An Experiment with Color in YES!

This is the time in our production cycle when the magazine begins to come alive.

In a loose-leaf binder in the editorial area of the YES! office, print-outs of rough drafts are replaced by final drafts, which are marked up by volunteer, intern, and staff editors, and then transformed into designed layouts. It feels almost like magic as the parts gradually become a whole,

Except for staff meetings, visitors, and the odd birthday celebration, the editorial staff is hunkered down, fact checking, editing articles, filling in the last-minute missing details.

With this issue we're trying an experiment. The theme asks the question, What Makes a Great Place? How can cities in cities and communities be green, just, and beautiful?

Inspired by the beautiful images we found of three-story murals in the impoverished neighborhoods of north Philadelphia, we are including some pages of color for the first time ever on the inside pages of YES!

Using color is an experiment for us and also for our printer. YES! is printed on 100 percent post-consumer waste recycled paper -- few others print on such high-recycled content paper, and I don't believe our printer ever had before we came along. They find the paper a challenge, and printing color on this paper will notch up the challenge. But as they have become familiar with using this paper, they've begun encouraging other customers to switch to higher-recycled content also, and so perhaps our impact is spreading.

Please let us know what you think of our experiment. The issue will be mailed out in early May.

If you don't subscribe, but would like to try YES!, you can get a free trial issue.

What's a patriotic American to do?

The other night, I heard a radio broadcast of a February 18, 2005 speech by Scott Ritter, a former Marine intelligence officer and arms inspector in Iraq for seven years and a veteran of the first Gulf War. Ritter, as you may remember, warned before the invasion that attacking Iraq was wrong and would be disastrous. (We ran our own assessment of the pending war on this website, and came to similar conclusions.)

In his recent speech, Ritter called for immediate withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Iraq and warned that the U.S. may be preparing for its next foreign military invasion, this taking the form of the bombing of Iran.

How does a former Marine officer become a leading critic of the military policies of the commander-in-chief?

Ritter was clear: his loyalty is to something greater -- to the Constitution of the United States and to a country founded by people who valued freedom and democracy over authority.

As a citizen, he said, it is not only his right but his patriotic duty to try to stop the destruction carried out in the name of Americans by the neoconservatives in power. These neoconservatives, he said, have hijacked the U.S. flag, hijacked the language of patriotism, and hijacked the values we hold dear. The US is not spreading democracy, we are undermining it. We are not spreading liberty, we are spreading disdain for the U.S. as recent public opinion polls show.

Patriotic Americans can't sit silently by while this administration shames our boys and girls in uniform and our nation, he said.

Ritter doesn't let anyone off the hook. The US population has become addicted to a lifestyle that requires access to the resources of the rest of the world. Our elected representatives get the message from us -- we expect them to use whatever means necessary to get those resources, and get them cheap. But we don't want to know how -- we remain remarkably badly informed about the rest of the world.

Asked about the role of big business, he said: "Yeah, war's a racket. General Smedley Butler said that."

Hearing that, I looked up the extended quote from General Butler:

"War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses. ...

The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.

I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. ... I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. ...

I helped make Mexico, 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 benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

... Looking back on it, I feel that I could 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."

Major General Smedley Butler, USMC

Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933

What did Ritter suggest we do? He did not suggest there were any easy ways. But he did say we need to get together with others in our communities, make the connection with the military families, with people who have not been part of the peace movement. And we need to reclaim the meaning of patriotism.

YES! has been publishing articles about peace and nonviolence since we started publication, and we will have an article in the upcoming issue on military families and Iraq War veterans organizing for peace. But I can't say I know of a magic bullet, or should I say, a magic olive branch. Speaking out courageously, withdrawing support for the corporations profiting from war, countering efforts to recruit our children for war, and reaching out to those hurt on all sides of the conflict -- those may be starting places. Ritter's challenge remains on my heart, though. How can we patriotic Americans stop this war in Iraq and stop another war before it begins?

You can get audio or transcripts of Scott Ritter's speech at the Alternative Radio website.

The Only World We've Got

A new study on the state of the environment was released this week, and the news is not good. The Millennium Assessment study concludes that we are degrading or using unsustainably "60 percent of the ecosystem services that support life on Earth – such as fresh water, capture fisheries, air and water regulation, and the regulation of regional climate, natural hazards and pests."

Translation -- the life support systems of this planet we call home are being used up, killed off, chopped up, or otherwise altered so they can support life less and less effectively. No matter how advanced our technology, the complex living systems of the planet are what make Earth different than a dead planet like Mars.

This four-year assessment by a partnership of UN agencies, international scientific organizations, and development agencies is sobering news, although not surprising to anyone who has been paying attention to the science (not the politics).

The report, prepared over four years by 1,300 experts from 95 countries, leaves little doubt that we will have to make some major changes if we are to shift this deadly trajectory.

But the authors believe it can be done:

“It lies within the power of human societies to ease the strains we are putting on the nature services of the planet, while continuing to use them to bring better living standards to all,” say the Millennium Assessment board of directors in a statement entitled “Living beyond Our Means: Natural Assets and Human Well-being.”

“Achieving this, however, will require radical changes in the way nature is treated at every level of decision-making," they say. "The future now lies in our hands.”

So, do we have it in us? Can we make the "radical" changes in time?

There is a mixed history of civilizations coming to terms with their own ecological limits. Some have crashed, as Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, shows in his book, Collapse: How Societies Choose or Fail to Succeed. (You can find a review of the book in the summer issue of YES!). But others have broken the grip of empire-building and the false god of materialism long enough to come to terms with the impending crisis -- and act.

If there's any good news in this, it is that many people today are likewise ready to act, and the solutions are readily available and often have multiple benefits. For example, there is huge public support for the Apollo Project, which would invest billions of dollars in developing renewable energy resources, creating stable and well-paying jobs, cutting climate-changing pollution, reducing our dependence on oil from regions that do not want a major U.S. presence and thus reducing our need to go to war.

Why don't our national business and government leaders get behind a project that is patriotic, job-producing, and good for the environment?

Evidently, the mammoth entrenched interests -- the oil companies and the military-industrial complex -- are not interested. There has been no sign of awareness in the Bush administration and little in Congress.

But there is leadership elsewhere. In the Fall 2004 issue of YES! Can We Live Without Oil?, we feature stories of state and local governments, non-profits, farmers, and entrepreneurs finding ways to wean our society off of oil.

But it's not only energy that's at issue. In the Summer 2004 issue of YES!, What is the Good Life? you can find evidence that happiness is not tied to how much of the planet we use up, but rather to such non-consumptive activities as spending time with friends and pursuing a spiritual life.

YES! has been covering environmentally friendly approaches to food, education, community planning, transportation, and much more since our founding in 1996, and I can tell you the solutions are out there.

If we wait for the failed leadership of the past to step forward, we may be in serious trouble. This report makes clear, we need to take action now to keep our planet's living systems alive.