'/> Uncommon Hours: December 2011
Blogging on culture, politics, and the environment since 2008.

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Collateral Damage: ‘Windows and Mirrors: Reflections on the War in Afghanistan’

Collateral Damage: ‘Windows and Mirrors: Reflections on the War in Afghanistan’
By Bob Sommer
(also posted at counterpunch.org)

Mural art tends toward bluntness. Its images are large, its imagery thick with meaning. The nature of the medium—walls!—lends itself best to simplicity, directness. The audience for walls is, after all, everyone passing by. Walls with murals ask us to stop and look and think. They tell stories about people we know, about our communities. Mural art is surely the best medium for “Windows and Mirrors: Reflections on the War in Afghanistan,” an exhibit assembled by the American Friends Service Committee and now touring the country. The exhibit brings together more than forty-five mural paintings in what the AFSC catalogue describes as “a traveling memorial to Afghan civilians who have died in the war.”

"Salima," by Nanna Tanier
 America’s longest war has also been its most invisible. After visiting the exhibit in Kansas City, my wife and I pondered a hypothetical question: What if the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had only been covered by the news media with Vietnam-era communications technology? In other words, what if there were no social media now, no internet, no 24/7 cable, no embedded cheerleaders in Kevlar vests and oversized helmets clamoring like underage groupies on a rock tour and posing as journalists; what if we only had the evening news, the local paper, and maybe the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, to cover these wars—what would we know about them?

After Walter Cronkite took off his glasses on camera and gave the lie to the notion that America was “winning” in Vietnam, and after Life Magazine published a large black-and-white photo of a terrified naked child running from the nightmare of napalm, America began to get it. That war was no longer about whose military casualty count was worse, but about the millions of innocent civilians suffering and dying as bombs fell and war crashed into their lives. And it was also about the tragic waste of sending young men to die for reasons that defied any moral explanation, and throwing billions of dollars at the effort.

Yet now, despite all the information we have at our fingertips and in our pockets, a medium that traces its beginnings to some ancient and remote caves in France may offer the best way for those of us who will never visit Afghanistan to understand these wars and their consequences.

“Windows and Mirrors” is a tour through the civilian cost of the war in Afghanistan. It is a gallery of windows into an Afghanistan we rarely see, a place whose people we don’t tend to think of with empathy. In turn the exhibit becomes a hall of mirrors reflecting who Americans are in the bitter images of what we are doing there. An untitled panel by Jessica Munguia illustrates the evolution of ever-changing rationales for waging this war in a collage of texts in military-speak, images of weaponry and flowers, and the faces of a woman and child weeping in despair and grief.

The question of our purpose in Afghanistan pervades the exhibit, as does the issue of complicity. The invisibility of this war is the result of a willingness, even an eagerness, on the part of Americans to choose shopping as the prime strategy for fighting the so-called “war on terror”—the bizarre and weirdly ironic notion (brilliantly marketed by the Bush administration) that pretending there were no wars was how we’d win them: Rationing and Victory Gardens turned inside out. And it worked! Such patriotism was easily sold to a nationalistic public that confused the reality of war with video games like “Call of Duty” and patriotism with shedding tears as “God Bless America” rang out in every sports stadium in the country and bone-rattling flyovers filled us with wonder and awe. Meanwhile, actual war continues even now in places we choose not to see, or are prevented from seeing by a corporate media complex that fills the airwaves with pablum.

Michael Schwartz’s painting, “Eternal Scream,” goes straight to the theme of complicity. It depicts a grief-stricken man crying out as he clutches the body of his dead child. The unusual descriptive text that accompanies the painting takes the form of a letter from the artist to the anonymous taxi driver who inspired the work: “Dear Taxi Driver: Thank you for sharing your story. I asked. Nothing I can say to you will bring back your brother's children, your cousins' store, your sister. I can weep with you, get angry, try to organize, but nothing will bring back the people who you loved, killed by bombs, made with dollars that should have gone to teach kids about empathy, compassion, science, history, art, math, and yes, poetry….”

"Learning to Walk Again,"
by John Pitman Weber
Children are the most vulnerable victims of this war and figure in many of the paintings. “Learning to Walk Again,” by John Pitman Weber, depicts the disturbing image of a child wearing a prosthetic leg and pushing a walker past a rack of prosthetic limbs. “Unknown Loss” by Christine Moss positions a madonna and child against the black-and-white backdrop of a refugee camp. Ann Northrup’s “Mountain Kites” portrays children flying kites in an open field. Her accompanying text describes the painting best: “I wanted to show the beautiful Afghanistan that still survives the violent incursions of war, and show ordinary Americans that here is life and value that must be respected and loved. I wanted an image that people could identify with, a child that they could fall in love with and that they would want to cherish and protect.”

"Mountain Kites,"
by Ann Northrup
 Ashley Scribner’s untitled work points out that three children died every day in Afghanistan in 2009 as a result of war-related incidents. A set of textual panels catalogues the weddings bombed during the course of the war and cites reports from international press coverage of innocents killed: In one incident, five women, three children, and an elderly man were killed in their mud hut when a 2,000 pound bomb was dropped on their village. In another, a man who could neither hear nor speak did not know CIA paramilitaries were shouting at him to stop running, so they shot him. In yet another, a man was shot dead by occupation forces as he drove to the hospital to inquire about his ailing sister.  

The texts give substance to the paintings. They remove the temptation to find subjectivity in the stark imagery and unsettling themes that surround viewers. They reinforce the vastness of these tragedies across time—this is our longest war—and place. This exhibit is both visceral and evocative, a submersion in human tragedy and the responsibility Americans share in creating it.

“Windows and Mirrors” closes this week in Kansas City and moves on to Pittsburgh. The full schedule and more information are available at http://windowsandmirrors.org/

Postscript: I contacted Ira Harritt, Program Coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee in Kansas City, for a comment about the exhibit for this post. I was in a hurry because my wife Heather and I viewed the exhibit on Wednesday and I wanted to submit the essay to Counterpunch in time for a weekend posting, which meant getting it to them by Thursday afternoon. Ira was out of town at the time, but he did get back to me later, offering this comment: “While proponents of the Afghan war ignore its horrors and camouflage it as a humanitarian effort, the Windows and Mirrors exhibit exposes the war’s tragic human costs and offers hope for a different future, which rejects the myth that war can bring peace and well-being for the Afghan people.”

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Ron Paul Undiluted

Ron Paul, Undiluted
By Bob Sommer

It would be easy to get the impression that the issue of Ron Paul’s past newsletter articles is little more than a dust-up over old news from another age and time. To hear Paul tell it, as he did in a recent interview with CNN’s Gloria Borger, the incendiary and racist articles that appeared in The Ron Paul Political Report and The Ron Paul Survival Report from the late 1970s through the mid-1990s were not only written by others but he had no knowledge of their content. Notably, he walked out of the CNN interview rather than respond to Borger’s questions about his role in the newsletter’s production.

The sheer quantity of these vile screeds is enough to make any reasonable person who's not infected by the paranoia and racist poison Paul's newsletters serve up question his credibility. The really scary thing is that in the current Republican campaign Paul has taken on the persona of a folk hero to young voters. He’s the “revolutionary” candidate, “challenging the status quo,” as he told CNN. Never has libertarianism looked so benign—such a clear-headed, answer-for-everything, simple solution to the mess Republicans have made with encouragement from their Tea-Party overlords and a dose of help from their co-dependent enablers among the Democrats. If nothing else, the libertarian credo is easily summarized: "You get yours and I'll get mine!"

College students can’t seem to get enough of Paul. Even Jon Stewart regularly touts his grandfatherly persona on The Daily Show, lauding the specious, oh-so-appealing notion that remaining true to your beliefs is somehow admirable no matter how misguided or just plain dangerous they may be.

The New Republic began challenging Paul’s articles back in the 1980s and in turn became a target of the newsletter. The current issue of TNR catalogues some of the most egregious excerpts and provides PDF links for all of them, as well as attributions for many. Reading through these articles it’s impossible to avoid concluding that Paul is either a liar regarding his culpability for this body of work or that he’s so ignorant of what his own newsletters were publishing that he shouldn't be running for dogcatcher. Either way, the idea that anyone believes he belongs in the White House should be enough to frighten the rest of us out of sleeping through the night until the election is over.

Here are a few nuggets from TNR of how Ron Paul really sees the world:

  • An October 1990 edition of the Political Report ridicules black activists, led by Al Sharpton, for demonstrating at the Statue of Liberty in favor of renaming New York City after Martin Luther King. The newsletter suggests that “Welfaria,” “Zooville,” “Rapetown,” “Dirtburg,”and “Lazyopolis ” would be better alternatives—and says, “Next time, hold that demonstration at a food stamp bureau or a crack house.”
  • The July 1992 Ron Paul Political Report declares, “Jury verdicts, basketball games, and even music are enough to set off black rage, it seems,”
  • The September 1994 issue of the Ron Paul Survival Report states that “those who don’t commit sodomy, who don’t get blood a transfusion, and who don’t swap needles, are virtually assured of not getting AIDS unless they are deliberately infected by a malicious gay.”
  • The January 1995 issue of the Survival Report—released just three months before the Oklahoma City bombing—cites an anti-government militia’s advice to other militias, including, “Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”
  • The October 1992 issue of the Political Report paraphrases an “ex-cop” who offers this strategy for protecting against “urban youth”: “If you have to use a gun on a youth, you should leave the scene immediately, disposing of the wiped off gun as soon as possible. Such a gun cannot, of course, be registered to you, but one bought privately (through the classifieds, for example).”
Here's the full article: http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/98883/ron-paul-incendiary-newsletters-exclusive

Caveat Iowa voters!

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Michael Brune: The Keystone XL Pipeline Scam

Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune

The Keystone XL Pipeline Scam
By Michael Brune

With all the political posturing in Congress over the Keystone XL tar-sands oil pipeline, it’s easy to lose sight of the real issue: This pipeline is dangerous, unnecessary, and would cost the American people far more than we can afford. What we're watching unfold in Washington, DC, is more than just a high-stakes political power play -- it's a scam undertaken by Big Oil’s congressional puppets on the orders of oil companies that have billions of dollars at stake.

The politicians pushing the pipeline are (how can I put this politely?) lying to the American people and pandering for dirty oil money. What do we really stand to gain if this thing is rammed down our throats? Higher gas prices, more air pollution, the threat of poisoned water, and enough carbon pollution to make stopping climate disruption next to impossible -- but few of the jobs and none of the huge profits that Big Oil would reap.

Exaggerated job numbers play well to public concern about unemployment and the economy, but they are a hollow promise. The numbers from TransCanada -- the company behind the pipeline -- have already been discredited as fuzzy math for using tricks like double counting and incidental employment for dancers, choreographers, and speech therapists. Here's some non-fuzzy math: The pipeline would raise gas prices across the Midwest -- hurting both consumers and businesses. Ironically, the pipeline could actually destroy more jobs than it generates.

Meanwhile, our nation’s largest aquifer, which supplies one-third of U.S. irrigated farmland and the drinking water for millions, would be put at imminent risk. Although that risk most directly affects the farmers and ranchers whose livelihoods hang in the balance, every American would feel the effect of an oil-spill catastrophe in the nation’s agricultural heartland.

TransCanada has a dismal record of cutting corners, ignoring the law, and spilling oil. The company's Keystone 1 pipeline spilled more than 12 times in its first year of operation, including a 21,000-gallon spill in North Dakota in May 2011 that shot a 60-foot geyser of oil into the air. Last year, the U.S. EPA determined that sections of the Keystone 1 pipeline were constructed using inferior steel and defective welds.

That means we have an irresponsible company asking for permission to build a kind of pipeline that is already far riskier than normal. Unrefined tar sands crude is both thicker and more toxic than conventional crude oil. Sand in the mixture scours the inside of a pipe, and highly reactive chemicals in the crude corrode the steel. Making things even worse, the heavy, gooey tar sands has to be pumped at far higher temperatures and pressures than conventional oil.

The riskiness of piping this toxic crude all the way across America is bad enough, but on top of that, this pipeline would actually make the U.S. less secure. Retired Brigadier General Steven Anderson said it plainly:

The Keystone XL pipeline will not reduce America’s dependence on Middle East oil, or do anything to get us off oil completely, which is key to America’s national security future. Much of the oil produced by Keystone won’t go right to American gas-tanks - it is to be exported, meaning we will need to import oil the same as before.

But pipeline advocates aren't really concerned about what's best for the U.S. At least one oil company backing the pipeline, Valero, has made it clear that its main goal is to reach growing foreign diesel fuel markets. Port Arthur, TX, where the Keystone XL would end, is a Foreign Trade Zone. That means oil companies would avoid paying U.S. taxes on oil that is imported from Canada, refined in Texas, and then exported to China, Latin America, or Europe. The American people get to assume all of the risk, but would see none of the benefits, not even the tax revenues.

This pipeline is a bad deal that would generate billions in profits for oil companies while leaving Americans to pay the price in higher fuel costs, energy insecurity, and polluted air and water. At a time when we need to be doing everything we can to get off oil and reduce global-warming pollution, the Keystone XL would take us in exactly the wrong direction. Tar sands oil is a gigantic climate disaster waiting to happen.

President Obama did the right and responsible thing by deciding to reevaluate this project. The Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is dangerous, unnecessary, and would cost the American people far more than we can afford. We cannot -- we must not -- let Big Oil and its minions in Congress force it upon us against our will.

Michael Brune is the Sierra Club's executive director.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Feds Link Water Contamination to Fracking for the First Time

By Abrahm Lustgarten and Nicholas Kusnetz
ProPublica, Dec. 8, 2011

In a first, federal environment officials today scientifically linked underground water pollution with hydraulic fracturing, concluding that contaminants found in central Wyoming were likely caused by the gas drilling process.

The findings by the Environmental Protection Agency come partway through a separate national study by the agency to determine whether fracking presents a risk to water resources.

In the 121-page draft report released today, EPA officials said that the contamination near the town of Pavillion, Wyo., had most likely seeped up from gas wells and contained at least 10 compounds known to be used in frack fluids.

“The presence of synthetic compounds such as glycol ethers … and the assortment of other organic components is explained as the result of direct mixing of hydraulic fracturing fluids with ground water in the Pavillion gas field,” the draft report states. “Alternative explanations were carefully considered.”