Sunday, September 24, 2006

*From The Archives Of "Women And Revolution"-"Silkwood"-A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for Karen Silkwood

Markin comment:

The following is an article from the Spring 1984 issue of "Women and Revolution" that may have some historical interest for old "new leftists", perhaps, and well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of "Women and Revolution" during Women's History Month and periodically throughout the year.

**********

Silkwood. Directed by Mike Nichols. Written by
Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen. ABC Motion Pictures.
A Twentieth Century-Fox release, 1984.


By Amy Rath

The long-standing controversy over the death of Karen Silkwood is being debated yet again, as the release of the movie Silkwood brings the case into the public eye. Silkwood has long been embraced by feminist and ecology groups as a heroine and martyr to the atomic power industry—the "no-nuke" Norma Rae; many believe she was deliberately poisoned with radioactive material and murdered to shut her up. Now, the movie, starring Meryl Streep and directed by Mike Nichols, has been seized upon by such bourgeois mouthpieces as the New York Times and the Washington Post to propagandize for the nuclear energy industry and smear her name.

"Fact and Legend Clash in "Silkwood'," cired the Times' science writer William J. broad, masquerading as a movie critic in the Sunday Arts and Leisure section. "Chicanery," "meretricious," "a perversion of the reporter's craft," blasts a Times (25 December 1983) editorial. That same day the Washington Post printed a piece by one Nick Thimmesch, a free-lance journalist with ties to Silkwood's employer, the Kerr-McGee corporation, charging "glaring discrepancies between the known record and the film's representations."

These are lies. In fact, Silkwood sticks remarkably close to the documentary record. If anything, it is surprisingly devoid of politics for such an alleged propaganda tract. Frankly, it's a little dull. It includes a lot of material (some of it made up, presumably for dramatic interest) about Karen Silkwood's unremarkable personal life. Like most people, she had problems with her lovers and roommates, didn't get along with her ex-spouse, was often troubled, and drank and took drugs. The bulk of the movie is a retelling of the last few weeks of her life, and raises more questions than it answers. How were Karen Silkwood's body and home contaminated with plutonium? Was Kerr-McGee deliberately covering up faulty fuel rods, which could lead to a disastrous accident at the breeder-reactor in Washington state where the rods were to be shipped? What happened on that Oklahoma highway on 13 November 1974, when Karen Silkwood was killed in a car crash, en route to an interview with a New York Times reporter?

The ending of the movie shows Silkwood blinded by the headlights of a truck on the highway, then her mangled body and car, seeming to imply that she was run off the road, as indeed independent investigators have concluded from an examination of her car and the tire tracks on the road and grass. Then a written message on the screen reports that Oklahoma police ruled her death a one-car accident and found traces of methaqualone (Quaalude) and alcohol in her blood¬stream. The conclusion is left for the viewer to decide We may never know the answers to these questions. As we noted in Workers Vanguard (No. 146,25 February 1977) in an article titled "Conspiracy and Cover-Up in Atomic Industry: FBI Drops Inquiry in Karen Silkwood Death":

"The abrupt cancellation of the second Congressional investigation into FBI handling of the case of Karen Silkwood has added to a widespread belief that the facts surrounding the death of the young trade unionist two years ago are being covered up at the highest levels of industry and government.

"...her documentation of company negligence and falsification of safety records was damning to powerful interests and as long as the bourgeois courts and commissions are running the investigations of her death, the only results will be successive cover-ups of the cover-ups."

In the fall of 1974 Karen Silkwood had been working for two years as a laboratory technician at the Cimarron, Oklahoma plutonium processing facility owned by Kerr-McGee, one of the largest energy conglomerates in the U.S. She became interested in health and safety issues at the plant. She brought her worries to the union, the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW), and was elected as a union safety inspector, the movie makes this appear to be her first interest in the union. In fact, she had been one of the few die-hards in a defeated strike the previous year; she never crossed the picket line and she remained in the union even when its membership went down to 20. Along with fellow unionists, she traveled to union headquarters in Washington, D.C., where officials assigned her to gather documentation of company cover-ups of faulty fuel rods, as well as other safety violations.

Early in November 1974, Silkwood was repeatedly contaminated with plutonium, one of the deadliest materials known to man, in circumstances which have never been fully explained. In the Hollywood movie Meryl Streep ends up with raw pink patches over her face from decontamination scrubdowns. Her panicked expression when she knows she has to face a second one imparts the horror of it. Yet it is only a pale image of the reality. Silkwood's first scrubdown was with Tide and Clorox; the two others which, occurred over the next two days employed a sandpaper-like paste of potassium permanganate and sodium bisulfate. De¬spite this chemical torture (try scrubbing yourself with Ajax sometime), her skin still registered high levels of radiation. Worse yet, three days of nasal smears (to monitor inhaled radioactive contamination) increased to over 40,000 disintegrations per minute (dpm)— normal background radiation from cosmic rays and naturally occurring isotopes is roughly 30 dpm.

Silkwood's house was contaminated as well; it was stripped and her belongings were sealed and buried— one scene poignantly portrayed in the movie. An examination conducted at the medical facility at Los Alamos showed that she had received internal contami¬nation possibly as high as 24 nanocuries of plutonium (about 50,000 dpm). The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC, now Nuclear Regulatory Commission) has set a lifetime limit of 16 nanocuries; many specialists consider this hundreds of times too high. The fact is that plutonium is an extremely potent carcinogen, inhalation of which is virtually certain to induce lung cancer at levels where other radioactive nuclides can be tolerat¬ed. And Silkwood was particularly susceptible—she was female, had lung problems (asthma) and was small, under 100 pounds. In short, the plutonium she received chained her to cancer and a painful, slow death.

It is for this contamination, which an Oklahoma jury ruled the responsibility of Kerr-McGee, that $10.5 million in punitive damages was assessed against the company for the Silkwood estate. On January 11 the Supreme Court ruled the court had a legitimate right to assess this penalty; however, the case has been returned to a Jower court where Kerr-McGee may challenge the award on new grounds. Kerr-McGee has held that the contamination was "by her own hand," as a plot to discredit the company, a contention repeated by the New York Times in its editorial, which doesn't even mention that a jury had ruled this imputation not proved.

Since then, theories about Silkwood's contamination have included such slanderous tales as that put forth by alleged FBI informer Jacque Srouji, who claimed that Silkwood was deliberately contaminated by the union, to create a martyr. This is a telling indication of how far the capitalists will go to discredit the only thing that stands between the workers and total disregard for any safety. In the movie the International union representatives are made to appear as a bunch of slick bureaucrats who push Silkwood way out front without anywhere near sufficient backup. Certainly the OCAW is as craven before the capitalists as any other union in the U.S. But it has fought, however partially, for safer conditions for the workers it represents.

In the movie, Silkwood posits that someone purposely contaminated her urine-specimen jar with plutonium while it was in her locker room, a jar she later accidentally broke in her bathroom at home. This explanation is plausible, but we can't know for certain. We do know that Silkwood had been a straight A student in school, the only girl in her high school chemistry class, a member of the National Honor Society. She had studied medical technology. She knew that tampering with plutonium was death. The idea that she would deliberately contaminate herself could originate only in the sick and vicious minds of a profit-mad industry like Kerr-McGee.

Even the New York Times had to admit that Kerr-McGee was "a hellish place to work." Between 1970 and 1974 there were 574 reported exposures to plutonium. Dr. Karl Morgan, formerly a health physicist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, testified at a Congressional investigation that he had never seen a facility so poorly run. The plant was constructed in a tornado alley; the tornado warnings were so frequent that the company never bothered to remove the plutonium to a safe place. Yet the hazards of the plant get barely a nod in the film. Only one other instance of contamination is shown, Silkwood's friend Thelma. But when Silkwood is shown leaving off her urine sample at the lab for analysis, the audience sees many such samples lined up, thus many more contaminations.

Yes, nuclear power is dangerous. An accident such as almost happened at Three Mile Island could kill thousands of people. But the only "solution" to this problem provided by the movie Silkwood—and shared in real life by the OCAW union tops—is, ironically enough, the New York Times! Get the Times to publish the damning evidence, and the AEC will make Kerr-McGee straighten things out. The crusading press will save America by publicly exposing wrong, and the government will step in and perform justice. Sure. This is a liberal pipedream: the AEC serves the interests of power conglomerates like Kerr-McGee, and the New York Times worships money, not justice.

The "no-nukers" hail the name of Silkwood in their campaign to abolish nuclear power. But the problem is that you have to replace it with something, and in this capitalist society there is no such thing as a danger-free source of energy. For generations workers have died miserably in coal mines and suffocated to death with black lung disease. Like any technology, nuclear power can be used and abused. It is not so much a question of a special technology, but the irrationality of the capitalist economy which makes all industry in the U.S., including the nuclear industry, hazardous. Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan threatens to blow up the world hundreds of times over to save American profits. Over 90 percent of the nuclear waste in this country is military. And that's nothing compared to the global nuclear holocaust plotted in the Pentagon. That is the real danger of nuclear power.

The no-nuke movement is part of a middle-class ecological concern that the disastrous conditions which workers have faced for generations might spread to the suburbs, perhaps even onto a college campus. Anti-nuke groups actively publicize and collect funds for the Silkwood lawsuit but not a peep is heard in protest against the murder of Gregory Goobic during a two-week strike by OCAW Local 1-326 in Rodeo, California last January. Goobic, a 20-year-old union member, was run down by a scab truck while picketing a Union 76 oil refinery. A company boss, with arms folded, stood in the dead striker's blood as cops kept the other picketers away. The capitalists and their government are not interested in the lives of their employees, particularly when adequate wages, work¬ing conditions and safety precautions stand in the way of profits. Obviously one thing militants in unions such as OCAW must do is fight for safety committees with the power to close down plants. But equally necessarily is the struggle to replace the pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy with a leadership that will break with both bourgeois parties and build a workers party. The world will be safe to live in when the ruling class has been expropriated by a workers government that runs society for the benefit of all, not the profits of a few.

Silkwood has been denounced by corporate spokesmen at the New York Times for portraying Karen Silkwood as "a nuclear Joan of Arc" when she was really "a victim of her own infatuation with drugs"; it has been denounced by anti-nuke fan Anna Mayo of the Village Voice for portraying her as a dope-smoking "bad girl" when she was really "beloved daughter, sister, friend, union martyr and heroine of the largest, most viable grass-roots force in the U.S. and Western Europe, the anti-nuclear movement."

Actually, Karen Silkwood was simply a union militant fighting the best she could for a better life for herself and her coworkers against one of the least safe, most powerful, biggest price-gouging capitalist enterprises in the country. And we think the movie did a nice job showing it."

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

*FREEDOM NOW FOR MUMIA ABU-JAMAL

Click on the title to link to the Partisan Defense Committee Web site.

I AM PASSING ON THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT RECENTLY RECEIVED FROM THE PARTISAN DEFENSE COMMITTEE. I NEED ONLY ADD THAT THE POINT MENTIONED ABOUT THE NEED TO CALL FOR MUMIA'S FREEDOM RATHER THAN THE CALL FOR A NEW TRIAL RETAINS ALL ITS VALIDITY. FINALLY, IF YOU DO NOTHING ELSE IN YOUR POLITICAL LIFE STAND BY THIS INNOCENT MAN. SUPPORT, ORGANIZE, RAISE FUNDS FOR HIS DEFENSE.


FREEDOM NOW FOR MUMIA ABU-JAMAL

The fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal is at a critical juncture. A prize-winning journalist, former Black Panther Party spokesman, supporter of the MOVE organization and defiant opponent of racist state terror, Mumia was railroaded to death row in 1982 on false charges of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. On July 20, Mumia filed his opening legal brief in the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia, which last December put his case on a "fast track" for decision. The forces of the capitalist state have long been determined to carry out Mumia's legal lynching as a warning to those who challenge racist cop repression, to fighters against U.S. imperialist depredations, to workers who stand up for their rights on the picket lines. The Partisan Defense Committee—a legal and social defense organization associated with the Marxist Spartacist League—calls on all opponents of racist injustice, and in particular the labor movement, to mobilize for freedom now for Mumia!

Mumia's life is in grave danger. The court is expected to rule in a matter of months whether he will live, die or have further legal proceedings. Both Mumia and the prosecu­tion are appealing a 2001 ruling by U.S. District Court judge William Yohn, who overturned Mumia's death sentence but upheld every aspect of his frame-up conviction. The Third Circuit has refused to hear any evidence of Mumia's innocence and has only allowed him to challenge three of the more than two dozen constitutional violations in his case. For more than five years, state and federal courts have refused to hear the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot and killed Daniel Faulkner. In an affidavit reprinted in the PDC pamphlet The Fight to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal—Mumia Is Innocent!, Beverly says that he was hired to kill Faulkner, who was reportedly interfering with prostitution, gambling, drugs and police payoffs, and that "Jamal had nothing to do with the shooting."

The courts have suppressed the Beverly evidence because it demonstrates that the injustice done to Mumia was not the work of one rogue cop, prosecutor or judge but the workings of a "justice" system whose purpose is to repress the working class, minorities and the poor on behalf of the capitalist ruling class. The fight to free Mumia must be waged on the basis that he is an innocent man, the victim of a political and racist frame-up. The need to mobilize around this understanding is underscored by the fact that Beverly's confession and other proof of Mumia's innocence—including the suppression and coercion of eyewitnesses by police and prosecutors and their fabrication, some two months after his arrest, of a phony "confession" by Mumia—cannot even get a hearing in the capitalist courts.

The Beverly confession has been derided by liberals like the writer Dave Lindorff and all but ignored by reformist left organizations. Many liberals object to Mumia's treatment in the courts but see it as at most an "aberration" in an otherwise fair and just legal system, and they regard the idea that the cops would frame up an innocent man as absurd.

But to see that such frame-ups are routine procedure requires looking no further than a special prosecutor's report released on July 19, which examines nearly 150 cases in which Chicago cops used electroshock, suffocation and torture to beat bogus confessions out of black "suspects." Although the Chicago report is mainly a damage-control job, it nonetheless confirms that there was widespread torture and that police brass knew about it and gave a commendation to the cops who were doing it. It was well-documented at the time of Mumia's trial that the Philly police used similar methods.

Mumia's frame-up was not only racist—it was politically driven as well. The police and FBI had Mumia in their sights since his Black Panther youth and continued their vendetta as he became known as "the voice of the voiceless" for his searing commentaries on racism, poverty and repression—a role Mumia continues to play through his writings from death row.

The three issues covered in Mumia's new brief point to the racist and political bias that saturated his trial and appeals, proving that Mumia, like Dred Scott in 1857, has no rights that a court is bound to respect. One issue is the racist bias of the late hanging judge Albert Sabo, a member of the Fraternal Order of Police (F.O.P.) who presided over Mumia's 1982 trial and again at his post-conviction (PCRA) hearings in the 1990s. The court filings highlight a 2001 affidavit of court reporter Terri Maurer-Carter, who disclosed that at the time of the trial she overheard Sabo say, "I'm going to help them fry the n---r." During the 1995 PCRA hearings, Sabo routinely quashed Mumia's subpoenas, sustained prosecution objections and found all of Mumia's witnesses "incredible." Sabo jailed PDC attorney Rachel Wolkenstein, then a member of Mumia's legal team, and told another defense lawyer, "Counselor, justice is just an emotional feeling."

The brief also exposes the prosecutor's racist jury-rigging at the trial. Excluding black jurors was an official policy of the Philadelphia DA.'s office, codified in a 1987 training video directing prosecutors to strike "blacks from the low-income areas" from juries because they have "a resentment for law enforcement." Statistical studies prove that this was the practice throughout the 1980s. Mumia's brief documents that for his trial "a black person's odds of being struck were ten times higher than someone who is white" (emphasis in original).

Mumia's third challenge strikes at the prosecution's outrageous closing argument that the jury should err on the side of convicting Mumia because he would have "appeal after appeal." This argument blatantly erased the reasonable doubt standard, telling the jury that in case of doubt they should convict Mumia. Mumia's brief also responds to the prosecution's own appeal of Judge Yohn's 2001 ruling, which seeks to reverse the overturning of Mumia's death sentence. Yohn found the sentence to be unconstitutional because the sen­tencing form and jury instructions did not allow jurors to freely consider all the "mitigating circumstances" weighing against a death sentence. Yet Mumia has remained on death row this entire time.

Mumia's case is what the death penalty is all about. It is a legacy of chattel slavery and the ultimate weapon in the government's arsenal of repression aimed at the working class and oppressed. The capitalist rulers want to see Mumia dead because they see in him the spectre of black revolution, a voice of defiant opposition to their system of racist oppression. Acting as their spearhead is the F.O.P., which has tried to intimidate Mumia's sup­porters at every step.
On July 19, the day before Mumia filed his court brief, more than 130 British lawyers released a letter to the court calling to overturn his conviction. Their letter emphasizes that the courts' blatant bias against Mumia must be seen "in the light of the Katrina hurricane disaster in New Orleans, when television viewers in every country of the world witnessed an unparalleled display of racism on a massive scale, allowed (some would say enabled) by the US government." The National Lawyers Guild and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund will be filing amicus (friend of court) briefs on Mumia's behalf.

The frame-up of Mumia Abu-Jamal is an object lesson in the class character of the capitalist state—centrally the cops, courts, prisons and military—which is an apparatus of violence used to preserve bourgeois rule by suppressing the working class and oppressed. An international movement of millions stayed the executioner's hand in 1995 after Mumia's first death warrant was issued. But that movement was systematically demobilized by reformist organizations that tailored their appeals to the liberal "mainstream," to those who saw in Mumia's case a "miscarriage of justice" that could be remedied if only he got a new, "fair" trial. As Rachel Wolkenstein stated earlier this year, in a talk printed in The Fight to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal:

"This meant tying Mumia's defense to what Democratic Party politicians would accept, like the need for a new trial to clean up the image created by Sabo's indisputably racially biased trial and PCRA proceeding. This meant denying the truth about the capitalist state and its vendetta against black militants, the COINTELPRO targeting of Mumia, the murderous attacks on the MOVE organization.

"Appealing to the 'mainstream' also meant ambiguity on the question of Mumia's inno­cence—and on whether he lives or dies, is entombed for life or goes free—so long as there is a new trial. It meant rejecting the very reasons that millions around the globe had taken up Mumia's cause: revulsion with the injustices inherent in capitalism— poverty, racial and ethnic bias, war. There was broad identification with Mumia's fight against the 'system' and for justice for all of humanity."

Every legal remedy must be pursued on Mumia's behalf. But Mumia himself told the French Communist Party's newspaper L'Humanite (25 April) that he had "very little hope in a favorable decision" by the Third Circuit court. Since first taking up Mumia's cause in 1987, the PDC has warned against any illusions in bourgeois "justice," placing all our faith in mobilizing the social power of the working class and the oppressed in defense of Mumia. If successful, the fight for Mumia's freedom would, as Wolkenstein stated in her talk, "strike a blow against the government's 'anti-terror' campaign and the evisceration of democratic rights. It would give labor a sense of its own power. The fight for Mumia is the fight for black liberation, for the liberation of us all, part of the struggle for socialist revolution."

We must mobilize now to make Mumia's fight once again a rallying cry against racist "legal lynching," against black oppression, against government repression. Free Mumia! Abolish the racist death penalty!

Join the Fight to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Contact the Partisan Defense Committee.
e-mail: partisandefense@earthlink.net • Web site: www.partisandefense.org New York: PO. Box

99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013-0099 • (212) 406-4252 Chicago: PO. Box 802867, Chicago, IL 60680-2867 • (312) 563-0442 Bay Area: RO. Box 77462, San Francisco, CA 94107-0462 • (510) 839-0852

Friday, September 15, 2006

THE YEAR OF THE WORKING CLASS

COMMENTARY

DON’T COMMENT, ORGANIZE!


It seems that every time this writer picks up any serious journal, newspaper or other periodical there is some article about the plight of the American working class family and the fact, which nobody bothers to deny at this point, that the class divide in this country (and elsewhere) is getting wider. I am not complaining about the fact of publication about the plight of the working class, mind you. After all anything that exposes the fact that there are, surprise, surprise, actually classes in American society warms this old Marxist’s heart. What bothers me is that after making their exposes the writers either have no prescription for solving the problem or, if they do believe that it can be resolved, it is by returning the Democratic Party to power on the national level. To state the problem I have with the prospectives of these writers this way is to give the answer. There will be no solution. The times, however, cry out for a solution. And the start of that solution is to break from the old capitalist party parliamentary solutions and build a workers party. Nothing new here. But it must be done. In short, don’t comment, organize!

Along the same lines this writer recently read an article by Tony Judt in, of all places, the very proper old Cold War liberal New York Review of Books on the possible resurgence of Marxism in some form. Obviously, I, personally, would link the creation of a workers party to a Marxian program. I have made that clear from the beginning of these postings. What is interesting is that that nature of the world since the ‘second phase’ globalization of capitalism has occurred over the last couple of decades that some commentators have picked up on the fact that the conditions of the international labor market now look an awful lot like those at the turn of the last century. In short, a lot of people are going to be presenting their solutions to the crisis and not all of them are in the interest of the international working class. Certainly Professor Judt does not want to see any resurgence of Marxism, having spent the better part of his career expounding on the benefits of the capitalist order against Stalinism. Stay tuned for more on this.

NO FREE SPEECH FOR FASCISTS/KLANSMEN

COMMENTARY

ORGANIZE MASS LABOR ACTIONS AND NIP THIS THREAT IN THE BUD

In a recent blog (dated, September 4, 2006) this writer mentioned that one of the Klan groups in this country held a demonstration at the Gettysburg National Cemetery over the Labor Day, 2006 weekend around a list of demands that included bringing the troops home from Iraq in order to patrol the U.S. borders. Symbols mean a lot in politics and the notion that Klansmen were permitted to demonstrate at a key symbol in the fight to end slavery and preserve the union raised my temperature more than a little. As I said then Gettysburg has been hallowed ground for generations of militants fought and paid for in great struggle and much blood BY Northern troops.

At that time I posed the question of what, if any, opposition to the demonstration leftists had put together to run these hooded fools out of town. In response, I was raked over the coals for calling for an organized fight by labor to nip these elements in the bud. Why? Apparently some people believe that running the fools out of town would have violated the Klan’s free speech rights. Something is desperately misunderstood here about both the nature of free speech and the nature of the Klan/fascist menace.

First, let us be clear, militant leftists defend every democratic right as best we can. I have often argued in this space that to a great extend militant leftists are the only active defenders of such rights- on the streets, where it counts. That said, the parameters of such rights, as all democratic rights, do not trump the needs of the class struggle. In short, militant leftist have no interest in defending or extending the rights of fascists and Klansmen to fill the air with their gibberish. Now that may offend some American Civil Liberties Union-types but any self-respecting militant leftist knows that such a position is right is his or her ‘gut’.

Moreover, let us take stock of what we are dealing with here. With the arrival of the Bush Administration we have heard from the left, especially the less politically sophisticated elements, the word fascist, etc. bandied about as a descriptive term for that crowd. Wrong. Yes, the Bush crowd is an extreme right-wing parliamentary cabal and surely harbors more than a few crypto-fascists in its entourage. However, they operate mainly within the norms of bourgeois democracy. Fascism (and here the Klan represents a home-grown variety of that trend) is based on the extra-parliamentary mobilization of the destroyed and decaying middle class. That seemingly subtle distinction is clear in the United States at this time. Militant leftists, if appropriate, can debate the right-wing parliamentary elements. You fight, to the best of your abilities and resources, the para-military forces as they surface in the streets. Supporting democratic rights for fascists/Klansmen, much less getting on the same debating platform with them, is not only foolhardy but sows dangerous illusions about the nature of their threat. There is nothing to debate.

In the final analysis we will be fighting the Klan-types on the streets and the issue will no be rights of free expression (except, maybe, in defense of ours) but the survival of our organizations. A short glance at history is to the point. One of the great tragedies of the Western labor movement was the defeat and destruction of the German labor movement in the wake of Hitler’s Nazi Party’s rise to power in 1933. That destruction was brought on by the fatally erroneous policies of both the German Social Democratic and its ostrich-like ‘see no evil' policy and that of the Communists parties and its “Third Period” isolationist policy. Thus, neither party fully saw the danger in time and compounded that error when they did see it and yet still refused to call for a united front of all labor organizations to confront and destroy Hitler and his storm troopers. We know the result. And it was not necessary.

Moreover, Hitler’s organization at one time (in the mid-1920’s) was small and unimportant like today’s Klan/Nazi threat. But that does not mean that under certain circumstances that could not change. By 1930 Hitler had 100,000 trained and disciplined storm troopers who were fighting the labor organizations in the streets and in the working class districts. And that, dear readers, is exactly the point of my argument. NO FREE SPEECH FOR FASCISTS/KLANMEN! ORGANIZE LABOR TO CLEAR THE STREETS OF THIS RABBLE WHEN THEY SURFACE! NIP THE KLAN/NAZIS IN THE BUD!

Monday, September 04, 2006

EVERYONE WANTS TO DO SOMETHING WITH THE TROOPS IN IRAQ-EXCEPT IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL

EVERYONE WANTS TO DO SOMETHING WITH THE TROOPS IN IRAQ- EXCEPT IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL.

COMMENTARY

BUSH, AL QAEDA AND THE KLAN HAVE THEIR DREAMS- AND THEY ARE NOT PRETTY


In a recent blog, dated September 3, 2006, this writer jokingly mentioned that the only people in the world who still supported the war in Iraq were in the immediate Bush entourage. Apparently I was not as far from the truth as I thought. The Bush Administration has clearly drawn a line in the sand on Iraq and has adamantly proclaimed that troops will stay in Iraq as long as that administration draws breathe. And Bush means every word of it. So we know exactly what he wants to do with the troops in Iraq. Leave them as hostages to the sectarian civil war there. Much more interesting are a couple of news reports concerning an American Al Qaeda operative and a Klu Klux Klan demonstration at the Gettysburg National Cemetery. Even hard core American right-wingers and Islamic fundamentalists are getting into the anti-Bush act.

On the American Al Qaeda operative. Apparently this Californian trained at an Al Qaeda base prior to 9/11 and then skipped to the Middle East, shortly after those events, with the FBI hot on his trail. Recently he came forward as an English-speaking spokesman (oops, spokesperson) for Al Qaeda’s No.2 man. And here is what his take on the American troops in Iraq is. He has called for the troops to switch sides and support the Al Qaeda cause in Iraq and Afghanistan. Jesus, and all I want to do is withdraw the troops from Iraq. After that, while I do not expect them to turn their swords into plowshares, I sure as hell do not expect them to become cannon fodder for Islamic fundamentalists. Know this- militant leftists have, as a part of their business of changing the world, a fight against religious fundamentalism and that most definitely includes this crowd. It is not always true, and in this case it is definitely not true, that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. We just have to order our priorities- American imperialism is today the main enemy of the peoples of the world. We will deal with the other enemies in due course.

On the Klu Klux Klan demonstration. I do not, as of this moment, know if there was any opposition by militant leftists to the fact that this organization was allowed to demonstrate anywhere, let alone Gettysburg National Cemetery. Gettysburg is hallowed ground for all those who struggled against slavery and the preservation of the union in the American Civil War- the Second American Revolution. That the Klan be permitted anywhere near there is a provocation in itself. In any case, I will deal with the issue of free speech for fascists and Klansmen (oops! Klanspersons) in another blog. What I want to mention here is one of their demands. Their spokesperson called for the troops in Iraq to come home- and patrol the borders (presumably with Mexico) against the so-called immigration menace. What I mentioned above concerning Al Qaeda pertains to this group as well.

The Bush Plan. The Al Qaeda Plan. The Klan Plan. All their dreams are our nightmares. What about the Markin Plan? That’s a simple idea given today’s political conjecture. The only way out is for the troops in Iraq to figure a way out. Use history, particularly the Russian Revolution, as an example. Given the opposing plans presented here I do believe that Markin’s Plan takes the only rationale course. At least this writer’s proposal ultimately gets the troops out of harm’s way. Which is just a shorthand way to say that this writer will, shortly, be sending another open letter to the troops in Iraq (see blog, dated August 24, 2006 for first open letter)- this time with some suggestions for really organizing a troop withdrawal. Enough said.

VOTE NO ON THE ABORTION REFERENDUM-HR 1215-IN SOUTH DAKOTA ON NOV.7TH

COMMENTARY

VOTE NO ON THIS DIRECT CHALLENGE TO ROE vs. WADE

FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY



NOVEMBER UPDATE: Well, the results are in and the good citizens of South Dakota have defeated HR 1215 by a fair margin. This is a small but important victory against the onslaught of the so-called 'right to life' forces. The results, at least temporarily, cuts those forces off the direct path to the United States Supreme Court that the authors of the legislation intended by its draconian provisions. However, be vigilant as these small victories are always subject to challenge in some other forum by the right-wing forces. The states are apparently still the battlegrounds for the fight to further restrict access to abortion-which means in practice poor and young women will find abortion harder to come by. Government out of the bedrooms! Defend the right to privacy! Forward to Women's Liberation.

ORIGINAL POST

This writer has spilled no little ink castigating the judicial decisions of the Neanderthals who pose as justices on the United States Supreme Court. And rightly so. And I am sure that I will have plenty of occasions to do so again. But some times these guys (and I do mean guys because at the time, in 1973, the court consisted of all men) get it at least partially right. That decision was Roe v. Wade which for all intents and purposes declared that a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion (or not) fell within her right to privacy and thus was constitutional protected against the snooping of the state. As far as that decision went in the direction of increased, if partial and reversible, democratic rights militant leftists supported the decision. And defend it today. Moreover, today we face yet another, apparently frontal, challenge to the decision this time in South Dakota. We are duty-bound to try to beat this one back as well.

Since 1973 later Supreme Court memberships have attempted to nullify abortion rights by making the scope of Roe v. Wade much more restrictive than the original court decision, generally under some compelling state interest rationale in creating more restrictive procedures. State legislatures have also contributed their ‘wisdom’ by narrowing its scope and making the procedures, especially for the most vulnerable- teenage girls and poor women, as hard and impractical as possible. To add fuel to the fire various so-called “right-to-life” groups have, at times, spent much time and effort in intimidating women at abortion clinics.

Now the South Dakota legislature has passed a law which has all the hallmarks of an openly declared war cry in order to get this issue before the Supremes again. The legislation, HR 1215, is intentionally so restrictive of the conditions under which an abortion would be legally permitted as to totally negate the right. The only stated condition that would make an abortion legal in South Dakota is if the mother’s life was in danger. Not even rape or incest cases would qualify. Thanks a lot. Christ, where the hell do these people who make such proposals come from. However, the legislation is up for a vote by the citizens of South Dakota on November 7th. This bill must be voted down.

Militant leftists must remember, or be made aware, that the political environment in 1973 when Roe. v. Wade was officially decided was a time of social protest and the awakening of the women’s liberation movement. Such protest has quite a lot to do with how the decision came down and that it was decided at all. There is a lesson for us here. The long and short of it is that every democratic gain must be defended strongly against the inevitable war to chip away those rights. A women’s right to choose falls in that category. But it is not enough to merely defend that right. To make the right real we need to insure those poor women, teenagers and others who do not have easy access to abortion clinics have that access as part of free, yes free, universal quality health care. This fact starkly comes home in the case of South Dakota where, according to news reports, there is only one abortion clinic in the whole state. Thus, the beginning of wisdom on this issue is that we need to fight to implement the socialist program. But until that time- DEFEND ABORTION RIGHTS. NO ON HR 1215. FREE ABORTION ON DEMAND. FREE QUALITY UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE FOR ALL.

THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES OF COMMENTARY ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!

*Labor's Untold Story- The 19th Century Labor-Farmer Alliances

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for Farmers' Alliances and link from there.

Every Month Is Labor History Month

This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

Sunday, September 03, 2006

*Labor's Untold Story- Honor The Labor Organizer And Women's Rights Fighter Lucy Parsons

Click on title to link to The Lucy Parsons Project.

Every Month Is Labor History Month

This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

*Labor's Untold Story- Honor The Haymarket Martyr Labor Organizer Albert Parsons

Click on title to link to the "Autobiography of Haymarket Martyr and labor leader Albert Parsons. This hardly the last you will hear about this man in this on-going labor series.

Every Month Is Labor History Month

This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

MARRIAGE IS APPARENTLY NOT FOR THE FAINT-HEARTED

COMMENTARY

NOTES ON THE RECENT NEW YORK AND WASHINGTON STATE SAME-SEX MARRIAGE DECISIONS

FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!

UPDATED: NOVEMBER 24, 2006


As noted in the commentary below the thrust of the fight on the issue of same-sex marriage has returned to the states with a vengeance. Since the original blog the midterm 2006 elections have produces seven more states that have passed resolutions or state constitutional amendments defining marriage in the old fashion way-one man, one woman. Arizona is the only state that bucked the trend. Also since the summer the New Jersey Supreme Court has held that same-sex marriage does not violate the state constitution. However, unlike Massachusetts the justices left it up to the state legislative to run with the issue. The struggle continues but remember- Government out of the bedrooms!

Originally posted: August 2006

Earlier this year, when the United States Senate was discussing and voting on a proposal to make the prohibition against same-sex marriage a constitutional amendment this writer pointed out that with the defeat of that measure in the United States Senate the battle ground would again shift to the states and particularly to the judiciary. (see blog, dated June 7, 2006). The states have been the battleground for quite some time. Numerous states have overwhelmingly approved various state constitutional amendments, statutes, etc. banning same-sex marriage. This summer the highest courts of New York and Washington states have rendered decisions along that same line. What is striking is the legal reasoning used to justify the majority decisions in these cases. One would think these cases were about prohibitions against indentured servitude rather than marriage. Here’s why.

One would have thought that in this day in age the act of marriage, at its core, represents nothing more than the act of registering the fact two people decided to legally fortify their relationship. Apparently this writer is way off base in that assumption. According to the legal reasoning put forward by the majorities in the aforementioned states procreation is a fundamental state interest. Fair enough. However, to those majorities the point of marriage, the fundamental point, is to ensure that procreation is protected within that act. Odd, odd indeed. While it would be easy to punch a hole (or rather about 10,000 holes) in that reasoning I will let it go. Let me say this- by the courts’ reasoning whole categories, way beyond the targeted same-sex couples, would be affected if their reasoning is followed through to the end. A rule of thumb in judicial- decision making is to tailor the decision as narrowly as possible while addressing the facts of the case. It takes an active act of judicial malice to take a swipe at most of society in order to get to your sacrificial lambs. Nice going Washington and New York Supremes.



THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!

THE (IL)LOGIC OF THE NATION-STATE

COMMENTARY

‘GLOBALIZATION’ THEORY TAKES A BEATING

FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!


The recent events in the Middle East and elsewhere have highlighted the irrational nature of trying to confine economic, social and political developments to the nation-state system in the age of imperialism. Every conflict from the sectarian civil war in Iraq to the Israeli- Lebanese border war to the Israeli-Palestinian struggle cries out for a socialist solution. That is a fight to the finish, not between ethnically divided populations, but a working class based solution. Today’s political configurations, including the prevalent of religious fundamentalism on all sides in every struggle, make that proposition seem utopian at best and irrelevant at worst. This writer will concede that it is entirely possible that just solutions to these conflicts may proved ultimately intractable nevertheless it is equally obvious that the capitalist nation-state system provides no way out of this dilemma. Sometimes one must fight for what is necessary as well as what is right.

Ironically, Marxists have historically had mixed feelings about the role of the nation-state in history. In the age of the rise of capitalist development at a time when the capitalist system as a whole was a truly progressive historical development, that is until about World War I, Marxists welcomed the formation of nation-states against the particularist , provincial nature of the feudal system. Since World War I, that is since the rise of the full blown imperialist age, Marxist have generally opposed the nation-state in the metropolitan areas. Nevertheless, even today Marxists extend support to national liberation struggles and defend the right to national self-determination for oppressed and neo-colonial peoples. The right to national self-determination has been an integral of the revolutionary program since the early days of the Communist International. The support for struggle of the Palestinian peoples for their own, even if truncated, state falls under that premise. Why? To take the national question off the agenda and place the class question to the fore.

While this little note makes no pretense to do anything but pose the question, to be taken up in future blogs, of the strategies necessary to replace the nation-state with other forms of political organization it does take issue with the notion, currently fashionable, that the process of ‘globalization’ will solve the problems of the nation-state by making borders irrelevant. Well, this writer for one would be more than happy if that were to be the case. However, who is the utopian here? If anything the process of globalization-let us call it by its right name, the international capitalist system- has intensified the tensions in the nation-state system. This ‘globalization’, by the way did not start recently. The whole development of the capitalist system from its progressive beginnings to its imperialist decay has been the struggle to internationalize the market. In short, the capitalists have had their chance - it is time to move on over and let others solve the question of international economic, social and political development. More, much more, later.


THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!

INHERIT THE WIND?

INHERIT THE WIND?

COMMENTARY

OF INHERITANCES AND MINIMUM WAGES

FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!


In the press of other commentaries this writer has had to delay commenting on proposed legislation this summer by Congress concerning the obviously connected issues of the abolition (or severe reduction) of the federal inheritance tax and the marginal increment of the federal minimum wage standard (see blog, dated July 5, 2006 concerning the minimum wage proposal). Obvious, you ask? Yes, those few thousand heirs who are trying to stampede Congress to protect their billions (and have spent many millions to get their way) and those millions fighting to make minimum wages (even at a lousy $7/hr) and thus avoid leaving their heirs to inherit the wind is compelling. Agreed?

At least that connection is compelling interest group politics in the demented minds of the Republican congressional leadership which parleyed these two items together in an effort to embarrass (if that is possible) the Democrats. How? By forcing an up or down vote on the counterposed issues and thus forcing the Democrats to vote against the federal minimum wage proposal. The Democrats initially, with a view to the fall congressional elections, supported an increase in the minimum wage in order to grandstand to a part of their constituency. As if any self-respecting person could, with a straight face, support much less propose a $7 minimum wage in this day in age (see below). Democratic politicians not having to personally live on the minimum wage apparently have weird senses of humor. The Republicans, responding to their very different base, faced no such embarrassment. Their proposal to severely cap, if not eliminate, the inheritance tax for millionaires and billionaires set just the right tone. And avoided an increase in the minimum wage, which they did not want, to boot. My hat is off to the Republican leadership for joining the two issues together. Just when this writer thought that parliamentary cretinism had reached a bottom line beyond which no rational politics could go he finds out that there is an abyss instead. Well you live and learn.

In an earlier blog, cited in the first paragraph, I counterposed to the minimum wage the fight for a living wage. I stand by that idea here. What one may ask is a living wage? Well, for openers the current median household income. That is somewhere near $50,000/yr. Do the math on the proposed federal minimum wage of $7/hr. Anyway one cuts it the total is about $15,000/yr. That, these days, just barely covers a family’s energy, housing and food costs. Get real. It is embarrassing to this writer to have to discuss the concerns of a small part of society which is worried (and seriously worried) about inheritance taxes when several million people have to get by on that $15,000/yr. Hell, I couldn’t. Can anyone else? Something is desperately wrong with this society’s priorities.

Do not get me wrong about the inheritance tax issue. In the final analysis a workers government will not simply confine itself to taxing the rich but will confiscate their inheritances as part of the social redistribution process. And not shed a single tear about it. The rich can work just like the rest of us, at first for their daily needs and by those deeds promote the good of society. However, that is music for the future. The point now is that the current inheritance tax does not hurt the people we care about-working people. The point at which the tax sets in is far, far above anything a worker’s estate would trigger. In short, the fight over this tax, one way or the other, is not central to our fight for a more just society.

Beyond that, various schemes to tax the rich which periodically spring up on the part of leftists as a means of the redistribution of the social surplus are generally put forth in order to deflect the need for class struggle. Needless to say to really put a crimp in the lifestyles of the “rich and famous” working people need to take state power. We need that solution in order to do more than inherit the wind. Forward.


THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!

FOR MORE POLITICAL COMMENTARY AND BOOKS REVIEWS CHECK MY BLOG AT- Http://markinbookreview.blogspot.com/

WHAT ABOUT THE TROOP DRAW DOWN IN IRAQ?

EVERYONE WANTS TO DO SOMETHING WITH THE TROOPS IN IRAQ- EXCEPT IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL.

COMMENTARY

BUSH, AL QAEDA AND THE KLAN HAVE THEIR DREAMS- AND THEY ARE NOT PRETTY


In a recent blog, dated September 3, 2006, this writer jokingly mentioned that the only people in the world who still supported the war in Iraq were in the immediate Bush entourage. Apparently I was as not as far from the truth as I thought. The Bush Administration has clearly drawn a line in the sand on Iraq and has adamantly proclaimed that troops will stay in Iraq as long as that administration draws breathe. And Bush means every word of it. So we know exactly what he wants to do with the troops in Iraq. Leave them as hostages to the sectarian civil war there. Much more interesting are a couple of news reports concerning an American Al Qaeda operative and a Klu Klux Klan demonstration at the Gettysburg National Cemetery. Even hard core American right-wingers and Islamic fundamentalists are getting into the anti-Bush act.

On the American Al Qaeda operative. Apparently this Californian trained at an Al Qaeda base prior to 9/11 and then skipped to the Middle East shortly after those events with the FBI hot on his trail. Recently he came forward as an English-speaking spokesman (oops, spokesperson) for Al Qaeda’s No.2 man. And here is what his take on the American troops in Iraq is. He has called for the troops to switch sides and support the Al Qaeda cause in Iraq and Afghanistan. Jesus, and all I want to do is withdraw the troops from Iraq. After that, while I do not expect them to turn their swords into plowshares, I sure as hell do not expect them to become cannon fodder for Islamic fundamentalists. Know this- militant leftists have, as a part of their business of changing the world, a fight against religious fundamentalism and that most definitely includes this crowd. It is not always true, and in this case it is definitely not true, that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. We just have to order our priorities- American imperialism is today the main enemy of the peoples of the world. We will deal with the other enemies in due course.

On the Klu Klux Klan demonstration. I do not, as of this moment, know if there was any opposition by militant leftists to the fact that this organization was allowed to demonstrate anywhere, let alone Gettysburg National Cemetery. Gettysburg is hallowed ground for all those who struggled against slavery and the preservation of the union in the American Civil War- the Second American Revolution. That the Klan be permitted anywhere near there is a provocation in itself. In any case, I will deal with the issue of free speech for fascists and Klansmen (oops! Klanspersons) in another blog. What I want to mention here is one of their demands. Their spokesperson called for the troops in Iraq to come home and patrol the borders (presumably with Mexico) against the so-called immigration menace. What I mentioned above concerning Al Qaeda pertains to this group as well.

The Bush Plan. The Al Qaeda Plan. The Klan Plan. All their dreams are our nightmares. What about the Markin Plan? That’s a simple idea given today’s political conjecture. The only way out is for the troops in Iraq to figure a way out. Use history, particularly the Russian Revolution, as an example. Given the opposing plans presented here I do believe that Markin’s Plan takes the only rationale course. At least this writer’s proposal ultimately gets the troops out of harm’s way. Which is just a shorthand way to say that this writer will, shortly, be sending another open letter to the troops in Iraq (see blog, dated August 24, 2006 for first open letter)- this time with some suggestions for really organizing a troop withdrawal. Enough said.

Saturday, September 02, 2006

*From The Archives Of "Women And Revolution"-British Miners Fight for All the Oppressed

Click on the headline to link to a"LibCom" website entry for the British miners' strike of 1984-85. This link is provided to give some "color" to the story at the local level from a different political prospective from mine.

Markin comment:

The following is an article from the Spring 1985 issue of "Women and Revolution" that may have some historical interest for old "new leftists", perhaps, and well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of "Women and Revolution" during Women's History Month and periodically throughout the year.

**********

British Miners Fight for All the Oppressed

The British coal miners' strike now in its eleventh month is a crucial class battle whose outcome will shape the social and political climate of the country for years to come. Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is seeking with unrestrained savagery to bludgeon and starve the miners into submission. If the miners lose, they and the whole British working class will be dealt with in the same spirit of limitless vindictiveness that Thatcher unleashed on the helpless young Argentine sailors of the Belgrano during the Falklands/Malvinas war. Thatcher personally supervised this gratuitous war crime when the ship, miles from the war zone, was dispatched to the bottom of the icy Atlantic.

But the British miners do not intend to lose. Standing alone thanks to the treachery of the Labour Party/ Trades Union Congress tops, they have held out against everything that bloody Thatcher and her cops could throw against them. They have endured thousands of arrests and countless injuries and they are still fighting. And their courageous defiance of the vicious "Iron Lady" has won to their side the most oppressed layers of
British society. The heat of sharp class struggle has tended to forge a spirit of solidarity between the miners and oppressed sectors such as blacks, Asians and Irish.

This political point was emphasized by comrade Eibhlin McDonald, a leader of the Spartacist League of Britain, during her recent visit to the U.S. We reprint below comrade Eibhlin's remarks at a public Spartacist forum in New York last November 16 (originally published in Workers Vanguard No. 367,23 November 1984) and her speech to a national internal meeting of the Spartacus Youth League (WV No. 368, 7 December 1984).

Women have played an active role in the miners' strike. Although women do not work in the British mines, being barred by law from doing so since 1942, the miners' wives have taken their place alongside their men. And they have made their presence felt since the beginning. When one week into the strike Thatcher deployed 10,000 cops in a martial law operation, Kent women beat back a police blockade at the Dartford Tunnel aimed at sealing the Kent strikers off, and went on through to join a demonstration in Leicestershire. In addition to organizing collections of food and money for the strikers' families, the women have been active strike militants. Their participation on picket lines has been especially important given the awesome scope of police attacks, where sometimes hundreds of miners are arrested in a single swoop. When 20,000 coal field women and supporters marched through London last August 11, one prominent slogan was "No surrender!" Here in the United States, the Spartacist League and Partisan Defense Committee have been campaigning to win political support among American unionists for the embattled British miners, and to raise desperately needed funds for the miners and their families. As of February 16, a total of $16,905.63 had been raised. W&R appeals to our readers to generously support this effort. Please make checks payable to: Aid to Striking British Miners'Families; mail to: Partisan Defense Committee, Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013.

I'm a member of the British section of the Spartacist tendency, and I'd like to take a few moments to describe to people particularly the British miners' strike which has been going on now for about nine months, I believe. In fact, we had a demonstration recently in London organized by the Spartacist League on the question of South Africa, where a number of miners attended. And we raised the slogan, "African Gold Miners, British Coal Miners— Same Enemy, Same Fight, Workers of the World Unite!" [Applause.] And this slogan had a really powerful resonance—one which is very deeply felt in Britain, primarily as a result of the experience of these miners after nine months on strike. Because you have to understand, two miners have been killed on picket lines; several others have died on the way to picket lines; and most recently people have been killed trying to salvage coal from rubbish tips in order to heat their homes. If you imagine what it's like to have been without money for your family for nine months—no money for food, they have no heating, t nothing like that.

However, they're pretty solid. They're not going back. Because they know that to go back means 20,000 jobs will be lost, and whole communities will be devastated. And, in fact, several thousand of them have been arrested, just simply for picketing. Thatcher has learned a few lessons from Botha's South Africa. They've recently adopted the tactic, instead of throwing people in prison—you obviously can't throw eight, nine, ten thousand miners in prison, because the prisons will overflow—so what they've started to do is to deport them within the country. People are sent off from English coal mines to the north of Scotland, and are not allowed to return home until after the strike.
So there was a certain identification with some of the stuff that was described recently in South Africa among the British miners. There is, of course, a scabbing operation, pretty well funded, we believe probably by the Vatican. Although if you listen to the news reports, then you could very easily be misled. Because as one miner told us recently in one of our meetings— according to the news reports there are now 3,500 scabs in his pit, which he finds very hard to believe, since only 500 people work there [laughter].

Now, there are two things that I want to draw out from the British miners' strike. One is that such a hard-fought class battle against the Thatcher government has inspired whole sections of the population in support for the miners. It's particularly noticeable among the black and Asian community. Something that is very new in Britain—you have a situation where miners, when they come into the city of London from their areas in order to collect money, of course the cops hound them throughout London, and arrest them for trying to collect money and so forth. They go along to a pub in the black ghetto, and the cops come into the pub— "Where are these miners?"—they want to arrest them. But the word had gone out that the cops were arriving, so of course the local people had hidden them. You know: "What miners? There are no miners here." Now, this kind of thing never would have happened before, because capitalism fosters those kind of divisions, and given that the miners union is predominantly white, this solidarity is a direct result of the struggle against Thatcher.

Another aspect of it is that women, mainly miners' wives and families, who'd come from pretty isolated communities, have in fact become political and taken on a leadership role in the strike and have organized themselves into strike committees.

And the other thing that I want to draw out of it is on the Russian question. It comes up most concretely and revolves around the question of Polish Solidarnosc', in Britain, and it's very sharply felt. Because the background to this miners' strike was in fact—the leader of the British miners, Arthur Scargill, happened to mention before a trade-union conference a year ago that Solidarnosc' was an anti-socialist organization. For this he was witchhunted and hounded by not only the capitalist class, the Tory party and so forth, but by a whole section of the trade-union leadership. And it has now become very clear, the people who were most outraged by Scargill's statement are today urging their union members to cross miners' picket lines quite openly. The leader of the Solidarnosc' movement in Poland has sent a message of solidarity... to the scabs. And so Solidarnosc is hated and despised, not just among the British miners, but among whole sections of the population. Which is actually quite a good thing, because it doesn't bode well for Thatcher's war preparations against the Soviet Union.

They do the same kind of thing there. Talking about the "evil empire" in Russia. Except that in Britain a lot of the population now doesn't believe it, because they have seen miners go off to the Soviet Union and have very nice holidays on the Black Sea, you know, for their families and so forth. And they see this on television, and say, well, this is "totalitarian Russia"...it really doesn't look so bad looking at it from Britain [laughter].

Now, just in conclusion. One of the things that is patently obviously missing from the situation is a revolutionary party with a policy directed to the overthrow of capitalism. Because in order to cohere together the struggle, particularly in a situation where old frameworks are breaking down within the country, to cohere and direct that struggle requires a program for the overthrow of capitalism. And that's what the existing trade-union leadership and the Labour Party in Britain doesn't have. For example, twice in the course of the miners' strike, the dockers were out on strike, and were sent back, having gained absolutely nothing. Because these leaders understand that in order to go all out and do what is necessary in order to win the strike, you must be prepared to at least play around with the question of power. And that's what they're not prepared to do.

That in a nutshell is the strategy and program that the Spartacist League has been fighting for there. Because simply in order to win this strike, it's necessary to spread it to other sections of the working class. We hope as the outcome of that kind of successful class battle that you will have the basis for building a revolutionary party. Because in Britain, in South Africa, in fact in the U.S., you can have very hard-fought class battles which may lose or in fact may be frittered away, if you're not prepared to go all the way and address the question of power, for the working class in power, like they did in Russia in 1917.

The Red Avengers [see article, page 24] is kind of a hard act to follow, but let me make one point that one comrade made in the forum in Toronto the other night: the British miners would really love the Red Avengers.

What I want to try to do is give you a flavor of the political situation in Britain, because it really is in marked contrast with Reagan's America right now. But there's something that I would like to underline, which is that the Thatcher government is in the second term of office and went in with a pretty big majority in the election in 1983, not quite as big as Reagan's. The first real opposition they ran into came from the British miners. And it's important to have the understanding and the hope that Reagan will run into the same kind of trouble, because it really does alter the political contours in the country.

You'll have noticed in the press here recently a lot of ballyhoo about a big "back-to-work" movement. And you could very easily be misled, because if you really added up the figures for people that have gone back to work then you probably would get more than is actually in the miners union, in the NUM itself. However, it is true that there has been a certain erosion within the strike recently. (Unlike what the bourgeois press tells you, it's not because of the Qaddafi connection. Miners think that it's really wonderful if they get money from anywhere, and one of them has said recently, in a meeting where someone mentioned the Qaddafi connection, "Well, you know, if we can't get money from Qaddafi, maybe we can get guns. We can use them." And it's not because of getting money from the Soviet Union—they'd love it.) But as of now, there's not much prospect of industrial struggle alongside the miners, and so they're basically now having to dig in to try and survive through the winter pretty much on their own against all the forces of the capitalist state. And that does have an effect on certain elements in the union.

Now, some of the things that are most striking about the course of the struggle. First of all, the way in which whole sections of the population who are normally deeply divided have rallied behind the miners and have seen in the miners' strike a possible solution to what they suffer under Thatcher. This is particularly true for the racially oppressed minorities. The blacks and Asians in Britain have become some of the most solid supporters of the miners. If you understand that the miners union is predominantly white, and pretty elitist in its political attitudes, for them to find allies in the black and Asian population is really quite a change in British politics. The reason for the identification is that the kind of treatment that's being dished out to the miners in the course of the strike is something that has been dished out to the black and Asian population in the inner cities in Britain for quite a long time.

And there's also the fact that the racial minorities tend to do the dirtiest, most dangerous and worst paid jobs in Britain. In actual fact British mining almost falls into that category, because you have to understand that miners or craftsmen in the British mines might take home, at the end of having worked 40 hours, less than $100 a week. And that's someone who's gone through an apprenticeship. And it's really dangerous and there's a lot of accidents. So there's that reason for identification as well.

It's also true of the Irish population. Previously if you had an IRA bombing in the mainland of Britain, regardless of what the target was, it was always followed by a wave of anti-Irish hysteria. You know, a pretty bad period. Whereas recently when the IRA bombed the hotel where a lot of Tories were staying during their conference the response was everybody cheered because one of the people who suffered most was the employment minister, Norman Tebbit. They showed these pictures on television of this guy lying under four or five floors of rubble and then being dragged out by his feet, and everybody cheered and clapped and thought it was wonderful. And someone had the response, whoever did this should be shot—for missing the target. They're really sorry they missed Thatcher.

There's also another example of the way in which the social divisions have broken down. There's an organization in London called Lesbians and Gay Men Support the Miners, and they have regular weekly meetings. Miners come along and address their meetings and express their solidarity with them, and they collect money and they give it to the miners. This is previously inconceivable in Britain.

And this seems true in other unions. There's a lot of workers in other unions who really desperately want to strike alongside the miners and to support them, but their leadership really doesn't want to take on that question.

The other thing that's really striking is on the Russian question— It's really clear that the miners' strike has done more to thwart Thatcher's war plans against the Soviet Union than all the peace demonstrations—and there have been a lot of them in Britain. You know, there's a big CND organization, you've had Greenham Common women, and so forth. And I tell you, the Greenharn Common women have become really insignificant by comparison with the miners' wives, who are out there organizing and fighting for support of the strike. And in more ways than one they really are the backbone of the strike.

The third thing is that, given that so much depends on the outcome of this strike, unless you're prepared to address the question of power, then you cannot even bring this strike to the conclusion that is possible. What I mean is that this strike could have been won several months ago. You had the dockers out on strike twice, and Britain is an island economy so the docks are pretty important. The dockers are a militant union. And you have this situation where the leadership of the trade-union movement and of the Labour Party itself are actually divided. The right wing of both the Labour Party and the trade-union bureaucracy—they're openly anti-Russian, anti-Communist; they were the people who really witchhunted [NUM leader] Arthur Scargill when he denounced Polish Solidarnosc'. And it's really clear today, they just tell their members to cross miners' picket lines, ignore the strike and don't give them any money.
On the other hand you've got the left wing of the trade-union bureaucracy and of the Labour Party that are not openly anti-Russian. But they simply will not call their members out on strike action. So you have a situation like when the dockers were out on strike, or the railwaymen. Several hundred members of the railway unions have been victimized, locked out and sent home, for refusing to handle scab coal on the trains. And their union is doing absolutely nothing to defend them, having originally instructed them to not handle the scab coal.

Now, the Labour Party. I believe that never before in its history has the Labour Party been more discredited. And this was as a result of the miners' strike. There's this character Denis Healey in the British Labour Party who's well known to have connections with the CIA and there's a clot of people around him, and we raised the slogan that this guy should be driven out of the Labour Party because the sort of dislocation that it would cause would be really interesting and would break the mold of British social democracy. And Tony Benn came here to New York and various other places and argued that well, of course, the last thing in the world the miners want is to see the Labour Party splitting right now. Well, I'll tell you this is a lie. Most of the miners could see these guys in hell, never mind driven out of the Labour Party. The general secretary of the TUC appeared in a meeting recently and the miners hung up a noose for him in the back of the room. Because you know, they have declared their open animosity to the miners' strike.

We're going to do this fund drive in the U.S. And there's a lot of miners that are really keen to come and meet the Spartacist League and the SYL in the U.S. They're really excited to come here and they desperately need the money. So I think that this will be really important for the international tendency. And it'll be important for the miners.

*Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!:An Introduction For 2006

Click On Title To Link To Site With Information About The Book Used In This Commentary. This Link Is Placed Here By The Writer Merely For Informational Purposes To Assist Those Who Wish To Get A Copy Of The Book.

Every Month Is Labor History Month

Book Review

Labor’s Untold Story, Richard O. Boyer and Herbert Morais, United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers Of America (UE), New York, 1976,


As I have often noted this space is dedicated to the struggles of the American (and international) working class and their allies. Part of understanding those struggles is to know where we have been in order to have a better grasp of where we need to head in order to create a more just, socially inclined world. In my travels over the past few years I have noted, even among those who proclaim themselves progressives, radicals and revolutionaries, a woeful, and in some cases willful, lack of knowledge about the history and traditions of the American labor movement. In order to help rectify that lack I will, occasionally, post entries relating to various events, places and personalities that have helped form what was a very militant if, frustratingly, apolitical (or not purely anti-political, especially against its left-wing) labor history.

In order to provide a starting point for these snapshots in time I am using what I think is a very useful book, “Labor’s Untold Story”, Richard O. Boyer and Herbert Morais, United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers Of America (UE), New York, 1976, that I can recommend to all those militants interested in getting at least a first taste of what the once mighty organized American labor movement was all about. For those unfamiliar with labor history the UE, cited here as the publisher, was a left-wing union that was split by the main labor federations during the “red scare” of the 1950’s for being “under Communist influence” and refusing to expel its Communist Party supporters. The other organization created at the time was the International Brotherhood Of Electrical Workers (IBEW). The history of that split and its timing that caused a wasteful break in the struggle for a single industry-wide union that has been the goal of all thoughtful labor militants will, of course, be the subject of one of these entries at a later date.

That UE imprimatur, for this writer at least, is something of a plus but you know upfront that this is a pro-labor history. That said, this 400 page book is chock full of events, large and small, complete with very helpful footnotes giving greater detail (mercifully placed at the bottom of the page where the subject is mentioned), that helped turned the American labor movement from an atomized, motley group of conflicting racial, ethnic and political tendencies in the last part of the 19th century to something like a very powerful and somewhat self-confident organized force by the 1940’s. After that period there is a long term decline that, for the book, ends with the period of the “red scare” noted above and for the rest of us continues until today.

In any case here you will learn about the embryonic stages of the modern labor movement after the American Civil War with its urgent industrial demands to provide goods for a pent-up market war-ravaged market and creation of a transportation and information system adequate to meet those needs. Needless to say labor received short shrift in the bargain, especially at first before it was even minimally organized. The story here it should be made clear, the story anytime labor is the subject of discourse, is organized labor. The atomized working class as a whole minus this organization does not exist as a historical force. That, my friends, is a great lesson for today as well.

As such, it important to note the establishment in the 1870s of the National Labor Union and its offshoots, later the Knights of Labor and the role of its class collaborationist leaders. Also noted is the fight in the coal mines of the East and the legendary saga of the “Molly McGuires” in Pennsylvania our first well-know labor martyrs. Then the fight moves west to the lead, copper, silver and gold mines. That push west can only mean the establishment of the Western Federation of Miners, the emergence of the paragon of an American labor leader Big Bill Haywood, his frame-up for murder in 1905 and the subsequent rise of the Industrial Workers of The World. Wobblies (IWW). Along the way there are various attempts to form a workers party, the most promising, if amorphous, being the Tom Watson-led Populist Party in 1892 before the somewhat more class-based Socialist Party took hold.

Of course no political study of the American working class is complete without a big tip o f the hat to the tireless work of Eugene V. Debs, his labor organizing and his various presidential campaigns up through 1920. While today Debs’ efforts have to be seen in different way in light of the fact that our attitude toward labor militants running for executive offices in the capitalist state and his ‘soft’ attitude on the question of the political organization of the working class with an undifferentiated party of the whole class, he stands head and shoulders above most of the other political labor leaders of the day, especially that early renegade from Marxism, Samuel Gompers.

The first “red scare” (immediately after World War I) and its effect on the formation of the first American communist organizations responding to the creation of the first workers state in Russian ( and of the establishment of the internationally-oriented Communist International), the quiescent of the American labor movement in the 1920s (a position not unlike the state of the American working class today), the rise of the organized labor movement into a mass industrial organization in response to the ups and downs of the Great Depression, the ‘labor peace’ hiatus of World War II, the labor upsurge in the immediate post-World War II period and the “night of the long knives” of the anti-communist “red scare” of the 1950s brings the story up to the time of first publication of the book. As to be expected of a book that pre-dates the rise of the black civil right movement, the women’s liberation movement and the struggle for gay and lesbian rights there is much less about the role of race and gender the history of the American labor movement. Not to worry, the black, feminist and gender scholars have been hard at work rectifying those omissions. And I have been busy reviewing that work elsewhere in this space. But here is your start.

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

A Short Note On The Pro-Stalinist Perspective Of "Labor's Untold Story"

Commentary

Okay, okay before I get ripped apart for being some kind of Pollyanna in my review of today’s book “Labor’s Untold Story” let me make a preemptive strike. I am, painfully, aware, that, at least back in the days when such things counted, the United Electrical Workers union was dominated by supporters of the Stalinist American Communist Party. The reason that I am painfully aware of this fact was that, back in that same day, I organized the unorganized under the auspices of that union. On more than one occasion various middle level figures in that union took me up short every time I tried to “step on the toes” (that is a quote from a real conversation, by the way) of some member of their vaunted “anti-monopolist” coalition. That coalition, my friends, was (and is for any unrepentant Stalinist still around) code for various politicos associated with the American Democratic Party. That, I hope, will tell the tale.

Notwithstanding that experience, I still think that “Labor’s Untold Story” is a very good secondary source for trying to link together the various pieces of our common American labor history. The period before World War I, that is, the period before the creation of the American Communist Party and its subsequent Stalinization, is fairly honestly covered since there is no particular political reason not to do so. The authors begin their “soft-soap” when we get to the 1920s and the Lafollette presidential campaign of 1924 and then really get a up a head of steam when discussing the role of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the labor struggles of the 1930s in the interest of the Popular Front (read: the 1930s version of that “anti-monopolist” coalition mentioned above) up until about 1939.

Then, please do not forget, the authors make the ‘turn’ in the party line during the short period of the Hitler-Stalin Pact there was nothing that a good right-wing American First Committee member could not have applauded. Of course, once the Soviet Union was invaded the authors went all out in their version of defense of that country (a correct position) when World War II heated up by supporting wholesale the “no strike” pledge and assorted other anti-labor actions (incorrect positions). Then when the Cold War descended in the aftermath of the war and the “red scare” hit the unions big time they cried foul when the capitalists circled the wagons against the Soviet Union and its supporters. Yes, well I knew all that before I re-read the book and wrote the review. Still this is one of the few books which gives you, in one place, virtually every important labor issue from the post Civil War period to the 1960s (when the book ends). Be forewarned then, and get this little book and learn about our common labor history.

Friday, August 25, 2006

*"THE EARTH IS FLAT?"- The Planet Pluto Get's The Bum's Rush

Click on the title to link to a "Sunday Boston Globe", December 13, 2009, interview with scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the villain behind the demise of Pluto as a planet. Our day will come, brothers and sisters.

COMMENTARY

PLUTO IS BOOTED OUT OF THE PLANET CLUB

Not all this writer’s political commentary is earth-bound. Here is proof. The news out of Prague recently centered on the decision of a congress of international astronomers to downgrade the planet formerly known as Pluto to the status of some thing called a “dwarf planet”. Well, so be it. This writer does not know enough of the science involved to determine whether this decision is right or wrong. But, as it turns out that there were partisans on both sides of the question. Fair enough. Science moves on in such fashion.

What interests this writer is the fact that no heads will roll over the decision (at least I assume none will roll). At an earlier time in human history such monkeying with the nature of the universe would have called forth hellfire and damnation on the heads of any who challenged the then currently accepted nature of the universe. One need only think of poor Galileo, among others, who was forced to recant his studied belief that the earth was not the center of the universe. The Catholic Church, such as it was in those days, exacted a heavy toll on inquiring minds and only took a mere few centuries to apologize to brother Galileo. Unfortunately, as occurs too frequently in such cases, he was not around to benefit from the pardon. Those of us who still see ourselves as the children of the Enlightenment can take some solace that in this small area of human endeavor humankind has made some progress. In such areas as stem cell research, the fight against creationism (or its currently fashionable disguise-“intelligent design”) as an explanation for human evolution and a more broad-based view of the death process the fight continues today. Hey, let real scientists fight it out just as they have done in Prague.

Finally, let me bring matters back to earth, so to speak. This writer makes no bones about the fact that he is an earth- chauvinist. We have enough on our plate to solve the ills that beset this little speck of the universe. Unless someone can give me a cogent argument about the need to fight for the right to self-determination of Pluto I will hold stubbornly to this view. In the meantime I will occupy my time by fighting against the very real wars in Iraq and elsewhere, the dangers of religious fundamentalism of all stripes, the attempts to roll back the gains of the Enlightenment and the international capitalist “race to the bottom” among other issues. Enough said.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE RANK AND FILE SOLDIERS IN IRAQ

Your Commander-In-Chief and Chain of Command have stabbed you in the back.
The politicians, Democratic and Republican, have stabbed you in the back and spit in your face.
The anti-war movement has failed you miserably.
Damn, the ball is in your court now. It is time to leave.

This writer usually relies on his own resources to distribute his commentaries. For this important commentary, he urgently asks for the help of anyone whether you agree, agree a little or for that matter violently disagree with the contents to disseminate it. Let the service men and women in Iraq decide what they want about it. If you have friends, relatives or know anyone serving in Iraq e-mail, fax, call or write a letter (if anybody does that anymore) to them about this commentary.

Brother and Sister Soldiers, Sailors and Air Personnel in Iraq, you and I need to talk. However, before we do so I want to come to the table with clean hands. Directly below are the headlines and first paragraph of a blog (dated, August 4, 2006- see my blog site at the end of this letter) written by me and placed on several Internet sites recently:


AN OPEN LETTER TO ALL ANTI-WAR ACTIVISTS- TAKE THE PLEDGE -SUPPORT THE TROOPS-HELL, NO!

THEY MAY BE OUR SONS AND DAUGHTERS BUT THESE ARE NOT OUR TROOPS! END THE OCCUPATION OF IRAQ NOW!! IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL OF UNITED STATES/ALLIED TROOPS FROM THE MIDDLE EAST!!!

“In light of the recent seemingly never-ending revelations concerning American military atrocities toward Iraqi civilians it is high time to set the record straight about the appropriate slogans that anti-war militants use to affect the political outcome of the situation in Iraq. For those militant leftists, including this writer, who have opposed the American war aims since before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 our main slogan expressing our opposition to imperialism has been for the immediate withdrawal of all American and Allied forces from the Middle East. That continues to be the thrust of our political struggle today. But, more, much more, is necessary to accomplish that goal. It is no longer up to us-the ball is in the court of the rank and file service personnel in Iraq………”


As you can see it calls, in unambiguous terms, for all anti-war activists who have not done so already to renounce the Support The Troops slogan which has motivated many activists and declare forthrightly for Immediate Withdrawal Now- ‘cut and run’ if you will. This writer, an old militant leftist who has known army life, has opposed the Iraqi debacle from before its start under that slogan. I made no apologies for any of the above then and I make none now. But, hear me out.

It has become a truism but it bears repeating- Your Commander-In-Chief, President George W. Bush, abetted by your Chain of Command from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on down has lied to you the troops who have had to carry out their policy. Did you find, what now seems like an ancient question, weapons of mass destruction? No. Were you ‘liberators’ of the Iraqi peoples? No. Are you making the world ‘safe for democracy’? Hell, no. The Iraqi government, such as it is, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the United States government. The Iraqi government’s writ extends no further than the Green Zone, if there. Now, as of August 1, 2006, some of your fellow soldiers are being sent from other parts of Iraq to Baghdad, essentially as hostages, in the ongoing sectarian war. As of August 22, 2006 President Bush has declared, as he has in the past, that the troops will not be withdrawn from Iraq on his watch. He means every word of that.

And how about the generals? This misadventure started out as a generals’ war. “Shock and Awe”. Remember? But, it sure in hell is not a generals’ war now. Look at the lists of those killed. I do. There are plenty of sergeants, corporals and PFC’s there but mighty, mighty thin at the officer level. Surprise, surprise. A look at the wounded lists would undoubtedly show the same thing.

Are your senior officers on the ground trying to keep your butts out of harm’s way and get you out of that inferno? Hell, no. They are at least smart enough to know not to leave the Green Zone-it is dangerous out there beyond the zone. Hell, you know that. Now, as of August 3, 2006 your senior command staff no longer believes in the mission. Before a Senate Armed Services Committee panel your day to day operational commanders have sounded the retreat. Read between the lines, please- the war is lost. Today, that idea is just in their minds, tomorrow they will be moving on to the next adventure. But, you ain't going nowhere. In short, your civilian and military leaders in the chain of command are stabbing you in the back-and they like it that way. As long as you don’t complain.

But something must be up because Marine Corps General Pace during the week of August 15, 2006 made a point of addressing his Marines in Iraq in person telling them essentially all is well and to stay the course. Damn, you know these generals never talk to the rank and file soldiers unless they want something. Hell, yes you have questions about the mission in Iraq but do not expect a straight answer from the brass. They want something and it’s your butt on the line that they want. General Pace, on the other hand, flew out of Iraq the next day. Get it.

The following has also become a truism-Your Congressional leaders, Democratic and Republican, the people who fund the war have stabbed you in the back. They continue to vote the war budget to keep you there- Read this from a recent blog of mine:

“Well the votes are in from various proposals for withdrawing from Iraq put forth by some Democrats. The results speak for themselves. On the parliamentary level anti-war militants are alone. Forget the ‘softball’ non-binding Levin-Reed proposal. Jesus, they all vote for those things as a cheap way to bolster their tarnished images. They can vote for that kind of proposition all day. No, I am talking about the Kerry proposal. That went down 86-13.

In this series the writer has been trying to hammer home the one real question that counts on the parliamentary level. Yes or No on the war budget. We had our answer on that one last week- 98-1 for the war budget. Enough said.”

Translation- these people do not want you out of Iraq anytime soon. While you are getting shot at, blown away and desert-addled they can wait until next year, or the year after or (my favorite) when the situation in Iraq becomes stabilized. Christ, your grandchildren will be fighting over there by then. Enough said, indeed!

And what about the anti-war movement? We, and the writer takes his fair share of political responsibility on this, did not have, and still do not have a political strategy that would stop this war. In the final analysis, the only way to do it is to change the government which started it in the first place. For what it is worth the only time that a war was stopped was when the workers and soldiers took over the government and stopped it in World War I. That event was the revolution in Russia in 1917. That does not help us right this minute, though.

Let me just relate one thing. The name Markin is a pseudonym I write under. Let me tell where it comes from. Markin was a working class sailor in the Baltic Fleet of the Russian Navy in World War I. As war-weariness developed and it became abundantly clear that Russia could not continue in the war and revolution was in the air Markin started organizing sailor and soldier committees to challenge the brass and, ultimately, the government. To make a long story short Markin, and eventually many other Markins were really the individuals who stepped up the plate and did the right thing for themselves and their buddies. Unfortunately it now is up to you. What are you going to do? Are there any Markins out there in Iraq?

I do not know whether this is still a part of basic training but when I was in boot camp during the Vietnam War the Drill Sergeant used to beat into our closely-shaven heads that the American army does not retreat. Bull! That pearl of wisdom is o.k. for green troops but any half-ass officer knows you damn well better have a retreat plan. Where do you think the word ‘skedaddle’ came from? Call it ‘skedaddle’, ‘cut and run’, declare a victory in Iraq, however you want to justify it- but it is time to leave.

I have said enough. Some talking head from cyberspace cannot do your thinking for you. Do this, though- talk it over with your girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, wives, parents, children, anyone you care about and who cares about you. Then talk to your buddies in the barracks, on guard duty, at the PX, wherever. You know what the right thing to do is. But above all keep your own counsel. Markin in his time knew what to do. Remember Markin. When the troops in Iraq take up the slogan Support the Troops-Hell, No! then you know the end of the war is near. Enough said, for now.

FOR MORE POLITICAL COMMENTARY AND BOOKS REVIEWS CHECK MY BLOG AT- Http://markinbookreview.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

EQUAL CYBERSPACE FOR REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTAIL CONTENDERS?

COMMENTARY

IN THE CASE OF ONE GOVERNOR MITT “FLIP-FLOP” ROMNEY
OF MASSACHUSETTS

FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!

This writer has recently taken some flack for going mainly after Democratic Party politicians. Well, what of it. This writer has not hidden his belief that the Democratic Party is not progressive and therefore is an obstacle to the formation of a workers party. However many people still do not believe that proposition. Thus, the struggle is mainly against those illusions.

Moreover, does anyone seriously want to argue that there is anything progressive about the Bush Republican party? Oh, yes, I forgot about those two “log cabin “ Republicans- but they do not count because they never read the history of the Republican Party after the Civil War and Lincoln’s time. Furthermore, I thought I covered the Republican Party in recent blog when I argued that Anne Coulter should be the unopposed Republican standard bearer- she is the soul of the Republican Party. Now I can announce that Senator Lieberman should run as her Vice-President in a National Disunity Party. In any case, to placate any disgruntled readers here’s my take on one punitive Republican presidential candidate- Massachusetts Governor Mitt (Does anyone have a real name like that?) Romney. This promises to be short and sweet.

Governor Romney stands for the proposition that in Massachusetts, at least, Democratic Senator John Kerry is not the only “flip-flop” presidential candidate as Romney has scampered to turn all his previously supported positions around, for example on abortion, in order to go after the main chance. And the main chance is to placate the right wing (the only wing) of the Republican Party. Yes, indeed this boy has the “fire in the belly”. However, it must be something in the water about this flip-flop thing among the bourgeois politicians of Massachusetts.


Governor Romney also stands for the proposition that competence (or the appearance of it) should get one far in politics. This is based most recently on his leadership around the Boston “Big Dig” tragedy and fiasco. In short, the ability to tell people that Elmer’s Glue is not a good way to keep a tunnel together is suppose to add fuel to his bid for the presidency. Please.

Actually the most interesting thing about Governor Romney is not about him. As most readers probably are aware Massachusetts, through its judiciary, has declared that gay marriage is a state constitutional right. Governor Romney and other Neanderthals oppose this right and have supported efforts recently to put through a vote for constitutional change. In opposition, gay rights activists staged a protest demonstration. At that demonstration I noticed one interesting sign. The gist of the slogan was that Governor Romney’s Mormon great-grandfather has five wives and the gay sign holder only wanted one. Now Great-Grandpa Romney is a man I would want to meet. Talk about executive ability. The great-grandson is a punk in that league. Step aside, sonny.

I told you this was going to be short and sweet- Enough said.


THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!