tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31053345367334276242024-02-19T08:34:07.784-08:00News and Related Musings About Nonfiction Books and our Adventures in Digital PublishingRafał Guzikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04553717584605238709noreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3105334536733427624.post-2292789331846448932014-09-22T09:17:00.000-07:002014-09-30T15:55:32.701-07:00My Enduring Interest in Bruce Springsteen<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
I first saw
Bruce Springsteen on <st1:date day="21" month="11" w:st="on" year="1978">November
21, 1978</st1:date>, during the <i>Darkness
on the</i> <i>Edge of Town</i> tour at McGaw
Hall on <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Northwestern</st1:placename>
<st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place>’s <st1:city w:st="on">Evanston</st1:city> campus, just
outside <st1:city w:st="on">Chicago</st1:city>.
I wasn’t what you would call a rabid fan by any means but rather someone who
admired his songwriting and appreciated his commitment to putting on a good
show. Even though I had read about his legendary marathon performances, I
wasn’t quite prepared: reading about him just wasn’t the same as actually
seeing him live. After watching him perform for a mesmerizing three plus hours,
I remember feeling physically and emotionally exhausted—I can only imagine how
he felt. I realized too—and with great alarm--that when I left the venue I
could barely see. This blurriness lasted a good many hours. “I had gone blind
at my first Bruce Springsteen concert,” I thought to myself. Not to worry. My
vision returned to normal by the next morning.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
I saw
Springsteen again in November 1980 during <i>The
River</i> tour. I tried to get tickets for the sold-out <i>Born in the USA</i> tour a few years later at <st1:city w:st="on">Chicago</st1:city>’s Soldier Field, but with no luck. I
had simply waited too long. Then many years went by and I didn’t see him again
until <i>The Rising</i> tour in 2002 and
2003. After that I made sure that I attended a show every time he came to <st1:city w:st="on">Chicago</st1:city> or the <st1:city w:st="on">Chicago</st1:city> area. In the
meantime, and being a bit of a pack rat, I kept a big file of Springsteen-related
articles and bought a batch of Springsteen books; all of which came in handy
when I began editing <i>Racing in the
Street: The Bruce Springsteen Reader</i>, which Penguin published in 2004. A
few subsequent Springsteen books and essays and presentations followed until
now with the publication of <i>Workingman</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
What makes Springsteen
so appealing? Why my enduring interest in him? For me, I think it has as much
to do with his great talent as a singer, songwriter, and performer as his
likeability and, especially, his innate humanity. In concert, he is soulful,
compassionate, angry, funny, and just plain goofy. How can you not like someone
like that? But more than this, it is his absolute commitment to community in all its forms—personal, local, national, international--that makes him stand
out above the rest. His music makes us better people or, at the very least,
appeals to our better selves. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
Or as
Springsteen himself once said, “Remember, nobody wins unless everybody wins.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .25in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">By June Skinner Sawyers, author of <i><a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/workingman-the-faith-based-politics-of-bruce-springsteen/" target="_blank">Workingman</a></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3105334536733427624.post-12743375897226854872014-01-30T14:29:00.000-08:002014-01-30T14:29:40.861-08:00Super UncertaintyTo plagiarize Dickens for the umpteenth time, this is the best of times and the worst of times for the NFL. For the first time in recent memory the Super Bowl pits the NFC’s best team against the AFC’s best, as well as the best defense against the best offense. And Peyton Manning’s return to the championship game has to please everyone who follows the NFL. A victory for Denver would complete the arc of a career that started out with all of the advantages of being Archie Manning’s son but then was sidetracked by a debilitating injury, followed by a comeback worthy of the pluckiest underdog in a Horatio Alger story. Manning has become Superman playing with Kryptonite in his pocket.<br />
<br />
Even the New Jersey winter weather, which could have been awful, appears to be cooperating. No one wants to see Manning grounded by the cold rather than the Seattle defense. The game may be a little chilly for those in attendance, but who cares? and it will likely draw the largest TV audience ever, which would mean more than 111 million, in the wake of some of the highest rated playoff games in NFL history. The TV audiences for the NFC and AFC championship games averaged more than 50 million, following weekends of wild card games and divisional playoffs averaging over 30 million. For comparison, the BCS championship game between Florida State and Auburn was watched by 24 million, and the new season of <i>American Idol</i> debuted with an audience of slightly more than 15 million. The NFL not only blows away all other sporting events (regular-season games sometimes outdrawing the World Series) but typically tops all non-sports programming as well. How could business be any better?<br />
<br />
But the NFL’s bad news is as obvious as the good. <i>The League of Denial</i>, as both a documentary on PBS’s <i>Frontline</i> and a book by ESPN’s Fainaru brothers, provided a devastating and convincing story of NFL leaders not just ignoring the dangers of head trauma but working aggressively to discredit the science and the scientists who were making the disturbing discoveries. The $765 million settlement of the lawsuits brought by former players is currently in limbo, at risk of unraveling and possibly sending the NFL back to court to answer the questions raised by <i>The League of Denial</i>. Even should the settlement stand, the controversies surrounding it won’t end: the $112 million pocketed by the players’ attorneys, the tradeoff between immediate benefits for those in most dire need and the relatively small amount awarded to players overall, the opting out of many former players to keep their separate lawsuits alive.<br />
<br />
Participation in youth football appears to be declining, if only slightly so far but a potentially dangerous trend for the NFL’s pipeline of future players. And underlying all of this is the uncertainty whether concussion awareness and new techniques such as “heads-up” tackling at the youth level, along with rule changes and stiff penalties for targeting opponents’ heads at the college and professional levels can make football not only safer but truly safe, or at least safe enough.<br />
<br />
What’s struck me most powerfully in the weeks since my eBook on “The Head in Football” came out is the divisiveness over the issues facing football where there ought to be growing consensus, whatever that consensus might be. Perhaps it could not be otherwise: if we’re hopelessly divided about everything else, why would football be excluded? The charge from the radical Right that trying to change the game in order to protect players’ brains is a “war on football” waged by Lefties who want to create a “nanny state” seems ridiculous—as if conservatives should be unconcerned about their children’s health and well-being! Brain science holds the key to football’s future, but here is where the divisiveness over the concussion crisis has become most depressing. As an academic I am very aware of science’s limitations and its slow, incremental advances. I take for granted the provisional and partial nature of scientific “truth.” I understand that there is “good” science and “bad” science, that all science is not equally reliable, and that scientists sometimes engage in rivalries, both petty and profound. None of this invalidates science altogether, only requires repeated studies and serious peer review.<br />
<br />
Because scientists have not yet established a definitive causal link between head blows in football and later brain damage through studies that satisfy the most rigorous scientific standards, it does not follow that they’ve discovered no possible connection at all. <i>Of course</i> Ann McKee’s sample of CTE cases is not representative of all NFL players; neither she nor anyone else has claimed that it is. Nor has she claimed to have found a definitive causal link between CTE and head blows in football. What she <i>has</i> found is CTE in the brains of nearly every former NFL player she has examined who has suffered from brain disease, in addition to the brains of a few young men who played only in high school or college. A definitive link, through long-term, double-blind studies and so on, will take a long time—that’s why they’re called “longitudinal.” For now, we have enough compelling case studies to <i>suspect</i> a causal link and compelling reasons to assume, until we know otherwise, that head blows can produce long-term damage and that we should do what we can to prevent them.<br />
<br />
The so-called concussion crisis isn’t a Red State/Blue State political issue but a family issue, a public health issue, and a social issue. As both a family and a public health issue, it requires weighing uncertain but potentially huge costs against known (or assumed) but less life-altering benefits. And the public has a stake in this: future medical costs are borne by all of us. As a social issue, in relation to NFL players rather than kids in youth leagues, it touches on how much suffering we as a people are willing to let others endure for the sake of our own pleasure. Football players have been called “gladiators” since the 1890s, and the appeal of the game has always been tied to its keeping alive a kind of primitive masculinity that is no longer very useful and seems to have been otherwise lost. But if football’s metaphorical “gladiators” turn out to be actual ones, a significant portion of them destroyed mentally as well as physically for our entertainment, can we as a people accept that? Our answer to that question will be a sign of just how “civilized” we’ve become.<br />
<br />
The recent scenes from <i>Friday Night Tykes</i> on YouTube—pencil-necked 9-year-olds being driven by coaches and parents to inflict and endure the pain of head-on collisions—are incomprehensible to me. These parents and coaches seem immune to the concerns that are causing such uncertainty about football. I assume that they are anomalies and that uncertainty is more common. Uncertainty haunts football but also preserves it. The haunting comes from parents’ natural concerns about their children’s well-being. The preserving comes from the fact that the damage to players, whether kids or professionals, rarely happens immediately, before our own eyes. It shows up years later, perhaps subtly at first before it becomes full-blown dementia or depression or rage, and in the privacy of homes rather than viewed by 30 million on TV. Watching games, we’re not forced to weigh consequences.<br />
<br />
Uncertainties abound, and how all of this will play out is itself uncertain. I share the uncertainty of those who want football safe enough to play and watch guiltlessly but are unsure if this is possible. I have the luxury of having sons who are 33 and 29, not 14 and 10, as we all wait for neurologists and pathologists to make things clearer. There’s more funding for brain research now, due in part to the media coverage of football’s concussion crisis, in part to the fact that the military and the NFL face similar challenges. But science is messy, and its “truths” emerge over time. Sadly, we live at a time when too many people believe that “truth” is determined by who’s telling it, on whether they heard it on Fox News or MSNBC. There’s much more at stake here than the future of football in the war on science. But football’s future is at stake, too.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Michael Oriard is the author of <i>The Head in Football</i>, published by the Now & Then Reader. It is
available as an eBook on Kindle, Nook, Kobo and iTunes. </span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3105334536733427624.post-54724145356428210492013-05-16T05:49:00.000-07:002013-05-16T05:49:22.781-07:00Deciding the Ultimate Fate of the Wounded Knee Massacre/Occupation Site
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">A public radio station in New
York City recently called me to ask my opinion about the prospective sale of
the Wounded Knee Massacre/Occupation site on Pine Ridge.</span>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">How the producers found me
and why they valued the opinion of this <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">white man</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>is something I can’t answer. But I think I have a good grasp of the history of
the site and I have visited many times over the years, so there you go. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">It seems that the matter of
who will eventually own the land around the graveyard and chapel will soon be
settled. Whether the Oglala Sioux Tribe seizes it, or it ends up in private
hands, the next question is, now what?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Will it remain as is, or will
someone try to build a museum or interpretive center?</span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW4-zCRBx5leJhsoRpMShwO7d2SpimtdkfylPt2bbn6S9wQ4NQi80J003KdaL4IkLWxRsYQMmGh-iJT4Xn0YBB6oxGokIbnF98DmNH12WYaVEpga2DATFUuFglCsbE6dZ4YEE0o8YLwU3t/s1600/wkgulley.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW4-zCRBx5leJhsoRpMShwO7d2SpimtdkfylPt2bbn6S9wQ4NQi80J003KdaL4IkLWxRsYQMmGh-iJT4Xn0YBB6oxGokIbnF98DmNH12WYaVEpga2DATFUuFglCsbE6dZ4YEE0o8YLwU3t/s320/wkgulley.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A gulley where victims of the 1890 massacre fled. STEW MAGNUSON</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">One of the points I made
during the brief interview is that if there is an interpretive center built
there someday, I think a section of it devoted to the Wounded Knee Massacre of
1890 would probably be easy to organize and not very controversial. That event
is pretty well understood.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">If there is to be a wing
devoted to the Wounded Knee Occupation, then you’re opening up a big honkin’
can of worms.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The “Still Bleeding”
secondary title of my newest book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wounded
Knee 1973: Still Bleeding</i>, speaks to that. There are lots of hard feelings
remaining 40 years later, a few unsolved mysteries, and many different opinions
on the meaning and impact of the occupation.<br />
Who is going to decide how a possible interpretive center <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">interprets</i> that event?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">What I wanted to talk about
on the radio show, but didn’t have the time, was what is there now.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">For those who live on Pine
Ridge, they know the answer. Next to nothing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">For those who don’t, or have
never visited, let me describe it. There is a small, circular rudimentary
building with some murals and relics of the occupation. Sometimes there are
some friendly Pine Ridge residents inside to answer questions. Sometimes not.
There is the mass grave with the massacre interred and a cemetery at the top of
the hill. Most don’t venture over to the foundations of the destroyed Wounded
Knee Trading Post/museum that was destroyed after the occupation in 1973.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I was last there in September
on a hot day. I would have paid good money for a cold drink. But there were
none to be had. A couple nice kids on bikes were hanging around. I think they
thought they were tour guides. Why they weren’t in school, I don’t know.
Suffice it to say, my conversations with them revealed that they didn’t now
much about the history of Wounded Knee. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Despite the fact that there
is not much in terms of development as a historical site, a steady stream of
tourists still make their way there. A whole van full of visitors from Indiana
came by along with other several cars in the half hour I was there.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">On that same trip I visited
the Crazy Horse Memorial for the first time. After paying my entrance fee, I
came upon a jam-packed parking lot. And this was after the end of the high
season for tourists. The gift shop was doing steady business. Yes, it is in the
middle of the Black Hills, and there is a lot of tourist traffic, but I do
believe there is a thirst for knowledge about Native American history and
culture.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I have done several book
signings at the National Museum of the American Indian here in Washington,
D.C., over the years, and the place is always packed. And not with Natives,
either. In fact, the only Indians I ever spoke to there were from New Dehli.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Would a Wounded Knee
interpretive center attract those kinds of crowds? Probably not. But many would
make their way there as they have been for decades.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Do the residents of Pine
Ridge want a parking lot that size full of cars and buses next to the hollowed
ground? I would think not.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">This is actually similar to
the vision that the seller of the property Jim Czywczsnki had in 1968. Except
all the money was going to go into his pockets, his idea for a memorial was
tasteless, and there was zero input from the Lakotas. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">But there are solutions to
develop the area in a sensitive way. A museum could be placed out of site, with
shuttle buses to take visitors the rest of the way, for example.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Maybe someday the National
Park Service will declare this a national monument.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">An interpretive center — if
done right — would provide jobs, income to local artists who could sell their
crafts there <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>— and most
importantly — provide a deeper understanding of Lakota history and culture for
those who care about it enough to venture out of the Black Hills.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Stew Magnuson
(stewmag (a) yahoo.com) is the author of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wounded
Knee 1973: Still Bleeding</i>, published by the Now & Then Reader. It is
available as an eBook on Kindle, Nook, Kobo and iTunes. </span></div>
Stew Magnusonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07549563209520381559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3105334536733427624.post-62574752197223906612013-05-12T06:39:00.000-07:002013-05-12T06:39:57.631-07:00Albert Camus on Algeria<br />
The <i>New York Times Book Review</i> published a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/books/review/algerian-chronicles-by-albert-camus.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=books&">wonderful review</a> of Camus's <i>Algerian Chronicles</i>, a collection of his writings on the intractable battle between the French government and Algerian nationalists in his native country -- and on all those trapped between the warring factions.<br />
<br />
Here's an excerpt from Susan Rubin Suleiman's review:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Even more eloquent, perhaps, are his remarks on the responsibility of intellectuals in times of hatred: “It is to explain the meaning of words in such a way as to sober minds and calm fanaticisms.” Great writer that he was, Camus placed hope in the calming power of language carefully used, and of reason; in the preface, he asks his readers to “set their ideological reflexes aside for a moment and just think.”</blockquote>
<br />
Lisa Lieberman's essay,<b> <a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/dirty-war-terror-and-torture-in-french-algeria/">Dirty War</a>,</b> explores Camus's dilemma in the context of postwar French history. As early as 1947, Camus had denounced the “Gestapo methods” routinely employed by the French in their colonies—torture, collective reprisals, executions. “Three years after having felt the effects of a politics of terror, the French take in the news like people who have seen too much,” he charged. “And yet the facts are there, clear and hideous as the truth: we are doing over there the same thing that we reproached the Germans for doing here.”<br />
<br />
Born into a pied-noir (the term for European settlers) family in Algeria in 1913, Camus would surmount poverty and illness and go on to win the Nobel Prize in literature for 1957, singled out for his “authentic moral engagement,” a commitment to justice, peace, and human rights exemplified in his life no less than in his literary works. During the Nazi Occupation he had founded an underground newspaper in Paris, <i>Combat</i>, that sought to unify the various factions of the Resistance under the banner of de Gaulle’s Free French organization. Upon the Liberation he advocated for reconciliation and publicly opposed the death penalty, even in the case of war criminals—a position he would maintain throughout the Algerian war.<br />
<br />
Camus was always one to put people before causes, but the conflict tested his loyalties. “When one’s own family is in immediate danger of death, one may want to instill in one’s family a feeling of greater generosity and fairness . . . but (let there be no doubt about it!) one still feels a natural solidarity with the family in such mortal danger and hopes that it will survive at least and, by surviving, have a chance to show its fairness.” Attacked for his unwillingness to reject colonialism outright, Camus had stopped commenting publicly about Algeria several years before his death in 1961, though he continued to lobby discreetly to mitigate the harsh sentences imposed on Algerian nationalists. Nevertheless the key features of his argument, the correlation he drew between French colonial authorities and the Gestapo, along with his ambivalence, would resurface in the torture debate a decade later. And it is worth noting that the most outspoken critics of France’s dirty war would be those who, like Camus, had been active in the Resistance.<br />
<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Lisa Lieberman is the translator of Jean-Paul Sartre's essay, <b><a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/paris-under-the-occupation/">"Paris Under the Occupation"</a> </b>and Simone de Beauvoir's essay, <b><a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/an-eye-for-an-eye/">"An Eye for an Eye"</a></b>.</span><br />
Lisa Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11129352554123911751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3105334536733427624.post-10695438214353631302013-04-17T11:40:00.004-07:002013-04-17T11:40:55.156-07:00A What-If Examination of an Assault on the Occupied Village of Wounded Knee
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">This is Part Six of a weekly blog that will take a
look at several aspects of the Wounded Knee Occupation as the 40<sup>th</sup>
anniversary of the controversial 71-day event continues from Feb. 27 to May 5.
Next week: A rundown of the Wounded Knee Occupation books available.</span></i>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Former Wounded Knee resident
Adrienne Fritze recently posted a historic picture of her uncle Clive and aunt
Agnes Gildersleeve, which was taken after the end of the Wounded Knee
Occupation. Piled up against a car were dummy assault rifles that AIM had left
behind the destroyed village.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Those, along with manikins
also found afterwards, were used by the occupiers to make their defenses against
the feds look more robust than they actually were.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The photo brings to mind an
interesting what-if question.<br />
What if higher-ups in Washington, D.C. had approved plans to end the occupation
through force?</span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMVumHhU9vYDTep10S4HqgP4HxYf5o9wg9_2nU-hhHVLem1h0MJ-AR3GCjy5rHtjuUm21Nh7jjroDfO6IZhWypsJ5ciuYvpkhGuG6sDWuB7F9dstzQIy_RbYOcsZ4Rurf5uthQYO-aMPNb/s1600/BuddyLamontgrave.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMVumHhU9vYDTep10S4HqgP4HxYf5o9wg9_2nU-hhHVLem1h0MJ-AR3GCjy5rHtjuUm21Nh7jjroDfO6IZhWypsJ5ciuYvpkhGuG6sDWuB7F9dstzQIy_RbYOcsZ4Rurf5uthQYO-aMPNb/s320/BuddyLamontgrave.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The final resting place of Buddy Lamont at Wounded Knee</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">We live in a country that has
a number of well-armed fringe groups that occasionally run afoul of federal
laws. See what happened in Waco, Texas, with the Branch Davidians in 1993.
Fifty died in an assault on this group’s compound. How law enforcement responds
to such scenarios is worth looking at and examining the government’s response
at Wounded Knee is an important case study. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Former Special Agent in
Charge Joseph Trimbach brings this up in the book, American Indian Mafia. He
states that the FBI agents, traditionally crime investigators, were ill-suited
for this military-style operation. The U.S. marshals on the scene normally
tracked down and transported federal fugitives and guarded courthouses. They
also did not have the training to invade an armed village.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Trimbach in his book asserts
that the only organization in the federal government at the time able to clear
out the village would have been the military.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Army advisors were on hand
and wanted nothing to do with such an operation, as Wounded Knee II, by Roland
Dewing notes. To do so would have run afoul of the Posse Comitatus Act.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Going into the act’s gray
areas and roots would take up too much space in this column. Wikipedia has a
fairly good explanation about it for those wanting to know more. Posse
Comitatus — at its heart — prohibits the military from taking part in domestic
law enforcement missions. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Basically no military officer,
up to an including the service chiefs, would have given the order for their
troops to attack the fortified village. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Authorizing the military to
take part in such a mission would have required an act of Congress, according
to the law. The president, the commander in chief, Richard M. Nixon at the
time, might have had the authority, but that is a gray area as well. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The Army had a trained civil
disturbance unit, most likely to be used for base security. But the advisors on
hand wanted no part of an assault. The stated reason was that the occupiers
weren’t going anywhere or a threat to any neighboring communities. However, the
unstated reason should be obvious. The Army wasn’t going to be involved in a
second Wounded Knee Massacre. The site is where the Army’s Seventh Cavalry in
1890 gunned down Chief Big Foot and some 150 to 300 of his people. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Strategically speaking, dead
Indians, soldiers, and possibly FBI agents and marshals would have been a disaster
for the Nixon administration, already embroiled in the Watergate scandal.
Recall that the Ohio National Guard in 1970 had shot and killed four unarmed
anti-Vietnam student protestors at Kent State. This horrific incident was fresh
in the minds of the public and the government.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Tactically, the feds could
have taken the village — at a price. They had at their disposal armored
personnel carriers, which are basically rolling bunkers and protected them from
small arms and Molotov cocktails, but you have to leave the APC eventually. And
as many have noted, Wounded Knee sat in a large bowl-shaped area, and feds
controlled the high ground.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Meanwhile, the occupiers had
in their ranks seasoned Vietnam War veterans such as Carter Camp, Stan Holder,
Bob Yellow Bird, along with many others who were manning bunkers. If they chose
to, they could have put up a good fight for awhile and inflicted casualties.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Head of the marshal service Wayne
Colburn, after entering Wounded Knee early in the siege, came to the same
conclusion and estimated 10 percent casualties. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Feds on the ground drew up plans
to end incident through force in the latter part so the occupation, but no one
in Washington would approve them, according to the Dewing book. There were also
hotheads among Tribal President Dick Wilson’s Guardians of the Oglala Nation,
GOONs, and white vigilante types in the border towns of Gordon and Crawford,
Neb., who were volunteering to “clean out the radicals,” but the law
enforcement officials would never have let that happen, and one suspects it was
a lot of hot air anyway.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">In hindsight, the Nixon
administration’s wait-them-out policy was probably the best course of action,
although it came at a high price for some. The policy also allowed the feds to
return fire. Hundreds of thousands of rounds were exchanged between the two
sides. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">U.S. marshal Lloyd Grimm was
shot and remained paralyzed for life. Frank Clear, aka Clearwater, and Buddy
Lamont died from gunshot wounds in the final days, and civil rights activist
Perry Ray Robinson possibly lost his life in the occupied village as well.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Stew Magnuson
(stewmag (a) yahoo.com) is the author of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wounded
Knee 1973: Still Bleeding</i>, published by the Now & Then Reader. It is
available as an eBook on Kindle, Nook, Kobo and iTunes. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Magnuson will discuss the
book April 27, 11:30 a.m. at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, S.D., and April
28, at 12:30 p.m. at the Bookworm, 87<sup>th</sup> and Pacific Street, in
Omaha. </span>
</div>
Stew Magnusonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07549563209520381559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3105334536733427624.post-22502609753070094572013-04-04T17:19:00.001-07:002013-04-04T17:50:45.760-07:00Ray Robinson talks Peanuts, Popcorn & American Presidents!<div style="text-align: left;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-V23XDjd1Cpw/UV4XJeR7g4I/AAAAAAAAAAg/tZyFWbB9ZZ0/s1600/Peanuts_Popcorn_and_American_Presidents+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-V23XDjd1Cpw/UV4XJeR7g4I/AAAAAAAAAAg/tZyFWbB9ZZ0/s320/Peanuts_Popcorn_and_American_Presidents+%25281%2529.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
Baseball season is officially back in 'full swing' and we're celebrating the season with our latest release by Ray Robinson: <i>Peanuts, Popcorn & American Presidents.</i> The 92 year old author is one of baseball's oldest fans and his new title has received great feedback from the baseball community!<br />
<br />
John Thorne, MLB's official baseball historian featured <i>Peanuts, Popcorn & American Presidents</i> on his blog '<a href="http://ourgame.mlblogs.com/2013/04/01/peanuts-popcorn-american-presidents/">Our Game</a>' where henotes the influence Mr. Robinson had on him as a young sportswriter. Having experienced many of the greatest moments in baseball history first hand, Ray is full of great stories and baseball memories!<br />
<br />
If you're a baseball fan, you don't want to miss Ray's chat with Ron Williams on 940 WCIT as he shares his stories from the past, including tales of his old friend Jackie Robinson!<br />
<br />
Click below to listen.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/peanuts-popcorn-american-presidents/" target="_blank">Visit Now and Then Reader to read <i>Peanuts, Popcorn & American Presidents</i></a><br />
<div>
<br />
<b>Part 1 (skip ahead to the 0:50 mark)</b><br />
<embed flashvars="audioUrl=http://sites.google.com/a/nowandthenreader.com/media/blogger-media/ray1.mp3?attredirects=0&d=1" height="27" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" quality="best" src="http://www.google.com/reader/ui/3523697345-audio-player.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400" wmode="transparent"></embed>
<br />
<b>Part 2</b></div>
<embed flashvars="audioUrl=http://sites.google.com/a/nowandthenreader.com/media/blogger-media/ray2.mp3?attredirects=0&d=1" height="27" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" quality="best" src="http://www.google.com/reader/ui/3523697345-audio-player.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400" wmode="transparent"></embed>
<br />
<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3105334536733427624.post-63909293025218583842013-03-22T11:34:00.001-07:002013-03-22T11:34:00.917-07:00Rumors of Unmarked Graves at Wounded Knee Still Alive after 40 Years
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This is Part Four of a
weekly blog that will take a look at several aspects of the Wounded Knee
Occupation as the 40<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the controversial 71-day event
continues from Feb. 27 to May 5. </i>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Before the Wounded Knee Occupation ended in May 1973, rumors
were already running rampant.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is not surprising. Watch the next mass shooting unfold on
CNN. (Sadly, you won’t have to wait long.) All sorts of statements that will
later be found untrue will be reported.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The same will happen during the next terrorist attack or
natural disaster. Nowadays, the Internet and Facebook allow misinformation to zip
around the globe at the speed of light. On battlefields, they call it “the fog
of war.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hopefully, by the end of the day, the rumors and facts are
sorted out. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The siege at Wounded Knee that took place 40 years ago was
no different.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And so we come to the rumor that there are six bodies buried
in or near the village — all killed at the hands of the occupiers. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Twelve young women were also said to be raped, murdered and
buried outside the perimeter. Someone reported this rumor to the FBI during the
occupation, an agent diligently writes it in a report, and 40 years later it is
repeated. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Rumors sometimes have a kernel of truth.</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBTbYVlcuB4qwir_Mj_Ec4OU8Mcdt57WTJGXan3WkMLrCzImz6xkIOZp7RmEcDe4Qt0m2T07Iqg-uF7Gznr8YyI45lpsig6NmwKTXTo4aLmb8_9N92lXgORIb6Gjg5LQ-edRNEm2GBRIZl/s1600/robinsonmug.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBTbYVlcuB4qwir_Mj_Ec4OU8Mcdt57WTJGXan3WkMLrCzImz6xkIOZp7RmEcDe4Qt0m2T07Iqg-uF7Gznr8YyI45lpsig6NmwKTXTo4aLmb8_9N92lXgORIb6Gjg5LQ-edRNEm2GBRIZl/s320/robinsonmug.jpg" width="243" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Perry Ray Robinson</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let’s examine this one, because a group I am just going to
call from now on “the Anti-American Indian Movement zealots” or anti-AIM
zealots are keeping the rumor alive.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The de facto leader of this group former FBI agent Joseph
Trimbach’s son John Trimbach made the assertion publicly at the Dakota
Conference at Augustana College last year. And writing under the pseudonym,
James Simmon, he will repeat it wherever he can on website comments sections
whenever the occupation is mentioned. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“We estimate that half a dozen people were murdered inside
the village versus the one casualty who died from a stray government bullet,”
he said April 27, 2012 during a presentation at the conference.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The bar for facts that go into my books is extremely high.
That’s because I make my living as a journalist. If I keep getting my facts
wrong, I lose my credibility, and ultimately, my career.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
John Trimbach’s AIM vendetta and the fact that he is an
airline pilot, not a journalist, gives him the luxury of posting rumors
publicly or under a fake name without any fear of losing his livelihood. What
does he care? As long as AIM looks bad, he throws out anything he believes to
be true to see if it sticks.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don’t always get my facts right. But I try my best, and if
I get something wrong, I will try to correct it as best I can. If I need to
correct something in this article, I can do so relatively easily. Once a book is
out, you can’t recall it. Rumors are usually just those: rumors. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have gone as far to say that a black civil rights
activist, Perry Ray Robinson, went inside the occupied village of Wounded Knee,
and has not been seen since. He is presumed dead. No one has come forward with
any hard evidence that he ever left the village. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The prevailing story is that he got in scuffle with AIM
members, was shot in the leg and bled out. His body was later clandestinely
buried in the village. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
AIM leaders have denied he was ever there. (That is not
true. He was.) They have been evasive about the case for decades.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Is this the kernel of truth that gave rise to the rumors?
Maybe.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
How about the other five murders. Who were they? Now thing
get fuzzy. Very fuzzy.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
John Trimbach handed me a sheet of paper at the conference
with a transcript of an interview allegedly given by AIM spiritual leader
Leonard Crow Dog, in which it mentions a black man being killed along with a
“Sicilian.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One other alleged victim is known in the anti-AIM zealot
community as “mannequin man.” FBI agents or U.S. marshals wrote in a report
that they observed at first what they thought was a mannequin being crucified
and tortured in full daylight. Later, in interviews disseminated by the same
sources, it is claimed he was a real person, and informant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The occupiers knew they were being watched 24/7. Why would
they do that in full view of the feds?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As for bodies four, five and six. We have nothing. No
theories, no names. Nothing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That doesn’t stop John Trimbach from saying he estimates
there are six murders there. Since he claims one died from a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“stray” bullet. (Was someone hunting
deer nearby?) I surmise he thinks one was Frank Clear, aka Clearwater. See my
post from March 6).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My wife gives me grief for one of my guilty TV pleasures,
Judge Judy. What can I say, we all like a little junk TV.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Judge Judy, as she hectors her plaintiffs and defendants,
likes to say, “It doesn’t make sense. And if it doesn’t make sense, it probably
isn’t true.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Perry Ray Robinson being buried at Wounded Knee is a
possibility. It at least makes sense. Here is why:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have met and talked to Cheryl Buswell-Robinson. She came
to the aforementioned conference last year. She sobbed as she pleaded with
anyone who had information on Ray to come forward, just so they could bring his
body home to rest. Ray had a wife and children, who, to this day, are asking
about his whereabouts.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What about these other five alleged victims?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Where is the Sicilian’s family? What is his name? Okay, I’ll
grant the zealots the slim possibility that ONE person with an Italian name
made his or her way to Wounded Knee without telling a single soul they knew,
then was killed and buried there. But five? The same for the 12 rumored women
supposedly killed by the Goons. Not one had fathers that came looking for them?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Doesn’t make sense.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Keep in mind these rumors Trimbach capitalizes on emerged
before the siege ended. FBI agents, who were desperate to hang any crime on AIM
leaders, went immediately in and combed the place for evidence and freshly dug
graves and found nothing. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That doesn’t completely prove or disprove anything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although I would argue that hiding a
whopping 18 unmarked graves from FBI agents would be quite a feat.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the first readers to finish my book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wounded Knee 1973: Still Bleeding</i>,
emailed me and asked if someone could go in and search for bodies and settle
this question. Could ground penetrating radar or cadaver sniffing dogs turn up
anything?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As a matter of fact, I went to the site last September with
just that question in mind. I had not been there in a number of years, so I
went hunting for a likely spot where Ray Robinson could be buried.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I came away convinced that a random search would be
difficult. There are too many places where a body could be hid. I believe that
someone would have to come forward with a tip to point searchers in the right
direction.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ground penetrating radar is expensive, slow, and painstaking
to use. You just don’t run down to Ace Rent-to-Own and grab one. And I wonder
how effective it would be in the uneven terrain in the gullies leading to
Wounded Knee Creek, which would be the first place I would look. A
cadaver-sniffing dog might be a better bet. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And then, it must be said, 40 years is time enough come in
the middle of the night and move a body. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That is what I know. No more. No less.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Stew Magnuson is the author of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wounded Knee 1973: Still Bleeding</i>,
published by the Now & Then Reader. It is available as an eBook on Kindle,
Nook, Kobo and iTunes. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Stew Magnusonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07549563209520381559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3105334536733427624.post-56997286236053336352013-03-13T09:41:00.000-07:002013-03-13T09:41:09.262-07:00Wounded Knee Hostages Have Seen Their Story Whitewashed from History
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This is Part Three of
a weekly blog that will take a look at several aspects of the Wounded Knee
Occupation as the 40<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the controversial 71-day event
continues from Feb. 27 to May 5. Next week: Are there unmarked Graves at
Wounded Knee?</i>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Former South Dakota Sen. James Abourezk, taking questions at
the Dakota Conference at Augustana College last year, was taken aback when
Adrienne Fritze stood up to correct him.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Just a few minutes earlier, Abourezk had cracked wise about
the day he went to the occupied village of Wounded Knee two days after the
American Indian Movement had taken over.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He suggested that they were all in on some kind of joke with
their AIM captors. He had come to negotiate their release. Having failed to do
so, he decided that they weren’t captives at all.</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd79eHck2ejlPnJ8hM4nKWpaxMBFlzV2rlo5mbig8jmUvrfRZonEGt2oH8cifEOxmgYYZrCjG0JYyJXanNuZoh6uJwg002OooQFLDDzhwbFHcg6eXG0VLV4a5MVBPte3HwtN0aIfgYbVhg/s1600/wksignlarge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd79eHck2ejlPnJ8hM4nKWpaxMBFlzV2rlo5mbig8jmUvrfRZonEGt2oH8cifEOxmgYYZrCjG0JYyJXanNuZoh6uJwg002OooQFLDDzhwbFHcg6eXG0VLV4a5MVBPte3HwtN0aIfgYbVhg/s320/wksignlarge.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wounded Knee, 1940. Photo by John Vachon. Library of Congress</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The former South Dakota lawmaker didn’t count on another
non-AIM witness being in the crowd that day.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fritze, who was 12 years old at the time, was the niece of
Clive and Agnes Gildersleeve, the long-time owners of the trading post.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She had read and heard for almost 40 years the
misrepresentations of her family in history books, along with AIM’s twisted
rationalization for destroying a community, and taking away all their
possessions. She was standing right in front of Abourezk, Sen. George McGovern
and the TV crew when they came in for the photo op on March 1, 1973.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She did not find Abourezk’s lighthearted anecdote amusing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I won’t go into the exchange between the two that followed
other than to say that Fritze said her and her family were under duress every
minute of the almost nine days they were there. They were threatened with
knives and guns, and held against their will. The occupiers stole any possession
of any value in front of their noses, and they were powerless to stop them.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In short, those fighting for their liberty, did so, by
taking others’ liberty away.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Abourezk’s attempt to recover after Fritze confronted him
with these uncomfortable facts was quite sad, and one of the low points of a
conference that had many low points. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s all in the new book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wounded Knee 1973: Still Bleeding</i>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The “Still Bleeding” secondary title refers to many who are
suffering as a result of the occupation. The Fritzes, Adrienne and her mother
Jeanne, the last two living hostages, are among them.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Tim Giago, founder of several Native American newspapers
including <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Native Sun News</i>, and a
former Wounded Knee resident, has written eloquently over the years about the
Gildersleeves. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I did not know them personally as he did. All I can say is
that since I first began doing research at Pine Ridge almost 10 years ago, I
have never met anyone who had a bad word to say against them.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If there is one thing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wounded
Knee 1973: Still Bleeding</i> contributes to the historical record, I hope it’s
a more balanced description of the hostages, and their predicament.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
AIM leaders, and sympathetic historians, have put forth two
assertions. One, that they were happy and willing hostages. And two, as Russell
Means suggested minutes after Abourezk and Fritze’s exchange, that they
basically deserved it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m not trying to brag when I say I am the first journalist
or historian to interview Adrienne and Jeanne. I just want to point out that I
was the first to even bother asking them for 39 years. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That is telling. Writers have accepted the simplistic
“crooked white trader” and “willing hostages” narrative for four decades.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The happy and willing hostages idea has its roots in quotes
that Agnes Gildersleeve and her brother Wilbur Riegert — both mixed-blood
Ojibwes — gave to the press.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Agnes, in front of cameras and in private conversations,
said she wasn’t sure she wanted to leave. Certainly, she had ambivalent
feelings. The stated reason for not wanting to leave was because she feared
what would happen to her home of 40 years after she left.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well guess what happened to her home of 40 years after she
left? It was burned to the ground.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Riegert, an elderly wheel-chair bound hostage, I believe has
been particularly aggrieved by historians. This was a man who loved Lakota
culture and religion and spent his life collecting art and artifacts, and
writing unpublished histories about the people he had lived among his entire
adult life.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Like a
Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee</i>, authors Paul
Chaat Smith and Robert Allen Warrior quote him as telling a print reporter that
he sympathized with AIM’s demands.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
First of all, interviews given with armed AIM leaders
standing a few feet away are done so under duress (You would think a smart guy
like Abourezk would know that).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In any case, this is undoubtedly true. Riegert was well
aware of all the injustices perpetrated against the Oglala Lakotas, would have
loved to have seen the Black Hills returned to them, as well as many of the
other demands fulfilled.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Like a Hurricane</i>
isn’t a completely bad book. But Smith and Warrior cherry picked facts to make
Riegert and the Gildersleeves look like villains. It is an influential book,
and used as textbook n college classes, so the misconception continues.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The other assertion is that they were corrupt, so they got
what was coming to them.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I hope my readers know by now that I don’t back away from
uncomfortable facts. And the fact is that the white trader system on Pine Ridge
in the first half of the 20<sup>th</sup> century on Pine Ridge was tremendously
corrupt. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
AIM leaders asserted that the Wounded Knee Trading Post
engaged in shady business practices, and Riegert’s museum was exploiting the
Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have come across no evidence that the Gildersleeves
engaged in such practices. I believe that Riegert was sincere in wanting to
share his love and knowledge of the local culture with any tourist who came to
see his museum.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I duly note in the book that Jim Czywczynski invoked the
Fifth Amendment 95 times in order not to incriminate himself at a Wounded Knee
trial when asked about his business practices. (Yes, the same man who tried to
sell the Oglala Sioux Tribe the land at Wounded Knee at a huge mark-up last month).
He bought the trading post for the Gildersleeves and ran it during its final
years.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the end of the day, the occupiers had no right to take
hostages, steal, loot and destroy lives under any circumstances.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There were many other Wounded Knee residents besides the 11
hostages. Their untold stories will have to wait for another column.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Stew Magnuson is the author of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wounded Knee 1973: Still Bleeding</i>, published by the Now & Then
Reader. It is available as an eBook on Kindle, Nook, Kobo and iTunes. </span>
Stew Magnusonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07549563209520381559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3105334536733427624.post-38553314264719440752013-03-12T11:59:00.000-07:002013-05-14T06:36:07.481-07:00The Battle of Algiers<br />
<div style="color: #232323; font: 13.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 23.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Franco Solinas, who wrote the screenplay for “The Battle of Algiers,” set out to demystify colonial war. Honor, glory, maintaining peace, bringing freedom and the advantages of civilization, guaranteeing human rights—whatever the occupier’s stated motivation for fighting—all of this was sentimental drivel. Solinas felt compelled, he said, to present the events in a harsh light because he was against “a hypocritical, phony, romantic, fictionalized idea of war.”</span></span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font: 13.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 23.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It’s true that the French do not come off well in this film. The colonists seem spiteful, their young people spoiled, their policemen immoral and underhanded. Apart from the paratrooper commander, Colonel Mathieu, who upholds his warrior code, the French army appears callous at best, sadistic at worst. In one brutal sequence, we see Algerians being tortured in graphic detail, Ennio Morricone’s mournful score heightening our revulsion. Not only must we endure the men’s agony as they are beaten, burned, waterboarded, and subjected to electric shocks, we are also shown the faces of their wives and mothers, tears running down their cheeks, as they too are made to witness the torture.</span></span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font: 13.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 23.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">But none of this would have surprised audiences in the mid-1950s, when the events marked by the film took place. The fact that torture was routinely used in France’s “dirty war” in Algeria was widely known and hotly debated. Exposés were written by prominent figures, from decorated army generals to Catholic theologians. Soul-searching was the order of the day, particularly among Left-Bank intellectuals. Former members of the French Resistance routinely denounced the “Gestapo methods” of the French army. And efforts by the authorities to censor this literature only increased the demand for it.</span></span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font: 13.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 23.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The European-born editor of a left-wing Algerian newspaper critical of the colonial regime was tortured for a month at the height of the Battle of Algiers. His account, smuggled page by page out of prison, sold 168,000 copies in a clandestine Swiss edition published in 1958, after the original version was confiscated in France. His ordeal became a cause célèbre.</span></span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font: 13.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 23.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The shock value of “The Battle of Algiers” did not reside in its revelation of French brutality, difficult as the scenes of torture are to view. I think it was the film’s glorification of revolution, its endorsement of the argument found in Frantz Fanon’s radical manifesto, <i>The Wretched of the Earth, </i>that violence could be a cleansing force, enabling an oppressed people to overcome their fears and reclaim their dignity, that earned the film its acclaim, and its notoriety (depending on the viewer’s politics).</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 23px;">
<span style="color: #232323; font-family: Helvetica;">In a famous sequence, three Algerian women prepare to bomb civilian targets in the European area of Algiers. Who doesn’t root for them to get through the checkpoints? </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hYtN2zWX8c"><img border="0" height="197" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nbUBkmhtwLM/UUDL3yI2OyI/AAAAAAAAAAM/rjYp4fTGn9s/s320/Battle+of+the+Algiers.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font: 13.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 23.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small; letter-spacing: 0px;">Pretty shocking, I’d say, even today.</span></div>
<div style="color: #232323; font: 13.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 23.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Helvetica; margin-bottom: 23px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #232323;">In her new title, <a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/dirty-war-terror-and-torture-in-french-algeria/">Dirty War: Terror & Torture in French Algeria</a>, Lisa Lieberman tells the story of the Algerian war and its impact on French intellectuals and political and military leaders.</span></div>
Lisa Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11129352554123911751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3105334536733427624.post-58442109875155726602013-03-07T11:47:00.000-08:002013-03-07T11:47:10.726-08:00More Questions Than Answers About Wounded Knee 1973’s First Fatality<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This is Part Two of a
weekly blog that will take a look at several aspects of the Wounded Knee
Occupation as the 40<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the controversial 71-day event
continues from Feb. 27 to May 5. Next week: The residents of Wounded Knee.</i>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnjzkOBqQZl7gEpfj5QS7u25u554Yja9k1n-maK1LTMNyrJwbaeUOrpIIeb0fFnxXcc3-iSP6KZbhKExO9CD2FxwWZNRDsZkmY5lo6-66sfZF9G7D2ZL8wY2mA131coIYLn8mKzoNH5Fgl/s1600/wounded_knee_final.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnjzkOBqQZl7gEpfj5QS7u25u554Yja9k1n-maK1LTMNyrJwbaeUOrpIIeb0fFnxXcc3-iSP6KZbhKExO9CD2FxwWZNRDsZkmY5lo6-66sfZF9G7D2ZL8wY2mA131coIYLn8mKzoNH5Fgl/s320/wounded_knee_final.jpg" width="240" /></a><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"></span><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Last
year, the Oglala Sioux Tribe sent a list to U.S. attorney for South Dakota
requesting that the he investigate approximately 56 suspicious deaths that had
occurred in Pine Ridge or nearby. </span>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">It
was an odd list. It looked like there was some padding going on. The first name
that jumped out at me was Raymond Yellow Thunder. I wrote a book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Death-Raymond-Yellow-Thunder-Nebraska-Pine/dp/0896726347/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232563832&sr=8-1"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder</i></a>, in
2008, and I was perplexed as to why his name appeared there. The killers were
caught, tried, convicted and served their time in in the 1970s. This all happened in Nebraska,
outside of South Dakota and the FBI’s jurisdiction. And even if someone
believed that the manslaughter charge should have been murder, what, you’re
going to retry the case on a different charge 40 years later? Ridiculous.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The
second name that jumped out at me was Frank Clearwater <i>aka</i> Frank Clear (or vice
versa depending whether you’re in the FBI or American Indian Movement camp). Since the last name is
in question, I’m just going to go with Frank for the remainder of this article.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Now
here is a death worth investigating. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Frank
Clearwater was the first fatality during the Wounded Knee Occupation in 1973.
His name has been surrounded in mystery since the day he arrived in the village
on April 17.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The
story, as told in several history books, reputable and otherwise, is that Frank
Clearwater, 47, an Apache, made his way into the occupied village with his
pregnant wife — Morningstar — arriving sometime on the night of April 16.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The
two weary travelers laid down to rest in the either the church or one of the
houses, and while they were sleeping one of the most intense firefights of the
occupation broke out. A stray bullet penetrated the wall and struck Frank in
the head. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">A
ceasefire eventually came and he was medically evacuated to Rapid City, where
he hung on for eight days, but succumbed to his wound on April 25.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">His
widow then asked that he be buried at Wounded Knee Cemetery. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">A
dispute immediately broke out between AIM and its avowed enemy Tribal Chairman
Dick Wilson. Wilson produced documents claiming that Clearwater was named Frank
Clear Jr., and that he was a white man who had served time in a military prison
for abandoning his post in World War II. Wilson said only Natives could be interred
at Wounded Knee.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">To
make a long story short, Frank was ultimately buried at Crow Dog’s Paradise,
AIM spiritual leader Leonard Crow Dog’s home on the Rosebud Reservation.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">So
who is buried there? Frank Clear or Frank Clearwater?</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">As
usual, we have two completely different interpretations of this event depending
whether you believe the former FBI Special Agent in Charge Joe Trimbach, whose
name appears on the cover of a book called, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">American
Indian Mafia</i>, or the AIM leaders.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">American Indian Mafia</span></i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> goes into some, but not
much detail of this event. Trimbach, of course, says he was Frank Clear. But he
doesn’t go into why he would have lied to AIM leaders about his name and
ancestry. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Curiously,
in a timeline in the book’s Appendix, on page 513, it reads “April 17, 1973:
Wounded Knee infiltrator Frank Clear is struck by a stray bullet that had penetrated
a wall.”</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">“Infiltrator?”
What a curious choice of words.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Is
Trimbach saying that Frank was sent in to gather intelligence? I could ask him.
But he wasn’t at Pine Ridge at the time, his superiors having removed him from
the scene by that then. And now in his late 80s, I am not sure he would
remember. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">At
the Augustana Conference in Sioux Falls, last year I asked Trimbach how many
informants he managed to put inside the occupied village. None, he insisted. He
was only on the scene for two weeks. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Later,
I read his book in which it details gathering information from a total of four
informants during his two weeks on the scene. This suggests to me that his
memory is faltering in his old age, or he isn’t familiar with the information
in a book that has his name on the cover.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Now
to AIM. Four decades later, they continue to assert that Frank was a Native
American. Proxies such as Ward Churchill, the former University of Colorado professor,
asserted in his series of pro-AIM books that the documents Wilson produced were
fake and it was a ploy to discredit him. He couldn’t be a martyr for their
cause if he was an FBI informant. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">My
question to AIM leaders like Dennis Banks, who was there at the time of his
arrival, is how did they know for sure? The prevailing story was the Frank and
his wife weren’t there very long before they went off to rest.<br />
They arrived at a time when leadership was deeply, and rightfully, paranoid
about infiltrators.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">According
to Roland Dewing’s, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wounded Knee II</i>,
the best blow-by-blow account of the occupation published to date (sourced
mainly from FBI documents), AIM initially gave authorities a number of names:
First he was Matthew High Pine from Pine Ridge, then he was Frank Still Water,
a Cherokee from Oklahoma, and finally Frank Clearwater, an Apache from
Cherokee, North Carolina. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">An
Apache from North Carolina? Well, maybe. <br />
Banks has a pretty bad record on telling who was and wasn’t a Native American.
Doug Durham, a white man posing as an Indian, turned out to be the FBI’s most
successful informant, and was one of Banks’ right hand men for years before he
was discovered.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Was
Frank Clear/Clearwater sent in as an informant? But with a pregnant wife? Or
was he just a wannabe Indian, who was escaping a troubled past?</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Or
was he really who AIM claimed him to be?</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I
don’t have the answers, but I am certain they are out there. The Apache Nation
would presumably have records of a Clearwater family.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">And
where is his widow — Morningstar — and where is the child — unborn at the time
of its presumed father’s death, today? He or she would be about 40 or 41 years
old. Could they shed any light on this man’s identity?</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">If
you have answers to this mystery, send me a message. (stewmag (a) yahoo.com)</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Stew Magnuson is the author of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wounded
Knee 1973: Still Bleeding</i>, published by the Now & Then Reader. It is
available as an eBook on Kindle, Nook, Kobo and iTunes. </span>
Stew Magnusonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07549563209520381559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3105334536733427624.post-36725658411892511402013-02-27T06:26:00.000-08:002013-02-27T06:26:22.923-08:00What Was the Larger Impact of the Wounded Knee Occupation?
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This is Part One of a
weekly blog that will take a look at several aspects of the Wounded Knee
Occupation as the 40<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the controversial 71-day event
continues from Feb. 27 to May 5. Next week: Who was Frank Clearwater?</i></div>
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Forty years after members of the American Indian Movement
and its local allies occupied the village of Wounded Knee on Pine Ridge
Reservation, controversy swirls around the 71-day event.</div>
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Much of the debate centers around what did or didn’t happen
as the federal government laid siege to the village.</div>
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Perry Ray Robinson, a black civil rights activist, made his
way inside Wounded Knee, and was never seen alive again. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVDCddf07_-xbqk85XtVKYvLbfgNM7DFVlSvrWVa4HosGfSJTBSy8PTGexGZi9rJ2fjwe1KvLE7OYj8ScrTIcr6gXOf65DCdh-uJLfb-rJLX5mwGqbOoqVeN_Yo_Osz28EIfCNCqEHJSz0/s1600/wounded_knee_final.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVDCddf07_-xbqk85XtVKYvLbfgNM7DFVlSvrWVa4HosGfSJTBSy8PTGexGZi9rJ2fjwe1KvLE7OYj8ScrTIcr6gXOf65DCdh-uJLfb-rJLX5mwGqbOoqVeN_Yo_Osz28EIfCNCqEHJSz0/s320/wounded_knee_final.jpg" width="240" /></a>The Trimbachs — former special agent in charge on the scene
Joe, and his son John — are the leading critics of AIM leaders and of the
occupation itself. They publicly claim that AIM leaders were responsible for
several deaths inside — including two men who were allegedly felled by
government bullets, Frank Clear <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">aka </i>Clearwater
and Buddy Lamont, as well as five other bodies they say are buried there.</div>
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Tim Giago, the founder of several local newspapers, has been
out front over the past four decades in pointing out that the occupation
destroyed a community. Oglalas, white and mixed-blood residents — were run out
of their homes, which were later looted and destroyed, with none of them ever
receiving compensation for their losses.</div>
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AIM leaders at the Dakota Conference at Augustana College in
Sioux Falls last year brushed aside these criticisms and made a case that the
occupation changed things for the better in Indian Country. AIM founder Clyde
Bellecourt in particular said everything from the American Indian Religious
Freedom Act of 1978 to the rise of tribal casinos and the economic power they
wield, were a direct result of the change in attitudes toward Native Americans
brought on by AIM and the occupation.</div>
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Of course, it is hard to say whether this is true, or not,
and there are arguments to be made both ways.</div>
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The late Russell Means, in his biography, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Where White Men Fear to Tread,</i> said,
“What Wounded Knee told the world was that John Wayne hadn’t killed us all.
Essentially, the rest of the planet had believed that except for a few people
sitting along the highways peddling pottery, there were no more Indians.
Suddenly, billions of people knew we were still alive, still resisting.”<br />
‘Billions? Well, aside from that probably inflated figure, I think there is a
kernel of truth there.</div>
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Putting the occupation in context, it was widely covered by
the mainstream media. The first armed insurrection on U.S. soil since the Civil
War made headlines everywhere. This was still during the Cold War, and the
Soviet Bloc countries sent reporters along with CBS, NBC, NPR, the wire services
and all the major newspapers. The media relished this story. Yes, here were
Indians resisting the U.S. government.</div>
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Were viewers watching or reading about it angry at AIM, or
the U.S. government? It was undoubtedly a mix of both, but for those who root
for the underdog, certainly they sympathized with the occupiers.</div>
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This was also a time when Dee Brown’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee</i> was a number one bestseller. That
book opened the eyes of a lot of Americans to the injustices perpetrated on
Native Americans in the 19<sup>th</sup> century. For many, Indians had only
been the bad guys in Westerns, who scalped the poor innocent settlers.
Historians continue to criticize the book, but it had an enormous impact in its
day.</div>
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Now, here was a group of radicals who had another story to
tell. Love them or hate them, Means and AIM co-founder Dennis Banks, were
charasmatic and ever quotable. The occupation started out as a protest against
the tribal government of Dick Wilson, but it grew into something more as the
weeks wore on.</div>
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AIM leaders spoke of many failed 20<sup>th</sup> century
policies. Relocation, when the Bureau of Indian Affairs tried to depopulate the
reservations by giving incentives to families to move to big cities, was one.
Termination sought to take away some tribes’ legal standing. Boarding schools
were havens for child abusers, whose purpose was to destroy Indian culture and
language. </div>
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The land, the source of power in the countryside, had been
slowly taken away from tribal hands thanks to the Dawes Allocation Act. The
Indian Reform Act of 1935 imposed Western democracy on tribes, and in the case
of Pine Ridge, created a schism between traditionals and non-traditionals that
scholar Akim Reinhardt argues led to the occupation.</div>
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These stories by 1973 had largely escaped the attention of
most Americans. If they knew any Indian history at all, their knowledge
probably stopped at the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890.</div>
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Reservations were — and some still are — places of horrific
poverty. But how did they get that way?</div>
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Until 1973, that story had not been widely told.</div>
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Did the occupation by itself usher in a new day? There are
no before and after public surveys that I know of that could tell us with
certainty. But one can say that many positive developments did happen
afterwards.</div>
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I don’t think AIM can take complete credit for all of them.
The Native American Rights Fund, which has been instrumental in fighting many
important legal battles in the Indian law realm, was founded in 1970. That is
just one example of others who had a role to play. </div>
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But to say AIM and the occupation had no impact on the
public’s awareness of Native American issues at all, I think, would be wrong.</div>
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Stew Magnuson is the author of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wounded
Knee 1973: Still Bleeding</i>, published by the Now & Then Reader. It is
available as an eBook on Kindle, Nook, Kobo and iTunes. </span>
Stew Magnusonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07549563209520381559noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3105334536733427624.post-23950731641106428242012-08-06T17:40:00.002-07:002012-08-07T06:56:29.424-07:00Damn Yankees<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Yankees haters are just as numerous today as they were in 1958, when this picture was released, following the successful run of the Broadway musical. Just about everything else has changed, though.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">A rookie baseball star turning his back on fame to go home to his wife? A big home-run hitter not suspected of being on steroids? Pay phones— with dials, no less! — that require a pocketful of change. Who even carries change these days?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">"Damn Yankees" takes us back to a simpler time in baseball history. Ballplayers were wholesome guys. Fans might have gotten excited up there in the stands, but they limited themselves to a few gripes and the occasional raspberry. <a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/dont-kill-the-umpire-how-baseball-escaped-its-violent-past/"><b>Fights?</b></a> You've gotta be kidding! <a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/high-and-tight-hank-greenberg-confronts-anti-semitism-in-baseball/"><b>Prejudice?</b></a> Not a whiff of it here, fellas.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The only character who doesn't play by the rules is the devil. Ray Walston honed his skills playing Satan (a.k.a. Mr. Applegate) before he got stuck being a Martian. I will admit that I kept expecting to see his antennae pop up every time he appeared. He’s suave, sly, and delivers his lines with superb restraint.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Hey, how’d you pull that off?” asks innocent Joe Boyd, watching the devil light his cigarette without a match.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I’m handy with fire,” deadpans Walston.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">They don’t make temptresses like Lola anymore. And nobody has carried off a number like “Who’s Got the Pain” since Gwen Verdon and Bob Fosse choreographed it together — that’s him dancing with her in the film, by the way.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">On top of this, you get Tab Hunter, a sterling actor. And such fine harmonizing by the team and their manager in “You Gotta Have Heart!”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Sorry, couldn’t resist. The devil made me do it.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Lisa Lieberman watched her first baseball game in Connie Mack Stadium when she was eight years old and has been a die-hard Phillies fan ever since.</span></div>
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<br /></div>Lisa Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11129352554123911751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3105334536733427624.post-20001570617573061202012-07-12T14:33:00.000-07:002012-07-12T18:05:26.585-07:00The Hitler Diaries<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">In retrospect, it was so lame. A cache of Hitler’s diaries, some sixty-two handwritten volumes spanning the period from 1932 to the eve of his death in 1945, was supposed to have been found in an East German barn. The German source who sold the diaries to the magazine <i>Der Stern</i>, Konrad Kujau, claimed to have smuggled them out of East Germany, one at a time — a process that took two years.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Kujau was a well-known forger who’d been caught peddling fake Nazi memorabilia in the past. He was apparently quite good; some of the letters he’d forged were still considered genuine at the time of the hoax. German handwriting experts compared the diaries against some of Kujau’s previous forgeries and pronounced them genuine as well. So did the British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, who was brought in by the <i>Times</i> to authenticate the documents. The first installment was duly published on April 25, 1983. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Skeptics pounced on the story the minute it hit the press. British historian <b><a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/portrait-of-the-monster-as-a-young-man-the-formative-years-of-adolf-hitler/">Alan Bullock</a></b>, author of the highly-regarded biography <i>Hitler: A Study in Tyranny</i>, noted that “despite extraordinary efforts... to scrape together every scrap of information about Hitler, there has never been a suggestion that he kept diaries.” </span>Others complained that the diary entries seemed out of character. “I read one excerpt where he was supposed to have written ‘ha, ha, ha,’” said another expert. “He wasn’t that kind of person.”</div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Still, it must have been hard to resist succumbing to the hoax when you had entries like this one, allegedly written by Hitler in June of 1941: "On Eva's wishes, I am thoroughly examined by my doctors. Because of the new pills I have violent flatulence, and - says Eva - bad breath." Nobody knew the real Adolf Hitler, not even his closest associates. Who'd have guessed that such a monster had problems with flatulence and bad breath?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Just this past April, Rupert Murdoch told the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics that publishing the Hitler Diaries in 1983 was a "major mistake" which he would have to live with for the rest of his life. Murdoch offered <i>Der Stern</i> $3 million for world rights to the diaries in a bidding war against <i>Newsweek</i>. A recent <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2011/07/what-murdoch-learned-from-the-hitler-diary-forgeries.html">New Yorker blog</a> suggests that even after the hoax was revealed, Murdoch came out ahead.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The last word, I think, should go to Trevor-Roper. "</span>For Mythopoeia is a far more common characteristic of the human race (and perhaps especially of the German race) than veracity," he wrote in <i>The Last Days of Hitler</i>. Or maybe we should go with P.T. Barnum: "There's a sucker born every minute."</div>
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<br />Lisa Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11129352554123911751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3105334536733427624.post-20703940451123808352012-06-15T11:28:00.000-07:002012-06-15T11:43:59.260-07:00Le Corbeau (The Raven)<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">All of France resisted the Nazis, if not actively, at least in their hearts. So argued Jean-Paul Sartre in “The Republic of Silence,” an uplifting little address he published a month after the Liberation. “Because the Nazi venom seeped even into our thoughts, every accurate thought was a conquest,” he wrote. “And here I am not speaking of the elite among us who were real Resistants, but of all Frenchmen who, at every hour of the night and day throughout four years, answered NO.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Of course, Sartre knew better. In <b><a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/paris-under-the-occupation/">“Paris Under the Occupation,”</a> </b>published a few months later, he presented a different picture of the compromises that daily life under the thumb of the Germans entailed. Here he admitted that his countrymen, for the most part, were too demoralized to resist. And yet he couldn’t quite bring himself to acknowledge how eagerly many complied.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Millions of people denounced their neighbors in anonymous letters to the authorities during the Vichy era. You could say this was something of a patriotic tradition in France. During the <i>ancien régime</i>, secret letters led to the imprisonment of countless “enemies,” who would languish in jail, never knowing what crime they had been accused of, not even knowing the name of their accuser. The practice was stopped during the French Revolution, but the habit persisted. Under Napoleon Bonaparte it was said that half of France was paid to inform on the other half. Informers were also employed during the colonial struggles after the war.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Betrayal was an uncomfortable fact of life under the Occupation, and Henri-Georges Clouzot made it the subject of his 1943 suspense film, “Le Corbeau.” Remarkably, the film was produced by a German-owned company, Continental. More remarkably, early publicity for the picture highlighted the theme: “Informing, the shame of the century!” Goodness, what were they thinking?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The film was a smash hit. The Catholic Church gave it a “6” on its moral scale—“1” being appropriate for all audiences, even children, and “6” being a film so pernicious that it deserved to be banned—thus ensuring that it would find an audience for decades to come. In fact, prominent critics on both ends of the political spectrum condemned “Le Corbeau.” Clouzot was accused of treason in the collaborationist newspaper<i> Je Suis Partout</i>; anonymous letters were “necessary” to maintain public order claimed fascist writer Lucien Rebatet. The Left, meanwhile, objected to the complete absence of admirable characters. Nobody comes off well. Not a single soul. Children, nuns, peasants, shopkeepers, teachers, workers: all are corrupted by the poison pen letters circulating in their small town.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">“You think that the good are all good and the bad are all bad,” the head of the hospital, Vorzet, tells the film’s protagonist, Germain, in a famous scene. “The good is the light and the bad is the shadow.” (Here Vorzet swings a lightbulb that is dangling from a wire overhead.) Germain is having an affair with a woman in the town. He desires her, but says that he wouldn’t hesitate to turn her in if she were found to be the culprit sending the poison pen letters. “But where is the shadow, where is the light?” Vorget asks. (By now the zones of light and shadow are shifting crazily as the bulb swings back and forth.) “Do you know if you are in the light or in the shadows?”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">It’s only natural to seek clarity, particularly during times of upheaval. Simone de Beauvoir argued in favor of the death penalty for war criminals for precisely this reason. Salutary executions were the only means of restoring the moral certainties that were compromised during the Vichy era, she proclaimed in her essay, <b><a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/an-eye-for-an-eye/">“An Eye for an Eye.”</a> </b>And yet both she and Sartre stood up for Clouzot when the postwar French government barred him from making any more films on account of his alleged ties with the Nazis. Sartre even worked with Clouzot on a screenplay during the two-year period before the ban was lifted.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">For his part, Clouzot seems to have been quite a piece of work. Germain’s intolerance for the hypocrisy of human nature mirrored the director’s own. He was not an easy man to work with; more than one actress complained of being slapped around on the set. On the other hand, he got fine performances out of his cast and is one of only three directors to have won the top prizes at the Cannes, Venice, and Berlin firm festivals (the other two were Michelangelo Antonioni and Robert Altman).</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">So, where is the shadow and where is the light?</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Lisa Lieberman </b>blogs about old movies at <a href="http://deathlessprose.com/">Deathless Prose</a></span></span>.</span></span></div>Lisa Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11129352554123911751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3105334536733427624.post-78804047908804668402012-05-22T19:42:00.001-07:002012-05-22T19:42:31.850-07:00Bad Girl Blues<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">“It’s just that I’ve got everything that makes a girl forget her better judgment,” Edward G. Robinson tells Alice White in the 1930 gangster picture, “The Widow from Chicago.” That seems to be exactly the kind of man that <a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/bonnie-parker-writes-a-poem-how-a-couple-of-bungling-sociopaths-became-bonnie-and-clyde/">Bonnie Parker</a> wanted, and if she hadn’t quite found him in Clyde Barrow, she was prepared to make him over from scratch.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Well, not entirely from scratch. She had pulp fiction to draw on, westerns featuring Jesse James and hardboiled crime stories, not to mention the gangster movies that flourished in Prohibition-era America before the Hays Code. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">James Cagney plays a tough guy in “The Public Enemy”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">If the reality of Bonnie and Clyde’s life on the lam was less than glamorous—the two spent more time hiding from the law than robbing, and much of their shooting seems to have been done by mistake—Bonnie’s fantasies turned them into outlaw heroes. She liked to pretend that she was a cigar-smoking gun moll, but deep down, she was the kind of gal who’d stand by her man, no matter how he treated her, and even take the rap for him.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Romance, not crime, may have been Bonnie’s true calling. I imagine her humming the lyrics to “My Man” as she waited for Clyde to be released from a two-year prison sentence he began serving a few months after they met. Fanny Brice popularized the song in the 1920s. I swear it could have been Bonnie Parker's anthem.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Oh, my man, I love him so </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">He'll never know </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">All my life is just despair </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But I don't care </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">When he takes me in his arms </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The world is bright all right </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">What's the difference if I say </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I'll go away </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">When I know I'll come back on my knees someday </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">For whatever my man is </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I am his </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">forever more</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><b>Steven Biel's</b> book, <i>Bonnie Parker Writes a Poem</i>, </span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">can be purchased for $2.99 through <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0083LPBWU/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=nowandtherea-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0083LPBWU">Amazon</a></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">, </span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">Barnes and Noble <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bonnie-parker-writes-a-poem-steven-biel/1110855165?ean=2940014440660">Nook Books</a>, <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/bonnie-parker-writes-a-poem/id527742087?mt=11">iTunes</a></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">, and <a href="http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Bonnie-Parker-Writes-Poem-How/book-w2Tx5CpfoEOqK__PTTMq_g/page1.html?s=lkbEj6nCN0-MMAJNkv-grg&r=1">Kobo Books</a></span>. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Lisa Lieberman's</b></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"> translation of Simone de Beauvoir's 1946 essay, "An Eye for an Eye" </span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">can be purchased for $1.99 through Amazon <a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1215313490">Kindle Singles</a></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007Z3REO0/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=nowandtherea-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B007Z3REO0">,</a> </span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">Barnes and Noble <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/an-eye-for-an-eye-simone-de-beauvoir/1110436217?ean=2940014556576">Nook Books,</a> </span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"> <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/an-eye-for-an-eye/id522769998?mt=11">iTunes</a>, and <a href="http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/An-Eye-for-an-Eye/book-BKzh8vioSEGLjDUCPkmm3A/page1.html?s=goTgPPSXJU6MyBZcVGRSPw&r=5">Kobo Books</a></span>. </span>She blogs about old movies at <a href="http://deathlessprose.com/">Deathless Prose</a>.</div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>Lisa Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11129352554123911751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3105334536733427624.post-48203261908416545072012-05-02T13:44:00.000-07:002012-05-02T13:44:24.238-07:00A Question of JusticeThe conviction of Liberia’s former president, Charles Taylor, of aiding and abetting war crimes in the neighboring country of Sierra Leone, has been widely praised. World leaders and human rights groups have applauded the Hague tribunal’s ruling for “sending a strong message to all perpetrators of atrocities, including those in the highest positions of power, that they will be held accountable," as a State Department spokesperson said.<br />
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The UN high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, termed Taylor’s conviction in the Hague “a historic moment in the development of international justice.” And U.S. Representative Chris Smith, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health and Human Rights that worked to bring Taylor to trial, called his conviction “a just verdict”—a view expressed by many survivors and relatives of victims in Sierra Leone.<br />
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A just verdict? Not according to New York Times Op-Ed contributor J. Peter Pham. A conviction for complicity in crimes committed in another country which ignores the atrocities Taylor committed against the citizens of his own country is hardly worth celebrating. After a trial lasting six years, Pham argues, and with many of Taylor’s henchmen still in power, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/27/opinion/an-incomplete-justice.html?ref=opinion" target="_blank">true justice for Liberians</a> seems a long way off.<br />
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Simone de Beauvoir would have agreed. While not condoning the sort of rough justice suffered by Muammar Gaddafi at the hands of his subjects, she might have preferred seeing Taylor tried and executed by his own countrymen, as was the case with those accused and convicted of war crimes in France during World War II.<br />
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Salutary executions, Beauvoir argues in her 1946 essay, “<a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/an-eye-for-an-eye" target="_blank">An Eye for an Eye</a>," are the only means of restoring the moral certainties that were compromised during the German Occupation. “One may excuse all the offenses and all the crimes individuals commit against society, but when a man deliberately applies himself to degrade another man and turn him into a thing, it is necessary to eradicate from the earth a scandal that nothing can undo,” she writes.<br />
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The purging of war criminals was a means of restoring France’s integrity following the moral disgrace of Vichy, Beauvoir argues. Nothing less than the nation’s legitimacy was at stake: the principles enshrined in the French Revolution, its proud commitment to justice and human decency. “If,” she concluded, “...the values according to which we live are real, if they have weight, it is not shocking to uphold them at the cost of a life.”<br />
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- Lisa Lieberman<br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><b><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />Lisa Lieberman's</b></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"> translation of Simone de Beauvoir's 1946 essay, "An Eye for an Eye" </span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">can be purchased for $1.99 through Amazon </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007Z3REO0/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=nowandtherea-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B007Z3REO0" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" target="_blank">Kindle Singles</a> <span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">, </span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">Barnes and Noble </span><a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/an-eye-for-an-eye-simone-de-beauvoir/1110436217?ean=2940014556576" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;" target="_blank">Nook Books</a><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">, and </span><a href="http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/An-Eye-for-an-Eye/book-BKzh8vioSEGLjDUCPkmm3A/page1.html?s=goTgPPSXJU6MyBZcVGRSPw&r=5" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">Kobo Books.</a> <span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">Her current project, </span><i style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"><a href="http://deathlessprose.com/books/lost-belongings/">Lost Belongings</a>, </i><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">explores the moral and political choices of exiled Holocaust survivors after the war.</span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3105334536733427624.post-43594538960300504932012-04-21T17:48:00.000-07:002012-04-22T04:47:56.130-07:00Guilty by Association<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Fanny Kemble felt accused from the moment she arrived at her husband’s Georgia plantation in December of 1838. On the faces of his slaves, she saw the same sad and fearful expression, conveying “a sense of incalculable past loss and injury and a dread of incalculable future loss and injury.” Deep down, she must have known that, for all her pity, and despite her small acts of kindness toward “these wretched people,” as she called them, she was complicit in their oppression.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Kemble, a famous actress in England before she married Pierce Butler, gave up earning her own living to be kept by a wealthy husband whose family had lived off the unpaid labor of slaves for two generations. From the comfort of her Philadelphia mansion, she could entertain abolitionists. She could even write against slavery, but this did not change the fact that, as Butler bluntly put it, “the act of marrying a slave owner made her also a slave owner...”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">At moments in her <a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/women-in-slavery/">Journal</a>, Kemble admits as much to herself:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>I am getting perfectly savage over all these doings, and really think I should consider my own throat and those of my children well cut if some night the people were to take it into their heads to clear off scores in that fashion.</i></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">She cannot pretend to be pure, cannot stand above the ugly reality she witnesses. Sad and fearful, and guilty, she fled the Georgia plantation after four months.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">A century later, white outsiders who, like Kemble, became insiders in the South—the Jim Crow South—felt the same complicated emotions as they contemplated the situation of the blacks. Refugee Jewish scholars from Hitler’s Germany who came to the United States and wound up teaching in black colleges in the segregated South, were dismayed to find themselves transformed overnight from victims to oppressors, owing to their white skin. Their response was quietly to circumvent the Jim Crow Laws, inviting their students into their homes while holding them to the same high standards they had expected of their students back in their German universities, replicating as best they could in their impoverished circumstances the vibrant academic community they had lost. Tellingly enough, few returned to Germany after the war.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Lisa Lieberman's</b></span> translation of Jean-Paul Sartre's essay,<a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/paris-under-the-occupation/"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">"Paris Under the Occupation"</span></a> can be purchased for $1.99 through Amazon <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Paris-Under-the-Occupation-ebook/dp/B0069W8KIW">Kindle Books</a>, Apple <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/paris-under-the-occupation/id481140928">Bookstore Quick Reads,</a> Barnes and Noble <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/paris-under-the-occupation-jean-paul-sartre/1107117050?ean=2940013491755">Nook Books</a>, <a href="http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Paris-Under-the-Occupation/book-ngr45Ix0Bka6igqphJ_OqQ/page1.html?s=TkwXbWrVK06LS2Vi4FIsRw&r=1">Kobo</a> and <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=dpAYKtzcT_UC">Google Books</a>. Her current project, <i><a href="http://deathlessprose.com/books/lost-belongings/">Lost Belongings</a>, </i>explores the moral and political choices of exiled Holocaust survivors after the war.</span></span></div>Lisa Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11129352554123911751noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3105334536733427624.post-59473619271828845882012-04-12T10:55:00.001-07:002012-04-12T11:12:16.598-07:00A continually expanding concept of national security is not viable for America's future<b>by John Prados</b><br />
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<b>The following is excerpted from John Prados' 11,000 word essay <a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/rethinking-national-security" target="_blank"><i>Rethinking National Security</i> </a>available for e-Readers through <a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/" target="_blank">Now and Then Reader</a>.</b><br />
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America today stands at a crossroads. Beset by economic woes, driven to attempt reform that might enable the nation to regain a sense of honor and purpose, and seeking desperately to identify what actions are needed, Americans are searching for a way forward. But there is an elephant in the room that blocks the way: what we call “national security.” Few observers have paid much attention to national security. Citizens have long deferred to government and allowed it full sway in the defense of the land. But our present crisis is too great, and our resources too strained, to continue with business as usual. America’s myriad difficulties cannot be overcome without dealing with the issue of national security.<br />
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As presently conceived, national security is a trap. Left untouched, pursuit of it will continue to cripple our country. In the essay that follows I try to show how national security evolved, why in its present form it ensnares the nation, what would be the consequences of failure to correct the situation, and what a new approach might look like. I also argue that a solution to this problem is urgent: escaping the national security trap may be the critical issue of our era.<br />
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During his presidential campaign Barack Obama made many promises, some of them concerning foreign policy and defense. His ideas resonated with Americans. Candidate Obama promised to end the war in Iraq; close the notorious detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; stop torture and renditions; move away from the nuclear standoff that still exists with Russia; ratify the comprehensive test-ban treaty; end regulations that oppress gay Americans serving in the military; strengthen the International Atomic Energy Agency; and place U.S. diplomacy on a broader foundation. Mr. Obama foresaw a global fair deal in which the United States would multiply assistance to the Third World, forgive the debts of underdeveloped countries, and reduce foreign hostility by means of transparent policies and frank answers to critics of America. Candidate Obama believed in strengthening common security by investing in the common humanity of all peoples.<br />
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Four years on, much of this agenda remains unfulfilled. Case in point: the day after his inauguration, President Obama issued an executive order providing that the Guantanamo prison be closed within a year. He was not able to enforce that directive. Objections from politicians, officials, and citizens over the relocation or release of detainees comprised a mounting wave of resistance that stalled the program. The administration’s initiative to move the trial of admitted terrorist Khalid Sheik Mohammed, one of the architects of the attacks of September 11, 2001, to a civilian court—and thus end the gravely flawed military tribunals created by the Bush administration—then failed. The collapse of this effort effectively ended the president’s entire program for detainees.<br />
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Obama had also advocated a variety of steps to reset U.S. relations with Russia and eradicate the vestiges of the nuclear balance of terror, disturbingly persistent even after the end of the Cold War. Final ratification of a comprehensive nuclear test-ban treaty, making new designs for nuclear weapons more difficult, and reaching a fresh agreement with Moscow on further reductions in existing weapons stockpiles were among these initiatives. But Senate fears of weakening the nation’s defenses put the final nails in the coffin of ratification. When Obama went ahead and canceled design of a new generation of weapons, senators made the program’s continuation a condition for their ratification of the arms-reduction agreement.<br />
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To reduce the danger of accidental nuclear war, the Obama administration suggested that both the United States and Russia modify the command control of their long-range missiles so that targets in the other nation would not be preset into the rockets’ guidance systems. Meanwhile a different initiative held over from the Bush administration called for an anti-ballistic-missile defense system that requires placing early-detection radars on the territory of nations contiguous to Russia. Moscow considers this an aggressive action aimed at Russia, but Obama officials continued the program. The Russians responded with actions of their own, including the rejection of the measure to reduce the danger of accidental war.<br />
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One campaign promise that President Obama fulfilled was his commitment to end the oppressive treatment of gay Americans by the military in the form of its “don’t ask, don’t tell” regulations, under which admitted homosexuals were dismissed from the armed forces. When the White House mandated cancellation of this regimen, a procession of generals and admirals—and powerful politicians—resisted by arguing that permitting gays to serve openly in the military would reduce the effectiveness of U.S. forces. Obama won through, and legislation ending the obsolete regulations was enacted into law.<br />
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In each of these situations involving foreign policy and defense, a common thread may be found in behind-the-scenes maneuvering and policy debates: the single concept of “national security.” Unremarked by nearly everyone, the idea of national security has expanded to the point where today it has acquired a quasi-mystical meaning. Almost anything that relates remotely to the nation’s well-being is declared within the realm of national security. As a candidate Barack Obama subscribed to many forward-thinking ideas. As president many of his campaign commitments remain in limbo precisely because of the demands of national security. But the president is not merely a prisoner of aggressive national security stalwarts. In important ways he himself believes in its precepts.<br />
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The central problem is not an individual—even a president—and not a cohort of advocates. America’s crisis today hinges in large part on an overweening and outmoded concept of national security. Left over from Cold War days, it has ballooned far beyond its original meaning. And this has happened without serious consideration by American citizens. If it is not curbed, national security will drive the decline of the very state it aims to preserve. Traditional national security is a trap.<br />
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<i>John Prados is a senior fellow of the National Security Archive at George Washington University. He is the author of more than twenty books in the field, including 'Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA;' 'Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War, 1945–1975;' 'Combined Fleet Decoded: The Secret History of U.S. Intelligence and the Japanese Navy in World War II;' and 'Keepers of the Keys: A History of the National Security Council from Truman to Bush.' He lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.</i><br />
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The complete essay 'Rethinking National Security' is available to purchase for $2.99 Kindle and iPad through <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007TAEUMS/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=nowandtherea-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B007TAEUMS" target="_blank">Amazon</a> and <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/rethinking-national-security/id518385031?mt=11" target="_blank">iTunes.</a><br />
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<br /></div>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3105334536733427624.post-70545147038468260842012-04-06T08:44:00.005-07:002012-04-06T10:33:10.028-07:00Happy Birthday, Charles Fourier<p style="text-align: center;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; color: rgb(51, 50, 51); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; color: rgb(51, 50, 51); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Picture yourself in a commune near Boston</span></p> <p style="text-align: center;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; color: rgb(51, 50, 51); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">With lions as butlers and lemonade seas </span></p> <p style="text-align: center;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; color: rgb(51, 50, 51); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Everyone’s willing to share their possessions</span></p> <p style="text-align: center;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; color: rgb(51, 50, 51); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">And work for the community </span></p> <p style="text-align: center;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; color: rgb(51, 50, 51); min-height: 15px; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="text-align: center;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; color: rgb(51, 50, 51); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Happy small children collect all the trash</span></p> <p style="text-align: center;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; color: rgb(51, 50, 51); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Riding on Shetland ponies </span></p> <p style="text-align: center;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; color: rgb(51, 50, 51); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Free education, free love </span></p> <p style="text-align: center;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; color: rgb(51, 50, 51); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Total equality </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; min-height: 15.0pxcolor:#333233;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; color:#333233;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">The magnificent failure known as Brook Farm, a utopian commune set up in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, was more fantastic than anything dreamed up by John Lennon. Founded by free-thinking New Englanders in 1841—the <a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/dawning-of-the-counter-culture-the-1960s/">hippies</a> of their generation—its ambitious program gave ownership of the community to anyone who lived and worked there, one share distributed for each day a member worked, and provided a high-quality education from preschool through college for all of the colony’s children. Nathaniel Hawthorne was one of the original shareholders; Ralph Waldo Emerson, the poet and Transcendentalist, along with feminist author Margaret Fuller, and the fathers of Louisa May Alcott and Harriet Beecher Stowe were all enthusiastic about the enterprise.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; min-height: 15.0pxcolor:#333233;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; color:#333233;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">The experiment was based on the socialist ideals of the French reformer Charles Fourier. Like other late-18th-century rationalists, including <a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/the-quintessential-american/">Ben Franklin</a>, Fourier believed you could solve all the problems of the world if you just put your mind to it. Putting his mind to the problems of urban and industrial society, he came up with the “back-to-the-land” philosophy that inspired not only Brook Farm, but numerous communes throughout the United States, not to mention the Kibbutz model in Israel. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; min-height: 15.0pxcolor:#333233;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; color:#333233;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">But Fourier didn’t stop at social engineering. He predicted that a new planetary alignment would change the earth. The North Pole would melt and the seas would lose their saltiness and turn to lemonade. Wild animals would become the servants of humankind. So maybe he went off the deep end, but his ideas were incredibly influential. Karl Marx “borrowed” his criticism of capitalism, the exploitation of workers for the benefit of factory owners, and his understanding of the way that factory work alienated workers. Others picked up on his support of women’s rights—Fourier coined the word “feminism”— his critique of the institution of marriage and advocacy of sexual freedom, including same-sex unions.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; min-height: 15.0pxcolor:#333233;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; color:#333233;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">All in all, he was a pretty radical guy, not only for his time, but for ours as well. “The first right of men is the right to work and the right to a minimum wage,” he said. “This is precisely what has gone unrecognized in all the constitutions. Their primary concern is with favored individuals who are not in need of work.” </span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; color:#333233;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; color:#333233;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Charles Fourier was born on April 7, 1772, and died on October 10, 1837.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; color:#333233;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; color:#333233;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-family:Helvetica;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; "><b>Lisa Lieberman's</b></span> translation of Jean-Paul Sartre's essay, <a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/paris-under-the-occupation/" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: normal; ">"Paris Under the Occupation"</a> can be purchased for $1.99 through Amazon <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Paris-Under-the-Occupation-ebook/dp/B0069W8KIW/" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: normal; ">Kindle Books</a>, Apple <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/paris-under-the-occupation/id481140928?mt=11" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: normal; ">Bookstore Quick Reads</a>, Barnes and Noble <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1036542302" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: normal; ">Nook Books</a> and <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/paris-under-the-occupation/id481140928" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: normal; ">Google Books</a>.</span></span></p>Lisa Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11129352554123911751noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3105334536733427624.post-4107920292558134942012-03-30T11:37:00.002-07:002012-03-30T11:37:29.016-07:00Higher Ed CommoditizationJoshua Kim reviewed Now and Then Reader's '<a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/why-american-newspapers-gave-away-the-future/" target="_blank">Why American Newspapers Gave Away the Future</a>' by Richard J. Tofel in today's edition of <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/4-higher-ed-lessons-why-american-newspapers-gave-away-future" target="_blank">Inside Higher Ed</a>. In his review, Kim looks at what higher education can learn from the mistakes that the newspaper industry made as they adapted to the offerings of the digital world. <br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, 'Nimbus Sans L', sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">In the news world, newspapers neglected to make investments in the reporters and editors that were the traditional comparative advantage of print media, and could have provided the service (in-depth reporting) that could have motivated readers to keep paying for content. In higher ed, we should be sure to invest in our greatest resource - </span><em style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, 'Nimbus Sans L', sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">our faculty </em><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, 'Nimbus Sans L', sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">- as we depend on the teaching and research that they produce to bring in students and research dollars. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, 'Nimbus Sans L', sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left;"><br /><br />Read more: <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/4-higher-ed-lessons-why-american-newspapers-gave-away-future#ixzz1qcVbGhaX" style="color: #003399; text-decoration: none;">http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/4-higher-ed-lessons-why-american-newspapers-gave-away-future#ixzz1qcVbGhaX</a><br />Inside Higher Ed </span></blockquote>
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The questions Kim asks are particularly resonant with yesterday's news that Santa Monica College plans to implement a tiered-pricing plan for their classes. Students trying to get in to the most popular classes, will pay more to gain access to the courses they need. The changes are proposed in response to over-enrollment in the College at a time when budget cuts have reduced faculty and thus capacity. David Blaine of the American Association of Community Colleges is quoted in yesterday's <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/30/us/community-college-to-charge-more-for-top-courses.html" target="_blank">New York Times article</a> on the plan:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, 'Nimbus Sans L', sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">But the impetus behind it, he said, is clear. “In many cases, and California most prominently, amid the recession there was a huge spike in enrollment concurrent with budget cuts,” Mr. Baime said. “The colleges have just maxed out in terms of how many students they can serve.”</span></blockquote>
The fact that this new structure, the first of its kind, is being implemented at a community college level as opposed to a private university is particularly concerning and raises the questions of the responsibility of community colleges, in general. It seems logical conclusion that the two-tiered pricing system will exclude students who cannot afford to pay for the higher classes. Just as it is with the rest of the commodities we're offered in all aspects of daily life, choices will have to be made by those on tighter budgets; and, in most cases, the lower cost, and subsequently lower-value option will be chosen. <br />
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Clearly, if Santa Monica College's new system gets approved by state regulators, it be replicated in other schools, both private and public. Since demand raises prices across all realm of products, be it <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/why-are-some-countries-more-expensive-than-others/255238/" target="_blank">nanny services</a> or haircuts, <a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/is-a-college-education-still-worth-the-price/" target="_blank">the cost of higher education</a> will continue to rise.<br />
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But what if Santa Monica College's pricing system has the reverse effect? Could an ad hoc pricing structure further commoditize education services driving students to look for alternate learning resources and subsequently bring the prices down. As Kim points out, just as the newspaper industry faced competition from websites in the early 2000s, today's traditional higher ed institutions are already facing growing "competition" from places like Udacity, Khan Academy and others. Despite the anger voiced by protesters at Santa Monica College, there are more and more learning opportunities available everyday. Widespread acceptance of a tiered pricing structure could potentially fuel further competition and with that, improve the quality of the product. Not necessarily in the form of a new gym or student union, which Richard B. Schwartz points out in "<a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/is-a-college-education-still-worth-the-price" target="_blank">Is a College Education Still Worth the Price</a>?" has become a troubling priority for many institutions, but in the form of a better education. For all.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3105334536733427624.post-23633488172220017352012-03-27T13:28:00.000-07:002012-03-27T13:29:39.597-07:00Hilton Kramer<br />
Hilton Kramer, the onetime chief art critic of the New York Times and in recent years the publisher of The New Criterion, died on March 26 near his home in Maine. He had been ill for some time. <br />
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I had the privilege (I use the word carefully) of publishing two of his books, The Twilight of the Intellectuals and The Triumph of Modernism, and had the greatest admiration for his work. <br />
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I often told Hilton that I had never learned more about art and art history than I did when reading one of his essays. He wrote his most important criticism at a time when the art world was balanced on shifting sands, and he was courageous in his defense of its higher forms. <br />
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His obit in the Times may be seen at <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/28/arts/design/hilton-kramer-critic-who-championed-modernism-dies-at-84.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/28/arts/design/hilton-kramer-critic-who-championed-modernism-dies-at-84.html</a><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3105334536733427624.post-33664030715520220542012-03-20T04:27:00.006-07:002012-03-20T05:48:01.534-07:00Review of the Movie "Free Men"<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hs3LQtzbpwU/T2hurTMMNhI/AAAAAAAAAJw/1TPwSTri-E0/s1600/FreeMen2.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 186px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hs3LQtzbpwU/T2hurTMMNhI/AAAAAAAAAJw/1TPwSTri-E0/s320/FreeMen2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5721945016739051026" /></a><br /><div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">I know this will date me, but watching “Free Men” sent me back to a black-and-white TV program of the 1960s, <i>The Outer Limits.</i> Each episode opened with a test pattern and some eerie music. “There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture,” a menacing voice would announce.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">“Free Men” is an effort to adjust our picture of the French Resistance during the Second World War to include the activities of North African Muslims who resisted the Nazis and rescued Jews. This is no small matter. Until fairly recently, the standard picture was completely FRENCH. Foreigners were left out, although early Resistance groups in occupied Paris and the Vichy zone contained large numbers of persecuted refugees from other parts of Europe, including Communists and Jews. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">As for the many Arab and Berber migrants from France’s North African colonies who had come to the mainland seeking work in the 1920s and 30s, they might as well have been invisible. Yet they had their own mosque, the Great Mosque of Paris, built to commemorate the 100,000 Muslim soldiers who died defending France in World War I. Si Kaddour Ben Ghabrit, the Great Mosque’s rector, is known to have saved the lives of a number of Jews, among them the Algerian-Jewish singer Salim Halali, by issuing them certificates of Muslim identity, which enabled them to escape deportation.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">The story deserves to be told, and the Moroccan-French director Ismaël Ferroukhi tells it well. Younes, the young Algerian drifter who joins the Resistance somewhat against his will, is a hero by the end of the film. He helps save Halali, among others. We see him making his way through the crowd on Liberation Day, a battered hero, sadder and wiser. Unfortunately, that’s where the film ends.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Despite their sacrifices for France and the promises of independence given by Charles de Gaulle in recognition of their loyalty, Algerians did not attain their independence until 1962, after a long and bloody war. Younes and the film’s other idealistic North African characters would become casualties of this war. Some would be arrested by the French as potential terrorists, or massacred in the streets of Paris when they attempted to stage a peaceful demonstration on October 17, 1961. Others would be seen as too moderate by radical Algerian nationalists and killed by their own side.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">“Free Men” makes a place for North Africans in the heroic pantheon, but the picture it presents is still in black-and-white and out of focus. The real story of the role Algerians and Algeria played in French history, including the Second World War, was not about heroism. It was about betrayal. Sadly, not much has changed.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><br /></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; "><b>Lisa Lieberman's</b></span> translation of Jean-Paul Sartre's essay, <a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/paris-under-the-occupation/" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: normal; ">"Paris Under the Occupation"</a> can be purchased for $1.99 through Amazon <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Paris-Under-the-Occupation-ebook/dp/B0069W8KIW/" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: normal; ">Kindle Books</a>, Apple <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/paris-under-the-occupation/id481140928?mt=11" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: normal; ">Bookstore Quick Reads</a>, Barnes and Noble<a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1036542302" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: normal; ">Nook Books</a> and <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/paris-under-the-occupation/id481140928" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: normal; ">Google Books</a>. <a href="http://deathlessprose.com/books/lost-belongings/" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: normal; ">Lost Belongings</a>, her current nonfiction project, tells how Holocaust survivors coped with irretrievable loss.</span></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div></div>Lisa Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11129352554123911751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3105334536733427624.post-69421255818663282542012-03-14T09:34:00.001-07:002012-03-14T09:34:52.274-07:00Of Historians, Umpires and GeneralsMerle Miller leads off this month's list with <em><a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/firing-the-general" style="color: #f0b312;">Firing the General</a></em>, Harry Truman's candid account of why he'd had enough of General Douglas MacArthur. Excerpted from Miller's oral history of President Truman,<em> Plain Speaking</em>, <em>Firing the General</em> is available exclusively through <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Firing-General-Truman-MacArthur-ebook/dp/B007FF73PS/" style="color: #f0b312;">Kindle Books</a> and for free for Amazon Prime Members. Historiographers can indulge or <a href="http://nonfictionbooksblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/historian-and-her-day.html" style="color: #f0b312;">dispute the reality</a> of J.H. Hexter's <em><a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/the-historian-and-his-day" style="color: #f0b312;">The Historian and His Day</a> </em>with an introduction by Gertrude Himmelfarb. Then, with baseball season just around the corner, we're happy to have Peter Morris' fascinating look at the history of violence in baseball, <em><a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/dont-kill-the-umpire" style="color: #f0b312;">Don't Kill The Umpire: How Baseball Escaped Its Violent Past</a></em> to put things in perspective.
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<a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/dont-kill-the-umpire" style="color: #f0b312;"><img alt="Don't Kill The Umpire by Peter Morris" border="0" height="240" src="http://gallery.mailchimp.com/e522a6e9b9cdb9fb3b979a441/images/dont_kill_the_umpire.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; height: auto; line-height: 13px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 180px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" width="180" /></a></div>
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Don't Kill The Umpire</h3>
by Peter Morris<br />
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Violence plays a peculiar, sublimated role in the sport of baseball. In stark contrast to the play of football and other widely appreciated American games like basketball and ice hockey, baseball players are schooled to take their aggressions out on the ball, not on other players. Yet the game was not always one of quiet courage played by gentlemen, as Peter Morris shows in this fascinating historical profile of the rise and fall of violence as a part of our national pastime.<br />
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007I82JME/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=nowandtherea-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B007I82JME" style="color: #f0b312;">Buy for Kindle</a><br />
<a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/dont-kill-the-umpire/id508961999" style="color: #f0b312;">Buy for iPad</a><br />
<a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dont-kill-the-umpire-peter-morris/1109403092" style="color: #f0b312;">Buy for Nook</a></div>
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Firing the General</h3>
by Merle Miller<br />
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No episode during the administration of President Harry Truman caused a greater uproar than his firing of General Douglas MacArthur. After continuing friction between his military aims in the Korean War and the administration’s policy of avoiding a larger conflict, MacArthur began to state publicly his complaints about being handcuffed. Truman’s patience wore thin and finally ran out. In this excerpt from Merle Miller’s Plain Speaking, the always candid former president explains what happened.<br />
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007FF73PS/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=nowandtherea-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B007FF73PS" style="color: #f1b413;">Buy now on Amazon</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/the-historian-and-his-day" style="color: #f0b312;"><img alt="The Historian and His Day" border="0" height="240" src="http://gallery.mailchimp.com/e522a6e9b9cdb9fb3b979a441/images/historianandhisday.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; height: auto; line-height: 13px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 180px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" width="180" /></a></div>
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The Historian and His Day</h3>
by J.H. Hexter with an introduction by Gertrude Himmelfarb<br />
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Deceptively mild and modest in tone, J. H. Hexter's "The Historian and His Day" is bold in conception and execution. Hexter was venturing upon a subject—the nature of the historical enterprise—that has engaged the most eminent historians, raising the perennially vexing question of past- and present-mindedness in the writing of history. It is also memorable because it addresses that issue in a notably down-to-earth, commonsensible, personal manner. .<br />
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007FGF4HQ/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=nowandtherea-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B007FGF4HQ" style="color: #f0b312;">Buy on Amazon</a><br />
<a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-historian-and-his-day/id506746593?mt=11" style="color: #f0b312;">Buy on iTunes</a></div>
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Free eBook of the Month</h1>
<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">This month's Free eBook will be </span><em style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">The Quintessential American</em><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;"> featuring selections from Benjamin Franklin's autobiography. Check for it later this week.</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/the-quintessential-american" style="color: #f0b312; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;"><img align="left" alt="The Quintessential American: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin" height="200" src="http://gallery.mailchimp.com/e522a6e9b9cdb9fb3b979a441/images/the_quintessential_american.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; height: 200px; line-height: 14px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-right: 10px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; text-decoration: none; width: 150px;" width="150" /></a><a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/the-quintessential-american" style="color: #f0b312; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;"><strong>The Quintessential American: Selections from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin</strong></a><br />
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">In his famous Autobiography, Franklin displays the iconic American virtues of thrift, ambition, hard work, self-improvement, and common sense. But, like many of the Founders, aspects of Franklin’s character remain something of a puzzle. In these selections from his Autobiography, Franklin reflects upon his rise in the world and the self-taught lessons that brought his success.</span></div>
</div>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3105334536733427624.post-44808349262730745312012-03-06T16:02:00.000-08:002012-03-06T16:02:10.077-08:00Publishing Perspectives on peddling e-trash<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y24PtTGgwwQ/T1abDSJe0qI/AAAAAAAAADo/3TgByERQVzU/s1600/IRD+photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y24PtTGgwwQ/T1abDSJe0qI/AAAAAAAAADo/3TgByERQVzU/s320/IRD+photo.jpg" width="234" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ivan R. Dee, Now & Then Reader</td></tr>
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Our venerable chief editor Ivan R. Dee put his own words out there today with a guest article on <a href="http://publishingperspectives.com/2012/03/traitorous-activity-why-a-veteran-publisher-went-digital/" target="_blank">Publishing Perspectives</a>.<br />
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Speaking of his transition from 30+ years publishing hardcover and paperback serious nonfiction to launching Now and Then Reader and publishing short form <a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/" target="_blank">nonfiction books</a> and essays for e-readers:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px;">The other day, I was accused by an old publishing friend of traitorous activities. </span></blockquote>
Even though I'm digital born and bred, I often feel traitorous as I switch back and forth between unfinished print books that have been lying on my shelf for months and the latest Kindle book I downloaded after reading a review in the New York Times. From a reader's perspective, it's all about convenience and immediacy. I can read it now. From a publisher's perspective, it's the same idea. We can publish it now:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px;">I needn’t remind those in traditional publishing about the agonizingly slow process of contracting for a book, developing the manuscript, seeing it through the editorial and design and manufacturing processes, getting it into the stores with adequate publicity — and finally trying to move it off the bookstore shelves. In my publishing house, once the manuscript was in hand, we usually accomplished this in five to six months — and we pushed. Many publishers of similar serious materials require a year or more </span> </blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px;">By contrast, Now and Then can get a long piece ready for publication within two weeks, including editing, cover design, production, and publicity materials. Using two to three people. Compared with book publication, it’s a piece of cake </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px;">— like the difference between a meal in the Gulag and tea at the Mayfair.</span></blockquote>
With the actual publishing side of things reduced to a simple, streamlined process, the challenge remains in reaching the audience. We founded Now and Then Reader on the belief that there is a large audience of serious readers out there. Recent studies states that the e-reader format itself is helping to nurture and expand <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/15/2637699/economist-rebirth-reading-lean-back" target="_blank">the audience for serious reading</a>. And some would argue that the world will be a better place with <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2011/nov/19/read-serious-books-zoe-williams" target="_blank">more people reading serious nonfiction</a> over novels. Unfortunately, with the ease of publishing that the new format brings, also comes a deluge of content, good and bad, that readers must wade through to find something worth their while. The same convenience and immediacy that we herald is actually making the job of finding the reader that much harder.<br />
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Sometimes I'm not sure it is possible for topics like ours to stand above the growing fray. But then I'm re-inspired by the words of support we get from new visitors to our site, new readers, new much needed media coverage. Time will tell. In the meantime, I have to finish the cover for our next title.<br />
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Read<a href="http://publishingperspectives.com/2012/03/traitorous-activity-why-a-veteran-publisher-went-digital/" target="_blank"> Ivan Dee's guest post</a> on Publishing Perspectives. <br />
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Chandos Erwin is the co-founder of Now and Then Reader. He lives in Venice, California where there are occasional serious reader sightings.<br />
<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3105334536733427624.post-62288372477360276322012-03-02T11:38:00.003-08:002012-03-02T12:11:59.864-08:00The Historian and Her Day<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I wasn’t yet born when Jack Hexter wrote <a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/the-historian-and-his-day/">“The Historian and His Day.”</a> By the time I was in MY early forties and teaching in a minor college, the world had changed significantly. The day of a historian in the 1990s—a female historian with three young children—did not begin with a leisurely scan of the newspaper headlines over breakfast, and it certainly did not end at midnight, after countless uninterrupted hours of intellectual work.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I too rose early. My first class on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday was at 8:30, but before my husband and I could make our way to the college where we both taught, we had to pack lunches, get our son off to elementary school, and drop our daughters at the daycare center on campus. At lunchtime, I hurried over to the daycare center to nurse our baby. Conversations with colleagues took place on the fly, although my husband and I talked shop a good deal of the time at home, in and around “domestic matters.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Somehow I managed to carve out time to read, research, think, and write about my scholarly field: 19th- and 20th-century France. But, in contrast to Hexter, I could not keep the clutter of my present-day life from intruding upon the past events I studied. Was this a bad thing?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I take heart from Hexter’s recognition that “each historian brings to the rewriting of history the full range of the remembered experience of his own days, that unique array that he alone possesses and is.” This is true, in my case, although maybe not in the way he meant. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I do find that my historical investigations have been influenced by my real-life experiences. My first book explored the cultural meaning of suicide, beginning in antiquity and continuing right up to the present. I chose the topic because I’d been haunted since childhood by the suicide of my grandfather, whom I’d never met (he killed himself during the Depression, when my father was a boy). As a parent, I wondered how he could have abandoned his family.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">More insights came through my work as a counselor on a suicide hotline. Listening to the reasons callers gave for wanting to end their lives, I was struck by their willfulness. Many were depressed—and who could blame them, hearing their problems? But these people were anything but victims. They saw dying as their only means of reclaiming control over their lives, and of course it was my job to convince them that there were less drastic ways of solving their problems.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">These insights led me to challenge our society’s most comforting assumption about suicide: that individuals who kill themselves are entirely passive, that they do not seriously intend to die. But as I explored the sources of this assumption, I was guided by Hexter’s commandments for responsible historical inquiry:</span></div>
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Present-mindedness, I would say, need not lead to sloppy scholarship. Caught up in the preoccupations of his or her day, the historian can ask questions about the past that help us to make sense of today’s world.<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Lisa Lieberman </b>is the author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Leaving-You-Cultural-Meaning-ebook/dp/B004BLILKA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330717396&sr=8-1" style="font-weight: normal;">Leaving You: The Cultural Meaning of Suicide</a>. </span>Her translation of Jean-Paul Sartre's essay, <a href="http://www.nowandthenreader.com/paris-under-the-occupation/" style="font-weight: normal;">"Paris Under the Occupation"</a> can be purchased for $1.99 through Amazon <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Paris-Under-the-Occupation-ebook/dp/B0069W8KIW/" style="font-weight: normal;">Kindle Books</a>, Apple <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/paris-under-the-occupation/id481140928?mt=11" style="font-weight: normal;">Bookstore Quick Reads</a>, Barnes and Noble <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1036542302" style="font-weight: normal;">Nook Books</a> and <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/paris-under-the-occupation/id481140928" style="font-weight: normal;">Google Books</a>. <a href="http://deathlessprose.com/books/lost-belongings/" style="font-weight: normal;">Lost Belongings</a>, her current nonfiction project, tells how Holocaust survivors coped with irretrievable loss.</div>Lisa Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11129352554123911751noreply@blogger.com2