Eyes On The Prize: Three More Poems

Below are three more poems. For an explanation of how and why I "write" the poems, see this.

For the rest of the poems click on the "lyrics" label at the bottom (there are at least four pages worth of posts, so click on the "older posts" at the bottom of the first page).

“Internment Night” based on “Fiery Cross” by Hate Society, original lyrics are here.

1. This is about the annual rioting on “Internment Night” in N. Ireland during the earlier years of the conflict (I read that at some point, probably 15-20 years ago, a community festival in west Belfast was started partly to give teenagers something else to do instead of rioting). The rioting for some number of years was accompanied by creating bonfires (at least in 1988) in republican areas. Is this poem meant as a criticism of the organizers of that festival? No, as far as I can tell, that festival was/is a great idea, and of course it is/was anti-Unionist and was therefore a form of resistance (considering the Peace Process, I’m not sure if “resistance” is the right word for today). But I also believe that during the conflict, rioting was generally a good thing- it was closer to mass struggle than the IRA’s campaign. It was just one more way of resisting along with rallies, marches, the IRA, elections, etc.
2. The phrase, referring to POWs is usually “men behind the wire” but “fence” rhymed and made sense. 1971 was the first year of internment. There’s a good, academic summary about internment here.
3. Squaddies is a word for British soldier, peeler is a word for the police.
4. Provos are the Sinn Fein and the IRA that in recent decades have been called simply Sinn Fein and the IRA. I haven’t really nailed down when this takes place, so I’m not sure what to say about them being “on the rise.” It’s a bad line in what is a bad poem.
5. BA is the British Army, and they didn’t defeat the IRA.
6. The phrase “freedom’s seeds” is based on a republican song called “Your Daughters and Your Sons” (it's my favorite song). The idea is that the children of (for example) Catholics in N. Ireland were the seeds of freedom in the future.
7. The idea behind the 2nd line of the 2nd verse is that the rioting of youth could possibly be seen as a small taste of what the security forces would get from the IRA (there’s more than that, the rioting also was to some degree mass struggle).
8. Normalization was a part of Thatcher’s N. Ireland policy where they tried to convince people the war wasn’t having much of an effect on N. Ireland society. Although they were rioting very frequently for years before that, nationalist youth rioting could be seen as doing a pretty good job of undermining normalization.
9. I deleted the last verse for various reasons.
10. I give this poem two stars of five.
11. 71% of this version is me, 29% is the original.
12. The reference to fascism towards the very end. For the most part, you’re right- their enemy was not fascist. But they were anti-fascist youth.
13. The original is by an American band, and so I made a point of including some anti-fascist/right/bigot or pro-left (I explain that a bit more here). With this one, it’s the term “anti-fascist.”

They’ve been lighting their bon-fires for years as resistance
And remembering those in ‘71 taken behind the fence
Already rioted a hundred times and never were arrested,
the squaddies and peelers presence would not go uncontested

Chorus:
Fiery resistance still burning - lighting up the land!
Better watch out squaddie - the ‘RA will shoot you where you stand!
Fiery resistance still burning - lighting up the skies!
Better watch out peeler - the Provos are on the rise!

Another army the BA couldn’t defeat, they are freedom’s seeds
They will let the crown forces know, a warning they should heed
Anti-fascist youth in one struggle - an army of the poor
Rejecting normalization, it’s their battle in a people’s war

chorus

****

“We Are Standing” based on “They Stand Alone” by No Remorse, lyrics are here (not exactly what I used, but close).

1. The first verse is about “Operation Motorman,” a British offensive against no-go areas (Nationalist areas where the security forces couldn’t easily enter because of barricades and armed Volunteers (members of republican paramilitaries)) For more info, see this. At that point, in 1972, the British Army (BA) were in complete conflict with the nationalist community. I’m not sure if that means they were there to support the status quo since the regional government in Belfast had been suspended, and the BA wasn’t in complete lock-step with the Unionists. But they were continuing the oppression of nationalist community. And a year earlier, they had carried out the internment operations demanded by the Unionists. And in 1974 they allowed the Unionists to bring down the power-sharing government. So it largely makes sense.
2. “Orange Jim Crow” is my way of referring to the anti-Catholic environment of N. Ireland back then (orange is the color of anti-Catholic bigotry in N. Ireland). In the period around 1972, there were still some Jim Crow-type laws, and certainly four years earlier they had them. You could also say that in some ways it continued up until somewhere around 10 years ago.
3. The second verse is about the formation of the state of Northern Ireland. The USC was the Ulster Special Constabulary, a kind of state militia to help the police, but they were worse than the police in terms of sectarianism. Britain paid a lot for the various efforts of establishing and securing N. Ireland- they turned the Six Counties (a republican term for N. Ireland) into an armed camp.
4. As I have explained in the last 1/3 of this, I believe the Left in many countries dropped the ball in terms of doing work on N. Ireland. The media didn’t help with that problem.
5. The line about Soldiers of Empire refers to the build up in the early 1970s.
6. I give this poem three stars out of five.
7. The Ulster Unionist Party was the main unionist political force in N. Ireland for decades until about 7 years ago. It’s leadership was overwhelmingly upper-class and the rich benefited greatly from UUP governments.
8. No Remorse was British and supported the unionist and/or British causes in N. Ireland.

A tank rolls up the Creggan Rd.
The BA’s here to support the status quo
The Volunteers escaped, to fight another day
Our day will come- victory to the IRA

Chorus
British Army man, you must go.
We’ll defeat you and Orange Jim Crow.
Northern Catholics, now we are standing
Freedom and justice, we are demanding

A State built on sectarian violence of the USC
An Orange system for the rich of the UUP
Propped up by pillars, of British pounds
Thousands of guns, to occupy Irish ground

Chorus

Oh! Northern Catholics, No-one on your side
Hopes are nearly fading. Freedom’s nearly died
come on

Chorus

Silence from the Left, while Nationalists die.
World-wide news media won’t ask why.
Soldiers of the Empire, build up in Six Counties.
It's an imperialist creation, they want us on our knees

Chorus

Take back your land...

*****

“Eyes On The Prize” based on “Final Attack” by Final War, original lyrics are here.

1. This is about Ireland, close to the day when Ireland is unified.
2. The Dail is the parliament in Dublin. There’s a good chance that unification will begin shifting Ireland towards the Left. There’s some more about that towards the bottom of this post.
3. In the time of Cromwell, in the 1600s, tens of thousands of Irish people were sent as slaves to the Western Hemisphere.
4. As far as I can tell, with Ireland united and free, there would be very little left of British imperialism.
5. As far as dialogue and reconciliation and helping the unionist bigots move beyond the end of N. Ireland, there is some info about that here and (as far as my record on supporting dialogue and reconciliation), here. You might also want to read this.
6. The red, white and blue are the colors of the British flag.
7. The Republic is already much more secular than it was decades ago (gay rights are fairly advanced) and even decades ago, Catholic fundamentalism rarely took the form of anti-Protestantism.
8. Anti-Catholic bigotry in Ireland was largely encouraged by the British.
9. It’s difficult to say when The Troubles ended. It was a gradual process, probably beginning with the Good Friday Agreement, and ending with Sinn Fein accepting the new police force.
10. “Eyes on the prize” was the name of a documentary made in the 1980s about the Civil Rights Movement in the United States (and the years between that era and 1985). I’m not sure if it’s a perfect fit, but the last line in this poem, I believe, works very well.
11. In the last line, “we’ve all” refers to about 90% of the Northern Catholic population and what would be a growing minority of Northern Protestsants.
12. I give this poem four stars out of five.
13. 80% this version is mine, 20% is the original.
14. The original is by an American band, and so I made a point of including some anti-fascist/right/bigot or pro-left (I explain that a bit more here). With this one it’s the title of the poem.
15. Orange is the color of anti-Catholic bigotry in the Irish-British context.


The day is approaching, the day of unity
for you and your family, will finally be free
gonna celebrate, and remember the dead
gonna paint the Dail a light shade of red

We’ll have equality and justice, with our liberation
we’re also gonna have truth and reconciliation
the Brits took our land, and enslaved many of us
Now British imperialism has been turned to dust

Chorus:
Oh no, what are the bigots gonna do
when the Brits lower the red, white and blue
We need to talk with them, make them understand-
We’re all gonna share this island

the Brits introduced sectarianism and kept the Nationalists down
Occupied all our cities and all our towns
explosions and gunfire had been part of our struggle
As well as voting and marching, during and after the Troubles

Chorus

We've got our sights set on a new democracy
We guarantee, it won’t be, a Catholic theocracy
Many have broken free from the orange lies
And we’ve all got our eyes, yeah, eyes on the prize

Star Trek: The Original Series Reviews Q

This is one of my posts where I “review” Star Trek episodes. I will be giving each one a star rating. I sometimes will make some comments about non-political parts of them that I like or don’t like. I’ll sometimes use the issues raised in the episode to discuss similar issues in real life. And I will sometimes simply high-light the progressive politics of ST. ST is in-line with the three original themes of this blog, as I explain in the first ST post where I offer some general thoughts about ST.

I have been more or less ignoring this- the need for me to become familiar with The Original Series. In general I don’t like much of what I’ve seen. In any case, I am now watching it and will be doing reviews of those episodes. I will be giving pretty low scores, probably no higher than three stars out of five- I just don’t like TOS.

Lastly. multi-culturalism is such a pervasive theme in ST that I only comment on it when it goes beyond the norm (i.e. inter-species partners).

“The Cloud Minders” See this for a plot summary.

This episode is basically about privilege. You could also mention national oppression, but privilege seems more appropriate (“elitism” is also very accurate). At one point Spock says: “this troubled planet is a place of the most violent contrasts. Those who receive the rewards are totally separated from those who shoulder the burdens. It is not a wise leadership.” You could also use the phrase “environmental racism.”

There is a scene where torture is being used. Although Kirk and Spock make it very clear they and the Federation won’t stand for that, the planet which is witnessing the use of torture by the government is IN the Federation. The torture is stopped and Kirk ends up leaving the planet when he is ordered to.

So, it is largely about inequality. At the end it appears that progress is being made, and there are moves towards equality.

I give it one star out of five.

"The Savage Curtain” See this for a plot summary.

This episode contained a lot of political or at least sort of political stuff.

At the end, there is the question, from an alien culture’s point of view (without these concepts)- which is stronger, Good or Evil?

The alien concludes that both use the same methods, and achieve the same results. In the battle that the alien had just watched, as far as I could tell, the methods were largely the same, although one fourth of Kirk’s team tried to resolve the conflict non-violently and was killed by the other side. There’s a large amount of truth that in war, most methods are used by both sides. The majority of the time, I’d say there’s no problem with that- the problems arise with things like torture and intentionally killing innocent civilians. In response to a series of sectarian murders of Catholics in south Armagh, some republicans (likely the PIRA (now known simply as the IRA)) killed 10 innocent (and possibly ANTI-sectarian) Protestant civilians. That was incredibly wrong (it was also the sort of thing the IRA absolutely or almost absolutely never did). As far as results go, there’s usually-always some (at the very least) large differences (I think you have a good idea of what I consider “Good” and what I consider “Evil,” so I won’t explain that here).

Some other items worth mentioning:

1) Lincoln. In general I have pretty good thoughts about Lincoln. I’m reading an article about how he was friendly to labor and got along via letters with Karl Marx. Although he wasn’t an abolitionist, he leaned in that direction for years before the Emancipation Proclamation- he often was critical of slavery and as President took some earlier steps in the direction of ending slavery.

2) There is one conversation involving Lincoln and Uhura which at first I thought was problematic in a racist way, but a friend convinced me it was was basically saying that the 23rd Century was more enlightened than the 19th Century.


I give it three stars out of five.

“All Our Yesterdays” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it three stars out of five.

“Turnabout Intruder” See this for a plot summary.

There are a few things I wanted to note in this review.

First, it’s said that there are no female Captains. Kirk doesn’t disagree with her on this, although we know that in TOS there was one woman Captain and in ENT there was also a female Captain. It seems likely that even though she was kind of wrong, there WAS a big problem with equality for women in StarFleet (looking at the main characters of all the series also suggests that problem, although it’s only a very serious problem if we assume that in the future women will be half of the military instead of a minority of it)

There is one line that stands out- a woman says something about the “indignity of being a woman.” After looking at the definitions of the word “dignity,” I’m still not sure what she meant. It almost sounds as if she’s saying that women don’t deserve esteem or respect. I’ll be honest, I’m not as familiar with gender studies and feminist theory as I should be, but if that is what she’s saying, that’s obviously untrue, but beyond that statement I’m not sure what else to say.

We also are reminded that with one crime as an exception, the death penalty is abolished in the Federation. Connected with that, we see something sort of close to a mutiny by some officers, including Chekov and Sulu. That’s fairly inspirational.

This is the last episode of the series, and apparently they didn’t feel like doing something special. Anyway, I give it three stars out of five.

Sinn Fein Is (sort of) Revolutionary/Sinn Fein WAS revolutionary

I have frequently referred to Sinn Fein and/or republicanism in general as being revolutionary. This is based on the combination of the following:

1. I might have exaggerated a bit how left-wing SF is earlier in the post “The Spirit of Malcolm X” but there is probably a large majority between the socialists and those who might be called progressives in the American context. Certainly Sinn Fein Youth, whose politics today I’m fairly familiar with since I read many posts on their blog, is a left-wing organization.

In the 2002 General Election in the South, something like a third of SF candidates were either members, leaders, or staff of trade unions. In the European Parliament SF is a member of European Parliamentary Group “European United Left/Nordic Green Left.” In elections to the South’s Senate in 2007, SF and Labour had a voting pact.

If you say that SF is actually NATIONAL socialist, read this.

2. SF is very much in favor of gay liberation. There are details on that in the top third of this post.

3. SF is very anti-White Supremacist. There are details on that in this post.

4. When it comes to international relations, SF is generally very progressive, supporting the Palestinians, opposing the Iraq War, supporting trade-unionists in danger in Columbia, etc.

5. SF is very feminist. As far as I can tell, looking over the last 14 years between the 1998 Assembly elections and today, and giving weight to the more senior positions and offices, some large minority of SF officers and elected politicians are women, and no more than a very large minority of the membership is female, so although there is room for improvement (why is SF not around 50% female?), it’s better than most political parties.

SF has often campaigned in support of free child care.

Probably the best evidence that some very large majority of SF members are feminist is their position(s) on abortion (bear in mind, there would be a lot of SF members who are pro-life but nonetheless feminist).

1) In 1985, although it was apparently a very unrepresentative vote, SF did, for one year, adopt a pro-choice position.
2) Although Sinn Fein MLAs did vote for a Democratic Unionist Party motion, which opposed the extension of the Abortion Act to N. Ireland (abortion is almost completely illegal there). It’s not that simple. A member of the Women's Coalition proposed an amendment that radically changed the resolution so that it simply referred the issue to the Health-Care Committee for further research, discussion, and debate. SF members spoke (starts half-way through, you'll want to look at this to see who's who) and voted in favor of this, and when they spoke, they made it clear their party is not fully committed to the pro-life position.
3) In 2004 (possibly 2003, but I'm pretty sure 2004) SF Youth came within one vote of adopting a pro-choice position.
4) SF's current abortion position is that they support abortion when the life or health of the mother (I think that might also apply to the fetus as well) is at risk, in cases of rape or incest (in the 2002 Abortion referendum in the South, SF also were okay with abortion when the woman is suicidal). They also feel very strongly about not criminalizing women who have abortions.
5) They support “comprehensive sex education, full access to child-care and comprehensive support services, including financial support for single parents.”


That’s about it for describing SF’s radical politics on the “normal” political issues (or at least, with abortion in the Irish context, relatively radical). The next part is about the republican goal of a United Ireland that SF pursues, (often pursued in a way that si intertwined with the other goals mentioned above).

The unification of Ireland will in several ways be revolutionary (that is, if you add up everything, it would be considered revolutionary).

1) It will probably mean the complete end of “Civil-War politics.” That is, the two main parties in the South are politically descended from the two different sides in Ireland’s Civil War, and the unresolved nature of the Anglo-Irish conflict has contributed to them not getting along. Fianna Fail, the largest party in the Republic receives a lot of working-class votes that would normally go to the Labour Party, partly (or perhaps entirely) because they are seen as being more nationalist on the border issue than the second largest party, Fine Gael and also Labour. I wouldn’t be surprised if abortion is also an issue that helps send working-class votes to FF that would otherwise go to Labour. But the fewer reasons such voters have for voting FF instead of Labour, the better- some will say “I don’t like Labour on abortion, but that’s only one issue, so I’ll vote for them.”

2) As I explain in most of the last half of this it’s very unlikely that Protestants in a United Ireland will experience more than a small fraction of the nightmare that Catholics have experienced in N. Ireland. Today, there is about 5% of the Northern Protestants who already know that there will be very little anti-Protestant bigotry. Over a period of time, probably one to ten decades, that figure will rise to something like 95%. As they realize they have nothing to fear, currently sectarian Protestants will become less so. The decline of that bigotry will eliminate divisions that weaken the working-class, the labor movement, and the Left. Normal politics will develop and you’ll see huge numbers of people stop voting for the more or less center-right Unionist parties, and start voting for Labour and/or left-wing parties.

So, all of this adds up to revolution, probably a very non-violent one (it’s VERY unlikely republicans would try to seize power, but there probably will be a fair amount of violence in the North for a while before and maybe a little bit briefly after partition ends). I should also link to another post where I propose a plan to end the conflict that will unite Ireland in a way that will probably minimize violence from Unionists.

(UPDATE 1/7/12 In at least one poem on my blog, I kind of had to use the word "revolution" to refer to the republican family's agenda. I just realized that my idea of how partition should be ended gradually erodes the point I was making in this post. Besides that, I'm now not 100% sure about using the word "revolutionary," but it's a LOT more accurate than "reformist.")

UPDATE 2/28/12 Three more reasons to use the word "revolutionary." 1) Although I doubt more than a small minority of armed republicans wanted to seize power through violence, the use of violence in recent decades by the IRA (a group associated with SF) to unite Ireland is a reason; and 2) In the past SF has spoken about Ireland having a constitutional convention when the island has been united; the use of mass struggle by SF members, supporters, and voters also contributes to this, and I would say the same thing about something that's kind of mass struggle- rioting by nationalist youth.

Racism

This is amazing! (UPDATE 12/26/11 maybe not "amazing," but something close to that- as I mention below, their talk about re-writing the law will almost certainly make it even easier to prove they're racists, and I'm a bit surprised because I thought they would be smarter than that)

UPDATE 12/10/11
What will be really important is to see HOW the authors of that law will re-write it. I can't imagine them re-writing it in a way that won't be easy to condemn as even more racist than the original bill. Anyway, here is another article worth reading.

UPDATE 12/16/11 A news item from the Southern Law Poverty Center has some more important info.

Israeli Apartheid and Palestinian Civil Disobediance

Yesterday I found a very interesting and encouraging article on the BBC web-site. It's about a civil disobedience action by Palestinians, which highlights the fact that Apartheid IS an appropriate term for Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

Tom

UPDATE 11/17/11
I forgot to mention a few other things about using the term "Apartheid" when referring to Israel. I don't remember the details, but there are laws that make it very difficult for couples to live in Israel if one of them is from certain parts of the Middle-East and North Africa (and the other one is an Israeli citizen). (UPDATE 1/12/12 More on that here)

And it's not just buses that are basically segregated, there are also roads that are segregated, too.

And then there is the fact that the State is officially defined by a Jewish identity. People who support that should be asked if they think there will ever be an Arab-Israeli Muslim or Christian President or Prime Minister in Israel (according to the Israeli government at some point in recent years around 17% of Israel's population is Muslim). More generally, the Arab-Israeli population does experience a fair amount of inequality.

UPDATE 11/27/11
As the article I link to above says, Israel says that keeping Palestinians without permission outside Jerusalem is for security reasons. But instead of banning the small minority of Palestinians who Israel could credibly consider security risks, the burden is placed on all Palestinians to get permission. In a similar situation (both areas include natives and a settler populations of one sort or another) even the British didn’t go that far in relation to N. Ireland (they only banned a small number of nationalists, which was bad enough). The policy that Israel has is very similar to the S. African Apartheid laws about controlling the movements of Blacks and generally keeping them out of white cities unless they had permission to be there.

If security is the motivation, I’d also have to ask, what about extremist settlers? MANY of them FREQUENTLY clash with the Israeli security forces (in both the West Bank and in Israel), and it was a supporter of settlers who assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Are any of them, for security reasons, not allowed into Jerusalem? I didn’t think so. (UPDATE 12/15/11 here's a recent article about this sort of thing)

So, security is not the reason. Bigotry is.

UPDATE 2/5/12 To be fair, SOME action is NOW taking place against the settlers, but it's new and seems pretty limited (and doesn't keep them out of Jerusalem, although this is a tiny step in the right direction). The article is here.

******

UPDATE 12/11/11 Juan Cole wrote a great essay about the Palestinians, largely aimed at the idea that their identity is invented and therefore they have no claim to Palestine.

Star Trek: The Original Series Reviews P

This is one of my posts where I “review” Star Trek episodes. I will be giving each one a star rating. I sometimes will make some comments about non-political parts of them that I like or don’t like. I’ll sometimes use the issues raised in the episode to discuss similar issues in real life. And I will sometimes simply high-light the progressive politics of ST. ST is in-line with the three original themes of this blog, as I explain in the first ST post where I offer some general thoughts about ST.

I have been more or less ignoring this- the need for me to become familiar with The Original Series. In general I don’t like much of what I’ve seen. In any case, I am now watching it and will be doing reviews of those episodes. I will be giving pretty low scores, probably no higher than three stars out of five- I just don’t like TOS.

Lastly. multi-culturalism is such a pervasive theme in ST that I only comment on it when it goes beyond the norm (i.e. inter-species partners).

“That Which Survives” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. I give it one star out of five.

“The Lights of Zetar” See this for a plot summary.

Overall a non-political episode, but there are a few things to mention:

1) More sexism than usual. A female StarFleet officer is frequently referred to as either a girl or a lass. Sulu makes a joke which seems to endorse thinking of women as brainless.

UPDATE 11/9/11 I think that with this post and maybe a couple others where I accused ST *TOS* of being sexist I went a little too far. I mean, there ARE two statements by kirk that are sexist, and I think the whole thing with women crewmembers wearing skirts (or dresses?) is sexist. But when it comes to Kirk and in this case also Scotty, referring to adult female crewmembers as "girl" or "lass" I have to wonder, how often has kirk called adult male crewmembers "boy?" I think probably rarely or never, but I'm not going to re-watch the series anytime soon, so I don't know. It is possible I'm being too harsh with the characters and writers over the use of "lass" and "girl." And I could be wrong about the skirts.

2) The idea of an electronic repository for all the knowledge in the Federation, which is open to anyone, sounds like a good idea.

3) The last of an alien race (less than a hundred of them) whose planet died a long time ago is eliminated in order to save a StarFleet offcier from being inhabited by them, which seems reasonable.

“Requiem for Methuselah” See this for a plot summary.

A non-political episode. But I liked the idea that Flint was immortal and had actually been many historical figures (such as da Vinci).

I give it two stars out of five.

“The Way to Eden” See this for a plot summary.

You could possibly call this episode “StarFleet versus the Hippie” (I’m not too familiar with this, but it kind of feels like “Beatnik” might work as well). Although Spock likes them, it’s fairly negative towards the hippies.

I give it three stars out of five (mostly because of the hippie Adam, who was a pretty good hippie character)

Star Trek: The Original Series Reviews O

This is one of my posts where I “review” Star Trek episodes. I will be giving each one a star rating. I sometimes will make some comments about non-political parts of them that I like or don’t like. I’ll sometimes use the issues raised in the episode to discuss similar issues in real life. And I will sometimes simply high-light the progressive politics of ST. ST is in-line with the three original themes of this blog, as I explain in the first ST post where I offer some general thoughts about ST.

I have been more or less ignoring this- the need for me to become familiar with The Original Series. In general I don’t like much of what I’ve seen. In any case, I am now watching it and will be doing reviews of those episodes. I will be giving pretty low scores, probably no higher than three stars out of five- I just don’t like TOS.

Lastly. multi-culturalism is such a pervasive theme in ST that I only comment on it when it goes beyond the norm (i.e. inter-species partners).

“Elaan of Troyius” See this for a plot summary.

There is one bit of politics, bad ones, when Kirk says that except for Vulcan women, women are all illogical. Not an example of ST’s progressive politics.

I give it one star out of five.

“Whom Gods Destroy” See this for a plot summary.

There is a lot of political aspects to this episode.

The setting is a prison housing the few remaining, un-rehabilitated criminally insane. There’s not much said about what the prison is like, but there is a painless therapy machine that helps with rehabilitation, although in general it apparently makes people docile, and at the end, it seems to also destroy memories, which is very disturbing.

It centers on one prisoner, a former Captain of StarFleet. He had tried to use his ship to destroy a peaceful people’s planet, but his crew mutinied, something I find fairly inspiring. More generally he had become a Federation imperialist and used torture.

I give it two stars out of five.

“Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” See this for a plot summary.

This is one of the most political episodes of all ST. There are two main themes, which kind of contradict each other, at least as I see it. The first theme is of a people fighting national oppression, dictatorship, and possibly genocide. The second is of two population groups that hate each other and end up killing everyone on their planet.

Although it isn’t completely clear this is the case, it seems very likely to me that the struggle Lokai was engaged in was for a good cause and probably conducted honorably. There’s talk of slavery of his people, followed by another form of inequality (probably comparable to Jim Crow in the American South). Genocide is mentioned as a goal of his oppressors, many of whom are on the verge of seizing power and creating a dictatorship.

At one point when Lokai is educating some of the Enterprise crew about his plant, he says “you don’t know what it would be like to to be dragged out of your hovel into a war on another planet- a battle that will serve your oppressor and bring death to you and your brothers.” It seems like that line was probably inspired by looking at who was being disproportionately placed in combat units during the Vietnam War (hint- it wasn’t affluent white people). That war was of great benefit to the military-industrial complex, and, if the US had been successful, there probably would have been other benefits for some more elements of the white population.

Regarding his use of violence, Lokai has a couple good lines:

“I led revolutionaries, not criminals- I demand political asylum”

and “why should a slave show mercy to the enslaver.”

Although it’s unclear if he means slave revolts in the past when his people WERE slaves, or if he means killing civilian officials and leaders of the “Jim Crow” type of oppression they experienced after slavery (which could possibly be questionable (the IRA rarely engaged in such attacks and I'm not sure if they were a good idea)), it’s a good line.

The first of the two lines reminds me of how IRA POWs resisted criminalization.

At one point Bele, the government official hunting Lokai, says that Lokai wants “utopia in a day” in reference to Lokai’s grivences. Lokai says something about how he wasn’t that impatient and suggested that Bele would be happy if it took one hundred thousand years. It kind of reminds me of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” in which he told white Christian clergy members that there was nothing wrong with oppressed people wanting justice to develop rapidly in the very near future.

As I said there are sort of two themes that contradict each other. At least some of the StarFleet crew generally believe that Lokai and Bele are mirror images of hatred, although there are exceptions who are very open to what lokai has to say. But I believe the dominant and accurate theme is the one of national oppression. The hand-full of lines and imagery about the other theme, are, by themselves, good statements about hatred.

Lastly, Kirk once again, exaggerates how non-violent StarFleet is.

In general it is a very good episode, and I give it three stars out of five.

“The Mark of Gideon” See this for a plot summary.

There are a couple of political themes that should be mentioned.

The first is this thing that the Federation and StarFleet have about not taking no for answer when they try to establish a relationship with alien civilizations. It’s just wrong.

There is also the issue of population growth. I’m not as educated as I could be about the subject and am going to skip it.

I give this episode two stars out of five.