Radio Bikini: Show It To Your kids

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

GED/HEO

Reading up on Nigerian history of late I find that in 1963, three years after independence from British colonial rule, the young Nigerian government broke diplomatic relations with France over its nuclear tests in the Sahara and southern Algeria. These were met with many protests and Nigerians too were concerned about the fallout.  Reading this made me think of the arrogance of colonial regimes. Why didn’t the French government test their nuclear bombs in The Camargue? That’s a rhetorical question of course as we know why; the French population wouldn’t have put up with it and it would have undermined the power of the French ruling class in their own back yard. Some estimates put the Algerian death toll during the French colonial rule at over 10 million so risking Algerian lives was clearly a better opti

 

I thought more about this after I read a piece this weekend by Timothy Noël Peacock on the Legacies of the post war nuclear tests that is published at The Conversation.com and it spurred me to look a little further in to the issue. That’s how I came across the documentary above and I urge folks to watch it. It’s called Radio Bikini after the Bikini atoll in the Marshall Islands, a beautiful coral reef and lagoon where the US exploded nuclear bombs. In all, the US conducted 23   nuclear tests there up till 1958. Overall the US has conducted 1,054 atomic tests up to 2020.

 

The documentary begins with celebrations as WW2 ended after the US dropped an atomic bomb on Japan as a warning to the Chinese, the Soviets and the entire world, that the US had the big stick and would use it. In 1946, the US was the only country in the world with the atomic bomb and needed to test it further. The Special Committee on Atomic Energy developed Operation Crossbow and chose the Bikini atoll and the testing ground after the inhabitants were removed of course.

 

The Bikinians had no say in the matter. The Bikinian Chief who is interviewed in the documentary describes how they were told that the US needed to do this to see what would happen “in case there was another war.”, and that they would “have to leave”. Their beautiful lagoon would be the testing ground for this awesome power the chief was told by an American who said he was “the most powerful man in the world”. The purpose of this test, the inhabitants were told, was to turn this, “great destructive power in to something for the benefit of mankind.” That the lagoon and its coral reef was a more suitable place to drop nuclear bombs rather than Lake Michigan was no doubt to offer the Bikinians a place in history as the source of mankind’s salvation due to the generosity of US imperialism.

 

Atomb bombs had not been dropped over water or exploded under water and the first two tests were the most important and well known. There were many old ships and sea vessels loaded with animals placed in the lagoon to study the affect the blasts would have on life and military equipment. There were hundreds of navy personnel involved and there is some powerful testimony from one of them, John Smitherman.

 

Smitherman points out that he didn’t recall the word radioactivity being mentioned at all and the general message was that they were all protected and it was very safe. “Don’t worry about it, it won’t harm us” he was told. But Smitherman and others were showered with debris after the blast that covered the ship, their clothes, their hair and so on. After the experiment, Smitherman got sick and was given a medical discharge and sent home. Up until the interview in the film, he was not told what was wrong with him.  Make it to the end and see what it did to him. How many thousands of enlisted men suffered a similar fate? For Smitherman, and no doubt thousands of other US workers who were in the navy, it was a “slow death from that time to this day” he says.

 

It’s not an easy video to watch. But it is important for us to draw some conclusions from it. One is relevant to today when the mass media and the right wing forces are attacking people for publicly protesting injustice. Colin Kaepernick was savaged and harassed for his mild protests against police violence and the murder of black people in particular. We still have the right to protest on paper but the illusion or limits of bourgeois democracy are laid bare when protests begin to turn in to a conscious movement and action for real change.

 

In the documentary we see protestors opposing the tests carrying signs that say the tests are not scientific but military and they were right. The mass media will always call protests riots and the ruling class will always use provocateurs to discredit them Any strike that successfully gives power to labor over capital is terrorism as far as the capitalist class is concerned.

The US dragged the UN along but we have to look at the objective situation.  The US was the only atomic power and had shown what it can do in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; a crime against humanity. The UN, still a capitalist club, was in no situation to stop the US from doing whatever it wanted. The productive forces of both US allies and enemies were destroyed and there was no country on earth that could stop the US at that point. By 1950, the US had over 50% of world trade and most importantly, atomic bombs.

 

It is important as well that we see the sheer barbaric nature of capitalism and its proponents. The US ruling class, like all ruling classes, had no respect at all for the people or the environment that it would pollute with radioactivity for generations to come. “There’s nothing in my life I want more than to go home to Bikini……” the chief says, “……The reason I can’t go back is because the Americans tell me there is poison there, I don’t understand this, but that is what the Americans say. This is not my island. I want to go back to my paradise, where God intended us to be.”

 

As far as I know, Bikinians are still scattered throughout the region unable to return home. A very familiar scene in the history of capitalist development. Peackock describes the event:

 

“But the cost which can never be calculated is the power of those images upon the human imagination and fear, as well as their effect on the nuclear arms race. Many target ships, while damaged, survived Crossroads Baker, but were enveloped in so much radioactive seawater that decontamination became almost impossible, except for a few vessels. Plans to sail the remaining ships back to the US triumphantly gave way to sinking most of them.”

 

Capitalism is a violent, competitive and destructive system of production. By its very nature it is hostile to the environment, and to all life, human included. While the existence of nuclear weapons has prevented a global war between the big powers, it has led to regional forever wars but we need to recognize that they do not make all those nuclear weapons never to use them. In Radio Bikini, US president Truman thanks God for giving the atomic bomb to the US rather than “our enemies” and offers prayers that God will guide the US to use the bomb in his ways and “for his purposes”. Didn’t Pompeo say something similar fairly recently? Religious fanatics of varying types, and there's plenty of them in the US body politic, see global conflagration as prophecy, as divine words written in 5000 year old tracts.

 

All working class people should watch this video and come away from it with one powerful conclusion. The political and military representatives of the capitalist class see no difference between some native on an island in the pacific and the US workers who were on those ships at Bikini atoll when their class interests are at stake. It’s pretty certain that more American workers died from that experiment than Bikinians although never being able to return to your home and witnessing the destruction of a coral reef that provided your sustenance is a death of sorts.

 

Then inescapable truth is that the US sailors have more in common with the Bikinian people than their own officers, their own president, their own government. Without the worker, society cannot function, wars cannot be fought, the environment poisoned. In that sense, “we” have no country of our own. Wow! I just had a great idea. What if workers of the world united as workers. Might that be a first step in changing course and building a sane, civilized global society?

 

I can’t believe no one’s thought of that?

 

Film Review: Judas and the Black Messiah

Review: Judas and the Black Messiah
Reprinted from the UK Socialist Website Left Horizons

By Jamie Penquite-Green, Penrith and the Borders CLP member

Shaka King’s Judas and the Black Messiah offers up an honourable portrayal of the FBI’s Cointelpro infiltration into the Black Panther Party. It does this by way of, and particularly focusing on, the coercion and collusion of a young man turned-FBI informant, Bill O’Neal, played by the skillful LaKeith Stanfield.

Stanfield worked masterfully to bring forth the humanity of O’Neal, who at 19 years of age, carrying an extensive criminal record and facing felony charges, agreed to infiltrate the Illinois Party branch, feeding back information on the rising 21-year-old, Chairman Fred Hampton, who is portrayed in the film by the resonant Daniel Kaluuya.

Beautifully shot, the film demonstrates the depravity and the lengths the FBI affords itself to deal with a perceived threat and the ever-looming presence of the police-state as part of the economically driven prison industrial complex. The film also touches upon the compounding variables of impoverishment and the arduous-lived realities that plague a majority of Americans to this day.

‘greatest security threat’

FBI boss, J. Edgar Hoover, unsurprisingly having been recently found within revealed documents to have given the approval of the assassination of Party Chairman Hampton, had dubbed the Black Panther Party (BPP) the “greatest threat to internal security of the country”. The BPP, righteously tenacious, generated tangible, class-based solutions and actions, to obtain liberation not only for Black Americans from white supremacist violence, still rife within the country, but ultimately looking to defend anyone suffering oppression and marginalization under capitalism within the US empire and beyond.

At a time of President Johnson’s purported ‘War on Poverty’, the Black Panther Party, alongside organised unionisation and strike action, was doing more to lift people from poverty than the government. Illustrating that another life outside of violent, capitalist individualism was possible, is possible, that there is a fight to be had – that each person has a place within that fight and that fundamentally all are greater in strength within the movement.

Fred Hampton, 1948-69

“We’re going to fight racism, not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity. We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with Black capitalism, but we’re going to fight it with socialism,”

Chairman Hampton’s words, still speaking truth directly to the inherent contradictions within capitalism and its inexorable impetus to exploit communities to extract wealth for the few at the top.

Chairman Hampton, looking to build a ‘Rainbow Coalition’, understood and relayed well to others how racism was and is, one pillar of the many used to prop up capitalism. He demonstrated its deliberate use of racism to manipulate, deflect and split apart the masses who have more in common than is often recognized.

A means of demanding justice

Kaluuya, stated in a recent interview, “[the film] shows the danger of apathy” and it demonstrates how valuable individuals truly are; as part of the collective, as a means for demanding justice, but also the pressing danger of being manipulated as a pawn to wreak destruction. In this instance, O’Neal was manipulated within the Party, resulting in the assassination of Chairman Hampton and fellow leader Mark Clark.

Captivating in his address and presence, Fred Hampton’s legacy is unforgettable for those who know him, but at the same time, it is undoubtedly one unknown or even misunderstood by many. His widow, Akua Njeri, speaking in the film, expressed happiness at the movie coming to the big screen and at the inclusion of herself, son and activist Fred Hampton, Jr., and the Black Panther Party Cubs, taking part and striving for a concise, yet accurate, depiction of Hampton.

Revolutionary line of thought

Njeri gives a pertinent take-away of the film – outside of any reservations or shortcomings, it gives an opportunity to the unknowing to spark an interest not just in Hampton himself, but to learn of the Party, beyond the media’s demonizing caricature, all of the other members on and off screen, those who are still living and those still incarcerated. It offers a path to go further on our own, to inquire about the fundamental principles of the Party’s revolutionary line of thought, putting anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism into action through their ardent commitment to the pursuance of justice, guided by the vision of proletarian internationalism.

It also leaves us viewers to reflect and leads us to identify with the individuals on the screen, giving space to recognize such capacity of character like that of Hampton, elucidating the ever-present choice within ourselves, and with hope, ultimately compelling us to the righteous strength of the collective struggle for a better world.

Movie: Boy Erased and The Horrors of Conversion Therapy

Jo and I watched this film last night and I strongly recommend it. I am not familiar with writing reviews of movies but do want to make a couple of points. Boy Erased is based on the true life experience of Jared Eamons played by Lucas Hedges who is struggling to develop a sexual identity. He eventually tells his parents he has thoughts about men. His father is a Baptist preacher in a small town in the US. Religion, and particularly religious or evangelical conservatism is a very powerful and influential force here in the US and guides much of US politics including toward Israel and the Zionists for example. Politicians have to be seen coming from or leaving church if they want to get elected. In the US you can be a pedophile and sexual deviant and get elected for office as Trump's election shows but an atheist is out of the question.

On telling his parents, his father calls over some other religious figures and threaten him with eviction unless he admits he wants to "change" and if he is committed  to rid himself of these satanic thoughts.  He says he is and they send him away to receive conversion therapy. Conversion therapy is a process that attempts to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity that any orientation other than a hetero-sexual one is a form of mental illness. In the UK for example homosexuality was illegal and a criminal offense until the 1960's. How it was dealt with back then is shown in the movie The Imitation Game based on a biography of Alan Turing's life by Andrew Hodges. Turing was a brilliant scientist who committed suicide after he was forced by circumstances to admit he was gay.

In Boy Erased, the conversion therapy is led by Christian fanatics where the youth receives threats and intimidation from the adults running the place. They are told God will not love them and that they cannot be born homosexual and so forth. They are forced to admit to something they are not.

Jared comes in to conflict with the authorities in this torture chamber and his mother defends him while his father as a local preacher has a much harder time of it. While I liked that the parents were treated as basically decent human beings, especially the mother who, like most women in these patriarchal religious environments are prisoners in their own right, I think the religious views the father has are not given the attention they deserve as a horrible, oppressive and dangerous value system. He is actually the person most in need of a conversion of thoughts away from the narrow confines of religious orthodoxy and basically a belief in magic.

When we think that millions of young children are brainwashed in this way through religious teachings from the moment they leave the womb. It's basically a form of child abuse in my opinion. When my son was young I told him that I was an atheist but that many people believe in gods of one sort or another, some in more than one god and that when he grows up he'll decide what he wants to do. I had no intention of indoctrinating him in beliefs that have absolutely no basis in reality. The film is based on a book by Jared Eamons himself.

Richard Mellor

The Dilemma For Social Dilemma: No Solution to the Problem.

 By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

Streamable on Netflix

The documentary Social Dilemma is scary to say the least. It’s meant to be scary of course. The folks behind it are former tech industry employees who have come to their senses and now fear the horrific global effects the smart phone craze and the technology associated with it, is having on society and human behavior, particularly the youth.

 

Technically, workers in factories in Cambodia China and Vietnam are tech industry employees but the documentary is not their creation. Former CEO’s coders, marketers, computer scientists and others who have made lots of money working for Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter and co are now warning us of the dangers humanity faces as this technology has the ability to manipulate behavior like no other.

 

“It’s a marketplace that trades exclusively in human futures” one expert warns. Numerous others warn of a dystopian future if the social media giants are not reigned in.  “If something is a tool, it genuinely is just sitting there, waiting patiently. If something is not a tool it's demanding things from you….” says a former Google employee and, “….It's seducing you, it’s manipulating you, it wants things from you. We've moved away from a tools based technology environment, to an addiction and manipulation used technology environment. Social media isn't a tool waiting to be used. It has its own goals, and it has its own means of pursuing them by using your psychology against you.”

 

The addictive nature of social media and the algorithms or whatever it is that we are manipulated by, runs throughout the commentary. But there doesn’t appear to be much self reflection from these people that have only now realized the dangers of their activity that made them very wealthy individuals. They never intended this they claim.

 

At one point, one of them asks if it should always be that we defer to the wealthy and powerful in society: Oh yes it be is, the answer to that one. This is always the case in class society whether the wealthy and powerful are feudal lords, slaveowners or in our case, the owners of capital and the means of producing and distributing society’s needs.

 

Throughout the documentary it is stressed that these companies have to make money. Technology is not the existential threat one expert says, but technology brings out the worst in society and the worst in society is the existential threat. But why this technology brings this out is not really asked or answered. Though this touches on it:

 

“Algorithms are optimized to some definition of success. So if you can imagine, if a commercial enterprise builds an algorithm, to their definition of success, it’s a commercial interest. It’s usually profit.” Says one of the data scientists in the documentary.

 

There you have it. The goal of the investors and major players in the social media business, just like any other business is to make money, to make a profit. “You have to grow revenue and usage” says another expert.

 

All of these characters warning us of impending doom stress that it’s OK to make money. They accept that the capitalist mode of production is the only form of social organization; there is no alternative, TINA Margaret Thatcher called it. And making money as they mean it, is not the same as earning money through wage labor; they mean profits. So after warning us all of the dangers and how we’re losing our children and that many of the people like them that have created and designed this process don’t allow their children to use social media or strongly restrict it, their solution is taxation, regulations and appealing to the political representatives of the very class that owns and directs the use of the technology we’re taking about.

 

This is why these sort of exposés, warning us of the dangers we are facing but offering no serious solutions, end up fueling further helplessness and despair. When have regulations or tax increases changed anything substantially? Didn’t Teddy Roosevelt make efforts to curb monopoly which is a natural development in the capitalist mode of production, and that was over a century ago. The 1986 tax overhaul just like all the others, has not stopped or curbed the massive accumulation of capital in the hands of a super elite. They will not tax themselves out of business.

 

The taking in to public ownership of the tech industry and all the dominant industries that provide the needs of a modern society is not on the cards for these people. The working class as a social force doesn’t exist for them. People are just consumers. One can’t blame them in a way as for the most part the working class is absent in a major way. Certainly we have no political party that speaks for us. But it would not be difficult for any thinking person to recognize that the recent social explosions in the US and globally that have arisen in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, have produced some changes that would never have occurred through the courts or legislation introduced by either of the two capitalist parties. Mass movements change things.

In a society based on the capitalist mode of production, technology, just like the product at the end of an auto assembly line, is not owned by those whose labor power produces it. It is owned by the capitalists that own the means of production and the labor process. They set production in motion not in order to produce a social need but for profit. In the hands of the ruling class, technology is a tool to increase the exploitation of the worker and increase capital accumulation for the capitalist. However, technology, just like any other form of labor saving tool has the ability to decrease labor time to the point when we are working two day weeks. Technology can liberate us, can allow us time to participate in the organization of society and the organization of work. It can literally save the planet. We are not Luddites; we should not reject or abandon technology, our goal is to own it and direct its use.

 

So Social dilemma while an interesting look in to the deep dark world of today’s technological jungle, is just another plea for the most ruthless ruling class ever to walk this planet to be a little kinder. I might be more sympathetic to these guys were they to be a little more humble and took responsibility for their role in all of this.  The documentary won’t cheer you up that’s for sure. It’s not meant to empower you.

Video: Racism, Movies and Police Violence.

Just  a few thoughts I want to share with subscribers to my YouTube channel and with the folks that follow and read this blog. I wiill post this to Facebook and feel free to share your views on what I have to say.

Movie Review: Netflix film 13th

We share this review by Mark Langabeer from the UK Website Left Horizons.

By Mark Langabeer, Newton Abbot Labour Party member

In the present climate of struggle against policy brutality and institutionalised racism, a film that should be compulsory viewing for all labour activists is 13^th. It is a Netflix documentary and it describes the experience of the great majority of Black Americans.

It begins with a speech by Barrack Obama, highlighting the fact that the US has only 5% of the world’s population but has 25% of all the world’s prisoners. Let's think about that”, he says. Six and half percent of the US are black males, but they represent over 40% of the prison system. One in three black males have entered the prison system at one time or another. Today, around 2.3 million people are currently serving a prison sentence in the US.

Imprisoned for trivial offences

The programme begins with the end of slavery. The title of the programme is 13^th because this refers to the amendment of the US constitution that prohibits slavery. However, it came with exemptions, specifically, those that who were felons serving a prison sentence. The freeing of 4 million slaves left the American south in a deep economic depression. Slavery was effectively retained by criminalizing the black Americans.

Many were imprisoned for trivial offences, like vagrancy and loitering. A reign of terror was unleashed, with the revival of the Ku Klux Klan and the Lynching of black people was commonplace. 

A contributor to the documentary points out that the concentration of black Americans in the inner cities in both north the and west of the US was not just due to the migration of those seeking a better life; it was refugees fleeing the terrorism in former southern slave states.

In 1915, one of first films ever made, called the Birth of a Nation, depicted a black man as innately aggressive and a sexual predator, a common myth prevalent in those times. This era, described as the period of 'Jim Crow', gave way to segregation and the denial of all civil rights that were afforded to most white people in the former slaveholding states.

Rise of the Civil Rights movement

With the rise of the Civil Rights movement in the 50s and 60s, reforms were granted, but at the cost of a number of important leaders of this struggle being murdered by the state or those acting on behalf of the state. Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Fred Hampton of the Black Panthers are just some of those who were murdered. Reaction resurfaced in the guise of restoring 'law and order'.

Crime had been generally static for most of the 20th century. Largely as a result of the increased population from the post-war baby boom, crime rates increased slightly at around the same time as the Civil Rights movement emerged. This was the cue for Nixon to mount a campaign in the 1968 presidential elections on a Law and Order ticket. The programme showed the brutality meted out by the Police and by racist gangs during this era. The number of prisoners in the US then stood at around 350,000.

The ‘war on crime’ included a doubling of spending on law enforcement. This included the so-called war on drugs. Rather than treating drug addiction as a health issue, it was a means of incarcerating more people, particularly young black men. By the time Reagan was elected in 1980, the number of people in jail was already over 500,000. His election was to prove transformative in the negative sense. He slashed social programs, which resulted in a growth in drug abuse. Crack cocaine use became rife amongst the poorest. The powdered stuff was used in more affluent areas as well. A contributor pointed out that prison sentences were far harsher in relation to crack than it was for those who snorted cocaine. Reagan tripled the budget for law enforcement and the number of prisoners went up to over a million.

Bush also stood up for ‘law and order’

One commentator in the programme suggested that the reason Bush senior won the Presidential election in 1990 was because of one individual case. A guy by the name of Horton had been granted release at weekends.  Dukakis, the more ‘liberal’ Democratic Party candidate, supported this release scheme and Bush used it as a pretext for standing up for law and order.

The conclusion drawn by the likes of Clinton, Democratic candidate in the 1994 presidential election, was to outdo the Republican Bush on law and order, by calling for the ending of parole and what was also called the 'three strikes and out’ rule. He also increased the size and number of prisons. Later on, Clinton did admit that his was wrong, but by the time Obama was elected, the number in jails was soaring and had risen to 2 million.

The programme showed a much younger Donald Trump demanding the death penalty for a number of black teenagers convicted of rape and murder. As it turned out, their convictions were later overturned with DNA evidence. The programme also showed an older Trump encouraging his supporters to attack a group of mainly black protesters at a Republican Rally. He lamented on how things were done in the 'old' days.

Business connections to the judicial system

What is also very interesting in this documentary is its exposure of the links between business and the legal system and it shows how the legal system is corrupt to its core. Due to the number of people charged with offences, few cases actually come to trial. Plea bargaining is the usual practice, which means that people are encouraged to plead guilty for lesser charges that carry lighter  sentences, with the clear threat that pleading not guilty would mean a conviction on a trumped-up more serious charge. One young black man ended up in prison on remand for three years and was found innocent of the charges. Traumatised by the experience, he committed suicide. A political lobbyist group called ALEC, at one time, financed by many major corporations, was often responsible for law-making and profiting from the prison system.

The programme highlighted the case of a white man who chased a black teenager and shot him. The guy was charged with murder in the state of Florida which has a law called 'Stand Your Ground', meaning that this murder could be interpreted as ‘justifiable’ homicide, so he was set free. The Stand Your Ground law was introduced after intensive lobbying by ALEC. One of ALEC's sponsors was WalMart, whose sales of rifles rocketed as a result of this law. Big business has profited enormously from the privatisation of much of the prison service. This includes using the prisoners as a means of providing enforced, cheap labour.

Nearly a third have lost the right to vote

The criminalizing of large numbers of black Americans has resulted in the loss of many basic rights and 30% have lost the right to vote. Being a felon often bars you from getting a job and other requirements for civilised existence, like welfare benefits and social housing. It is little wonder that the murder of George Floyd has resulted in widespread protests and riots. The greater surprise is that the uprising after his murder didn’t come sooner. As a contributor points out, the riots in the 60s were as a response to police brutality, but the lessons of that period have not been made, nor any significant changes made.

This superb film is available on Netflix, or you can find it on YouTube.

June 8, 2020

“Young Karl Marx”: A Must-See Film

I really enjoyed this movie and was particularly surprised and pleased that the two women companions/comrades of Marx and Engels were given the place in history they deserve and that all the characters come across as real human beings struggling to understand the world around them and change it for the better. It is a pleasant experience indeed to watch a movie in which historical characters so vilified by the capitalist media and ignored by "official" history for the masses yet who played such important roles in shaping it are given their due. Were I capable of writing a thoughtful intelligent review of it I would have. Instead, I share this excellent review of the film from Frieda Afary from the Alliance of Middle Eastern Socialists. Richard Mellor

Review of Raoul Peck’s “Young Karl Marx”: A Must-See Film

Mar 23, 2018 |

Raoul Peck’s Young Karl Marx has succeeded in presenting a holistic view of the young Marx and his time that also speaks movingly to the problems of our time . . .  Three aspects stand out as unique:  

I. Marx’s concept of organization; 
II. Marx’s challenge to the French Anarchist thinker, Pierre Proudhon;  
III.  The role of women.


Reviewed by Frieda Afary

It is not easy to make a movie about a multidimensional and historical figure like Marx without privileging one aspect of that figure’s life over another.  Raoul Peck’s Young Karl Marx however, has succeeded in presenting a holistic view of the young Marx and his time that also speaks movingly to the problems of our time.

That success seems to be rooted in two elements:
First,  In addition to being very knowledgeable about Marx’s work and time period,  Raoul Peck and Pascal Bonitzer,  the screenplay writers have largely drawn on the  correspondence of  the main characters, Marx, Friedrich Engels, his closest colleague and collaborator, and Jenny von Westphalen, his comrade/wife.  In doing so, they have allowed us to hear these characters think.

Secondly, Peck’s own life-experience has made him a creative intellectual/filmmaker/political activist, sensitive to the issue of human suffering and emancipation.    Born in Haiti, under Duvalier’s dictatorship, he went to the Congo with his family in 1961 where the first democratically elected government of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba had just been overthrown by U.S.-backed forces loyal to the dictator Mobuto Sese Seko.   After living under the dictatorship of Mobutu for many years, he continued his education in France and Germany where he received degrees in industrial engineering, economics, and film.  He has had jobs as varied as being a taxi driver in New York, a journalist and later, Haiti’s minister of culture in 1996-1997.  

During the past 36 years, Peck has made 21 films,   most notably,  Lumumba, about the Congolese revolutionary and independence leader,  and I Am Not Your Negro about the African American writer, James Baldwin.  It is this knowledge and life experience that has been brought to bear on his presentation of the young Marx.

The film thus starts with a chilling scene in which poor peasants– women, men and children –collecting deadwood in Prussia’s Mosel forest in the Rhineland, are assaulted, beaten and killed by agents of landowners who arrive on horsebacks.  In the background, we hear excerpts from one of  Marx’s 1842 essays on the Prussian law on the theft of wood, which he wrote for the newspaper Rheinische Zeitung, where he challenged the very hypocrisy and  inhumanity of this law and its use to kill peasants.  

Film viewers are then taken to the office of the Rheinische Zeitung where the 24-year old editor, Marx (not yet a communist) is challenging his colleagues to be more radical, even as the Prussian police is banging on the door with an order to shut down the newspaper and arrest them.

Peck then,  introduces us to Friedrich Engels,  the son/employee of a German textile factory owner in Manchester and a socialist intellectual seeking  the collaboration of workers to help him write a book about the condition of the working class in England.  Marx and Engels meet for the second time at the office of the German philosopher and political writer, Arnold Ruge.  They discuss their respective works, ideals and goals,  and the rest is history.

Since it is not possible to  discuss all the dimensions of Peck’s film, in this short review,  I would like to limit myself to  three aspects which stand out as unique:   I. Marx’s concept of organization;   II. Marx’s challenge to the French Anarchist thinker, Pierre Proudhon;   III.  The role of women.

I. Marx’s Concept of Organization
While a two-hour film cannot possibly allow any writer/director to do justice to the philosophical, economic, political and social issues that Marx was writing about,  or Engels and Marx were jointly writing about,   what comes through in Peck’s film is the following:   Marx saw himself as a philosopher,  the originator  of a unique critique of political economy and  a totally new concept of human liberation.  He was not simply exposing income inequality but challenging alienated labor and the alienation of humanity.   He was a profound philosopher and economist but also not an ivory-tower intellectual.  Thus,  he and Engels actively reached out to workers, men and women,  to poor people,  to other revolutionary intellectuals,  and helped transform the League of the Just from an organization that limited itself to “the brotherhood of men”  to one whose manifesto became the Communist Manifesto,  written and published on the eve of the 1848 Revolutions that shook up Europe.

The fact that Marx’s concept of human emancipation and his views on organization were completely distorted and turned into totalitarian state capitalist societies, as seen in the USSR and Maoist China,   does not permit the abandonment of that concept and its relevance for today.

II. Marx’s Challenge to Proudhon
Peck emphasizes how much the development of Marx’s ideas was a response to what he and Engels thought were the inadequacies of Pierre Proudhon’s views.   At the same time, we see that  Marx and Engels made an effort to reach out to Proudhon in their organizational work, because they respected him as a worker-intellectual and a working-class leader.

The gist of Marx’s critique of Proudhon is expressed in a few scenes in which Marx challenges Proudhon’s view of “property as theft” for being inadequate in its understanding of capitalism and capitalist relations of production, namely alienated mechanical labor and its consequences.   Peck also depicts how Marx took it upon himself to do a serious study of  Proudhon’s  Philosophy of Poverty (1846),  and was compelled to write  Poverty of Philosophy(1847), as a response.

In his Philosophy of Poverty,   Proudhon had argued that if money were abolished and if workers were paid vouchers based on their labor time,  the vouchers would allow autonomous cooperatives and communities to have transparent exchange and social relations without the need for a central plan.

Marx, in his Poverty of Philosophy, and later in the Grundrisse,  critiqued Proudhon’s thesis and argued that under capitalism too,  workers’ wages are based on their labor time.  However, the labor time used as the measure of remuneration under capitalism is not the worker’s actual labor time but the minimum labor time for the production of an exchange value.  Later in Capital he called this measure, an average or  “socially necessary labor time.”  He thought that any conception that fell short of comprehending the capitalist mode of production and its fragmentation of the human being, would not be able to offer an alternative that could truly transcend capitalism.

While the detailed content of these books could not be discussed in The Young Marx, the film does show that  Poverty of Philosophy was meant as a book  for workers as much as for intellectuals.   In one scene, Mary Burns, a worker, is shown holding it up at a labor meeting and calling on the participants to read Marx’s response to Proudhon.

III. The Role of Women
Peck makes a special effort to highlight the role and characters of Marx’s wife,  Jenny von Westphalen and Engels’s companion,  Mary Burns.   Jenny von Westphalen was the daughter of an aristocratic family in Trier and had been Marx’s friend from a young age.   She was not simply Marx’s wife.  As a highly educated woman who had also become a revolutionary,  she was a thinker and a comrade who could carry on debates with Marx and assisted him in the development of his ideas.   She was independent-minded and articulate.   She endured poverty and endless hardships because of having married a revolutionary who kept getting expelled from one country after another for his ideas and activities.   However,  she did not  return to Prussia to live with her aristocratic family,  because she truly believed in the cause for which she and Marx were both fighting.    All of these dimensions of Jenny Marx come through in the film and make viewers truly admire her.

Mary Burns was also not simply Engels’s companion.   She was a militant and vocal Irish worker who challenged the horrible conditions of factory labor and helped introduce Engels to the League of the Just, an organization of revolutionary artisans and workers led by German emigrant artisans, Karl Schapper and Wilhelm Weitling.   She was also very interested in the ideas that Marx and Engels were developing,  and participated in activities with them to introduce these ideas to other workers.
The last scene in the film in which Marx, Engels, Jenny von Westphalen and Mary Burns are sitting around a table and editing the handwritten copy of the Communist Manifesto,  is truly memorable.

IV. Marx’s Relevance for Today
It is the Communist Manifesto,  the culmination of the film,  that Peck argues,  speaks volumes to today’s crisis-ridden capitalism.  In an interview about the film,  he states:   “Both projects [I Am Not Your Negro and The Young Karl Marx] were a sort of response to the world I see around me, and not only here in this country [U.S.] but in Europe and in the Third World.  It’s what I call the rise of ignorance, of confusion . . . I just wanted to give a response and come back to what I call the fundamentals.”  (https://www.npr.org/2018/02/25/588673944/the-young-karl-marx-looks-inside-the-mind-of-a-revolutionary) In another interview, he states:  “Marx was not dogmatic.  Marx always said you need to reanalyze your current situation and your historic situation.” (http://www.newsweek.com/young-karl-marx-movie-raoul-peck-director-review-communist-manifesto-communism-818987)

It is not only Marx’s critique of capitalism but also his ability to comprehend reality in a holistic way, to analyze, to be a critical and independent thinker,  that Peck thinks we can learn from in order to  challenge the growing  populism,  dogmatism and authoritarianism that is engulfing the world.   Peck wants a new generation to know that they can change the world for the better and revolutionize it, provided they begin with the thinkers who give us the foundation to do so.

Hopefully,  Peck will go on to make parts II and III of this film to cover the other periods of Marx’s life.

Frieda Afary
March 23, 2018

Cast: August Diehl as Karl Marx, Stefan Konarske as Friedrich Engels, Vicky Krieps as Jenny von Westphalen,  Hannah Steele as Mary Burns, Olivier Gourmet as Pierre Proudhon, Rolf Kanies as Moses Hess, Niels-Bruno Schmidt as Karl Grun, Alexander Scheer as Wilhelm Weitling.
Director: Raoul Peck
Writers: Pascal Bonitzer and Raoul Peck
Cinematographer: Kolja Brandt
Editor:  Frederique Broos
Composer:  Alexei Aigui
Languages:  German, French, English with English subtitles
Length:  118 minutes

Native American actors did the right thing.

Richard Mellor

The problem with all the excuses that have come up around this issue is that there is history here.  Everyone is not equal, everyone has not had the same experience.  If that was not so there would be no need for cultural advisers. When I was in Iraq in 1971 I was not as political as I am  now. But I had become to understand more clearly the role of British colonialism in this area and wanted to dissociate myself from it.

I bought traditional clothes and wore them, a simple attire that working class Arabs wore. I couldn't afford anything else. Not that I needed anything else. I made it very clear that the Queen of England may be the same color as me, we both like tea and crumpets too perhaps but the similarity ends there. We having nothing else in common least of all our view of the world. My mother was a worker who left school at the age of 14.

These lame excuses that everyone is in on the joke are a bit like the defense of the cartoons insulting Mohammad by the French cartoonists. I do not condone what happened to them and I believe in free speech. But what we say has consequences and not only that, does what we say advance consciousness.  In that case French colonial oppression of the mostly Muslim Arabs of North Africa comes in to play as does the racism and inequality North African Arab Muslims face in France. All is not equal in history or the present.

The people whose roamed this continent were almost wiped out. Some of them were maybe, I know many languages have been. When I watch old US shows even those I might find entertaining or funny, when racism (and sexism) is so blatant particularly through the complete absence of any people other than European Americans except in stereotypical roles, I can't help thinking of the anger that must build up in people who are the victims of it.  What's it like when you see you have no existence in the mass media?  I feel that way as a worker. They don't teach working class history.  In crap Hollywood movies the main players if they're not cops, are lawyers, architects, writers. It's as if there's no truck drivers, welders or plumbers here unless we're portrayed as stupid, drunks or backward. But I do not feel excluded as a white person or as a person with an English accent. How they control themselves at times is a credit to our humanity.

I watched the Lone Ranger when I was a kid and I never knew Tonto meant stupid until I came to the US and lived and worked with Latinos. Imagine an actor having to play that role of a guy named stupid. Did he ever say, "Who are you to call me stupid"? (I'm so stupid I don't know where the question mark goes or if I should use two of them.) Of course he didn't he wouldn't have had a job.

Those actors were right to walk off the set of that stupid movie. You want to make some movie with the name ridiculous in it do a biopic of the Bush family.

Movie: 3rd Anniversary of the Marikana Massacre

This is a very powerful movie about the Marikana Massacre that also won prestigious awards.  If you can make this event please do so.   Also, while it is very popular with socialists and others on the left, the "usual suspects" as we say, working class people in general are very moved by it.  You can get a copy of the film by contacting us at this blog or the people organizing this event and we strongly urge you to show it at your church, local pub, union hall or other places workers frequent. It is important to bring issues like these to the attention of the wider working class.

The San Leandro Workers Club showed it at a local pub and it was very well attended by people not normally exposed to events like these.  

Christian Preacher Punished for condemning American Sniper

by Sean O'Torrain

The movie, American Sniper was made by that right wing freak and promoter of violence, Clint Eastwood. You know him, the one who popularized the taunt "Make My Day," playing the role of a cop he pointed a huge gun at a young man and asked him to make his day by doing something that would give him the excuse to kill him. It is people like this who help create the cop violence that pervades this country. Now he is at it again producing Sniper. Every time you hear of a mass killing at a school, of a shooting of an unarmed person by cops keep Eastwood in mind. He and his kind have created the atmosphere for this.

This firing of this Christian Chaplain brings another thing to mind. Compassion, Kindness and  Respect. I saw a study some time ago where women in 37 different countries were asked what they wanted most in a sexual partner. The answer that came first by a wide margin was kindness. Kindness! Now this is not something you see pushed much in the capitalist media and advertising propaganda industry. Why not? It is because kindness is dangerous for capitalism. With it comes caring for others, empathy for others, and not far behind that comes solidarity and the development of a mass workers' movement. None are welcome to capitalism. It wants every man and woman for themselves, fighting amongst themselves, and the devil take the hindmost.

But back to Eastwood and the sniper. Remember the freak Eastwood is not too bright. Remember him making a show of himself at the Republican Party conference where he spoke to an empty chair pretending it was Obama. Even his Republican Party hosts were embarrassed. Think about what is involved in this sniper business. That sniper was in a land which had been invaded by US imperialism. He had no right to be there in that capacity. He was a trained killer for US imperialism. He sat on roof tops and randomly murdered men, women and children. None of them got a trial, never mind a fair trial. They were just murdered by this sniper in cold blood. Noe of them had the right to defend themselves. They were just murdered by one of the trained killers of US imperialism. That sniper was some hero alright.

This is what is portrayed and glorified in the movie Sniper. Can you imagine how enraged this makes the people of the Middle East? Imagine the US being invaded by another country and one of the invading troops gets specialized training so he or she can randomly murder US citizens, including civilians. The people who run this country, the politicians and military tops are war criminals.

And we have not heard the full story of why this sniper person was killed by one of his own fellow soldiers.

I am not a Christian whatever that means. I am not a pacifist. But I support this chaplain speaking out against the violent culture of US society. It is the violent culture which is propagated by US imperialism to further their ends abroad. And it is the violent culture which is used to further its  ends at home. All we have to do is look at Ferguson and the many many other Fergusons, with the cops with the full body armor and the cop departments with the huge military vehicles. Who are they being used against, who will they increasingly be used against? US working people have to oppose the propaganda in movies such as sniper. If they do not they will be keeping quiet at their own peril.

I am not a pacifist. I am for the mass mobilization of the working class against the 1%. And when the 1% takes violent action against the working class, that is the majority of us, then I am for defending ourselves. What the movie Sniper is about is trying to get the 99% to think the US military and US imperialism and its foreign policy represents our interests.   And in this way get the 99% to support US imperialism's wars abroad and disarm the US 99% so their living standards and rights can be further eroded  at home. 

The piece below is republished From Alternet.org

 

Christian Chaplain Fired for Preaching Compassion and Love Over Violence of American Sniper

By Zaid Jilani

March 6, 2015 

On February 10th, MidAmerica Nazarene University's  (MNU) chaplain Randy Beckum gave his morning sermon, which wasn't unusual – it was his job. But what was different that day was the response to the sermon – as one student paper put it, the sermon sparked an “outcry [3]” and a torrent of criticism particularly on social media. The criticism ranged from complaints that Beckum had politicized his sermons to the idea that he had insulted Christians who served in the military.

What was this controversial sermon that Beckum gave? Here's the full text [4] and below you'll find an embedded video of the sermon:

Beckum's sermon that day was about America's addiction to violence, citing the film “American Sniper” as a symptom of that, and how this was problematic for Christianity, a religion founded on the ideals of nonviolence. Here's an excerpt:

"As you know two movies came out recently. Selma, the story of one of the 20th century most influential Christian leaders, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who led a non-violent movement that changed the course of American History forever. And American Sniper, the story of the most deadly Navy SEAL sniper in American history. Selma has made 29-30 million so far. American Sniper made over 103 million in the first 4 days. Gives you an idea about who our heroes are. I don’t think it is an under-statement to say that our culture is addicted to violence, guns, war, revenge and retaliation. Unfortunately, so are a lot of Christians."

He went on to say that we have to “be very careful about equating patriotism with Christianity,” and implored his flock to be “controlled by love, compelled by love for everyone.”

Shortly after Beckum's sermon, it was announced that he would no longer [5] be the vice president of the university's Community Foundation. Although the university president claimed [6] Beckum had previously expressed interest in stepping down from that position, his daughter disputes this assertion.

Many in the MNU community are wondering if Beckum was “punished [7]” for his pro-peace sermon, and the timing of his dismissal as VP of the community foundation seems to validate those concerns. “Even the people that were frustrated with what (Beckum) had to say in chapel, or wanted to challenge it, were confused and almost offended by the demotion,” said Kristi Rose Jackson, who was elected to be student body president.

Sadly, it appears that MNU may have given into the furor and decided that a Christian clergyman preaching the peace the founder of the faith stood for is simply too controversial for their campus.

Miner's Shot Down. Fundraiser for Marikana families

A captive and diverse audience for Miners Shot Down

The San Leandro Workers’ Club (San Leandro, California) sponsored a showing of the film, Miners Shot Down at the Englander Pub and restaurant in San Leandro on November 1st.  The film, directed by Rehad Desai (Watch an interview with Desai here), covers events that occurred at the Lonmin mine in Marikana South Africa in August 2012.

Rock drillers at the mine went on a wildcat strike after frustration at their union leadership’s cozy relationship with management and refusal to support their demands for wage increases. These workers mine one of the world’s most valuable minerals for pitifully low wages that ensure a life of poverty.  The miners merely wanted the company to negotiate with them, but Lonmin’s management insisted they go through their official leaders in the NUM. The NUM officials however, refused to support the drillers' wage demands and had shot at strikers attempting to protest at the NUM offices. The miners were demanding a wage of R12,500 South African Rand a month. 

Miners Shot Down is a very powerful film.  Through detailed accounts and emails produced in the aftermath of the massacre, it shows how the Police, Lonmin and government ministers colluded during the six days prior to the massacre to break the strike and to stop it spreading to other mines.  It shows how Cyril Ramaphosa, the once heroic NUM leader now government minister, sided with the corporation on whose board he sits.

Ramaphosa in an unguarded moment in the film justifies his collaboration by claiming that with the introduction of Black Economic Empowerment some blacks have been brought in to the corporate world but do not own or control these industries which is true.  Neither the economic or political power has changed hands and the system of exploitation remains. He excuses his collaboration on the basis that all people like him can do is become “advocates.”  He sees no alternative to capitalism and like his counterparts in the US, has enriched himself in the process.

There is a very moving scene in the movie when Joseph Mathunjwa the head of the rival union, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), falls to his knees and pleads with the strikers to leave their gathering place, telling them that a black man’s life is “very cheap” in Africa and warning them of the “capitalists” brutal intentions.

A diverse group of forty-five people attended the San Leandro event that raised $300 for the Marikana Justice Campaign.  There were blue and white collar workers, professionals and students. Members of various unions present included, SEIU, ILWU, Plumbers, Operating Engineers, Letter Carriers, and Afscme. 

It is important for as many of us as possible to see this moving film and help the victims. If you are interested in showing the movie to raise funds for the campaign, in a home, club or other venue, and are in the Bay Area contact the San Leandro Workers Club at San_Leandro_workersclub@yahoo.com

For future screenings go here: http://www.minersshotdown.co.za/screeningtimes/

You can donate directly here: http://www.givengain.com/cause/5541/projects/14853/

Miners Shot Down Website: http://www.minersshotdown.co.za/
Trailer for the Miners Shot Down  http://youtu.be/yk77YFfad1I

Below are two useful articles that give some insight in to the social conditions that led to this clash between the South African government and the working class, the worst massacre in post Apartheid South Africa, at the following links:

http://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/2013/12/mandelas-legacy.html

http://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/2013/12/on-death-of-mandela.html