This is a documentary about the rise of the organic/local food movement in the late sixties and early seventies and the ongoing battle to end a corrupt federal food subsidy program. The latter plays a major role in the US epidemic of obesity and diabetes.
The film depicts the organic food movement as arising out of a 1960s hippy counterculture that viewed America’s growing system of industrial agriculture as intimately linked to the military industrial complex waging the war in Vietnam.*
Ironically the organic food movement began to take off just has the Nixon administration was repealing New Deal agricultural subsidies that supported small family farms and redirecting USDA subsidies to corporations producing the cheap commodities used in processed foods, such as corn, wheat and soy.
The activists interviewed decry the federal emphasis on cheap food as a false economy – we will never save enough to cover skyrocketing medical costs related to processed food diets.
Despite the rapid growth of small organic farms across the US, food activists face an uphill battle without major changes to the USDA farm subsidy program which makes cheap processed food the only affordable option for many low income families.
The high level of corporate-financed corruption becomes clear as the film follows Representative Ron Kind’s efforts to get his Fairness in Farm and Food Policy Amendment added to 2016 Farm Bill.
*Monsanto and Dow, the corporations producing Agent Orange and Napalm also produce the toxic pesticides and herbicides used in industrial agriculture.
Last night Maori TV showed Part 2 of The Vietnam War series, entitled “Riding the Tiger”. In my view it provides the most honest analysis of President Kennedy’s role in escalating the Vietnam War. Its only drawback – which is major – is its failure to acknowledge the CIA role in the coup against President Ngo Dinh Diem.
Following his assassination, many historians have been inclined to portray JFK as a dove on Vietnam. In my view, the facts exposed in this documentary suggest otherwise. In 1962 JFK
authorized US special forces (16,000 by November 1963) to accompany the South Vietnamese army into battle. This was a clear violation of the 1954 peace treaty signed in Geneva see What You Never Learned in School About Vietnam
authorized delivery of dozens of helicopters and armored personnel carries, as well as napalm and toxic defoliants (eg Agent Orange) to the South Vietnamese army. He deliberately concealed this escalation from the American public.
supported a massive “pacification” program by the South Vietnamese army that forcibly removed South Vietnamese farmers from their lands and forced them to live in fortified villages. The anger this generated in rural South Vietnam significantly aided recruitment by the South Vietnamese Liberation Front (aka the Vietcong) that was fighting to overthrow the US-installed dictator Ngo Dinh Diem.
By the time of Diem’s assassination in November 1963, Kennedy realized the US was losing the Vietnam War. At the same time he feared withdrawing US forces. He believed allowing South Vietnam to fall would cost him the 1964 election. At the time of his assassination in November 1963, he had ordered a gradual withdrawal of US forces to finish at the end of 1965.
Sir, No Sir examines the GI revolt that effectively ended the Vietnam War. While it’s common to hear about fragging* incidents which occurred in Vietnam, I was totally unaware of the vast GI anti-war movement built by three years of sustained organizing in barracks, on bases, battlefields and ships and at armed forces academies like West Point.
This documentary traces the origin of this GI resistance movement to the 1967 court martial of a dermatologist who refused to train Green Berets how to treat common skin conditions of Vietnamese civilians. Captain Howard Levy took this stand due to his personal conviction that the US torture and murder of Vietnamese civilians was immoral. Levy, who was court-martialed and sentenced to three years in prison, inspired hundreds of other GIs once they realized the US government was at war with the entire civilian population of Vietnam.
Levy’s court martial was followed by many others, as active duty GIs began organizing anti-war meetings and participating in civilian anti-war protests while in uniform. Black GIs could be court-martialed for doing a soul handshake.
Word of the GI anti-war movement spread mainly through underground GI newspapers that sprang up on many bases. However GI coffee houses and Jane Fonda’s FTA (Fuck the Army) shows were also major organizing tools.
Civilian peace activists opened GI coffee houses near bases, where off duty GIs could listen to subversive rock music and get counseling, legal advice and accurate information about Vietnam and the anti-war movement. Although the FTA shows were also held off base, GIs attended in droves.
Refusing to Deploy Against US Civilians
In 1968, Fort Hood GIs newly returned from Vietnam were ordered to police the anti-war protests at the Chicago. Democratic Convention. After a group of black GIs met about refusing to deploy, they were beaten up by MPs and court martialed. The white “subversives” at Ft Hood (including one of my friends from high school) were treated more leniently. They were confined to base instead of being sent to Chicago.
In 1969 a thousand active duty GIs participated in an anti-war march at Fort Hood on Armed Forces Day. A year later 4,000 participated.
1971 Winter Soldier Conference
The Winter Soldier Conference the Vietnam Veterans Against the War organized in 1971 was the real turning point for the GI resistance movement. The purpose of the conference was to establish that the 1968 My Lai massacre wasn’t an isolated incident – that superior officers were ordering the deliberate targeting of civilians. Testimony at the Detroit conference also focused media attention on the government’s genocidal policies towards the Vietnamese. Specific examples included widespread use of the toxic defoliant Agent Orange and the deliberate reconfiguration of Napalm** to make it stick better.
Nixon Forced to “Vietnamize” the War
By 1971, so many GIs were refusing orders, fragging and killing officers and deserting that the Pentagon warned Nixon the military was on the verge of collapse. In response, the latter ordered the “Vietnamization” of the war. This would translate into a massive increase in aerial bombardment, as US troops withdrew, and the gradual transfer of combat duties to the South Vietnamese Army.
*Fragging is the murder or deliberate injury of members of the military, particularly commanders of a fighting unit. The term originates from the fragmentation grenades commonly used in these incidents.
**Napalm is a mixture of a gelling agent and petroleum or a similar fuel for use in an incendiary device. It was initially used against buildings and later primarily as an anti-personnel weapon, as it sticks to skin and causes severe burns when on fire.
The Most Revolutionary Act 