Reviews

- Jeremy Agar

“WITH DISTANCE COMES PERSPECTIVE:

Essays On Politics, Security And International Affairs”

Paul G Buchanan, DPG Press, Auckland, 2005. $29.95

Paul Buchanan is a former US foreign and intelligence policy insider, now at the University of Auckland. The list of organisations where he has worked, and countries where he has taught, is long. As few issues to do with NZ’s relationships with the outside world do not involve the Americans, and their views of us, Buchanan’s background alone means he is worth listening to. Buchanan, however, offers something more than the conventional US wisdom. For a start, he is keen to establish himself as a local – “good on ya mate” he tells a friend in the dedication. He’s also quite happy to say that his former mentors are making a mess of things.

In fact, in Buchanan’s eyes, Washington is the capital of a “culturally vacant, economically stagnant, and politically bankrupt superpower”. If non-Americans say things like that, it’s written off as the envy of a beheader of a very tall poppy. For Buchanan, as his title indicates, it’s a matter of seeing more clearly now that he’s some distance away from his former home. The book is a compilation of Buchanan’s articles, mostly to do with the Ahmed Zaoui* affair or the war in Iraq. Like all daily journalism, the material is dated in places, or the moment has passed. It’s also something of a risk. Critics can find predictions that haven’t been borne out and take cheap shots. The power elites, those on whom Buchanan is commenting, never allow themselves to be so exposed. * For background on the Zaoui affair, read “Ahmed Zaoui: New Zealand’s Very Own Political Prisoner”, by David Small, in Watchdog 107, December 2004. It can be read online at
http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/07/10.htm. Ed.

Buchanan’s judgements mostly stand up. Several times, for instance, he comments on the apparent lack of progress of a free trade deal, the central theme in current NZ-US relations. In US government circles - and therefore within the circles of local tall poppy admirers - the default setting is stuck. If only NZ were to put aside its quirky anti-nuclear nonsense, it is said, then the US would be able to open its markets and we’d all be happy consumers for ever after. Once Buchanan remarks that this notion has “some credibility”, but several times he makes the more plausible assessment that NZ nuclear policy makes no difference to our trade prospects.

Hoary Old Chestnut

US trade policy does not take note of minor irrelevancies in minor countries. In this context two remarks come to mind, both mentioned by Buchanan. The first is the characterisation by former Secretary of State, Colin Powell, of NZ and the US as “very, very close friends”. This means that we’re trying harder, but we’re not “allies”, we’re not quite good little girls and boys, and we’re not “allies” because of the nuclear issue.

Thank goodness, some would say. So what, others might think. Buchanan’s second maxim - and this is a really hoary old chestnut - is that nations don’t have friends, they have interests. If something looks good to you, you do it. There’s no reason to believe that the US (or any other state) acts on the basis of anything other than the dictates of pragmatism and the opportunities of power. Domestic US politics, and its influential protectionist agriculture lobby, is one reason the trade negotiations go nowhere. All power to American farmers, if that’s what’s keeping the talks on hold. The teacher’s pet, Australia, got a free trade deal which does nothing at all to displease US lobbies and nothing at all to help Australia.

Another reason NZ hasn’t got anywhere might well be that when the little boy in the back row comes panting for approval, the schoolyard bully feels compelled to withhold it. Discussing Iraq, Buchanan writes that US policy “requires it to compel even its allies and friends to openly acknowledge its global authority”. Power must not only be obeyed, it must be seen to be obeyed. An aspect of the inexorable logic of power is that it doesn’t necessarily mean what it says. The NZ Right might be naive, but at least some of them are not naive enough to really think that US Congressmen are waiting for a different attitude to the generation of energy or the propulsion of warships from the government of New Zealand.

Neither - to take the other two strands in this tangled knot of dishonesty - do they really think that the Kyoto Protocols are undesirable and impractical because two countries, the US and Australia, haven’t signed up. Nor do they really think that NZ rates of taxation must be too high because another country, Australia again, has lower rates. Apologists for Bushite America say these things because they want NZ policy to move to the Right. They don’t say them because they’re relevant, and in the case of Australian tax policy, they don’t say them because they’re true. When the Australians were seen as less fervent in their adherence to neo-liberal economic orthodoxy the NZ Right derided them for being “wet”.

The job of propagandists is to get people to accept their authority. Detail doesn’t matter any more than accuracy. That’s why they try different lines. Whatever it takes. And the reason that these people want us to ape foreign governments is not because they think these policies are necessarily any good. It’s to establish subservience. Buchanan remarks that the State Department’s policy that it will “neither confirm nor deny” belongs to the Cold War. He asks why “State” persists with that approach. The question should be rhetorical. While there were security aspects that loaned themselves to official inscrutability, a bully superpower will never willingly divulge. The motive is not military, so much as strategic. As a keen student of Machiavelli, Buchanan should appreciate that it’s a principle of power to play hard to get (Niccolo Machiavelli, 1469-1527, whose principal book “The Prince” is the classic textbook of “whatever it takes” Ed).

Nor do pro-Bushite critics really believe that NZ should “pull its weight” by buying all sorts of fighter jets for the Air Force. The implication is that NZ should strive for an independent deterrent, a goal which, in the real world, no-one has ever thought to be either possible or desirable. All defence and foreign policy has assumed interdependence. Like the other cheap shots aimed at attempts to establish a truly sovereign NZ, the pretence that we should spend a whole lot of money on what would be a redundant strike capacity does not have the motive it claims. It is part of the permanent drive to make sure NZ policy is set offshore.

Still Looking Out At The World Through A State Department Window

In his introduction Buchanan points out that he’s changed his mind about some things. Let’s hope that the Israeli spies episode * is one of them. At the time Buchanan chided Helen Clark for publicly outing the Mossad agents who entered the country on fake NZ passports. He argues that Israel is an ally, and that Clark was currying favour with its enemies to drum up prospects of trade with Islamic countries. This is one case in which distance obscures the view. Although he is consistent and coherent in his articles on the Ahmed Zaoui affair, denouncing the NZ government’s willingness to be manipulated by foreign spy agencies, Buchanan writes of Israel as though he’s still looking out at the world through a State Department window. * For the details of this, read “ Israel Apologises To NZ For Bungled Mossad Passports Operation” by Murray Horton, in Peace Researcher 32, March 2006. It can be read online at
http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/pr32-123b.html. Ed.

The error is compounded by the observation that the Prime Minister, Helen Clark, was in the grip of an obsession to take over as Secretary-General of the United Nations. This folklore has been spun by the same spin doctors who want NZ to abandon its attempts to be independent. The UN invites criticism, but that is not why domestic pro-Bush and pro-Howard propagandists slag the UN or why they link the UN to the Clark government. The more important reason, the strategic motive, is that only the UN has the potential to rival the US as a legitimate source of global power.

Although there are few such overt inconsistencies in his analysis, there’s always an ambivalence in Buchanan’s comments. He can point out what’s wrong with the Bush-Blair-Howard axis, but he seems to be not ready to imagine an alternative. It’s not clear whether he’s accepting the fact of the status quo - as we all have to - or whether he aspires to no more than asking it to exercise its power more politely. Buchanan supposes that those unhappy with our ties to the US military are exercised by matters nuclear. He considers that “only die-hard anti-American and anti-war protestors” would oppose visits by conventionally powered and armed US warships. As he introduces terms like “imperialism” and “capitalism” into his own critique of US policy, Buchanan begs as many questions as he answers. When you talk of imperialism you talk of systemic relationships. By definition, an imperial power exercises military policy as an aspect of economic policy.

When we obsess about the musings of former US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, as to whether we are a “friend” or an “ally” we’re not caring about one foreign person’s opinion of a country he might not have thought about, and we’re not talking culture or sport. We’re not asking tourists if they enjoyed the Milford Track. We’re talking imperial dependence. Imperialism is like pregnancy. You’re either an imperialist or you’re not an imperialist. You can’t be a little bit imperialist. Readers might be surprised that Buchanan, whose journalistic sallies against the excesses of power are no different from other, non-American critics, is not, himself, “anti-American”. This is a throw-away insult, coined to discredit robust analysis of the way American power is projected. The term assumes certain systemic facts. Otherwise - and it’s a reason why “die-hard” critiques are routinely dismissed - so-called anti-Americans sound like whingers. Bigots even.

Perspective Shows That It’s All Big Picture Stuff

A distinction has to be made between the big picture, to do with strategic interests, and the little picture, as viewed by daily journalism. Strategically, US interests assume an imperial need; tactically, like anyone else, Americans can be nice guys. Buchanan needs to be clear when he’s talking strategy and when he’s talking tactics. Everything he says about official NZ compliance with US strategic interests (for instance in the Zaoui case) assumes he’s upset by a deference to an imperial master. So isn’t this a case of “die-hard anti-Americanism”?

Without this perspective we don’t know if we’re looking at a detail or a panorama. Locking up Zaoui can be dismissed as a lapse, the fault of ill-trained staff; or the Rainbow Warriorcould be said to have been sunk by a couple of inexperienced French agents in Auckland Harbour, in 1985; or - one of the more frequent such constructions - the American destruction of Vietnam during the 1960s and 70s’ war could be regretted, briefly, as a “mistake”. In these examples, once the immediate issue is resolved, there wouldn’t be much else to say.

When he looks inward to his adopted country, Buchanan’s view is uncluttered. He makes sharp criticisms of Wellington’s “opportunism and expediency” and its “culture of impunity”. He charges the Clark government with a policy of replacing representative democracy with what he dubs “delegative democracy”. It’s stimulating and timely stuff. He says of his former country that in the US “political society is increasingly divorced from civil society”, the result being that the power elites have earned “mass contempt”. Buchanan has sketched a series of portraits of what happens when government policy assumes certain permanent interests. As we step back to gain perspective, we can see that it’s all big picture stuff. Whether we’re friends or allies, NZ is as dispensable as an enemy. So is everyone else.

 

“THE RISKS WE RUN”

Roger Moody, International Books, Utrecht, 2005

John Reed Book Distribution Box 257, 11 Yandala Street, Tea Gardens, NSW 2324
e-mail: johnmreed@johnreedbooks.com, tel: 00612 4997 2936.

In the lexicon of business lingo, “risk” is central. It’s supposed to denote imagination and bravery, conjuring images of visionary leaders. If you’re a risk-taker, you create wealth. You’re the antidote to the deadweight of government and the bludgers it supports. The risk-taker might lose everything, so he deserves compensation. So we talk of “reward” as the balancing of the entrepreneurial equation. That’s the theory.

Roger Moody does not agree. His study of “political risk insurance”, or PRI, points out that the “political” insurance industry exists to eliminate the consequences of risk. Moody’s not talking about small business, let alone the house renter or the car owner. PRI has little in common with the tales we hear from the daily lives of ordinary mortals of denied claims, where all too often we haven’t read the small print. If you’ve got PRI, you don’t have to worry about your coverage, as the contracts were drafted with your interests in mind.

This is because PRI is taken out by transnational corporations operating in foreign places and their insurance agents have the best connections, the big operators being agencies of national governments. The US State Department runs an Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), whose name indicates that their mandate is to look after private corporations. Conventional wisdom still thinks of the government of the United States as being an instrument of American citizens, who fund it with their taxes and elect their representatives to manage public business on their behalf. That’s how these things are meant to work, and that would make the State Department “public”. But PRI is the means by which, in effect, the populace subsides the operations of transnationals headquartered in their country.

Moody focuses on mining, an industry he has watched closely for years. It’s an apt choice, because it is mining which has done more than its unfair share of messing up overseas places. Mining corporations want to dig holes in the ground, scoop out nickel or tin, and get out. Most of the book is devoted to a series of concise explanations of some of the resulting disasters. The island of New Guinea, both West Papua (the Indonesian-colonised half) and Papua New Guinea, features frequently and sadly.

Insurance Of Private Investment

Because they host many of the world’s big mining companies, the Australian and Canadian governments are major providers of PRI. Export Development Canada, a big PRI player, sounds like one of those ubiquitous government outfits like Creative New Zealand or Housing New Zealand. And so it is. But, while they are insured by public money provided by public officials, the exporters expect private benefits. Of course it sounds nice to encourage exports, which might be another reason PRI evades scrutiny, but some rebranding would make things transparent. There could be government bureaucracies with doors marked Noranda Canada or a Rio Tinto Australia.

Some might commend the Americans for calling corporate risk coverage what it is - insurance of private investment - but the Washington elites would not think there was anything unusual in OPIC. Getting the public to take the risks to smooth the ride for private interests has long been the consensus policy of the American military-industrial establishment.

Moody looks at how the world’s most powerful corporations operate by co-opting the State to underwrite them. Political risk insurance sounds boring. In a perverse sort of way, this anonymity is a mark of its power. PRI won’t often make the headlines any more than a section of a law normally will. It’s a clause of the constitution of the modern corporate state, and the more it is unremarkable, the less likely its assumptions are to be challenged. By bringing it to our attention, Moody has made a valuable contribution.

“Political Risk” Is A Chimera

What constitutes a political risk, and how is a policy negotiated to cover it? “Arguably”, Moody considers, “the very term ‘political risk’ is a chimera; a hold-all into which almost any happenstance can be thrown, including the appropriation or devaluation of assets, the sabotage of an electricity power plant, attacks on staff, restrictions on profit transfers, a company’s expulsion from a host country. Such events, and more, do get covered by many PRI policies. Yet ... the premiums paid rarely seem to reflect the magnitude of possible risks. Equally curious is that companies may fail to make a claim, following an interruption to their work or an operational failure, although these occurrences are manifestly covered by their PRI policy. Conversely, insurance cover is sometimes continued, even when project design has demonstrably changed for the worse. It becomes clear why this happens if we regard PRI, not so much as an insurance instrument, as a political tool used to maintain a project or sustain a company’s debt finance”.

The penny - make that the billion dollar profit statement - drops. Extractive industries like mining tend to go on in places far from the rich Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries where PRI policies are written. Out of sight and out of mind. Typically they are cursed with weak traditions of public accountability and they don’t have the economic or political clout to defend themselves. That’s assuming they want to. As the host countries are liable to be governed by thieving elites, whose local power was created by selling out to these selfsame foreign transnationals, they are notoriously prone to abandoning their own citizens.

The news is never all bad. One of Moody’s case studies is Peru, one of three adjacent Latin American countries with long histories of corruption and dependence. Peru and Bolivia have minerals; Venezuela has oil. All are currently resisting strong American pressures to keep their collaborationists in office. They’ve shocked the State Department by electing governments with a democratic mandate.

How fitting that the biggest provider of PRI, the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), is, in fact, the World Bank. Besides acting, ostensibly, as the main facilitator for poorer countries to get a head start, the World Bank has been a principal propagandist for Big Business. It lectured the Perus and Indonesias of the world about the need for “market discipline” (making sure that private companies, selected for their adherence to World Bank prejudices, were given cosy deals). By privileging exporters rather than any enterprise that might add domestic value, the World Bank does a good job as a Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, but it guarantees this at the price of African, Pacific and Asian dependency and poverty. Moody cites Ghana, where 40% of exports are derived from mining, yet the industry contributes only 3% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Moody’s Title Is Nicely Ambiguous

The risks we run are the risks of global citizens forced to put up with a depleted landscape and exploited communities so that a few very rich people might continue to reap the rewards. You wouldn’t expect the PRI lads to pay out often. Usually “mediation” does the trick. Moody says that MIGA has done so just once in its first 17 years. That was to a company called Enron. Where have we heard that name before? (see Jeremy’s review, below, of the movie “Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room”. Ed.).

Roger Moody has, of course, been very well known to CAFCA members and Watchdogreaders for a quarter of a century. We toured him through NZ in 1990. In 1991, we co-published his book “Plunder”, about Rio Tinto Zinc (represented in this country by Comalco). “The Gulliver File”, Roger’s 894 page encyclopaedia on mining companies, was reviewed in Watchdog72, November 1992. “The Indigenous Voice – Visions And Realities”, edited by Roger, was reviewed in 62, September 1989. “Half Left: The Challenges Of Growing Up ‘Not Quite Normal’, co-authored by Roger and his late brother Pete, was reviewed in 58, January 1988. Roger is an old friend, whom we, sadly, haven’t seen for far too long. Ed.

 

“ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM”

A Film By Alex Gibney, 2005

The subject matter is business, but, as an interviewee remarks near the start of this film, “Enron” is a personal story. At the time of its NZ screening, the former bosses of Enron were on trial on so many charges that it’s hard to remember just which. Is the indictment for fraud, conspiracy, embezzlement or theft, or are there more names for the ways they ripped off billions of dollars? They’re probably up for all the greed-and-corruption sins.

It doesn’t matter because they’re all aspects of one big thing. It’s the oldest story of them all. So in one sense it’s timeless. In the course of bringing down California’s electricity grid and bankrupting employees and their pension schemes, Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, the bosses at Enron, made mega-millions for themselves. The sheer size of the collapse is intriguing, but that might not be its real significance. Lay and Skilling were smooth as whisky and rye, deflecting scrutiny through snake oil charm, affability and evasion. They appeal as classic Hollywood villains. The sociopath is always a convincing liar. He’s crafted a career from exploiting others’ trust or inattention. Yet it’s possible that, at some level, the innocence he protests might be genuine. He only did what his peers and the President wanted him to do.

It’s Reaganite* America that’s on trial. Real villains offend society’s mores; they break its rules. But Lay and Skilling exemplified the values of their society. Historically, the significance of the Enron debacle will be its marking of the end of the first wave of excess. In their early days, revolutions tend to overshoot, and the neo-liberal revolution is no exception to the rule. * The late Ronald Reagan was US President from 1980-88. Ed.

Central casting could have come up with the two defendants. Lay’s father was a poor Baptist preacherman; Skilling was an Ivy League* boy. Two powerful American mythogies. The driven Southerner and the privileged New Englander (maybe). All America could look at them and say, yes, I’ve been dirt poor, I have dreams, and you boys can show me the dream’s still alive. * Ivy League is an American description of the old money ruling class who went to prestigious North-East US universities such as Yale and Harvard. Ed.

Skilling believes in “the survival of the fittest” because the slogan confirms his view of the world as a tough, competitive place where Ivy League boys with big brains and a bigger talent for speculation do well. This notion, a convenient self-justification, is popular with people who regard themselves as being the “fittest”. The downside (for others) is that the “weak”, the bulk of the planet’s people, animals and plants, will go down.

Social Darwinism

The “winners” will always describe the world in their own image. Skilling is talking what’s been called social Darwinism, an entirely misguided pastiche of Charles Darwin’s* adaptation theory, that’s been around for 150 years. It originally proved to be useful propaganda for expanding Victorian corporates. It’s still a jungle out there, man. * Charles Darwin, 1809-82, author of “On The Origin Of Species” and father of the Theory of Evolution, whose central tenet is the survival of the fittest. Ed.

Because their values and motivations come from their mates, the Skillings of the world are always absolutely conventional. Geniuses too busy to think, action men contemptuous of books, daredevils who crave approval, the social Darwinists wallow in unnoticed contradiction. The macho men at Enron were forever urging all and sundry to “ask why”. That of course is precisely what they themselves could never afford to do. The rise, rise and collapse of Enron are testament to corporate America’s failure to ask anything much at all.

The film deals only with Enronism in the USA, particularly the California power crisis, but Enronism was a global scourge. As it’s a movie about two hucksters, this is appropriate. You can’t deal with any more content at a screening. For a fuller take, we need to read. Skilling and Lay, take note (see my review of “Power Play” by Sharon Beder in Watchdog104, December 2003, an analysis of neoliberal electricity policy. It can be read online at http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/04/12.htm. In this review I coined “Enronism”. Others have too. It’s an expression which probably evolved spontaneously and often. Beder gives a full account of Enron’s global reach).

If only, lamented the apologists, the California deregulation had gone further. Had there been no rules left, had they gone the whole way, all would have been well. It was the Government’s fault. It should have abdicated, and handed all power to Arnold Schwarzenegger (the current Republican Governor of California. Ed.). You can beat that drum as long as you want, but it won’t play a good tune. In NZ, at the Rogernomic wake, the free marketeers sang their dirge. If only everything were privatised then it would have worked. The trapeze Government chickened out. It looked at the ground.

If only. If only Skilling and Lay had not had to put up with dumb regulators and dumb employees. Former 1990s’ Finance Minister Ruth Richardson, who still tours the world touting Ruthanasia, has a variant. She complains of a “yes but” mentality that restrains her clients. Yes, they say, you might have a point, but we’re responsible for the consequences. If Only and Yes But are the slogans of Pure Mind. But wishing a world, and thinking a reality, doesn’t make it so. The suckers out there still have their values. They just won’t go away. It’s a jejune fantasy, a boys’ only vision. If only we could live for ever in perfect happiness wallowing in immense riches, with starlets draped around our pool.

Me, me, look at me. It’s all about them, it’s all about individuals, and their highwire balancing act. If you do it right, you cross the chasm to our relief and applause. But why govern our mundane selves this way? If all is personal, if success depends on being especially clever or especially lucky or especially macho - whatever the qualities are thought to be - then losing is guaranteed for all but the one winner. The Skillings of the world want that. They think that there should be only the one “winner”.

What they don’t remember from their childhood Greek mythology or “Aesop’s Fables” is that when the super heroes take on the gods, they are brought down. The gods don’t approve. Hubris, the sin of pride, kills you every time. If only the great intellectuals knew something of their own culture they would have known these things. If only they had known the precepts of the religions they often profess. If only they had experience of the sort of normal everyday living that the suckers around them have.

Skilling presents himself as delusional. In one trial scene he excuses his activities with the suggestion that his company’s bankruptcy was “a classic run on the bank”, a panic by the “losers”. We see a shot from one of those Depression-era movies where the bank has failed and investors are clamouring at the doors. It’s pure Hollywood. But no such thing has happened in Skilling’s life. The “classic” is a virtual classic. Like all of Skilling’s notions, it’s a movie scene. It has no connection with boring reality.

Enronism presents itself as a pastiche of fin de siecle* excess. Skilling and Lay were so crude that their story might not be the cautionary tale that it should be. Those guys were so over-the-top, so overt, that viewers might consider they have watched a farce rather than a tragedy. Tragic heroes get to understand that they’ve gone wrong. This pair never will. Rather than being invited to ponder the nature of late 20 th Century capitalism, an audience might think that ultimately the whole routine was a joke. The main actors certainly were. * Fin de siecle means end of century. It was originally coined to describe social and financial excess at the end of the 19 th Century. It was also perfectly appropriate for the Roaring 90s of the 20 th Century. Ed.

Enron Was Far From Being The Exception To The Rule

Such a reaction would have the “rotten apple” effect of absolving neo-liberalism. A running gag in The Corporation* was a series of shots of complicit bosses excusing all and sundry with the remark that there’s a few rotten apples in every barrel. What can you do, they sigh with crocodile sighs, when human nature is so flawed? If only the world was perfect. *See my review in Watchdog107, December 2004, which can be read online at http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/07/11.htm.This documentary’s theme, that the modern corporation is necessarily pyschopathic, is the theme here too, so it’s a good companion piece to “Enron”.

The director, Alex Gibney, has commented that the fiasco “takes the predatory nature of ‘business as usual’ to the extreme”, a remark that leaves no doubt that he has no time for this buck passing. Malfeasance is systemic, he is saying. The purpose of the neo-liberal ideology that so enraptured Skilling was to liberate himself and his mates so that they could remake America - and then the world - in their image. Neo-liberalism envisages a planet dominated by a few big players unhindered by governments and contemptuous of democratic scruple. That what’s it about.

At first glance, the Enron trials might seem to be following a traditional script. At the end of the movie the bad apples are thrown out and the barrel is cleaned. We’re viewing a moral fable. Or maybe not. Let’s wait and see. The classic story, as Skilling, might say, features two good apples going bad. But, far from straying from their society’s mores, the Enron characters were always part of them. Can the system afford guilty verdicts? Yes, if they’re limited to such obviously flawed individuals. The best bet is that Lay and Skilling will be presented as bad apples which spoiled a pure harvest. At the time of writing one of the three main characters in the film is ratting on Lay and Skilling. Thieves falling out is a tried and tested theme, but society won’t have earned the right to congratulate itself if the aftermath of the trials is a kinder, gentler Enronism

Enronism is far from being the exception to the rule that spin doctors would have us believe. It’s more like the rule. The trials did not come about because Citibank and Arthur Andersen* and the rest of them wanted to check the health of their fellow apples. Skilling and Lay are in the dock because the whole rotten barrel of thieves had not yet managed to corrupt all the underlings. It’s good that the film concentrates on the clowns. When we go to the movies we want a good story and we want to follow the plot. We don’t need to hear about the evils of capitalism any more than we would have wanted Shakespeare to take time out during “Hamlet” for a lecture from a psychiatrist.* Arthur Andersen was the accountancy transnational that collapsed as a result of Enron’s 2001 collapse. It was in it up to its eyeballs. Ed.

The review of “With Distance Comes Perspective” was first published in Peace Researcher 32, March 2006. PR is the journal of the Anti-Bases Campaign. Annual membership of ABC costs $20 (or $NZ25 for Australia and $NZ30 for the rest of the world), payable to ABC, Box 2258, Christchurch, cafca@chch.planet.org.nz; www.converge.org.nz/abc. Ed.


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