Thursday, August 24, 2017

CLID Statement On 33 Arrestees At Saturday Boston Anti-Fascist Rally-Drop The Charges!

CLID Statement On 33 Arrestees  At Saturday Boston Anti-Fascist  Rally-Drop The Charges! 

THE COMMITTEE FOR INTERNATIONAL LABOR DEFENSE
____________________________
The Committee for International Labor Defensejoins with our sisters and brothers of Black Lives Matter Boston and Cambridge, to call on the Boston Municipal Court, Mayor Marty Walsh, District Attorney Dan Conley, and Police Commissioner William Evans, to drop all charges stemming from the unlawful arrest and detainment of 33 protesters on Saturday, August 19, 2017, at the “Fight Supremacy” rally on Boston Common.


Many of the protesters were unnecessarily injured by police during the confrontations and arrests. All those arrested were charged with crimes ranging from disorderly conduct to assault, for holding their ground against fascism and white supremacy in the southeast quadrant of Boston Common and surrounding areas.

The Committee for International Labor Defenseis aware that the arrestees face court appearances on August 21, 22 and 23, to determine their fate, and we are closely monitoring each of their cases. The Committee squarely and publicly holds the City of Boston accountable for the health and safety of every one of these political prisoners, including the minor who is only 15 years of age.

The Committee for International Labor Defensedemands the immediate release of the Boston 33, dismissal of all legal charges, and withdrawal of all fines and penalties for which the Court may hold them liable. Their arrest was unjust and a violation of the democratic right to protest that is fundamental to the U.S. constitution and US history. No one should be arrested for standing against racism and racist violence.FREE THE BOSTON 33 NOW!"

We are mindful that on this day, exactly 90 years ago, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ruthlessly electrocuted two working class political prisoners namedNicola SaccoandBartolomeo Vanzetti,during a time of similar unrest.We will not allow those crimes to be repeated.

The Committee for International Labor Defensecalls on our brothers and sisters in the labor movement to show solidarity with all 33 of these political prisoners in memory of Sacco and Vanzetti, one of International Labor Defense’s very first cases.The capitalist bosses and their repressive state apparatus have changed little since 1927, as we can see through these attacks on working class protesters.
Signed by:
THE COMMITTEE FOR INTERNATIONAL LABOR DEFENSE


___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


THE COMMITTEE FOR INTERNATIONAL LABOR DEFENSE
____________________________
MISSION STATEMENT
The Committee for International Labor Defense (CILD) aims to bring together labor organizations worldwide to organize mass defense in cases important to the cause of workers and all oppressed.
We seek to build on the past achievements of the working class to revive International Labor Defense.  The original ILD (1925-46) mobilized worldwide campaigns in political and legal defense of Sacco and Vanzetti, the Scottsboro Boys, Cuban sugar workers, sharecroppers in the US South, and many more cases.

The ILD took a side, in solidarity with the struggles of workers, oppressed, and other socially marginalized people.  The ILD defended movements, organizations, and individuals with whose political views it did not necessarily agree.
While supporting legal efforts, the ILD understood that the law, courts, prisons, and police exist to protect the ruling class.  To paraphrase one of the founding members of the original ILD, “We place all our faith in the masses, and none in the ‘justice’ of the courts or other tribunals.” 

In the process of recruiting labor organizations worldwide to rebuild the ILD, the CILD will take up international, domestic and local defense cases, in line with its capacity.

For more information please send an email tocforild@gmail.comor visit our websiteinternationallabordefense.org

On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 8:34 AM, Eric Brooks<rico49@gmail.com>wrote:
A final comment for consideration: It might help build the CILD to add a website URL and email address where people can contact CILD to the statement so that if it is printed and handed out it stands alone. At the top you could say: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Committee for International Labor Defense URL…

Free Reality Leigh Winner Now!- How you can support whistleblower Reality Winner





Freedom of the Press Foundation
Reality Winner

Dear Friend,
We’re sending you this appeal because you’ve stood up with us in the past to defend accused whistleblowers from unfair prosecution. We need you to stand with us again.
Reality Leigh Winner, a 25-year-old Air Force veteran, was recently charged leaking a classified document to The Intercept that shed light on alleged attempts by Russian actors to hack into U.S. election infrastructure. She is currently sitting in jail, awaiting trial after being denied bail.
It’s up to us to give her a fighting chance by providing her the best defense possible. Please click here to donate to the Reality Winner Defense Fund to support her legal defense and push back against using the unconstitutional Espionage Act against accused whistleblowers.
First Look Media, the publishers of The Intercept, have agreed to match every donation up to $50,000 until August 30th, so we need your donation today!
Thanks in part to the document Reality is charged with leaking, we now know hackers attempted to breach the election systems in 39 states, and that state election officials resisted attempts to increase security before the 2016 election. Some election officials did not even know their systems were targeted until The Intercept’s report was published.
Instead of working to bolster our country’s digital security to protect our election systems, the Trump administration is engaging in an extremely harsh and disproportionate prosecution of Reality, using the same lawused to go after whistleblowers Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden.
In times like these, courageous people who bring important information to public attention need to know someone will have their back when they choose to do the right thing. Please join our campaign, donate what you can to Reality’s legal defense, and help us spread the word.
For more information, please visit standwithreality.org/donate
Standing in solidarity,
The Freedom of the Press Foundation Team

*The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons- From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky- On The Anniversary Of His Death- How Lenin Studied Marx (1936)

Click on the headline to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline.

Markin comment:

The name Leon Trotsky hardly needs added comment from this writer. After Marx, Engels and Lenin, and in his case it is just slightly after, Trotsky is our heroic leader of the international communist movement. I would argue, and have in the past, that if one were looking for a model of what a human being would be like in our communist future Leon Trotsky, warts and all, is the closest approximation that the bourgeois age has produced. No bad, right?

Note: For this 70th anniversary memorial I have decided to post articles written by Trotsky in the 1930s, the period of great defeats for the international working class with the rise of fascism and the disorientations of Stalinism beating down on it. This was a time when political clarity, above all, was necessary. Trotsky, as a simple review of his biographical sketch will demonstrate, wore many hats in his forty years of conscious political life: political propagandist and theoretician; revolutionary working class parliamentary leader; razor-sharp journalist (I, for one, would not have wanted to cross swords with him. I would still be bleeding.); organizer of the great October Bolshevik revolution of 1917; organizer of the heroic and victorious Red Army in the civil war against the Whites in the aftermath of that revolution; seemingly tireless Soviet official; literary and culture critic: leader of the Russian Left Opposition in the 1920s; and, hounded and exiled leader of the International Left Opposition in the 1930s.

I have decided to concentrate on some of his writings from the 1930s for another reason as well. Why, with such a resume to choose from? Because, when the deal went down Leon Trotsky’s work in the 1930s, when he could have taken a political dive, I believe was the most important of his long career. He, virtually alone of the original Bolshevik leadership (at least of that part that still wanted to fight for international revolution), had the capacity to think and lead. He harnessed himself to the hard, uphill work of that period (step back, step way back, if you think we are “tilting at windmills” now). In that sense the vile Stalinist assassination in 1940, when Trotsky could still project years of political work ahead, is not among the least of Stalin’s crimes against the international working class. Had Trotsky lived another ten years or so, while he could not have “sucked” revolutions out of the ground, he could have stabilized a disoriented post-World War communist movement and we would probably have a far greater living communist movement today. Thanks for what you did do though, Comrade Trotsky.

Statement From The Smedley Butler Brigade, VFP Boston On Trump's Afghanistan Escalation -Rally Saturday


08/22/17

Smedleys:

Last night President Trump announced that he intends to increase the number of American troops in Afghanistan by some unknown amount and to allow our military to define the rules of engagement.  Translate, more destruction and civilian deaths.

We are fighting a war of our choosing for reasons that are unclear. (Clearly, we are not defending the homeland.) We are spending billions on a war that has no end, and the only ones profiting from it are the companies which produce the weapons. The Russians in the 80’s were smart enough to admit defeat and go home after more than eight years of fighting.

Remember Vietnam and the cry from the military if only they had more troops we could win the war.  Trump is following that line. Afghanistan as Vietnam is unwinnable.

Remember Trump originally questioned this war. Now he is going along with the military.  We need to stop this escalation.  The damage we are doing has to come to an end. 

Please call your congressman and senators to vote against any more monies for this war and actually to defund it!  

We are also scheduling an emergency standout at Park St. this Saturday between 12 and 1.  Please come with signs!

Thank you,

Your executive committee  
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Ex-intelligence chief: Trump's access to nuclear codes is 'pretty damn scary'-You Think?

Ex-intelligence chief: Trump's access to nuclear codes is 'pretty damn scary'

James Clapper questioned the US president’s ‘fitness to be in this office’ after his speech in Phoenix, joining a growing chorus of alarm over his erratic behavior
Julian Borger in Washington
Donald Trump’s access to the nuclear codes is “pretty damn scary”, a former US intelligence chief has said, calling Trump’s rally in Arizona on Tuesday night “disturbing”.
James Clapper, director of national intelligence (DNI) for seven years under Barack Obama, questioned the US president’s “fitness to be in this office” after his demagogic performance in Phoenix, and expressed anxiety about Trump’s power to launch nuclear weapons without consulting Congress or any other official.
Once a president has verified his identity with a code kept constantly on his person or nearby, the military chain of command has no power to block his launch orders.

James Clapper: democratic institutions are 'under assault' by Trump

 “Having some understanding of the levers that a president can exercise, I worry about, frankly, the access to the nuclear codes,” Clapper told CNN, pointing to the current stand-off with North Korea.
If “in a fit of pique he decides to do something about Kim Jong-un, there’s actually very little to stop him. The whole system is built to ensure rapid response if necessary. So there’s very little in the way of controls over exercising a nuclear option, which is pretty damn scary.”
Clapper did not mention Richard Nixon, who was involved in a tense stand-off with North Korea in 1969, after the regime shot down a US spy plane. Nixon is reported to have gotten drunk and ordered a tactical nuclear strike, which was only averted by his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger.
Nixon’s biographers Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan quoted a top CIA official, George Carver, as saying: “The joint chiefs were alerted and asked to recommend targets, but Kissinger got on the phone to them. They agreed not to do anything until Nixon sobered up in the morning.”
Clapper joined a growing chorus of alarm over Trump’s erratic behaviour. The Republican chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, Bob Corker, said last week that Trump “has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful”.
On Capitol Hill, a Democratic congressman and senator have introduced a bill [links to text of Markey Lieu Bill] that would prohibit the president from launching a nuclear first strike without a declaration of war by Congress.
In the wake of the Phoenix speech and Clapper’s remarks, one of the bill’s authors, the congressman Ted Lieu, tweeted “Freaked out yet?” and called Congress to support the bill.
Peter Westmacott, a former UK ambassador to Washington, said on Twitter that the rally showed “shades of 1933 Germany”.
Clapper, who stood down as DNI in January, pointed out that he had served the US under every US president from John Kennedy to Barack Obama, having joined the Air Force in 1963.
“I don’t know when I’ve listened and watched something like this from a president that I found more disturbing,” he said. “Having some understanding of the levers of power that are available to a president if he chooses to exercise them, I found this downright scary and disturbing.
“How much longer does the country have to, to borrow a phrase, endure this nightmare?” Clapper asked. He expressed hope that other Republicans would join Corker and “reach the point where enough is enough”.
Trump is reported to have fallen out with the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, whom he is said to have berated in a foul-mouthed telephone call for failing to protect the president from the investigation into his campaign’s relationship with the Kremlin during the election campaign. The growing investigation, led by the former FBI chief Robert Mueller, is often cited privately by White House officials as driving Trump’s wilder angry outbursts.
Bruce Blair, a former missile launch officer, warned last week about the president’s untrammeled power to start a nuclear war. He voiced concern over Trump’s threats against North Korea, vowing the country would never be allowed to field a missile capable of striking the US mainland and declaring that “fire and fury like the world has never seen” would befall Pyongyang if it continued to threaten the US.

James Clapper says Watergate 'pales' in comparison with Trump Russia scandal

Read more
“Nuking another country just because it seeks to acquire nuclear weapons enjoys virtually zero support from US nuclear troops,” Blair wrote in a Washington Post commentary. “Yet Trump indulges in issuing such threats, and he has unchecked authority to order a preventive nuclear strike against any nation he wants with a single verbal direction to the Pentagon war room.”
Blair is now a research scholar in Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security and a founder of Global Zero, a movement calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
“ Under the current nuclear strike protocol, [Trump] can consult any and all – or none – of his national security advisers, and no one can legally countermand his order,” he wrote.
“If he gave the green light using his nuclear codes, a launch order the length of a tweet would be transmitted and carried out within a few minutes. I could fire my missiles 60 seconds after receiving an order. There would be no recalling missiles fired from silos and submarines.”

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The time is now to repeal the 2001 Authorization For Use of Military Force


Massachusetts Peace Action

The time is now to repeal the 2001 Authorization For Use of Military Force

Dear Douglas ,
Last night, President Trump announced a “new” strategy for U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. In it, he made clear that the one thing that he won’t be changing is waging ongoing and unending war.

After nearly 16 years, it’s long past obvious that military options are not going to bring the longest war in American history to an end. Adding a reported 4,000 additional troops to the 8,400 soldiers already there is not going to accomplish now what 100,000 U.S. troops couldn’t do in 2011. The last 16 years has taught us there is simply no military solution in Afghanistan. Yet that’s apparently the only option the Trump administration even considered.

It’s time for Congress to correct the mistake it made when it passed the 2001 Authorization For Use of Military Force (AUMF) but failed to include an end date to the authorization.

Write Senators Markey and Warren and your U.S. Representative today and ask them support a repeal of the 2001 AUMF, and to hold a debate about Trump's war in Afghanistan. They should oppose endless war.

By sending in potentially thousands more U.S. troops with no withdrawal date mandated, the war will now continue through its third U.S.  presidency. 
The Afghan people have experienced war for at least 38 years and deserve a different policy.

The war in Afghanistan has already cost the U.S. dearly in blood and treasure. Over 3,500 U.S. military and civilian contractors have lost their lives. That number is dwarfed by the more than 26,000 Afghan civilians who have died as a result of this war. All this at a cost of nearly $800 billion. We simply can’t afford to continue on this path.


Please write Massachusetts U.S. Senators and your Representative and urge them support a repeal of the 2001 AUMF, and to hold a debate and in it to oppose ongoing war in Afghanistan.


When the AUMF was passed in 2001, it was intended to bring the perpetrators of 9/11 to justice. That goal has largely been accomplished. Yet, with Trump’s announcement tonight, and Congress failing to fulfill its constitutional duty, the war in Afghanistan will continue with no real plan for a lasting peace. Rather, we continue to have a blank check for a war with no end in sight.

Please, tell your members of Congress that you expect them to stand up and fulfill their responsibilities by repealing the 2001 AUMF, and debating whether to authorize continued, endless war.
Cole Harrison
For an end to endless war,
Cole Harrison
Executive Director

Visit our website to learn more about joining the organization or donating to Massachusetts Peace Action!
We thank you for the financial support that makes this work possible. 
Massachusetts Peace Action, 11 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138
617-354-2169  • info@masspeaceaction.org • Follow us on Facebook or Twitter
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Free The Boston August 19th Anti-Fascist Protesters-Build The Anti-Fascist United Front

Free The Boston August 19th Anti-Fascist Protesters-Build The Anti-Fascist United Front  


Free the Boston Protesters!

August 23, 2017
 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date:  August 23, 2017
 
 
 
STATEMENT 
BY THE 
COMMITTEE FOR INTERNATIONAL LABOR DEFENSE 
ON THE BOSTON PROTESTERS
 
 
The Committee for International Labor Defense joins with our sisters and brothers of Black Lives Matter Boston and Cambridge, to call on the Boston Municipal Court, Mayor Marty Walsh, District Attorney Dan Conley, and Police Commissioner William Evans, to drop all charges stemming from the unlawful arrest and detainment of about 30 protesters on Saturday, August 19, 2017, at the “Fight Supremacy” rally on Boston Common.
 
Many of the protesters were unnecessarily injured by police during the confrontations and arrests. All those arrested were charged with crimes ranging from disorderly conduct to assault, for holding their ground against fascism and white supremacy in the southeast quadrant of Boston Common and surrounding areas.
 
The Committee for International Labor Defense is aware that the arrestees face court appearances on August 21, 22 and 23, to determine their fate, and we are closely monitoring each of their cases. The Committee squarely and publicly holds the City of Boston accountable for the health and safety of every one of these political prisoners, including the minor who is only 15 years of age.
 
The Committee for International Labor Defense demands the immediate release of the Boston 33, dismissal of all legal charges, and withdrawal of all fines and penalties for which the Court may hold them liable. Their arrest was unjust and a violation of the democratic right to protest that is fundamental to the U.S. constitution and US history. No one should be arrested for standing against racism and racist violence.
 
FREE THE BOSTON 33 NOW!
 
We are mindful that on this day, exactly 90 years ago, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ruthlessly electrocuted two working class political prisoners named Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, during a time of similar unrest.  We will not allow those crimes to be repeated.
 
The Committee for International Labor Defense calls on our brothers and sisters in the labor movement to show solidarity these working class political prisoners in memory of Sacco and Vanzetti, one of International Labor Defense’s very first cases.  The capitalist bosses and their repressive state apparatus have changed little since 1927, as we can see through these attacks on working class protesters. 
 
Signed by:
 
The Committee for International Labor Defense
Boston, August 23, 2017

The Bolshevik Revolution and Women’s Liberation


The Bolshevik Revolution and Women’s Liberation

Workers Vanguard No. 1107
10 March 2017

TROTSKY

LENIN
The Bolshevik Revolution and Women’s Liberation
(Quote of the Week)
On International Women’s Day in Petrograd in March 1917, a mass outpouring of working women sparked the revolutionary upheaval that culminated in the Russian October Revolution. The smashing of capitalist class rule brought unheard-of gains for women in all areas of public and private life. Despite economic backwardness and poverty, the young Soviet workers government sought to undermine the material foundations of women’s oppression, which is rooted in the institution of the family. The Bolsheviks understood that complete social equality could only be attained with the abolition of classes in a world socialist society. In a 1920 commemoration of International Working Women’s Day, Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin underscored the fact that the fight for women’s liberation is inseparable from the fight for international socialist revolution.
Capitalism combines formal equality with economic and, consequently, social inequality. That is one of the principal features of capitalism, one that is deliberately obscured by the supporters of the bourgeoisie, the liberals, and is not understood by petty-bourgeois democrats. This feature of capitalism, incidentally, renders it necessary for us in our resolute fight for economic equality openly to admit capitalist inequality, and even, under certain conditions, to make this open admission of inequality the basis of the proletarian statehood (the Soviet Constitution).
But even in the matter of formal equality (equality before the law, the “equality” of the well-fed and the hungry, of the man of property and the propertyless), capitalism cannot be consistent. And one of the most glaring manifestations of this inconsistency is the inequality of women. Complete equality has not been granted even by the most progressive republican, and democratic bourgeois states.
The Soviet Republic of Russia, on the other hand, at once swept away all legislative traces of the inequality of women without exception, and immediately ensured their complete equality before the law.
It is said that the best criterion of the cultural level is the legal status of women. This aphorism contains a grain of profound truth. From this standpoint only the dictatorship of the proletariat, only the socialist state could attain, as it has attained, the highest cultural level. The new, mighty and unparalleled stimulus given to the working women’s movement is therefore inevitably associated with the foundation (and consolidation) of the first Soviet Republic—and, in addition to and in connection with this, with the Communist International.
Since mention has been made of those who were oppressed by capitalism, directly or indirectly, in whole or in part, it must be said that the Soviet system, and only the Soviet system, guarantees democracy. This is clearly shown by the position of the working class and the poor peasants. It is clearly shown by the position of women.
But the Soviet system is the last decisive struggle for the abolition of classes, for economic and social equality. Democracy, even democracy for those who were oppressed by capitalism, including the oppressed sex, is not enough for us.
It is the chief task of the working women’s movement to fight for economic and social equality, and not only formal equality, for women. The chief thing is to get women to take part in socially productive labour, to liberate them from “domestic slavery,” to free them from their stupefying and humiliating subjugation to the eternal drudgery of the kitchen and the nursery.
This struggle will be a long one, and it demands a radical reconstruction both of social technique and of morals. But it will end in the complete triumph of communism.
—V.I. Lenin, “International Working Women’s Day” (4 March 1920)