Municipal Elections

Municipal Elections are occurring in Alberta next Monday, October 15. Ho hum so far. But for coverage of Mayoral, Aldermanic and School Board candidates from a progressive perspective check out;

Calgary- Enlightened Savage

(R)Edmonton-daveberta

Living in Ward 4 in (R)Edmonton I have to agree with davebera that the best team that has a chance to replace outgoing Michael Phair and incumbent Jane Batty are Henderson and Cardinal.

It's a race with 15 candidates, many of them are nowhere close to running a winning campaign let alone standing a chance to get elected.

One though that does is Hana Razga. Unfortunately her campaign is lost amongst the gaggle of candidates. I note daveberta does link to Dipper Hana Razga.

Unfortunately she has not had the media profile she deserves in this race. Nor did she get labour's endorsement, that went to Cardinal. Like Cardinal she is a candidate concerned about the ward's economic development disparities.

Henderson is a Liberal, Cardinal has the backing not only of labour but also some Dippers, in particular former City Councilor and Alberta NDP Chief of Staff; Sherry McKibben. This kind of political division of forces in municipal elections is problematic.

By the way, Cardinal has an interesting campaign manager, Sherry McKibben. McKibben had a brief one-year stint on council in the mid-1990s, winning a byelection and then getting defeated in the general election. Then for years she was the high-profile and hard-working manager of HIV Edmonton.

The reality is that despite the appearance of not being driven by political parties all municipal elections are extensions of party politics. Which is why I believe municipal politics should be party politics. That way you would not have two dippers running in Ward 4.

What would happen if . . . party politics came to municipalities? by David Siegel and Eugene Plawiuk
The Next City asked David Siegel, associate professor of politics, and Eugene Plawiuk, the NDP's co-chair of strategy and communications in Alberta's recent provincial election in 1997, to comment The Next City September 21/1997

For public school board trustee labour supports Dr. Marlene Spencer in Ward G which is also the ward I live in.


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Burma Watch

Researching Burma I discovered that Redmonton is home to the international Burma Watch organization. Despite having only a small Burmese population, it plays an important role internationally as a voice of opposition to the military junta.

Protest at the Legislature
Edmonton Sun, Canada - 28 Sep 2007
“We are supporting the courageous Buddhist monks and civilian protestors,” said Than Aung, president of Burma Watch International, an Edmonton-based human ...

Local Burmese concerned about homeland Edmonton Journal, Canada - 24 Sep 2007 EDMONTON - Edmonton's tiny Burmese community is watching a mass protest of monks in their home country closely, offering their prayers and financial support ...

Local Burmese cut off from net
Edmonton Journal, Canada - 28 Sep 2007
Edmonton has a Burmese community of about 150 to 200 people. Maung, a former Buddhist monk, fled the country after the 1988 crackdown. That mass protest was ...

For those in Redmonton interested in ongoing campaigning in light of the current crisis in Burma should consider joining Burma Watch.

2007 October 14 - Burma Watch International Annual General Meeting

We, the executive of Burma Watch International, invite you to attend our Annual General Meeting.

• Date: Sunday, October 14, 2007
• Time: 2 to 4 p.m. (14:00 to 16:00)
  
• Location: International Center
  Main level of HUB Mall
  University of Alberta
  Edmonton, AB

For those of you in other cities in Canada here is a list of Burma Solidarity committees.

SEE:

Blogs Left and Right Unite

Blogging Burma

Myanmar Ghost Dance

No Reincarnation Without Permission

The Road Out of Mandalay

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More Shills For Big Oil

Add Link Byfield to the list along with Ralph Klein and Ezra Levant of those who don't believe Albertans deserve a fair share for our resources. Heck I say we should charge 100% royalties on our resources. Given that I am a socialist after all, most Albertans being reasonable folks like the Royalty Report.

And Link, like other conservatives of his ilk, always dismisses the fact that some of those resources also belong to the First Nations.

Funny thing though his announcement at the first meeting of his new political party fell flat amongst the severely normal Albertans that were there.

A townhall meeting by Alberta‘s newest political party was marked by bickering among the 60 people who attended over whether the province should increase energy royalties.

The fledging Wildrose Party has yet to gain party status or adopt policies, but called the meeting to talk about a government-appointed review panel‘s call for a 20 per cent hike in royalties.

Senate nominee Link Byfield chaired the meeting and denounced the proposed royalty increase, saying it would force energy firms to curtail exploration, resulting in thousands of job losses.

But others at the meeting disagreed, arguing that energy companies earning record profits can afford to pay higher royalties and that other countries are getting a larger take from their resources.

The crowd included former supporters of Alberta‘s governing Progressive Conservatives and some who had been members of the Alberta Alliance Party, which holds one seat in the legislature.

Byfield says putting an extra $2 billion in the hands of Premier Ed Stelmach‘s government would simply generate more waste, while leaving this money in the oilpatch generates jobs and prosperity.

EDMONTON/630 CHED - A townhall meeting called by a hopeful new political party brought in a few dozen people, and they weren't all on-side.

Even after the microphones were turned off, people kept up the debate. The Wildrose Party is yet to be officially registered in the province, but called a town hall to talk about why royalty rates need to stay where they are.

we seem to have the assumption that that money's going to go to us," said the party's executive director, Link Byfield. "I mean, how foolish can you be?"

Byfield talked to the small crowd about driving Alberta's economy with prosperous energy companies, and how a proposed hike in royalties would drive out investment. More than a few people taking to the mic were against that idea though, and were for the report recently released which calls for Albertans to take a larger share of oil and gas profits. (js, jk)

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Thoughtful

Fellow blogger thoughtinterrupted was kind enough to redo my CBC/Ezra ad.






Thank you for the much better designed ad. I have replaced my crude one on the sidebar.

She comments on yet another dreadful appearance of this opportunist self promoting partisan of the right on Don Newman's Politics on CBC yesterday.

And Ken Chapman another thoughtful Alberta blogger concurs.

Expand your Alberta based Rolodex Mr. Newman and do the province - and the country a favour.

But is CBC listening?

Well Ezra is apparently, since as thoughtinteruppted points out, he finally mentioned the Alberta NDP, who have four seats in Redmonton.

Levant proclaimed that after Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach, by having commissioned a panel of mostly pro-business types including one former Fraser Institute associate to review Alberta’s energy royalties, has become so far left that “everyone” in Alberta is “wondering when we elected Brian Mason and the New Democrats”.

Business type's, Fraser Institute alumni are left wing? Give your head a shake, Mr. Newman. Is this the kind of politically challenged comment you would accept from someone talking about Ontario or Quebec or heck even Newfoundland politics? I think not. This would be like having Kate from Small Dead Animals comment on Saskatchewan politics.

Uh oh maybe I shouldn't have mentioned that, it might give the Politics producer ideas, since the CBC has already bowed to right wing pressure for political correctness by having Ezra on, to try and show they are not liberal lefties.

As for Ezra's comment itself he is shilling pro-bono for Big Oil, repeating comments made by Ralph Klein. They are the only ones in Alberta upset over the royalty report. Albertans support our ownership of our own resources, a key plank of the right in fact, that socialist idea that the resources belong to the people, not big oil. And that they should pay us for the privilege of processing them.

Perhaps Ezra ever the opportunist hopes to get some cash injected into his fiscally challenged Western Standard from the oil boys. Watch for an WS email ad solicitation campaign to target oil companies.


SEE:

Conservative Broadcasting Corporation


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40 Years Later; The Society of the Spectacle

The foundational work of post Marxism; Society of the Spectacle, resulted from the creation of the Situationist Internationale

Released during the Summer of Love, it would go on to inspire the revolts of 1968.
Which appropriately was the year of the pig.

This work influenced the broad left in France and Europe including the post structuralists, and post modernists, who watered it down and created a specter of itself for their own academic pursuits.

It is forty years old and still caustically accurate as a critique of post- modernist capitalism.

The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord
Originally published in 1967 The revolutionary thinker, Guy Debord was the leading figure of the French intellectual group who called themselves The Situationist International. His text, The Society of the Spectacle written in 1967 is one of the greatest theoretical examinations of our socio-cultural condition, describing in pinpoint accuracy, the dreadful corporate globalization craze currently sweeping the planet. His work was instrumental in sparking the student uprisings in Europe in the late sixties. In 1989 he published his "Commentaries on the Society of the Spectacle" Both texts are chillingly accurate descriptions of the world of simulation and lies that mankind has transformed his life into. In December of 1994, at the age of 62, Debord killed himself.




SEE:

Baudrillard RIP

Same Old Olympics

Their Satanic Majesties Request

Black and Redmonton

The Fifth International

Kabbalistic Kommunism

Palm Sunday April Fools Day

Paul Goodman

For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing

New Age Libertarian Manifesto

The Right To Be Greedy

May 68 Redux

Tout va Bien

After Montreal A View From the Past

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Link Byfield's New Party

Living off the avails of his Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy, which arose from the corpse of the politically and fiscally bankrupt Alberta Report, Link Byfield has decided that being an elected Senator in Waiting is not enough. So he and some pals have formed a new Right Wing Rump Party.

Whats interesting is that all these neo-con wannabe Reform Parties in Alberta seem to come from or originate in Calgary. The largest American city north of the 49th parallel. Which explains their Republican agenda.

A Canadian development without a direct parallel in Australia was the key role
played by “Calgary School” political scientists in new right party politics and freemarket think tanks like the Fraser Institute. In Australia a number of economists have played a prominent role in promoting public choice frames of analysis, but largely via think tanks rather than through direct involvement in party politics.

Members of the Calgary School reproduce the main features of US right-wing
anti-elite discourse, including a contrast between elite fashions and mainstream
traditional values, a campaign against the tyranny of political correctness, and an
attack on self-styled equality seekers—feminists, anti-poverty groups, the gayrightsmovement, natives and other ethnic and racial minorities.

To be honest they should quit calling themselves Albertans or Party of Alberta and call themselves what they are; the Calgary Republican Lobby. Since many of them believe Ronald Reagan Was Better Than Trudeau.

Background of Albertans

Many Albertans have immigrated from the United States. The energy industry, as well as the ranching industry, has attracted many Americans. Attacking Americans attacks the family background of many Albertans. Prominent Albertans have American roots. Senator Ted Morton is originally from California. MP Myron Thompson is from the U.S..

Their appeal is limited to the Americanized Albertans who live in Southern Alberta. So they don't even appeal to the Lougheed liberals who made the PC's the Party of Calgary. And they don't appeal to urban voters.

And they certainly don't appeal to Northern Albertans who make Redmonton their capital.




SEE:

Not Before Alberta Votes

Link Byfield Goes AA

Mr Harper Forgets Redmonton

Leo Strauss and the Calgary School

Mormonism Cult of the Political Right

Creationism Is Not Science

Reform Party of Alberta

Return of the Socreds

Aboriginal Property Rights

Shop Keepers Liberty

Alberta Separatism Not Quite Stamped Out

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Summer of Love

It is the fortieth anniversary of the Summer of Love, which led to a social revolution around the world. One that we are still experiencing and which the Right Wing loves to blame for all of modern societies ills.

Summer love-in summer -in



Events nationwide mark the 40th anniversary of 'Summer of Love'

Events are being held around the country this summer to mark the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love, when thousands of young people descended on San Francisco to experience the hippie counterculture in 1967. Here are some highlights.

Ongoing: ''Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era'' at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York through Sept. 16. Through light shows, album covers, posters and music, the show explores the era's cultural impact. http://www.whitney.org .

Ongoing: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum exhibit dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the Monterey International Pop Festival. Highlights include telegrams from Jemi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead and The Who regarding their attendance at the festival; Paul Simon's guitar; the dress worn by Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas,and many pohotographs. The museum is in Cleveland, Ohio. http://www.rockhall.com .

Related Links

• Baby boomers nostalgic for wild Summer of '67
• 'Psychedelic Era' exhibit a cheerful romp through shards of the vanished hippie tribe
• Summer Of Love Memorable Moment

Various dates: Jefferson Starship, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Big Brother and the Holding Company and other bands reunite for a Summer of Love 40th anniversary tour, including the Monterey Pop 40th anniversary festival at Monterey Fairgrounds, Monterey, Calif. http://www.genxentertainment.us .

Concludes today: Monterey Summer of Love Festival, featuring dozens of bands performing from the same exact stage as the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. On stage: Riders on the Storm, Robbie Krieger's & Ray Manzarek's latest version of The Doors; Electric Flag; tributes to The Mamas and the Papas, and The Who. http://www.summer67.com .

American soldiers are fighting an unpopular war halfway around the world; peace groups protest and Congress is embroiled in a bitter, divisive debate.

At home, radios play the Doors, the Beatles, the Who and the Moody Blues. People flock to open-air concerts to see Eric Burdon and the Animals, Jefferson Airplane and Big Brother and the Holding Company. Concern grows for the environment and people feel good when they can buy organic food directly from growers.

It’s cool to get in touch with your feelings. Fashionable women wear flower power minidresses and empire-waisted tops. Jeans, of course, are everywhere. Is it 1967 or 2007? It’s both.

Forty years after the Summer of Love that signaled a seismic shift in our culture, many of the concerns and issues – even the looks – are back again.

And as for the areas where we’re not re-experiencing 1967 – the sexual revolution, the drug culture, the civil rights movement, the civil unrest – that’s because the subculture has now become the culture, says Robert J. Thompson, founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University.

“Our entire lifestyle in the early 21st century significantly carries the genetic code of the revolutions and cultural and social changes in the late 1960s. And we don’t consider them at all revolutionary,” says Thompson.

Nineteen sixty-seven was when the journey began, but where, and when, did it end? Or has it? What really happened during those portentous few months of the Summer of Love that caused many of us to mutate physically, emotionally and spiritually? Did it really cause a seismic shift in the values, sensibilities and moralities of our culture, as many suggest? And are we still living in the afterglow of it intense culture-transforming heat?

Critics on the right would also like to deep-six the buzz about a better, happier time. A psychedelic Shangri-La. As the Chicago Tribune recently noted:

"In the nation's culture wars, the 1960s are a rallying cry for conservatives who view the decade as the source of social trends they oppose, such as a high divorce rate, legalized abortion and, more recently, the drive for same-sex marriage." (Strange, you make that sound like it's a bad thing.) For Jason Fine, deputy managing editor of Rolling Stone, "A lot of what happened in the summer of '67 wasn't about politics, or even antiwar, it was much more personal. And those kinds of developments have certainly stuck around. Our attitudes about sex, drugs and spirituality are all rooted in that time. That wasn't a blip."

SEE:

A Little Eros For Valentine's Day

CIA Conspiracies Are Real

Psychedelic Saskatchewan

RAW RIP

420

Marx on Bigamy

Passover Song

Year of the Pig

Black and Redmonton

Celebrating Capitalism

Soul of a City

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Premier Taft?

Picture this; Kevin Taft,



Alberta's Next Premier

Werner doesn't think so, and it appears neither do some other Liberals now that they see their chance at grabbing the brass ring. Though with leadership like his perhaps it is time for a change.

"Have (Calgary voters) stampeded to the Alberta Liberals? "No, they haven't, but a change is beginning to open up," said Taft.

And a careful read of voting patterns show that long-time Tories haven't switched wholesale to the Alberta Liberals (who suffer their own growing rump of doubters in the abilities of leader Kevin Taft) as much as they have simply stayed home.

Rod Love, former chief of staff to Klein and once nicknamed "Ralph's brain," offered some other context.

"Lest your viewers think the Liberals are about to sweep the province, the Liberal vote in Calgary Elbow went down by 100 votes," he told MDL. "The story is the Conservative vote went down 3,000 votes. It's a good thing they didn't go across the street, as we say, or Mr. Taft would have been a much happier guy."

The Tories now hold 61 of the legislature's 83 seats. The Liberals are second with 16. The NDP have four and the Alliance had one. There is one Independent.

Love noted the Liberals won 32 seats to the Tories' 51 in the 1993 provincial election, Klein's first as leader. "To us, that was an earthquake, and we won."

That was the Liberals under former Redmonton Mayor Laurence Decore and Taft ain't no Decore.

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Canadian Labour Blogging

Uncorrected Proofs has a three part article on the Labour Movement in Canada and Quebec and its response, or lack of response, to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Disorganized Labour: Unions and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms - Part One

Disorganized Labour: Unions and the Chater of Rights and Freedoms - Part Two

Disorganized Labour: Unions and the Chater of Rights and Freedoms - Part Three

Relentlessly Progressive Economics reports on Buzz Hargrove's take on Kyoto; and comments on the conflict between Small Business and Unions; Why small independent businesses should be pro union


Daily Dissidence reports on the six month long Credit Union workers strike in Ontario; COPE 343 Strike Update

Ken Chapman addresses the issue of safety on the job in Alberta, or lack thereof...Workplace Deaths Increasing in Alberta - Improved Literacy is Part of the Solution.

And since today is May Day check out these Posts at Progressive Bloggers.


See:

Happy May Day

Day of Mourning

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Happy May Day

The Worker’s May-Pole
(1894)

See:

May Day Lotta Continua

Tax Time and Walpurgisnacht

May Week in Redmonton

Gnostic Easter

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May Day Lotta Continua

May Day the International Workers Day and the Struggle Continues (Lotta Continua)

As long as the struggle of the workers against the bourgeoisie and the ruling class continues, as long as all demands are not met, May Day will be the yearly expression of these demands. And, when better days dawn, when the working class of the world has won its deliverance then too humanity will probably celebrate May Day in honor of the bitter struggles and the many sufferings of the past. Rosa Luxemburg 1894

Nigerian workers: still searching for succour

Today, the first day of May, otherwise called Workers Day in Nigeria, no longer has any meaning to many a Nigerian worker. It is doubtful if the workers understand the significance of the day as one set aside to recognize the valour and sacrifice of the creators of the nation’s wealth. The average Nigerian worker does not see any need for the celebration of his contribution to nation building or for his efforts to ensure that the country of his birth becomes prosperous so that he can live an assured life in future. The day to him now provides the opportunity to show the world the level of his impoverishment

FOR some time now, the May Day celebration has become a day for wilful display of anger by Nigerian workers against their employers, both government and private. Nowadays, industrial unions of both the public and organized private sectors look forward to the Workers Day to publicly vent their spleen against the soulless establishments that have grounded the nation’s social machinery that would have ensured and enhanced the quality of life in the nation. As such, the venues of the Day’s celebrations across the country are usually rally grounds where the workers loudly bemoan their pitiful conditions and declaim the nation’s rulers for making the lives of Nigerian workers laborious.

THAT the venues of May Day rally have been turned into agitation ground is an indication of the virtual collapse of the nation’s social structures and the erosion of the lives of the nation’s teeming masses. The Nigerian worker has made a singsong of his pitiable social conditions. He is one of the poorly paid workers (if not the poorest) in the world. There has not been any time his take-home pay has been made adequate by his employer to give him the much needed lifeline. In spite of his resourcefulness, experience and contributions he is hardly able to live from hand to mouth.

BUT as most social scientists like Adam Smith have postulated, the real wealth of any nation is not in the tangible resources like gold, silver or crude oil. The wealth of a nation is not in the quality or arability of its land. The real wealth can only be found in the quality of its human resources. A highly cultivated human resource, in terms of good and quality education, highly enhanced salary package and functional social amenities, will, without doubt, be highly motivated and resourceful and very productive. Conversely, a workforce that is poorly remunerated will only produce a very low yield. In both cases, the society is at the receiving end. In other words, the quality (and lack of it) of any workforce will translate into the prosperity (and otherwise) of that particular society.

THE fact that Nigeria has enjoyed unqualified status among the “scum of the earth” shows the extent to which its people have been degraded and dehumanized. The nation is ranked among the poorest countries of the world in spite of its enormous natural resources; it holds an un-exalted position as one of the most corrupt nations in the world and as one of the most looted nations, looted and raped by its own citizens. What all this shows is that the nation has not invested adequately in its human resources and this has made it possible for the emergence of the uncouth and rogue leaders who raped and looted the nation’s essence and still got away with their crimes. The failure to cultivate good citizenship has made possible the collapse of the nation’s economic and social structures and led to the creation of criminals in both low and high places. The result of this is the present collapse of the nation’s social structures.

And in an ironic twist of fate the original Lotta Continua in Italy were the subject of a political witch hunt in the Seventies and Eighties. Like the Strega of Old.

LOTTA CONTINUA

Italy has always had a particularly active political Left and in the late '60s and early '70s an extraparliamentary faction that descended into propagandist violence. In the so-called Hot Autumn of 1969, a bomb exploded in the Agricultural Bank in Milan, killing 16 people. An anarchist railway man, Giuseppe Pinelli, was taken in for questioning by the police. Three days later, Pinelli (immortalized in Dario Fo's play The Accidental Death of an Anarchist) fell to his death from the window of the police commissioner Luigi Calabresi's office. The police claimed suicide but the Left accused them of murder. In 1972 Calabresi was shot dead in front of his home. The far-left Lotta Continua claimed it was an act of proletarian justice but many think right-wing extremists were involved. After almost 16 years of silence, an ex-militant of Lotta, riven with guilt, gave himself up, claiming responsibility for the murder. Leonardo Marino then implicated the leadership of Lotta in the affair.

Carlo Ginzburg, a noted and respected historian, draws on his work on witchcraft trials in the 16th and 17th centuries to dissect the state's case in this late-20th-century show trial. He has written a provocative and passionate book that casts a detailed look at the facts of the case, facts that when presented here cast serious doubt on the judgments reached in Italy early in 1999.

Judge and the Historian: Marginal Notes on a Late-Twentieth-Century Miscarriage of Justice. Translated by Antony Shugaar. New York: Verso, 1999. There is a sort of general democratic interest in showing how a concrete trial functions. --Carlo Ginzburg, Liberation (October 9, 1997) Social conflict in Italy during the late 1960s and early 1970s had a particular breadth and impact. Radical-left movements like Lotta Continua championed factory occupations and large demonstrations and saw the Communist Party and labor unions as stifling the workers' revolutionary project. ^1 Elements within the state responded with "the strategy of tension": exceptional police brutality and an instrumental approach to extreme-right violence (the cause of more deaths than extreme-left violence), often carried out sub rosa in conjunction with state secret services and intended by some to destabilize the state and create the basis for an authoritarian regime. In the mid-1970s, Italy promulgated a series of exceptional laws that bolstered police powers at the expense of individual rights and gave a special place to informers; increased the time an individual could be held in preventive detention; and made individuals of the same group liable for the same sentence despite differences in individuals' actions. ^2 Faced with declining expectations for revolution, factions [End Page 135] of the extreme left turned to vanguard party terrorism.

Ginzburg regards the convictions in the Calabresi case as the 20th century equivalent of the witchcraft and heresy convictions under the Inquisition. The contemporary Italian courts, he says, cared just as little for the evidence as the 16th and 17th century Catholic ones: Suspects could affirm their crimes, deny all or remain silent, and all these possible responses were regarded as evidence of their guilt. The Calabresi judges ended up believing the informer, Leonardo Marino, despite the dozens of problems Ginzburg cites with his story, any one of which, he says, should have created more than the shadow of a doubt and led to acquittal.

Ginzburg, a specialist in probing sixteenth-century inquisitorial records and
writing micro histories of the victims, uses court documents to scrutinise the
notorious May 1990 conviction of his friend of thirty years, the journalist Adriano
Sofri. Founder and leader of the radical left-wing group Lotta Continua from the
1960s until its dissolution in 1976, Sofri, along with his two co-defendants, was
pronounced guilty of the 17 May 1972 murder of the police superintendent Luigi
Calabresi, widely believed to be responsible for the death under interrogation of an
accused suspect three years earlier. Almost the entire case against Sofri rested on the testimony of one former Lotta Continua militant, Leonardo Marino. After a second career as an armed robber, Marino confessed in 1987 to a parish priest and in 1988 to three carabinieri offices his role as the driver in Calabresi’s assassination; he also named his former Lotta comrade Ovidio Bompressi as the murderer and two others, Sofri and Giorgio Pietrostafani, as the authors of the deed (pp. 8–11). Despite his long-delayed declaration of guilt as well as important errors and inconsistencies in his testimony, Marino’s accusations were never seriously challenged.

Ginzburg, although a renowned investigator of non-elites under pressure from
forces from above, was uninterested in Marino or his astrologer companion Antonia Bistolfi. While deftly demolishing Marino’s testimony, Ginzburg neglected to examine the bases of the ex-thief’s repentance, which had so powerful an impact
on the court.

Instead, Ginzburg’s main subject is the presiding judge Antonio Lombardi, who
‘with a clear conscience’ and ‘absolutely no doubt’ pronounced the ‘complete
reliability [of] Marino’s statements’ (p. 103). Although acknowledging that historians and judges share the practice of contextualising their evidence, Ginzburg demands a far higher threshold of proof from the figure handing out sentences and berates Lombardi for his reckless and illogical leap in validating Marino’s questionable story and condemning Sofri (pp. 110–18).

Unlike the Papon trial, where prominent historians gave contrasting views of the Vichy past, the Sofri trial was dominated by the judge’s and the prosecutor’s shared trauma of a decade of violence. Thus, The suspect, a railway worker named Giuseppe Pinelli, either fell, jumped or was pushed out the window of Calabresi’s office while under questioning about the bomb blast on 12 Dec. 1969 in the Banca dell’Agricoltura in Milan that had killed seventeen people and injured eighty-eight others. The subsequent official investigation showed that right-wing extremists, aided by the Italian secret services, had set the bomb.

Donald Reid, ‘The Historian and the Judges’, Radical History Review 80 (Spring 2001), p. 144, n. 4. Lotta Continua immediately denounced Calabresi for the murder; the incident was the subject of Nobel Prize-winner Dario Fo’s play, The Accidental Death of an Anarchist. Marino gave the wrong color of the stolen car and incorrectly described the assassination route (pp. 22–5, 72–97). ‘I do not know what pushed Marino to lie. The psychological motivations . . . seem . . . wholly irrelevant.’ (p. 97). according to Ginzburg, much like the earlier inquisitors, they were all too ready to accept even the most defective confirmatory evidence.

To be sure, in writing as an advocate for the defence Carlo Ginzburg appears
to have suspended his own critical judgement. Not only are most witnesses in
criminal trials unreliable, forgetful and self-contradictory, particularly sixteen years after the event, but also key evidence is often missing.25 Nonetheless, The Judge and the Historian is itself an important historical document. Underlying Ginzburg’s approach is a spirited defence of old-fashioned historical inquiry against the postmodern challenge, as well as a strong assertion of the existence of proof and of truth (pp. 16–17).26 Moreover, a century after another flawed trial, Ginzburg’s J’accuse not only demonstrates how those in power continue to rewrite history (in this case holding Lotta Continua responsible for ‘the years of lead’) but also suggests disquieting links with Italy’s Fascist past (pp. 119–20)

A H/T to Terry Glavin


Also See:

May Week in Redmonton

Tax Time and Walpurgisnacht

The Origins and Traditions of May Day

Anarchist Mayor of Milan

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