wanted to wait until mid-week before sending out another email blast, but as you will see in the content that follows, the news in some of these stories is already over a week old.  News of interest to the Green Party is rolling out faster than we can keep up with all of it.  Comments to these email blasts are also starting to pick up from our membership.

ITEM 1:  NUCLEAR NOW documentary by Oliver Stone (available at local theaters, Apple+)

First, let me point out that I live in Oak Ridge.  The atomic city, once the state’s largest employer – a rank now occupied by the University of Tennessee – is still the home to nuclear reactor research and its legacy of chemically hazardous and radioactive waste.

A few weeks ago, acclaimed director Oliver Stone, who endorsed and voted for Jill Stein in 2016, appeared on The Hill’s Rising program to tout his 2022 documentary, Nuclear Now. Those of you who watch Rising will note that he was interviewed by a comparatively neutral and unfamiliar host.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6GGJWelpBA&t=23s

• Stone argues that we cannot meet our carbon emission goals (USA’s or world’s) without nuclear.
• According to Stone, renewable energy has been tried and failed. Ask yourself if that is a fair statement.  Did any utility across the country invest even 10% of its total capital on power production in renewable energy?  What would the country look like if we had mandated utilities spend not less than 25% of all power production on renewables?
• According to Stone, Hollywood and the mainstream media are responsible for generating hysteria against nuclear power and conflating nuclear weapons with nuclear power.
• Stone also takes potshots at the Greens, but it is not clear if he means the Green Party USA and Green Party of Germany, or Greenpeace.
• He admits that he voted Green (in 2016) and that even he makes mistakes.
• Stone produces very compelling documentaries. His Untold History of the United States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Untold_History_of_the_United_States#:~:text=The%20Untold%20History%20of%20the%20United%20States%20(also%20known%20as,in%20America's%20global%20role%20since  is among my top three favorite documentaries of all time.  His 2022 documentary tying up loose ends in the JFK assassination is striking and leaves viewers 99% sure that the CIA orchestrated the assassination.
• Stone claims radiation kills cancer. This subject is actually one of my research areas, and the statement is not accurate. If it were true, everyone with cancer would get irradiated and go back to living their lives.  Radiation can kill some limited tumor forms of cancer but with less than ideal results.
• Stone claims the accident at Three Mile Island did not pose a serious health/ environmental contamination risk, i.e., the reactor was not going to melt down but shut down. That claim is disputed in an interview two days ago by WNYC’s On the Media program interview of Tom Devine of the Government Accountability Project.  Devine claims that 4 billion gallons of contaminated/radioactive waste, not 10,000 gallons as reported at the time, were in danger of release from Thee Mile Island’s nuclear waste dump.  https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/legacy-daniel-ellsberg-and-pentagon-papers-on-the-media  I was not able to independently confirm that claim.  However, Devine states these facts are all explained in a Netflix documentary, which I plan to watch when I re-start my subscription in August.

Next, Oliver Stone appeared on Breaking Points:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DTHxciTbbA

• The “conservative populist” host Saagar Enjeti, a Republican and former intern for Tucker Carlson, is the sole interviewer. The progressive co-host Krystal Ball is missing.
• Writing in Current Affairs magazine, Nathan Robinson asks “And then we need to ask ourselves once again: What is this “right-wing populism,” exactly, with which we on the Left are supposed to comfortably ally ourselves? And if we get past our common criticisms of the Democratic establishment (which Trump makes too, and which he is often correct about), we remember that right-wing populism is simply the politics of Trump and Bolsonaro. It is racist, sexist, xenophobic. It is a giant fraud—Enjeti speaks ofa politics that is “pro-worker” yet “socially conservative” (i.e., economically left but bigoted), but Trumpism isn’t even pro-worker. In practice, this politics leaves governing to the ultra-rich, people like Steven Mnuchin and Betsy DeVos, while gutting workplace safety regulations and trying to destroy workers’ ability to unionize. It is, as we can see from Enjeti and Trump’s approach to the current protests, not on the side of the dispossessed, but actually supports crushing them with the force of the state. It may sound a little socialist at times, but it is not the socialism of Karl Marx, who thought the workers of the world should unite. It is, instead, strictly nationalist. A kind of “national socialism,” if you will.” https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/06/isnt-right-wing-populism-just-fascism
• Stone repeats his same comments on the need for nuclear power and minimizes risks compared to the carbon in our air.
• Saagar offers “red meat” to Stone asking what leftists have gotten wrong about nuclear power. Stone eats that up.

A group unaffiliated with the Green Party USA has a web site captioned Greens for Nuclear Energy.  https://greensfornuclear.energy/

The Green Party USA position:  https://www.gp.org/talking_points

Oppose Nuclear power

The Green Party remains opposed to nuclear power.

New nuclear power plants would take too long to build to assist in cutting emissions in the time frame needed.

From Platform - End the use of nuclear power. Nuclear energy is massively polluting, dangerous, financially risky, expensive and slow to implement. Our money is better spent on wind, solar, geothermal, conservation and small-scale hydroelectric.

COMMENT FROM TN GP MEMBER TO PRIOR EMAIL:

As for the "states' rights" side of things, I am no authority. The unprecedented jettisoning of two states a few years ago, I can tell you something about those unique situations. In one case, a state party opted not to involve itself in the effort to support a POTUS campaign. Their state was being hit very hard with covid at the time, and its responses made things like petitioning a problem. They chose, in that year, to focus on local issues. Someone among them, as I recall, also said something supporting (in their state) a "lesser evil" vote, since there would be no Green on the ballot. Lots of fur flew over that. I don't recall all the details, but I didn't think the problems justified losing the party.

In the other case, there was apparently a connection with at least a couple of the candidates from our primary, and the state party received a form after our nominated candidate had funded and pushed the signature gathering necessary to obtain a ballot line, and the form did not yet have the candidate's name filled in. The person in control of the state party (which had apparently been propped up through the activity of one of Hawkins's team members, and rejuvenated by setting a few people up as party administrators) said, "Oh, thanks. How nice of you," and then put someone else's names in the form and filed it.  I began that discussion strongly opposed to removing the state party from the national. As it evolved, though, there was much acrimony and little apparent chance of replacing the people who created the problem. As the participation of the candidates who rebelled (after doing all they could to sew chaos during the primary season) against the national party decision became more apparent, my fervor diminished. That state was Alaska, and the difficulty of building a new infrastructure within a population so widely spread out was one of the few arguments to be made against disassociation.

I believe that there were candidates in our 2020 POTUS primary whose purpose was an attack against the Green Party, and not a legitimate effort to become the candidate.

Supporting the nationally nominated candidate is, I think, a requirement within the agreement for affiliation between state and national parties.

I have not seen Nuclear Now, but I don’t feel an overwhelming urge to go pro-nuclear power at this point.  New plants cannot be constructed and put into operation quickly enough to get us out of our global warming crisis.  The claim in one interview that modern nuclear power plants burn up their own waste does not mesh with reality.  Do you want to discuss this topic?  Are there any pro-nuclear power Greens in TN?

ITEM 2:  The Howie Hawkins vs. Jill Stein division, if any, within the Green Party nationally is not based on any cult of personality.  Rather, the division stems from their positions on the Ukraine war. Hawkins does not want to abandon Ukraine in their time of need and thus is perceived by same as being pro-war.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmExssNQeRY&t=2829s

Here is a new interview of presidential candidate Cornel West in which he explains his position on the Ukraine War.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r83LQVEeAn8

• Bernie would not go for the jugular. “Bernie is one kind of brother, and I am a different kind of brother.”
• Crimes against humanity: “Invasion and occupation of Iraq is a crime against humanity for me,” indiscriminate bombing/shooting of Iraqi civilians “An Iraqi life has the same value as your precious life and my precious life.” Boy oh boy!  You don’t hear American or British or Canadian politicians talking like that! Biden as a grand architect of mass incarceration is another crime against humanity.  While the United States represents about 2 percent of the world's population, it houses around 20 percent of the world's prisoners. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate#:~:text=While%20the%20United%20States%20represents,percent%20of%20the%20world's%20prisoners.
• Cornel wants to stop the war as the only way to stop the horrendous suffering of the Ukrainian people and to turn off the spigot for the military-industrial perpetual war machine.

Let us know if you agree with Cornel West’s approach to the Ukraine War.  How would he get Putin to stop bombing Ukraine?

COMMENT FROM TN GREEN PARTY MEMBER TO PRIOR EMAIL:

In one or another of the Cornel West interviews I've watched over the last few days, he commented that he was doing several each day. His access to media outlets seems far to exceed what other Green Party POTUS hopefuls have enjoyed over the last decade or two. That—even considering that it is nearly all "alternative media—could be enough to do great good.

If his numbers climb in the polls, and he becomes the Green nominee, his magic number will be 15%, as that would get him a podium at the televised POTUS debates.

 [If you haven't encountered it yet, this fairly short documentary from 2016 is packed with info and things that can be explored elsewhere, if desired.]

https://youtu.be/iIAh9mlvLmo

If that happens, 5% of the actual vote would become feasible, and that would, I believe, turn the Green Party into a "Minor party" in US political parlance. That would affect funding dramatically.

ITEM 3:  THE NATION magazine, Cornel West Has No Business Running for President

I had thought The Nation was a source of good journalism primarily due to John Nichols’ reporting and editorials on elections from 2016 – 2023 (Chicago mayor’s election earlier this year, Wisconsin Supreme Court election in his home state).  But a recent article by Joan Walsh and its happy endorsement and goading by the magazine’s podcast clarifies that The Nation is on the side of the Democratic Party, warts and all.  https://www.stitcher.com/show/start-making-sense/episode/start-making-sense-cornel-west-should-not-be-running-for-president-plus-the-gop-vs-divorce-304457711

This video from the Due Dissidence channel on YouTube expresses my own view of the Joan Walsh hit piece.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p25kywqknBo

As always, share your opinions with us:  [email protected]

Michael Guth

Digital Communications Coordinator