e Scarlet or Blackyovember 4, 1977—page s

 

Vicki Fontanini
Peace effort ideals questionable, but effective

Three weeks ago, the Nobel
committee of the Norwegian
government awarded the 1977
Nobel Peace Prize to Amnesty
International, a London-based
volunteer group which investigates
worldewide political repression and
torture, and campaigns
assiduously for the release of all
political prisoners. In presenting
the award to the group, the Nobel
committee cited Amnesty Ins
ternational for “its activities to
defend human values against
degradation, violence and torture"
and for its contribution toward
safeguarding "the foundation for
freedom and justice and thereby
also for peace in the world.”

For example, last year alone,
Amnesty International worked for
the release of 3550 prisoners in 107
countries, and since the group's
formation in 1951, reputedly
hundreds of prisoners which it has
supported have been released. The
groups files and contacts are so
valuable that several attempts to
break into its offices have been
made, primarily by foreign in~
telligence agencies.

ALONG with the 1977 peace
prize, the Nobel committee
awarded the 1976 Nobel Peace
Prize retroactively to two Irish
Catholic women who have
organized and led a mass “peace
movement" in Northern Ireland

Doug Schultz

Knight settles in at Grinnell

It was Halloween. a fitting time
for a rendezvous with an ap-
parition, a ghost, a lunatic, or
whatever he is, this apparent
knight in armor who has been seen
stalking North Campus during the
semester accompanied by hooded
Druid—like figures.

Through his medium, I had
arranged an interview. As I waited
in the spotlight behind Darby, I
suddenly heard the clanking of
metal and mail approaching from
the darkness. Soon he appeared7
a figure in a white armor suit and
silver chain mail, accompanied by
two hooded. cloaked figures who
scouted me out, ‘ere I approached
too close. After all was determined
.to be safe, we exchanged the usual
handshakes and the taking of the
sword, l proceeded to try to find
out who he or it was.

He claims to be Wamba, son of
Wamba, who is son of Witless, and
says he is a member of the Order of
Templar. According to Sir Walter
Scott’s historical novel, Ivanhoe.
Wamba was a jester who risked his
life foolishly to save his master. All
this is supposed to have taken.
place in England under Richard I,
around 1139 to 1199, though Wamba
could not exactly remember his
first days on earth when he was a
youth. When one is almost 800
years old, however, a little fading
of the memory is understandable.

He retains, however, many
memories of his exploits. Though
naturally a rather timid creature

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like his companions (if ap—
proached, he tends to retreat into
the shadows), he has had many
astonishing adventures. When
Spaniards once sank the ship on
which he was aboard, he was
forced to swim the English
Channel with a full suit of armor.
His great strength propelled him to
safety. His suit, however, was
totally ruined.

He generally has to have a new
suit made every 100 years. With
little to do ”us last summer, he
made his latest armor out of pieces
of galvanized sheet metal and used
70,000 ft. of aluminum clothesline
wire for the mail.

Throughouthis life, he boasts, he
has been with many Great Men,
kings, queens and princesses, such
as Arabath of Albania. He laments
that there have not been many
great American kings or queens.
“America is not the best place for
meeting princesses,” he adds. He
left England because he ”got sick"
of it, and hoped to settle into the
pleasant environment of a typical
American college.

Grinnell, however, is not a
typical American college, he finds.
It is filled with ”really weird
people," illogical people who
study things like science and whose
thoughts are not coherent, he says.
One learns later that logical is
having four wives or risking one's
life for one’s master, or hanging
around Druids.

Thanks to his friends, the dark-

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since last year. The two women are
Mairead Corrigan, 33. and Betty
Williams, 34. They call their
movement “People for Peace.”
People for Peace began on
August 11, 1976. as an indistinct
group of about fifty women led bv
Corrigan, who organized a protest
in her Catholic neighborhood of
.Andersonstown, a suburb of
Belfast, as an immediate reaction
to the accidental killing of three
children in Belfast the day before.
The children were killed in a
bizarre car accident, probably not
so bizarre to those living under the
stress of unremitting war. The
driver of the car which hit the
children, Daniel Lennon, was a

cloaked creatures of the night, who
insist they are not Druids, Wamba
has found a new crusade—the
revival of paganism at Grinnell
and America. He has offered
himselfas a soldier to help lead the
revival.

The two cloaked figures,
descendants of celtic pagans but
representing pre—homeric, pan
european paganism as well, noted
that there is no representation for
their sect on campus. There is
Christian Fellowship and a Jewish
group, but no recognition of
paganism, whose hard core
followers at Grinnell probably
number 15, according to one of the
hooded ones.

Naturally pacifistic creatures
(they have burned many a draft
card throughout the centuries), the
pagans do not threaten the Judeo
Christian world. but merely desire
peaceful coexistence and
recognition. After all, they note,
Halloween was a pagan fall
festival before it became All
Hallows’ E’en, a religious holiday.

To arouse support for their cause
and perhaps gain followels, at the
coming rise of winter solstice, Dec.
22 to 23, there will be at Grimell a
call to worship, a celebration of life
in the vein of the ancient
(Bachanalian) festivities. There
will undoubtedly be a bonfire; the
rest of the activities have not yet
been determined and will depend
on the probable turnout,

With typical pagan wisdom and
perception, the bearded one
carrying a magic lighted wand
said, ”Whoever shows up, shows
up; whoever does not, does not."
As a last resort, he said, “There’s
always Mayday." ,They com-
plained about the relative lack of
enthusiasm which their ap-
pearances have created, although
they were almost accosted by one
group of curious observers.

Their message spoken and the
knight seeming rather bored with
the whole thing, they retreated
back into the shadows beyond the
PEC. But they have promised to
return.

Eyes Examined
Phone 236-7502

JENSEN
OPTOMETRIS'I'S
Etrl J. Jensen, 0.0.
Clark J. Jensen, 0.0.

Across from Post Office
Closed Thursday pm.
and Sat. p.m.

volunteer in the Provisional Irish
Republican Army’s Belfast
Brigade. He lost control of his car
when a British soldier fired upon
him and killed him. Corrigan was
me children's auntithus began the
“peace movement.“

WILLIAMS joined the movement
the following day, August l2, her
interest being 'more political than
personal. However, both Corrigan
and Williams claim that their
movement is not political. They
believe that their goal to end the
eight-year long struggle between
Catholics and Protestants in
Northern Ireland is devoid of all
politics—yet People for Peace
supports what they term “the rule
of law and order in Northern
Ireland . . . The Royal Ulster
Constabulary (RUC) and the other
security forces are the only
legitimate upholders of law and
order," In other words, People for
Peace is asking for an incomplete
“peace," consequently one that
cannot be more than ephemeral.

People for Peace wants a peace
not based on the resolution of
existing conﬂicts, but a feeble
“peace" based on the surrender of
both militant Catholic and
Protestant forces to the so-called
“security forces"——the much hated
RUC, the Protestant police and the
British Army, It is certain from
this that People for Peace lacks a
defined political ideology; the
group simply seems to be asking

 

for immediate “peace" for the
sake of everyone's health, which is
a nice proposition but not a very
realistic one.

lTls precisely because it lacks a
defined political ideology that the
People for Peace movement has in
recent months lost much of its
support in Northern Ireland. Ac-
cording to knowledgeable ob»
servers in Northern Ireland, the
People for Peace movement is now
considered irrelevant to the
complex political and religious
war, Vital questions the movement
leaves unconfronted are the merit
of Protestant demands for
preponderant influence in view of
Catholic struggle for equal rights.
and whether Northern Ireland
should stay in the United Kingdom,
join the Irish Republic or become
independent.

In awarding Corrigan and
Williams the 15776 peace prize
retroactively, the Nobel committee
said that they “acted out of a deep
conviction that individual people
can do meaningful efforts for
peace through conciliatory work."
How f‘meaningful" their “efforts
for peace" actually were is
questionable, yet it appears all of
their efforts were not in vain.,In
comparing the first eight months of
1977 with the same period in 1976,
killings in Northern Ireland have
dropped from 222 to 96, shootings
from 1327 to 892, and bombings
from 464 to 225.

Humor, tragedy highlight

weekend’s t‘ /0 movies

By Nancy Carpenter

,What's Up. Tiger Lily? features
the improbable combination of
Woody Allen, the Lovin’ Spoonful
and Mia Hamma. As Woody Allen
modestly explains in the film’s
prologue, he was hired to change.
by editing and “dubbing in”
English, a James Bondtype spy
drama made in Japan. The result
is a hilarious thriller in which
heros, heroines and Villains Clash
with one another for possession of a
salad recipe.

The original Japanese version is
filled with meaningless action,
which itself is amusing, and Allen’s
embellishmens, such as Brooklyn
accents for the enu're cast, are
even funnier. A typical example of
the film’s peculiar brand of humor
is the scene in a hotel room in
which the Japanese hero is en
circled by a seductive, halfenaked
girl who looks at him and says,
“Name three Presidents." The
adventure, intrigue and romance
build up to a spectacular finale in
which the hem not only triumphs
but even disposes of four villains
widl three bullets.

The weekend’s second film is a
penetrating political study, The
Confession. Many Grinnellians are
already familiar with foreign
director Constantin Costa-Gavras’

 

work from the films Z and State of
Siege, shown here on campus last
year, Costa-Gavras has a deserved
reputation for infusing the intense
political impact of his films with a
visual lyricism; the faces, at
titudes and gestures in The Con-
fession are as much a statement of
the director’s intent as the' in
tellectual content.

The Confession is the story of a
devoted communist’s torture at the
hands of his party and how he was
made to confess to imaginary
crimes. If the movie seems ex-
tremely realistic, it is because it is
historically accurate. The
screenplay was drawn from Arthur
Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, an
account of the Slansky trial of 1952
written by one of the prosecuted
communist leaders. In this trial,
fourteen leading Communists,
most of them Jewish, were accused
of Trotskyism, Titolsm, espionage
for the West, ,and Zionism. Strong, .
idealistic men of character
collapsed before a system which
demanded scapegoats. The semi-
documentary style of the film fools
the viewer into a sense of no“.
involvement that is shattered as
the victims succumb to the
physical and psychological
harassment.

The ultimate in light beer
ﬂllwmr-mlt.

 

