How we crowd-sourced transcripts of the entire Manning court martial

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By Rainey Reitman, Freedom of the Press Foundation. October 15, 2013. Originally published at pressfreedomfoundation.org.
On May 9, 2013, we made a bold claim on this website. We promised to crowd-fund enough money to hire independent court reporters to provide transcripts of the entire Manning court martial.
We knew that it was vital that the public have a virtual seat in Chelsea Manning’s trial1. A public record of the court proceedings could fuel better, more accurate, and more frequent news coverage of the trial and could hold the government to account for its actions during the court martial. The government had forbidden tape recorders or cameras from entering the courtroom, so the only way to get an accurate accounting of the proceedings was sending in someone to take notes by hand.
Paying professional court reporters to transcribe the proceedings seemed like the perfect solution – if it was possible.
We knew it would be hard, but had no idea how hard. At every turn, we faced new obstacles to getting transcripts of the trial. So, finally, here’s the story of what we faced – and all the people who helped us surmount those obstacles.
Where do you even find a court reporter?
The very first problem we faced was finding a court reporter that would work with us. We knew we needed a reputable court reporter/stenographer that could do real-time transcripts and would be familiar with military jargon. But many court reporters rely on military court systems for their livelihood and didn’t want to jeopardize those relationships. In addition, we were asking for an incredibly quick turnaround time in conditions that didn’t allow the court reporters a recorded backup, or the ability to ask for any court participants to slow down or repeat their statements, like most court reporters can. Given the long court hours, this puts a toll on any court reporter, no matter how good.

Tony Rolland, who connected us with Gore Brothers

We were incredibly thankful when court reporter Tony Rolland (pictured right) approached us and recommended Gore Brothers. They are a professional court reporting firm that serves the larger DC/Baltimore metropolitan area. While other court reporters turned down our business, Gore Brothers understood how important it was to have accurate, timely records available to the public for one of the most important trials in our lifetime. Even though it was a politically contentious issue, Gore Brothers took us on and agreed to send in court reporters.
Working with Gore, we realized that one court reporter wasn’t going to be nearly enough. Instead, Gore brought together a team of 6 court reporters so that there would be continual coverage throughout the many weeks of the trial.
We know that journalists need transcripts quickly in order to write stories about the trial, and so we prioritized speed in getting these transcripts made. That meant two court reporters every day: one covering the morning and one covering the afternoon. By having court reporters only covering half days, we could ensure that we got transcripts edited and live on the website faster – morning sessions would go live at 7 PM in the evening, afternoon sessions would be published early the following morning.
Wait, it costs how much?
The second barrier was funding. We knew that professional court reporters were expensive, but we underestimated how expensive. We originally believed we needed to raise $40,000-$50,000 to cover the entire trial. But it quickly became apparent that we needed to raise twice that much.
What made this possible? Amazingly, it was individual donors. Over one thousand six hundred people chipped in $10, $20, and $50 because they believed that the Manning trial should be public for the whole world. The average donation was under $100.
We made the platform, but ultimately it was the generosity and faith of individuals making small contributions that made the transcripts possible.
Taking on the U.S. government
Money and a team of top-notch court reporters weren’t the only thing we needed to cover the Manning court martial. We also had to get into the courtroom, and the government made it very difficult for us and many other media organizations to access the trial.
We knew there were strict regulations preventing any electronic equipment in the courtroom, but the media center allowed journalists to bring in laptops as long as they didn’t record or connect to the Internet during the proceedings.
We knew we were far more likely to be allowed to bring stenography equipment into the media center than into the courtroom, so we teamed up with the Verge, the Guardian, and Forbes. Each organization requested a press pass for their reporter and a second press pass for a court reporter to accompany their reporter.
Unfortuantely, each was issued only one press pass, meaning there wasn’t an extra space for our court reporter.
And we weren’t the only ones shut out. Of the 350 media applications the government received, only 70 were granted.
We weren’t ready to give up. With the help of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, we organized a coalition of twenty major media organizations – including the Los Angeles Times, NPR, Fox News, and the New Yorker – and sent a letter to the Army requesting two additional press passes.
We also tried to find someone to lend us a press pass. We reached out to individual media organizations and also tweeted in hopes that someone would lend us one, with no luck.
I flew out to Fort Meade the weekend before the court martial was scheduled to begin and began approaching journalists who had been granted press passes. Unsurprisingly, almost all of them refused to lend Freedom of the Press Foundation a pass. Many wanted to help, but they didn’t want to give up their press passes for the first day of a historic trial.
Finally, the night before the trial began, we managed to get one press pass for the first day. Nathan Fuller, a blogger for the Private Manning Support Network2, temporarily loaned us his pass. We are deeply indebted to Nathan for giving up his seat in the media center that day. It’s the only reason we managed to get a transcript of the first day.
After the first few days, the crowd in the media center thinned. We were able to use donated press passes from ARD German Radio, the Verge and Forbes.
During the trial
When court reporters work, they use a computerized stenotype machine to make a quick transcript. They sit close to the judge so that they can hear everything, and have the ability to interrupt proceedings or ask for clarifications in order to get an accurate transcription. Above all, court reporters make a recording of everything, and double-check their transcripts against the audio recording.
Our court reporters were denied all of these things. They were in a room with the rest of the media, watching a live video feed of the court proceedings. The audio was muffled and difficult to understand at times, and there was no way to interrupt proceedings when things were hard to understand.
Worst of all, they were forbidden recording devices – so there was no way to double-check the accuracy of their notes. Instead, our court reporters simply had to transcribe as quickly as possible, often without breaks for long stretches of time, and try to get every word down accurately.
We also had trouble switching out court reporters midday. The strict rules meant that everyone who wanted in the media center had to be on base by 8 AM. This meant that both of our court reporters had to be on base at 8 AM, even though one didn’t start working until after lunch. It was not until the defense brought this issue to the judge was our court reporter allowed to show up half way through the day.

Alexa O’Brien outside the media center at Ft. Meade. Photo by Xeni Jardin.

On more than one occasion, we ran into technical difficulties. Once we even lost a large section of the transcription. Journalist Alexa O’Brien (pictured left) –whose own meticulous hand-typed transcripts of the trial have been an invaluable service to the public–generously offered to lend us her transcript from that day, for which we are deeply grateful. Her attention to detail is one of the many reasons we awarded Alexa a grant before the trial began.

After the trial
In all, we raised over $100,000 – all from individual contributions.
After fees taken out by credit card processors and our fiscal sponsor, that was about $5,000 more than the total needed to pay for the court reporters.
When we originally announced this campaign, we promised to donate any extra funds to the Manning Support Network. The Support Network has decided to apply half of that money to Chelsea Manning’s legal fees during her appeal and has generously offered to donate the other half back to the Freedom of the Press Foundation so we can continue our work.
You’ve probably noticed that there were a lot of people who went out on a limb to help us – folks like Tony Rolland, Gore Brothers, Nathan Fuller, Alexa O’Brien, Forbes, the Verge, the Guardian, ARD German Radio, the twenty media organizations that signed onto a coalition letter in support of our endeavor, and the hundreds upon hundreds of people who donated to ensure we could cover the costs of the court reporters. It is their generosity and their courage that was responsible for the Manning transcripts being freely available to the public today.

• 1. Shortly after the trial concluded, Chelsea Manning publicly acknowledge that she identifies as a woman and prefers the name “Chelsea” to “Bradley.” We respect this decision and will use it going forward when possible. However, in the transcripts her name is still written as “Bradley” for historical accuracy.
• 2. Disclosure: I am a steering committee member of the Private Manning Support Network, and also a proud co-founder.

Stop watching us: Oct 26, Washington DC rally supporting whistleblowers

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STOP WATCHING US: RALLY AGAINST

MASS SPYING

SAT. OCT. 26th – WASHINGTON DC

At the StopWatching.Us rally on October 26, we’ll remind our elected officials that they work for us, not the NSA. We are demanding a full Congressional investigation of America’s surveillance programs, reform to federal surveillance law, and accountability from public officials responsible for hiding this surveillance from lawmakers and the public. And we will personally deliver the half million petition signatures to Congress.
This will be the biggest rally for privacy the U.S. has ever seen. Will you be there?

Click here to RSVP.

Pvt. Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden: two of the most important whistleblowers of our time.

Location:

Gather at Columbus Circle in front of Union Station, then march to the Capitol Reflecting Pool

Date and time:

12pm Eastern,
Saturday October 26th

StopWatching.us is a coalition of more than 100 public advocacy organizations and companies from across the political spectrum, including the Private Manning Support Network. We came together in June 2013 to demand the U.S. Congress investigate the full extent of the NSA’s spying programs.

STAND UP AND SUPPORT OUR WHISTLEBLOWERS

***Songs To While The Time By- The Roots Is The Toots- The Music That Got Them Through World War II-Peggy Lee Backed By The Benny Goodman Band- Duke Ellington's I Got It Bad

 

 

Over the past several years I have been running an occasional series in this space of songs, mainly political protest songs, you know The Internationale, Union Maid, Which Side Are You On, Viva La Quince Brigada, Universal Soldier, and such entitled Songs To While The Class Struggle By. This series which could include some protest songs as well is centered on roots music as it has come down the ages and formed the core of the American songbook. You will find the odd, the eccentric, the forebears of later musical trends, and the just plain amusing here. Listen up-Peter Paul Markin       

Additional Markin comment for this series:

Whether we liked it or not, whether we even knew of it or not, this is the music that went wafting through the house of many of those of us who constitute the Generation of “68. Those of us who came of age, personal, political and social age in the age of Jack Kennedy’s Camelot and who slogged through that decade whether it be in civil rights/black liberation struggle, the anti-Vietnam War struggle or the struggle to find one’s own identity in the counter-culture before the hammer came down.

This is emphatically the music of the generation of ’68 parents’ generation, the generation that survived the dust bowl hard times of the 1930s Great Depression. Survived by taking the nearest freight, Southern Pacific, Union Pacific, B&O, Illinois Central, Penn Central, Empire State, Boston and Maine, or one of a million trunk lines to go out and search for, well, search something that was not cold-water flat, rooming house, tumbled down shack, and get out on the open road and search for the great promised American night that had been tattered by world events, and greed. Survived the Hoovervilles, the soup kitchens, the scroungings of the trash piles of the urban glut, the rural fallow fields, and that gnarring hungry that cried out in the night-want, want that is all.  Survived the look, the look of those who in their fortified towers tittered that not everybody was built to survive to be the fittest. Survived too to slog through the time of the gun in World War II, either carrying one on the shoulder in Europe or the Pacific or waiting at home hoping to high heaven that some gun had not carried off sweetheart Johnnie or Jimmy.          

It wafted through the large console radio centered in the living room of my house via local station WDJA in North Adamsville as my mother used it as background on her appointed household rounds. It drove me crazy then as mush stuff at a time when I was craving the big break-out rock and roll sounds I kept hearing every time I went and played the jukebox at Doc’s Drugstore over on Walker Street down near the beach. Funny thing though while I am still a child of rock and roll (blues too) this so-called mushy stuff sounds pretty good to these ears now long after my parents and those who performed this music have passed on. Go figure. 

*******

I Got It Bad 

 

The poets say that all who love are blind
But I'm in love and I know what time it is
The good book says, "Go seek and ye shall find"
Well, I have sought and my, what a climb it is!

My life is just like the weather
It changes with the hours
When he's near I'm fair and warmer
When he's gone I'm cloudy with showers

An emotion like the ocean
It's either sink or swim
When a woman loves a man
Like I love him

Never treats me sweet and gentle, the way he should
I got it bad and that ain't good
My poor heart is sentimental, not made of wood
I got it bad and that ain't good

But when the weekend's over and Monday rolls around
I end up like I started out just cryin' my lil' heart out
He don't love me like I love him
No, nobody could, I got it bad and that ain't good

So bad, so bad

I got on it so bad, so bad though folks with good intentions
Tell me to save my tears
I'm glad, I'm mad about you, I can't live without you
Lord above me make him love me the way he should

Like a lonely weeping willow lost in the wood
The things I tell my pillow
No woman should
I got it bad, bad so bad and that ain't good

 

From The Marxist Archives-In Honor Of The Anniversary Of The John Brown-Led Raid On Harpers Ferry-

Inequality and the Capitalist Economy

 

STRIKE THE BLOW-THE LEGEND OF CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN

Reclaiming John Brown for the Left

BOOK REVIEW

JOHN BROWN, ABOLITIONIST, DAVID S. REYNOLDS, ALFRED A. KNOPF, NEW YORK, 2005
From fairly early in my youth I knew the name John Brown and was swept up by the romance surrounding his exploits at Harpers Ferry. For example, I knew that the great anthem of the Civil War -The Battle Hymn of the Republic- had a prior existence as a tribute to John Brown and that Union soldiers marched to that song as they headed south. I was then, however, neither familiar with the import of his exploits for the black liberation struggle nor knew much about the specifics of the politics of the various tendencies in the struggle against slavery. I certainly knew nothing then of Brown’s (and his sons) prior military exploits in the Kansas ‘proxy’ wars against the expansion of slavery. Later study filled in some of those gaps and has only strengthened my strong bond with his memory. Know this, as I reach the age at which John Brown was executed,I still retain my youthful admiration for him. In the context of the turmoil of the times he was the most courageous and audacious revolutionary in the struggle for the abolition of slavery in America. Almost 150 years after his death this writer is proud to stand in the tradition of John Brown.

That said, it is with a great deal of pleasure that I can recommend Mr. Reynolds’s book detailing the life, times and exploits of John Brown, warts and all. Published in 2005, this is an important source (including helpful end notes) for updating various controversies surrounding the John Brown saga. While I may disagree with some of Mr. Reynolds’s conclusions concerning the impact of John Brown’s exploits on later black liberation struggles and to a lesser extent his position on Brown’s impact on his contemporaries, particularly the Transcendentalists, nevertheless on the key point of the central place of John Brown in American revolutionary history there is no dispute. Furthermore, Mr. Reynolds has taken pains to provide substantial detail about the ups and downs of John Brown’s posthumous reputation.

Most importantly, he defends the memory of John Brown against all-comers-that is partisan history on behalf of the ‘losers’ of history at its best. He has reclaimed John Brown to his proper position as an icon for the left against the erroneous and outrageous efforts of modern day religious and secular terrorists to lay any claim to his memory or his work. Below I make a few comments on some of controversies surrounding John Brown developed in Mr. Reynolds’s study.

If one understands the ongoing nature, from his early youth, of John Brown’s commitment to the active struggle against slavery, the scourge of the American Republic in the first half of the 19th century, one can only conclude that he was indeed a man on a mission. As Mr. Reynolds’s points out Brown took every opportunity to fight against slavery including early service as an agent of the Underground Railroad spiriting escaped slaves northward, participation as an extreme radical in all the key anti-slavery propaganda battles of the time as well as challenging other anti-slavery elements to be more militant and in the 1850’s, arms in hand, fighting in the ‘proxy’ wars in Kansas and, of course, the culmination of his life- the raid on Harpers Ferry. Those exploits alone render absurd a very convenient myth by those who supported slavery or turned a blind eye to it and their latter-day apologists for his so-called ‘madness’. This is a political man and to these eyes a very worthy one.

For those who like their political heroes ‘pure’, frankly, it is better to look elsewhere than the life of John Brown. His personal and family life as a failed rural capitalist would hardly lead one to think that this man was to become a key historical figure in any struggle, much less the great struggle against slavery. Some of his actions in Kansas (concerning the murder of some pro-slavery elements under his direction) also cloud his image. However, when the deal went down in the late 1850’s and it was apparent for all to see that there was no other way to end slavery than a fight to the death-John Brown rose to the occasion. And did not cry about it. And did not expect others to cry about it. Call him a ‘monomaniac’ if you like but even a slight acquaintance with great historical figures shows they all have this ‘disease’- that is why they make the history books. No, the ‘madness’ argument will not do.

Whether or not John Brown knew that his military strategy for the Harper’s Ferry raid would, in the short term, be defeated is a matter of dispute. Reams of paper have been spent proving the military foolhardiness of his scheme at Harper’s Ferry. Brown’s plan, however, was essentially a combination of slave revolt modeled after the maroon experiences in Haiti, Nat Turner’s earlier Virginia slave rebellion and rural guerrilla warfare of the ‘third world’ type that we have become more familiar with since that time. 150 years later this strategy does not look so foolhardy in an America of the 1850’s that had no real standing army, fairly weak lines of communications, virtually uninhabited mountains to flee to and the North at their backs.

The execution of the plan is another matter. Brown seemingly made about every mistake in the book in that regard. However, this is missing the essential political point that militant action not continuing parliamentary maneuvering advocated by other abolitionists had become necessary. A few more fighting abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, and better propaganda work among freedman with connections to the plantations would not have hurt the chances for success at Harpers Ferry.

What is not in dispute is that Brown considered himself a true Calvinist avenging angel in the struggle against slavery and more importantly acted on that belief. In short, he was committed to bring justice to the black masses. This is why his exploits and memory stay alive after over 150 years. It is possible that if Brown did not have this, by 19th century standards as well as our own, old-fashioned Calvinist determination that he would not have been capable of militant action. Certainly other anti-slavery elements never came close to his militancy, including the key Transcendentalist movement led by Emerson and Thoreau and the Concord ‘crowd’ who supported him and kept his memory alive in hard times.

In their eyes he had the heroic manner of the Old Testament prophet. Now this animating spirit is not one that animates modern revolutionaries and so it is hard to understand the depths of his religious convictions on his actions but they were understood, if not fully appreciated, by others in those days. It is better today to look at Brown more politically through his hero (and mine, as well) Oliver Cromwell-a combination of Calvinist avenger and militant warrior. Yes, I can get behind that picture of him.

By all accounts Brown and his small integrated band of brothers fought bravely and coolly against great odds. Ten of Brown's men were killed including two of his sons. Five were captured, tried and executed, including Brown. These results are almost inevitable when one takes up a revolutionary struggle against the old order and one is not victorious. One need only think of, for example, the fate of the defenders of the Paris Commune in 1871. One can fault Brown on this or that tactical maneuver. Nevertheless he and the others bore themselves bravely in defeat. As we are all too painfully familiar there are defeats of the oppressed that lead nowhere. One thinks of the defeat of the German Revolution in the 1920’s. There other defeats that galvanize others into action. This is how Brown’s actions should be measured by history.

Militarily defeated at Harpers Ferry, Brown's political mission to destroy slavery by force of arms nevertheless continued to galvanize important elements in the North at the expense of the pacifistic non-resistant Garrisonian political program for struggle against slavery. Many writers on Brown who reduce his actions to that of a ‘madman’ still cannot believe that his road proved more appropriate to end slavery than either non-resistance or gradualism. That alone makes short shrift of such theories. Historians and others have also misinterpreted later events such as the Bolshevik strategy which led to Russian Revolution in October 1917. More recently, we saw this same incomprehension concerning the victory of the Vietnamese against overwhelming American military superiority. Needless to say, all these events continue to be revised by some historians to take the sting out of there proper political implications.

From a modern prospective Brown’s strategy for black liberation, even if the abolitionist goal he aspired to was immediately successful, reached the outer limits within the confines of capitalism. Brown’s actions were meant to make black people free. Beyond that goal he had no program except the Chatham Charter which seems to have replicated the American constitution but with racial and gender equality as a cornerstone. Unfortunately the Civil War did not provide fundamental economic and political freedom. That is still our fight. Moreover, the Civil War, the defeat of Radical Reconstruction, the reign of ‘Jim Crow’ and the subsequent waves of black migration to the cities changed the character of black oppression in the U.S. from Brown’s time. Black people are now a part of "free labor," and the key to their liberation is in the integrated fight of labor against the current one-sided class war and establishing a government of workers and their allies. Nevertheless, we can stand proudly in the revolutionary tradition of John Brown (and of his friend Frederick Douglass). We need to complete the unfinished democratic tasks of the Civil War, not by emulating Brown’s exemplary actions but to moving the multi-racial American working class to power. Finish the Civil War.
**************

	Workers Vanguard No. 984	5 August 2011

LENIN

Inequality and the Capitalist Economy

TROTSKY

(Quote of the Week)

A key premise of social-democratic reformism is that wealth inequality under capitalism is fundamentally a matter of unequal distribution of goods, to be remedied by “tax the rich” schemes and other such measures. As Karl Marx pointed out, the distribution of wealth is determined by the capitalist mode of production, in which the bourgeoisie owns the factories, land, etc., while the working class sells its labor power in order to survive. To eliminate scarcity requires a series of proletarian revolutions internationally, through which the working class will collectivize the means of production and create and develop a global planned economy.

Any distribution whatever of the means of consumption is only a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves. The latter distribution, however, is a feature of the mode of production itself. The capitalist mode of production, for example, rests on the fact that the material conditions of production are in the hands of non-workers in the form of capital and land ownership, while the masses are only owners of the personal condition of production, of labour power. If the elements of production are so distributed, then the present-day distribution of the means of consumption results automatically. If the material conditions of production are the collective property of the workers themselves, then there likewise results a distribution of the means of consumption different from the present one. The vulgar socialists (and from them in turn a section of the Democrats) have taken over from the bourgeois economists the consideration and treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production and hence the presentation of socialism as turning principally on distribution. After the real relation has long been made clear, why retrogress again?

—Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875)

 

***Out In The Be-bop 1930s Crime Noir Night- Dashiell Hammett’s Ur-“Maltese Falcon”-A Film Review

DVD Review

The Maltese Falcon, starring Bebe Daniels, Richard Cortez, Warner Brothers, 1931
Well it is possible for even a devoted actor Humphrey Bogart and crime novelist Dashiell Hammett aficionado to learn something new. For many years I had assumed that the 1941 hard-nosed Bogie as Sam Spade version of The Maltese Falcon was the original screen version of Hammett’s crime noir classic. Then an acquaintance, the old time radical journalist Josh Breslin whose by-line for half the progressive press and alternate vision journals in this country for the past forty years that some readers may know, informed me that an older version (or rather versions existed). That discovery however had to go unchecked until the age of the Internet. Now I have found the film via a very helpful lead from Wikipedia. Kudos.

Of course after reading Hammett’s crime novel countless times (if for no other reason than that great dialogue even after the plot line wore thin) and viewing the 1941 Bogie version almost as many times certain prejudices were bound to show up. The key is the role of Sam Spade as the world weary scrappy avenger of his partner’s murder while “in the line of duty”. If for no other reason than for professional pride. And the well-known plot line, basically murder and mayhem by parties known and unknown searching for a bid, “the stuff of dreams,” is what let’s Sam save the day, his professional pride, and his rough-hewn sense of justice.

The 1931 Spade (played by handsome Richard Cortez) is less concerned with those gritty issues, more brazenly cynical, and much more of a womanizer than Bogie’s Spade (although he is not immune, temporality at least, to femme fatale charms). That as I found out was a result of the change in what was deemed acceptable to the general audience (the so-called Production Code). In the 1931 version it is clear, very clear, why Spade is ready to chase after windmills for the femme fatale (played Bebe Daniels). Sexual tension and adventure were rife. In the 1941 version I was always wondering what there was about Mary Astor (after all she didn’t seem Bogie’s type on the face of it) that made him all that intrepid. It was never spelled out. Now I know. No question though, despite that new information, that Bogie’s Spade is the cinematic standard and Hammett would agree.

***Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- When Butterfly Swirl Swirled

A YouTube film clip of the Kinks performing their classic rock number, You Really Got Me.

CD Review

Classic Rock: 1964, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1987
Scene brought to mind by the cover art that graces this CD. Said cover art showing in the background a motley foursome from some post- British invasion invasion group all with de rigueur Nehru jackets and getting little long in the back and on the sides better get to the barber boys reminds dear old moms. But that is some much fluff. Because in the foreground is the object our, ah, inspection, one female, dangling earring bejeweled, but more importantly day-glo, or if not day-glo then some non-toxic paint celebration, painted flower. No tattoo, not permanent not in those days, although more than few young women has an off the back of the shoulder flower and some even had, well that is a story for another time. A time when the snooping grandchildren are safely out of sight.

The whole effect, as if in a flashback, no not that kind, immediately brought to my memory’s eye one Kathleen Callahan, a. k. a. Butterfly Swirl, Carlsbad (California, that’s important) High School Class of 1968 and Josh Breslin’s old flame from the summer of love, 1967 version, circa San Francisco in the merry prankster, yellow brick road night. Of course, as always in the interest of full disclosure, Ms. Swirl was my girl. Very much my girl, until old Josh, Olde Saco High School Class of 1967 (that’s up in Maine, although that is not important to the story, or just a little) showed up in a Russian Hill park one day.

[That, by the way, is Joshua Lawrence Breslin, the radical journalist whose by-line has appeared in half the unread back hall recycle bin radical newspapers and public good alternative vision journals in the country over the past forty years. And here is the beauty of it. Since he is legally a “public figure” (I looked it up before starting), although he is right now holed in some podunk Maine log cabin holding off the winter chills in solitude, he had better not even think of the word “defamation.” I know where the bodies are buried and while I am not usually a “snitch” I do have a long, very long memory.]

This was a day when we, our whole merry prankster crew, Butterfly Swirl included, were taking in the view (read: smoking dope, fine stuff I can still smell now from Panama I think, and actually inhaling don’t let anyone, including amnesiac Josh, tell you otherwise. Yes, I said that with the full knowledge that the statute of limitations has run out on that. I checked that up too just to make sure). And that one fine day was, well, when “stole” her from me. That too is not important to the story, except maybe to explain, a little, the kind of magnetic gal Kathleen was. What is important is how she came to be, not even out of high school yet, Butterfly Swirl.

No question in 1957 or 1977 Kathleen Callahan, brown hair, bright smile, good figure, great legs, and an irksomely sunny disposition would have been just Kathleen Callahan, maybe the head cheerleader at some suburban school, some seaside suburban school like Carlsbad just norte of San Diego. Or, more realistically given that locale, some dippy surfer joe girl watching while they, some impossibly blond surfer joes, were hanging five or ten or whatever they did to those LaJolla, Malibu, Carlsbad waves that weren’t harming anybody as they slipped tepidly to shore. And, as she later confessed to Josh, she actually had been a surfer joe girl, although the guy’s name was Spin Curley, nice right.

Then the 1964 British invasion came, and she, all of thirteen, although fully formed in lots of ways as she also told Josh was swept away, swept away from the silly little surfer girl life, small seaside everybody adobe-housed Spanish fandango and the inevitably inevitable Spin. She told Josh it was really the Kinks that got her off-center. Not the Beatles or Rolling Stones as you might think. She said she was mad for their You Really Got Me, it kind of turned her on, turned her on a lot. A lot more than Spin could deal with what with his having to hang five or ten out in mother nature wave land. So naturally she headed to Los Angeles to check things out for a few days. Her and another girl from school a year ahead of her but about one hundred years ahead in everything else, whose story can be summed up in one word-bonkers. Heavy petal to the metal drug bonkers.

But she, that girl, get this, already had a moniker, Serendipity Swan, and knew some real cool people that she had met down at LaJolla where they were taking care of some rich guy’s estate (they are all estates in that zip code, then known as postal zones, look it up in Wikipedia, alright). This rich guy got rich, got very rich by “inventing” acid (LSD), or something like that. Or knew guys who invented it, or something like that. Old Serendipity wasn’t much on facts, straight or crooked. But in any case, the guys taking care of the estate, Captain Crunch and his confederates were always high, were always on the move with their merry prankster yellow brick road bus and were always welcoming to lost lambs, and ex-surfer girls.

That was how, a couple of years, before Kathleen, who had not then metamorphosized into Butterfly Swirl, kind of at wit’s end, eventually came up further north. And that is how I met her, when she got “on the bus” around Big Sur, I think, somewhere north of Xanadu. And became the Swirl (my pet name for her, for obvious reasons, obvious between us and like I said before relatable when the grandkids are not around). Complete with some tempera design on her face most of the time. Nothing elaborate but sometimes in a certain light she looked like something out of Botticelli. Here’s the funny part though, as things got weird on the bus, or too weird for her and her embedded suburban girl manner (when she wasn’t high, high she was like a Buddha or Siva or whatever those divines are called) she hankered (my word) for home, and for her Spin and his hanging five or ten, or whatever he did to those waves. Like I said in 1957 or 1977 she wouldn’t have even been “on the bus.” But just for that 1967 minute, driven by those wicked Brits she broke free. Josh, after his theft of her from me and after she slipped away one night, looked for her later but never caught up to her again.

***The Girl With The Bette Davis Eyes- Somerset Maugham’s “The Letter”-A Film Review

DVD Review

The Letter, starring Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, directed by William Wyler, based on a play by Somerset Maugham, Warner Brothers, 1940
Not every black and white film is a noir and not every crime noir has a femme fatale although in both cases many are. Nor are all films based on the work of world literature figures like Somerset Maugham (although his reputation has been eclipsed somewhat since his 1920s-1930s heyday when he produced classics like The Razor’s Edge and Of Human Bondage). But the film under review, The Letter, is all of them, kind of. Sure the black and white crime noir is present although with a more than usual amount of melodramatic moments, and as noted so is the world literature authorship.

The real question is the femme fatale aspect. Now Bette Davis was an extremely fine actress during her 1940s and 1950s heyday (and earlier as well in such beauties as The Petrified Forest) but she never struck me as a femme fatale like Lana Turner, Lauren Bacall and Rita Hayworth. You know leaving the guys gasping for breath, and asking for more. No question in this role as the put-upon and isolated wife of a owner of a rubber plantation in pre-war (pre-World War II war to be precise) in colonial British Malaysia scorned by a wayward lover she matches any femme fatale with a quick, too quick, trigger finger when things don’t go her way. She certainly could use her wiles, feminine or otherwise, to get out from under the law, British colonial style. And she was just psycho enough to stand one’s hair on edge. But a lot of her actions (and frankly Davis’ performance) are just too mawkish to root for.

Maybe a little sketch of the plot will illustrate the point. As the film opens Ms. Davis is firing away with that old root-a-toot-toot like crazy at that scornful lover (Hammond by name) mentioned above. No question she is a classic murder one case, and let’s just wrap it up and ship her off to some English prison. Right. But she has a story; a fantastic story on its face about a known intruder making sexual advances to her while her husband is away. Moreover this is the 1930s colonial outback of the Empire and Bette is the proper wife of a stand-up rubber plantation owner (played by Herbert Marshall).

Needless to say, outback or not, murder is murder and the wheels of justice must grind along. A mere formality if her story holds up, a quick trial and she will be free. Except a certain letter, and hence the title of the piece, shows up in mid-plot from her to the intruder. Seems they were lovers, that she had been scorned, and that moreover he had picked up an inconvenient wife, a Eurasian wife to boot. Said letter was in possession of the wife who had her own ax to grind after Bette put six in her husband. A deal between Bette’s compromised lawyer and the wife suppressed this piece of key evidence that would convict Bette.

Bette thereafter was acquitted. Legally acquitted. But you know how those Eurasian women are. That was not to be the end of it. Naturally between a woman scorned and a woman bereft of her companion-lover something has to give. And instead of getting the hell out of town on the first boat, canoe or raft like any real femme fatale our Bette just steps into her fatal fate. See what I mean.

***Films To While Away The Class Struggle By- American Civil War General And President  U.S. Grant- A PBS Documentary

This year marks the 152nd anniversary of the commencement of the American Civil War-and the beginning of the end of chattel slavery in the United States.

DVD Review

U.S. Grant: American Experience , PBS Productions, New York, 2003

Recently in celebrating , rightly, the military exploits of General William Tecumseh Sherman and his “bummers’ who wreaked havoc all through the Confederacy in the waning days of the American Civil War I, perhaps, slighted the organizational and strategic battle plans of his superior, the commanding general of all the Union armies, General U.S. Grant. I attempt to make amends here as we mark the 152nd anniversary of the commencement of that war.

This three hour plus PBS “American Experience” documentary tells the average viewer probably much more than they would ever want to know about the career, with all its successes and failures, of one Ulysses S. Grant. As always in a PBS production there are the “talking heads”, mainly historians here, who try to flesh the meaning of Grant’s career, the fistful of attributes that led him to successful military achievements and also helped shed light on his less than stellar presidency. And as always there is plenty of still photography, much of it not previously familiar to this reviewer, and re-enactments of the major events in Grant’s life.

There are few surprises here, although to my surprise a number of commentators noted that Grant, not Lincoln was the most popular American figure of the 19th century. As the recent bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth demonstrated that is clearly not verdict of history, at least for later centuries. That said, there is a compelling argument to make, and that is made by some of the commentators here, that Grant was the prototype for the successful modern warfare commanding general once the increase in industrial production provided the massive resources necessary to wage such war and create widespread devastation. I would only add that only in the context of the sacred Union cause and its adjunct, the abolition of slavery does his rise make sense.

The documentary painstakingly takes us through Grant’s rough and tumble childhood; his early not very glamorous military career, including service in the Mexican War a touchstone for all later military leadership on both sides of the Civil war; his various business failures prior to the war; his slow emergence as the decisive military leader and strategist in the Western campaign culminating in the massive Union victory at Vicksburg; his subsequent elevation by an admiring Lincoln to commander of all the Union armies, including the decisive and costly final marches, like Cold Harbor, that haunted him and later historians and that marred his overall achievement particularly when the Southern school of Civil War historical interpretation was in its ascendancy; his post-Civil War actions as a military commander which tried to recreate a single nation; his two- term presidency, including the various financial scandals that are forever attached to his terms of office; his earnest, and unsuccessful, attempts to integrate the newly liberated freedman into the Southern society, including his forthright actions against the Klan in the early 1870s; and, finally, his post-presidential life including a worldwide grand tour and the writing of his memoirs.

Nothing here will contribute to an argument for his outstripping of Lincoln as the decisive figure of the American 19th century. But know this: all labor militants and other progressives honor General Grant, and his subordinate General Sherman, for their military leadership in ending chattel slavery in this country. That was no mean task as this documentary amply demonstrates.

***Poet’s Corner-Young America’s Walt Whitman’s “Leaves Of Grass”

DVD Review

American Experience: Walt Whitman, Walt Whitman and various modern commentators, PBS Productions, 2008

Sure, it is always appropriate to thumb through the pages of the 19th century poet laureate of democracy Walt Whitman’s “Leaves Of Grass”. After wading through Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier and the other Brahmin and Brahmin wannabe poets who dominated the 19th century ‘aristocratic’ European-influenced American poetic academy old white-bearded Walt is like a breath of fresh air. And let’s put it this way, while everyone has, and should, take a peek at those other 19th century poets, if no other reason that to compare work, it is old Walt that those of us in the 21st century WANT to read. Therefore, it is appropriate that PBS’s “American Experience" in 2008 produce a documentary that is, while filled with biographic information, centered on Whitman’s long struggle to produce his masterpiece, “Leaves Of Grass”.

This documentary does yeoman’s service in setting the context in which Walt Whitman had to work, including the trials and tribulations of his long suffering over his troubled working class family affairs; his free-wheeling experiences in breaking out of the family and establishing himself as a newspaper writer in New York City in the pre-Civil War period; his invention of himself as a 'proto-hippie' in that city’s bohemian milieu: his various, mainly homosexual, romantic experiences that eventually find themselves noted heavily throughout his master work; his dramatic and traumatic Civil War time nursing services to the Union wounded; the shock of Lincoln’s death; and, his post-war struggles to expand and deepen his poetic works. That sets the pace for the many ‘talking head’ academic commentaries about the meaning of Whitman’s work, his place as the poetic, warts and all, 19th century democratic champion of the fragile American republican experience, and the breakthrough nature of the more or less explicit sexual, erotic and homoerotic passages in his work.

Finally, poets like other types of writers, run through period of fashion and neglect. My recent road back to an appreciation of Whitman is a case in point. I have been running through (for the nth time) and reviewing the work of the 1950s “beat” writer Jack Kerouac (himself the subject of the vicissitudes of fashion) in this space. Kerouac makes clear (as do many other writers and poets) that Whitman’s poems, his lifestyle and his championship of the “common man” deeply influenced him in his early formative days as he struggled to write. That is a very common story when the name Walt Whitman comes up. So if you need a little refresher on Whitman this well-done documentary fills the bill. But, really, go read some of his poems


Walt Whitman - One’s-Self I Sing.

ONE’S-SELF I sing—a simple, separate Person;
Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-masse.

Of Physiology from top to toe I sing;
Not physiognomy alone, nor brain alone, is worthy for the muse—I say the
Form complete is worthier far;
The Female equally with the male I sing.

Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,
Cheerful—for freest action form’d, under the laws divine,
The Modern Man I sing.

Walt Whitman - To a Historian.

YOU who celebrate bygones!
Who have explored the outward, the surfaces of the races—the life that has
exhibited itself;
Who have treated of man as the creature of politics, aggregates, rulers and
priests;
I, habitan of the Alleghanies, treating of him as he is in himself, in his own
rights,
Pressing the pulse of the life that has seldom exhibited itself, (the great
pride of man in himself;)
Chanter of Personality, outlining what is yet to be,
I project the history of the future.

Walt Whitman - Pioneers! O Pioneers!


1
COME, my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready;
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp edged axes? Pioneers! O pioneers!

2
For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers!

3
O you youths, western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you, western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, Pioneers! O
pioneers!

4
Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied, over there beyond the seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden, and the lesson, Pioneers! O pioneers!

5
All the past we leave behind;
We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march, Pioneers! O pioneers!

6
We detachments steady throwing,
Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,
Conquering, holding, daring, venturing, as we go, the unknown ways, Pioneers! O pioneers!


7
We primeval forests felling,
We the rivers stemming, vexing we, and piercing deep the mines within;
We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving, Pioneers! O pioneers!

8
Colorado men are we,
From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high plateaus,
From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come, Pioneers! O pioneers!

9
From Nebraska, from Arkansas,
Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental blood intervein’d;
All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern, Pioneers! O
pioneers!


10
O resistless, restless race!
O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all!
O I mourn and yet exult—I am rapt with love for all, Pioneers! O pioneers!

11
Raise the mighty mother mistress,
Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress, (bend your heads all,)
Raise the fang’d and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weapon’d mistress, Pioneers! O
pioneers!

12
See, my children, resolute children,
By those swarms upon our rear, we must never yield or falter,
Ages back in ghostly millions, frowning there behind us urging, Pioneers! O pioneers!

13
On and on, the compact ranks,
With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly fill’d,
Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping, Pioneers! O pioneers!


14
O to die advancing on!
Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come?
Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is fill’d, Pioneers! O
pioneers!

15
All the pulses of the world,
Falling in, they beat for us, with the western movement beat;
Holding single or together, steady moving, to the front, all for us, Pioneers! O
pioneers!

16
Life’s involv’d and varied pageants,
All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work,
All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves, Pioneers! O pioneers!


17
All the hapless silent lovers,
All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked,
All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying, Pioneers! O pioneers!

18
I too with my soul and body,
We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way,
Through these shores, amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing, Pioneers! O
pioneers!

19

Lo! the darting bowling orb!
Lo! the brother orbs around! all the clustering suns and planets,
All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams, Pioneers! O pioneers!

20
These are of us, they are with us,
All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait behind,
We to-day’s procession heading, we the route for travel clearing, Pioneers! O pioneers!

21
O you daughters of the west!
O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives!
Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united, Pioneers! O pioneers!

22
Minstrels latent on the prairies!
(Shrouded bards of other lands! you may sleep—you have done your work;)
Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us, Pioneers! O pioneers!

23
Not for delectations sweet;
Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studious;
Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment, Pioneers! O pioneers!

24
Do the feasters gluttonous feast?
Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock’d and bolted doors?
Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground, Pioneers! O pioneers!

25
Has the night descended?
Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged, nodding on our way?
Yet a passing hour I yield you, in your tracks to pause oblivious, Pioneers! O pioneers!


26
Till with sound of trumpet,
Far, far off the day-break call—hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind;
Swift! to the head of the army!—swift! spring to your places, Pioneers! O pioneers.

***Starlight On The Rails, Indeed-In Honor Of The Hobo King Utah Phillips  

DVD REVIEW

American Experience: Riding The Rails, PBS Productions, 1998

Growing up in the 1950’s I had a somewhat tenuous connection with trains. My grandparents lived close to a commuter rail that before my teenage years went out of service, due to the decline of ridership as the goal of two (or three) car garages gripped the American imagination in an age when gas was cheap and plentiful. In my teens though, many a time I walked those above-mentioned abandoned tracks to take the short route to the center of town. As an adult I have frequently ridden the rails, including a cross-continental trip that actually converted me to the virtues of air travel. Of course, my ‘adventures’ riding the rails is quite different than that being looked at in this American Experience documentary about a very, very common way for the youth of America to travel in the Depression-ridden 1930’s, the youth of my parents’ generation. My own experiences were merely as a paying passenger. Theirs was anything but. The only common thread between them and me is the desire expressed by many interviewees to not be HERE but to be THERE.

This tale of a significant number of youth in the 1930’s is held together by film footage of the time, some nice background music from the likes of Jimmy Rodgers and Doc Watson that evokes the ‘romance of the rails’ and ‘talking head’ interviews with the itinerant travelers, male and female. Despite various motives, from the desire to leave the parents’ house to being thrown out during those tough times, the stories they tell are of cold nights in open box cars, overcrowded jails, beatings by the ever present railroad "bulls" and the struggle to find a little work in order to be able to move on to the next locale and maybe some ‘peace’. Mainly this was the eternal heading West of the famous Professor Frederick Turner Jackson thesis- with this proviso- by then the land had run out and maybe the possibility of the dreams. A few interviewed are still driven by the lore of the rails, many had no regrets but mainly this is a very interesting trip down memory lane in a time before the automobile became readily accessible to teenagers.

No review of the life of the rails can omit the special jargon developed by those on the road, the ‘class distinctions' (hobo, bum, and tramp) between them and the rough and ready ‘code of honor’ of the rails (honored more in the breach than in the practice from what I can gather). This tradition has survived best in song by the likes of Woody Guthrie in any number of his songs written in the 1930’s, the classic Elizabeth Cotton song "Freight Train" and the work, including a song with the same title as the headline to this piece, of the recently deceased old Wobblie, folksinger, writer and rail rat extraordinaire Utah Phillips. Starlight On The Rails, indeed!

Daddy What's A Train? Utah Phillips

Daddy what's a train? Is it something I can ride?
Does it carry lots of grown-up folks and little kids inside?
Is it bigger than our house? Well how can I explain
When my little boy and girl ask me "Daddy what's a train?"

When I was just a boy and living by the track
Us kids would gather up the coal in big 'ole gunnysacks
Then we heard the warning sound as the train pulled into view
The engineer would smile and wave as she went rolling through

She blew so loud and clear, we had to cover up our ears
And we counted cars just as high as we could go
I can almost hear the steam those big old drivers scream
A sound my little kids will never know

Daddy what's a train? Is it something I can ride?
Does it carry lots of grown-up folks and little kids inside?
Is it bigger than our house? Well how can I explain
When my little boy and girl ask me "Daddy what's a train?"

I guess the times have changed, kids are different now
'Cause some don't even seem to know the milk comes from a cow
My little boy can tell the names of all the baseball stars
I remember how we memorized the names on railroad cars

The Wabash and the TP, Lackawanna, the IC
The Nickel-Plate and the good old Santa Fe
Just names out of the past, I guess they're fading fast
Every time I hear my little boy say

Daddy what's a train? Is it something I can ride?
Does it carry lots of grown-up folks and little kids inside?
Is it bigger than our house? Well how can I explain
When my little boy and girl ask me "Daddy what's a train?"

We climbed into the car, drove down into town
Right out the depot house, but no one was around
We searched the yard togheter for something I could show
But I knew there hadn't been a train for a dozen years or so

All the things I did when I was just a kid
How far away those memories appear
I guess it's plain to see they still mean a lot to me
'Cause my ambition was to be an engineer

Daddy what's a train? Is it something I can ride?
Does it carry lots of grown-up folks and little kids inside?
Is it bigger than our house? Well how can I explain
When my little boy and girl ask me "Daddy what's a train?"

Starlight On The Rails

This comes from reading Thomas Wolfe. He had a very deep understanding of the music in language. Every now and then he wrote something that stuck in my ear and would practically demand to be made into a song.
I think that if you talk to railroad bums, or any kind of bum, you'll see that what affects them the most is homelessness, not necessarily rootlessness. Traveling is all right if you have a place to go from and a place to go to. It's when you don't have any place that it becomes more difficult. There's nothing you can count on in the world, except yourself. And if you're an old blown bum, you can't even do that very well. I guess this is a home song as much as anything else.
We walked along a road in Cumberland and stooped, because the sky hung down so low; and when we ran away from London, we went by little rivers in a land just big enough. And nowhere that we went was far: the earth and the sky were close and near. And the old hunger returned - the terrible and obscure hunger that haunts and hurts Americans, and makes us exiles at home and strangers wherever we go.

Oh, I will go up and down the country and back and forth across the country. I will go out West where the states are square. I will go to Boise and Helena, Albuquerque and the two Dakotas and all the unknown places. Say brother, have you heard the roar of the fast express? Have you seen starlight on the rails?




I think about a wife and family,
My home and all the things it means;
The black smoke trailing out behind me
Is like a string of broken dreams.

A man who lives out on the highway
Is like a clock that can't tell time;
A man who spends his life just ramblin'
Is like a song without a rhyme.

Copyright ©1973, 2000 Bruce Phillips


FREIGHT TRAIN
(c) 1957 by Elizabeth Cotten. Sanga Music

Chorus:
Freight train, Freight train, run so fast
(rep.)

Please don't tell what train I'm on
They won't know what route I've gone

When I am dead and in my grave
No more good times here I crave
Place the stones at my head and feet
Tell them all that I've gone to sleep.

When I die, Lorde, bury me deep
Way down on old Chestnut street
Then I can hear old Number 9
As she comes rolling by.

***IN THE TIME OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE?

IN THE TIME OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE?

BOOK REVIEW

AMONG EMPIRES: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors, Charles S Maier, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Ma. 2006

With the demise of the former Soviet Union in 19991-92 and the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq in the post-9/11 period there has been an inordinate among of ink spilled in academic circles over the question of whether the United States has become the latest empire. In fact, this question has created something of a cottage industry. Professor Maier’s book is a contribution, and not the worst, to this controversy. Militants of this generation who understand what is wrong with the drift of American society must confront the question of the imperialistic nature of the United States head-on. For my generation, the generation of 68, the imperialistic nature of the United States was a given. The question then really centered on what to do about it. For a variety of reasons we were not successful in taming the monster. Each generation must come to an understanding of the nature of imperialist society in its own way. And fight it. Thus, this book is a good place to start to understand that question.

A lot of the current controversy in academic circles (government and military circles have no such difficulties) about whether there is an American Empire gets tangled up in comparisons with past empires. True, the American Empire does not look like previous empires. The real problem is trying to pigeonhole the contours of empire based on past experiences. As if the builders of each empire doe not learn something from the mistakes of previous empires. Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin long ago analyzed the basis contours of modern imperialism in his seminal work Imperialism- The Highest Stage of Capitalism. That outline, although in need of updating to reflect various, mainly technological, in the global capitalist structure remains an important document for militants today. By his or virtually any other definition the United States gets the nod.

But let’s get down to brass tasks. Hell, the American Empire, is the mightiest military machine the world has ever known defending a nationally-based global economic infrastructure. Previous empires, like the Roman and British, are punk bush league operations in comparison. Academics can afford to have an agnostic view about whether an empire exists or the effects of imperial power. However, when one’s door is kicked in by a foreign, heavily armed soldier in some god forsaken village in Iraq or Vietnam, or your city is flattened in order to ‘save’ it a ready definition of imperialism comes to mind. And a good one.

One of the issues that cloud the question of the American Empire is that there is no readily apparent imperialist ideology. In fact, it is argued, for historical reasons, that there is some kind of popular anti-imperialist ideology in America that has always countered the trend toward empire. I take exception to that notion. While there has always been a section of the chattering classes that has held this position it has never really taken popular root. What is really the dominating popular theme is more like-don’t tread on me. That is a very different proposition. And it can be seen most unequivocally when a war, any war, comes along and virtually everyone- from the groves of academia to the local barroom- gets on board. Then the imperialist fist is bared for all to see.

With that caveat, this writer recommends this book. Agnostism on the question of empire in acceptable in the academy. It is the nature of such an institution. Unless that heavily-armed soldier mentioned about comes kicking down those doors.

 

***THE DREAMS COMETH-Eugene O'Neill's "The Iceman Cometh"

BOOK REVIEW

THE ICEMAN COMETH, EUGENE O'NEILL, YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, NEW HAVEN, 2006

The dreams (and illusions) of the very wretched of the earth are different from those of you and me. Or are they? This is the true subject matter of Eugene O’Neill fine play. Very little action, lots of drinking, lots of dreaming, lots philosophizing by the bedraggled cast of characters in a low- down gin mill do not sound like the makings of a great American play. But they are. The narrowly focused story line turns into a microcosm of the underside of American society in the early part of the 20th century. These are not the ‘robber barons’ of historic fame but the jetsam of the early stages of industrial society. These are the ones that cannot cope, for one reason or another, with the new ways and seek solace and comfort in the back streets of urban society. For lack of a better word these are what Karl Marx called the lumpen proletariat. Not Jean Genet’s hardened rough and ready sailors, pimps and male prostitutes but on the margins nevertheless. In neither case will they make the revolution. But they have their dreams too and O’Neill is there to chronicle them.

Between shots of whiskey the denizens of this small world exhibit all the emotions, contradictions, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of life that the rest of us ‘normals’ have to face. Except, for dramatic effect, these flophouse devotees get their noses rubbed in it by one Harry Hickey- traveling salesman and sport- formerly chief denizen of the ‘resort’ who now has gotten ‘religion’ and wants to spread his newfound ‘glad tidings’. Spare us from the Hickeys of the world-a little dreaminess and a couple of illusions never hurt anyone. Did they. Although in O’Neill’s hands the dialogue is a little stilted and the characters are a little stereotyped and wooden(the seemingly obligatory house philosopher, renegade anarchist, token immigrant, day workers, runaway with a hidden past, Irish cop and floosies) the point he is trying to make gets across just fine. This is a must read on your American drama list.

***Playwright's Corner- Eugene O'Neill's "The Emperor Jones"

Click below to link to a Wikipedia entry for American playwright Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_Jones

Markin comment:

This entry provides a little background information for the play (and movie) that helped, along with Othello, define Paul Robeson as the epitome of the strong black man, a man for every racist, and every Uncle Tom, to fear. Period.

***Playwright's Corner- Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour

Click below to link to a Wikipedia entry for American playwright Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Children%27s_Hour_(play)

Markin comment:

Yes, I know that Lillian Hellman (along with long-time lover, novelist Dashiell Hammett) was nothing but a Stalinist hack in her political life but some of her plays, including The Children's Hour which deals with the subject of lesbianism and witch trials-type hysteria forthrightly for the 1930s, are nevertheless worth reading. And immediately after that reading then go back to blast her for her defense of the Moscow Trials, and all the rest. Author Mary McCarthy (The Group), whatever her own political sins, had Hellman's Stalinist hack number on that score.