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Friday 10 December 2021

Bookshop

 Over the past few months I've taken a few steps forward into the world of publishing, mainly translation and non-fiction work. This page is essentially a storefront, with samples and links to the works. Any income generated from these goes into a fund I have for purchasing out of print books for scanning and transcription. Sadly, the prices have been creeping up over the years, and I'm no longer in a position to fund acquiring them out of my wages.

 Author page

 

 FAQ

These are for sale on the kindle store, but you don't need an amazon pad to read them, you just need an amazon account, you can access a kindle cloud reader on desktop computers and download an app for phones and tablets. You can also download the files and port them to your own devices.

 

On Offence and Defence: A Speech on War & Revolution


 A translation of a speech by Wilhelm Liebknecht a prominent Socialist leader in 19th century Germany. The contents of the speech are an attack on nationalism, militarism and capitalist morality and an appeal for international brotherhood and social revolution. It covers and criticizes early industrial capitalism and Bourgeois society for its failures to solve social issues and argues coherently that on the contrary they are often the root causes of these problems, from poverty to political violence.

e-book link

 Online version.

Milicianas, Soldaderas, Petroleuses and the Yellow Mimosa: A Brief History of Female Revolutionaries


 A short introduction to the exploits of several women who took up arms to defend their communities and build a better world for all. Covers some key individual women, including the Communard Louise Michel and the Ortega sisters. Covers women participating in combat in many struggles from the French Revolution to the Cold War conflicts in Central America in the 1980s.

E-book link 

 Also, available in paperback

Is Socialism Being Built in the Soviet Union?: A debate between three revolutionaries

 


English translation of Ĉu socialismo konstruiĝas en soveto? by Eugene Lanti and his comrade M. Ivon. The text is an early exploration of the still young Stalin regime and the development of the Soviet economy and society eighteen years after the Revolution. The work was based on Lanti's own experiences with the Soviet Union and its government as well as over a decade of correspondence with hundreds of Soviet citizens who had contacted him to discuss events and support his work in international solidarity as the head of the World Anational Association (Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda) a workers association that uses Esperanto to communicate and link workers all over the world.

Originally published in 1935 this is one of the early works to bring attention to some alarming features of Soviet rule and its experiments in building a "socialist" society. It covers many topics and had some predictions for the future and the approaching international conflicts. 

e-book link

Also, available in paperback

 Online version.

 

The Forerunners of Anarchism


  

An English translation of the French Individual Anarchist Emile Armand's Les précurseurs de l’anarchisme a philosophical history of Anarchist thought from the philosophers of Antiquity to the thinkers of the Industrial Revolution.

The book traces the evolution of thought and belief in liberty from Ancient Greek philosophers through dissident Christian movements and Enlightenment thinkers and the impact of the 18th century revolutions in France and America.

 e-book link 

Online version.

 

 

Darker Phases of the South


 Darker Phases of the South was Frank Tannenbaum's attempt to grapple with the totality of Southern society from its roots. It tackles the rise of the KKK and explains how such an institution could exist and thrive into the 20th century, the economic foundations of the South from cotton crops to land ownership and working conditions in its many Mill towns, and also the deplorable state of its prisons and shocking treatment of its prison populations. Finally, Tannenbaum attempts to promote a way forward for the South that would end these injustices and build if not a Utopia than a better society with less racial and social friction.

 e-book link

Also available in paperback

Note, this book is a re-issuing of a public domain and increasingly rare text and is only available in territories where the copyright has expired. 

 

The Pyramid of Tyranny

e-book link, also available in paperback
Online version.
 
An English translation of F. Domela Nieuwenhuis's essay De piramide der tirannie (The Pyramid of Tyranny). The essay is an early attempt to grapple with and expose the systems of power within class society and how the people might one day disrupt and overcome this system of oppression. Though written over a hundred years ago, the society it critiques and attacks is still very much with us today. This means that aside from some cultural references, the work remains fresh and revealing.

The Libertarian Society: A translation from the French Workers Movement

 


e-book link, also available in paperback.

Online version.

Translation of the 1926 pamphlet advocating for a new society based on the principles of Libertarian Communism. The original author George Bastien was a lifelong union militant and Anarchist activist who spent many years fighting the class struggle in France and abroad. Libertarian Society was his answer to the sceptics who accused revolutionaries of being nothing more than violent destroyers and shows us how a potential new society could be built on the principles of solidarity, equality, liberty and mutual aid.

 

Wednesday 1 December 2021

Notes on the life of Eduardo Vivancos 1920-2020; Almost a century in the Libertarian and Esperanto movements

A version of this article first appeared in Liberte Ouviere un Journal Anarcho-syndicaliste


 

Notes on the life of Eduardo Vivancos

1920-2020

Almost a century in the Libertarian and Esperanto movements

Reddebrek

2021

 

“Paroli Esperanton estis iam esenca parto de anarkiismo.”

(There was a time when speaking Esperanto was an essential part of being an anarchist.)

On the 30th of December 2020 Eduardo Vivancos passed away at the age of 100. He leaves behind a family and nearly a century of dedication to a number of causes, from athletics, Anarchosyndicalism, and minority languages, especially Catalan and Esperanto. I think his life is worth remembering, and while in the Spanish speaking world his death was marked with numerous tributes and retrospectives, including a feature in Corredor a popular magazine dedicated to running, and a lot of friends mourned him in Esperanto texts, he is largely unknown in English. A short blog post I wrote to mark his passing is the first hit when his name is searched in English, though there was also an article in Fifth Estate #400 written in 2018 by his fellow Esperantist Xavier Alcade that serves as a short introduction. Personally speaking, Vivancos’s writing was some of the first I read in Esperanto that I could mostly understand that wasn’t written as a teaching tool, though Vivancos did dabble in that as well. I suppose I should credit Vivancos with pushing me from viewing the language as a hobby into something to be taken seriously.

The son of Domingo Vivancos, Eduardo Vivancos was born into a working-class family in Barcelona on the 19th of September 1920. In 1934, shortly before his fourteenth birthday, Vivancos left elementary school and became an apprentice. In September of that year Vivancos had also enrolled in a worker’s school (Escuela del Trabajo) which held classes in the evenings. While at the school he mixed with a group of young workers who were members of the Iberian Federation of Libertarian Youth (FIJL) an organisation that he would join along with becoming a member of the Student Federation of Free Thinkers (Federacion Estudiantil de Concienecias Libres).

A year later Vivancos would join the Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), he would remain a member of the CNT for the rest of his life. In 1936 Vivancos looked forward to the People’s Olympiad that was being prepared in Barcelona as an alternative to the official Olympics that were being hosted in Berlin. The first piece of writing I read by Vivancos were his recollections of those days when he would go to the training grounds and practice and mingle with hundreds of foreigners from dozens of nations. The enthusiasm of the time made a big impact on him, unfortunately there preparations for the games coincided with the beginning of the bloody civil war and the appearance of Franco as a political leader. The games were not only called off at the last minute by news of the revolt of the Spanish army, but the preparations for the games had also been targetted by a campaign of fascist sabotage and intimidation.

During the Spanish Revolution and Civil War Vivancos initially focused on his studies, enrolling in the Ateneo Enciclopedico Popular, where among other subjects he was taught Esperanto. He would remain an active Esperantist for the rest of his life, often combining it with his activism with the Libertarian movement. In 1937 the Spanish Republic created a number of Worker’s Institutes (Institutos Obreros) a high school system for workers, Vivancos passed the entrance exams in December 1937 and enrolled. However the war situation continue to get worse for the Republic and so in 1938 Vivancos and some fellow class mates from the institute volunteered to serve in a battalion of the 26th division of the Durruti Column and served at the Montsec front and saw combat at the battle of Lleida, and participated in other operations.

Whilst serving in the 26th division Vivancos was part of a small teaching and correspondence circle of Esperantists which included Gines Martinez the battalion commander. At the time most of the Spanish left and Libertarian movements had embraced Esperanto and were publishing Esperanto newspapers. From the Communist Party of Spain, to the Workers Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) the CNT and other Anarchist groups, and even the General Government of Catalunya, all were actively using the language to broadcast news to the outside world and establish contacts with sympathetic foreigners. In response to this the Esperanto movement was singled out for bloody persecution within Fascist zones. An example of this repression was the fate of the Esperanto club in Cordoba, the Fascist Falange party organised a firing squad and murdered its entire membership.

Unfortunately as we’re all aware, the war continued to go badly and the revolution continued to retreat, by February 1939 Vivancos along with thousands of other committed anti-fascists had to escape Spain to France. Vivancos did this on foot, crossing the Pyrenees in winter. While in France the Vivancos family were separated and sent to concentration camps that had been built by the French government to house Spanish refugees. He was moved from one camp to another over several years, at one point in 1940 he was billeted in the same barracks as the famous Catalan author and poet Jaume Grau Casas, the author of Catalan Anthology and many other works. The two communicated almost exclusively in Esperanto, if anything the incarceration and constant transferring seem to have boost Eduardo Vivancos’s studies and teaching of the language.

The Vivancos family were not reunited until after the Second World War in 1947, by that time Eduardo had met and fallen in love with fellow Spanish exile Ramona Comella, the two married in Paris on the 5th of December 1945, they had two children, Floreal (1947) and Talia (1948). While in Paris Eduardo Vivancos joined the World Anational Association the Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda or SAT, and organisation of left-wing Esperantists of many tendencies from around the world.

Also in the aftermath of WWII the Spanish Libertarian movement began to reorganise itself and planned out strategies to resist the entrenched Franco dictatorship. As part of this process, the FIJL had decided to build an international federation for Anarchist youth. As part of this project Vivancos was made a delegate of the Spanish section. Unfortunately, this plan did not progress much further due to the global weakness of the Anarchist movement at that time. A more substantial attempt at international networking was the founding of two Esperanto language newspapers the Nigra Flago (Black Flag) and Senŝtatano (Without a State), Vivancos was a contributor to both and editor of Senŝtatano. This activity would bear some fruit, the correspondance service of Senŝtatano sucessfully exploited a relaxation in hostility to Esperanto by the Spanish government to send letters to Spain, this reconnected many exiles with family and friends still living under Franco. And the contact with foreign Libertarian minded Esperantists like the Chinese anarchist Lu Chen Bo and the Japanese anarchist Taiji Yamaga led to increased co-operation in many ways. In 1963 Eduardo Vivancos and Taiji Yamaga worked together to produce a Spanish translation of the famous Chinese philosoper Laozi’s Dao de Qing, it was titled “Libro del Camino y de la Virtud”, Book of the way and Virtue in English.

In 1954 Vivancos emigrated to Toronto Canada and would remain a resident until his death in 2020. He maintained his commitment to his two life causes Esperanto and Anarchism and his opposition to Franco while living in Canada. He joined the Asociacion Democratica Espanola Canadiense ADEC, a group for anti-francoist Spanish migrants and exiles living in Canada. As a member, he attended demonstrations and organised meetings. Eduardo Vivancos would return to Spain in 1976 after a 37-year exile, when the Francoist regime crumbled and a stilted democratic transition was taking shape. He would make many visit to Spain and the Catalunya region throughout the remainder of his life. In 1986 he gave a lecture to the 59th Congress of SAT in San Cuget on the 5oth anniversary of the Spanish Civil War, the lecture drew heavily from his recollections of the atmosphere and conditions on the streets of Barcelona and the Spain in 1936.

At the end of his life Eduardo Vivancos received many honours from SAT and the wider Esperanto community, and with nearly a hundred years of dedicated activity including on the front-lines on a mountain range it’s not hard to see why. But I also find his writing and the way he was able to use Esperanto to support the goals of international solidarity and libertarian resistance very inspiring too. I said at the start that Eduardo Vivancos is little known in the Anglosphere, I hope to correct this. In addition to writing up this short memorial, I am also translating his Esperanto texts in English and working on an English language wikipedia article to complement the already existing versions in Spanish, Catalan and Esperanto. By doing this, I hope others will learn of him and an be inspired.




Thursday 25 November 2021

Marx on Guns

 

So, I'm not a fanatic follower of Karl Marx, and I'd go so far as to say I find the actions of many Marxists to be embarrassing and rather annoying and counterproductive. One example of this is the use of Marx as a flesh and blood bible. Much of socialist discourse is really just a petty game of idol worship and quotation fighting, and like most Christians many Marxists are fond of just taking random snippets of gospel and using them because they look like they're agreeing with a preconceived idea if you just give them a quick glance and don't bother reading the rest of the text or the historical context.

A big example of this is 2nd Amendment Marx, you've probably seen the famous quote or a paraphrasing of it "Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary." Had Karl Marx been an American politician alive today or some point in the 20th Century, I would also assume he's weighing in on America's gun control debate. But he wasn't. What he was actually doing was commenting on the political situation in Europe in the middle of the 19th Century.

That quotation comes from text written in 1850 Address of the Central Committee of the Communist League. The text is an attempt by Marx and Engels to promote a new strategy in the aftermath of the 1848 wave of Revolutions. To be specific, this is the rest of the paragraph that the above sentence comes from

 

 2. To be able forcefully and threateningly to oppose this party, whose betrayal of the workers will begin with the very first hour of victory, the workers must be armed and organized. The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens’ militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented, the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and with their own elected general staff; they must try to place themselves not under the orders of the state authority but of the revolutionary local councils set up by the workers. Where the workers are employed by the state, they must arm and organize themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary. The destruction of the bourgeois democrats’ influence over the workers, and the enforcement of conditions which will compromise the rule of bourgeois democracy, which is for the moment inevitable, and make it as difficult as possible – these are the main points which the proletariat and therefore the League must keep in mind during and after the approaching uprising.

He's talking about a future military force acting in a hypothetical revolutionary situation. In the text this scenario is called inevitable, but it didn't happen, so it wasn't. I'm not really surprised the 1850 Address isn't well known, and its legacy is this one sentence, it's referring to a period that was unique or at least hasn't been repeated, and a lot of its immediate predictions didn't pan out, and ultimately Marx and Engels would soon move away from the strategy it promotes.

During the early 19th century, there was a continental wide explosion in the popularity of militias of one type or another. Some like the Yeomanry of England were established by men of property and their sons to be a supporting force for the professional army, as was the case in the Peterloo massacre. Others were more plural bodies of the citizenry and were supposed to assist the nation in times of strive, and there were also more radical and less official bodies made up of working men. 


Compare: Above the Yeomanry at Peterloo, and below the more popular and insurrectionary militia at Prague, 1848.

This movement was in response to general conditions and developments, rather than the strategy of any would be leaders of the workers. The nobles and industrialists and landowners grew worried that the professional forces of law and order were incapable of offering sufficient protection from rebellious peasants and workers, so funded and established their own bodies of armed men. The growing national movements of professional politicians and thinkers felt that the professional armies which were still in the hands of a powerful King or noble class were not truly representatives of the nation, and so agitated for the creation of citizens and national militias to form a truly patriotic force. Meanwhile, more radical elements amongst the workers and student fraternities also promoted the establishment of armed bodies, both to play a role in some expected insurrection and to act as a counterweight to the violence of the authorities. There was also a Liberal utopian case for the militia system at the time, it was argued that militias were sufficient to protect life, liberty and property at home, and man the city walls and "natural" borders in time of crisis, but weren't suited for offensive action, so by adopting the militia and replacing or at least heavily reducing professional armies, the militia could be the seed for greater international peace. 

A key issue among the pre-1848 German liberal opposition to the existing order was the reduction if not the abolition of princely standing armies and their replacement by militias based on universal male military service (also see entry under Military Reform). Their models were the 1793 French levee en masse, an idealized memory of the halcyon days of the Prussian Landwehr during the 1813 war of liberation or the local municipal civil guards of self-governing towns. What these shared was a stress on a non-professional armed force of citizens serving only in times of emergency. Liberals generally associated standing armies with wars of aggression and believed that militias could only be used for defense. A Europe of militias would be at peace.

Popular Militias

For years, this grew into a very heterodox movement of militias in many European nations, until in 1848 when the situation exploded into mass revolts in France, the German states, the Italian states, and the Habsburg Empire including in Prague, Hungary and Vienna. The 1848 Revolutions were a chaotic mix of participants and ideologies, liberalism, republicanism, democracy, nationalism, and to an extent early socialism played its part in motivating and shaping the struggles.

 


It's difficult to untangle, but in general terms, and I must stress general, the militias that were composed mainly of the affluent and the gentry sided with the reactionary governments, while those with a more popular and working class composition tended to side with the more radical forces. 

For example, the French National Guard in Paris:

 In February 1848, the Paris National Guard's some 50,000 members were divided into twelve legions, one for each of the city's arrondissements. The legions, in turn, were broken down into battalions, recruited at the level of the quartiers of each arrondissment. The legions were commanded by colonels or lieutenant-colonels, the battalions by majors, captains, and sometimes lieutenants. Of the city's twelve National Guard legions, only one, the first, from the notoriously haute bourgeois Champs Elysée-Place Vendôme district, would prove loyal to the monarchy at the onset of the February revolution. The mass defection of the guard has been seen by many historians as the crucial event in the collapse of the Orleanist regime. Georges Duveau contended that "the insurrection [of the February 1848] could have been brought under control if the National Guard had remained loyal to the system." He added that the morale of the regular army plummeted when the troops "realized that [they] were liable to be struck in the back by the National Guard."

The French National Guard - Bruce Vandervort

Though there were exceptions, in Hungary the Habsburg Emperor faced a revolt led by Hungarian nobles and was able to win support from the serfs by promising to abolish serfdom, while the nobles didn't offer them much of anything. While the insurrectionary wave was a sustained challenge to the established authorities and did force a number of political concessions like the abolition of serfdom in the Habsburg Empire, the wave was defeated with the powers of Europe remaining intact if shaken and bruised. As a result the widespread popularity for the people armed, and militias greatly declined amongst the liberals and the conservatives, and there were moves to control and disarm the surviving radical armed bodies, though a minority of them remained in existence for a while yet.

The address of 1850 was a response to this aftermath, this is why it talks about a "proletarian guard" and opposition to the revival of the "citizens" militia movement. There were still some armed workers groups, many workers had been armed and experience combat and the storing and use of weapons, and the idea that workers could form armed guards and fighting forces was a recent memory. He wasn't talking about an unrestricted market in guns for the consumer, which exists in the USA of today. Most of those arms held by people in the famous paintings of barricade fighting were bought clandestinely or seized from the state armouries for what its worth. 

But does it really matter? Well it's dishonest and adds to the general confusion which is a problem, but there is a much more serious problem with taking Marx out of context to weigh in on the American gun culture debate. That is, the American worker is already disarmed. The workers were armed in the 1800s through several forces hundreds or even thousands strong, and were actively training themselves in combat techniques. The American working class is not armed because a plumber can afford to have a small collection of generic (or "civilian" as Americans call them) rifles, nor because a UPS delivery driver can save up to buy a small revolver. Even if a greater proportion of the more dangerous weapons were bought by Americans on lower incomes this wouldn't change anything. 

I used to own a gun and know several people who work for a living and still have some, no one would be taken seriously claiming the working class of the UK is armed and should resist attempts to disarm them. 

The American class is not armed and in danger of being disarmed, that's not what the gun control debate is about. What America does have is a relatively unrestricted market for firearms, with one political group wishing to push for  more restrictions on commercial transactions while the other side is pushing for even fewer. What militia movement North America does have is a scattering of ill-disciplined far right fanatics anticipating and longing for a sort of apocalyptic race war. If anything, they're more reactionary than the most reactionary elements in Europe in the 1850s.

The two just aren't comparable, if anything I believe the laissez-faire gun market that exists in the modern United States is evidence of the lack of such a presence. There was a period of time when the class struggle in the US was extremely violent with essentially smaller re-enactments of the Civil war breaking out, in the mining towns of the South west and the Appalachians, but after the battle of Blair Mountain and the end of the 1920s armed working men getting into stand-offs with the company security, and the police, and the national guard gradually faded. When the spectre of radical armed insurgency reared its head, as shown by the Black Panther Party, the response was Reagan's gun control measures for the state of California. The New Left of the 60s and 70s did see isolated pockets of armed resistance, but these were quickly and brutally isolated and neutralised by the 1980s. 

So I don't think it's particularly wise to put the cart before the horse and try to will a revolutionary army into existence. The only way I see that leading is in a new form of Foquismo which only really works in conflict as depicted by video games. If American revolutionists really wish to live up to this scarecrow of Marx, then they'll have to put a lot more work in, I'm aware there are now several active gun clubs, it's not on the same scale as the militia columns, but hopefully if nothing else they're raising the standards of gun safety and discipline. Possibly they could be the foundations for a more substantial force, assuming that is even something desirable or viable, but we'll have to wait and see.

Friday 19 November 2021

1937: Juan García Oliver Speech About Durruti and the time of Pistoleros and action groups

 

 


I found this speech given at some point in 1937 by Juan Garcia Oliver while looking for public domain footage of the Spanish Civil War and the years that preceded it. Oliver had joined the CNT Anarcho-syndicalist union in 1919 and in the early 1920s took an active part in the illegal action groups. The groups carried out reprisals for the murder of Anarchists and union members and with the group Los Solidarios Oliver took part in some high profile assassinations. In the 1930s Oliver took part in several abortive insurrections in Catalunya and was in prison until an amnesty in 1936. 

During the civil war he oscillated wildly between posts and ideological positions, initially supporting the full implementation of Libertarian Communism and joining a column at the front in Aragon, before being called back to be a CNT representative and later joining the Caballero republican government. During the Mayday's clashes between the Republic and the more revolutionary elements, he urged a ceasefire and unity with the government. In his tenure as Minister of Justice, he was associated with abolishing court fees and destroying court records, but also had a role in the establishment of work camps and prisons.

 


 

Link  

 

Text of the speech.

 
Our anarchist group was founded in the year 1923.

In circumstances that were very bad for our movement, very sad for the whole working class,
The pistoleros of the "Sindicato Libre*", sponsored by the bourgeoisie, were almost owners of the city.
The police hordes contributed to the destruction of our organizations and our men.
Salvador Seguí, the titan of anarcho-syndicalism, had fallen.
Old militants, the first men of our so splendid movement today, had fallen.
When we thought that the moment of being completely defeated was probably coming,
We united, in that moment,  we who I have no shame in saying, we who I have pride in confessing:
The kings of the working-class, pistol of Barcelona!
We lived and acted disunited.

But we made a selection!
The best terrorists of the working class
The ones who could best return punch by punch and deliver the final victory to the proletariat
We split from the other comrades, we united, and we formed an anarchist group.
A group of action, to fight!
Against the pistoleros, against the bourgeoisie, and against the government!
We achieved our goal: we won!
Our punches were harder, more towards the head, than theirs.
And the group was formed, and it was an oath of those who joined it, that, from that moment on, our group "Los Solidarios" we'd continue the struggle, until the total triumph of the working class, until the triumph of the social revolution and that only death could separate us.
The first to fall was comrade Eusebio, in Asturias.
Comrade Torin also fell, in Barcelona.
The comrades Suberviela and Torres Escartín suffered in prison.
And when we, after the Republic was established, came out of the prisons, and united once again in Spain, we continued the group, and then, we renamed to, "Nosotros".

We (Nosotros), who have no name!
We, who have no pride!
We, who are a mass!
We, who will go one by one!
We (Nosotros)!
We have a debt.
Durruti paid it.
For the revolution and in honor to his commitment.
We who are, like Durruti, to show Europe we stopped at the last compromise.
Time has been proving it:
It is not a test of a day nor a year.
It is a test of (???).
It was paid.
It was accomplished.
Durruti did his duty,
and we, who are still here, will also do it.
Death is nothing!
Our individual lives are NOTHING!
That's why we are "Nosotros".
And while one of us is left, "Nosotros" lives on.
That's all.

* A labour union set up by the industrialists of Barcelona in an attempt to break the much more militant CNT Union. Its leadership was complicit in the Pistoleros campaigns, informing on CNT members.

UPDATE:

Found a youtube channel affiliated with the CGT union in Valencia which has the full recording of the film online. 

It also has more information,


Documental realizado por la CNT en homenaje a Durruti en el primer aniversario de su muerte y dedicado a su viuda Emiliana Morín y a su hija Colette Durruti.  Comienza con unas imágenes del cementerio de Montjuich tras lo que se pasa a un acto de homenaje anarquista en el cine Tívoli de Barcelona. Vemos la intervención de cuatro dirigentes anarquistas, entre ellos a Juan García Oliver, que hace un discurso sobre la importancia de Durruti y la CNT en la lucha revolucionaria.  De nuevo en el cementerio, un antiguo miembro de la Columna Durruti, transformada en la 26 División, se dirige a la multitud prometiendo seguir la lucha por las ideas del líder caído. García Oliver da un inflamado discurso en el que recuerda a Durruti y al grupo de acción anarquista "Los Solidarios", la muerte de Salvador Seguí al que aplicaron la "Ley de fugas", y la lucha que mantuvieron contra los pistoleros del Sindicato Libre. Este discurso está intercalado con imágenes de ficción entre las que destaca una recreación de la aplicación de la "Ley de fugas".

Translation

 

 Documentary made by the CNT in homage to Durruti on the first anniversary of his death and dedicated to his widow Emiliana Morín and his daughter Colette Durruti.  It begins with some images of the Montjuich cemetery after which an anarchist tribute act is held at the Tívoli cinema in Barcelona. We see the intervention of four anarchist leaders, among them Juan García Oliver, who makes a speech about the importance of Durruti and the CNT in the revolutionary struggle.  Back in the cemetery, a former member of the Durruti Column, transformed into the 26th Division, addresses the crowd promising to continue the fight for the fallen leader's ideas. García Oliver gives an inflamed speech in which he remembers Durruti and the anarchist action group "Los Solidarios", the death of Salvador Seguí to whom the "Law of Fugitives*" was applied, and the fight they waged against the gunmen of the Free Trade Union. This speech is interspersed with fictional images, among which a recreation of the application of the "Law of Fugitives" stands out.


* The Ley de fugas or Law of fugitives was a law that authorised the shooting of prisoners attempting to escape. It was widely used by the police to execute prisoners out of hand.


Saturday 13 November 2021

A modest defence of the Langoliers

 


 

Recently I've dived back into Stephen King, both his stories and the many adaptions for film and tv. I've just finished the novella the Langoliers, which has been on my to read list for a good while. As a young kid I remember watching the Langoliers TV miniseries on the Sci-Fi channel. It's quite a long run time for two parts, 90 minutes with advert breaks. It has a bit of a reputation, it's mainly remembered for early 1990s CG special effects, and memes about its dialogue. Not many King fans care for it, and I'd be lying if I claimed it made my top 10, but I do think it has its charms. Having read the novella and re-watched the mini-series which is just on youtube, I find the derision is a bit overcooked. 

It's not without its flaws, the dialogue is indeed very strange, but most of that is from the novella, I was surprised while reading, but the TV show is very close and faithful to the original story, it's easily one of the most faithful to source material adaptions in the Stephen King filmography. Often it's word for word, and that includes Mr Toomey's* infamous "Scaring the little girl? LAY-D"! Tantrum and Nick's bizarre American stereotype of an Englishman. Now, that doesn't entirely absolve Directer and teleplay writer Tom Holland here, you are allowed to make changes, and should do to account for format and other differences. Punching up or reworking the dialogue was an option and while it does have its charms, re-working was probably the way to go. One example of the faithful dialogue that should've been changed or just cut entirely was Dinah the blind girl's line about cereal and milk, "it sounds... a little like rice crispies after you pour in the milk". This is a slight change from the novella, there Dinah still says that, but all the other characters once they hear the sound make different comparisons, radio static, crunching etc, it supposed to reflect each character's experiences and inability to describe accurately an alien sound, which adds to the creepiness and gives a little more depth to each character. The show just cut all but Dinah's which limits the character development and comes across rather silly.

I say it should've been changed or just dropped entirely because it deflates one of the Langoliers key strengths, its sound design. The great strength of the show is that throughout part I and much of Part II, clunky lines aside, it does a lot to convey a sense of wrongness and building tension and dread. The sound design is key to that, muffling echoes when the characters arrive at Bangor airport, and most importantly, the noise of the Langoliers. There's a very low, almost unnoticeable at first background noise, that slowly, very slowly builds in volume and intensity as the threat approaches until as they draw near its impossible to ignore. And it is a strange sound that's hard to identify precisely. This is what hooked me to beg my parents and let me stay up late on two school nights in a row to watch the show. My parents have no interest or love for science fiction, view it with contempt, so to agree to let me stay up and watch it on the family telly that had cable took some doing. I was quite intrigued and wanted to know what had in fact happened, I doubt I'd ever seen a horror story like it, where the threat and hostility came from just how wrong and off the world was.

Unfortunately, its greatest strength is also the show's greatest weakness, it builds and builds and builds upon itself. The mystery of what happened keeps deepening, the Langoliers march from the distance continues, Craig Toomey's trauma and high-stress existence drive him further and further down a violent breakdown, endangering himself and the other passengers. And then finally, in the final third of the second episode, it all comes to a climax that fizzles out. The Langoliers show up and they are terrible indeed, just not in the way they were supposed to be. Even for the 1990s the CG effects are shockingly poor, I had seen Reboot and Insektors and enjoyed both immensely, their early episodes are in another league compared to this. I have seen concept art of what the Langoliers would look like as practical effect models, they look a bit better, but ultimately I think the design is a major limitation, the teeth simply must have looked better if they had gone that route instead, but as cheap and artificial as the CG one's look, they follow King's descriptions in the novella exactly. It's a testament to King's skill that he wrote a story whose pay off is floating meat balls with teeth to eat the world once time passes, and it was published as a serious work of horror laced fiction that takes a philosophical look at our relationship with time as a concept and force, it wasn't until a studio put it on the screen that people finally realized just how naff that is. Again, though, they must've known how silly and stupid that design would look like out of the minds of readers and in reality. I don't know why changes weren't considered. Then again, they might not have been able to come up with a satisfying alternative with the time and resources they had available.

So in summary, while I think the Langoliers time in the sun has passed, I do think it has its merits, and I am a little sad that most people just see the gay stereotype from the Beverly Hills Cop movies** running around an abandoned airport and passed gifs of his lines on social media. His character is one of the better ones in the show, and there is a lot of depth and emotional baggage and turmoil. I would like to recommend anyone curious to track down the novella, it's the first entry in the collection Four Past Midnight, and perhaps give the show a go, just try to go into it with an open mind, you don't watch all of it though, if you don't like Part I, you can stop, it's the strongest part and the best bits of Part II are what's good about Part I.

*I suppose since everyone else who talks about the show does, but Craig Toomey was played by Bronson Pinchot, star of Perfect Strangers. However, I'm not American, and that show wasn't big over here, I'm not even sure if it was ever broadcast, so I didn't recognize him, and I'm only aware of that fact because everyone else who talks about this show bringing it up, often at length.

** Yes, we did get those, including Beverly Hills Cop III, I suspect Bronson Pinchot doesn't have a very good agent, or has an amazing one with a massive grudge against him.

Thursday 28 October 2021

Freedom Fighters and War Games

 

Recently I've had a massive increase in free time and a major reduction in income, so I've been playing old games again. When I was younger I really liked Freedom Fighters, a 2003 squad based game. The setting is an alternative Cold War where the Soviet Union has successfully conquered the United States. The aim of the game is to liberate New York and drive out the invaders.

Now, Freedom Fighters is part of a proud tradition in Cold War fiction, where the Soviet Union is a powerful force for evil and oppression but aside from the flag and the red stars has no real political resemblance to the actual Soviet Union as it existed. They don't talk about socialism or the works of Lenin, you could swap them out with any generic imperial power. It also has a slightly cynical satirical edge to its humour. It's not a serious game with a serious political message other than freedom is good and invading other nations is bad.

 At the time it was heavily acclaimed for exceptionally good squad AI, they would largely do what you told them, and would be very effective if you ordered them about appropriately. It also had an interesting approach to levels, each level was broken into multiple blocks with the objective being the destruction of all Soviet army forces within them. The unique twist was that you couldn't or at least weren't supposed to boot up the level and then just shoot your way to the end, walking over a pile of corpses. The game wanted you to act like an underdog urban guerrilla. 

Playing it again, it reminded me a lot of a controversial military theory called Foco theory or Foquismo. Foquismo has largely faded from memory, but there was a time in the 1960s-80s in the midst of the Cold War where it was a popular strategy that inspired dozens of small groups of revolutionaries in Latin America and other parts. It's closely associated with Che Guevara, but was codified by Regis Debray, in the years before he became a comfortable member of the French establishment and adviser to French governments. Debray was an admirer of Guevara and based his military ideas on the experience of Guevara, which confuses me a bit because the Cuban revolution doesn't really reflect the ideas of Foquismo, but that's a discussion for another day.

Anyway, the way the game's combat mechanics work seems like it was originally designed as a training tool for a school of Foquista soldiers. Obviously that isn't the case and its just a coincidence, but nevertheless the parallels were striking to me.

A brief summary (simplified) of Foquismo:

  1. It is possible for a small band of dedicated and skilled armed fighters to defeat a standing army.
  2. By fighting against the army of a regime, this group can inspire and ignite a popular uprising.
  3. This means that the Foco, the Guerrilla army has replaced the party as the revolutionary vanguard and can exhilarate and establish the necessary conditions for social change and revolutionary struggle.

Again this is a simplification, Debray and every other advocate of Foquismo I've encountered added more to it and some qualifiers. A common one is that this strategy is only viable for "developing" nations with a still small proletariat, or in colonial and immediately-post colonial societies whose rulers haven't had time to cement their rule and establish their legitimacy fully. But these three points are what distinguish Foquismo from more orthodox Leninist and Maoist military strategy. 

How did it work? Well to cut it short, terribly. They failed everywhere they tried, the People's Revolutionary Army in Argentina were exterminated, and the military used their failed campaign as justification to launch a general war of extermination against all dissident groups.

But of course Freedom Fighters isn't real, it's a video game, so things turn out a bit better for the Foco there. After the tutorial level you meet a skilled survivor called Mr, Jones who takes you to an already prepared base area hidden in the sewers. From there, you plan your counter-attacks. Each block is divided into three or four sections with detailed locations of Soviet forces, their checkpoints, armouries etc. What's interesting is that these sections while split into sublevels still have an effect on each other. Say you find yourself ripped apart by a Soviet Hind and cannot advance further, checking the map will reveal that in another section there is a helicopter refuelling station, moving to that part and blowing it up means the Hinds are no longer an issue. Or perhaps you keep getting spotted by snipers and patrols at night, in another section there's an electrical substation that's powering the search lights. 

Instead of just marching to point A to point B, the game wants you to stay mobile using the sewers to constantly move between areas picking vulnerable enemy positions and thus whittle down their strength before finally driving them out of the area. Foquismo like most over theories on Guerrilla warfare stress the need for the outnumbered Guerrillas to stay moving and pick their battles, only taking on fights they should win. The weapons are either improvised, a wrench, a Molotov cocktail or taken from the enemy. 

The way it handles squads is close to the logic of Foquismo. In addition to a green health bar, there is a yellow bar, this yellow bar is called charisma, and it governs how many freedom fighters you can recruit into your squad. You get charisma from fulfilling objectives, i.e. inspiring the population with your military exploits. In later levels you will find wounded Soviet soldiers, by healing them they come over to your side. This shows how the guerrillas have been inflicting more damage on the occupiers and have successfully demoralised some of the enemy troops.

Narratively speaking this is also mirrored, as you go on completing missions you become known as the "Freedom Phantom" a mythic hero who inspires the downtrodden. At one point in the game, your characters' brother leaves the base and New York as part of a mission to link up with other groups of freedom fighters to escalate the fighting into a general uprising.

 The final act of the game involves the freedom fighters seizing a Soviet run TV channel and broadcasting messages to launch an uprising throughout New York. Then launching a final assault on the Soviet army base on Governors Island. You've gone from a tiny band of committed fighters to seizing most of the territory and leading a popular revolt.

 And that's it, apart from an unlockable bonus level fighting on the Statue of Liberty, that is where the game ends. It never got a sequel or follow up, so we have no idea how the freedom phantom handled the fallout.

 

Sunday 24 October 2021

For la Ĉinaj Agresuloj el Vjetnamio! - Away with the Chinese Aggresion Against Vietnam!

  


 

Declaration 

 By the Central Board of the Bulgarian Esperantist Association.

 

Bulgarian Esperantists have just learnt of the invasion by the Chinese army into the territory of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam with great anger and indigination.  This insidious attack by fascist means shook all honest people throughout the world and has only brought joy to reactionaries. There is no evidence of any provocation by the Vietnamese people against Chinese territory. But there are other facts. They speak of China's relentless pressure on the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. This pressure began immediately after the total failue of US aggression in Vietnam. This pressure is exerted because of the ambitions of the Chinese party and state leadership to impose hegemony. China wishes to be supreme in South East Asia, and because of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam's allegiance to its socialist ideals, the socialist community, and the Soviet Union, the powerful pillar of socialism and peace in the whole world. The armed aggression by China is the culmination of this pressure. By this abominable war, which China has instigated, by the barbarous murder of Vietnamese women, children and the elderly, and through its destruction of Vietnamese cities and villages the Chinese leadership has shown the whole world, that it has nothing in common with peace, humanity, and internationalism. It more closely belongs to the world of Imperialism and the blackest forces of reaction. These barbarous attacks against the liberty, sovereignty and independence of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, is an indignant injury to every kind of legal and moral international norm, it endangers the peace and security of the world, and it also brings misery to the Chinese people itself.

In the name of all Bulgarian Esperantists - sincere fighters for friendship and understanding between the peoples, and for peace and security in the world - the Central Board of the Bulgarian Esperantist Association together with the whole Bulgarian people angrily declare "Get your hands of Vietnam! Immediate withdrawal of the Chinese army from the land of the heroic and free Vietnamese people! Long live the front of peace and socialism in the whole world!"


CB of BEA

 

Telegrams protesting Chinese aggression came in the editorial board of the annual meeting of the Bulgarian Esperanto Co-operative, of the North Bulgarian Esperanto Youth Conference in Varna (II. III. 79) and from many other Esperanto organisations. 

Source:


Bulgara Esperantisto. Jaro 48, n. 3 (1979)

 

DEKLARACIO
 

de la Centra Estraro de Bulĝara Esperantista Asocio

Kun granda kolero kaj indigno la bulgaraj esperantistoj eksciis pri la invado de la ĉina armeo en la teritorion de Socialisma. Respubliko Vjetnamio. Tiu insida atako laŭ fasista maniero skuis ĉiujn honestajn homojn en la mondo kaj ĝojigis nur la reakciulojn. Ek- zistas neniu fakto pri ia ajn provoko de la vjetnama popolo kontraŭ ĉina teritorio. Sed esta aliaj faktoj. Ili parolas pri senĉesa premo de Ĉinio kontraŭ Socialisma Respubliko Vjetnas mio. Tiu premo komenciĝis tuj post la sengiora fiasko de la usona agreso en Vjetnamio- Gi estas farata pro la ambicio de la ĉinaj partia kaj ŝtata gvidantaroj trudi la hegemo. nion de Ĉinio super Sudorienta Azio kaj pro la fideleco de Socialisma Respubliko Vjetnamio
al la socialismaj idealoj, al la socialisma komunaĵo kaj Sovetunio — la potenca pilastro de
Sa paco kaj socialismo en la tuta mondo. Kulmino de tiu premo estas la armita agreso de Ĉinio. Per tiu abomena milito, kiun Ĉinio iniciatis, per la barbara mortigado de vjetnama virinoj, infanoj kaj maljunuloj kaj per detruado de la vjetnamaj urboj kaj vilaĝoj la ĉina gvidantaro montris al la tuta mondo, ke ĝi havas nenion komunan kun la paco, Ia humanisma kaj la internaciismo. Ĝi pli intime aliĝis al la monda imperiismo, al la plej nigraj fortoj de la internacia reakciularo. La barbara atenco kontraŭ la libero, suvereneco kaj sendependoj de Socialisma Respubliko Vjetnamio estas indigna rompo de ĉiuj kaj ĉiaj internaciaj juraj- kaj moralaj normoĵ, ĝi subfosas la pacon kaj sekurecon en la mondo, portas malfeliĉon an- kaŭ al la ĉina popolo mem. 

 

En la nomo de ĉiuj bulgaraj esperantistoj — sinceraj batalantoj por amikeco kaj kompreniĝo inter la popoloj, por paco kaj sekureco en la mondo — la Centra Estraro de Bulgara Esperantista Asocio kune kun la tuta bulgara popolo kolere ekkrias:“ For la manojn disde Vjetnamio! Senprokrastan eltiron de la ĉina armeo el la lando de la heroa kaj liberama vjetnama popolo! Vivu la fronto de la paco kaj socialismo en la tuta mondo !“.

 

CE de BEA Telegramoj proteste kontraŭ la ĉina agreso venis en la redakcion de la jarkunveno de Bulgara E-Kooperativo, de la Konferenco de Nordbulgara E-Junularo en Varno (11. III. 79), ĉe multaj E-societoj.


 

Monday 4 October 2021

Thatcher’s Tech Base | Red & Black Gamers

 This is a copy of my review for Organise! Magazine's Red & Black Gamers section.


 

Thatcher’s Tech Base (TTB) is a Doom II modification that was released on Friday the 24th of September, with the help of the websites how to install guide after ten minutes of downloading and extracting I managed to get the game working. Six hours later I had made it to the end screen and a sequel hook. My final runtime was just over an hour, the other five hours were me reloading after dying. I’ve enjoyed Doom, Doom II and Wolfenstein 3D for years, ever since I found them installed on a computer in my town’s internet cafe. Though sadly I was never very good at them, so if you were an old school Doom pro you’ll probably beat my time, and if you’re not a pro then copy my strategy of saving in rare moments of peace from slaughtering everything in a room.

TTB feels like Doom II, its pacing, its maze and gauntlet mix for level design, the soundtrack is original but aside from a few tunes inspired by old British patriotic jingles like Land of Hope and Glory are just like the soundtrack to the original Doom II. The webpage has a bandcamp that plays some of the tracks and I’ve been listening to them while writing this. The levels are covered and I do mean covered in detailed sprite work that’s gory and gross, and full of highly detailed 1980s propaganda posters and graffiti. The only parts of the game that show that it's a 2020's modification and not from the 1990s (when shareware mods were common) are the things it does that were simply impossible back then. Other than a short opening section in a demon prison where Thatcher and her acolytes have escaped, the entirety of the game including boss battles and secrets is in one level. That’s over an hours worth of gameplay with dozens of unique assets with no loading in between. The sprite work that covers the walls of this world is just too crisp and clear for an older machine to have run, you can read most of the gravity and text on the vote Tory posters.

The plot is very simple, Thatcher has gained control of a part of hell and is attempting to return and bring an army of demons and party activists with her. Its the players task to go to the tenth circle of hell ie. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to stop her. The demonic horde is quite diverse, most of the roster of enemies from Doom II are here but have been given a light blue makeover. Jokes aside the world of TTB does look like a hell version of the late 1980s/1990s UK. Apart from some very brief text boxes the old Doom games told their stories through environmental design and TTB maintains that tradition. You can tell Thatcher has escaped because the prison at the beginning has a lot of corpses of guards and busted open cells and damaged machinery. You can tell you’re getting closer to the final confrontation the more closely the scenery resembles a Tory party HQ and the British government. The final showdown with a Cyber Thatcher (see the box art) is in the House of Commons complete with both aisles full of sycophants willing to fight to the death to protect her.

Though this does mean that the game has a target audience of people who are already intimately familiar with the legacy of the Thatcher’s government and her successors, something the game acknowledges by being dedicated to them, and since this is a modification of a licensed property, instead of payment which is illegal due to copyright law, the game devs at Doom Daddy Digital recommend that you donate to one of several charities on their webpage. The charities are ISWO support for Mining families, Stonewall, The Hillsborough Justice Campaign, ICTJ The International Center for Transitional Justice, Living Rent, and the Scottish Refugee Council. This might at first glance seem a bit of random list but they all represent some of the victims of the Thatcher government, Mining communities were ripped apart and occupied for over a year, queer Britons were left to die through AIDs with the UK government only taking action once it had definitely started affecting heterosexuals, but even after that gay people were still criminalised and scapegoated (Ed. Google Section 28), Hillsborough was of course where the police managed to kill 97 Liverpool FC fans, which was covered up by the government in 1989 and to this day the families of the deceased are still battling government indifference and inertia, the ICTJ campaigns to expose systematic human rights abuses and given that Thatcher’s administration escalated the conflict in Northern Ireland and turned parts of Britain into militarised states. Living Rent is one of the many groups dealing with the ugly aftermath of one of the Conservative government’s flagship policies, mass selling off of council housing and deregulation of the housing market, and the Scottish Refugee Council, well in addition to using Scotland as a test bed for most of their reactionary policies before rolling them out to the rest of the UK, the Tory party of the 1980s was also openly hostile to refugees, which to be fair is an example of the continuity of British government rather than a break with tradition.

I’m old enough to remember the lingering effects of the Conservative governments of the 1980s and 1990s partly because the Labour governments that followed did very little to change or counter act that legacy. So I ate everything TTB was serving me. I understood that the NUM stickers on the walls were about the 1984-85 Miners strike, I understood the graffiti that were references to the IRA and the fighting in Northern Ireland, I understood why the 1% health pick ups are milk cartoons and why the words “you’ve snatched some milk” flash on the screen when you pick them up. I also chuckled a little when I noticed that the evil base full of dripping acid and exploding barrels has health and safety at work signs. And I understood what the red baiting vote Tory posters were getting at. But I don’t think that’ll be easily understood by someone playing this without that prior knowledge.


 

To take just one example, there’s a really clever part of the level that’s a BBC communications room, in it there are two banks of monitors with images of the UK and groups of blue uniformed soldiers at the desks. I enjoyed seeing this, but if you didn’t know just how overtly pro government the BBC was during this period and how the Conservative party used it to manipulate the population I think a lot of the messaging is lost. I do wonder what a Doom completionist who plays TTB with no real knowledge of Thatcher but loves the game and its modding scene would think. Hopefully the strengths of the game and the sheer never ending examples of just how hated Thatcher and the Tory party were will pique their curiosity and they’ll learn more about it when they’ve made it to the end screen or gotten a 100% of the secrets. On my first full playthrough I only managed 11% of secrets, and there’s an entire path of the level locked behind a series of doors that needed a red key card to access which I never even saw, so after finishing I dived back in, though I will probably have to wait for someone else to write up a walkthrough.

In summary, if you like the old Doom games you should play this game its in the top tier of mods and games inspired by them. If you remember the Thatcher administration and its austerity and police state actions, you should play this game even if you don’t like Doom games. It’ll take a few minutes for you to adjust but once you’ve got the hang of using a Winchester rifle and grabbed the Trident missile launcher you will find some catharsis. If neither applies to you, I would still say give the game a go, even if the game play doesn’t click and you don’t come away with an in-depth understanding of the damage the combination neoliberal economics and patriotic traditionalism and respect for authority can do to a people, you will at least get a taste of how varied and visceral the resistance to it was.

 

Reddebrek
www.reddebreksbowl.blogspot.com

You can learn more about Thatcher's Tech Base and play it yourself via their Github.
https://thatchers-techbase.github.io/

 

 

Bonus Screenshot gallery 

 















 

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