the world and his sense of purpose that was born with the WORMS.

My heart goes out to his wonderful wife, Helen, and their family. I will never forget Tom, and am very grateful to have known him the brief time I did.

Thanks to Alice Embree / The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Sir! No Sir! - courtesy L. Hansel, D. Zeiger

If I had seen this film while I was in Iraq , things would have been much different. -Garett Reppenhagen, Army Sniper and OIF Veteran. Co-Founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War

This is powerful stuff, offering us not only a new look at the past, but unavoidably relevant insights into the present. --Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News

A film that threatens the war movement with every showing, the Bush administration should outlaw it from all theatres within fifty miles of an armed forces recruiting station.-- Ron Wilkinson , Monsters and Critics

On July 15, Sir! No Sir! will be available on DVD**

Over the last three months, Sir! No Sir! has played in theaters in more than 50 cities, generating excitement, controversy, and rave reviews. All reviews are posted at http://www.sirnosir.com/home_filmpress_main.html

Thousands have seen it, but millions need to.

Now, in response your calls to get this film out everywhere, a limited edition DVD of Sir! No Sir!, along with the powerful flash animation by Not Your Soldier and Ruckus Productions, Punk Ass Crusade, will be available starting July 15 for $19.95 plus shipping and handling.

EXCLUSIVELY AT WWW.SIRNOSIR.COM.

From the beginning, word-of-mouth and the internet have been the main way news of this film has spread. Over the holiday weekend, please help spread it even farther. Please send this email out to your own lists, and download the flyer available at:

http://sirnosir.com/home_filmdownloads_dvd_poster.html

to hand out at your events this weekend and beyond!

And starting July 15 you can...

***Buy the DVD
***Host house parties to show and spread it further

***Register online to set up activist screenings

***Use the film to support the growing number of soldiers who are resisting the Iraq war, and

***Turn this summer into The Summer of Sir! No Sir!

And that's only the beginning. Also for sale will be a CD Soundtrack of the film with the stirring and innovative score written by Buddy Judge, and all of the songs in the film including Soldier We Love You by Rita Martinson. This is the only CD available with Rita Martinson's incredible tribute to GI resisters that stirs audiences at every screening of the film. The unstoppable pirate DJ Dave Rabbit of "Radio First Termer" fame also makes several appearances.

As a special bonus, my film, A Night of Ferocious Joy, will also be available--a film that chronicles an audacious, in-your-face concert held on Mother's Day, 2002, to confront the "war on terror" that brought together Ozomatli, The Coup, Blackalicioius, Dilated Peoples, Saul Williams, Mystic and many others. A film for everyone looking for inspiration and hope in a dark world.

In coming months, additional great films, music and books relevant to GI resistance then and now will be added to the list of products available at the site. And while you're there, take some time to roam through the newly completed, stunning archives featuring thousands of underground papers, cartoons, audio recordings and photographs illustrating the depth and breadth of the GI Movement.

And in the fall, an expanded DVD of Sir! No Sir!, with a wealth of additional material included, will be available at stores and on web sites everywhere. Included will be several additional stories from that GI Movement, an exclusive interview with pirate radio DJ Dave Rabbit, the court-martial of Iraq war resister Camilo Mejia, and presentations by Jane Fonda, Cindy Sheehan, and many more.

Finally, I want to thank all of you once again for the support you have given to Sir! No Sir! and hope you will continue to spread the film far and wide.


David Zeiger
www.sirnosir.com
Displaced Films
www.displacedfilms.com

*******************************************************************
David Zeiger's superb documentary about the Vietnam War era's GI protest movement is jammed with incident and anecdote and moves with nearly as much breathless momentum as the movement itself. ~ Chuck Wilson, L.A. Weekly

"Sir! No Sir!" combines exceptional artistry and insightful analysis with great story telling. This is no facile agitprop piece, but a careful dissection of a growing military rebellion that permanently altered American society, but has largely been forgotten. ~ International Documentary Magazine

TWO THUMBS UP!® Ebert & Roeper--Click HERE to hear their review!

Nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary

Click here to watch the trailer!

Audience Award Best Documentary--Los Angeles Film Festival

Jury Award Best Documentary--Hamptons International Film Festival

Seeds of War Award--Full Frame Documentary Film Festival

Jury Award Best Film on War and Peace--Vermont International Film Festival

Nominated for a Gotham Award and International Documentary Association Award

Click HERE to see the trailer.

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

David Zeiger: These Wars Aren't Over Yet

Why We Fight from Displaced Films on Vimeo.

An Open Letter to Iraq Veterans Against the War Members and Supporters
From David Zeiger, Director of This is Where We Take Our Stand and Sir! No Sir!

Dear Friends,

As I write this, we are getting ready to post the fourth episode of This is Where We Take Our Stand, our six-part web series about last year’s Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan event. You can find the series at www.thisiswherewetakeourstand.com, and of course on Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube.

It’s been a huge struggle, but this series is finally here–and I hope we created something that will bring the truth you revealed at Winter Soldier to thousands, even millions. We strove to make each episode a revelation and a punch in the gut, featuring some of the most important and powerful testimony from Winter Soldier along with the battles so many of you fought to make it happen. Boots Riley of The Coup wrote a killer theme song, Sound Off, that can also be downloaded from the site.

Winter Soldier happened in the last year of the Bush administration, and it was the most powerful condemnation of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan that I have seen. Your testimony laid bare the insane, relentless brutality of those wars and the hypocrisy of Bush’s claims that you were there to bring “freedom and democracy” to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. You made it clear that it was the policy of the government and military that was criminal. And you brought into the open the courageous, profound opposition to the wars that exists within the military and veterans’ community.

But what about now? Millions of people expected the Obama administration to change those policies and end the occupations. Well, where is that change? In Iraq, where we have been promised there might be a withdrawal by 2011 leaving 50,000 troops there to insure an “America friendly” government? Or how about Afghanistan, where a
thoroughly corrupt, Bush-installed government is now being propped up with the
additional 20,000 troops that were withdrawn from Iraq? What has changed?

What’s most horrifying for me is seeing the slaughter continue today with hardly a peep from those who would have loudly objected when Bush was in charge. So, perhaps
ironically, Winter Soldier is today more relevant and urgent than ever. This is not about the past, as Obama has often said, but about what is happening right now.

It is your voices that must be heard in this darkness. And it’s in that spirit that we have made this series. It belongs to you, and we hope you will not only watch and show it to others, but use it to spread the impact of Winter Soldier and build your movement. We welcome your thoughts and comments, and urge you to add your own testimonials to the web site. Along with posting the final three episodes through September, we will make the whole series available on a DVD for you to use.

With love and solidarity,
David Zeiger

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Sir! No Sir!

'Support the GI Movement & End the War, Again'
...by David Zeiger

General, man is very useful.
He can fly and he can kill.
But he has one defect: He can think.

This poem by Bertold Brecht was an anthem of the widespread GI Movement against the Vietnam War, and thirty years later it still resonates.

Today there is a growing GI movement against the War in Iraq. It has the potential to tremendously impact the War in Iraq and end US foreign policies of empire. But it needs our help. On December 8-10, there will be three days of action across the US to show widespread public support for the courageous troops that resist. Educational events, rallies, marches and vigils will take place around the US.

In the 1960's an anti-war movement emerged that altered the course of history. This movement didn't take place on college campuses, but in barracks and on aircraft carriers. It flourished in Army stockades, Navy brigs and in the dingy towns that surround military bases. It penetrated elite military colleges like West Point. And it spread throughout the battlefields of Vietnam. It was a movement no one expected, least of all those in it. Hundreds went to prison and thousands into exile. And by 1971 it had, in the words of one colonel, infested the entire armed services.

I was part of that movement during the 60's, and have an intimate connection with it. For two years I worked as a civilian at the Oleo Strut in Killeen, Texas -- one of dozens of coffeehouses that were opened near military bases to support the efforts of antiwar soldiers. I helped organize demonstrations of over 1,000 soldiers against the war and the military; I worked with guys from small towns and urban ghettos who had joined the military and gone to Vietnam out of a deep sense of duty and now risked their lives and futures to end the war; and I helped defend them when they were jailed for their antiwar activities.

I made the film Sir! No Sir!, released earlier this year, to tell this suppressed story of the GI Movement.

Today the new GI resistance movement is growing -- more soldiers are going public with their opposition, thousands are going AWOL, the first GI coffeehouse opened recently (with internet!), and the antiwar movement is realizing that supporting these soldiers is the next step.

It's time for us to escalate public pressure and action in support of the growing movement of courageous men and women soldiers who have in many different ways followed their conscience -- upholding international law, taking a principled stand against unjust, illegal war and occupation and standing up for their rights. Widespread public support and pressure will help create true support for courageous troops facing isolation and repression, and help protect their civil liberties and human rights.

Like the GI Coffeehouses of the 60's and 70's, showing widespread public support for soldiers who resist is one of the best ways those of us outside the military can encourage the growing momentum of GI resistance, a movement that has the direct power, with the civilian movement, to end this war.

Those of us outside the military must match their bravery by escalating our support for all GI resisters. They've got to know we're out here for them!

Supporting GI resistance, together with counter-recruitment and draft resistance, is key to stopping illegal war and occupation ourselves. If the government can't recruit or draft enough new troops, and if troops refuse illegal immoral orders, it will help end the war and occupation and help prevent the next one.

The December 8 - 10 Days of Action calls for:
1) Support for War Objectors
2) Protect the Right to Conscientious Objection
3) Protect the Liberties & Human Rights of GI's
4) Sanctuary for War Objectors.

Support the actions or events in your area or organize an event, like showing Sir! No Sir! to a house party of friends or your local community.

If not now, when? If not us, who?

Visit www.CourageToResist.org for more information or to contribute to this campaign.

To get a copy of Sir! No Sir! or see the trailer, go to www.SirNoSir.com.

This letter is also in this week's "Must Read" section on Michael Moore's web site, http://www.michaelmoore.com/mustread/index.php?id=784

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Lamar W. Hankins : Slipping Creationism into Texas Textbooks

Political cartoon by Kirk Anderson. Image from The Skeptical Teacher.

How Texas' Board of Education
will slip creationism into textbooks

Since a majority of the reviewers of the science texts are 'creationists' or proponents of 'intelligent design,' there can be little doubt that science education in Texas is under attack and our children will suffer...

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / August 7, 2013

SAN MARCOS, Texas -- Thanks to the Texas Freedom Network (TFN), those who care about science in education have learned how the religious right will slip creationism into Texas’s textbooks over the next year. The Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) has appointed six creationists to review science textbooks, along with five others whose views on creationism are not known.

The TFN promotes religious freedom and individual liberties against the agenda of the religious right. It is “a non-partisan, grassroots organization of more than 60,000 religious and community leaders” from throughout Texas.

Creationism, often referred to as “intelligent design” in its newer incarnation, is promoted by those who do not accept the scientific consensus that evolution explains the origin of life on the earth.

In 1962, when I began college at a small Methodist-related university, my biology teacher, while offering no apologies for teaching evolution as fact, also suggested that there was no inconsistency between belief in God and evolution. Belief in God is based on faith, the claims for which cannot be tested or verified. Evolution is based on science; that is, it is testable. Its predictions can be verified.

Evolutionary geneticist Jerry Coyne explains that science makes “observations about the real world that either support [a scientific theory] or disprove it.” Further, “a good theory makes predictions about what we should find if we look more closely at nature. And if those predictions are met, it gives us more confidence that the theory is true.”

The difference between evolution theory and “intelligent design theory” or “creationism,” as it was originally called, is that evolution is subject to testing and falsification. These faith-based theories are not. No one can test the belief that God created the earth and all of its inhabitants in six days 10,000 years ago. What we know is that the available empirical evidence establishes that organisms have existed on earth for 3.5 billion years.

Simply put, “intelligent design” cannot be tested by any scientific method. It is a belief that claims a supernatural entity designed complex organisms, such as human beings -- an inherently religious view that falls outside the sphere of science.

In 2005, the most extensive case involving “intelligent design” was concluded with a court finding that “intelligent design” is not science, but another name for “creationism.” The case, Kitzmiller v. Dover, was brought by parents in Dover, Pennsylvania, who objected to a decision by their school board to promote the teaching of intelligent design in their children's public school science classes.

The federal district court held that two different legal analyses of the facts, both used previously by the Supreme Court in judging such matters, led to the same conclusion -- teaching “intelligent design” (ID) in public schools violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment:

In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedent... As stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom...

The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision [to adopt the ID Policy] is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

Now the SBOE is heading in that same direction in Texas -- a direction it has been moving for decades in spite of the best efforts of educators, scientists, and the mainstream religious community. Textbooks to be used in Texas schools will be adopted in November. Since a majority of the reviewers of the science texts are “creationists” or proponents of “intelligent design,” there can be little doubt that science education in Texas is under attack and our children will suffer intellectually, and perhaps professionally, as a result of the religious beliefs of these reviewers.

To understand the importance of what is taking place now in Texas, one needs to know the process of textbook adoption. The TFN explains that “publishers are making changes to their textbooks based on objections they hear from the review panelists. And that’s happening essentially behind closed doors because the public isn’t able to monitor discussions among the review panelists themselves or between panelists and publishers.”

Because Texas is one of the major purchasers of textbooks nationally, students in most other states are affected by what happens in Texas. As TFN has noted, the public won’t learn about publishers’ changes to science textbooks until sometime in September. The process is so circumscribed that the names of the reviewers are not announced in advance and will not be made public until the changes are announced.

The Texas Freedom Network recently revealed the names and described the backgrounds of these six reviewers on the biology textbook review team. Following are edited excerpts of the TFN comments about each creationist reviewer:

• Raymond Bohlin is Vice President of Vision Outreach for Probe Ministries in Plano and a research fellow for the Seattle-based Discovery Institute. The Discovery Institute promotes “intelligent design” over evolution. Founded in 1973, Probe works “to present the Gospel to communities, nationally and internationally, by providing life-long opportunities to integrate faith and learning through balanced, biblically based scholarship.” Bohlin has a doctorate in molecular and cell biology from the University of Texas at Dallas, making him a star performer for anti-evolution groups. He has edited an anti-evolution book. Probe and the Creation Science Hall of Fame (which has honored Bohlin for his creationist views by naming him a “Darwin Skeptic”) promote a fundamentalist, literal interpretation of the Bible’s creation story.


• Walter Bradley is a retired Baylor University professor of engineering who coauthored a book, The Mystery of Life’s Origins in 1984, that essentially launched the “intelligent design” movement. Bradley, founding fellow of the Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, is also listed as a “Darwin Skeptic” on the Creation Science Hall of Fame website.


• Daniel Romo is a chemistry professor at Texas A&M University and is listed as a “Darwin Skeptic” on the Creation Science Hall of Fame website.


• Ide Trotter is a longtime standard-bearer for the creationist movement in Texas, both as a source of funding and as a spokesperson for the absurdly named creationist group Texans for Better Science Education. Trotter, listed as a “Darwin Skeptic” on the Creation Science Hall of Fame website, is a veteran of the evolution wars at the SBOE. He testified before the board during the 2003 biology textbook adoption and again in 2009 during the science curriculum adoption. In both instances, Trotter advocated including scientifically discredited “weaknesses” of evolution theory in Texas science classrooms. Trotter, who has a doctorate in chemical engineering, runs his own investment management company and served as dean of business and professor of finance at Dallas Baptist University. He claims that major scientific discoveries over last century have actually made evolutionary science harder to defend.


• Richard White, a systems engineer in Austin, testified at an SBOE hearing on the proposed science curriculum standards on March 25, 2009. At the time, he advocated the inclusion of phony “weaknesses” of evolution in Texas science standards. White went on in his testimony to insist, illogically, that teaching the mainstream scientific consensus concerning evolution without also presenting its alleged “weaknesses” amounted to forcing religious dogma on students, even though evolution has nothing to do with religion and, thus, nothing to do with religious dogma.


• David Zeiger is a seventh-grade teacher at a Christian private school in North Texas. He holds a biochemistry degree from the University of Texas at Dallas. In 2009 he and his wife, Heather, opposed removing from the state’s science curriculum standards the requirement that students learn about the so-called “weaknesses” of evolution. Creationists have used that requirement to insist that publishers include discredited arguments challenging evolution, such as supposed “gaps” in the fossil record.

The first public hearing on the textbooks will be held by the SBOE at its September 17-20 meeting in Austin. The TFN suggests that “if you want students to learn real science in their science classrooms -- not discredited creationist arguments that will leave them unprepared for college and the jobs of the 21st century -- then join thousands of Texans who have signed our Stand Up for Science petition here. The Texas Freedom Network will keep you informed about the textbook adoption this year and what you can do to stop anti-science fanatics from undermining the education of Texas kids.”

Sadly, petitioning is currently the only recourse available against the takeover of the Texas SBOE by religious fundamentalists. Electing people to the SBOE whose primary concern is education, rather than pushing their religious dogma, has not worked out well the last few election cycles for those who oppose the view that religious faith should guide everything that is taught in the public schools.

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

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Under The Hood : An Anti-War GI Coffeehouse in Texas

Last updated July 28, 2008

Jane Fonda at Oleo Strut Coffee House, Killeen, Texas, circa May, 1970. Photo by Thorne Dreyer / Space City!

The Under the Hood cafe offers an oasis for members of the military to gather and talk of issues of importance.

I welcome the opportunity to meet fellow military in an atmosphere of peace and justice.

Ann Wright, U.S. Army colonel (retired);
Official of the U.S. State Department (retired)

Coming to Killeen: A GI coffeehouse in the grand tradition
By Tom Cleaver / The Rag Blog / July 22, 2008

I'd like to let you all know that "Under The Hood," a GI antiwar coffeehouse in Killeen TX, outside Fort Hood, will be opening soon. Under the Hood has been founded in the tradition of The Oleo Strut, the GI coffeehouse that was in Killeen from 1968-72, and is the focus of work by the Fort Hood IVAW chapter and their friends and supporters in Austin.

As one of the original staff of The Oleo Strut, I was quite happy this Spring to be able to bring 40 years of additional experience to bear on helping the GIs to organize the project, getting them an Austin law firm to do the work they needed to set up the Fort Hood Support Network pro bono, and to work with Jane Fonda to come up with the initial funding to get the site, equip it and operate it for the first several months. We're looking forward to opening on Labor Day Weekend.

We have a website that I invite you to visit. We have a PayPal account, or you can send a check to the Fort Hood Support Network. We are in the process of becoming a 501(c)(3) organization, so your contribution will be completely tax deductible.

For those of you who don't know about the GI antiwar movement and the coffeehouses back in the day, yours truly has written a history of the Oleo Strut. [See below.]

If you really want to "support the troops," this is the best way to do it. GIs stopped the war in Vietnam and they can stop the war in Iraq. Right now, Fort Hood is a collection of some 30,000 GIs assigned to the 1st Cavalry and the 4th Infantry Division. The average soldier there is 20 years old, has had two tours of combat, and is “stop-lossed.” The only way out of today's "Action Army" is a wheelchair or a coffin. The guys need your support and we need it on a continuing basis. The GI Antiwar Movement isn't going to stop at 12:01 p.m. on January 20, 2009 - we will be holding President Obama to his promises.

The troops support Senator Obama, so Progressives for Obama should support the troops.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Soldiers hanging out at the Oleo Strut, from 1968 - 1972. Photo (c) Alan Pogue. Used with permission from Sir! No Sir! photo galleries.

Under The Hood is being launched in the spirit of its predecessor coffeehouse, The Oleo Strut. Below is a vivid history of The Oleo Strut, written by someone who was there.

The Oleo Strut Coffeehouse And The G.I. Antiwar Movement
By Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

Writing in the June, 1971, Armed Forces Journal, Colonel Robert D. Heinl, Jr. stated: "By every conceivable indicator, our army that now remains in Vietnam is in a state of approaching collapse, with individual units avoiding or having refused combat, murdering their officers and noncommissioned officers, drug-ridden and dispirited where not near-mutinous... Word of the death of officers will bring cheers at troop movies or in bivouacs of certain units. In one such division, the morale-plagued Americal, fraggings during 1971 have been running about one a week....

As early as mid-1969 an entire company of the 196th Light Infantry Brigade publicly sat down on the battlefield. Later that year, another rifle company, from the famed 1st Air Cavalry Division, flatly refused -- on CBS TV -- to advance down a dangerous trail... Combat refusal has been precipitated again on the frontier of Laos by Troop B, 1st Cavalry's mass refusal to recapture their captain's command vehicle containing communication gear, codes and other secret operation orders... "

Shortly after this article appeared, President Nixon announced the new policy of "Vietnamization" and direct American combat operations came to an end within a year. In 1971, desertion rates were soaring, re-enlistment rates plummeting, and the United States Army was not considered reliable enough to enter major combat. Today, the G.I. Antiwar movement that accomplished this is little-known, but it was the threat of soldiers not being willing to fight and die that stopped that war. Soldiers refusing to fight is the most upsetting image to all of those who claim to rule, since the monopoly of armed force is their ultimate weapon to retain their power. Much of what they have promoted in the 37 years since Heinl wrote that article -- the all-volunteer Army, the Rambo version of Vietnam, the resurgence of patriotism that crested with the invasion of Iraq in 2003 --has been in direct response to the specter of GIs deciding a war wasn't worth it. The war against the war within the American military began almost as soon as America became directly involved in Vietnam, which can be dated to the so-called "Tonkin Gulf Incident," the excuse for direct American combat.

By 1966, veterans like my old friend, former Army intelligence specialist the late Jeff Sharlet - who would later found "Vietnam GI," the major GI antiwar newspaper - had returned from their tour of duty and were trying to tell those back in America who they met at college what the real truth was about the war they had served in. Many in the campus antiwar movement did not respond to we veterans, with some purists telling us we were part of the crime for our participation. Somehow we were neither fish nor fowl to many.

The result was that veterans began searching each other out. Eventually, in early 1967, Vietnam Veterans Against the War was founded in New York City and took part as an organization in the spring mobilization against the war. No one was more surprised than the veterans at the positive response they got from bystanders as they marched together as opponents of the war they had fought. By 1967, Fred Gardner, a former editor of the harvard Crimson who had served as an officer in Southeast Asia, had returned to civilian life.By September, Fred had raised enough money to start the organization he had been thinking about for two years: an group that would bring the antiwar movement to the GIs still in the Army who opposed the war.

In September 1967, Gardner and a group of friends arrived in Columbia, South Carolina, home of Fort Jackson. Jokingly known as the "UFO," a play on the military support organization USO, the coffeehouse quickly became the only integrated place in the city (this was the old South of the 1960s). The regulars soon consisted not just of black and white GIs, but also students from the local university. A few months later, Gardner returned to San Francisco where he established Summer Of Support (later called "Support Our Soldiers") which was to coordinate the spread of similar coffeehouses to other Army bases. The first two were to be outside Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, and outside Fort Polk in Louisiana. The Missouri coffeehouse managed to open, while the organizers sent to Louisiana were run out of town before they could even obtain a site for a coffeehouse. Fort Hood was chosen to replace the Fort Polk operation. At the time, no one knew what a momentous decision this would be.

In August, 1967, riots broke out in Detroit, and the 101st Airborne Division was sent to stop it. This was the first time active Army troops had been used to quell a civil disturbance in the United States since the Civil War. In April 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, and riots spread across the country. In response, the Army was called on to establish an organization for suppression of riots that were feared that summer as the time got closer and closer to the Democratic National Convention, to be held in Chicago that August.

Fort Hood in 1968 was the main base where Vietnam veterans who had six months or less left on their enlistments were sent upon completion of their tour of duty in the war. Somehow, the Army thought that these combat veterans would be perfect for use in suppressing the war at home. The Army brass weren't the only ones who didn't know the mood of the troops. Neither did we. These were men who had experienced the Tet Offensive, men who had known the truth before Tet - that America was not winning the Vietnam War. They were turned off from their experience and unwilling to participate in a new war, a war against their fellow citizens. Killeen at the time was a typical "old South" garrison town. The town lived off the soldiers, but hated them at the same time.

Soldiers at Fort Hood were seen by the businessmen in town as being there strictly for the picking. Avenue D was a collection of loan sharks (borrow $30 and pay back $42 - the payday loan industry's been around a long time), pin ball palaces, sharp clothing stores - one had $100 alligator shoes, a brilliant green Nehru jacket in the window with 12 feet of racks stacked with cossack shirts in satin colors - insurance brokers, and overpriced jewelry stores. If a soldier walked into one of these establishments and didn't pull out his billfold within ten minutes, he'd be asked to leave. Local toughs - known by the derogatory Texan term "goat ropers" - carried on their own war against the GIs, who they would try and catch alone at night and with assault and robbery on their minds. The local police generally sided with the "good old boys" against the "outsider" GIs.

The town was as segregated as any in the South; there was an active Klavern of the KKK to enforce segregation. Killeen had grown from a population of 500 in 1940 (when Fort Hood was established to train Patton's coming armored corps) to around 35,000 by 1968. It was not a place that was going to welcome "outside agitators" from California and Massachusetts, as we were. I remember an organizer for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee who visited that September and told me he considered Killeen more dangerous than Sunflower County, Mississippi.

The Oleo Strut opened on July 4, 1968, with a public picnic in the local park. GIs had been checking the place out over the previous month as the staff worked to set it up, and there was a large enough crowd that a reporter from the New York Times thought the event important enough to write a story about, that received national play. The coffeehouse was given the name "The Oleo Strut." An oleo strut is a shock absorber, and we saw this as a metaphor for what we hoped the place would be for the soldiers we hoped to work with. We had no idea what a shock we were about to absorb.

Within a week of opening, soldiers were coming in at night to tell us of riot control training they were taking part in during the day. They'd been told they were going to Chicago to "fight the hippies and the commies" who were going to show up for the Democratic Convention the next month. They were terribly upset at the thought of having to possibly open fire on Americans who they agreed with about the war and the need for change here in America. Soldiers were talking about deserting, about running away to Mexico, about "doing something." Our response was a little yellow sticker, two inches by two inches. On it was a white hand flashing the "peace sign," backed by a black fist. We printed up 1,000 of them and passed them out. GIs said they would put these on their helmets if they were called into the streets, to identify themselves to the protestors. At this point, the Army got very upset with us.

The Monday of the convention, 5,000 troops were ordered to board the transports. They were headed for the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Chicago, as backup for the Chicago Police Department. As the soldiers were preparing to board the airplanes, the bravest act of antiwar protest I ever knew of happened. 43 Black soldiers, all combat veterans, refused to board the airplanes. Due to the self-separation of the races on the base, we had no idea this was going to happen. The Black troops had organized themselves. They knew what they were going to get for this. The minimum qualification to be one of those who would refuse was the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart, so the Army wouldn't be able to call them cowards.

As this was happening on the base, we were on the way from our house to the Oleo Strut, when we were stopped by the Killeen Police. A search of the car found drugs - we knew immediately we were set up, since we were completely drug-free. We also knew immediately what a terrible threat this was, since at that time the possession of a joint could get one a sentence of 20 years in Huntsville Prison, as had recently happened to an SNCC organizer in Houston who'd had marijuana planted on him by an undercover officer. We were scared. In the end, only Josh Gould was held, since he had been identified as our "leader." He would stay in the Bell County Jail for six weeks until the Bell County Grand Jury would vote a "no bill" on the indictment, thanks to the tireless efforts of local attorney Davis Bragg.

The world knows what happened in Chicago. A government cannot put soldiers on the street without the prior knowledge that if they are ordered to crack heads, they all will. No one knew how many of the GIs would carry out their threat of resistance if put in the streets, so all were held back. Deprived of their military backup, the Chicago Police Department staged their historic "police riot." The GI antiwar movement had inflicted its first major blow against the government.

In the months following, the antiwar movement took hold at the Oleo Strut. Soldiers started publication of "The Fatigue Press," an underground newspaper we ran off down in Austin on a mimeograph the local SDS chapter found for us on the UT campus. In November, 1968, GIs from Fort Hood staged an antiwar teach-in at UT, despite the best efforts of the Army to close the base and prevent their participation. We also endured the daily reports of the court-martials of the 43 Black GIs, each of whom received several years in Leavenworth and a Dishonorable Discharge for their courageous act.

Perhaps most importantly, a GI named Dave Cline walked through the front door that September. Wounded in action with the 25th Infantry Division the year before, Dave was only now out of an extended tour of Army hospitals to deal with his wounds. He was completely dedicated to the cause of opposition to the war, and became the center of the GIs who were involved in anti-war activities on-base. He became the editor of Fatigue Press.

In later years, the rest of the country and the world would come to know Dave Cline, who spent all his life until his death on September 15, 2006, from the wounds he received in Vietnam, fighting for peace and justice as the President of Veterans for Peace. He fought the Veterans Administration for proper care and benefits for all Vietnam vets, fought for both American and Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange; he fought against America's intervention against the Central American revolutions in the 80s; he stood up against the attack on Panama, the Gulf War, and intervention in Somalia in the early 90s; he opposed the bombing of Serbia and Kosovo in 1999 and traveled to Vieques to show solidarity with the people of Puerto Rico in their fight to stop the U.S. military using it as a practice range; he organized against the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and as his last act organized a Veterans for Peace caravan to bring relief to New Orleans after it was devastated by Hurricane Katrina and neglect by every level of government. A GI Dave knew in the 25th Infantry Division was so impressed by him that in 1986, that GI - Oliver Stone - memorialized him as the main character of "Platoon." Things weren't all heavy politicking.

Then as now, Austin had an active music scene and I was able to find bands willing to make the trek up I-35 to entertain the GIs. The most popular of these bands that fall of 1968 was a new blues band fronted by a great young singer who was only 16. Given they couldn't play in the Austin bars due to his age, they were happy to come up and play for the peanuts I could offer. The place would be packed whenever they appeared. 18 years later, in 1986, when I was at the United States Film Festival in Dallas, Stevie Ray Vaughn recognized me and thanked me for being the first guy to ever give him a break. Over the years between 1968 and 1972, when the Oleo Strut finally closed, many name musicians came and entertained the troops. Among them were Pete Seeger, who played to a packed house in 1971, followed by Country Joe McDonald and Phil Ochs. By 1970, there were some 20 coffeehouses - not all part of Support Our Soldiers - to be found in the vicinity of Army, Air Force, Marine and Navy bases across the country. Their most important role was giving soldiers who had come to understand how wrong the Vietnam war was the knowledge they were not alone.

Eventually, this dissent within the military spread to the front lines in Vietnam, as reported by Colonel Heinl. Of the three original SOS coffee houses, the UFO was closed in 1970 by a court order declaring it a "public nuisance." The coffeehouse outside Fort Leonard Wood succumbed to harassment and threats in 1969. The Oleo Strut stayed open till the war ended in 1972. Today, the site of the coffeehouse on the corner of 4th and Avenue D (101 Avenue D) is an office complex. One can still, however, find the red paint in the cracks of the sidewalk that was thrown on the door and windows weekly, back 40 years ago.

Source / Under The Hood

Friends,

Thanks to Tom Cleaver for the fascinating history of the Oleo Strut. Of course, he is correct that the Oleo Strut was an inspiration for the idea to open a coffeehouse in Killeen. I'd like to add a bit more information regarding the current project. First, the work to establish 'Under the Hood' began after several active duty GIs from Ft. Hood IVAW and Cindy Thomas, a supporter whose spouse is currently deployed in Iraq , asked for assistance. Alice Embree and I agreed to help. It was the vision of these young GIs which motivated us. With Tom's fundraising talents, the help of an attorney with military law expertise, and the determination of Cindy, a Killeen army wife, we have made a lot of progress.

Though much has been done, including incorporating, launching a website, and initial fundraising, clearly, there is much, much more work ahead of us. If you followed the link to our website, you saw that it is not quite ready for prime time, and that the Pay Pal donation link isn’t working yet. We are still finalizing the 501c3 filing. While we are optimistic, we are not certain that we can open by Labor Day.

The work we have done so far is just the beginning. Raising money to sustain the effort long term and securing resources (accounting, entertainment, counseling, maybe even carpentry!) will be an ongoing challenge. We are going to need all the help we can get; this will require a big commitment on the part of the Texas peace community. I think it is correct to say that this community understands how important GI resistance is to the movement. For this reason, I feel certain that we are all up to the challenges that this new initiative will present.

In Solidarity,
Fran Hanlon

I am proud to say that at Liberation News Service, where I worked with Thorne Dreyer and others on this Rag/Texas list, we were fully informed about the Oleo Strut and other anti-war coffee houses, and we did everything we could to support and promote them and their important work.

The compassion that anti-war people had for the unfortunate low-ranking military guys in the Vietnam era was obvious to me, and this relates to the anger I feel every time I hear the stupid "urban myth" about anti-war protesters spitting at GIs. Not one of the hundreds of anti-war activists I knew would dream of saying nasty things to a GI in uniform, much less spitting at him (or her).

Allen Young

Fuckin' Aye, my Friend!

It was a myth, perpetrated by the same oppressive assholes who were sacrificing my social class for capitalist hegemony in Asia. That spitting thing ... It never fuckin' happened. It was the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon supporters and the Pentagon hacks who spit on us. The Peace Movement loved us and worked hard, some giving up their lives (Remember Kent State?), to save us. Our gratitude to you and to the Thorne Dreyers and to David Hamiltons and to Alice Embrees is forever!

Doug Zachary
USMC 2499357
1968-1970

Agreed, the spitting thing never happened to me, or any vets I knew. The anti-war students at UT were much more likely to offer to buy me a cup of coffee in the Union, or a beer at Able's or Les Amis, and pick my brain about what happened in Nam, and how in hell I ended up volunteering. I felt no condescension or disdain... just peace, love, curiosity, and support for the Oleo Strut and VVAW.

Peace,
Terry DuBose

No one ever spit on me, as a veteran that is. But I have spoken with at least one veteran who was spit on for being a Vietnam veteran. We must be careful never to say "never". The overwhelming truth is that the anti-war movement was and is kind to veterans. It is similar to bra burning stories. There may have been a woman or two who burned her bra in protest of sexism but that was never a regular event. Bras do not burn well unless they are 100% cotton. The usual bra is made of synthetics, burns poorly and makes noxious fumes as it does burn. Beware of burning spandex.

If someone had spit on me for being part of the army that killed a million Vietnamese then that would have been a very light punishment for my crime. But the anti-war folks understood what a shallow brain washed youth I had been and I did repent. The real punishment was having been there. Those who sent me deserve much more punishment than being spit upon.

Alan Pogue

Wow! about Tom Cleaver's article. I spent a lot of time at the Oleo Strut, especially when Bob Bower was going through his courtmartial for speaking at an anti-war rally in uniform, but I this is the first time I ever heard the full story. Thanks so much.

One note: I finally got involved with a right wing wacko in Seattle, and he explained to me that yes, it did happen [the spitting], and a lot. I asked him to tell me a specific. And he explained to me that he was told so by his drill sergeant, and that's when I understood that the military stopped at nothing to create a sense of isolation and alienation in our soldiers. Over the years I've wondered what other propaganda was casually crammed down their throats.

Pat Cuney

In 1985, [Don] Snell and I were part of a anti-nuclear bike ride to Pantex for the 40th anniversary of Hiroshima. On the first day, with the temperature at 103, we left the congregating area in Georgetown to ride to (whatever the name of that town near Fort Hood is)[Killeen].

Snell and I were older than the others. We were not in as good shape as the rest of the riders. If we saw a telephone pole, we stopped in its shadow to rest. Needless to say, we were the last to arrive at the evening dinner/sleep site. They'd sent out spotters to look for us.

But that's not why I'm writing . . .

As we rode around part of the perimeter of Fort Hood, we spotted a tavern. It looked military, but it also looked like we might be able to get something cool to drink. Politics be damned! We rested our bikes and went in.

We sat at a table and were ready to order when people came to talk to us outsiders. Why, they asked were we on bikes on such a hot day? Where were we going? Pulling up to full height, we told those military-looking people that we were on a pilgrimage to the only nuclear weapons facility in the country - 16 miles northwest of Amarillo. They could hardly believe us.

And then it started: Orange juices started to arrive. Good, nourishing food that would be easy on our tired bodies showed up. We were not allowed to pay a single cent, no tab, no tip. We were treated like cherished colleagues.

We ate, drank, celebrated our conviviality and got back on our bikes. But we were changed, knowing that there were good people everywhere, even in a hellish corner of Texas where we - in our total naiveté - had not expected to find them.

Ruth Roberts

An excellant book on the spitting myth is "the spitting image" by Jerry Lembcke. in my own research I could only find one case of a Viet Nam vet betng spit on and that was Ron Kovic. He was spit on at the Republican Convention by a delegate who called him a communist for yelling "Stop the War".

Robert Pardun

Thomas Cleaver's article on the history of the Oleo Strut is one of the best things yet posted on the SDS site. Real original source history that is usually completely ignored in histories of the 1960s. I visited the Strut many times during that four year stretch. Saw both Joe McDonald and Phil Ochs perform. Every trip back was always accompanied by the local police pulling you over and harassing you as you were leaving town. One time they accused me of "pissing on the side of the Killeen State Bank" while they were holding guns to our head and tossing our car. Then they let us go after they berated us with threats and insults. Same old same old.

It should also be noted that the publisher of the Killeen Daily Herald (name escapes me) and Frank Mayborn with the Temple Daily Telegram were both strongly allied with Lyndon Johnson. They definitely took the existence of the Oleo Strut very personally.

Each time we were stopped the local marked unit was followed by an unmarked vehicle with a couple of guys who never got out of the car. Never was sure what agency this was. I always got the impression the local piss-ants were putting on their little show for the benefit of the guys in the unmarked vehicle. One of the worst places to pass through was the little town of Nash just outside of Killeen. You were almost guaranteed to get stopped there by their little gestapo cops if you had anti-war stickers on your car. One of them was about 5'7" and wore two pistols on backwards. A regular Johnny Ringo.

Does anyone have photos of Joe McDonald or Phil Ochs at the Strut? I had some of McDonald but they have vanished over the years after one too many moves between Texas and California.

It's a damn shame Sean Penn didn't follow through with his plans to do a film about Phil Ochs. He was red hot to do this at one time but it never came together.

About twenty years ago I was backpacking around some extremely remote villages in the Yucatan - just thatched huts, loud chattering monkeys, unpaved roads, not even a local cafe -- just little stands selling Cokes and stringy chicken tacos. Came around a corner and saw painted on the side of a caliche wall: "Long live Phil Ochs!" in big red letters.

Made my day.

Steve Speir
Austin / July 28, 2008

Also see David Zeiger : Did the GI Movement End the Vietnam War? / The Rag Blog / July 25, 2008

And Austin, 1969 : Bob Bower, Anti-War GI by Henry Mecredy / The Rag Blog / July 24, 2008

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...