U.S. Marines vs. Avatars

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“Titanic” director James Cameron threw elements from a few CGI animated sci-fi/ fantasy/action films into “Avatar,” his latest multi-million-dollar vehicle.

The result is a scenic delight. Moreover, it’s obvious from the start that Cameron meant for “Avatar” to speak against U.S. exploitation of indigenous peoples and their lands for their natural resources. His antimilitary viewpoint is also evident throughout.

It’s 2154, and the Earth has been destroyed due to excessive consumption, climate change, and disease.

But even without a home planet, the U.S. military is still in operation in space. On the moon Pandora, the U.S. discovers a needed mineral. A space station hovers over Pandora, replete with scientists conducting experiments, headed by cigarette-smoking Grace, played by Signoury Weaver, and Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi), a fanatical project manager.

The mining and exploration of Pandora is backed by the military—in this case Marines and paramilitary— with all their gun-bearing spaceships. Steven Lang is the top military operations commander, Colonel Miles Quaritch, who refers to his men as “meat.”

We see shots of huge mining operations taking place on Pandora, with workers wearing oxygen masks, on a scale of destruction actually seen in coal and iron ore mining in the U.S. today. Monstrous dump trucks with wheels the size of 10-story buildings rumble down sliced-off mountaintops, on barren terraced areas.

There’s no oxygen on Pandora, so in order to explore, scope out the situation, and befriend the beautiful, blue, 10-foot-tall, dreadlock-wearing Na’vi natives, human scouts must become Na’vi avatars. Transforming into an avatar is accomplished by climbing into a cyro tank, which is hooked up to lots of wires and ... Leon Trotsky (continued from page 7: “Two new Trotsky biographies: biased, inaccurate, superficial”)

Trotsky wanted the Leninbund to “rearm ideologically, and to rebuild [not ‘recognize’] its ranks accordingly” (“Writings of Leon Trotsky [1929],” p. 249).

This series of mistakes, misinterpretations, and misreadings are only based on one paragraph, but this paragraph is no exception to the rule. Service cannot be trusted as a reliable source on matters large or small. Every chapter suffers from similar ignorance and teems with similar problems.

A multi-volume “Anti-Service” would have to be written to set matters right. Such a work would lack for no shortage of topics, including questions of Marxist theory for which Service has no aptitude. For instance, he fails to understand the significance and difference between Lenin’s theory of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry and Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. “The differences, indeed,” Service claims, “were detectable only with an ideological microscope” (p. 91).

To “The Revolution Betrayed,” one of Trotsky’s maHarold (Hal) Verb, an occasional writer on historical subjects for Socialist Action newspaper, passed away at the Veteran’s Hospital in San Francisco on Dec 4.

Hal was a committed revolutionary socialist and an activist in a number of social causes, as well as being a “pioneer atheist” in the San Francisco area.

Hal Verb was born in Philadelphia on April 14, 1931.

Following the Cuban Revolution, he became active in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and joined the Socialist Workers Party. He moved to San Francisco in 1962 and worked at various jobs, including as a printer and independent bookseller, while participating in the movement against the Vietnam War.

Hal was an astute reader of American history. He was convinced from his research into the John F. Kennedy assassination that Kennedy had been murdered as part of a conspiracy, and that Lee Harvey Oswald had been employed as a government agent. Hal frequently addressed that issue as a public speaker and writer.

Hal Verb became a supporter of Socialist Action after its formation in the 1980s. He frequently participated in events sponsored by the San Francisco Socialist Action branch, though his deteriorating health made such activity difficult in later years. He suffered from Marfan’s Syndrome, which leads to progressive tubes to another tank containing a Na’vi body; once your human DNA is mixed with Na’vi, you then control it with your thoughts, while you remain in the tank. Your avatar is then transported to Pandora. If things start to go wrong, a scientist can just push a red “kill” button to wake you up.

Sam Worthington plays Jake Sully, a Marine who has lost his legs in the latest war. His brother had been killed in action and he wants to do right by him, so signs up to become an avatar. Someone jokes, as he rolls in on his wheelchair, “Oh, boy, meals on wheels.” He is told that they are on Pandora to “win [the natives’] hearts and minds” and convince them that we mean them no harm, words that could have come directly from the mouth of Generals Petreus, McChrystal, and the top military brass before them.

Once on Pandora, Grace and her assistant, Norm (Joel Moore), as avatars themselves, guide avatar Jake through a colorful jungle wonderland of strange plants and animals. Jake, making full use of his new legs and body, takes off on his own and disappears. Night is falling. Concerned, Grace and Norm decide to leave him there. Here’s where I sensed a plot loophole: Couldn’t they have told someone on the space station to push the red button? But no, if Jake is worth his salt, he’ll be fine and Cameron’s story will move forward.

In a dramatic scene, Jake meets a female Na’vi (who looks like a blue Angelina Jolie), Neyriti (Zoe Saldana). She brings him home to tribal leaders, Mom and Dad (Wes Studi: immediately recognizable voice). Their ways are similar to those of Native Americans and other indigenous peoples who’ve lived off the land for centuries and feel a deep spiritual connection with their land and all living beings.

Jake soon comes to think that the Na’vi world is the true world and his world is built on lies. He begins jor works, a systematic critique of the Stalinist Soviet bureaucracy, Service devotes only two paragraphs. Ultimately, he believes the work was written for personal and psychological reasons: “At some unconscious level he [Trotsky] seemingly needed the reassurance that great historical forces and not an individual adversary of comparable talent had brought about his defeat” (p. 457).

But in a speech written in the year that “The Revolution Betrayed” was published, Trotsky offered, contrary to the amateur psychoanalysts of the future, a Marxist analysis: “It is absurd to explain such a furious struggle by personal motives. It is a question not only of political programmes, but also of different social interests, which clash in an increasingly hostile fashion” (“I Stake My Life!”).

Only someone without interest in Marxism could make the kind of “absurd” (using Trotsky’s word) comments cited in the above paragraphs. It is not a question of disagreement, for then Service would have developed a rebuttal to the opinions of his subject. He does not even try. Marxist ideas, when they are considered at all, are treated superficially or dismissed out of hand.

muscular degeneration.

Don Havis, a member of the San Francisco Atheists, writes that “Mr. Verb reported in his autobiography that he became completely convinced that atheism was the conclusion that made sense to him in 1948 or ’49, when he read about it in the so-called ‘Little Blue Books’ published by Emanuel Haldeman-Julius. (E.H.J. was a well-known atheist and socialist who published his inexpensive and popular little booklets from 1919 to 1955.) He ordered some of these books at that time, and then began collecting them in about 1950, which he continued all of his life—particularly trying to find the rare very early ones. Hal amassed one of the largest collections of ‘Little Blue Books’ and ‘Big Blue Books’ in the United States. His collection of thousands of these books is now housed in the Freethought Library at the Center For Inquiry in Amherst, N.Y.”

Havis continues, “Hal Verb was a very active atheist and socialist all of his life—very much dedicated to the social causes of equality and liberty and rational thought. Let us hope that we in the San Francisco Atheists, as well as other broader-based rational organizations, will continue the sort of activism that Hal Verb embodied.”

We in Socialist Action likewise salute our comrade Hal. We are confident that his work will live on with future generations. n questioning Selfridge’s and Quaritch’s motives; he is derided for “going native” because he got a “piece of Na’vi tail.” Still, Jake is a Marine and must do what he was trained to do—until . . .

An ancestral, spiritual, tree of life is threatened as it sits on the largest deposit of the mineral. Jake has failed to convince the Na’vi to move to another site, so Quaritch barks his orders. Jake, as his avatar, the Na’vi and all the mythical beasts and birds of the jungle retaliate, including dragons piloted by Na’vi. When Chacon in her airship sees she is killing innocent people, she echoes what many American soldiers who have served recently in Iraq and Afghanistan have said, openly, “This is not what I signed up for.”

This is a film with strong pro-environment, antiwar, and anti-imperialism messages that I trust will not be lost on audiences who went to see it for its gorgeous animation; imaginative, sci-fi story; its inventiveness, and its out-of-this-world (no pun intended) 3D effects. Try to see it in an IMAX theater. n Of course, someone so ill equipped in the field of Marxism ought not to be writing major biographies of Marxists. It is equally obvious that someone who says Trotsky would have been better off if he had died in the 1930s before he had written works like “The Revolution Betrayed,” as Service claimed in the on-line “Uncommon Knowledge” interview, perhaps ought not to be writing a biography of Trotsky.

Robert Service not only dismisses Marxism, and not only continually insults Trotsky; he continually insults his readers. Every chapter delivers an affront to logic, common sense, historical fact, or scholarly standards. Slanders and smears are his stock-in-trade.

A knowledgeable reader is at first startled, then disgusted, and, finally, morbidly curious. Reading the biography becomes a kind of bizarre game in which the reader tries to anticipate just what kind of bias-driven stupidity will appear on the next page or two. But, before long, even this perverse pleasure fades, and every page turned comes to feel like a drop of hot motor oil on an open eye.

Biography goes only so far and is only of so much importance. So, yes, LT was cantankerous, difficult, and overly libidinous. He was easily roused to anger when his fundamental beliefs were challenged. He could be brutally demanding of intimates and family and could speak cruelly to his wife. He found rest and relaxation through vigorous outdoor exercise but seemed always to have a pen in his hand. So on and so forth.

What matters, though, is that the LT of the preceding paragraph—actually, Leo Tolstoy—is the author of “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina.” The episodic details of his life matter little when compared to the permanent achievement of his life’s work. The same is true for Leon Trotsky, author of “The Permanent Revolution,” “The History of the Russian Revolution,” and “The Revolution Betrayed.” His life’s work will far outlast this work of his life. n Socialist Action january 2010 11