Recommended: Wild Tales (2014)

I loved this film despite hating its underlying premise.



As the title suggests, and the opening credits make explicit, Wild Tales is based on the notion that we’re a heartbeat away from “regressing” to our animal nature. As expected, this nature is characterized by: violence, vengeance, irrationality, lust, the reflexive defense of kin and tribe, greed, and gluttony.

This sort of speciesism – which itself underlies a great deal of racism, sexism, and political repression - we can and should avoid, particularly in works that aspire to political satire or social criticism. Director Damián Szifrón has discussed the film’s theme:

Despite the clear common theme of violence and vengeance, what connects the accounts, according to the director, is ‘the fuzzy boundary that separates civilization from barbarism, the vertigo of losing your temper, and the undeniable pleasure of losing control’. This is explored through the concept that human beings have animalistic features. Szifron considers the main difference between human and animals is the capacity one has to restrain oneself as opposed to animals who are guided by their instincts. Humans ‘have a fight or flee mechanism, but it comes with a very high cost. Most of us live with the frustration of having to repress oneself, but some people explode. This is a movie about those who explode’. It deals with ‘daily life’ aspects and ‘is a movie about the desire for freedom, and how this lack of freedom, and the rage and anguish it produces, can cause us to run off the rails’. The main issue, according to Szifron, ‘is the pleasure of reacting, the pleasure of reacting toward injustice’. (my emphasis)

The Freudian distinction between a repressed “civilization” and a “barbarous” freedom, in addition to isolating the human characters with their alleged instincts and drives, presents an obstacle to working out a real approach to political freedom and social justice. As I said, I loved the film, but it could have been a much stronger work of art, a stinging and biting social satire, had it questioned and challenged received wisdom about “civilization” and “barbarism,” “human” and “animal,” rather than reproducing it.

Quote of the day

“You are in resistance in order to strengthen sovereignty, democracy and the possibilities of life. The global economic system must be transformed urgently and a new social contract created. As you said, may the people choose to exercise their sovereignty, for the present and future of Greece and of all peoples everywhere.”

- from letter to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras from Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Nora Cortiñas, Mirta Baravalle, and Beverly Keene

The Butcher of Bariloche

The Butcher of Bariloche

The perfect escape
this Fitzroya gothic village
old friends meet
for days of mythic forgetting
in the steeled bliss
of Priebke’s delicatessen

Benjamin Dangl, Dancing with Dynamite

This book deals with the dances between today’s nominally left-leaning South American governments and the dynamic movements that helped pave their way to power in Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Brazil, and Paraguay. The discussion surrounding the question of changing the world through taking state power or remaining autonomous has been going on for centuries. The vitality of South America’s new social movements, and the recent shift to the left in the halls of government power, make the region a timely subject of study within this ongoing debate. Though often overlooked in contemporary reporting and analysis on the region, this dance is a central force crafting many countries’ collective destiny. (KL 153-158)

Benjamin Dangl’s 2010 Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America

offers an accessible overview of political struggles in seven Latin American countries as they’ve developed over the past few decades. It’s more a journalistic than a scholarly work, written for a general audience of activists and others on the Left and seeking primarily to respond to immediate practical and political rather than more abstract scholarly or theoretical debates. I recommend it for anyone looking to familiarize themselves with recent history and contemporary dynamics in this part of the world and to better understand what’s at stake within these nations and globally.

In a refreshing and much needed twist, the book’s protagonists are the (coalitions of) social justice movements in these countries as they negotiate a political landscape in which, following decades of rightwing rule, leftist or relatively more sympathetic populist governments have been successful.* I do wish he’d paid more attention to the role of the US in the internal politics of these countries - not only in support for the politicians, parties, movements, media, and repressive policies and actions of the Right, but also within the antistatist/antiauthoritarian Left itself (a situation which of course makes the choices for these movements even more complicated and perilous). It’s always a delicate balance for those who want to turn the focus away from the traditional subjects – Great Men (and occasionally Women), North and South – and show neglected local movements as real and effective political forces; on one side is the danger of underemphasizing the powerful influence of the US (and Canada) on domestic politics in these countries, on the other of implying that political actors in Latin America are mere puppets or capable only of reacting to powerful corporations and governments rather than independently shaping their history. Since there are a number of people writing about the role of the US, Canadian, and other foreign governments and corporations in Latin American politics, it’s probably best for Dangl to lean toward the former. (And I really like that he closes the book with a discussion of the relationship between these bold movements and activists in the US inspired by their aims and tactics.** More recently he’s written about connections with the Occupy movement.)

In any case, as an anarchist who’s made similar arguments over the years, I’m, unsurprisingly, right on board with his perspective and his thesis:

Many South American movements make revolution a part of everyday life, not something to be postponed for an electoral victory or the seizure of state power. While they may not define themselves as such, a number of these movements are anarchist in action and belief…. For movements in South America that engage the state, the relationship involves a tightrope walk between cooptation and genuine collaboration. Many times, however, cooperation with the state leads to the demobilization of social movements…. When facing such challenges, according to Uruguayan analyst Raúl Zibechi, it is important for movements to remain true to their own agenda, and not water down their demands to align with the state. Movements must expand their power, potential, spaces, and capacities.13 However, expanding power doesn’t need to mean becoming a part of the state’s political or electoral process; rather, it can mean working to become a sustainable movement that can weather changing political climates. (KL 172-186)

(It’s important to note that he immediately makes clear that anti-poverty and other such government programs are valuable and important, and that he’s by no means endorsing a libertarian model: “This book is based on the belief that public-run services are by definition more accountable than commercial, for-profit businesses or corporate run services, and in many cases, vital for survival. The process of negotiating with current left-leaning governments has posed challenges to social movements; but the region’s history demonstrates that multinational corporations and right-wing governments pushing through neoliberal policies have typically been even more devastating” (KL 194-197).)

Especially relevant to this year’s US presidential elections, Dangl refers to a 2008 article by the late Howard Zinn, “Election Madness.” In it, Zinn writes:

No, I’m not taking some ultra-left position that elections are totally insignificant, and that we should refuse to vote to preserve our moral purity. Yes, there are candidates who are somewhat better than others, and at certain times of national crisis (the Thirties, for instance, or right now) where even a slight difference between the two parties may be a matter of life and death.

I’m talking about a sense of proportion that gets lost in the election madness. Would I support one candidate against another? Yes, for two minutes—the amount of time it takes to pull the lever down in the voting booth.

But before and after those two minutes, our time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on matters of war and social justice.

Let’s remember that even when there is a “better” candidate (yes, better Roosevelt than Hoover, better anyone than George Bush), that difference will not mean anything unless the power of the people asserts itself in ways that the occupant of the White House will find it dangerous to ignore.

I miss Howard Zinn.

*The recent administrative coup in Paraguay signifies a retrenchment.

**I should note that these aims and tactics aren’t as new as many books suggest. The global history of radical activism spans centuries, over which tactics have been shared, modified, and adapted across movements and continents. I would love for this history to be better known.

Children's rights, the pharmaceutical industry, and media silence

I’m pleased to see CRIN devoting some editorials to the issue of pharmaceuticals, and especially psychiatric drugs: “Children’s rights and the other kind of drug use” and “Children’s Rights and the Pharmaceutical Industry.”

Some quotes to give the gist:

Unquestionably, medicine plays a huge role in securing children's rights. Indeed, the Convention on the Rights of the Child is clear that children have the rights to survival, development, and the highest attainable standard of health, all of which must be respected if they are to fully enjoy the wide range of rights under the Convention. Medical assistance is hence vital to the fulfilment of all children's rights, and prescription drugs are often an important component of health care.

But what happens when the very same companies that provide life-saving drugs violate some children's rights to improve health care for others, or simply to increase the bottom line? As the pharmaceutical industry becomes increasingly globalised, it is ever more important to ask this question. Over the past several years, lawsuits and investigations have cropped up around the world that raise concerns about not only testing drugs on children, but administering untested or unnecessary drugs on children.

+++

While pharmaceutical companies have the power to greatly increase children's well-being, it is difficult to see how this can be accomplished by conducting unsafe and unregulated trials, prescribing untested medicine as a matter of course, and lobbying to give some children medication they don't need while seeking to deny others the medication they do need. These practices threaten rather than enhance children's rights to survival, development and health, and CRIN firmly believes that they must be put to an end. As the business of medicine expands around the world, its focus must be fundamentally revisited and revised in light of global ethical concerns and, above all else, the pharmaceutical industry should realign its focus to ensure that its efforts are in the best interests of all children.

Of course, the pharmaceutical industry is never going to realign its focus, and this is why no part of health care should be in the hands of a private, for-profit industry in the first place, but it’s a good thing that children’s rights activists are calling for major reforms in this area.

A somewhat tangential but serious issue the editorials raised for me is media coverage of abuses. They refer, for example, to the case of GSK being fined* this year for research violations, especially related to informed consent, in its clinical trials of the vaccine Synflorix in poor areas of Argentina.

(The Buenos Aires Herald reported that the government found that the 14 babies who died were in the placebo group and that the vaccine is safe; while of course important to note - if correct - this shouldn’t distract from the documented abuses in this research.)

What caught my attention was that the CRIN editorial links to an article from January about how GSK was appealing the decision. I had actually heard about the case in April, when I came across reports that GSK was dropping its appeals and paying the fines, so I knew this information was dated. I searched for more recent coverage, and came up with page after page of reports from January about GSK’s appeal, giving the impression that all was still up in the air. The only reason I was able to find the April article, which is in Spanish, was that I’d saved it at the time. I suspect that there were few or no major exposes or stories in the mainstream English-language media reporting on the April developments, but is it also possible that they do exist but GSK is using some SEO techniques to bury them?

Another case mentioned in one of the editorials is that of Florida’s Department of Juvenile Justice**:

Last year, Florida ordered a sweeping investigation after finding that many psychiatrists engaged to treat children in the juvenile justice system had accepted large fees from manufacturers of antipsychotic medications. Child advocates have argued that the rising and widespread use of these powerful drugs, some of which are not even approved for use in children, is little more than a “chemical restraint” on children.

But when I try to find recent news about the progress, findings, reports, or consequences of this “sweeping investigation,” I come up empty-handed.

This could be a search failure on my part, but I think these two cases are indicative of the way in which patterns of corporate/government abuse in research and psychiatry not only overwhelmingly go unreported, except for those few egregious examples in which people have made noise, but on the rare occasions these examples do appear they're then allowed by the media to fade into obscurity.

*This phrasing reflects the reality of law with regard to corporations in most places at present. It’s a sad fact that corporations can be found guilty of serious crimes and pay fines without any human having to take criminal responsibility. In fact, the top executives are often rewarded.

**I was bothered that they link at one point to Natural News. It’s just a post citing a study reported in the NYT about children on Medicaid being far more likely to be given antipsychotics than those whose families were privately insured, and I think it’s hard for many people who find it in the first sites listed in a search to recognize it for the kookfest it is, but still…annoying.

A good movie that isn't a documentary

It's "foreign,"* unless you're in Argentina, so I suppose I should call it a "film." Haunting.



But why the hell do so few films pass the Bechtel test?

*Won the 2010 Best Foreign Language Academy Award.

(Delayed) Justice for Kidnappings in Argentina and Spain

In other legal news, after many years, Jorge Videla and Reynaldo Bignone (already in prison for life) and six other officials in the Argentine military junta have come to trial for the kidnapping of hundreds of babies from people who were persecuted – jailed, tortured, murdered – by the regime during Argentina’s “Dirty War.”

While the children were adopted by families friendly to the military leadership, their parents were rarely heard from again.

Female political prisoners were kept alive during their pregnancies, only to be summarily killed after giving birth, often dropped alive and naked into the sea from military aircraft.

The trial will involve hundreds of witnesses and last several months.

In Spain, meanwhile, the pressure continues to build for a full national investigation of the baby-stealing ring that began after the Civil War, when children of opponents of the dictatorship were kidnapped and adopted. (This was the subject of the book/film The Lost Children of Franco several years ago.)

Military psychologist Antonio Vallejo-Nagera built the ideological framework for the practice of taking children from their parents. He saw Marxism as a form of mental illness that was polluting the Hispanic race and advocated that children of leftists be removed and re-educated, a process he termed "separating the wheat from the chaff."

An unknown number of infants were taken from women's prisons. In addition, some Republican child evacuees were repatriated without their parents' consent and interned in Social Aid homes for schooling in religious and nationalist ideology. Many were adopted by right-wing families.

In the Spanish case, the involvement of priests and nuns seems clear; I don’t know if this was also the case in Argentina, though there is of course evidence of Church complicity more generally.*

Speaking of justice and the recovery of historical memory, I’m looking forward to seeing Patricio Guzmán’s new film, Nostalgia for the Light:



It’s showing in New York for the next couple of weeks, and he’s making appearances there. (He’s made some pro-Church films in the past, but the ones I’ve seen haven’t been. Hope this one isn’t all goddy.) ...By the way, why are these documentaries so expensive? Why don’t they put them on iTunes and elsewhere online and go for quantity? That way they could get their message out to more people far more quickly….

*Note - of Christian von Wernich:

On 9 October 2007 the court found him guilty of complicity in seven homicides, 42 kidnappings, and 32 instances of torture, and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

As of 1 February 2010 von Wernich has not been penalised by the Catholic Church and is permitted to officiate as priest at Mass in prison. On his conviction his superior, bishop Martín Elizalde, apologised for von Wernich being "so far from the requirements of the mission commended to him" and said "at the appropriate time von Wernich's situation will have to be resolved in accordance with canonical law", but never again referred to the issue in public.

Well, knock me over with a rusty thurible. I’m shocked.