From The "UJP" Website- National Day of Action to Stop FBI Raids and Repression- January 25, 2010- All Out In Defense Of The Chicago And Minnosota Anti-War Fighters

Click on the headline to link to a Boston UPJ Web site posting calling for nation-wide demonstrations in defense of the Chicago and Minnesota anti-war activists facing the federal grand juries.

Markin comment:

As I noted in an entry concerning a demonstration on behalf of jailed whistleblower Pvt. Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange in Boston on January 15, 2010 being out on the public square in defense of our basic democratic rights has lately taken on some urgency. I noted that the defense of those old-fashioned democratic rights began with the defense of Manning and Assange. But it hardly ends there. The cases of the Minnesota and Chicago anti-war activists who are facing the grand juries on January 25, 2010 also fall under that defense. All out in their defense.

Frankly these Chicago and Minnesota anti-war committee cases, as I pointed in a commentary about the use of a government informer in the cases, reposted below, make no sense, but one would spent much worthless time speculating on the whys and wherefores of the manner in which the American imperial state defends itself. Better spend our time on the streets protesting yet another egregious act. Obama- Hands Off The Anti-War Fighters!- Troops Out Of Afghanistan and Iraq Now!
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January 14, 2010

From The UJP Website- A Report-Government Informer Infiltrated Minnesota Activist Groups- And A Case Study

Markin comment:

It seems impossible that this government, this monstrously over-fed imperialist government, with more security agencies than it knows what to do with, would seriously bother with the doings of the minuscule organized extra-parliamentary left in America , or in this case just some, mainly, ad hoc anti-war committees. But they are, and as long as the class struggle goes on, in today‘s low tide doldrums or when our time comes, they will continue to do so.

This “interest” reminds me of the heyday of the anti-communist “red scare” of the 1950s when the long gone and unlamented FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, had so many of his agents undercover in the American Communist Party that they were reporting on each other. That was another time when one had reason to wonder about the why of such as interest by governmental bureaucrats since the party had been decimated by the purges from the trades unions, academia, and the entertainment industries, and by the internal problems caused by the contradictions of Stalinism after the death of Stalin (chiefly Khrushchev’s revelations about Stalin and the Hungarian events of 1956).

All this report tells us though, really, is what we already knew. That the government, no matter the administration, has always done, is doing, and will continue to do infiltrations of left groups. All we can do is be cautious, not get catch up in some hare-brained scheme hatched by anybody, known or unknown, and, frankly, in these quasi-democratic times just do our business of anti-capitalist, anti-war propaganda as best we can in the open. For as long as we can.