Kansas City's (Very Racist) History

I just ran across this video over the weekend. If you'll get past the start of it, with the filmmaker proving himself a hillbilly, I guess, because that Country Club restaurant is just way too fancy for him, it's got good and fair and true information in it.



Not sure it's true?

Worse, you don't agree?

Read on:

Kansas City is among the most 

economically segregated cities in the US

Then, too, there's this from none other than our own University of Missouri-Kansas City.

'Troost Wall' the product of 

Kansas City's long-running racial plight 

We need to be better than this, Kansas City.

We need to be better than this, America.

Link to more information:

Our Divided City - KCPT

The Large--and Glaring--Problem of the Vietnam Documentary

Like so many Americans this past week, I've watched a good deal of Ken Burns' and Lynn Novick's documentary on PBS covering the Vietnam War.

I'll say right off the bat, it's good and it's important. It's important we Americans know more about this horrible saga. It's important we know more fully what took place and they do cover a lot of that and well.

That said, it seems it also needs to be made clear that this program also lets America off any moral hook and that it leaves out a great deal more information, information we sorely need to know. No one puts this information out there better on the series than Christopher Koch in his writing online this week in Medium.

The Tragic Failure of Ken Burns Vietnam

A bit from the article:

Burns and Novick tell us that the war was begun “in good faith by decent people out of fateful misunderstandings, American overconfidence and …” whatever the current threat. That’s probably true of most wars. However, as we used to teach our children, you have to be accountable for your actions. If you kill someone speeding the wrong way down a one way street you’ll get charged with manslaughter even if you’re rushing someone to the hospital.

It’s the lack of accountability, the failure to prosecute those who lied to get us into the war, who encouraged battlefield tactics that resulted in the massacre of women and children, who authorized the indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets, who drenched Vietnam in chemical poisons that will cause birth defects and death for generation.

In order to maintain this central lie, Burns and Novick must establish a false balance between good and evil on both sides. Every time the United States is shown doing something bad, Burns and Novick show us how the Vietnamese also did bad things. In one absurd example, Coyote intones something like, “we called them ‘Dinks,’ ‘Gooks,’ ‘Mamasans;’ they called us ‘invaders’ and ‘imperialists.’” The GI terms are dehumanizing, but the Vietnamese terms are accurate. People who cross 3,000 miles of ocean to attack a country that has done them no harm, are accurately called ‘invaders.’ I suppose you could argue about the ‘imperialist’ charge.

Vietnamese soldiers killed some 58,000 Americans and wounded a couple of hundred thousand more. Buns and Novick put the number of Vietnamese we killed at 3 million, but most experts say it was more like 4 million and Vietnam says its 6 million, with more people continuing to die from unexploded ordinance and Agent Orange. We destroyed 60% of their villages, sprayed 21 million gallons of lethal poisons, imposed free fire zones (a euphemism for genocide) on 75% of South Vietnam. They attacked US military bases in their country and never killed an American on American soil. There are no equivalences here.

Finally, besides we Americans knowing our history and knowing what happened in Vietnam, the horrors and tragedies and even the lies, all the lies, that got us there and then kept us there, it's important to know it all and to put and keep it in perspective because of what it's since gotten us first in Iraq and then in Afghanistan, where we still are, to this day.

Without the peace movement, there is no moral center to this series. The lack of accountability is fatal. That an American general can watch from a helicopter the massacre at Mai Lai (as the films tells us) and suffer no consequences is sickening. If military courts had aggressively prosecuted violators of human rights, or even if we only had held detailed and accurate reconciliations where the truth came out, there would have been a chance that our reckless invasions of Iraq with its policy of torture and the invasion of Afghanistan would not have followed so easily. When people are held accountable for their actions, perpetrators of questionable violent acts think twice.

Last week on NPR an American general in Afghanistan announced that we are not trying to occupy territory in Afghanistan, we are simply trying to kill terrorists. Here, again, is the same rationale of the body count that led to disaster in Vietnam. We are reliving the Vietnam War because no one was ever really held responsible for its horrors.

We need to learn. We need to know. And then we need to apply the lessons of this nightmare, of this past, of our past, to the mistakes we're making now and that we continue to make.

I understand that they wanted to make this series both palatable and acceptable to most all, if not all Americans. They didn't want it to be "harsh." They didn't want it to be seen as "too hard" on our nation, too critical, too condemning, if not damning. It would have instantly been branded as "Leftist" and "against the troops" and so, then, against the nation. But by making it palatable, they whitewashed the history, our history. They whitewashed and prettified what happened and what we did over there.

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick let us off easy. In not telling all that happened, they let us off easy. Consequently, we learn nothing. Tragically, we repeat the same mistakes, killing in other, different parts of the world.

Additional links: 

Ken Burns's Vietnam Documentary Promotes 

Misleading History

The tragedy of the PBS-Ken Burns version 

of the Vietnam War

Ken Burns' Vietnam War: An Object Lesson in the Failures of the Objective Lens

A Story Ken Burns and PBS Should Tell

I was at a friend's home for dinner last evening and I once again brought up the subject and idea that, as our Grandfather pointed out years ago, before he died, his generation saw more change in their one lifetime, their generation, than any other, very likely.

Sure, there was the generation that witnessed the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution and that was, admittedly, a ton of change, sure. Going from purely agrarian to big cities like London with all their brand new factories and machines was huge but this generation, those born at the end of the 1800s to the early 1900s saw humankind and the planet go from horse and mule drawn wagons and dirt roads to, literally, the moon, by 1969.

It think it could be an incredible story.

Before everyone had electricity. Before indoor plumbing and so, toilets, were common. Before cars. Before highways, the telephone, all of it. Lots of us can't imagine a world before all this.

Interview people all over the US, England and the world, before we've lost them all. Have them describe their lives and living conditions, their homes, transportation, all of it. Then go to, really, what we developed in the meantime. I think it could be riveting but it would also be quite an education for a lot of people, too, like so much of what, again, Ken Burns and PBS do and have done.

Here's hoping.

Link:  Ken Burns America - PBS

We Americans Don't Seem to Learn From History

This week, I watched the first screening of PBS' Murder of a President  on American Experience, telling the story of US President James Garfield, his life, his deeply tragic assassination and death 200 days later.

It was fascinating to the point of riveting. Such great and deep history. Sad it isn't taught in our schools. Seems he was a brilliant man who fought for the people and even for the slaves of the nation, a very welcome rarety.

Too bad we don't still, to this day, have such Republicans.

Anyway, it pointed out to me, once more, how we Americans don't learn from history and I'll tell you why.

We all know our President Abraham Lincoln was shot and killed, also tragically and needlessly, in 1865, at the hands of a mad man.

At the time, Presidents didn't have security guards and protection. So the assassin came in, had access to the President and shot and killed him easily, if horribly enough.

You would think we would, as a nation, learn something from that, right? Like that we need to protect our presidents?

Nah.

We're Americans. Learn something?  Heck, no. Not from the past, not from recent history, nothing.

16 years later---sixteen whole, long years---then-President James Garfield, still unprotected, was headed to a train station, rather famously as it was in the newspaper, for pity's sake, so a crazy man came up and shot him, repeatedly. It didn't kill him instantly but soon enough, it was done.

No body guards. No protection. Nothing.

So a couple centuries later, do you think we'd learn anything from, say another countries military foray into another country?

Do you think we'd pay any attention to the world and international, military history of, say, France, that had attacked and fought the people of Vietnam?

Oh, hell, no.

Go ahead. Attack. Go in. Think you're going to win. Think you're going to win the people over. With bombs.

We all know how that went.

Couple decades later?

Not just one nation but two.

Iraq?  Afghanistan?

Oh, heck, yes, let's attack.

Forget that the British and Soviets both attacked and fought and were repelled and in effect beaten in these places and by these people.

Ignore it.  Go ahead and attack.

We're Americans.

We don't need to learn from history.

The "Downton Abbey" That's Never Told

For watchers of PBS' "Downton Abbey" and for anyone and everyone who might be interested in old British history, specifically the old, historical homes in which the wealthy lived.

I've been looking for a documentary or video on how the staff or "help" of these homes actually lived and worked and were treated.  I believe I found it.



Enough of that horrible, false, romantic, absurdly pretty view of the "help" that "Downton Abbey" shows.

It skewers history and insults intelligence.

The Next Important Documentary We Need to See

Get ye to the Tivoli

What our corporations---and our food--are doing to us, as a nation

A documentary from last year:



Get that?

"This is the first generation of American children expected to lead shorter lives than their parents."

And this:

"Over 95% of all Americans will be overweight or obese in 2 decades."

And "The government is subsidizing the obesity epidemic."

So you know.

So we know.

And act and react.

Important documentary coming soon

I was just made aware, last evening, of this new, as I said, important documentary that's coming out soon on the American diet and how sugar, especially, is so prevalent and dangerous in our nation and society:



I look forward to it.

Another documentary more Americans should see

But sadly, won't.





"Who is looking out for the American worker?

The answer is:  nobody."  --Robert Reich, American political economist, professor, author, and political commentator


Links:  Inequality for All | a documentary film about income inequality

Inequality for All (2013) - IMDb

Theaters & Opening Dates

October 11, 2013

Kansas City: Tivoli @ Manor Square

A Liberal's dream

It may only be one evening and one night's entertainment but check it out:

Our black, "Liberal" president, first.

And he gives us this:

In Performance at the White House: Memphis Soul

 

It's on PBS, of course.

 

Then, it's followed by this on the same channel:

 

THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE - PBS

 

And it's by none other than Ken Burns.

 

Entertainment. The Blues. History. Education.

 

Mmmmm.

Excellent documentary tonight on HBO on the Catholic Church & their sexual assault and abuse cases

The trailer:



Besides spelling out what happened here, with over 200 children, it also apparently implicates now Pope Benedict XVI, formerly Cardinal Ratzinger.

These are stories that need, desperately, to be told.

On KCPT and PBS tonight at 9

There is an extremely important documentary on PBS this evening that lots and lots of Americans should see this evening at 9 pm.

In their own words: "FRONTLINE investigates why Wall Street CEO's have escaped prosecution for mortgage fraud:

The Untouchables | FRONTLINE | PBS

 

 

Did you see in the Star over the weekend, how a man poached deer locally and got a $150,000 bond he had to set?  Yes, it happened. Those are his accusations and that's what he's gotten so far.

 

These people fleeced thousands of people--America, really--for millions of dollars and they don't have so much as one charge against them.

 

This is important.

 

These are things we need to know.

Keeping corporations accountable

Again, from The Wall Street Journal earlier this week, there were two totally unrelated articles having to do with corporations and their responsibility to society.

The first has to do with a company, St. Jude Medical, creating heart defibrillators that had wires in them that burst out of their insulation so they ended up shocking the patients that had them. Here's the article and link:

St. Jude Riata Heart-Device Flaws Known for Years

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444223104578036752346768278.html?mod=e2tw

Nice, huh?

The thing is, the company sent out recalls on them but the doctors didn't report them to the patients, in most cases.

So say you had a heart defibrillator put in your chest and all of a sudden you started getting shocks from inside your body. Then, later, you find out your doctor just didn't tell you about it.

Real quick, there's two things about this.

First, you're angry--and likely scared as heck--that you have this thing you need to live in your body that your doctor put there years ago and it's giving you electric shocks no one can control.

That's bad enough.

Then, on top of that, it will continue to keep giving you those electric shocks until your doctor once again opens up your chest, disconnects it from your heart, takes it out and replaces it.

Here's the second article:

US Warns Motorists of Counterfeit, Faulty Air Bags

Ironically, it was right next to this, above story.

It seems people who work on cars have been replacing good, working air bags with ones that don't.

Sick.

People--mothers, fathers, sons, daughters--depend on their air bags to keep them at least a bit more safe in their cars, should they be in a car wreck, heaven forbid. They have some issue or problem with the bag, for one reason or another, depend on their local auto repair company to fix it and they put in one that isn't likely to work.

Again, fantastic. Fantastic in a sick, selfish, greedy, "free-market" Capitalism kind of way.

What this brings me to is that we, the people, the ones who end up in -these personally- and financially-exposed ways, need some kind of way to hold corporations and people responsible so if, in fact, these things happen, we are compensated for them and, just as importantly, there are punishments so others aren't tempted to cut their costs or to out-and-out cheat their customers and these types things don't happen again.

We're not shooting for a "perfect world" here by pushing for this. We're mere hoping and working for a more honest fair and working one.

So, if you think America really needs "tort reform" to help the country and get an keep our nation's company's costs down, you're badly, badly mistaken.

As a recommendation, if you haven't already seen it, go rent the documentary "Hot Coffee." (Link below).



It will really open your eyes.

Links: www.hotcoffeethemovie.com/

"AIDS in Black America"

If you're not watching the Major League Baseball Game tonight, out of Kauffman Stadium here in town, you might be the type person that, instead, would watch and want to watch the "Frontline" special on PBS "AIDS in Black America:



It's one of the biggest killers of Black Americans today. It's important we recognize where this came from, where we are and where it's going.

It begins this evening at 8 pm.

Link: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/endgame-aids-in-black-america/

Documentary coming out on climate change evidence

This is a new documentary that just came out of the Sundance Film Festival this year.

Apparently the man who shot it was formerly a global warming skeptic. What he saw and filmed changed his opinion on it completely.



You might watch for it. When it comes, it will likely be at the Tivoli Theater in Westport.

Important new documentary coming out

Fortunately, it is to be on HBO. That means some people, at least, will see it.

If it were at the theaters, it would get acclaim, some would see it but not enough people. And likely, too, it wouldn't be the people seeing it who should see it.

This way, if it's on HBO, in our homes, in our living rooms, we don't have to get up and go anywhere to take it in.

And there's more and cheaper food, too.

Upcoming documentary

Remember, 3/4 of the grocery store is utterly unnecessary. Vegetables, some meat and/or fish--if you eat it--some pasta(s) and the freshest breads you can get, either at home or the store. After that, a few condiments--maybe--some seasoning(s) and everything with as little sugar, if any at all, and as few ingredients as possible. Nothing processed. It's easy. Easier than it sounds, too. It's great for your health, great for your wasteline, far less expensive, potentially, simple and you'll feel terrific. Take back your food. Take back your body. Take back your life.

Great Kansas City Arts news!

Great news, indeed! Kansas City's (actually, Prairie Village's) own Joyce DiDonato and the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts are going to be in a documentary on PBS. The working title is HOMECOMING: THE KANSAS CITY SYMPHONY PRESENTS JOYCE DIDONATO Their write-up on it: "Architect Moshe Safdie’s extraordinary new Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts provides the stunning backdrop for a 60-minute performance-documentary profiling the young, Grammy Award-winning musicians of the Kansas City Symphony, their vibrant artistic director and conductor Michael Stern, and the radiant, internationally celebrated mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato. A concert wrapped by documentary narratives, this Arts Festival special tracks Ms. DiDonato’s nostalgic return to her hometown, and her thrilling Kauffman Center debut, after a triumphant appearance with Placido Domingo at The Metropolitan Opera in New York. Together, Joyce DiDonato, Maestro Stern and the Kansas City Symphony create a musical program as grand and ambitious as the Kauffman Center itself. Produced by Kansas City Public Television (KCPT) in association with veteran PBS music producers James Arntz & John Paulson." Further proof to all the naysayers that building the Kauffman Center was somehow a bad idea. And thank you, thank you, thank you, to the Kauffman family, Julia and her parents, for this and the many gifts they've given Kansas City. As I've said before, we're eternally grateful. Links: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/blogsburger/53231413-53/arts-pbs-art-festival.html.csp; http://www.pbs.org/about/news/archive/2012/arts-summer-festival/

Great documentary on our American soldiers

If we truly care about our soldiers, the way we profess. Keep an eye out for it. It may come to the Tivoli Theater or another local one.

We need to see this movie

Seems The Beatles were correct. All we need is love. "The truth of who we are is that we are because we belong." --Bishop Desmond Tutu. Link: http://www.iamthedoc.com/