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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
The labor movement: its conservative functions and social consequences
Frank Tannenbaum's examination of the labor movement and its
social-political impact. Weighs up the strengths and weaknesses of the
Socialist Party, the American Federation of Labor and the Industrial
Workers of the World methods of organising and the impact they have on
the working class and wider society.
An introduction and evaluation of the Socialist and Co-operative
ideas of Robert Owen, possibly the most influential of Britain's 19th
century reformers and political advocates. Written by C.E.M. Joad for the Fabian Society in 1917.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
It is possible for a small band of dedicated and skilled armed fighters to defeat a standing army.
By fighting against the army of a regime, this group can inspire and ignite a popular uprising.
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.
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 laĉina 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 estaaliaj faktoj. Ili parolas pri senĉesa premo de Ĉinio kontraŭ Socialisma Respubliko Vjetnasmio. 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 deSa paco kaj socialismo en la tuta mondo. Kulmino de tiu premo estas la armita agreso deĈinio. Per tiu abomena milito, kiun Ĉinio iniciatis, per la barbara mortigado de vjetnamavirinoj, 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 humanismakaj la internaciismo. Ĝi pli intime aliĝis al la monda imperiismo, al la plej nigraj fortojde la internacia reakciularo. La barbara atenco kontraŭ la libero, suvereneco kaj sendependojde 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 BulgaraEsperantista Asocio kune kun la tuta bulgara popolo kolere ekkrias:“ For la manojn disdeVjetnamio! Senprokrastan eltiron de la ĉina armeo el la lando de la heroa kaj liberamavjetnama 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 deBulgara E-Kooperativo, de la Konferenco de Nordbulgara E-Junularo en Varno (11. III. 79), ĉe multaj E-societoj.
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