On the Palestinian Question

Commentary

I HATE to write about the Middle East conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Any half aware political person knows why without having to go into detail. Right? There are bad days with shots fired, hostages taken, rockets launched, separation walls built and tensions on both sides inflamed by their respective leaderships. Then it goes downhill from there. However in light of American President Bush’s ‘optimism’ about concluding a just peace and, moreover, some kind of peace treaty, before he leaves office a few words are in order.

The Israeli-Palestinian dispute is a classic example of the fate of interpenetrated peoples who both have the right to national self-determination but the exercise by one of which, however, in effect denies the other of its right. There are other such situations, like in Ireland, but today this conflict is the one that is front and center. I have mentioned at other times in discussing the right to national self-determination that it is not a supra-historic right but is rather a basic democratic right. Whether or when it is exercised depends on the state of the class struggle and whether it helps resolve the national question satisfactorily. And that, my friends, is the point. Socialist support the right to national self-determination in order to take the nagging national question off the agenda and put the class question to the fore. And that is basically all we ask of it. As a general proposition, self evident in the age of ‘globalization’, the nation state is obsolete as a political entity. However, they are easier to declare obsolete than to get rid of.

For the most the part in the year 2008 the national right to self-determination does no come up as a question for most states. Although no Zionist wants to hear this, in the context of the question of Israel’s right to national self-determination, in short its right to exist, is not seriously in question. There may be a great deal of bluster on all sides about this but when the deal goes down Israel is by far the dominant military power in the region and by that fact alone assures its continued existence. Moreover, the subject Palestinian people, despite their occasional military efforts to the contrary, do not represent any threat to the existence of the state of Israel.

That, dear reader, brings us back to President Bush’s, or for that matter any party’s, efforts today to ‘resolve’ the national question here. Let us be clear, we support measures that represent even a distorted expression of the Palestinian right to national self-determination like the bi-national state. However, at the risk of sounding utopian the hard reality is that the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is one of those that really cry out for a socialist solution that goes beyond the democratic question of national self-determination where the working people of the two countries create a bi-national state as part of a greater federation in the Middle East. Ya right, you say. Okay that does sound utopian today but YOU tell me another just and equitable way out. In any case, I forewarned you that I hate to write on this subject. Enough said.

On Revolutionaries Running For President, Part II

Commentary

In the Spring of 2007, at the height of the French presidential elections, I wrote a commentary concerning my take on the then current ‘controversy’ on the left about whether revolutionaries, and more importantly, revolutionary organizations can, on principle, run candidates for the executive offices of the bourgeois state (president, governor, sheriff, etc.). (See that article reposted below today’s commentary). I noted there that my comments did not represent my final thinking on the matter. One of my premises is that there is a fair amount of propaganda value in running for these high profile offices. Now that we are in the heart of the American presidential nominating process in early 2008 it is time to reconsider the points that I made in that commentary. Again this does not represent my final thinking on the matter.

The main proponent of the argument for opposing running for executive offices on principle has been the International Communist League (ICL), an organization that has for some time been running an internal and now external argument about this issue. Underlying the ICL’s position is their perceived need to clarify the question of the state that, at times, got rather murky in discussions during the first four Congresses of the Communist International which they (and I) stand on. Admirable as that quest may be I still do not believe that the question of running for executive office in the bourgeois state, with the obvious and longstanding proviso that it is clear we refuse to take office if elected, is in need of this clarification.

Central to my premise, as noted in the earlier commentary below, was that it was unprincipled to accept funds (as revolutionaries did in France, also see below) but that the propaganda value of running for executive office outweighed not doing so as a matter of getting attention during an intense political period. I agree that there was a fair amount of confusion brought about in the Zinoviev-led Communist International around the various formulations concerning what types of workers governments could be supported, at what times and and under what conditions by revolutionaries. Moreover, I recognize that part of that confusion spilled over into Communist policy in Germany in 1923 in regard to support or non-support for various Social Democratic party administered bourgeois provinces. That said, this is nevertheless hardly an argument for not running your own candidates under your own banner for executive office.

Here, however, is where my main problem with refusal on principle comes in. There is no question, or at least there should be no question, that revolutionaries can use the united front policy on elections to critically support other worker formations in their campaigns, including their campaigns for executive office. Lenin, in Left-Wing Communism, can be cited authoritatively for that proposition. Part and parcel of that proposition is the premise that those critically supported worker formations would, if successful, administer the bourgeois state . Thus, revolutionaries would be in the position of remaining organizationally and individually ‘chaste’ while supporting, as a rope supports a hanging man, others who are not so squeamish about running and taking executive offices. I fail to see a reason, much less a principled reason, to draw that distinction here.


The ICL, as a democratic centralist organization, can rightly impose discpline on its members, including any dissenters on this question, now that the organization has publically committed itself to this position. Fair enough. The question therefore becomes whether this issue itself is, in Leninist parlance, a ‘split’issue' even if one considers that the ultimate ramifications might lead to differences on the question of the state. I say, hell no. But that brings me to my last comment. It is certainly not clear to me other than in the above-mentioned interest of historical clarification why given the immense tasks that confront the international working class movement in the fight for socialism that in the year 2007 (and now 2008) this question need take up so much of our attention. Running for but not taking executive office seems like a definitive enough policy to not be called into question at this time.

Reposted article from the Archives


On Revolutionaries Running for President(Now Part I)


The main bourgeois electoral political action of 2007 in the Western world has thus far been the French presidential elections. After the just completed first round the Gaullist and Socialist Party candidates are headed into the final round on May 6th. Recently, in a commentary on the workers movement and public campaign funding (see April 2007 archive), I used the example of the French presidential campaign in discussing the erroneous policy of ‘far left’ groups there, like the Revolutionary Communist League (English translation) and Worker’s Struggle (also English translation), of accepting campaign funds from the French state.

My position was that as a matter of integrity, the nature of our tasks and our own security this policy was unprincipled for revolutionaries. That stirred up some controversy; or rather I should say a 'tempest in a teapot', not so much around the question of accepting funds as the question of whether those organizations in France should have even fielded presidential candidates. Thus, the question is starkly posed. Can leftists in principle run for executive office in the bourgeois state and therefore take political responsibility for the administration of its policy? The following comments represent my take on this issue; however, they are by no means my final thinking on the matter.

Those of us who consider themselves Marxists owe two debts of gratitude to Vladimir Lenin. First, for leading the modern fight against parliamentary abstensionism, mainly a fight against anarchist and syndicalist tendencies in the worker’s movement to deny any importance to bourgeois elections as a means of getting out the socialist message. His classic polemic against those tendencies in ‘Left-Wing' Communism-An Infantile Disorder’ gives short shrift to such notions. Secondly, we owe Lenin for his sorely needed updating of the Marxist conception of the state and the need to replace the current bourgeois state with a workers state with its own institutions. His classic statement of the case in State and Revolution gives short shrift to the notion that a victorious worker’s revolution can take over the current state apparatus with just a little ‘fine tuning’.

Why do we need to invoke the tremendous authority of Lenin on what is a seemingly simple question of whether a revolutionary organization should or should not run for an executive office of the bourgeois state? On the basis of State and Revolution to pose the question would appear to give the answer. However, unlike other questions dealt with there this one is not one where to pose the question gives the answer.

Let us set the parameters of the debate. Nobody, or at least I hope nobody, believes in 2007 that running in elections will lead to socialism. I would also hope that nobody believes that we can simply take over the current state apparatus as is and go from there. I would further hope that no one, in some kind of anarchist funk, would fail to draw a distinction between administering the executive power of the capitalist state and using the legislative branch as a forum in order to be ‘ tribunes of the people’. Finally, for now and the foreseeable future no one should assume that this question is much more than a theoretical one. Otherwise something is desperately wrong with one's organizational priorities and one's grasp of political reality.

So now that I have safety guarded all those parameters, What is the big deal? And that is pretty much where I stand on the issue. Historically, revolutionaries have used bourgeois election periods to run on their programs and get a hearing in quarters they might not reach outside of the electoral process. In terms of executive offices, a revolutionary organization, like the Socialist Workers Party in the old days, ran for executive office with the proviso that if elected they would not serve. And that seems to me to continue to be the right policy. Those who want to carry out a policy of total refusal to participate in executive office campaigns, like the presidency, today have got to make a better argument for that decision than they have thus far.

A Short Note on the Death Penalty- The Supreme Court Oral Arguments

Commentary

One of the first, if not the first, issues that captured my passions as a young neophyte liberal politico was the fight against the death penalty. This fight seems like a never-ending battle that has had its own ebb and flows. In my youth here in Massachusetts that fight reflected the fact that no one had been executed in the state since 1947, and we wanted to keep it that way. It also reflected for me personally a fight in memory of Sacco and Vanzetti, the two Italian anarchists framed and executed in the 1920’s by this very same state of Massachusetts. Since then there have been a couple of serious attempts (one almost successful) to reimpose the death penalty. Current Republican presidential candidate and ex-Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney attempted to lead one of those efforts. He failed.

The ebb and flow of the fight against the death penalty here has also been reflected nationally as there have been periods when more states added this statute to their books, especially for heinous crimes directed at particular groups of persons like governmental officials or their agents. Lately with the successes of the Innocent Project and better scientific methods, such as DNA testing, that will stand up in court there has been something of a slow down in that trend. Recently New Jersey banned the penalty and others may follow.

This brings up today’s subject, which is a little comment on the work of the United States Supreme Court. Last week the Court agreed to accept a case to determine whether any crime other than murder, like rape, can be considered a capital crime and therefore subject to the death penalty statutes for punishment purposes. Most importantly, on Monday January 7, 2008 the Court heard oral arguments on the question of whether three dose legal injection, a method used by most of the 37 states that have the death penalty on their books, is cruel and unusual punishment under the United States Constitution. A moratorium, of sorts, on executions in the states has been in effect nationally pending a decision in this case.


If ever a death penalty opponent needed ammunition for the argument against the death penalty a reading of the transcript of the oral arguments in this case is all that is required. Getting down to the technical details of the process of injection and whether the subject human being is, in effect, being tortured by the state before taking his or her life is an almost surreal and Kafkaesque experience. That will, however, probably not deter this august Court from finding that such procedures are not cruel and unusual. The original intent theorists like justices Scalia and Thomas, aided by their dear friends justice Kennedy and the two Bush appointees, will find that anything short of drawing and quartering, a common practice in the 18th century, does not “shock the conscience” of humankind these days. Thus, our fight goes on. Abolish the Death Penalty Now!

*Leon Trotsky on Literature and Art- A Book Review

Click On Title To Link To Leon Trotsky Archive 1938 Article "Art And Politics In Our Epoch". The Points Made There By Trotsky Are Still Relevant Today.

BOOK REVIEW

Leon Trotsky on Literature and Art, Leon Trotsky, ed. By Paul N. Siegel, Pathfinder Press, Inc. New York, 1970

Some of the points made here are taken from a review of Trotsky’s other compilation on this subject "Literature and Revolution". The first part of the book under review book draws from that work in discussing the question of ‘proletarian culture’ and its probabilities

Trotsky reputedly once wrote that of the three great tragedies of life- hunger, sex and death- revolutionary Marxism, which was the driving force behind his life and work, mainly concerned itself with the struggle against hunger. That observation contains an essential truth about the central thrust of the Marxist tradition. However, as Trotsky demonstrates here, Marxist methodology cannot and should not be reduced to an analysis of and prescription for that single struggle. Here Trotsky takes on an aspect of the struggle for mass cultural development.

In a healthy post-capitalist society mass cultural development would be greatly expanded and encouraged. If the task of socialism were merely to vastly expand economic equality, in a sense, it would be a relativity simple task for a healthy socialist society in concert with other like-minded societies to provide general economic equality with a little tweaking after vanquishing the capitalism mode of production. What Marxism aimed for, and Trotsky defends here, is a prospect that with the end of class society and economic and social injustice the capacity of individual human beings to reach new heights of intellectual and creative development would flourish.

The most important and lasting polemic that Trotsky raised here, however, was the fight against the proponents of ‘proletarian culture’ inside the Russian Communist Party. The argument put forth by this trend maintained that since the Soviet Union was a workers state those who wrote about working class themes or were workers themselves should in the interest of cultural development be given special status and encouragement (read: a monopoly on the literary front). Trotsky makes short shrift of this argument by noting that, in theory at least as its turned out, the proletarian state was only a transitional state and therefore no lasting ‘proletarian culture’ would have time to develop. Although history did not turn out to prove Trotsky correct the polemic is still relevant to any theory of mass cultural development.

The second half of the book is made up of commentaries, using the Marxist method, to discuss various cultural and political figures. These include an incisive essay on Tolstoy, acerbic comment on Winston Churchill, fair eulogies of the Russian poets Essessin and Mayakovsky and a polemical article reviewing Andre Malraux's fictional work on the Chinese revolution of the 1920's. Not a bad combination to show the power of Trotsky’s thought and the range of his interests. Also, to some extend, this is a study on his progression as a writer from the somewhat florid early Tolstoy pieces to the solid polemic of the Malraux article. Read on.

The Winds of Change Do Shift

The Winds of Change Do Shift

On Friday January 4th in the aftermath of Obama’s victory in the Iowa caucuses I noted that victory and also speculated that this event represented, perhaps, the first manifestation of a leftward trend in politics after forty years in the wilderness. (See entry entitled Obama ‘The Charma” and the Baby Boomers, January 4th 2008). In response I received a comment from a reader that implied that apparently in my old age I have grown soft and now, at least tacitly, see a bourgeois politician as the hope of the future. Hell no, a thousand times no. That road is well worn with the political corpses of many of my generation. Enough of that. However, as I will point out below, there is some political significance to the Obama phenomena that actually may help those of us to the left of and opposed to the Democratic Party. Listen up, carefully. But first directly below I have reposted for the record my Friday introductory statement….

“On the day after Obama’a decisive victory in the Iowa caucuses it is only fair to acknowledge that victory even though I am politically far removed from traditional parliamentary politics. I have noted earlier this year in this space and on my American Left History blog site that the winds of change seem to be blowing leftward for the first time in forty years. That was the time of John Kennedy trying to slay the conformist dragons of the 1950’s. It is rather strange to see Hillary as the Eisenhower of this year’s drama. In any case, Obama seems to be the first national manifestation of that change. Below is a commentary made earlier this year as Obama staked his place out in the sun.”….

As any one can see this is hardly a left-handed way to declare for Obama. Look, the last forty years or so have been a disaster for leftist politics. Some of this was, surely, of our own making. Some was obviously due to international politics. But in the final analysis we were defeated because our forces were too small to fundamentally change the way political business was done in this country. In the ensuing forty plus years of cultural wars the yahoos have run rough shot over the country, and us. I would argue, however, that making a political football out of the case of the unfortunate Terri Schiavo was a watershed in the rightward drift and that event signaled its high (or rather low) watermark. The midterm 2006 Congressional elections, whatever else they represented, rather codified my thinking on this question (although the net results caught me a little by surprise).

Do these events mean that we have entered a revolutionary epoch? Hell, no. Not at least from today’s configurations. What it does represent is the fact that we of the left now have more breathing room to fight for and get an audience for our politics. That, dear friends, is where the comparison to the Kennedy days (and in any event probably more the Robert Kennedy days that Jack’s. Some of Obama’s mannerisms and speech patterns rather eerily evoke Bobby) comes in. At that time the cultural wraps of the Eisenhower years were untightened and good political work could be done. The fight for nuclear disarmament opened up, the black civil rights struggle opened up, the fight for a more democratic society opened up. Hell, it was even okay to hobnob with communists in those fights (as long as you didn’t yell it from the rooftops). Is that what the Kennedys wanted? Again, hell no. But that is where the winds of change did shift.


One of the virtues of the extreme concentration on presidential electoral politics by the media is that they poll everything that is not tied down. This time in Iowa they actually have provided some useful information that we can use. The breakdown of the youth vote is illuminating. A major fight today centers around getting the masses of youth of this country back into left wing political struggle. Yes, like in the 1960’s. The hallmark of the 1960’s, whatever else they may have produced, was the wholesale entry of the young into political struggle. Except episodically, the past forty years have not until today witnessed such a phenenomon. Again to look at history the Kennedy victory in 1960 was the catalyst for bringing many, including this writer, onto the political stage although from there we moved in our own direction.

That again is where the comparison with the rise of Obama is apt. I think that one quote from a student in Iowa kind of sums it up nicely. Drake University student Stacey Wilson stated that “No one was expecting the student turnout. Just because we’re not protesting or getting tear-gassed doesn’t mean we don’t care. I’m just glad we shocked everybody”. Yes, I am glad too. Does this mean we must dust off the old Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) buttons? No, but we better keep a rag handy. Enough for now.

Obama "The Charma" and the Baby Boomers, Part II

In the aftermath of Obama’a decisive victory in the Iowa caucuses it is only fair to acknowledge that victory even though I am politically far removed from traditional parliamentary politics. I have noted earlier this year in this space that the winds of change seem to be blowing leftward in America for the first time in forty years. That was the time of John Kennedy trying to slay the conformist dragons of the 1950’s. It is rather strange to see Hillary as the Eisenhower of this year’s drama. In any case, Obama seems to be the first national manifestation of that change. Below is a commentary made earlier this year as Obama staked his place out in the sun.


CHANGING OF THE GUARD, WELL OKAY-BUT ON WHAT PROGRAM?

It has been several weeks now since Illinois Senator Barack Obama announced his candidacy to run for President of the United States on the Democratic Party ticket. Some readers might have expected that I would drop everything to comment on this development as soon as that candidacy was announced, especially as here we have a serious (and ‘clean’) black candidate who moreover has challenged the political pretensions of baby-boomers, my generation.

Let us be clear on this, I actually agree with the Senator that it is time for newer, younger leadership to assert itself and not wait until the last grave of the last boomer is covered over before new voices can be heard on the political scene. And I offer as specimens #1 and #2 the two most recent presidents, Bush and Clinton, baby-boomers both, as prime evidence for the bankruptcy of conventional bourgeois politics. Every rationale person should go screaming into the night at the thought that another Clinton (or Bush, what about Jeb?) will be taking her apparently alternating dynastic place in the White House.

I have noted, sarcastically, elsewhere that my parent’s generation, the generation that went through childhood in the Depression of the 1930’s and fought World War II, has been misnamed “the greatest generation” for basically being quiet (in the 1950’s and 1960’s when it was time to scream like hell). Unfortunately the boomer generation has also long ago given up the ghost of whatever dreams animated our youth and made the 1960’s and early 1970’s a time-‘when to be alive was very heaven’. Some got tired, some burned out, some copped out and a few, very few, of us are left to tell the tale. Well, for what it is worth we made every error in the book of social change, there were excesses to be sure and most certainly we were defeated politically not only by the likes of one Richard M. Nixon but by ‘wannabes’ from my generation like the Bushes and Clintons who offered more of the same old politics.

But, hold on a minute. If Senator Obama wants to lead a new ‘children’s crusade’ against the current boomer establishment I want to know one thing and that is what is your program? Call me jaded but his campaign is very long on dreamy talk and very short on a program that addresses the key needs for working people-education, living wages, defense of civil liberties, repairing the physical infrastructure of the country, making New Orleans and the ghettos and barrios livable, health care and I could go on but you get the point. In short, those things that are desperately needed today but go far beyond the norms of even ‘left’ Democratic Party politics and require a workers party fighting for a workers government.

Now I can tell why I did not respond to sooner to the announcement of Obama’s candidacy. As it is Black History Month I have been concentrating on writing about various historical figures and events important to the black liberation struggle. And as a natural part of that work the name and life of Malcolm X has taken prominence. Frankly, in the presence of such a real black mass leader, the voice of the rage of the ghettos in the 1960’s, to friend and foe alike, it was hard to take the time to comment on yet another ‘clean’ black Democrat. As I pointed out in a review of the Autobiography of Malcolm X today’s black leaders like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Obama the “Charma” please take a step back, very far back. Enough said for now.

*From The Pages Of “Workers Vanguard”-Torture, Lies and Videotape

Click on the headline to link to the article from “Workers Vanguard” described in the title.


Markin comment:

As almost always these historical articles and polemics are purposefully helpful to clarify the issues in the struggle against world imperialism, particularly the “monster” here in America.

*From The Pen Of Karl Liebknecht- His Famous Slogan "The Main Enemy Is At Home"

Click on title to link to Karl Liebknecht's famous leaflet "The Main Enemy Is At Home" distributed In Germany in the heat of World War I and under penalty of arrest. For that alone Karl stands as a hero of the international working class movement.

TONY BLAIR AND THE QUESTION OF RELIGIOUS TESTS FOR OFFICE

Recent news out of England is that former Labor Party Prime Minister and current ad hoc Middle East envoy Tony Blair has converted to Catholicism from the Protestant Anglican state church. That in itself is not remarkable. My own father made the same kind of conversion from Protestantism. As kids we use to call the American equivalent of the Anglicans, the Episcopalians, left-wing Catholics. They just followed Henry the VIII rather than the Pope. The point for now is that until we create a society where the need for religious solace is not a driving force such individual decisions are neither here nor there.

What is relevant, however, is a piece of information in the article I am referring to is that Blair had not previously announced his formal conversion while Prime Minister as there was a question on whether he could continue in that office as a Catholic. I have noted elsewhere (see below earlier commentaries) that various statutes passed mainly in the 18th century excluded Catholics, dissenters and others from political office and other institutions. Part of the fight for a democratic secular republic here in America was on this very question of religious tests for office. Apparently, despite the fact that the British political landscape today, unlike the American scene, frowns on public discussion of religion in political circumstances- remember the famous statement by Blair’s press secretary stating that “We do not do God” not all obstacles to democratic secular discourse have been removed. Thus, a basis democratic fight in the British Isles needs to add a slogan calling for no religious tests for public office. That, along with abolishing of the monarchy, the Anglican state Church and the moribund House of Lords will go a long way toward that condition I mentioned above about not needing religious solace to face this wicked world.

I cannot resist one parting shot at brother Blair now that he has sworn fidelity to Rome. The above-mentioned article noted that Mr. Blair had been taking instruction for a while from the personal secretary of the British Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor. I learned Catholic ‘just war’ theory at my late mother’s knee (and have since moved on from that constricted theory). Apparently, given Mr. Blair’s bizarre and poodle-like devotion to George Bush’s war in Iraq while in office, a clear case of ‘unjust war’, he must have been absent the day the good secretary gave that lesson. All of which let’s me close on this Christmas Eve with the call for Immediate and Unconditional Withdrawal of All Troops, American and British, along with their mercenaries from Iraq.

Below are a common of other relates commentaries on the question of religious tests, of one sort or another.





NO TO RELIGIOUS TESTS FOR OFFICE - FOR SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

COMMENTARY

Every once in a while left wing propagandists, including this writer, are forced to comment on odd ball political or social questions that are not directly related to the fight for socialism. Nevertheless such questions must be addressed in the interest of preserving democratic rights, such as they are. I have often argued that socialists are, or should be, the best defenders of democratic rights, hanging in there long after many bourgeois democrats have thrown in the towel, especially on constitutional questions like abortion and searches and seizures.

A good example from the not too distant past, which I am fond of citing because it seems so counter intuitive, was opposition to the impeachment of one William Jefferson Clinton, at one time President of the United States and now potentially the first First Ladies’ man. How, one might ask could professed socialists defend the rights of the Number One Imperialist –in Chief. Simple, Clinton was not being tried for any real crimes against working people but found himself framed by the right wing cabal for his personal sexual preferences and habits. That he was not very artful in defense of himself is beside the point. We say government out of the bedrooms (or wherever) whether White House or hovel. We do no favor political witch-hunts of the highborn or the low for their personal predilections. Interestingly, no one at the time proposed that Clinton be tried as a war criminal for his very real crimes in trying to bomb Serbia, under the guidance of one Wesley Clark, back to the Stone Age (and nearly succeeding). Enough said.

Now we are confronted with another strange situation in the case of one ex-Governor of Massachusetts and current Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney on the question of his Mormon religious affiliation and his capacity to be president of a secular state. Romney, on Thursday December 6, 2007, fled down to Houston apparently forced to deal with the issue by his vanishing prospects in Iowa, and made a speech about his Mormon faith, or at least his fitness for office. This speech evoked in some quarters, at least formally, Jack Kennedy’s use in the 1960 presidential campaign of the same tool concerning his Roman Catholicism as a way to cut across anti-Catholic bigotry in a mainly Protestant country and to affirm his commitment to a democratic secular state. I pulled up that speech off the Internet and although Kennedy clearly evoked his religious affiliation many times in that speech he left it at that, a personal choice. He did not go on and on about his friendship with Jesus or enumerate the virtues of an increased role for religion in political life.

Romney’s play is another kettle of fish entirely. He WANTS to affirm that his Mormon beliefs rather than being rather esoteric are in line with mainstream Protestant fundamentalist tenets. In short, Jesus is his guide. Christ what hell, yes hell, have we come to when a major political party in a democratic secular state has for all intents and purposes a religious test for its nominee for president. A cursory glance at the history of 18th century England and its exclusion clauses, codified in statutes, for Catholics and dissenters demonstrates why our forbears rejected that notion. It is rather ironic that Romney evoked the name of Samuel Adams as an avatar of religious toleration during some ecumenical meeting in 1774. Hell, yes when you are getting ready to fight for a Republic, arms in hand, and need every gun willing to fight the King you are damn right religion is beside the point. Revolutions are like that. Trying to prove your mettle as a fundamentalist Christian in order to woo the yahoo vote in 2007 is hardly in the same category. Nevertheless on the democratic question- down with religious tests, formal or otherwise, for political office.

Now to get nasty. Isn’t it about time we started running these religious nuts back into their hideouts? I have profound differences with the political, social and economic organization of this country. However, as stated above, I stand for the defense of the democratic secular state against the yahoos when they try, friendly with Jesus or not, to bring religion foursquare into the ‘public square’. We have seen the effects of that for the last thirty or forty years and, hit me on the head if I am dreaming, but isn’t the current occupant of the White House on some kind of first name basis with his God. Enough. Look, this country is a prime example of an Enlightenment experiment, and tattered as it has become it is not a bad base to move on from. Those who, including Brother Romney, want a faith-based state- get back, way back. In the fight against religious obscurantism I will stand with science, frail as it sometimes is, any day. Defend the Enlightenment, and let’s move on.



TROUBLE IN BUCKINGHAM PALACE

COMMENTARY

ABOLISH THE BRITISH MONARCHY, STATE CHURCH AND HOUSE OF LORDS

In the normal course of events news from England’s Buckingham Palace, the seat of the British monarchy, does not directly concern socialist militants except in a propagandistic way. Most of the news lately has concerned the ‘plight’ of poor Prince Harry (or is it Prince William?) and his non-deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan with his tank unit. However another more recent piece of news permits me to make some points about the socialist attitude toward those ‘revered’ English institutions of British royalty, the established Anglican Church and the moribund House of Lords.

I will admit that I have received this news second hand but Queen Elizabeth’s eldest grandson Peter Phillips, son of her daughter Princess Anne, has become engaged to a Canadian woman. Nothing extraordinary there. However in the convoluted process of the British royal succession Peter Phillips stands number ten in line to the throne. That, again, would be neither here nor there except that the woman he proposes to marry, Autumn Kelly, is a strongly self-professed Catholic. And there is the rub. Although Peter's real chances of getting to be the ’once and future king’ are just a shade better than mine apparently if he marries the Catholic woman without some form of renunciation he violates British law. According to the Act of Settlement of 1701 (the one that brought Queen Anne, daughter of the papist James II, to the throne) no British monarch can marry a papist- a Roman Catholic. Thus, either Peter Phillips has to renounce his right to the throne or Autumn has to renounce her religious beliefs. Attempts, including one last year, to rescind that law have failed. And that is where socialists have a duty to comment.

Strange to have to say in the year 2007 but socialists, while hostile to religion on principal, are opposed to religious tests for anyone- including marrying into royalty. A great part of the struggle during the heroic days of the rise of the bourgeoisie and the fight for the Enlightenment centered on this very question of state support of, and interference in, the private realm of religion. But that is not the main point. In England the head of state, in this case the queen, is also the head of the state church. This brings me to the real argument. Despite the so-called aura of tradition and despite its alleged benign symbolic place the real fight here is to abolish the monarchy. When Oliver Cromwell and his friends established the Commonwealth during the English Revolution one of the important acts, if not the most important act, was the abolishing of the monarchy exemplified by the beheading of Charles I. I, however, do not believe that Cromwell spent enough time trying to round up Charles' sons, who later during the counter-revolution became Charles II and James II, in order to eliminate (or at least curtail) the chances of restoration. So here is my proposal. British militants take note. In order for the kids, Citizen Peter Phillips and Citizen Autumn Kelly, to get married life off to the right start-ABOLISH THE BRITISH MONARCHY, ABOLISH THE STATE CHURCH and ABOLISH THE HOUSE OF LORDS. In short, finish the tasks of the old English Revolution of the 1600’s. Those are our tasks, among others, in the British Isles.

*We Need A Different Strategy To End This Damn War, Part II

Click on the title to link to an "Under The Hood" (Fort Hood G.I. Coffeehouse)Web site online article about the "Oleo Strut" Coffeehouse, an important development in the anti-Vietnam War struggle. Hats off to those bygone anti-war fighters.

COMMENTARY

I commented on the need to change strategies in the fight against the war in Iraq on this site in September during the lead up to the Petreaus/Crocker reports. That was also a time when it had become clear that the various parliamentary maneuvers linking war appropriation approval to timetabled withdrawals by the Democratic-led Congress had fizzled. This week as Congress winds up its sorry session the same comments seem as appropriate as ever. Sad to say, I need merely update that commentary here as the main points still apply. That said, the song remains the same- U. S. Out of Iraq and Afghanistan Now.


SOMETIMES THE BIG ISSUES OF WAR AND PEACE CAN ONLY BE RESOLVED ON THE STREETS

IMMEDIATE UNCONDITIONAL WITHDRAWAL FROM IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN

It is very nice to be able to periodically run old George W. Bush through with a rhetoric spear and Thursday night's speech to the nation (referring to the speech Bush made in September in response to the Petreaus/Crocker reports- Markin 12/20) has once again taken us nicely down ‘neo-con’ memory lane with a certain flourish. Some things no matter how one packages them defy changing. I will admit I will miss the ‘old boy’ as a target when he is gone. Not as much as I miss his puppet master, Karl Rove, but I will miss him nevertheless. After almost seven years George Bush, however, is just too ‘soft’ a target and it is no longer ‘clever’ as sign of political sophistication to make hay from that source in order to end this damn war. Christ, my mother, a life long ‘bleeding heart’ conservative Catholic Republican, is taking potshots at him. If one is looking for parliamentary targets as obstacles in the struggle to immediately end this war the Congressional Democrats are more tempting. (Their okaying 70 billion dollars for Iraq this week, the week of December 18th, without a whimper only painfully highlights that impotence). They deserve it because in the end they knew, or should have known, better than to go along with the Bush agenda in Iraq in the early days.

However, after all the parliamentary wrangling and bleeding over the floor of Congress this spring on the war budget it is almost no longer fun to rip the establishment Democrats for their weak-kneed policy either. Even if Senator Reed, in response, last night (the Democratic answer to Bush’s September speech) made the right parliamentary points the sad reality is those policies on not funding the war are not going to happen. Moreover, here is the hard reality. A Democratic Party consensus appears to be forming that in the likelihood of a Democratic presidential victory in 2008 (most likely by a centrist) troop limits will not drop off significantly under that presidency and will remain in Iraq for ….. (Fill in the blank). In capsule form there are three prongs to that strategy 1. Avoid genocide and ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Iraq; 2. Cut off safe havens for Al Queda in the region 3. Counter and contain Iranian influence in the region. That, my friends, is realpolitik, Democratic style. To these eyes that means many troops for many years. End of story. (Lately, in the frenzy of the presidential campaign leading up to next months Iowa caucuses, Iraq as an issue has fallen beneath the newspaper fold).

Well, where the hell does that leave serious anti-war militants? Our slogan is for Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal. That means today (if not yesterday). Does anything said recently by any politician of note even touch on that? They are all backpedaling using the huge logistical problems to, in practice, negate the impact of that slogan. We need another strategy if we are to win this battle against the war. The long and short of it is looking for parliamentary solutions and depending on the ‘good graces’ of anti-war Democrats has had its day. I have been advocating for over a year on my blog site American Left History that we change the axis of our political struggle and form anti-war soldiers and sailors solidarity committees in order to link up with the rank and file troops and lead us to an end of the war. A couple of years ago that would have seemed somewhat far- fetched, and may strike some readers here as far too radical today, however it comes closer to political wisdom for the left than those tired old parliamentary maneuvers we have witnessed all this year. Let me make one historical point in defense of my position. When the deal goes down on the question of war and peace the only time that war stops in the ‘people’s’ interest is when the soldiers themselves put down their arms. In modern times I would refer the reader to World War I, the Russian Revolution and the American experience in the latter parts of the Vietnam War. Give some thought to this proposition. (Even my proposition has lost some of its potential as American casualty levels and the smell of ‘victory’ in Baghdad have made the troops less receptive to anti-war efforts-Markin 12/20.) More, much more on this later.

*The Streets Were Not for Dreaming, Part II- The Struggle Against The Nixon Juggernaut

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the Chicago democratic Convention in 1968.

BOOK REVIEW

Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man, Garry Wills, New American Library, New York, 1969

The English poet and Cromwellian revolutionary John Milton had his Samson struggling against forces that he did not understand and that in the end he was unable to overcome. Professor Wills in his seminal contemporaneous study of the career through his successful run in 1968, up close and personal, of one Richard Milhous Nixon, former President of the United, common criminal and currently resident of one of Dante’s Circles of Hell tries to place the same spin on the vices and virtues of this modern “Everyman”.

Wills takes us through Nixon’s hard scrabble childhood, the formative Quaker background in sunny California, the post World War II start of Nixon’s rapidly advancing hard anti-communist political career, his defeats for president in 1960 by John Kennedy and for California governor in 1962 by Pat Brown and his resurrection in 1968 against Democrat Hubert H. Humphrey. And through his discourse, as is his habit, Professor Wills seemingly writes about every possible interpretation of his rise to power and what Nixon symbolized on the American political landscape. If one has a criticism of Wills it is exactly this sociological overkill to make a point but make your own judgment on this one as you read through this tract.

However, as well written and well researched as this exposition is it will just not wash. Nixon knew what the score was at all times and in all places so that unlike old Samson there was no question of his not understanding. As Wills points out Nixon had an exceptional grasp of the ‘dark side’ of the American spirit in the middle third of the 20th century and he pumped that knowledge for all it was worth. Moreover, rather than cry over his self-imposed fate one should understand that Nixon liked it that way. There is no victim here of overwhelming and arbitrary circumstances clouding his fate.

It is perhaps hard for those who were not around then, or older folks who have forgotten, just what Nixon meant as a villainous political target to those of us of the Generation of 68 for all that was wrong with American political life (although one Lyndon Johnson gave him a run for his money as demon-in-chief). Robert Kennedy had it very eloquently right, as he did on many occasions, when he said that Richard Nixon represented the ‘dark side of the American spirit’. For those who believe that all political evil started with the current President George W. Bush, think again. Nixon was the ‘godfather’ of the current ilk. Some have argued that in retrospect compared to today’s ravenous beasts that Nixon’s reign was benign. Believe that at your peril. Just to be on the safe side let’s put another stake through his heart. And read this book to get an idea of what a representative of a previous generation of political evil looked like.

Although the Nixon saga is the central story that drives this book Professor Wills, as is his wont, has a lot more to say about the nature of those times. He takes some interesting side trips into earlier days in California where Nixon grew up. He draws a direct line on the various other personalities like Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney (Mitt’s father) and a younger Ronald Reagan who fought Nixon for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968. He gives an interesting overview of the state of liberal and radical thought during 1968 and how the tensions between them were fought out at the Democratic Convention and in the streets of Chicago.

Wills also tries to draw out the meaning of the virulent George Wallace independent third party campaign and how that kept everyone on their toes on the question of law and order the code word then, and today, for race. In short, Professor Wills has enclosed the Nixon story in a hug sociological and political survey of the times. Some of his observations had momentary importance; some have a more lasting value. Others seem rather beside the point. Collectively, however, they give a helpful history of the key year 1968 in America. The proof is in the pudding. The ‘culture wars’ on the nature of personal rights, political expression and lifestyle choices that we have been fighting for the past forty years have their genesis in this time. Give this book a good, hard look if you want to know what that was all about by someone who covered many of the events closely.

Victory to the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK)!

As I write this commentary the Turks are already bombing and sending foot soldiers over the border to Iraq in pursuit of PKK militants. It is the duty of every leftist to stand in solidarity with the PKK and call for their military victory over Turkey. Below I have republished a commentary from earlier this fall that highlights the central question at issue. I would add one supplementary note to the commentary below that would change our attitude a liitle toward the Iraqi Kurds in the present situation. To the extent that they militarily support and defend the PKK in Northern Iraq we call for their defense against the Turks as well. That position might change if American troops intervene directly in the north.

Commentary

DEFEND THE RIGHT TO NATIONAL SELF-DETERMINATION OF THE KURDS IN TURKEY. MILITARY DEFENSE OF THE KURDISH WORKERS PARTY (PKK)

The minute one enters into the murky waters of Middle East politics one is immediately confronted with words like, insolvable, daunting, and hopeless. If there is one area of the world that cries out for a multi-nationally derived socialist solution it is this benighted area. Practically speaking, however, that prospect is music for the future. Nevertheless some programmatic points can be put forth today that will cut across the racial, ethnic and religious divides that lead one to use the above-mentioned words of despair. One such point is not even a socialist point per se- the question of a nation’s right to self determination. Yes, that question is off the table for those nations that have already established their right to it by force of arms, or otherwise. However, in the case of the interpenetrated peoples of the Middle East some real nations have been left on the sidelines. In no case is this clearer than with the Kurds, the largest coherent population without a state of their own.

Recent headlines have highlighted this question point blank as Turkey, one of the four nations along with Syria, Iraq and Iran in the region that have significant Kurdish populations, has attempted to solve its Kurdish ‘problem’, as in the past, by militarily annihilating various guerilla operations wherever they crop up- here across the border in neighboring Iraq. I make no pretense that this solves all the questions of this area in regard to the Kurdish situation, for example, militants do not today raise the right of national self-determination for Kurds in Iraq who have consciously subordinated themselves to American imperialism but the beginning of wisdom today is to defend those guerilla forces, mainly the Kurdish Workers Party, in their fight against their national oppressor-Turkey. More, much more on this situation as it unfolds but for now the prospective slogan is –For the right to national self-determination for the Kurds in Turkey. For the future- A United Kurdistan.

The Second Amendment- The Right To Revolution

COMMENTARY

A few weeks ago the United States Supreme Court decided to take a case, to be heard in the spring of 2008, involving the question of interpretation of the Second Amendment right to bear arms. Despite the continuing overwhelming proliferation of guns and other armament in individual hands in this country the question of the meaning of the ambiguously phrased amendment has not faced much federal litigation in the lower courts and very, very seldom at the Supremes, the last case being heard in the late 1930’s over machine guns. The issue to be decided, if it is, is whether the amendment confers an individual right to bear arms, with or without restrictions, or whether it is a collective right to security by the maintenance of armed forces, in this case, citizen militias. The early betting is that the conservative court will hold that the right is individual but that like other amendments in the Bill of Rights, such as those that guarantee free speech and assembly, the government has the right to make reasonable restrictions on that right. Thus a whole new field of litigation will be opened up until somewhere down the road there is settled law on the issue.


That this issue was helped along through the judicial pipeline by the well greased efforts of a right wing businessman who wanted to test the waters only adds intrigue the question and demonstrates once again the proposition that when it comes to American justice you better have good lawyers and plenty of ready cash. Despite the source of the case’s origin, despite the probable outcome of the case and despite the ravings of the National Rifle Association and other gun aficiados socialists would welcome a legal interpretation that establishes an individual right to bear arms. However, like many issues that are not necessarily of our own making we have our own distinct rationale for our position. We see the issue in the context of the right to revolution. As the case develops I will have additional commentary from this angle as the arguments are heard and the decision made next year.

A Short Note On a Small "Victory"- Crack Cocaine Sentencing

Commentary-Revised December 17, 2007


One of the most bizarre twists in the United States Sentencing Guidelines that have for a generation controlled judicial discretion in the federal system has been the distinction drawn in many federal sentences between crack cocaine and ‘straight’ cocaine. Not entirely by accident that difference in severity for crack cocaine has been reflected in the disproportionate number of blacks and Hispanics incarcerated for the crime. Recently the United States Sentencing Commission, the governmental organization that established the guidelines, did an about face for many of the crack cocaine offenses and reduced the disparity. Since the hysteria over crack cocaine has died down and further information has indicated that the differences between the two forms of the drug is not significant the Commission voted 7-0, over Bush Administration objections, to retroactively permit challenges to sentences in many of these cases. An estimated 20,000 prisoners could be positively affected by the decision.

Although leftists do not share the illusions in the capitalist justice system that one commissioner, Federal Judge William Sessions of the District Court in Vermont, expressed when declaring that this decision goes a long way to insuring a ‘color blind’ justice system we nevertheless will take such a 'victory’ when it comes along. And that I think is the point here. The Federal system is loaded, no, over- loaded with prisoners sentenced during the heyday of the “war against drugs” for crimes that should never have been crimes in the first place. I have argued, and continue to argue today, that drugs should be decriminalized. In most cases possession of drugs constitutes a personal preference and as such are so-called ‘crimes without victims’ and that is where it should be left-out of the court system. One estimate has it that some 60,000 of the over 200, 000 prisoners in federal jails are there for some drug related crime. That alone tells the tale. Moreover, multiply that figure by the numbers of drug prisoners in state and local facilities and one can only conclude that something is very wrong here. Down with the ‘war against drugs’. Decriminalize drug use now.

ADIEU, KARL ROVE- ALMOST

COMMENTARY

There appears to be something of a political law that bourgeois ideologues, venal as many of them are, do not retire but merely move on to greener pastures. At least that appears to be the case with one Karl Rove who until this past September served as President George W. Bush’s ‘brain’. No sooner had we seen him off to the rolling hills of East Texas the he pops up on the “Charlie Rose Show”. And his purpose? To muddy the waters about who and who did not act impulsively in the lead up to the ill-fated Iraq War. Rove is retailing the notion that the legislative branch, in this case, the august ‘slumbering giant’ United States Senate ‘bushwhacked’ the Administration into a rush to judgment. Okay, Karl have it your way. That, however, is not the real point here. The nefarious Mr. Rove is just getting a jump-start on history by influencing what the first drafts will look like. Oh, well. But mark this, some ‘objective’ historian writing about the Iraq War and the slow demise of the American Empire in fifty or one hundred years will, in order to give all sides their due, cite Mr. Rove’s remarks as good coin. Nice move, Karl. But know this also; there is no truth to be found in the man. Nevertheless, as I noted previously in the commentary reposted below written as a ‘tearful’ farewell to a departed foe in September here is savage class warrior.


COMMENTARY

A SAVAGE CLASS WARRIOR LEAVES BUSH TO HIS OWN DEVICES

Well by now everyone among the ‘chattering classes’ knows that Republican President George Bush’s ‘evil counselor’, one Karl Rove, has like so many in the recent past abandoned the sinking ship U.S.S. Bush and gone off to seek greener pastures in the hills of Texas. However, unlike most of the Bush ilk, the likes of Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz to a name a couple, I will miss Karl Rove as a target. Why? I will make a confession based on a very long experience in politics- I get along better with and better understand right wing ideologues than the usual mushy ‘consultant’ types who populate today’s political scene. The ‘band aid guys’ and the ‘scotch tape gals’ whose political program is a small grab bag of ‘nice’ things to tweak the capitalist system while leaving it intact and that solve nothing leave me cold. One only needs to mention the name of the apparently recently retired Democratic Party consultant and perennially ‘loser’ Robert Schrum to bring this point home.

Give me the hardball players, the real bourgeois class warriors, any day. They know there is a class struggle going on as well as I do and know and that, in the final analysis, it is a fight to the finish. And who will dare say that Karl Rove was not the hell-bent king of that crowd. Anyone who could get a genuine dolt like George Bush elected twice Governor of Texas and twice President of the United States without flinching knows his business. Imagine if Rove had had a real political street fighter like Richard Nixon for a client. Yes, I know in the end Mr. Rove and I will be shooting from different sides of the barricades but Karl was a real evil genius and I will miss that big target.

Karl Rove honed two basic propositions that Marxists can appreciate, even if only from an adversarial position. One was the above-mentioned sense of the vagaries of the class struggle for the bourgeois class that he has so faithfully represented. How he was able to grab the dirt poor and against the wall farmers of places like Kansas and the desperately poor of the small towns of the ‘Rust Belt’ as cannon fodder voters for a party that has not represented plebian interests since at least the 1870’s is worthy of study. The second was his notion, parliamentary-centered to be sure, of a ‘vanguard’ party. What? Karl Rove as some kind of closet Leninist? No. However, his proposition that the Republican party should cater to its social conservative base and drag whoever it could in their wake is a piece of political wisdom that leftists should think through more. That is a much better political approach than to rely on the current dominant ‘popular front’ strategy of organizing on the basis of the lowest common denominator issues whittled down to a meaningless point just to avoid antagonizing the Democrats instead of fighting for what is necessary. Yes, one can sometimes learn something from one’s political adversaries- Adieu, Karl.

NO RELIGIOUS TESTS FOR OFFICE- FOR SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

COMMENTARY

Every once in a while left wing propagandists, including this writer, are forced to comment on odd ball political or social questions that are not directly related to the fight for socialism. Nevertheless such questions must be addressed in the interest of preserving democratic rights, such as they are. I have often argued that socialists are, or should be, the best defenders of democratic rights, hanging in there long after many bourgeois democrats have thrown in the towel, especially on constitutional questions like abortion and searches and seizures.

A good example from the not too distant past, which I am fond of citing because it seems so counter intuitive, was opposition to the impeachment of one William Jefferson Clinton, at one time President of the United States and now potentially the first First Ladies’ man. How, one might ask could professed socialists defend the rights of the Number One Imperialist –in Chief. Simple, Clinton was not being tried for any real crimes against working people but found himself framed by the right wing cabal for his personal sexual preferences and habits. That he was not very artful in defense of himself is beside the point. We say government out of the bedrooms (or wherever) whether White House or hovel. We do no favor political witch-hunts of the highborn or the low for their personal predilections. Interestingly, no one at the time proposed that Clinton be tried as a war criminal for his very real crimes in trying to bomb Serbia, under the guidance of one Wesley Clark, back to the Stone Age (and nearly succeeding). Enough said.

Now we are confronted with another strange situation in the case of one ex-Governor of Massachusetts and current Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney on the question of his Mormon religious affiliation and his capacity to be president of a secular state. Romney, on Thursday December 6, 2007 fled down to Houston, apparently forced to deal with the issue by his vanishing prospects in Iowa, and made a speech about his Mormon faith, or at least his fitness for office. This speech evoked in some quarters, at least formally, Jack Kennedy’s use in the 1960 presidential campaign of the same tool concerning his Roman Catholicism as a way to cut across anti-Catholic bigotry in a mainly Protestant country and to affirm his commitment to a democratic secular state. I pulled up that speech off the Internet and although Kennedy clearly evoked his religious affiliation many times in that speech he left it at that, a personal choice. He did not go on and on about his friendship with Jesus or enumerate the virtues of an increased role for religion in political life.

Romney’s play is another kettle of fish entirely. He WANTS to affirm that his Mormon beliefs rather than being rather esoteric are in line with mainstream Protestant fundamentalist tenets. In short, Jesus is his guide. Christ what hell, yes hell, have we come to when a major political party in a democratic secular state has for all intents and purposes a religious test for its nominee for president. A cursory glance at the history of 18th century England and its exclusion clauses, codified in statutes, for Catholics and dissenters demonstrates why our forbears rejected that notion. It is rather ironic that Romney evoked the name of Samuel Adams as an avatar of religious toleration during some ecumenical meeting in 1774. Hell, yes when you are getting ready to fight for a Republic, arms in hand, and need every gun willing to fight the King you are damn right religion is beside the point. Revolutions are like that. Trying to prove your mettle as a fundamentalist Christian in order to woo the yahoo vote in 2007 is hardly in the same category. Nevertheless on the democratic question- down with religious tests, formal or otherwise, for political office.

Now to get nasty. Isn’t it about time we started running these religious nuts back into their hideouts? I have profound differences with the political, social and economic organization of this country. However, as stated above, I stand for the defense of the democratic secular state against the yahoos when they try, friendly with Jesus or not, to bring religion foursquare into the ‘public square’. We have seen the effects of that for the last thirty or forty years and, hit me on the head if I am dreaming, but isn’t the current occupant of the White House on so kind of first name basis with his God. Enough. Look, this country is a prime example of an Enlightenment experiment, and tattered as it has become it is not a bad base to move on from. Those who, including Brother Romney, want a faith-based state- get back, way back. In the fight against religious obscurantism I will stand with science, frail as it sometimes is, any day. Defend the Enlightenment, and let’s move on.

*POLITICAL SLOGANS AND TIMELINESS- ANTI-WAR SOLDIERS AND SAILORS SOLIDARITY COMMITTEES

Click on the title to link to an "Under The Hood" (Fort Hood G.I. Coffeehouse)Web site online article about the "Oleo Strut" Coffeehouse, an important development in the anti-Vietnam War struggle. Hats off to those bygone anti-war fighters.

COMMENTARY

Recently a reader asked me why during the last few months I have not highlighted the slogan for creating anti-war soldiers and sailors solidarity committees in my commentaries on Iraq. Fair enough. As noted in the headline, and as commentators seemingly from time immemorial have noted, much of politics is about timing. That is as true for a left wing political propagandist as it is for those today mired in any of the bourgeois party nomination processes. In fact, an argument can be made that it more important for us as openings in the political process, particularly in this country, are far fewer and therefore we need to be judicious. The long and short of it is that today, December 5th 2007, and for some time prior to this date, it has not been appropriate to raise that slogan.

Let me draw some distinctions around the question of the uses of political slogans. There are two basic, although sometimes overlapping, uses of political slogans. One is to make propaganda points about some crying political need that is not immediately possible. The propaganda fight for a workers party falls into that category. That slogan has general applicability in this period and only a radical and militant turn in the labor movement, like in the 1930’s, would, perhaps, render that slogan inappropriate. To not get too far from today’s reality the various ‘universal’ health care proposals, mainly from Democratic presidential contenders, are at this stage propaganda fights. The other use of political slogans is agitational-for immediate action. The slogan for Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal of U. S. Troops and Mercenaries from Iraq falls in that category- from day one of the Iraq War buildup.

So back to the slogan for creation of anti-war soldiers and sailors solidarity committees. There are many continuously appropriate slogans in the fight against American imperialism but that slogan is not one of them. For example, given the fact of an all-volunteer American army, in say the year 2000, we would not have raised such a slogan. It would have made no sense and, in any case, would have fallen on deaf ears in ‘peacetime’. For that matter raising it in 2003 would have made no sense, given the patriotic hysteria, even though it was a political necessary corollary to the fight for immediate withdrawal from Iraq. The same sense of timing holds true for the slogan calling for labor strikes against the war. Yes, that slogan is nice and necessary but the realities of the American labor movement at the time meant that it would not have intersected any real political movement.

No so for the solidarity committees in late 2005 and early 2006 when I, and unfortunately too few others, raised this slogan as an agitational response to the continuing American occupation in Iraq. At that point it was clear the Democrats were basically sitting on their hands hoping for a favorable result in the midterm 2006 elections. Furthermore, the bankruptcy of the ‘anti-war’ Democrats and their parliamentary strategy of piecemeal chipping away at the Iraq war budget and setting timetables for troop withdrawals was being laughed at by the Bush Administration and ignored by everyone else. Most importantly, the visible and vocal stirrings of opposition from the rank and file troops in Iraq and more forcefully by those who had returned after serving there gave an objective basis for anti-war opponents to link up with the rank and file troops to try to shut down the war.

What has changed in the political situation to make that slogan no longer an agitational demand (although the jury is still out on its propaganda use)? It’s the ‘surge’, stupid! We need to recognize that General Petreaus’s strategy has ‘worked’, in the short haul. American causalities are down, violence has been reduced, the Iraqis are making ‘nice’, etc. That is the political reality we work with now at least until the spring when the troop attrition rate will make the situation clearer, one way or the other. In any case, the rumblings, mumblings and grumbling by the rank and file troops have drastically fallen. Nothing could demonstrate this more clearly that a question that I put to the ‘street’ journalist Noel Troett about troop morale in Iraq and the question of the committees. (See archives in this space). He dismissed the idea out of hand in today’s Iraq. Why? The troops smell ‘victory’. That is not a predicate for turning the world upside down. Right? Will the slogan for anti-war soldiers and sailors solidarity committees be raised again if the situation turned for the worst in Iraq next year? Good question. Probably not, the slogan is by its nature conjunctural and it is hard to see the troops getting uppity again any time soon. The only things I see in my crystal ball now are that Bush will leave the Iraq mess behind him for the next administration to deal with and the next administration will hem and hew about not letting the Iraqi security situation deteriorate by withdrawing troops. Raise hell about withdrawal now but better start getting your banners and posters ready for January 20th 2009, as well.

WHAT IF THEY GAVE A WAR AND NOBODY NOTICED?

COMMENTARY

I hope that I am not the only one who has noticed that the war in Iraq has fallen way below the newspaper fold lately. As a prime example in a recent edition of the Boston Globe news of the war was on page 10. Page One, front and center, featured the trials and tribulations of those yuppie trend setters who are ‘pioneering’ the concept of luxury condo living adjacent to upscale malls. Go figure. I was ready to get out the old hankerchief on that on.

Moreover, the vaunted presidential campaign has shifted it axis, especially on the Democratic side, as there is now far more talk about various domestic priorities than the fate of the war. On the Republican side there is a certain amount of gloating, especially by Senator McCain who has hinged the fate on his campaign on the success of the troop ‘surge’ to bring some stability to Iraq. And frankly he should gloat. One would have to be a fool, political or otherwise, to not recognize, that at least in the short haul that military strategy has worked. Whether come next spring when American troop levels go down by attrition and the Iraqi forces have to fend for themselves more that will still be the case is still an open question.

This is a good time to be clear here about why we opposed this war in the first place. If for no other reason, we opposed this war as an act of imperial hubris. We very definitely did not oppose it under a standard of whether it made military sense or that the question of ‘victory’ for the American side was important or not . We have to remember that as we are once again, as in the immediate aftermath of the invasion in 2003, somewhat isolated and shut off politically. In short, the political slogan of the day still is- Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal of U.S. Troops and Mercenaries from Iraq! Know this though- there is a world of political different between forcing the troop question through our political efforts and the leisurely withdrawal of troops, if any, on the Bush (or any) Administration’s timetable. We must continue to force the issue. More, much more on this question will follow as the situation develops over the next few months.

ON IRAQ: AN INTERVIEW WITH 'STREET' JOURNALIST NOEL TOERTT

My old friend Noel Toertt, free-lance ‘street’ journalist and contributor to the monthly political magazine New Dawn, is just back from Iraq. If you are merely interested in the handouts from the U.S. Embassy or press conferences by Central Command in order to find out about the situation there pass this by. However, if you want to know what the situation is on the ‘street’ Noel will more times than not give you some insight into what is happening and why. Sometime I will give a real biographic sketch on the man but for now know that he is of Russian-German heritage. His grandfather was a Czarist general at the time of the Russian Revolution. An uncle fought in the Ernst Thaelmann Battalion of the International Brigades in Spain during the Civil War. Those seemingly contradictory facts will tell you part of the tale of his life. Make no mistake, as the interview below will make clear, we do not share the same political universe for the most part. What we do share is the need to turn the world upside down. This interview took place on October 21, 2007. More of the interview will follow in later entries. Any transcription problems are mine. Any political problems you can be the judge.



Markin: Noel, long time no see. How are you doing? You look at little tired?

Tortt: Ya, my flight back from the Middle East was a nightmare. I think I would rather have been on a cargo plane at least you have room on them. And the booze is better.


Markin: Just to set the frame for the interview when did you first go to the Middle East?

Tortt: Actually I started covering the area at the time of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, about 1980; I worked out of Pakistan first. Iraq about 1990 during the build up for the first Iraq war. Afghanistan again in 2001 and Iraq again, off and on, since late 2003. I have written about all of this maybe a hundred times.

Markin: Okay now that we have established your ‘credentials’ here is the first ‘softball’ question. I have been arguing, unhappily, since late spring that, all things being equal, that the Bush troop ‘surge’ in Iraq by placing more troops on the ground would be successful in the short haul. As long at the American troops stayed in the lead. Now several months later and after the Petreaus/Crocker reports to Congress and the tamp down on known acts of violence it looks to me like that is the case. What is your take on this?

Tortt: Look, let’s look at this from this perspective. A conventional army like the American one, and especially the American one, can rain hell down on any other conventional army if it has the will. Adding a few more troops, more or less, doesn’t really change the mix. This asymmetric warfare is a different baby though. Once the numbers for the ‘surge’ and where they would be concentrated became general knowledge insurgent decisions had to be made. For the various insurgent operations you noticed what amounted to a self-imposed tamp down on confronting the American forces. So yes, today, and I only speak of today in an almost literal sense, the ‘surge’ has had some successes. But listen, the atmosphere in places like Baghdad is so tense you could cut a knife through it. That’s the real situation. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.



Markin: Waiting for the other shoe drop and do what?

Tortt: Waiting for the Americans to back off enough to go back on the ‘offensive’ and this time with more sophistication and probably more co-coordinated attacks. One thing that gets forgotten in the mix is that these guys have nothing but time. Hell for the most part it’s their country so they aren’t going anywhere. They also know that the Americans have to leave sometime so like smart guys they prepare, keep up enough of a presence to worry the American generals and move when the time is right. Not a nice picture from the American side but that is the story.


Markin: How do you know that they, the insurgents, have not just decided that there is no way forward on the road they were pursuing and have decided to close up shop?

Toertt: Let’s go back to that tension in the air business I mentioned a while ago. Nothing indicates that they have given up the struggle. Let me tell a little point to bring that home. I ran into a kid, and I do mean kid, who was carrying about a half dozen cell phones in need of various repairs. He approached me and asked me for some batteries that I did not have. I asked since the phones did not seem to work what he needed batteries for. He replied that a ‘friend’ would have them working pretty soon. The way he said it made me think that something more than calling his girlfriend was on his mind. No, they are getting ready believe that. By the way those cell phones were thrown away by the Americans in the Green Zone if that kid was not lying, and I do not think he was. Shades of Vietnam all over again.

Markin: What do you mean?

Toertt: Well, the American army in Vietnam supplied, incidentally and unintentionally, a fair amount of material to the South Vietnamese Liberation forces that they turned around and used as ammo, etc. against the Americans. Also remember the Iraqis are smart people. Hell this area is the cradle of civilization and although they have lost a few steps over the centuries they are still smart. It never did anyone any good to underestimate a determined foe, although the Americans repeatedly do so.


Markin: Well, if the Bush strategy is a temporary success at least what about the other part of the puzzle- turning the war over to the Iraqi national army and police forces?

Toertt: That, Markin, is a whole different ball game. Let me take a couple of steps back on this. Saddam build a pretty good national army in his time. At least it looked like it could fight or be used, as is the usual case, for any internal disturbances. However, he squandered that army in the Iran wars in the 1980’s. Then the cream got decimated in the Kuwait fiasco in 1991. After that the thing was a bleeding hulk. By the time 2003 rolls around it is essentially human dust. Nothing since then has indicated that a national army, or for that matter police force, can be built that will do the job of defending the government or put a stop to foreign interventions. Look it is hard to create a real army. You need cadre. As I mentioned above that, for the most part, has been liquidated. So what you have now are a bunch of kids who have seen nothing but failure being forced usually out of economic necessity to take up the gun. Add in the sectarian aspect and the stigma of working with the occupiers and that does not present a very good picture. That is what the American generals scream into the night about.

Markin: That sounds like a recipe for a very long occupation


Toertt: Right, do not let anyone kid you, nobody I talked to realistically thought about being out of Iraq for five to ten years with the ten years being more likely. And they were not sure even then that the army they trained could do the job. Believe me when they invented the expression between a rock and a hard place they had something like Iraq in mind. More than that though I do not see a will to create an army. There are just a bunch of scared kids (justifiably so) in a place they do not want to be in. The proof of that are the exceedingly few operations the Iraqis do on their own. You made me laugh one time when you said in one of your commentaries that you would like to see the Iraqis do an operation without half the 82nd Airborne beside them. You hit the nail on the head on that one.


Markin: Well here is the ‘hard’ question. We have talked earlier today and at previous times about this. As you know for the last year or more I have been arguing for a change in orientation for the anti-war movement away from the futile parliamentary maneuvering and linking up with the rank and file troops in Iraq to end the war. I asked you before you left for Iraq this time to get a feel for this for me. What did you think?


Toertt: Markin, you have got to move away from your love of the Russian Revolution and all that happened there. It is starting to unbalance you. Sure the Russian troops then were ready to lead the fight against continuing the war and they did it with their feet. Hell, they tried to boil my grandfather the General in a barrel. But that was different. They were war weary, they had land hunger and mainly they were tired of the offensives that led nowhere except to death. Rather exceptional circumstances won’t you agree. And nothing like today.


Markin: I figured I would have to take a verbal beating from you on this but as I have pointed out before the whole point of making propaganda for this position was to change the axis away from reliance on essentially Democratic parliamentary maneuvering to bring about a troop withdrawal. Believe it or not I realize that conditions in Russia in 1917 and today are different but the task is the same.

Toertt: Okay, Okay we have been through that before but to answer your question I do not see any movement like that today. First, the ‘success’ of the surge has tended to solidify the rank and file back to at least neutrality about what they are doing there. Secondly these kids are a long way from home and want to get home fast. The shortest way seems to be to do their time and rotate. I also think that the effects of being a part of a professional force tend to militate against those kinds of actions. In Russia, and even in the late stages of the Vietnam War, these were actions of citizen-soldiers fed up with the way things were going. I got no sense of that. Sure there is some opposition to the war among the rank and file. And also some confusion about why they are there. And importantly, some resentment toward those who they perceive are not respectful of their mission. All those things are normal and to be expected.

Markin: Okay, that is a fair enough evaluation although it does not negate the need for a change in orientation. One last question for this round. Where does all this go? If parliamentary maneuvering is doomed, if the troops will not lead us out- then what?

Toertt: You like to call yourself a hard socialist realpolitik politician. I like to call myself a tough liberal realpolitik observer. Here is the hard reality. Korea and Germany. Yes, a long term occupation force smaller than today’s for a very long time, make that a very, very long time no matter what administration is in power, except if your guys take political power before. Ouch.

Markin: Thanks, I will take that under advisement.

*22nd Annual Holiday Appeal-Free All Class-War Prisoners!

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

This appeal is passed on from the Partisan Defense Committee. I need only add that support for class-war prisoners is a duty not charity. Dig deep for our brothers and sisters.

Workers Vanguard Mo. 903 23 November 2007

22nd Annual Holiday Appeal

Free the Class-War Prisoners!

(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)

"The class-conscious worker accords to the class-war prisoners a place of singular honor and esteem."

— James P. Cannon, "The Cause that Passes Through a Prison," Labor Defender, September 1926

For the past 22 years, the Partisan Defense Committee has been sending monthly stipends as an expression of solidarity to those imprisoned for standing up to racist capitalist repression. In doing so, we have revived the tradition initiated by the International Labor Defense (ILD) under Cannon, a founding leader of the Communist Party and the ILD's first secretary (1925-28). This year, as in years past, the PDC calls on labor activists, fighters for black rights, radical youth and defenders of civil liberties to join us in building our annual Holiday Appeal, which raises funds for this unique program.

The Holiday Appeal benefits will focus particularly on our campaign to mobilize mass protest demanding freedom for death row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. Mumia currently awaits a decision by a federal appeals court on whether to reinstitute the death sentence, keep him entombed in prison for life or grant him a new trial or other legal proceedings. For those fighting for Mumia's freedom, there must be no illusions in capitalist "justice." Earlier this year, the capitalist courts again turned down appeals by class-war prisoners Leonard Pettier, Ed Poindexter and Mumia's son Jamal Hart. Build the Holiday Appeal! Free all class-war prisoners!
Mumia Abu-Jamal is a former Black Panther Party spokesman, a well-known supporter of the MOVE organization and an award-winning journalist known as "the voice of the voiceless." The fight to free America's foremost class-war prisoner has reached a crucial juncture. This past May, oral arguments "were heard before the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals — the last stage before the U.S. Supreme Court. A decision could come at any moment.

9 December 2007 marks the 26th anniversary of Mumia's arrest for a killing that the cops know he did not commit. Mumia was framed up for the 1981 killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner and sentenced to death explicitly for his political views. More than six years ago, Mumia's attorneys submitted to the courts the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Muraia, shot and killed Faulkner, but to the racists in black robes, a court of law is no place for evidence of the innocence of this fighter for the oppressed.

Mumia faces the racist death penalty or life in prison because he has always spoken for the oppressed, like the Jena 6 or those left to die in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Workers, immigrants, minorities and all opponents of racist oppression must redouble their efforts to free Mumia now!

Leonard Peltier is an internationally revered class-war prisoner. His incarceration for his activism in the American Indian Movement has come to symbolize this country's racist repression of its native peoples, the survivors of centuries of genocidal oppression. Peltier's frame-up trial for the deaths of two marauding FBI agents in what had become a war zone at the South Dakota Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975 shows what capitalist "justice" is all about. Although the lead government attorney has admitted: "We can't prove who shot those agents," and the courts have acknowledged blatant prosecutorial misconduct, the 63-year-old Peltier is still locked away. In separate lawsuits, early this year federal courts in New York and Minnesota kept under government seal thousands of FBI documents, once again covering up the racist frame-up that has already Stolen 30 years of his life.

Jamal Hart, Mumia's son, was sentenced in 1998 to 15 1/2 years without parole on bogus firearms possession charges. Hart was targeted for his prominent activism in the campaign to free his father. Although Hart was initially charged under Pennsylvania laws, which would have meant a probationary sentence, Clinton's Justice Department intervened to have Hart thrown into prison under federal laws. Hart was transferred to Minersville, PA, where prison officials subjected him to repeated provocations and improperly adjusted Hart's security level to deny him transfer to a lower level security facility; a transfer to Loretto, PA, has finally been granted. In October, the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals summarily turned down Hart's habeas corpus petition which would have freed him after more than ten years in prison.

Eight MOVE members, Chuck Africa, Michael Africa, Debbie Africa, Janet Africa, Janine Africa, Delbert Africa, Eddie Africa and Phil Africa, are in their 30th year of prison. They were sentenced to 30-100 years after the 8 August 1978 siege of their Philadelphia home by over 600 heavily armed cops, falsely convicted of killing a police officer who died in the cops' own cross fire. In 1985, eleven of their MOVE family members, including five children, were massacred by Philly cops. In 2008, the MOVE prisoners will be eligible for parole, but without massive calls for their freedom can only expect continued imprisonment.

Jaan Laaman and Thomas Manning are the remaining anti-imperialist activists known as the Ohio 7 still in prison, convicted for their roles in a radical group that took credit for bank "expropriations" and bombings in the late 1970s and '80s against symbols of U.S. imperialism such as military and corporate offices. Before their arrests in 1984 and 1985, the Ohio 7 were targets of massive manhunts. Their children were kidnapped at gunpoint by the Feds.

The Ohio 7’s politics were once shared by thousands of radicals during the Vietnam antiwar movement and by New Leftists who wrote off the possibility of winning the working class to a revolutionary program and saw themselves as an auxiliary of Third World liberation movements. But, like the Weathermen before them, the Ohio 7 were spurned by the "respectable" left. From a proletarian standpoint, the actions of these leftist activists against imperialism and racist injustice are not a crime. They should not have served a day in prison.

Ed Poindexter and Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa are former Black Panther supporters and leaders of the Omaha, Nebraska, National Committee to Combat Fascism. They were victims of the deadly FBI COINTELPRO operation under which 38 Black Panther Party members were killed and hundreds more imprisoned on frame-up charges. Poindexter and Mondo, railroaded to prison for a 1970 explosion which killed a cop, were sentenced to life and have now served more than 35 years in jail. In September, a Nebraska court denied a new trial for Poindexter despite the fact that a crucial piece of evidence excluded from the original trial, a long-suppressed 911 audio tape, proved that testimony of the state's key witness was perjured.

Hugo Pinell is the last of the San Quentin 6 still in prison. He was a militant anti-racist leader of prison rights organizing along with his comrade and mentor, George Jackson, who was gunned down by prison guards in 1971. Despite hundreds of letters of support and no disciplinary write-ups for over 26 years, Pinell has repeatedly been denied parole, most recently in November 2006. Now in his 60s, Pinell continues to serve a life sentence at the notorious Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit in California.

Contribute now! All proceeds from the Holiday Appeals will go to the Class-War Prisoners Stipend Fund. Send your contributions to: PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013; (212) 406-4252.