Letters to the Editor Letters to the Editor
Wounded in Combat, Denied Benefits Killeen, Tex. My thanks to Joshua Kors for his truthful reporting on these fraudulent "personality disorder" discharges ["Disposable Soldiers," April 26]. I am happy my story has been told. After the mortar blast, when I reached out and asked for help from my chain of command, I had no idea that my comrades would turn on me. I joined the military to serve like both my grandfathers, to do my part for America. I never thought that this could happen to me. This article triggered a huge outpouring of support, including e-mails and phone calls from other soldiers who said, "That happened to me." With the support of my family and friends, I have been able to pull myself up, and I will continue to fight for my brothers and sisters in arms. I will never forget the things that happened to me. To make sure it never happens to anyone else, I have founded Disposable Warriors. We provide support for other soldiers wounded then denied benefits. Since the article was published, we have had more than 200 e-mails and fifty phone calls. I encourage anyone who has had this problem to contact us and keep fighting, because there is hope. I have seen how widespread these personality disorder discharges are. They need to stop. Too many warriors have been wronged. SGT. CHUCK LUTHER California In 2001 they used the personality disorder discharge on me. I was 19, and my commander said the discharge was my sole way out. I was threatened that if I didn't take that discharge, he would have me thrown out with a dishonorable discharge. I was having physical medical problems. I should have been honorably discharged. I was verbally assaulted and humiliated. I received threats from fellow enlisted marines and began to fear for my safety. My commander attempted to put me in confinement "for my medical safety." Out of desperation, I tried to kill myself. After the attempt, I was offered the personality disorder discharge. I took the discharge and didn't look back, for a little while at least. I was just so happy to get out of there. Sometime later I began dealing with the experience. Doctors have since confirmed that I do not have a personality disorder. Even though I have been successful in the days since the discharge, the experience still haunts me. I have told very few people what really happened to me. I feel guilt and shame for the type of discharge I was given. Despite what I know, at some levels I feel that it's my fault. I am too afraid to apply for my dream career in law enforcement because I know they will see my discharge status. Now I wish I had just endured the suffering while I was in the Marines. It has made my life a living hell. VINCENT T. Simpsonville, S.C. I was shocked and saddened when I read Joshua Kors's article. I consider myself pretty well informed, but I had never heard of the disgraceful practice of discharging physically wounded soldiers without benefits by claiming they had a pre-existing personality disorder. I was amazed at how Chuck Luther was not only called a liar but treated as a prisoner of war by our own military. I felt that if people knew about this tragic practice they would demand that it be stopped. That night I started a group on Facebook called Stop Personality Disorder Discharges for Our Wounded Soldiers. The response has been overwhelming. I have been flooded with e-mails from soldiers and families who thought nobody knew or cared about them. Two weeks later, we had more than 2,300 members. We are organizing an e-mail and telephone campaign for Memorial Day, May 31, to let our government know how ashamed we are of this national disgrace. I encourage readers to join the group. I believe we can, and will, stop the use of personality disorder discharges for our wounded soldiers. CHARLES NICHOLSON Overland Park, Kan. "Disposable Soldiers" was absolutely heartbreaking. How could this man, wounded in combat, not only be misdiagnosed but treated in a manner unbefitting a human being? To hear that his superiors' careers "flourished" after this incident is unacceptable. I hope someone with more clout than me can help these soldiers. At least The Nation is listening. KATHLEEN MORALES Allen, Tex. These pre-existing personality disorder discharges: they did the exact same thing to me! I have all the documents to prove it but have not found any attorneys with the courage to help. PHILLIP POPE New York City There is no such diagnosis as an "adult onset personality disorder," as Army doctors have alleged in the case of Sgt. Chuck Luther. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders makes this clear. Sergeant Luther's symptoms are classic signs of traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It's troubling to think that he, a decorated soldier who has proven himself in combat, would be deemed ineligible for benefits. ROBERT LICHTMAN, PhD Professor of psychology John Jay College of Criminal Justice Brooklyn, N.Y. As a clinical psychologist who trained in the Veterans Administration, I am particularly chagrined to read of the abuse of diagnostic practices that Joshua Kors describes. Personality disorder is not one diagnosis but rather a category of diagnoses, with extremely broad manifestations. The assertions of certitude by the doctors who labeled Sergeant Luther with "personality disorder" would be laughable were their consequences not so tragic. MARGARET HORNICK, PHD Danielson, Conn. If doctors found them fit for duty at enlistment time, then they were either lying at discharge or incompetent. The doctors should be dealt with accordingly—i.e., discharged with no benefits. WARREN E. SMITH Columbia, Mo. I was a sergeant in the 82nd Airborne, one of the first deployed to Iraq. When we were clearing out of the country, there was a lot of paperwork to fill out. Most of it was crap, and most of us were more than happy to sign anything just to get out of there. But there was one document that was very important. It asked, "Have you ever fired your weapon at a combatant? Have you ever taken fire? Did you at any time fear for your life?" Ninety-nine percent of us checked yes. Then, as they gathered up the forms, they gave us this gem of wisdom: "In case any of you want to change your answers, remember this: there is a two-month backlog to see the mental health providers. If you checked yes, you will be held here for two months before you are allowed to leave. But if you fill out a new form, I am sure we will be able to clear you out of here with no issues." Every single one of us filled out a new form and left the country. This comes back to bite you in the ass if you later seek help from the VA for PTSD. I'm thankful for reporters like Joshua Kors who get the word out. I hope we can get the government to own up to these shady, underhanded tactics. DANIEL A. CLARK
May 5, 2010 / Our Readers
Letters to the Editor Letters to the Editor
Nuclear Arms and the Man Cincinnati Jonathan Schell, in "Reaching Zero" [April 19], describes very well the theoretical illogic of the arms race, but there are more practical, immediate reasons to oppose proliferation. During the past sixty years the United States has spent more than $7 trillion on nuclear weapons production, much of it without taxpayer or Congressional oversight. We have accumulated dangerous nuclear waste, which we don't know what to do with and which will be a threat for thousands of years. Those who worked at production plants and those who lived nearby have experienced high cancer rates. Any government that continues to build nuclear weapons, knowing their danger, is in effect using them against its own people and the planet itself. CAROL RAINEY Mary Jane Got a New Set of Laws Federal Prison Camp, Jesup, Ga. How legalization will affect small pot growers depends on the types of regulation states choose [Alexander Cockburn, "Marijuana, Boom and Bust," April 19]. For instance, under the medical marijuana law in Michigan a grower is limited to growing for himself and five patients—seventy-two plants (twelve per person). Clearly, legalization will take the big money out of small operations. Unlike the booze industry, however, I don't see the centralization. Even with much of the alcohol industry centralized, there remains a market for small wineries and beer microbrewers. Small growers who are good will always have a niche. Besides the ballot measure in California, legalization will be on the ballot in Oregon and Washington, if all works out. It's interesting to note that when Montanans legalized medical marijuana in 2004, George W. Bush received around 60 percent of their vote; but marijuana outpolled him. Flash-forward four years. Obama took Michigan with around 60 percent of the vote. Medical marijuana outpolled him as well! When are the politicians going to crunch the numbers on this one? HAROLD BARANOFF Desert Hot Springs, Calif. I disagree that legalization in California will drive down prices. I think demand will skyrocket. People who already buy for medical reasons will probably retain their current level of consumption. But many who ingest pharmaceuticals will test-drive cannabis and switch. People who sampled pot recreationally but turned to alcohol because of legality issues will get high instead of drunk. Pent-up demand plus first-in-the-market status will make California a destination for college educations, vacations and retirement. Who's worried? Probably the Mexican drug cartels. Who should worry? The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; Homeland Security; and the Postal Service. The tax revenue will relieve much of the state's $25 billion budget deficit. And guess what Californians will be sending out for Christmas! EARL NISSEN Alexandria, Va. Marijuana is worse for the lungs, heart and brain than cigarettes. It is teeming with bacteria, viruses and fungi. Pure heroin—which the marijuana apostles demonize while portraying pot as a safe "soft" drug—just causes constipation and dizziness. MARK SCOTT OLLER Hilberg & Arendt: It's Complicated Clinton, N.Y. Nathaniel Popper's thorough, nuanced, intellectually brilliant and morally serious journalistic investigation of the complicated personal and historiographical relationship between Raul Hilberg's The Destruction of the European Jews and Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem reminds me why I've been a loyal Nation reader for the past four decades and will (I hope) remain so for decades to come ["A Conscious Pariah," April 19]. MAURICE ISSERMAN Jerusalem Nathaniel Popper's essay on Raul Hilberg and Hannah Arendt is one of the most balanced accounts of these two complex personalities I have read. Given their common perceptions—or the genealogy of these perceptions from Hilberg to Arendt—and the fact that both were vilified in Jewish circles for their emphasis on the bureaucratic machinery of Nazism (for years you could hardly mention the name of Hilberg or Arendt at Yad Vashem), it is truly a shame that they were not allies. One minor correction: it is not true that Hilberg's 1974 course on Holocaust history was the first taught in the United States; I studied the subject with Erich Goldhagen (Daniel Goldhagen's father) at Brandeis in the late 1960s. Hilberg's book was, as I recall, the major resource for that course. SIDRA DeKOVEN EZRAHI Concord, Mass. Nathaniel Popper did a remarkable job restoring to Raul Hilberg scholarly credit attributed by history to Hannah Arendt. However, in the course of doing so, Popper gave credit to Hilberg for being the first to teach a college-level course on the Holocaust. He was not. In 1972, two years before Hilberg first did so, Hampshire College offered a course titled "Thinking About the Unthinkable: An Encounter With the Holocaust," designed in that first year by a group of students and facilitated by anthropologist Leonard Glick. In 1973, Glick created his own syllabus and taught the course for many years thereafter. Hampshire was honored, beginning in 1972, to welcome Hilberg as a guest lecturer for the course. SIGMUND J. ROOS, chair Board of trustees, Hampshire College Tulsa, Okla. As an undergraduate at the University of Vermont in the late 1970s I encountered Hilberg, by then a revered—and feared—faculty member. He was a stern man, distant, but a profoundly gifted lecturer and teacher. Years later, I was his host during a visit to the university where I was then a faculty member. I'd not seen him for decades; he didn't remember me (nor should he have). I found him courtly, friendly, funny, even in his distant way. The lecture was a powerful performance, but during the question-and-answer segment, he erupted when asked to discuss Holocaust survivors. "I don't want to talk about survivors," he shouted. "I want to talk about those who were murdered!" I think that statement reveals much about who he was. BRIAN HOSMER I Remember Mario San Diego I was in Mario Savio's Free Speech Movement/Children's Crusade and bachelor's degree program at UC Berkeley [Scott Saul, "A Body on the Gears," March 29]. It took me eighteen years to graduate because I told Mario I wouldn't take my degree until he got his (he called me when he graduated from San Francisco State). I spoke at his Manhattan memorial service. Did you know he starred in Brigadoon as a senior in high school? He was known as Bob then, as your reviewer notes. Once, a classmate wanted to shoot out a street light outside his window in Queens. Bob wouldn't advise him one way or the other. After the friend did shoot it out, Bob asked, "Did you clean up the glass?" RICHARD THOMPSON A Late, Great Muckraker Blairstown, N.J. As the son and daughter-in-law of Fred Cook, we found Richard Lingeman's "Redbaited by the FBI" [Jan. 11/18] most interesting. The FBI must have been very frustrated trying to find anything on Dad, as he was incorruptible. Dad wrote books on many controversial subjects—The Plot Against the Patient (healthcare), The Warfare State (military-industrial complex), The Great Energy Scam (oil industry) and The Secret Rulers (organized crime) among them. We have great memories of a wonderful man. Thank you for the article. FRED and CAROL COOK Throw Another Nation on the Barbie! Sofia, Bulgaria I am an Australian and an English teacher in Bulgaria. I just want to thank you for your articles. I use them to teach my students, and they greatly enjoy them. LEWIS ALBANIS
Apr 28, 2010 / Our Readers
Letters to the Editor Letters to the Editor
Through the Looking Glass Darkly Pittsburgh After reading Richard Kim's "The Mad Tea Party" [April 12], I saw the light and converted to Teabaggerism. Has anyone noticed that the monogram for "Cloward-Piven" is "CP," the same as for "Communist Party"? And that the reverse, "PC," is the same as for "political correctness"? And that their article was published in 1966, which, of course, contains the number of the Antichrist, with the first 6 diabolically disguised as a 9? I eagerly await a Fox "News" offer of my very own show. MICHAEL PASTORKOVICH London If you combine the first three letters of "Cloward" and the last three of "Piven," you get "cloven"! NORBERT HIRSCHHORN Brooklyn, N.Y. Frances Fox Piven is a target precisely because her work has always supported democratic politics from below. She has devoted a lifetime of scholarship to studying how ordinary people, particularly poor people, fight for social change to improve their lot in life. Case studies she has researched over several decades on the Revolutionary era and the abolitionist, labor, 1930s unemployed workers', welfare rights and civil rights movements all underscore a basic truth: people can redress the imbalance of power and wealth in our society when they organize and disrupt business as usual. That's the last thing Glenn Beck et al. want Americans to realize, and it helps explain why they are working overtime to offer a counternarrative. DOROTHEE BENZ Germantown, N.Y. I worked for Richard Cloward at Mobilization for Youth in 1966 and was there at the creation of the "Strategy to End Poverty." Were Cloward and Piven radicals? You bet, but so was everybody--from the poverty lawyers to school activists (remember Ocean Hill-Brownsville?) to housing advocates and right on down. For God's sake, it was the '60s! At no time did Cloward and Piven consider welfare rights a brief against capitalism, and you'd have to be a lunatic to consider what they were doing to be out of the mainstream. Compare the peaceful and orderly welfare rights movement with the Harlem, Watts, Newark and Detroit riots. I am astounded at the sudden infamy of Cloward and Piven (which Dick would have loved; Frances was always the more practical of the two). To suggest that what the community organizers were doing to help the poor was sinister, unpatriotic or intended to bring down the pillars of our country through disruption is a barbaric misreading of a nation in what was arguably its most creative, if not the messiest, period of the last half of the twentieth century. Cloward and Piven were partners at every relationship level. The energy that produced the "Strategy" came from a combustible combination of love and commitment to a better life for the poor. I ran into Fran on the subway shortly after Dick died. She said she was going to a meeting at Columbia to organize the poor--did I want to come along? I said no, but I loved that she was still fighting for the oppressed. ARTHUR SCHIFF There You Go Again, Israel Westport Island, Me. Congratulations on "Obama's Israel Problem" [April 12]. As one who served on three UN missions to Palestine, beginning with the Bernadotte Mission in 1948, I suggest that the president tell Israel that America will continue to defend it against aggression and support it financially provided Israel returns to its 1967 borders, phases out West Bank settlements and leaves Gaza. Until Israel initiates actions to those ends, we should suspend diplomatic relations and notify the Security Council accordingly. BRUCE STEDMAN UN assistant secretary general (ret.) Mineola, N.Y. Why is America's foreign policy establishment so astonished by Bibi Netanyahu's serial intransigence? Taking Washington's support for granted has long been an article of faith in Tel Aviv. Though Democrats and Republicans continue to vilify one another over everything else, both parties march in lockstep with AIPAC and any and all Israeli policies, no matter how brutal or illegal. Little wonder, then, that despite Vice President Biden's effusive praise for a US-Israel special kinship, Prime Minister Netanyahu publicly embarrassed his state's staunchest ally and chief benefactor. Israel's military pre-eminence, European standard of living and technologically sophisticated economy are due in great measure to Uncle Sam's per annum stipend of $3 billion. Yet Israeli leaders never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity when it comes to the two-state solution. Gen. David Petraeus's admonishments notwithstanding, no American president--including Obama--will ever emulate Ike and summon the courage to overturn such naked irredentism. ROSARIO A. IACONIS Louisville Your nostalgic reference to the days when "President Eisenhower was not afraid to threaten economic sanctions" against Israel needs to be placed in historical context. Eisenhower was elected at a time of heightened cold war tensions, when Israel was perceived by many in DC as a closet, albeit nonaligned, friend of the Soviet Union. Key to his willingness to take on Israel and push for Middle East peace was that top CIA officials like Kermit Roosevelt, and the State Department's Henry Byroade, covertly supported the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism, led by rabbis Elmer Berger and Morris Lazaron and San Francisco businessman George Levison. In the early '50s the ACJ was a major voice in Reform Judaism, speaking for about 25 percent of US Jews. In 1953 Levison and ACJ president Lessing Rosenwald met with Eisenhower to discuss ways the ACJ could assist the Middle East peace initiative, and to distinguish Judaism from "expansionist Zionism." The CIA's Roosevelt also recruited Jacob Blaustein of the American Jewish Committee to pressure Israel into accepting back about 200,000 Palestinian refugees of the 1948 war. Critical to the ACJ acting as a CIA front organization was the American Friends of the Middle East, created by Roosevelt and Berger, with help from Aramco's Col. William Eddy. AFME funded trips to the region by Berger and Lazaron in 1954 and '55. Freedom House's Leo Cherne also worked with the ACJ to create a philanthropic fund, which, had the Eisenhower peace initiative borne fruit, would have assisted Palestinian refugees (with a TVA for the Jordan Valley) and Arab Jewish communities in Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and Iraq. Eisenhower called for Israel to end its Zionist mission, and Berger's 1955 trip focused on how CIA and Aramco money funneled through the AFME to the ACJ philanthropic fund could maintain Jewish communities in the Arab states. The Eisenhower administration worked diligently to create a supportive American Jewish constituency group in the ACJ. The ACJ was even encouraged by the Luce family of Time-Life fame to develop a network of anti-Zionist Reform temples, starting with Chicago's Lakeside Congregation, and Jewish schools with a message that opposed Jewish "peoplehood" in favor of Jewish spirituality. (Readers who would like to know more can read Thomas Kolsky's Jews Against Zionism.) DAVID EUGENE BLANK
Apr 22, 2010 / Our Readers
Big Green: Outed and Outraged Big Green: Outed and Outraged
Below are letters from various environmental groups responding to our March 22 cover story, "The Wrong Kind of Green," by Johann Hari. Because space in our Letters column is limited, they have been abridged. For longer versions, go to "Conservation Groups & Corporate Cash: An Exchange." --The Editors Montpelier, Vt. Johann Hari's "The Wrong Kind of Green" is an irresponsible and toxic mixture of inaccurate information and uninformed analysis. Hari, who did not contact the National Wildlife Federation, has written a work of fiction that hardly merits a response, except that it stoops to a new low by attacking the reputation of the late Jay Hair, a former CEO of the National Wildlife Federation whose powerful legacy of conservation achievement speaks for itself. The National Wildlife Federation is funded primarily by the generous donations of 4 million members and supporters. Corporate partnerships for our educational work account for less than 0.5 percent of our funding. Our dedicated staff, volunteers and state affiliates fight tirelessly to take on polluters, protect wildlife habitat, promote clean energy and educate families about wildlife and the importance of spending time outdoors in nature. What will The Nation do next, blame polar bears for global warming? CHRISTINE DORSEY, communications director National Wildlife Federation Seattle Johann Hari has made outrageous and false statements about my late husband, Dr. Jay Hair, who died in 2002 after a five-year battle with cancer. Jay devoted his life--and his considerable passion, courage and intelligence--to protecting this planet. He never betrayed that mission to "suck millions" from oil and gas companies. While Jay was president of the National Wildlife Federation, corporate contributions never exceeded 1 percent of NWF's budget. In 1982 Jay established NWF's Corporate Conservation Council to create a forum for dialogue with Fortune 500 leaders. Prior to this controversial initiative, almost the only place business and environmental leaders met was in court. Jay took considerable heat, but he understood that the enormity of our challenges required that all sectors--private, government, NGO, religious--be involved and talking to one another. The council was funded solely by its members; NWF's budget was not drawn upon to create the council, nor did corporate money from the council seep into NWF's regular budget. After the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, Jay was the first national environmental leader to go to Prince William Sound to draw attention to the social and environmental devastation. Under Jay's leadership, NWF initiated the class-action lawsuit against Exxon for punitive damages. He protested on the floor of an Exxon stockholders meeting. If Exxon or anyone thought that Corporate Conservation Council membership bought "reputation insurance," they clearly were mistaken. Hari's sloppy reporting smeared the reputation of a fine man. You owe an apology. LEAH HAIR San Francisco Thin on solutions, Johann Hari's story was so plump with distortions of reality that it might have been written by Lewis Carroll. Hari's silliest innuendo is that the Sierra Club is somehow less than aggressive in the fight against coal power. Sierra Club members have blocked no fewer than 119 coal-fired power plants in recent years, and the organization is regarded by friend and foe as the most successful force in the critical effort to scrap coal power. On February 10 even climate scientist James Hansen pulled on a Sierra Club T-shirt and participated in a Sierra Student Coalition anti-coal rally at the University of North Carolina--one of dozens of such rallies our young activists have held in support of Hansen's number-one anti-climate disruption goal: to move America beyond coal. Hari also offered the false and offensive analogy that Sierra Club's marketing partnership with Clorox's environmentally friendly cleaning products was like Amnesty International being funded by genocidal war criminals. The Sierra Club had ensured that these products met the Environmental Protection Agency's most stringent standard, spending four months reviewing Green Works. In the two years since the partnership began, no one has cited evidence that Green Works products do not meet the claims made for them. Rather, they are helping to increase consumer demand for green products. Finally, we have always supported the deepest emissions cuts in line with the science and the need to convert to a new clean energy economy. This includes cuts endorsed by the Center for Biological Diversity, with whom we often join in litigation. Indeed, it was the Sierra Club that helped bring the original suit that led to the Supreme Court decision that spurred the EPA to begin regulating global warming pollution. CARL POPE, executive director Sierra Club Washington, D.C. "The Wrong Kind of Green" offers an inaccurate and incomplete picture of the role deforestation plays in climate change and the way environmental and conservation organizations are fighting for policies to address global warming. For the true story, see nature.org/climatechange. KAREN FOERSTEL, director Climate media relations The Nature Conservancy Washington, D.C. Johann Hari points to three principles that could make environmental advocacy groups stronger and the world a safer place for our children: (1) avoid the perceived or real conflicts of interest created by taking corporate money; (2) start with what must be done to save the environment, not with what we think we can eke out of an unfriendly Congress; (3) work bottom-up, shutting and stopping coal plants. I couldn't agree more. For forty years, Greenpeace has maintained our financial independence, refusing money from corporations. A few years ago, Greenpeace and our allies decided to stop deforestation in the Amazon by "persuading" the major industries driving the problem to cease and desist. When we discovered that cattle ranching was a primary driver of deforestation, Greenpeace activists in the United States and Europe nudged Nike and Timberland to cancel their contracts with leather companies causing deforestation. A few canceled contracts later, the major ranching companies agreed with Greenpeace Brazil to a moratorium on any ranching that causes deforestation. It doesn't matter if you work with companies or governments, as long as you are independent, start with the ecological goal, work globally with governments or companies to change the game and ultimately bring your opponents to a place where they'll lobby for your law or can't withstand it. It is difficult to imagine a way forward on global warming that gets at the root of the problem--coal, the number-one cause of global warming pollution--without a plant-by-plant fight to shut down coal. Some environmental organizations have approached coal with an attitude of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em." The Sierra Club and Greenpeace have a different approach: "beat coal until they join us." PHIL RADFORD, executive director Greenpeace Middlebury, Vt. Many thanks to Johann Hari for his kind words about our work. At 350.org we aren't so much an organization as a campaign, and we look for allies everywhere. We've found them not only across the environmental spectrum but in churches, mosques, temples, sports teams and theater troupes. Our global day of action last October--which CNN called the most widespread day of political action in the planet's history--involved 5,200 demonstrations in 181 countries. We worked easily worldwide with big green groups as well as thousands of organizers from tiny local campaigns and people who'd never done anything before. We were a little surprised at how hard it was to get buy-in to our campaign from some of the big US environmental groups. But as Hari points out, history may have played a role--these groups were set up and scaled to fight much smaller battles, doing the noble work of saving particular canyons or passing conservation laws. It's a whole 'nother level to take on fossil fuel, the center of the economy. But even if the front office of the Sierra Club didn't like what we were doing, its chapters across America and around the world engaged with the 350 campaign, helping pull off rallies and demonstrations. Which is good, because we're a tiny outfit--a couple-dozen young people and one aging writer spread out across a big planet. Immodestly speaking, we're good at what we do, but not good enough to replace other organizations. Our real strength is the amazing volunteers who make it happen everywhere--including in places you're not supposed to be able to do this work. Check out the pictures at 350.org, and you'll see that environmentalism is no longer only for rich white people. We are black, brown, Asian, poor, young--because that's who most of the world is. One key battle that lies ahead for American groups is passing legislation to finally do something about our enormous contribution to global warming: when we talk to our organizers in Addis Ababa or Beijing or Quito, they say that US legislation is vital before anyone else will take real steps. We've learned that it's easier to rally people around bold, ambitious goals. The lobbying in Washington will go better if there's a real movement pushing senators--and that movement can only be built behind legislation that would truly change the system. The good news is everyone gets another chance to help out, all over the world. In collaboration with our UK friends in the 10:10 movement, we've set October 10 for a global Work Party with a 350 theme, with people around the planet putting up solar panels and insulating houses. The point is to send a message to our leaders: we're doing our work, why aren't you? If we can get up on the roof of the school with hammers, surely you can do your work in the Senate, the General Assembly or Parliament. If leaders won't lead, we'll have to lead for them. We hope everyone will join in, big groups and small. Working together is fun and empowering. BILL McKIBBEN, 350.org Tucson Johann Hari asks, Why do so many of the large environmental groups appear to take their lead on climate policy from Congress and the White House? Why do they appear to lack a bottom line on climate policy? He is puzzled by their quick endorsement of weak climate bills, their lauding of Obama's regressive position at Copenhagen and their claims that Copenhagen was a success. He is right to be puzzled: such positioning has been a failure. Congress and the White House have taken progressively weaker positions on climate change legislation and are giving ground in the face of corporate opposition. They see little reason to move toward environmental groups that have endorsed weak positions and signaled that they will endorse even weaker ones. The Center for Biological Diversity has joined groups such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and 350.org to establish 350 parts per million as a bright-line criterion for endorsement of any climate legislation, policy or international agreement. It is not negotiable, because the conditions that support life on earth are not negotiable. While pushing for new, comprehensive legislation, the Center believes it is imperative that we also use existing laws--like the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act--to begin reducing greenhouse gas emissions now. And we must update land and wildlife management plans to ensure that imperiled species are able to survive the level of global warming that is already locked in. We've petitioned the EPA to determine scientifically the safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases), just as it does for other air pollutants. Hari describes the aggressive public opposition to the EPA's determining this safe level by a faction within the Sierra Club, which has also tried to persuade other environmental groups to ask Congress to amend the Clean Air Act to prevent the EPA from doing this. The good news is that the Sierra Club is diverse and dynamic, and many of its leaders and chapters are strongly in favor of the Center and 350.org's petition. Recent changes in the Club's management are promising, and I look forward to working with it to reduce carbon dioxide to 350 ppm. That is unquestionably the task of our generation. The tough questions Hari asks will continue to be posed by astute reporters as environmental groups' endorsements are being lined up for a very weak Kerry-Graham-Lieberman bill--a bill that seeks to increase oil drilling, continue coal burning and allow greenhouse gas emissions to pass irrevocable tipping points. Hari's questions are critical for our time. As environmental leaders, we would do well to use those questions for self-reflection rather than defensively dismiss them. For the Center's efforts to combat global warming, see biologicaldiversity.org/programs/climate_law_institute/index.html . KIERAN SUCKLING, executive director Center for Biological Diversity Quito, Ecuador Congratulations to Johann Hari for the courage to "out" what many have been whispering about for a long time. While we all want to see a stop to deforestation, and real progress in addressing climate change, the approach of the BiNGOs [big nongovernmental organizations] has been to double down on market-based solutions, a questionable approach given that the market, its drivers and its defenders are some of the same culprits responsible for getting us into this mess in the first place. Many of the industry-friendly stopgap measures the BiNGOs are advocating for don't meet the threshold for emissions reductions that scientists tell us are needed. And many treat forests as mere carbon concessions, at the expense of biodiversity and indigenous rights. Given that the tipping point for forest collapse is two to ten years away, this is no time for compromise or false solutions. We invite these organizations to address the drivers of climate change and deforestation, and make indigenous rights central to their climate change agenda. In the run-up to Cop 15, several BiNGOs committed to a "No rights, no REDD" [reducing emissions from deforestation and deregulation] position. These groups should be speaking out and withdrawing their support for REDD unless basic inalienable principles like FPIC (free prior informed consent) are included. KEVIN KOENIG, Ecuador program coordinator Amazon Watch Hari Replies London It is a fact that Dr. Jay Hair kick-started the process of environmental groups taking money from the world's worst polluters. It is also a fact that this process has been taken much further by groups like Conservation International and The Nature Conservancy, ending with their missions becoming deeply corrupted, as I reported. My view is also the view of America's most distinguished climate scientist, Professor James Hansen; of whistleblowers from inside these organizations; and of the environmental groups that don't take money from polluters. I accept that Hair was a fine person in his personal life and had some positive motives, and of course his early death is tragic. But people with otherwise positive motives can make horrific misjudgments. In public debate we have to be able to criticize the harm people have done, and show how it continues, or we cannot prevent more harm. The apology Leah Hair demands is in fact due from the "green" groups that are taking ever more polluter cash and betraying their own missions. If she wishes to preserve the best of her husband's legacy, she should direct her anger at them, not at journalists honestly describing how this process began. Carl Pope, rather than engage with the issues I raised, sadly plays the old politician's trick of denying charges I did not make. Where did I say that the Sierra Club doesn't oppose coal? Nowhere. I described the facts--that under his leadership, the Sierra Club vehemently opposed a lawsuit to force government policies into line with basic climate science by returning us to 350 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Pope doesn't try to justify or explain this, although it was my single largest charge against the Sierra Club. The Center for Biological Diversity describes this behavior as "throwing climate science out of the window," and Jim Hansen--the man Pope waves as a papal authority--describes it as "shocking" and "abominable." So, yes, the Sierra Club opposes coal in many places and at many times, as I said in my article. But it is a matter of record that when there was a lawsuit to ensure the dramatic scale-back in coal we need to preserve a safe climate, its spokesmen and legal counsel lined up with former Bush administration members to deride it. I would like to hear Pope offer an explanation for this, instead of name-calling. Pope also gives an account of the Clorox scandal that is, alas, inconsistent with the facts. A corporation approached Pope and said it would give the Sierra Club a cut of its profits if it could use the Club's logo on its new bleach. As Christine MacDonald exposes in her book Green Inc., Pope gave the go-ahead without making any effort to check that the bleach was genuinely greener than its competitors. The Club's own toxics committee co-chair, Jessica Frohman, was very clear about this, saying, "We never approved the product line." It is a disturbing example of how corporate cash has perverted the behavior of even as admirable a green group as the Sierra Club. There is something lacking from many of these responses. Do these people feel no concern that America's leading environmental groups are hoovering up cash from the worst polluters and advocating policies that fall far short of what scientists say we need to survive the climate crisis safely? Is this the best response they can muster? JOHANN HARI
Apr 16, 2010 / Our Readers and Johann Hari
Letters Letters
Letter published in the May 3, 2010, issue of The Nation.
Apr 14, 2010 / Our Readers, D.D. Guttenplan, and Maria Margaronis
Letters Letters
A historical parallel that might add to Cole's well-put points, particularly regarding lawyers defending Guantánamo detainees: John Adams agreed to serve as defense attorn...
Apr 7, 2010 / Our Readers, Barry Schwabsky, and Miriam Pemberton
Letters Letters
Letters published in the April 19, 2010 issue of The Nation.
Mar 31, 2010 / Our Readers and Jon Wiener
Letters Letters
C'mon, California... 14 Little Words! Napa, Calif. "State Races Matter," says John Nichols in "A 2010 Elections Primer" [March 1]. Indeed they do. And when the November 2010 dust settles, California's legislature is likely to have just enough Republicans to exercise the tyranny of the minority on state budget and revenue matters. We need to end the antidemocratic "two-thirds" rules here so we can start closing the tax loopholes enjoyed by corporate interests and the wealthiest Californians. The California Democracy Act will eliminate the means by which a small minority of right-wing legislators--who put corporations and the wealthy above the vast majority of Californians; who gridlock the budget process year after year; and who block funding for education, social services and infrastructure--have done just that for more than thirty years. Our proposition is just fourteen simple words: "All legislative actions on revenue and budget must be determined by a majority vote." Go to CA4Democracy.com. JOANNE GIFFORD Looting Haiti's Vaults New York City Naomi Klein's "Haiti: A Creditor, Not a Debtor" [March 1] was right on--and about--the money. She highlighted four reasons Haiti deserves reparations: slavery, US occupation, dictatorship and climate change. This debt to Haiti was spelled out clearly in a report issued by the Foreign Policy Association in 1922, a committee that included NAACP stalwart Moorfield Storey and future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. According to the report, in 1914 US Marines landed at Port-au-Prince, "proceeded to the vaults of the National Bank of Haiti, and forcibly seized and carried away $500,000." This marked the beginning of a military occupation that continued until 1934 and an economic control that remains unbroken. HERB BOYD NPR's Faux (Fox) Pas San Jose, Calif. Thank you, Eric Alterman. Finally, someone is saying what needs to be said about NPR ["Zinn-ophobia at NPR," March 1]. I heard the broadcast on the death of Howard Zinn and was astonished that the ever-paranoiac David Horowitz was asked to chime in. Alterman points out that NPR never bends over backward like this when a conservative dies (say, Gen. Al Haig); it just lights the votives and gets Juan Williams to wax nostalgic. The public stations had some cred years ago. Now they are bought and paid for. I call them Fox lite. TIM RYAN Asheville, N.C. It is a mistake to define Howard Zinn solely as a historian and writer. I agree with Eric Alterman's assessment of NPR's ridiculous Fox-like inclusion of David Horowitz to analyze Howard Zinn's career. But Alterman misses the point: Zinn was first and foremost an activist. He spoke out bravely, gave his time continually to justice movements and marched with us on the street right up to the end of his life. Whether his analysis was "overly schematic and simplistic" is of little concern to the activists who can only afford to read his book at the end of the day. It was the actions of his life, and not merely his words, that made Howard Zinn a man of the people. STACK KENNY Sacramento Although I appreciate Eric Alterman's takedown of David Horowitz, I take issue with his snarky remarks about Zinn's life's work. Alterman surely knows that 99 percent of academic historians would not deign to mingle with the great unwashed by participating in protests or civil disobedience. Zinn's activism set him apart. Even as an assistant prof he took courageous stands for civil rights and peace that threatened his career. And "ideologically driven"? Compared with what? The consensus school? The "American exceptionalists"? Cold war liberals who supported the Vietnam War? I'll take Zinn's clear ideology any day over those who claim not to have one. JOSEPH A. PALERMO Seminole, Fla. I took NPR's choice of David Horowitz differently. NPR did the left a favor. The only one who looked bad after Horowitz's commentary was Horowitz. If a person is unworthy of respect, turn on some music, let him step into the light and see how he dances. Give Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong-Il some time onstage to do the old soft shoe--and wait for the jeers and rotten tomatoes. Horowitz stepped on the stage in the limelight glare, slipped on a puddle of his own bile-infused saliva and fell flat on his big, fat, mean, nasty ass. ROBERT AUSTIN Berkeley, Calif. Having David Horowitz comment on Howard Zinn is like having a Holocaust denier comment on Elie Wiesel. STEVE JUNIPER Alterman Replies New York City Thanks, everybody, though I remain confused about Mr. Palermo's definition of "snarky." I had differences with Zinn's interpretation of US history. I stated these clearly and respectfully. Palermo offers no evidence, or even argument, to dispute these views. So who's snarking whom? ERIC ALTERMAN John Logue Memorial Scholarship Shaker Heights, Ohio Thank you, William Greider, for "John Logue, 1947-2009" [March 1], a touching account of the man's career. Logue was a pioneer in bringing employee ownership to the United States. The John Logue Memorial Employee Ownership Scholarship Fund has been created at Kent State. This endowed fund will set up an annual scholarship that will live on forever. It seeks to raise $100,000. To contribute to the scholarship fund, please make a tax-deductible check to the KSU Foundation and put "Logue Memorial Employee Ownership Scholarship Fund" on the memo line. Send to: Department of Political Science, 302 Bowman Hall, PO Box 5190, Kent, OH 44242. MARK CASSELL Satchmo's Jazz Irvine, Calif. Thanks for the deliciously venomous headline for David Schiff's equally pungent review of Terry Teachout's Pops ["Not Even Bing's," March 1]. With the addition of William Deresiewicz's literary criticism and Barry Schwabsky's art criticism to your pages, The Nation seems to be enjoying a cultural renaissance. I've seldom read an arts review as bracing and insightful as Schiff's in any forum. Please give us more. JUDITH WILSON Correction: Even Worse than Reported An editing error in Katha Pollitt's March 22 column led to incorrect figures for the percentage of women in Congress. In all of the 2000s their numbers rose from 13 percent to 17 percent.
Mar 10, 2010 / Our Readers and Eric Alterman
Re ‘Big Tobacco and the Historians’ Re ‘Big Tobacco and the Historians’
Gainsville, Fla. I read this article with interest because I have been on the periphery of some of the events Jon Wiener describes. I would like to take this opportunity to correct the record on a few points. In April 2008 Dr. Gregg Michel, an historian from Texas, contacted me in my capacity as graduate coordinator in the history department at the University of Florida. He was working for a law firm representing one of the tobacco companies, and he was looking for some advanced students to do microfilm research. He e-mailed me a short ad, offering $20 an hour for part-time research. I passed it on to the graduate students. I believe that he interviewed and hired two students at the time, and added two more some time later. I later learned that the graduate students were assigned to read specific Florida newspapers for specific years. They were to look for and copy any stories that pertained to tobacco and health. Their instructions were quite clear: they were not to make any decisions about whether the stories supported or contradicted the arguments made by Big Tobacco. They were to identify everything remotely relevant and pass it on to Michel. The following May I received a phone call from my colleague Betty Smocovitis. Betty had just heard from Stanford's Robert Proctor, who had named four of our graduate students who were doing research on a tobacco case. She was extraordinarily upset about this news and she was particularly concerned because she feared that Proctor would use this information--including perhaps the names of the specific students--in a way that would reflect poorly on the department. I explained that the students were only doing the most basic low-paid research and were not engaging in any sort of advocacy. But she said that Proctor was a bit of a zealot and it was entirely unclear what he might do with the information. She indicated that it was entirely possible that he would publish their names, and she seemed to feel that it was pretty likely that he would present the department as somehow responsible. I passed this news on to the chair of the department and thought I was done with the whole thing. (A few days later Smocovitis e-mailed that upon reflection she doubted if he would use the specific names, but by then events were underway.) The chair spoke to one of the students, to be sure that any work she was doing was within university guidelines (it was). He briefed her on the situation and she was justifiably worried that this fellow Robert Proctor would be publishing her name in some deceptive article (rather like Jon Wiener's). She called Michel, who contacted the lawyers. They apparently smelled a rat. A few months ago I was surprised to learn from a Chronicle of Higher Education reporter that my name appeared in e-mails and legal depositions that were part of a pending case. The tobacco lawyers had charged Proctor with meddling with their case and had deposed both Proctor and Smocovitis. The reporter told me that Dr. Smocovitis's deposition indicated that the history department actively selected the students to work for Michel. I found myself forced to "go on record" to correct this huge error and to explain what our students had actually been doing. Stories appeared in the Chronicle and in the Gainesville Sun presenting various versions of the controversies swirling around Robert Proctor. (The reader can find both by Googling Smocovitis + Proctor.) Now we have Wiener's "Big Tobacco and the Historians." The essay raises a host of interesting issues about what historians should and should not do, but it also raises a few serious concerns in my mind. First, Wiener mentions the research done by UF graduate students and then immediately quotes a University of California-Irvine graduate student--Birte Pfleger--who describes how she had been instructed to engage in unprofessional research methods. The reader is left with the logical conclusion that the UF graduate students had behaved similarly. But Pfleger was working on another case for a different historian eight years ago. Meanwhile, the two recent newspaper stories on this case document that Michel did not give his research assistants this sort of unethical instruction. Why would Wiener omit this easily accessible information? My second concern is how Wiener characterizes Proctor and his behavior towards those graduate students. Having interviewed Proctor, Wiener tells us that the Stanford professor is a helpless victim who had not tried to intimidate anyone. He merely wrote an innocent e-mail to Betty Smocovitis about UF students. I do not know Dr. Proctor and cannot look into his soul and determine his intentions (any more than Wiener can). I do know that Judge William A. Parsons of the Seventh Judicial Circuit Court, who presumably has more experience peering into people's souls, reviewed the complex chain of events and the e-mails that Proctor sent--including some that he had apparently tried to destroy--and concluded that "he appears to have used Dr. Smocovitis to generate activity designed to harass, humiliate and cause the graduate students to either resign from doing work with Dr. Michel or run the risk of being the subject of national publications..." "This court," Parsons continued, "is unable to construct any innocent reason for his conduct. While it is clear that Dr. Smocovitis was manipulated by Dr. Proctor, there is no question that Dr. Proctor was effective in his undertaking..." The e-mails presented to the court, he added, "represent the lowest of the low in terms of a professor of such high standing. To advance your own cause at the expense of graduate students trying to get through college strikes this court as appalling." This opinion, dated November 20, 2009, is part of the public record. The Gainesville Sun quoted Judge Parsons on December 8, 2009. Wiener quotes the lawyers who he says were trying to intimidate Proctor, but he mysteriously fails to quote the judge who weighed all the evidence and found Proctor's behavior so deplorable. Historians, like judges and juries, are supposed to weigh evidence and come to considered opinions. In the process we are supposed to take pains to find the relevant evidence, and present a balanced portrait of that material to our readers even as we are making our arguments. Paid advocates--like lawyers and perhaps historians who work for lawyers--are supposed to tell the truth in the context of an adversarial process. Reasonable people can disagree about whether historians should ever be paid advocates for Big Tobacco. But it seems to me that when historians like Jon Wiener engage in supporting some historians and attacking others, they should go about their business like professional historians and not like paid advocates. J. MATTHEW GALLMAN Wiener Replies More than 400,000 Americans die every year from smoking-related diseases; forty historians have worked as expert witnesses in court, defending the tobacco companies; but Matt Gallman seems to think the big story here is four grad students at the University of Florida who worked as research assistants on one case. It's a footnote to a footnote, but his letter raises some interesting points. The historians who testify for Big Tobacco often don't do their own research but rely on students. That's what Gregg Michel did; he's a historian at the University of Texas-San Antonio. For my piece, I wanted to ask Greg Michel what he had told the students he hired. Did he tell them they would be working for tobacco attorneys, who would use their research to argue in court that the companies shouldn't have to pay a smoker because it was her own fault she was dying of cancer? But Gregg Michel declined to answer. The "two recent newspaper stories on this case" don't quote Michel either. He's not talking. I would have asked the students what they had been told, but the tobacco attorneys who employed the students had already made it abundantly clear that asking the students would be regarded as "harassment." Matt Gallman's description of his e-mail to students annoucing the job is a bit misleading, if the question is what they were told about this research. In fact, his e-mail didn't reveal the purpose of the research in question; it said only, "This research is connected to product liability litigation." A more honest e-mail would have mentioned tobacco. It would have said, "This research will be used in court to defend tobacco companies being sued by smokers." Maybe the students were told that later; we don't know, because Gregg Michel, the historian who hired them, isn't talking, and neither are the students. Maybe the students would say they were delighted to work for the tobacco companies and agreed with the way the companies used their work; maybe they would say they're not proud of what they did, but they needed the money. My guess is that they'd say something like the latter. They are certainly welcome to speak for themselves, instead of their having Matt Gallman speak for them. Next issue: What did Betty tell Matt about Robert? This part of Gallman's letter is more like gossip than history. For the record, Betty Smocovitis, a historian of science at the University of Florida, told me what upset her was not Proctor but rather Gallman's recruitment of grad students in her department to work for Big Tobacco. She says she never told Gallman that Proctor was "a bit of a zealot" or likely to "out" the students. And, for the record, Proctor never did "name" or "out" any students; all he did was e-mail Smocovitis. Volusia County circuit court judge William A. Parsons, Gallman reports, sided with the tobacco companies' view of Robert Proctor as "the lowest of the low"--certainly a striking thing to say about a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Parsons, however, did not "weigh all the evidence"--attorney Bill Ogle, representing plaintiffs who want Proctor as an expert witness, says the judge did not hear from Proctor about his side of the story. Matt Gallman is concerned about Proctor's "intentions." As far as I can tell, Proctor's intentions are good. He is passionate about the health hazards of smoking and about holding Big Tobacco responsible for its actions. In this he is hardly alone. The federal courts ruled in 2006 that for fifty years the tobacco companies had "lied, misrepresented and deceived the American public about the devastating health effects of smoking." In 1999 a Florida jury awarded the class of smokers in Florida $145 billion, the largest punitive damage jury award in US history. In one of the first of the successor cases to that suit, a jury recently awarded smoker Cindy Naugle $300 million. The judge in that case, Jeffrey Streitfeld, who recently lowered the award, said the jury's verdict offered "a lesson" for tobacco attorneys: their "blame the smoker" defense "didn't work," he said. "It upset the jury." But Big Tobacco is still blaming the smokers--and historians are still helping Big Tobacco. Matt Gallman says I have failed to provide a "balanced portrait" of this conflict. To that charge, I plead guilty. JON WIENER
Mar 9, 2010 / Jon Wiener and Our Readers