Haskel Wexler

I read with sadness that legendary cinematographer Haskel Wexler passed away. He was 93. Leftist film and video makers should note his name, and hoist a glass his way. He was a fellow traveler who worked on leftist classics such as the 1954 blacklisted film "Salt of the Earth." He shot "Medium Cool," and a generation later was cinematographer for John Sayles' "Matwan," and others. In between, he went to Viet Nam with Jane Fonda, filmed the Weather Underground, and picked up a few Oscars here and there.

Kay and I chatted with Wexler during a break at a conference for "Salt of the Earth," held on the 50th anniversary of the film. We were there because Kay had shown that film year after year to her high school English students. In the early 70s, I had screened an original 16mm print of it many times to soldiers as part of the GI movement against the Viet Nam war, and had later made a point of showing it to union workers in a variety of venues. Haskel Wexler was from the WW II generation, one of the forefathers who faced down the incredible repression of the witch-hunt days, and continued to put out political work that made a difference to the generations who followed. When we met him in 2003, he was still active and quite animated.

What I'm most proud of is that Haskel Wexler once contacted PepperSpray Productions, asking us for permission to use our Lt. Watada footage. I was so pleased that a guy whose work I had admired and used so much had found value in our coverage of the Watada story. Our footage ended up in a film on Lt. Watada where Haskel Wexler is credited as cinematographer, "In the Name of Democracy: America's Conscience, a Soldier's Sacrifice." That's a great honor for all the PepperSpray Collective, and our little connection to one hell of an activist and cinematographer. 

Rest In Peace, Brother Haskel Wexler.

Randy Rowland

Trumbo (the movie)

I was out of town when this movie opened in Seattle, but finally saw it last night. Dalton Trumbo, a member of the CPUSA, author of "Johnnie Got His Gun," scriptwriter for "Spartacus" just to name a few, was one of the blacklisted Hollywood Ten. He did a year or so in prison for refusing to name names, etc. Fighters like him made conditions a whole lot better for radicals like us in the generations who followed him.

The movie is very good, and fellow travelers especially will love it. Luckily, it is still playing in Seattle (Guild 45th), so if you haven't seen it, you owe it to your activist self to get to it this week.

Randy Rowland

Beiruit bombing ignored while Paris receives sympathy

The following is an excerpt from a NY Times article, also carried in the Seattle Times. My comments follow--Randy

Beirut, Also the Site of Deadly Attacks, Feels Forgotten
NY Times
By ANNE BARNARD
NOVEMBER 15, 2015

"Around the crime scenes in south Beirut and central Paris alike, a sense of shock and sadness lingered into the weekend, with cafes and markets quieter than usual. The consecutive rampages, both claimed by the Islamic State, inspired feelings of shared, even global vulnerability — especially in Lebanon, where many expressed shock that such chaos had reached France, a country they regarded as far safer than their own.

"But for some in Beirut, that solidarity was mixed with anguish over the fact that just one of the stricken cities — Paris — received a global outpouring of sympathy akin to the one lavished on the United States after the 9/11 attacks.

“When my people died, no country bothered to light up its landmarks in the colors of their flag,” Elie Fares, a Lebanese doctor, wrote on his blog. “When my people died, they did not send the world into mourning. Their death was but an irrelevant fleck along the international news cycle, something that happens in those parts of the world.”

"The implication, numerous Lebanese commentators complained, was that Arab lives mattered less."

my comments: 

Nobody would think that an attack on a soccer game or heavy metal concert would count as a military victory, but as Clausewitz said so long ago, war is politics by other means. While the West licks their wounds, a very heavy fact is not lost on people from the Middle East: they don't really count. If ISIS wanted to drive a wedge between the Arab street and the West, what better way than the tactic they used. 

Look at the latest terror attack through the lens of "Black Lives Matter." If we can understand the pain that comes from African American disenfranchisement, it isn't hard to understand the pain in the Middle East that flows from yet another example of how little their lives matter. If war is "politics by other means" then terror is too. I have no way of knowing whether ISIS strategists anticipated the difference in world reaction and set this up as a trap for suckers, or whether it just worked out that way, but the propaganda value seems clear.

The Collapse of US Policy on Syria

I want to comment on a related matter: in my view, we are witnessing the collapse and failure of US policy with regard to Syria. For some time now, I've viewed the anti-Syrian efforts of the US with alarm. The US, in my view, has been working consistently for several years to ease Russia out of its only toehold in the Middle East by overthrowing the Assad government. 

Remember when the US created Bin Laden to overthrow the Soviet-backed government of Afghanistan? That came back to bite us in the butt, and I've seen the recklessness of meddling in Syria in the same light. For a few years the US was giving various support to "Syrian rebels" in the name of supporting a democracy movement. That was destabilizing to what had been not a great government, no doubt, but one that was at least secular and relatively stable.

And then the US almost had the war they seemed to be yearning for when the issue of chemical weapons came up. If you remember, somebody used chemical weapons against some civilians and the US insisted it was Assad. (In retrospect, I wonder if it was ISIS or somebody just like them.) After some tense US brinksmanship, Russia convinced Assad to surrender his stocks of chemical weapons and the US military attack against Syria was averted at the last minute. The US press and government almost seemed bummed that things didn't work out. 

Not long after that, there was the ISIS beheading of an American in the desert. Next thing you know, the US further ramped up its support for what were now termed "anti-ISIS/anti-Assad forces." I  saw this as a thinly veiled attack on the Syrian government, under the auspices of stopping ISIS. We were going to train rebels who could be used against Assad. Not surprisingly, that training and weaponry ended up helping ISIS. Meanwhile the US bombed oil refineries in Syria that if they weren't held by ISIS would have reverted to Assad, but didn't bomb ISIS-held refineries in Iraq, which would revert to the US sphere, which made it pretty clear to me that Assad, not ISIS was the real target.

Then, not long ago, Russia moved into Syria with force, backing the Assad government, sending both troops and aircraft, saying it was better to stop terrorism in Syria than having to fight it at home. Suddenly the dynamic changed. 

Now, after this attack in Paris, the American government, which was using "Syrian rebels" (ie ISIS) to undercut Assad is admitting they might have to use Assad to stop ISIS. This amounts to a policy rout. ISIS is the new Bin Ladin, Russia is in Syria to stay, and Syria keeps its current secular government, rather than the right-wing religious government desired by the US. 

Great power politics are again making a mess of a region, with dire consequences for all involved. We can hardly support the right-wing, throat-slashing religious fundamentalism of ISIS or its ilk, but we, the people, can not stand silent about the "super-power contention," as we used to call it, going on in the region, with its blatant disregard for the lives of the people there. And while it isn't good to undercut the "Black Lives Matter" movement with flippant declarations that "all lives matter," it is helpful to use the understanding gained through the "Black Lives" movement to give clarity to the righteous perspective of the Arab street, and keep the focus of our anger on our internationalist duty to first stop our own ruling class.

Randy Rowland

The cuff

My fashion contribution for the season is "The Cuff," a fashion accessory for men. In the photos below you see what you might otherwise call a "bracelet," but the correct term is a "cuff." I made the thing last night by weaving rolled tubes of newspaper into a cuff, designed to be worn outside your shirt sleeve.




In this photo, you can see how well it goes with the sweatshirt (issued by the Boone County Jail).

I asked Gary Owens, a founding member of the Seattle Black Panther Party to model The Cuff as well. As you can see from his photo, The Cuff goes equally well with a proper shirt.



I can imagine this must-have item being in hot demand, so look for it everywhere, on everyone cool. I'm testing the prototype now, stay tuned for further announcements.


Randy Rowland

comments based on Woody Allen's film "Irrational Man"

  Watching a Woody Allen movie is like sitting around with the greybeards, listening to them swap parables, forever arguing about rightness and wrongness, moral imperative, and what constitutes a decent life. In that respect, Woody’s latest film, Irrational Man, might be his most “Woody Allen” film yet, as Joaquin Phoenix, playing a philosophy professor, commits an “existential act” while romancing the (Emma) Stone. The film may be as close as most folks ever get to yashiva. Woody Allen doesn’t appear, but his voice is obvious in every line.

            As I was walking out of the movie, I found myself thinking of another bit of karma, seemingly unrelated to the film. We saw the flick at the Regal Cinema in downtown Seattle. Security levels have recently changed. Some of the theater’s doors no longer open from the outside, and my wife’s bag was inspected by the ticket tearer before we could enter.

            I was reminded of a conversation I had more than 10 years ago with an Israeli peace activist who was visiting the US for his first time. He worked with the Tel Aviv Independent Media Center (IMC) and was in Seattle to visit our IMC, the original one, born as part of the “Battle In Seattle” protests against the World Trade Organization. Seattle’s IMC had spawned hundreds of media collectives around the world and for a while our IMC drew activists like the “original” Starbucks attracts more mainstream tourists.

            As we swapped documentary videos and chatted about the latest happenings in the media movement, I asked his perspective on Israel/Palestine. He thought the big picture problem was a fear of democracy by Israeli political leaders. Their logic, he said, was that it was better to keep Palestinians as a stateless people than allow them citizenship. Palestinians bear the brunt of disenfranchisement, but Israelis can’t, my guest pointed out, send their kids to the movies without fear of a terrorist act. I recalled Malcom X’s speech on “The Bullet or the Ballot,” as my Israeli guest went on to make a simple point: “People don’t strap on the dynamite vest if a petition campaign or an election might solve the problem.”

            He pointed out that the US was going the way of Israel in its responses to 911. Instead of seeking the high road, and using the opportunity to strengthen international law and dignity, the US launched not only a war against Afghanistan (which was not responsible for the attack), but then spread it to Iraq as well. Those existential acts, he said, with their Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and all the rest, make even the ancient notion of “eye for an eye” seem like a high standard.

            Perhaps in the judgment of history, this period will be viewed as a moment when America missed a chance for greatness, in favor of the snarling dog. The world has certainly changed, and I guess no parent who has taught their children “not to settle things through violence” and that “decisions carry consequences” should be all that surprised. All I know for sure is that now, we, too, have to worry when we go to the movies.

 

Randy Rowland

first thoughts on Academy Awards

excerpted from a letter I just wrote my father:

I just got back from my neighbor's, where we were watching the Academy Awards. I go to a lot of movies, so the Oscars is fun for me, to see what mainstream Hollywood is all about. My overall impression of the politics: This year was a liberal love fest. An amazing number of speeches championed one liberal cause or another. 

That's fine with me, of course, because I live on that end of the spectrum, but still remarkable. I think back to Marlin Brando, who sent an Indian activist to refuse his Academy Award in 1973 in support of Wounded Knee and because he was protesting the portrayal of Native Americans in Hollywood movies. Or I remember Michael Moore, picking the Dixie Chicks over the President, denouncing Bush's build-up to war as he collected his Oscar. There have always been a few voices now and then breaking through the din to deliver a message to power or the people. But those voices have usually been islands on the sometimes hostile sea of celebrities. 

Tonight was different. Every cause was represented and roundly cheered by an approving audience. It was Liberal America, sending a unified voice to the world. Perhaps it was rallying the troops, an opening salvo in the approaching political season. But at one point, as always, they were announcing how many countries the broadcast was going to, and how many viewers they were capturing, and I found myself thinking "Yes, we do hold certain truths to be self evident, and it's about time somebody was standing for something besides drones and mayhem." It's the difference between being the bully on the playground, or being the leader, based on solidarity.

But at any rate this is as good a time as any for me to tell you the story of when I went to the Oscars. Years later I held Michael Moore's Oscar, but that's a different story. This is from when I still marched with the radical veterans. 

It was 1978, the year The Deer Hunter was up for--and won--several Oscars. My marching buddies and I felt that the movie was an attempt to reverse the verdict on the war against Viet Nam. What later became known as the "Viet Nam Syndrome" was a long chain dragging behind American politicians who wanted to be free to take the country to war against any other Third World countries at will. 

The movie was sneaky. Many people saw it as an antiwar statement. But it certainly was not, in my opinion. For instance, instead of showing Americans throwing grenades into the foxholes and hiding places of peasant families, it showed the Viet Cong doing it. Instead of that famous image of the Saigon Police Chief shooting in the head a suspected VC prisoner, the movie showed the VC holding the pistol to an American head. It alluded to things the American public knew had happened, but portrayed the mirror image of those things. As soon as the movie came out, our vets chapter wrote up a leaflet and started passing it out to the crowds at theaters, calling the film out for twisting history. 

We weren't supposed to protest at the Academy Awards, but we did anyway. Getting inside to disrupt the proceedings was hopeless, of course. But we used good tactics, driving around in some vans, then jumping out like we were coming out of an APC, forming up on the run, then ducking through a labyrinth of passages, double-timing our way past the security perimeter to emerge on the street, just up from where the red carpet entrance was. Next to the carpet there were bleachers, facing into the street. We ran for a position centered opposite the grand entrance, on the other side of the street. 

As we appeared, so did plain clothes cops. The guys in front ran right by them, deflecting their efforts to stop us. But the cops fell right into step beside us. The guy running alongside me pulled out a leather-covered blackjack from somewhere and started hitting me with it. It hurt, but he didn't hit anything vital, so I fended him off, and just kept running. The cops faded away as we ran into the field of view of the cameras, so we were able to get the banners up and start our chants. It was not at all disruptive to the program inside, but there were TV cameras everywhere and lots of people in the stands, and along our side of the street, on the sidewalk behind us. The plain clothes took up positions in the crowd behind us and every once in a while bopped somebody from behind with what looked like a telescoping swagger stick. We had some vets holding them off while others lined up with the banners to make a presence. 

I have a photo around here somewhere that has me in it, standing alongside a banner, chanting. I was working at the copper smelter back then, and had flown down for the occasion, representing our Tacoma vets chapter. Mostly, in those days, I saw myself organizing a rank and file radical caucus in the Steelworkers local at the smelter, but every once in a while there was a job the vets needed to do, and this time I'd answered the bugle call. 

That year, Coming Home was in the running for its own set of awards. That movie, if you remember, starred Jane Fonda as the wife of a guy returning from a tour in Viet Nam who was suffering some PTSD, and she has an affair with another vet, crippled from the waist down, but more sensitive to her needs. It's a powerful movie, with scenes of the wheelchair vet chaining the gates of the base shut in protest.

In contrast, The Deer Hunter was trying to erase from popular memory the bitter lessons we learned in the course of that war. The Deer Hunter, while intense and well done technically, is a good example of how art can play a political function, in this case, one I didn't like. So here we were at the artistic awards ceremony for film, causing as much ruckus as we could get away with. 

At a certain point in our protest outside the Academy Awards, it was time to be done and leave. There was an uncomfortable number of cops around us. Our plan was to form up, do a left face and march out as quickly and quietly as possible. It all went fairly well until we crested this little hill and marched down toward our vans, waiting for us just beyond the security perimeter. I looked back and mobbing down the hill toward us were all the uniformed cops in the world, billy clubs raised overhead, storming our retreating line. We had a few seconds so some of us formed a rear guard to try to hold them off as best we could so the fellows who really couldn't be arrested could get away. I was part of the rear guard, fending off baton blows from several directions, agitating as loudly as I could, dancing around dodging, fending, but taking blows until I went down. A whole bus-load of us were arrested. I was bleeding profusely from my scalp, as I sat cuffed in the bus. I would be charged with assaulting a policeman's club with my head.

I'll tell you, that LA jail is no place to be. It's huge, chaotic, and they only feed you a sack lunch twice a day. When I heard you were going to the County, I worried you'd only get fed like that. I've been in other county clinks and bad as the food always is, at least it comes 3 times a day. 

I got bailed out, so I was told, by Lt. Sulu, that is to say George Takei, the Japanese American actor who played the helmsman on Star Trek. It just so happened the police attacked us right in front of the parking area where the limo drivers for the stars were waiting for the event to be over. They witnessed the whole thing and reported it to the movie stars, some of whom bailed us out. Jane Fonda, I remember, bailed out at least one guy. There were others as well. It just happened that I was the guy George Takei bailed out. Up until then I didn't know anything about his politics, but it turns out he's about as liberal as you'd expect from a gay guy who spent time in the internment camps as a child. 

I flew home with a head full of stitches, and was on shift just a few hours later. The next issue of the Local 25 Smelterworkers' newsletter had a cartoon one of the brothers drew of me, limping back to work with bloody bandages on my head.  Eventually the charges were dropped and it's now just an old man's memory, a line in my radical resumé.

You can tell I'm older now, and not so fiesty. This year's contenders for Academy Awards included American Sniper, based on a sniper who served 3 or 4 tours in Iraq, including in the siege of Fallujah. Clint Eastwood directed the film, and politically it reminded me of The Deer Hunter. American Sniper is not nearly as overt as Deer Hunter in it's effort to reverse the popular verdict on the US invasion and war in Iraq. But the film shows the sniper, credited with 160 kills, as always carefully considering targets and only shooting combatants. It's war, but without context; no missing weapons of mass destruction, no Abu Ghraib, nothing but a good clean "war is hell" message, that it's terrible to have to kill people, but necessary in war sometimes. 

My problem with all that is that back when the sieges of Fallujah were going on, we had our little TV show, and we aired three videos about Fallujah. I reviewed them all a couple weeks ago, to refresh my memory, after having seen the Hollywood version in American Sniper. We aired one piece that came out of Iraq, made by an Iraqi. Called "Testimonies From Fallujah" it was mostly interviews with Iraqi survivors. We made two other videos. One was based on the reports of Dahr Jamail, a Texas A&M graduate who was in Fallujah as a journalist, embedded not with the US troops, but with the Iraqi civilians. We called that piece "Eyewitness In Iraq." We also did a separate short video based on the reports of a British activist, Jo Wilding, who was riding in the shot-up Iraqi ambulances in Fallujah during the first siege. 

All three sources said the same thing, that Fallujah was a free-fire zone, more "shoot-em-all" rather than carefully selected, only combatant targets. In fact, in the Jo Wilding piece we also used actual quotes from US snipers, bragging about how good it made them feel to "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out." The reports also claim that the citizens of Fallujah suffered through white phosphorous attacks and flechette bombs. The photos were unsettling, and one of the things burned into my brain about that war. Then here comes along the Clint Eastwood's fantasy Sniper Saint, a down-home, honest American, just doing his duty. Audiences are imprinted, almost subliminally, in American Sniper with a different memory of the Iraq war than portrayed by our PepperSpray Productions pieces, which were done at the time, based on actual sources, with documentary evidence. 

Personally, I would have loved to see a bunch of "never again" vets protesting American Sniper, but if that happened, I certainly didn't hear about it. But that's just me. Perhaps I'm focused on this after taking a number of clubs to the head during my own trip to the Academy Awards. It beats the perspective into my memory pretty strongly. At any rate, though it was nominated in several categories, American Sniper ended up empty handed in all but sound editing. The evening was not allowing any of that sort of thing to mar the high road celebration of civil rights, women's equality, gay rights and marriage, the cause of Mexican immigrants, whistle blowers, and more. This year American Sniper, which took in more money at the box office than all the rest of the Acadamy-nominated movies combined, was the outlier, no vets protests needed.

Randy's Musings on "The Interview"

The Interview is sort of a modern equivalent of that 1960s TV series Get Smart. The jokes are more scatological, but the movie is political-themed slapstick. That’s what I expected going into the theater, and that’s pretty much what it is. What was surprising was how much of the North Korean perspective made it in among the silliness. I made a list of the points that were introduced in this otherwise sophomoric movie:

1) The US has more prisoners, even on a per capita basis, than North Korea.

2) The US has more nukes, and has used them. (and, I might add, was the first to abrogate the treaty prohibiting nukes on the Korean Peninsula)

3) North Korea has been in a defensive posture ever since they drove the US out, while the US has gone on to invade numerous other countries.

4) Hunger and other depravations in North Korea might be due to bad Korean leadership as the US alleges, or might be due to the cruel sanctions imposed by the US, in an effort to starve the North Korean people into submission.

5) While there are two perspectives on who fired the first shot in the Korean War, there can’t be any question of whose soldiers were in whose country.

6) The US employs the tactic of assassination of governmental leaders in sovereign nations as a “normal” option to pursue its political goals. (That, of course, was the unchallenged premise of the movie.)

            I can’t remember the last time a mainstream movie made those points, even in a comedy that was overall disrespectful of North Korea and its leadership. This raises the obvious question of why North Korea would have hacked Sony, unless, of course, nobody over there had seen the movie. At any rate, I was surprised The Interview raised the points noted above. Since the movie is generating considerable chatter, it seems like a good opportunity for the American left to remind people about the history between the US and Korea.

            For those interested in finding out more about the Korean War, I can’t think of a better book than I.F. Stone’s 1952 book “Hidden History of the Korean War.”

Check it out of your library or go here:

http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-History-Korean-War-Stone/dp/0853451613

 

For a quick over-all summary, read Wikipedia’s article on US /North Korean relations. I suspect that for the average American leftist, and certainly for the average American, there is much that will surprise the reader.

 

Here’s the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea–United_States_relations

 

Comrade Kim

            Since I started out discussing a movie that supposedly takes place in North Korea, it’s worth mentioning a different movie, directed by westerners, but filmed in North Korea, using Korean actors. The Seattle International Film Festival included in its 2013 line-up a great little film entitled Comrade Kim Goes Flying. It was a Belgium, UK, and North Korean co-production. I loved this movie, about a young coal miner who dreams of being a trapeze artist in the circus. With the assistance of her fellow workers and a little mischief along the way, she overcomes the disdain of an arrogant trapeze star who thinks miners should stay in the mines, to realize her dream.

            Although both movies are light comedies, what a difference between the crass Interview and Comrade Kim’s uplifting, socialist, feminist message.

 

To view the trailer for Comrade Kim online, follow this link:

http://www.comradekimgoesflying.com/index.php

 

The Lesson of 1812

            For a while in my younger years, I thought Viet Nam was the first country to successfully defend itself against the US juggernaut. I guess that’s because I’m of the Viet Nam generation, and we thought we invented resistance to US Imperialism. It was sort of like when I was a kid, hiking in the woods, thinking that I was probably the first person to ever walk down that trail. I don’t remember stopping at the time to wonder how the path got there if nobody before me had passed that way.

            At a certain point I learned more, or got more humble, and realized that the Koreans had done what the Vietnamese did, only a generation earlier. Both of those wars were in many ways Cold War proxies. “If we don’t stop them over there, we’ll be fighting them over here” was the mantra, no matter that neither Korea nor Viet Nam showed any desire to invade us, or even had ships big enough to do so. How surprised I was when one of my fellow soldiers pointed out the shoulder patch all American troops in Viet Nam wore on their uniform (the MACV patch).

 

Click here to see what the patch looked like: http://www.medalsofamerica.com/Item--i-P116

 

The sword, coming from below, is piercing the Great Wall of China. Even the patch on American uniforms exposed the lie behind US assertions that we were in a defensive war! Of course that didn’t stop the Rambo movies from rewriting the verdict on that failed war.

 

            A few years ago my wife and I took a couple copies of a 16mm film from Seattle to Montreal. We had the only 2 known English language copies of a 1951 Joris Ivens  documentary film Peace Will Win, and we were donating them to be archived and preserved by Concordia University in Montreal. The film had footage of Korean cities being napalmed by US forces.

            Imagine my surprise on arriving in Montreal to discover that Canadians are proud to have successfully repelled multiple US invasions during the War of 1812. As a child, I learned that the War of 1812 was fought to stop the British naval practice of press-ganging. Canadians have a different version of the story. They see that war as a defensive effort to stop the annexation of Canada by a land-hungry US. I thought we won that war, they think they did.

            Things aren’t always the way we are led to believe. Consider again the points mentioned in The Interview. I think it’s a shame that the American left has bought into the US vision of “Axis of Evil” North Korea. While I can’t recommend seeing The Interview, I do believe it gives good-hearted people an opportunity to discuss the reality of a country that repulsed a US invasion and is still being punished for it. See beyond the rectum jokes and help some American, in the course of your film discussions, pull their head out of theirs.