Simon Schama, Citizens

This book came out when I was an undergraduate at Fresno State.

At Amazon, Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution.

John Foran, Taking Power

At Amazon, John Foran, Taking Power: On the Origins of Third World Revolutions.

'The Battle of Algiers' — It's Excellent

I took my older son with me yesterday. He loves hanging out in L.A.

Here're my earlier posts, "Going to See 'The Battle of Algiers' Today," and "At the Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles: 'The Battle of Algiers' — 50TH ANNIVERSARY NEW 4K RESTORATION (VIDEO)."

I remember from years ago, although I can't remember where (probably the LGM homos), how leftists praised "Battle of Algiers" as THE cinematic exegesis of the revolutionary experience. It was the radical left's "in" movie.

And I can see why. It's practically a do-it-yourself instructional video on how to mount an insurgency against the hegemonic colonial capitalist ruling classes.

See for example the review, at A.V. Club, from 2004 (when he movie came out on DVD):

In the current political climate, between the war in Iraq and the looming election, topical documentaries and fiction features have flooded the marketplace. But none are more relevant to the times than Gillo Pontecorvo's masterpiece The Battle Of Algiers, which was made nearly four decades ago. Throughout the years, the film has been tagged as a terrorist textbook, an inspiration for the Black Panthers and other radical organizations, yet its startling verity has recently proved useful for Pentagon officials eager to understand how networks like al-Qaeda operate. Still smarting from their moral and tactical failures in colonial Algeria, the French banned the 1965 film for several years, and some countries excised scenes revealing the systemic torture of National Liberation Front (FLN) operatives. But even though The Battle Of Algiers ranks among the great works of revolutionary cinema, Pontecorvo depicts insurgent warfare with a stark, evenhanded realism that feels like history painted on the screen. In fact, many prints actually come with the disclaimer that the film doesn't include a single frame of documentary or newsreel footage. And that's not a boast: It really does seem that real.

 Plus, I missed this earlier, at the New York Times from 1967, "MOVIE REVIEW - Screen: Local Premiere of Pontecorvo's Prize-Winning 'Battle of Algiers': Gripping Re-enactment Opens Film Festival."

And here's a good piece on the conflict altogether, at the World Socialist Web, "Torture in the Algerian war (1954-62)."

More here, from an interesting blog post by a leftist academic, "What was the Algerian War/Why should you care."

Related: James D. Le Sueur, Uncivil War: Intellectuals and Identity Politics During the Decolonization of Algeria. And, General Paul Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah: Terrorism and Counter-terrorism in Algeria, 1955-1957.

At the Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles: 'The Battle of Algiers' — 50TH ANNIVERSARY NEW 4K RESTORATION (VIDEO)

The film's coming to the Nuart in West L.A. on October 7th. Sounds like something I'd like to attend. We'll see.

In any case, here's the trailer, "The Battle of Algiers."

A history of the three-year Battle of Algiers, chronicling the escalating terrorism and violence between French military forces and the Algerian independence movement, based on the memoirs of Saadi Yacef, a leader of the National Liberation Front. The 50th anniversary restoration opens October 7 at New York's Film Forum, Landmark's Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles, and Landmark's E Street Cinema in Washington, D.C.

*****

THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (1966), Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo’s legendary re-telling of the struggle for Algerian independence from France, on the 50th anniversary of its release, will run at Film Forum in New York in a new 4K restoration from Friday, October 7 through Thursday, October 13.

THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS is also a selection of the NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL 2016 and will be released theatrically by Rialto Pictures on October 7 at New York’s Film Forum, Landmark’s Nuart in Los Angeles and E Street Cinema in Washington, D.C., followed by a major city roll-out through the fall.

Algiers, 1957: French paratroopers inch their way through the labyrinthine byways of the Casbah to zero in on the hideout of the last rebel still free in the city. Flashback three years earlier, as the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) decides on urban warfare. Thus begin the provocations, assassinations, hair-breadth escapes, and reprisals; Algerian women — disguised as chic Europeans — depositing bombs at a sidewalk café, a teenagers’ hang-out and an Air France office; and massive, surging crowd scenes unfolding with gripping realism.

Shot in the streets of Algiers, The Battle of Algiers vividly re-creates the tumultuous uprising against the occupying French in the 1950s. As the violence escalates on both sides, the French torture prisoners for information and the Algerians resort to terrorism in their quest for independence.

Battle’s startling relevance to today’s world events motivated the Pentagon to hold a much-discussed private screening for military personnel shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. A flyer advertising the screening stated, "How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range. Women plant bombs in cafés. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar?"

One of the most influential films in the history of political cinema, Battle of Algiers won the Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1966, was nominated for three Academy Awards (Best Foreign Film, Best Director and Best Story and Screenplay), and was ranked as the 26 greatest film of all time in the 2012 Sight and Sound directors’ poll (it was also in the critics’ top 50), though it was long banned in France for its negative depiction of French colonialism.

With the exception of actor Jean Martin, as the French colonel brought in to quell the uprising, the cast is comprised mainly of non-professional actors who’d been involved in the Algerian struggle. Saadi Yacef, who produced Algiers, also stars as one of the leaders of the insurrection – a role he played in life as a general in the National Liberation Front. Yacef wrote the original treatment for the film – adapted from his book Souvenirs de la bataille d’Alger – in jail after he was captured by the French.

The stirring score is by Pontecorvo and the great Ennio Morricone.

Restored by Cineteca di Bologna and Istituto Luce - Cinecittà at L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in collaboration with Surf Film, Casbah Entertainment Inc. and CultFilms

Approx. 121 min. | A Rialto Pictures Release

Director: Gillo Pontecorvo | Screenplay: Franco Solinas,

Based on the book by Saadi Yacef | Cinematography: Marcello Gatti

Music: Gillo Pontecorvo & Ennio Morricone

A Constitutional Convention — The Last Step Before Revolution

From Glenn Reynolds' excellent column, at USA Today, "A revolution in the works?":

The political class usually gets its way, because it thinks about politics -- and its own position -- every waking moment, while the rest of America thinks about these things only in fits and starts, in between living everyday life. But if there's an upside to the increasing unhappiness that most Americans feel toward the political class, it's that maybe it means people are paying closer attention.

What's next? In my constitutional law class the other day, most of my students took the position that they would be unlikely to see a Constitutional Convention in their lifetimes. I'm not so sure. Last year I spoke at a Harvard Law School conference on holding a new Constitutional Convention, one which had participants from all sorts of ideological positions ranging from the Tea Party to the Occupy Wall Street movement. (People got along surprisingly well.)

In the American system, a Constitutional Convention -- which has never been held since the Constitution was adopted -- is the last stop before revolution. It was intended as a way for the people to end-run the political establishment; if enough states request a convention, Congress has no choice but to call it, and the resulting proposals go straight to the states for ratification, bypassing Congress. It's a way to make drastic changes when the political class has blocked smaller ones.

Are we there yet? I don't think so. But we're getting closer all the time. Political class, take note.

RTWT.

Gabrielle Giffords Testimony Before Senate Gun Control Hearing

I hate to say this, but it's time for Mark Kelly and Gabby Giffords to limit their political exposure. It's painful to watch Giffords testify and as Althouse reported earlier, she's vulnerable to political exploitation by the gun-grabbing left.

At London's Daily Mail, "'Too many children are dying, the time to act is now': Gabrielle Giffords makes emotional plea to Senate on gun violence."

Dana Loesch Debates Guns With Piers Morgan on CNN, Pulls Out Mini AR-15 Rifle

I was checking this out last night. It's a lighter she picked up at the gas station, via Gateway Pundit:

The full 10-minute segment is available here.

'It Really Was Something You'd Expect From State-Run Media'

Here's Kirsten Powers yesterday slamming Steve Kroft's "60 Minutes" Barack-Hillary softball interview:

And I watched Kroft's interview with Piers Morgan last night, and he defends his pussy interview style as key to maintaining access to "The One." Talk about state-run media, at Newsbusters, "CBS's Kroft on Why Obama Does 60 Minutes: 'He Knows We're Not Going To Play Gotcha With Him'."

Why Women Prefer AR-15s

Hey, listen to Celia Bigelow make the case for the AR-15 with the 30-round magazine:

The World According to Dianne Feinstein

More knowledge-based goodness from Emily Miller:

And she's got still more at the Washington Times, "The high-capacity magazine myth: Anti-gun crowd deliberately misleads the public."

Straight Shooting Jessie Duff!

An interview with Judge Pirro:

And ICYMI, "Jessie Duff - World Champion Shooter with Sean Hannity."

Blood of Tyrants

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." — Thomas Jefferson.

The left's gun-grabbers are fomenting a patriotic insurrection so fierce even old Thomas Jefferson would be gobsmackingly astonished.

At SHTF Plan, "Will You Submit & Obey?":

In New York, we have a prequel of what’s to come – the repeal of the Second Amendment and summary criminalization of peaceful citizens merely for possessing the means of self-defense, even in their own homes. As in Great Britain, citizens of NY face prison if they use proscribed weapons against murderous thugs – even in their own homes. The tyrants Michael Bloomberg and Andrew Cuomo have made their decision. Now New Yorkers will have to make theirs. And so will the rest of us – if, as seems likely, the federal tyrants succeed in issuing a New York-style fatwa that applies to the rest of the country. Which brings us to the question:

What will you do?

It is a very hard question. Perhaps the hardest question Americans have had to face since 1861. As then, there may be no peaceful way to preserve our rights. There may be blood. As then, one side is absolutely determined to impose its will at bayonet-point. To murder us in the thousands – perhaps millions, this time - if we refuse to submit. There is no reasoning, no discussing. What we face is violence against our persons by people who absolutely will not leave us in peace – no matter how peaceful we try to be – until we have submitted to them utterly and for all time to come. We wish only to be left alone – and demand that our right to defend ourselves against those who will not leave us alone be respected. That self-defense is the most basic of rights – a right conceded even to the lowest animal. They do not acknowledge our rights; they despise the very notion of us having any rights at all. They regard their power over us as limitless in principle – and rage at even the smallest assertion of freedom of action. They loathe our guns because our ownership of guns is an expression of our determination to defend our very lives – and thus, of self-ownership.

And that is what cannot be tolerated. Which is why the current bum-rush to disarm us has become absolutely frantic. The moment is at hand. We will either stand up and be reckoned with as free men – or we will sit down forever and accept any degradation, any humiliation. And in that case, we shall have proved worthy of such treatment. Future generations will look upon us with the same mixture of incomprehension and contempt that our generation looked upon those who meekly lined up naked in queue for their turn at the edge of the pit. Because it will come to that, in time.

Continue reading (via Director Blue and Cold Fury).

RELATED: At the New York Post, "Only rebellion can save America," and Canada Free Press, "Understanding the Obama Conspiracy & U.S. takeover."

EXTRA: At Right Wing News, "2/23/2013 Will Be a Day of Resistance."

Rep. Carolyn McCarty: Women Can't Handle AR-15s

Snarks Moonbattery, "Funny, this woman learned how to handle an AR-15 quickly enough":

At at the Truth About Guns, "Carolyn McCarthy: Traditional Rifles Better for Women’s Self Defense Than AR-15s."