Fuck Veteran’s Day: A Vet’s Lament

Fuck Veteran’s Day: A Vet’s Lament

by | Nov 18, 2020 | Colonialism & Conquest

U.S. Marine Corps veteran Vince Emanuele offers the reader a systemic analysis of the culture of war, it’s purpose, and the destruction it leaves behind.

by Vince Emanuele / Counterpunch

“They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.”  Ernest Hemingway

“War and drink are the two things man is never too poor to buy.” William Faulkner

I served with the United States Marine Corps, 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, Alpha Company, 3rd Platoon, 1st Squad, 3rd Fire Team, as a Squad Automatic Machine Gunner from September 2002, until January 2006. During that time, I was twice deployed. First, in 2003, in southern Iraq, during the initial invasion and occupation of Iraq. Then, again in 2004–2005, in Al Qaim located in Al Anbar Province, during the height of the insurgency in Iraq.

In 2008 I testified to U.S. Congress about war crimes the U.S. military was committing in Iraq in the name of democracy and freedom: the wanton killing of non-combatants, the torture of prisoners, the mutilation of dead bodies, the cover-ups, lies, and complete disregard for Iraqi life.

Seventeen years after the invasion of Iraq and Americans remain split in their opinion of the war.

Interestingly, Trump ran and won on a quasi-antiwar platform in 2016. Rhetorically, he railed against the military-industrial complex, Bush’s neverending wars, and “interventionist” policies. Republican voters preferred his message to the Neoconservative party line. So much for polls. Trump didn’t out-hawk the hawks in the GOP — he provided a different message. And it resonated. No matter what the left says about Trump’s base, there’s no evidence to suggest they’re champing at the bit for another foreign war.

Fortunately, recent polls show that most U.S. veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan are opposed to the wars and regret their time served overseas. In other words, “it wasn’t worth it.” Not surprising. In my experience, while most veterans might not say so out loud, privately and in the company of fellow veterans, they’re more than willing to speak critically of the wars and do so regularly.

In 2017, roughly 45,000 Americans died from suicide.

Of those, 6,139 were veterans. Most veterans who kill themselves do so because we regret what we’ve done overseas: the people we’ve killed, the friends we’ve lost, all for nothing. We have experienced what some experts call ‘Moral Injury.’ Others commit suicide because they were raped, violently assaulted, hazed, or simply because the military is a harsh fucking place to be at times.

These days, I have a love-hate relationship with my military service. On the one hand, it made me grow up in ways that were necessary and extremely helpful. I met lifelong friends and forged bonds that can only be established in war and through tremendous shared collective sacrifice (something this nation needs now more than ever, a conversation for another day).

As a result of my service, I’m a more disciplined, wise, and emotionally hardened person.

Some people might say that becoming emotionally hard isn’t a good thing. I disagree. This world is a fucking bitch and many men would like to divorce her. Better to prepare for the worst and hope for the best than the opposite. Better to maintain some armor and avoid problems instead of allowing people to walk all over you.

During my service, I also became a more compassionate person. Discovering compassion through war might seem like a major contradiction, a warped irony, it is. On the other hand, my time in the USMC was personally and socially destructive. I put my family, friends, and former lovers through hell, a story most vets can understand. I became addicted to cocaine and alcohol and eventually ended up in an inpatient program at the North Chicago VA. I spent years wondering whether I should get out of bed or stick a gun in my mouth.

Today, my views concerning military service are much more nuanced than they were when I was 22 years old and fresh out of the corps. It’s taken a lot of time, reflection, and hard work to place those experiences in their proper context, to explore different perspectives.  Surely, you’ve heard the expression, “There’s life before your parents die, and life after your parents die.”  The same is true of war. Life before war seems like a distant dream, a vanishing horizon of memories.

Life after the war is crystal clear.

I can recall week-by-week events from ten years ago. I can remember entire months from 2014, 2015, and 2018, what I was doing on specific days, projects I was working on, and the like. It’s wild how the mind works, what it chooses to remember, and chooses to discard to the netherregions of the brain. Childhood memories, like ghosts from the war, revisit me in my dreams, where they stalk, haunt, and entertain.

As much as my views have changed on a number of topics, my views on Veteran’s Day have not. I hate this holiday. I loathe Veteran’s Day because it’s superficial, like most shit in today’s society and culture. What most people call friends, I would call penpals. What most people call lovers, I would call fuck buddies. So it goes in modern America…

On a day that should be shrouded in shame, corporations advertise discount mattresses, while chain restaurants provide menial giveaways — the same chain restaurants that financially benefitted from the wars, the wars that have destroyed some of our lives. And people wonder why veterans lose it? Americans act shocked when a veteran picks up a gun and goes on a killing spree. I’m shocked it doesn’t happen more often.

Americans seem to love superficial displays of patriotism.

They underpin our entire history and existence. They form the way we view the world and those in it. Patriotism gives Americans a sense of fulfillment and meaning. Without it, we’re not a country — we’re just a bunch of states who, as the last election shows, share less and less in common with each passing year.

Where we go from here, no one knows. What we do know is that Biden’s cabinet will be stacked with military-industrial types. The Neoliberals and Neoconservatives will call the shots when it comes to U.S. foreign policy, which means neverending support for Israeli war crimes, more drone strikes, coups, extensive operations in Africa, and no drawdown of troops in Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan. Massive surveillance of U.S. citizens will continue. U.S. Empire will march on, until or unless mass social movements exist that are capable of stopping it.

I don’t know too many veterans who joined the military to fight and die for oil companies, weapons manufacturers, and bankrupt geopolitical interests. Most veterans join the military for good reasons. After all, we live in such a selfish and hyper-individualistic society — it’s not surprising that someone would want to join the military and get away from the dominant culture of “Me! Me! Me!” Here, we should attempt to better understand what draws people to military service.

Nevertheless, as we used to say in the corps, “Good intentions, bad judgment.” No matter how well-intentioned one might be, joining the United States military has nothing to do with protecting our freedom. Some marines have understood this for a long time.

In 1935, General Smedley Butler wrote, War Is A Racket, a scathing text about the true origins of the U.S. military empire and the capitalist interests it serves:

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China, in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

It’s worth again noting that Butler wrote those words 85 years ago. Since then, the U.S. Empire has only grown in size. Additionally, the military-industrial complex is bigger and enjoys more influence in U.S. Congress and White House than at any previous point in U.S. history. If this trajectory doesn’t change, the empire will eat the republic and this little experiment will be cast into the dustbin of history.

For those of you reading this who’ve already done your time, hell, even for those of you who remain in the military, remember this: we signed our name on a dotted line, willing to give our lives, not for a specific president or political party, but in the defense of the U.S. Constitution. If you no longer believe in that oath, I understand. However, if you do believe in the oath, understand what it means: “protecting the U.S. Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

No Iraq, Somali, Pakistani, Palestinian, Libyan, or Syrian poses a threat to our constitution. The Republican Party represents a threat to our constitution. The Democratic Party represents a threat to our constitution. Wall Street poses a threat to our constitution. These are the domestic enemies our oath was referring to. Focus your anger and energies on them, not ordinary citizens, our brothers and sisters, or supposed “foreign threats.” Our problems are staring at us in the mirror.

Veteran’s Day should be a day of national reflection.

If I had it my way, every American would be forced to stand for three hours in the morning and listen to the politicians who vote for wars read off the names of every servicemember and veteran who’s died since 9/11. In the afternoon, Americans would be forced to listen to the testimony of Iraqis, Afghans, Syrians, and other victims of U.S. militarism. And in the evening, they would be forced to volunteer at a veterans hospital. No sports. No bars. No shopping. No sales. No nothing. Then and only then, will we get the attention of people in this country. Shutdown Netflix for a day and see how quickly Americans pay attention.

Meanwhile, to my fellow veterans, welcome home. You made it. You might not be in one piece physically or mentally, but goddamnit, you’re here. You’re alive. And sometimes, that’s all we have. Don’t spend too much time alone. Don’t drink too much. Workout. Have sex. Write. Paint. Play. Create. Smoke pot. Eat mushrooms. Discover yourself, not in some hippy-dippy bullshit way, but in a visceral way. You, more than anyone, should understand just how short life can be.

As the great director and antiwar veteran, Oliver Stone, once wrote, “Those of us who did make it have an obligation to build again, to teach to others what we know, and to try with what’s left of our lives to find a goodness and a meaning to this life.”

You won’t find that meaning in superficial displays of nationalism. That’s why I say, Fuck Veteran’s Day.

This article was originally published in CounterPunch, you can read the full and original article here.

Vincent Emanuele is a writer, antiwar veteran, and podcaster. He is the co-founder of PARC | Politics Art Roots Culture Media and the PARC Community-Cultural Center located in Michigan City, Indiana. Vincent is a member of Veterans For Peace and OURMC | Organized & United Residents of Michigan City. He is also a member of Collective 20. He can be reached at vincent.emanuele333@gmail.com

Dumping Fukushima’s Water into the Ocean

Dumping Fukushima’s Water into the Ocean

by | Nov 7, 2020 | Toxification

In this article, Robert Hunzinker writes about the current situation regarding the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident which has led to the spillage of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean and also water containment issues with worrisome consequences.

By Robert Hunzinker / Counterpunch.

For nearly a decade the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant has been streaming radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. As it happens, TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Co.) struggles to control it. Yet, the bulk of the radioactive water is stored in more than 1,000 water tanks.

Assuredly, Japan’s government has made an informal decision to dump Fukushima Daiichi’s radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. A formal announcement could come as early as this year. Currently, 1.2 million tonnes of radioactive water is stored.

The problem: TEPCO is running out of storage space.

Government of Japan’s solution: Dump it into the Pacific Ocean.

Third-party expert solutions: Build more storage tanks.

Environmental groups insist there is no reason why additional storage tanks cannot be constructed outside the perimeter of the plant. They accuse the government of seeking the cheapest and quickest solution to the problem. All along, authorities have promised the site will be safe in 40 years. Really, only 40 years!

According to IAEA’s Director General Grossi, who visited Fukushima in February 2020, dumping radioactive water that is mainly contaminated with tritium meets global standards of practice.

In that regard, advocates of nuclear power utilize a subtle storyline that convinces, and deceives, the public into accepting nuclear power, however reluctantly. It goes something like this: “There’s nothing to worry about. Nuclear power plants routinely release tritium into the air and water. There is no economically feasible way to remove it. It’s normal, a standard operating procedure.” Nevertheless, as shall be explained in more detail forthwith, there is nothing positive about that posture, absolutely nothing!

According to TEPCO, all radioactive isotopes will be removed, except tritium, which is hard to separate. Still, similar to all radioactive substances, tritium is a carcinogen (causes cancer), a mutagen (causes genetic mutation), and a teratogen (causes malformation of an embryo).

The good news: Tritium is relatively weak beta radiation and does not have enough energy to penetrate human skin. The principal health risks are ingesting or breathing the tritium.

TEPCO has deployed an Advanced Liquid Processing System that purportedly removes 62 isotopes from the water, all except tritium, which is radioactive hydrogen and cannot easily be filtered out of water.

However, the filtration system has been plagued by malfunctions. According to Greenpeace International, within the past two years TEPCO admitted to failures to reduce radioactivity to levels below regulatory limits in more than 80% of the storage tanks. Reported levels of Strontium-90 (a deadly isotope) were more than 100 times regulatory standards with some tanks at 20,000 times:

“They have deliberately held back for years detailed information on the radioactive material in the contaminated water. They have failed to explain to the citizens of Fukushima, wider Japan and to neighboring countries such as S. Korea and China that the contaminated water to be dumped into the Pacific Ocean contains dangerous levels of carbon-14. These, together with other radionuclides in the water will remain hazardous for thousands of years with the potential to cause genetic damage. It’s one more reason why these plans have to be abandoned.”

Cancer is the main risk to humans ingesting tritium. When tritium decays it emits a low-energy electron (roughly 18,000 electron volts) that escapes and slams into DNA, a ribosome or some other biologically important molecule. And, unlike other radionuclides, tritium is usually part of water, so it ends up in all parts of the body and therefore, in theory, can promote any kind of cancer. But that also helps reduce the risk because tritiated water is typically excreted in less than a month. (Source: Is Radioactive Hydrogen in Drinking Water a Cancer Threat, Scientific American, Feb. 7, 2014)

Some evidence suggests beta particles emitted by tritium are more effective at causing cancer than the high-energy radiation such as gamma rays. Low-energy electrons produce a greater impact because it doesn’t have the energy to spread its impact. At the end of its atomic-scale trip it delivers most of its ionizing energy in one relatively confined track rather than shedding energy all along its path like a higher-energy particle. This is known as “density of ionization.” As such, scientists say any amount of radiation poses a health risk.

You can read the full article here.

Message to the French People

Message to the French People

by | Oct 30, 2020 | ACTION, Protests & Symbolic Acts

This writing was written by Deep Green Resistance cadre in December 2018 and is published here in English for the first time.

Message To the French People

In the past weeks we have seen an uprising of the people. Macron and his cronies in the L’Assemblee have gone too far again. The average people in France are living a precarious life. We are poor, we are sick, and we are tired of the bosses and the politicians, the little dictators.

Now they try to tell us that we are responsible for paying a tax on fuel to solve global warming. These capitalist dogs who caused the problem in the first place now want to turn around and rob us to fix it. Their fuel taxes are a form of theft from the poor, one of the many ways they rob us of life and liberty. First they exploit our labor. Then they poison us with their factories and pollution. Then they rob us as landlords. Next they commodify every part of our lives through mass advertising. These elites are vampires sucking us dry.

The French people have a true sense of our power.

Our forebearers took the rich to the Guillotines and erected the barricades in Paris. Our grandmothers and grandfathers fought the Nazi regime from the streets and rooftops and alleyways and made collaborators pay for their self-serving treachery.
Now our very own government has unleashed their trained dogs against the people, injuring hundreds and leaving the streets of France bloody. We say: no more. No more can we tolerate their capitalist lies. No more will we pay their farcical taxes. No more will we cooperate with their tyrannical vision. No more will we stand idly by as fascists step to the fore.
As the police and security forces of the state run amok through the streets of this country, we say it is time. Let us rise up. We need a radical new imagination to chart a course out of this terrible storm.

What we want:

1. We want the freedom to determine our own destiny. We can no longer rely on distant wealthy politicians.
2. We want an end to the robbery of the people. This means an end to capitalism and to the capitalist economy and a return to localized economies of sharing and cooperation. Life is incompatible with constant growth.
3. We want a true environmentalism that serves the people and the natural world, not the rich. “Green technology” and “green capitalism” are false solutions that have been sold to us through lies. but on reconnecting with the spirit of the land and changing our economic structure.
4. These goals are mutually supportive, and one cannot succeed without the other. Building a new France and a new world means dismantling mass industrial society, ending the reign of capitalism, regaining a sense of our own political power, autonomy, and responsibility, and reintegrating ourselves into the ecology of the land.
As the world falls deeper into crisis, our leaders are showing their ineptitude. They do not serve us, they serve the rich. It is up to the people of France to disarm the state through the solemn manifestation of our will. In the face of racism and bigotry, we must find solidarity. In the face of state violence and repression, we must find courage. It is our obligation to fight and win.
BREAKING: Wet’suwet’en Women Occupy Pipeline Drillsite To Stop CGL from Drilling Beneath Their Sacred Headwaters

BREAKING: Wet’suwet’en Women Occupy Pipeline Drillsite To Stop CGL from Drilling Beneath Their Sacred Headwaters

by | Oct 14, 2020 | Colonialism & Conquest, Mining & Drilling

via Wet’suwet’en Access Point on Gidimt’en Territory:

BREAKING: Wet’suwet’en Women Occupy Pipeline Drillsite To Stop CGL from Drilling Beneath Their Sacred Headwaters

As Coastal GasLink attempts to destroy our homelands, we are surveilled, harassed, and criminalized even when we pray for our yintah.

Our rights are being trampled and our future is at risk. We ask our supporters to again stand with us and to take action, as Coastal GasLink is now days away from test drilling at our sacred headwaters .

The time is now to fight with all we have against this colonial invasion.

Indigenous Women Hold Ceremony at Pipeline Drill Site

https://www.facebook.com/wetsuwetenstrong/posts/695976478014808

Coastal GasLink has called in the RCMP to try and remove Wet’suwet’en community members and Indigenous youth as they hold a ceremony at a proposed drill site for Coastal Gaslink’s pipeline. Coastal Gaslink has been evicted from our territories by the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs – who have full jurisdiction over Wet’suwet’en lands. As CGL continues to trespass, we will do everything in our power to protect our waters and to uphold our laws.

We will not let CGL break our Wet’suwet’en laws and drill under the headwaters of the Wedzin Kwa river, which nourishes all of Wet’suwet’en territory. The standoff is ongoing. We call for solidarity actions from coast to coast. Take action where you stand, or come stand with us on the yintah.

Donate, volunteer, or take action: http://www.yintahaccess.com

 

They Want To Mine The Deep Sea

They Want To Mine The Deep Sea

by | Aug 26, 2020 | Mining & Drilling

In this article Julia Barnes describes the process of seabed mining and calls for organized resistance to this new ecocidal extraction industry. This article was originally published in Counterpunch

They want to mine the deep sea.

We shouldn’t be surprised. This culture has stolen 90% of the large fish, created 450 de-oxygenated areas, and murdered 50% of the coral reefs. It has wiped out 40% of the plankton. It has warmed and acidified the water to a level not seen since the Permian mass extinction. And indeed, there is another mass extinction underway. Given the ongoing assault on the ocean by this culture, there is serious question as to whether the upper ocean will be inhabitable by the end of this century.

For some people, a best-case scenario for the future is that some bacteria will survive around volcanic vents at the bottom of the ocean.

Deep sea mining is about to make that an unlikely possibility. It’s being touted as history’s largest mining operation. They have plans to extract metals from deposits concentrated around hydrothermal vents and nodules – potato sized rocks – which are scattered across the sea floor. Sediment will be vacuumed up from the deep sea, processed onboard mining vessels, then the remaining slurry will be dumped back into the ocean. Estimates of the amount of slurry that will be processed by a single mining vessel range from 2 to 6 million cubic feet per day.  I’ve seen water go from clear to opaque when an inexperienced diver gives a few kicks to the sea floor.

Now imagine 6 million cubic feet of sediment being dumped into the ocean. To put that in perspective, that’s about 22,000 dump trucks full of sediment – and that’s just one mining vessel operating for one day. Imagine what happens when there are hundreds of them. Thousands of them.

Plumes at the mining site are expected to smother and bury organisms on the sea floor. Light pollution from the mining equipment would disrupt species that depend on bio-luminescence. Sediment plumes released at the surface or in the water column would increase turbidity and reduce light, disrupting the photosynthesis of plankton.

A few environmental groups are calling for a moratorium on deep sea mining.

Meanwhile, exploratory mining is already underway. An obscure organization known as the International Seabed Authority has been given the responsibility of drafting an underwater mining code, selecting locations for extraction, and issuing licenses to mining companies. Some companies claim that the damage from deep sea mining could be mitigated with proper regulations. For example, instead of dumping slurry at the surface, they would pump it back down and release it somewhere deeper.

Obviously, regulations will not stop the direct harm to the area being mined. But even if the most stringent regulations were put in place, there still exists the near-certainty of human error, pipe breakage, sediment spills, and outright disregard for the rules.

As we’ve seen with fisheries, regulations are essentially meaningless when there is no enforcement. 40% of the total catch comes from illegal fishing. Quotas are routinely ignored and vastly exceeded. On land, we know that corporations will gladly pay a fine when it is cheaper to do so than it is to follow the rules. But all this misses the point which is that some activities are so immoral, they should not be permitted under any circumstances.

Permits and regulations only serve to legalize and legitimize the act of deep sea mining, when a moratorium is the only acceptable response.

Canadian legislation effectively prohibits deep sea mining in Canada’s territorial waters. Ironically, Canadian corporations are leading the effort to mine the oceans elsewhere. A spokesperson from the Vancouver-based company Deep Green Metals attempted to defend deep sea mining from an environmental perspective,

“Mining on land now takes place in some of the most biodiverse places on the planet. The ocean floor, on the other hand, is a food-poor environment with no plant life and an order of magnitude less biomass living in a larger area. We can’t avoid disturbing wildlife, to be clear, but we will be putting fewer organisms at risk than land-based operations mining the same metals.” (as cited in Mining Watch).

This argument centers on a false choice.

It presumes that mining must occur, which is absurd. Then, it paints a picture that the only area affected will be the area that is mined. In reality, the toxic slurry from deep sea mining will poison the surrounding ocean for hundreds of miles, with heavy metals like mercury and lead expected to bio-accumulate in everyone from plankton, to tuna, to sharks, to cetaceans.

A study from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences stated that “A very large area will be blanketed by sediment to such an extent that many animals will not be able to cope with the impact and whole communities will be severely affected by the loss of individuals and species.”

The idea that fewer organisms are at risk from deep sea mining is an egregious lie.

Scientists have known since 1977 that photosynthesis is not the basis of every natural community. There are entire food webs that begin with organic chemicals floating from hydrothermal vents. These communities include giant clams, octopuses, crabs, and 10-foot tube worms, to name a few. Conducting mining in these habitats is bad enough, but the effects go far beyond the mined area.

Deep sea mining literally threatens every level of the ocean from surface to seabed. In doing so, it puts all life on the planet at risk. From smothering the deep sea, to toxifying the food web, to disrupting plankton, the tiny organisms who produce two thirds of the earth’s oxygen, it’s just one environmental disaster after another.

The most common justification for deep sea mining is that it will be necessary to create a bright green future.

A report by the World Bank found that production of minerals such as graphite, lithium, and cobalt would need to increase by nearly 500% by 2050 to meet the growing demand for so-called renewable energy. There is an article from the BBC titled “Electric Car future May Depend on Deep Sea Mining”. What if we switched the variables, and instead said “the future of the ocean depends on stopping car culture” or “the future of the ocean depends on opposing so-called renewable energy”. If we take into account all of the industries that are eviscerating the ocean, it must also be said that “the future of the ocean depends on stopping industrial civilization”.

Evidently this culture does not care whether the ocean has a future. It’s more interested in justifying continued exploitation under the banner of green consumerism.  I do not detail the horrors of deep sea mining to make a moral appeal to those who are destroying the ocean. They will not stop voluntarily. Instead, I am appealing to you, the reader, to do whatever is necessary to make it so this industry cannot destroy the ocean.

Julia Barnes is a filmmaker, director of Sea of Life and of the forthcoming film Bright Green Lies.

Featured image: deep-sea coral, Paragorgiaarborea, on the edge of Hendrickson Canyon roughly 1,775 meters or nearly 6000 feet underwater in the Toms Canyon complex in the western Atlantic. NOAA photo.