Night and Fog and the State

“Even a peaceful landscape…even a meadow in harvest, with crows circling overhead and grass fires…even a road where cars and peasants and couples pass…even a resort village with a steeple and country fair…can lead to a concentration camp.” So begins the narration of the most devastating documentary film ever made.

Before Hollywood determined it takes at least three hours to effectively grapple with the Holocaust — a Schindler’s List or a Pianist, for example — long before, some four decades and more, there was Alain Renais’ 31-minute Night and Fog.

I first saw and was shattered by this remarkable short movie while in college in 1975. I’ve just seen Night and Fog a second time, because Criterion recently released a new digital restoration of it on DVD. And 28 years later, Renais’ film remains for me not only a chilling record of Hitler’s "final solution" but the most powerful cinematic indictment of the State I’ve ever seen.

[Read entire essay here]

India loosens ban on smoking in movies

ICONIC FIGURES CAN BE SHOWN
SMOKING; HEALTH MINISTRY NODS

New Delhi, Oct. 20 — (IANS) India’s multibillion rupee film industry, which has been fuming over a ban on smoking scenes in films, now has reason to smile. The health ministry is ready to allow the depiction of iconic characters with their favourite poison stick.

So British statesman Winston Churchill and fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, who cannot be imagined without their cigars and pipes, can now be shown smoking in new films — though with a warning.

“Characters like Churchill and Sherlock Holmes can smoke on screen. People know about them and their on-screen smoking won’t influence the audience behaviour much,” a senior health ministry official told IANS.

“This will be made public next month,” the official added.

The health ministry had banned smoking in films but director Mahesh Bhatt moved court against the government decision. The case has been pending in the Delhi High Court for the last two years. The Delhi High Court is going to hear the case in the third week of November.

Earlier, the ministry was completely against any smoking scenes in any movie. It had said all old movies with such scenes would have to be accompanied with a note saying the habit is injurious to health, and new films with such depictions could not be made at all.

"Death to the Party!"

For those libertarians still clinging to the electoral process, I present here “Death to the Party!”, a polemic written by Victor Koman and published in pamphlet form by “Ultra Faction MLL [Movement of the Libertarian Left]” in the 1980s. I don’t know whether Victor subscribes to these opinions today, but I find this little essay still on target.

Those of you who still love Liberty and Freedom, listen! Those of you not poisoned by the dope of Power, hear me! Those of you not yet shipwrecked by the Sirens of statism, read this! That most evil of temptors, the State itself, is seducing you in the dark alley which is the Party. Do not be deceived and led into dishonor.

The Party is the State. How can anything be more plain or more obvious? The rotting corpse of government has burst forth, spewing out a new breed of maggots to infect us and spread the disease of slavery, plunder and murder. For a Party exists only to put people into power. Don’t be hoodwinked by lies about “education.” Einstein needed no Party to get his ideas to the world. Nor did Spooner, nor Rand, nor Paine, nor any man or woman with the truth. Truth needs no Party.

The idea of Libertarianism is Liberty. The idea of the Party is Government. The only “education” requiring a Party is “education” in Statism. Ask a Cambodian, if you can find one.

And what will you learn from such an education? The philosophy of Atilla. The metaphysics of Stalin. The biology of Leviathan.

He who serves the Party serves the State. She who supports the Party supports the Statist quo. They who defend the Party defend those who would hunt us down and kill us.

By groveling before the altar of the almighty Vote, you are not turning the sword of the State against itself — you are sharpening its blade! By drawing others into political Sodomy, you are not disarming the guns of the State — you are providing them with fresh bullets! And by wasting your time learning to plot and betray, compromise and backstab, you are not bleeding the State — the State is bleeding you!

Those of you who claim to defend Liberty, tell me this: if the system you oppose is corrupt and evil, how can you change it by joining it, by saying “This is a place I belong, a system I endorse,” by embracing it? Do you not become as evil and corrupt?

Can you change the Mafia by becoming a Don or even the Capo? Can you stop the NKVD by becoming its head axeman? Can you reform the Gestapo by becoming an agent willing to “work within the system”? Can you stop destruction by becoming the destroyer?

I SAY NO! I say that to help the Party is to lock chains around the necks of Libertarians everywhere and lead us to death. I say that the Party is as foul and corrupt as the State to which it toadies. I say that the smallest quantum of aid or solace to the Party is open, blatant support of everything Libertarians find hideous and repugnant.

The Party is Death.

The Party must die.

Long live Freedom!

Young minds, well washed for The State, part two

Young minds, well washed for The State

Must listening

Fer crissakes, listen to Rick Kleffel interview Cory Doctorow about standing firm, not being afraid, state surveillance, and his sci-fi "juvenile" Little Brother, which I think may be the best "libertarian" novel since Suprynowicz's The Black Arrow. Download the MP3 file (or listen to it) right here.

Fool your friends with this fake camera

Speaking of surveillance cameras — which I was earlier today — why not spook your friends with this nifty free downloadable papercraft CCTV camera, courtesy of Nude Magazine? Mount one at your front door or, as Cory Doctorow suggested at Boing Boing, in your bathroom.

"Smile! You're on Candid Camera!"

Paul Strong Jr. has launched a public art project to protest Seattle’s recent installation of “security” cameras in some of its parks — The Camerahead Project.

The project parodies the security-surveillance police-state by deploying its own agents, “a highly trained elite group of cybernetically enhanced observers using the latest and greatest in modern surveillance technology. Each Camerahead agent has been hand selected and specially modified for their unique ability to monitor the public with a complete disregard for anyone’s personal privacy.”

Your Thursday dose of political poetry

What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some talk of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck themselves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.

“The Colonel,” from The Country Between Us
by Carolyn Forché
(HarperCollins, 1987)

Free Bill Stickers!

Thanks, Wendy!

To preserve and protect...

The Utah Highway Patrol dispenses justice.

Government is good for you!

If it weren’t so detailed and earnest, I’d think Professor Douglas J. Amy’s Government is Good website was a joke. But I’m afraid it’s not. Amy teaches politics at Mount Holyoke College, and his site is subtitled “An Unapologetic Defense of a Vital Institution.” You’ve got to see this to believe it.

Here’s a snippet from Amy’s article “A Day in Your Life”:

Though we usually fail to notice it, government programs and policies improve our daily lives in innumerable ways. …

7:50 a.m. You and your child walk across the lawn to your car and arrive without getting dog poop on your shoes. A small but welcome achievement that is made possible now by a local law that requires people to clean up after their pets. Also, the reason your neighborhood is not plagued by stray cats and dogs is that your local Animal Control officer is on the job dealing with this constant problem.

Columbus Day -- phooey!

And besides, it's just another goddamn State-sanctioned day off for government bureaucrats and bankers...

Victor Milan adds his two cents

Victor Milán, a libertarian comrade and science fiction novelist of considerable talent (his The Cybernetic Samurai remains one of my favorites) has posted a comment to my recent review of John Scalzi’s The Last Colony. And y’know what? I like Victor’s analysis of the book a lot better than my own! Just in case you never check back for comments to past posts, I’ll re-post his comment right here:

I agree Last Colony’s an excellent book, and stands on its own.

I also think that it’s even more worthwhile to read as the third volume of a trilogy, since it changes the apparent thrust of the first two books.

Old Man’s War and Ghost Brigades were fine SF novels in their own right. But, to me at least, they carried an implicit message: shut up and soldier. That conscience and judgment are fine things for individuals, but of no consequence compared to the will of the State. Don’t you know there’s a war on? Follow your orders.

Pretty much the same as Heinlein’s paean to Bolshevism, Starship Troopers, in other words.

Last Colony reverses the spin. The war is no longer all-encompassing justification but at best a mistake, at worst a scam, and in either case likely to result in the suicide of the human species. Our hero and heroine follow their consciences, do not shut up and soldier, they disobey orders; and they save humanity.

While I wouldn’t call them perfect from a freedom perspective (Scalzi still indulges a bit much in leader-worship) the concluding volume turns the whole trilogy into a sort of extended debate upon the conflict between individual and state — and comes down squarely for the individual.

Thanks for this insight, Victor.

Government

Thanks for the tip, Karen.