Memories of Algiers

Screened intelligence

What to do about Iraq?

As Bush comes close to begging Europe for assistance, the New York Times reports how the Pentagon has been busy screening The Battle of Algiers, described by the NYT as “the film that in the late 1960s was required viewing and something of a teaching tool for radicalized Americans and would-be-revolutionaries opposing the Vietnam War.”

Qu’est-ce qu’il se passe?

The film, for those of you not from the 1960s, was made in 1965 by Gilles Pontecorvo, a communist Italian director with sympathies for Algeria’s National Liberation Front and a dislike of French colonial rule. It was banned in France for years.

The Times says some forty officers and civilian experts were drawn to a special screening and “urged to consider and discuss the implicit issues at the core of the film – the problematic but alluring effectiveness of using brutal and repressive means to fight guerrillas in places like Algeria and Iraq.”

OK, this next bit is not made up. A flyer inviting guests to the screening read as follows:

“How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range. Women plant bombs in cafes. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar? The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare showing of this film.”

Curse those French plans!

This is not a joke either: the idea of screening the revolutionary film was floated by the Directorate for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, whose office Christmas party, the Diary can’t help thinking, must be a scream.

The Directorate for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict is charged with “thinking aggressively and creatively” about guerrilla warfare.

That’s nothing. Every week, the Diary thinks not only aggressively and creatively, but mixes a shot of passive tranquillity into the cocktail.

One Pentagon official said that showing the film was “intended to prompt informative discussion of the challenges faced by the French.”

Perhaps they should have screened it before the UN Security Council vote.

Anyway, the big plan is to start asking questions about the appropriateness or otherwise of torture as a method to extract information about terrorist networks and future attacks.

Here we go again.

Immigrant nation

Is America changing?

A big question, but some events this week have got the Diary thinking the unthinkable.

First, the presidency. This summer, a campaign was launched to get British prime minister Tony Blair into the White House – Blair 2004. A joke, yes. But one day – well, who knows?

A debate is simmering in the US about whether immigrants not born in the United States should be allowed to be president. As it stands, the constitution outlaws immigrants from the highest office in the land. The president must be native-born. Some think this is “decidedly un-American”.

This very same summer, Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, and Vic Snyder, a House Democrat, proposed a measure to eliminate the 216-year-old constitutional requirement. “Ours is a nation of immigrants,” Hatch said, taking to the Senate floor.

This week, the New York Times ran an editorial supporting the Hatch proposal. the first line read “America is a nation of immigrants”.

Arnie for president, anyone?

Hatch cited public servants like Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright. “None of these well-qualified, patriotic United States citizens could be a lawful candidate for president.”

As the NYT writes: “Some historians are puzzled about what the Founding Fathers had in mind.” Hatch suggests the requirement “was driven largely by the concern that a European monarch, like King George III’s second son, the Duke of York, might be imported to rule the United States.”

Frankly, as Hatch says, “that threat has long since evaporated”.

Meanwhile, strange happenings in Alabama. What the BBC calls “the great American tax taboo” has been challenged by the state’s governor, Bob Riley.

Riley, a right-wing Republican, thinks it is a Christian duty to raise taxes to help the poor. “What would Jesus tax?” he asks.

Riley put the idea to the electorate – in God’s name, help me change the constitution and raise your tax burden.

“According to our Christian ethics,” Riley says, “we’re supposed to love God, love each other and help take care of the poor.”

“Is there something about us that says we can’t excel at something other than football?” Riley asks of his state, which consistently comes bottom of the league table in poverty and education.

Low tax versus high-quality services – it’s the age-old debate. Oh, and Alabama also has a $675 million deficit.

Readers may not be surprised to learn that Riley’s proposals were coolly received by the folks of Alabama. As the Dairy was being written, reports suggested two-thirds of voters rejected Riley’s plan to hike taxes up by $1.2 billion.

Fine, said Riley, your choice. But now I have to cut the school supply budget and release thousands of prisoners.

Kim bombs

The Diary has had its eye firmly fixed on North Korea in recent weeks.

This week, the Stalinist state marked the fifty-fifth anniversary of its founding. Some analysts feared Pyongyang would celebrate by unveiling a new ballistic missile, perhaps conducting a nuclear test. In fact, it just held a giant military parade at which the army chief of staff, Kim Yong Chun, promised to escalate North Korea’s nuclear programme and talked of North Korean soldiers as “human bombs and bullets devotedly defending the leader”

“Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il, a terrible public speaker, stood by, silent.

Tens of thousands of citizens cheered on the goose-stepping soldiers – how many of them through choice, the Diary cannot say.

Standing with Kim were Konstantin Pulikovsky, special envoy of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, and Chen Haosu, a little-known Chinese bureaucrat.

In Japan, the founding day banquet, as ever, was sponsored by the General Association of Korean Residents of Japan. Japanese attendance was non-existent. Next year, Japan plans to spend $1.2 billion on building a missile defence system against North Korea. There is, of course, talk of Japan going nuclear.

As the celebrations began, authorities in Tokyo raided the General Association offices. The North Koreans owe 46 million yen in taxes.

Charles L. Pritchard, who resigned last month from the Bush administration, and who is described by the NYT as “the American who has had the most dealings with North Korean officials in recent years”, called the prospects for a diplomatic solution to the crisis “very grim”. “We’ve got to get serious about this,” he said. “Rather than the drive-by meetings that occur when we roll down the window, wave at the North Koreans and move on.”

Lion down-pour

Time for our latest visit to King Mswati III of Swaziland, reliable staple of the Diary over the last couple of years.

This week, Swaziland staged the annual reed dance, in which young virgin girls dance bare-breasted for the King, and from whom the King (known locally as “The Lion”) usually selects himself another teenage bride to add to his ever-growing collection.

Unfortunately for Mswati, this year’s dance didn’t go to plan. Just as the King was about to inspect the 15,000 half-naked girls, the heavens intervened.

A massive hailstorm sent everyone diving for cover.

Mswati must be especially peeved. He’s had a bad time of it of late, and has a lot of work to do if he is to catch up with his father’s record of more than a hundred wives.

In Swaziland, parade-day rain is counted as a blessing.

The Diary, however, is not convinced.

Tasteless wines

Finally, can it be possible that the Italian-German rift is about to re-open?

Adolf Hitler, once the architect of an alliance between the two countries, has this time come between them.

The Diary reads in the (London and Manchester) Guardian how Brigitte Zypries, Germany’s justice minister, has lodged a complaint to Roberto Castelli, her Italian counterpart, about bottles of Italian wine with labels featuring images of Hitler and the logo “Ein volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer”, which needs no translation.

The bottles, says the Guardian, “have been selling fast, mainly to German tourists who spot them in petrol stations in northern Italy.”

Hitler, though, is not alone. Other bottles feature Mussolini, Stalin and Che Guevara.

But Hitler sells the most – 30,000 bottles a year.

The vintner, Alessandro Lunardelli, is unapologetic. “People like these characters,” he says. “They make good table conversation ... I am sorry if there are some people – German politicians, Jewish groups, or that type of thing – who get upset. But it’s just history. I see no reason for such a fuss.”

Germany plans to prosecute Mr. Lunardelli if he sells his wines to Germans over the internet. Lunardelli is not happy. “I could make a fortune if I responded to all the email orders I get from Germany,” he groaned.

German law bans Nazi symbols. Hitler is a Nazi symbol.

Said Roberto Castelli, “It seems bad taste to me.”

Oh, so you’ve tried the wine?

Quotes of the week

“Failure is not an option.” Supachai Panitchpakdi, head of the WTO, on the Cancún summit.

“It’s very hard to find things that rhyme with ‘North American Free Trade Agreement’.” Chris Martin, frontman of band Coldplay. Martin and guitarist Jonny Buckland visited the WTO meeting in Cancún to make the case for fair and free trade. They brought with them a petition of three million signatures.

“The UN building is owned by all the member-nations, while the secretary-general is just a hired manager.” Sergei Levov, Russian ambassador to the UN, furious that Kofi Annan has imposed a ban on smoking in all UN premises.

“Some calls are more important than others.” An advert for Etsalat, the state-owned telecommunications company of the United Arab Emirates. The company is giving Muslims the option of receiving the call to prayer on their mobile phones.

“The idea of a left-wing Labour government as the alternative to a moderate and progressive one is the abiding delusion of one hundred years of our party. We are not going to fall for it again.” Tony Blair, British prime minister and leader of the Labour Party

Contact the Diary Editor: dominic.hilton@openDemocracy.net