12:08 East of Bucharest (2006)

“Was there a revolution or not in our town?”

12:08 East of Bucharest is a very low key Romanian film that examines the difficulties of establishing history. It’s December 22 in a small Moldavian town, and a talk show host decides to film a programme called “Issue of the Day.” The host, Virgil Jderescu (Teodor Corban) selects his programme to commemorate the sixteen-year anniversary of the revolution that “changed our lives” and overthrew Ceausescu in 1989, ending communist rule in Romania. When the film begins, Virgil is still trying to line up guests for the show. Most people won’t return his calls, and he’s only managed to find one guest, a local high school teacher Tiberiu Manescu (Ion Sapdaru) who has a reputation of being the town drunk.

Scraping the bottom of the barrel for guests, and now desperate, Virgil remembers Emanoil Piscoci (Mircea Andreescu), a man who plays Santa for the local children. Virgil knows that Emanoil was around in December 1989, and so Virgil’s two guests are set to answer questions from callers.

Some of the film is devoted to the build-up to the programme. Tiberiu spends the night before the show in a local pub getting drunk as usual. His next paycheck slated to pay his large bar tab, Tiberiu tries to get another bottle on credit to help his ‘nerves’ before going on the air. Tiberiu spends the morning at school giving an examination to a large number of students who failed the test the first time. Disinterested and disconnected, Tiberiu tells the students that he doesn’t see how he can help them if they “can’t even cheat properly.”

Money–or the lack of it–is a problem that plagues all the main characters in the film, and there are inferences that the revolution didn’t exactly bring economic prosperity. Virgil’s wife hits him up for money to give their daughter for a skiing trip, and Emanoil’s moth-eaten Santa costume has seen better days. The revolution hasn’t exactly liberated women from their traditional roles either, and wives are portrayed as mothers to their husbands. There’s Virgil’s wife who scurries around cleaning up and organizing for him, and then there’s the autocratic mother role assumed by Tiberiu’s wife as she demands his paycheck ‘or else.’ There’s a sense that permeates the film, and hinted at by the characters, that no revolution has taken place–in other words little has changed for the common folk. People still suffer from money worries, and everyday life is still a struggle for the average Romanian.

The main thrust of the talk show is whether or not a revolution took place in the town or if the town’s residents joined in to protest after Ceausescu left (”Is it a revolution if people took to the streets after the fact?”). Virgil questions Tiberiu concerning the events of December 22, 1989. Tiberiu claims that he and a couple of other teachers entered the town square and began protesting against Ceausescu in the morning of the 22nd before noon. One caller phones in to say that Tiberiu is unreliable because he’s drunk all the time, and another caller, an employee of the Securitate and now transformed into a respectable factory owner, disputes Tiberiu’s version of events.

The precise accuracy of the events doesn’t trouble the programme’s other guest, Emanoil. He compares the revolution to the streetlights that are lit after dark–one after another, and says: “one makes whatever revolution one can, each in their own way.” One caller, a woman whose son was killed during the bloody street fighting, doesn’t seem troubled by the various scenarios of exactly how the revolution took place. Instead she advises that everyone should enjoy the new snow while they can, as tomorrow it will turn into mud.

While the topic of the talk show seems to split hairs, the film 12:08 East of Bucharest serves as a microcosm of the Romanian Revolution. On December 22, 1989, martial law was in force in Romania, and groups of more than 5 people were forbidden to gather together. Tiberiu’s version of events indicates that the revolution spread across Romania spontaneously, but his version is disputed and discounted. Callers argue that the town square was empty until after Ceausescu and his wife fled.

The conflicting versions of events expressed by Virgil’s callers mirror the general confusion and controversy about that period. Even today, it’s unclear exactly why and when the army turned against Ceausescu. Furthermore various tales of terrorists and terrorist activities whipped troops into a frenzy, and it’s unclear whether these tales of terrorists were rumours or stories planted deliberately to manipulate the army. 12:08 East of Bucharest not only symbolizes the problems of the events of that day, but it also symbolizes the problems with history. Accounts of events differ, and exactly which account becomes the official or prevailing version is problematic.

12:08 East of Bucharest grew on me, and I enjoyed a second viewing even more. Deceptively simple, the film’s low-key style slips in perfectly with the film’s statements regarding Romanian history. This gem is from director/writer Corneliu Porumboiu.

Emilio Canzi: an Anarchist Partisan in Italy and Spain by Paolo Finzi and others

“Ah, Canzi never made a move without his dog.”

Emilio Canzi: an Anarchist Partisan in Italy and Spain by Paolo Finzi (and others) is a 50-page pamphlet from Kate Sharpley Library. The pamphlet is one of an ongoing series of publications from KSL, and as with all of KSL’s publications, it’s very reasonably priced. Let’s face it, the big commercial publishing houses aren’t going to publish books on slices of anarchist history, so it’s great that KSL is here to do the job. KSL survives on donations, so consider sending a donation (money or anarchist material) their way.

The pamphlet includes:
Piacenza and Back by Claudio Silingardi
Death to Death: Emilio Canzi and the Arditi de Popolo in Piacenza
The Epic of One Libertarian Antifacist by Orazio Gobbi
Tragic Barcelona by Ivano Tagliaferri
Way up in the Apennines by Franco Sprega
Isabella’s Story
Poor Devil: Canzi the anarchist and Don Borea
A founding father of the resistance: Orazio Gobbi interviews historian Mirco Dondi
With a Rock for a Pillow-The Comandante Muro ANPI Youth Committee, Piacenza
A Very Humane Person by Renato Cravedi
The Christian Democrat, the Communist and the Anarchists by Italo Londei
Canzi’s Epitaph (from his tombstone)
The Anarchists vs. the fascists by Massimo Ortalli

Canzi was born in 1893 and died in 1945. During his lifetime he fought in WWI, joined the anarchist movement, fought against the fascists in Italy and also fought against fascists in the Spanish Civil War. He was sent to concentration camps in Hinzert, Germany and Arezzo. When he managed to escape from Arezzo in 1943, he went to the mountains in Peli di Coli and established the “province’s first partisan unit.” Canzi became “commander of the XIII Zone” and this became a controversial post. Communists were not comfortable with Canzi’s role and sought to overthrow him. Ironically, in this war against fascism, history repeated itself as Canzi had also faced Stalinist hostility and betrayal in Spain.

The assortment of essays crosses over on some information (the dates, major incidents, etc), but each essay offers a unique view of Canzi. One essay, for example, mentions that Canzi was always accompanied by a dog, and the dog’s keen sense of hearing and smell always knew when those fascists were sneaking close by. Another essay details the murders of several Italian anarchists in Barcelona. There’s the sense here that Canzi became an old hand at fighting the fascists, but he also was well aware that communists were quite ready to stab him in the back–in spite of the fact that they supposedly shared a common (fascist) enemy.

The pamphlet includes a contents page, a rather difficult to read map, a glossary and an extremely helpful list of main characters.

http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net

Waco:The Rules of Engagement (1997)

“Somebody had better buy some fire insurance.”

In Waco, Texas, April 19 1993, 76 members of the Branch Davidians were killed inside their city-block sized compound. The Branch Davidians were a religious group led by David Koresh, and they had been established in the area since the 30s. Koresh was raised as a Davidian and took over the leadership position some years before. Koresh was polygamous, and there were also rumours that he maintained relationships with underage girls, but it was the idea that Koresh and his followers (and the group were licensed gun dealers) had illegal weapons that brought them to the attention of the authorities. The thought-provoking DVD Waco: the Rules of Engagement is the story of what happened in 1993.

On February 28th, 1993, rumours that the Branch Davidians were stockpiling weapons led to more than 70 ATF agents storming the Branch Davidian camp–known as Mount Carmel. Although the plan was to storm the compound in a surprise attack and seize the weapons, the presence of the press (who had been alerted by the ATF) meant the Branch Davidians had a good idea that something was about to happen. Both sides claim the other side fired first, but at the end of the day, 4 ATF agents were dead (and 6 Davidians), and many more wounded. The FBI took over from the ATF and laid siege to the compound for 51 days. The siege finally came to a fiery apocalyptic end that captured the headlines.

The documentary goes back and forth blending senate investigation hearings with footage taken during the siege. Apparently, at one point the FBI gave the Davidians a camera during the siege period, so many Davidians who were killed in the fire appear on snippets of videotape. Various experts, a handful of survivors, and law officers are also interviewed, and parts of the audio taped negotiations are included in the film.

So what happened? How did this situation become SO bad? For that answer, you will have to watch the DVD yourself. But I will say that I came to this film a bit curious and with a pre-conceived notion about the event I saw in the news over a decade ago. My impression was that the Davidians were a bunch of rabid loonies holed up and armed to the teeth. After watching the DVD, I have many, many questions about the event–were the rumours about Koresh’s involvement with underage girls ever investigated? The film includes snippets of one teenage girl’s testimony in the senate hearings, and the evidence seems quite impressive. If these rumours had been investigated, then the police or social workers would have knocked on the Branch Davidian doors instead of an ATF raid taking place. It’s all a matter of jurisdiction.

The ATF raid was a poorly conceived idea, and after the deaths of the ATF officers, it led to the inevitable standoff with the FBI. One has to ask, were the conditions during the siege conducive to the Davidians surrender? Unfortunately, the answer is an overwhelming ‘NO’. Recorded tapes of animal slaughter, Davidians being mooned, endless playing of Nancy Sinatra songs are just some of the juvenile tactics used during the siege that were judged to be conducive to surrender.

This brings me to the events of April 19th, and the senate hearings that were ostensibly held to investigate the incident. Frankly, I was shocked both by the incidents that took place in Waco, Texas, and also by the senate hearings themselves. All the grandstanding, all the outraged senators, all the testimony….everything comes down to the fact that the truth doesn’t matter.

Would the Branch Davidians, who claimed to be peaceful people, simply have given up if approached differently? We will never know the answer to that question. If you are at all curious (as I was), then watch this excellent DVD. It’s chilling.

A Dime’s Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils ed.by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair

“Something was very rotten”

A Dime’s Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils edited by Counterpunch writers Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair is an excellent collection of 23 essays focusing on “the decay of the American political system.” With such topics as the presidential elections, Clinton, Karl Rove, John McCain, Jesse Jackson, the defense budget, and the so-called ‘War on Drugs’, the essays systematically strip away the notions that there’s much to choose from between the two political parties–the Democrats and the Republicans. Editor and essay contributor, Alexander Cockburn wonders exactly why there’s so much fuss over the elections, and why elections “rouse expectations far in excess of what they actually deserve.”

A Dime’s Worth of Difference was published prior to the November ‘04 election, and some Americans still imagined that John Kerry had a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the presidency. But according to the authors, “on the calendar of standard-issue American politics” there’s a “relentlessly shrinking menu.” The 2004 election came down to the selection of a “lesser of two evils”, and this is more a sad comment on the political process in the country than the glittering ratification the ‘winning’ administration seems to imagine it deserves.

There’s something to offend just about everyone in this collection–the right, the left, and the stuck-in-the-middles. Here we read about the candidates for the 2004 election–Bush, the man whose “genes and education turned into a Mendelian stew of all that’s worst and most vulgar” and Kerry “who offers himself up mainly as a more competent manager of the Bush agenda.” Other essays examine Clinton’s presidency, the relationship between the government and the oil industry, & poverty in America. One fascinating section of a co-written essay “War on the Poor” from Cockburn and St Clair examines the role of Dick Morris and the ratings mania during Clinton’s presidency emanating from the “neuro-psychological profile” of the typical American voter. Another essay tackles the formidable Karl Rove. One of Rove’s nicknames may be “turdblossom”, but it’s clear he’s a fierce adversary with “the intuitive facility for adducing that single, simple idea that would win the most people to your side.”

Contributor Josh Frank’s essay, “The Slick Swindler: Senator Max Baucus”(D-Montana) is a very personal account of the gradual disillusionment experienced by the author, a Montana resident. Other essays explore the friendships between odd couples, such as Senator John McCain and S&L “fraudster” Charles Keating, and DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe and IBEW pension fund (or ‘How to Invest $100 and make 2.45 Million’). In addition, Marc Racicot (R-former gov. of Montana), Paul Wellstone (D-Minnesota), Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania), Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) are all subjects of scrutiny and analysis.

Special mention for Cockburn and St Clair’s illuminating essay, “Bipartisan Origins of the War on Drugs.” This essay examines the government’s attitude and policies since the 50s towards the trade of illegal narcotics. The authors cite the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act which passed 29 new minimum mandatory sentences, creating a minimum sentence of 5 years in the federal pen for possession of 5 grams of crack–while there is no mandatory sentence for powdered cocaine under 500 grams. This, according to the authors, creates a “100:1 sentencing ratio” between crack and cocaine. Well so much for the ‘war’ on drugs. The essay finishes with a nice statistical breakdown of the racial breakdown of those in prison for drugs. There’s a lot of information packed into slightly less than 300 pages, and an index in the back helps keep track of it all.

Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman (2005)

“What have we done? We’ve just killed a man.”

Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman is an excellent film that takes a fresh look at the subject of capital punishment through the eyes of Albert Pierrepoint, a British hangman. The film’s title is a bit of a misnomer. Pierrepoint (pronounced ‘peer point’) was not the last hangman in Britain. Hangings continued in Britain until 1964, 8 years after Pierrepoint’s retirement, and he was the last official Chief Hangman for the United Kingdom. But, Pierrepoint was the last executioner in his family, and here’s the extraordinary thing–apparently being a hangman was the family trade amongst the Pierrepoint males. Both Albert Pierrepoint’s father and uncle were also hangmen, so this family dominated the hangman profession in Britain for the first half of 20th century.

When the film begins, Pierrepoint (Timothy Spall) has applied to be a hangman (the film doesn’t mention that in his youth he’d assisted his uncle upon occasion), so when Albert gets the job, he knows exactly what he’s in for. The film depicts the first hanging, and here Albert is employed to be the assistant with another man as the lead hangman–the person who’s supposed to slip on the noose, etc. But the other man’s nerve crumbles. Not so Albert. With precision, he takes over the procedure. The hanging takes place, and the head executioner, obviously sickened by the experience chucks the job and hands Albert the money he received. In his mind, the money is no good, and he can’t get rid of it fast enough.

The film charts Albert’s career from 1932-1956. Although not a lucrative job (executing people is Albert’s side job), he certainly has steady work, and over the course of his career, Pierrepoint executes more than 600 people. Eventually, Albert and his wife save enough to buy their own pub, and the subject of Pierrepoint’s side job is never discussed between them.

Other people at the scenes of the hangings (guards, etc) discuss the crimes of the person about to be executed in order to persuade themselves that the condemned man (or woman) deserves to die. Albert, on the other hand, doesn’t want to discuss the prisoners’ crimes or whether or not they ‘deserve it.’ On the contrary, such matters simply don’t matter to him; he argues that the government wants these people dead, and he’s just doing his job. He makes no moral or emotional investment in his actions whatsoever, and states: “when I walk in that cell, I leave Albert Pierrepoint behind.” At the hangings, Pierrepoint must calculate the precise length of rope necessary for each condemned person. Emotionless, he conducts the executions with an emphasis on efficiency, and this includes conducting one execution with the record speed of 7 seconds.

Over the course of his career, Pierrepoint executes some controversial people–including a few men for treason (post WWII), Ruth Ellis (the last woman to be hung in Britain), Derek Bentley (who was in police custody when the murder took place) and Timothy John Evans who was found guilty of strangling his daughter. This latter case was reopened (somewhat too late for Bentley) when it was discovered that serial killer John Reginald Christie was responsible for the murders of Evans’s wife and daughter.

Pierrepoint’s sangfroid attitude to his work comes a cropper when he is sent to Germany to execute Nazis for war crimes. Of course, these people, while slaughtering and torturing countless victims, have only been following the orders of their government too. It’s unclear whether Pierrepoint makes the connection, but the film does stress the point that the sheer numbers of hangings Pierrepoint conducted in Germany did have an adverse affect on him. But the negative impact was partly from the result that Pierrepoint moved from having anonymity to public notoriety. At first worshipped as some sort of patriotic hero for hanging Nazis, Pierrepoint’s popularity sinks as the public outcry against execution grows. While ostensibly Pierrepoint resigns from his position as government executioner due to a dispute over lack of payment (a prisoner was reprieved), Pierrepoint later claimed that his participation in the hanging of an acquaintance led him to hanging up the noose and instead declaring himself opposed to capital punishment. The film doesn’t mention that Pierrepoint discussed selling his story to the newspapers, and this prompted the Home Office to consider prosecuting Pierrepoint for treason. Instead, the newspapers were pressured to not publish the story.

Pierrepoint is not an emotional film. Instead this is a presentation of a man who hangs hundreds of people with no emotion whatsoever. He begins the film believing that he is doing only his duty–after all this is what his government wants, and he happens to be the best there is. Pierrepoint seemed unperturbed by events he engaged in, and yet obviously, on some level, the stream of deaths, and pleas of the condemned eroded the barrier he’d constructed to protect his conscience. The film doesn’t mention that in childhood, as a treat, Pierrepoint was allowed to read his uncle’s accounts of executions. So as a child he accepted executions as the family trade, and then took up this trade while still a young man. Obviously he didn’t question the morality of his gruesome job because he grew up thinking this sort of job was normal. Pierrepoint offers a different, and interesting perspective on the topic of capital punishment.

Una Pasion Singular (2003)

 “My patriotism is for the human race.”

Based on the true story of Blas Infante, the Spanish film Una Pasion Singular explores the life of the man known as “the father of Andalucia.” The film begins with the arrest of the upper class, middle aged, Blas Infante (Daniel Freire) and his subsequent imprisonment during the Spanish Civil War. As Infante’s wife Angustias (Marisol Membrillo) struggles with the authorities to get her husband freed, flashbacks depict their meeting and early courtship. Infante and his wife are depicted as individuals with vastly opposed value systems. Infante is devoted to the notion of a separate, autonomous Andulucia, and agrarian reform that includes “returning the land to the peasants” but Angustias, the daughter of wealthy elites, is used to a life of privilege. Infante courts and marries Angustias and they both secretly hold the idea that they can ‘change’ the ethics of the other if given time and proximity of marriage.

Through flashbacks, the film shows Infante, who designed the Andulucian flag and wrote the national song, at various meetings organizing political strategy. Other scenes depict Infante offering his legal services to the disenfranchised peasants at no charge. These scenes of political, and social involvement are contrasted with scenes of conflict with Angustias. She was born to a privileged life, and she fails to understand why life shouldn’t continue on in the same manner. Disagreements about money, and Infante’s devotion to the cause lead to bitter arguments.

The scenes involving Infante’s fate at the hand of Franco’s brutal system of repression are very well done. The film does an excellent job of depicting the arbitrary cold brutality of the system–men taken out of the jail by night and shot, men taken on journeys by guards from which they never return. One of the most powerful scenes occurs when Infante is taken to a makeshift prison. The door opens and as Infante’s sight adjusts to the dim light, the room is seen to hold hundreds of men in various attitudes of despair as they await their fate. In this hideous makeshift facility, there are no trials, and there is no justice. Guards arrive periodically to take the despondent men away to their doom.

The contrasting flashback scenes of Infante’s relationship with his wife are not as interesting, and they tend to distract from the much more interesting story of Infante’s social and political beliefs. If, however, you are interested in the Spanish Civil War, or the tyranny unleashed in Franco’s Spain, then Una Pasion Singular is worth catching. Directed by Antonio Gonzalo, the film is in Spanish with English subtitles.

The Gleiwitz Case (1961)

“The job we are doing is part of a master plan.”

The documentary style black and white film The Gleiwitz Case recreates a long buried incident that sparked WWII. In 1939, a staged attack was conducted against a radio station in Gleitwitz–a few miles away from Germany’s border with Poland. The Gleiwitz incident was part of Operation Himmler–an orchestrated Gestapo plan to demonstrate “Polish aggression” against Nazi Germany, and it was supposed to provide the perfect excuse Germany needed to invade Poland.

Alfred Naujocks (Hannjo Hasse) organized the incident operating under the direct orders of Heinrich Muller and Reinhard Heydrich. The plan was to attack the station using Polish-speaking German officers. These officers–dressed in Polish uniforms–grabbed the airwaves and made hostile statements against Nazi Germany using Polish and broken German. Then as further ‘evidence’ left behind, the Germans took a Pole from a concentration camp, dressed him in a Polish uniform and shot him in the front of the radio station.

The film is basically a recreation of events–there’s no examination of the psychology of the characters, but this is an excellent portrayal of the cold efficiency of the Third Reich in operation. The film’s realism and pacing is reminiscent of The Battle of Algiers–with an emphasis on close-ups and a breathtaking immediacy. The film is a chilling reminder of exactly how calculating the Gestapo were when it came to propaganda, and it’s a demonstration of a government using a range of propaganda devices to ’sell’ a war to the people–enraging a nation and whipping it into a war frenzy. In this instance, Hitler publicly preached reason and patience and in reality created a moral imperative and a fictional urgency to justify war. The Gleiwitz incident took place on August 31, 1939, and the next day, Germany invaded Poland. The film ends with the chilling caption: “43 million dead.” DVD extras include: the trailer, a photo gallery, an essay “The Case of the Gleiwitz Case”, biographies and filmographies. Directed by Gerhard Klein, the film is in German with English subtitles.

Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie (1988)

“The word ‘Nazi’ doesn’t exist”

At almost 4 1/2 hours long, Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie from director Max Ophuls thoroughly examines the career of the man who served as Gestapo Chief of Lyon during WWII and earned the name “The Butcher of Lyon” for his various crimes against humanity. The filmmaker painstakingly disassembles Barbie’s life from his early boyhood, his Nazi career, through his post WWII activities, and the new life he established in S. America. While the film ostensibly concentrates on the life of one man, Ophuls subtly, and successfully makes larger statements regarding fascism–a phenomenon so widespread that Barbie managed to successfully convert his Nazi resume to further his career prospects with post WWII CIC activities and also leap into bigger and better things in rightwing Bolivia.

While boyhood chums recall Barbie as a natural leader, and find it difficult to imagine him as a war criminal, his victims remember his brutal torture techniques. Barbie was responsible for the death–amongst others–of French resistance leader Jean Moulin, and Barbie also personally supervised the brutal round up of Jewish children from the orphanage at Izieu to be shipped off for execution at Auschwitz. Following WWII, Barbie, as a prominent Nazi was employed by the American CIC, and various agents recall their memories of Barbie. It’s particularly interesting to note the interviews with former CIC agents who state on camera that they had no idea of Barbie’s background, and can’t really verbalize what Nazi ideology is anyway. Former CIC agent Eugene Kolb clearly believes that a Nazi is better than a communist any day of the week. He excuses America turning a blind eye to Barbie’s past by saying, “The world is shot through with moral ambiguities.”

When things got too hot for Barbie in the CIC, he received an all-expenses paid one-way ticket with his family to Bolivia. Barbie’s career in South America is extraordinary. I had imagined that Nazis who’d managed to get to that distant continent were hiding out on some remote ranch somewhere in the impenetrable Andes. Not so, Barbie was a prominent citizen in Bolivia–and up to his old tricks: arms smuggling, torture, and dirty politics. He was even involved with the Fiances of Death and Italian terrorist Stefano Delle Chiaie.

Ophuls uses the footage brilliantly. He juxtaposes interviews that expose conflicting information to highlight the web of lies–both political and personal–that were necessary to further Barbie’s bloody international career. Ophuls confronts former Nazis, and it takes a few questions to expose the fact that they’re now just old Nazis–still locked in denial about exactly what happened during WWII. One even has the gall to demand, “Whatever happened to human rights?” But throughout all this, there’s Barbie–who remains ultimately a strange, distant figure, proud, confident and utterly unrepentant. Regarding his past, he has this to say, “I’ve forgotten it, if they haven’t it’s their concern.”

The film raises fascinating moral questions. There are those on camera who feel that prosecuting Barbie 40 years after the war is excessive, and there are those who believe Barbie acted as a mere soldier under orders from higher ups. Then there’s the fact that he tortured Resistance fighters who wore no uniforms and opposed the Vichy government. If you are a documentary fan and are even remotely interested in the subject, then I highly recommend this riveting and highly relevant film.

The Imperial Presidency: Sovereignty, Terror, and the Second Superpower (audio CD)

“Huge profits beyond the dreams of avarice.”

The 64 minute audio CD The Imperial Presidency: Sovereignty, Terror and the Second Superpower is a lecture delivered by Noam Chomsky shortly after the re-election of George Bush in November 2004.

The lecture is divided into 11 subsections:

History and the Second Superpower
Controlling the Great Beast
Rescinding the Geneva Convention
Demystifying Pre-Emptive War
The Principle of Universality
Polling the Great Beast of Public Opinion
The Threat of Terrorism vs. the Real U.S. Priorities
What the Great Beast Wants and Why it is Deceived
What is Old Europe anyway?
America’s Messianic Vision of Democracy
Making Use of Our Freedom to Fight Back.

Chomsky discusses the morality of the “pre-emptive war” and argues that “elementary moral truisms” demand the rejection of the ethics of a preemptive war. Calling the Iraq War a “supreme international crime” Chomsky describes the incidents that occurred in November 2004 at Fallujah General Hospital as a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Prior to the storming of Fallujah in 2004, the hospital was taken over, and Iraqi doctors hogtied in the hallways. It was, Chomsky argues, the Bush administration’s goal to “shut down the propaganda weapon” of the images of civilian dead and wounded. What else can you expect from an administration that considers the Geneva Conventions “quaint”?

Chomsky discusses the power of public opinion and how “political campaigns are designed” by the same companies who sell other products–in the case of politics, however, the product being sold is the candidate. Chomsky explains how the image of Bush as a “spoiled frat boy from Yale” was transformed to create a “homespun image” with general appeal to the average American voter. Chomsky uses the November 2004 election to illustrate the use of advertising in political campaigns–stressing the fact that the advertising isn’t designed to present information to inform the voter but rather the advertising campaigns are designed to deceive the voter. He cites a figure–10% of voters vote on agenda–with the other 90% of the voters for the candidate’s perceived qualities or image.

Using healthcare as an example, Chomsky makes a fascinating point about the issues placed on the table during an election year. He argues that most Americans are concerned to one degree or another about improving healthcare, but that thanks to the influence of the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical companies, and Wall Street, the issue of universal healthcare in America is written off as “politically impossible.” Consequently, healthcare while of immense importance to most Americans (and an issue that stands to make a tremendous difference to the lives of average Americans) was not a substantial issue for either candidate. It’s strange when you consider that the entire country looks forward to these four-year election rituals anticipating that something in the social structure of the country may change, when really the status quo seems to go on more or less the same as before.

Misfit: A Revolutionary Life by Captain Jack White

Misfit is the memoir of anarchist Captain Jack White covering the years 1899 to May 1916–just after the Easter Rebellion. White (1879-1946) begins his memoirs when he was stationed in South Africa with the British Army during the Boer War. As one of the 1st Gordon Highlanders, he recounts the Battle of Magerfontein.

After leaving the army, White was restless. Heavily influenced by Tolstoy, he traveled to Canada, and here he cast around, worked various jobs, and to coin a cliché, tried to ‘find himself.’ Eventually, however, disillusioned, White states “I had bitten deeper than Tolstoy, because I had tried him out as he had never tried himself.” Subsequently White was involved in the Labour movement, became a Socialist and formed the Irish Citizen Army.

The book’s title refers to Captain White’s often-misunderstood, unwelcome role. He was not a member of the working classes–yet joined their ranks. He joined the Catholics supporting home rule for Ireland–yet he was an Anglo-Irish protestant. Later in WWI, he volunteered as an ambulance driver on the front lines, but he was regarded with suspicion because of his involvement in the Irish political scene.

White apparently wrote a sequel to Misfit, which was either destroyed or lost. This is a great shame as the book concludes while White is still a relatively young man. I’m not sure that White and I would have got along had we ever crossed paths. There’s an arrogance that comes through these pages. The first part of the book establishes White as an officer in the British Army, and at one point he orders a public caning for one of the natives. He expresses shame at his actions and also concludes that being in the Army obviously wasn’t good for him. I’ll agree with that, but White seems to have retained his military air–at least for the course of the book.

At one point, he negotiates with Birrell, a British official whose job it was to allocate funds to “the Dublin Local Government Board for the relief of stress.” Previously, a woman named Harrison, a Dubliner contacted Birrell for the release of these much-needed funds. She’d got nowhere with Birrell, whereas White and Birrell hit it off immediately. White seems to chortle with superiority over the fact that he can negotiate with this man while an Irish woman cannot. Well…yes, the official obviously recognized White as one of his own kind; plus Miss Harrison was a woman. Birrell’s stated preference for White is not necessarily a compliment to White’s diplomatic skills, but more a nod to class, race and gender.

At the same time, there are bits of humor in these pages. At one point, White meets Arthur Voysey, the son of theist Charles Voysey, and White notes Arthur Voysey’s move to Tahiti with the comment: “I feel sure he is under a banana tree in a loincloth.”

I also found White annoyingly oblique and obscure when it came to discussing his personal life. It’s not mandatory to discuss one’s personal/private life in a memoir, but since he brought it up, it would have been nice if he had been a bit clearer. His vagueness on the subject of his wife is a bit odd. Here’s an example:

“Thus a pair like us, when tired of hand-to-hand fighting, can go on fighting through the warring worlds with which our respective types have become aligned. What is more, there is some hope of final decision, if not final peace. What’s that game they play on board ship crossing the line; two combatants sitting on a spar over a sail-path and hammering at each other with bolsters till one of them falls in-sometimes both. Suppose they sat on different spars, and nothing on earth would stop them hammering till the spar of one of them broke. Then if they loved each other, for all the hammering, the survivor would pick the sparless one out. There is a picture of my marriage given in advance. I am now to get off the spar on which we sat together and get on another.”

Also, I didn’t particularly care for White’s heavily symbolic writing style:
“The threads of intelligence must be interwoven with the threads of being; that is to say, that on some needle, which is neither, abstract neither intellect nor intelligent being, the two stitches must be picked up and combined. That needle is faith, keen-pointed enough to pick up stitch after stitch in their right order, strong enough to bear the weight of woolly substance always tending to break off and rip up.”

That’s just an excerpt, but it should give you an idea of White’s writing style. He doesn’t do this for the entire book, but there are long passages of this sort of thing. The book ends abruptly, and there seems to be much ahead for Captain White (he later fought with the CNT militia in Spain).  Speeches made by White and articles he wrote are included at the end of the book along with some additional biographical information.
Livewire Publications
259 pages