The Treatment and the Cure by Peter Kocan

“You’re not feeling so cheerful now, with this talk of shock treatment. You start to think how it was all too good to be true. Now you’re finding out about the bad thing, the thing you knew had to be here though you didn’t know exactly what it would be. Shock treatment! It had a very bad ring to it. Especially the word ‘treatment.’ When they biffed you it was pretty bad, but at least you knew they were doing something they shouldn’t be doing. They knew it too. There was always a chance they’d get into trouble for biffing. Not much of a chance, but a chance. Also some screws didn’t agree with biffing, and they’d try to stop other screws who did it. But ‘treatment’ was different … they could do it with a clean conscience because they were trying to help you.

In 1966, nineteen-year-old Peter Kocan attempted to assassinate politician Arthur Calwell. Kocan failed and was subsequently tried and found guilty of attempted murder. Sentenced to life imprisonment, he was first sent to Long Bay Correctional Centre and then transferred to the Criminally Insane Ward of the Morisset Psychiatric Hospital. The novel The Treatment and The Cure (originally published as two separate novellas) is an autobiographical but fictionalized account of Kocan’s experiences told through the eyes of nineteen-year-old Len Tarbutt.

When the novel begins, Len, confused and disoriented, is freshly transferred from a prison to a mental asylum. At first the hospital seems a great improvement over Long Bay prison, but Len very soon discovers that the insane asylum has its own minefields to be avoided at all costs: medications that reduce the powerless patient to a zombie-like state and electric shock ‘therapy’ administered by the forgetful but enthusiastic doctor known as “Electric Ned.”

Len mingles with an assortment of patients with a range of problems–murderers, child molesters, and even peeping Toms. Lonely and withdrawn, Len soon learns the asylum system–where the number one rule is not to draw attention to yourself. But surviving in this system is easier said than done–especially when bored and sadistic guards often set up scenarios in which patients are guaranteed to be dragged off to shock therapy. Len witnesses many patients who were functional reduced to cretinism by the over-eagerness of Electric Ned.

The very best parts of this excellent novel describe how Len tries desperately to appear normal and rational, yet this is a game in which the inmates don’t make the rules. Even Len’s attraction to poetry becomes suspect at one point as it causes him to read and meditate in solitude–an activity that’s largely frowned upon. Sometimes when inmates come to the attention of the guards and the doctors, they’re questioned and boxed in with circular logic, and there’s always shock treatment as the inevitable outcome awaiting them. For example, a particularly sadistic guard named Smiler continuously persecutes one inmate named Sam. When the inmate complains about the persecution, it’s becomes a signal that he’s ‘paranoid’:

“Everyone knows that mentally ill people think they’re being persecuted, so Sam is sealing his own fate by accusing Smiler. Smiler is pleased at how beautifully it’s working out.”

In spite of the dark subject matter, Kocan manages to write with a humour that’s refreshingly innocent. Although Kocan writes in the first person, Kocan’s protagonist describes his environment by using the second person ‘you.’ This creates a numbing depersonalized distance between the narrator and his difficult experiences.

There are some wonderful passages that describe patients who appear cured, but they’ve simply learnt the game well enough to give the ‘authorities’ exactly what they want to hear. Zurka, for example, doesn’t seem like the sort of person who chopped up several passengers on a train, but that’s exactly what he did. After spending several years at the asylum, he appears ‘cured,’ but there are some instances in which Len retains nagging doubts about some of the inmates’ preparedness to be returned to society:

“Zurka is obviously very sorry and sad when he’s telling you about the last bit, about the train. You are quite sure he’d never do anything like that again. You’d bet your bones on it. If it was up to you, you’d let Zurka go to the open section. Yet when he’s talking about the psychiatrists who took all his money for pills and fees, or about his Polish countrymen who wouldn’t help him, you get a faint cold feeling of worry. There’s an edge in his voice that makes you think he’s spent the years here remembering the wrong they did him. It’s probably nothing. You’d still let him go to the open section if the decision was up to you. Yet, you’re glad somehow, that it’s someone else’s decision.”

Those who learn the rules and a superficial degree of conformity are judged ‘normal’–and as long as the inmates pay satisfactory attention to these rules, those in charge are happy with the inmates’ progress. It doesn’t seem to occur to those rule-makers that perhaps the inmates have learned to mimic the behaviour the doctors, nurses and guards want to see:

“You’re talking to Zurka about what he did to the people with his butcher’s chopper. He doesn’t mind talking about it now. He’s pretty sure he’s to be transferred to the open section and he wants to show that he understands about his crime and why he did it and that it was a dreadful act. The screws say that being able to talk calmly about your crime shows you’ve gained insight. Of course, you mustn’t talk about it too much, or too calmly, or they’ll say you’re dwelling on it or that you aren’t showing a healthy remorse.”

Strangely enough, some of Len’s hardest times are when he’s transferred out of maximum security. He falls under the ‘care’ of a sadistic nurse nicknamed Blue–a woman who torments some of those who fall under her jurisdiction. One of the ubiquitous ideas in the novel is the degree of mental illness inside the asylum. Whereas the patients are diagnosed and labeled with terms, some of the more sadistic employees are able to mentally torture inmates and twist reality with impunity to such a degree that the more fragile inmates escape the only way they can–through suicide.

There are escapes, the moments of joy, and small but powerful acts of human kindness, and the few people who reach out to Len makes all the difference in the world. There’s the overwhelming idea that no one really gets ‘cured’–even though that’s supposedly the goal held for all the inmates, and the system recreated here in these pages would most likely push anyone in a fragile mental state over the edge. Since this is basically a coming-of-age novel, this is not only a fictionalized memoir of asylum life but also an account of Len’s gradual ability to self-heal when given the fragments of opportunity.

All of the employees at the asylum inherently believe in different approaches to mental well-being. For example, the librarian believes reading provides healing, Electric Ned believes a cure can be found in shock treatment, and the therapy supervisor, Mr. Trowbridge believes that work is therapy. Although Trowbridge is a thoughtful man, one of Len’s few advocates, his dogmatic belief has little flexibility. To Trowbridge, the road to mental health is found through employment and functionality, and the ability to work is the measure of mental health. Similarly, the sadistic nurses and guards use the systems they embody (medications and rules) and create ways to subvert and sabotage any progress made towards mental health, and as in any closed system (school, for example) there are favourites and there are those who are picked on unmercifully. Institutional corruption is not included in this tale because for Len it doesn’t seem to exist; instead cruelty exists because of abusive power structures directed by banality and boredom. Cruelty is, therefore, the more devastating for its sheer disinterest.

On one last note, Kocan has published several books and has won awards for his fiction.

239 pages

Europa Editions

The Bonnot Gang by Richard Parry

“To counter the threat of armed working class bandits, many bourgeois began to arm themselves; from dawn to dusk they queued up to buy guns and learn how to use them, while car-owners, feeling particularly threatened, offered their vehicles to the police until such time as the bandits were caught. Cars were not yet widespread, and the idea that workers could not only have access to them, but make this particular use of them was very worrying.”

The Bonnot Gang: The Story of the French Illegalists by Richard Parry is an excellent, highly detailed account of the notorious French anarchist gang–”auto-bandits” who were the first group to use getaway cars during the course of robberies.

Don’t even think about skipping the preface to the book because this is an essential part in understanding how the members of the so-called Bonnot Gang were a symptom of the times. The term ‘Bonnot Gang’ by the way, was the name given by the French press to a loosely connected group of French anarchists–some were friends and some only had the barest acquaintance with the others. The author points out that they “were not a close-knit criminal band in the classical style, but rather a union of egoists associated for a common purpose.”

Tracing the ideas and influence of Max Stirner and his book The Ego and Its Own, Parry credits Stirner as a powerful influence on anarchist-individualism and spends the marvelous first chapter describing the anarchist scene in France and the growth of anarchist-individualism. Following the debacle of the 1871 Paris Commune, the French government cracked down, and with “revolutionary organizations outlawed, and all forms of working class political activity banned, anarchists and trade-unionists were forced to operate in ways that were clandestine and outrightly illegal.” But in spite of this (or perhaps because of this), by the 1880s “there were an estimated forty anarchist groups in France with two thousand five hundred active members.”

The bitter aftermath of the Paris Commune “left a rich legacy of class-hatred” and Parry explains, “all anarchist activity and propaganda was centered on the class struggle which was especially bitter and violent up to the mid 1890s.” Since these were active times, a plethora of newspapers sprang up, and a number of anarchist groups emerged. One of the most prominent papers to emerge was L’Anarchie–considered the mouthpiece of anarchist-individualism–the paper “positively promoted crime and the theory of illegalism.” Co-founded in 1905 by Libertad, the paper’s position was that “there were not two opposed classes, bourgeois and proletarian, but only individuals.” Libertad seems to be a rather explosive character who quarreled with Syndicalists and was largely unwelcome–except in his own circle, and even then he managed to alienate friends and lovers.

Parry explains how Illegalism grew out of anarchist-individualism and points out that “almost all the Illegalists who were associated with the Bonnot Gang were born in the late 1880s or early 90s.” During this period, Parry argues, “the anarchist desire for the abolition of the state was translated onto an immediate practical level through individual acts of assassination and bombing.” Furthermore the idea of expropriation was “reduced to individual acts of ‘re-appropriation’ through the theory of La Reprise Individuelle.” Parry stresses the point that Illegalism differed from La Reprise Individuelle as the “illegalists stole not simply for the advancement of the cause, but for their own advancement.” And it was during these times that some infamous French anarchist criminals existed: Clement Duval, Marius Jacob and Ravachol. There’s a brief overview of their careers included.

Gangs began to emerge, and proceeds from burglaries and thefts were donated to the Cause, and naturally some donated more than others. Meanwhile an intellectual argument raged between anarchists regarding Illegalism and its moral justification, and eventually a split formed. While Illegalists argued that so-called “honest citizens, believers in the State and Authority” were part of the problem, others argued against Illegalism and the use of violence and force against ordinary citizens. Again Parry goes into some detail about this split–those pro and those con Illegalism, the major proponents and detractors, and their arguments for their beliefs.

There’s a clear sense of the social pressures of the time that helped create Illegalism. With mandatory military service, there were thousands of deserters roaming around France, unable to work, and even for those who could find work, often an eighteen-hour day of the most horrendous working conditions barely managed to put food on the table. (According to the book, in the early 1900s, there were approximately 70,000 deserters and draft dodgers.) One of the gang members, anarchist and draft dodger Octave Garnier was trying to make a living at age 13, but turned to crime. Working a “sixteen or eighteen hour day, seven days a week” on forged documents barely allowed survival. Garnier became increasingly disillusioned and frustrated with his situation and gradually came to loathe the system. Into this difficult social environment, Illegalism was born, and the Bonnot Gang became a major part of it.

Parry goes into significant detail describing the members of the gang–their relationships, their teetotalism and vegetarianism. The book details the “legendary” violent crimes the Bonnot Gang committed, the subsequent hysteria that swept through France, how the gang members were caught, the trials, executions and exiles. As the net tightens on the Bonnot Gang, there’s the sense that this is only going to go one way, and certainly most of the Bonnot Gang exited this life as spectacularly as they lived it. There’s quite an extensive list of characters, so it’s advisable to take notes. You may need them.

It always seems a little unfortunate when anarchists fight amongst themselves, and yet at the same time, criticism of anarchists by other anarchists is invaluable. The aftermath of the Bonnot Gang left many anarchists scrambling to explain their philosophical positions on Illegalism. Parry goes into some depth on the sticky role Victor Serge (Victor Kibalchich) played in the trial. While as the editor of L’Anarchie, Serge promoted Illegalism, he backtracked and waffled during the trial and later called Illegalism a form of “collective suicide.” Other anarchists at the time expressed the notion that the Bonnot Gang went off the deep end. Some felt that Illegalists were not anarchists at all but were “pseudo-anarchists who dishonour the anarchist ideal” and others resented the post-Bonnot Gang crackdown on the anarchist community. The story of the Bonnot Gang is an integral part of anarchist history and it’s a story that raises some intriguing questions and deserves attention. But part from all that, the book is an excellent read.

The book includes a bibliography, index and many black and white photos.

189 pages
Rebel Press

Anarchy TV (1998)

“I’m sick of paying taxes so you can sit around and play counterculture.”

The comedy film Anarchy TV directed by Jonathan Blank pits five anarchists and a prostitute against a religious wanker in a struggle for Public Access TV.

When the film begins a group of five anarchists manage their own Public Access channel called Anarchy TV, lampooning religion and government with a series of parody advertisements and programmes. For example, the programming includes a parody version of Jeopardy. One of the questions to pick from is “Conspiracy Theories” and the game show prize is to collect as many Prozac pills as possible.

The five anarchists are:
Natalie (Jessica Hecht), the daughter of a hypocritical and sinister TV evangelist
Jerry (Jonathan Penner), Natalie’s lover
Frank (Matt Winston) techno-phile and conspiracy theorist
Katie (Moon Unit Zappa), the most serious of the bunch
Sid (Dweezil Zappa)

Outraged by the content of Anarchy TV and to ‘protect’ public morals, Natalie’s father, the corrupt Reverend Wright (Alan Thicke), buys the station, disowns Natalie and turfs the anarchists out of the building. The anarchist group attempts traditional, legal methods of protest and end up in jail for their efforts. In jail they meet bubbly prostitute Tiffany (Tamayo Otsuki). Entranced with the anarchist message, she joins the group.

 
After the failure of legal protest, the group decides to move to Direct Action. Storming the station, they take a newscaster hostage and begin broadcasting their message on “God’s Station” on the “Christian Unity Network.” Mink Stole appears in a small role as Stephanie’s employer: (”schoolteachers can’t appear in a nudie carnival.”)

The anarchists look like a bunch of yuppies for the most part. Tiffany ends up being the most radical of the group in many ways, but that’s mainly because she’s a strong character and not afraid to take her clothes off: “Hi, I’m Tiffany. I’m here with the cast of Anarchy TV. We all met in jail. It was my 8th bust for solicitation. Prostitution is illegal. I thought this was a capitalist country. If some horny bastard wants to pay me 100 bucks to jack off all over my face who the hell is the government to interfere in my business.”

Tiffany’s actions on Anarchy TV put her into direct conflict with Katie, but her tactics also gain an interested audience. It’s a sad yet bitterly funny comment on society that nudity is one of the few things that can wake people from their stupor.

Since this is a comedy, there isn’t too much serious here, but the film illustrates the powerful and toxic power relationships between established institutions. Anarchy TV’s broadcasted parodies manage to be accurate and bitingly funny at the same time. One of Reverend Wright’s religious programmes is “Countdown to Armageddon” with the “top 7 deadly signs that the world is coming to an end.” One of those 7 signs is that “sodomites are given equal rights as citizens.” When Anarchy TV takes over and starts broadcasting parody programming, some of the audience can’t even tell the difference. Plus the film also shows Anarchy TV’s audience reaction–and this ranges from sloth to outrage.

Most of the anarchists’ message unfortunately seems to congeal around the rhetoric of democracy and liberty–although one scene shows Katie smashing a vending machine and after gauging the disapproval of the group, she states “Property is Theft”–a phrase that seems to be thrown in for authenticity. Ultimately Anarchy TV  isn’t about anarchy at all; it’s more about the Bill of Rights and the erosion of the U.S. Constitution. The film’s subtext, however, is that our television sets transmit meaningless rubbish, conditioning us into herd behaviour, fear and complacency. And I can’t argue with that.

Judas Horse by April Smith

“FAN is an invisible group of anarchists that operates behind the façade of Free Animals Now–bland enough to attract the liberals and provide a front for the hard-core element. Interchangeable in tactics with ecoterrorists like ALF and ELF, the level of violence in their attacks is on the rise. They used to glue locks and liberate research animals; now it’s firebombing. There are dozens of unsolved cases in the Northwest attributed to FAN–which some investigators argue does not exist at all, but is a cover for a mixed bag of disenfranchised extremists.”

Here’s the synopsis of April Smith’s novel Judas Horse :

Fiction: FBI agent Ana Grey goes undercover and infiltrates a “hard-core anarchist group” operating “behind the façade” of FAN (Free Animals Now). She befriends the group members in order to expose illegal activities of the group and also to solve the murder of fellow undercover agent Steve Crawford.

The plot made me think of the case against Eric McDavid (who just got a whopping 19-year sentence):

True (Not Fiction): The FBI paid ‘Anna’ a chunk of money to infiltrate anarchist groups. She befriended McDavid and two other anarchists–they eventually ended up in a rented cabin in N. California (wired by FBI). They discussed using Direct Action to create property damage, and Anna even gave McDavid the recipe with which to make explosives. If anyone waffled about the plan, Anna pushed, needled and implied they weren’t ready for the big time.

Hmmm….

April Smith’s novel Judas Horse begins with the discovery of what remains of FBI undercover agent Steve Crawford’s body in a remote area of Oregon. Agent Ana Grey is approached to pick up Steve’s assignment, and after a short stint in ‘undercover school’ in Virginia, Ana–who’s now Darcy DeGuzman–is off to Oregon. Infiltrating the group is easy-peasy, according to the author. It just takes a fake identity (which includes a phony arrest) and a tatty copy of Singer’s Animal Liberation, and bingo, Ana…errrr, I mean Darcy is in like Flint.

Seems the “anarchists” hang out at a Portland neo-nazi bar (did the author mix up neo-nazis with punk?), and they may finance their operations with a meth lab. Darcy, who comes across as a bit of a bimbo, has no problem kissing up to the ‘hard-core’ anarchists who consist of:

Julius Emerson Phelps (a loony, out-of-shape former FBI agent). Doughnut-chomping Phelps has delusions of grandeur no doubt instigated by his obsessive devotion to Apocalypse Now. He demands to be called “Allfather” and plans “the Big One.” Not only is Phelps a total loony but he’s also a sadistic bastard.

Megan–an aging hippie who decorates herself with silver jewelry and has a misplaced desire to practice amateur psycho-therapy on Julius. It doesn’t seem to be working.

The other two in this motley crew are two damaged teenagers.

Yes, people. These four make up our “hard-core” anarchist group, but they sound fairly soft-core to me. One scene made me laugh. While anarchists are planning an action in which non-violence is stressed, Darcy complains about the “nonviolent action” by stating that she is “tired of empty gestures.” She wants and pushes for action. Translation: “hello, I’m an FBI agent. Welcome to entrapment.”

The author avoids any reference to anarchist beliefs with the excuse, that according to Agent Galloway: “Anarchists don”t care about the issues….Don’t feel as though you have to spout the rhetoric. The cause is never the cause.” So we should probably be grateful for small mercies.

The book has an acknowledgment page thanking various FBI agents for their help. Figures.

But apart from the pathetic, weedy would-be anarchist group, something far more disturbing is the fictional inclusion of several injuries caused by animal rights groups (”three employees injured by shrapnel”). The book states FAN is “interchangeable” when it comes to “tactics with ecoterrorists like ALF and ELF.” FAN is showed as operating not only with a careless disregard for the possibility of human injury, but an almost gleeful hope that people will get hurt, and at one point, Phelps even orders a murder. These sorts of irresponsible leaps pander to the wave of inaccurate green-scare oriented information. I shudder to think how many people are going to read this book and come away with the mistaken impression that ALF and ELF go around ordering hits, blowing up buildings and people in the process.

But all those complaints aside, while the book offers a wildly inaccurate portrayal of anarchists, the book makes several interesting points. Over time Ana becomes morally confused about her mission. For example, she works with FAN to save horses from the meat factory only to discover that a nasty, greedy, weasely BLM official is faking purchases to the public, selling the wild horses to a slaughterhouse, and lining his pockets with the profits. Ultimately the FBI is seen as a morally bankrupt, horribly corrupt, and corrupting agency, and by the end of the novel, Agent Grey’s FBI career may well be in the toilet….

American Dream (1990)

“People who believe in what they are doing are the most dangerous people in the world.”

American Dream—-from filmmaker Barbara Kopple follows the intricacies of the strike at the Hormel meat-packing factory in Austin, Minnesota. The trouble began when workers who were paid $10.69 an hour were told by the company that they had to accept a 23% cut in wages and a 30% cut in benefits. Hormel was at one time viewed as a “progressive” company with a guaranteed “living” wage and profit sharing. But in 1985, with the founder long dead, and Hormel only raking in 29.5 million profit, it was decided that it was time for the workers to pull their collective belts in and start making less money.

Pressured by increased production ‘goals’ and a sharp upswing in work-related injuries, naturally, the workers at the plant were unhappy with facing a substantial pay cut into the bargain. Austin’s Hormel workers found that their contract did not contain a provision against pay cuts (as they had thought), but they also weren’t happy with the lack of support from their parent union. At this point Local P-9 employed strategist Ray Rogers from Corporate Campaign to manage the fight against Hormel. Meanwhile the national union representative Lewie Anderson predicts disaster that will have ramifications throughout the industry, and that Hormel will simply shift work to its other plants. With no support from the parent union, a fissure is created between P-9 and the rest of the union hierarchy. Amid some unpleasant name-calling, accusations fly and talks break down.

What follows is a long-drawn out strike against Hormel. P-9 had no support from the parent union and thus weakened, it’s a long slow death. With brother literally against brother, many of Lewie Anderson’s predictions are proved correct. When the strike turns sour, the National Guard arrives and many workers lose their jobs.

American Dream lacks the emotionality of Kopple’s Harlan County, USA, and the film inevitably suffers from a comparison. That’s a shame and certainly not deserved at all, and the two films deserve to be companion pieces. While Harlan County, USA is loaded with colourful images of incredibly strong characters, American Dream has its own characters who are not as charismatic, but the story is equally interesting. While in Harlan County, USA, the situation in the miners’ strike spirals so far out of control that a man is murdered by strikebreakers (also prior to the strike the union president UMWA President Boyle order the murders of union activist and challenger Yablonski and his family), things don’t get quite that crazy in Austin, Minnesota. But there’s some nasty stuff afoot. There’s one scene when the management negotiator meets with workers and while one worker lets lose with grievances, the management representative quickly establishes his hierarchy and who’s in charge by threatening to leave the meeting unless the worker shuts up. This move establishes the idea that workers are supplicants, and that they’d better behave or the meeting is over. With the management establishing ground rules and hierarchy, any idea of “negotiation” is soured.

Director Barbara Kopple once again demonstrates her talent at exposing the exploitation of the workers by including some amazing footage–there’s Lewie Anderson meeting with dissident strikers, a punch-up in a strike meeting, and workers confronting the wife of a Hormel executive: “There are so many people who would be happy to make $8.75 an hour. Leave if you don’t like it.” I wonder what she’d say if her husband faced a 23% pay cut and her family had to leave their splendid mansion?

Harlan County, USA (1976)

“The laws were not made for working people in this county.”

Murder, mayhem, and a gun-toting mine foreman. Miners and their families living in substandard company shacks without running water…A few minutes into the amazing documentary Harlan County, USA, I had to stop the film and double check the years these events took place.

It’s really difficult to grasp at times that these feudal conditions existed at the Brookside Mining Company in Harlan County, Kentucky in the early 70s–post IWW and not late 19th century. With safety issues flagrantly ignored, horrendous work conditions, and miners crouching in a four-foot high workspace, accidents in the Brookside Mine were three times the national average. The Brookside Miners belonged to the company union and earned $17 to $32 a day while the national average was $45 for United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). In 1973, workers became fed up and voted to join the UMWA. The Eastover Mining Company who ran Brookside Mine refused to sign a contract, and a strike began. All hell broke loose as management brought in scabs and violence erupted between the striking miners and those sent in to ensure that work continued.

Filmmaker Barbara Kopple was there in Kentucky with the miners’ families to film events as the strike continued and became incredibly ugly. Extraordinary footage includes Kopple and her team coming under fire as scab workers attempt to go to work. As the strike continues and strikebreaking forces become increasingly more violent, the striking miners and their angry wives begin defensive tactics on the picket line. At one point, miner’s wife, the spirited Lois Scott pulls a gun from her bra and vows she’s not going to take being shoved around any more. But for me, one of the greatest scenes in this truly phenomenal film is when the local sheriff, who arrives to hassle the strikers, finds himself forced to arrest “gun-thug” mine foreman Basil Collins–a man who’s so confident about his “right” to intimidate and harass the strikers that he openly brandishes weapons in broad daylight. Odd…the sheriff was never around when the violence was unleashed against the miners. But he manages to put in an appearance in order to tell the miners to stop blocking the road. Obviously with things this completely out-of-control, it was just a matter of time before someone was murdered in Harlan County.

Archival footage includes scenes of strikes that took place during the “Bloody Harlan” strike in the 1930s. One older miner explains that as a child working in the mine, there was a powerful “union’ of political and religious authorities to ensure that miners towed the line. The film also includes clips of UMWA presidents John Lewis and W.A. Boyle. Unpopular Union President Tony Boyle who some said was “in bed with the coal operators” orchestrated the murders of union activist and challenger Joseph Yablonski and his family in 1969 using union funds to pay the assassins.

The new Criterion version of Harlan County, USA includes a director’s commentary that’s well worth catching. For example in the opening of the film, we see miners sliding down into the belly of the mine on a chute. The director’s comments make the point that this was absolutely illegal and considered unsafe, but this was just one example of the many hazards at the mine.

King Corn (2007)

“You are what you eat.”

In the documentary King Corn, two friends, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis decide to grow an acre of corn in Iowa. This decision comes as a result of their concern regarding the American diet; for the first time ever, the film notes–the life expectancy of Americans has decreased. Grasping the fact that a great deal of what we eat is a corn-based diet, Cheney and Ellis head off to Greene, Iowa, lease an acre of land and proceed to grow corn.

The film is not heavy-handed or preachy, and in fact the filmmaker Aaron Woolf while uncovering some very alarming facts about food production and diet in America, is remarkably even-handed and sympathetic to all his subjects. But the point is made that America’s farming practices: the disappearance of the family farm, the reliance on corn in the American diet, the pervasive and ubiquitous use of corn syrup, and factory farming create a alarming, ultimately disturbing state of affairs. It seems that we are–quite literally–what we eat.

Interviewees include Iowa farmers, dairy farmers and beef ranchers, and even a very elderly Earl Butz, the US Secretary of Agriculture whose policy helped shape, and is largely responsible, for the current state of affairs.

King Corn seems to be a very simple film–no high gloss, no fancy frills, and simple techniques to illustrate the startling facts and figures, but it’s a remarkably powerful film, and its seemingly simple story reveals the complicated relationships between profit, diet, obesity and diabetes. As a vegetarian, I was aware of some of the facts and figures here, but I still felt shaken by some of the film’s revelations. With the pressures to increase production, the nutrients of genetically engineered corn have dropped, and cattle who once grazed in fields of grass are now stuffed full of corn. These corn-fed cattle–who rapidly end up as various cuts of beef after 140-150 days –produce meat that has 6 times the amount of unsaturated fat (and there are clips of nasty greasy, fat-oozing hamburgers to prove the point). To quote the film: “It’s fat disguised as meat.” Cows are kept in total confinement, are fed continually, and are stuffed full of antibiotics in order to survive confinement.  This means that they’re ready to enter the food market far faster than grass-fed cows  (140-150 days compared to seven years.)

The film also explores the production and (over) use of high fructose corn syrup which is sneaked into everything–from drinks to spaghetti sauce. Perhaps not as flashy as Supersize Me, King Corn makes its points about the links in this unhealthy capitalist food chain quite thoroughly: “The mass production of corn pushes the mass production of animal production in confined operations.”

Come and Wet This Truncheon by Dave Douglass

“Where are all the constitutional checks and balances so famed of the bourgeois political theory? The separation of powers and administrators to prevent the rise of such unchecked actions? The judiciary, as we have seen, fell nicely into place.”

Come And Wet This Truncheon: The Role Of The Police In The Coal Strike Of 1984-1985 is a 32-page booklet is based on the experiences of the author, miner and NUM Branch Delegate, Dave Douglass. In the introduction, Douglass explains that although there are other pamphlets written on the subject of the miners’ strike, they cover such issues as civil rights and the extension of police powers. The author emphasizes that his booklet focuses on the “way in which the police operation confronted us as ordinary working people.” At the same time, Douglass realizes that those of us who’ve never had clashes with police will no doubt have a difficult time accepting that the “police in Britain have acted like this and are about to carry on acting like this as a matter of course.” That said, the booklet was written in 1986, and I suspect that a large portion of the population would not be surprised at some of the episodes of targeted violence recorded in these pages. I recall the footage of the WTO protests in Seattle 1999….

Douglass makes the point that some of us grew up with benign images of the police–Mr. Plod the Policeman (children’s book character) and Dixon of Dock Green (television programme), and some of the residents in mining areas suffered from those antiquated bucolic stereotypes when they found out the hard way that Thatcher, determined to destroy “the enemy within”–conducted a military style campaign against the strikers. Douglass notes that the government had “been cynically preparing this mixture of social poison since we beat them in 1974….It’s been coldly and clinically planned, and if it’s been enthusiastically and zealously put into operation, it’s because the faceless powers behind desks and phones have made sure they only recruit the right sort of person who unquestioningly gets on with the job of beating down the workers.”

The booklet is not a chronological account of the various clashes between miners, locals and police. Instead Douglass records incidents of tactics used and some of the more egregious treatment (black and white photos included) meted out by police involved in the strike:

· Police ‘pincer’ type movements,
· Police beatings with truncheons (the title refers to the police taunts),
· Forcing people into protest areas,
· Agent provocateurs
· Raiding and smashing of homes of people who had nothing to do with the miners or the strike
· Police removing their identification
· Raiding of clubs and pubs
· The sealing off of a village and banning journalists from recording events
· Phone Tapping
· Use of police dogs against families of miners
· Hints of army/paramilitary involvement.

One set of photos comes with the caption “policing the Miners’ strike at Orgreave, Yorkshire May and June 1984″ along with the newspaper headline “Police horses were called in to restore order.” These photos look more like assaults by the Mongol Horde updated to the 20th century with the Mongols wearing police uniforms and whacking their truncheons at anyone in their way. So much for bringing order.

According to the author, even some miners who’d witnessed the violence of the 1926 strike were shocked at the police tactics. Douglass argues that while the violence of the state was unleashed against the miners who were largely pilloried by the press “the implication for the labour movement at large and civil liberties in general are deadly.” Twenty years later, that’s clear.

If you would like to read more on the subject, I recommend Pit Sense Versus The State: A History of Militant Miners in the Doncaster Area  by the same author. For copies of Come And Wet This Truncheon, go to www.akpress.com

Behind the Mask (2006)

“I don’t believe you can ever challenge the law without Direct Action.”

Behind the Mask, directed by Los Angeles animal rights lawyer Shannon Keith examines why some animal rights activists feel compelled to break the law and risk jail in order to liberate animals from factory farms and laboratories. The title refers to the ideas behind the acts of those who wear masks when raiding those nasty little laboratories and farms. If there’s another film out there that bothers to ask people in depth exactly why they feel so strongly about the issue of the treatment of animals, and why they break into facilities to save animals and expose the treatment meted out, I don’t know about it.

Now let’s be perfectly clear here; the Animal Liberation Front is not an organization. So you can’t write off and ask for a membership card and you can’t join. That said, the Animal Liberation Front has guidelines which are posted on the website www.uncagedfilms.com , the website created by the makers of Behind the Mask. Labeled a terrorist group, ALF has been around now for decades, and as with all marginalized groups, they have become ‘unnewsworthy.’ The film’s tagline is: The film the government doesn’t want you to see, but I’d argue that it’s a film that corporations don’t want you to see. Although of course, government and corporations are connected in the most advantageous and powerful ways.

The film examines some of the methods used by ALF, and we see footage of raids on various labs and farms. Various animal activists (some of whom have served prison time for their actions) address issues involved in animal liberation. Some see animal liberation as the “modern day underground railroad.” Others raid labs, breaking the law, in an attempt to bring the treatment of lab animals to the attention of the public. One PETA activist describes her harrowing undercover work in a laboratory, and Ingrid Newkirk, president of PETA addresses the idea that every consumer can do something by simply not purchasing products from companies who test on animals. One of the arguments that supports the testing of animals is that it is a necessary process for its contributions to human medicine. Dr. Vlasak, a trauma surgeon addresses the absurdity of the argument that animal testing contributes to human medicine (it doesn’t): “the vast majority of all animal research is never ever useful for treating human health issues.”

Interviewee Rod Coronado addresses one of the criticisms of ALF by stressing that “it’s very easy to prevent human fatalities when carrying out Direct Action.”

Given the subject matter, some of the footage is grueling. Animals die on screen in the most disgusting and appalling ways using so-called efficient methods. I’ll admit some of the footage disturbed my sleep for several nights, but I expected this when I started the film. And to be honest, I think this is one of the reasons the general public shy away from the details of what goes on in the labs and slaughter houses; we don’t want to educate ourselves about the issues because part of us knows full well that the process of exactly how that bacon ended up in the supermarket shelf, for example, is full of earth-shattering violence and disdain for the suffering of animals. Some of the footage includes scenes in slaughter houses, and some of the footage exposes the conditions that exist in the labs–along with some horrendous photos of lab animals. One scene, for example, shows a burly lab tech punching a Beagle unconscious telling the dog “you had your chance.”

The film also makes the point that the vast pharmaceutical companies use pressure to pull media ads targeting laboratory animal abuse. While the film points out that Direct Action and economic sabotage have closed several facilities (a rabbit farm, for example), the point is not made that some of those closed down are very small time operators with fairly easy access. The huge laboratories, which are as secure as Fort Knox, remain largely untouched. I have a sneaking suspicion that some of these actions just make insurance companies fatter and richer, and I loathe insurance companies.

One great interview in Behind the Mask reinforces the idea that animal liberators have become increasingly marginalized–and often painted with the same brush as terrorists when we see the lead singer of Goldfinger, John Feldmann whose house was surrounded by helicopters and a SWAT team after his wife attended an animal rights protest.

One of the arguments made in Against All Odds: Animal Liberation 1972-1986 (a brief history of the development of the Animal Liberation Movement which argues that animal liberation, herded into illegality, has moved in the wrong direction) is that marginalization is the natural result of the intense criminalization of protestors–for example in the sentencing of acts of simple trespass. By blocking legal avenues for protest, society gets what it creates–illegal actions. To quote Victor Serge “Thus we have neither to approve nor disapprove of illegal actions. We say: they are logical.”

Ultimately, animal liberation raises some complex, uncomfortable moral questions. Have acts of animal liberation brought the issue of animal exploitation in factory farming and laboratory testing to the public’s attention? Or do people just tune out at the mention of ALF? Unfortunately it’s going to be very, very difficult to create a paradigm shift against the eating of meat–although this may happen with the seeming increasing number of meat contamination cases that make the headlines and enter public consciousness. But I do think the area of laboratory testing is ripe for education. The film makes the point that laboratory testing that involves animals is an “industry that regulates itself.” Most of the ‘public’ simply don’t know what’s involved in product testing, and if they did, it’s likely that a certain percentage would boycott corporations that operate with such flagrant, disgusting and careless disregard for animal life.

In the meantime, watch Behind the Mask and inform yourself about exactly how animals are treated. One thing we can all do is stop supporting companies that test on animals by simply not buying their products. For more information on corporations that test on animals, visit www.caringconsumer.com

Behind the Mask is available at www.akpress.com

The Long Exile by Georges Simenon

“He was a petit-bourgeois down to the cut of his jacket, the knot of his tie, and his manner of speaking–the epitome of provincial France, but transported suddenly to the other side of the world, and surrounded by people who, if one looked at them closely, were like supernumerary actors in some exotic stage spectacle. “

George Simenon’s novel The Long Exile is the story of two young anarchists who become fugitives and flee from France to South America following the murder of a wealthy Parisian.

The Long Exile, with shades of Conrad and Graham Greene, is an excellent book, but its central figures Charlotte Godebieu and Joseph Mittel are problematic characters as anarchists. Joseph Mittel, a tragic, frail figure is the son of anarchist and Bonnot gang member Mittelhauser. While the state was unable to convict Mittelhauser of involvement in the Bonnot gang due to insufficient evidence, he is arrested during WWI for “passing state secrets to the enemy” and there commits suicide “having opened up the veins in his wrists with the handle of a spoon which he had sharpened on the edge of his plate over several days.” Still a child, Mittel is subsequently abandoned by his mother, and he later alters his name and is more or less adopted by the French anarchist community. Mittel, whose life story is similar to some of the details of the life of the French film director Jean Vigo, has TB, lived in a sanitarium, and worked in a film company. While Mittel doesn’t really espouse anarchist beliefs, it’s the only world he’s ever known, and anarchists are the only people who’ve ever helped him–finding him employment, and a place to stay. Without the anarchist community, Mittel realizes he would have starved.

Charlotte Godebieu, however, is an entirely different case. In reality, she’s a prostitute, a thief, and a blackmailer who’s learned that a veneer of anarchist beliefs lends a certain romanticism to her behaviour. Charlotte brags about her exploits and her sketchy beliefs, exaggerating details as she draws a crowd of male admirers. She justifies the blackmail and murder of her former employer as necessary in order to finance the publication of the newspaper La Liberte, but even Simenon doesn’t seem to take Charlotte’s proclaimed anarchism seriously. With Charlotte, the author creates a portrait of a very unpleasant character who steals from her own impoverished family.

With help from an anarchist bookseller, Mittel and Charlotte manage to get passage on a ship sailing to South America, captained by the renegade gun-running Mopps. Mopps very quickly becomes obsessed with Charlotte even though he has no illusions about her character: “She’s totally devoid of feeling. She gives herself because she has no choice, or because there may be something in it for her. She thinks of nothing but making herself appear interesting, and when she saw I wasn’t impressed by her freethinking notions, she dropped the subject.” Even though Mopps decides that Charlotte is “no better than a trollop,” he still becomes her lover.

On the long voyage to South America, the other crew members ask Mittel if it’s “true” that he’s an anarchist, and then the next question is whether or not Mittel has “ever thrown a bomb.” When Mittel replies “never” they are clearly disappointed and ask “what’s the point” of being an anarchist if you don’t throw bombs? While the crew is initially a little nervous about Mittel, he soon gains everyone’s respect and Captain Mopps’ affection.

At one point, Mittel admits to himself that “he was no anarchist, but that he was the son of an anarchist, and this made him a kind of aristocrat among aristocrats. He was forced to attend all their meetings as an example to the younger generation.” He feels as though there’s “no escape” for him, and that no matter where he travels “there were anarchist, groups, cells, only waiting to grab him and do him honor” as the “son of a French Martyr.” While Simenon’s use of the word “aristocrat” is jarring when describing Mittel’s position in the anarchist community, this is the author’s attempt to describe the anarchist community’s view towards the son of a deceased comrade. Simenon doesn’t seem to take Mittel’s complaints about the pressure from the anarchist community quite seriously. Mittel is seen as a sympathetic, yet weak lost character who lacks any ability to make decisions about his own fate. At several points in the novel, he remarks that he had “no choice” about his life, and indeed even his exile to South America with Charlotte is something that simply happens.

Charlotte and Mittel eventually land in Columbia where Mittel takes a job working in a remote mine that supposedly yields a large amount of gold. Trapped here with Charlotte and a Belgian geologist who may or may not be insane, Mittel becomes involved in a murderous scam and experiences human greed and corruption through his brush with a group of corrupt businessmen. Mittel’s weak character leads him into trouble when he’s finally forced to take a stand in the warring business community of Buenaventura.

Escaping from Columbia and the intricate politics of rival business interests, Mittel and Charlotte travel to Tahiti to join Mopps. Here Charlotte manages a bar for ex-pats, and Mittel who’s left to observe Charlotte’s flirtations and affairs, begins to mull over his life….

A surface examination of Simenon’s protagonists may lead us to the hasty conclusion that Charlotte and Mittel embody all the negative stereotypes of anarchism. But Simenon does not seem entirely unsympathetic to anarchism in this novel. Indeed Simenon’s creation of Charlotte and Mittel as anarchists exemplify the idea that all sorts may be attracted to anarchism, and that as the son of an “anarchist martyr” Mittel carries a legacy that no one is likely to forget. Even though Mittel is not involved in Charlotte’s crime, he immediately is linked to the murder by the press. Furthermore, Simenon makes it perfectly clear that while Mittel and Charlotte are labeled as anarchists for different reasons, neither of the characters are, in fact really anarchists at all.  Charlotte’s acts of theft, blackmail and murder are arguably les reprises individuelles–acts committed by an Illegalist (although Simenon doesn’t go into such theories), but any such claim drops the minute Charlotte leaves France. Mittel at first sees Charlotte as a “militant anarchist” while he is “halfhearted at best” but by the time they are stuck in Columbia he realizes that they “are just a couple of pathetic little people.” While in the beginning Mittel admires Charlotte’s force of character, he later admits that she committed murder “not so much from devotion to the Cause as from bravado, because she wanted to prove she was something better than a servant.”