The Dominion - 2

Morroccan Immigrant to be Deported

Fri, 27 Jun 2003 00:26:17 +0000

Adil Charkaoui, a 29 year old Morroccan immigrant and resident of Montreal, has been charged with being a "dormant agent" of Al Quaeda by CSIS. He is being deported under a section the one year old Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, which allows CSIS to gain approval from Solicitor General Wayne Easter and Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Denis Coderre to detain or deport immigrants without a conventional trial.

The public evidence offered by CSIS claims that Charkaoui associated with terrorists in the 90s, and that he visited Pakistan at the same time that Ahmed Ressam, a member of the Canada-based terrorist group that planned attacks on the Los Angeles Airport, was training in Afghanistan. No evidence is offered that connects Charkaoui to terrorist activity.

Under current Canadian law, a federal judge will examine the evidence provided by CSIS, and if she concurs, Charkaoui will be deported. Since CSIS claims the evidence would jeopardize national security if made public, Charkaoui and his lawyers will not be privy to the evidence against him. After a decision is made, no appeal is available. Charkaoui, who is married and has one child, has denied connections to terrorist activity in the past, and has claimed his arrest is retribution for refusing to spy on other Montreal muslims for CSIS.

Mohamed Harkat, an Algerian refugee, was arrested under a similar security certificate last December, and has been held in solitary confinement for seven months. Under similar claims of a risk to national security, Harkat has not been made aware of the details of the charges against him. His hearing is set for July. (Toronto Star, Canadian Press, Montreal Muslim News)

June 25, 2003

Thu, 26 Jun 2003 23:16:37 +0000

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"New Coat Pride"

Thu, 26 Jun 2003 10:55:43 +0000

"New Coat Pride," by Heather Meek

Wayzgoose

Thu, 26 Jun 2003 10:09:35 +0000

The unseasonably warm afternoon of April 26 of this year was the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Wayzgoose festival of the printing arts in Grimsby, Ontario. A curiously named event (various sources confirm that, historically, a cooked goose did indeed figure prominently), the Wayzgoose festival is a gathering for practitioners of all arts relating to the production of fine, small-editioned, usually hand-made books. Small press operators, book binders, paper makers, printmakers, and others gather together in the Grimsby Public Art Gallery (in the basement of the Grimsby Public Library) to share knowledge and beautiful things not only with each other, but also with a respectable number of faithful and/or curious members of the public.

A woodcut by Margaret Lock; from the keepsake "December", Locks' Press, 1999. Fred and Margaret Lock were amongst the exhibitors at this year's Wayzgoose.

Wayzgoose was first organized in 1978 by the industrial designer and master printer Bill Poole, who operated Poole Hall Press out of Grimsby, an otherwise typical Southern Ontario town butted up against the Niagara Escarpment, faced by Lake Ontario, and slashed across the middle by the Queen Elizabeth Way. What brings printing aficionados to the Wayzgoose from as far away as the Maritimes is a quixotic concern for, quite simply, beautiful things -- books as aesthetic objects. William Rueter, founder and sole operator of Aliquando Press, had for display and sale a beautifully conceived broadsheet, with a simply ornamented quotation by George Bernard Shaw:

There is nothing on earth more exquisite than a bonny book, with well-placed columns of rich black writing in beautiful borders, and illuminated pictures cunningly inset. But nowadays, instead of looking at books, people read them.

Certainly, those who peddle their wares at the Wayzgoose are the type to look as well as read; they are those gentle, harmless lunatics who would endure great physical obstacles in order to hold, sniff, and stroke a handmade book.

John Metcalf, the Ottawa-based writer and editor, puts it succinctly in his memoir, An Aesthetic Underground, when describing his discovered love for books as objects:

I wallowed in bindings and leathers and fonts, in all the lovely jargon of the trade, half-titles, colophons, blind stamping, foxing, black letter, washed leaves, cancels ... I came to believe that there were few things in the world more beautiful than the deep burning black of Baskerville type on crisp rag paper.

Having only recently gained a view into this new world of fine books myself, I was surprised to see at the Wayzgoose not only the exhibiting artists, but an enthusiastic turnout from the public. After all, one doesn't find one's way into the basement of the Grimsby Public Library by accident. Many people had come expressly for the purpose of seeing these deliberate, considered bookworks. Apparently, many more people than I had imagined were interested, or at least intrigued. I was troubled by my own surprise, and I pondered the reason for it.

Good, and especially great book artists are a grossly underrated crew. They have chosen to work in a medium which is challenging in that it is ubiquitous. A painter might splash abominable hotel-art watercolours of flowers and nudes, but to the common perception this brush-wielder is -- by association with Impressionists and Surrealists -- an artist. Those who spend obsessive months hunched over a hulking iron printing press, sweating over the proportions and placement of a colophon, are working with the more 'common' media of paper, ink, and type -- and therefore might more likely be thought certifiably loony than genuinely artistic. In a day when computers are pandemic as viruses, anyone with access to design software has access to the medium of typography. And with contemporary design software comes almost infinite possibility: thousands of fonts and colours, the ability to adjust spacing on the level of the pixel. From this environment of ubiquity and possibility emerges the art of restraint.

This restraint focusses the artist on a simple and beautiful notion: the arrangement of symbols on two-dimensional space. Inexperience makes itself obvious through unconsidered and overcompensated design -- design that makes up in clutter for what it lacks in compositional sense. The experienced designer, on the other hand, may achieve by the simplest means a perfect balance of the form and content of a piece of printed matter. The composition sings. One is taken aback by the surprising pleasure of it -- an inked-type-induced elation, which I suspect for many of us is followed by a brief moment of, perhaps, embarrassment or confusion -- such as one would feel when admitting that he truly, genuinely, loves those pine-tree-shaped air fresheners that dangle from rear-view mirrors.

Still, on the last Saturday of next April, I will find myself in strange but familiar tire ruts that lead back to the basement of the Grimsby Public Library, for my second visit with that exclusive club of lunatics. Admittedly, this is a club that I would be honoured to be a part of, even if they'd have me as a member.

John Haney is a photographer and occasional printer, currently living in Sackville, New Brunswick.

The unseasonably warm afternoon of April 26 of this year was the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Wayzgoose festival of the printing arts in Grimsby, Ontario. The Wayzgoose festival is a gathering for practitioners of all arts relating to the production of fine, small-editioned, usually hand-made books. - by John Haney -

Sounds Prohibited

Thu, 26 Jun 2003 10:00:58 +0000

Censorship rockin' in the free world

For the first time in nearly three years, aging hip-hoppers the Beastie Boys recorded and released a new song. Called "In a World Gone Mad", the song was inspired by the overt militarism of U. S. President George W. Bush. But Mike D of the Beastie Boys also cited another motivation for the recording: the reports of artists being discouraged from mentioning the Iraq conflict during this year's Grammy Awards. In the months of March and April, it seemed that everywhere you turned there was a pop artist or activist complaining that dissenting voices were getting crushed by the powers above. Surely, you'd think, all the belly-aching was exaggerated -- but then again, you'd also think that if the Beastie Boys released much-anticipated new material, you might have had a chance of hearing it on the radio. Fat chance, apparently. The age-old debate on censorship in the so-called free world has returned to the headlines.

Artists ranging from Chumbawumba to Yo La Tengo released protest songs during the war, but according to The New York Times these tunes were "virtually absent from commercial radio stations, where most programmers wouldn't dream of dividing or alienating their listenership." And yet somehow corporate censorship didn't stop redneck-cum-country-megastar Toby Keith, who scored a huge #1 in America with "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue", featuring the stunning lyrics "This big dog will fight / When you rattle his cage / And you'll be sorry that you messed with The U. S. of A. / 'Cause we'll put a boot in your ass / It's the American way."

The recent wave of music censorship in the West has led some journalists to discover that the corporations who control the entertainment industry have long been close buddies with the world's most powerful political leaders. The top management at Clear Channel, which owns over 1200 radio stations in the U. S., has well-established personal and financial ties to the Bush administration. A recent Village Voice article summarized how Clear Channel's vice chair, Tom Hicks, made George W. Bush a multimillionaire by buying the Texas Rangers from him, and chaired a state university board that steered most of its endowment to firms with Bush and GOP ties. Caught with their paws in each other's pockets. Is it at all shocking to hear, then, that Clear Channel stations sponsored pro-war rallies across America? (This included one in Louisiana where they rented a tractor to crush Dixie Chicks CDs and merchandise, on account of singer Natalie Maines having mentioned at a London concert that the band was "ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas".)

Meanwhile, President Bush has called rapper Eminem "the most dangerous threat to American children since polio". You can see how some musicians might be getting nervous about being listed in the music industry's axis of evil.

Here in Canada, there haven't been widely-publicized cases of music suppression, but that hardly means we're immune from the change in the censorship landscape that's occurred since the war on terror began. Martin Cloonan, chairperson of the censorship watch group Freemuse, says that the new climate in the west is not so much one of outright censorship as it is one of consensual control, where the listening public has voluntarily accepted the corporate mechanisms that restrict the free flow of musical ideas.

We're getting used to the idea that certain pop songs are inappropriate or -- a broadcasting public-relations favourite -- "insensitive" to such fragile times. You'll rarely hear of stations using ugly words like "banning"; instead, Clear Channel, BBC Radio 1, and MTV Europe have all recently circulated memos with "suggested guidelines" for playlists. Apparently, these broadcasters believe that listeners are incapable of handling subversive music, but are ready to swallow euphemisms.

So what exactly should we be watching out for in the future of this debate? Censorship under another name, perhaps. Goodbye to "censorship", then, and hello to policing pop.

Matt Brennan is finishing a master's degree on music and the media at Stirling University, U. K.

In the months of March and April, it seemed that everywhere you turned there was a pop artist or activist complaining that dissenting voices were getting crushed by the powers above. Surely, you'd think, all the belly-aching was exaggerated -- but then again, you'd also think that if the Beastie Boys released much-anticipated new material, you might have had a chance of hearing it on the radio. - by Matt Brennan -

Gouging Together a Living

Thu, 26 Jun 2003 09:46:25 +0000

How banks get away with making you pay for your savings account

Day or night, bank machines somewhere are calculating fees on your bank account or interest on your credit card. photo: Dru Oja Jay

Most Canadians don't need to be told that bank fees are rising, while interest rates paid on deposits--even in long term savings accounts--have diminished to the point of being inconsequential. Since the early nineties, the "big five" banks in Canada (Toronto Dominion, Royal Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Bank of Montreal) have been accelerating a collective move away from traditional retail banking, which is based on the premise that depositors lend their money to a bank and receive interest and certain services in return.

Instead, the trend has been to charge increasing service fees while moving customers into areas more lucrative for banks such as credit cards, mutual funds, money market accounts, and stock market investments. Simply storing money in chequing and savings accounts is no longer a considered as a mutually beneficial arrangement; it is now a service to be paid for.

For example, Royal Bank customers pay up to $1.25 for each cheque used, and can pay up to $1.50 when withdrawing money from a non-Royal Bank tellers machines. Similar fees apply to deposits, Interac transactions, and teller visits. One always has the alternative to pay a higher monthly fee for a set number of "free" transactions. Such fees are typical of other big five banks.

Meanwhile, interest rates on savings accounts under $5,000 are all but nonexistent. Royal Bank, for example, pays 0.1% on savings accounts under $5,000. Rates reach 2% on deposits of $10,000 or more: still below the rate of inflation, which hovers at just over 2%. Again, other banks offer similar rates, with some variation.

"They've lost some of their customers, but they don't think they're going to lose any more, so they're gouging their remaining customers"

For customers who want to keep pace with inflation, much less learn interest, there are mutual funds, money markey accounts, and stock portfolios, all of which the banks manage for a fee. For an annual administrative fee, these customers receive personal advice and higher returns. Other customers receive unsolicited complimentary "visa cheques" in the mail; as the fine print informs those who care to look, any use of the cheques carries a hefty 17.5% interest rate. To keep record profits coming in, banks must leverage their "brand" in as many ways as possible to sell their customers a wide variety of financial services.

At first glance, this state of affairs is baffling. There are five different banks in Canada, each with hundreds of outlets across the country. Given that a large number of customers are annoyed at paying just to have an account, surely they would compete with one another for customers by offering lower fees and higher interest on deposits? The situation seems even more strange when one notices that competing banking services from Presidents Choice and ING Direct offer no-fee banking and Interac service, with interest rates well above inflation on any amount (2.75% and 3%, respectively). Many community credit unions offer similar benefits.

So why do Canadians overwhelmingly stay with the big five banks? Do the CEOs of the big five sit in smoke filled rooms and conspire to raise fees? As it turns out, they don't need to.

"People bank based on convenience; what's close to home, school, or work: that's where they have their bank," says Duff Conacher. Conacher chairs the Canadian Community Reinvestment Coalition, a collection of "anti-poverty, consumer, community economic development, labour and small business groups" that advocates for bank accountability in Canada.

Conacher cites a 1998 study by the federal Competition Bureau which found that fewer than 1% of Canadians had ever switched banks. "You're not going to switch to save $10, if you have to drive ten minutes to get to your branch." Perversely, the recent new competition from virtual banks like ING Direct and President's Choice seems to be partially responsible for new fees and ever-increasing credit card interest rates. "They've lost some of their customers, but they don't think they're going to lose any more, so they're gouging their remaining customers," says Conacher. The reason for this is decidedly simple: "baby boomers on up will not do their banking electronically," so virtual banks are out of the running.

Of the bricks-and-mortar banks, none has any incentive to try to compete with the others. "You're not going to lower your fees as a bank," explains Conacher, "and then open up a whole bunch of branches, because you're going to have costs from opening up the branches, and you're going to have lower revenues from reducing your fees, so you're going to lose money... unless you get an enourmous number of people to switch over."

Data from the Canadian Bankers Association seems to suggest just the opposite. Between 1997 and 2000, the number of people employed in Canadian banks declined in every province except for Ontario, Alberta, and British Colombia. The latter two saw modest increases, but over 16,000 new banking jobs emerged in Ontario, and 8,000 new workers were hired outside of Canada. Unless Ontario represents an exception to the move to more automated, this trend suggests that banks are pouring resources into high-end services on Bay street, while cutting back and automating everywhere else.

"It's a tough issue, because everyone has a minute amount of outrage about it... no one is going to dedicate their life to working on it.

The problem, says Conacher, is that despite a clear lack of competition in many retail banking areas, banks are regulated as if they were competing. Having multiple competitors doesn't make a market competitive, he says. "The measurement of competition is based on whether companies can steal customers from each other based on what they do, in terms of price or quality of service... if you have record profits year after year, it's a direct sign that there is no real competition."

The simple answer, according to the Canadian Community Reinvestment Coalition (CanCRC), is to regulate the financial services industry in the same way that some utilities and telephone service providers are regulated. Conacher: "For each line of service (teller banking, self service, telephone, and internet banking)--we know they track their profit margins for each of those sectors-- they should be required to disclose the profit margin. If the profit margins are higher than 15-20%, it should automatically trigger a review by the regulator, and possibly force a lowering of interest rates [or fees]."

Ironically, such practices might be better for everyone in the long run. According to Conacher, the record profits from alleged price gouging allowed the banks to lose millions of dollars on bad investments in Mexico, Argentina and the telecommunications industry, as well as companies like Enron and Worldcom. If regulated, competitive profit margins might force the banks to be less cavalier with their customers' money in the future.

But profit margins on specific services aren't the only thing that CanCRC would like the banks to disclose. According to www.cancrc.org, "banks have refused to disclose detailed information about their lending to women, minorities, in low-income neighbourhoods or specific regions of Canada." Without this information, there is no way to determine with certainty whether banks are discriminating against certain groups, or denying financial services to certain demographics. Critics have argued that banks deny access to individuals with low incomes by demanding kinds of identification they are not likely to have before granting an account, among other tactics.

In the current political climate, however, it is unlikely that the government will force the banks to disclose any information, much less attach consequences to it. Instead, the principle discussion among banks and the government centres around mergers, which would almost accelerate the processes described above. Canadians are left with few alternatives: the virtual banks, and community credit unions. However, the former are not an option for many people with low incomes; households with internet access are much more likely to be of better means. Community Credit Unions often offer their members some degree of democratic accountability from management through an elected board, but they are often not in accessible locations, and require dedicated individuals and organized groups to get started.

"It's a tough issue, because everyone has a minute amount of outrage about it," says Conacher, "no one is going to dedicate their life to working on [this issue]." But, he explains, there is a very simple way of collectivizing the ubiquitous minute outrage: "The government would require the banks to enclose a one-page pamphlet when they mail out a bank statement or a credit card bill. The pamphlet would invite you to join a group that would watch over the banks. That pamphlet would reach 20 million people for a very low cost. If only one percent joined, you'd have a group with 200,000 members. We've done a national survey, and people have said they're willing to pay $30 as a membership fee. So you'd have a group of 200,000 members and a $6 million annual budget. Then you'd have collectivized outrage, and you'd see the government change their position right away."

As it stands, the banks wield an enourmous amount of influence with the current government. In additions to the hundreds of lobbyists that work Parliament Hill on their behalf and two recent Liberal Junior Finance Ministers who were career bankers, banks gave at least $233,000 to the national Liberal party in 2001, more than any other industry or group (this and other data on donors is available at elections.ca).

Conacher says this explains why the simple plan to piggyback a consumer rights group pamphlet on bank mailings has not been implemented. "They haven't rejected it, because they know there's no reason to reject it. They haven't said anything publically about it... even though Martin's own task force recommended it, and so did the House committee and the Senate committee that reviewed Martin's task force report."

While groups like CanCRC continue to attempt to draw attention to issues of competition and accountability, mainstream debate on the issue of banking regulation has taken an opposite tack. Judging by two recent Globe and Mail articles, the debate is about mergers, and the dispute is not about whether they will happen, but when.

Last November, Michael Den Tandt wrote in the Globe "In 1998, bank mergers seemed likely. Now, they're virtually inevitable. Jean Chretien, on this as on a number of other key economic files, is fighting the historical tide. Everyone seems to know it but him." The argument for bank mergers seems to rest squarely on the need for the banks to be "globally competitive". This argument, however, doesn't become urgent until we believe that further NAFTA integration is inevitable, "ultimately forcing Canada to remove the 20-per-cent ownership limit that now prevents foreign banks from buying controlling stakes in Canadian institutions." Without the "historical inevitability" of deepened free trade, the big five banks might just have to settle for competition amongst themselves, a proposition that is at once less lucrative, but better for Canadian consumers who want consistant service and better for small businesses that see loans drying up with the further consolitation of banks.

Mainstream debate seems to leave out altogether the massive popular opposition to bank mergers in 1998, when the banks last formally proposed to merge. Only the NDP is strongly opposed to further bank mergers in Canada. Lorne Nystrom, the NDP Finance critic, wrote the following upon the conclusion of hearings on bank mergers in the House Finance Committee: ega bank mergers have never been, and will never be, in the public interest. "When four of the largest Canadian banks proposed to merge in 1998, it took a year of public hearings, protests, $4 million, five reports and the Competition Bureau to convince then Finance Minister Paul Martin that leaving one or two large private banks in control of the nation's credit was bad for competition, bad for jobs and bad for communities, and, therefore, not in the public interest... The Canadian banking system is one of the most concentrated systems in the world. Six largest banks account for more than 85 per cent of the assets of our banking industry and have even increased their share of deposits from 70% in 1997 to 73% in 2001. What could possibly improve if only two or three banks controlled the banking business?"

How banks get away with making you pay for your savings account

Most Canadians don't need to be told that bank fees are rising, while interest rates paid on deposits--even in long term savings accounts--have diminished to the point of being inconsequential. Since the early nineties, the "big five" banks in Canada (Toronto Dominion, Royal Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Bank of Montreal) have been accelerating a collective move away from traditional retail banking, which is based on the premise that depositors lend their money to a bank and receive interest and certain services in return.Instead, the trend has been to charge increasing service fees while moving customers into areas more lucrative for banks such as credit cards, mutual funds, money market accounts, and stock market investments. Simply storing money in chequing and savings accounts is no longer a considered as a mutually beneficial arrangement; it is now a service to be paid for. - by Dru Oja Jay -

Iraq Briefs: US in Iraq for a Decade?

Thu, 26 Jun 2003 09:38:36 +0000

USA Today reported that "two top U.S. defense officials signaled Congress on Wednesday that U.S. forces might remain in Iraq for as long as a decade and that permanent facilities need to be built to house them there." According to the report, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "gave no explicit estimates for the time U.S. forces would stay in Iraq, but they did not dispute members of Congress who said the deployment could last a decade or more." Pace and Wolfowitz also reportedly "did not dispute" suggestions that the US would need an annual budget of $54 billion to maintain the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Iraqi women at a pre-invasion demonstration; the Washington Post reports that rising Islamic fundamentalism is eroding womens' freedom of movement. Iraq Journal photo: Iraq Journal

A poll conducted by the University of Maryland found that over one third of Americans believe that the US has discovered weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; 22 percent believe that Iraq used banned weapons during the invasion. No such weapons have been found to date. "This level of misinformation suggests some Americans may be avoiding having an experience of cognitive dissonance," suggested one pollster quoted by the Associated Press. An NBC-Washington Post poll found that 54 percent of Americans would support military action against Iran to stop it from acquiring nuclear weapons; 34 percent of respondants were opposed.

In what a Reuters correspondent called "a bizarre musical reprise from Vietnam war film 'Apocalypse Now'," American troops listened to Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" to psyche themselves before raiding Iraqi homes to look for gunmen. At least one journalist claimed to have seen US pilots watching porn movies to psyche themselves up before flying missions in Afghanistan. US and Iraqi officials confirmed the theft of over 6,000 artifacts from Iraq's National Museum of Antiquities during a looting spree.

"This level of misinformation suggests some Americans may be avoiding having an experience of cognitive dissonance," suggested one pollster quoted by the Associated Press.

By the most recent estimate calculated by Iraq Body Count, an organization that compiles press reports of civilian deaths in Iraq, between 5,000 and 7,000 Iraqi civilians been killed since the beginning of the war. 54 US troops have died in Iraq since George W. Bush declared the war over; 139 died during the war. A recent investigation by Human Rights Watch concluded that US troops had "responded with excessive force to a perceived threat" when they shot into a crowd of protesters, killing three and wounding sixteen.

10,000 protestors threw stones at British troops and vehicles and chanted slogans demanding self government; British forces had recently disbanded a town council, replacing it with "a committee of technocrats chaired by a senior British military commander," according to the Telegraph. A recent attempt at a local election was abruptly and unilaterally cancelled by L. Paul Bremer III, the top US official in Iraq. According to the New York Times, "marines had built makeshift wooden ballot boxes," and an Army reserve unit had "conducted a voter registration drive." The report stated that "privately, American officials said they believed Iraq was not ready for elections, and voting could inflame tensions." According to a report in the Washington Post, Iraqi women are increasingly pressured to wear veils, and are discouraged from going to school. (USA Today, Moscow Times, Iraq Body Count, Washington Post, Human Rights Watch, Daily Telegraph, New York Times)

compiled by Dru Oja Jay

Weekly Chomsky #2

Fri, 20 Jun 2003 22:39:14 +0000

talk on Mid-East governments given in Berkeley in March 2002.

In a situation of conflict and threat, the state authorities will resort to any means that they can get away with; that includes serious war crimes, crimes against humanity, and they will do so, as long as their crimes are tolerated and supported and sometimes encouraged by the overlord. If the master says that's enough, they stop. Therefore, it follows that our criticisms should be directed primarily to ourselves. Indignation about the crimes of others is easy and cheap and not particularly attractive, sometimes even shameful. Looking in the mirror is far more important, much more difficult. And in these, and many other cases, our participation in crimes is quite real, and it proceeds at several different levels.

In the first place, it's a matter of government policy, decisive military, economic, diplomatic support for crimes, all with full awareness, over many decades. At the second level, it goes on at the level of doctrinal institutions--media, schools, universities, intellectual journals, often scholarship. That includes evasion or suppression of crucial facts, plenty of outright falsification, sometimes even unconstrained enthusiasm for atrocities.

And at the third, and most important, level, it's a matter of our own choices. None of this is graven in stone. There are many examples rather similar to this, where things have been changed by public action. We may remember that this month, March, 2002, happens to be the 40th anniversary of the first public announcement of the U.S. attack against South Vietnam. In March, 1962, the Kennedy administration announced that the U.S. Air Force would be flying missions against the South Vietnamese. Use of chemical warfare was instituted to destroy food crops. Hundreds of thousands, ultimately millions of people were driven into concentration camps, urban slums. Napalm was authorized.

All of this proceeded with no protest. That's why there's no commemoration, today, of the 40th anniversary. Nobody even remembers. There was no protest, virtually none, here in Berkeley or in anyplace, for a long time. It took years before substantial public opposition developed. It did finally develop, as somebody, Barbara, somebody pointed out, and it made a big differences.

One of the differences it made is that it contributed, along with the civil rights movement and other activism of the time, to making this a much more civilized country, in many ways. I'm not talking about the leadership, I'm not talking about the intellectual classes, but the general population has changed. No American president could dream of anything remotely like that today. And the same is true in many other areas. And it didn't happen by magic or "gifts from angels" or anything like that. It came from committed, dedicated public activism on the part of millions and millions of people. And it did make a much better country. There's plenty wrong, but, as compared with 40 years ago, the improvement is enormous.

"There's plenty wrong, but, as compared with 40 years ago, the improvement is enormous."