Re: [Marxism] Getting the job done...

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> I recommended my student to access <english.aljazeera.net>
> and to check up on the photo essays.  The current one on
> Carnage in Fallujah is sufficient I would have thought to
> demonstrate the inadequacy of the war=job metaphor.

Speaking of Al Jazeera, I just returned from a screening of "The Control
Room" in Loch Sheldrake, a nearby village. I am in upstate NY for about
the fifth weekend in a row cleaning out my mother's house to get it ready
to rent by October 1st.

Loch Sheldrake is like most of the other economically depressed villages
in Sullivan County, which used to be home to the once thriving Borscht
Belt hotels and bungalow colonies. During the 1950s, they were booked
solid with NY Jews from Memorial Day to Labor Day but after they became
more affluent and moved to Long Island or New Jersey, they stopped coming
up. The lake that Loch Sheldrake sits on (loch is Scottish for lake) was
infamous for being a depository for the victims of Murder Incorporated, a
gang of Jewish hitmen active in the 1930s and 40s.

Mendy Weiss and Charlie "The Bug" Workman were two of Murder, Inc.'s most
notorious killers. In 1935, they gunned down Dutch Schultz, another Jewish
gangster, and his three henchmen: Abbadabba Berman, Lulu Rosenkrantz and
Abe Landau. It took 24 hours for Dutch Schultz to kick the bucket. As he
lay dying, the cops recorded his words in the hope of fingering the
killers. Nothing but gibberish came out of his mouth, however. I remember
that these words were incorporated in a Beat Poetry collection back in the
early 1960s. Like nearly everything else, it has ended up on the Internet:

Sergeant Conlon: Who was it shot you?

Schultz: I don't know. No, don't put anyone near this check; the check.
You might have; oh, please. Please do it for me. Let me get up, sir, heh?
This is Connie's, isn't it? Uh heh. In the olden days they waited and they
waited. Please give me a shot. Please. Oh...Oh...it is from the factory.
O.K. Sure, that is bad...well, Oh, go ahead; that happens for crying; I
don't want harmony; I want harmony. Oh, mamma, mamma. Who give it to him?
Who give it to him? Tony? Let me in the district; ...fire...factory that
he was nowhere near. It smoldered. No, No! There are only ten of us and
there are ten million fighting somewhere in front of you, so get your
onions up and we will throw up the truce flag. Oh, please let me up; Leo,
Leo! Oh, yeh! No, No; I don't...please! Please shift me. Police are here;
communistic...strike...baloneys...Please; honestly it is a habit I get;
sometimes I give it and sometimes I don't.

Full: http://www.bway.net/~abbot/gunshot.html

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the theater was pretty well packed.
"The Control Room" was part of a double feature; the second film was
"Outfoxed", a critique of Fox TV that was originally shown at moveon.org
events. It has since been released in theaters. I was too beat to stick
around for it.

The films were the opening night of a documentary film festival produced
by WJFF (http://www.wjffradio.org/), the community radio station in
Jeffersonville, a town in the northern part of Sullivan County that
historically was a bit removed from the Borscht Belt. It mixes local
programming with NPR and Pacifica fare. Apparently a few weeks earlier
WJFF brought Amy Goodman up to speak to a packed audience at the movie
theater.

This is part of an interesting social demographic shift in the area. As
the area has become more and more economically depressed, low housing
costs have attracted artists and bohemian elements. From what I can
gather, Jeffersonville is something of an artist's colony.

My mother was friendly with Glenn Portier, who used to be the station
manager at WJFF. He was a draft resister during the Vietnam war and has
recently been involved in Woodstock commemorations in the area. The famous
music festival did not take place in Woodstock, but in Bethel, a nearby
town. My mother's constant companion grew up on the farm next to Max
Yasgur, who rented it to the festival producers back in 1969.

Being isolated up here from my favorite cable TV shows and high-speed
access to the Internet, I rely on WJFF and the local NPR station to keep
me from bouncing off the walls. After seeing the people who were brought
together by the film festival, it reminded me how important radio
continues to be. WJFF is really the only way that left-minded people can
connect with each other in this neck of the woods.

Speaking of connections, I recommend that everybody see "The Control Room"
as soon as it comes out in DVD. It is a deeply involving look at the
people who work for Al Jazeera that was made during the run-up to the war
in Iraq and its immediate aftermath. Their humanity and their wisdom are
in sharp contrast to the meatheads from CNN and the US army. The movie
ends on a rueful note since it was made at a time when it looked like the
USA would have its way with the people of Iraq. Someday the full story of
Iraq will be told and an epic it will be.


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