Obama's Slippery Slope?: Drone Strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia

Recent news reports have given us a better idea of what  is going on inside the Obama Administration and the drone strikes and Hellfire missiles attacks in the Near East and Africa.  

 

 Human Rights groups are bringing up objections to the escalations of these attacks.  Congressional Democrats, led by Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, are asking for clarification of "targeted attacks".   The CIA?  They won't confirm of deny anything, as usual.    

 

   Most of the NATO powers have been silent--at least publicly--on the attacks. 

 

Meanwhile the increase in drone strikes have clearly killed some real terrorist leaders, including Anwar al-Awlaki, an English-speaking Yemeni-American who looked to be the next big leader of al-Queda, at least in it's AQAP (al-Queda in the Arabian Peninsula) group.  Dozens of others have been killed as well, as have been people who were by-standers.

 

The military brass itself has put pressure on Obama  to go after a large group of targets.  So far, at least according to Newsweek's Daniel Klaidman's book excerpt "Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency", http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/05/27/drones-the-silent-killers.html

Obama has been reluctant to give an o.k. to any strike that doesn't identify a specific identifiable target. The notion of "signature strikes"--taking a shot at a group in an isolated area which looks like a terrorist camp is something Obama has been reluctant to do.   He prefers  "personality strikes"--knowing to the best of the ability of the NSA, CIA, et al,--exactly where a known terrorist(s) are.     

 

For most of the 20th Century,  war was carried out without "direct target" strikes.  Bombs were released on cities, harbors, plants, troop concentrations, et al.  There were always attempts to hit a given target, but most of the bombs dropped by the Allies in World War II, for instance, were estimated to be well off their prime targets. 

 

At least a high-tech targeted strike, some critics say, is better than a Dresden/Coventry/Tokyo style firebombing.  Or the napalming campaigns of the US Air Force in Vietnam during that war.  But what is the acceptable number of collateral victims of the strike?  (I guess it depends on whose kid  is standing under the bombing range to my mind.)   

 

 And what compromises are there in the global war for morality advantage the USA and other nations might hold over a terrorist group if so many civilians are killed by a strike to pre-empt or retaliate in an attack? And what if the intelligence is wrong, and the White House kills the wrong people?   Or we get the right people but too many died who weren't terrorists?    

And how can we use lethal force in another country barring something like  a declaratioo of war, even a nation like Pakistan or Yemen or Somalia?  These three are nation-states which cannot or will not persue terrorists or support American efforts to do so.  The government in  Pakistan clearly see this as an unwelcome intrusion into  a vacuum  of  state power.  

On the other hand, waiting and doing nothing against groups like AQAP seems a deriliction of power as well. Every nation has the right to use force to defend itself--certainly from other national force.  But what of  "non-state actors" who  pose a threat to a nation like the United States which have already been attacked by a terrorist group?   

 

This being an election year, there is no doubt that President Obama, as a Democratic President, is under the gun from conservative critics and his opponent, Mitt Romney, to be "tough on  terrorism"--- which transfers to more air strikes.    A successful terrorist action against Americans abroad or at home would likely trigger a loosening of the criteria for a high-tech strike.

And the issue of using drones as domestic surveillance tools for law enforcement is another problem---a  major and dangerous precedent. One may feel safer (or not) that Obama or Romney or some other developed country with a   national leader will use drone technology wisely. But at least in the United States it is understood that presidents are accountable to more than just their intimates in the Oval Office.      

The spectre of September 11,  2001 and 3,000 innocent lives snuffed out  haunts the whole overview of this action.  But so does the US Constitution. Through the War Powers Act of 1973 and Congress' War Declaration power, Congressional approval is needed, demanded in some form, for anything like an  extended war. 

 

      Given all that is happening--threats and covert style-tactics from abroad from small cells of Muslim extremists-- is Obama's policies  getting this right?   Or ,as some say, is  he simply a war criminal? (If the latter, I ask, what other modern leader who carries out any covert action in time of  war or terrorist threat not  a war criminal as well?) 

 

   Using "national security" as an overriding impetus, is the Obama Admistration justified in total to fight an unorthodox war with precision weapons and to ignore the demands of those in his own party like Dennis Kuchinich and  international human rights critics?  I don't think it's that simple either. 

 

  Further disclosure to Congress seems to me is needed as to what is going on and where the line needs to be drawn. International Law is not to be slummed off  either.  If a nation cannot handle terrorists who are threats to other nations inside her borders,  it appears that some action through diplomacy is needed to declare via the United Nations that a portion of a nation is "ungovernable" and therefore justify this strange and troubling new phase of warfare.  

Albert Camus: A Rebel Amongst Rebels

"We notice that everywhere, together with freedom, justice is profaned. How then can this infernal circle be broken? Obviously, it can be done only by reviving at once, in ourselves and in others, the value of freedom--and by never again agreeing to its being sacrificed, even temporarily, or separated from our demand for justice."-From "Resistance, Rebellion and Death" (1959)





"A man does not show his greatness by being at one extremity, but rather by touching both at once"--Blaise Pascal (used as an introductory quote by Albert Camus' for his last collection of essays: "Resistance, Rebellion and Death".)

To me , Albert Camus (1913-1960) stands as one of the most illuminating political and social philosophers of the 20th Century. He was also an exceptional novelist--his masterpiece being "The Plague" (1948)--a story about a seemingly inexplicable contagious disease which ravages an Algerian coastal city and how various people of various backgrounds come to grips with the randomness of its victims. He also wrote many plays for the theater including a 3 1/2 hour adaptation Dostoyevsky's novel "The Possessed" (1959) which was his last major work before his untimely death from a car accident n the south of France on January 4, 1960. Three years earlier he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

His attitudes and opinions were, to quote one of his English translators, Justin O' Brien, unique, sometimes in the face of hostility, sometimes at the risk of his life (as in his work in journalism and militancy in the French Underground during World War II) and later in vitriolic attacks against him former friends, including Jean-Paul Sartre, which is featured in the video below.
Many French left writers and other intellectuals sided with Sartre at the time he struck out, first through disciples and then directly, against Camus for his unabashed non-favoritism between Soviet, American and non-aligned camps in the Cold-War tinged struggles of the 1950's.

It would have easier for Camus to confine his criticisms of the post-war era to Francoism and the United States "containment" strategies of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles , which supported fascist and other dictatorial regimes in many parts of the world. But Camus saw attacks against human liberty in places like East Berlin, Poland, and Hungary as well. It was this past and present limitlessness of revolutionary movements going back to the French Revolution and the reign of the mad emperor Caligula that inspired his writings.

Anything foul and inhumane he fought against it, most courageously when his country was occupied and he was writing brilliant pro-freedom essays and working with the Underground for the liberation of France. His writings in the newspaper "Combat" are truly above propaganda. At the same time, when "Combat" became a commercial entity after the war, and the editorial line was compromised,he left it. He also left his position with UNESCO when it accepted fascist Spain as part of its transnational members.

"By remaining flagrantly independent", Justin O'Brien wrote a year after Camus death,"he could speak out against both against the Russian slave labor camps and against US support for Franco's Spain. By overcoming the immature nihilism and despair that he saw as poisoning our century, he emerged as the staunch defender of our positive moral values and of 'those silent men who, throughout the world, endure the life that has been made for them."

"Freedom is not made up principally of privileges; it is made up especially of duties."--Camus.


He was a also staunch opponent of the death penalty, in all its forms, and, at great loss to his prestige against the Paris intelligentsia, this Algerian-born son of a single mother who lived with her in poverty for years, stood against the terrorism of if the 1950's between the Algerian radicals in the F.L.N. and the French colonialists and the torture and desperate retributions of those who wanted Algeria to step back into its harsh colonial past.

Camus didn't compromise in his ideas of liberty or concern for the lowliest individual. His father had died at the First Battle of the Marne in 1914. His mother was of humble origins and they were forced to live in a poverty stricken part of Algeria. He worked a variety of low-paid jobs and participated on a soccer team and a local theater group in Algiers. He was given a chance at university based on his intellect and he received a degree after completing university courses. He joined the Communist Party in Algeria in 1936, but couldn't stay with that group. Later, he incurred the wrath of the moderate government for his exposes in his newspaper work about the plight of the poor Kabyle tribes in North Africa.



After World War II, he continued his work as a writer in Paris and became friends with other major writer-philosophers, including Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. This ruptured in the early 1950's when he wrote "The Rebel", a book-length essay.



Unlike Sartre, he could not look away when he saw individuals destroyed for some future "greater good".

Having seen war firsthand and the loss of many of his comrades in the spy networks that were set up to thwart the German occupiers, Camus became a warrior for truces and greater understanding among opposing forces. At the same time, he held an overall "absurdist" view of life.

"To observe that life is absurd is not an end, but a beginning."
- Albert Camus



From the Swarthmore College webpage on the author: "Camus was concerned mainly with exploring avenues of rebellion against the absurd as he strove to create something like a humane stoicism. The Plague (1947; Eng. trans., 1948) is a symbolic novel in which the important achievement of those who fight bubonic plague in Oran lies not in the little success they have but in their assertion of human dignity and endurance. In the controversial essay The Rebel (1951; Eng. trans., 1954), he criticized what he regarded as the deceptive doctrines of "absolutist" philosophies--the vertical (eternal) transcendence of Christianity and the horizontal (historical) transcendence of Marxism. He argued in favor of Mediterranean humanism, advocating nature and moderation rather than historicism and violence. He subsequently became involved in a bitter controversy with Jean Paul Sartre over the issues raised in this essay."

Heart of Darkness

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Literature & Fiction
Author:	Joseph Conrad

"The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much." --Joseph Conrad.

The Heart of Darkness is a story of a story. Conrad's narrator, Marlowe, recounts his experiences in Africa and briefly, in Belgium, and his feelings about the voyage to a group of other men while waiting for a rising tide along the River Thames. In the story the narrator is going down an African river for "The Eldorado Exploring Expedition" to bring back some of the valuable caches of elephant ivory. The journey takes him down the dark waters and deep and sometimes deadly jungles. The ultimate end of the journey is a personal fiefdom of terror run by a man called Kurtz.

Joseph Conrad's 1902 novella is familiar to many. Rereading it again I was struck by how much of the story delves into Marlowe's sense of assault upon not only the native peoples and his fellow men in the steamer, but his own psyche. Marlowe is as much a victim of war as the modern soldier with post-traumatic stress disorder might be.

But the wounds are totally psychological-- and not to be healed by being removed from the harrowing river journey. The mysterious, intelligent and ultimately enigmatic Mr. Kurtz, the leader of the ivory station--a highly civilized and capable man who is brilliant and at the same time savage and mad--has made him question the nature of humanity itself.
Marlowe cannot see civilization in the same way again, and has contempt for those who might judge his reactions to such terrors "with a policeman at one corner and a butcher shop on the other".

Civilization to Marlowe is a mere veneer. Its Conrad himself trying to express that difficult sense of total isolation in his own skin---he knows that London itself was a savage place to the first Romans who came to Britain. All places were savage once and parts of them can be again, without warning.

But there is something dark and evil within all men as well, and what circumstances might bring this darkness, a darkness perhaps beyond the control of the keenest intellect.

"Heart of Darkness" is a multi-layered novella that is a triumph of fiction and an authentic statement of the animal nature of human avarice.

Some think the book has a racist slant. But I believe, even if he was a man of his own time, Conrad is after something more profound than a tale of terror or a political statement on race. In condemning Kurtz and his dark deeds, and those of others along the route of colonial exploitation, Marlowe also sees something within himself, a savageness as dire as the heads of men placed on poles to encourage more ivory extraction.
Marlowe feels as alone as he was with his friends and listeners as he was back in Africa, at that ivory station hundreds or miles inland, standing over the body of the "great" Mr. Kurtz as he sums up the brutality within that heart of darkness:

"The Horror! The Horror!"

The book is based on the worst of colonies in the dire history of the great African land grab of the late 19th Century---King Leopold of Belgium's' Congo Free State of 1890. Conrad, a longtime seafarer with the French and later British Merchant services--served briefly as a fresh-water captain of a small steamship going upriver to meet up with an ivory outpost run along lines of brutality he later depicted in horrifying and psychologically subtle details.

Torture and Liberty Don't Belong Together

Gerald Field is no career leftist.   Although he did support Barack  Obama for President before the 2008 elections, he previously served under President Ronald Reagan as Solicitor General.  He is also a Harvard Professor of Law and knows a thing or two about the Constitution. A book he wrote with his son Gregory, a philosopher and chairman of that department at Suffolk university, recently wrote:   "Because it is Wrong: Torture, Privacy and Presidential Power in the Age of Terror," 

Although I haven't read the book yet, interviews with the Frieds  make clear its central thesis--that it is wrong to torture a person to any degree, under any circumstances and for any reason.

The Frieds note that the Constitution says government surveillance — essentially a search — is wrong, but only if it is unreasonable or conducted without a warrant. As Fried points out below, there is no power of torture laid out in the Constitution, despite the twisted logic of Bush Justice Department lawyers like John Woo and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, both of whom approved of "waterboarding" suspects under the guise of fighting terrorists.   

Editorial excerpt below from The Medford (Oregon) Mail Tribune, Sept. 13, 2010:

"As Charles Fried said in an interview on National Public Radio, "that immediately shows there's a difference, because you can have reasonable snooping. You can have snooping pursuant to a warrant. I don't care what kind of a warrant you have, you can't torture and there is no such thing as reasonable torture."

His son Gregory agreed: "... I think it's essential to our identity as a nation that we hold to this absolute among others, that torture is one of the things that a democratic republic must not do in order to retain its character."

Charles Fried cited figures from American history who echoed that sentiment: "Washington said treat those captured in the battle with humanity and let them have no reason to complain over our copying the brutal example of the British army. Lincoln said military necessity does not admit of cruelty that is the infliction of suffering for the sake of suffering or for revenge, nor of maiming or wounding except in fight, nor of torture to extort confessions."

America's stature in the world owes much to its Constitution, a document that protects the rights of individuals from the actions of their own government. Americans should ask themselves what that great tradition is worth if our government takes away the rights of others in the interest of our own security."

If The United States is supposed to stand for something greater then just a territory or a brute force of Hegalian Statism--and I believe that is why we were conceived as a nation-- we should heed these mens' words well.  

A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	History
Author:	Robert W. Merry

James Knox Polk was a protege of the better-known American general and President Andrew Jackson. He was the eleventh president and, though despised and reviled by many of his rival Whig Party enemies (including a young Congressman, Abraham Lincoln) , the United States had a territory 500,000 square miles larger than it had been four years earlier when Polk first took the Oath of Office on a rainy day in Washington City in March of 1845.

The better-known Jackson served two four-year terms (1828-1836) and ignited a new democratic spirit in the nation--a spirit that because of the times was confined to working white men and small farmers, and not include women, blacks, or Native-Americans.

Jackson, "Old Hickory" he was called, was a hard-bitten rawhide figure who managed to gain great success during the War of 1812 by defeating a British force at the Battle of New Orleans and later driving Native-American fighters like the Seminoles off their lands.

He was the first President from the then-frontier state of Tennessee, and the neo-Jeffersonian champion against the forces that wanted a National Bank. (Which he felt put too much power in the hands of New York speculators, among other things.) Jackson is immortalized still on the $20 bill and remained an immensely popular Chief Executive until the beginnings of the modern Civil Rights Movement.

And yet, you could make the argument that James K. Polk, the man known as "Young Hickory" , did more in the four years he was President (1844-1848) than his mentor did in eight.

Polk was an accidental President in many ways. A former shining light in the Jacksonian Democratic Party, stalwart Polk (1798-1849) had gone from point-man for Jackson to Speaker of the House in Congress in the mid-1830's. He was from the same state as the shrewd and imperious Jackson and basically didn't go to the bathroom without consulting the older man.

A few years later, however, the rival Whig Party started to gain ground thanks to the leadership of Henry Clay, a Congressman who popularized an "American System" of internal improvements (canals, roads, port facilities) into the growing nation. The Whig Party was a national movement that favored high tariffs to develop the nation. This was seen as favoring the industrializing centers of New England and the Mid-Atlantic and Upper Midwest where slavery had been pushed out of existence. Low tariffs, favored generally by the Democrats, helped promote trade with Britain, France and Europe--especially agricultural crops like cotton, which were slave-labor dependant.

Polk was a defeated candidate for governor of Tennessee in 1843. The political career of this Tennessee plantation (and slave) holder seemed to have peaked and he went back to the town of Columbia, south of the state capital, Nashville, to lick his wounds.

But one year later Polk was back in the ascendancy. He had his name placed in nomination for the Vice-Presidency. With a new "two-thirds" approval rule in the Nomination Convention in Baltimore, Maryland, however, none of the favorite candidates could pull off a super-majority of the delegates. A compromise candidate was needed, someone who was from a border state (like Tennessee) who could draw both Northern and Southern support. And Polk--after multiple ballots--got a bigger prize than he had hoped for.

It was a hard-fought national campaign for the Presidency, however. Polk's opponent was the great Henry Clay himself. Clay has served in Congress longer than Polk and had a national reputation as "The Great Compromiser" who had staved off clashes between free and slave states in the young Republic. Along with Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, he was one of the three greatest political leaders of the Jackson Era and remained so until his death. Yet Polk beat him--narrowly, in part, the author states, because Clay underestimated how important the expansion of the nation was to many voters, particularly those who wanted to see the new republic of Texas (which had gained independence from Mexico in an Anglo-American inspired uprising a decade earlier) admitted to the Union.

Clay was lukewarm on the Texas issue, knowing that it would lead to problems with the balance of power between slave and free states. (Texas was a slave republic, which was one of the reasons white men fought to be free of this part of Mexico's northern frontier. Mexico has abolished slavery when she won independence from Spain.) "Young Hickory", however, was pro-Texas, and he also articulated in his letters to his followers--it was considered unseemly to openly campaign in those days--- that he wanted as much of the Oregon Territory as well, which was then jointly administered by the USA and the British through their Hudson Bay Company.

He was also not shy about being prepared to go to war with Mexico to secure Texas and also take New Mexico and California as well, either by purchasing them from the cash-strapped Mexican government or by conquest.

A "war of choice" you might say.

There is enough political intrigue in "A Country of Vast Designs" to keep any history nerd like me enthralled. Polk himself is not a very intriguing figure, but he was focused and stubborn and, whatever can be said for the immorality of the Mexican War--which cost 11,000 American lives and many more Mexican ones--he changed the map of America forever and made it a transoceanic power. The careful negotiations with Great Britain over Oregon, where Polk was at odds with his own more-cautious Secretary of State, James Buchanan, also make for interesting reading. If Britain and Mexico had formed an alliance against American western expansion, as Buchanan feared, it would have been a disaster.
That was another thing about Polk, he was not a great leader, but he was damn lucky.

Well, except for the fact that he died four months after he left office from disease author Merry says says was brought about by stress and exhaustion battling with Congress and his own cabinet over the shape of the nation and its fiscal structure.
It is likely his early death that prevented James K. Polk--The Napoleon of the Stump-- from getting his rightful share of both Machiavellian credit and moral blame for the "vast designs" of America in modern America. He personified the Age of Manifest Destiny.

Here's a song about the 11th President, courtesy of the off-beat 80's rock band They Might Be Giants

The English Resistance: The Underground War Against the Normans

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	History
Author:	Peter Rex

For years, what I had read about the Norman Invasion of England was summarized by the events of the Battle of Hastings in late 1066, when King Harold Godwinson and his "Saxon" forces were defeated by William the Conquerer. King Edward (the Confessor) had left no surviving heirs and the Witan council had named Harold king. His elevation to regal status was short lived.


There were three major battles that year, and all had been bloody tests for the English forces: first, the northern earls (at Fulford Gate) and for King Harold (at Stamford Bridge and Hastings) . This is from a review of this same book by Carla Neyland, and sets the stage for the rebellion to come after William of Normandy came to power in London:

"'The English Resistance' begins with a survey of the three battles of 1066. Gate Fulford was fought just south of York on 20 September, when Tostig Godwinsson and Harald Hardrada defeated Earl Edwin of Mercia and Earl Morcar of Northumbria.

"Stamford Bridge was fought east of York five days later, when Harold Godwinsson defeated and killed Tostig and Haradrada after a forced march from the south of England. Hastings was fought on 14 October on the south coast, when William of Normandy defeated and killed Harold Godwinsson (after Harold and his army had marched all the way back from Stamford Bridge)."


Harold's ships and levies of soldiers were all too taxed from a bloody battle against the Vikings in the north of the kingdom to get back to Hastings with any measure of rest and preperation. The Norman Duke knew all about Harold's troubles with the Norwegians and William was poised to strike across the Channel when he found the time just right.

Harold and his men could only march hundreds of miles-- again--- and still had reinforcements coming up when the Battle of Hastings was all over.

It was the end of the story, at least as far as popular history goes. One assumed after the victory at Hastings, William the Conquerer (or the Bastard) moved on quickly to quell most of Britain and that was that.

Peter Rex's book shows that was not all that.

For the next five to six years, and sporadically for decades after, the English (with Welsh, Scottish and Danish support) refused to accept the Normanization of their islands and their lands. While rebellion around London and the southern regions of the kingdom ended around 1067, the remaining Earls of the Saxon dynasty and the various groups of 'silvatici' (forest dwellers) was just getting started.

There were vast parts of England (Cornwall, Northumbria, many parts between thee Humber River and the Wash, et al) that hadn't seen any Normans yet and hadn't got "the memo" it seems that the fight was over and their lands were forfeit to William's fighting chums. In Wales, for example, Eadric "the Wild" gathered forces to give the Normans a warm welcome when they moved westward.

Norman progress in the north toward Yorkshire was not all that smooth---newly-minted nobles were set upon and killed by the locals. York itself was attacked as soon as the Normans got their castle up in 1068 and the combined English-Danish forces drove the surviving invaders and their quislings back down to safer turf. William himself, dealing with problems in his own territory back at Normandy, had to rush back to lay siege to towns like Chester.

Only William's own leadership saved the day for the Normans in this new realm, filled with angry "outlaws" who hoped for a new Saxon king in the shape of Edgar the Atheling ( a young man gathering what forces he could in Scotland as a guest of King Malcom) or even in the hopes of a restored "Danelaw" king who could drive the Normans back to the Channel and restore the less onerous burden of Norse foreign rule.


A video on early Norman attempts to isolate and destroy resistance:



Rex's book focuses a great deal on one man in particular, Hereward the Exile or Hereward the Outlaw. He was one of the leaders of those forest dwellers and a military strategist who ranked up with William the Bastard or Harald Hardara of Norway, only without the loyal forces these monarchs enjoyed. Hereward (also called "The Wake" by a later generations) made inroads up and down the northern coast of England and at the then island of Ely near the deep marshes of the Fens. Needing to keep his restless Danish allies sated, Hereward sacked treasure from the abbeys that the Normans solely needed to finance their campaigns against rebels on both sides of the Channel. William responded in more than kind. It was, in Rex's phrase, William the Bastards' "government by punitive expedition."

It was all of course a bloody and brutal affair, but there is little evidence William expected anything else. To combat the forces of the resistance, The Bastard lead men up and down the north in a "harrying" operation that left farms burning and innocents slaughtered. The major battled at Stafford took on tactics that would be, in Rex's view from the surviving documents, precursors of German occupation atrocities 900 years later in places like occupied France.


Eventually, lacking loyal support from the Danes, who may never seriously considered taking on the Normans in a major battle, and after the Norman invasion of Scotland in 1072 sent Edgar Atheling to Flanders and safety and made Malcom a more passive neighbor, the English resistance dwindled. But Peter Rex and other historians he cites make a strong case that it took almost a decade for William to consolidate his 'total victory' at Hastings.

The last part of the book recounts the blending of English and Norman Noble families over the next few decades into a group with a increasingly independent identity from Normandy. As for Hereward the Outlaw, he apparently escaped from his last big stand at Ely as the Normans built a causeway and forced their way across. Hereward also escaped from any reliable historical account as to how he spent his last years. That he was the prototypical horse-mounted knight--likely trained at Flanders while in a previous exile imposed by the Confessor--is very likely. That he might have also served as a precursor to the legends of Robin Hood have also been proposed. Its his whereabouts with his bands after escaping Ely that makes for the intriguing speculations and where history and legend cross over into the great theme of resistance to foreign powers that characterizes English history just after 1066 and for centuries to come.

And now a word on 11th Century Norman taxation schemes, read by actor Chris Bailey . It looks a lot like what a Public Service Announcement from Bill The Bastard's New Order would "encourage" the public to prepare for :

The Last Train From Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	History
Author:	Charles Pellegrino

"Had Mary Shelly or Edgar Allen Poe been born in the mid-twentieth century, they never would have had to invent horror."
--Chapter One.


This is a book filled with horrific details---there is no getting around that. People with blackened bodies covered in grass stems moving along in lines like ants, walking about desperate for water and for someone to help them. Tens of thousands of people obliterated in such a fashion that only their shadows remain in a bright spot against a wall. Mothers who abandon their children because they seem beyond help. Doctors who watch patients literally rot from the inside and spit out tapeworms that only leave a body when the tissue they live on is dead.

Horror heaped upon horror--dozens of people who flee one atomic blast zone
go to Nagasaki and are victims of yet another bombing. Somehow some 120 people manage to survive both blasts. But though they may be alive for some years longer, they envy those who were vaporized. Some overcome this and decide they are alive to tell the story. But will a world cushioned from such shocks believe them or their sanitized history books?

Many people who read Stephen King, Clive Barker or other horror novelists might find some of this material familiar territory. But King and Barker's material is largely the work of vivid imaginations and situations that will resolve themselves in one form or another as fiction always does.

But this book is not so dispensable on the side of good vs. evil. There is something about the Atomic Bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945 that break the boundaries of warfare with its tragic but expected casualties of armed personnel and civilian deaths. It is humankind gone to the very core of matter to create a weapon so lethal nothing can deter it. It is a fury of energy so deadly that it is not within the realm of human imagination unless one is a victim of it. This is the most interesting aspect of the book: those who tell their stories of personal survival and watching other people--innocent people whose crime was to be born under the Empire of the Rising Sun--die in the most gruesome ways imaginable.

In a century that perfected trench warfare, rocket bombs, poison gas, fire-bombing of cities by hundreds of planes, napalm, and mass murder on a mechanized scale no conqueror could have imagined before this time, the Atom Bomb makes all this seem a rehearsal somehow to some ending of all human endeavor, a hole we cannot dig out of and go on, a blade always at our throats.

This book contains a great deal of direct eyewitness accounts of the atomic bombing of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While some stories might be familiar to readers--such as the little girl Sadako Sasaki who survived the Hiroshima blast on August 6, 1945 as a two year old and ten years later constructed over a thousand "peace cranes" out of paper while slowly dying in a hospital. But most of the you-are-there accounts of the most horrific single man-made explosions in history were brand new to me, and I suspect to others who haven't focused on the fate of the survivors of this story.

Pellagrino is not interested in giving us an argument for or against the dropping of these bombs, perhaps because that is a topic that has been exhausted by sixty-four years of his predecessors. What he does in a very empathic fashion is simply tell the stories of those who lived on somehow to tell the story of what happened to the people who died in that unleashed destruction of the very matter of human, plant and animal life (called "Pika-Don" or "flash-bang" by the Japanese.)

This book has run into its share of controversy since it was published earlier this year. Two or three of Charles Pellagrino sources for the book have not been able to be collaborated as being part of the flight crew of "Bock's Car", the plane that dropped the plutonium bomb "Fat Man" on a suburb of Nagasaki at 11:00am on August 9, 1945. The explosion wiped out most of the city in a flash and later sickened and killed its victims with burns and radiation poisoning for years afterwards. Three days earlier the bomb nicknamed "Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima.

For years afterward Japanese, American and British scientists went to these two cities to try and determine just what had been wrought. The Occupation Authorities in Japan (under General Douglas MacArthur) did their best to downplay or censor the true effects of how horrible the bombs were and how all types of people were still dying from the effects of what the earliest doctors called "Disease X." Pellegrino speculates that MacArthur himself didn't want to face the fact that the war was ended by means other than what he had been able to accomplish as a commander.

But word spread anyway.

Still, for whatever small errors, "Last Train from Hiroshima" is a worthwhile read: while perhaps not the best of story-telling on the subject, it brought the nightmares of radiation sickness to the fore of my dreams-capes and I cannot but think that Americans need to face these people's stories as surely as we embrace the tales told by Holocaust survivors or soldiers and airmen and Marines coming back from our modern killing grounds.

Here is a portion of an article from the Medford Mail Tribune (written by Paul Fattig) about a Hiroshima survivor and her efforts to join others to protest at the United Nations this weekend:

http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100502/NEWS/5020326

Ghost Writer (2010)--First Rate Thriller Produces A Grim Shadow of Real Life Events

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Drama

(right) Former Prime Minister Andrew Lang (Pierce Brosnan) and his newest
scribe (Ewan McGregor) have a bit of tense communication in a scene from "The Ghost Writer".


This adaptation of the Robert Harris novel "Ghost" marks Roman Polanski's return to the thriller films like "A Knife in the Water" (1962), "Repulsion" (1965) and "Chinatown" (1974) that he excels at. Although I certainly don't endorse Mr. Polanski's past behaviors with under age girls, it's undeniable he is one of the best living directors working in films today.

The film concerns a hired ghost writer of celebrity memoirs who agrees to shape up the biography of ex-British Prime Minister Andrew Lang. (The previous ghost-writer drowned accidentally in the waters off Massachusetts' cold Atlantic shore--or so that's the official story.)

The protagonist encounters a large bunker-like VIP beach house where Lang is holed up with his nervous and weary wife Ruth (Olivia Williams), a pack of security personnel, and his tough and alluring personal secretary Amelia (Kim Catrall) whom Ms. Lang strongly suspects of being Lang's mistress. The whole set-up crackles with personal tension.

The writer has just a few weeks to make a workable product out of Lang's verbal ramblings and boring political anecdotes. He is a one time Cambridge University actor who took a sudden interest in politics and rose quickly to the leadership of the Labour Party in the 80's and 90's. Brosnan and the writers do a good job here creating a PM who is at times charming, easy-going and a little superficial (good qualities for an American leader to project as well) but quick-tempered and a tight-lipped person once the doors close. Lang is a man who has been following a script long after he ceased being an actor. The question at the center of the film is: Who is writing that script? Lang himself, or the CIA?

(I personally have found it hard to get through modern politicians memoirs, and pretty much have given them a pass in the last few years. It seems the more powerful someone was, the less likely it is he or she can be candid about what actually happened while they were in office. And all memoirs written by future candidates are inevitably guarded and coy.)

The tension ratchets up nicely when the writer discovers that Lang has been charged with being a war criminal by human rights groups and by his ex-foreign minister for allowing four British citizens to be seized by the CIA and taken to a "black ops" site where one of them died in custody. There is also the question of Lang stretching the "special relationship" between Her Majesty's government and the Americans to a point where he was all too eager in the past to do what Washington wanted in matters of war and national security . (Does any of this sound familiar?)

The films has enough twists and red herrings to satisfy not only political types but also those who enjoy a good tale of intrigue and underhandedness told with intelligence and wit. The film works well in part because right up to the end you are not sure what to make of Andrew Lang or those closest to him and the writer, like any good writer, is overcome with a searing desire to simply tell the truth--if he can only live long enough to find out what it is.

The whole cast of this film does an excellent job. Both Olivia Williams and Kim Cattrall make the most of their supporting roles. I had my doubts about the fetching former "Sex and the City" star playing such a steely power player, having only seen her in comic roles heretofore, but she obviously can handle more subtle dramatic roles than she has ever found in Hollywood assignments.

The Cast

Ewan McGregor The Ghost
Kim Cattrall Amelia Bly
Olivia Williams Ruth Lang
Pierce Brosnan Adam Lang
Timothy Hutton Sidney Kroll
Tom Wilkinson Paul Emmett
Robert Pugh Richard Rycart
James Belushi John Maddox
Eli Wallach Old Man
Jon Bernthal Rick Ricardelli

Screenplay by Robert Harris and Roman Polanski.

Rural Oregon Town Says No to Nazi Neighbors

The small eastern Oregon lumber town of 2,000 people has one of the highest unemployment rates in the western states (17 percent) and is predominately white. Yet John Day's residents are not willing to step back in the ugly past of America with endorsing or tolerating the American nazis in their midst.

 

 

The self-proclaimed leader of the Aryan Nations is some 36-year old male nuisance named Paul Mullet. He wants to move out of the Aryan Nations compound that they have in the hamlet of Athol, Idaho (in part apparently because even that remote area is becoming toxic to tender Nazis sensibilities.) The nazi leaders goal is a headquarters for his pack of primitive racists in rural Oregon. But its not working out quite as easy as the storm troopers thought:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here''s a bit of the feedback from the community the nazis have been getting:

Terrorist Crashes Plane Into Building in Texas, Blames IRS For Making Him Do It

A 53 year old computer softeware programmer and part-time musician (identified as Joseph Andrew Stack--pictured here-- and  living near Austin, Texas) apparently  set fire to his house early this morning then jumped into a small private plane.  He then crashed the plane into The Eschelon building in Austin and, kamikaze style, killed himself and at least one other person. 

Why did he do this?  Apparently he owed the IRS some money and decided he wanted to make a "statement". He left behind a 3,000 word essay about how bad the government is and how they have been taxing him unjustly and so on and so on. 

I know some far-far-right conservatives will say  this guy is a hero; to me he is a desperate and messed-up human being who didn't or wouldn't get psychological help in time for himself.  

That he tried to take other people's lives in this terrorist  manner  only goes to prove not how bad things are in America, but how a few people refuse to live decent lives and let anger and rage draw them to the mouth of madness.    

I report this not just because of the obvious links to terrorist events in the recent past, but because I personally  find it  disturbing to see so many people on the Internet reacting to this twisted dementia as a positive political statement.  Political it may have been, but the cause was not ethical, just, righteous or remotely in keeping with the idea of seeking redress from the government guaranteed in the Constitution.  No one likes to pay taxes; no one likes all the things their taxes go to; no one completely trusts government.  But attempted mass murder is not the answer! 

   Stack forfeited the right to be anything but a terrorist when he drew blood against innocent people in a personal vendetta I'm not even sure was as hopeless as he made it out to be.  Violence is only the course of last resort; Mr. Stack, a man with a house and a family and friends, was far from that "last resort".  This,  to me, was ego-driven insanity.     

 

The Walking Wounded: Nearly 40 Percent of Deployed Troops Suffering Mental Illness

(photo by Joe Readle, Getty Images)

This is the face of a young Marine who had just participated in a house-to-house sweep in an Iraqi village.

 

 The toll of boomerang re-deployments for these depleted soldiers and marines aren't just taking their toll in physical maiming (everything to lost limbs to brain trauma caused by powerful remote controlled exploding devices--IEDs-- ), but in the loss of long-term mental stability as well.  New rules that make it impossible to send soldiers back until a year's "rest" from deployment do not address the still lamentable fact that the wars, particularly in Afghanistan, appear to be nowhere near ending and this country is relying on National Guard and Reservists troops in numbers that have not been seen in the Armed Forces since World War II.     

Although it has been nearly three years since the first major findings came out recording high combat stress-related  disorders plaguing American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, things seem to have only got worse. Recent studies by the Department of Veterans Affairs show that of the 289,328 veterans returning from combat across the globe, 37 percent are suffering from either clinical depression or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  Alcoholism, violence (including suicide and homicide) are a record levels.  In just one Army unit, based in Fort Collins, Colorado, over eleven homicides have been carried out by returning soldiers who saw intense fighting in Iraq.)  And yet, despite, the studies, according to Daniel Swerdling of National Public Radio, the psychiatric staff  at Army Medical facilities stateside are still under-funded and under staffed.       

This is a report on the Fort Carson incidents from the pro-Veteran site, VetsVoice (not affiliated with the Department of Defense):   

"Soldiers from a Colorado unit accused in nearly a dozen slayings since returning home - including a couple gunned down as they put up a garage sale sign - could be showing hostility fueled by intense combat in Iraq, where the troops suffered heavy losses and told of witnessing war crimes, the military said Wednesday.

In what was billed as its most comprehensive study to date of violent crimes and combat exposure, the Army looked at soldiers from the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division - nicknamed the Lethal Warriors - who were accused in a spate of five killings around Colorado Springs, home to Fort Carson, in 2007 and 2008.

Six other slayings involving unit soldiers occurred in Colorado and other states since 2005

We've been hearing about a number of incidents, that is by 'we' those who use multiple mostly online sources and either accidentally find them or use the right search words. The MSM is virtually silent except when one or two who get it are brave enough to fight to get the reports aired!!

Army investigators compared the Fort Carson unit of about 3,700 soldiers with a similarly sized unit and found it suffered more combat deaths in Iraq and was deployed there longer.

"This deployment experienced higher levels of combat intensity," the report said, adding that the soldiers also faced "significant disruptions in family-social support."

Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker, the Army's surgeon general, said Wednesday the unit's crime cluster appeared to be unique among Army bases and that its combat exposure and length of deployments are just two factor officials are looking at.

"We're starting to look into the deployments and ... how it's related with attitudes and behavior," Schoomaker said.......Rest Here

Soldiers returning need not only more down time, between deployments, they should be serving one if any at all. They need time between deployments! They need the help they seek! They need to be understood when seeking that help!"

http://vetvoice.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=5B3AB9B85FAC165E2D62DE46FD95E048?diaryId=2955

It is clear that, in the course of American military history, to paraphrase a famous statesman of the past: Never has so much been demanded of so few, over and over again.   I wonder how long the Afghan War would last if the leaders in Washington came out for a draft of men to fight the war.  The very unpopularity of such an idea--among rank and file members of both parties--calls into question the very need for this war.  And with troops strength recently doubled to 80,000 Americans in  Afghanistan, and little continued support for this war outside America, this policy seems to be designed to continue to produce violence not only abroad but pain and suffering for families and their loved ones on the home front.     

 

 

 

Who Needs al-Queda ? American Nazi On Museum Rampage

An 88-year old neo-Nazi, James Von Brunn, is expected to live after he, according to witnesses and the FBI, murdered a security guard in cold blood.  The younger man was trying to help him through the door when the aged hate-monger shot him in the heart. 

The rise of hate groups in the USA is quite disturbing---a 50 percent increase in the last few years  to over 900 identified hate groups.  As Bob Herbert of the New York Times pointed out in a recent editorial, the election of Barack Obama, and the rise of former "minority groups" in prominence and voting strength and the bad economy will no doubt continue to add to the ranks of the white, male, dumb and dangerous fringe of far-right politics.   

Von Brunn, a blogger who denied the Holocaust and claimed "the best gentiles" were all being murdered as part of some conspiracy, was also a donor to a group called American Friends of the British National Party, a fascist group that recently won a seat in the European Union elections. (The group, thankfully, was reported disbanded in 2001.  Which leaves 900 more groups that could disband and not be missed.)     

The Central Asia Institute: Fighting Terrorists Without Bombs and Guns

"When it is dark, you can see the stars."--

Persian Proverb

 The Central Asia Institute  is a non-profit, non-governmental organization.  It was  started by Greg Mortenson, a one-time child of Christian missionary parents (sent to Tanzania for much of his youth).  He later enlisted in the military and became a medic, and later a trauma nurse by profession and a skilled mountain climber.  He was trying to climb the infamous "K2" mountain in the Himalayas when disaster struck his party about 800 meters from the summit.  He barely made it down the mountain alive and was nursed back to help by Muslim villagers in an isolated mountain town.

Thanks to the generosity of these strangers, Mortenson made a vow: he would return to the village and build the people there a school for their children.   The efforts to get funding for the endeavor (and the beginnings of the Central Asia Institute's main efforts to promote female literacy in Pakistan and later Afghanistan) were outlined in a July 2008 column by   Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times (excerpt below) 

  "Scrounging the money was a nightmare — his 580 fund-raising letters to prominent people generated one check, from Tom Brokaw — and Mr. Mortenson ended up selling his beloved climbing equipment and car. But when the school was built, he kept going. Now his aid group, the Central Asia Institute, has 74 schools in operation. His focus is educating girls.

"To get a school, villagers must provide the land and the labor to assure a local “buy-in,” and so far the Taliban have not bothered his schools. One anti-American mob rampaged through Baharak, Afghanistan, attacking aid groups — but stopped at the school that local people had just built with Mr. Mortenson. “This is our school,” the mob leaders decided, and they left it intact.

"Mr. Mortenson has had setbacks, including being kidnapped for eight days in Pakistan’s wild Waziristan region. It would be naïve to think that a few dozen schools will turn the tide in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

"Still, he notes that the Taliban recruits the poor and illiterate, and he also argues that when women are educated they are more likely to restrain their sons. Five of his teachers are former Taliban, and he says it was their mothers who persuaded them to leave the Taliban; that is one reason he is passionate about educating girls.

"So I have this fantasy: Suppose that the United States focused less on blowing things up in Pakistan’s tribal areas and more on working through local aid groups to build schools, simultaneously cutting tariffs on Pakistani and Afghan manufactured exports. There would be no immediate payback, but a better-educated and more economically vibrant Pakistan would probably be more resistant to extremism.

“Schools are a much more effective bang for the buck than missiles or chasing some Taliban around the country,” says Mr. Mortenson, who is an Army veteran.

"Each Tomahawk missile that the United States fires in Afghanistan costs at least $500,000. That’s enough for local aid groups to build more than 20 schools, and in the long run those schools probably do more to destroy the Taliban."

 

   Mr Mortgenson's is also the  co-author of a bestselling book about his experiences called "Three Cups of Tea" which has been on the best-seller lists in the USA for 90 weeks, despite not having a major publisher initially to promote it.  It was mainly by word of mouth. It was through my wife that I first heard of this amazing organization and these efforts to help children, particularly in promoting education for girls in isolated mountain villages around the old Northwest Frontier of Central Asia.  His organization also promotes the training of teachers from within the local communities themselves. www.threecupsoftea.com

(above) Here a camera crew visits a school and interviews Farhat, an eighth-level scholarship student, at a village school in the Pakistani part of Kashmir.  

 

  One of the mottos of the organization is "educate girls and save the world".  It is estimated by the Council on Foreign Relations that this is a key to break the cycle of poverty that afflicts this area, the overwhelming number of whose victims are women.  

For more on Greg Mortenson and the work of CAI, here is a clip from an interview from Borders Books television:  

Interesting Television: The Prisoner (1967), and "The Prisoner" --Reloaded-- (2009),Part Two of Two

Production shot from "The Prisoner" (1966 or 67) at Portmeirion.  Note the giant meteorlogical  ballon, "Rover", which served as the nasty device that "retrieved" people who tried to check out of "The Village".    

 

 

"…We're run by the Pentagon, we're run by Madison Avenue, we're run by television, and as long as we accept those things and don't revolt we'll have to go along with the stream to the eventual avalanche… As long as we go out and buy stuff, we're at their mercy. We're at the mercy of the advertiser and of course there are certain things that we need, but a lot of the stuff that is bought is not needed…

…We all live in a little Village… Your village may be different from other people's villages but we are all prisoners."--Patrick McGoohan, from a 1977 Interview 

"I don't want to raise THE PRISONER to any more than it was, just a bit of television entertainment, but if it has a deeper meaning it is the fact that we are all prisoners. You know, the thin man is a prisoner because he's thin, a fat man can't go and buy the thin man's clothes, a very famous person can't go to the pub and have a drink because everyone recognises them. The Queen can't go shopping in a department store whenever she wants to, she's a prisoner in that sense. People are prisoners of their health, their religion, their wealth, their poverty, and that's an interesting theme to explore."

 --George Markstein (1914--1987) , co-creator of "The Prisoner" , from a 1984 interview.   Markstein served as producer and story editor of the series for most of its production until he and his star, McGoohan, had a serious falling-out over creative control near the last part of the shooting schedule.  McGoohan himself wrote the last episode of the series (called, ironically "Fall Out".)

  

 Markstein had served in British Intelligence during World War II and told McGoohan twenty years later about rumors he had heard of a special camp in Scotland set up for retired undercover agents  who knew too much to simply be out in public.  Patrick McGoohan, who was looking for a way to get out of doing any more episodes of  the popular series "Secret Agent" (or "Danger Man") , jumped at the chance to take the series in a totally different direction. The actor   later claimed that the character he was playing was not "Danger Man" John Drake, although photos from his time on the show are used in the opening.  The allegorical ending to the series--where Number 6 finally gets to meet  "Number 1"--led to initial disapointment  with the show, which reportedly lost money even after the rights were sold to CBS in America.  Interest in it rebounded when it was released in the 1970's and 80's.       

After a brief 1981 ITV interview with Patrick McGoohan--who talks about  the controversy over the the ending of the series and its cult folowing--there are some highlights from the original "Prisoner" series. (see  below)    There were many interesting episodes dealing with the some thorny issues of modern consumer societies.  The application of technology and scientific  progress had, in the minds of the producers, undercut individuality. People were made more vulnerable to institutions rather than free-thinking and fully-functioning individuals. (This was a similar theme explored about the same time by Stanley Kubrick in his film adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's "2001: A Space Odyssey".) 

Patrick Mc Goohan made attempts to get a film made of the series in the 1990's, and reportedly had Mel Gibson--his co-star from "Braveheart"--interested in playing the lead in the big-screen version.   This didn't pan out, but there is a new version of "The Prisoner" as a six-part television series due out next June  with Jim Caviezel as Number 6 and Ian McKellen as No.2.  It will be shown on the American Movie Classics cable station in the USA.  

 

 

 

The clips from the series show below (editted by Fragile78 from You Tube) feature several of the actors who played Number 2, including the pentultimate adversary, played by the great Australian actor Leo McKern from the later series  "Rumpole of the Baiiley".  

 

 

 

This last clip is from my favorite episode in the series.  Entitled "The Girl Who Was Death", it shows Number Six back at his old job tracking down a mad Napoleonic character and his young flirty daughter who plan to destroy London with a Super Rocket.  It's a rare episode which contains a good deal of funny scenes and good satire of the spy game, such as this one coming up where Our Hero stops at a pub to have a pint.   

 

Interesting Television: The Prisoner (1967) and its remake (2009)--Part One

This was the opening dialouge to almost all episodes of "The Prisoner":

 "Where am I?"

"In the Village."

"What do you want?"

"Information."

"Whose side are you on?"

"That would be telling…. We want information. Information! INFORMATION!"

"You won't get it."

"By hook or by crook, we will."

"Who are you?"

"The new Number Two."

"Who is Number One?"

"You are Number Six."

"I am not a number — I am a free man!"

"The Prisoner" is a unique piece of television. It addresses issues such as personal identity and freedom, democracy, education, scientific progress, art and technology, while still remaining an entertaining drama series. Over seventeen episodes we witness a war of attrition between the faceless forces behind 'The Village' (a Kafkaesque community somewhere between Butlins and Alcatraz) and its most strong willed inmate, No. 6. who struggles ceaselessly to assert his individuality while plotting to escape from his captors."--Stuart Besick, from "The Prisoner" International Movie Database Website.   

I first saw "The Prisoner" as a CBS Summer Replacment show in  1969.  I was still a kid, but had seen my share of  American  spy dramas on telelvision ("The Man From Uncle", "Mission:Impossible") and spoofs of the James Bond craze ("Get Smart").  I had even seen some of "The Avengers" which was a hybrid of both the dramatic and the tongue-in-cheek espionage series.

But none of that prepared me for this show.    Even after I had watched several episodes  of it, I wasn't sure what to make of the whole thing.    In 1978 I got reaquainted with the series in a syndication run.  This time the series, starring Patrick McGoohan, the star of "Danger Man" (or "Secret Agent Man" in the USA) had me hooked by its enigmatic qualities.  The oppressive and eclectic athmosphere of "The Village" and its allegorical views of what constitutes freedom and individual integrity had resonance now that I knew something about George Orwell's and Franz Kafka's most popular writings.  But I still couldn't get a handle on what point on the politcal spectrum the show fell on.  And the last episode of the show "Fall Out", where "Number 6/The Prisoner" (McGoohan) finally gets to meet the "Big Brother/Number One" seems to be the most perplexing  ending to any work of drama I'd seen to that date.   

  And apparently I wasn't alone. Millions of adults had seen the series in the United Kingdom when itoriginally aired in 1967/1968 and didn't know quite what to make of it either. The American host of the station that presented the series claimed that McGoohan himself had felt the need to to leave England and for Switzerland and then America because so many people were angred by the enigmatic ending to the show.

This intrigued me.  Television dramas could be interesting of course but casual viewers usually don't get so worked up over a show that the star and co-creator has to hot- foot himself and his family out of the country to avoid people who were in an uproar over what was only a James Bond genre show, right?  Didn't make sense. It's onlly after seeing a couple episodes that you see that McGoohan and producers George Markstein and David Tomblin were subverting the whole "cold war spy" series into something that was neither stoic action-drama or smug spoofery.

(Exteriors for "The Prisoner" were shot along the coast of north Wales, at the resort of Portmierion. This was the backdrop for "The Village.)   

After the show had aired a few more times in the 1970's and 80's it took on a cult status, a status which apparently was only increased by the Internet, from which several "The Prisoner" sites can be found with a quick Google search. That cult status has not escaped the notice of movie and television executives either--a new "Prisoner" television series is currently in production in Namibia and Capetown, South Africa, to be broadcast next year on the AMC network.  Here's a link below for information on the new series.

http://www.amctv.com/originals/the-prisoner/    

The premise of the original series is deceptively simple.  A man who works for some British intelligence service marches into the office of his boss in the bowels of the Parliament Building, slams down a written resignation and then takes off in his sportscar to pack for a trip to the tropics.  But he finds himself waylaid to a place called "The Vilage", an idyllic little seaport where people are generally friendly but from which no person can leave. Every one has a number they wear on a badge on their person at all times.   

(above, McGoohan's character campaigns for the office of "Number Two" in the episode "Free For All".  In "The Village" elections are held from time to time. If he manages to win, freedom will be won and things will certainly change for the citizenry. Or will they?)     

 

Almost every week "Number 6" had to deal with a new leader of the village , an administrator known only as "Number 2", usually a man but in one episode a woman.   The new "boss" would try to get him to break down and acknowledge why he resigned from the service and/or entice him to join "The Village" as a proper good citizen.  Rather than simply eliminating him, or subjecting him to brute torture, the forces behind these various Number 2s had a mission to win him over as a potential new "boss" of the Village.  Number Six is no ordinary agent, one must surmise, but has great value.  (I later learned the basic premise of the show bears some resemblance to the philosophy of Ayn Rand's Objectivism, a philosophy of extreme selfishness I cannot say I am impressed with any more than I am with the notion of mass conformity in peace-time civilization.)        

Here is a scene from one of my favorite episodes, "Hammer And Anvil", which shows a quintessential encounter between Number 6 and the authorities. Number Two is played by the fine actor Patrick Cargill.  His character has just driven Number 73, a fragile woman prisoner, to suicide.  He now works his "charms" on our hero.  

 

In the next section of the blog, I will post a few more "Prisoner" clips and talk about why I think this is one series that is worth looking out for, even if you've never seen it.  The best aspects of the show have a unique way of being thoughtful and entertaining. 

Until then, here's a bit of a taste of the previous series McGoohan starred in,'Danger Man".  It  made him a big star on the small screen and the highest paid actor in British television.  It also reportedly bored him after awhile, but  its success in the UK and North America gave him the clout to  get something as off-the-wall as "The Prisoner" off the ground.  

 

 

Saved from the Holocaust: "Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport" (2000)

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Documentary

Director: Mark Jonathan Harris

Writer: Mark Jonathan Harris

Stars: Judi Dench (narrator) , Lorraine Allard, Lory Cahn, Hedy Epstein, Kurt Fuchel

Genre: Documentary, World Cinema

Length: 122 minutes

Cinema: 24 November 2000

Country: UK


The documentary recounts a compassionate effort by ordinary people to save Jewish children from Nazi prosecution. In late 1938, Hitler's government was still willing to allow some German-Jews to leave Germany IF they could get through all the red tape required and leave all their money and almost all belongings behind in Germany.

Of all the nations which were willing to accept Jews, only Great Britain responded with a genuine program. 10,000 Jews (but only children) were granted asylum in Britain. This documentary follows the tortured path the children took to get out of Germany--taking trains to Denmark and then ships to Britain--over a period of months until war was declared in September of 1939 and the program stopped. (The United States Congress voted down any program to follow Britain's lead due to intense lobbying by anti-Semitic groups. Only small numbers of younger Jews escaped to the USA from Britain itself, after they had been rescued from the Nazis.)

The film has a great deal of archival footage, as well as interviews with the surviving members of the kindertransport program. Due to the genocide of "The Final Solution" very, very few of these children ever saw their natural parents again.
The film interviews the surviving children, who tell about the adjustments into an alien society. Very often these children were adopted into homes and taken care of as if they were the natural children of the adopted. In other cases, they were used as domestic servants by people who wanted the status of having hired help to show off to their neighbors. And of course there were frictions at school where the young boys and girls came up against language barriers and xenophobic schoolmates and adults. But, in the main, the resettlement stories are positive. And as Nicholas Winton, one of the agents of the Kindertransport Program put it, "I wouldn't say it was a 100 percent success but all the children were alive at the end of the war."

The most heart-breaking parts of the documentary deal with the letters that were sent back and forth between these de facto orphans and their parents who were still trapped in Germany and Austria. Some children's last contact with their mothers and fathers were postcards received via the Red Cross from train stations where they were rounded up to go to Auschwitz and other death camps.


In an ironic twist, many of the young teen aged boys who left Germany in 1938-9 were actually interned by Chamberlain and later Churchill's government as "enemy aliens", some were even shipped off to Australia in prison-like conditions. Once the initial fears about all Germans subsided, the young men were allowed their freedom if they were willing to serve in the armed forces.

After the war, some of the children became British citizens for life, or went to Palestine, but others did return to Germany and the post-war reconstruction efforts. The power behind this story of course is that so many innocent people could have been saved if other nations had followed the British example.

Here is the official site for the film:

http://www2.warnerbros.com/intothearmsofstrangers/

And this is a selection from the Preface to the study guide of the film, written by the documentary producer, Deborah Oppenheimer:

In August 1939, in the days just following my mother’s eleventh birthday, my
grandparents sent their daughter on a train departing Chemnitz, Germany. My
mother was exchanging life with a loving family under the peril of Nazi control for
an unknown future with strangers, in the relative safety of Great Britain. Like the
majority of the 10,000 children saved by the Kindertransport rescue effort, she never
saw her parents again.
Throughout my life, my mother could never speak about the events that brought her
to Great Britain and then to the United States. The few times I tried to break
through her silence she would start crying, then I would begin to cry and would
ultimately retreat—out of love for my mother. She was hiding a profound grief from
her childhood, and I made a silent pact to absorb it.
In 1993, my mother passed away from cancer. As a means of dealing with my loss and no longer fearful of causing her pain,
I went in search of her story. While the Kindertransport had been the defining experience of my mother’s life and had deeply
affected our family, I had never heard it mentioned outside our home, studied it in school, talked about it with friends, or, to
my knowledge, met another Kindertransport survivor. I always had an emotional awareness of the Kindertransport, but
I never knew its history. I decided to learn everything I could in the hopes of bringing it to the widest audience possible.
I wanted people to know what had happened, and used the skills I had developed as a longtime producer (“The Drew Carey Show”)
at Warner Bros. to make my documentary feature debut.
I contacted Mark Jonathan Harris, whose work I had admired in the Academy Award®-winning film The Long Way Home.
Recognizing that we couldn’t possibly present the complete range of experience of a rescue operation which saved so many
lives, we looked for witnesses whose stories would represent what we considered the most characteristic aspects of the
Kindertransport. We read historical accounts, letters, diaries, transcripts, and memoirs. We viewed testimonies and spoke to
Kindertransport survivors around the world whom we found through Holocaust institutions, word of mouth, and books.
Inspired by the hundreds of stories we read and heard, we then retraced the path of the Kindertransport through Germany,
the Netherlands, and England, and attended the 60th Anniversary Reunion of Kindertransport survivors in London.

The Infernal Machine: From the Assassination of Alexander II to Al-Queda

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Nonfiction
Author:	Matthew Carr

It was Sweden's Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, who unintentionally privatized weapons of terror. He made it possible for "every day" folks with an agenda to kill statesmen and bystanders wihtout having to lug around a lot of gunpowder. It was dynamite that created small "infernal machines" that brought fear (or to some desperate people, hope) to both the King and the President, as well as the lowly who might serve as collateral damage in some conflagration. The horor of the bomber/terorrist captured the imagination of authors like Fyodor Dostoyevsky in "The Demons" and Joseph Conrad in "The Secret Agent".

Matthew Carr takes a broad and very through look at the roots of modern terrorism, from its rise through the "People's Will" cells that dynamited Czar Alexander II in 1881 through pre-1914 Europe when bombers and assassins using knives and pistol terrorized heads of state all of Europe under the general heading of "anarchists". These cells of extremists did in indeed kill several royal personages and prime minister and Presidents, some of whom were simply targeted because they were royalty and not that they wielded any real power. Some who called themselves anarchists were simply deranged, like Leon Frank Czolgosz, who shot and killed President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York in 1901. Gzolgosz had briefly met anarchist leader Emma Goldman, but didn't belong to hers or any organized group.
It was, of course, after the shooting of Austria-Hungary's Archduke Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajavo, Bosnia, in July, 1914, that the head honchos of Mighty Europe's capitals took over and gave the assassins' a run for their money in bloodletting. The result was "the war to end all wars", and millions of dead soldiers and civilians who thought in the Summer of 1914 that the war would be a cakewalk against their old nationalist foes.

Much of the book goes back and forth--chapter by chapter--between "underdog" terrorist groups like the bloody deeds of the IRA and the bloody deeds of the counter-terrorist "over lords" like the British "Black and Tan" flying units of terror competing to win hearts and minds through putting more and more of each other's foes into the ground. The IRA/Black and Tan strugle is repeated over and over again for the next 90 years. The geography changes, the people involved and their languages change, the weapons get more ominous, but on and on the push-and-pull of fear and counter-terror goes forward.
Carr examines terrorism and the aims of "asymetrical warfare" in a dispassionate style that allows many opinions to come through his chapters. He documents the 1950's with the "Mau Mau uprising", in three dozen total dead white settlers were matched with many thousand black African deaths. The British Colonial government in Kenya turned to concentration camp, or a "pipeline" system, to house hundreds of thousands of Kikuyu who were made to swear alligence to the colonial government to be free. The liberal use of hanging also helped keep order in the brush. The French, not to be outdone, had similar terror campaigns of torture, confinement and bombing to quell the anti-colonial violence in Algeria.
Later on, the ugly side of the USA's "Alliance for Progress" in Latin America is examined as American CIA, FBI and military special forces institute programs of training right-wing paramilitaries from El Salvador to Uruguay to keep "friendly" dictatorships in charge in Latin America and counteract the "many Vietnams" approach of revolutionary war taken up by Che Guervara and other pro-Communist insurgents.

Carr writes of our own time that "the present eruption of Islamist violence is perhaps a symptom of an imbalance of power and the consequence of decades of manipulation, deceit and hypocrisy in Western foreign policy towards the Arab world." It's pretty clear no matter what the future holds that the ugly process of terror and state sponsored counter-terror will continue. Carr does point out the dangers of free societies using intrusive and draconian tactics to stop terrorism. And he reminds that much of the brutal deaths in this world are not the result of terrorism but of "good" old-fashioned war in places like the Congo where 3 million people died in a past few years recently, as opposed to the few thousand killed by terrorists in developed countries.