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“WAR ISN’T ENTERTAINMENT — AND SHOULDN’T BE TREATED LIKE IT IS

August 13, 2012

An Open Letter to Mr. Robert Greenblatt, Chairman of NBC Entertainment, General Wesley Clark (ret.), Producer Mark Burnett and others involved in “Stars Earn Stripes”:

During the Olympics, touted as a time for comity and peace among nations, millions first learned that NBC would be premiering a new “reality” TV show. The commercials announcing “Stars Earn Stripes” were shown seemingly endlessly throughout the athletic competition, noting that its premier would be Monday, August 13, following the end of the Olympic games.

That might seem innocuous since spectacular, high budget sporting events of all types are regular venues for airing new products, televisions shows and movies. But “Stars Earn Stripes” is not just another reality show. Hosted by retired four-star general Wesley Clark, the program pairs minor celebrities with US military personnel and puts them through simulated military training, including some live fire drills and helicopter drops. The official NBC website for the show touts “the fast-paced competition” as “pay[ing] homage to the men and women who serve in the U.S. Armed Forces and our first-responder services.”

It is our belief that this program pays homage to no one anywhere and continues and expands on an inglorious tradition of glorifying war and armed violence. Military training is not to be compared, subtly or otherwise, with athletic competition by showing commercials throughout the Olympics. Preparing for war is neither amusing nor entertaining.

Real war is down in the dirt deadly. People—military and civilians—die in ways that are anything but entertaining. Communities and societies are ripped apart in armed conflict and the aftermath can be as deadly as the war itself as simmering animosities are unleashed in horrific spirals of violence. War, whether relatively short-lived or going on for decades as in too many parts of the world, leaves deep scars that can take generations to overcome – if ever.*

Trying to somehow sanitize war by likening it to an athletic competition further calls into question the morality and ethics of linking the military anywhere with the entertainment industry in barely veiled efforts to make war and its multitudinous costs more palatable to the public.

The long history of collaboration between militaries and civilian media and entertainment—and not just in the United States—appears to be getting murkier and in many ways more threatening to efforts to resolve our common problems through nonviolent means. Active-duty soldiers already perform in Hollywood movies, “embedded” media ride with soldier in combat situations, and now NBC is working with the military to attempt to turn deadly military training into a sanitized “reality” TV show that reveals absolutely nothing of the reality of being a soldier in war or the consequences of war. What is next?

As people who have seen too many faces of armed conflict and violence and who have worked for decades to try to stop the seemingly unending march toward the increased militarization of societies and the desensitization of people to the realities and consequences of war, we add our voices and our support to those protesting “Stars Earn Stripes.” We too call upon NBC stop airing this program that pays homage to no one, and is a massive disservice to those who live and die in armed conflict and suffer its consequences long after the guns of war fall silent.

Sincerely,

Jody Williams

– Nobel Peace Prize, 1997

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

– Nobel Peace Prize, 1984

Mairead Maguire

– Nobel Peace Prize, 1977

Dr. Shirin Ebadi

– Nobel Peace Prize, 2003

President José Ramos-Horta

– Nobel Peace Prize, 1996

Adolfo Pérez Esquivel

– Nobel Peace Prize, 1980

President Oscar Arias Sanchez

– Nobel Peace Prize, 1987

Rigoberta Menchú Tum

– Nobel Peace Prize, 1992

Betty Williams

– Nobel Peace Prize, 1977″

“Trying to somehow sanitize war by likening it to an athletic competition further calls into question the morality and ethics of linking the military anywhere with the entertainment industry in barely veiled efforts to make war and its multitudinous costs more palatable to the public.”

Lest we forget CNN’s in-glorious “Shock and Awe” evening ~ Baghdad, March 20th 2003.

^{* My Bold}

^{Thanks once again to “Vineyard Views” for bringing this to my attention.}

CBS Evening News temporary anchor, Bob Schieffer tonight expressed outrage that an estimated two and a half million Syrians have so far been displaced, wounded, or killed as a result of the civil war raging in that country.

^{Bob Schieffer}

He laid the blame squarely on Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad.

That figure is fractionally more than half the estimated number of Iraqis displaced (4-5 million) after the US invaded Iraq in 2003. But, wait! The Iraqi figure doesn’t include the (approx) 655,000 civilians slaughtered in that conflict (Lancet figure – death certificates supported in 92% of cases), and an indeterminate, but obviously huge number of Iraqis wounded.

In 2007, the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki quoted a figure of five million Iraqi children orphaned as a result of the conflict.^[1]

Where was Schieffer’s outrage then? I guess the Iraqis were simply playing for the wrong team?

Bashar al-Assad still has a long, long, way to go as a war criminal to beat the record of US President George Walker Bush, and UK Prime Minister Anthony Charles Lynton Blair.

^{[1] “Occupation’s Toll: 5 Million Iraqi Children Orphaned” AlterNet, December 18th 2007}

One of the most fascinating facets to emerge from the images beamed back from Mars is the striking resemblance to areas of our own planet. For some strange reason, possibly due to the sci-fi movies prevalent when we were younger, the expectation is of garish, unearthly, landscapes. It comes as something of a shock to gaze out on a vista that could be almost any desert on Earth; an amazing similarity, as NASA scientists have themselves remarked, to parts of the southwestern United States.^[1]

^{Click to Enlarge}

Given the intense drought presently gripping much of the United States, it seems likely that, within a few years, many more of this nation’s vistas will come to resemble Martian landscapes.

The science of climate change on planet Earth is now sufficiently advanced for man’s part in its causality to be well-proven. Few scientists, with the possible exception of some in the pockets of the fossil fuel industry, are in any doubt that the increasing intensity of extreme weather conditions experienced over the last few years results from man’s pollution of the planet and its atmosphere.

US politicians still refuse to act on this evidence, allowing industry to continue pumping millions of tons of carbon, and other greenhouse gases, into our atmosphere with little regard for anything but short-term profit.

One in particular, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma…

…at last week’s Senate hearing on climate change (the first for three years) continues to deny the existence of climate change, and insists the planet is not heating up, but cooling.

I must say it feels like we’re back to the good old days. It may be hard to believe, but it was in February of 2009, during the height of the global warming alarmist movement, that this committee last held a hearing on global warming science. Back then we heard promises from the Obama administration of a clean energy revolution with green jobs propped up by billions in taxpayer dollars to companies like Solyndra.

What came of all those promises? The global warming movement has completely collapsed and cap-and-trade is dead and gone…^[2]

Yes, indeed, Mister Inhofe. Dead and gone because you and your right-wing, fossil-fuel affiliated, cronies blocked all attempts to pass legislation in the Senate.

Senator Barbara Boxer, who chairs the environment and public works committee, said afterwards that the Republican-controlled House had turned down fifteen requests from Democrats for climate change hearings. Inhofe is the leader and instigator of these refusals.

One has to wonder why he is so adamantly averse to what is fast becoming too obvious for further denial by any sane individual? Well, the answer is equally obvious.

The fossil-fuel lobby maintains Inhofe in a job. Vast sums in campaign funding are required to keep returning a senator to government. One glance at Inhofe’s generous contributors reveals why he continues with his objectionable climate-change stance, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary.

His biggest source of campaign funding over the past five years – over half a million dollars – has been from the oil and gas industry:

Koch Industries – oil, gas, minerals, chemicals, and much, much, more…

Murray Energy -“the largest privately owned coal company in America”

Devon Energy – a leader in the ‘fracking’ industry. Devon holds 13 million net acres of the North American continent, including Cana Woodford Shale and Arkoma Woodford Shale in Oklahoma.

Contran Corporation – a holding company owned by billionaire Harold Simmons, with interests in titanium mining and chemicals.^[3]

Without these corporations backing him, Inhofe would be a nobody. He’s a poodle of the powerful.

It’s the intention of corporate America to prevent any climate legislation interfering with their colossal incomes. To that end they are spending vast sums to ensure a Republican win in November’s presidential election.

The Koch brothers, owners of the giant oil producer Koch Industries, are widely perceived as Obama’s major opponents in the energy sector.

But they don’t lack for company. Oil and gas companies, led by Koch Industries, are pouring millions into the 2012 elections and almost all of it is going to the GOP.

Of the $8.1 million contributed thus far to federal candidates, 86 percent went to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.^[4]

It’s a deadly game the rich and powerful think they can win. Yet, in the end, if they succeed no-one will win.

Inhofe again:

We’ve been through this now for the past 3 ½ years and the results are clear: President Obama’s green energy agenda has been a disaster. The time has come to put these tired, failed policies to rest and embrace the US energy boom so that we can put Americans back to work, turn this economy around, become totally energy independent from the Middle East, and ensure energy security for years to come.”

The Inhofe’s of America, together with their masters in the fossil-fuel industry, would sell us all down the river for the sake of their insatiable greed. Yet, there may well be no rivers for anyone, if they get their way.

Planet Earth will have the last word on climate change, not Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma. And, when she does, your backyard may well end up looking like the Martian landscape at the head of this article.

^{[1] “Nasa Mars rover makes detailed crater image” BBC, August 13th 2012}

^{[2] “Statement of James M. Inhofe” US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, August 1st 2012}

^{[3] “James M. Inhofe” Center for Responsive Politics}

^{[4] “Energy interests pour millions into campaign” Muckety, August 9th 2012}